L'Insomniaque

There isn't even an official standard for DDR4, the next generation of computer memory technology. But memory manufacturers are already shipping samples of the first DDR4 memory units, and preparing to produce them en masse. On May 7, Micron joined the field, announcing it had released its first fully functioning DDR4 memory product for testing. Micron says its product, a 4-gigabit x8 DDR4 memory unit developed in partnership with its Taiwanese partner Nanya, will ship on a variety of memory module configurations by the end of the year. Micron's competitors in the space are also preparing to ship their own DDR4 modules in that time. That means that memory modules based on the faster, more power efficient memory technology could start shipping  on servers (where its benefits are in the greatest demand) by 2013—if there are any CPUs ready to handle them. Read the comments on this post

Five years ago, the social gaming company Zynga was cruising along with a fairly standard IT infrastructure. Servers were racked and stacked in a retail data center where Zynga rented space. Customer demand for games like Zynga Poker, launched in 2007, was being met. Then along came FarmVille. After the game's 2009 release, 10 million users were hitting FarmVille servers within six weeks, and 25 million within five months. Read the comments on this post

A recent report from the Congressional Research Office (PDF) suggests that China's restrictive policy on rare earth mineral exports isn't going to change anytime soon. The report comes on the heels of a renewed call for a rare earth production boost in Europe and a dispute settlement filed in March by the United States, Japan, and the European Union with the World Trade Organization over alleged unfair trading practices concerning rare earth minerals. "From 2002 to 2011, the value of US rare earth imports from China rose by 1,376 percent," the CRS report states. "From 2010 to 2011, the value of US rare earth imports from China increased by 305 percent." For a few years now, there has been a lot of talk about rare earth minerals. You know, the ones that aren’t particularly rare, but are nevertheless crucial for many products. Demand for them has shot up. They’re needed in the production of hybrid cars, missiles, and smartphones. And it doesn’t help that China, the world’s largest producer, announced in 2010 that it was cutting export of its domestic supply. This has since led to newfound attention on mines and processing in California, Estonia, Malaysia, and Australia. Not surprisingly, the rest of the world isn't very happy at China. The country produces 97 percent of the world's rare earth minerals—according to the United States Geological Survey, that translated to $3.4 billion of the stuff in 2011. Read the comments on this post

This summer, Microsoft is launching a new green energy initiative in which all of the company's direct operations, "including data centers, software development labs, air travel, and office buildings," will go carbon neutral. The program will begin in July, at the start of Microsoft's 2013 fiscal year, and includes a company-wide carbon fee, whereby various divisions will be held accountable for their own energy usage. Read the comments on this post

The federal judge hearing a Massachusetts file-sharing case has struck down a proposal to send all defendants a notice urging them to contact the plaintiff to work out a settlement. The move is yet another sign that federal judges are growing skeptical of the mass copyright litigation strategy. The case involves the film Big Butt Oil Orgy 2 and a group of 39 Massachusetts residents who allegedly shared it with one another via BitTorrent. Critics of these lawsuits have long argued that even innocent defendants may be forced to settle simply to avoid the legal expense of a trial and the public embarrassment of having one's name publicly identified with a pornographic film, regardless of the case's merit. Read the comments on this post

Many in and around the video game industry have long been concerned with the way many social games seem designed to encourage compulsive spending on digital gewgaws rather than strategic gameplay decisions. Now the Japanese government looks poised to crack down on one of the more pernicious and addictive forms of virtual good sales, arguing that it runs afoul of the country's lottery laws. Read the comments on this post

Twitter has asked a New York state judge to throw out a court order requiring it to turn over three months worth of messages posted by an Occupy Wall Street protester being prosecuted for disorderly conduct. In a motion (PDF) filed on Monday in New York City Criminal Court, Twitter lawyers argued the city's district attorney's office is overstepping its authority in ordering the handing-over of tweets and other subscriber info of Malcolm Harris, whose handle on the microblogging site is @destructuremal. Prosecutors seeking the data failed to get a court warrant based on probable cause, making an order they obtained earlier a violation of federal law and the Constitution's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Twitter brief argued. Read the comments on this post

Dell has launched an experimental project called Sputnik to produce a Linux laptop that is tailored to meet the needs of software developers. The first stage of the project is a six-month exploratory effort that will pair Dell’s XPS13 Ultrabook with Ubuntu 12.04. Dell’s Barton George, who described the concept this week in a blog post, hinted at the potential for a more ambitious follow-up effort if the initial experiment succeeds. Dell’s previous Linux efforts have had mixed results. The company first began to offer Ubuntu on desktop and laptop computers in 2007 after open source advocates used Dell’s IdeaStorm website to campaign for Linux preinstallation options. Read the comments on this post

Dajaz1, the hip hop blog whose domain was seized and then held for a year by the United States government before being returned without any charges filed, came out swinging against the government and the Recording Industry Association of America on Monday. In a blog post, Dajaz1 attorney Andrew Bridges called the government's legal position "stunning" and compared the dajaz1.com domain's year in legal limbo to a "digital Guantanamo." Bridges pointed out that Dajaz1's alleged crime consisted of posting four links to infringing files hosted by third-party websites. "Seizing a blog for linking to four songs, even allegedly infringing ones, is equivalent to seizing the printing press of the New York Times because the newspaper, in its concert calendar, refers readers to four concerts where the promoters of those concerts have failed to pay ASCAP for the performance licenses," he argued. Read the comments on this post

The second phase of the Oracle v. Google trial got into full swing today, following yesterday's verdict, which left Oracle with a partial and inconclusive victory over Google. The subject matter has moved from copyrights to patents, and the next phase of the trial will deal with the "virtual machines" that both Android and Java use to speed up their operations. In opening statements, Oracle's lawyer said that Android's "Dalvik" virtual machine infringes two patents that originated at Sun but are now owned by Oracle, US Patents No. 6,061,520 and RE38,104. Read the comments on this post

Myspace has agreed to settle charges that it misled users about sharing their personal information with advertisers, the Federal Trade Commission announced Tuesday. The FTC alleges that Myspace allowed advertisers to combine profile information with browsing information in ways that Myspace's privacy did not cover. Each Myspace user has an assigned persistent unique identifier, called a "Friend ID," associated with their profile on the site. Even protected profiles contain a certain amount of personal information, such as display name, full name, age, gender, and profile picture (though users had no incentive or obligation from Myspace to make this true to life). Myspace's privacy policy states that personally identifiable information would not be used in a way inconsistent with the purpose for which it was submitted. The company also says that data used to customize ads would not identify users to third parties, and that it wouldn't share non-anonymized browsing activity. But in 2009, researchers at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and AT&T Labs noticed that Myspace was handing the Friend IDs associated with visited pages to advertisers. Advertisers could then associate the browsing data with the users' full names, and associate broader browsing activity with that personal profile. The FTC found this behavior in violation of federal law, and found that as a result of this data sharing, Myspace had lied about its compliance with the US-EU Safe Harbor Framework. Myspace's settlement is not an admission of guilt, but the company must now establish a "comprehensive privacy program" and submit to third-party audits for the next 20 years. It seems that this won't do much good, as Myspace is already on a significant decline—in short, we'll be surprised if the site lasts that long. Facebook and Digg were implicated for similar activity at the same time as Myspace, almost exactly two years ago in May 2010. Facebook settled with the FTC on the matter in December 2011, also committing to the 20-year third-party evaluation plan. Read the comments on this post

A US-based advertising firm has promised to stop bombarding Facebook users with fraudulent messages in exchange for Washington State officials dropping a lawsuit that claimed the practice violated a federal antispam statute. Adscend Media also agreed to pay $100,000 in attorneys' fees to settle charges Washington state's attorney general brought in January claiming the misleading messages violated a federal law known as the CAN-SPAM, short for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing. The settlement also requires Adscend Media to regularly monitor its affiliate partners to make sure they're in compliance as well. According to documents filed in US District Court in Seattle (PDF), Adscend Media used a proprietary network of affiliates to target Facebook users with unsolicited messages that had been manipulated to appear as if they originated from friends. Carrying headlines such as "OMG! See What Happens to his Ex Girlfriend" the bait pages required users to click buttons that masqueraded as age verification checks from Facebook but really caused the messages to get posted on users' Facebook News Feeds to allow them to spread virally. The messages never disclosed that they originated with Adscend Media for purposes of driving traffic to the websites of its customers, Washington officials alleged. The company had a gross monthly revenue of about $1.2 million, and 80 percent of its income was derived from Facebook solicitations. Facebook recently settled a civil lawsuit with Adscend Media over the same practice. Adscend Media didn't admit any wrongdoing in Monday's settlement. Security researchers have dubbed attacks that cause Facebook users to unwittingly endorse websites and products "Likejacking." Read the comments on this post

Facebook users spend more time on the social network on their mobile phones, where monetization and revenue is far weaker than on the desktop site. According to digital analytics firm comScore, Facebook users on mobile phones—those running iOS, Android and BlackBerry OS—spent 441 minutes per month on the social network during the month of March. This compares with 391 minutes of usage via the traditional desktop site. That's nearly an extra hour each month—time that advertisers are eager to tap into. comScore's findings demonstrate just how important the mobile market will be to Facebook's continued success. In the company's February IPO filing, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that "if users increasingly access mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, our financial performance and ability to grow revenue would be negatively affected." Facebook isn't sitting idly by, however. It acquired mobile photo-sharing app Instagram last month for a whopping $1 billion in cash and company stock, a move viewed largely as an attempt to bolster the company's mobile strategy. Instagram passed 50 million users earlier this month, and is said to be adding an additional 5 million users each week. In an interview with Bloomberg, Richard Nunn, media analyst at Charles Stanley, said that this so-called "dwell time"—how long users spend on Facebook each month—is a "big factor for advertisers, and therefore, revenue." Last year, the company introduced sponsored posts into users' mobile news feeds, but Nunn believes it is only a matter of time before users see full-fledged advertising too. Read the comments on this post

Facebook users spend more time on the social network on their mobile phones, where monetization and revenue is far weaker than on the desktop site. According to digital analytics firm comScore, Facebook users on mobile phones—those running iOS, Android and BlackBerry OS—spent 441 minutes per month on the social network during the month of March. This compares with 391 minutes of usage via the traditional desktop site. That's nearly an extra hour each month—time that advertisers are eager to tap into. comScore's findings demonstrate just how important the mobile market will be to Facebook's continued success. In the company's February IPO filing, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that "if users increasingly access mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, our financial performance and ability to grow revenue would be negatively affected." Facebook isn't sitting idly by, however. It acquired mobile photo-sharing app Instagram last month for a whopping $1 billion in cash and company stock, a move viewed largely as an attempt to bolster the company's mobile strategy. Instagram passed 50 million users earlier this month, and is said to be adding an additional 5 million users each week. In an interview with Bloomberg, Richard Nunn, media analyst at Charles Stanley, said that this so-called "dwell time"—how long users spend on Facebook each month—is a "big factor for advertisers, and therefore, revenue." Last year, the company introduced sponsored posts into users' mobile news feeds, but Nunn believes it is only a matter of time before users see full-fledged advertising too. Read the comments on this post

When race cars whiz around a track at 200 miles per hour, driving ability isn’t the only factor that determines who wins the race. Behind the scenes, in mobile data centers tucked into semis and behind laptops in the pit area, people like Chuck Houghton use tech to make decisions that can determine whether their car crosses the finish line first. As race engineer for the No. 4 Corvette C6.R of the American Le Mans Series GT class, Houghton and his squad build sophisticated algorithms to crunch the reams of data spit out by modern race cars. When it’s race time, Houghton is on scene, running calculations that determine when to make changes to car variables like "ride height" or when to let drivers know that they're running a few seconds behind. “It’s kind of like hanging a carrot out there in front of a horse,” Houghton says. Read the comments on this post

Apple and Samsung have both filed motions offering to cut the number of asserted patent claims in half. The purpose of cutting the claims was to keep a proposed July 30 trial date for the companies' first US lawsuit over their mobile device patent disputes. Apple continues to contend that Samsung is a "copycat," while Samsung claims Apple is merely trying to "compete through litigation." Judge Lucy Koh told both companies during a recent case management meeting that the number of asserted claims was far too large, suggesting that forcing a jury to wade through them all would be akin to cruel and unusual punishment. Koh said the number of claims would have to be reduced significantly in order to proceed with a proposed July 30 start date for the trial. While Apple and Samsung filed a joint motion to reduce claims last Tuesday, neither party seemed willing to budge very much. However, the separate motions filed this week cut the number of asserted patents and other rights nearly in half. Apple cut out four of eight asserted patents against Samsung, three of seven asserted design patents, and four of nine trade dress claims. It also dropped all of its asserted trademark claims. Samsung has cut its asserted patents from 12 to 7, though many of the remaining patents are deemed "essential" to wireless 3G standards. Continued assertion of those patents against Apple could constitute abuse of its agreement to license such patents on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The company is under a formal investigation by the European Commission for such alleged abuse. It originally appeared that Apple may have been more interested in a broad and decisive win against Samsung rather than a quick resolution of the case. However, its proposal filed on Monday suggested that Samsung's continued infringement is costing Apple billions in sales while Samsung continues to gain market share lead over Apple. The two companies are preparing for a court-recommended mediation later this month. While Apple CEO Tim Cook has expressed an interest in settling the dispute out of court, he said that he didn't want Apple to become "the developer to the world." "I've always hated litigation and I continue to hate it," Cook said during Apple's most recent financial results announcement, but "we just want people to invent their own stuff." Read the comments on this post

The iOS 5.1.1 update released on Monday doesn't just fix a handful of feature bugs—it also patches a security flaw that allowed an attacker to display the URL of one site in Mobile Safari while loading another, potentially tricking users into visiting malicious sites. MajorSecurity researcher David Vieira-Kurz demonstrated a proof of concept for the flaw in March of this year, which caused a new window to open when clicking a specially crafted link. The new window showed the user that it was loading (for example) Apple's website, but actually loads another page that gave the appearance of loading Apple's site via an iframe. Vieira-Kurz said the vulnerability was related to the way Mobile Safari handles JavaScript's window.open() function, which could be used to trick users into handing passwords or credit card information over to attackers. The flaw was present in iOS 5.0, 5.0.1, and 5.1, but is fixed in 5.1.1, as highlighted by Kaspersky Lab's ThreatPost blog. In addition to a fix for the URL spoofing flaw, iOS 5.1.1 also patches a vulnerability used by researcher Sergey Glazunov at CanSecWest this year, which could lead to a cross-site scripting attack, as well as one submitted by Adam Barth and Abhishek Arya of the Google Chrome Security Team that could lead to arbitrary code executions. Read the comments on this post

AT&T has started to embrace the idea of shared family data plans, Ralph de la Vega, President and CEO of AT&T Mobility, told CNET on Tuesday. With this new interest, the company is playing catch-up with Verizon, which announced its interest in family data plans last year. De la Vega had previously been less than enthusiastic about shared data plans, saying that it would be tricky to support the feature in customer service while making sure the company could still turn a profit on it. It appears the company has worked out those kinks for the most part and is well on its way to rolling out the shared plans. "I'm very comfortable with the plan that will be offered to our customers," de la Vega told CNET at the CTIA trade show in New Orleans. De la Vega did not speak to the timing of the rollout, pricing, or any other further details. Verizon announced in May 2011 that it felt a future with family data plans was inevitable. "I think it's safe to assume that at some point you are going to have megaplans and people are going to share that megaplan based on the number of devices within their family. That's just a logical progression," said Fran Shammo, Verizon's CFO. A leak by Engadget in January showed that Verizon intends to charge for one communal pool of data to be shared among family plan members, with an additional $10 access charge for each device. Obviously, Verizon was, and is, in no hurry to get the shared plans out to customers, but a newly competitive AT&T may light a fire under its cell towers. T-Mobile has thus far remained mum on the issue of shared data, but Sprint does currently offer a shared family data plan starting at $129.99 a month (Sprint is also the only remaining carrier with any kind of unlimited data plan). Neither company has directly addressed the issue of sharing data service with non-voice devices that customers must buy separate data plans for, such as tablets. We have our fingers crossed that our iPads, Galaxy Tabs, and Xooms will somehow be involved. Read the comments on this post

The world inhabited by dinosaurs was typically a hot one, with high levels of greenhouse gasses, lots of water vapor, and no permanent ice sheets. And, according to a new estimate published in the journal Current Biology, the dinosaurs themselves may have contributed to their hothouse conditions. (Note to the editors of Current BIology: I'm not sure that the Jurassic really qualifies as "current.") A team of British researchers has put together various estimates of the features of the Jurassic's large herbivores, such as population density, typical body mass, and so on. Combined with an estimate of how much methane is emitted by a typical herbivore, these numbers suggest that the dinosaurs were pouring out enough methane to help the greenhouse effect keep the Earth nice and toasty. Read the comments on this post

An industry group that aims to make WiFi access from smartphones and other devices as simple as connecting to a cellular network will begin certifying WiFi network equipment and end-user devices for the new connection method next month. The WiFi Alliance said its Passpoint program aims to make WiFi a “true extension of service provider networks,” letting users roam from one hotspot to another with no manual effort, just as cell phone owners already switch seamlessly from one cell tower to another. Read the comments on this post

Nine months ago, a tremendous controversy began with a simple e-mail: "Gentlemen, The BART Police require the M-Line wireless from the Trans Bay Tube Portal to the Balboa Park Station, to be shut down today between 4 pm & 8," wrote Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) construction supervisor Dirk Peter on August 11, 2011. (The Transbay Tube runs beneath the Bay, moving people to and from San Francisco; Balboa Park is a residential city neighborhood.) "Steve," the note continued, "please help to notify all carriers." The message was addressed to Steve Dutto of Forzatelecom, a wireless project management company situated across the Bay in Oakland. BART requested the wireless network shutdown in response to an expected station demonstration that day to protest the killings of Oscar Grant and Charles Hill by BART officers a few days earlier. Read the comments on this post

It looks like the analysts were right in their suspicions that EA and Bioware's The Old Republic MMO is already losing subscribers just a few months after its late 2011 launch. In an earnings report issued today, EA announced that the game currently has 1.3 million active subscribers, down nearly 25 percent from the 1.7 million active subscribers reported in March. Read the comments on this post

On Monday, the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles approved Google’s license application to test autonomous vehicles on the state’s roads. The state had approved such laws back in February, and has now begun issuing licenses based on those regulations. The state previously outlined that companies that want to test such vehicles will need an insurance bond of $1 million and must provide detailed outlines of where they plan to test it and under what conditions. Further, the car must have two people in it at all times, with one behind the wheel who can take control of the vehicle if needed. The Autonomous Review Committee of the Nevada DMV is supervising the first licensing procedure and has now approved corresponding plates to go with it, complete with a red background and infinity symbol. "I felt using the infinity symbol was the best way to represent the ‘car of the future,’" Nevada DMV Director Bruce Breslow said in a statement. "The unique red plate will be easily recognized by the public and law enforcement and will be used only for licensed autonomous test vehicles. When there comes a time that vehicle manufacturers market autonomous vehicles to the public, that infinity symbol will appear on a green license plate." Eagle-eyed Ars readers: if you spot this car in Nevada, snap a pic and let us know! Read the comments on this post

A huge number of websites around the world are endangered by an unpatched vulnerability in the PHP scripting language that attackers are already trying to exploit to remotely take control of underlying servers, security researchers warned. The code-execution attacks threaten PHP websites only when they run in common gateway interface (CGI) mode, Darian Anthony Patrick, a Web application security consultant with Criticode, told Ars. Sites running PHP in FastCGI mode aren't affected. Nobody knows exactly how many websites are at risk, because sites also must meet several other criteria to be vulnerable, including not having a firewall that blocks certain ports. Nonetheless, sites running CGI-configured PHP on the Apache webserver are by default vulnerable to attacks that make it easy for hackers to run code that plants backdoors or downloads files containing sensitive user data. Read the comments on this post

Prior to this spring, the Heartland Institute was a relatively obscure think tank that was primarily known for organizing an annual conference of people who take issue with mainstream climate science. That changed when an environmental researcher tricked the group into sending him internal documents, setting off a public drama that ended up leaving both parties worse off (Heartland lost sponsors, while the researcher had to resign a number of his positions). Apparently, the experience left Heartland craving more public controversy, and it responded with what can best be described as a bit of trolling. In advance of this year's climate-skeptic conference, Heartland paid for a billboard that showed a picture of the Unabomber accompanied by the text "I still believe in Global Warming. Do You?" In a press release, Heartland said future iterations would feature Charles Manson, Fidel Castro, and possibly Osama bin Laden. Instead, the campaign was stopped after 24 hours as prominent conference speakers threatened to cancel and a number of the Institute's financial backers threatened to depart. Read the comments on this post

A security flaw in the most recent version of OS X Lion, 10.7.3, can allow anyone with access to system logs to gather passwords to decrypt legacy FileVault home directories or access remote home directories of networked users. Though the flaw was first discovered a whopping three months ago, it has been widely publicized after a security researcher posted details of the flaw to a cryptography mailing list on Friday. While only users with admin or root access could access the passwords stored as plain text in the log files, it's possible that malware could be created to look into the file for any passwords in order to access personal data.The security implications are even worse, though, according to security researcher David Emery. "The [system] log in question can also be read by booting the machine into firewire disk mode and reading it by opening the drive as a disk or by booting the new-with-Lion recovery partition and using the available superuser shell to mount the main file system partition and read the file," he wrote to the cryptography e-mail list on Friday. "This would allow someone to break into encrypted partitions on machines they did not have any idea of any login passwords for." Read the comments on this post

When we first heard rumors last week that Microsoft was planning to offer a cheap Xbox 360 and Kinect bundle to customers who committed to two years of a new monthly online service, we thought it had the potential to revolutionize the way game consoles are sold and positioned as full-service living room entertainment centers. Now that Microsoft has confirmed the details of its subsidy plan, however, we can't help but see it as a bad deal and a missed opportunity. Read the comments on this post

Say what you will about Kim Dotcom, but if there’s something that we (and the Feds) can probably agree on, it’s that he’s entertaining. After all, what other target of an international manhunt, while under investigation, comes out with a catchy rap tune as part of a New Zealand political scandal? On Sunday, the Megaupload magnate, who had his assets seized and site smashed earlier this year, released the "John Banks Song" on YouTube. The new track was produced with the Black Eyed Peas' Printz Board. Its chorus crows: "Nothing to fear / Nothing to hide / He's the majority / So he's all right. / He is John Banks / He got the vote / And that's why Key keeps him afloat / On his cabbage boat." John Banks is the head of the ACT New Zealand political party and the current minister for Small Business and Regulatory Reform. Kim Dotcom is alleged to have donated NZ$50,000 ($38,000) to the 2010 Banks campaign for mayor of the city of Auckland, keeping it anonymous and under the radar by splitting it in two. Dotcom is now set to be questioned by local authorities over this issue. Banks has said previously that he "didn’t come up the river in a cabbage boat." This appears to be a New Zealand English expression meaning that he’s not stupid. Prime Minister John Key is a governing coalition with Banks’ ACT party, and has publicly defended Banks. Banks, however, has subsequently denied that he broke any elections laws, and then said that he could not remember if he’d taken a helicopter ride to Dotcom’s mansion to meet with him. "He took that strategy to a level of absurdity," said Bryce Edwards, an Otago University political scientist, in an interview with the New Zealand Herald over the weekend. "People don't understand the whole case but they pick up on things like the helicopter. People just think the whole thing stinks." The newspaper also reported that his poll numbers had dropped to just 10 percent in the wake of the political scandal, and reported last week that the "Crown lawyers acting for the United States knew before seizing Kim Dotcom's fortune and property that they were using an unlawful court order." On Monday, the paper, which has been filling inquiries through the Official Information Act, also reported that "police officers who raided the mansion of Internet magnate Kim Dotcom put together a list of belongings for United States authorities to seize." Last Friday, Prime Minister John Key denied any knowledge of Dotcom "until the day before the raids even though his senior ministers, a string of senior civil servants, and his own electorate staff were involved in matters relating to him. It has emerged that staff in the Prime Minister's own department were aware of Dotcom and his bid through the Overseas Investment Office to buy the mansion in which he lived with his family." Read the comments on this post

In what could be a major blow to Android, Google's mobile operating system, a San Francisco jury issued a verdict today that the company broke copyright laws when it used Java APIs to design the system. The ruling is a partial victory for Oracle, which accused Google of violating copyright law. But the jury couldn't reach agreement on a second issue—whether Google had a valid "fair use" defense when it used the APIs. Google has asked for a mistrial based on the incomplete verdict, and that issue will be briefed later this week. Read the comments on this post

Another year, another complaint from Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) against Comcast and its merger with NBC Universal that was approved last year. Just as he did before, the senator—now in a letter published publicly on Monday (PDF)—is "urging [the Federal Communications Commission and the United States Department of Justice] to proactively monitor, investigate, and enforce the conditions you adopted in the merger order." As the Minnesota senator has outlined previously, he "hates the merger." In this letter he notes that "a number of complaints regarding Comcast's compliance with the merger conditions…have languished" before the FCC. In an e-mail sent to Ars, Comcast denied any wrongdoing. "Comcast and NBCUniversal are fully complying with (indeed exceeding) the transaction orders as detailed in our recently filed Annual Compliance Report," wrote Sena Fitzmaurice, a Comcast spokesperson. Specifically, Franken notes that it took the FCC 10 months to deal with a dispute involving the Bloomberg news channel, and Comcast’s refusal to put it in the same "neighborhood" as other similar channels. (The FCC ruled in Bloomberg’s favor last week). Franken also noted that a similar conflict with the Tennis Channel is also pending. "The one complaint by an outside party regarding the NBCUniversal FCC Order has been brought by another very large media company, Bloomberg LLP - and it has been preliminarily adjudicated," Fitzmaurice added. "We respectfully disagree with the Media Bureau’s interpretation believe the full Commission will agree on appeal to enforce conditions as they were originally negotiated and intended." Franken took the FCC to task too, noting that "at least one online video distributor (OVD) has encountered problems negotiating programming deals with Comcast." This resulted in Comcast arguing that it needs a "full, unredacted copy of the underlying peer agreement before it can provide its programming." CBS, News Corporation, Sony Pictures, Time Warner, Viacom, and Disney argued earlier this year (in their own letter to the FCC) this was "overbroad and will harm competition…[as it would allow] one entity to possess detailed nonpublic information about its competitors' business dealings—which would appear to be counter to relevant competition laws." Franken concludes: "I am concerned that these sorts of delays always inure to the benefit of Comcast and give Comcast further incentive to challenge any aspect of its compliance with the merger order." He's also "very concerned" about Comcast’s announcement last month that its Xbox Live television streaming would not count against existing data caps. Comcast argues the video is "being delivered over our private IP network and not the public Internet." However, Comcast spokesperson Sena Fitzmaurice added that the On Demand service, is "indisputably part of our Title VI cable service which is not subject to the FCC's Open Internet Rules - and we are not aware of anyone who has taken a contrary view." But Senator Franken does appear to have a differing opinion. "I am not yet prepared to say that this appears to be a technical violation of the Commission's merger order or DOJ's final judgment, but I urge both of your agencies to investigate this conduct immediately," Franken wrote. "Even if this does not amount to a technical violation, it certainly raises serious questions about how Comcast will favor its own content and services to the detriment of its competitors." Read the comments on this post

Apple has released an update to iOS that fixes a number of minor (but annoying) bugs within the operating system. The update was just released on Monday afternoon (at least for those of us on the eastern half of the US) and includes fixes for iPads and iPhones. According to Apple, iOS 5.1.1 improves the reliability of the HDR photo option when you try to take photos using the Camera app's shortcut from the lock screen. (This one drives me the most crazy). It also fixes some AirPlay video bugs that affected playback "in some circumstances," improves the reliability of syncing Safari bookmarks and Reading List, and fixes a bug that caused iTunes or the App Store to display an error saying "Unable to purchase" when the purchase was successful after all. The one fix that specifically affects the iPad is one that prevented third-gen iPads from switching easily between 2G and 3G networks. There may be other minor bug fixes or feature changes buried within iOS 5.1.1, but those will be left for users to discover. When iOS 5.1 was released in March alongside the new iPad, the company also increased its over-the-air file download limit and free trials for subscriptions alongside the OS's bug fixes and feature additions. Although 5.1.1 isn't likely to address any of the ongoing frustrations we have with iOS, we're still eager to update and see if there are any other easter eggs. You can update either through iTunes or by going to Settings > General > Software Update within your iOS device—though when I checked on my iPhone just now, it had not yet seen the OTA update. Read the comments on this post

MobileMe users who transition their accounts to iCloud will be able to keep their free 20GB of extra storage for an additional three months after MobileMe's shutdown, according to Apple. The company has updated its FAQ page on the MobileMe-to-iCloud transition (hat tip to MacOtakara), explaining that MobileMe users who want complimentary iCloud storage upgrades will be able to take advantage of the upgrade through September 30, 2012. That deadline has been moved back from June 30, when MobileMe shuts down, most likely in an attempt to lure more users into transitioning their accounts instead of letting them die. When Apple introduced iCloud in October of 2011 along with iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S, the company explained that the cloud service was meant to replace MobileMe—itself a successor of Apple's old iTools service launched in the year 2000. iCloud's services are somewhat similar to those offered through MobileMe; users who transition their accounts to iCloud can still use their MobileMe e-mail accounts, Back To My Mac, and Find My iPhone, but will also gain a handful of new services, like Find My Mac, iTunes in the Cloud, Photo Stream, and document syncing services over iOS devices. MobileMe users will also lose a few services when they transition. As noted by Apple last year, iWeb publishing, iDisk storage and file sharing, and MobileMe's photo/video gallery feature will all only exist until MobileMe is shut down in June of this year. Apple was quick to give some benefits to its paid MobileMe subscribers, though, offering them 20GB extra cloud storage for free when they migrate their accounts to iCloud—normal users signing up for a new iCloud account receive 5GB of free storage automatically. With the free storage expiration date extended for another three months after MobileMe goes dark, we're willing to guess that Apple hasn't yet seen as many MobileMe accounts transition to iCloud as it would like. It's possible that some MobileMe users are aware of the June 30 deadline but are planning to just let their accounts expire along with it. The extension to September could mean more MobileMe customers making the jump after all and giving iCloud a try, though the rest of MobileMe's services will still be going away in June. Read the comments on this post

Television remains at the center of American life, and whatever threats exist from outside the realm of the Great BoobTube, those threats (including the Internet) are not making huge dents in TV consumption patterns. In fact, technologies like the DVR and on-demand services appear to be gaining momentum, largely making up for declines in live TV consumption. This is hardly a surprise. Television isn't dying—it's continuing to post strong viewership numbers (and we know that Nielsen and the like capture only a portion of the real audience). The data we have, however, makes it clear that audiences are changing the way they relate to TV. Companies that figure out the best way to service viewers' various demands—better content, served up when they want it, and viewable where they want it—will reap the profits.  Read the comments on this post

Google+ users can now broadcast live public video feeds and video conferences via webcams through its Hangouts on Air feature, which was previously only available to a select number of accounts. Google announced today that Hangouts on Air is now out of beta and will be rolled out to all of its users worldwide. Google implemented videoconferencing via its Hangouts feature when it released Google+, though at the time the broadcasting was limited to those users who were joining in the video conference (there’s a limit to 10 per session). Hangouts on Air now lets users broadcast their own version of a television channel publicly. The application provides similar functionality to competing services such as UStream, Livestream, and Justin.tv by opening video webcam streams for public viewing. In Hangouts on Air, anyone can watch a video session. Google+ is also encouraging users to browse and casually join these hangouts via Google+’s revamped hangouts page, where users can find sessions that are currently taking place. Live broadcasts are automatically recorded to the host user’s YouTube channel for later viewing or embedding. Users can also embed their live broadcasts on other websites, effectively expanding the reach of the Google+ platform beyond registered users of its service. Hangouts on Air does require users to enable the new feature, and they must also review and agree to its terms of service. Doing so will also link the user’s Google+ account to their YouTube channel. In some cases, users may also need to upgrade Google’s voice and video plugin for Web browsers. Google says the feature is rolling out to users starting today, so it may take some time to see it enabled in users’ individual accounts. Read the comments on this post

Much to the chagrin of California tourism promoters, smog is likely one of the things you picture when you think about the city of Los Angeles. The haze of pollutants that often hangs over the region is more than just an eyesore; it's a source of considerable respiratory stress. And where does that air pollution come from? Smokestacks, tailpipes, and cows. You read that right—cows. In fact, a new study estimates that cows contribute at least as much as automobiles. There are two main factors that control the formation of smog. The first is the air pollution. This includes a range of volatile organic compounds, as well as oxides of nitrogen (referred to as NOx compounds. These pollutants react in sunlight to produce the ground-level ozone that triggers asthma advisories. The second necessary condition is stagnant air. A stiff breeze moving through the city will clear away pollution before it can collect. Areas that experience smog typically have the right topographical and meteorological conditions for air masses to hang around for a while. Read the comments on this post

In the physical world, when you share a record or a book with a friend, it's still technically yours. But in the digital world, where documents aren't so much shared as they are copied, it's difficult for content creators to maintain control. Sharing a Word document chock-full of sensitive information isn't like lending out your beloved old copy of Paul's Boutique, after all. You can forward that document to multiple people, edit its contents, and print out as many copies as you want. And in most cases, the content creator is likely none the wiser. Clément Cazalot believed there had to be a better—and easier—way to keep such crucial documents in check. Rather than create a paranoid tool for paranoid people, Cazalot and his cofounder Alex Negrea created DocTrackr, a file tracking service that also gathers usage analytics. The service tracks how and where documents are being viewed and shared—and boasts a handy kill switch to revoke access altogether, if needed—with the hopes of giving creators a better idea of how their content is being used. Read the comments on this post

A couple of decades ago the most advanced technology to appear in an average classroom was a mini-cassette recorder and a calculator. For most students, however, typical classroom technology ran the gamut from yellow legal pads to theme books, from pencils to ballpoints. Computers were restricted to the computer lab. There, the green blinking DOS cursor would excite and intimidate. Most of the thrill of the computer lab, aside from a few basic computer games, came from the fact that you could type up a paper without using Wite-Out. Read the comments on this post

"Life for Syrian game developers has never been better," joked Falafel Games founder Radwan Kasmiya in an e-mail to Ars Technica. "You can test the action on the streets and get back to your desktop to script it on your keyboard." Kasmiya's icy humor hides a sobering truth about the troubles faced by Syria's once-promising game development industry. The country once looked like a future technology hub, with its centralized location among the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries allowing it to easily draw programming and engineering talent from Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. But that promise has been effectively squashed, first by global economic sanctions and then by more than a year of bloody civil conflict. Read the comments on this post

A couple of decades ago the most advanced technology to appear in an average classroom was a mini-cassette recorder and a calculator. For most students, however, typical classroom technology ran the gamut from yellow legal pads to theme books, from pencils to ballpoints. Computers were restricted to the computer lab. There, the green blinking DOS cursor would excite and intimidate. Most of the thrill of the computer lab, aside from a few basic computer games, came from the fact that you could type up a paper without using Wite-Out. Read the comments on this post

The developers behind the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) have announced the official release of version 2.8, the first stable update since 2008. The new version brings a number of significant technical enhancements and user interface improvements, including the long-awaited single-window editing mode. The GIMP is an open source raster image editor with advanced features, such as support for layers and scripting. It was originally created by students at UC Berkeley in 1996 and later became part of the GNU project. The GIMP has spawned several other notable open source software projects, including the Gtk+ widget toolkit with which it is built. Read the comments on this post

Most neighborhoods in America have a public library. Now the biggest neighborhood in America, the Internet, wants a library of its own. Last week, Ars attended a conference held by the Digital Public Library of America, a nascent group of intellectuals hoping to put all of America's library holdings online. The DPLA is still in its infancy—there's no official staff, nor is there a finished website where you can access all the books they imagine will be accessible. But if the small handful of volunteers and directors have their way, you'll see all that by April 2013 at the latest. Last week's conference set out to answer a lot of questions. How much content should be centralized, and how much should come from local libraries? How will the Digital Public Library be run? Can an endowment-funded public institution succeed where Google Books has largely failed (a 4,000-word meditation on this topic is offered by Nicholas Carr in MIT's April Technology Review)? Enthusiasm for the project permeated the former Christian Science church where the meeting was held (now the church is the headquarters of Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive). But despite the audience's applause and wide-eyed wonder, there’s still a long way to go. Read the comments on this post

It's graduation season, which means that students, teachers, and administrators alike are all thinking about one thing: Facebook. Schools around the globe have a fascination with—indeed, sometimes a fixation on—the social networking site and what their students are getting up to online. Questions about the appropriate response to student material on social networking sites have existed for years, but they're exploding into serious policy questions (and even laws) as such sites become almost ubiquitous teen hangouts. For instance: can school administration use social networking to keeps tabs on what students do during the school day? What about things they do after leaving school property? Read the comments on this post

The following round-up is from our esteemed colleagues at The Wirecutter. We recently were discussing this very topic in the Editor's household, where children abound and the SmartCover fails to do much protecting. Some people think the iPad is so gorgeous it doesn't need a case. I disagree, and my favorite overall case is Joy Factory's SmartSuit 3. I'm surprised we could narrow it down; this took some doing. After about 70 hours of trolling published reviews and surveys of every case available for the new iPad, we called in roughly a dozen finalists to check the fit and feel ourselves. We eliminated the obviously ugly, cheap-feeling, poor-fitting, ill-reviewed cases in previous iPad 2 iterations, and selected the most protective, ergonomic and aesthetically pleasing models available. We looked at every model from makers like Speck, Targus, XtremeMac, G-Form, Switcheasy, Marware, DODOcase, Grovemade. (An up-front tip of the hat to iLounge's Nick Guy is in order here, because he is clearly the best iPad case reviewer around. We gained a lot, not only from his insights but from the sheer number of cases reviewed. His work represents as complete a catalog as you'll find.) Read the comments on this post

Drafts of new regulations relating to hydraulic fracturing in natural gas production were released for public comment Friday. This follows on the heels of the new rules for air emissions released two weeks ago. The US Environmental Protection Agency announced new guidance for obtaining permits when diesel fuel is included as a component of the fracking fluid used to fracture source rocks and free the gas trapped inside. As we laid out in a previous story, a 2005 amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act exempted fracking from regulation as an underground injection, except when diesel fuel is used. Despite that caveat, the industry continued using diesel fuel without reporting it, saying that the EPA had never explicitly provided a process for them to do so. That process is now laid out in the new guidance. This may become a moot point, however, as public pressure is forcing the industry to move to more innocuous alternatives. The US Department of the Interior also announced new rules for fracking on federal and Indian land, greatly increasing oversight. Fracking must now be explicitly approved as part of the normal drilling permits companies apply for when operating on federal land. This will require them to submit details on the layers of rock they plan to frack and how they will manage and dispose of the spent fracking fluids. They will also have to submit documentation of tests performed to ensure integrity of the seal around the well before the actual fracking begins. After the process is complete, drillers will have to publicly disclose the chemicals used in the fracking fluid. In the press release, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar says, “As we continue to offer millions of acres of America’s public lands for oil and gas development, it is critical that the public have full confidence that the right safety and environmental protections are in place. The proposed rule will modernize our management of well stimulation activities—including hydraulic fracturing—to make sure that fracturing operations conducted on public and Indian lands follow common-sense industry best practices.” Several states (most notably Wyoming and Texas) already have some similar requirements on the books, and others may use the federal rules as a template in the future. The drafts of both the EPA guidance and DOI rules will be revised and finalized following the 60 day public comment period. Read the comments on this post

"According to a well written and thorough article in the Virginia Journal of Law & Technology, what we've been saying for over three years has been determined to be true: WarDriving is not a crime." That's the text of a September 8, 2004 blog post by Marius Milner, the engineer who developed NetStumbler, a tool used to map WiFi networks using a WiFi card and GPS (also known as "wardriving"). Milner is also the engineer Google has claimed was solely responsible for the code that collected personal data from WiFi networks, including e-mail addresses and passwords, with the company's Street View cars between May 2007 and May 2010. Read the comments on this post

Apple released its sales data on April 24, and in our Q2 earnings liveblog, you can also reference some of the figures Apple reported, supporting the continued success of devices like the iPhone and iPad. Apple said it sold 4 million Macs during the quarter, a 7 percent unit-increase over the same quarter a year ago. We also reported on IDCs’ report, which confirms that Apple’s got a definitive hold on the tablet market. Apple has not yet announced exactly which of its Mac lines will get the Ivy Bridge processors, or to what extent, and now is perhaps the best time for the Ars community to tackle these topics. Read the comments on this post

Imagine a door that locks when you pinch the knob. Or a smartphone that can be silenced by a hand gesture. Or a chair that adjusts room lighting when you recline into it. A team of researchers at Disney Research and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have come up with a system called Touché, which uses the same capacitive technology as a smartphone's touchscreen to imbue everyday objects with body and gesture recognition. Read the comments on this post

Syncing data between computers, smartphones, tablets, and other devices has gotten much easier since the days of manually syncing a PC and a Palm Pilot via an infrared port or a USB cable. Freely available cloud services that store your data centrally, something that used to be the purview of expensive solutions like Exchange servers that were out of reach for home users, have now become much more affordable and easier to use. For a one-man army or a one-woman business, things are great. But when you start wanting to share things, it gets messy, fast. Read the comments on this post

"Virtual" grocery stores aren't just for South Koreans anymore—a version of them exists in the US now as well. Peapod, which operates without commercial stores and delivers groceries to customers after they order online, is testing a new real-life shopping concept in Chicago and Philadelphia. But it doesn't involve picking up products and putting them into your cart: instead, shoppers can scan barcodes for items plastered on the walls of a virtual store space and add those items to their online shopping carts automatically. Read the comments on this post

I thought I didn't like you, but then you mentioned the Supreme Court: Atheists are some of the least trusted members of society, consistently coming in last in polls that ask whether you'd vote for a hypothetical presidential candidate that had certain features. Now, researchers have figured out a way to make atheists a touch more appealing: prime people with thoughts of trusted secular authorities. This didn't eliminate the bias against atheists, but it did seem to reduce it a bit. Buckyballs as a fabricated fountain of youth: The fullerenes are spherical cages of carbon atoms, the most common containing 60 of them. Their distinctive chemical properties have led to their use for a variety of materials, including a number in which they'll end up in contact with the human body—in a few cases, ingested as drugs. Various studies have shown that fullerenes are nontoxic when the exposure is brief, so one lab decided to give some rats a repeated dose of the fullerene and see what happens. Surprisingly, they report, the rats lived twice as long as their control peers, even though the fullerene was cleared within a couple of days. That result may be weird, but there's something else fishy about the experiments. Derek Lowe, who first blogged about the results, saw his eagle-eyed readers dive into the paper, and come up with a bit of a problem. Two figures, meant to represent different data, actually turned out to be different views of the same sample. This could be an innocuous mistake but, as Lowe notes, it doesn't exactly give you confidence in the paper. So, best not to fry up your pork chops with buckyballs just yet. Studying the past using a giant tower of bird poop: This is a way to reconstruct that past that only a faculty member with some expendable grad students would love: a large, unused tower that had been occupied by chimney swifts for decades, recording their history through the equivalent of sedimentary layers at the bottom. Except the sediment is bird poop. The authors could track the arrival of DDT and the changes it created in the insect populations eaten by the swifts using that 50-year record. Maybe we should see how yeast respond to Viagra, too: Zoloft is an antidepressant that targets a signaling pathway used by nerve cells. Yeast have no nerve cells (more accurately, yeast are single cells that don't happen to be nerves). Yet, dump Zoloft on yeast, and it triggers significant changes, probably through altering the internal membranes of the yeast. All of which has some pretty serious implications, since the drug may be doing similar things in humans. Read the comments on this post