Week in gaming: PSN hacked, Credit card security, Star Wars
This week Sony announced the extent of the damage from the PlayStation Network breach, and it was much worse than anyone was expecting. The rest of the week was spent dealing with the fallout, although we did have a writer find out how his virtual racing skills translated onto the real-world track, and we had some extensive time with The Old Republic MMO.
This week was filled with huge, interesting stories, and we were all over it.
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Week in science: PhD overload edition
The PhD problem: are we giving out too many degrees?: The worldwide PhD output is increasing every year, and bestowing all these advanced degrees is beginning to cause problems.
Guns at home more likely to be used stupidly than in self-defense: Do guns at home make sense from a public health perspective? A review of the literature concludes that humanity's tendency to anger and mistakes makes it unlikely that they'll ever be a net positive.
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Google faces $50 million lawsuit over Android location tracking
Google and Apple have both been in the news lately over details of how both companies' mobile operating systems store and transmit geolocation data. Following a class-action suit brought by two Tampa men targeting Apple over alleged user tracking, Google is facing a similar class action lawsuit filed in Detroit on Wednesday.
Last week it was revealed that iOS devices cache a large amount of location data in a file that is backed up to users' computers. The file is hidden from normal access on iPhones and iPads, but is unencrypted, and unless users also opt to encrypt iOS backups in iTunes, the file is also unencrypted. While someone would need physical access to either device to get the information, concerns were raised that the information could be used to track individuals, thereby compromising their privacy.
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Amazon's lengthy cloud outage shows the danger of complexity
Reddit, Foursquare, and Quora were among the many sites that went down recently due to a prolonged outage of Amazon's cloud services. On Thursday April 21, Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) went offline, leaving the many Web and database servers depending on that storage broken. Not until Easter Sunday (April 24) was service restored to all users. Amazon has now published a lengthy description describing what went wrong, and why the failure was both so catastrophic and so lengthy.
Amazon has cloud computing data centers in five locations around the world; Virginia, Northern California, Ireland, Singapore, and Tokyo. Within each region, services are divided into what the company calls Availability Zones: physically and logically separate groups of computers. This design allows customers to pick a level of redundancy that they feel is most appropriate; hosting in multiple regions provides the most robustness, but at the highest cost. Hosting in multiple Availability Zones within the same region is cheaper, and guards against problems affecting any one zone.
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Appeals Court lifts stem cell research-funding injunction
Today, a three-judge panel of a US Appeals Court lifted an injunction against the NIH's revised policy on the funding of stem cell research. The new policy, which would open up research funding to many more human embryonic stem cell lines (hESCs), attracted a lawsuit from researchers who focus on adult stem cells, who claimed that their chances of obtaining grants had been diminished. That suit produced an injunction that would block the National Institutes of Health from distributing funding for hESC work. The Appeals Court had previously stayed this injunction; now it has lifted it entirely, although the case is continuing towards trial at the District Court level.
For decades, legislation called the Dickey-Wicker Amendment has prevented the US government from funding research in which a human embryo is destroyed. Everyone agrees that this prohibits funding of work in which hESCs are derived through the destruction of fertilized eggs. Differences arise, however, regarding research that involves hESCs that have been previously created. President Bush's administration determined that this is acceptable, provided that the ESC creation occurred prior to a specific date. President Obama's administration lifted this temporal restriction; work on previously created hESC lines is now eligible for funding, regardless of creation date.
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Samsung continues barrage against Apple with new lawsuit in the US
Samsung has launched another counterattack against Apple's patent, trademark, and trade dress lawsuit in the form of a US patent suit filed in California this week. The lawsuit comes after three patent suits were filed in Europe and Asia last Friday, in counter to Apple's lawsuit filed earlier this month.
Apple targeted Samsung with a major lawsuit on April 18. The company claimed that Samsung's Galaxy-series of Android-based smartphones and tablets infringe on Apple's iOS-related software, hardware, and design patents, as well as iOS-related trademarks and trade dress. In addition to claiming Samsung copied the iPhone's physical design, Apple noted that the TouchWiz interface violated design patents and trademarks, and even copied the iPhone trade dress down to its box design.
"Rather than innovate and develop its own technology and a unique Samsung style for its smart phone products and computer tablets, Samsung chose to copy Apple's technology, user interface and innovative style in these infringing products," Apple wrote in its complaint.
Later that week, Apple COO Tim Cook explained that while Apple enjoys a good relationship with Samsung as a component supplier, its mobile communication division had "crossed the line" with the Galaxy S, Galaxy Tab, and its TouchWiz Android mod. "After trying for some time to work on the issue, we decided we needed to rely on the courts," Cook told analysts during the company's most recent quarterly earnings call.
Days later, Samsung filed three separate patent infringement lawsuits in South Korea, Japan, and Germany. Those lawsuits allege that Apple's iPhone uses Samsung intellectual property to connect to and improve communications with cell towers. Samsung implied that Apple was trying to bully a successful competitor, with company chairman Lee Kun-hee telling the press that "[w]hen a nail sticks out, [people] try to pound it down."
Samsung's US lawsuit targets the iPhone, which allegedly violates 10 Samsung patents that "relate to fundamental innovations that increase mobile device reliability, efficiency, and quality, and improve user interface in mobile handsets and other products." Though Apple has an extensive patent portfolio of its own, Bloomberg News noted that Samsung was awarded the second largest number of US patents in 2010 (IBM was at the top of the list).
Apple is no stranger to smartphone-related patent fights; the company is currently involved in lawsuits with HTC, Nokia, and Motorola, following through on its January 2010 warning to handset makers that it was prepared to file lawsuits over iPhone-related IP.
UPDATE: Former IP attorney Nilay Patel got his hands on Samsung's complaint and looked at the patents it is asserting against Apple. Seven are UMTS/W-CMDA "3G" related, while three are UI-related. Patel's analysis suggests that the seven 3G patents could be trumped by FRAND requirements if "essential" to 3G technology, or otherwise difficult to prove that the iPhone infringes. The UI-related patents seem fairly weak and "anti-climatic" compared to Apple's lawsuit, Patel wrote.
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Facebook takedown followup: what happened, and what Facebook needs to fix
Facebook has reinstated a number of sites' Facebook pages that were taken down due to bogus copyright claims this week. The company issued an apology for the inconvenience and says that DMCA notice abuse is an issue that Facebook takes seriously, but serious questions still remain about the effectiveness of Facebook's process for dealing with complaints.
"We have invested significant resources into creating a dedicated team that uses specialized tools, systems and technology to review and properly handle intellectual property notices. This system evaluates a number of factors when deciding how to respond and, in many cases, we require the reporter to provide additional information before we can take action. As a result of these efforts, the vast majority of intellectual property notices that we receive are handled without incident," Facebook spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter told Ars on Thursday evening.
"Of course, no system is perfect and we are always striving to improve our practices. As such, we will be considering the results of our investigation into this matter as we continue to refine our systems and procedures."
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FBI investigating PSN hack; Sony looking into compensating users
Yesterday Sony updated users on how the recent PlayStation Network attack will affect their personal data, and today the company has released a second Q&A detailing how the network outage will affect game content. While no specific details have been announced, Sony says it's looking into ways to compensate users of subscription-based games and services like streaming service Qriocity.
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Is Netflix reducing illicit file sharing? Depends on which stats you believe
Netflix, the DVD-by-mail and streaming movie giant, now has as many subscribers as Comcast, and in the evenings accounts for more than 40 percent of US bandwidth usage by some measurements.
Those astounding numbers are leading some to wonder whether Netflix is reducing the amount of peer-to-peer file sharing, once the easiest way to find movies to watch.
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Want to increase your IQ? Get motivated
For years, debate has raged about the validity of IQ tests. Critics claim that these tests are subject to all sorts of biases, but research shows that IQ results are good predictors of several aspects of life, including educational achievement, success in the workplace, and even longevity. These correlations suggest that IQ tests are measuring some important quality, but it may not be restricted to intelligence. A new study in PNAS suggests that motivation is very important in IQ scores, and may actually be the driving factor in some of these associations.
IQ tests are purported to maximize the subjects’ motivation via the sequence of the questions and how the test is administered, but this probably doesn’t mean much in real life. First, the researchers conducted a meta-analysis of previous studies to determine how important incentives were to IQ test results. The studies all compared subjects’ IQ test results under two conditions: with and without material incentives for performance.
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Brink supports PC gaming with free, feature-rich standalone server
I've never believed the "PC gaming is dying" complaints, but it has been sad to see so many games launch without modding tools or a proper standalone server. Brink is fixing at least one of these issues with a proper, free, standalone server launching prior to the game's release. You don't have to rent a server, you don't have to play on their servers, and you can adjust anything you'd like. My enthusiasm for this game just went up several notches.
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Opponents: kill AT&T bid for T-Mobile, Qualcomm licenses at same time
The Federal Communications Commission has launched the pleading cycle for the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile. The union would make AT&T the nation's largest wireless carrier, with over 41 percent of wireless subscriber market share. Whether you love or hate the idea—get your feedback to the FCC soon. Petitions to deny are due through May 31 (docket #11-65). Oppositions to those petitions are expected by June 10. The last chance for push back is June 20.
But five media reform groups say that the FCC should broaden the scope of its inquiry. The Commission should also add AT&T's proposed acquisition of Qualcomm licenses to the T-Mobile evaluation, then reject both bids—the sooner, the better.
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TOBA is a-swingin', looking for gravity waves
A few months ago, we reported on a theoretical paper that discussed the potential advantages of a gravity wave detector based on a torsion bar, which the creators called TOBA. In the intervening time, the team has not been idle, as they have a small-scale test bar up and running. Deep in the night of August 15, 2009, they performed a test run to look for gravity waves—not gravity induced pressure fluctuations in Earth's atmospheric pressure, but stretching space-time.
The good thing about the TOBA experiment is that it fills an important spectral gap in the current generation of gravity wave detectors. Cosmological and astronomical observations can be used to look for extremely low frequency (10-6Hz) gravitational waves, while the laser interferometer detector (LIGO), and other Earth-bound instruments are used to look for gravity waves with frequencies in the 100Hz plus range. TOBA is designed to operate in the 0.1-1Hz range.
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Feature: It's unfinished, but we definitely want more: Ars reviews RIM's PlayBook
RIM, the venerable business smartphone vendor, has entered the tablet market with the official launch of its BlackBerry PlayBook. The seven-inch slate ships with a new operating system that pairs the QNX kernel with a custom user interface. The PlayBook is designed as a companion device for a tethered BlackBerry handset, which it relies upon for messaging and other productivity applications.
The PlayBook hardware is impressive and the user interface is compelling, but the product has some major limitations that will significantly impair its mainstream appeal. Rough edges aside, the PlayBook is still extremely significant because it offers a first look at the future of RIM's platform—the company has already said that its QNX-based tablet operating system will serve as the basis for future versions of the BlackBerry smartphone operating system.
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Dutch traffic cops use TomTom GPS data to nail speeders
Sorry about that, says Amsterdam-based GPS device manufacturer TomTom, following revelations that Dutch police have been using data from its products to nail motorists for speeding. The news was first disclosed by the Netherlands newspaper Algemeen Dagblad on Tuesday.
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Microsoft beats estimates, but not Apple in third quarter earnings
Microsoft today posted its earnings results for the third quarter of financial year 2011. It was a strong quarter, with revenue of $16.43 billion, up 13 percent year-on-year; operating income of $5.71 billion, up 10 percent year on year; and net income of $5.2 billion, up 31 percent over the same period last year. Earnings per share were 61¢, an increase of 36 percent.
The big success story of the quarter was Entertainment and Devices Division, the group that includes Xbox 360, Xbox Live, and Windows Phone. Continued voracious demand for the Kinect controller saw that division boost its revenue by 60 percent year on year. Though the division was keen to boast of selling 2.4 million Kinects during the period, it was silent on the matter of Windows Phone sales.
Microsoft Business Division was another strong performer, seeing revenue growth of 21 percent year-over-year driven by Office 2010, the fastest-selling version of Office of all time, and its SharePoint, Exchange, Lync, and Dynamics CRM products.
Server and Tools had a successful quarter too, with revenue up 11 percent, on the back of significant business adoption of Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2, and Systems Center. Online Services increased revenue by 14 percent, and increased losses by 2 percent.
In spite of Windows 7's continued strong sales, the Windows and Windows Live division's revenue dropped by 4 percent, with the company citing prevailing PC trends as the reason for this decrease.
The company's guidance for next quarter is that Windows and Windows Live and Online Services will increase revenue in-line with growth in the PC and advertising markets, respectively, with Business Division, Server and Tools, and Entertainment and Devices expected to increase revenue by mid-to-high single-digit, low double-digit, and 25 percent, respectively.
Overall, it was a strong quarter for the company, beating analyst estimates for both revenue (estimated at $16.2 billion), and earnings per share (estimated at 56¢). Strong results, but not as strong as Apple, which posted a net income of $5.99 billion for the quarter.
These results mean that Apple has at last bested Microsoft not merely in terms of market capitalization, but also in terms of profitability—a result unimaginable a decade ago. This quarter's figures are testament both to Apple's substantial success in conquering new markets—media players, smartphones, and tablets—and, in parallel, Microsoft's consistent inability to match its rival in those same markets.
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NVIDIA announces SLI support for the AMD platform
For the past few years, if you've wanted to gang together two NVIDIA cards in an SLI configuration, you've been restricted to using an Intel CPU. But that's soon going to change. NVIDIA has announced that it is licensing its SLI technology to motherboard makers for use with AMD CPUs, so that AMD's upcoming, performance-oriented Bulldozer chip can be used with a pair of NVIDIA GPUs.
"We are pleased to announce that SLI has been licensed to the world’s leading motherboard companies for integration onto their upcoming motherboards featuring AMD’s 990FX, 990X and 970 chipsets. Asus, Gigabyte, ASRock, and MSI are among the first motherboard manufacturers to offer this new capability, with more coming on board shortly," NVIDIA said in a blog post.
While NVIDIA may not be too keen on enabling a competitor in the GPU market, the move makes a ton of sense. If NVIDIA believes that Bulldozer really will be a viable Intel competitor for gamers, then why wouldn't they want to expand the market for its GPUs to include Bulldozer customers?
It's also the case that Intel is not sitting still on the GPU front. Despite Larrabee's cancellation, Sandy Bridge's integrated processor graphics (IPG) make some low-end discrete GPUs redundant, and the fully modern Ivy Bridge IPG (Sandy Bridge's successor) will probably take a bite out of the mid-range market for discrete GPUs. Any way you slice it, both NVIDIA and AMD are likely to lose progressively more discrete GPU sales to Intel's IPGs in the coming year, so NVIDIA needs to do all it can to ensure that as many customers as possible can have access to as much of its discrete GPU hardware as possible. And that means enabling SLI on AMD platforms.
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Three Foxconn workers arrested for leaking iPad 2 design
Details of the iPad 2's design leaked out as early as December 2010, nearly three months before Apple officially unveiled the updated device in early March. Three employees of Taiwan-based Foxconn, Apple's manufacturing partner, have been arrested and formally charged for leaking details of the design to accessory companies.
One of the earliest leaks of case designs purported to fit the second-generation iPad popped up in early December. More rumors based on alleged iPad 2 case designs came later in the month, noting details of the device's size and design that turned out to be fairly accurate. Foxconn suspected a leak from the inside, and three workers at its Shenzhen, China plant where iPads are assembled were arrested on December 26, 2010—just days after the newest batch of rumors surfaced.
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Facebook shoots first, ignores questions later; account lock-out attack works (Update X)
Got enemies on Facebook? Facebook is so eager to protect copyright that the mere accusation of copyright infringement is enough to get an account locked. Ars found this out the hard way Thursday morning when our own Facebook page became inaccessible, with no warning, no explanation, and no clear appeal process.
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