The Federal Communications Commissions’ Notice of Inquiry on content blocking and filtering devices is done, with all comments and replies to comments filed. And judging from the latest statements, a key question is whether the FCC’s required report to Congress on this matter will encourage lawmakers to expand the TV ratings systems used by the statutorily required V-Chip.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Canonical is building an Android execution environment that will make it possible for Android applications to run on Ubuntu and potentially other conventional Linux distributions. The effort will open the door for bringing Android’s growing ecosystem of third-party software to the desktop.

Google’s Linux-based Android platform is attracting a lot of attention. The new version significantly improves the platform’s reliability and could make it look a lot more appealing to carriers and handset makers. The availability of an experimental x86 port has caused some people to speculate that Android might have a place in the netbook market.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

If you’re an Ars Technica reader, you probably think you have this DTV transition thing down. How complicated could it be? All stations are shutting down their analog over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts on June 12, the government is handing out $40 coupons for converter boxes, and old analog TVs will soon display every OTA channel in even higher quality than before.

Except that it’s quite a bit more complicated than that. For instance, signal quality will decrease for some; analog OTA stations will continue to broadcast after the transition; and June 12 is not actually the national switchover date. Show of hands: how many people knew that the entire state of Hawaii made the switch back in January?

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Amazon has unveiled a new service called AWS Import/Export that is designed to “accelerate moving large amounts of data” to and from Amazon’s S3 cloud-based storage solution. Only it doesn’t rely on improved network infrastructure—instead, it relies on the good old fashioned US Postal Service.

Now, the mail isn’t exactly known for operating at Internet speeds. But the problem that arises in transmitting large amounts of data—even as networks become increasingly fast—is that our collective ability to gather data is outpacing the ability to send and receive it over a wire.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Charles Nesson is the William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and co-Founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Together with a group of his students, he is defending Joel Tenenbaum, accused in federal court of sharing seven songs some years ago through KaZaA. Due to the intense public interest surrounding the case, we have offered Professor Nesson the chance to lay out what’s at stake in his own words. His views do not necessarily reflect those of Ars Technica.

Earlier this month my students stood in the rain for nearly seven hours in the heart of Harvard Square, raising money for and awareness of a lawsuit that has captured international attention.

My client is Joel Tenenbaum, a 25-year old physics graduate student at Boston University, and he’s being sued by the music companies for sharing seven songs back in 2003 using KaZaA, a file-sharing network comprised of millions of his peers doing likewise. The case has probably spent more time being discussed among the public than it has spent before judges. And, quite frankly, that is the point.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Here’s the paradox: cable companies are roundly despised in the US, saddled with the sort of scorn generally reserved for lawyers, politicians, and the recording industry. But the services that those cable companies provide are well-loved.

Indeed, despite years of price-gouging and customer service so atrocious that techs sometime fall asleep on people’s couches, Americans love themselves some cable TV, and in fact are watching more hours of the boob tube than ever before in history. How to explain the disconnect?

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

One of the biggest disappointments for owners of the Mac mini versions that were released prior to the latest update were the numerous small barriers to using the device as a home theater PC. Sure, the mini’s form factor is perfect for an entertainment center, but the pre-2009 models don’t support HDMI, and the first generation of minis lacks even the optical outs for digital audio. Even my own Core 2 Duo-based mini with optical outs, which many originally greeted as a real HTPC from Apple, is a pain to use with HDMI. I never did get the DVI-to-HDMI cable that I bought at the Apple Store to work properly with my Pioneer plasma screen, so I gave up and just used VGA. And then there are the audio codec issues with playing MKV files, specifically MKVs with DTS—I also gave up on getting the mini’s optical out to produce anything but stereo with these files.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Mozilla Labs has announced a new project called Jetpack to provide an easy way for users and developers to enhance the Firefox web browser. Jetpack is a lightweight extension system that makes it possible to build new Firefox features with HTML, JavaScript, and other conventional web technologies and, although it’s still at a relatively early stage of development, the project already delivers some extremely useful capabilities. In this tutorial, we will look at what Jetpack has to offer, then show you how to use it to augment Firefox’s functionality.

The Firefox user interface is largely built with XUL, an XML-based user interface design language. Much like regular web content, XUL user interface elements can be styled with CSS and manipulated with JavaScript through the browser Document Object Model (DOM). These characteristics are what enable Firefox to offer its powerful extension system.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

The web has spawned all sorts of popular online activities—social networking, video sharing, blogging—but one of the more mundane has quietly grown into a leviathan. The use of Internet classified ads has more than doubled since 2005, according (PDF) to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. And if you’re looking for reasons why newspapers are struggling now, add online classifieds to the list.

According to Pew’s research back in 2005, only 22 percent of online adults used classified ads like those on Craigslist. That number grew to 49 percent in April 2009, with nine percent visiting classified sites every day.

At the same time, Pew notes that classified ad revenue for traditional newspapers has plummeted. Back in 2000, newspapers made almost $20 billion from classified ads. In 2005, they still earned a healthy $17 billion. But in 2008, newspapers earned just under a billion dollars from classifieds.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Is it safe to write about Darwinius masillae yet? It has been about a week since news first started leaking out about a fossil that some were calling a “missing link.” Last week saw a dramatic unveiling at a press conference, and the arguing hasn’t abated since.

About the only thing everyone can agree on is that the fossil that was unveiled last week is spectacular, a complete skeleton of an early primate that even preserved its last meal. As things stand, however, the scientific arguments are beginning to make it look like this episode could be called “Return of the Hobbits.” Even though the hobbits, Homo Floresiensis are tens of millions of years removed from the newly described primate, the scientific debates over their meaning seem likely to follow similar trajectories. 

It’s probably worth spending some time clarifying what Darwinius isn’t. Some of the sponsors of its unveiling, including the BBC and History Channel, would have you believe that the fossil, nicknamed Ida, is a key missing link—one that (in words that have been since been edited out of a phenomenally stupid post on the TED blog) “validates Darwin.” Darwin’s proposal that organisms are related by common descent was considered validated over a century ago—at best, Ida could have told us something was wrong with Darwin’s idea if it had, to borrow Haldane’s phrase, shown up in the Cambrian. Instead, it dates from the Eocene, right where we’d expect an early primate to appear.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Let’s not eat at that island again: What prompted the greatest migration in human history? Food poisoning, if we’re to believe one recent publication. The Polynesians covered staggeringly vast distances in the Pacific using nothing but open boats, all with no guarantee that they’d wind up someplace that was any better than the one they left. The authors of a new paper show that there are indications of abrupt shifts in diet among the occupants of many islands, which they ascribe to algal blooms that made the local seafood inedible. According to the authors, “the celebrated Polynesian voyages across the Pacific Ocean may not have been random episodes of discovery to colonize new lands, but rather voyages of necessity.”

When it comes to thieving whales, the data finds you: It’s been difficult to study the sperm whale, primarily because it’s hard to actually find them, given their tendency to spend much of their time at significant depths and away from shore. So, instead, a study of the whales took advantage of a case where the whales came to us. Apparently, the animals have figured out how to safely pluck bait of the lines of Alaskan fishing boats. Researchers were able to film this process, because the fisherman wanted to know how it was happening. It turns out the whales have learned to grab the line well upstream of the hook and shake it until the bait falls off. For their part, the researchers now have a better sense of how the whale’s vocalizations correlate with its body size, which may help them track these whales in the future.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Heading into a three-day weekend for many in the US means that readers have plenty of time to catch up on all the tech news they may have missed last week. Here to make that easier is our weekly rundown of the top ten front page stories on Ars this week:

Hands-on: Intel brings rich UI to Moblin Linux platform: Intel has unveiled the next-generation user interface of Moblin, the company’s open source Linux platform for netbooks and mobile Internet devices. We tested it on real netbook hardware so that we could give you a detailed hands-on look.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

This week in gaming we have a huge EA release hitting the BitTorrent sites a little earlier than expected, a review of a wonderfully written and designed PS3 open world title, and the return of Punch-Out!! Let’s see what the world of gaming was talking about this week.

Sims 3 leaked to torrent sites weeks before retail release: While EA may be backing off the practice of using invasive DRM in its games, piracy continues. The newest casualty? Sims 3 has leaked to the torrent sites two weeks before the game’s release.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Let’s look back at the week that was in Microsoft news:

Leaked: Office 2010 Technical Preview screenshots. A Technical Preview build of Office 2010 leaked this week, and we had a ton of screenshots up… but Microsoft demanded that they be taken down.

Fifth Laptop Hunters ad: time for a déjà vu. The fifth advertisement in Microsoft’s Laptop Hunters advertisements series seems to be a big case of déjà vu.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Just how much piracy goes on among iPhone users? Has Best Buy dropped hints about an updated iPhone in its internal inventory system? Are students still switching to Macs en masse? All these questions and more are answered in our weekly roundup of Apple news.

Mac OS X 10.5.7 update boosting netbook battery life: Scattered reports indicate that the latest update to Leopard gives a serious boost to the battery life of “hackintoshed” netbooks. It could be an indicator that Apple has something similar planned for its own machines.

Easter eggs may get apps approved, but could hurt App Store: An intrepid iPhone developer has found one potential way around Apple’s “objectionable content” rejections—by hiding the content behind a clever Easter egg. The method has merit, but could end up causing Apple and developers more headaches down the road.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

If you want to know what kind of history OQO has at Ars, just check out this Google search, which will cough up coverage that goes back to at least 2002. We’ve covered the launches of the various OQO products over the years, as the company’s handheld PCs always seemed like they were on the verge of becoming the Next Big Thing… once someone figured out a killer app for them.

Alas, the OQO—and with it the handheld “PC”—is an idea whose time never came. OQO now looks to be packing it in, and I suspect that the MID/UMPC form factor in general has lost favor within Intel as well.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Fair use has nothing to do with—and can’t be used to defend—DRM circumvention, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. The arguments were made during the RealDVD hearing in San Francisco this week, with the MPAA insisting that the DVD copying case isn’t about fair use at all, but violations of the DMCA’s anticircumvention rules. The two concepts aren’t directly related when it comes to US Copyright Law, and the MPAA wants the court to agree that DMCA claims trump all when it comes to copying content.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Visitors to the Ars Open Forum will now begin seeing a slight design refresh, which will roll out over the course of the next hour. Most of the user-facing changes are visual, beginning with a tweak to the color scheme as well as as update of the logo. The new look is slightly darker, and much more in sync with the Ars front page. The elimination of green is perhaps the most striking difference.

3. USE OF MATERIAL SUPPLIED BY YOU:

Service Provider does not assert any ownership over the information, text, graphics, photographs, images, video or audio files, or other material or content you post, upload, input, or otherwise store on the Website (collectively, “User Content”); rather, as between Service Provider and you, subject to the rights granted to Service Provider in this Agreement and our Privacy Policy, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content. For information regarding use of information about you that you may provide to, or that may be collected by, the Website, please read our Privacy Policy. In addition, please be aware that User Content you disclose in publicly accessible portions of the Website will be available to all users of the Website, so you should be mindful of personal information and other content you may wish to post. Unless expressly provided otherwise in the Privacy Policy or in this Agreement or on a specific web page, you grant Service Provider (and its hosting and other similar vendors) a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide license to use, copy, reproduce, modify, adapt, reformat, transmit, distribute, publicly perform, and publicly display such User Content in any medium (now in existence or hereinafter developed) for any purpose on or in connection with the Website, or the promotion thereof.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

GameStop is the king of game retailers. While mammoth chains like Walmart may move more product, GameStop continues to post amazing profits off the back of used game sales and high-margin accessories. The company’s first-quarter earnings are strong, but the guidance for the second quarter is rough, with the company relying on that used-game model to see it through. So what happens to the company when used game sales wither?

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has revealed that Sun plans to launch an application store for Java software. It will be modeled after Apple’s iPhone App Store and will allow users to download and install new software over the Internet. The store will use Sun’s Java runtime updater as a deployment mechanism, providing a distribution channel that Schwartz says will reach an audience of billions.

Aping Apple

The success of Apple’s App Store store has inspired other companies to imitate the concept and build their own application delivery systems. Virtually all of the major mobile vendors have launched similar services. Sun will be the latest company to jump on the bandwagon. Its new service, codenamed Project Vector, will be fully unveiled at Sun’s JavaOne event next month.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Military projects are infamous for delays and cost overruns. Ditto for just about everything we put into space. Combine the two in the form of military space programs and you would presumably have a recipe for disaster. So it’s no surprise to learn that various military satellite programs have been plagued with problems, many of which have been detailed in a report by the Government Accountability Office. For most of us, the programs in question are pretty well abstracted from our day-to-day experience, but one of them has found its way into our lives: the Global Positioning System. Has the Department of Defense’s problems put our gadgets at risk? The answer depends on how you define “risk.”

The GAO is a nonpartisan office that performs critical analyses of government programs, providing a sanity check on federal spending and management. In a report released on Wednesday, the GAO tackled the items the military puts in orbit and did not hold back on the criticism; the report is titled “DOD Faces Substantial Challenges in Developing New Space Systems,” and those substantial challenges are described in substantial detail.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson is branching out.

For years he watched with horror as the RIAA demanded money from tens of thousands of Americans, finally getting into the ring himself when federal judge Nancy Gertner connected him to Joel Tenenbaum, a young man in need of an attorney for his file-sharing suit.

The move made waves that continue to ripple—the resources and legal minds of Harvard Law would wade into the controversy and provide a much needed counterweight to the crushing RIAA litigation machine! But critics noted that this was only a single case, and it only came after years of recording industry lawsuits. Didn’t Harvard’s privileged profs need to do more?

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Gamma rays, which occupy the high end of the energy spectrum beyond X-rays, are only produced by the most violent cosmic events, such as the collapse of stars in supernovae or the collision of neutron stars. But these bursts of high-energy radiation are fleeting, and often last only seconds before fading from view. For years, it wasn’t even clear that these events even had an optical counterpart, but researchers have gradually associated these high-energy events with bodies that had been detected at visible or IR wavelengths. This approach, however, only provided static, before-and-after views of exceptional events; what scientists needed was a way to observe them as they happened. Enter NASA’s GCN, or Gamma ray bursts Coordinates Network.

The GCN really got off the ground with the launch of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, a member of NASA’s Great Observatory series that was designed to detect high-energy events. As it and other observatories went into orbit, it became increasingly possible to get near real-time positional information on gamma ray bursts and their X-ray afterglow. The GCN was designed as a way of distributing that information to other observatories as quickly as possible.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Those Google “doodles” that sometimes adorn the search giant’s homepage with clever variations on the company logo might be cute, but take a closer look. Critics charge that it’s possible to see in the sketches Google’s disdain for (take your pick) America, Muslims, Christians, Christmas, and creationism.

Take this week’s unveiling of the darwinius masillae fossil called Ida. Our own science editor, John Timmer, calls the fossil’s big reveal a tremendous bit of hype not fully justified by the science, but some press accounts have talked Ida up as a key missing link in human evolution.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

In one corner, the Free Software Foundation, headed by bearded guru (and sometime songwriter) Richard “I don’t use a Web browser” Stallman. In the other, the recording industry, where beards only exist as wispy examples of hipster irony (unless you’re Kenny Rogers) and where the songwriting skills are (slightly) better. What would happen if the two groups ever met in court over a file-sharing case? Now we know.

The FSF has weighed in on the highly-publicized Joel Tenenbaum case, where a graduate student stands accused of sharing copyrighted music files for years on P2P networks. Tenenbaum is defended by Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, but the Free Software Foundation has also shoved its oar into the water and is paddling around a bit, trying to make some waves.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Nokia has been hard at work building Maemo 5, the next major version of its Linux-based mobile platform. This new version, which is codenamed Fremantle, brings a user interface overhaul and some compelling new capabilities. Although Maemo 5 is still at the beta stage of development and Nokia has not yet announced when it will ship on actual hardware, details are already emerging about the version that will come next, which is codenamed Harmattan.

Nokia first published the preliminary roadmap for Harmattan last year at the Maemo wiki but disclosed very few additional details. Earlier this week, alleged screenshots of Harmattan and a considerable amount of new information about the platform were leaked and published by MobileCrunch. According to their informant, Harmattan could arrive at the end of 2010 and is potentially going to be available on a smartphone device. The informant also claims that Nokia’s long-term plan is to eventually ditch its Symbian-based S60 platform and adopt Maemo across its handset line.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Move over cable TV, because the Internet is taking a step towards becoming a true cable replacement. TV streaming site Hulu plans to offer a live stream of a Dave Matthews Band concert on June 1—the site’s first-ever live music concert. While the site has previously streamed certain live events, such as the 2008 presidential debates, the Dave Matthews Band concert marks the beginning of live-streamed entertainment, chipping away at the appeal of paying a monthly cable TV bill.

The live concert will begin at 9:00 pm ET on June 1 at Hulu. Because of the partnership, Hulu will begin offering various music videos leading up to the show, and after the concert is over, the site will continue offering on-demand streaming access. “Dave Matthews Band is honored to partner with Hulu in this groundbreaking venture,” Dave Matthews Band manager Coran Capshaw said in a statement.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

With great power comes great scrutiny. That line may not have appeared in any movies, but it’s the lesson that Google executives seem to be taking home from the extensive attention it’s receiving from governments and private interests, all of which are concerned that its dominance of the search and advertising business may allow it to control related markets. In recent days, the company has been doing its best to play nice, consulting with regulators, settling with litigants, and explaining to anyone who will listen that it’s really just a giant enabler of good things.

The latest instance of this approach came in the form of a modification of Google’s settlement of a lawsuit brought by book publishers and copyright holders, a deal that has raised concerns by everyone from librarians to the Department of Justice. Now, Google has negotiated changes to an agreement it has with one library, that of the University of Michigan, that’s participating in its book digitization project. That document is written in high legalese, and assumes you’ve got a copy of the initial document that’s being amended; fortunately, the Michigan Libraries have seen fit to summarize it.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Americans are more inclined to stay home and play video games than go out to see a movie, according to research by the NPD Group. The research firm found as part of its 2009 Entertainment Trends In America study that only 53 percent of Americans have gone to a movie theater in the last six months, compared to 63 percent who have played a video game in that time. Neither activity came even close to the penetration of music listening, though gamers certainly do their fair share in “stimulating” the economy.

NPD noted that gaming isn’t just limited to the console—it’s spreading to new mediums as of late, with 10 percent of US users playing video games at a social networking site. Another five percent have paid to download a game from the Internet, too—a number that was two percent higher than a year ago.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has settled a GPL compliance lawsuit with network hardware maker Cisco. Under the terms of the settlement, Cisco will make a monetary donation to the FSF and appoint a Free Software Director to conduct continuous reviews of the company’s license compliance practices.

The FSF filed a lawsuit against Cisco last year, alleging that Linksys—which is owned by Cisco—routinely failed to adhere to the requirements of GNU’s General Public License (GPL), under which Linux and other open source software programs are distributed. The GPL stipulates that recipients of a software program must be permitted to study, modify, and redistribute the underlying source code. According to the FSF, Linksys often declined to provide source code upon request or failed to provide the complete source code of GPL-licensed programs that it integrated into its networking hardware products.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

The latest report from ratings firm Nielsen reveals that the number of web and mobile video viewers is up, and the time spent watching video on the internet is increasing. But the overwhelming majority of video is still viewed on a television. And Americans are watching more TV than ever.

About 131 million people are watching an average of three hours of video per month via the Internet, according to Nielsen’s data. That’s up from 116 million watching a monthly average of two hours this same time last year. Additionally, about 13 million mobile phone subscribers—up 52 percent from nearly 9 million last year—report watching an average of 3.5 hours of video a month on a mobile phone (time measurements are not available from Q1 last year).

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Bionic Commando has many, many loyal fans, so a remake of the classic arcade and NES title was a good business decision. The final product that hopes to bring the characters and concepts into the modern day may leave even the faithful out in the cold, however. The main hook the game offers—swinging across large environments with the character’s bionic, zip-line of an arm—is done well… mostly. Everything else drags the game into mediocrity.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Bionic Commando has many, many loyal fans, so a remake of the classic arcade and NES title was a good business decision. The final product that hopes to bring the characters and concepts into the modern day may leave even the faithful out in the cold, however. The main hook the game offers—swinging across large environments with the character’s bionic, zip-line of an arm—is done well… mostly. Everything else drags the game into mediocrity.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Getting fiber to rural communities can be cost-prohibitive, but Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) has a plan: force the federal government to build fiber conduit into the sides of all new road projects, making it dirt cheap to string new fiber all interstates when necessary.

Eshoo introduced her plan last week in the form of the Broadband Conduit Deployment Act of 2009—a bill title mercifully free of the acronym scourge that has so afflicted Congress of late.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Back in April, the Department of Energy issued a Notice of Intent of its plans to use stimulus money to fund smart grid projects. In order to get things moving quickly, the DOE had a short timeframe for public comments. Nevertheless, a variety of companies and groups provided their input before the deadline, and the DOE has already acted to implement some of their suggestions. We’ve gone through some of the feedback provided to the DOE and talked with Loraine Hariton, Director for Public Policy at Echelon and part of the Demand Response and Smart Grid (DSRG) Coalition, to get some feel for how the industry views the DOE’s proposed funding.

According to Hariton, the focus of the feedback, both from her organization and others, is to help ensure that the DOE spends its money in a way that’s more consistent with the overall goals. “We’re saying ‘Let’s enable what the stimulus package is trying to do,” she said, “let’s focus on that.” And, while there is some obvious self-interest and difference in focus, that seems to be a reasonably accurate statement.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Like everything else these days, cars are getting increasingly computerized, with embedded microprocessors controlling everything from the fuel-air mixture in the engine to the air temperature in the car. That trend will almost certainly accelerate as automakers tune their engines for mileage and increase the use of hybrid and plug-in hybrid technology to meet the new fuel efficiency standards. That increased reliance on technology, however, has brought fragmentation to the repair business, which now requires specialized hardware and software to interface with a typical vehicle. A bill introduced in Congress would ensure that automakers would provide equal access to those specialized tools.

The bill states up front that regular maintenance is critical for everything from basic safety to minimizing the environmental impact of vehicles. It also argues that car owners are entitled to the service provider of their choice when it comes to the repair and maintenance of their vehicles, and that competition among service providers helps ensure that everyone has viable choices in this regard. The threat to this comes from the fact that automakers can provide discriminatory access to the tools required for maintenance, providing them only to authorized service providers or refusing to allow individual car owners to purchase them.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

We’ve all run into it before—you want to buy a certain widget, only to find that every single retailer seems to carry it for a certain price, with little variation among them. It’s a result of vertical price-fixing, where manufacturers set minimum prices for retailers to sell their products. So much for a good deal, right? eBay and other retailers are now fighting to get Congress to overturn a 2007 Supreme Court decision allowing vertical price-fixing, arguing that it hurts smaller Internet resellers who are trying to compete with the big dogs.

eBay, Burlington Coat Factory, and the Federal Trade Commission pushed a Senate subcommittee this week to reconsider the decision in Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS, saying that the practice is driving prices up in the US and is hurting competition. The team also argued that the decision goes against the entire history of antitrust law in the US and that it should be overturned.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

YouTube is the latest target for pranksters looking to amuse themselves. Today, May 20, has been deemed “Porn Day” by denizens of 4chan and eBaum’s World, with an organized group of users from the sites uploading video clips of explicit, adult content en masse in an attempt to overwhelm the search results. In actuality, it appears that content was prematurely uploaded on the afternoon of the 19th. YouTube has already taken some steps to fight back, but it’s disturbingly easy to find stuff you really don’t want to see, and the uploaders are changing tactics.

As one might expect, the pornographic clips are being uploaded without any indication that they’re for adult eyes only, making them easy to happen upon by casual searchers. As the upload-fest has progressed, users are also uploading what seems to be legitimate content, but is in fact a porn video that simply has 20-30 seconds of non-porn content (a newscast, an interview) at the beginning.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

California’s failed video game censorship law is headed to the Supreme Court. The bill, which was passed by the state assembly in 2005 with the support of Governor Schwarzenegger, aimed to criminalize the sale of violent video games to minors. It was promptly challenged in court by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), a video game industry trade group. After the US District Court threw it out Governor Schwarzenegger sought an appeal, which was rejected by the 9th Circuit. Schwarzenegger announced on Wednesday that he won’t back down and intends to take it to the Supreme Court.

The courts have consistently rejected laws that restrict video game sales. Such laws are fundamentally in conflict with the First Amendment rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution. Despite the evident futility of defending these laws in court, states have attempted to do so and have paid the price. When the states lose, the courts inevitably order them to foot the bill for the ESA’s legal fees. This costly burden on taxpayers collectively adds up to well over a million dollars.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarian revolution” has just revolted its way into cell phone design, producing a US$13.95 handset/MP3 player in Venezuela with Chinese parts. Chavez has big plans for the phone, which he wants to export to the world, but much of the talk so far has focused on its name, “Vergatario”—as one YouTube commenter put it, “creo que la traducion corecta es: Big Wang.”

“Verga” is a Venezuelan slang term for “penis.” The fact is glossed over in some Spanish newspaper accounts, which say that the phone’s name only signifies “excellence.” But, as The Guardian points out, the root word retains prominence. And Chavez can’t keep himself from chuckling when he says it.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Google may want to store every bit that you have ever flipped, but it faces the problem that current data storage technology uses a relatively low-density, 2-D approach. Of course, holographic data storage has been touted as the answer to this problem ever since, well, since the first hologram was demonstrated. Despite its potential, holographic data storage has failed to gain market share. This is because the current generation of optical and magnetic storage media are actually simple, robust, and just good enough to hold the competition at bay.

The upshot is that, until magnetic bits can no longer be shrunk and multilayer optical discs reach their limits, any new technology has to have all the good features of current data storage techniques and be better. A bunch of Aussies think they might have hit the sweet spot with a new multilayer optical storage medium that has the potential to store data at around 1.1Tb/cm³. A standard DVD clocks in at 51MB in a square centimeter in each of its layers.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Craigslist is fed up with the attorney general of South Carolina running his mouth about the classified site’s adult services listings. Just days after demanding an apology from Henry McMaster, Craigslist has filed a lawsuit against the AG in the US District Court for the District of South Carolina.

Announced Wednesday morning on the Craigslist blog, the lawsuit seeks a restraining order preventing McMaster from filing charges against Craigslist, as well as a ruling that the site is not violating the law.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

In many ways, Cole MacGrath, the protagonist of Sony and Sucker Punch’s latest title, follows the Spider-Man model of being a superhero. You have to have amazing powers, and the people have to hate you for it. To be fair, at the beginning of inFamous, the people have a good reason to hate you. You see, the city has been reduced to piles of rubble by the explosion of a bomb. Untold numbers of people are dead. The government has quarantined the area. The police are outgunned, and the gangs control the streets with very little to fear.

So why are you stuck in the middle? Simple. You delivered the bomb.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

While GameStop, Amazon, and smaller independent stores are duking it out for your game trade-ins, we reported Monday on a kiosk spotted at a Walmart location that automated the act of trading in games. The gamer who tried to use the kiosk had quite the unhappy experience, and the gaming blogs ran with the story that Walmart may be getting into the used game business. We caught up with the company behind the kiosk, e-Play, to get all the questions answered.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Given cable’s long history of exorbitant rate increases and atrocious customer service (it’s routinely ranked one of the very worst industries in the US), it’s hard to blame people for being skeptical about cable’s moves to start capping broadband access—especially when costs are dropping and revenues are rising. But the head of cable’s Washington lobbying effort tells Ars that cable isn’t out to price-gouge its way to massive profit margins. Instead, the industry seeks to provide Internet access in a way “that’s best for the consumer.”

And everyone who has already decided that it’s “flat rate pricing or bust!” needs to pipe down, adopt the scientific method, and wait until all the data is in.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Forgetting which password you used for a rarely used shopping site can be a pain, one that’s often made worse by the fallback authentication method. If you’re like me, you’re often stumped by which of your past pets you considered your favorite two years ago, or whether you put a “the” in front of your favorite sports franchise when first registering. Those sorts of failures should be worth it, since they add an extra layer of security to the password recovery process. 

Except they don’t.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Intel has announced the availability of the first Moblin 2 beta release. This version introduces the platform’s innovative new user interface. Although there are still some rough edges, it delivers impressive usability and aesthetic sophistication. I tested the beta on my Dell Mini 9 netbook so that I could get a real hands-on look at the new version.

Moblin is Intel’s Linux-based based mobile platform for netbooks and MIDs. It is heavily optimized for the Atom processor and is designed to work well on small form-factor devices. The project is gaining significant traction among Linux distributors and many have partnered with Intel to participate in the development effort. Individual distributors will integrate Moblin components into their own netbook platforms or build their own derivatives.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Intel renewed its netbook push Tuesday with the formal announcement of its next-generation Atom platform, codenamed Pine Trail. The details of Pine Trail, including the late 2009 launch date, had already been widely leaked, and today’s disclosure provided little new information. But for those who haven’t followed the Pineview leaks, I’ll break down the details of what was announced.

Pine Trail’s CPU, Pineview (confusing, I know), is a more highly integrated version of Atom that puts the memory controller and GPU on the same die as the CPU. As the diagram below shows, this move will shrink the number of chips in the Atom platform from three to just two.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Two months after being sued by Discovery Communications for patent infringement related to its Kindle e-book reader, Amazon has fired back with a handful of patent infringement counterclaims of its own. The online retail giant accuses the cable network responsible for the likes of Mythbusters and The Deadliest Catch of infringing on its patents covering various aspects of e-commerce.

In a filing on May 15, first reported by TechFlash, Amazon denies infringing on any of Discovery Communications’ patents, arguing that they should be invalidated due to the existence of prior art. Amazon also busts open its massive patent portfolio, saying that Discovery is infringing on Amazon IP covering an “Internet-based customer referral system” in its online store.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

There are many, many ways that the Wii reboot of the Punch-Out franchise could have gone wrong. For fans of the series, there was only one way to do it right. Luckily, Next Level Games understood exactly what made the classic so beloved, and stuck with the primary mechanics from the original title. That’s right, two buttons and a digital pad are all you need.

You can also play the game with a Wiimote and nunchuck, punching at the screen and using the analog pad of the nunchuk to control whether your punchers go high or low. Right or left and you dodge, push up without a punch and you block. Do you gain anything by using the waggle? Nothing much, although if you get into it, you can expect to break a nice sweat for your efforts. This is how I played, dancing on the balls of my feet, trying to knock Piston Honda on his ass.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica