DoJ: Take AT&T/T-Mobile trial off the fast track
AT&T's $39 billion bid to acquire T-Mobile hit a new snag today. The Department of Justice has told a Federal judge that the government plans to ask the court for a motion to stay or even withdraw in the trial considering the government's attempt to block the merger. The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription) that a DoJ attorney is arguing that a fast track for the case is no longer necessary; after all, AT&T and T-Mobile withdrew their merger application from the Federal Communications Commission several weeks ago.
Joseph Wayland of the Justice Department calls a stay or withdrawal of the proceeding appropriate until the companies bring their merger request back to the FCC.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Chrome sandboxing makes it the most secure browser, vendor study claims
A new study by security vendor Accuvant Labs concludes that Google Chrome is more secure than rivals Firefox and Internet Explorer, largely because of Chrome's sandboxing and plug-in security.
The research was funded by Google, which might make any reasonable person suspicious of its conclusions. Accuvant insists that Google gave it "a clear directive to provide readers with an objective understanding of relative browser security" and that the conclusions in the paper "are those of Accuvant Labs, based on our independent data collection." Accuvant also made the supporting data available as a separate download so that it can be scrutinized by other researchers.
Accuvant focused only on Chrome, IE and Firefox, leaving out Safari and others for the sake of time. It also tested the browsers only on Windows 7, 32-bit edition. Despite concluding research in July, the paper was just released today. As a result, the report excludes newer versions of Chrome and Firefox, which have more rapid release cycles than Internet Explorer.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Forza's Dan Greenawalt talks about popular features, computerized cars
It's been a couple of months since Forza Motorsport 4 arrived in stores and set a new benchmark for console racing. This week, Turn 10 released the "December IGN Pack," the third in a series of six monthly DLC car packs. December's DLC is a good mix of classics—I think Managing Editor Eric Bangeman will be happy to see his old Alfa (Editor's note: I'm happy to see a representation of an Alfa in good working order, something I didn't always experience as an owner)—and modern metal. They've also released a title update that fixes a number of bugs and exploits, which you can read about here. We also had a chance to talk to Dan Greenawalt, the game's lead developer, to ask him some follow-up questions after our review.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
SpellTower on iOS shows power of creating games in genres you hate
It's always tempting to ask those who create games where their ideas come from, but video games are like all creative endeavors: the idea is rarely as important as someone's ability to execute on that idea. A friend told developer Zach Gage about a game that was like "Tetris and Boggle," and he immediately had an idea of how that game would look and play. When he saw the described game being played in front of him, he realized his ideas were very different, and he went to work creating his own game, hoping to release the smaller-scale project quickly. After all, he was in the middle of four other titles.
There was, on the other hand, one small problem. Gage hated word games.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Microsoft brings the Genius Bar to the Web with Answer Desk
Microsoft has quietly launched a new service to help Windows and Office users get the most out of their PCs. Answer Desk is an online version of the Answer Desks found in Microsoft's retail stores, which are in turn modeled on Apple's successful Genius Bars, providing users with personalized consulting on their computer problems.
Each Answer Desk consultation starts with a free chat—online or over the phone—with an Answer Desk support rep. If the free consultation isn't sufficient to answer your questions or fix your faults, you pony up some money—$49 for an hour of one-on-one Windows or Office training, $99 for an hour of Windows or Office troubleshooting, $99 for two hours of virus removal and malware protection, or $99 for two hours of PC performance tuning—and the support tech remotely controls your PC to perform their task.
Microsoft promises a jargon-free experience, which suggests that the service is aimed more at the beginner end of the customer spectrum. The services are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, though training sessions need to be scheduled in advance.
The endeavor is a little surprising when one considers that Windows and Office already, in theory, come with support. Retail copies of the software qualify for phone support from Microsoft directly. And for OEM copies of Windows, which make up the majority of sales to end-users, part of the deal that OEMs agree to in order to pay lower prices for the software than retailers is that they will take on the support burden themselves.
For Microsoft to step in and offer high quality support to end-users directly suggests that existing OEM support avenues aren't doing the job properly: that Windows and Office users are suffering poor support experiences at the hands of the OEMs, and that these poor experiences are damaging perceptions of Microsoft's software. It's understandable that Microsoft would want to improve its image, but harder to see why it should let the OEMs get away with providing a poor experience in the first place.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Logic Pro comes to Mac App Store, Logic Express dropped in the shuffle
Apple is discontinuing sales of its Logic Studio and Logic Express digital audio workstation packages "effective immediately," according to a notice sent to authorized resellers on Thursday. Updated versions of the Logic Pro 9 app and the live-performance app MainStage 2, previously both part of the Logic Studio suite, are now available separately via the Mac App Store for significantly lower prices. Simplifying its software offerings in the transition, Apple is putting the kibosh on the lower-cost Logic Express and sending Soundtrack Pro into the great hard drive in the sky.
A rumor from September suggested that Apple was making progress on a new version of Logic Pro dubbed "Logic Pro X." As MacRumors noted, however, the notice released Thursday referenced "new" versions of Logic Pro 9 and MainStage 2. Those versions appeared in the Mac App Store on Thursday afternoon, with Logic Pro 9.1.6 available for $199.99 and MainStage 2.2 now selling separately for $29.99.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Another Adobe Flash zero-day for sale by security software vendor
InteVyDis, a Russian firm specializing in packaging software security exploits, has released a software module that can give a remote computer access to an up-to-date Windows 7 machine running the most recent version of Adobe Flash Player 11.
The exploit module, called vd_adobe_fp, is packaged in VulnDisco Step Ahead Edition, an add-on toolkit for Canvas—an automated exploitation system developed for IT security professionals by Miami Beach-based Immunity. In a video demo of the exploit, Immunity's Alex McGeorge said that the attack had been tested against fully patched Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows XP Pro systems running Internet Explorer 7 and 8, Google Chrome, and Firefox. McGeorge said that a Mac OS X version of the exploit is expected in the next release.
When a system connects to a website on a remote system equipped with the exploit, it can give that system access to a "low-integrity" shell with limited access to the target, allowing the uploading of other software modules to the target and giving the remote system control over TCP socket connections. Additional exploits could then be used to get higher-level permissions to the system.
Update: An Adobe spokesperson responded to an inquiry from Ars on the exploit, saying that the company is aware of the announcement and has "reached out" to InteVyDis. "We would welcome any details so we can verify and address the vulnerability," the spokesperson said, but without further information Adobe can do nothing but monitor for exploits.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
ICE admits year-long seizure of music blog was a mistake
We've covered Operation In Our Sites, an ambitious project by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to seize the domains of dozens of websites allegedly used for copyright infringement, in great detail here at Ars. In a piece earlier this year, we noted the curious case of Dajaz1.com, a hip-hop music blog that didn't seem to fit the conventional definition of a "rogue site." When the domain was seized last year, the site's owner expressed confusion, showing the New York Times copies of e-mails documenting that some of the allegedly infringing songs on his site had been sent to him by artists and labels.
Now, as first reported by Techdirt, the federal government has tacitly admitted it screwed up in seizing Dajaz1.com. After holding the domain for a year, the government returned the domain to its owner. ICE spokesman Ross Feinstein told Ars that "the government concluded that the appropriate and just result was to decline to pursue judicial forfeiture."
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
First big upgrade of cloud-hosted TFS: better performance, easier project management
Team Foundation Service Preview, Microsoft's cloud-hosted beta version of its Team Foundation Server application lifecycle management, received its first major update today, offering improved performance, better notifications, a clearer user interface, and richer oversight of projects.
Team Foundation Service is built on Team Foundation Server (TFS) 11; the as-yet unreleased successor to TFS 2010. TFS 11 will be available as both traditional on-premises software and an online version hosted on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform. The online version has been available as an invitation-only preview since Microsoft's BUILD conference earlier in the year, and it's this online version that is being updated.
TFS is designed to handle most parts of the software development lifecycle; it includes a source repository/version control system, it handles bug reports and feature requests, it builds software and runs tests. With TFS 11, Microsoft is building in greater built-in support for agile methodologies (in particular scrum iterative development), integrated support for code reviews, and more.
There are third-party hosted versions of TFS 2010, and Microsoft uses TFS 2010 behind the scenes in its Codeplex open source project hosting service, but TFS 11 is the first version with first-party cloud hosting, and the first to see new fixes and updates rolled out to the cloud first. As the product matures, Microsoft will remove its invitation-only constraint, and later on remove the "preview" branding, at which point it will start charging customers that use the service. The company will also produce migration tools, to enable users to move both to and from the cloud-hosted version.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Rats show empathy, will come to the aid of other rats
Empathy is the ability to feel others' pain or distress; we feel bad when someone else feels bad. It’s what motivates us to give a few dollars to the homeless man on the corner, donate our time to a worthy cause, or hug a friend who has just been dumped. Scientists used to believe that empathy was unique to humans and was one of the traits that actually distinguished us from other species. Recently, however, there is increasing evidence for empathy in several species, most notably other primates.
Now, new research in Science suggests that rats are capable of empathy. The study tested how rats responded when their fellow rats were trapped, and found that they would not only spend time and energy deliberately helping their trapped companions, but they would even share food after liberating them.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Censorship foes roll out antipiracy plan, say stop "butchering the Internet"
It's a battle of the Congressional antipiracy acronyms. In one corner are SOPA and PROTECT IP, the House and Senate bills that would bring site blocking, search engine de-listing, and more to the US in an effort to stop "rogue" sites. In the other corner, today's challenger: the Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade Act, called the "OPEN" Act (PDF).
OPEN has been spearheaded by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who released draft text of the plan today on a special website that invites citizen comment and reaction before the text is finalized.
"Butchering the Internet is not a way forward for America,” said Issa in a statement.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Bad code plagues business applications, especially Java ones
A new study examining 365 million lines of code in 745 applications identifies bad coding practices that affect security, performance and uptime, with Java Enterprise Edition applications having the greatest number of problems. Cast Software, which makes tools that automate the analysis of business applications, examined programs written in Java-EE, .NET, ABAP, C, C++, Cobol, Oracle Forms, and Visual Basic, used across a wide range of industries from energy and financial services to IT consulting, insurance, government, retail, telecom, and more.
Java-EE applications were the most prevalent in the Cast Report on Application Software Health, taking up 46 percent of all applications, and also had the most problems on average, while Cobol and SAP's ABAP had the fewest. Cast analyzed factors such as the stability of an application and likelihood of introducing defects when modifying it; efficiency of software performance; ability to prevent security breaches; transferability, the ease with which a new team can understand an application and become productive working on it; and the ability to quickly and easily modify an application.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
NBA players wrong about "hot hands" from three-point land
Anybody who follows basketball has seen it before: a player hits a momentum-changing three point shot. His team gets the ball back and tears down the court. Will the same player feel he (or she) has a hot hand and try another long-distance shot? Chances are he will. And chances are he'll miss. And chances are he'll do the same exact thing the next game.
That's the conclusion of a statistical analysis of a few hundred professional basketball players (291 from the NBA, 41 from the WNBA). The goal was not only to find out whether the frequently discussed "hot hand"—a shooter who's connecting on most of the shots he takes—exists, but also to find out whether players could identify when they're more likely to be hot, and adjust their behavior accordingly. The answer to both appears to be no, but there may be some other learning going on on the court.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Blogger not eligible for media shield law, hit with $2.5M judgment
An Oregon judge has ruled that a Montana blogger is not eligible for the legal protections afforded to journalists, letting stand a $2.5 million defamation verdict.
The blogger, a Montana woman named Crystal Cox, had become a thorn in the side of an attorney named Kevin Padrick. Padrick is the principal of a firm named Obsidian Finance Group. Cox styles herself an "investigative blogger," and has created numerous websites with names like "obsidianfinancesucks.com," "bankruptcytrusteefraud.com," and "oregonshyster.com," in which she accused Padrick and Obsidian of misconduct in their handling of a bankruptcy case.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
250MBps XQD cards to replace CompactFlash in high-end cameras
The CompactFlash Association announced on Wednesday that it has adopted a new specification and format to replace the venerable CompactFlash memory card. Tongue-twistingly dubbed "XQD," the PCI Express-based memory cards are smaller and faster than current CF cards, but should offer performance advantages over the current competing compact memory card format, Secure Digital (SD) and its recent SDHC and SDXC variants.
The XQD card measures 38.5 x 29.8 x 3.8mm, about three-quarters the size of a CF card and about the same thickness; physically it looks a bit like a tiny SSD drive. Unlike CF cards, which are based on the practically ancient PCMCIA standard, XQD cards are based on PCI Express, with a base maximum transfer rate of 2.5Gbps. That should be good for up to 250MB/s transfer rates, though the CFA is targeting real world write speeds of 125MB/s to start. Such write speeds would blow away all but the most expensive CF or SD cards currently available, and should be able to ramp up higher as technology matures and a future 5Gbps PCIe is implemented.
"The XQD format will enable further evolution of hardware and imaging applications, and widen the memory card options available to CompactFlash users such as professional photographers," CFA chairman Shigeto Kanda said in a statement.
The CompactFlash format likely has quite a bit of life left in it, as the most recent standard (UltraDMA mode 7) is designed for a maximum 167MB/s data transfer rate. However, as professional DSLRs offer increasingly higher megapixel counts and 1080p or higher video capture, the XQD format should allow memory cards to keep pace with the data requirements of future professional photography and videography equipment.
The XQD card will be publicly unveiled next February at the CP+ trade show in Japan. There's no word yet when we will see cameras that incorporate support for the new format.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Bees reach consensus by headbutting dissenters
The human brain is wonderfully complex. Within it, there are billions of neurons, each collecting information and determining whether to respond to it. In some cases, groups of neurons compete for an outcome; when a group reaches a certain level of activity, its output ends up being chosen. To help make their case, these neurons can send positive signals to each other, and they can inhibit others with different agendas. Ideally, this system improves the chances of reaching an optimal decision; it’s an elegant way to make sense of lots of competing input.
As if we didn't think bees were cool enough already, Science reports this week that this approach to decision making is echoed in the behavior of honeybee swarms. Just as our neurons emit inhibitory signals, bees can hinder other hivemates that are advocating a different course of action. As with neurons, the swarm’s collective decision is made when a particular threshold is reached. But, unlike neurons, the bees have a very physical means of inhibiting those with a competing message: they headbutt them.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
How to market your indie games: Ben Kuchera's lecture at Run Jump Dev
There is a group of independent game developers called Run Jump Dev that meets in Lexington Kentucky— of all places—to discuss their projects and share information and stories and stories about the games they're creating. Since I live in Cincinnati and love to support both local groups who game and independent developers as a whole, I jumped at the chance to speak to the group when they invited me to present a topic to the group. My subject was a simple one: how to get your indie game to the press in a way that gets you publicity.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
7554 puts gamers in the shoes of Vietnamese soldier during historic battle
Huy Nguyen Tuan is the Director of the Vietnamese game studio Emobi Games, whose current project is the upcoming game 7554. The name refers to May 7, 1954, the day the French Army in Dien Bien Phu surrendered to the Vietnam People's Army, thus ending its occupation of all Indochinese colonies. The game puts you in the shoes of a soldier in the Vietnamese Army, and places you inside the battles. For an American gamer, the setting and scope of the game are very different than what we're used to from our war games.
Tuan explained the choice of battles for the game to Ars. "Dien Bien Phu is great victory that we proud of. That day, 7th of May, 1954 is a symbol of our strength." It's a source of national pride, as Vietnam is a small country that rose up to fight for its independence. "I think it is similar to what Americans feel when they celebrate July 4th. Independence is very important and something worth fighting for. It is also something worth honoring." We spoke with Tuan about the challenges of creating a PC game in Vietnam, and why this game will be a departure for American audiences.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Make a left turn here: scientists direct nerve cells with lasers
Every now and then, a result comes along that sounds like something out of science fiction. Nature Photonics played host to one of these this past weekend. In it, researchers built turn signals for neurons out of nothing more than a tiny bead and some light. It's not especially useful right now, but it's still an impressive bit of engineering.
In adult animals, neurons extend small, thread-like projections called axons for large distances away from the main body of the cell. These axons help form connections between places like the brain and the end of the spinal cord, or the spinal cord and the sensory neurons on the tips of your fingers. In the body, directing these axons to the right location is a very carefully controlled process that involves lots of signaling and adhesion molecules. Put a neuron in a culture dish, where none of these signals are present, and it will tend to grow an axon in a straight line. Not satisfied with this, the authors decided to give it a little nudge and see what would happen.
The axon's growth comes at a specialized structure at the tip called a growth cone. To redirect the growth cone, the team placed a special bead nearby, and held it in place by an optical trop created with a laser. The bead was made of materials that have two different indexes of refraction, which allowed a second laser to set it spinning (the second laser had circular-polarized light, which interacts with the two different refraction indexes on the bead to impart motion). Once the bead was spinning, it set fluid flowing near the growth cone, creating a small force that could deflect it.
Between 30 and 40 percent of the time, this was enough to cause the axon to shift direction by as much as 30 degrees from the straight line (the rest of the time, they kept going straight). It was also possible to create gates with two spinning beads that channeled the axon between them.
Being physicists, the authors created a model with shear forces and viscosity to explain the behavior they observed, and they speculate about possible future utility for doing things like spinal repair. What strikes me as a bit more likely is the prospect of using a system like this to control how multiple neurons in a culture dish form connections. It may be possible to build a neural network out of actual neurons.
Nature Photonics, 2011. DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2011.287 (About DOIs).
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
You can't opt out of the "no class-action" Xbox 360 TOS update after all
We reported that Microsoft was taking away your right to sue the company in the latest Xbox 360 update by forcing gamers into neutral arbitration, while also blocking consumers from joining class-action lawsuits... unless they opted out of the clause by mailing a letter to Microsoft. It seems this isn't actually the case, as Microsoft has told Kotaku that you can't opt out: you need to give up these rights if you'd like to continue using your Xbox 360.
This is Microsoft's full statement on the matter:
Users must agree to the new clause to the Terms of Use in order to continue using Xbox LIVE. Changes to the Terms of Use are designed to ensure that our customers have an easy way to file a dispute without requiring formal legal action. They may now bring a dispute to our attention by filling out a simple Notice of Dispute form found at www.xbox.com/notice and mailing in documentation in support of their claim. We will then work to resolve the dispute to their satisfaction within 60 days. Any customer unsatisfied with the outcome of this informal process may easily initiate arbitration with the American Arbitration Association.
Customers may also choose to bring their claims in their local small claims court if they meet the normal jurisdictional requirements. For detailed information, please visit: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Legal/LiveTOU.
"The terminology in the ToS used to 'opt out' applies only to future changes made after this agreement," Kotaku reported. So you have to accept this agreement, and give up your right to class-action status and most legal action against Microsoft, but you can opt out of any future changes.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Adobe scrambles to patch Acrobat zero-day hack
Adobe has reported a new "critical vulnerability" for current and older versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat for Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix operating systems. The attack has already been exploited by hackers in targeted attacks against the Adobe 9 reader on Windows, the company stated in its security advisory The hack appears to have already been used in an attack on US defense contractors and research facilities.
Discovered by Lockheed Martin's Computer Incident Response Team and MITRE, the vulnerability could allow an attacker to send a malicious Adobe document file that crashes Reader, and "potentiallty allow an attacker to take control of the affected system," according to the Adobe Product Security Incident Response Team's alert. In a blog post, Adobe's director of product security Brad Arkin said that Adobe is planning to release a fix for the Windows versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.4.6 "no later than the week of December 12." There is currently no workaround for Reader 9.x.
Arkin said that the risk to Mac OS X and Unix users of Reader is "significantly lower," and that the attack can be blocked on Windows with Reader X by opening documents in Adobe Reader X in "protected mode." Patches for those versions of Reader will be held until the next quarterly update of Reader, scheduled for January 10.
Arkin encouraged anyone still using Reader 9. "We put a tremendous amount of work into securing Adobe Reader and Acrobat X, and to date there has not been a single piece of malware identified that is effective against a version X install," he claimed. However, that would appear not to apply to Reader and Acrobat X users who open documents without using protected mode.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Box.net for business file sharing: Putting it all in the cloud
Eventbrite is a business firmly rooted in the cloud. With a website hosted on Amazon EC2, Google Apps for e-mail, calendaring and document creation, a sales team that uses Salesforce.com, and DocuSign for electronic signatures, the company is a big fan of hosted services. So when the 200-employee firm wanted a better way to share files and enforce access controls, it started scouting out cloud services, ultimately choosing Box.net as its standard method of sharing documents.
For consumers, Dropbox is probably the best known such service, providing syncing of documents across most types of computers and mobile devices. But Dropbox has a serious competitor in Box.net, especially in the potentially lucrative market for corporate file sharing. Charging $15 per user per month for business accounts, and negotiated rates for enterprise accounts, Box claims to have 100,000 organizations signed up, including 82 percent of the Fortune 500.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
PATRIOT Act and privacy laws take a bite out of US cloud business
While there are plenty of technical and functional concerns that have slowed adoption of public cloud computing and software-as-a-service, American companies trying to sell their cloud services outside the US or to large multinational organizations have another handicap to overcome: the USA PATRIOT Act. European, Asian, and Canadian data privacy rules and concern about US surveillance of data crossing international boundaries have even been used to market European data centers' services. Today, ComputerWeekly reported that BAE Systems had ditched Microsoft Office 365 over PATRIOT Act concerns, because Microsoft could not guarantee the company's data wouldn't leave Europe.
Microsoft's managing director in the UK, Gordon Frazer, made that admission in June at the Office 365 launch in London. After researching the PATRIOT act, Microsoft found that regardless of where data was stored, it could not ensure that data would not be turned over to the US government as the result of a National Security Letter or other government request, because the company is governed by US law.
"The PATRIOT Act has come to be a kind of label for [privacy] concerns," Ambassador Phillip Verveer, the State Department's coordinator for international communications and information policy, said in a recent interview with Politico. Verveer said that some European cloud providers are "taking advantage of a misperception" of PATRIOT to cut American companies out of potential business, "and we'd like to clear up that misperception." The "misperception" has become a big enough problem for major tech firms that the Obama administration is making a diplomatic effort to allay fears about US data surveillance.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Light, fast, a little unstable: hands-on with a Toshiba ultrabook
Toshiba's entries into the ultrabook market, the Portege Z830 series, falls on the less expensive end of the spectrum. The internals of our test model, the Z835, are robust and we had no issues with its performance. But the exterior feels cheap, and the keyboard and trackpad gets uncomfortable to use during long sessions. It's not bad for the price, but its various shortcomings will grate on you beyond light-to-medium use.
Unlike the fancier Asus Zenbook, the Portege has a brushed aluminum cover and palmrests, but the underside, keyboard keys, trackpad and bezel are plastic. This helps keep it light, obviously, but the notebook does have a cheap feel to it, and doesn't look all that great. It stands 0.63 inches high and weighs just under 2.5 pounds, which is admirable for a 13-inch notebook.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
AT&T says it won't back down on T-Mobile acquisition
AT&T Chief Financial Officer John Stephens is putting a brave face on his company's beleaguered bid to acquire T-Mobile. Speaking at the UBS Conference on Global Media in New York City on Wednesday morning, Stephens promised that the telco would "continue to move forward" with its efforts "to complete the T-Mobile transaction."
AT&T and T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telecom are "motivated to complete a transaction and we continue to pursue the sale," he confidently told the conference panel.
Read the comments on this post
Read More ...
Available Tags:Chrome , iOS , Microsoft , Mac , Adobe , security , other , Java , gamers , Xbox , hack , Toshiba ,
No comments:
Post a Comment