iParadigms, the company behind the turnitin plagiarism detection service, has received a summary judgement in its favor in a case resulting from students that were upset by its ability to perpetually store their term papers. According to the judge, detection of plagiarism has a transformative value that makes it fair use.
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Plagiarism screener gets passing grade in copyright lawsuit
Posted: March 26th, 2008, 1:17pm
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Analysis: patent reform bill unable to clean up patent mess
Posted: March 26th, 2008, 6:55am
With the Senate poised to take up the patent reform passed by the House last year, Ars explores what's in the legislation, what it means for the IT industry, and what Congress should do when it gets serious about patent reform.
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Canadian ISPs furious about Bell Canada's traffic throttling
Posted: March 26th, 2008, 6:05am
Bell Canada is now reportedly filtering P2P traffic not only on its network, but on DSL service that is resold by others. One Canadian ISP tells Ars that it's a "symptom of Bell's arrogance" and "blatant censorship" of its users' Internet connections.
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A fistful of patents: Seagate's saber rattling aimed at SSDs
Posted: March 26th, 2008, 4:55am
Solid-state hard drives, or SSDs, may appear to threaten the market position of conventional hard drive manufacturers, but Seagate CEO Bill Watkins isn't worried. In the event the drives do become a threat, Watkins views Seagate's patent war chest as an essential part of any SSD versus HDD throwdown that might occur in the mainstream market.
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IP hypocrisy: US likes WTO rulings only when it wins
Posted: March 26th, 2008, 3:46am
The US is a frequent critic of the intellectual property protections granted by other countries. When it comes to abiding by WTO judgments against it, thought, the US suddenly becomes far less enthusiastic about IP enforcement.
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Vista-capable lawsuit paints picture of buggy NVIDIA drivers
Posted: March 26th, 2008, 2:30am
Evidence drawn from Microsoft's own Windows Vista crash logs suggest that reports of G80 instability through 2007 were far from exaggerated. Driver stability was a major early issue for NVIDIA, and may have played a part in the rough reception Vista received from some quarters in the aftermath of the launch.
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OpenSocial Foundation launches with Google, Yahoo, MySpace
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 10:15pm
The establishment of an OpenSocial Foundation and Yahoo's support should lend significant weight to Google's social networking initiative. LinkedIn, Salesforce.com, and Plaxo are already on board.
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Sony BMG's planned music service looks like a yawner
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 7:45pm
Sony BMG CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz has let the cat out of the bag regarding the label's plans to launch a music subscription service. His ideas were just that, though—ideas. Without any specific details or even a timeline, it's clear that Sony BMG has a lot of planning to do if it wants to succeed.
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Chat app Digsby goes public with with A/V, Twitter support
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 7:10pm
Digsby goes public with the latest beta release. The "communication dashboard" app is maturing well, adding some major new features that private beta testers requested most.
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Innocent man pinched by RIAA asks SCOTUS for attorney's fees
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 6:39pm
With US appeals courts giving different answers, a Texas man is taking his case to the Supreme Court to ask why he has a stack of legal bills after the RIAA bailed out.
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SlySoft on Blu-ray BD+ crack: next time it will be easier
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 5:55pm
Blu-ray's BD+ was supposed to take "10 years" to crack, but it didn't take 10 months. Yet, even though the scheme can be dynamically updated, SlySoft is extremely confident that they'll crack whatever the BDA sends our way. (Updated.)
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Fox to FCC: your analysts' sexual fantasies not our problem
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 4:23pm
Fox TV charges that someone at the FCC may be reading just a little too much into a 2003 episode of Married by America, and is refusing to pay a FCC-imposed $91,000 fine.
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Paying for secrets: national security versus tech innovation
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 2:27pm
For a few years now I've been covering the decline in US federal funding for basic science and engineering research, but until recently I had no idea of the impact that 9/11 had on university-based computer science funding, and, by extension, the industry's ability to make the leap to multi-core.
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Clear Channel to FCC: wash XM-Sirius' mouth out with soap
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 1:46pm
Clear Channel has become an advocate of decency regulation and public interest reforms, at least for the competition.
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TiVo takes a break while cable giants do the heavy lifting
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 12:34pm
Comcast and Cox have begun rolling out TiVo software upgrades to their generic Motorola DVRs. The landscape is changing for TiVo, which may end up looking more and more like a software company as time goes on.
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Safari 3.1 on Windows: a true competitor arrives (seriously)
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 6:55am
We put the Windows beta of Safari 3 through the wringer last summer, we weren't impressed. With 3.1 out of beta, we wanted to know, have things improved? Wow, have they.
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Network Solutions in crosshairs over web site takedown
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 4:53am
Network Solutions has pulled the plug on a web site that promoted an anti-Islamic movie called "Fitna." The company says that it's performing an investigation after a number of customers complained about the site's contents.
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WiMAX body slam met with pile driver from its many backers
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 4:15am
An Australian WiMAX provider has trashed the technology, saying that it has "failed miserably." Does one provider's bad experiences spell trouble for the emerging wireless broadband technology? We don't think so, as the problems faced by the company down under are arguably unique to its situation.
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US Department of Energy called out for poor IT security
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 3:10am
Web security is always a moving target, but a recent report from the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Energy suggests that the DoE isn't doing all it should do when it comes to securing its public web servers.
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New inkjet tech can "print" LCDs using silver nanoparticles
Posted: March 24th, 2008, 11:00pm
Researchers use inkjet technology and a customized "ink" made of a suspension of silver nanoparticles to print the wiring of a thin film transistor, much like the ones used in most LCDs.
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Rock Band meets iTunes, opens built-in music store
Posted: March 23rd, 2008, 6:12am
With the record industry in a slump, games like Rock Band present a unique opportunity to sell new music directly to consumers. A new in-game store makes pushing new and existing acts to gamers even easier.
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Retailers offering credits/refunds to early HD DVD adopters
Posted: March 22nd, 2008, 7:20pm
With HD DVD officially dead, multiple retailers are reaching out to soften the loss for early adopters, and maybe entice them back into the store. Ars tells you who's offering the trade-ins and how to take advantage.
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DC.Ars: the podium finish gauntlet
Posted: March 22nd, 2008, 3:30pm
DC.Ars returns with a new distributed computing challenge. Help Ars Technica's distributed computing projects to a top-three finish as the Optimal Golumb Ruler project winds down.
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Sony realizes $50 crapware removal fee is, well, total crap
Posted: March 22nd, 2008, 1:08am
$50 to get a PC without all that useless software installed? Sony launched a small test, but the company has killed it after the move raised the question as to whether or not crapware is acceptable at all.
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Tibet effect: China shutters 25 video sites, penalizes 32
Posted: March 21st, 2008, 8:51pm
China's video-sharing services are a popular way to share clips not sanctioned by the government. Now, acting under a recent law, the government has shut down 25 of these sites and issues penalties and warnings to 32 more.
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Lessig enlists Web 2.0 in fight for congressional reform
Posted: March 21st, 2008, 8:15pm
Lawrence Lessig has officially launched his "Change Congress" campaign by rolling out mashups, web badges, and a wiki. Will it be enough to cleanse politics of its cash addiction?
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Tracking the geek vote: support for Obama, McCain even
Posted: March 21st, 2008, 7:30pm
A recent poll of IT workers show support split fairly evenly between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain. They're most likely to self-identify as Republicans, but people from the tech sector and their political action committees are more likely to contribute to Democrats.
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Analysis: the Obama/Hillary passport breaches and Real ID [Update: McCain too]
Posted: March 21st, 2008, 6:24pm
Only a full investigation will determine whether Executive Branch contractors had political ends in mind when they inappropriately accessed the passport records of Senators Obama and Clinton, but the entire incident shows exactly why citizen privacy is critical in a country where citizens compete with one another for control of the government.
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Google loves Tor: online anonymity project in Summer of Code
Posted: March 21st, 2008, 5:47pm
The Tor project that helps facilitate anonymous Internet communication has been accepted into this year's Google Summer of Code. Learn about what kinds of things Tor hopes to accomplish this summer and how to apply.
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OLPC security expert resigns over reorg as project flounders
Posted: March 21st, 2008, 5:07pm
The One Laptop Per Child's director of security has resigned in response to recent changes in management within the organization. He says that the project has deviated from its goals and vision.
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NY bill would police intersection of online ads, privacy
Posted: March 21st, 2008, 4:16pm
A New York State Assembly representative has proposed a bill that aims to impose restrictions on Internet advertising data collection. Ars takes an in-depth look at the legal implications and the intersection of advertising and privacy.
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Report: 95% of Internet video stuck looking longingly at TV
Posted: March 21st, 2008, 1:32pm
Only 5 percent of people who watch or download video content from the Internet do so regularly on a TV or some other non-computer device, according to new survey results from Macrovision. This should come as no surprise, since strict limitations from content providers make it inconvenient (or downright impossible) to do so.
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Playing chicken: ISP depeering a high-school lovers' quarrel
Posted: March 21st, 2008, 12:30pm
The peering dispute between large ISPs Cogent and Telia has disrupted Internet traffic in Europe and shows the fragility of Internet connectivity agreements. It's part backbone, part high-school dating, and part junior-high school politics.
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Lawmaker: IBM aided Holocaust, Google following same path
Posted: March 21st, 2008, 5:07am
Rep. Chris Smith argues that search engines who censor content in other countries are acting much like he believes IBM did during the Holocaust.
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Verizon, AT&T rule 700MHz auction; Block D fate unsettled
Posted: March 21st, 2008, 3:48am
AT&T and Verizon scored big in the FCC's biggest broadband auction ever; the agency is putting Block D on ice for the moment. Chairman Martin is happy with the outcome, while Commissioner Adelstein laments the fact that woman- and minority-owned business were shut out of the auction.
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DirecTV DVR clampdown: a sober reminder of DRM suckitude
Posted: March 21st, 2008, 2:27am
DRM giveth, and taketh away. That's the message from DirecTV, which in bowing to Hollywood, has now made its DVR customer's experience lamer. And best of all, this new use of DRM has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with making money.
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The more, the merrier? Study endorses some multidisplay rigs
Posted: March 21st, 2008, 1:17am
A study of office productivity tasks indicates that adding screen real estate increases task performance to a point, but there are diminishing returns, and differences based on how the extra pixels are provided.
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Classmate PC rated "E" for everyone; Intel to sell to public
Posted: March 20th, 2008, 8:53pm
Intel may not have sold all that many Classmate PCs, but the company is sold on the idea of the low-cost laptop. The CPU manufacturer has announced that the second-generation Classmate would be available to the general market in both North America and Europe.
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MPAA to Congress: Filtering is in colleges’ best interests
Posted: March 20th, 2008, 8:17pm
In a letter to Congressional leaders, the MPAA continues to push for special copyright provisions in a new bill reauthorizing the federal student aid program for college students. Filtering, it seems, can save big money on bandwidth, but colleges remain unimpressed.
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Florida botnet herder sheared by cops, faces 10 years in pen
Posted: March 20th, 2008, 6:50pm
A 21-year-old hacker from Florida has admitted to controlling a botnet that cost at least one company over $150,000 to fix. He now faces prison time and up to $250,000 in fines.
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PC game developer has radical message: ignore the pirates
Posted: March 20th, 2008, 6:17pm
When trying to make a living creating PC games, ignoring the pirates might be the best approach. The CEO of Stardock, which made the best-selling Sins of a Solar Empire, argues that copy protection simply aggravates actual customers.
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Nokia's "Comes With Music" now comes with EMI
Posted: March 20th, 2008, 5:35pm
Now that a second major label wants to sign on with Nokia's "Comes With Music" unlimited music subscription model, Nokia could set the bar for the next generation of content delivery.
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E-voting vendor blocks security audit with legal threats
Posted: March 20th, 2008, 4:01pm
New Jersey election officials have scrapped plans to hire a Princeton University computer science professor for a voting machine security review after receiving legal threats from the the vendor, Sequoia Voting Systems. Sequoia says that unauthorized independent review would violate the county's license agreement and jeopardize Sequoia's intellectual property.
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FCC commish: Net neutrality shouldn't extend to illegal acts
Posted: March 20th, 2008, 12:21pm
FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein threw the MPAA a bone, saying that the FCC will be "very careful about the use of the Internet for illegal activities." The FCC also announced the end of telco building monopolies and another P2P hearing, this time at Stanford University.
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Communicating good science to a polarized US public
Posted: March 20th, 2008, 6:50am
Should the public be getting its science in a "frame"? Experts at institutions from Brown to the Vatican weigh in on how to get the public to pay attention to decent science.
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First look: KidZui's kid-centric 'Net heavy on the ads
Posted: March 20th, 2008, 6:03am
A new browser and for-pay service seeks to create a more kid-friendly version of the Internet. Ars takes KidZui for a spin and finds the intermingling of ads with content troubling.
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FCC overhauls its broadband data as EU points and laughs
Posted: March 20th, 2008, 5:05am
The EU today made a point of saying that eight of its countries have better broadband penetration than the US, and the FCC adopted new rules on broadband data collection that it hopes will spur investment and competition.
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AMD's Barcelona to hit server racks in April
Posted: March 20th, 2008, 3:49am
AMD is preparing to launch the new B3 revision of Barcelona processors in April. Multiple launch partners will be announcing servers based around the new Opterons, including HP's eight-processor DL785, which can support up to 32 processor cores.
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Room-temperature superconductors a step closer with silane
Posted: March 20th, 2008, 2:41am
Researchers show that metallic hydrogen is most likely superconducting and that hydrogen compounds may even be superconducting at high temperature. It's another step in the direction of room-temperature superconductors.
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"Canada's Next Great Prime Minister" to be found on P2P
Posted: March 20th, 2008, 1:33am
Canadian broadcaster CBC plans to seed a legal, DRM-free version of one of its shows to BitTorrent starting next week. The move will mark the first time broadcaster in North America has used BitTorrent to legally distribute non-DRMed content.
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German court tightens up ISP, phone data retention rules
Posted: March 19th, 2008, 9:14pm
Germany's Constitutional Court ruled this week that access to e-mail and phone records should only be granted in serious investigations. It has also struck down indiscriminate license plate scanning and put curbs on police spyware.
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Intel hopes to unwire the world with long-range WiFi
Posted: March 19th, 2008, 7:56pm
Intel's Rural Connectivity Platform hopes to use modified 802.11 technology to bring wireless Internet to the masses in the developing world. The gear can be 100km apart, costs only $1,000, and offers 6.5Mbps.
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Apple may bundle unlimited iTunes with iPods
Posted: March 19th, 2008, 7:43pm
Apple is reportedly in negotiations to offer all the iTunes you want for a one-time or monthly subscription. Could the deal take the subscription model to the masses at last?
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Hands-on: Google Docs get gadgets
Posted: March 19th, 2008, 7:05pm
Google has introduced "gadgets" into its Google Docs suite, allowing developers to extend Google's spreadsheets in almost any way imaginable. The gadgets aren't likely to convert die-hard Office fans, but they do make Google's offerings more attractive.
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Questions about Block D linger in aftermath of auction
Posted: March 19th, 2008, 6:33pm
The 700MHz auction is over, but the FCC's ballyhooed Public/Private partnership is on ice after bidding on Block D fell well short of the $1.33 billion reserve. Inquiring minds want to know what's going to become of Block D and the FCC's plans for a nationwide public safety network.
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The reality of the RDF: how Apple motivates us to creativity
Posted: March 19th, 2008, 5:39pm
Maybe the fabled Apple Reality Distortion Field is actually a behavioral distortion field. New psychology research reveals that Apple's brand can motivate people to try to be more creative.
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Sizing up the NVIDIA-VIA acquisition rumors
Posted: March 19th, 2008, 4:06pm
Intel's Larrabee may make for strange bedfellows.Once bitter chipset rivals, NVIDIA and VIA are reportedly in talks that might lead to the acquisition of the Taiwanese manufacturer. VIA has denied such discussions, but with revenue down over 50 percent from the company's heyday, a buyout may be inevitable.
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Twitter breaks down barriers in the classroom
Posted: March 19th, 2008, 3:31pm
Ars looks at how microblogging services are reshaping modern communications. One particularly intriguing example is the story of a college professor who found that Twitter got his students more engaged in his classes.
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A truly hands-on experience: a review of the Novint Falcon
Posted: March 19th, 2008, 6:52am
The Novint Falcon doesn't want you to play games, it wants you to feel them. Ars Technica puts the innovative hardware through its paces to see if haptics really can increase your enjoyment of games.
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First Look: LimeWire Music Store beta short on selection
Posted: March 19th, 2008, 5:35am
LimeWire has opened up a beta version of its DRM-free MP3 store. Sure, you can buy music there for as low as 27 cents per track, but what good is it if there's no selection to speak of?
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Israel rebukes US: Our copyright laws are fine, thanks
Posted: March 19th, 2008, 4:40am
The Israeli government defends its copyright laws against content industry critics in the US who say that they don't go far enough.
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Comcast: FCC lacks any authority to act on P2P blocking
Posted: March 19th, 2008, 2:35am
Comc