Ars Technica

Why Sony's PSP Go speed boost won't up the eye candy

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:30:32 GMT

SonyInsider dug up an FCC filing that indicates that the forthcoming PSP Go will have a significantly faster top processor speed than than current PSP models. Specifically, the Go's CPU can clock up to 480MHz, compared to the 333MHz speed of the existing models.

The site ends the post by asking the obvious question: "What will a 480MHz PSP Go bring to the table?" I suspect the answer to this is, "Nothing that hasn't already been announced." Let me explain.

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Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:16:32 GMT

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Are "deleted" photos really gone from Facebook? Not always

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:32:25 GMT

In an age where your boss, coworkers, parents, and even (*gasp*) grandparents are finally joining social networks, we are all more aware than ever that we had better keep things relatively clean. And if you were someone who joined MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, or a number of other sites years ago, you may have more cleaning up to do than usual—after all, back then, you were probably young(er) and dumb(er), posting silly pics of your drunken escapades or questionable updates regarding your unusual interest in English cucumbers.

If you delete questionable images of yourself, you may be in the clear—or you may not, depending on the social network. As it turns out, some social networks delete your images right away while others hold onto them even after claiming they've been deleted. This was the discovery made by researchers at Cambridge University last month when they found that images deleted from social media sites are often left on the server, ripe for anyone to embed elsewhere or link up.

We put this finding to the test and found that some of the most popular sites on the Internet do, in fact, keep images on their servers after you delete them. On May 21, 2009, we deleted photos from four of the networks most used by the Ars staff and readership and monitored them for six weeks. The four networks we checked were Flickr, Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook.

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Game publisher Midway joins Time Warner empire for $33M

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:30:48 GMT

There's no denying that gaming publisher Midway has had a rough time in the past year. After an insane saga of strange twists, turns, accusations, and increasingly dire news, most of us weren't entirely certain that the beleaguered publisher would actually survive to see 2010. Despite our doubts, it turns out that Midway is living to see another day, having just been acquired by Time Warner for $33 million.

For those of you new to the situation: after the company's much-hyped Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe earned lukewarm reviews and reasonable (though not amazing) sales numbers, Sumner Redstone sold his controlling interest in Midway for $100,000, and the publisher wound up laying off roughly 25 percent of its workforce and killed many games that were currently in development. It was then revealed that, even though employees weren't getting paid what was owed to them and the publisher was filing for bankruptcy, executives were still raking in a great deal of cash during all this.

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Game publisher Midway joins Time Warner empire for $33M

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:32:14 GMT

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Apple patching critical SMS vulnerability in iPhone OS

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:26:19 GMT

Security researcher Charlie Miller has revealed that Apple is working on a patch for a security flaw he identified in the iPhone's SMS implementation. The flaw can actually lead to arbitrary code execution, as he explained to Ars last month. Miller hasn't yet detailed the flaw, citing an agreement with Apple, though he and partner Vincenzo Iozzo plan to detail their discovery later this month at the Black Hat Security Conference in Las Vegas.

During a presentation at the SyScan security conference in Singapore, Miller explained that a vulnerability in the iPhone's handling of SMS messages makes it possible to send code instead of strictly text. Despite SMS's 140 byte size limitation, the iPhone can reassemble larger messages that are broken up to fit the limitation, which allows larger programs to be sent. The iPhone can be instructed to execute SMS data as code instead of text, and when it executes the code it does so with root privileges and without any interaction from the user.

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Apple patching critical SMS vulnerability in iPhone OS

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:26:19 GMT

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Phone ringtones a "public performance"? EFF, AT&T say no

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:45:13 GMT

It isn't often that you find AT&T and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in agreement, but consensus has been reached on one matter: ASCAP's demand that wireless companies pay it license fees for ringtones is, well, ridiculous.

On Wednesday EFF called the move "outlandish" and "a ploy to squeeze more money out of the mobile phone companies." The advocacy group filed a friend of the court brief with the United States District Court for the Southern District New York this week, which is hearing the dispute between ASCAP, AT&T, and Verizon over whether the telcos have to pay the music licensing body royalties for wireless ringtones. Joining the amicus brief are Public Knowledge and the Center for Democracy and Technology. Meanwhile CTIA - The Wireless Association, to which the big telcos belong, has also filed an amicus brief in the case.

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Apple Stores now fixing cracked iPhone screens in-house

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:59:25 GMT

An iPhone falls to the ground in slow motion and makes its first impact on a corner. You watch as the cracks branch out over the screen like a spiderweb. If it hasn't happened to you, it has happened to someone you know—and now, if the iPhone is still under warranty, Apple can fix it on the spot at one of its retail locations.

Jim Dalrymple at The Loop has confirmed that Apple retail stores have begun performing this in-house repair with what amounts to a big suction cup in the back. The machine separates the broken glass from the rest of your ~~precious~~ iPhone, letting the technician install a shiny new one.

This is one of the only in-house warranty repairs being done on iPhones. Not only that, but in the past, owners with broken screens either got a full phone replacement or nothing at all. Of course, if you're outside of your warranty and don't have AppleCare, then you'll probably still find yourself out of luck. Still, knowing all the people we know who have shattered their screens, this is certainly welcome news for clumsy and not-so-clumsy iPhone owners alike.

Apple may be dumping NVIDIA graphics for next-gen Macs (Updated)

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:47:58 GMT

Apple has nearly turned its entire line of computers over to NVIDIA-based GPUs, thanks mainly to the vastly improved graphics performance of its GeForce 9400M chipset over comparable chipsets from Intel. However, rumors suggest that recent negotiations between the two companies over next-gen hardware have soured to the point that Apple may give NVIDIA a complete cold shoulder.

According to SemiAccurate (the irony of the site's name isn't lost on us), Apple is supposedly done with the "arrogance and bluster" that NVIDIA showed in its proposals concerning chipsets for Apple's next-gen hardware, which should include Nehalem-based Intel CPUs. According to the site's sources, the language used in Apple's rebuke was forceful and unfriendly, and amounted to Apple telling NVIDIA to "get lost" for three or four years.

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Apple may be dumping NVIDIA graphics for next-gen Macs (Updated)

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:47:58 GMT

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Behavioral advertisers discover the self-regulation gospel

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:10:08 GMT

Behavioral advertising, in which users are fed ads based on the interests revealed by their Web browsing habits, has an obvious appeal to advertisers, as it will ostensibly allow them to serve ads to the most relevant audiences. It also raises a host of privacy concerns—to work effectively, the Web surfing histories of consumers have to be aggregated and analyzed by those providing the ads.

Both the Federal Trade Commission and Congress have asked questions about whether advertisers were doing enough to protect and inform consumers, raising the prospect that regulation of behavioral advertising was only a matter of time. In an attempt to head off the government, a coalition of advertising groups that includes Google has now issued a series of principles that will guide their self-regulation.

The industry didn't need to look far to see the downsides of a failure to respond to public concerns. One of the more aggressive approaches to behavioral advertising, the deep packet inspection used by NebuAd, saw the company's CEO dragged before Congress, and the resulting bad publicity turned the company into a pariah. It ultimately closed its doors last month.

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Universal to bring Asteroids to theaters

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:50:00 GMT

Once again, news has arrived from the land of Hollywood that another major video game franchise is being adapted for the silver screen. Last week, it was announced that Uncharted would get a celluloid makeover; this week, it's a much older franchise that's being adapted. It turns out that Asteroids, the Atari game from 1979 (thus making it older than many in the current generation of gamers) will be coming to theaters sometime in the future.

Astonishingly, not only is Asteroids being made into a movie, but there was an actual bidding war between four major studios for the rights. Universal Studios has emerged the winner.

As a result, Matthew Lopez is set to write the script and it will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura. Lopez has written the screenplays for the recent Disney films Escape to Witch Mountain and Bedtime Stories, as well as for the upcoming The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Meanwhile, di Bonaventura's latest ventures include Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and the soon-to-be-released G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

While there are some big Hollywood players involved with this project, the inherent problem with making a movie out of Asteroids is that it doesn't have a plot, or characters, just a triangular spaceship blowing up some oddly-shaped polygons.

On the other hand, one could look at this with the perspective that it's pretty much impossible to screw up the game's story. However, this news implies something much larger and much more unsettling: Hollywood may officially be out of original movie ideas.

"MySpace mom" Lori Drew's conviction thrown out

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:30:26 GMT

"MySpace mom" Lori Drew has had her misdemeanor guilty verdict overturned by the federal judge handling the case, the LA Times reports. Violating a website's terms of use is not, it seems, a federal crime after all.

Horrible things aren't always crimes

The guilty verdict against Lori Drew, prosecutors crowed, would send an "overwhelming message" to online bullies. Though she escaped conviction on felony charges, the 49-year-old Missouri mom could have still faced three years in prison or fines of up to $300,000 for launching an online harassment campaign that ended in the suicide of a teenage neighbor. Drew was due to be sentenced today.

But the "message," legal observers worried, may be that anyone who uses a website without paying close attention to those ubiquitous Terms of Service risks committing a federal crime. The judge shared those concerns.

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Microsoft Surface SDK now available for Microsoft Partners

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:11:00 GMT

Companies who want to take the Microsoft Surface development tools out for a spin now can easily do so as the company has opened up resources to Microsoft Partners. The Microsoft Surface QuickStart Program has an entry level titled "Microsoft Surface Community Members" which provides access to the SDK and simulator, as well as training and other resources, without any commitment required. This is actually a Workstation Version of the SDK, meaning it is for developing applications on a PC using a simulator. Benefits also include marketing campaigns, Web presence, events, press releases, and so on. The other two levels, Microsoft Surface Partners and Strategic Partners, get even more benefits.

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IE8 coming to WSUS on August 25, 2009

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:40:00 GMT

Starting on August 25, 2009, Internet Explorer 8 will be made available as an Update rollup, applicable to all supported languages, via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). After the WSUS administrator approves the IE8 EULA, organizations that have WSUS configured to auto-approve Update rollup packages will see Internet Explorer 8 installed automatically on computers running Internet Explorer 6 or 7 on Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows Server 2003 (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit), and Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit). Cumulative security updates for Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 8 Compatibility View List updates will also be released via WSUS as they become available.

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Sony may bring backwards compatibility back to PS3, PS3 Slim

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Those of us with 60GB PS3 hardware—with fully-working backwards compatibility—live in constant fear of something happening to our precious. There is nothing that beats the ability to play three generations of PlayStation games. According to Siliconera, however, Sony may be working on a surprise to bring that functionality back to newer systems.

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NVIDIA offers up GPU-accelerated plug-ins for Quadro FX 4800

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:32:36 GMT

Imagine you have a top-of-the-line Mac Pro, NVIDIA's obscenely expensive Quadro FX 4800 workstation GPU, dual 30" Cinema Displays, and you're editing your next masterpiece in Premiere Pro, After Effects, or Final Cut Pro (or maybe all three!). You might be dying for Snow Leopard and OpenCL to unlock the computing potential inside that powerful GPU, but luckily, there are a selection of plug-ins that can take advantage of that power right now.

NVIDIA has a page that lists several video effects plug-ins from Elemental Technologies, BorisFX, and Red Giant Software that are designed to leverage NVIDIA's CUDA GPGPU technology. Premiere Pro CS4 users will definitely want to check out Elemental Accelerator 1.2 for Mac, which effectively halves the time it takes to encode video in H.264/MPEG-4 for either Blu-ray or online use. Leveraging your GPU to do the encoding work can also make your system more responsive while an encoding job is running, meaning you can get more work done faster.

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Impending Newton Y2K10 apocalypse narrowly averted

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:38:02 GMT

Make fun of Apple's Newton MessagePad all you want, but the proto-PDA introduced by Apple in the early 90s managed to gather some rather tenacious followers. Current users of the then-revolutionary, now-exceedingly-bulky personal digital assistants were afraid that a date handling bug would render the devices useless beginning early next year. However, fear no more: a developer has come to the rescue with a patch for the Newton's OS that lets the device handle dates in 2010 and beyond.

The problem is similar to the dreaded Y2K problem that many computers faced in the late 90s (we'll take this chance to gloat that Macs never had this problem). Dates were essentially encoded using only the last two digits of the year, so computers would start reporting the year as 1900 instead of 2000 after New Year's Eve, 1999. While the impending implosion of life as we knew it never happened, lots of time and money went in to fixing the problem so that our increasingly computer-controlled life would continue without fail.

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MAP Toolkit 4.0 beta for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:35:16 GMT

The Microsoft Solution Accelerators team recently released the beta version of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning toolkit (MAP) 4.0 on TechNet in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Make sure to check out the Getting Started Guide (.doc) before taking the plunge. The integrated planning toolkit performs key functions that include hardware and device inventory, hardware compatibility analysis, and generation of actionable, environment-specific IT proposals for migration to most major Microsoft technologies.

Here's what has been added since version 3.2:

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Server consolidation and performance isolation a dead issue?

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:02:43 GMT

Back when virtualization was transitioning from being a curiosity to a buzzword, one of the core issues addressed in whitepapers and other research involved performance isolation. In a nutshell, performance isolation issues arise when you have different types of workloads, each of which would normally be run on an independent server, all running under VMs on the same processor—and each unaware of the others' presence.

This isn't discussed now as much as it used to be; some Googling turns up a few good papers on it, but they're from 2007. To see if that was true, I started a discussion thread in The Server Room, asking our IT pros if this had come up as an issue for them recently, and I got all of three responses. This admittedly unscientific investigation supports a hypothesis that I have about how the virtualization story has evolved over the course of the past few years.

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