Yesterday's Delta IV-Heavy rocket launch: a personal impression
I went to see the Delta IV-Heavy rocket launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc, California on January 20. With the capacity to lift 23 tons of payload to low-Earth orbit, the rocket was the biggest to launch from the west coast of the United States to date, and it was a spectacular show.
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"Crime is crime": meet the Internet police
John Morton, head of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), wants netheads to know something about his agency: they are "not the police of the Internet." So what's the story with our headline? Morton made his comment about not policing the 'Net at the end of speech this week in which he talked about nothing except policing the 'Net. His agency may not be the police of the Internet, but it's certainly one of them, with its investigations "increasingly directed toward Web-based criminals." And Morton says that's a good thing.ICE doesn't get much coverage in the tech press, being more concerned with illegal immigration and shipping containers full of Coach knockoff handbags. But that changed in 2010 as ICE launched "Operation In Our Sites," which is "spelled s-i-t-e-s as a purposeful play on words."
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New alleged evidence of Android infringement isn't a smoking gun
Patent reform activist Florian Mueller has published what he believes to be new evidence of copyright infringement in Google's Android software platform. He has found files in the Android code repository that have Sun copyright headers identifying them as proprietary and confidential.A close look at the actual files and accompanying documentation, however, suggest that it's not a simple case of copy and paste. The infringing files are found in a compressed archive in a third-party component supplied by SONiVOX, a member of Google's Open Handset Alliance (OHA). SONiVOX, which was previously called Sonic, develops an Embedded Audio Synthesis (EAS) framework and accompanying Java API wrappers which it markets as audioINSIDE.
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10 billion pairs of particles entangled with single radio wave
Researchers have managed to entangle ten billion pairs of particles at once, according to a letter in Nature this week. The group of scientists used phosphorus-doped silicon, a microwave pulse, and a radio pulse to achieve the record number of simultaneous entanglements. The process worked on 98 percent of the possible pairs and, while control over their states is still somewhat limited, the authors note that mass entanglement could be an important step for quantum computing.The experiment took place in a cube of silicon spiked with phosphorus ions, with the phosphorus's nuclei serving as one half of the entangled pair and one of the phosphorus' electrons (donated in a bond to a silicon atom) as the other half. The phosphorus donors were ideal for this, because materials doped into semicondunctors like silicon are able to hold particles in entangled states for seconds at a time. Other entangling materials, like photons, see the entanglement decay within a few thousandths of a second or less. The researchers needed all the extra time they could get to herd all of the particles into behaving in a similar way.
The researchers pulsed the particles with a microwave to set their wavefunctions to a particular state, and then sent a second radio frequency pulse to entangle the pairs. When they went to extract the particles' final state, they found that 98 percent of the attempted pairs had entangled, and the process worked on up to ten billion pairs at once.
Of course, creating the entanglements is only the first step—it's reading and writing to the entangled particles that will allow them to serve as quantum bits, or qubits, in quantum computers. Still, the ability to create all these pairs—the storage equivalent of 2.5 gigabytes—will be something future quantum computers will probably need to do.
Nature, 2011. DOI: 10.1038/nature09696 (About DOIs).
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XBMC now running on jailbroken Apple TV or iDevice
The open source home theater software XBMC has made the jump from the desktop to both the Apple TV and Apple's mobile devices running iOS. Getting XBMC to work on iOS required hacking into some private Apple APIs, though, so don't expect it to be available via the App Store anytime soon.Scott Davilla, accomplished Apple TV hacker and lead developer of XBMC for Mac OS X, told TUAW that enabling XBMC to run on iOS hinged on the discovery of a hardware decode API called VideoToolBox by GStreamer developer Ole André Vadla Ravnås.
"It's the API Apple 'should' have exposed instead of VDADecoder," Davilla explained. Also known as the Video Decode Acceleration Framework, it has been an official developer API since Mac OS X 10.6.3. However, "VDADecoder is just a thin wrapper around the VideoToolBox API," Davilla said.
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Catholic bishops, Protestant leaders: we need net neutrality!
On January 18, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter to lawmakers outlining top Catholic legislative priorities. The letter features well-known Catholic positions, including concerns on abortion and marriage law, support for universal healthcare, advocacy for "poor families and vulnerable workers"—but it also stresses the bishops' robust support for net neutrality."As the Internet continues to grow in its influence and prominence in Americans’ lives, we support legislation and federal regulations that ensure equal access to the Internet for all, including religious and nonprofit agencies, as well as those in more sparsely populated or economically distressed areas," said the letter. "True net neutrality is necessary for people to flourish in a democratic society."
This isn't an outlying position among US Christian leaders, either. The National Council of Churches, which represents everyone form the Episcopalians to the Presbyterian Church (USA) to the Orthodox Church in America to the United Methodists, issued a net neutrality resolution of its own on October 18, 2010.
"We jointly urge the Federal Communications Commission to take any and all action to adopt network neutrality, including reclassification of broadband services as a telecommunications service, as a fundamental and necessary part of the framework for all forms of broadband Internet service that will protect the freedom of every individual and group to see and hear and send any information they desire," said the resolution.
While the NCC skews liberal, even (some) conservative Protestants have jumped on the net neutrality bandwagon. The Christian Coalition, which is currently working for the "repeal of ObamaCare," has been a famous supporter of net neutrality for several years. This has been a controversial stand in conservative circles, but as far back as 2007, the Coalition was making "the conservative argument for net neutrality."
The reasons for this support aren't hard to find; churches simply don't have the financial resources of massive corporations, and they worry that they'll be priced out of using the Internet in effective ways. "This is what the net neutrality debate is really about, at its core," said the Coalition three years ago. "The ability of diverse voices and alternative views to continue to be heard, whether or not it is profitable for Viacom or Disney to air these views. It's about the ability of conservative activists and candidates to communicate directly to our members and supporters without paying an additional toll to Verizon or AT&T."
The NCC had similar worries. "If vital net neutrality protections are not assured by the FCC, large for-profit companies providing Internet services may have a commercial incentive to favor their own content over others and as a result could limit the activity and equal access of members of faith communities and other non-commercial organizations online," it said.
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If you can't buy it, build it: Google Offers to battle Groupon
Trying to buy Groupon is so passé—why not do what everyone else is doing and launch a deal site of your own? That's apparently what Google has decided to do after its failed bid to purchase the popular daily deal site. The service will be called Google Offers, the company confirmed, but the service is still in the testing phase and it will be a while before customers get to start signing up for yet even more deals.
Unofficial confirmation of the service came on Thursday via Mashable, which obtained leaked documents from the search giant. The documents showed a pretty standard Groupon competitor, complete with a localized deal of the day depending on the user's location and powered by Google Checkout. They also revealed that Google plans to pay 80 percent of participating business' share of the revenue three days after the deal runs, with the remaining balance being held for 60 days to cover refunds.
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Duke Nukem Forever arrives May 3; new trailer inside
The skies have opened, the gods have smiled, and 2K Games has announced an actual release date for Duke Nukem Forever. The game is for real, people have played it, and we know when it will go on sale to gamers who have waited over a decade to play the official sequel to one of the most-loved PC games ever released. You'll be able to buy your copy on May 3 in North America, and May 6 internationally. The game is coming to the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.Also, there is a new trailer. Take a look.
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How much power do our genes have over our friendships?
We've all heard the axiom "birds of a feather flock together," and the saying seems to be true for humans: we tend to associate with people that we resemble. Obviously, this kind of similarity can result from social influences, but can it also extend to our genes? A group of scientists attempts to answer this question in a new study in PNAS this week, but their findings have been met with a healthy dose of criticism.Two long-term datasets were used as sources of data for this study, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (known as Add Health), and the Framingham Heart Study Social Network (abbreviated as FHS-Net). These studies investigate some of the causes and risk factors associated with health, including social influences. Therefore, each of these studies asks respondents for information about some of their friends.
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Blizzard offers StarCraft 2 modder tour, encouragement, love
Ryan Winzen is a mod-maker who was happily working on a StarCraft 2 modification called World of StarCraft until Blizzard had the video of the game removed from Youtube. He pleaded with Blizzard for its official blessing to work on the game with that title, and the company has reached out to Winzen to offer him a tour of their facilities, while encouraging him to continue work on the mod."It was never our intention to stop development on the mod or discourage the community from expressing their creativity through the StarCraft II editor. As always, we actively encourage development of custom maps and mods for StarCraft II, as we've done with our strategy games in the past," Blizzard's Bob Colayco said in a statement.
Colayco explains why the video was removed from YouTube. "With the name so closely resembling that of World of Warcraft, we wanted to discuss the title of the mod with the developer, and as part of our routine procedure, we contacted YouTube to request the video be removed while that discussion took place."
It seems likely that Winzen is going to be asked to change the name, and then go on his merry way with the mod. "Like many players in the community, we're looking forward to seeing the continued development of this mod, and as part of our ongoing discussion, we've extended an offer to the developer to visit the Blizzard campus and meet with the StarCraft II development team," Colayco continued. "As always, we appreciate all of the efforts of the talented and enthusiastic mod-making community, and we look forward to seeing and playing what they create using the StarCraft II editor in the future."
If you're ever offered a chance to take a look around Blizzard's offices, you take it. Winzen seems to have gotten the industry's attention; he was also offered an interview with Riot Games.
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Mozilla blocks Skype add-on: caused 33k Firefox crashes in a week
Mozilla announced yesterday that it will block the Skype Toolbar add-on for Firefox and remotely disable it for existing users. Mozilla was forced to take this extraordinary measure after discovering that severe bugs in the add-on are crippling the browser's performance and stability.The Skype Toolbar add-on is developed by Skype and comes bundled with the company's popular chat program. The add-on appears to be injected into Firefox automatically during the Skype installation and update process. Its primary function is to identify strings of text in Web pages that look like phone numbers and transparently convert them to links that can be used to automatically dial a call with Skype.
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HTML to lose the version number
In a blog entry Thursday, HTML specification editor Ian Hickson announced that the HTML specification will no longer have a version number attached. The WHATWG version of the specification will be treated as a "living standard" that will evolve organically as additions are integrated, sort of like a rolling release model.The need for clear HTML versioning has diminished and is arguably superfluous. Browser vendors tend to implement new HTML features at their own pace regardless of the status of the standardization process. Web developers will adopt the new features when there are mature implementations available across enough mainstream browsers. This used to be a glacially slow process, but it has accelerated considerably over the past few years. A significant number of HTML 5 features are already in widespread use despite the fact that the new version of the standard hasn't been officially finalized.
"In practice, the WHATWG has basically been operating like this for years, and indeed we were going to change the name last year but ended up deciding to wait a bit since people still used the term 'HTML5' a lot," Hickson wrote. "However, the term is now basically being used to mean anything Web-standards-related, so it's time to move on!"
The decision to remove the version number is little more than a move to strip away a small bit of unnecessary bureaucracy and acknowledge how the HTML standards ecosystem actually functions. Hickson notes that W3C, which is technically responsible for publishing the HTML standard, will likely have "snapshots" that reflect stable milestones of the ever-changing WHATWG version.
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IFPI: Fighting music piracy is a government job
It's official: online piracy has only one real solution, and that solution will be taxpayer-funded. International music trade group IFPI today issued its annual report on digital music (PDF), and remarks from CEO Frances Moore sum it all up: "2011 is the year when governments can turn the tide."Yes, the industry can sue (and win against) Limewire, Mininova, and The Pirate Bay, but it doesn't seem to matter who gets shuttered; piracy persists. Fortunately for IFPI, "there were encouraging signs in 2010 that the tide of government opinion is turning" in the direction of "three strikes" laws.
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Honest raptors refuse to lie about their fitness
Many animals use signals to indicate their general level of fitness, giving potential suitors a hint of how their offspring might fare. For the most part, the effort and energy involved in producing these signals provide an accurate read on fitness. But other species use indirect signals to advertise themselves to mates, which leaves open the possibility of cheating, of advertising a fitness that isn't really there. Researchers have now identified a predatory bird that advertises its fitness using white plastic (no paper, please), and is so scrupulously honest that, when researchers added some additional plastic, most of the birds removed it. The bird in question is the black kite. The kite chooses its nesting location based on the quality of the nearby food sources, and then defends it, as other kites will challenge a breeding pair for a prime location. The best locations tended to be occupied by fit breeding pairs, to the exclusion of juveniles or older animals.
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Hands on: touch-sensitive Jawbone Era has serious face appeal
Let’s start with a disclaimer—we don’t know any folks who really want to wear a Bluetooth headset while they’re talking on their phone. And if we did, we would probably tell them to get over themselves. When we’re walking down the street and see someone rocking the headset as they cruise around, not even on a call, well, we’re not that kind of nerd.That said, there are times where a headset is unavoidable—especially if you commute in a car. So, as much as you might want to avoid the ‘tooth, you’ve got to deal with it.
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Second iOS 4.3 beta picked apart for clues about upcoming iPad 2
Apple has released iOS 4.3 beta 2 to developers, and some digging into various system files has already revealed clues to new features that may be coming to the next-generation iPad. It also hints at new social media services, Ping notifications, and a possible February 9 announcement date for the next-gen iPad hardware.
Providing some clues about future camera features for the iPad is an image used to show a preview of what a new wallpaper image will look like on your home screen. That image contains icons for what looks like FaceTime, Camera, and PhotoBooth applications. This suggests that the upcoming iPad hardware revision, expected in the next couple months, will indeed have at least a front-facing camera if not also a rear-facing camera. Other system files suggest that PhotoBooth will offer image filters like Thermal Camera, Mirror, X-Ray, Kaleidoscope, and more.
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Why is Verizon suing over net neutrality rules it once supported?
In the wake of Verizon's decision to sue the FCC over its net neutrality rules, it's worth taking a look back at the rules Verizon actually supported last autumn. In an effort to head off the FCC effort, Verizon huddled quietly with Google and produced a "suggested legislative framework" for net neutrality. It looked quite remarkably similar to the rules eventually adopted at the FCC—the rules that Verizon has chosen to sue over now as being "contrary to constitutional right" and "otherwise contrary to law."Excerpted below are the main Verizon/Google provisions, followed by their matching item in the FCC's "open Internet" order from December. All are exact quotes.
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Google cofounder Larry Page moves into CEO role
There's movement at the top of Google, and cofounder Larry Page will be taking over daily operations at the search giant. No longer will Eric Schmidt sit in the CEO position—he has decided to step into the role of Executive Chairman, while Page slides in as CEO. The other Google cofounder, Sergey Brin, will "devote his energy to strategic projects, in particular working on new products."Google made the announcement as part of its quarterly earnings report for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2010. The company reported revenues of $8.44 billion during the quarter, an increase of 26 percent from the same quarter in 2009, with Google-owned sites generating 67 percent of total revenues. But forget the company's clearly successful quarter: all the discussion is about the shift in Schmidt's position.
"For the last 10 years, we have all been equally involved in making decisions," Schmidt wrote in a post on Google's Blog, referring to himself, Page, and Brin. "This triumvirate approach has real benefits in terms of shared wisdom, and we will continue to discuss the big decisions among the three of us. But we have also agreed to clarify our individual roles so there’s clear responsibility and accountability at the top of the company."
As a result, Page will lead product development and technology strategy within Google and take over Schmidt's day-to-day role as CEO starting April 4. As Executive Chairman, Schmidt will focus on deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership, in addition to being an advisor to both Page and Brin.
On the followup call to discuss Google's quarterly earnings, Schmidt told analysts that the decision to switch things up would result in "even better success for the corporation." He assured the group that "Larry is ready," and that the move would help clarify how decisions are made within Google.
In a more amusing (but slightly less reassuring) tweet, Schmidt declared that "[d]ay-to-day adult supervision" would no longer be needed at Google. Does this mean the inmates are now running the asylum? Possibly, but Brin hinted during the call that he had "things" up his sleeve that he'll introduce soon—if that means new toys, then we're all ears.
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Verizon sues FCC, says "net neutrality lite" rules illegal
Verizon dropped a bomb on the FCC's net neutrality plans today, asking a federal appeals court to "vacate, enjoin, and set aside" the signature accomplishment of FCC Chair Julius Genachowski.The company loves the open Internet, it says, just so long as no one can, well, enforce that openness. Verizon's deputy general counsel said in a statement today that "Verizon has long been committed to preserving an open Internet and meeting the needs of our customers... [But] we are deeply concerned by the FCC's assertion of broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband networks and the Internet itself. We believe this assertion of authority goes well beyond any authority provided by Congress, and creates uncertainty for the communications industry, innovators, investors and consumers."
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Google Voice tests $20 number porting
One of the main reasons people cite for not using a service like Google Voice is that they don't want to give all their friends and family Yet Another New Number. That may soon be a concern of the past, however, as Google has begun allowing users to port their numbers to the telecom service. But you'd better hurry if you want to get in on the action, because Google says the offering is a limited-time test.
Some Google Voice users began noticing a link in their settings offering to port over a different number to their Google Voice accounts. The settings link points to a page that checks whether the number you want to use is portable, and if it is, you can pay $20 through Google Checkout to get the process going. So, if you have been holding off on using the service because you'd rather keep the cell phone number you've been toting around for 10 years, now's your chance.
Google confirmed that it had turned on number porting, but hinted that it may not be permanent until more kinks are worked out. "We're continually testing new features to enhance the user experience," the company told PC Magazine. "For a limited amount of time, we're making the Google Voice number porting process available to users."
For the uninitiated, Google Voice is great for call filtering, forwarding, and screening to as many or as few numbers as you'd like. You can also listen in on voicemails as they're being left, and get mostly-decent text transcriptions of voicemails sent to you via SMS, e-mail, or push alerts. And now with native apps available for iPhone and Android users, the service is even more useful, as it lets you send and receive text messages from your Google Voice number, and even place calls from that number instead of a number you may want to hide.
Although some of our readers noted back in 2009 that call porting was possible under some conditions, Google hasn't opened it up to the public at large until now.
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Chinese green group criticizes Apple over supplier conduct
Apple isn't as transparent as it could be when it comes to the effects its suppliers have on the environment and worker safety, according to a Chinese environmental group. The Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) published a report (Chinese-language PDF) on Thursday ranking Apple and 28 other companies when it comes to taking responsibility for supplier conduct, with Apple coming in dead last on the list.Apple "only care[s] about the price and quality and not the environmental and social responsibility issues. In some ways they drive the suppliers to cut corners to win their contracts," IPE spokesperson Ma Jun told Reuters. "We've found that Apple isn't honoring its commitment in ensuring its supply chain's work safety and environmental responsibility and giving dignity and respect to the workers."
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Final Nintendo 3DS hardware: immersive screen, middling battery
Nintendo finally let us have a good look at the 3DS hardware. The reps working the floor at a New York press event said the consoles were in their final version, and they looked and felt good—we found the 3D wasn't disorienting or painful in short stints. But some of the other specs like battery life, reasonable playtimes, and camera resolution seemed to be sensitive subjects. No brand reps would speak on the subject of battery life, instead pointing us toward the fact sheet given to the press. The sheet states that players will get 3-5 hours out of the battery when playing 3DS software, and 5-8 hours when playing Nintendo DS software. They note that the figures will differ depending on screen brightness and "what functions of the Nintendo 3DS system are used." So a game that doesn't use the bottom screen much, for example, may get you longer playtimes. Unfortunately, the battery takes as long to charge in its cradle or through an AC adapter as it does to run out: about 3.5 hours, Nintendo says. It seems like five hours for 3D play is a hard limit, but we'll be sure to do extensive testing once our review hardware arrives.
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Infectious cancer cells hop hosts, steal replacement parts
On its own, cancer is a pretty disturbing disease. But over the last few years, we've identified an even more disturbing ability: in at least two cases, cancerous cells have evolved into a communicable disease. Now, researchers studying one of these infectious cancers have found that it's apparently stealing part of its host's cells when it infects them.Currently, we know of two cases of transmissible cancer. In one case, a lethal oral cancer is pushing the Tasmanian devil towards extinction. But the other case is both less lethal and wider reaching: it strikes domestic dogs on all continents, but only causes a transient infection. The disease, canine transmissible venereal tumor, appears to have originated a few thousand years ago, based on the differences between its genome and that of domesticated dogs.
It's not quite clear what to call a cancer that's evolved in isolation from its host for thousand of years and has a lifestyle closer to that of a unicellular parasite—is it a new species? The authors of the new research settle for calling it an "asexual mammalian unicellular pathogen." They were apparently studying the evolution of the pathogen by sequencing the genome of its mitochondria, organelles in each cell that carry their own DNA. You can build an evolutionary tree of an organism's history by figuring out which DNA sequences are most similar and placing them on adjacent branches.
When they tried this with the mitochondrial sequences, the tree they got was a bit unusual, in that it didn't correspond to the tree obtained using the cancer's regular, nuclear genome. In fact, the cancer samples wound up scattered within a phylogenetic tree of the cancer as a whole. The authors offer a simple explanation: cancer cells have continued to steal mitochondria for their hosts, refreshing their own supply in a process that functions a bit like replacing worn-out parts.
They note that cancers are very metabolically active, which means that mitochondria are under a bit of stress to supply the cell with fuel. That makes mutations more probable, and there is evidence that they're likely to accumulate in the cancerous cells. Should one that harms fitness predominate, the cancerous cells would seem to have no option other than to grab a replacement. It would seem likely that, under these circumstances, competition between cells might allow those with harmful mutations to be weeded out, but the authors suggest that transmission between hosts might not create a bottleneck sufficient to create this sort of between-cell selection.
The cancer still seems to be evolving rapidly—the common ancestor of all the strains we've isolated is only a few hundred years old, despite the relative antiquity of the original cancer. At some point, the same lack of bottleneck that lets the mitochondrial genome go bad might affect the regular, nuclear genome of the cells. At which point we may see the cancer evolve a way to start stealing genes from the host it effects.
Science, 2011. DOI: 10.1126/science.1197696 (About DOIs).
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Apple "screwing" new iPhones out of simple DIY repair
Apple is making it more difficult for iPhone 4 owners to perform simple DIY repairs by replacing common Phillps head screws with a rare "pentalobe" screws. While newer iPhone 4s have included the screws from the factory, it is also Apple policy to replace any Phillips head screws with the new pentalobe screws whenever an iPhone 4 is taken in for service."This screw head clearly has one purpose," iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens told Ars. "To keep you out."
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Playing Nintendo 3DS games: 3D galore, but few new concepts
Nintendo presented demos of several games created for its upcoming 3DS platform at its Wednesday press event in New York. While many were still only in short (but polished) demo form, we were able to get a pretty good sense of what the 3DS has to offer in terms of gameplay—a few seemed in great shape, but the selling point for many other titles seemed merely to be the addition of 3D graphics. One of the games that seemed to make the most of the 3DS's features was Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition. The game has a new dynamic camera mode that favors an over-the-shoulder vantage point of your fights, but will whip down and around your character during aerial attacks, or overhead for low ones—a great effect in 3D. The standard side-scrolling mode is still available as well; when players fight over WiFi or watch matches as spectators, they're able to choose the viewing mode they prefer.
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