New Internet Explorer 10 memory protection features not just for Internet Explorer
After last week's pwn2own and pwnium contests, browser security is, once more, a hot topic. The existence of flaws in browsers is nowadays taken for granted: what security researchers are most interested in is the mitigation techniques browsers use to try to render those flaws harmless. Microsoft published a recent blog post discussing some of the new mitigation techniques that will be used in Internet Explorer 10.
The post first addresses existing anti-exploitation measures already used by Internet Explorer. These are a mix of compile-time techniques—Microsoft's compiler injects code to detect some buffer overflows, for example—and runtime techniques—such as the "Data Execution Prevention" that makes it harder to exploit buffer overflows.
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Firefox 11 released with Style Editor and 3D DOM viewer
Mozilla has announced the availability of Firefox 11, a new version of the popular open source Web browser. The update brings several noteworthy new user-facing features and a number of technical improvements under the hood.
When Firefox 10 was released in January, the browser gained a new suite of tools for Web developers. Mozilla continued to work on the browser's integrated development tools and has issued several major improvements in Firefox 11. One of the most significant new tools for Web developers is a new Style Editor.
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Encyclopædia Britannica's 2010 edition to be its last
The 244-year-old Encyclopedia Britannica will be going out of print this year, abdicating to the likes of Google and Wikipedia. Most adults will remember looking up information in the IRL knowledge-base's volumes, but the iconic encyclopedia only represents 1 percent of the company's total sales today. Britannica traditionally published a new set of tomes every 2 years, but the company decided that the 2010 version (which costs $1,400) will be the final edition. Britannica will sell its remaining 4,000 copies of the encyclopedia, and then end its run.
The company will still sell its online version at a subscription price of $70 per year (there's also an app version that will put you out $2 per month) but even that only accounts for 15 percent of Britannica's revenue. The other 85 percent comes from the company's sales of educational products like its online learning tools. Britannica says it may start offering more free information to muster subscribers.
The books were originally printed in Scotland in 1768. Since then, 7 million bound sets have been sold. The company's president, Jorge Cauz, said the company will throw a party for itself on Wednesday to celebrate the changes with a “cake in the shape of a print set,” according to CNN Money.
Personally, as a kid, I loved Encyclopedia Britannica. My dad's 1960's edition had my favorite entry, the one for "Frog" showing the different layers of a dissected frog on transparent layers. Feel free to share your favorite entry (if you have one, naturally) below.
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Judge orders failed copyright troll to forfeit "all" copyrights
Righthaven, a copyright-troll law firm that failed in its attempt to make money for newspapers by suing readers for sharing stories online, was dealt a death blow on Tuesday by a federal judge who ordered the Las Vegas company to forfeit "all of" its intellectual property and other "intangible property" to settle its debts.
The order is an ironic twist to a copyright trolling saga that began in 2010, when Righthaven was formed with the idea of suing blogs and websites that re-post newspaper articles or snippets of them without permission.
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Double Fine's adventure game Kickstarter ends with over $3.2 million pledged
It seems the fine folks at Secret of Monkey Island and Psychonauts developer Double Fine were a tad pessimistic when they set a $400,000 Kickstarter funding goal for their effort to create a new, old-school point-and-click adventure game last month. The company blew that target out of the water with over $1 million in donations in less than 24 hours, and passed $2 million roughly a week after starting to take donations.
Now, with a little over two hours until the Kickstater winds down as of this writing, the effort has succeeded in bringing in over $3.2 million, roughly matching the budget for classic Double Fine adventure title Grim Fandango and easily setting a record for all projects funded by the Kickstarter site (in second place currently: an iPhone dock that brought in just over $1.4 million).
After the funding pace slowed down slightly during February, donations have once again surged in the Kickstarter's final days—the project has brought in at least $700,000 since Sunday. The late addition of a new T-shirt reward for backers who contribute over $100 might have had something to do with that late surge. Over 13 percent of the 84,000-plus total contributors have contributed at that level or above, and four generous backers even managed to earn a lunch with Double Fine's Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert by donating over $10,000.
The company will be broadcasting the final hours of the extremely successful campaign live on UStream starting at 6pm EDT (3pm PDT).
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Raspberry Pi retailers clarify shipping costs on $35 Linux computer
The retailers that have partnered with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to sell the organization's low-cost Linux computer clarified their pricing structures today. Inconsistent regional prices and shipping costs have created some confusion about the total cost of procuring the computer, which has met with massive demand.
The Raspberry Pi foundation was founded with the goal of building an inexpensive Linux computer that can be used by young students to learn computer programming. The computer, which is a bare ARM board roughly the size of a deck of playing cards, has a 700MHz ARM11 CPU and 256MB of RAM. The project has attracted considerable interest from Linux users and embedded systems enthusiasts.
The first model of the Raspberry Pi board was intended to sell for $35, but it looks like buyers can expect to pay closer to $50 after factoring in taxes and shipping. RS Components, one of the Raspberry Pi retailers, announced today that it has adopted a flat global price of £21.60 and a flat global shipping charge of £4.95. Add the 20 percent VAT, and the total cost becomes £31.86.
RS Components allowed users to register for their purchase on launch day, but hasn't actually made its Raspberry Pi units available for purchase yet. The company says that it will be making units available on a first-come-first-served basis, in the order that users registered on the site. They will be contacting buyers within the next few days to tell them how to complete their orders.
RS Components received over 200,000 registrations from individuals who are interested in buying the board. There are only 10,000 units available in total in the first batch, which will be split between RS Components and Premier Farnell, the other retail partner.
Farnell has also been working to simplify its pricing structure for the Raspberry Pi, but still has variable regional pricing. The company has published a table that shows what the price and associated sales tax will be in various regions. The cost of purchasing the device from Farnell and having it shipped to the United States is $40 plus sales tax. Farnell began taking orders on launch day, but the company says that it will automatically adjust prices for existing orders in cases where the new pricing model is less expensive than when the user placed the order.
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Critical Windows bug could make worm meat of millions of high-value machines
Microsoft has plugged a critical hole in all supported versions of Windows that allows attackers to hit high-value computers with self-replicating attacks that install malicious code with no user interaction required.
The vulnerability in the Remote Desktop Protocol is of particular concern to system administrators in government and corporate settings because they often use the feature to remotely trouble-shoot e-mail servers, point-of-sale terminals and other machines when they experience problems. RDP is also the default way to manage Windows machines that connect to Amazon's EC2 and other cloud services. That means potentially millions of endpoints are at risk of being hit by a powerful computer worm that spreads exponentially, similarly to the way exploits known as Nimda and Code Red did in 2001.
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Sega "not planning" more Sonic 4 after upcoming Episode 2
When Sega first announced that 2D series revamp Sonic 4 would be released as a series of short, downloadable episodes, the company was careful not to say just how many episodes it planned to release. Right now, it looks like that number is going to be two, as Sonic Team producer Takashi Izuka recently told Digital Spy the team is "currently not planning to release another episode," after the second.
Sonic 4's first episode got mixed reviews (including a glowing write up from Ars) and equally mixed sales across a number of downloadable game platforms. The game premiered as the top downloadable title on the PlayStation Network after its October 2010 launch, and peaked at No. 3 on iTunes' top-grossing games charts, but the Xbox 360 version sold considerably less than contemporary releases like Super Meat Boy, according to online leaderboard data. It's probably safe to assume the WiiWare version of the game didn't sell so well either—while Episode 2 is coming back to Xbox Live Arcade, PSN, PC, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone later this year, Sega announced in December that there wouldn't be a Wii version of the title's second episode.
This might seem like a bad sign for Sega's once-venerable Sonic brand, but it might just represent a shift toward the more robust Sonic Generations series, which rode its mix of 2D and 3D gameplay to over 1.6 million sales since its November release, according to Sega.
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Virtual reality that doesn't suck: my time inside Half-Life 2
For decades now, the futuristic dream interface for video games has been some sort of head-mounted display (HMD) that removes the world around you and projects an all-encompassing, head-tracked 3D environment across your entire field of vision. But this dream has been largely dead in the water since the mid-'90s, when everyone from Nintendo and Sega to Atari was prototyping or releasing ill-thought-out Virtual Reality headsets, even though the technology of the time was far from capable of fulfilling the VR promise.
Now, we may be finally be reaching the point where the display technology is finally catching up to our collective virtual reality dreams. At least that's the impression I walked away with after a state-of-the-art HMD slipped me into the world of Half-Life 2 at a Game Developers Conference demo last week.
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Mini-review: GarageBand update brings Smart Strings, Bluetooth jamming
In addition to launching a new iOS version of iPhoto last week, Apple also updated GarageBand and iMovie. iMovie 1.3 merely brought the auto-generated "trailers" feature from the desktop, but GarageBand 1.2 saw some serious feature additions, including the ability to edit individual MIDI notes, a new "Smart Strings" instrument, and the ability for iOS devices to have a virtual "jam session" over Bluetooth.
We decided to go hands-on with the new features in GarageBand to see how they pan out. In all, they compliment an already impressive mobile music-making app.
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New study suggests cap-and-trade results in decreased innovation
Among those interested in addressing the problem of climate change, one of the primary debates is about the best way to induce the private sector to develop innovative technologies. Although some favor a simple carbon tax, the US' success with a cap-and-trade system has led to its use both in Europe and in regional systems within the US. A new analysis of past US programs, however, suggests that cap-and-trade hasn't quite been the success many think it is. Its rapid early gains have been followed by a period of stagnation.
The US implemented cap-and-trade systems in the 1990s as a response to the problem of acid rain. Chemicals produced by combustion of fossil fuels (primarily coal) had previously been regulated by standard environmental regulation. However, over the course of the 1990s, SO2 and NOx were both subject to a cap-and-trade system that gave industries the option of taking different approaches to the control of these emissions. All significant sources of these chemicals were given allowances targeted to keep the total emissions below levels deemed acceptable. Innovators that cut their emissions substantially could sell their allowances to sources that found it too difficult or expensive to do so.
On some levels, this was a significant success. Emissions dropped and the cost of reaching that goal turned out to be far less than many had predicted. But Berkeley's Margaret Taylor has now gone through the numbers and found data suggesting not all is as rosy as it appears.
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FTC subpoenas Apple over details of Google search deal for iPhone
The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly subpoenaed Apple to learn the details of its deal with Google to make its search engine the preferred search provider on the iPhone. The subpoena comes as the FTC is broadening its investigation into Google's business practices, according to Bloomberg News.
The FTC began an investigation into Google's business practices in June 2011 after it received complaints that the search giant was unfairly favoring its own services over those of competitors in its search results. The European began its own formal investigation into similar complaints in November 2010, though neither investigation has lead to any official censure of Google at this time.
Though the FTC hasn't made any announcement about the subpoena, sources for AllThingsD confirmed that Apple had been served.
A formal complaint was filed against Google earlier this year claiming that it was circumventing features in Apple's Safari browser that prevent saving cookies used to track users on the Web. Google claimed it was a mistake, and reportedly fixed the error.
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Yahoo IP lawsuit: We patented "Facebook's entire social network model"
By now you've heard that Yahoo has sued Facebook, alleging patent infringement. But just which pieces of intellectual property is Yahoo claiming Facebook ripped off?
Surely, you'd say, Yahoo doesn't claim that it invented the entire social networking model Facebook is based upon—except it turns out that is almost exactly what Yahoo is claiming.
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Walmart's DVD-to-digital service will sell you a copy of your own movie for $2
Walmart is starting a service to let customers create digital versions of DVD movies they own for a small fee, the company announced Tuesday. A new collaboration with Vudu will allow people to bring their discs into Walmart, pay $2 or more to get a Vudu-facilitated digital copy of the movie stored in their account with Vudu.
The uploads use the UltraViolet DRM system created by a collective of entertainment studio partners (the service is facilitated by Paramount, Sony, Fox, Universal and Warner Bros). The conversion service works as follows: customers take their old discs to a Walmart Photo Center and pay $2 to have each DVD or Blu-ray converted to a digital version, or $5 to upgrade a standard-definition disc to an HD digital version. After the DVD is converted, customers keep the disc. For now, the service only works for DVDs from the studios listed above, and only for movies in Vudu's catalog—TV shows are excluded.
The digital versions are automatically placed in a Vudu account. This will be created for you at the Photo Center, if you don't already have one. Then, the movies will be accessible for streaming on "more than 300 Internet-connected devices," according to Walmart (which bought Vudu in 2010 for $100 million). Those 300 devices include game consoles like the XBox 360 and Playstation 3, and set top boxes like Boxee.
Of course, DVD owners have long had ways of turning their DVDs into digital files without visiting a store or paying a dime, irritating to the studios though it may be. The question is whether the need to visit a store and pay fees will be a sufficiently low-resistance process. In response to a question about whether it would be necessary for customers to visit a store or pay a fee to convert movies they already own, a Walmart representative told Ars that "we need to be able to verify they are actual DVDs."
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Early benchmarks confirm third-generation iPad has 1GB of RAM
The third-generation iPad has 1GB of RAM after all—at least according to some early benchmarks. Vietnamese site Tinhte.vn obtained one of the new devices a couple days ahead of schedule and immediately ran Geekbench. The app reported back that the device has 1GB of RAM and a Geekbench score of 756.
According to Tinhte's benchmarks, the third-gen iPad's processor remains at 1GHz despite being bumped to Apple's new A5X (a dual-core processor with quad-core GPU). The Geekbench score of 756 puts the device just above the iPad 2's Geekbench score of 749, according to our tests from last year, and the original iPad's Geekbench score of 454.
Before Apple announced the third-gen iPad on March 7, there were rampant rumors the device's RAM would be bumped to 1GB, up from the iPad 2's 512MB. Apple's spokespeople declined to comment on the amount of RAM in the new device, however, so we were forced to wait until the first benchmarks started rolling in. We'll repeat these benchmarks and perform a few others when reviewing the third-generation iPad here at Ars. Stay tuned for our review, which you can expect to see on the site early next week!
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Which iPad should you buy on Friday? Your questions answered
The third-generation iPad—don't call it the iPad 3!—is hitting the streets this Friday, March 16. Although Apple took preorders for its latest tablet for a few days before the shipping dates started being pushed back, many potential buyers decided to hold off on the decision until Friday rolls around. Maybe you're one of them. Perhaps you couldn't decide on carriers or data plans. Maybe you simply wanted to participate in exciting launch-day festivities; standing outside an Apple Store with a bunch of chain smokers for four hours while passers-by ask you endlessly if they're giving something away.
Whatever your reason for waiting until Friday, there are still plenty of decisions left to make. We decided to lend you a hand by answering some of the most common questions about buying an iPad in a single place. Got questions about 4G versus LTE, data plans, international roaming, or where to even buy an iPad? Or do you have friends or family who won't stop asking you those questions? The answers are right here.
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Chrome coming to Windows 8 Metro too, Opera "looking into it"
Google confirmed to Mashable that it is developing a Metro version of Chrome for Windows 8 users. This follows Mozilla's announcement last month that it was building a Metro version of Firefox, work that has recently begun in earnest.
Plain Metro applications on Windows 8 are tightly restricted, with limited access to the operating system's features. Desktop applications are essentially unrestricted. Browsers are a special-cased hybrid between the two: Microsoft allows browsers to offer Metro front-ends without subjecting them to the Metro restrictions. These Metro browsers have dual front-ends: they run on both the desktop and within the Metro environment.
The Metro front-end will naturally be touch-friendly. Google says it will also work to make the desktop front-end touch-friendly too.
With Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer all offering Metro-enabled browsers, the three most popular Windows browsers will all be given touch-friendly Windows 8 interfaces. We asked Opera if it planned to follow suit. Arnstein Teigene, product manager, Desktop at Opera Software told us, "Unfortunately we can't comment on any specifics yet, other than we are currently looking into Windows 8. The new OS and the Metro UI offers an interesting new platform and we know users will want to run Opera on it."
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Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England
A 23-year old student from Sheffield Hallam University in the north of England is bound for America. That wouldn't be unusual—except that Richard O'Dwyer won't go voluntarily. The UK Home Secretary has today agreed to extradite O'Dwyer over US copyright infringement charges for running a "linking site" called TVShack.
Back in June 2010, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized O'Dwyer's tvshack.net domain name after a closed, one-sided hearing before a judge. (All domains ending in .net and .com are seizable by US law enforcement, regardless of where their owners are located.) But O'Dwyer soon had the site back up at a new address, TVShack.cc, which did not require a US-based domain name registrar. He slapped a notice to the top of the new site urging users to update their bookmarks.
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New 3D printer could create nano-devices in minutes
Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have developed a 3D printing technology that can quickly print detailed objects in nanoscale using a process called two-photon lithography. It's fast, too: the precision required to print objects with features measured in hundreds of nanometers in width meant the speed of previous attempts at printing nanoscale objects were measured in millimeters per second. In contrast, the TU Vienna team's 3D printer is capable of printing lines of resin at a rate of five meters per second. In a demonstration shown in the video below, the team was able to print a nanoscale model of a 300-micrometer long Formula 1 racecar—made from 100 layers of resin, each consisting of approximately 200 individual lines—in four minutes.
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Despite Fukushima disaster, global nuclear power expansion continues
A new report published by the World Energy Council examining the effects of the Fukushima Daiichi accident upon the global nuclear energy industry suggests a strong long-term prognosis for the technology. The near-immediate cessation of nuclear energy programs in a handful of Western nations will clearly set back total global nuclear energy generation, but it's an effect that will most likely be dwarfed in the long-term as the majority of countries, including emerging economic giants China and India, proceed with their nuclear plans unabated, albeit at a more cautious pace.
In the immediate aftermath of Fukushima, countries the world over put nuclear energy programs on hold to undertake comprehensive safety reviews. As a result, reactor construction starts have fallen from 16 during 2010 (following year-on-year growth since 2004) to just two in 2011. In some cases, countries haven't held out for review findings before electing to close aging power stations.
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Predator or prey? Charter cuts Internet prices to compete with city-owned network
One of the benefits of living next to a municipal Internet Service Provider came into focus this month. Residents of Monticello, Minnesota found a hastily composed flyer in their mailboxes. The missive listed Charter Cable's basic and digital tier offerings, with an extra enticement scribbled in hand on the right side of the page:
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Stop innovating, please: Kaleidescape loses DVD ripping case
A California judge ruled last week that Kaleidescape, the company behind a line of high-end home media servers, violated the terms of its DVD licensing agreement by allowing consumers to rip DVDs.
The DVD Copy Control Association sets rules that all manufacturers of DVD players must follow. The organization objected to the DVD-ripping functionality of Kaleidescape's products and went to court to force them off the market. On Thursday, Judge William Monahan issued a broad injuncton barring Kaleidescape from selling its DVD-streaming products.
The case is a useful reminder that, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, major content companies continue to enjoy veto power over the design of digital media devices. Include a digital lock in your spec and the DMCA keeps anyone from bypassing it, even if the intended use might well be legal. Hollywood is using this power to prevent "DVD jukebox" products from reaching consumers.
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Mojang can't use "Scrolls" name for potential sequels
Yesterday, we were happy to report that Mojang and Bethesda Softworks had settled a months-long legal battle over the rights to use the name "Scrolls" for Mojang's upcoming card/board game title. Now, Bethesda parent ZeniMax Media has clarified that it is licensing that trademark out as a strictly one-time deal.
"ZeniMax has licensed the 'Scrolls' mark to Mojang to be used solely in conjunction with its existing Scrolls digital card game and any add-on material it makes to that game," the company said in a statement. "The terms of the settlement bar Mojang from using the Scrolls mark for any sequel to the current card game, or any other video game."
Not that Mojang has announced any plans for a Scrolls sequel, or even announced a solid release date for the first game. Still, this additional restriction on the settlement seems a little overbearing, considering that there was seemingly little chance of the claimed "brand confusion" between Scrolls and Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls series in the first place.
"We are pleased to have settled this matter with Mojang amicably," ZeniMax Chairman and CEO Robert Altman said in the statement. "The Elder Scrolls is an important brand to us, and with this settlement we were able to protect our valuable property rights while allowing Mojang to release their digital card game under the name they preferred."
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Mysterious hog farm explosions stump scientists
A strange new growth has emerged from the manure pits of midwestern hog farms. The results are literally explosive.
Since 2009, six farms have blown up after methane trapped in an unidentified, pit-topping foam caught a spark. In the afflicted region, the foam is found in roughly 1 in 4 hog farms.
There’s nothing farmers can do except be very careful. Researchers aren’t even sure what the foam is.
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Idealism vs. pragmatism: Mozilla debates supporting H.264 video playback
The HTML5 video element promised to be a game-changer for Internet media publishing. It provided a vendor-neutral standards-based mechanism for conveying video content on the Web without the need for proprietary plugins while offering a path for tighter integration of video content on the Web and broader platform support than has historically been available through plugins.
But the HTML5 video element has yet to live up to its full potential, because a dispute over video encoding has prevented the standard from being implemented consistently across all Web browsers. Mozilla, which has long resisted adoption of H.264 on ideological grounds, is now preparing to support it on mobile devices where the codec is supplied by the platform or implemented in hardware.
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