IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (Ars Technica) 11/03/2011

Feature: Xcode 4 hands-on: be sure to RTFM first

When Apple bought NeXT, one of the things it was getting was a set developer tools: Interface Builder, used to construct the GUI; and Project Builder, which was used for managing code and resources. Combined, they enabled rapid application development. Although these tools were well ahead of their time when they were created, in many ways they'd fallen behind by the time they saw their first release from Apple. There have been some significant updates to the tools since, including the renaming of Project Builder to Xcode and the integration of iOS development, but these didn't fundamentally alter the behavior of the two applications.
Xcode 4.0, released Thursday, appears to be the most radical departure yet. It contains very significant changes and will require equally significant revisions to a developer's workflow. Still, the overall benefits look to ultimately be worth the effort. The new tools are so sprawling that it will be impossible to thoroughly review XCode 4 here; instead, we'll focus on its overall approach, and a few specific functionalities.

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Son of ACTA: meet the next secret copyright treaty

So many countries in need of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, so little time! The US government, still trying to secure final passage for the drafted-in-secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), has already turned its attention to a new multilateral trade agreement that will bring the wonders of the DMCA to countries like Australia, Brunei, Chile, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
The new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), like the ACTA before it, had its intellectual property chapter drafted by the US. Once again, the chapter was drafted in secret and has been classified for at least four years after negotiations end. The agreement exports (nearly verbatim) the DMCA's rules on digital locks, ISP liability, and subscriber disconnections, with a few extra goodies on the side.

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Google says new blacklist feature doesn't impact page rank—yet

We've all probably run into this problem at one time or another: you find yourself searching for expert info on a topic, only to be presented with that site you loathe at the top of your search results. Every. Time. Or, you might be a parent who's tired of certain porn or spam sites coming up when your kid searches for Dora the Explorer. Either way, Google has made an update to its search results that gives you control over which sites you don't want to see while you're searching.
The new blacklisting feature is triggered when you perform a Google search, click on a link, and then go back to Google after having decided that link isn't what you wanted. When you return to Google the second time, a new option appears next to the Cached link that says "Block all [website name] results." If you're logged into your Google account (which is required in order to maintain a blacklist), you can then click that link and get a confirmation message that you want to block it.
Google wrote on its blog that you may not see the site disappear right away if you simply refresh your browser with the same search, but running a new search should get that domain out of your face for good. "The next time you’re searching and a blocked page would have appeared, you’ll see a message telling you results have been blocked, making it easy to manage your personal list of blocked sites," Google Search quality engineers Amay Champaneria and Beverly Yang wrote. "This message will appear at the top or bottom of the results page depending on the relevance of the blocked pages.
But what if a huge group of people—say, Anonymous—decide to block the same site thousands of times in hopes of getting it demoted by Google's algorithm? Google says it's not currently using the blacklists as a signal in ranking, but "we’ll look at the data and see whether it would be useful as we continue to evaluate and improve our search results in the future."
So, it's possible that the blacklists could affect page rank one day, but it's not happening right now.
Like all Google updates, this one is rolling out slowly over a period of days and currently only works for those using Chrome 9+, IE8+, and Firefox 3.5+ (sorry Safari and Opera users).
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Risquأ© Wii game We Dare pulled from release in UK

We Dare, a Wii game with risquأ© commercials that have raised a few eyebrows, has been pulled from its UK release following a seemingly low Pan European Game Information (PEGI) rating of 12.
We Dare commercials began appearing across the Internet a few weeks ago and were widely watched in the US, despite the fact that the game is only being released in Europe. On Wednesday, PEGI announced the game's 12 rating, a decision that was immediately decried in UK papers as being inconsistent with the nature of the game as conveyed in the ads, which show good-looking adults spanking each other and nibbling at Wiimotes in pairs.
PEGI defended their decision, saying that the commercials belie the nature of the game and that it is plenty tame for a 12 rating. But the controversy has rattled Ubisoft enough that the company decided to pull the release scheduled for Friday in the UK. The commercials in question have since been barred from the US and made private on Ubisoft's UK YouTube channel. There's been no word on the state of the release in other European countries, so videos of actual gameplay may still be imminent.
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Pwn2Own day 2: iPhone, BlackBerry beaten; Chrome, Firefox no-shows

After successful attacks on Safari and Internet Explorer 8 on Wednesday, the second day of Pwn2Own saw the iPhone 4 and then the BlackBerry Torch 9800 successfully exploited. The annual security competition allows researchers to win any systems that they successfully compromise, and also awards them cash rewards if those security flaws are still present in the latest version of the software.
The iPhone was hacked by Pwn2Own veteran Charlie Miller working with Dion Blazakis. In the last three years, Miller has successfully pwned both Apple's phones and laptops at the competition, and he kept his winning streak going this year with a successful attack on the iPhone 4. The flaw used to pwn the iPhone was in its Mobile Safari Web browser; the phone was compromised simply by visiting a specially-crafted Web page, which allowed Miller to run exploit code that allowed him to access the phone's address book.

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Judges focus on technicality, not constitutionality of TSA scanners

A federal appeals court on Thursday appeared unlikely to block the use and ongoing deployment of the so-called “nude” airport body scanners, which the government maintains are necessary to protect the airways from terrorists.
Still, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which hears challenges to Department of Homeland Security policies, did not indicate during an hour-long oral argument here whether it agreed with allegations that the machines are an unconstitutional privacy invasion, ineffective, and unhealthy. Instead, the three-judge panel, which did not indicate when it would rule, appeared stuck in the procedural muck, and spent little time on those bread-and-butter issues.

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How to set up iTunes Home Sharing to stream to your iOS device

Apple has finally introduced a way to stream your music, TV, and movie content from your computer running iTunes to your iOS device as part of the iOS 4.3 update. Though Home Sharing has been around since Apple released iTunes 9 in the fall of 2009, it has been limited to sharing media between computers—until now, that is. Since it's such a new feature for iOS users, we thought we'd do a quick primer on how to set it up.
First, it's important to make sure your version of iTunes on your Mac or PC is upgraded to version 10.2 before trying to stream to your iOS device. Once you've made sure you're using the most recent version, go into the Advanced menu in iTunes and choose "Turn On Home Sharing."

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Feature: Research ethics: science faces On Fact and Fraud

David Goodstein has a unique perspective on scientific fraud, having pursued a successful career in research physics before becoming the provost of Caltech, one of the world's premier research institutions. As an administrator, he helped formulate Caltech's first policy for scientific misconduct and applied it to a number of prominent cases—all of which should put him in an excellent position to provide a rich and comprehensive overview of scientific frauds and other forms of research misconduct.
Unfortunately, his book On Fact and Fraud doesn't quite live up to this promise. Goodstein devotes most of the book to case studies of fraud or potential misconduct. Although many of the individual chapters are excellent, they don't come together to form a coherent picture of what constitutes misconduct or how to recognize it.

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Xbox Live points hack cost Microsoft thousands, not millions

A promotion offering Microsoft Points, 48-hour Xbox Live passes, and in-game props could have cost Microsoft more than it bargained for last weekend after Xbox Live users discovered that they could generate hundreds of working codes and redeem thousands of points. Most users exploiting the flaw were interested in the Microsoft Points: each code was worth 160 points, an amount that would normally cost $2 to buy.
The flaw was remarkably simple. Microsoft's promotional system used a special URL to generate the redeemable codes. That URL included within it two important parameters; a two-digit number used to pick the kind of code that would be generated—Points, passes, or props—and an enormously long string that governed which set of codes the system would hand out. It turned out that changing four specific characters in that string to any number from 0000 to 9999 allowed the system to generate new codes, making it easy to create thousands of codes. The problem was first publicized by a user named Dark posting at The Tech Game in a thread that has since been locked.
Estimates have been made that Microsoft Points worth between $1 million and $3 million dollars were generated illicitly before Microsoft shut the system down on Monday. These high numbers have, however, been ridiculed by Microsoft representatives, saying that the true figure is nowhere near that high. On the face of it, it looks like they have a point. Seven different two digit numbers that yielded Microsoft Points were discovered, and each two-digit code was then paired with the four digit number to generate a redeemable code. That would seem to imply that 7 أ— 10,000 codes were possible. With each code having a value equivalent to $2, that makes a total of just $140,000.
Abusing server flaws is against the Xbox LIVE terms of service, so the company would be entitled to hand out bans to those who abused the issue. However, the codes that were generated are legitimate, and it may prove difficult for the company to figure out which rewards were legit and which are not. Nonetheless, in a statement issued today the company said that it had "taken steps to invalidate the codes obtained illegitimately." The company said that it was still "evaluating whether or not certain individuals have violated the Terms of Use for Xbox"; if they have then Microsoft will "take the appropriate enforcement on an individual basis." There are unconfirmed reports that some people who took advantage of the flaw have already been banned.
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iOS 4.3 makes it harder for kids to go nuts with in-app purchases

A tweak delivered via the iOS 4.3 update is designed to prevent kids from inadvertently racking up huge in-app purchase bills to their parents' iTunes accounts. iOS 4.3 now has a separate 15-minute time window for making in-app purchases after a new app has been downloaded, requiring a user to enter a password before any new in-app purchases can be made. The move comes just a month after complaints from irate parents inspired US Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) to request the FTC investigate the matter.
Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller confirmed the change in a statement to The Washington Post. "We are proud to have industry-leading parental controls with iOS," Muller told the Post. "With iOS 4.3, in addition to a password being required to purchase an app on the App Store, a reentry of your password is now required when making an in-app purchase."

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Apple way ahead of tablet competition, expected to hold 80% share

The latest analysis from market research firm IDC shows that Apple snagged nearly three-quarters of the tablet market during the fourth quarter of 2010. Though Samsung's 7" Galaxy Tab offered some competition, Apple captured 83 percent of the market for 2010, and most analysts believe that with the iPad 2, Apple can maintain about 80 percent share for 2011 as well.
IDC's research also showed that Amazon's Kindle continues to be a market leader, grabbing almost half of the eReader market in fourth quarter 2010. With Amazon representing the closest competition to Apple with respect to available content and e-commerce infrastructure, Forrester researcher Sarah Rotman believes Amazon is best poised to give Apple the most credible threat to its dominating market position, assuming it could assemble a more general purpose tablet with a color screen.

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Saving the Earth: meet NASA's Planetary Protection Officer

Do you know who your Planetary Protection Officer (PPO) is? Do you know what a PPO does? Two weeks ago, I would have answered "no" to both of those questions. Thanks to a session at the recent meeting for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), that mystery has been cleared up. Basically, a PPO has two main jobs: to make sure that missions we send into space looking for extraterrestrial life don't end up contaminating their destinations with earthlings, and to make sure that anything we bring back to Earth doesn't accidentally end all life on Earth or turn out like the Andromeda Strain.

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Admit it, data hogs: you know you should pay more

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt backed off his company's tough data capping trial in early 2009, but he still likes the idea of some sort of pay-by-usage Internet model—and he suspects you (secretly) agree.
"I think you will naturally see evolve a world where people who use very little broadband expect to pay less and people who use a whole lot may complain, but in their hearts know they are going to pay more than somebody who reads e-mail once a week," said Britt at a conference this week, as reported by Multichannel News. "I think there will always be an unlimited tier, but I think you'll see the element of consumption introduced over time."
Britt's comments come as Canada is in the midst of a national debate on data capping thanks to a Bell Canada plan to force its caps onto even indie ISPs who purchase last-mile network access from Bell (most large incumbents already impose low data caps). Caps aren't unknown in the US, of course—Comcast allows 250GB per month—but they generally remain high even as ISPs like Time Warner generate terrific profits.
If data caps are really about finding a way to offer $3 per month broadband to grandma for her e-mail use, terrific. But if consumers see them simply as tools to squeeze more cash from customers (as they did in the Time Warner trials), then low caps will probably bring out Congressional resistance once again.
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WiMAX throttling lawsuit: Clearwire can't deliver the goods

Wireless operator Clearwire has had a bumpy few months, and now things are getting worse. A lawsuit has been filed by 15 users over the company's throttling practices, accusing Clearwire of not delivering advertised "high-speed Internet" services to customers and charging them termination fees when they walk away unsatisfied. The group even says that Clearwire is engaging in a Ponzi scheme by selling service that it can't deliver in hopes of raking in enough money later to build out its network.
Customers began complaining in mid-2010 that Clearwire had begun to throttle their home Internet connections, sometimes as slow as 256Kbps. It wasn't clear (ba-dum ching) at the time as to what standard Clearwire was using in order to trigger the throttling—some users were told about monthly usage caps while others were simply told that there were certain times of day in which the network would be congested. Customers were frustrated at this lack of transparency, and complaints began piling up all over the Web.

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Saturday, March 12, 2011

IT News HeadLines (Ars Technica) 11/03/2011

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