Mozilla has announced the availability of Fennec alpha 2, a new prerelease of the mobile Firefox browser. This version includes some important performance optimizations that make the browser more responsive.
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The RIAA sued Project Playlist in April for its “alternative” approach to collecting music from around the web and allowing users to stream and share it. Despite Project Playlist finally cutting its first licensing deal with a major label, the RIAA has now succeeded in plugging two of the service’s largest outlets: Facebook and MySpace.
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A major new feasibility report on mandatory Internet filtering in Australia finds that the program can be implemented, but only with huge expenses, legal uncertainty, performance problems, and the possibility of a new “arms race.”
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If we’re improving education in science and technology, a big part of that should be improvements in pre-college computer science education, according to the Association for Computing Machinery.
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Ars talks to the MPAA and learns that “graduated response” isn’t just for music; the movie business has been in talks with ISPs for some time, and trials are already underway.
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The developers behind Merb and Ruby on Rails, two popular open source Ruby web development frameworks, have put their differences aside and will be unifying their efforts.
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That’s it, says Stanford Professor Lawrence Lessig, time to kill the FCC once and for all.
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Compressing air into former mines and other chambers could allow wind generation plants to store their off-peak power for later extraction.
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Notebooks recently overtook desktop PCs in the US, and a new report says the trend went global in Q3 as well, thanks to the rise of the netbook.
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The EPA has tightened up the rules for its Green Power Partnerships, which allow private companies to get certified for filling their energy needs with renewable power.
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In the ongoing legal battle between Apple and unlicensed Mac clone-maker Psystar, Psystar has answered to Apple’s amended complaint riddled with factual errors. Is Psystar hoping to become the new SCO?
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In a positive twist, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) has announced it intends to partner with the same group of MIT students it once sued in an attempt to prevent them from revealing massive security flaws in the MBTA’s contactless payment system. No amount of work is going to fix the MIFARE Classic cards that the system uses, but partnering with security researchers is an infinitely better tactic than just attempting to gag them.
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Europeana, the European Union’s online digital library, has been brought back online nearly a month after massive server overloads. It’s not officially relaunching yet, but you can still poke around during off-peak times.
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A new Google gadget allows for quicker access to one’s documents living in the Google Docs cloud. It’s a good step towards making the service more transparent and accessible, but Google still faces a tough battle for office suite market share.
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The group in charge of managing the FCC’s proposed public safety broadband network wants the Obama administration to fund its plan via economic stimulus money. Not everyone is convinced.
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A spammer responsible for sending millions of e-mails marketing herbal products has been fined in New Zealand after he settled a case against him, although his two cohorts are appealing. He still faces charges in the US, so his piddling NZ fine may not be the last.
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Sprint’s plans to build a first-mover advantage when it comes to rolling out the next generation of wireless technology may have hit a speed bump in the form of a suit that says the company, along with Clearwire is violating a set of six patents.
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It’s time to help make Christmas the best it can be for children who can’t be home for the holidays. For the second year Ars Technica wants to help raise money for Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity, but we need your help. How to give, and what you can win, inside.
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CableCARD was meant to free us from the shackles of cable operators’ set-top box offerings. Instead, that’s the only place it ends up.
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Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, has announced plans to develop a new cross-desktop visual notification system. A video mockup released by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth shows that the new notification system is designed to be less intrusive and will support sophisticated visual effects.
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The cybersecurity trend lines and aggregate data reports for 2008 are available from some firms, and the results show a burgeoning market that rocked and reacted to many of the same forces as more legitimate occupations. Unfortunately, the US has taken the #1 spot as a malware-hosting country; hopefully we’ll manage to lose that particular distinction by this time in 2009.
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In this opinion piece, former FCC Chief Economist Thomas Hazlett uses the bursting of the municipal WiFi bubble to argue that the FCC’s proposed smut-free wireless broadband network is doomed from the point of conception.
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The RIAA made headlines last week when it announced an end to rampant P2P lawsuits in favor of working on a kinder, gentler tactic of communicating with ISPs. However, the first of what is sure to be many questions on this new process has already surfaced: who’s going to pay to track down these users?
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The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, better known as the OECD, thinks that the growth of the IT economy slowed dramatically in 2008, and may decline next year as the full impact of the general economy hits the sector.
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Team Ars Technica needs your spare CPU cycles. Pledge now and join the Million-Ars Club!
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There might still be a few of you who still watch VHS tapes, but the rest of the world has moved on. Now, the last major VHS supplier is ditching its remaining inventory after the holidays to focus on bargain DVD sales.
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One could say that Christmas has come early to the Ars Technica Community. We’re movin’ on up, but not to the East Side.
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Let’s not leave on a down note! It’s time to take a look back at 2008 and share the games and experiences that pleasantly surprised us. This is a very good time to be a gamer.
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The US government isn’t any happier with ICANNs plan to open 200-800 gTLDs for sale to the highest bidder than anyone else. The federal response to the proposal falls just short of recommending ICANN throw it out altogether.
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The first feature film from Massify, a community that helps independent film makers to share ideas and collaborate on projects, is set to debut at HorrorFest next month. It’s a major win for the democratic power that the Internet can bring to projects like this.
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The Australian government’s Department of Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy says that live testing of its net filtering plan is on track to commence before the end of the year, even though the ISPs that are interested in taking part haven’t been told if they will yet.
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There are few citizens who are fans of red-light and speed cameras, but high school students are beginning to use these controversial cameras to their advantage. With the help of a printer, some glossy photo paper, and a license plate template, these students have learned that they can trick speed cameras into sending tickets to their peers.
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Will Julius Genachowski take over the FCC next year? And who is this guy, anyway?
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Leaders from government and the private sector gather in D.C. for cyberwargames.
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After a year’s worth of DRM blunders that set off protests from PC gamers, EA has unleashed some of the back catalog of its big PC games on Valve’s Steam platform with no third-party DRM.
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Talk about mixed signals—just after two prominent members of the House tell FCC Chair Kevin Martin to table his smut-free broadband proposal, two others tell him to make it happen.
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As a buzzword, “cloud computing” has been beaten to death. But behind the hype, there really is something there. HP’s Russ Daniels and I recently sat down to talk about what that “something” is, and what it means for the way we think about software in the internet age.
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One of the highest-profile cyberbullying cases in Internet history has sent lawmakers scurrying to create and update laws to include electronic communications. In Missouri, the updated law has resulted in seven cases being filed since August, although critics feel that the updated state law won’t do much to stop future cyberbullies.
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Warner wasn’t able to reach new revenue-sharing terms with YouTube during contract renegotiations, so it’s yanking all of its previously sanctioned music videos and any user-generated content that featured its artists’ tracks. It’s another stark reminder that digital licensing still has a lot of growing up to do.
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Times are tough, unless you’re in the netbook business. Netbook sales are the one bright spot on the computing landscape right now, as consumers are fleeing higher-end products for these low-cost devices. There’s only one major computer maker who’s missing out on all the fun.
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Ars talks to RIAA President Cary Sherman about the music industry’s new graduated response program, and we also confirm that one major US ISP is not involved.
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Activists and analysts seek to model the shape of online opinion networks.
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An open source software tool called ElectionAudits was adopted by Colorado’s Boulder County to conduct one of the largest risk-limiting post-election audits in history.
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Not only does the Parents Television Council dislike YouTube’s “sexually suggestive” fare, it wants something done about the comments posted below the vids.
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In this week’s top Microsoft news, we cover Windows 7, Internet Explorer, Windows Live Essentials, Windows Live Hotmail, and the Windows Live Solution Center.
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This week in gaming and geekery brought us the revelation that Microsoft knew about the Xbox 360 disc scratching issue, some hilarious PlayStation advertising, news that Tron 2.0 would have at least one girl in attendance, and more.
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This week in science from the minds at Nobel Intent brings you science from the far reaches of the universe to the inner workings of the human mind, along with green chemicals that go boom, and green processing for nanotechnology.
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Apple’s ditching Macworld, and lots of people would rather give up sex than the Internet. Catch up with the week’s top stories from Ars.
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We recap the week’s hardware news. Can you believe Phantom Entertainment actually convinced investors to give them more money to make its Lapboard?
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Once again, Internet traffic to the Middle East, Africa, and Asia has been compromised following damage to an undersea cable.
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