Win 8 app store revealed: more money for devs, beta in late February
In San Francisco today, Microsoft started talking up the Windows Store, the online marketplace for Metro-style Windows 8 applications. With Apple's Mac App Store and iTunes Store already operational and selling both computer and tablet applications, Microsoft was keen to highlight the differences between its offering and Apple's. Microsoft promised to make an application store that was more flexible, more transparent, and ultimately more lucrative for developers than Apple's.
The Windows Store will support both free and paid applications, with paid applications ranging from $1.49 to $999. As with Microsoft's Windows Phone Marketplace, developers can offer free trials, with integrated support for converting trials to full versions. Microsoft will provide its own advertising and in-app purchase infrastructure, but these will be strictly optional; if a developer wants to use a different ad network, or its own subscription and billing system, that's not a problem.
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World's first 128Gb 20nm NAND flash could pack 2TB into a 2.5" SSD
Intel and Micron's joint venture IMFT has announced that it has produced a 128Gb die. A package combining eight such dies together would be small enough to fit on a fingertip and boast an unprecedented 128GB capacity. Mass production will start in the first half of next year, and devices using the new dies are likely to start shipping in 2013.
IMFT also announced that it had started mass production of a 64Gb 20nm die. This part was first announced in April of this year. Consumer delivery should start in the middle of next year.
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Verizon filching Google Wallet from US-bound Galaxy Nexus
Android fans anxiously awaiting the arrival of Google's Galaxy Nexus flagship smartphone in the States may be disappointed to learn that Verizon has nixed its integrated Google Wallet mobile payments system. Verizon claims it's not "blocking" the functionality, though its association with a competing mobile payment system leaves some doubt about its motivations.
Google announced its Google Wallet payment system in May, noting that Android users that link a credit card to the Wallet app can pay a variety of retailers using an NFC-equipped handset with compatible "Pay Pass" terminals. So far, the only compatible handset has been the Nexus S 4G phone available from Sprint.
A Google spokesperson confirmed to Computerworld that Verizon requested the functionality be removed from handsets destined for its network. Answering to criticism that it was "blocking" the functionality, Verizon denied that it blocks any applications. Instead, Verizon placed the blame on unique Google Wallet hardware requirements.
"In order to work as architected by Google, Google Wallet needs to be integrated into a new, secure, and proprietary hardware element in our phones," a Verizon spokesperson told Computerworld.
The Galaxy Nexus released internationally includes the necessary NFC hardware, so it's still not clear why Verizon won't be supporting Wallet. It's worth noting, however, that Verizon is part of a mobile payments consortium cofounded by the three largest US mobile carriers called Isis. The group's aim is to replace "cash, credit and debit cards, reward cards, coupons, tickets, and transit passes" that users would normally carry with NFC applications. However, it won't even begin testing its own competing mobile payment system until sometime in 2012.
In the meantime, Verizon claims it is still "continuing our commercial discussions with Google on this issue."
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More evidence found for quantum physics in photosynthesis
Physicists have found the strongest evidence yet of quantum effects fueling photosynthesis.
Multiple experiments in recent years have suggested as much, but it's been hard to be sure. Quantum effects were clearly present in the light-harvesting antenna proteins of plant cells, but their precise role in processing incoming photons remained unclear.
In an experiment published Dec. 6 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a connection between coherence—far-flung molecules interacting as one, separated by space but not time—and energy flow is established.
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Researcher demos threat of "transparent" smartphone botnets
In a presentation at TakeDownCon in Las Vegas today, security researcher Georgia Weidman demonstrated how malware on smartphones could be used to create smartphone "botnets" that could be used in the same way as PC botnets, providing hackers with a way to insert code between the operating system's security layers and the cell network. In an interview with Ars Technica, Weidman said that the approaches used by Carrier IQ developers to create phone monitoring software could be adopted by hackers as well to create botnets that could silently steal users' data, or send data without users' knowledge. "From what I've seen in Carrier IQ, they just didn't think about what they were going to do," Weidman said. "But malware writers are going to take advantage of those techniques.
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EU investigating if publishers conspired with Apple on e-book pricing
The European Commission announced on Tuesday that it has formally begun an investigation into claims that publishers colluded with Apple to keep e-book prices high, in violation of EU anti-competition rules. The announcement comes after the Commission raided European offices of five international publishers in March in conjunction with the UK Office of Fair Trading.
The five publishers under investigation include Hachette Livre, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, and Macmillan. The Commission wants to determine if the publishers have "possibly with the help of Apple" engaged in anti-competitive practices, particularly through the "agency agreements" that Apple uses with publishers and others to sell media via its iTunes Store.
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Analysis: carbon capture looks really, really expensive
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has mostly received attention as a way to limit the impact of burning coal, which emits the most CO2 of all fossil fuels. Using this approach, CO2 would be captured from the exhaust stream of a power plant and pumped into a geological formation that would store it for centuries, preventing it from influencing the climate or ocean chemistry. As emissions continue to rise, CCS has attracted attention as a way to emit now and fix the problem later. The same technology that isolates CO2 from the exhaust stream of a power plant could also conceivably pull it right out of the atmosphere.
But how much does it cost? Some initial estimates put the cost of CCS from the atmosphere at under $200 per ton. But a new analysis in PNAS suggests these estimates are misguided—we already know how much it costs to obtain trace chemicals from a mixture, and it's a whole lot more expensive than that.
The PNAS authors focus on two things: a thermodynamic analysis of CCS, and an empirical evaluation based on our experience with industrial processes for isolating trace gasses.
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Feature: Ars Technica's 2011 holiday gift guide extravaganza
Every holiday session, millions of geeks suffer at the hands of poorly thought-out gifts: USB flash drives in Hello Kitty shapes. T-shirts that detect Wi-Fi signals. Your second, third, and fourth copies of Arkham City.
No more, friends. This year, buy the tech-savvy friends and family in your life something they actually want—or something they don't know they want until you, insightful person that you are, give it to them. Fortified with eggnog and holiday cheer, the Ars staff picked out a few of our favorite things to make your gift-giving (and gift-asking) easier.
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Serious Sam 3 is hardcore, difficult, and lovely
Serious Sam 3 is a classical first-person shooter, much like the first two games of the series, or even something like Painkiller. You are a man who can carry a large number of guns, and you are presented with a series of bad guys you need to kill with those guns. You'll see many weapons return from the previous games in the series, along with a few new guns that are still familiar from other video games. There are no wheels being reinvented here; the developers at Croteam clearly want you to understand each weapon the second you see it in the game.
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Google Earth, other mobile apps leave door open for scripting attacks
In the rush to create mobile apps that work across the leading smartphones and tablets, many developers have leaned heavily on web development tools and use embedded browsers as part of their packaged applications. But security researchers have shown that relying on browser technology in mobile apps—and even some desktop apps—can result in hidden vulnerabilities in those applications that can give an attacker access to local data and device features through cross-site scripting.
At today's TakeDownCon security conference in Las Vegas, researcher Kyle Osborn will present some examples of cross-site scripting attacks that he and colleagues have discovered on mobile devices. "XSS is generally considered to be a browser attack," Osborn said in an interview with Ars Technica. But many applications, he said, such as those built with cross-platform mobile-development tools like PhoneGap, use HTML rendering to handle display of data. If applications aren't properly coded, it's possible for JavaScript or other web-based attacks to be injected into them through externally-provided data. "Often, there are times when you can just make a JavaScript request and pull files from the local filesystem," he said.
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DARPA's factory of the future looks like open source development
DARPA is looking to solve the problem of runaway defense systems projects by reinventing how complex systems are developed and manufactured. They aim to do this by borrowing from the playbooks of integrated circuit developers and open-source software projects. And in the process, the agency's Adaptive Vehicle Make project may reinvent manufacturing itself, and seed the workforce with a new generation of engineers who can "compile" innovations into new inventions without having to be tied to a manufacturing plant.
"The direction we've been going in defense acquisition can't last," DARPA AVM deputy program manager and Army Lt. Col. Nathan Wiedenman said in a press briefing attended by Ars Technica. "The systems we build are more complex, but the way we do it hasn't changed much in 50 years." He pointed out that the Army alone had spent $22 billion over the last 10 years on programs that got cancelled. He said that DOD wasn't far off from a tongue-in-cheek statement made by former Lockheed Martin president Norman Augustine—one of "Augustine's Laws"—that by 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase one aircraft.
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