Microsoft coverage: tell us what you want
You've likely noticed that our coverage of Microsoft (non-gaming) has picked up quite a bit over the past year, thanks in large part to contributions from Peter Bright who has joined Emil Protalinski on One Microsoft Way. Peter and I were recently discussing future projects, and we both thought it would be a great idea to solicit from you, dear reader, thoughts on what we should and should not be covering in the world of Microsoft.
Microsoft is a massive company with more products than 99.9 percent of the population can name. Despite so many products, it's often hard to determine what is best to cover. Many, many moons ago we sought to cover nearly all of the daily "news," but it was frankly quite boring (and you told us as much, in both feedback and traffic). Patch Tuesday is the most uninteresting (and predictable!) "news" on earth, but some people would argue that it's essential information. Point updates and patches to enterprise products can be pretty snoretastic as well. But readers seemed to respond well to big releases, consumer product news, and strategy/direction analysis.
When thinking about what you'd like to see us cover, keep in mind that there are really two kinds of things we do here at Ars: there's the daily news mill, and then there are long-form features. We're looking for suggestions on both. For those of you who read other tech sites that address Microsoft, it would be fantastic if you linked to stories you wished we covered but didn't. It's one thing to say you want more enterprise news. It's quite another to link some examples of what you think counts as worthwhile examples of enterprise coverage.
As usual, Peter and I will be in the discussion section, so don't hesitate to ask questions if you've got them.
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Lack of funding may burst China's Green Dam
China's controversial porn filtering software, Green Dam Youth Escort, may be at the end of the road. The Beijing Times (via China Daily) reported that China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has pulled funding on the project, and that efforts to secure more have not been successful. Green Dam has a sordid history given its short lifespan. Last May, the Chinese government quietly ordered PC manufacturers to bundle the software with all computers sold in the country. The goal was to prevent children from seeing porn via a database of blocked sites that could be updated remotely. The software was also capable of performing semantic and image-based evaluation of incoming content.
Soon after the news broke, security researchers at the University of Michigan discovered a number of serious security vulnerabilities in Green Dam, saying that malicious websites could take advantage of the software and run arbitrary code on the user's computer. A code exploit was even posted on Wikileaks, and researchers further revealed that a large portion of the code in Green Dam appeared to have been stolen directly from commercial filtering programs in the US, including CyberSitter. (CyberSitter eventually sued the Chinese government for the alleged code theft.)
None of this seemed to faze China—until now, anyway. According to China Daily, MIIT had promised funding for development and a year of tech support to two companies behind Green Dam, but the teams have not received funding since May 2009. That's before news broke in the US about the project's existence in the first place, making us wonder whether China was ever as serious about Green Dam as it appeared.
Because of the lack of funding, the Chinese papers are now reporting that the project has been halted. One of the two companies is refuting that report, however; general manager of Beijing Dazheng Human Language Technology Academy Chen Xiaomeng said that the company simply stopped using its former office in Beijing and was not closing. He also said that the company would continue to provide free support to users, even without funding.
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4GB Xbox 360 Slim Arcade rumored for August release
When Microsoft announced the much-rumored Xbox 360 Slim redesign at E3, it only came in one flavor: with a 250GB hard drive and a $300 price point. Now, thanks to a listing on Amazon's German store, speculation is that the updated 360 is about to get the Arcade treatment as well.The listing, which was spotted by German site Gamers Global, is described as "Xbox 360 4 GB Arcade System Bundle." Few other details are given, so we're not sure at this point what might be included in this bundle. The 4GB most likely refers to some sort of internal storage—something the current Arcade unit lacks—and the original report puts the price at €148.99, or around US$190. The price seems to have since been removed from the listing, however.
The slimmed-down Arcade unit shows an August 20 release date, which would place the release during Gamescom—Europe's biggest trade show, which takes place in Cologne, Germany. Given the way Microsoft both announced and shipped the 360 Slim on the same day at E3, this release date seems very possible.
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New firmware to bless PS3 with support for 3D movies, photos
Sony has been pushing 3D technology for gaming pretty hard, and last month the PlayStation 3 received a firmware update that allowed it to play stereoscopic 3D games. Unsurprisingly, Sony is also looking at expanding the PS3's 3D capabilities beyond games, and later this year users can expect an update that will bring support for 3D Blu-ray movies, photos, and even YouTube to the console."In September this year, we're launching another Firmware upgrade—and this one is going to upgrade the PS3 to support Blu-ray movies in 3D," SCEE senior director Mick Hocking told CVG.
"So you'll see 3D games in the next 12 months, you'll see Blu-ray movies in 3D, and as soon as the broadcasts start through our PlayTV services, you're going to watch 3D content. YouTube will be supporting 3D content over the next 12 months as well—and you'll be able to watch that on the PlayStation 3. And as you start taking 3D pictures of your family or 3D camcorder movies, you can play those back on PS3, too.
"Crucially for us, PlayStation 3 will be able to store all types of 3D content. And we can do this through properly upgrading the Firmware on the platform."
If 3D does take off the way Sony hopes, it looks like PS3 owners will be in luck. Sony's "future proofing" of the console has made it so firmware updates are necessary to support 3D content (and take away other features). Just be sure not to keep the glasses on too long.
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Windows Phone 7 to be cloud-connected like Windows Mobile
We already know from leaked documents that Windows Phone 7 will require the use of a Windows Live ID and offer support for various online services. This online integration has now been described in more detail. A key part of the Windows Phone 7 system will be a new Windows Phone Live service.Windows Phone Live will provide a central place to manage and view data users have shared or created on their phones. For example, photos that have been published to SkyDrive photo albums, calendar items and contacts created on the phone, and OneNote notebooks will all be manageable through Windows Phone Live. The service will also provide access to SkyDrive's 25GB of online storage. Windows Phone Live will also include a Find My Phone service. This will allow lost phones to report their position, and it will provide support for remote lock, ring, and wipe capabilities.
These features might sound familiar to existing Windows Mobile users—the same abilities are available through Microsoft's My Phone service. My Phone offers equivalent capabilities to Windows Mobile 6.1 and 6.5 handsets, though with some small differences: for My Phone, the Find My Phone service is still in beta. Further, the remote lock, ring, and wipe features are all listed as "premium features." Though My Phone doesn't charge for them, they are, notionally, available only on a free trial basis.
It appears that Microsoft has abandoned any intention to charge for these features, as the company says that Windows Phone Live will be a free service for all Windows Phone users.
The Windows Phone Live features are, of course, augmented by Microsoft's other online services that have been previously announced: Windows Phone 7 will integrate Bing search, Zune Marketplace, Xbox Live, and e-mail.
Redmond has also confirmed for the first time the languages that will be available at launch, as well as the countries that will include Marketplace support for paid applications. Windows Phone 7 handsets will initially support English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian. Marketplace purchases will be available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the United States.
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Google makes plea for broadband conduit on new fiber website
Since early February, over 1,100 communities have applied to be part of Google's experimental 1Gbps, open-access, fiber-to-the-home Internet service, including applicants who have promised to change the name of their town to Google (temporarily), name their expected twins after Google's co-founders (if they're boys), or train their puppy to bark "Google" (sort of) every time the phrase "high speed Internet" is mentioned. But while the search engine giant has yet to decide which of these applicants will win the 1Gbps prize, the company is trying to enroll all of them, and everybody else, in what amounts to an advocacy campaign "for common-sense federal and local policies that would help fiber deployments nationwide."
All the details will show up on Google's new fiber-for-communities website, which will update the public on the project, and comes complete with a "thank you" YouTube video for all the fiber hopefuls—including the mayor who swam in a shark tank "to show his dedication to our cities' pursuit of Google fiber."
The key components of this campaign include showing support for bills in the House and Senate that would require all new federally funded construction projects to include broadband conduit—plastic pipe that can house fiber-optic communications cable. Google also wants cities to establish the same policies for construction projects that involve street work.
"We'd like every city and community that shares our interest in expanding the speed of the Internet to make conduit installation an integral part of their own road construction/repair process," Google says. "We encourage local governments to take concrete action on this and complete the dream of ultra high-speed Internet in their own towns."
The company emphasizes that participation in this campaign isn't going to get any of those 1,100 city applicants special consideration when it comes to picking testbed winners, but we're betting that more than a few aldermen, supervisors, and city council members in those fair towns are now thinking about conduit ordinances, if they haven't already.
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Intel rides the cloud to a record quarter
Intel was firing on all cylinders last quarter, as a jump in margins, productivity, consumer and business demand, and investment returns all combined to rocket the chipmaker to its best quarter ever. Revenue was up across the board, in both clients and servers, on strong demand for the company's 32nm products. PC client revenue was up 2 percent, but the real action was in the company's server business. Businesses may not be hiring yet, but Internet data centers are growing, and the two phenomena may actually be connected. Time and again throughout the company's earnings call, Intel made reference to the fact that the cloud infrastructure build-out is ramping up, and that the Xeon is quite popular with Internet service providers. It's also the case that the company's newer Xeon products offer such a power efficiency boost over the previous generation that cloud customers are upgrading their legacy systems, thereby adding to demand. Given that companies in every sector of the economy would rather sit on cash right now than invest in new IT infrastructure, it's probably the case that the very same uncertainty about the business climate that's preventing companies from hiring is also fueling demand for cloud services and, by extension, for Intel chips. When credit is tight and you're not sure if your income is going to fall off a cliff again, it's just better to rent than to own, and the cloud lets companies rent.
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Masterpiece: Super Metroid
At its best, the Metroid series is about solitude; you're left alone on a strange alien planet and its up to you to figure out where to go and what to do. And while the first game introduced the concept, it was with Super Metroid, released nearly a decade later, that the developers at Nintendo perfected it.Read the comments on this post
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Feature: Confirmation bias in science: how to avoid it
One of the most common arguments against a scientific finding is confirmation bias: the scientist or scientists only look for data that confirms a desired conclusion. Confirmation bias is remarkably common—it is used by psychics, mediums, mentalists, and homeopaths, just to name a few. As you may guess from such a list, deliberate use of confirmation bias is held in low esteem by scientists, and allowing confirmation bias to get the better of your results is regarded as a particularly sad form of incompetence.Yet, whenever science meets some ideological barrier, scientists are accused of, at best, self-deception, and, at worst, deliberate fraud. Examples of this are scattered across the Internet with respect to evolution, gun control, sex education, and, of course, global warming. Let's take a look at three cases: in two cases, scientists were certainly duped by confirmation bias: the case of N-rays and homeopathy. In the last case—sex in Samoan society—we can see how difficult it can be to either establish or refute confirmation bias. I will then follow that up with a story from my own research, which shows how everyday scientific practice is designed to avoid falling into the trap of confirmation bias.
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Amazon goes from cloud to grid with new cluster product
Amazon has announced a new cloud product aimed at bringing cloud-style scaling and flexibility to high-performance computing (HPC) applications. In short, the company has released a classic grid computing product that's based on their cloud offerings—it's a kind of the reverse of the normal grid-to-cloud evolutionary development that we described in our introduction to cloud computing. A quick look at the contrast between a cloud and an HPC-style grid will make it clear what Amazon has done and why. The cloud model that Amazon uses for EC2 consists of multiple compute nodes, loosely coupled, with each node running a collection of tasks from different clients. Here's a depiction of this model, drawn from the aforementioned introduction.
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French legislators have second thoughts on three strikes law
Are the French legislators who passed the country's tough new "three strikes" Internet disconnection law having second thoughts? Le Figaro caught up last week with Jean-François Copé, a leading member of the ruling right-leaning UMP party that wrote and supported the "Création et Internet" law passed last year. Copé helped rally support for the bill after it failed its first vote in the National Assembly because most UMP deputies had actually left the chamber without voting.Copé told the paper that he "knew and perceived the weaknesses" of the law before it was passed, confessed that the choice of wording in the law was "maladroit," and issued "un petit mea culpa" for the way the law turned out. "I have evolved a bit on this issue," he added.
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Apple's nuking of iPhone 4 discussions is business as usual
By now, you have undoubtedly heard that Consumer Reports has flipped its position on the iPhone 4 antenna. At first, the publication said that the signal woes weren't as serious as the Internet seemed to think, but it decided this week that it couldn't recommend the iPhone 4 thanks to its own lab tests on the issue. Now, Apple seems to be deleting discussion threads about the latest Consumer Reports conclusion, and Apple-watchers are incensed—even though this behavior is old hat for Apple.Threads in Apple's support forums started popping up almost immediately after the latest CR report hit the Web. As noted by TUAW, there wasn't just one thread: there were at least six threads that now point to nothing. There are a few more than have not yet been deleted, however—this thread is still alive, as is this one, but it's unclear how long they will stay up.
Longtime Apple product users know that this isn't the first time Apple has deleted discussion threads about controversial topics. One of the higher-profile incidents of discussion censorship was when iMac displays began displaying gradients back in 2007. Another involved some discussions in 2008 about Apple's decision to get rid of FireWire in its MacBook line. Yet another incidence of discussion disappearance involved threads about iPod touch WiFi connection problems after updating to iPhone OS 3.0.
There is rarely (if ever) comment from Apple as to why the discussions are disappearing, leading many to believe that Apple is actively trying to hide the issue. Others believe, however, that the nuked threads are simply ones that violate Apple's TOS, which states that discussions are specifically for community tech support about specific products, and must not include speculations about Apple's decisions. Posts must also be constructive and explicitly cannot contain "rants." These rules are far stricter than many other forums, but they are undoubtedly being used by moderators to decide which threads are worth shutting down.
Whatever the case, Apple is creating its own Streisand Effect here: the Internet is more abuzz than ever about the CR recommendation thanks to the disappearing threads, and it's likely only going to get worse.
Apple did not respond to our request for comment about the disappearing iPhone 4 discussions by publication time.
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Fleeting f-bomb insanity dealt body blow by appeals court
After years of enduring inconsistent, illogical, and often plainly stupid indecency decisions from the Federal Communications Commission, the broadcasting industry has found a champion in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Reviewing the FCC's sanctions against Fox Television for airing several instances of the f-bomb and s-word said on the fly, the court has unanimously declared the agency's "fleeting expletive" policy to be "unconstitutionally" and "impermissibly vague" and in plain violation of the First Amendment."Under the current policy, broadcasters must choose between not airing or censoring controversial programs and risking massive fines or possibly even loss of their licenses, and it is not surprising which option they choose," the justices declared. "Indeed, there is ample evidence in the record that the FCC’s indecency policy has chilled protected speech."
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XP fans get reprieve in form of downgrade rights extension
Downgrade rights have been a long-standing feature of Microsoft's operating system licensing. They allow users to buy a license for the latest version of the operating system, and then use that license with an earlier incarnation. Volume license users have long had a broadly unrestricted right to downgrade; though unsupported, they could choose to run Windows 95 if it suited their needs. OEM licenses, sold with preinstalled copies of the software, also have downgrade rights, but unlike the volume license kind, they tend to be restricted to specific versions.Windows 7's OEM downgrade rights, available for Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate, were originally due to expire this October. Microsoft has now announced that these end-user downgrade rights are being extended further.
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Poll Technica: iPhone 4 antenna woes got you down?
The iPhone 4 antenna issue has certainly been a major PR problem for Apple. While widely repeated tests have shown that the issue is real, Apple CEO Steve Jobs told users to just "hold it differently." Later Apple admitted there was a problem, but blamed it on inaccurate signal strength reporting. That admission wasn't enough to stop several class-action lawsuits from being filed, taking Apple to task for the flaw.The problem was exacerbated this week when Consumer Reports changed its mind about recommending the iPhone 4. Despite the fact that most of the staff loved it, and the consumer organization gave it the highest rating of any smartphone, it ultimately decided it could not recommend it to consumers due to the antenna problems. It didn't help matters much when Apple Support Forum moderators systematically deleted threads discussing Consumer Reports' verdict (though there is a long-standing policy to delete threads that are merely full of complaints and little useful support information).
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Support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP2 comes to an end
Today is the last day that Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 will receive support and patches from Microsoft. Starting tomorrow, Service Pack 3 will be required to receive support and hotfixes for Windows XP.In the past, the end of support for a service pack would mean that Microsoft would refuse to offer any kind of telephone support or troubleshooting assistance. This policy was relaxed a little in April; limited support will remain available for those organizations sticking with Service Pack 2. However, any hotfixes or security updates will be restricted to Service Pack 3.
Customers on Windows 2000 will not even have this option. The operating system is now out of its extended support phase. This brings an end to any and all hotfixes, security updates, or even paid support options. Fewer than half a percent of Internet-connected machines appear to use Windows 2000, and with the end of support, it is now open season on that minority: Microsoft will take no action to provide fixes for any security issues, regardless of their severity.
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Improved user experience needed to save Symbian
Although Symbian still holds the crown as the world's most widely used smartphone mobile operating system, it is rapidly losing ground to more modern alternatives. The Symbian Foundation's efforts to revitalize the platform—improving both the user experience and developer tools—is moving forward, but it may not be fast enough to save the platform from irrelevance.Gartner analyst Nick Jones has issued a wake-up call to Symbian's backers in a recent blog entry. He says that the mobile platform is losing market share at an accelerated pace and that the upcoming Symbian^3 update isn't going to remedy the platform's fundamental lack of competitiveness. The user experience is still too weak, he says, and he doesn't think that the Symbian Foundation can afford to wait until 2011 to address that issue with S^4. He complains that developers shouldn't be wasting time on projects like improving multitasking and internal architecture while the poor user experience continues to cripple the platform's chances of success.
"So if the weak UI is threatening Symbian's very survival the Foundation ought to be seriously worried, right? Wrong. I just looked on the Foundation web site and blogs at the roadmap and features for future releases. What I see is too much effort on stuff that really doesn't matter," he wrote. "The situation is now serious enough that any developer who isn't working on something directly related to a new UI is wasting their time."
Jones' concerns about the Symbian Foundation's pacing and priorities are well-founded, but the issue isn't as simple as he makes it sound. There are a lot of developers working on Symbian, but not all of them are infinitely versed in every aspect of the platform. The developers who are working on multitasking at the kernel level, for example, are probably not trained as designers and might not even have much familiarity with the userspace software stack at all. Fixing multitasking and improving the user experience aren't mutually exclusive efforts.
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Neutrino mass less of a mystery thanks to deep space imaging
Researchers are getting closer to nailing down the actual mass of neutrinos by studying their interaction with the Universe as a whole. A paper published in Physics Review Letters this week describes how the history of galaxy formation indicates that the mass of neutrinos must be less than 0.28 electron volts. This lowers the mass ceiling by half, and researchers hope that technology will allow them to find the exact neutrino mass within the next decade. Knowing the exact mass would offer insight into particle physics and cosmology, among other things.Scientists know that neutrinos are some of the lightest particles around. They come in three flavors: muon, tau, and electron, and it's possible to get some sense of their relative masses. However, details on their physical nature have been hard to come by, and their absolute mass has been difficult to determine.
The best researchers have been able to do is narrow the mass down to a window, with each new experiment shrinking the range a bit further. The upper limit has gone from 7.0 to 1.3 to 0.58 electron volts, and the lower limit from zero to about 0.05 electron volts. To push the limits closer, a research group turned its gaze to the Universe as a whole.
Even though neutrinos do have some mass, they tend to inhibit the clumping of matter, since they're so light and move so quickly that they don't tend to aggregate. On small scales (small being a relative term here), the bigger neutrinos were, the less galaxy formation there would be.
The researchers took pictures of deep space to observe the state of the Universe billions of years ago and compared them to pictures of areas nearer by to see how the formation rate has changed. Based on this measure, they determined that the rate of galaxy formation is only large enough for the sum of the masses of the three neutrinos to be no larger than 0.28 electron volts.
While the number isn't definitive, the authors hope they can refine their measurement further with more detailed pictures of space that can encompass items like Lyman-alpha forests and weak lensing. He predicts that cosmological observation technology should be sufficiently advanced to pinpoint the exact neutrino mass within the next decade. Determining the individual mass of each individual neutrino, though, may take a bit longer.
Physics Review Letters, 2010. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.031301
APS Physics, 2010. DOI: 10.1103/Physics.3.57 (About DOIs).
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New Massachusetts law extends censorship to IM, e-mail, Web
It has long been illegal in Massachusetts to provide minors with "matter harmful to minors" under the state's "Crimes against chastity, morality, decency, and good order" law. The law targets obscenity, but only its physical forms, which makes it easier to enforce. When little Johnny steps inside the adult video store, clerks can check his ID before selling him that DVD of industrial sexuality. And anyone trying show hardcore porn to a 13-year old knows exactly what they're doing, and who they're doing it to.In April, this "harmful to minors" law received a brief update—not more than a couple of paragraphs—but they had profound implications for free expression. The new law extended "harmful to minors" to the Internet. In addition to smutty books, films, pamphlets, pictures, plays, dances, and statues (!), Massachusetts decided that the "matter" which might harm minors should now include:
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Lack of monkeys caused PS3's Joe Danger publishing woes
Imagine this, but with more monkeys.
At the annual Develop conference in Brighton, UK, Murray revealed some of the reasons that publishers gave the studio for not wanting to publish Joe Danger. Originally reported by Develop Online, the list is as funny as it is depressing.
- "Name me one popular game with motorbikes?"
- "Collecting giant coins feels unrealistic to me"
- "I can see this working as a Facebook app"
- "We want games that are less about fun right now"
- "We love the theme, but with a different game"
- "We believe the iPhone will be largely unsupported"
- "Can Joe be a monkey? We like Monkeys"
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