XBMC 11.0 released with new Ubuntu-based live CD and iOS support
The developers behind the XBMC project have released a major new version of the program. XBMC 11, which is codenamed Eden, brings better performance, broader platform support, theming enhancements, and a number of other improvements. The developers have also created a new XBMC live CD environment based on Ubuntu.
XBMC is a highly portable open source media center application with a sophisticated library management system. It indexes the user's video content and provides an intuitive remote-friendly user interface for browsing and playing media. XBMC and its derivatives, such as Boxee and Plex, are popular among home theater PC users.
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Gun-shy TSA gets critic booted from Congressional panel
Bruce Schneier, the security expert who coined the term "security theater" to describe the Transportation Security Agency's airport screening procedures, was uninvited from speaking on a Monday Congressional panel at the insistence of the TSA.
In a blog post, Schneier reports that he had been officially scheduled to appear at a hearing sponsored by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, but received word on Friday that he had been removed from the witness list.
"The excuse was that I am involved in a lawsuit against the TSA, trying to get them to suspend their full-body scanner program," Schneier wrote. "But it's pretty clear that the TSA is afraid of public testimony on the topic, and especially of being challenged in front of Congress."
This is not the first time the TSA has engaged in brinksmanship to avoid having to appear on a panel alongside its critics. The TSA abruptly canceled a planned appearance before the same committee last year. The agency objected to sitting alongside a representative of EPIC, a privacy group that also had a pending lawsuit against the TSA.
The TSA's refusal to participate at last year's hearing prompted a public rebuke from subcommittee chairman Jason Chaffetz. The TSA eventually backed down and agreed to appear on a separate panel following the other scheduled testimony.
This year, the TSA's threats apparently worked. Schneier's name still appears on the official page for the hearing, but it is crossed out.
The TSA "wants to control the story, and it's easier for them to do that if I'm not sitting next to them pointing out all the holes in their position," Schneier wrote on Monday.
With Schneier booted from the panel, the remaining witnesses were all representatives of the Obama administration: two TSA officials, an admiral from the Coast Guard, and a member of the Government Accountability Office.
The TSA's efforts to "control the story" were not completely successful. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight Committee, read a selection of 350 comments about the TSA submitted via Facebook. A marine complained that when he traveled in uniform he was "forced to remove his trousers in full view of passengers because the shirt stays beneath them were scaring a TSA employee." Others with disabilities and medical devices complain of being groped by TSA officials.
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Australia blocks Chinese-owned Huawei from bidding on national broadband plan
China's reputation for cyber-espionage has cost the country's largest network equipment manufacturer a shot at billions of dollars in infrastructure sales to Australia. The Australian government has moved to block Huawei from bidding on Australia's approximately $36 billion-dollar National Broadband Network project.
The decision by Australia's attorney general, reported March 26, was based on concerns raised by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization over the number of cyberattacks coming out of China, and that the company's equipment would provide the Chinese government backdoors into the network.
"The National Broadband Network is the largest nation-building project in Australian history," a spokesperson for Australian Attorney General Nicola Roxon said in a statement, "and it will become the backbone of Australia's information infrastructure. As such, and as a strategic and significant government investment, we have a responsibility to do our utmost to protect its integrity and that of the information carried on it."
The Australian government has cause for concern. In 2011, the computers of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and then-Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd were reportedly hacked by Chinese intelligence agents. And the US defense and intelligence community have continued to warn about China's involvement in industrial espionage.
Huawei has been alleged to have benefitted from that espionage in past: Cisco accused the company of stealing technology from Cisco, but dropped its legal claims in 2004 after Huawei stopped producing a contested product. And the US Department of Defense expressed concerns about Huawei in a 2011 report to Congress (PDF) on Chinese military and security issues, because of the company's close ties to the People's Liberation Army.
Those connections haven't stopped Huawei from selling network gear elsewhere. The company has won a number of large network infrastructure supply contracts in Europe, including equipment for the deployment of LTE wireless in the UK. And Huawei has been hoping to replicate that success in Australia by bringing in local political muscle: the board of the company's Australian subsidiary is stacked with former government officials, and chaired by the former commander of the Australian Navy, retired Rear Admiral General John Lord. The company also sponsored trips to China for members of the leadership of Australia's Liberal Party. In fact, it was believed that Huawei was the internal favorite after the technical team for the NBN visited the company's headquarters in Shenzen in 2010.
So the announcement has come as something of a shock to the company's Australian executives. "This sort of whole concept of Huawei being involved in cyber warfare, presumably that would just be based on the fact that the company comes from China and everybody in China is—who's involved with information technology is involved in cyber warfare," said Alexander Downer, an independent director of Huawei Australia and a former Australian foreign affairs minister, told reporters for an Australian TV network. "This is just completely absurd."
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Net neutrality concerns raised about Comcast's Xbox On Demand service
Monday's announcement that traffic generated by Comcast's new Xbox streaming video service would not count against the cable giant's 250GB monthly data cap drew swift denunciation from the network neutrality advocates at Public Knowledge.
In an e-mailed statement, PK President Gigi Sohn said that the new policy "raises questions not only of the justification for the caps but, more importantly, of the survival of an Open Internet."
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Lightning strikes produce free neutrons, and we're not sure how
For the last 30 years there has been a very small controversy rumbling in the hallowed halls of physics. Way back in 1985, scientists from the then-USSR noted that whenever a thunder storm passed over their neutron detector, they observed an increased flux of neutrons. Unfortunately, they didn't have much in the way of monitoring equipment to really nail down much beyond the initial observation.
Since then, scientists have put forward a couple of potential explanations for the observed flux. One was that the high fields generated during lightning strikes was modifying the trajectories of muons from cosmic ray showers. In short: these are cosmic rays, and this is not interesting. The second was that the gamma rays emitted during the lightning strike generated neutrons, a photonuclear event. But new measurements show that neither of these explanations can explain the data.
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LibreOffice developers demo collaborative editing prototype
A group of LibreOffice developers have added experimental collaborative editing capabilities to the open source office suite. The feature allows multiple users to work on the same document simultaneously over the Internet. The collaborative editing functionality was implemented by grafting Telepathy to LibreOffice.
Telepathy is an open source instant messaging framework that supports multiple protocols. One of the key features of Telepathy is that it allows instant messaging protocols to be used as a medium for arbitrary communication between applications, like a form of real-time network IPC. Building LibreOffice's collaborative editing features on top of Telepathy eliminates the need to operate special servers for the purpose.
Four LibreOffice developers recently met for a small hackfest at the Cambridge offices of open source startup Collabora in order to work on the collaborative editing prototype. The hackfest was funded by The Document Foundation, the non-profit organization behind LibreOffice.
The developers published a video that demonstrates the functionality. In the demo, they show two instances of LibreOffice Calc editing the same spreadsheet. When a value was changed in a table on one instance, the change propagated to the other. A formula and chart in the document also updated to reflect the change.
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Comcast: Xbox 360 On Demand streams won't count against data caps
It looks as if Comcast is preparing to move from a limited beta test to a wide release for its long-promised Xbox Live streaming video app, with some details appearing on the company's support pages. Probably the biggest revelation about the service is that streaming Comcast's On Demand videos through the Xbox 360 will not count towards customers' 250GB monthly data limit.
Comcast says the Xbox app gets special treatment because the video is "being delivered over our private IP network and not the public Internet." This gives the service a potentially large advantage over not just other video streaming apps like Netflix and Hulu Plus, but also over Comcast On Demand content streamed through the company's website and mobile apps, both of which count against the data limits.
Streaming video can eat up limited data rather quickly, though you'd have to stream around 100 hours of Netflix per month before having a chance of bumping up against Comcast's 250GB limit (assuming you didn't use the Internet for anything else). Canadian ISP Shaw announced last year that its "Movie Club" service wouldn't count towards users' monthly data caps, because it is delivered though existing cable infrastructure.
Elsewhere in its Xbox FAQ, Comcast clarifies that cable subscribers who use a different Internet service provider won't be able to stream content through their Xbox 360, and that the service requires an Xbox Live Gold subscription as well as at least one cable box elsewhere in the home. The FAQ also notes that Comcast has no plans to follow Verizon's lead in offering live TV content through the Xbox 360, but offered that the "service will evolve over time."
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Dotcom says Hollywood studios once courted Megaupload
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom spent the first few weeks after his arrest in prison, with the US government arguing that he posed a flight risk. But he was finally released from prison last month, and his wife recently gave birth to twin daughters.
Dotcom is now speaking out about his case as he continues to fight extradition to the United States. On Monday, TorrentFreak posted one of the most in-depth interviews Dotcom has done since his arrest. Dotcom told TorrentFreak he can "refute pretty much each and every claim in the indictment."
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Windows 8 Release Candidate rumored for June, retail release in October
Windows 8 will enter the Release Candidate stage in late May or early June, according to a post made by winunleaked.tk over the weekend. This would mesh with an earlier rumor from Bloomberg that the software will be finished in the summer, with retail availability in October.
All these dates are unsubstantiated rumor at this point, but they're not at all surprising. Microsoft has been clear that the development of Windows 8 is following the same track as Windows 7—initial preview about a year before release, public beta in the first quarter, release candidate mid-year, and a release in fall.
The timelines aren't, however, identical. Windows 7's preview came in October 2008, with a beta shipped at CES in early January 2009, the release candidate in early May 2009, and the final build completed in late July 2009, with retail availability in October of the same year. Windows 8's preview was released in September 2011, but its beta didn't ship until late February of this year, making it a little slower to reach the same developmental stage as Windows 7. A June release candidate would similarly be a little behind the timetable laid down by Windows 7.
While Windows 7 and Windows Vista both had three months between RTM and retail availability, there's likely scope to compress this slack time. Windows XP, for example, had only two months between its August RTM and October retail release. Windows 2000 similarly had two months between a December RTM and a February release. If Windows 8 RTMed in August, per Bloomberg's summer estimate, an October launch would be a bit tight, but well within reach.
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TiVo accuses Motorola, Time Warner of violating "time warp" patents
TiVo today accused Motorola and Time Warner Cable, a Motorola Customer, of violating patents covering the company's digital video recorder technology.
TiVo's accusation comes in the form of counterclaims filed in response to a lawsuit Motorola launched against TiVo a year ago in the Eastern District of Texas. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, TiVo said it has accused Motorola and Time Warner of infringing patents numbered 6,233,389; 7,529,465; and 6,792,195.
The patents cover TiVo's "multimedia time warping system," TiVo's "time shifting multimedia content streams," and its method and apparatus for allowing rewind, pause, and fast forward capabilities in streaming video.
Digital video recorders have been a popular technology for patent infringement lawsuits, and TiVo in particular has aggressively defended its patents. After a series of legal setbacks, Dish Network agreed to pay TiVo $500 million by way of a settlement. Motorola's suit against TiVo accused TiVo of violating Motorola DVR patents, and TiVo and Microsoft recently settled litigation related to the same type of technology.
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Apple promises royalty-free license for proposed "nano-SIM" standard
Apple has promised to license any patents for its proposed "nano-SIM" standard to other manufacturers for free. The company hopes its promise will address concerns from opponents of the proposed standard as the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) considers both Apple's proposal and one developed by Nokia, RIM, and Motorola.
The Financial Times reported last week that Nokia, RIM, and Motorola had collectively expressed concern over Apple's proposal, citing a fear that Apple would own all relevant patents. However, Apple's proposal for a SIM card smaller than today's current micro-SIM already has the approval of most European mobile carriers.
In a letter to the ETSI dated March 19, seen by Florian Müller, Apple committed to offering a royalty-free licenses to any of its patents deemed essential to it's nano-SIM standard. The only stipulation is that any company declaring patents essential to the standard, if it becomes adopted, also commit to a royalty-free license. In other words, if Apple's proposal is adopted, the standard should be open and free for anyone to use.
A group within the ETSI charged with approving the new standard is set to meet this week to decide between the competing standards.
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Does it matter if the Wii U only has "current generation" hardware power?
Technically, Nintendo's Wii U will launch the "next generation" of video game consoles when it hits stores later this year. But as far as pure hardware power, the upcoming system might be better grouped with the current generation of high-definition consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. At least that's what Darksiders 2 director Marvin Donald said in a video interview with Nordic site Game Reactor.
"We'll have a few new features for sure, but I think visually, for the most part, it'll be pretty much the same," Donald said of the Wii U version of Darksiders 2, which is being planned as a launch title for the system. "So far the hardware's been on par with what we have with the current generation, so, based on what I understand, the resolution, textures, polygon counts and all that stuff, we're not going to being doing anything to up-rez the game, but we'll take advantage of the controller for sure."
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Particle-wave duality demonstrated with largest molecules yet
One of the deepest mysteries in quantum physics is the wave-particle duality: every quantum object has properties of both a wave and a particle. Nowhere is this effect more beautifully demonstrated than in the double-slit experiment: streams of particles (photons, electrons, whatever) are directed at a barrier with two narrow openings. While each particle shows up at the detector individually, the population as a whole creates an interference pattern as though they are waves. Neither a pure wave nor a pure particle description has proven successful in explaining these experiments.
Now researchers have successfully performed a quantum interference experiment with much larger and more massive molecules than ever before. Thomas Juffmann et al. fired molecules composed of over 100 atoms at a barrier with openings designed to minimize molecular interactions, and observed the build-up of an interference pattern. The experiment approaches the regime where macroscopic and quantum physics overlap, offering a possible way to study the transition that has frustrated many scientists for decades.
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After warning from Apple, apps using UDIDs now being rejected
iOS apps that make use of the device's unique identifier string, the UDID, are beginning to be thinned out from the App Store due to privacy concerns. Apple began rejecting the apps over the weekend, as first noted by TechCrunch, after having warned developers late last year that the UDID was deprecated as of iOS 5.0 (released to the public in October). But Apple is no longer just guiding developers away from using the unique ID; the company has begun playing hardball by rejecting apps that make use of it.
Concerns over apps storing and making use of iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch UDIDs began popping up in 2010 as security researchers discovered that numerous apps were transmitting user data back to their own servers. Some of those apps associated real names in plaintext with the device's UDID, but even without a specific user name or address, the device's UDID could be associated with the collected data and the user in question could be identified—a privacy concern for most users.
These privacy issues have escalated even more over the last year or so after a number of other apps were discovered to be uploading address book contacts and other data to remote servers without user permission—a move that has grabbed the attention of Congress, causing certain members to pressure Apple to step up its privacy practices.
Now, TechCrunch's sources claim that two of Apple's 10 app review teams have begun doing blanket rejections of apps that make use of UDIDs. Reportedly, the plan is for four teams to begin rejecting those apps next week, "and keep escalating until all 10 teams are turning down apps that are still using UDIDs."
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Microsoft uses racketeering law to seize servers, take down botnets
On Friday, armed with a federal warrant and backed by U.S. Marshals, Microsoft employees raided web hosting centers in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Lombard, Illinois to seize servers and take possession of hundreds of Internet domain names. The actions were part of a global legal effort by Microsoft and partners to go directly after botnets through civil lawsuits.
The servers and the domains hosted on them were allegedly being used to spread multiple Zeus botnets and collect key-logging data from infected computers, a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement on Sunday. Microsoft and its partners in the effort—the Financial Services - Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) and NACHA—obtained warrants for the seizures through a federal lawsuit based in part on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
In the suit, the organizations claimed that the phishing e-mails used to spread the botnet infringed on their trademarks and intellectual property. When recipients clicked on the links in the messages, the sites downloaded malware based on the Zeus botnet that could be used to take control of computers and steal personal data—including passwords and financial information—by recording what users typed.
The effort, called Operation b71, is the second time Microsoft has gone after botnet operations on its own rather than waiting for law enforcement to take action. Last March, Microsoft's Operation b107 took down the Ruckstock botnet. But b71 is the first time that Microsoft has gotten other organizations to join as plaintiffs in the civil suits used to after a botnet operator, and used RICO as a legal instrument to go after botnet operators. It's also the first time Microsoft has simultaneously moved against multiple botnets in a single seizure operation.
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At $99.99, Nokia Lumia 900 priced to move for April 8 launch
The Nokia Lumia 900 will finally arrive in stores on April 8, AT&T confirmed to CNET. Though the phone is considered the flagship Windows Phone device in the US, it will sell for $99.99 with a two-year contract, a much lower price than most premium phones, to help it win the attention of buyers.
The Lumia 900's specs remain unchanged since CES: a 4.3-inch ClearBlack AMOLED display, 8-megapixel camera, 512MB of RAM, 1.4GHz processor, and a beefy 1830mAh battery. The handset will also be able to access AT&T's 4G LTE network.
Windows Phone has yet to make much of a splash in the US—its market share held steady at the end of 2011, though at a paltry 1.4 percent. In recent months, the platform gained some traction with the Lumia 710 on T-Mobile, which initially sold for $49.99 with a two-year contract and is now offered as a free handset. Nokia has reportedly paid $25 million to AT&T to have the Lumia 900 offered as a free phone to AT&T sales representatives.
The matte black and cyan blue versions of the Lumia 900 will be available at launch, while a white version will become available on April 22.
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Senators want ruling on whether Facebook password requests are illegal
Two US Senators asked the Department of Justice and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to start an investigation into whether employers asking job applicants for usernames and passwords violates federal law.
The issue has come under scrutiny in the past week, after the Associated Press and others reported on employers asking applicants for Facebook usernames and passwords. Facebook took a stand, saying it could take legal action, although the company noted that it has no immediate plans to sue any specific employers.
US Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) asked the agencies to investigate whether such requests violate current federal law, the senators said yesterday. The Senators plan to write legislation filling any gaps in federal law that might allow employers to require login information to social networking sites and e-mail accounts.
While disturbing, the problem is likely not very widespread. Forbes called it "the great Facebook employee password nonissue," saying most of the cases reported by news media took place in 2010 or earlier. In a case involving the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, the department dropped the requirement, but still requests "voluntary" access to usernames and passwords, Forbes reported. In 2009, the city of Bozeman, Montana, decided to stop asking applicants for Facebook passwords after a flood of opposition.
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Atlanta renovation achieves highest LEED score in Northern Hemisphere
A renovated building in Midtown Atlanta has been awarded 95 out of a possible 110 LEED points for its environmental design-the highest score for any new construction in the Northern Hemisphere.
Though classified as a "New Construction" in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design system, 1315 Peachtree Street, Atlanta is actually a 1980s construction that has undergone extensive renovation. But what does LEED certification entail? And is this the greenest building in the Northern Hemisphere?
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