IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (Ars Technica) 08/04/2011

Source: Anonymous attacks on Sony annoying, not much more

The total amount of firepower used to flood Sony websites this week? It's only "medium strength," says a source at Sony's hosting provider who is not authorized by his employer to speak on the record.
The hacker collective Anonymous has been hammering Sony all week—both online and off—over the company's lawsuit against PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz ("GeoHot"). The online attacks have largely used the Anonymous tool of choice, the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), to flood Sony's servers with enough information to create a distributed denial of service attack. LOIC was built as a network stress-testing tool but has been repurposed by Anonymous to create voluntary botnets in which Anons contribute bandwidth to take down a shared target.

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New tech shows Einstein wrong: we can watch Brownian motion

The seemingly random movement of Brownian motion just got a little more classical. Scientists have been able to image the ultrafast motions of a trapped particle, revealing the underlining trajectories causing Brownian motion. This is the first time inertial Brownian motion of a particle in a fluid have been measured.
In 60 BC, the poet Lucretius described the motions of dust in a dark room and speculated on the existence of atoms. In 1827, Robert Brown described the random motions of pollen in water, the motion which now bears his name. It took until 1905 for Einstein to fully described how Brownian motion arises from instantaneous imbalances in the forces from collisions with water molecules.
At its heart, Brownian motion is still described by classical Newtonian physics, even if we cannot define a classical velocity and can only measure mean square displacement. Einstein said, "It is therefore impossible... to ascertain the root mean square velocity by observation" because the timescales of the instantaneous velocity are vanishingly short. Einstein calculated that the time for a particle to decelerate significantly is about ~100ns, impossibly fast to measure at the time.
But that was then. Now researchers have been able to probe time scales an order of magnitude faster. By holding a micron-sized sphere in a optical trap and measuring the scattered light with a high speed position detector (75MHz), a team was able to measure the motion of the spheres with a resolution of 0.2 angstroms and a temporal resolution of ~10ns. At these resolutions, they were able to track the inertial Brownian motion of the sphere.
Nature Physics, 2011. DOI: 10.1038/NPHYS1953 (About DOIs). Read the comments on this post

Time Warner, Viacom aim legal guns at each other over iPad app

Time Warner Cable is taking the dispute over its live-TV-streaming iPad app to court. The company has filed a request for declaratory judgment, asking the judge to rule that the cable giant has the rights to stream content to any of its subscribers' devices, whether it's a TV set or an iPad. Viacom, in turn, also filed its own lawsuit against Time Warner, arguing that the two companies never agreed to such rights.
"[W]e are very confident in our rights to distribute our programmers’ feeds over our cable distribution infrastructure to any digital device within our customer’s home. And some of our programming partners have taken the position that our interpretation is wrong," Time Warner's director of digital communications Jeff Simmermon wrote on the company blog. "To be completely clear: this is not a hostile lawsuit... We’re at an impasse with a handful of network owners, and we need an impartial third party to referee the situation and confirm that our interpretation is correct."

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Acer's new Honeycomb tablet to compete with iPad on price

With the debut of the Iconia Tab A500, Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Acer is the latest to throw its hat into the tablet ring.
As of Friday morning, the A500 is up for preorder on Best Buy’s web site for $450. It will be ready for purchase in Best Buy retail stores beginning April 24.
The tablet will run Android version 3.0 (Honeycomb) on its NVIDIA Tegra 250 1GHz dual-core processor, supported by a gig of RAM.
The price ranks in at just below the cheapest iPad 2, which costs $500 and is Wi-Fi only with 16GB of internal storage (just like the Iconia A500). At $600, Motorola’s WiFi-only Xoom remains the most expensive Honeycomb-powered tablet option (though the extra hundred bucks will buy you a full 32GB of internal storage, among other things). Acer plans to eventually release a 32GB model, although no details on this have been given.
Acer’s tablet won’t be competing with those in the 4G realm yet—the A500 will be available in a Wi-Fi version first, and a 4G version will eventually make its way to AT&T’s network.
The A500’s 10.1-inch display boasts a 1280أ—800 resolution ratio (equal to that of the Xoom, and better than the iPad 2). You can watch HD 720p video on the screen, or use the HDMI output to view stored media on external screens. A 5-megapixel rear facing camera comes for shooting photos and video, while the 2-megapixel front facing camera allows for video chat.
Like the other Android tablets to debut in 2011, the A500 will trail Google’s flagship Honeycomb device, Motorola’s Xoom, to market. Samsung’s currently available version of its seven-inch Galaxy Tab runs Android version 2.2—we won't see Honeycomb on a Samsung device until the 10.1-inch version ships (although delays have pushed back the larger version’s release).
And in what seems to be the beginning of a disturbing trend in tablet debuts, the A500 will support Flash eventually, but won’t ship with it. Motorola’s Xoom, which debuted six weeks ago, also launched without Flash, though a beta release is currently available for Honeycomb in the Android Market.
With the BlackBerry Playbook set to debut on April 19 and a number of offerings to follow, Acer’s preorder ploy is an attempt to push out the Iconia before other tablets hit the market.
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Android chief Rubin's response to Android critics misses the point

Android chief Andy Rubin has finally issued a statement in response to recent reports regarding Android's deteriorating openness. He characterizes the media reports as "misinformation" and says that he is speaking up "in the spirit of transparency" in order to "set the record straight."
In his statement, he defends Google's "anti-fragmentation" strategy and says that the source code will be made available when it's ready. He also dismisses the allegation that Google is tightening its control over the user experience. Unfortunately, his statement sheds no light on the Android roadmap, and he has completely failed to address many of the issues raised by widespread reporting on Google's role in the Android ecosystem. The condescending and evasive statement does little to support his argument.

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Minecraft to exit beta November 11 with $32 million in revenues

The hit PC sandbox game Minecraft is set to shed its beta cocoon on November 11 of this year, creator Markus Persson announced via his blog on Thursday. The full version won't differ very much from the current iteration, Persson says, though the team plans to keep adding features before and after the "beta" label comes off.
Minecraft's development path has not been too rocky, popularity-wise: a back-of-the-envelope calculation from a Reddit question-and-answer session revealed that the game has generated about $32 million in revenue since its release, with copies selling first for $14, and later for $21. Persson notes that the full release date is "really more of a milestone… some kind of goal for us to work towards," and won't mark the release of any particular content.
Persson demonstrated his commitment to the continuous addition of features by announcing that version 1.5 of Minecraft is due out next week, which will add weather to the game, among other things. The release date for the full version of Minecraft, 11/11/11, coincides with several other entertainment releases, including Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
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PSP to get streaming music next week, powered by Qriocity

Starting next week, PSP owners will be able to stream an unlimited amount of music to their handhelds. Sony has announced that the PSP is the latest device to support the recently launched Qriocity cloud-based music service, and users will be able to start streaming music on April 14.
The "Music Unlimited" service comes in two flavors: a basic package for $3.99/month and a premium one for $9.99. Both options let users access the service's library of seven million songs, but those who opt for the higher-price tier will also be able to access additional "premium" music channels, as well as listen to songs on-demand and create custom playlists.
The service already supports a number of Sony products, including the PlayStation 3, Bravia TVs, and online-enabled Blu-Ray players. And Sony says that users can expect a "synchronized music experience" across all platforms. The company also explained that the service will soon be accessible on Android-enabled devices as well, which should make owners of the upcoming Xperia Play happy.
Not everyone will be able to use the service, though, as Qriocity is not currently available worldwide. As of February, users in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand can access the music in the cloud.
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How early reviews hurt sales of indie games

When a game reviewer is given a copy of a game for consideration, we're almost always told when we're allowed to publish the review. In a perfect world, these embargoes put everyone on the same footing and allow reviewers to play through a game in its entirety instead of rushing through it to be first. In the real world, they're often used to make sure an outlet picked by the publisher gets an exclusive. That's a story for another time; we're here to discuss another issue that has come up in conversations with independent developers. Many of them want reviews of their games published no earlier than the day of release, when the game is available for purchase.
This isn't nefarious, and the request is always phrased politely, but the timing of a review for a smaller game can have a huge impact on the sales of that game. Ars Technica spoke with Tom Ohle, who is doing PR for the just-released Anomaly: Warzone Earth, about why early game reviews can hurt the sales of these games.

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Insects with Rickettsia infection produce twice as many offspring

Endosymbiotic bacteria, which take up residence inside their hosts' bodies, aren't particularly rare in insects; in fact, the majority of insect species likely harbor one or more symbionts. However, scientists don't really know how these microbes become entrenched in new host populations. A case study in Science this week uncovers the novel ways that a bacterial endosymbiont can take over by manipulating reproduction in a new host.
Bacterial endosymbionts are passed vertically from mother to daughter, and can be benign, neutral, or extremely maladaptive. Rickettsia, the genus of bacteria examined in this study, can cause typhus and Rocky Mountain spotted fever in humans, but its effects on insect hosts—such as the sweet potato whitefly—are largely unknown.
In 2000, less than one percent of sweet potato whitefly populations in Arizona, New Mexico, and California were infected with a particular type of Rickettsia. In 2003, the infection rate was already 51 percent and, by 2006, it had risen to 97 percent. In less than 80 generations, the microbe had exploded to near-fixation in these whitefly populations. But how had Rickettsia established itself so quickly?
It turns out that whiteflies infected with Rickettsia produce twice as many offspring over their lifetimes as uninfected whiteflies. Furthermore, these offspring develop more quickly, and are much more likely to survive to adulthood than the progeny of uninfected whiteflies. Somehow, Rickettsia bacteria actually increase the reproductive success of their whitefly hosts.
At first glance, these effects may seem great for the flies. However, Rickettsia also increases its spread throughout the population via another interesting effect: infected mothers give birth to significantly more females than uninfected mothers do. Disrupting the natural sex ratio in a population will upset the delicate balance created by many generations of evolution and may cause disturbance to reproductive patterns and population dynamics.
While these effects are pretty amazing, the researchers don’t yet know how Rickettsia actually influences the reproductive success and sex ratio of whiteflies. We may want to find out; the sweet potato whitefly is an invasive pest in the southwest US and, by enhancing its reproduction, Rickettsia is likely to increase the speed and aggravate the influence of the whitefly invasion.
Science, 2010. DOI: 10.1126/science.1199410 (About DOIs).
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Microsoft releases 64 fixes on April's bumper Patch Tuesday

Microsoft's patching is going from one extreme to the other. While March had just three bulletins fixing four vulnerabilities, next week 17 bulletins are being issued, fixing 64 different vulnerabilties. This ties with December 2010 as the most bulletins, and takes the clear lead for number of flaws fixed.
Nine bulletins are critical, with all carrying the risk of remote code execution. The remaining eight are ranked important; six of these enable remote code execution, one allows privilege escalation, and the last can lead to information disclosure. Seven of the bulletins have mandatory restarts; the remainder "may" do so.

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Why Facebook open-sourced its datacenters

Facebook has opened up a whole new front in its war with Google over top technical talent and ad dollars. Instead of simply hiring away Google engineers, the social networking service is now aiming to do for its datacenters what Google is doing with Android—that is, it's taking an open-source approach that will let the company harness the energy and know-how of a larger ecosystem of programmers and engineers to make its ad business that much more profitable. Facebook has framed the announcement as part of its commitment to openness, but there are much larger forces at work here. Specifically, despite what most people think, Facebook and Google are hardware companies, and the former's open-source datacenter will potentially help it compete in the datacenter arena with its much larger and deeper-pocketed rival.

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Memorial service details for James Caple-Nisby, aka AlphaMeridian

On March 28, long-time Ars moderator and أ¼bergeek James "AlphaMeridian" Caple-Nisby passed away unexpectedly. A memorial-graveside service for James will take place on Friday. April 8, at 10:30am at Eastwood Memorial Gardens, 7500 Wares Ferry Road, Montgomery, AL 36117.
James was preceded in death by his mother Dr. Janice Eileen Caple, father John Edward Nisby, and grandfather. He is survived by his maternal grandmother, Yvonne L. Caple; parental siblings Jon Nisby, Dawn Nisby, Shawn Nisby, and J.P. Nisby; as well as aunts, cousins, and countless friends.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in honor of James to the American Heart Association.
Given James' love for computers and gaming, we would also suggest that those wanting to honor his memory think about giving to DonorsChoose.org, a charity devoted to improving the lives of kids in classrooms around the United States. James was passionate about technology and gaming, and many of the giving opportunities at DonorsChoose.org aim to improve the technology available to students in classrooms around the country. Whether it's new keyboards, a projector, or a printer, DonorsChoose.org offers a tangible way to make a difference in the lives of children at a specific school.
Peace to the memory of James Caple-Nisby.
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Microsoft warns homebrew Windows Phone 7 updater could cause problems

In the weekly update to the Windows Phone 7 update rollout, Microsoft warned against using Chris Walsh's update program, saying that it might somehow jeopardize the ability to install future updates, claiming specifically:

But my strong advice is: wait. If you attempt one of these workarounds, we can’t say for sure what might happen to your phone because we haven’t fully tested these homebrew techniques. You might not be getting the important device-specific software we would typically deliver in the official update. Or your phone might get misconfigured and not receive future updates.

Meanwhile, there is no progress for customers on AT&T in the US, Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile in Europe, Telefonica in Spain, or Optus and Telstra in Australia. These laggards are still claiming to be "testing" the NoDo update. AT&T is still claiming to have the testing completed in "early April," but with a week already gone, that's looking dubious.
As for the warnings about ChevronWP7.Updater, well, they would say that, wouldn't they. If there's even the slightest possibility that the updater will break something, Microsoft plainly doesn't want to be on the hook for resolving the problem.
However, problems still seem highly unlikely. Though some users have reported issues with the program, these stem from a failure to actually follow the instructions and not any fundamental flaw with the upgrade process it uses. And given that the updater uses unmodified firmware directly from Microsoft, and uses Microsoft's own support program to install that firmware, the opportunity for it to do something wrong is slim.
Nonetheless, Chris Walsh has pulled the program from his site. Though he has claimed this is due to hosting issues, some have speculated that Microsoft requested the software's removal. If this is a result of Microsoft pressure, then—just as with the pulling of the original ChevronWP7 device unlocker—it's a futile gesture, as mirrors are already available.
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Competition creator? FCC forces "data roaming" on reluctant carriers

With Sprint and Comcast cheering (and Verizon booing), the Federal Communications Commission has issued rules requiring commercial mobile broadband providers to provide data roaming to other carriers "on commercially reasonable terms and conditions."
The vote was three to two in favor of the decision.
"The evidence shows that mobile providers must be able to offer nationwide voice and data plans to have any chance of competing in today's market," commented FCC Chair Julius Genachowski at today's Open Commission meeting. He continued:

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WoW players could one day buy "Fair Trade" gold from Chinese farms

A new report from infoDev.org takes a fascinating, in-depth look at the so-called "virtual economy," which consists mostly of gold farming, power leveling, and other small tasks like reading CAPTCHA values. The angle that the report takes is that the market for virtual goods and services represents a growth opportunity for developing countries, and that NGOs should consider getting involved in connecting poorer, mostly rural residents with opportunities to help meet the demand for farmed gold, high-level player characters, crafted in-game items, and the like.
The report focuses on two areas of the virtual economy: "third-party gaming services," which are mainly gold farming and power leveling, and "microwork." The latter is best exemplified by Amazon's Mechanical Turk service, which lets small, repetitive tasks like image recognition be parceled out to low-wage laborers in other countries. The authors identify two other areas of the virtual economy that they choose not to focus on: virtual item creation and "cherry blossoming" (i.e. paying users to increase a brand's social network footprint by "Liking" certain pages or becoming a fan of the brand on Facebook).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Saturday, April 9, 2011

IT News HeadLines (Ars Technica) 08/04/2011

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