Data caps claim a victim: Netflix cuts streaming video quality
Netflix announced last night that Canadian users will, by default, receive lower-quality—and lower-bandwidth—streaming video. The change was made to protect users, "because many Canadian Internet service providers unfortunately enforce monthly caps on the total amount of data consumed."Fast Internet connections could previously chew through 30-70GB of data while streaming 30 hours of Netflix video in a month. Data caps for the Rogers cable operator and for Bell Canada start at 2GB per month; cable operator Shaw starts at 15GB.
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RIP James Caple-Nisby, aka "AlphaMeridian": friend, moderator, Arsian
A devoted member of the Ars Technica family and long-time leader in our gaming and hardware communities has died suddenly. James Caple-Nisby, known by nearly everyone as AlphaMeridian or just “Alpha” for short, leaves behind family and friends who remember a kind, giving أ¼bergeek who left us far too soon. While all details are not yet clear (we will provide updates as we get them), it appears that James died in his sleep from a heart attack on Monday, March 28. He was 29 years old.
Alpha joined Ars within months of its birth, registering back in 1999 and quickly becoming one of the most helpful and selfless people on Ars. In the summer of 2001, when James was only 20 years old, he became one of the first volunteer moderators in the OpenForum, first taking on Other Hardware and then eventually Gaming, Extra Strength Caplets, our gaming forum. Alpha was always gregarious, whether he was laying down a verbal beating on a terrible poster, dealing with the Ars staff in IRC who always teased him for his choice in gaming (GUNBOUND? GUNBOUND!), or threatening to post office furniture questions in Other Hardware.
I will remember James for being an amazing peacemaker who always looked on the bright side of life. Idiotic things like IRC channel fights (which seem doubly idiotic in retrospect) could suck in all kinds of people, but it was usually Alpha who led people back to their senses. He even wrote a code of behavior for one of our channels, because he cared so much about people getting along and moving beyond stupidity. If there was ever a man who was a real mensch, it was Alpha.
We will update this thread throughout the day with details on how you can honor James’ memory, details on the service, and other matters.
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Dust storms test the limits of scientific computing
Many of the systems studied by scientists evolve through time and space, like diseases spreading through a population, weather fronts rolling across a continent, and solar flares churning the atmosphere. A paper, part of a special series on what's termed "spatial computing," argues that understanding these processes will necessarily require computing systems to have a structure that reflects the corresponding spatial and temporal limits. According to its authors, the spatial nature of the systems being studied is reflected in everything from data gathering to its processing and the visualization of the results. So, unless we engineer the computing systems to handle spatial issues, we're not going to have very good results. It would be easy to dismiss spatial computing as a buzzword, except the authors provide concrete examples that demonstrate spatial issues do play a major role in scientific computing. Unfortunately, they also demonstrate that they play several roles, some of them largely unrelated to each other; as a result, the spatial tag ends up getting applied to several unrelated problems, which dilutes the message to an extent.
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Feature: The Drobo FS in-depth, Part 1: what it is, how it works
I have a buddy named Matt who's a digital pack-rat. He's the guy you call when you need a movie or a TV show, because chances are he's got it. Among the finer things in his collection is the entire multi-decade run of "Dr. Who," including lots of rare black and white Hartnell stuff. He's long since reached the point where he could put his collection on random play and die of old age before he sees a repeat.Matt's not alone, either—we're coming to a point where everyone and their dog has at least a digital music and photo collection, and tons of folks (especially folks in the Ars reader demographic) have collections of ripped movies and TV shows on top of that. All that stuff has to reside somewhere, and to that end there's a huge array of network attached storage devices—NAS boxes, as we in the biz say—that can keep the data safe, with redundancy and protection that you wouldn't get from storing the collection on your computer's main hard drive or on a single external disk.
I recently got my hands on a Drobo FS from Data Robotics, and I've been using it intensively for some time now. If you're interested in the Drobo, then this two-part review is perhaps the longest and most thorough look at the device you'll find anywhere. Indeed, it's more than just a review—In Part 1 I dig into Data Robotics patent filings so I can explain how the device works. In Part 2, I'll describe how the Drobo functions in day-to-day use.
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Apple opens Design Awards only to Mac apps in App Store
Apple has announced the criteria for this year's Apple Design Awards (ADAs), given out during its yearly Worldwide Developers Conference. Like last year, Apple will be giving awards to top iPhone and iPad apps. Unlike last year, apps designed for Mac OS X will once again get some recognition. Still, apps that aren't in Apple's new Mac App Store won't be eligible for an award, giving developers yet another reason to begin considering the Mac App Store as the de facto distribution point for Mac software.Last year, Apple snubbed Mac OS X developers by only offering ADAs for iPhone or iPad apps. Additionally, the sessions at WWDC 2010 were mostly focused on Apple's mobile operating system. With Apple's popular Mac Downloads page being retired, many Mac developers felt that Apple was letting the spotlight fade on Mac OS X in favor of iOS.
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Firefox 4 leads IE9 in downloads and usage
Firefox 4, which launched last week, has attracted considerable interest among technology enthusiasts. The browser was downloaded 7.1 million times during the first day of availability alone. It passed 15 million downloads within the first 48 hours and is currently nearing 40 million total downloads.By comparison, Microsoft's recently-launched Internet Explorer 9 only netted 2.5 million downloads during its first 24 hours. Firefox 4 is also outpacing Internet Explorer 9 in actual usage, according to statistics provided by StatCounter and Net Applications. They show that Firefox 4 usage represents between 4 and 5 percent of the total browser market whereas Internet Explorer 9 is hovering between 1 and 2 percent.
It's worth noting that neither browser has been rolled out to regular end users via the standard update channels yet—the statistics are based entirely on voluntary downloads by early adopters. Mozilla's Asa Dotzler attributes the early popularity of Firefox 4 to strong grassroots support from the browser's vocal community of independent advocates.
Firefox's cross-platform footprint and backwards compatibility with Windows XP—which isn't supported by IE9—may also have played a role in boosting Firefox's momentum out of the starting gate.
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Choplifter gets a PC, PSN reboot, with video!
Choplifter was unique for its time—it saw an Atari release in 1982, three years before the game's debut in the arcades, complete with new scoring feature. In this game your mission was to save people, while also killing everyone else. Today, it's still a recognizable name in gaming, and many of us continue to feel warmly about our hours spent pushing quarters into the machine (or playing it on the Apple ][). Now inXile Entertainment, the developer behind the upcoming Hunted title, is rebooting the game for the PlayStation Network and the PC.Take a look.
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Sprint on AT&T/T-Mobile merger: "we want it blocked"
The third largest wireless broadband carrier in the United States spent Monday making the rounds with reporters, expressing its opposition to the proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. We got a call around noon, and weren't surprised to learn that Sprint, which depends on AT&T for network connections, opposes the deal. But we wondered whether the company would accept the marriage if the government attached various public interest conditions to the union. "Sorry, no divestitures, no fixes, no conditions," Vonya McCann, Sprint's senior vice president for Government Affairs told us. "We want it stopped."
Well, what if the government came up with some better special access rules for commercial voice companies that want to connect to AT&T?
"It won't fix it for us," she repeated. "We want it blocked."
There are no possible deal-sweeteners that could win you over to this merger?
"No. It's bad consumers," McCann insisted. "It's bad for industry. It's bad for the country. It creates a huge duopoly. We don't see how it can fixed."
And how are you going to stop this?
"We're going to make the case that the government should block the transaction."
The government can stop this deal if it wants to. Ars readers who followed the Comcast/NBCU merger drama know how the drill goes from here. As per the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, AT&T and T-Mobile will have to file their proposal with the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Then various government agencies will consider the impact of the union from an antitrust and public interest perspective, with Congress chiming in via Commerce/Science and Judiciary Committee hearings.
We're betting those agencies will be the DoJ and the Federal Communications Commission. An official from the latter outfit has already told the Wall Street Journal that the merger faces considerable skepticism.
"There's no way the chairman's office rubber-stamps this transaction," the FCC official told the Journal last week. "It will be a steep climb to say the least."
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"Psycho-acoustic" Beatles recordings cost BlueBeat $950,000
BlueBeat.com, the company that tried to sell "remastered" Beatles tracks online before they became officially available, has agreed to pay nearly $1 million to settle a lawsuit filed by three music labels. The move comes more than a year after a federal judge issued a restraining order and then an injunction against the company, and does not yet include any attorney's fees or other damages involved in the lawsuit.The case dates back to 2009, before the (now infamous) Beatles remasters were actually authorized to be sold online. When BlueBeat and its parent company Media Rights Technologies (MRT) first posted the songs for only a quarter per track, it was widely believed there were some shenanigans going on, sparking the lawsuit from EMI, Capitol Records, and Virgin Records America.
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Plutonium no worry (yet) at Fukushima, but beware the puddles
Today, the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which runs the Fukushima nuclear power plant, announced that environmental samples taken a week ago indicate the presence of plutonium in the soil near the plant. The levels remain low, and pose little threat to those working on getting the reactors back under control. More worrisome from that perspective is the finding that highly radioactive water has been found in tunnels away from the reactor building proper, suggesting that there have been leaks from elsewhere in the containment structures. Combined, these findings confirm previous indications that there are problems with the integrity of both the reactors' fuel rods and its containment system. As far as human health risks, the plutonium isn't a serious concern at the levels it was detected; according to a Reuters report, levels were similar to those found in Japan in the wake of nuclear testing done elsewhere, and unlikely to put workers at risk due either to toxicity or radioactivity. Its presence, however, does indicate damage to the reactor's fuel rods has been sufficient to allow some fuel to escape with the steam vented from the plants.
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AT&T admits to slowing down the Motorola Atrix and HTC Inspire
AT&T has admitted that it clipped the wings of its 4G network and is the reason that two recently released phones, the Motorola Atrix 4G and the HTC Inspire 4G, have dismal upload speeds. Carrier reps on Facebook have promised that AT&T will fix the problem with a software update to the phones in April after many complaints were made to the Better Business Bureau. AT&T's HSUPA network has been up and running for some time now, but when 4G phones began entering the market recently, customers were surprised to find their upload speeds were no faster than 300kbps, as we found in our Atrix review. AT&T initially dodged the issue, saying that the HTC Inspire 4G wasn't able to use 4G. AT&T now says it is still conducting the "testing and preparations" that come ahead of actually on its 4G service.
A software patch will be released in April to both the Atrix and the Inspire to fix their upload speeds and give them access to the (hopefully active) HSUPA network. AT&T also notes that an upcoming phone, the Samsung Infuse 4G, will ship with HSUPA enabled. If you're looking to pick up any of the hobbled phones, be prepared to work with slower upload speeds for at least a few weeks, if not longer.
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WWDC 2011 may be all software, signaling change in iPhone strategy
Apple has said that this year's Worldwide Developers Conference will focus on "the future of iOS and Mac OS," and several sources are now suggesting that Apple isn't planning to show off any new hardware in June. That means Apple won't even show us a new iPhone, despite the fact that new iPhone revisions were highlighted at the last three WWDC keynotes. And, if Apple divulges anything about iOS 5, the mobile OS itself may not be ready until the fall.Since 2008, Apple has followed a fairly predictable yearly pattern with respect to both major iOS software revisions and iPhone hardware revisions. In early spring, Apple typically holds a special event to announce the next major iOS release, touting the major features and giving developers access to an early beta. Subsequent betas would be released up until WWDC, where Apple would typically have a golden master ready so developers could finalize and test any new features before release.
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RIAA lobbyist becomes federal judge, rules on file-sharing cases
Last week, Washington, DC federal judge Beryl Howell ruled on three mass file-sharing lawsuits. Judges in Texas, West Virginia, and Illinois had all ruled recently that such lawsuits were defective in various ways, but Howell gave her cases the green light; attorneys could use the federal courts to sue thousands of people at once and then issue mass subpoenas to Internet providers. Yes, issues of "joinder" and "jurisdiction" would no doubt arise later, but the initial mass unmasking of alleged file-swappers was legitimate.Howell isn't the only judge to believe this, but her important ruling is especially interesting because of Howell's previous work: lobbying for the recording industry during the time period when the RIAA was engaged in its own campaign of mass lawsuits against individuals.
The news, first reported in a piece at TorrentFreak, nicely illustrates the revolving door between government and industry. And it reminds us just how complicated questions of influence can be.
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Fear of a social planet: how Nintendo failed with 3DS friend codes
Now that the Nintendo 3DS has been released and gamers are picking up their systems, many of us have been calling our friends, posting on forums, and even taking to Twitter to exchange friend codes with people we know. The 3DS has gotten rid of the per-game friend codes that were so annoying in previous Nintendo offerings, so the single code for your system will allow you to play your friends in online games across your entire library.The problem is that Nintendo has done next to nothing with the functionality, and it's one of the largest missed opportunities on the 3DS. Let's take a look.
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