Small atoms, big ideas in gravity detection
One of the more laborious scientific enterprises of the last few decades has been the development of gravity wave detectors. These detectors, which are supposed to pick up the tiny ripples in space-time due to events involving massive objects are, themselves, massive. The biggest hang-up is that, despite their enormous size, these things need to be incredibly sensitive, making building one rather challenging. In an intriguing talk, called "Underground and airborne matter wave inertial sensors: towards fundamental tests of gravitation," Phillipe Bouyer of CNRS d'Optique presented some interesting results and a grand vision for a new type of gravity wave sensor.
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IE zero-day bug leads to squabble between Microsoft, researcher
[Editor's Note: The original version of this story was published before receiving proper vetting, and many of you rightly chastised us for it. We apologize and present the following coverage, which more completely examines the issue.]Microsoft is at odds with a researcher employed by Google who published a zero-day Internet Explorer vulnerability on New Year's Day. The vulnerability was discovered using cross_fuzz, a browser fuzzing tool created by Google researcher Michal Zalewski, who says he gave Microsoft more than six months of warning before going public with the flaw. That hasn't stopped Microsoft from sharply disagreeing, however, with the company arguing that Zalewski has now put thousands of IE users at risk.
According to Zalewski's published timeline of events, he first told Microsoft about the vulnerability in July of last year and provided the company with copies of cross_fuzz for independent verification. Zalewski informed the company that he planned to release the tool in January, and Microsoft acknowledged the report at that time—confirmed on Tuesday by Microsoft spokesperson Jerry Bryant.
Microsoft said it was unable to reproduce any problems using the cross_fuzz tool upon being informed of the issue in July, despite Zalewski's insistence that he saw "multiple crashes and GDI corruption issues" in IE. The company claims it was only notified on December 21 of a new version of cross_fuzz that could cause a potentially exploitable crash.
Microsoft immediately issued Security Advisory (2488013), confirming that the vulnerability impacted all supported versions of IE. Microsoft explained that the vulnerability exists due to the creation of uninitialized memory during a CSS function within the browser, making it possible for the memory to be leveraged by an attacker with a specially crafted webpage.
"We immediately worked to reproduce the issue with the updated and original tool and are currently investigating it further to determine if it is actually exploitable," Bryant told Ars.
This is when the stories diverge, however. Zalewski says he heard virtually nothing from Microsoft until mid-December, at which point others were able to reproduce the problem, including by means of the original cross_fuzz version used last July. According to Zalewski, Microsoft was suddenly concerned about the potential PR fallout and claimed the IE problems only surfaced after he had updated his code. Zalewski said he confirmed that the problem was unchanged by running both the new and old versions of the fuzzer and told Microsoft again that he planned to release the tool in January.
"Response from [Microsoft Security Research Center] confirms that these crashes are reproducible with the July 29 fuzzer; unclear why they were unable to replicate them earlier, or follow up on the case," Zalewski wrote on December 29. As promised, he released the fuzzer on January 1.
Now, Microsoft is accusing Zalewski of increasing the risk to IE users—the company says attackers may find a way to exploit the flaw before a patch can be tested and distributed. Zalewski insists that Microsoft knew about the flaw and his plan to release in January for more than six months, however, and did nothing until it was almost too late.
Whichever way this he-said, she-said fight ends up, Microsoft says it's actively monitoring the situation and plans to issue a patch soon.
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Copy some webpages, owe more than the national debt
The Internet Archive's "Wayback Machine" is a set of snapshots of the Web over time. It's a wonderful way to delve into the past (see Ars in its 1999 black-and-green glory to learn why "ERD Commander turns me on"), but it's only possible thanks to rampant copying—and the potential copyright infringement that goes along with such copies. Thanks to US law, a successful copyright suit against the Wayback Machine could put the nonprofit Internet Archive on the hook for up to $150,000 per infringement. Multiply that $150,000 by the number of individual pages in the Archive and you quickly run into some serious damages. The Electronic Frontier Foundation does the math (PDF):
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Feature: Galaxy Tab review: Android hitchhiking its way to tablet success
The Samsung Galaxy Tab is one of the first high-end Android tablets from a mainstream hardware vendor. Available with 3G connectivity from a wide range of carriers, the Tab is arguably the vanguard of the legion of Android tablets that are expected to arrive in the coming year.Samsung has delivered an intriguing product with some compelling characteristics, but Android itself hasn't been fully tailored for the tablet form factor yet. The Tab has some unique software customizations that smooth out some of the rough edges and offer a more tablet-friendly experience than stock Android, but it's not quite enough to make it a true iPad rival. You can think of it as a dress rehearsal for the next-generation of Android tablets that are slated to arrive in 2011 with Honeycomb, the next iteration of Google's mobile operating system.
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AMD makes massive Fusion push with new products, design wins
Not to be outdone by Intel's Sandy Bridge launch, AMD has hit back with a formal unveiling of its Fusion line of "APUs" (this being the chipmaker's preferred term for a CPU/GPU combo chip). In addition to product names and other details, AMD also announced some high-profile design wins for the Fusion line. Lenovo, HP, Toshiba, and Sony are among the PC makers touting laptops based on the new technology. Lenovo's ThinkPad X120e and HP's new DM1 are netbook-sized ultraportables with 11.6-inch screens. These laptops use the E-series family of processors, which sits in the middle of the Fusion price/performance/power spectrum and consists of a 1.6GHz, dual-core part dubbed the E-350 and a 1.5GHz single-core part called the E-240. Both the ThinkPad and the DM1 use the E-350, and vendors are claiming battery life in the range of 10 to 11 hours for the portables. This sounds optimistic but not outlandish, given that the E-series parts are rated at 18W.
The Fusion C-series is at the bottom of AMD's lineup in terms of performance, price, and power consumption. Like the E-series, the C-series is based on the low-power Bobcat core, and it comes in two flavors: a dual-core 1GHz C-50, and a single-core 1.2GHz C-30. TDP for both parts is rated at 9 watts, putting them more in the netbook range for battery life and performance. We're not aware of any C-series design wins yet, but we'll keep an eye out for them as CES unfolds.
Lenovo also announced that its G Series laptops will be available with Fusion, but it's not clear whether these are using E series or C series chips.
Other PC makers that are expected to unveil Fusion-based portables include Acer, Asus, Dell, MSI, and Samsung.
We'll be out on the CES show floor this week, spending time with the new Fusion laptops and bringing you our hands-on impressions. While true performance evaluations of AMD's new baby will have to wait for full reviews and benchmarks, we're optimistic that the new Brazos-based parts will breathe new life into AMD's portable prospects.
Nonetheless, one only has to compare AMD's four portable Fusion parts to the 14 Sandy Bridge mobiles that Intel announced yesterday to see that the smaller chipmaker is up against some stiff competition. In terms of selection, Intel's lineup positively swamps AMD's, but that's not necessarily an unmitigated positive.
One of the problems with the sprawling Sandy Bridge launch is that Intel's product matrix and naming scheme has grown increasingly unwieldy. The Core i7, i5, and i3 brands were supposed to bring order to the chaos of Intel's mess of clockspeeds, core counts, and options (VT-x, VT-d, vPro, etc.). Yet the problem persists.
The fact that AMD is offering only four Fusion products could well be a net benefit to the smaller chipmaker. If only Intel would similarly simplify its lineup and differentiate only by core count, clockspeed, and cache size. But that's not going to happen, so if there's an edge to be had in a simpler lineup, AMD will continue to have it.
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New material blocks light from exhibiting diffraction
I admit this failing: I am an optics geek, and all things light-related tend to get me... um... excited. But a recent paper in Nature Photonics presented a result that most people will find very startling: researchers have created a material which prevents light from exhibiting diffraction.Read the comments on this post
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Appeals court upholds first sale doctrine for promo CDs
Collect all those promo CDs you managed to pick up at bars and clubs and get ready to make a trip to your local used music shop: the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that it's legal for you to sell those CDs. In the case of UMG vs. Augusto, the appeals court upheld a lower court's decision, saying that a mere stamp on the CD label isn't enough to force the recipient into a license agreement, and therefore people can resell the CDs without the record label's permission.This case goes back to 2007 when Universal Music Group (UMG) sued California resident Troy Augusto, who made a living by selling promo CDs on eBay. UMG claimed that it had merely licensed the CDs to Augusto—the label insisted that it had never officially transferred ownership, and therefore Augusto did not "own" the CDs. As a result, UMG said he was committing copyright infringement by reselling the CDs—after all, they did have a line printed on the label saying they couldn't be redistributed.
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US government getting more interested in IPv6
The US federal government seems to have IPv6 on the brain as of late: both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) came out with IPv6-related documents recently. The FCC document is a collection of previously known information—it's not about FCC policy—but they managed to include a few things we weren't aware of.Read the comments on this post
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Trends suggest industrialized world may be hitting peak travel
Transit, primarily in the form of automobile use, continues to be one of the biggest factors in the world's energy use. Although many vehicles have become dramatically more energy efficient over the last few decades, competing trends such as increases in the total miles traveled, have kept the total energy use rising. A study released recently, however, suggests that several industrialized countries have reached the point where their total transit use appears to be flattening out, an event the authors refer to as "peak travel." The work was based on what seems to be an obvious contradiction: many economic and energy models assume that the rapid expansion of transportation will continue unabated for something approaching the indefinite future. But, realistically, transit faces some real limits. Some countries already have more cars than licensed drivers, many people aren't willing to spend much more of their days in transit, and the congestion and parking problems faced by urban populations can put a hard limit on automobile use. Population growth could drive a continued expansion, but that's also slowing in many industrialized countries, and their aging populations are expected to drive less.
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Net neutrality? Not at the coffee shop
Net neutrality rules arrived just before Christmas, but they won't apply to Kindles, coffee shops, or dial-up Internet. And they won't apply to Google.The toughest rules (PDF) apply only to "fixed broadband Internet access service," which can include fixed wireless links ("mobile" broadband has different, and even weaker, rules). Dial-up isn't covered, since "telephone service has historically provided the easy ability to switch among competing dial-up Internet access services" and the telephone network is still regulated under "common carrier" rules.
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Fighting infection with missiles: Ars reviews Microbot
Microbot is yet another downloadable twin-stick shooter, seemingly nothing to get excited about. But this game about exploring the human body while fighting off a biomechanical infestation is surprising. It's a twin-stick shooter that actually makes you take notice. It may not be entirely original—borrowing heavily from several other games—but the result is sublime.Read the comments on this post
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Warrantless cell phone search gets a green light in California
The contents of your cell phone can reveal a lot more about you than the naked eye can: who your friends are, what you've been saying and when, which websites you've visited, and more. There has long been debate over user privacy when it comes to various data found on a cell phone, but according to the California Supreme Court, police don't need a warrant to start digging through your phone's contents.The ruling comes as a result of the conviction of one Gregory Diaz, who was arrested for trying to sell ecstasy to a police informant in 2007 and had his phone confiscated when he arrived at the police station. The police eventually went through Diaz's text message folder and found one that read "6 4 80." Such a message means nothing to most of us, but it was apparently enough to be used as evidence against Diaz (for those curious, it means six pills will cost $80).
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