It's official: Saudi Arabia bans BlackBerries
The rumors are true: Saudi Arabia has become the second country inside of a week to block access to Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices on grounds of national security.
The ban goes into effect on August 6 after a "grace period" in which local wireless companies were unable to bring BlackBerry devices (and their encrypted e-mail) into compliance with kingdom rules.
Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission said that it informed local providers STC, Mobily, and Zain yesterday that they would need to terminate BlackBerry service in a few days. Zain Saudi Arabia, which is headed by His Royal Highness Prince Dr. Husam bin Saud bin Abdul Aziz, announced only two weeks ago that its profits in the kingdom were up dramatically and that business was booming.
The Saudi government laid blame for the situation on the providers and on RIM, which is famously protective of customer messages.
The encryption used by RIM was good enough to thwart the security service in nearby United Arab Emirates, which earlier this week also blocked BlackBerry service until it could get access to people's messages.
These are relatively small markets for RIM, of course, but they aren't negligible; Arab News estimates that the UAE already has 500,000 BlackBerry devices in use, with another 750,000 in Saudi Arabia.
Rumors continue to swirl that India is also putting heavy pressure on RIM, and for the same reasons, though no similar ban has yet been announced.
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Social rejection might make you sick
Finally, someone is trying to find out why nerds stereotypically have asthma. A new experiment conducted at UCLA shows that social stress and rejection are related to the release of certain inflammatory chemicals in the body; these chemicals have been linked to several medical conditions, including asthma, arthritis, and some kinds of cancer.In the study, a group of researchers recruited a bunch of students at UCLA and subjected them to socially stressful situations. The students were asked write a speech and then read it to a pair of evaluators, who then acted as if the speech were abhorrently subpar. After that, they had to perform mental arithmetic for a proctor who would appear impatient with them and urge them to go faster. A subset of the participants were also made to play a game of "Cyberball" with two other people, who were asked to socially exclude them.
Throughout these socially stressful experiences, researchers took mouth swabs of the students and monitored their activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, a part of the brain known to process rejection-related distress. (It's possible that the swabbing added to the stress.) The two measures showed that greater activity in this area of the brain correlated with a rise in two inflammatory chemicals that are known to play a role in the onset or progress of conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease, depression, and various types of cancer.
The authors speculate that there may be some overlap in the neural circuits that process social and physical pain, resulting in a similar bodily response to both. The release of the inflammatory chemicals are typical of a basic threat response, as they help wounds heal more quickly and reduce the risk of infection.
The scientists didn't look into whether increases in social stress correlated with increased inflammation, or which symptom causes which—that is, if being a nerd begets asthma, or if asthma begets a nerd. Still, if the inflammatory results of social stress are cumulative, understanding the relationship better could help in controlling related health problems.
PNAS, 2010. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1009164107 (About DOIs).
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Feature: A brief hands-on with the BlackBerry Torch
RIM had hardware demo units available at today's Torch product intro, and we got some time to get a first impression of both the hardware and the new OS. There's no doubt that RIM is hoping that the combination of the two will let it expand into the consumer space, where most of the smartphone action is these days. All the speakers from RIM (which included a co-CEO, a VP, and a CTO) repeatedly emphasized that the products are thoroughly touch-based and are multimedia powerhouses. But do those claims hold up to a casual hands-on??
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Decency group to advertisers: stay away from "$#*! my Dad Says"
Say what you like about the Parents Television Council, the decency group follows up on its threats. Back in late May the PTC warned that if CBS didn't change the raunchy name of its new TV Series $#*! my dad says, all golly gosh heck would break loose."The PTC will wage an unrelenting campaign against every network advertiser that chooses to support this program; and in this instance, we will wage an unrelenting campaign against every local advertiser sponsoring the program at the affiliate station level," the organization's President Tim Winter promised.
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How do you get movies and/or music into your home theater?
The quest to gain a more accurate picture of the State of Home Theater at Ars continues this week, with the following polls based on feedback from last Tuesday's nominations data dump. There are a number of interesting polls that could be extracted from the data that Ars staffers, forum members, and readers submitted about their home theater setups, but perhaps the most important one is "How does content find its way into your home theater setup?". Do you use a media extender connected to a local server, an Internet-based media extender like Roku, an HTPC running Boxee, a NAS, etc.?
Once complete, the nine polls below should give us a pretty good idea of the relative popularity of different media options among the Ars crowd. But before you take the poll and then jump into the comments with your thoughts and ideas, scroll down to the bottom of this post for a "Most Likely To Be Asked Questions" (MLTBAQ) list.
MLTBAQ:
Q: Why isn't my favorite widget or application in this poll?A: Because you didn't submit it when nominations were open.
Q: Why do you have separate options for "Mac" and "PC," when it's just the OS that's different. The least you could do is not lump Windows and Linux hardware together, and then have a separate hardware option for the Mac. I mean, what if I'm running Ubuntu on my Mac mini?
A: I dunno... it just seemed better to me to do it this way.
Q: Why aren't the different Linux distros broken out? After all, the different Windows flavors are broken out.
A: Are there really that many different Linux flavors in common use for HTPCs besides Ubuntu? I suppose we could put it to a separate poll.
Q: Why don't the percentages here add up to exactly 100 percent?
A: Because you can select multiple options. What the percentage tells you for each choice is what percent of respondents selected that particular choice in addition to whatever other choices they selected.
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Intel & GE join to spend money, CPU cycles on healthcare
Intel and GE have announced a joint healthcare venture that marks a major step in the progress of Intel's healthcare IT efforts. Intel has been steadily increasing its investment in healthcare projects over the past decade, growing initially from a set of internal efforts that resulted in the 2008 launch of the Intel Health Guide. In April of last year, Intel and GE announced an agreement to collaborate on healthcare, with the two companies pledging a combined $50 million per year of research dollars over a five-year period. Intel's Paul Otellini later began publicly advocating for a greater role for IT in healthcare, and the company spent much of 2009 touting the IHG as a model for healthcare's future. The new Intel/GE spinoff company has yet to be named, but the two companies will split ownership of it 50/50. The company will combine GE Healthcare's Home Health division and Intel's Digital Health Group, and it will launch later this year pending regulatory approval. Intel's and GE's joint statement explains that the venture will "focus on three major segments: chronic disease management, independent living and assistive technologies." Note that all of these areas are mainly patient-facing, as opposed to electronic medical records and other, more traditional examples of "healthcare IT." This patient focus is logical given that much of Intel's software research is driven by novel and processor-intensive user interface ideas (e.g., software that can use a camera to track an elderly person's gait in order to anticipate a fall and possibly contact emergency medical services).
Intel has done these kinds of joint ventures before, the most widely known of which is probably IM Flash, LLC—an Intel/Micron joint venture that produces NAND flash memory.
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Web-based jailbreak relies on unpatched iOS PDF flaw
A new Web-based jailbreak was released recently for iPhones and iPads running the latest versions of iOS. Users merely need to visit jailbreakme.com from an iPhone or iPad to automatically jailbreak the device, allowing them to install apps and hacks that have not been approved by Apple. However, the process relies on a vulnerability in Mobile Safari that could be likewise exploited by more nefarious hackers to access all the data on your device.Jailbreaking has been around since the iPhone was first released—it was the only way to develop apps before iPhone OS 2.0 and the App Store appeared in 2008. It has also been used to install apps that aren't approved for the App Store, access iOS's underlying UNIX features, enable FaceTime chat over 3G and other carrier-unsupported features, or change settings that are otherwise unaccessible from the standard iOS interface. And, the Library of Congress recently ruled that defeating Apple's DRM to jailbreak an iPhone is a justified "fair use."
There are a variety of automated tools to jailbreak an iOS device, most of which require plugging a device in restore mode to a computer and running an application that performs the necessary steps to remove Apple's software locks. Jailbreakme.com, on the other hand, exploits a vulnerability in Mobile Safari to run the code necessary to jailbreak. "I wonder how long until someone figures out the actual bug I'm exploiting," the developer of jailbreakme.com wrote on Sunday via Twitter.
Not long, it seems. VUPEN Security today identified an issue in PDF handling as the flaw being exploited. A "memory corruption error" can occur when processing font data stored within a PDF file. The memory corruption can then trigger a kernel error that allows elevated privileges, bypassing the sandbox within which iPhone apps typically run. The vulnerability "could be exploited by attackers to execute arbitrary code by tricking a user into visiting a specially crafted web page using Mobile Safari," which is exactly what jailbreakme.com does. The flaw is handy for easy jailbreaking, but not so good for unsuspecting users who might end up having their personal data pilfered.
The vulnerability has been identified as existing in iOS 3.x, 4.0, and 4.01, and affects iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches.
McAfee security researcher David Marcus noted that the exploit is so far only being used for jailbreaking, but could be used for many more—and far less savory—things. "This should serve as a wake-up call for anyone with a mobile device: Remote exploitation is real and here to stay," he wrote.
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Sign here: how EA Partners can help indie game devs
Jamil Moledina has extensive experience in the world of gaming. He was the editor-in-chief of Game Developer Magazine, he was the executive director of the Game Developers Conference, he sits on the board of the International Game Developers Association, and he's now the outreach director of EA Partners, which publishes the work of independent third-party devs. This is a man who knows gaming from its untrimmed toenails to its designer glasses, and we spoke to him about the world of independent gaming and what EA Partners can bring to the table.Moledina doesn't open his mouth unless he has something to say, and he has interesting thoughts about what a publisher can do for those developers sitting on wonderful game. The message he wants to send seems to be a clear: let us help you.
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Microsoft turns on Visual Studio LightSwitch
Microsoft today announced Visual Studio LightSwitch (previously codenamed Kitty Hawk), the newest member of the Visual Studio product family. It will be available as part of Visual Studio Professional, Premium, and Ultimate. Microsoft says that LightSwitch is aimed at developers of all skill levels and organizational sizes who want to build business applications that target the desktop, cloud, and Web.
A beta will be available on August 23 to MSDN Subscribers, with general availability to follow, and the software giant is hoping to get feedback as it works on getting a final version released by next year.
Visual Studio LightSwitch includes pre-built templates and tools in a simplified development environment for building scalable custom business applications that connect with existing applications, legacy systems, and Web services. Developers can choose from a wide variety of hosting, deployment, and third-party plug-in options. Deployment is simplified in that applications (which are at their core Silverlight applications) can be deployed to the client, browser, and even Windows Azure (post-beta). LightSwitch can be used with C# or Visual Basic and it supports SQL Server, SQL Azure, SharePoint, and Microsoft Office.
Microsoft says that LightSwitch dramatically decreases the time it takes to build a custom application by automatically handling routine code; it's a rapid application development tool that offers application shells and screen templates to allow the developer to concentrate on the core business logic.
There's also a lot of "drag and drop" functionality, but full access to the .NET Framework is still available; if you need to tinker under the hood, you can do so by opening your LightSwitch application in the "full" version of Visual Studio.
How does LightSwitch compare to Microsoft's recently announced WebMatrix Web development suite? Both are tools for building applications, but the approach and target audience is very different: WebMatrix is HTML UI and LightSwitch is Silverlight UI.
WebMatrix is a tool that includes a Web server (IIS Developer Express), a simple database (SQL Server Compact), and programming framework (ASP.NET). It is targeted at non-professional developers to make it easier to create new websites from scratch, or use Microsoft's Web Application Gallery to customize popular ASP.NET and PHP open source community applications. In contrast, LightSwitch is targeted at professional developers and power users looking to create custom Line of Business (LOB) applications using data from multiple sources.
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Rdio now open to all, streams music to any device
The new music streaming service by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, Rdio, has now opened to the public. For $4.99 or $9.99 per month, though, it's more than just your average streaming service: Rdio lets you stream its music, but it also focuses on your local music collection so you can always have access to your own music when you're away from home.When we checked out the Rdio beta in June, we said that it was a solid idea but our major complaint was that it was lacking a bit in music selection. It looks like the Rdio team has been working hard to remedy that situation since then: not only does the service have deals in place with the Big Four labels (EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner Music Group), it also has access to music from a number of indie aggregators (IODA, IRIS, Finetunes, INgrooves and The Orchard).
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Cloud-based iTunes could be about the video, not the music
When Apple bought streaming music company Lala last year, the consensus was that Apple would likely augment iTunes with cloud storage and music streaming services. However, according to music industry sources speaking to CNET, Apple's plans for music may be much more "modest in scope," instead focusing on video streaming services. That strategy may work in the short term, but Apple can't ignore Google's moves to give Android streaming music access this fall.Apple acquired Lala last December and ended up shuttering the music streaming service in May after its management and engineers were folded into Apple's iTunes division. It was widely expected that cloud-based iTunes services would launch sometime in 2010, but so far, that hasn't happened.
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Catching up: RIM launches BlackBerry Torch, touch-based OS 6
Today, at a press event in New York City, Research In Motion introduced both the new BlackBerry Torch and version 6.0 of the company's operating system. The event, co-hosted by AT&T, marked the latest attempt by RIM to find a hardware/software combination that might appeal to a broader consumer audience and hold off the hard-charging Android and iOS platforms.
The new BlackBerry Torch, a touchscreen device with a slide-out keyboard, will be available as an AT&T exclusive on August 12th. The price will be $199 with a two-year contract.
Updated hardware
The hardware itself is typical of current smartphones. The Torch comes with a 360x480 touch screen, a slide-out keyboard, and Bluetooth and WiFi B/G/N. The battery is said to allow nearly six hours of talk time or 30 hours of music. The camera is 5 megapixels, and it comes with a flash. All of this is powered by a 624MHz processor (presumably an unspecified ARM chip) with 512MB of main memory. There's also 4GB of built-in storage, and a microSD slot that accepts cards of up to 32GB.Read the comments on this post
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NBA Jam coming to 360 and PS3 (if you buy NBA Elite)
The upcoming remake of the classic arcade game NBA Jam has, up until this point, been exclusive to the Wii. Now EA has revealed that the game is indeed coming to both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as a downloadable title, but there's catch: it's only available to those who purchase NBA Elite 11.Those who purchase Elite will get a download code that provides access to three different Jam modes: play now, classic campaign, and online. At least for now, the game won't be available to purchase on either XBLA or PSN.
The Wii version of the game is an update to the arcade classic and features a similar over-the-top style of gameplay. There are power ups, boss battles, and the bizarre 2D head visual style. In addition to the classic campaign, the game also features a new remixed single-player mode that includes a number of updated features. It doesn't look like this mode will be included in the HD version.
NBA Elite 11 and the downloadable NBA Jam will both be available on October 5, the same day that Jam comes to the Wii.
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Happy days are here again for global chip sales... for now
The Semiconductor Industry Association has confirmed what Intel and other semiconductor companies have said in their recent round of earnings reports: chip sales have shot back up in the first half of this year from their 2009 lows.The SIA reports a 50 percent jump in sales vs. 2009, which puts chip sales a bit above their previous 2008 peak—in other words, a return to the long-term growth trend, with 2009's v-shaped fall-off and then recovery looking like a blip on an otherwise upwards-pointing curve.
The last time semiconductor sales tanked this hard, in the wake of the dotcom bubble, it took four years for them to rebound off their lows and make new highs. So the fact that the drop and then full rebound happened over the course of one year is quite remarkable.
But the industry isn't out of the woods yet. Intel was careful on its recent earnings call to sound a note of caution about the sustainability of the snap-back in demand. SIA president Brian Toohey took a similar tone in a statement, saying, "Macroeconomic factors such as consumer confidence, job growth, and overall economic growth continue to bear watching for their possible impact on sales in the second half."
At least one new study flagged by Infoworld suggests that the second half could see a bit of a slowdown, at least in the server market. A study by research firm TheInfoPro claims that 38 percent of the 252 decision makers that the company surveyed plan to reduce their server spending vs. 2009, while only 25 percent plan to increase it. The survey blames virtualization in part for the slowdown, since it has let companies consolidate and better utilize their existing infrastructure.
Such a slowdown in server spending may or may not translate directly into a slowdown for server chip makers like Intel and AMD, however. If enough of these companies are moving to cloud platforms as an alternative to new server purchases (i.e., converting capex to opex), then server vendors could still see an uptick in sales as cloud datacenters continue to expand. Indeed, Intel's latest earnings call had some indications that this trend may have taken hold this past quarter.
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