Hands on: Roku rocks as it slims down, adds 1080p support
Roku announced Wednesday that the company is revamping its line of three set-top boxes for streaming video. All three models come in a much smaller case, similar to the new Apple TV and about the size of two CD jewel cases. Some models also gain support for 1080p video output, while the top model can stream MPEG 4 files directly from a USB drive.
We got to spend a little time with the top-end Roku XD|S, which is competitively priced at $99.99. This model comes with all the A/V connectivity you might need, including HDMI, component video (using a special cable), composite video, digital optical audio, and analog stereo audio. For networking, it includes Ethernet and dual-band 802.11n WiFi. It supports up to 1080p video output, and also includes a USB port for hooking up a hard drive or flash drive to play back video from MP4 files (MOV support is promised in a later update).
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"WiFi on steroids" gets final rules, drops spectrum sensing
At its monthly meeting today, all five FCC Commissioners set disagreements (mostly) aside and unanimously supported the final rules that will open empty TV channels to unlicensed broadband use. If all goes according to plan, these "TV white spaces" will be the raw material that unleashes another WiFi revolution—but this time with longer range, better building penetration, and even more speed.White space devices will still need to query a special geolocation database before transmitting, in order to avoid broadcasting over existing TV channels and wireless mic users, but the FCC has ditched the expensive "spectrum sensing" tech it initially required back in 2008. On a conference call yesterday, reps from Google, Dell, and Public Knowledge worried that a requirement to include both the database check and spectrum-sensing hardware would make the new white space devices too costly and too difficult to build, while broadcasters and microphone users have long argued both techniques are necessary to avoid any interference.
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Internet Explorer 9 to require Windows 7 users to install SP1
Windows XP users are unable to install Internet Explorer 9, and now it looks like Windows 7 RTM users won't be able to either, at least once the final version hits the 'Net. When Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 9, Windows 7 users will need to have Service Pack 1 before they can install it, according to the Internet Explorer 9 Beta FAQ for IT Professionals. Microsoft did confirm, however, that IT pros will be able to add IE9 to existing Windows 7 images in order to streamline the deployment process.The decision is a curious one if we remember the company's insistence that IE9 is not dependent on any future releases of Windows. Microsoft has previously released new Windows versions with new versions of IE (IE6 came with Windows XP, IE7 came with Windows Vista, and IE8 came with Windows 7). Now it appears IE9 will require Windows 7 SP1.
This new tidbit explains why, earlier this week, Microsoft used the The Windows Blog to tell businesses not to wait for the final version of IE9, saying they should move to Windows 7 Enterprise and IE8 now. Microsoft is quite aware that businesses will find it much more of a hassle to deploy a whole service pack in order to install IE9, let alone move from Windows XP and IE6/IE7 straight to Windows 7 SP1 and IE9. In other words, Microsoft doesn't want to give organizations any excuse to avoid moving to Windows 7 and IE8.
The IE9 public beta, released last week, requires four hotfixes before it can be installed, but the browser's installer takes care of everything for the user. It's not clear whether Microsoft will have the final IE9 installer roll out SP1 to Windows 7 users, but given the company's history, the software will likely spit out an error message and fire up Windows Update for users to get SP1 themselves.
Microsoft has not given a release date for either Windows 7 SP1 or for IE9, though we now know the two will not be far apart. Testers got their first Windows 7 SP1 beta build three months ago, but the final version won't come until the first half of 2011.
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Spain: YouTube not liable for user uploads
Calling it a "clear victory for the Internet and the rules that govern it," YouTube today praised a Spanish court ruling which found that users—not YouTube—are liable for any copyright infringement in their uploaded videos.Broadcaster Telecinco had asked the court to find otherwise, arguing that it simply wasn't fair for the rightsholder to monitor the Web for every instance of infringement. But Europe has a law much like the US "safe harbor" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA); under it, rightsholders are supposed to monitor their own content and notify sites like YouTube, which must then take down infringing material.
A Madrid court upheld that approach, though not all national courts in Europe have done so—remember the infamous Italian decision to hold YouTube liable for an uploaded video showing kids abusing a developmentally disabled student?
"If Internet sites had to screen all videos, photos and text before allowing them on a website, many popular sites—not just YouTube, but Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others—would grind to a halt," said YouTube today, adding that it provides a content filtering service called "Content ID" that helps companies alleviate the burdening of continuous monitoring. (In its US court case against YouTube over some similar issues, media giant Viacom argued that YouTube initially used its Content ID tech as a competitive cudgel, only providing it to those companies willing to do deals with YouTube. If that was true once, it no longer appears to be YouTube policy.)
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Blockbuster finally gives in, files for bankruptcy
It's official: Blockbuster has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company made the filing Thursday morning, asking for protection against its almost $1 billion worth of debt as it works on its restructuring plans. The company isn't closing up shop. Rather, it plans to focus on other parts of its business—such as kiosks and online offerings—while still keeping a select few stores open. You know, for nostalgia's sake."You mean Blockbuster wasn't bankrupt already?" That's what I heard from our readers and Twitter followers the last time we wrote about Blockbuster. Indeed, the company has been putting off the inevitable for most of 2010, and most expected the filing to come in September. Blockbuster has already closed nearly a thousand stores in recent years, but that hasn't stopped the company from entering into new distribution deals with movie studios.
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LittleBigPlanet 2 pushed into 2011, time needed for polish
LittleBigPlanet 2 was one of our most anticipated releases due out this year, especially with Move support and expanded content-creation tools. Sadly, now it looks like it's going to be our most anticipated release of next year: the game has been delayed until January 2011."We know this will come as disappointing news for all you LittleBigPlanet fans, and believe us, we are disappointed too," Media Molecule wrote on its official page. "We are a tight-knit team and we take enormous pride in our work, so to raise the bar we've set with the original LittleBigPlanet, a game that has been so embraced by all, we've agreed to allow ourselves a bit more time to deliver the experience that our great fans and community deserve. We are truly sorry, but hope you understand that we have to build the best possible game, as it is the foundation of our community."
LittleBigPlanet 2 is coming to the PlayStation 3 in January of next year.
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Laser imaging reveals the secrets of an unassuming predator
Mnemiopsis leidyi, a comb jelly, doesn’t seem like a very formidable predator: it lacks good vision, isn’t capable of sensing nearby food via mechanoreception, and can’t move quickly enough to strike at prey. Its common name, “the sea walnut,” certainly doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of men. However, M. leidyi is an extremely effective stealth predator. A new paper in PNAS this week details how this seemingly innocuous sea creature can be such a successful hunter.
The researchers used 2D digital particle image velocimetry, or DPIV, to study water movement around feeding M. leidyi. During this process, the water is seeded with particles which are then illuminated with a laser. The movement of these particles can be analyzed to visualize the velocity, direction, and movement patterns of the fluid.
DPIV revealed that M. leidyi use millions of cilia to move water and create feeding currents that trap nearby prey and carry it to their mouth. This technique isn’t unique among animals; many bivalves and bryozoans use the same strategy. What makes this comb jelly's strategy different is its ability to create a laminar feeding current that is completely undetectable to the prey that's caught in the flow.
The currents created by other animals, such as oysters and mussels, have very high fluid deformation rates, meaning that the disturbance in the water can alert the prey to the presence of danger and give it the chance to escape. In contrast, the feeding currents created by M. leidyi have extraordinarily low deformation rates that are well below the detection thresholds of their prey.
Thanks to the slow speed of the current and the morphology of the comb jelly's mouth, the prey remains blissfully unaware of the impending danger until it is too late: the fluid deformation rates only exceed the prey’s detection threshold once it has entered M. leidyi’s critical capture zone. There, sticky tentillae in the comb jelly's mouth capture the prey with a near 100 percent success rate.
With this clever strategy, M. leidyi can feed at the same rate as many higher-level copepods and predatory fish (and possibly an even faster rate, according to less conservative estimates). Moreover, the hydrodynamically silent feeding current is capable of entraining a large variety of prey, including small copepods and even some fish larvae. Despite belonging to a basal lineage and lacking many of the attributes of many higher-order predators, the sea walnut's manipulation of fluid dynamics makes it a master stealth predator.
PNAS, 2010. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1003170107 (About DOIs).
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Hands-on: Reading e-books on Android with Aldiko
Although pocket-sized touchscreen devices are arguably not the most comfortable way to read copious amounts of text, modern multifunction smartphones offer a convenient alternative to dedicated e-book devices such as Amazon's Kindle. With the right third-party software, an Android handset can transform into a capable e-book reader whenever you have a spare moment to dive into a novel.There are several excellent e-book readers for Android, each with a slightly different user interface and feature set. In this article, we will primarily be looking at one called Aldiko that is becoming popular.
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Feature: Castle Ravenloft: the 4th Edition D&D horror board game of DOOM!
When I went to buy Castle Ravenloft at the local hobbyshop, they told me they didn't take American Express. "Oh, c'mon man, this is for work!" I told him, going back to my wallet for my personal debit card. "I have to bring this game to the Internet!""Like in Tron?" he asked. Sometimes my job provides moments of great fun, and that was certainly one of them.
This is our third board game review here at Ars—we've previously reviewed Elder Gods and Drakon, both by Fantasy Flight—and we had originally planned to dive into Tannhauser, a WWI-era miniatures game, also by Fantasy Flight. But someone pointed out in the comments to our last review that the idea is to talk about board games in general, not have a Fantasy Flight column. Hence, our decision to go with Wizards of the Coast's Castle Ravenloft in the third installment. Besides, Castle Ravenloft's claim to fame is offering bite-sized chunks of fourth-edition Dungeons and Dragons—and that's hard to pass up.
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"A stab in the back": Europe tackles online piracy
As part of their rise to power in the 1930s, German National Socialists like Hitler and Heydrich bought into—and publicly proclaimed—the myth of the "stab in the back." Under this view, the patriotic German army could have won World War I, had it not been stabbed in the back by internal traitors (read: Jews and Communists). It helped preserve dignity and patriotism at a time when both were hard to come by in Germany, shifting the blame for Germany's fortunes onto minority scapegoats and raising the spectre of internal traitors.So powerful was the idea (and its consequences) that the German term for it, "dolchstoss," has entered English (and still comes up repeatedly today). So when a leading European digital rights group describes a just-adopted, non-legislative European Parliament resolution on dealing with intellectual property as "a stab in the back of citizens' freedoms," we were naturally intrigued. This must be one helmet-wearing, Czech-annexing, goose-stepping resolution!
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Zombie cookie wars: evil tracking API meant to "raise awareness"
The war against persistent zombie cookies—cookies that never seem to lose your data, even when you delete them—rages on, as users learn more about the technology. While awareness is rising thanks to widespread coverage of Flash cookies and, more recently, HTML5's storage capabilities, we have a long way to go before Internet users can avoid persistent tracking. Like all zombie wars, this one will take some time to win; and if you thought things were bad now, they're about to get worse.Case in point: evercookie, an open source JavaScript API by developer Samy Kamkar. When implemented by a website, evercookie stores a user ID and cookie data in not two, not three, but eight different places—with more on the way. Among them are your standard HTTP cookies, Flash cookies, RGB values of force-cached PNGs, your Web history, and a smattering of HTML5 storage features. In addition, Silverlight Storage and Java are apparently on the way.
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Free Microsoft Security Essentials now for small business, too
Microsoft Security Essentials has won a lot of praise since its introduction last year. The anti-malware software is unobtrusive and reasonably effective, and its price—free—can't be beat. One fly in the ointment has been the software's licensing terms; MSE is only licensed for home users. Businesses have to look elsewhere for their anti-malware needs.That's set to change, at least a little, next month. From early October, small businesses—defined here as those with ten PCs or fewer—can use MSE, too. Microsoft claims that enterprise security software is too expensive, complicated, and hard to use for these organizations, hence its decision to expand the reach of MSE.
While it's interesting to see yet another definition of "small business" from Redmond (Small Business Server is good for up to 75 desktops, and the forthcoming cloud-based Small Business Server "Aurora" is for companies with up to 25 users), this is certainly a good move.
Free anti-virus for home users has been around for a long time, but most of the free products include similar restrictions to MSE—if you want to use them on corporate desktops, you have to pay for the privilege. Microsoft's entry into the free anti-virus market was met with mixed reactions by its competitors, with some voicing antitrust concerns even when MSE was a consumer-only product. This foray into the corporate anti-malware market is sure to raise the hackles of the company's competitors once more.
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American energy: do we need the "nuclear option"?
It's been decades since the last nuclear power plant was completed in the US, but the increasing emphasis on avoiding carbon emissions has led the Obama administration to promote an expansion of nuclear power. Partly as a result, there are now 19 sites for potential new plants in the licensing and approval stages, and the Department of Energy has been awarding loan guarantees with the intent of getting some of these projects off the ground. With that as a backdrop, Nature is publishing a pair of commentaries today on whether nuclear power should have a significant future in the US energy economy. For what are ostensibly opposing views, the two pieces actually agree on a wide variety of the basic facts; the difference is primarily in the meaning they assign to those facts. One of the big points of agreement is that nuclear plants are ferociously expensive, and they take years to build. The fragmented nature of US utilities means that relatively few of them have the financial muscle to take on a project like a nuclear plant on their own. As a result, nuclear plants will either rely on private financing or the sorts of loan guarantees provided by the DOE.
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Ping, Facebook integration fell apart after 18 months of talks
When Apple announced Ping, the social network connected to iTunes, CEO Steve Jobs mentioned being able to easily add contacts via Facebook friends. A day after the launch, however, that option quickly disappeared. Turns out Apple may have worked with Facebook for over a year to connect the two services, only for the deal to fall apart at the last minute.A source told Business Insider that the iTunes team was in discussions to integrate Ping with Facebook for 18 months or more before the deal fizzled right before launch. Apple developers reportedly used Facebook's Connect APIs at the last minute, which allowed early Ping users to quickly add friends from their list of Facebook contacts. However, Facebook blocked Apple's access to the Connect APIs just a day later, leaving many early users scratching their heads about how to add friends via Facebook, as recommended.
As for why things fell apart, Jobs told All Things Digital that Facebook wanted "onerous terms that we could not agree to." Business Insider notes that Facebook as a company has become more difficult to work with of late due to the company's growing influence in social networking and its increasing user base.
Apple still hasn't been able to reach an agreement with Facebook to connect the two services. It's far too early to tell if this will have any lasting negative impact on Apple's fledgling social network, but some colleagues at Ars have mentioned buying more music via the iTunes Store thanks to Ping. Apple will continue to leverage its existing iTunes customer base without the help of Facebook, but it may not grow the network as quickly.
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Salmonella causes, then feeds off gut inflammation
If you’ve ever had the misfortune to experience salmonella poisoning, you are familiar with symptoms like gut inflammation, nausea, cramps and diarrhea. As it turns out, a symptom might not merely be a result of invading pathogens—it can also be an accomplice to further transmission. Studies published a few years ago linked severe intestinal inflammation with improved growth of Salmonella Typhimurium in the intestinal lumen, but no one knew why at the time. A paper in a recent issue of Nature reveals the mechanism involved.
The authors began by referencing experimental methods that scientists developed in 1923, where a liquid called tetrathionate broth is used to selectively enrich the growth of Salmonella Typhimurium in samples that contain rival microbes. This led the authors to ask if tetrathionate is made in the gut, where it also could promote Salmonella Typhimurium growth.
Tetrathionate is S4O62-, but can be produced by the oxidation of thiosulphate (S2O32-). As it turns out, there's a lot of thiosulphate in the guts. Bacteria in the colon produce significant amounts of hydrogen sulphide (H2S), a very toxic gas, which is converted to the safer thiosulphate in the mucous membranes of the cecum.
In experiments on mice, the authors found that gut inflammation did indeed generate tetrathionate. When Salmonella Typhimurium infection inflames the intestines, the gut releases reactive oxygen radicals that go on to oxidize the thiosulphate into tetrathionate. Salmonella Typhimurium bacteria then use the tetrathionate as an electron acceptor (an important part of the fermentation process) to thrive and outgrow competing microbes in the gut.
Inflammation is a common disease symptom that affect many different body parts. The authors’ findings open up questions about whether other types of inflammation may promote diseases. Understanding the mechanisms that explain the complex interactions between a pathogen and host will benefit therapeutic efforts.
Nature, 2010. DOI: 10.1038/nature09415
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ZoneAlarm caught using fake antivirus scare tactics
Check Point, a security company that offers various products to protect consumers and businesses, is imitating the tactics of fake antimalware programs. Over the last few days, ZoneAlarm users have been receiving a warning from their security software that tells them they are not protected against a new piece of malware. The warning is titled a "Global Virus Alert," shows "Your PC may be in danger!" in bright red, and urges the user to "SEE THREAT DETAILS" and "GET PROTECTION." The prompt is very poorly designed: it looks a lot like malware masquerading as an antivirus (in fact, we would say that newer fake antimalware prompts are more believable than ZoneAlarm's warning). 
Exhibit A: The alarmist Zone Alarm prompt
Exhibit B: A warning from a fake antimalware product
It's really unfortunate that the designers of this prompt did not take the time to think about how their users might interpret it. Real antimalware software should never ever stoop to the level of fake antimalware software; taking marketing advice from malware writers completely undermines the advice tech-savvy users give their friends: ignore these types of messages.
ZoneAlarm's customers are enraged, calling the notification a scare tactic, and many of them have opted to uninstall the software. A thread on the company's forums has now been set as a Sticky, amassing 60 posts and over 27,000 views at the time of this writing.
"We thought we were being proactive with our virus message," a Check Point spokesperson told Ars. "After listening to consumer feedback, we realized that it was misinterpreted and have turned the pop-up message off... It was never our intent to lead customers to believe they have a virus on their computer. This was purely an informative message about a legitimate and serious virus that also included information about the differences in protection of various products, and how to get protection against it."
Let this be a lesson to all security companies: the marketing department should not be allowed to make security warning decisions.
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Intel's upgradable processor: good sense or utter catastrophe?
Intel is about to experiment with a new concept in mass-market processors with its forthcoming Pentium G6951 CPU: upgradability. The chips will be upgradable by end users via a purchased code that is punched in to a special program. Previews of the processor quietly hit the Web last month, and with Engadget's post of the retail packaging, people took notice with reactions ranging from surprise to outright disgust.The Pentium G6951 is a low-end processor. Dual core, 2.8GHz, 3 MB cache, and expected to be around $90 each when bought in bulk—identical to the already-shipping Pentium G6950. The special part is the software unlock. Buy an unlock code for around $50, run the software downloaded from Intel's site, and your processor will get two new features: hyperthreading will be enabled, and another 1 MB of cache will be unlocked, giving the chip a specification just short of Intel's lowest Core i3-branded processor, the 2.93 GHz Core i3-530. Once unlocked, the G6951 becomes a G6952.
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10-minute Bioshock Infinite trailer hallucinatory, beautiful
It's rare that we run a post that consists mostly of "hey, watch this video." That said... hey, watch this video: Infinite
It's going to be a long wait until 2012.
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Microsoft exec hints at frequent (annual?) Halo releases
The release of a new Halo game is always big news, complete with midnight launches, huge sales, and players flooding Xbox Live to play online. So why does it to take so gosh-darn long to make a new game? The Corporate Vice President for Microsoft Game Studios, Phil Spencer, wants more Halo games, but not at the expense of quality."343 Industries is thinking a lot about how to take this franchise and turn it into something that people feel like they have an ongoing relationship with and they can entertain themselves more often," he told IGN. "But it's not, hey every November 6 or whatever we have to ship a game and build a production plan around that. We want to do things that make sense as a first party."
"I used to look at annual releases of non-sports games as people just trying to milk me... Kudos to Activision because they've done a good job building a good game, continuing to release each year and I think the fans feel like it's a good thing that they do that," Spencer explained. "I think there are some things to learn, some positives and some opportunities, in what they do with that. Obviously they've kept the quality extremely high, which I think is important."
Actually, pushing new games out on a regular basis nearly destroyed the Guitar Hero business, and the quality of the Call of Duty series has always been uneven due to the yearly release schedule. We talked about the challenges 343 Industries faces as it takes over the Halo franchise from Bungie and tries to keep quality high in our Reach review; releasing more games, or having different studios working on side projects such as Halo Wars, will only make that more difficult.
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Neuroshima Hex on iPhone: great board game port, confusing rules
Neuroshima Hex is a tactical tile-based game where two armies square off on a grid of hexes and seek to destroy the opponent's HQ. By placing tiles that represent attacking units, tiles that gives certain units buffs, and tiles that represent immediate actions such as throwing a grenade, you're able to attack your opponent and hopefully whittle his HQ's hit points down to nothing.The basics are simple, but the strategy can become interesting as you mix up ranged and melee attackers, decide which tiles to keep and which to discard each round, and worry about the order of attack by looking at the initiative of your units during the Battle phase. Here's a look at the game in action on the iPad. Keep in mind that the game is designed for the iPhone, so play on the iPad is pixel-doubled. Don't worry, it still looks good and is very playable.
Neuroshima Hex
It also would have been great to have a way to look up explanations of cards while in a game; as you play, the game simply assumes you know the meaning of the symbols on each card by memory. Being able to press the cards to learn exactly what it does would have gone a long way to making the game friendlier.
Still, for $3 this is a great way to play the game if you don't mind putting in some time reading online guides or getting frustrated in your first few games. For board game buffs, this is a very good buy... just be ready to do some research.
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Mozilla becomes Open Invention Network licensee
Mozilla has joined the Open Invention Network (OIN) as a licensee. The unsurprising move reflects Mozilla's long-standing commitment to open source software and support for the Linux platform. It's also yet another high-profile endorsement of the OIN's approach to open intellectual property licensing.The OIN was founded in 2005 by a group of large technology companies that rely on Linux for key aspects of their business. In order to protect Linux from patent litigation, they assembled a pool of extremely broad patents that cover a wide range of essential technologies. In the event that a patent lawsuit is launched against core pieces of the Linux kernel or platform stack, the OIN could theoretically retaliate by filing a patent suit of its own against the aggressor. The defensive advantage of this patent pool is that it can deter litigation and provide the Linux ecosystem with leverage to negotiate a favorable cross-licensing agreement should it become necessary.
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LHC spots possible signs of a high-energy particle soup (updated)
Today, the scientists running the Compact Muon Solenoid detector at the Large Hadron Collider reported some of the first signs of unexpected physics happening at the LHC. After tracking the particles that have spilled out of some collisions, the CMS collaboration has detected a correlation among the angles at which many of them escape the collision. This sort of behavior has been seen before, but only in heavy ion collisions, and the initial report is cautious about trying to draw a specific connection between the two. But, if the results hold up, they may tell us something about the internal structure of the proton, and where most of its mass comes from. Heavy ion collisions, like those produced in Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, cause the particles that normally inhabit the nucleus to break down. Instead of a collection of protons and neutrons, their internal components—quarks and gluons—exist in a fluid-like state that is termed a quark-gluon plasma. This plasma is short lived, but it lasts long enough for the particles that fly out of it engage in interactions that link the angles at which they exit the plasma.
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Even freeloading species can help hosts live longer
Freeloaders in nature may be more beneficial to their hosts than scientists thought, according to a study published in PNAS on Monday. When a group of researchers studied the relationships between acacia trees and four types of ants that ranged from mutually beneficial to parasitic, they found that more types of ant residents were better. The timing of their residency in the trees plays a key role in determining whether the ants were helping, hurting, or just hanging around.Acacia trees in East Africa are often occupied by many different types of ants, and the ways they cope with each other varies greatly. Some ants provide defenses for the trees from other vegetation and roaming herbivores while the tree provides the ants with housing and food. Other ant species are freeloaders or parasites, facilitating beetle attacks by being poor defenders or actively eating the flowering parts of the tree so it can't reproduce.
The authors studied various combinations of the different types of ants on each tree to see how they affected the trees' growth and health. They were surprised to find that trees that had hosted all four species of ant at one time or another had higher expected lifetime fitness than trees that had only hosted one species. This held true even if the tree had exclusively hosted a species that didn't eat the trees' flowers and was a good defender.
This may be in part a result of good timing with respect to the trees' life span. For instance, the researchers found that the ants that ate the trees' flowers and prevented it from reproducing often were present while the trees were still young, when reproduction wasn't important. Likewise, ants that were poor defenders and contributed to the trees' mortality were more likely to settle in when the tree was older and didn't need as much help defending itself.
The authors point out that scientists should resist oversimplifying mutual relationships like the ones between ants and acacia trees, as the ants that are harmless freeloaders in one decade can be shameless parasites, or even defenders, in another.
PNAS, 2010. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1006872107 (About DOIs).
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