Red Carpet Diamonds

Apple has given developers yet another few months to implement application sandboxing for OS X apps, a security feature brought over from iOS: the deadline is now June 1, 2012. While the intent of sandboxing is to prevent hacked apps from taking over a user's system, however, the sandbox design inherently limits functionality that users and developers have come to expect on the desktop. Apple's changes and delays to sandboxing requirements have also created a situation where the sandboxing goalpost keeps moving while developers continue to push Apple to improve its design.

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The nation's fourth-largest cellular firm has asked the Federal Communications Commission to block a spectrum acquisition by its largest competitor. T-Mobile argues that allowing Verizon to purchase more spectrum would make it too difficult for smaller wireless firms to build next-generation networks of their own.

The spectrum under dispute was acquired in an auction by a coalition of cable companies led by Comcast and Time Warner in 2006. But the cable firms have apparently decided they don't want to be in the wireless business after all. In December, Verizon Wireless announced plans to buy the spectrum, which is in the AWS band, for $3.6 billion.

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Since September, scientists have been scratching their head over results that appear to show neutrinos traveling between Switzerland and Italy faster than light would. As far as anyone could tell, the team behind the results had done everything they could to eliminate errors, and had even released some preliminary data that had strengthened their results. But the results remained difficult to square with everything else we know about how the Universe operates.

But now, ScienceInsider is reporting that there was a good reason the measurements and reality weren't lining up: a loose fiber optic cable was causing one of the atomic clocks used to time the neutrinos' flight to produce spurious results. If the report is confirmed (right now, there's only one source), then it provides a simple explanation for the fascinating-yet-difficult-to-accept results. According to the new report, researchers are preparing to gather new data with the clocks properly hooked into computers, which should definitively indicate whether the loose connection was at fault.

It's somewhat ironic that ScienceInsider, which is part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, broke the news now. Over the weekend, the AAAS held its annual meeting, which included a discussion of the biggest news in physics, where the neutrino results were highlighted. The session indicated that five different neutrino experiments were upgrading their hardware in order to check timing, and some would have data before the year is out. So even if this report doesn't pan out, we should know more soon.

At the AAAS meeting's discussion, CERN's director of research, Sergio Bertolucci, placed his bet on what the results would be: "I have difficulty to believe it, because nothing in Italy arrives ahead of time."

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The prospects for quick European approval of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement dimmed Wednesday as the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, announced plans to seek an opinion from the European Court of Justice about ACTA's constitutionality.

In a statement, Viviane Reding, the EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship, reiterated her commitment to "a freely accessible Internet" and "freedom of expression and freedom of information via the Internet." She said the EC has decided to ask the ECJ for an opinion to "clarify that the ACTA agreement and its implementation must be fully compatible with freedom of expression and freedom of the Internet."

"I believe that putting ACTA before the European Court of Justice is a needed step," Commissioner Karel De Gucht wrote in a Wednesday press release explaining the move. "This debate must be based upon facts and not upon the misinformation or rumor that has dominated social media sites and blogs in recent weeks."

"Intellectual property is Europe's main raw material, but the problem is that we currently struggle to protect it outside the European Union," De Gucht wrote. "This hurts our companies, destroys jobs and harms our economies. This is where ACTA will change something for all of us—as it will help protect jobs that are currently lost because counterfeited and pirated goods worth 200 billion Euros are floating around on the world markets."

The European Commission has traditionally been a strong supporter of the ACTA agreement. The executive body adopted the treaty in December, and it is due to be considered by the European Parliament later this year. Presumably, the commission hopes that a favorable ruling from the high court will ease the agreement's passage by rebutting critics' charges that ACTA threatens Internet freedom.

But the decision to seek a judicial opinion could also further delay consideration of the treaty, giving opponents more time to organize against it.

ACTA opponents have been particularly effective in Poland, where the government suspended ratification of the treaty earlier this month. As our sister site Wired has reported, online activists persuaded Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to participate in a 7-hour online conversation about ACTA on Twitter, Facebook, and even IRC. Last week, Tusk repudiated his earlier support for ACTA and called on other European nations to reject the treaty as well.

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Nokia is gearing up for some big smartphone announcements at Mobile World Congress next week, and not all are related to Windows Phone. In addition to a few Windows Phone handsets, the company is also teasing a camera-centric Symbian phone with one of the largest camera sensors on a mobile phone yet.

First, the Symbian outlier: the Nokia 803 will have a large imaging sensor that will be Nokia's big step up to 1080p video, according to PocketNow. With a 4-inch AMOLED screen, the phone will be an all-touchscreen successor to the Nokia N8, a phone revered for its photo prowess. Nokia's teaser commercial offers little information, but has some 1080p shots of winter scenes.

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Trying to pass unconstitutional restrictions on a burgeoning artistic medium is not cheap. Just ask the state of California, which will end up paying $1.8 million in attorney's fees in its failed effort to restrict violent game sales to children with a law that was overturned by the Supreme Court last year.

It was widely reported last month that the state would be paying $950,000 to cover legal costs for the Entertainment Merchants Association and Entertainment Software Association, which argued against the law. But that number didn't take into account nearly $300,000 the state had paid to industry defenders during earlier court battles, and $500,000 it spent on its own side of the legal battle, as The Sacramento Bee recently reported.

But there are no regrets from the sponsor of the bill. "When you fight the good fight for a cause you know is right and just, and it's about protecting kids, you don't ever regret that," bill sponsor Leland Yee told The Bee. "I think we felt the issue was so important that it warranted the costs associated with it," former California deputy attorney general Jim Humes added.

And while the legal costs are a drop in the bucket compared to the state's massive annual budget of over $92 billion, some say legislators should have known that the law would end up being a waste of time and money. "I think it's fair to say the industry warned the state that they were just getting themselves into a big legal mess and they would end up having to pay attorney fees—and that's exactly what happened," game industry attorney Paul M. Smith told The Bee.

The good news is that states seem unlikely to waste taxpayer money on this specific issue in the future. The 7-2 Supreme Court ruling that overturned the California law was very clear in granting games full First Amendment protections, setting a precedent that other states seem unlikely to challenge directly. But that doesn't mean they won't try to find other ways to limit the impact of games they deem objectionable, as proven by an Oklahoma representative's recent efforts to add a surtax on games rated T and up.

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Last week, several documents that purportedly came from the Heartland Institute appeared on the Web, laying out the organization's financial efforts to undercut the mainstream understanding of climate science. Although the Heartland admitted that most of the materials were genuine, it claims they had been obtained via deception, and that one of the documents (the most inflammatory) was a fake. Now, a prominent environmental researcher has admitted that he impersonated a Heartland board member in order to obtain the documents, but claims they are all genuine.

Peter Gleick is the founder and current president of the Pacific Institute, where he specializes in research on the water cycle. His research can be provocative—some of it suggested that the US has already passed peak water—but has been considered important enough to get him elected to the National Academies of Science.

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Apple's massive North Carolina data center is apparently only the beginning when it comes to handling the deluge of content traffic flowing through Apple's servers. The company has now confirmed that it has plans to build another large data center in Prineville, Oregon, continuing the green efforts that it initiated with its east coast facility.

The news came via Oregon news station KTVZ, which was following up on rumors from December about the project as Apple spokesperson Kristin Huguet confirmed that Apple had indeed purchased the land for the data center. Huguet declined to offer any further details about Apple's plans, but KTVZ says the property's price tag was $5.6 million and the deed was signed by county commissioners on February 15. The location for the new 160-acre data center is said to be a "stone's throw" away from another large facility owned by Facebook.

Before Apple publicly acknowledged its North Carolina facility, rumors spread for years about what the company was planning to do with it. As it turned out, the NC data center ended up powering iCloud—which launched in October with iOS 5—and Apple began talking about its plans build a 171-panel solar farm to help run it. Apple's Oregon data center is expected to boast similar green efforts, but no details have been offered. Apple just laid out this week some of the other green initiatives it's taking in North Carolina, so it's likely we'll see some of those same elements carried over to the facility in the Beaver State.

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These days, it seems, it's not enough for a digital device to just play games. To keep up with the smartphones and tablet computers of the world, any game system needs to at least nod in the direction of cloud-based and social networking "apps" that are all the rage with the kiddies. Sony's PlayStation Vita has now done exactly that, launching free downloadable Netflix, Twitter and Flickr apps in conjunction with the system's official debut today (though pre-orderers have had the system for a week now).

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Microsoft today filed a competition law complaint against Motorola Mobility with the European Commission, claiming that the company—and, by extension, its soon-to-be-owner Google—is charging outrageously high licensing fees for patents essential to complying with industry standards.

In a blog post titled "Google, Please Don't Kill Video on the Web," Microsoft general counsel Dave Heiner said Motorola "is attempting to block sales of Windows PCs, our Xbox game console and other products" by charging unusually high fees for patents related to the H.264 video standard. On a $1,000 laptop, Motorola wants a royalty of $22.50, Microsoft claims. Microsoft said its complaint, which is not a publicly available document, is filed against both Motorola and Google.

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The Apache Software Foundation has announced the availability of Apache 2.4, a major update of the popular open source HTTP server. The arrival of the new version, which is the first major release of Apache in six years, coincides with the software's 17th anniversary.

The Apache project emerged in 1995 around a fork of a Web server that was originally developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Apache became the Web's number one HTTP server is currently used by 400 million websites around the world, powering roughly 60 percent of all active domains.

The new version of Apache introduces a number of new features and technical improvements that will help it retain its standing. The developers say that version 2.4 is significantly more efficient than its predecessor, offering better performance and lower resource consumption.

"This release delivers a host of evolutionary enhancements throughout the server that our users, administrators, and developers will welcome," Apache server vice president Eric Covener wrote in a statement. "We've added many new modules in this release, as well as broadened the capability and flexibility of existing features".

One improvement that is particularly worth noting is that the multiprocessing module system (MPM) has been improved so that the desired module can be selected at runtime. Various MPMs implement different behaviors for how the HTTP server spreads its workload across threads and processes.

Previously, the desired module had to be selected during the configuration step of the build process. In version 2.4, it's now possible to select multiple MPMs during configuration and specify the one that should be used at runtime. This will offer more flexibility in Apache deployments.

Although Apache is highly popular and deeply entrenched, it is facing some fresh competition from nginx, an open source Web server that has seen dramatic growth in adoption over the past year. The latest statistics show that nginx has become the second most popular server, surpassing Microsoft's IIS.

Adopters generally cite superior performance as the reason why they replace Apache with nginx. According to some benchmarks (PDF) demonstrated by Apache Software Foundation president Jim Jagielski, Apache 2.4 offers competitive performance.

For more details about the release, you can refer to the official launch announcement. An overview of the new features can be found in the Apache 2.4 documentation.

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AUCKLAND, New Zealand—File-sharing magnate Kim Dotcom was granted bail Wednesday morning New Zealand time, after the judge hearing his application ruled that the Megaupload founder has no access to funds to help him flee the country.

As part of the bail conditions, Dotcom must reside at his leased Coatesville, Auckland mansion. He cannot travel more than 80 kilometers, or 50 miles, from the Coatesville residence on which no helicopters are allowed. Earlier bail applications by Dotcom failed as he was thought to have access to helicopters and chartered private jet planes with which he could flee New Zealand.

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President Obama last week signed the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act of 2012. Tucked inside the legislation is a provision that could have far-reaching implications in the coming decade: widespread civilian use of unmanned aerial drones.

Until now, the use of unmanned drones has been tightly regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration. Use has mostly been restricted to government agencies, and applications for private use were considered on a case-by-case basis. As of last summer, the FAA had only approved about 100 applications from private parties to fly unmanned drones.

But that's about to change. According to the New York Times, the new legislation mandates that the FAA begin allowing the use of small drones (under 4.4 pounds) by law enforcement within 90 days. And the agency must overhaul its drone regulations by September 30, 2015, including allowing more widespread use of drones by private parties.

The number of potential uses for aerial drones is almost endless, ranging from the life-saving to the creepy. Drones will allow search-and-rescue personnel to more quickly locate disaster victims. The Times interviewed a photographer, Daniel Gárate, who used a drone to make fly-by videos of high-end real estate to help their owners sell them. He shut down his operation after the Los Angeles police warned him that he was violating federal regulations, but he will likely be able to resume his business in 2015.

Other uses of the drones are likely to prove controversial. Gárate says he was asked to use his drone to conduct paparazzi surveillance of Kim Kardashian's wedding. He said no, but others are likely to say yes if drone regulations are liberalized. Google and Microsoft have already added high-resolution aerial photographs to their online maps, but their coverage is currently limited. Unmanned aerial photography will allow them to achieve much higher coverage at lower cost.

The American Civil Liberties Union has argued that law enforcement use of drones threatens Americans' privacy. A December report called for new regulations to ensure that drones are not abused.

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Comcast is launching its own video streaming service this week, the company announced on Tuesday. Dubbed "Xfinity Streampix," the new service appears to address concerns that customers are increasingly attracted to online services such as Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, and Hulu Plus.

Comcast already offers limited streaming access to current TV shows and other content to cable subscribers via its Xfinity TV service. Xfinity Streampix, on the other hand, will give users access to an expanded library of TV shows and movies. Disney-ABC Television Group, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, and Cookie Jar Entertainment have signed on as launch partners for the service, which goes live on Thursday.

Like Xfinity TV, Streampix will be included in certain cable subscription packages. However, it will also be offered as a $4.99 per month add-on for other customers. Unfortunately, Comcast appears to be offering the service only to existing video services subscribers; if you're merely paying Comcast for its high speed Internet service, you won't be able to add Streampix.

Customers will be able to access Streampix content away from home via the Xfinity TV website and iPad app. Comcast said it plans to expand access to consoles like Xbox 360 as well as mobile devices running Android "in the coming year."

Given the fact that a cable box isn't needed to access the content, we see little reason why Comcast isn't offering a version of the service to its Internet-only subscribers. These users still have no other choice but to subscribe to competing services like Netflix, which already have much larger libraries of content to choose from and are already available on more devices.

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There are hundreds of games that ask you to save the world/galaxy/universe, but precious few that put that epic mission in the context of the regular people that your efforts will effect. That's part of why the new, extended "Save the Earth" trailer for Mass Effect 3 has me so excited about the game's direction.

Sure, the trailer is packed with the requisite death-from-above explosions that look like they're straight out of Independence Day. A lot of viewers will no doubt be thrilled by the hordes of zombie-like Reaper husks, swarming and attacking like a Left 4 Dead Boomer just went off in the area. I still think it's hard to tell whether these pre-rendered, exquisitely shot battle sequences will be as powerful when translated to actual gameplay, however.

For me, the real heart of the trailer comes in the juxtaposition of a little girl playing with a toy spaceship and the real version of that ship being blown to smithereens. The look of bewilderment as that little girl's eye reflects the massive floating ship that has come to utterly annihilate her adds an important, grounded connection to what could easily have just been another frenetic battle for the fate of the world.

Then again, the Mass Effect series has always been good at layering the macro-level, interstellar power struggle over a core of personality-driven stories and micro-level decisions. The split focus in this latest trailer has me hopeful that this tradition will continue when Mass Effect 3 comes out in just a few weeks.

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As the game industry manages the awkward transition from a focus on retail distribution to a focus on purely downloadable titles, Sony seems to have come up with an interesting compromise position for its new handheld, Vita. The company has promised that any retail game for the system will also be available for download from the PlayStation Store, and usually at a price roughly ten percent less than the suggested retail price. (Titles like EA's FIFA Soccer, Sega's Virtua Tennis 4 and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 are currently showing up at the same price for download or retail purchase, however.)

At first glance, this seems like a great way to gently encourage players to purchase from Sony's online store, a boon for publishers that often hate to see their games resold on the secondhand market. But that encouragement is based on a price advantage that might be hard to maintain over real-world brick-and-mortar stores in the long run.

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The system requirements for the OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) developer preview released last week indicated that quite a few "modern," 64-bit capable Macs would not be able to upgrade to the new OS. How Apple determined the cutoff still remains fuzzy, but according to our research, we believe the issue is related to the graphics capabilities of those machines. Apple has suggested to Ars that the list is not set in stone, however, so some of the earlier Core 2 Duo Macs may end up making the final cut after all.

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Microsoft declined to comment on rumors that it's about to release an iPad version of its Office productivity suite. "We have nothing to share at this time," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars via e-mail—a statement that will do nothing to curb the apparent enthusiasm for the as-yet-unannounced iOS app.

On Tuesday morning, The Daily published a photo that appeared to show Microsoft Office running on an iPad. The publication cited sources who claimed the app would soon be submitted for approval in the App Store; the design team has allegedly wrapped up the project and it "could be released in the coming weeks." The Daily also claimed to have had some hands-on time with a "working prototype" of the software, noting that the interface was similar to Microsoft's OneNote app.

"Word, Excel and PowerPoint files can be created and edited locally and online. But it’s unclear if Microsoft will support other Office apps at launch or at all," the site wrote.

Ars was unable to obtain independent confirmation of the app's existence from our own sources, and as such, we're left feeling skeptical of The Daily's claims. For one, it's likely that the Mac BU would be involved in the development of an iPad app, and the photo appears to show no Mac BU branding. Additionally, three-apps-in-one is atypical for the App Store and may not pass Apple's review. And finally, the claim that Microsoft could take an app from design-to-finished product within weeks seems especially aggressive, and it's highly unlikely that the app would be coded before the design is finalized.

Still, these points aren't likely to dissuade those who have been waiting for Microsoft to release such an app for iOS devices, and Microsoft's vague statement will only feed the fire. But is there really a need for an official version of Office on the iPad? iOS users can view certain Office documents without the need for extra software, and there are already third-party apps that can edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Should Microsoft use its resources on developing its own app for (seemingly) the same purpose? Let us know what you think.

Update: Microsoft has confirmed that the photos published by The Daily do not show an actual Microsoft product. The company is still staying silent, however, on the question of whether Office is ultimately coming to the iPad.

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As a native speaker of English—as distinct from its transatlantic cousin, American—Windows has long been the source of considerable emotional trauma for me. Though the operating system has always let us use a UK keyboard layout, it has insisted on offending our sensibilities with such non-words as "favorites" and "colors."

Thankfully this will soon be no longer, as Windows 8 will treat British English as a first-class citizen. This is no mere language pack, either: Microsoft will sell boxed and preinstalled copies of the British English operating system that preferentially use and default to the Queen's English, with no colonial fallback.

Windows 8 will also include 13 new language packs, primarily for languages used in emerging markets. The process for installing new languages has also been considerably streamlined and simplified.

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Canonical has announced a new product called Ubuntu for Android that will bring the popular Linux distribution to high-end Android smartphones. The product consists of a complete Ubuntu desktop experience that is intended to be installed on the device alongside the standard Android environment.

Users will be able to run Ubuntu from their phone when they plug the device into a dock that connects to a keyboard and monitor. The underlying concept is similar to that of the WebTop environment that Motorola ships on the Atrix handset and other devices.

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