Tissue differences within us track cancer, hinder forensics
The process of copying DNA, which has to take place every time a cell divides, has a low but measurable rate of error—in other words, it introduces new mutations. Add that to the fact that it takes a lot of cell divisions to go from a single fertilized egg to the trillions of cells present in an adult, and there's an obvious conclusion: not all of your cells have precisely the same DNA. In recent years, DNA tests of different tissues have confirmed this for a number of genes, but a new study of mitochondrial DNA indicates that significant differences between tissues can be associated with diseases like cancer, and may have implications for forensics.
Mitochondrial DNA is a small genome that is present in the organelle that helps provide ATP to power eukaryotic cells. It doesn't have access to the full collection of DNA repair enzymes that help keep the DNA in a cell's nucleus from accumulating damage, so it tends to pick up mutations a bit more rapidly. That tendency is exacerbated by the fact that there are many copies of the mitochondrial genome present in an adult: each cell can have hundreds of mitochondria, and each mitochondria carries about five to ten copies of the genome.
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Hands on: Opera 10.50 makes impressive performance gains
The Opera Web browser has taken a big step forward with the release of version 10.50, a significant update that brings some nice new features and a number of radical improvements under the hood. Opera Software contends that it has taken the lead in performance, leap-frogging its competitors. We conducted benchmarking and some hands-on tests to determine if the new Opera lives up to the hype.
Although Opera was one of the early pioneers of the browser market, it has failed to gain significant traction. It has been left behind and is increasingly overlooked as newcomers like Chrome lap it in the market share race. Opera also started to fall behind in technical areas where it used to be a leader, particularly performance and support for emerging standards. Version 10.50 puts Opera back on track with an offering that is both competitive and functionally compelling.
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Obama admin declassifies major cybersecurity plans
Bowing to pressure from activist groups and to the dictates of common sense, the Obama administration has done what the Bush administration wouldn't and declassified some general information [PDF] about the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), a sweeping program that the Bush White House launched in early 2008 to protect the government and critical civilian networks from cyberattacks. It turns out that, like at least one other effort launched by the Bush administration in the name of national security, the program was too secret for its own good.
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How Nokia helped Iran "persecute and arrest" dissidents
A new report out of Finland suggests that the country's corporate poster child, Nokia Siemens, has been involved in some pretty tawdry dealings with Iran, dealings that go beyond the company's admitted involvement with the Iranian regime.
Journalist Hanna Nikkanen quotes Nokia's Lauri Kivinen saying that "there's been this perception internationally that we've supplied them [Iran] with internet surveillance equipment, but this is not true. The statement was made on February 20, 2010, but Nikkanen obtained leaked manuals to the equipment in question and concluded, " The surveillance made possible by the Nokia Lawful Interception Gateway (LIG) extends to mobile internet usage. Either Kivinen was lying or his knowledge of his company's core competence field isn't quite adequate."
Do the deals made in Espoo lead directly to arrests in Tehran?
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feature: How-to: real-world dates with the iPhone SDK
When you're programming for the iPhone, time plays an important role. The core NSDate class could be refined a little in how it approaches many common tasks. Did two time events happen within the same hour? Does a given date represent a time today, or yesterday? Ars looks at this problem by building out a set of classes inspired by work done on the iPhoneSDK e-mail list by iPhone Developer Bryce Wolfson. Here, we build these ideas out, starting from scratch and pushing the concept even further, to provide a handy set of date methods and properties that you can use in your own application
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Latest MacHeist bundle brings even more software on the cheap
The folks behind the scenes at MacHeist are at it again, this time with a promotion they call the nanoBundle 2. The software bundle includes five Mac apps for $19.95 with the possibility of two more being unlocked if certain sales figures are met. The retail value of all the applications, including the two that are currently locked, is over $260. Once again, the team is giving a portion (25 percent) of all sales to a charity of your choice. You can choose from a list of 11 at checkout.
The bundle is what we have come to expect from the folks at MacHeist: a couple apps you may never use, one or two that you will use once, and two or three that may find their way into your everyday workflow. Included this time around are MacJournal, RipIt, Clips, CoverScout, and Flow. Tales of Monkey Island will be unlocked when 50,000 bundles are ordered, and RapidWeaver will be unlocked at an undisclosed number of sales (which will be revealed after ToMI is unlocked). Each one of the included applications retail for more than the $19.95 asking price for the bundle.
I don't have any firsthand experience with any of these applications, but I can say that at least one current and one one former colleague here at Ars swear by MacJournal for all of their writing needs. CoverScout seems like a useful utility that fills album artwork gaps in your iTunes library and, if you have been looking for an FTP client, it may be worth at least checking out Flow.
If you are worried about the unlockable applications, we should note that, in the history of MacHeist, the entire bundle has always been unlocked regardless of sales figures. The bundle will be on sale through March 9.
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Desperate cities beseech St. Google: bless us with thy fiber
Forget "Topeka"—as of yesterday, Topeka, Kansas will be referred to as "Google, Kansas" for the month of March.
Bizarre publicity stunt? Sure, but it's got nothing on the time in 1998 that Topeka became the US launch city for Pokemon games from Nintendo—and changed its name to "ToPikachu" (groan) for the day. At least this time, the city has a serious goal: get Google to bring in a 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home network.
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Beaten and bloodied, Real agrees to settle RealDVD fight
The RealDVD soap opera is finally over: RealNetworks has settled its litigation with the movie industry and has agreed to pay out $4.5 million to cover their costs related to the lawsuit. It has been a long and painful fight for the company, and RealNetworks has decided to move on rather than continue dragging it out.
Real announced the settlement late Wednesday, noting that it plans to withdraw its appeal to a recent injunction imposed by the courts prohibiting the sale of RealDVD. Additionally, Real plans to suspend its metadata service that provides cover art and other movie info to the existing 2,700 RealDVD users (who we presume to have been beta testers, since RealDVD never got to hit the market). The company has agreed not to sell or distribute any technology that would enable duplication of content protected by Content Scramble System, ARccOS, or RipGuard.
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Hands-on: Picnik is handy and inexpensive, not very Google-y
Google recently announced that it had acquired the Web-based photo editing application and website Picnik. We had briefly looked at Picnik in the past, when Flickr integrated its tools for online editing over two years ago. We decided to take a look to see how it has progressed since then, and we compared it to one of the other major Web-based editing site, Photoshop.com.
Like the Photoshop Express editing tool, Picnik is an entirely Flash-based application. You can use it without registering, but you can essentially only work on one image at a time (I learned this the hard way after trying to upload a new image during testing). A free account keeps track of your last five saved photos, and saves settings like the connection to your Flickr account. The site also constantly encourages you to upgrade to "Picnik Premium" for "as low as $2.08 a month." More on that later.
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Apple wants to extend its cloud storage to films, television
Apple's recent affair with cloud computing appears to be far from a dalliance: Apple has supposedly spoken to some of the major film studios about allowing iTunes users to store their purchased content on the company's servers, according to unnamed sources speaking to CNET. The content, including TV shows and music, would be accessible from all Internet-connected devices.
Since Apple doesn't comment on anything before it's final, we're left to speculate on the reasoning behind such a move. Some analysts say that sales of digital movies and music may have declined between 2008 and 2009 because users are becoming wary of how much hard drive space they devote to these files. This may be a bit of a reach, but HD movies can indeed add up pretty quickly for those who haven't gotten around to upgrading their computers or getting a beastly sized external drive.
Before Apple can enact cloud storage, though, it will need the approval of content creators and studios to do so. Unfortunately for Apple, many media companies have been joining forces to exert some control over digital media standards. One such group is the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, which counts among its members Twentieth Century Fox Film, Netflix, and Sony. Nonetheless, Apple is building a new data center in North Carolina that is speculated to be the future home of Apple's streaming headquarters, with streaming technology provided by Apple's recent acquisition of Lala.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball speculates that the cloud storage could mean one of two things: Apple may want to provide a sort of backup or sync point for users' media, or it wants to remove local storage for the customer entirely (thereby exercising even more control over the user's content). Removing local storage would bring the iTunes Store model dangerously close to that of Netflix and other streaming services; at a minimum, customers would no longer be able to claim even the limited ownership they have of their media in the current format.
A backup, on the other hand, might be more appealing if it's pitched the right way. As it stands, recovery of iTunes Store-purchased media is far from difficult— often a note to customer service will do the trick— but being able to get whole seasons of TV shows off a cramped hard drive without this extra step to get them back indicates that a cloud-based library- or backup-type solution might actually be helpful to some users.
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Piezo-rubber creates potential for wearable energy system
As we continue to carry around items that insist on requiring electricity to work, portable—even wearable—energy-generating systems are looking very attractive. A group of researchers has recently looked into the use of piezoelectric materials, which generate an electric field or potential when placed under mechanical stress. By placing these materials on a rubbery or flexible surface, they created a material that can generate the highest rate of energy conversion reported for similar systems. While these are still far from the market, the metrics of the flexible piezoelectrics so far are very promising.
Piezoelectric materials are not new. Certain crystals and ceramics generate electricity when mechanically stressed, but coupling these brittle items with flexible substrates is not easy— often the materials need a significant stress to produce an electric field, but that stress could break them into pieces, rendering them ineffective. There are a couple of polymer piezoelectrics that can flex, but their voltage coefficient is an order of magnitude smaller than the crystal materials.
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Valve creates fake Apple ads, teases Steam on OS X
Valve has been getting clever when its announcements recently. The company has intrigued fans by placing hints of something in an update to Portal, and gamers are still following the clues to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. The next announcement? It looks as if Steam is coming to the Mac.
Valve has been sending cryptic images to a number of sites, using its characters and properties to create faux Apple-looking advertising. Francis is talking about "hating" different, Gordon Freeman is wearing iMac colors... the list goes on.
When the beta for the new look of Steam went live, enterprising gamers found files with Mac OS X identifiers, getting the talk about a Mac-native client going. These images should get people talking even louder. With GDC right around the corner, we should expect a big announcement soon.
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Hail the victorious dead: the first section of God of War 3
Kratos is starting to look long in the tooth. His gruff growl, his single-minded pursuit of the gods, his willingness to destroy everything between himself and his goal... at the beginning of God of War 3 we already know who he is. We know how he got there. The only question for the Ghost of Sparta is simple: what next?
As God of War 3 begins, Kratos is laying siege to Mount Olympus, leading an attack on the gods using the Titans as living weapons. Zeus and a few others look down at the coming threat, and begin their defense. Riding on Gaia's back, aching for blood, it seems Kratos is close to achieving what passes for his dreams.
I'm playing God of War 3, taking notes on what I'm seeing in the first moments of the game. The first section dares the player to ask "if this is how it begins, how the hell will it end?"
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Apple stepping up pressure on music labels to snub Amazon
Apple has allegedly been pressuring music labels to ditch Amazon MP3's "Daily Deal" promotions, lest they be excluded from being promoted through the iTunes machine. According to anonymous executives speaking to Billboard, Apple has always been uncomfortable with the labels double dipping with both iTunes and Amazon, but the company has ramped up its complaints lately in an attempt to retain its lead in the online music market. Though Apple still remains in the number one spot among all music retailers, the move is indicative that Apple takes competition from Amazon very seriously.
One unnamed music executive said that, when Amazon first launched its Daily Deal section in 2008, the labels weren't included in the discussion and no one was given any special privileges for being there. Nowadays, however, Amazon has asked labels to give the company a one-day exclusive before street date in order to be featured in the Daily Deals. This was the turning point for iTunes, it seems—iTunes reps allegedly began threatening to "[withdraw] marketing support for certain releases featured as Daily Deals" if labels continued participating.
Speaking about iTunes, another major label executive told Billboard that "[t]hey are . . . diverting their energy from 'let's make this machine better' to 'let's protect what we got.'"
Some of those threats have apparently worked: labels representing Corinne Bailey Rae, Lady Antebellum, and Ke$ha have all reportedly pulled out of Daily Deals consideration in favor of staying on Apple's good side. And, because Apple's distaste for the Daily Deals at Amazon has become widely known in the industry, other labels have decided not to play the game at all by holding back their online offerings on the street date and the day before.
Amazon MP3 has been gaining popularity rather quickly since its launch in 2007, due largely to the fact that it was the first major online music store with a fully DRM-free library. In late 2008, market research firm NPD Group noted that Amazon MP3's gains were not coming at the expense of iTunes, though. Instead, NPD said Amazon had been building its own user base and that only 10 percent of Amazon's customers had previously bought through iTunes.
Last year, however, NPD released a new report saying that Amazon had already taken the number two spot in online-only music sales—iTunes sat at 69 percent with Amazon MP3 at eight percent. Even though the differences in market share were significant, Apple knows that Amazon is gunning for its spot and that it's only a matter of time before the two are on more equal footing.
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Ubuntu dumps the brown, introduces new theme and branding
Canonical has revealed the style of the new default theme that will be used in Ubuntu 10.04, the next major version of the popular Linux distribution. In a significant departure from tradition, Ubuntu is shedding its signature brown color scheme and is adopting a new look with a palette that includes orange and an aubergine shade of purple.
Ubuntu's distinctive brown look dates back to the very first version of the distribution, which was released in 2004. Although the style has evolved considerably since then and new colors like orange gradually gained a foothold in the desktop palette, brown has been the dominant color of Ubuntu's default themes for the past five years.
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First look at Halo Reach multiplayer
Here is the first video trailer of the multiplayer portion of Halo Reach. You'll get a look at some of the new features, and get a sense of what you can expect from the upcoming beta. Before we share some thoughts, give it a watch.
It looks like it will be fun to play, but it also looks like Halo with jet packs. We received a ton of negative feedback after leaving Halo: Reach off our list of most-anticipated games, but honestly... it's Halo. It will be fun, it will sell in the millions, but it seems like at this point we know what to expect.
Still, here's hoping for some pleasant surprises. The multiplayer beta begins May 3, and will be available to those with copies of Halo 3 ODST.
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