IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (Ars Technica) 04/01/2011

Ars Attacks! What we're after at CES 2011

At various times and in various places, the Ars crew will begin to board airplanes tomorrow to head to Las Vegas for CES 2011. The festivities will begin on Wednesday, January 5, and we will be liveblogging the following press conferences (all times PST):

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Porn purveyors target 13,000 more Does in P2P lawsuits

Looks like the P2P settlement industry is starting off the new year with a bang. By our scanning of the Justia Federal court dockets database, over 13,000 people could be dragged into "Doe" lawsuits based on complaints filed since December 20, and almost all of them are for porn. Here are some of the cases we're seeing.

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For female fish, a choice between beauty, brawn, and brains

Imagine a scenario in which there were five different kinds of men, each of which looked and behaved drastically differently. How would the women of the world choose between all these eligible bachelors? According to a new study in BMC Evolutionary Biology, this complicated situation is a way of life for the South American freshwater fish Poecilia parae.
Male P. parae come in five genetically determined varieties: yellow, blue, red, parae (which have vertical stripes), and immaculata (which are very drab). Parae males are large and antagonistic, while immaculata males are small and meek. Red, yellow, and blue males are all medium-sized. In this species, females ultimately have the choice of which male to mate with.

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How to keep your customers safe at your business' hotspot

Public WiFi is insecure. But it doesn't have to be. If you own or manage a venue, like a coffeeshop or restaurant, and provide free and open WiFi, you can help protect your customers without having to provide technical support or waste money. The new reality is that you can offer "open" access without having an open network.
People using open WiFi networks have always been vulnerable, because the contents of their Internet surfing, e-mail, and other kinds of activities are often sent without protection over the wireless network in such a way that any other user on the same network can snoop. This requires no complicated or expensive software. It's free, and increasingly easy for anyone to use. The Firesheep extension for Firefox makes it a couple-click operation to hijack someone's session on the same network with a few dozen popular websites. (Banking and stock trading sites are typically entirely protected.)

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Feature: AMD, Intel, NVIDIA: our silicon will power future "smart" TVs

This year has seen two major developments in the TV market: 3D, and the Web. TV makers are betting that consumers will flock to stores this holiday season to upgrade their plain old 2D and Web-less panels with models that will let them bring the Internet into their living rooms without requiring them to add another box to their entertainment center. In this four-part series on the Future of TV, Ars takes an in-depth look at the major transition that TV is currently undergoing.
To understand some of the technological innovations that will enable a shift in how we use TVs, we spoke to AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA. All three companies shared some information about what hardware we can expect to see integrated in future TV sets and what innovations they believe will be driven by new hardware capabilities.

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Sandy Bridge arrives from Intel with up to 50% performance boost

Intel pulled its Sandy Bridge launch forward today, launching the new family a full two days earlier than the planned January 5th date at CES. And with 15 desktop parts and 14 mobile parts, what a launch it is. The 29 total parts announced make it Intel's biggest launch ever.
Initial reviews are now coming in, and it looks like Intel has a winner on its hands, at least for now. Anand is the first one out with truly comprehensive looks at both the desktop and mobile parts, and he's quite impressed. Sandy Bridge's completely overhauled microarchitecture gives it between a 10 percent and 50 percent performance boost over its predecessor in some instances, depending on the workload. For now, Intel has mainly chosen to exploit the benefits of its new design by keeping clock speeds low and offering the same level of performance as Arrandale, but at much cheaper prices.

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Optical traps let scientists see immune system destroy cells

One of the difficulties in observing how the immune system goes about its business is that it isn't easy providing an environment where exactly one immune cell type is in proximity to one specific pathogen. This is compounded by the lack of imaging systems that provide an adequate combination of spatial and temporal resolution.
To overcome this problem, researchers from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have combined forces to produce a solution in the form of a combined optical trapping and imaging system that is optimized for just this sort of problem.

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LimeWire seeks data from Amazon in bid to avoid big payout to RIAA

As LimeWire awaits its jury trial to determine how much it owes the recording industry, the company is trying to get the inside scoop on how much the RIAA really makes off the work it represents. LimeWire has begun pushing third-party licensees to hand over their internal records and documentation related to music industry deals, but so far, they have refused.
LimeWire has been in the RIAA's crosshairs since 2006 thanks to its P2P functionality. In May of 2010, Judge Kimba Wood ruled that LimeWire was liable for inducing copyright infringement among its users—the company made virtually no effort to police infringement or even discourage it, aside from asking users to affirm that they weren't doing Bad Things. Judge Wood then slapped LimeWire with an injunction in October, ordering the company to suspend its P2P services.

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2010 in IP addresses: 225 million down, 496 million to go

As of January 1, 2011, the number of unused IPv4 addresses stands at 495.66 million. Exactly a year earlier, the number of available addresses was 721.06 million. So we collectively used up 225.4 million addresses in 2010. 242 million, really, if we ignore the unusual circumstance that Interop gave back nearly 17 million addresses.
At first glance, this suggests that we have two more years of IPv4 addresses left. But it's not that simple: Asia is almost certainly going to run out before year end. And that means really running out, as in: sorry, no addresses for you. This is different from the depletion of the IANA global pool, which will very likely happen later this month. That event is more like an office running out of those big water bottles in the storage room: every water cooler gets its last bottle and everyone can still drink—for a little longer.

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Mass Effect 2 to get one more DLC release, turns off news network

Mass Effect 2's Cerberus Network, a service that provided story background for off-screen happenings in the game, will stop serving news updates on January 24, one year after it began. Instead, the developers say updates will come with downloadable content, meaning there's at least one more DLC package coming to players before the release of Mass Effect 3.
The Cerberus Daily News was mostly for atmosphere, usually a couple of paragraphs either adding to the series' storyline or parodying real-world events. But after January 24, it will go dark until the next DLC release.
According to the service, the news will start up again in the week before the new DLC, which has no planned release date as of yet. CDN will also come back in the two weeks leading up to the release of Mass Effect 3, which is due out sometime this coming holiday season for the XBox 360, PS3, and PC.
The last DLC for Mass Effect 2, The Lair of the Shadow Broker, was released September 7, and the PS3 version of the game is due out January 18.
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So long, broadband duopoly? Cable's high-speed triumph

Broadband users have long been skeptical of the duopoly situation in the US Internet market, which often feels like “pick your poison”: telephone company or cable company. "Where's the real competition?" they cry, pointing to other countries with healthy ISP markets thanks to regulated line-sharing or even direct government control of the underlying fiber infrastructure (Australia's new plan). But will they one day look back at the US duopoly situation with something like longing?
When the Federal Communications Commission rolled out its National Broadband Plan last year, it shied away from any bold calls to transform ISP competition. But it did note that the US is quickly moving to a situation where many markets have only a single truly high-speed Internet provider. To put it in the plainest possible terms, if your home isn't served by Verizon's fiber optic FiOS system, you could be looking at a local high-speed monopoly. And that monopoly will probably come courtesy of an industry routinely rated low for customer satisfaction: cable.

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Microsoft restores missing e-mails from Hotmail accounts

Over on the Windows Live Solution Center, a number of Windows Live Hotmail users have been complaining about missing e-mails. For the last three days, users have reported that their e-mails have been deleted from their Inbox and other folders or that e-mails sent to them never arrived. Microsoft has since fixed the problem, after declaring that the issue was not widespread.
Yesterday, Microsoft offered the following statement: "We have identified the source of the issue [and] have restored e-mail access to those who were [a]ffected. We recognize that even though we restored email access, some of the affected users did not receive mail sent to them during the last 24-72 hours. We are in the process of rectifying that and should be finished by late tonight Pacific time."
Less than 12 hours later, the company said the problem was fully resolved: "We have restored the e-mails to those who were [a]ffected. If you are still missing your emails, please post your issue here (please note that you need to be logged in to the windowslivehelp.com site to be able to post) with as much detailed information as possible (How much wasn't restored, and any specifics that you may have). We sincerely apologize and thank you for your continued patience."
None of my personal Hotmail accounts were affected. Microsoft says that only 17,355 accounts lost e-mails, which is but a fraction of the hundreds of millions of Hotmail users. The company did not explain, however, what caused the problem or what it is doing to prevent it from happening again.
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Kinect designers to debut motion controller for PCs

The debut of a motion-sensing controller designed for PCs has been announced by PrimeSense, the creator of the Kinect for XBox 360. The company has teamed up with Asus to make the device, which is in turn creating a dedicated online store for selling compatible apps.
The controller goes by the name "WAVI Xtion," and will enable gesture controls for media center PCs. According to PrimeSense, the focus of the device will be on multimedia control, as opposed to the gaming focus of the Kinect.
Like the Kinect, you'll probably need a decent amount of room for it to see and process your waving appendages properly, so this won't be for a cramped home office. Asus is planning an "Xtion Online Store," where developers will be able to sell apps designed for the WAVI Xtion.
There is a definite demand for this type of controller—even without Microsoft's blessing, many a homebrew developer has adapted his or her Kinect for use with PCs. Given that the WAVI Xtion will be optimized for media rather than game control, it sounds like it's running the risk of falling short of functionality by comparison, though native PC compatiblity may appeal to a different subset of users.
The WAVI Xtion is currently scheduled for launch in February of this year. It will be formally introduced at both the PrimeSense and Asus booths at CES this week, where the Ars team will hopefully get a look.
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20% of users now on Windows 7

The year 2010 ended quite well for two products from Microsoft and Google, at least when it comes to specific market share numbers. Windows 7 passed the 20 percent mark while Chrome almost reached double digits. Despite IE8's strong growth and the IE9 beta program, Internet Explorer has hit a historic low. Firefox is stubbornly holding on to its users, while Chrome and Safari continue their growth. Before we go into further detail with browsers, let's take a peek into the world of Windows.

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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

IT News HeadLines (Ars Technica) 04/01/2011

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