Microsoft needs to stop trash-talking IE6 and just trash it
Microsoft Australia has launched an online campaign to try to persuade people to stop using Internet Explorer 6. The campaign likens the browser to a carton of milk: you wouldn't drink nine-year old milk, so why would you use a browser of a similar vintage?
The site then goes on to list various facts and figures about how online crime affects Australians, and describes the ways in which Internet Explorer 8 protects against phishing and security flaws.
Though the comparison is more than a little absurd (and the idea of drinking nine-year old milk wholly revolting), Internet Explorer 6 is without a doubt thoroughly obsolete. Its support for Web standards, though reasonably good back in 2001, is nowadays laughable. The world has moved forward. Internet Explorer 6 has not.
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Rumor: entry-level unibody MacBook set for a minor update
The same Vietnamese forum that detailed a fourth-generation iPhone prototype last week has also obtained a model of what it claims is the forthcoming update to the entry-level MacBook. The specifications have been slightly improved over the last iteration of Apple's sub-$1,000 notebook, which got its rounded, unibody shell last October.
According to Tinhtế, the updated MacBook will come equipped with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, up from 2.26GHz. The NVIDIA 9400M will also be updated to the same NVIDIA 320M used in the latest revision of the 13" MacBook Pro. Bus speed (1066MHz), installed RAM (2GB), and hard drive (250GB 5400PRM) remain the same. The display is still a 1280x800 pixel, LED-backlit, glossy panel, though System Profiler allegedly reports that the display is now capable of 32-bit color depth.
There's no mention of the battery, but it seems likely that Apple will include the slightly higher capacity 63.5Whr battery now standard in the 13" MacBook Pro. Combined with the more-efficient NVIDIA 320M, an updated MacBook should also be capable of a theoretical maximum of 10 hours of "wireless productivity." The included charger in the MacBook seen by Tinhtế also has the same updated MagSafe connector found on recent MacBook Pro and MacBook Air power adapters.
Updated models are expected to be released soon, based on historic upgrade cycles for the MacBook. (This would also coincide with the upcoming back-to-school buying season.) The model number for this new MacBook is reported to be MC518, suggesting this MacBook may also be joined by a rumored MacBook Air update said to have a model number of MC516. The MacBook Air is long overdue for an update based on historical release cycles.
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Mario Galaxy 2 preview: bludgeoned by great ideas, surprises
Mario Galaxy 2 began life as an expansion to the first Mario Galaxy and, when the developers found themselves overflowing with ideas and levels, it was expanded to become a very rare item: a direct sequel to a Nintendo game. A storyline doesn't seem to figure much into the action—Princess Peach bakes something, then gets kidnapped, and Mario has to find her with the help of a star that allows him to spin during his jumps. This makes perfect sense, right?
Mario soon gains control of a starship shaped like his head, and this becomes his home base. You'll be able to pick up friends to journey with you, and you'll gain the use of a bank for your collected star bits; in between missions, you can gain a few extra lives here and there. You'll need them: this is a game that doesn't mind throwing you into some incredibly tough situations.
What stands out about the game is that there is no "standard" level. Every section gives the player a new mechanic, a new challenge, or something new to play with. This is Nintendo at the top of its game... almost to the point of being obnoxious about it.
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Cold blood won't save lizards from rising temperatures
Despite many claims about climate change wreaking havoc on biodiversity, there are very few experimentally-validated models that can accurately explain recent extinctions and project future extinctions based on rising temperatures. However, a study in last week's Science conclusively links extinctions of Sceloporus lizard species to climate change and forecasts a gloomy future for many other lizard species around the world.In general, most lizards should be relatively resilient to rising temperatures, since they can regulate their own body temperature by basking in the sun or retreating to shady refuges to cool down. However, if temperatures rise so much that lizards cannot spend enough time out foraging to meet their energetic needs, extinction at a local level is possible. These time restrictions would be especially detrimental in the reproductive season, when energetic demands are particularly high. The study first tests whether this scenario might be responsible for past extinctions of lizard species in the genus Sceloporus.
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Feature: Glenn Beck's war on the FCC (and Satan worshippers)
Right-wing talker Glenn Beck took to his Fox News TV program last Monday night to deliver a rant about how President Obama has compiled something "almost like an enemies list" and how Obama is into "silencing opponents." The president's tool of choice for this censorship? Network neutrality—the principle that ISPs cannot interfere with content.
"We are dealing with people who think they should rebel until they get their little kingdom like Satan did," said Beck. "You know what? Thanks, Mr. President, but I think we're going to keep the Internet the way it is right now. You know—or at least until people who are worshipping Satan, you know, aren't in office."
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You didn't need to hear the fire alarm: Able Planet NC300s
The last set of headphones from Able Planet we looked at aimed to make sounds clearer at a lower volume, while the NC300s we'll be talking about today are all about isolating you in sound. Here's an explanation of noise cancellation so I don't embarrass myself by trying to explain it again. While it does block out ambient noise, you'll notice a high level of fuzz around the sound. Your brain will filter this out very quickly but, if you've never used this sort of technology, it can be slightly disconcerting.
The headphones work as advertised. The television in the same room as my gaming all but disappeared, and I couldn't hear my wife asking me to make dinner while she nursed our baby. (Is that a feature or a liability? It depends on who you ask.) Bass didn't distort at high volumes, but it also didn't seem as distinct as it is with other high-quality headphones I am used to. Outside of that nit-pick, sound quality was more than adequate for headphones at this price level, and the sound isolation worked very well.
The headphones don't come with a microphone out of the box, but you can purchase an add-on microphone if you'd like to get online and play some games. The microphone plugs into the bottom of the left can, and comes complete with mute and volume controls on the cable. Unsnap the microphone and you'll need to plug the standard connection back in. The microphone sounded crisp and clear during recorded interviews and on Ventrillo servers.
The headphones cup your ears and hold them in to try to block as much ambient noise as possible, and remain comfortable for the long haul. Able Planet lists the headphones at $130, which would be a hard sell, but Amazon is selling them for around half that price at the moment. The microphone will run you around $30. Getting both products for $100 or less will give you a compelling deal if you're interested in blocking out the little distractions of your environment while listening to music, working, or playing.
The headphones come with a hard case, an adaptor for use on planes, a single AAA battery for active noise cancellation, and a standard cable to connect to computers or iPods. The list price is a tad high for what what sound like entry-level noise-canceling headphones, but if you can find these for less than $80 you'll see why we liked them so much. Being able to disconnect the headphones and even the cable for storage in the hard case also made these a joy for travel.
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Five examples of lame DMCA takedowns
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act serves many purposes, some of which are good, but certain parts of it are ripe for abuse. The infamous DMCA takedown notice is at the top of anyone's list of most-abused parts of the act. These notices are meant to make it easy for content owners to have violations removed, and they do. But the notices also make it easy for anyone to try and silence criticism or stifle angles they simply don't like, even if the party in question is working perfectly within the confines of fair use.
Over the course of our coverage here at Ars, we've seen a number of DMCA takedown cases that were just plain lame. And, although there are plenty more lame cases that have happened in the world, we thought we would highlight some of our "favorite" ones to show how the DMCA takedown system can be used in an attempt to control content instead of merely enforcing copyrights. Plus, these examples just make us chuckle at the absurdity.
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Tetris, shooters, and Diablo: the best of StarCraft 2 mods
The StarCraft II beta has been going on for a while now, and though it has given players the chance to try out the game's fast-paced RTS action, the beta has also provided an opportunity to play around with the new content editor. Enterprising map makers have been able to work wonders with the powerful tools provided by the editor, making everything from a version of Tetris to an actual first-person shooter. Here are some of the best maps so far.
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Largest cellphone-cancer study to date clarifies little
The largest study to examine a potential link between cellphone use and cancer is already stirring up controversy, two days ahead of its actual release. After many years of ambiguous and sometimes conflicting results, the Interphone study was an attempt to provide a definitive measure of any risks associated with heavy cellphone use. But even the study's authors spent several years arguing over how to interpret the data that came in, before finally producing a report that's due to be published Monday evening, US time. A number of newspapers, however, have released stories on Interphone ahead of its general availability, and they suggest that the final product won't do much to clarify the health risks.
The past decade or so has seen a number of studies published that examined the potential for a link between cellphone use and cancers of tissues in the head, such as gliomas and parotid tumors. A few of these have found potential associations between heavy cellphone use and specific tumors, but these have generally used methods that are potentially subject to issues of bias—asking a user which side of the head that they typically held their cellphone on only after cancer had been spotted on one side of the head, for example. A steady flow of reports have failed to find any indication of an increased risk at all, even as cell phone use has increased dramatically.
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Weird Science commands its rodent army to smell the chicken
This story's so good, it's difficult to know where to start: The press release that brought me to The Journal of Experimental Biology involved spitting cobras, which seemed quite intriguing. Unfortunately, the paper was not yet available, so I'll recommend you visit Ed Yong's description of the methods used in the paper, which included having a researcher taunt the cobras until they spat venom at him.
While at the journal site, however, I stumbled across a paper entitled "Red junglefowl have individual body odors," which seemed too good to pass up. (For the uninitiated, the red jungle fowl is the wild ancestor of modern domesticated chickens.) It turned out that the researchers had stumbled across this purely by accident. They made this discovery as they attempted to find out whether the birds emitted odors based on their social position in the local pecking order. And we mean pecking literally—the study involved "six feather-pecked and six non-pecked birds." The answer to that question was no.
But what really sent the story into complete Weird Science Nirvana was the method used for distinguishing the eau de poule: "an automated olfactometer which assessed the ability of trained mice to discriminate between the odors." That's right: they trained the mice to pick up the scent of the birds, and then used an automated system to figure out what the mice thought about the stench.
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