Feature: Anonymous goes after Sony, makes it personal... very personal
The hacker collective Anonymous has attacked Sony websites all week, taking them down intermittently in retaliation for Sony's federal lawsuit against PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz ("GeoHot"). But in recent days, "Operation Sony" morphed from a standard website attack into something a bit more personal, as some Anons formed a separate "Sony Recon" mission and began tracking down corporate executives, their wives, the schools their children attend, and the shops at which they buy their flowers. And the way they obtain that information can be ingenious—and disquieting.Gathering this sort of information is referred to as "doxing" or collecting "dox" on targets, and such data is usually collected and distributed so that others can use it "for the lulz"—amusement, legitimate protest, or harassment.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Nanoparticles successfully take down MRSA bacteria
Traditional antibiotics like doxycyclin and vancomycin—the kind that many bacteria can now resist because of their overuse—work by getting inside the bacterial cell and interfering with essential cellular processes. Charged peptides have been proposed as alternatives, since they work by electrostatically interacting with the negatively charged bacterial cell wall, poking holes in the bacterial cell membrane and thereby killing the bacteria. Because these molecules physically disrupt the bacterial membrane rather than target an intracellular component, bacteria are less able to develop resistance. However, these agents are expensive to produce, have short circulating half-lives in the body, and tend to kill red blood cells in addition to bacteria. They have thus met with limited clinical success. A report in this week’s Nature Chemistry describes the synthesis of the first biodegradable antimicrobial polymer nanoparticles to help fill the breach.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
RNA duplicating RNA, a step closer to the origin of life
According to the “RNA world” model of life's origin, RNA performed all of the operations that are essential to life. RNA alone passed on genetic information and catalyzed the reactions of basic metabolism; DNA and proteins were not in the picture. The RNA world hypothesis is an appealingly simple model for simple early life forms, since it allows the complex array of biochemical interactions among proteins, DNA, and RNA to evolve gradually.Our current natural world no longer uses RNA enzymes that act on their own to perform most biological functions. To better understand ancient RNA enzymes, modern scientists have to rely on proxies, like engineered RNA "ribozymes" that have catalytic functions without the need for proteins. However, scientists have had trouble creating a proxy for the first self-replicating molecule, or even an RNA ribozyme that can copy an RNA that's long enough to have further biological functions. Aniela Wochner and her coauthors have overcome that difficulty. In a recent issue of Science, they report the creation of an RNA ribozyme that synthesizes complex RNAs, including RNAs that act as ribozymes and perform a biological function.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Playing against the gods: how the press reviews multiplayer games
Reviewing a single-player game is relatively easy—you just need to hunker down and play the darned thing. Multiplayer gamers are a different beast: they require multiple players to evaluate, and those players can be hard to come by when you get a copy of the game days (or even weeks) before release. You can always review the single-player portion of the game and come back to the multiplayer portion after launch, but that's not the best solution when your readers are desperate for thoughts on how the game plays online.So what happens? The publisher sets up play dates where the press plays the game against the developers. This is weird for a number of reasons, chiefly because those individuals know the game much better than we do. It's also in their best interest to make sure we have a good time playing their game. Reviews written based on games played with the developers and other press are incredibly common, but the issue is very rarely discussed. Let's change that!
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Pandora sends user GPS, sex, birthdate, other data to ad servers
Pandora's Android app transmits a plethora of personal information to third parties after all, at least according to an analysis done by security firm Veracode. The company decided to do a follow-up on the news that Pandora—among other mobile app makers—was being investigated by a federal grand jury, and found that data about the user's birth date, gender, Android ID, and GPS information were all being sent to various advertising companies. Earlier this week, Pandora revealed that it had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury to produce documents about its user data collection practices on Android and iOS devices. The company said that it believes the subpoena is part of an industry-wide investigation into popular applications on both platforms. The Wall Street Journal quickly followed up on the news by reporting that the purpose of the investigation is to find out whether app makers fully describe to users the kinds of information they obtain and why they need it. One other iOS developer, Anthony Campiti, said that he also got a subpoena over his app, "Pumpkin Maker."
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Apple gets go-ahead to move against unauthorized accessory makers
A federal judge has ruled that Apple's lawsuit against a group of California companies selling unauthorized accessories for iPods, iPhones, and iPads can continue. The group of four companies, led by eForCity, tried to have the lawsuit dismissed on procedural grounds, but US District Judge Jeremy Fogel has ordered the lawsuit to proceed.In July, Apple sued a group of seven companies that make and/or sell unauthorized accessories designed to work with its various iDevices. Apple has a specific licensing and certification program for businesses that want to offer such accessories, known as the MFi Program. To avoid paying the licensing fees, the seven companies skirted the program and made accessories without Apple's blessing. Apple claimed that by doing so, the companies are culpable for patent infringement—as the company has numerous patents on its 30-pin dock connector and cable—as well as trademark infringement and unfair competition.
"These products are frequently advertised and sold in a manner that falsely and unfairly implies affiliation with Apple and infringes Apple’s valuable intellectual property," Apple said in its original complaint. "Many are of inferior quality and reliability, raising significant concerns over compatibility with, and damage to, Apple’s products."
Two of the companies in the suit ended up settling, while a third was dropped from the case by Apple when it failed to respond to the lawsuit. The four remaining companies tried to argue that the suit lacked merit because Apple didn't identify the specific patent claims that its products infringed. Judge Fogel noted in his order denying the motion to dismiss that stating such specific claims is not required to file the suit, and aren't due until after case management has been determined.
Judge Fogel did give a small win to eForCity, however—he granted its motion to strike a quote from an angry eForCity customer from Apple's original complaint. Apple used the quote, which claimed an eForCity iPod cable was "garbage," to reinforce its claim that eForCity products were inferior. eForCity argued the quote was not essential to the claims for relief, and Apple did not oppose the motion.
It's unclear if eForCity has any viable defense with the case headed to trial. It may try and fight the patent claims, but given the costs involved in such a case, it's more likely to settle. In a similar instance last year, Apple applied legal pressure on Sanho Corporation, which produced a popular line of HyperMac extended batteries for Apple notebooks that used patented MagSafe connectors. Sanho expunged the MagSafe connectors from its products, hoping to avoid costly litigation.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Senate, House can't agree on EPA, Clean Air Act
The Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions continues to be a political football. This week, the US House is preparing to pass legislation that would strip the agency of this authority and, in the process, it rejected an amendment that reiterated the scientific community's position on climate change. Meanwhile, the Senate has rejected a similar bill, suggesting that President Obama won't have to exercise his threat of a veto, at least for now.The issue at hand is whether the EPA has the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gasses as a pollutant, and if so, if there is a scientific case for doing so. Under previous administrations, the EPA had ignored states' requests to evaluate the latter, leading them to sue. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Air Act compelled the EPA to make a scientific risk assessment. The Agency obeyed and found that greenhouse emissions were pollutants under the Act's definition. The Bush Whitehouse, however, instructed its staff not to open the e-mail containing these findings, leaving things in limbo (this document was later released by the current EPA).
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Dishwasher sequel delivers violence, vengeance
The Dishwasher's release on the Xbox Live Arcade was a heart-warming success story, even if it spawned a game where a 2D character washed your screen in the blood of his enemies. The game was created when a man named James Silva imagined what it would be like if a dishwasher lost his mind and killed everyone put in front of him. Silva, by no coincidence, was a dishwasher. The Dishwasher was created using Microsoft's XNA tools, submitted to the Dream.Build.Play contest, was then released as an Xbox Live Arcade game and became a hit. Not bad for a game based on an idle revenge fantasy.Dishwasher: Vampire Smile takes the original formula and improves on it, and the reviews have been almost unanimously positive. I've been playing myself, and the game keeps what made the original so compelling while adding a second character, continuing the story, and offering a good amount of content for only $10. We talked to James Silva about his time creating this game, and how his only goal is to make enough money to keep making games.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Feature: Battlefield Play4Free: more like Battlefield Cash4EA
I never played Battlefield 1942, and to this day the appeal of the Wake Island map evades me. But I loved Battlefield 2. Played the hell out of it. Sure, it was always a little flawed—OK, a lot flawed, because good pilots could completely ruin the game for everyone else—but the wide range of classes, the mix of vehicles, the squad-based play, and the whole commander dynamic made it a great game.
So when I found out that EA was going to make a free-to-play version of that classic game, Battlefield Play4Free, I was immediately intrigued. The promise of the new game is simple: the maps and vehicles of Battlefield 2, combined with the zero entry fee and micropayments of Battlefield Heroes. I signed up for, and got into, the closed pre-beta, and a couple of days ago the beta opened up. Now anyone can play.
I wish I'd never bothered. The game is wall-to-wall horrible. The gameplay mechanics are broken, the game itself is aggravatingly buggy, and the micropayment model is an egregious and blatant cash-grab.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Feature: Is gravity not actually a force? Forcing theory to meet experiments
How are controversial ideas handled by modern science? A common charge leveled against science (generally by those who are unhappy with its conclusions) is that the only way to get funding or continue your research is by going along with the current theories and not rocking the boat. For those who spend their careers in science, this is laughable—it is those who successfully rock the boat who are the most successful. In this article, we are going to look at a manuscript that purports to overturn hundreds of years of accepted ideas about gravity, and use it as an illustration of how controversial ideas are dealt with in modern physics.It was Isaac Newton who first proposed a universal law of gravitation, where every massive body in the universe was attracted to every other one. This simple law proved extremely powerful, able to explain the orbits of planets and the reason the apocryphal apple fell on his head. However, Newton was never able to explain why gravity worked or what exactly it was. Three hundred plus years later, Albert Einstein was able to offer a more complete description of gravity—one where Newton's laws are a limited case. According to Einstein, gravity was due to the warpage of spacetime by mass and energy; all objects followed straight paths, just on curved spaces.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Mono for Android framework lets C# developers tame the Droid
Novell is officially launching Mono for Android 1.0, a framework that will allow third-party developers to build native Android applications in C#. It complements the company's existing MonoTouch offering, which supports C# development for Apple's iOS mobile operating system.The Mono project is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET framework and language compilers. Due to its permissive license and technical flexibility, Mono has opened the door for .NET to come to many new computing environments, including mobile and embedded platforms.
Capitalizing on the opportunity to open up iOS to developers with existing C# expertise, Novell launched its commercial MonoTouch framework in 2009. MonoTouch uses ahead-of-time compilation to conform with Apple's App Store requirements. It also offers comprehensive bindings for UIKit and other iOS platform APIs, making it possible to build fully native-looking applications with standard user interface elements. The company has been working on an equivalent product for Android development, which is finally ready for a public launch after a year of development.
Mono for Android integrates with Visual Studio on Windows and MonoDevelop and Mac OS X, providing tooling support and other functionality that simplifies the development and deployment process. The Android APIs have been wrapped in C# and adapted to work neatly with the programming language. Unlike MonoTouch, which is somewhat hampered by some of Apple's security restrictions, Mono for Android can take advantage of full JIT compilation.
Developers who are building mobile applications with MonoTouch or for Windows Phone 7 could use Mono for Android to port their applications to Google's mobile operating system. Of course, the obvious downside is that developers will still have to build separate user interfaces for each platform due to the fundamental differences in native user interface APIs.
A Mono for Android license will cost $399 for an individual developer. A one-seat enterprise license costs $999. For more details you can refer to the product's official website.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Newt Gingrich, Captain Beefheart, humpback whales join National Recording Registry
The Library of Congress has released its latest picks for the National Recording Registry. That's the LOC's collection of recent and historic recordings determined to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant and worthy of preservation for all time," in the words of the library's Jennifer Gavin.Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Google: don't give private "trolls" Web censorship power
The House and Senate are both drafting "rogue sites" legislation that will likely support website blocking at the domain name level and will require online ad networks and credit card companies to stop working with sites on the blacklist. That idea is controversial enough when only the government has the power to pursue the censoring; it gets even more controversial if private companies get the right to bring a censorship action in court without waiting for government to act.Both houses of Congress are considering such a "private right of action" as they work to review and revise last year's COICA Web censorship bill, but Google can't say strongly enough what a bad idea this would be.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
100 classic Atari games for iOS out now, iCade cabinet coming in June
Atari announced on Tuesday that it is launching Atari's Greatest Hits, a collection of 18 arcade classics and 82 Atari 2600 console games, for iOS. The free app includes the original '70s arcade classic Pong, with the other 99 games available via in-app purchase. The app runs on iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads, and it will be the first to support the iCade mini iPad arcade cabinet set to ship this June.
The game includes access to arcade classics like Asteroids, Centipede, Millipede, Battlezone, Missile Command, Crystal Castles, and Tempest. Additionally, users can play a selection of Atari 2600 games like Combat, Adventure, Night Driver, Star Raiders, Outlaw, all the Real Sports titles, and Yars Revenge. The games come in 99آ¢ four-packs that are loosely theme-based—the "Super Breakout Pack" includes Super Breakout, Breakout, Off-the-Wall, and Circus Atari, while the "Tic-Tac-Toe Pack" includes 3D Tic-Tac-Toe, A Game of Concentration, Backgammon, and Brain Games. You can also buy all 100 games for a single $14.99 in-app purchase if you're so inclined. Several of the titles include support for multiplayer play with other iOS users via Bluetooth.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Toyota pulls Scion tC jailbreak theme at Apple's behest
Toyota's Scion brand, known for its basic vehicle designs that buyers can customize with style and performance options, recently offered a custom theme for jailbroken iPhones in order to promote the new 2011 Scion tC. Shortly after the campaign started, however, Toyota had its mobile advertising agency pull the theme and ads promoting it from the Cydia jailbreak store after Apple caught wind of the campaign. The move appears to be an effort to keep high-profile companies like Toyota using official channels, such as iAd, to reach iOS users.Apple enthusiast site ModMyi.com had been working with Velti, a mobile advertising firm that was also contracted by Toyota to promote the Scion brand online. ModMyi.com founder Kyle Matthews said in a forum post that the two companies had discussions about building a custom iOS jailbreak theme to promote the new tC as far back as April of last year. (Themes are a collection of interface modifications for iOS, which can include custom icons, fonts, background images, and other stylistic changes.) Velti had apparently seen a connection between iPhone users who jailbreak their devices to install custom themes and car buyers that would be interested in a brand built around customizations, which led to the collaboration.
Matthews noted that the Scion tC theme was released in February this year, but ModMyi.com began running ads promoting the theme (available from the jailbreak Cydia Store) at the end of March. The ad campaign and a ModMyi.com article discussing the collaboration with Velti eventually caught the attention of the tech press, which led to Apple learning of the promotion.
Apple reportedly requested that Toyota remove the theme from the Cydia Store and stop the advertising campaign. Velti then contacted ModMyi.com Monday night to pull the theme and ads. Toyota gave in to Apple's request in order to "maintain their good relationship with Apple," a Velti representative told Matthews.
It's hard to say what particular relationship Toyota has with Apple, and company representatives did not respond to our request for comment as of publication time. Neither Toyota nor Scion appear to be running iAd campaigns at this time, but both brands do offer iPod integration on some car models. Whatever the case, Apple has effectively put a stop to Toyota marketing directly to jailbreakers.
Matthews suggested that Apple's request is a direct attack on the jailbreak scene. It's no secret that Apple wishes jailbreaking didn't exist; the company tried unsuccessfully to have jailbreaking ruled illegal and continually plugs security exploits that make the practice possible. At one point, Apple even tired implementing a jailbreak detection API. However, it's just as likely that Apple is trying to keep its partners using official channels, such as Apple's own iAd mobile advertising service. Letting a partner like Toyota target jailbreakers directly could be seen as an implicit approval of such practices, not to mention that Apple doesn't get a cut from ad campaigns served over non-iAd channels.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Feature: A shiny new ornament for your Linux lawn: Ars reviews GNOME 3.0
The developers behind the GNOME project have announced the official release of GNOME 3.0, a significant redesign of the open source desktop environment. The update introduces a new desktop shell that offers a streamlined window management workflow and a more modern look and feel. The new version also represents a major architectural overhaul, with many important enhancements to the GNOME platform's technical underpinnings.The effort to deliver GNOME 3.0 has a long history. It took the developers years to reach a consensus about how to proceed with the new version, and years more to implement it. The protracted development period has largely paid off in stability and coherence. It's fit for duty out of the starting gate, though there is still plenty of room for further improvement.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
One-of-a-kind Tron light cycle board game? Yessir
The iconic light cycles from the Tron films aren't necessarily the first thing you'd think of when creating a new board game, but that doesn't mean it can't work. Brett King created a custom game to play with his kids and posted the results on YouTube, and we can't help but be impressed.Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Tevatron data suggests new, unknown particle—but not the Higgs
It seems that it's the season for Tevatron data analysis, as a set of papers is doing the rounds based on the full set of data from its most recent run (another run, its last, is in progress that will apparently double the total data). In March came word that there was an odd asymmetry in the production of top quarks that could be explained by a number of particles that have been limited to the realm of theory. Now there's been a paper that suggests the data might contain hints of the decay of something that nobody had predicted, a particle with a mass of about 144GeV that doesn't behave the way theorists predict the Higgs should.
The new work is described in a paper that has been placed on the arXiv preprint server; it has been submitted for peer review and publication, but hasn't passed these hurdles yet. The work builds on an earlier paper in which the data from the CDF detector was scanned to look for the production of the particles that carry the weak force, the W and Z bosons.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
No comments:
Post a Comment