Week in tech: blinking lights, laying your own fiber
The evolution of computer displays: We've come a long way since the days of blinking lights and teletypes. Ars surveys the history of computer displays from the very early days.Tale of the trench: what if your subdivision laid its own fiber?: A community-owned fiber network might sound like a panacea for those afflicted with bad Internet service, but make sure you know what you're in for before your neighborhood starts digging trenches.
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Week in science: rockets, Great Dying, and teaching evolution
Insert Yesterday's Delta IV-Heavy rocket launch: a personal impression: The biggest rocket launch ever from the US' West Coast went up on Thursday, and Ars was there to watch. The dynamic range of everything you see, hear, and feel is so large that no recording device can capture the entire range of sensation.
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Not so fast! FCC says net neutrality lawsuits filed too soon
The Federal Communications Commission is asking a DC appeals court to throw out the Verizon and MetroPCS lawsuits against the agency's new Open Internet rules. Verizon filed the initial lawsuit papers on January 20, arguing that the FCC's move "goes well beyond any authority provided by Congress, and creates uncertainty for the communications industry, innovators, investors and consumers." Ditto, declared MetroPCS a few days later.But the government isn't taking on Verizon's specific arguments. In fact, the Commission's response is about as technically procedural as it gets. The FCC says that both companies jumped the gun by suing the FCC before its December net neutrality Order was even published in the Federal Register. That's the action that makes any federal agency decision live and official.
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Omni Group continues push on iOS, adding cloud sync for Plan and Focus
The Omni Group CEO Ken Case came to this year's Macworld Expo to pitch his company's productivity apps to those using Macs and iOS devices to get work done. These days, that could mean heading in to a cubicle at a large corporation, working with a small business or just being your own boss. We sat down with Case to see what Omni has in store for 2011, which includes a major update to OmniPlan (with OmniFocus integration), and bringing OmniOutliner to the iPad.When we spoke with Case last year, he was excited about the prospect of moving Omni's productivity apps to the large touchscreen interface of the iPad. He predicted the iPad would be big—"this is the computer my dad should have had," he told Ars—and Apple's numbers for fiscal first quarter of 2011 say he was right.
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What's in all that tear gas we've been selling Egypt?
A protestor holds a used tear gas canister
Several reporters in Egypt have commented on that fact this week. ABC News ran a story on the gas today in which it quotes a protestor saying, "The way I see it, the US administration supports dictators."
It's no secret that Egypt is one of the largest recipients of US foreign military funding, much of which is designated to purchase US-made weapons; it's just that Americans don't often see Egyptians holding empty tear gas canisters stamped "Made in USA" up to a TV camera.
But what's in those canisters?
A wide array of shiny new canisters
The tear gas grenades and canisters are largely filled with a fuel mixture that burns to disperse the tearing agent. The Model 5220 CN Smoke grenade (PDF), for instance, has a small starter mixture of potassium nitrate, silicon, and charcoal. This in turn in used to light the "CN smoke"—a form of tear gas.
The CN smoke is 71 percent fuel, made up of potassium chlorate, magnesium carbonate, nitrocellulose, and… sucrose. The other 29 percent of the smoke is the tearing agent, chloroacetophenone, which has been around for nearly a century and causes severe irritation of the mucous membranes. (Combined Tactical Systems also sells the commonly used "CS smoke" tear gas version, which is powered by chlorobenzalmalononitrile.)
A tear gas cartridge spec sheet
That's because, as the protestor went on to tell ABC, "Your eyes tear up a lot so you can't see, and you feel like you're suffocating. You can actually breathe but you feel like you are suffocating so you try to run, but when you run you inhale more."
As the MSDS puts it, rather more clinically, the gases cause "tearing of eyes, irritation of respiratory tract and mucous membranes," and asthma may be "aggravated by exposure."
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How Egypt did (and your government could) shut down the Internet
How hard is it, exactly, to kill the Internet? Egypt seems to have been able to do it. But Egypt's situation isn't exactly the same as that in the Western world. And even though Egypt only has four big ISPs, the fact that everything went down after midnight local time suggests that it took considerable effort to accomplish the 'Net shut-off. After all, it seems unlikely that President Hosni Mubarak ordered the Internet to be shut down as he went to bed; such a decision must have been made earlier in the day, and then taken hours to execute. Read the comments on this post
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"TWO *REAL* GUNS POINTED AT ME": how the FBI raided Anonymous
The FBI yesterday executed 40 search warrants around the US to gather evidence on the Anonymous distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in defense of WikiLeaks last year—attacks which targeted Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Amazon. And when the FBI comes a-knockin', the whole house starts a rockin'.Ars has seen posts from a private forum in which several targets of the FBI raids offer brief descriptions of the experience, along with the occasional photo of a beaten-in front door. We cannot guarantee the authenticity of these accounts, though we believe them to be genuine.
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iPhone 4 "Glassgate" finally generates a lawsuit
We all knew it was just a matter of time before someone sued over the iPhone 4 "Glassgate," and now the time has arrived. California resident Donald LeBuhn filed a lawsuit this week accusing Apple of knowingly unloading flawed iPhone 4s onto customers, citing personal experience with his own iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS. LeBuhn says that his iPhone 4's glass broke three weeks after he bought the device thanks to his daughter, who allegedly dropped it three feet to the ground. His iPhone 3GS before it, however, was apparently able to survive a number of drops from similar heights. (For the record, I have dropped every generation of iPhone from many different heights, and the one that sustained the most damage was my old iPhone 3G. R.I.P.)
Because Apple advertises the fact that the iPhone 4's glass is "20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic," LeBuhn feels that Apple is knowingly misleading consumers when selling the iPhone 4. "Months after selling millions of iPhone 4s, Apple has failed to warn and continues to sell this product with no warning to customers that the glass housing is defective," reads the complaint.
It's not entirely clear whether "Glassgate" is considered a real problem in Apple's eyes, but third-party warranty service SquareTrade released a report in October saying that the iPhone 4 is twice as prone to accidental screen damage as the iPhone 3GS. The analysis was drawn from accident reports submitted to SquareTrade by users—3.9 percent of iPhone 4 owners reported cracked glass after four months of ownership compared to 2.1 percent for the 3GS.
Though the numbers still aren't particularly high, SquareTrade's report was bolstered by a rumor that came out a month later saying that Apple was halting the sale of slider-style cases in order to avoid damage to the iPhone 4's glass. The alleged problem was that dirt could get trapped between the rear cover and a slider case, and as the case is repeatedly put on or taken off, the particles could cause scratching or even cracking of the glass.
Despite problems with the glass, Apple has certainly had no problem finding people to buy iPhone 4s—the company sold 16.24 million of them last quarter alone. Still, LeBuhn argues that Apple knows about this flaw in the iPhone's design and should refund the purchase price to all customers covered by the class, in addition to repair fees and restitution.
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PlayStation NGP round-up: price, battery, hardware, and games
So the PSP2, or NGP as it's been dubbed, is finally real. And there's a lot we know about the system. It has an OLED touchscreen in addition to a rear touch panel, front- and rear-facing cameras, motion sensors, a dual analog stick setup, and more. It will also feature games from the usual suspects like Uncharted, Wipeout, and LittleBigPlanet. But there's still a lot we don't know. How much will it cost? What's the battery life like? How will the 3G service work? And, most importantly, what will the games be like?Ars has dug through all the coverage to try and answer these questions.
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MPAA, BREIN take down more torrent sites; Internet barely notices
At least 51 torrent sites have been taken down this month thanks to joint efforts by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its dutch counterpart BREIN—12 in the US and 39 in the Netherlands. The two groups say they were able to work with the sites' hosting providers to take them offline, though the names of the affected sites have not been released.According to BREIN, the torrent sites in question published links to copyrighted movies, leading it and the MPAA to send copyright infringement letters to the sites' hosts. In addition to the 51 sites knocked offline this month, BREIN also claims to have taken down 29 in the Netherlands last year.
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Samsung moves 2 million Galaxy Tabs; Tab 2 coming in February
Samsung has shipped two million of its Galaxy Tab tablets since the product's launch three months ago, and the company is already planning some kind of addition to the line, according to a leaked PR schedule for the Mobile World Congress. Though the 7-inch Galaxy Tab took twice as long as the iPad to hit a million units sold, it looks like Samsung is either planning to get out a revised tablet before Apple or step up to the 10-inch plate with a planned Galaxy Tab 2. Samsung has previously confirmed that it has a 10-inch tablet in development, and a press schedule indicates that it's due to talk about a product called the Galaxy Tab 2. The sequel-y name suggests this will be another 7-inch iteration of the original Tab, but running Honeycomb.
The iPad still outsold the Tab by a significant margin: 7.33 million iPads shipped in the fourth quarter of last year. Still, the Tab beat Samsung's end-of-year sales goals of 1.5 million, and is now being sold by 200 mobile carriers in 94 countries.
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Amidst chaos and riots, Egypt turns off the Internet
In response to increasing civil unrest, the Egyptian government appears to have disabled almost all Internet connectivity with the rest of the world. The Internet's global routing table, which is used by Internet routers to determine where to send traffic, has had virtually every Egypt-bound route withdrawn, giving the Internet traffic no path either into or out of the country.The routes were all withdrawn almost simultaneously last night, causing the country's Internet users to disappear over the space of about half an hour. The block appears to affect Egypt's four largest ISPs, responsible for most of the country's Internet connectivity: Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, and Etisalat Misr.
Indications are that, at the time of writing, not every ISP has been taken offline. Noor Group, a smaller provider, still appears to have external connectivity, and limited sites including the Egyptian Stock Exchange appear to remain accessible. Whether this is by design or by accident is unknown. Connectivity through Egypt appears unaffected. A number of fiber-optic routes linking Europe to Asia go through Egypt, and they remain operational.
This move—the near-complete removal of a country's routes from routing tables and the resultant inaccessibility—seems quite unprecedented. Civil unrest in Tunisia earlier this year was met with limited censorship of certain sites, and similar unrest in Iran in 2009 resulted in substantial throttling (but not outright blocking) of Internet traffic. Egypt's response appears to be a great deal more heavy-handed.
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Sony releases new PS3 firmware, hackers shrug and get to work
Sony has released a new mandatory update for its PlayStation 3 system, bringing the firmware version up to 3.56. The "security patch" is an attempt to keep hackers from executing unsigned code that allows homebrew programs as well as pirated games to run and online games to be hacked.The new firmware was unpacked in a matter of hours, but it may be longer than expected before the new firmware is fully cracked. Those running hacked firmware currently are being told not to update, and it's possible a hardware solution will be required to get past the new protections put in place by Sony.
This back-and-forth will continue until... well, who knows? Sony has to at least try to keep people out of its system, but the hacking community now has the console square in its sights, and each update is little more than a direct challenge, one that so far has been easily met. Just remember that when you're downloading this update instead of playing a game on your PlayStation 3, its sole purpose was to give Sony a few hours of respite from hackers.
The hacking community won't be easily stopped, no matter what minor victories Sony wins in court. Gamers will be inconvenienced and Sony will continue in its futile attempt to stop these hacks.
Somewhere, there is a person installing Linux on her hacked PlayStation 3 while sighing contentedly. The rest of us lose.
Post updated for clarification.
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OWC launches Mac mini-based HTPC configuration at Macworld
Other World Computing, purveyors of all manner of Mac-related accessories, is debuting a new service during this year's Macworld Expo to transform your 2010 Mac mini into a home theater PC. Dubbed the "Media Center Solution," the new service includes up to 12TB RAID storage, an optional Blu-ray drive, Elgato HDTV tuner options, and installation and configuration of several common Mac OS X media center apps.The service works by shipping any new Mac mini (introduced last June) to OWC's facility in Woodstock, Illinois. There, the RAM is upgraded to 4GB (if necessary), a bundle of open source media center software is installed, a capacious 4, 8, or 12TB RAID is set up for consolidating up to 6,000 hours of DVD-quality video, and one of two Elgato HDTV interfaces is set up and configured. The system is shipped back to you within 48 hours of receipt, configured and ready to go. OWC also includes an Apple remote, since one is no longer included with the Mac mini.
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FBI goes after Anonymous for pro-WikiLeaks DDoS attacks
The FBI has joined in the hunt for those who participated in the retaliation attacks against companies that cut off services to WikiLeaks, executing more than 40 search warrants across the United States on Thursday, the bureau announced.In what seem to be timed raids, British police arrested five men Thursday morning who allegedly participated in the Anonymous group’s denial of service attacks on Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and Amazon in mid-December. Anonymous was seeking to bring attention to—and punish—the financial-service companies’ decisions to prohibit donations to Wikileaks. Amazon was targeted after it kicked Wikileaks off its Web-hosting service.
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Paradox tells Ars what went wrong, how it's fixing Magicka
It's not often you get to put questions to the man responsible for a broken game your friends just bought so they could play with you, but that's exactly what I did when I spoke with Fredrik Wester, the CEO of Paradox Interactive. Readers commented that our first story sounded personal, and it kind of was. I don't often get a chance to get all my buddies together to play a game, and it was galling when Magicka simply refused to work for any of us."We ran the game through two rounds of external QA, one of them dedicated to co-op multiplayer, including hot seat, LAN, and over the Internet. We got a lot of good feedback from the QA team on all forms of co-op," Wester told Ars. "I want to make it perfectly clear: it's obvious not enough was done to fix the online multiplayer part, as it turns out."
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Feature: Withings WiFi body scale review: weight data and cool graphs
Those who know me or follow my coverage know that I tend to take an interest in fitness-related gadgets and software. If it provides me data about myself and my activities, I'm on board. The BodyMedia FIT that I reviewed last year and RunKeeper on the iPhone are two of my favorites for this reason, but there's always more to be learned—if I can do that without having to do any of the dirty work, even better.
That's where the Withings body scale comes in. It's not a brand new gadget, but it recently came into my life as a result of a disturbing increase in chatter among my peers. You could say that the peer pressure got to me, and now I'm a Withings convert.
What's so special about a scale that comes equipped with WiFi? It's not just so you can tweet your body weight every day (though you could if you really wanted to). The scale allows you to track trends in your weight as well as body composition changes over time—graphs and all—and you don't even have to lift a finger to enter that data into WeightBot or PhysicsDiet to get them. Not only that, but the free service that comes with your physical scale integrates with a plethora of other services (including WeightBot, in fact) so that your data is everywhere you want it to be. And all you have to do to get it is step on the scale.
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First taste of Honeycomb: Android 3.0 user interface preview
Google has released an early preview of the Android 3.0 software development kit (SDK). Android 3.0—codenamed Honeycomb—introduces Android's new tablet user interface, which is expected to officially debut next month on Motorola's Xoom tablet. Developers will be able to use the SDK preview to get a head start on updating their applications to support the tablet form factor.The SDK also offers Android enthusiasts an early look at the new tablet user interface. It includes a partial Android 3.0 environment that runs in the Android emulator. Due to the emulator's glacially slow performance, however, we weren't really able to get an accurate feel for the responsiveness of the interface. The following screenshots highlight some of the major characteristics that differentiate Honeycomb's tablet interface from Android's conventional smartphone interface, but keep in mind that it's still just a preview build for developers and might not accurately represent what the platform will look like on an actual product.
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Sony granted temporary restraining order against PS3 hacker
US District Judge Susan Illston of San Francisco granted Sony a temporary restraining order against hacker George Hotz, despite initial misgivings about California courts having jurisdiction in the case. Hotz can no longer make any information about the hack available on his website, and he must turn over his computer equipment to Sony within 10 days.Judge Illston ruled that California can try the case due to the concept of "purposeful direction," where the defendant "committed an intentional act, expressly aimed at the forum state, causing harm that the defendant knows is likely to be suffered in the forum state." In this case, the forum state is California. This concept is explained in detail in the Schwarzenegger v. Fred Martin Motor Co. legal documents.
Hotz's lawyer, Stewart Kellar told the Register he was disappointed in the ruling. "But this doesn't end the question of personal jurisdiction of Mr. Hotz, and we still intend to go forward with that motion,” he said “Suffice it to say it is burdensome to my client for him to give up his computers and hard drives for the order.”
Sony has also asked the courts for monetary damages due to the hack's deleterious effects on software sales. As of this writing, it's a simple task to find the offending code, open your PlayStation to third-party software, and begin installing new programs or playing pirated games.
This is a win for Sony, in that the loss of his computers will hurt Hotz personally. It won't do much to help the company, though. "The code necessary to 'jail break' the Sony PlayStation computer is on the Internet. That cat is not going back in the bag," Kellar wrote in previous court documents. "Indeed, Sony's own pleadings admit that the code necessary to jailbreak the Sony Playstation computer is on the Internet. Sony speaks of 'closing the door,' but the simple fact is that there is no door to close. The code sought to be restrained will always be a Google search away."
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Microsoft rides Kinect to record quarter
Microsoft has released an exceptionally strong set of second quarter results, on the back of growth in the company's Windows and Entertainment divisions. Depending on how you do the accounting—and Microsoft reports it two ways this time—Microsoft either saw a slight drop in profit or a jump. Either way, the company's revenues were up, and the big story is that Kinect had quite a bit to do with it."We are enthusiastic about the consumer response to our holiday lineup of products, including the launch of Kinect. The 8 million units of Kinect sensors sold in just 60 days far exceeded our expectations," said Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft in a statement.
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Hulu may rebrand itself as cable-like TV bundle provider
Hulu is considering a complete makeover of its business model, with the possibility of transforming into an online TV bundle provider that would make money from subscriptions in the same way as cable or satellite companies. That's just one of several options being considered within the company, according to unnamed insiders speaking to the Wall Street Journal, but something's gotta give if the company wants to make money and remain competitive. The free-with-ads model isn't working out as well for Hulu as its creators had hoped, leaving the company trying to figure out ways to better monetize its content before the content providers move onto greener pastures. For example, "people familiar with the matter" have told the Journal that News Corp. and Disney are considering pulling free Fox Broadcasting and ABC content from Hulu, respectively, as they make money from other delivery solutions such as Netflix, Apple, and Microsoft.
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Ask Ars: making a custom Windows USB install disk
Welcome to the re-launch of Ask Ars, brought to you by CDW! Re-launch, you ask? Why, yes! Ask Ars was one of the first features of the newly born Ars Technica back in 1998. Ask Ars is all about your questions and our community's answers. Each week, we'll dig into our bag of questions, answer a few based on our own know-how, and then comes the best part: we turn to the community for your take.
To launch, we reached out to some of our geekiest friends to solicit their burning questions. Without further ado, let's dive into our first question. Don't forget to send us your questions, too! To submit your question, see our helpful tips page.
Q: I've seen a few different recipes online for making a patched, updated install disk for Windows on a USB drive. What process do you guys recommend?
I'm not sure that I would go to the trouble of making and maintaining a patched and updated install disk. New Windows patches are published virtually every month, and occasionally more often. For a typical home user, creating a patched image, and keeping it up-to-date, is a greater burden than simply installing the vanilla operating system and hitting Windows Update. Installing from USB is worthwhile, as it's typically much faster (and means you don't have to bother with optical media any longer), but customizing the installed media is harder to justify.
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Modern humans walked out of Africa and across the Red Sea
Modern humans may have left Africa 65,000 years earlier than we previously thought, according to new evidence discovered at a dig site in the Arabian peninsula. Sets of tools found at the site suggest that humans living on the Persian Gulf weren't even advanced enough to cross the Red Sea by boat. So how'd they get across? According to the researchers, the sea level was low enough that they could simply walk at that point. The anatomically modern human first appeared in East Africa around 200,000 years ago, and according to earlier findings, that's where they stayed for 140,000 years. But a group of researchers recently found tools, including small hand axes, corresponding to the late-middle Stone Age dated to 125,000 years ago at an archaeological dig site in the southeastern Arabian peninsula.
The artifacts presented a couple of logistical problems: not only did the tools date to that period and appear consistent with other tools from that era, but they also seemed too primitive to allow the humans to cross the Red Sea. The scientists also weren't sure what would motivate humans to populate such an arid location.
Historical climate data pointed to the solution: at that time, the area seems to have been going through a humid period, and the Red Sea's water levels were about 100 meters below sea level. These conditions would have allowed people to simply walk across the surface where the Red Sea was, and find a reasonably fertile region when they got to the other side.
Science, 2010. DOI: 10.1126/science.1199113 (About DOIs).
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Canada comes out on top as Netflix rates North American ISPs
Netflix today made good on a promise from its financial statements yesterday, and it released data on which US Internet providers offer the best access to Netflix streaming content. The company's data puts it "in the unique position of having insight into the performance of hundreds of millions of long duration, high-definition video streams delivered over the Internet."The chart below sums up the US results; it's a "time-weighted bitrate metric" that shows throughput from Netflix content delivery networks to subscriber homes. Netflix says that its best quality HD streams are encoded at 4,800Kbps, and it's clear from the chart that no ISPs can sustain this level of service across an entire movie. But "the higher the sustained average, the greater the throughput the client can achieve, and the greater the image quality over the duration of the play," says the company.
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