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Week in science: hating on crippled products, climate contrarians, and more

by Ars Staff | Published February 18, 2012 9:00 AM

Not wasteful, but unethical: why we hate crippled products: It has become commonplace for a company to offer a range of products built from a common base. But the companies have to be careful about how they make the different versions, or risk consumer ire.

Leaked docs: Heartland Institute think tank pays climate contrarians very well (updated): Someone has leaked internal documents from the Heartland Institute, a thinktank that apparently funds climate contrarians very well, and is planning on developing its own school curriculum.

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BrailleTouch keyboard allows typing on a phone without looking

by Ryan Paul | Published February 17, 2012 8:10 PM

A group of researchers at Georgia Tech have created a new piece of software called BrailleTouch that allows users to type on a smartphone without looking at the screen. It takes advantage of gestures and multitouch interaction to support a chorded typing system that is modeled after Braille keyboards.

A group of visually impaired test subjects using the application on an iPhone were reportedly able to type at up to 32 words per minute with 92 percent accuracy. This speed is said to be considerably faster than what has previously been achieved with other "eyes-free" text input prototypes.

The researchers contend that the chorded typing system used by BrailleTouch is easy to learn and that it could potentially be useful to a broader audience, including sighted users who want to be able to type on their phone without looking. The interface has six dots, three on each side of the screen. The user holds the phone in landscape orientation with the screen facing away from them and types by tapping the dots.

"Research has shown that chorded, or gesture-based, texting is a viable solution for eyes-free written communication in the future, making obsolete the need for users to look at their devices while inputting text on them," the project's lead researcher, Mario Romero, told is in a statement.

The researchers intend to distribute the program under an open source software license. They are also working on ports to other platforms, including Android. For additional details about the software, you can reader a paper (PDF) published by the researchers. You can also see it in action in a YouTube video.

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ITC hands Apple another patent win against HTC

by Jacqui Cheng | Published February 17, 2012 5:00 PM

Apple has won another victory against HTC thanks to a new ruling by the International Trade Commission. On Friday afternoon, the ITC dismissed HTC's original patent complaint against Apple, upholding its initial ruling from October that said Apple had not violated HTC's patents in its implementation of iOS.

Apple first began its attack on HTC in March of 2010 by filing a federal patent infringement suit along with a similar complaint with the ITC. HTC responded with its own counterattacks on Apple, the two bickering over who owns certain parts of each other's respective operating systems. In October of 2011, the ITC's Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) made an initial ruling that Apple had not violated HTC's patents, but the decision was not final and remained subject to a six-person review panel.

Friday's ruling upholds the decision of the ALJ, leaving HTC out in the cold. This, however, isn't the only case going on between HTC and Apple—the ITC had ruled in favor of Apple on a different case between the two companies in December, saying that HTC's smartphones would face an import ban if they didn't remove a feature that allowed users to tap on data to bring up other information. (HTC says it has already found a solution and won't be facing the ban after all.) The ITC also sided with Apple in a patent infringement claim brought by HTC subsidiary S3 Graphics in November, and another ITC decision between HTC and Apple is currently on the calendar for November of this year.

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Malicious backdoor in open-source messaging apps not spotted for 3 months

by Dan Goodin | Published February 17, 2012 4:05 PM

For almost three months, versions of three widely distributed open-source applications from Horde.org contained a backdoor that allowed attackers to remotely execute malicious PHP code on systems that ran the programs.

Members of the Horde Project warned of the tampering earlier this week, in a bulletin that advised users of the collaboration and messaging applications to immediately reinstall newer versions that didn't contain the malicious code. Those affected included anyone who downloaded installation packages for Horde 3.3.12, Horde Groupware 1.2.10 or Horde Groupware Webmail Edition 1.2.10 between various dates in November and February 7. Horde 4 is not affected. A module that targets the vulnerability has already been added to the Metasploit framework for hackers and penetration testers.

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MacRumors claims to have confirmed that the displays headed for the iPad 3 are indeed "retina" class displays, with a resolution of 2048x1536.

A flag no more: Microsoft unveils new Windows logo

by Peter Bright | Published February 17, 2012 3:47 PMLast updated February 17, 2012 4:08 PM

The multicolored Windows flag is no more. Windows 8 will do away with the wavy Windows logo that Microsoft has used in one form or another for the last 20 years, and replace it with a logo that's, well, a window.

Windows 8 ushers in a new, and completely different, Windows look and feel: it brings the Metro design concept to the desktop. With Metro's emphasis on clean lines and typography, Microsoft wanted a logo that reflected these ideals, and so commissioned agency Pentagram to create the new logo.

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Nanopore tech brings rackmounted genome machines, USB-based DNA sensors

by John Timmer | Published February 17, 2012 3:22 PMLast updated February 17, 2012 3:44 PM

The DNA sequencing systems on the market produce their output by synthesizing new DNA in a way that allows them to read the identity of the base that's added. There have been a few ideas floated around that involved reading the bases directly from existing molecules, but the technical challenges of doing so have kept anyone from bringing these technologies to market. Now, a company called Oxford Nanopore has announced that it will be selling a DNA-reading machine before the year is over. Not only does this represent an entirely new sequencing technology, but the systems will be sold as rack-mounted hardware that can be clustered.

The basic principle behind nanopore sequencing is pretty simple (we've got more detail if you're interested). An external voltage forces DNA molecules to snake their way through a narrow protein pore embedded in a membrane. As each base passes through, its distinct chemical properties cause changes in the voltage difference across the membrane. By tracking the local voltage changes, it's possible to identify each base as it slides through the pore.

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Android 5 rumored for Q2 launch, could potentially converge with Chrome OS

by Ryan Paul | Published February 17, 2012 2:43 PM

A report from Taiwanese news publication DigiTimes claims that Google could launch Android 5, codenamed Jelly Bean, in the second quarter of 2012. The report cites unnamed manufacturers in the supply chain.

The report indicates that Jelly Bean will integrate "Chrome system functions." DigiTimes also claims that Google aims to bring Android 5 to the netbook and laptop market. These rumors together raise questions about whether Google is looking at a potential path forward for converging Android and Chrome OS. It's worth noting that Google recently launched an Android port of the Chrome Web browser, which is now in public beta for Android 4.

DigiTimes further claims that hardware manufacturers will be able to produce dual-operating system tablet devices that run Android 5 and Windows 8. Such products will reportedly allow the user to switch between the operating systems without having to reboot, which distinguishes them from traditional dual-boot configurations.

DigiTimes has a mixed track record on rumors, so its claims regarding Android 5 should be taken with a grain of salt. The rumored second quarter release date seems dubious in light of how long previous Android development cycles have taken, but it's possible that the work Google did to overhaul the platform during the transition between Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich has allowed the company to accelerate development.

As BGR pointed out in its coverage of the DigiTimes report, moving Android to a faster release cycle could seriously exacerbate the fragmentation caused by Android's version spread. Many popular Android handsets aren't scheduled to be updated to Android 4 until the second half of this year, so it's not clear what a Q2 release of Android 5 would mean for the hardware vendors that are struggling to get Android 4 out the door.

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Litigation between SCO and IBM to resume

by Ryan Paul | Published February 17, 2012 12:45 PMLast updated February 17, 2012 1:08 PM

Litigation between IBM and disgraced UNIX vendor SCO is set to be reactivated, Groklaw reports. The lawsuits, which were subject to an automatic stay imposed by the bankruptcy court, will now go forward and finally be brought to a close.

SCO is infamous for launching a misguided legal assault on the Linux operating system. The company claimed that IBM misappropriated code from UNIX and integrated it into the open source Linux kernel. SCO never managed to support this claim with evidence and the company's own internal code audits suggest that the allegation is baseless. The real roadblock that SCO faced, however, was the fact that they don't even own the UNIX copyrights.

The IBM litigation was put on hold pending the outcome of a dispute over the ownership of the System V UNIX copyrights between SCO and Novell, the rightful owner. The courts ruled in Novell's favor, finding that SCO did not obtain the copyrights in an asset purchase agreement that was made in the '90s. This effectively means that SCO doesn't have standing to sue IBM for allegedly infringing UNIX copyrights. SCO slid into bankruptcy and has never recovered.

The reactivation of the litigation between IBM and SCO is largely a procedural matter aimed at resolving the pending claims and counterclaims that the companies have brought against each other. Due to the court's previous conclusion that Novell is the rightful owner of UNIX, the reactivated litigation between SCO and IBM isn't going to be an opportunity for SCO to turn the tide in its favor.

IBM has a number of counterclaims against SCO that will finally be addressed by the courts. IBM is accusing SCO of breach of contract, violating the Lanham Act, engaging in unfair and deceptive trade practices, and violating the GNU General Public License. IBM is also seeking a declaratory judgement which will affirm that IBM's AIX platform doesn't infringe on any of SCO's copyrights.

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Mac developers: Gatekeeper is a concern, but still gives power users control

by Chris Foresman | Published February 17, 2012 11:30 AMLast updated February 17, 2012 12:38 PM

Apple's next version of its desktop operating system, OS X Mountain Lion, promises developers access to hundreds of new APIs to enable new functionality for their apps. While developers we spoke to seem mildly excited about the new functionality, their immediate focus was on the implications of Apple's new Gatekeeper security feature.

Gatekeeper allows users to tightly control which sources apps can be installed from. By default, Gatekeeper will allow apps from the Mac App Store to be installed, as well as other apps that have been signed using a special certificate given to registered OS X developers. Users can also opt to allow apps from any source—the current default on Lion. The latter would remain an option for "power users" who are confident in the source of their apps even if they are not signed, Apple told Ars.

But regardless of the options, Gatekeeper remains a hot topic of conversation among developers, as noted by Rogue Amoeba's Paul Kafasis. "If Apple uses a light touch, there's little downside here. As long as getting to be an 'identified developer' is not onerous for developers, Gatekeeper should provide more security for users, while not hindering developers in any noticeable way."

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Anonymous Antisec hackers break into and bring down FTC website

by Sean Gallagher | Published February 17, 2012 11:05 AMLast updated February 17, 2012 11:28 AM

Members of Anonymous' "Antisec" collective struck a Web server of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection early on February 17, hacking into and defacing the sites hosted on it.

"The Bureau of Consumer Protection’s Business Center website and the partnership site NCPW run by the Federal Trade Commission were hacked earlier today," FTC spokesperson Cecelia Prewett said in an official statement sent to Ars. "The FTC takes these malicious acts seriously. The sites have been taken down and will be brought back up when we’re satisfied that any vulnerability has been addressed."

The log of the hack, a cut-and-paste from a shell session on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux server, shows the server's directories, the user account names and encrypted passwords stored in its etc/shadow file, and the MySQL databases running on the server. The contents of two of the tables posted in the log dump include the contents of a table with the account names, e-mail addresses, and hashed passwords of what appears to be the users of the server's installations of Drupal and Wordpress.

While the websites belong to the FTC, they weren't running in a government-owned data center. According to the IP address data for the server, it was hosted by Media Temple in Culver City, California, and it appears its sites were set up for the FTC by the public relations firm Fleishman-Hilliard. Spokespeople for Fleishman and Media Temple could not be reached by Ars for comment.

Based on the claims of the Anon Antisec member who posted the log of the attack to Pastebin.com, the attack was motivated by the FTC's failure to step in to stop Google's changes in its privacy policy, and by the US government's support of ACTA. In the statement, the Anon threatened that "If ACTA is signed by all participating negotiating countries...We will systematically knock all evil corporations and governments off of our internet."

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Google hit with FTC complaint, says circumventing Safari privacy features accidental

by Jon Brodkin | Published February 17, 2012 10:50 AMLast updated February 17, 2012 11:07 AM

The Consumer Watchdog advocacy group today asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Google violated a previous privacy agreement with the FTC by tracking cookies in a way that circumvents default privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser.

Google's method of getting around Safari's default blockage of third-party cookies was detailed today in a study by Stanford grad student Jonathan Mayer and in two articles in the Wall Street Journal. One Journal headline calls it "Google's iPhone tracking," but the technique actually works across iPhones, iPads, iPod touches, and desktop computers. After being contacted by the Journal, Google disabled the code that had allowed it to install tracking cookies on Safari, even though the browser is designed to block such cookies by default.

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Apple has reportedly confirmed that all software updates in Mountain Lion will be delivered via the Mac App Store.

Your questions and answers about Messages beta on the Mac

by Jacqui Cheng | Published February 17, 2012 10:22 AMLast updated February 17, 2012 12:37 PM

Mac users have now had a full day to mess around with the newly released Messages beta that lets them send iMessages from the desktop. (We shared our thoughts on the beta software yesterday and highlighted a number of things that could use improvement before Messages' final release.) We've received a number of follow-up questions from readers, so we thought we'd do a quick followup with some of the points that people have been sending in.

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For those who haven't read it yet, the Wall Street Journal scored an exclusive interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook. It's worth a read if you follow Apple news.

Location tracking of GSM cellphones: now easier (and cheaper) than ever

by Dan Goodin | Published February 17, 2012 8:47 AMLast updated February 17, 2012 10:57 AM

Computer scientists have devised a low-cost way to surreptitiously tease out key location details of people carrying cellphones that are connected to older carrier networks.

The attack, described in a research paper (PDF) penned by members of the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering, is most useful for determining whether a target is within a given geographic area as large as about 100 square kilometers (about 39 square miles) or as small as one square kilometer. It can also be used to pinpoint a target's location but only when the attacker already knows the city, or part of a city, the person is in.

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Preorders begin for Spark, the open KDE tablet

by Ryan Paul | Published February 17, 2012 2:39 AMLast updated February 17, 2012 3:09 PM

The Spark tablet is now available for preorder from the Make Play Live website. Registering for a preorder doesn't require a credit card and will secure a place in line to purchase the tablet when it is finally available later this year. The product is expected to ship to customers in May.

KDE developer Aaron Seigo announced the Spark last month and revealed that it will ship with a tablet-friendly user interface based on KDE's Plasma environment. Under the hood, the Spark runs the Mer platform, which is a community-driven mobile Linux environment based on the MeeGo project.

The Spark will have a 1GHz ARM CPU, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage, and an 800x480 display. Seigo has confirmed that it's based on the Zenithink C71, an Android tablet produced by a Shenzhen manufacturer. The retail price of the Spark hasn't been finalized yet, the developers are aiming for â‚¬200 ($262).

The tablet sets a relatively high standard of openness. The software environment is built with open components from the KDE and Mer projects, both of which are community-driven and welcome the participation of independent developers. Users can also optionally choose to replace the operating system that is installed on the device. In a blog post about the product's openness, Seigo explained that the only parts that aren't completely open yet are some of the hardware drivers.

"Right now we're still stuck with a few binary drivers which is not a perfect situation. With time I'm confident we'll get the binary drivers out of the picture, one by one, even if it takes time, effort and some pain," he wrote. "We've already managed to get source for some drivers that were not previously available so the trajectory is right."

Seigo also documented the answers to some frequently asked questions about the Spark in another recent blog post.

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A neutron star that's a fast particle accelerator may lie at the heart of the Crab Nebula

by Matthew Francis | Published February 16, 2012 5:00 PM

The Crab Nebula (also designated M1 or NGC 1952) is visible through small telescopes, which has allowed astronomers to observe its growth and evolution since the supernovae that created it became visible in 1054 CE. A pulsar was found in the center of the Crab in 1968. This rapidly rotating neutron star is the core of the star that went supernova to make the nebula. In the intervening decades, X-ray, gamma ray, and radio observations have mapped the region of the nebula closest to the pulsar. During that mapping, it became apparent that the Crab pulsar is one of the brightest sources of gamma rays observable from Earth.

Despite all of those observations, we still don't fully understand the Crab's precise gamma ray spectrum, particularly recently observed pulses of intense gamma radiation seen by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Existing models certainly do well at describing much of the complex interplay between the intense magnetic fields of the pulsar and the winds of charged particles flowing outward. But no single scheme seems sufficient to cover all the observed phenomena.

A potentially promising new model, proposed by F. A. Aharonian, S. V. Bogovalov, and D. Khangulyan, may fill in some of these blanks. It proposes that areas near the pulsar are acting as rapid particle accelerators, but don't boost electrons and heavier particles to the same extent.

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Takedowns run amok? The strange Secret Service/GoDaddy assault on JotForm (updated)

by Nate Anderson | Published February 16, 2012 4:44 PMLast updated February 16, 2012 5:40 PM

Popular site JotForm doesn't host music or movies or child pornography, all of which have led US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to seize other Internet domain names without advance warning (sometimes making serious mistakes). JotForm also doesn't create content itself. Instead, it helps customers create online forms that can then be embedded in their websites for easy data collection.

But that didn't spare the site from having its entire business shuttered without warning yesterday as the site's domain name was shut down at the request of the US Secret Service. JotForm's domain name registrar, GoDaddy, redirected the site's nameservers to NS1.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM—and with that, JotForm.com became unreachable and the site's two million user-created forms all broke.

And it all may have been done without a court order.

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Older Macs voted off the Mountain Lion island

by Jacqui Cheng | Published February 16, 2012 4:23 PM

Another Mac OS release, another moment of truth for those using old Macs. Apple's next OS X release, code-named Mountain Lion, will drop support for some older machines as the company continues to move forward with the iOS-ification of the operating system. The list of supported machines has not been publicly published (yet) by Apple, but a developer source has now passed that list along to TUAW after having downloaded the Mountain Lion developer release.

So which Macs get to stay on the island? According to TUAW's source, Mountain Lion will run on:

iMac (mid 2007 or later) MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later) MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, 2.4/2.2 GHz), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later) MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later) Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later) Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later) Xserve (Early 2009)

Anything earlier than those machines will not be able to install OS X 10.8 from the Mac App Store. The list of those getting the axe include the original MacBook Air and all pre-unibody plastic MacBooks, iMacs from 2006, pre-June-2007 MacBook Pros, pre-mid-2007 Mac minis, the original and 2007 Mac Pro, and Xserves from 2006 and 2008. Most of those machines were released early enough that it makes sense for Apple to drop support, but there are plenty of Mac users who like to hold onto old hardware and won't be pleased with the latest restrictions. Are you one of them?

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Google has released Dartium, a Chromium build with a Dart VM

by Ryan Paul | Published February 16, 2012 3:56 PM

Google has announced the release of an experimental Chromium build that includes an integrated Dart language runtime. The browser, which Google calls Dartium, is being made available as a technical preview for the benefit of developers who want to see how the Dart virtual machine works in a browser.

Dart is a new programming language that Google is developing for client-side Web scripting. The language has a more conventional object model than JavaScript and optional support for static typing, features that Google claims will allow it to be faster, safer, and more conducive to tooling than JavaScript. Much like Microsoft's VBScript, Dart is a nonstandard client language that is developed and supported by a single vendor outside of the Web standards process.

Google intends to include a Dart virtual machine in Chrome, but the language seems unlikely to attract the support of other browser vendors. Google is developing a compiler that will allow Dart code to be converted into JavaScript so that it can run in browsers where Dart is not supported. This "transpiler" approach is similar to how the CoffeeScript convenience language is used today.

Dartium, which includes an integrated Dart virtual machine, is the first browser that can run Dart code that hasn't first been converted to JavaScript. It can load raw Dart code from a conventional script tag. Dartium, which can be downloaded from the Dart language website, is currently available for Mac OS X and Linux. Google says that a Windows build is coming soon. For more details, you can refer to the official Google Code blog.

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Oracle claims new MySQL Cluster does 1 billion queries per minute—in NoSQL

by Sean Gallagher | Published February 16, 2012 3:20 PM

Oracle has announced the general availability of MySQL Cluster 7.2 as a GPL download, and claims to have achieved a benchmark of 1 billion queries per minute and 110 million updates per minute on an eight-server cluster. Those results, based on the flexAsynch test in the DBT-2 benchmark, were attained using a new NoSQL NDB C++ API.

Mikael Ronstrom, senior MySQL architect at Oracle, described the test rig for the benchmark in a blog post on February 15. He said that the server cluster used in the test ran on eight two-socket servers, each running one data node, "using X5670 with Infiniband interconnect and 48GB of memory per machine." Ten other machines ran the flexAsynch queries against the cluster.

In the flexAsynch test, "each read is a transaction consisting of a read of an entire row consisting of 25 attributes, each 4 bytes in size," he wrote. "flexAsynch uses the asynchronous feature of the NDB API which enables one thread to send off multiple transactions in parallel. This is handled similarly to how Node.js works with callbacks registered that reports back when a transaction is completed."

The results were a eight-fold improvement from a similar benchmark ran by Oracle last year. But given that there aren't any published results anywhere else for flexAsynch scores from any other vendor, it's hard to say exactly what these results mean, or how the performance compares to other open-source NoSQL databases.

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Floppy Bose Einstein condensates oscillate free of theory

by Chris Lee | Published February 16, 2012 2:45 PMLast updated February 16, 2012 8:27 PM

One of the key concepts in physics is that of a phase transition. Ice melting to form water is one example; another is the transition between magnetic and non-magnetic forms of iron. The underlying physics of these transitions is a story about correlations. Understanding a phase transition and, indeed, a phase of matter, is all about understanding the growth of correlations.

You would think that one of the cleanest and best understood physical systems wouldn't have a lot to offer physicists in terms of understanding correlations that develop through a phase transition. However, physicists got a bit of a surprise when they looked at particular correlations that arise as a dilute gas is cooled down until it forms a Bose Einstein condensate (BEC).

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Hands-on with iMessage beta on the desktop: a good start with beta bugs

by Jacqui Cheng | Published February 16, 2012 2:08 PMLast updated February 16, 2012 2:51 PM

iMessage on the desktop went from a wish to (beta) reality in just four months. Less than half a year after rolling out its SMS "replacement" for iOS devices, Apple brought its iMessaging platform to the Mac OS X desktop as part of its announcement of Mountain Lion on Thursday morning. The desktop app is actually called "Messages," and it's a somewhat reworked version of the old iChat client that many Mac users still prefer for AIM, GTalk, and Bonjour messaging. And although Messages is officially a part of the Mountain Lion release that will come out this summer, Apple released a public beta for Lion users (which requires 10.7.3) on Tuesday.

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Slide for injunction: Apple wins against Motorola over "slide-to-unlock" in Germany

by Chris Foresman | Published February 16, 2012 1:50 PM

A German court ruled on Thursday that Motorola's smartphones infringe on an Apple patent that covers certain implementations of the iPhone's "slide-to-unlock" feature. Presiding Judge Dr. Peter Guntz of the Munich I Regional Court awarded Apple a permanent injunction it can enforce against the sale or distribution of Motorola's Android-based smartphones within the country.

The patent in question, EP1964022 "Unlocking a Device by Performing Gestures on an Unlock Image," was already at the center of a patent dispute between Apple and Samsung in The Netherlands. A judge there did not grant a preliminary injunction against Samsung devices on the basis that he believed the patent may be ruled invalid.

The German court disagreed, noting that two different "slide-to-unlock" implementations used in Mototrola's Android smartphones violated the claims of that patent. The court ruled that the Xoom tablet's particular implementation did not infringe on Apple's patented claims, however.

Apple is asserting the same patent against Samsung in Germany, as well. The win today makes it more likely that German courts could rule against Samsung or other Android handset makers based on this patent. However, it is currently subject to a validity review in a separate court case; if Apple wins injunctions which are later overturned because the patent is ruled invalid, it will be required by German law to pay out damages to Motorola and any others affected by such injunctions.

The "slide-to-unlock" decision follows a recent win Apple gained over Motorola concerning standards-essential 3G patents, and reverses a string of losses against Motorola in Germany. Apple and Motorola are also currently duking it out over smartphone patents in US District Court as well as at the ITC.

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Load more stories from News

News

Week in science: hating on crippled products, climate contrarians, and more

BrailleTouch keyboard allows typing on a phone without looking

ITC hands Apple another patent win against HTC

Malicious backdoor in open-source messaging apps not spotted for 3 months

A flag no more: Microsoft unveils new Windows logo

Nanopore tech brings rackmounted genome machines, USB-based DNA sensors

Android 5 rumored for Q2 launch, could potentially converge with Chrome OS

Litigation between SCO and IBM to resume

Mac developers: Gatekeeper is a concern, but still gives power users control

Anonymous Antisec hackers break into and bring down FTC website

Google hit with FTC complaint, says circumventing Safari privacy features accidental

Your questions and answers about Messages beta on the Mac

Location tracking of GSM cellphones: now easier (and cheaper) than ever

Preorders begin for Spark, the open KDE tablet

A neutron star that's a fast particle accelerator may lie at the heart of the Crab Nebula

Takedowns run amok? The strange Secret Service/GoDaddy assault on JotForm (updated)

Older Macs voted off the Mountain Lion island

Google has released Dartium, a Chromium build with a Dart VM

Oracle claims new MySQL Cluster does 1 billion queries per minute—in NoSQL

Floppy Bose Einstein condensates oscillate free of theory

Hands-on with iMessage beta on the desktop: a good start with beta bugs

Slide for injunction: Apple wins against Motorola over "slide-to-unlock" in Germany

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