Moving day for Discovery
We covered the space shuttle Discovery's return home earlier this week, and Ars returned to get pictures of the ceremony handing the shuttle over to the Smithsonian.
Discovery is ferried to Washington-Dulles Airport via NASA 905, the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. After de-mating, ownership of the shuttle was formally transferred to the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum.
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French presidential candidate against three-strikes law, kinda sorta
On Sunday, French voters will go to the polls to decide whether President Nicolas Sarkozy should return for a second five-year term, or whether his main rival, François Hollande, the head of the Socialist Party, should take the driver's seat in the Elysée Palace. So far, the two men are in a near-dead heat, with Hollande possibly holding a slight edge.
Sarkozy, of course, has championed France's harsh and controversial three-strikes anti-piracy law, known by its French acronym, Hadopi—and even wants to expand its authority and mandate should he be re-elected. The agency responsible for enforcing this law (also called Hadopi), recently came out with a report saying that French Internet users have been decreasing their use of illegal filesharing, even as the French recording industry has seen a drop in revenue.
Not surprisingly, Hollande has positioned himself against Hadopi. In an interview with the French film news website, AlloCiné, the Socialist candidate said that his position on the anti-piracy law was clear.
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Plans afoot to tap Iceland's geothermal energy with 745-mile cable
A proposed high voltage electrical cable running across the floor of the North Atlantic Ocean to tap Iceland's surplus volcanic geothermal energy would become the world's longest underwater electrical cable, if it goes ahead. The cable would be a significant step towards a pan-European super grid, which may one day tap renewable sources as far afield as Scandinavia, North Africa and the Middle East. It's argued that such a grid would be able to widely transmit energy surpluses from active renewable sources, thereby alleviating the need for countries to use (or build) back-up fossil fuel power stations to cater for peaks in demand when more local renewable sources aren't particularly productive.
If a European super grid comes to fruition, energy surpluses will be big business. So it's hardly surprising that both Germany and the United Kingdom are jostling for position at the other end of the Icelandic cable, with Norway and the Netherlands also having been mooted as potential connectees. That would necessitate a cable at least 745 miles (1198 km) in length, making it easily the longest electrical cable in the world.
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German magazine says intellectuals rejecting Pirate Party
As the Pirate Party in Germany seems to be taking off in local elections (reaching 13 percent of support in a recent national poll), some German artists are increasingly voicing their frustration with a political group that they say doesn’t represent their interests, according to an article published Friday in the German magazine Der Spiegel.
After having been founded in Sweden in 2006, the political philosophy has since spread worldwide. It's had the most success thus far in Germany, although adoption in the United States has been much slower.
The magazine concluded that the Pirate Party "is the first left-wing party to have a considerable number of intellectuals not for, but against it."
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Is The Old Republic becoming an old ghost town? OpenForum gamers debate
Earlier this week, our gaming editor Kyle Orland reported that EA's Star Wars: The Old Republic might be causing a decline in World of Warcraft subscriber numbers, according to an analyst. What's more, The Old Republic might be seeing its own numbers decline. In order to find out what's really going on in the community of The Old Republic, we turned to the Ars readership to learn more.
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Badoo set to help facilitate hookups across the U.S.
America, get ready for Badoo. Haven't heard of it? Until recently, I hadn't heard of this social network either. But apparently, lots of users and investors in Europe have.
Essentially, as its Russian founder has explained before, Badoo is a "nightclub on your phone," where people, "as adults, are looking to do adult things." The site first was launched in Spain, where it soon expanded to neighboring Portugal, France, and then, hopped the pond to Brazil and Mexico and now, claims users in 180 countries.
Last fall, The Economist proclaimed it as having "a shot at becoming one of Europe's leading internet firms." But now, says GigaOm, the site appears poised to grow rapidly in the United States, particularly after its official American launch just last month.
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JavaScript package offers a smarter way to serve hi-res images
Given enough time, all simple, previously solved problems of the web eventually rear their ugly heads again.
Remember when limited bandwidth was a huge problem? Then bandwidth was infinite. Now it’s a problem again. And that means serving up images is once again a complex problem with no elegant solution. Its seems simple—Websites should serve the right image to the right screen, high-resolution images to high-resolution devices and low res to the rest. But of course it’s not that simple. Factors like bandwidth as well as screen size and orientation complicate the matter considerably.
Arguably the best solution right now is to send low-res images to every device. Sure, your images might look terrible on high-res screens, but at least you aren’t wasting people’s time or worse, costing them money.
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Weekend Ar(t)s: Cartoon College may be the Indie Game of comics
During the weekend, even Ars takes an occasional break from building the best bargain computer or trying to solve mindblowing puzzle games. Weekend Ar(t)s is a chance to share what we're watching/listening/reading or otherwise consuming this week.
For everyone whose parents scoffed at a Liberal Arts degree...
How do people become comic artists? I'm sure some have natural talent; others work at it and end up honing their craft at a newspaper. Maybe some started out by choosing between Tippy the Turtle or the pirate first (thanks, Art Instruction Schools).
A select and successful few took a very traditional route. Build your portfolio, apply yourself, then pursue a Masters degree at the only logical institution of higher learning: The Center for Cartoon Studies.
No joke, that path is about to be the focus of a film.
Cartoon College documents life at this unique school. CSS itself is a relatively young and exclusive place of higher learning. It was founded in remote Vermont (ever hear of White River Junction?) in 2004. In 2007, the state approved the institution to award Masters of Fine Arts degrees, then their first graduating class happened that May: 20 students. Each year roughly another 20 enroll in either the one- or two-year programs.
Inspiring comic artists hone their skills here in a more specialized manner than any art school ever could offer. Results speak for themselves. Alumni boast Eisner Awards, Ignatz Awards, numerous year-end book lists and even a Guggenheim Fellowship. The setting and concept feels perfect for filming. Seeing artists waiting for their breakthrough in a competitive, creative environment is the basic recipe for plenty of compelling entertainment—from Project Runway to Top Chef. Maybe Bravo should save time and just commission this film now.
A better comparison: Cartoon College feels reminiscent of Indie Game: The Movie. Both productions received funding through a well-received Kickstarter. Each film focuses on niche entertainment forms, and chooses to follow creators in their professional adolescence. It's a glimpse at the hypothetical future wave of artists as they sculpt projects with the potential to be the next big thing, and veterans are sprinkled throughout to provide context, insight, and viewing incentive. Indie Game had Jonathan Blow as a headliner and followed the developments of Fez and Super Meat Boy. Cartoon College has Art Spiegelman of Maus fame or Lynda Barry from What It Is, and who knows what faces from the film will be more recognizable within a year.
Cartoon College debuted at the Palm Beach Film Festival last week and has a screening lined up at the Newport Beach one at the end of the month. That's it for the moment, but Josh Melrod (producer, director, editor) says it's being shopped around to distributors and festivals. He says VOD is in the film's future too, thinking video could be where most people find the movie and give it an even longer shelf life.
If Cartoon College can have an Indie Game like ceiling, that's not too bad. That film made it to Sundance 2012 after all. It also inspired HBO to purchase its rights for a series. Hopefully Cartoon College has a similar run in it. Comic creations deserves the same level of recognition and it'd be great to have a few young names in the public eye. And if the film was to ever become a TV series, their network of choice should be clear. At the very least, the adapted graphic novel options would be limitless.
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Week in Apple: Mac malware saga continues, Jobs interviews, and more
Is the Apple world still talking about malware threats on the Mac? Yes, yes it is. Our most popular Apple posts from the last week were almost entirely focused on old threats, new threats, ongoing threats, and beyond. There were a couple breaks, though, to talk about some recently discovered Steve Jobs interview tapes, 3D technology on the iPhone, Apple's battle over e-book pricing, and more. Check it out:
Researchers uncover new espionage malware preying on Mac users: Two weeks after researchers uncovered a 500,000-Mac botnet built using malware known as Flashback, they've uncovered a new OS X threat used in highly stealthy espionage campaigns called SabPub.
Mac OS X invulnerability to malware is a myth, says security firm: The Flashback malware scare is only the tip of the iceberg for Mac users, says security research firm Kaspersky Lab. The firm says Mac users can expect more botnets, more drive-by downloads, mass-malware, and Mac-specific attacks from here on out.
Five OS X security threats that fizzled: In the aftermath of Flashback—one of the highest profile malware attacks on the Mac—Ars takes a look back at other security threats that didn't quite make such a big blip on the radar.
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Week in Gaming: Unlocking Fez's secrets, analyzing Wii's weakening sales
This week's big breakout gaming feature was a in-depth look at how the internet gaming community banded together to solve the most arcane puzzle in Xbox indie hit Fez, even if they weren't really sure why their solution worked the way it did. We also took a look at how Nintendo's declining sales are dragging down reported numbers for the entire industry, talked to the developer of a Baldur's Gate revamp about why he's not thrilled with console development, and looked at a potential console firmware update that could make a dent in our collective household energy use.
I'm looking forward to playing Diablo III with some friends and the wider public during the open beta this weekend. I'm KyleOrl on Battle.net if you want to try and track me down. Use the secret code "Ars Technica is the best site ever!" so I know you're not a stranger.
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Week in tech: copyrighted magic, System Guide, ChromeOS, and Oracle v. Google
Hands-on: getting work done with Google's new Aura interface for Chrome OS: Google attempted to introduce a new approach to computing when it first launched Chrome OS in 2010. Now the company is about to introduce a new user interface layer called Aura for the OS. Ars goes hands-on to see if it's an improvement.
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The week in science, with an extra helping of optical illusions
Some rather unusual stories topped this week in science news. For starters, a physicist described how he convinced a judge that his apparent running of a stop sign was an optical illusion. Next up, the "hologram" of Tupac turned out to be the updated version of an optical illusion that dates back about a century. That was followed by a story on the odd pattern apparent in the stats on volcanic eruptions. From there on, things got a bit less unusual, but it was still an interesting week.
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Flashback infections not waning after all; 650,000 Macs still hijacked
Analysis declaring the demise of the Flashback Mac backdoor has been greatly exaggerated, said researchers with a Russia-based antivirus firm, who on late Friday estimated there are 650,000 unique OS X machines currently infected by the malware.
The estimate by Doctor Web is in stark contrast to analysis provided Wednesday by Symantec, which showed the number of compromised systems had dropped from more than half a million to about 140,000. Following the release of the latest Doctor Web estimate, Symantec updated its post to say company researchers now believe their servers "are receiving limited infection counts" for the malware.
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Venture Capital slightly down in Q1 2012, while Splunk IPO surges
Despite what you might read on sites like TechCrunch on a daily basis, where million dollar deals get tossed around like the merry go, venture capital is actually down after the first quarter of 2012. According to figures published late Thursday by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, 758 companies received just $5.75 billion, or about 11 percent lower than Q1 2011's $6.41 billion.
SquareTrade, an extended warranty services company founded 13 years ago in San Francisco picked up a cool $238 million during the past quarter, the largest single deal over the first three months in 2012. The second highest was Sapphire Energy, a San Diego-based company that "creates algae-based fuel," with its $144 million deal announced earlier this month.
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Privacy experts warn that new car black box bill doesn't go far enough
There's currently a bill pending in Congress, known to those inside the Beltway as MAP-21, which would "reauthorize Federal-aid highway and highway safety construction programs." But the part of the bill that has gotten the attention of privacy and tech activists is Section 31406, which says, "beginning with model year 2015... new passenger motor vehicles sold in the United States [will] be equipped with an event data recorder that meets the requirements under that part."
Last month, the bill passed in the Senate as S. 1813, where its House equivalent, H.R. 14 is likely to come up for a vote in the coming months. While some conservative news websites have pre-emptively gotten their knickers in a twist about this provision, others have been quick to point out that nearly all new cars sold in the United States since 1996 already have an event data recorder (EDR). In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports current usage rates at 91.6 percent.
The EDR "must keep a record of 15 discrete variables in the seconds before a crash," says IEEE Spectrum. "Among them are the car’s speed, how far the accelerator was pressed, the engine revolutions per minute, whether the driver hit the brakes, whether the driver was wearing a safety belt, and how long it took for the airbags to deploy."
Since 2011, car manufacturers have been required to disclose the presence and physical location of an EDR in a car's owner's manual. Seven years earlier, California became the first state to mandate such disclosure.
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Canadians suing Apple, publishers over e-book prices too
Apple's e-book price-fixing battle has made its way to the Great White North. At least three lawsuits have been filed in Canada against Apple and a number of publishers for allegedly conspiring on e-book prices, largely echoing the complaints filed in the US by the Department of Justice and 16 states.
The Montreal Gazette summarized the three suits on Friday after talking with the lawyer in charge of one of the lawsuits, Normand Painchaud. Painchaud's suit, filed on behalf of Antoine Pontbriand, targets Apple for pushing publishers to move away from Amazon's popular wholesale model—where resellers get to determine the price of e-books—to the agency model, where publishers get to determine their own prices. Apple's agreement with publishers also allegedly required them to give Apple the lowest price on the iBookstore and to price-match any discounts given to other e-book resellers.
Painchaud's suit was filed in the Quebec Superior Court while the others were filed in British Columbia and Ontario. All three are asking for class-action status. There is also an ongoing investigation into Apple and various publishers in Europe.
Apple has argued that the launch of the iBookstore "fostered innovation and competition" and that it helped to break "Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry." The company apparently feels that its position is worth testing in court as well, and has so far resisted settling with the DoJ.
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Asteroid takeout—a one-billionaire mission to bring a 500-ton asteroid to Earth by 2025
Visiting (and eventually mining) asteroids is viewed by space development advocates as an imperative stepping stone to making our way out into the solar system. One group of President Obama's advisors, the Augustine Commission, counseled that a manned asteroid mission might bring the highest payoff per dollar spent in terms of science and essential skills for space exploration. A study was also commissioned to check the feasibility of bringing a small asteroid—on the order of 10,000kg—back to the International Space Station. It reported no showstoppers.
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Hacked Vita games fixed, replaced on PSN store; hackers undeterred
Remember late last month when Sony removed two PSP games from the Vita's downloadable store to limit the spread of an exploit that allowed homebrew apps on the system? Well those games have been patched and replaced on the store, though the battle to get unsigned code running on the Vita is far from over.
New versions of both Motorstorm: Arctic Edge and Everybody's Tennis were back on the Vita's Playstation Network store as of Wednesday. The reposting follows Sony's release of a new version 1.67 firmware update that patches the exploit, paving the way for existing and new purchasers to redownload the games at their convenience.
While hackers that are already running programs like the Vita Halfbyte Loader through the exploit don't have to update to the new, patched firmware, they won't be able to access certain system features, including the PlayStation Network Store, until they do.
But Sony's protection efforts seem to be amounting to barely a bump in the road for the Vita hacking community. Videos have already popped up showing homebrew code running on the new 1.67 firmware, purportedly through another downloadable PSP game that has yet to be patched. The community at Wololo.net has vowed to release the details of the new hack to the public soon, and fully expects Sony to repeat history by quickly taking down the targeted game afterward. And we go round and round and round in the circle game.
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FBI seizes activists' anonymous remailer server in bomb threat investigation
Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigations seized a server belonging to an Italian Internet service provider on Thursday as part of an investigation into a series of anonymous bomb threats sent to the University of Pittsburgh. But the groups associated with the operation of the server are calling the seizure an attack on Internet anonymity.
The server that was seized belongs to the Italian political activist Internet service European Counter Network, and hosted a node of the Mixmaster anonymous remailer service. It was seized under a search warrant served on a co-location facility in New York shared by Riseup networks (a "technology collective" that provides secure communciations for activists) and May First/People Link (an Internet co-op). The server also provided e-mail and other services to ECN's users.
According to a statement from Riseup Networks, the server hosted several websites, over 300 e-mail accounts, and as many as 80 e-mail discussion lists—including an Italian "cyber rights" listserv and discussion lists for Mexican migrant, labor and indigenous peoples' rights groups. May First/People Link Director Jamie McClelland said in a statement that "the server seizure is not only an attack against us, but an attack against all users of the Internet who depend on anonymous communication."
Because the server was just one node in the Mixmaster remailer network, which anonymizes e-mails in much the same way that the TOR Network anonymizes website visits, the members of Riseup and May First/People Link say that there's little chance that the FBI will be able to determine the source of the e-mail from forensic analysis of the server. "Taking this server won’t stop these bomb threats," said Riseup spokesperson Devin Thierot-Orr. "The network of anonymous remailers that exists is not harmed by taking this machine. So we cannot help but wonder why such drastic action was taken when authorities knew that the server contained no useful information that would help in their investigation.”
Since the server seizure, the Associated Press reports, at least six more anonymous e-mailed bomb threats have been received by the University of Pittsburgh.
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Australian High Court rules ISPs need not act on private infringement notices
The Australian High Court has ruled that Internet providers have no duty to act on the copyright infringement notices they receive from rights holders. Such notices amount to mere allegations that provide no “reasonable basis for sending warning notices to individual customers containing threats to suspend or terminate those customers' accounts,” wrote the court in its ruling today (read the court's summary). The decision marks the third consecutive loss of the case for the movie studios that brought it.
Back in 2008, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) hired a company to watch BitTorrent networks for the online infringement of films, then sent a list of suspected infringers to Internet provider iiNet. Rights holders demanded that iiNet take action, passing the warnings on to its subscribers and eventually cutting off their accounts. When iiNet refused, the studios sued, claiming that the Internet provider had effectively authorized the infringement of its users.
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Germany: YouTube must improve monitoring of copyrighted content
On Friday, the Hamburg State Court ruled that Google, YouTube’s corporate parent, will need to prevent users from re-posting flagged copyrighted material without express consent.
The court ruled that once a YouTube post has been flagged, the company must use its monitoring software to make sure that further copyright infringement does not occur, which would include live recording and alternate mixes. The ruling codifies YouTube's policies for Germany, and effectively puts them in line with existing practices in the United States.
The suit was filed two years ago by GEMA, the German royalty agency, and other music rights groups, who alleged that the video-sharing site had infringed on the copyright of seven particular pieces of music. GEMA, which represents the interests of over 64,000 composers, lyricists and music publishers in Germany alone, and over two million rights owners globally, is one of the largest such organizations in the world.
The case could have significant implications not only for Google, but also for other websites that publish music, videos, and other content online in Europe, and possibly around the world. The German decision comes just weeks after the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit partially reversed a lower court ruling that YouTube is exempt from copyright liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for the infringing activities of its users. That decision sent the case back to a lower court for a trial on the question of whether YouTube's founders were aware of specific infringing content and failed to delete them promptly.
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Chip delays point to next-gen iPhone launch around October
Will Apple return to its usual summer launch for its next iPhone revision, or will it repeat last year's fall unveiling of the iPhone 4S? The latest news from baseband supplier Qualcomm suggests the iPhone update will happen closer to October due to manufacturing delays.
Apple has switched its mobile device to use cellular baseband chips from Qualcomm, which include support for multiple standards, including 4G LTE, 3G HSPA+, and 3G EV-DO. However, the first-generation LTE chip used in the latest iPad required a significant boost in battery to maintain its usual 10-hour running time.
Qualcomm had expected to launch a second-generation design using a 28nm manufacturing process during the second quarter of this year. But those plans are now changing; the company announced during its quarterly financial results that it has run into delays ramping up the manufacturing process to meet demand.
"At this stage we cannot secure enough supply to meet the increasing demand we are experiencing," CEO Paul Jacobs told analysts on a conference call. As noted by Reuters, the short supply could slow rollouts of new LTE smartphones, including the next-gen iPhone.
The 28nm chip—the MDM9615—is expected to be significantly more power efficient than the current MDM9600 used in the iPad. That efficiency will be essential to delivering an LTE-equipped version of the iPhone as is widely expected this year.
It's possible that Apple may have been targeting October all along, but the delays from Qualcomm make that timeframe much more likely than a summer launch.
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Ars Technica seeks Senior Reviews Editor
Ars Technica is hiring again! Today I am pleased to announce an entirely new position here at Ars: a Senior Reviews Editor. Obviously we have been reviewing products for nearly 14 years, but we never tapped a single person and said: "You, go lock yourself in a room and don't emerge until you have a fully formed Voltronesque attack plan for reviews for the next 6 months!" And this is really disappointing, because all I've wanted for Natalis Invicti these past four years has been a Voltronesque attack plan for reviews.
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Googler who said "we need a license for Java" says he didn't really mean it
A Google engineer who wrote an e-mail that is now one of the key pieces of evidence in Oracle's patent and copyright infringement lawsuit against Google testified yesterday that he did not mean to imply that Google needed to obtain a Java license from Oracle or any other company.
In August 2010, Google engineer Tim Lindholm wrote an e-mail to Android chief Andy Rubin that said "What we've actually been asked to do (by Larry [Page] and Sergei [Brin]) is to investigate what technical alternatives exist to java for android and chrome. we've been over a bunch of these, and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need."
Oracle presented this e-mail as evidence that Google knew it needed a license to Java and did not obtain one. Google has argued that the Lindholm e-mail was simply a strategic discussion of what to do in response to Oracle's threat to sue.
While testifying yesterday, Lindholm was asked by Oracle lawyer David Boies if he meant that Google needed to get a license from Sun, to which he answered "that is not what I meant," according to the Wall Street Journal. At the time he wrote the e-mail, Sun was already owned by Oracle, which bought the company in January 2010.
Oracle's lawyer pressed Lindholm further, asking if he meant Google should have gotten a license from some other company. Lindholm replied "It was not specifically a license from anybody." Lindholm worked for Sun from 1998 to 2005 as a distinguished engineer, where he was one of the developers of Java, and has been with Google since 2005.
Google CEO Larry Page testified earlier this week that "we worked hard to negotiate a business license with Java," but acknowledged that "I don't think that we did" ultimately obtain a license from either Oracle or Sun. Oracle is accusing Google's Android team of infringing two Java patents, and is making a copyright infringement claim involving the alleged copying of 37 Java APIs and 11 Java source code files. The lawsuit was filed on August 12, 2010, and the trial got underway on Monday of this week.
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Hiding in the Higgs data: hints of physics beyond the standard model
The good folks at the LHC have not been shy about sharing their results. Indeed, at the end of last year, the bigwigs at CERN called a press conference to announce that they hadn't found the Higgs boson yet, but they were starting to see some signals that might be the Higgs. If only all of us in research could get away with progress reports like that.
OK, that was a very cynical opening to a story that shows the benefits of such openness. The signal seen by the LHC's CMS and ATLAS detectors hinted at a Higgs Boson with a mass in the range of 124-126GeV. But buried in the details are some numbers that, if they hold up, will be impossible to accommodate in the standard model of physics. What does any good theoretical physicist do in these circumstances? Plug the numbers into their favorite model to see if it is still in the running. Something that could not be done had CERN not been so open about its preliminary results.
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