Ars Technica

Has the Mac crested? The OpenForum's haikus tackle the issue

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

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Disney researchers put gesture recognition in door knobs, chairs, fish tanks

Imagine a door that locks when you pinch the knob. Or a smartphone that can be silenced by a hand gesture. Or a chair that adjusts room lighting when you recline into it.

A team of researchers at Disney Research and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have come up with a system called Touché, which uses the same capacitive technology as a smartphone's touchscreen to imbue everyday objects with body and gesture recognition.

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Future U: Classroom tech doesn't mean handing out tablets

A couple of decades ago the most advanced technology to appear in an average classroom was a mini-cassette recorder and a calculator. For most students, however, typical classroom technology ran the gamut from yellow legal pads to theme books, from pencils to ballpoints.

Computers were restricted to the computer lab. There, the green blinking DOS cursor would excite and intimidate. Most of the thrill of the computer lab, aside from a few basic computer games, came from the fact that you could type up a paper without using Wite-Out.

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Schools can't stop wondering what students are up to on Facebook

It's graduation season, which means that students, teachers, and administrators alike are all thinking about one thing: Facebook.

Schools around the globe have a fascination with—indeed, sometimes a fixation on—the social networking site and what their students are getting up to online. Questions about the appropriate response to student material on social networking sites have existed for years, but they're exploding into serious policy questions (and even laws) as such sites become almost ubiquitous teen hangouts.

For instance: can school administration use social networking to keeps tabs on what students do during the school day? What about things they do after leaving school property?

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Weekend Ar(t)s: With Free Comic Book Day, there's no excuse to miss out

During the weekend, even Ars takes an occasional break from reviewing just how mastered those iTunes songs are or worrying about a few malicious Android apps. Weekend Ar(t)s is a chance to share what we're watching/listening/reading or otherwise consuming this week.

Experts project The Avengers to dominate the weekend box office. Major magazines currently devote pages to Joss Whedon. So if there was ever a perfect year to embrace whatever inner geek resides within, this is it. And the day to do so is this Saturday, the first in May.

Since 2002, the first Saturday in May has marked the celebration of Free Comic Book Day. The name leaves little to the imagination. Comic book shops across the world offer up titles for no charge in the hopes of promoting comic culture to the masses (and gaining a few new readers of course). Major publishers such as DC, Marvel, or Image develop exclusive titles for the day, with shops even purchasing these exclusives themselves in order to participate. Comic retailers will dole out an estimated two million books this year alone.

(Not bad for a holiday started by one guy's column in a trade magazine, with only four shops participating in year one).

The concept of a niche industry-wide promotional day may feel flat now—from bookstores to coffee shops, everything has its own "day" nowadays—but Free Comic Book Day may be the modern original. It predates all the major industry days by five years: Record Store Day ('07), Small Business Saturday ('10), and even its comic compatriot Read Comics in Public Day ('10).

Frankly, comics may be the medium that needs this support the most. As of 2011, it was roughly a $650 million dollar market. For perspective, the Harry Potter series has sold 450 million copies. And the transition to digital may still be in its infancy, but it's already marred by a concern of impacting the print income.

But comics provide so much to popular culture. That's why celebs like Kevin Smith vouch for it, Hugh Jackman too. It's a development farm for endless amounts of film and television, while simultaneously remaining an endlessly flexible medium (somehow Maus and the sexed-up New 52 Batman fit within the same category?).

So find a local participating shop through the holiday's official website. You can even browse (not to mention preview) the exclusive titles so you can go in with a purpose. "Gold" books refer to titles that cost slightly more for the shops and are a little more rare, when compared with "Silver" titles of course.

This year's freebies run the gamut. There's a new New 52 book from DC. You can find things like Donald Duck for the kids, The Avengers for dedicated fans, or even oddities like My Favorite Martian for the pop culturally curious.

There's never been a wider range of comic-references splattered across media nor a brighter lens being focused on comics-related things. It's never too late to pick up your first or encourage a friend to do so. Indulge.

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Subsidized Xbox 360: bad deal for consumers, missed opportunity for Microsoft

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

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Exercises in democracy: building a digital public library

Most neighborhoods in America have a public library. Now the biggest neighborhood in America, the Internet, wants a library of its own. Last week, Ars attended a conference held by the Digital Public Library of America, a nascent group of intellectuals hoping to put all of America's library holdings online. The DPLA is still in its infancy—there's no official staff, nor is there a finished website where you can access all the books they imagine will be accessible. But if the small handful of volunteers and directors have their way, you'll see all that by April 2013 at the latest.

Last week's conference set out to answer a lot of questions. How much content should be centralized, and how much should come from local libraries? How will the Digital Public Library be run? Can an endowment-funded public institution succeed where Google Books has largely failed (a 4,000-word meditation on this topic is offered by Nicholas Carr in MIT's April Technology Review)?

Enthusiasm for the project permeated the former Christian Science church where the meeting was held (now the church is the headquarters of Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive). But despite the audience's applause and wide-eyed wonder, there’s still a long way to go.

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Weird Science increases its fondness for atheists

I thought I didn't like you, but then you mentioned the Supreme Court: Atheists are some of the least trusted members of society, consistently coming in last in polls that ask whether you'd vote for a hypothetical presidential candidate that had certain features. Now, researchers have figured out a way to make atheists a touch more appealing: prime people with thoughts of trusted secular authorities. This didn't eliminate the bias against atheists, but it did seem to reduce it a bit.

Buckyballs as a fabricated fountain of youth: The fullerenes are spherical cages of carbon atoms, the most common containing 60 of them. Their distinctive chemical properties have led to their use for a variety of materials, including a number in which they'll end up in contact with the human body—in a few cases, ingested as drugs. Various studies have shown that fullerenes are nontoxic when the exposure is brief, so one lab decided to give some rats a repeated dose of the fullerene and see what happens. Surprisingly, they report, the rats lived twice as long as their control peers, even though the fullerene was cleared within a couple of days.

That result may be weird, but there's something else fishy about the experiments. Derek Lowe, who first blogged about the results, saw his eagle-eyed readers dive into the paper, and come up with a bit of a problem. Two figures, meant to represent different data, actually turned out to be different views of the same sample. This could be an innocuous mistake but, as Lowe notes, it doesn't exactly give you confidence in the paper. So, best not to fry up your pork chops with buckyballs just yet.

Studying the past using a giant tower of bird poop: This is a way to reconstruct that past that only a faculty member with some expendable grad students would love: a large, unused tower that had been occupied by chimney swifts for decades, recording their history through the equivalent of sedimentary layers at the bottom. Except the sediment is bird poop. The authors could track the arrival of DDT and the changes it created in the insect populations eaten by the swifts using that 50-year record.

Maybe we should see how yeast respond to Viagra, too: Zoloft is an antidepressant that targets a signaling pathway used by nerve cells. Yeast have no nerve cells (more accurately, yeast are single cells that don't happen to be nerves). Yet, dump Zoloft on yeast, and it triggers significant changes, probably through altering the internal membranes of the yeast. All of which has some pretty serious implications, since the drug may be doing similar things in humans.

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Kim Dotcom lampoons New Zealand MP in his new rap song

Say what you will about Kim Dotcom, but if there’s something that we (and the Feds) can probably agree on, it’s that he’s entertaining. After all, what other target of an international manhunt, while under investigation, comes out with a catchy rap tune as part of a New Zealand political scandal?

On Sunday, the Megaupload magnate, who had his assets seized and site smashed earlier this year, released the "John Banks Song" on YouTube.

The new track was produced with the Black Eyed Peas' Printz Board.

Its chorus crows: "Nothing to fear / Nothing to hide / He's the majority / So he's all right. / He is John Banks / He got the vote / And that's why Key keeps him afloat / On his cabbage boat."

John Banks is the head of the ACT New Zealand political party and the current minister for Small Business and Regulatory Reform. Kim Dotcom is alleged to have donated NZ$50,000 ($38,000) to the 2010 Banks campaign for mayor of the city of Auckland, keeping it anonymous and under the radar by splitting it in two. Dotcom is now set to be questioned by local authorities over this issue.

Banks has said previously that he "didn’t come up the river in a cabbage boat." This appears to be a New Zealand English expression meaning that he’s not stupid. Prime Minister John Key is a governing coalition with Banks’ ACT party, and has publicly defended Banks.

Banks, however, has subsequently denied that he broke any elections laws, and then said that he could not remember if he’d taken a helicopter ride to Dotcom’s mansion to meet with him.

"He took that strategy to a level of absurdity," said Bryce Edwards, an Otago University political scientist, in an interview with the New Zealand Herald over the weekend. "People don't understand the whole case but they pick up on things like the helicopter. People just think the whole thing stinks."

The newspaper also reported that his poll numbers had dropped to just 10 percent in the wake of the political scandal, and reported last week that the "Crown lawyers acting for the United States knew before seizing Kim Dotcom's fortune and property that they were using an unlawful court order."

On Monday, the paper, which has been filling inquiries through the Official Information Act, also reported that "police officers who raided the mansion of Internet magnate Kim Dotcom put together a list of belongings for United States authorities to seize."

Last Friday, Prime Minister John Key denied any knowledge of Dotcom "until the day before the raids even though his senior ministers, a string of senior civil servants, and his own electorate staff were involved in matters relating to him. It has emerged that staff in the Prime Minister's own department were aware of Dotcom and his bid through the Overseas Investment Office to buy the mansion in which he lived with his family."

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Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom

In what could be a major blow to Android, Google's mobile operating system, a San Francisco jury issued a verdict today that the company broke copyright laws when it used Java APIs to design the system. The ruling is a partial victory for Oracle, which accused Google of violating copyright law.

But the jury couldn't reach agreement on a second issue—whether Google had a valid "fair use" defense when it used the APIs. Google has asked for a mistrial based on the incomplete verdict, and that issue will be briefed later this week.

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DocTrackr offers file tracking, analytics, without the paranoia

In the physical world, when you share a record or a book with a friend, it's still technically yours. But in the digital world, where documents aren't so much shared as they are copied, it's difficult for content creators to maintain control.

Sharing a Word document chock-full of sensitive information isn't like lending out your beloved old copy of Paul's Boutique, after all. You can forward that document to multiple people, edit its contents, and print out as many copies as you want. And in most cases, the content creator is likely none the wiser. ClĂ©ment Cazalot believed there had to be a better—and easier—way to keep such crucial documents in check.

Rather than create a paranoid tool for paranoid people, Cazalot and his cofounder Alex Negrea created DocTrackr, a file tracking service that also gathers usage analytics. The service tracks how and where documents are being viewed and shared—and boasts a handy kill switch to revoke access altogether, if needed—with the hopes of giving creators a better idea of how their content is being used.

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Feature: Game over—how sanctions and violence doomed Syria's gaming industry

"Life for Syrian game developers has never been better," joked Falafel Games founder Radwan Kasmiya in an e-mail to Ars Technica. "You can test the action on the streets and get back to your desktop to script it on your keyboard."

Kasmiya's icy humor hides a sobering truth about the troubles faced by Syria's once-promising game development industry. The country once looked like a future technology hub, with its centralized location among the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries allowing it to easily draw programming and engineering talent from Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. But that promise has been effectively squashed, first by global economic sanctions and then by more than a year of bloody civil conflict.

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Week in Apple: Mastered for iTunes, RubyMotion, and Willy Wonka Jobs

This week's most popular Apple coverage at Ars included our analysis of the Mastered for iTunes audio, a look at RubyMotion, Apple's tablet market share numbers, an interview with the creative director who worked with Steve Jobs for 12 years, and plenty more. It has been a busy week, so we won't blame you if you missed some of it. You've come to the right place!

Does "Mastered for iTunes" matter to music? Ars puts it to the test: Some engineers say Apple's "Mastered for iTunes" program is mere marketing hype. Ars visits a mastering studio to try the process for ourselves.

Exclusive: building native iOS apps with RubyMotion: Former Apple developer Laurent Sansonetti has created a new development tool called RubyMotion that allows developers to build iOS applications with the Ruby programming language. We put it to the test in this exclusive hands-on tutorial.

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EPA, Department of the Interior announce additional fracking oversight

Drafts of new regulations relating to hydraulic fracturing in natural gas production were released for public comment Friday. This follows on the heels of the new rules for air emissions released two weeks ago. The US Environmental Protection Agency announced new guidance for obtaining permits when diesel fuel is included as a component of the fracking fluid used to fracture source rocks and free the gas trapped inside. As we laid out in a previous story, a 2005 amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act exempted fracking from regulation as an underground injection, except when diesel fuel is used. Despite that caveat, the industry continued using diesel fuel without reporting it, saying that the EPA had never explicitly provided a process for them to do so. That process is now laid out in the new guidance. This may become a moot point, however, as public pressure is forcing the industry to move to more innocuous alternatives.

The US Department of the Interior also announced new rules for fracking on federal and Indian land, greatly increasing oversight. Fracking must now be explicitly approved as part of the normal drilling permits companies apply for when operating on federal land. This will require them to submit details on the layers of rock they plan to frack and how they will manage and dispose of the spent fracking fluids. They will also have to submit documentation of tests performed to ensure integrity of the seal around the well before the actual fracking begins. After the process is complete, drillers will have to publicly disclose the chemicals used in the fracking fluid.

In the press release, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar says, “As we continue to offer millions of acres of America’s public lands for oil and gas development, it is critical that the public have full confidence that the right safety and environmental protections are in place. The proposed rule will modernize our management of well stimulation activities—including hydraulic fracturing—to make sure that fracturing operations conducted on public and Indian lands follow common-sense industry best practices.”

Several states (most notably Wyoming and Texas) already have some similar requirements on the books, and others may use the federal rules as a template in the future. The drafts of both the EPA guidance and DOI rules will be revised and finalized following the 60 day public comment period.

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Apple improves AirPlay playback, iPad network switching, HDR with iOS 5.1.1

Apple has released an update to iOS that fixes a number of minor (but annoying) bugs within the operating system. The update was just released on Monday afternoon (at least for those of us on the eastern half of the US) and includes fixes for iPads and iPhones.

According to Apple, iOS 5.1.1 improves the reliability of the HDR photo option when you try to take photos using the Camera app's shortcut from the lock screen. (This one drives me the most crazy). It also fixes some AirPlay video bugs that affected playback "in some circumstances," improves the reliability of syncing Safari bookmarks and Reading List, and fixes a bug that caused iTunes or the App Store to display an error saying "Unable to purchase" when the purchase was successful after all. The one fix that specifically affects the iPad is one that prevented third-gen iPads from switching easily between 2G and 3G networks.

There may be other minor bug fixes or feature changes buried within iOS 5.1.1, but those will be left for users to discover. When iOS 5.1 was released in March alongside the new iPad, the company also increased its over-the-air file download limit and free trials for subscriptions alongside the OS's bug fixes and feature additions. Although 5.1.1 isn't likely to address any of the ongoing frustrations we have with iOS, we're still eager to update and see if there are any other easter eggs. You can update either through iTunes or by going to Settings > General > Software Update within your iOS device—though when I checked on my iPhone just now, it had not yet seen the OTA update.

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A trip to the (virtual) grocery store

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

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Google+ Hangouts on Air live broadcasting is now out of beta

Google+ users can now broadcast live public video feeds and video conferences via webcams through its Hangouts on Air feature, which was previously only available to a select number of accounts. Google announced today that Hangouts on Air is now out of beta and will be rolled out to all of its users worldwide.

Google implemented videoconferencing via its Hangouts feature when it released Google+, though at the time the broadcasting was limited to those users who were joining in the video conference (there’s a limit to 10 per session). Hangouts on Air now lets users broadcast their own version of a television channel publicly. The application provides similar functionality to competing services such as UStream, Livestream, and Justin.tv by opening video webcam streams for public viewing. In Hangouts on Air, anyone can watch a video session. Google+ is also encouraging users to browse and casually join these hangouts via Google+’s revamped hangouts page, where users can find sessions that are currently taking place. Live broadcasts are automatically recorded to the host user’s YouTube channel for later viewing or embedding. Users can also embed their live broadcasts on other websites, effectively expanding the reach of the Google+ platform beyond registered users of its service.

Hangouts on Air does require users to enable the new feature, and they must also review and agree to its terms of service. Doing so will also link the user’s Google+ account to their YouTube channel. In some cases, users may also need to upgrade Google’s voice and video plugin for Web browsers. Google says the feature is rolling out to users starting today, so it may take some time to see it enabled in users’ individual accounts.

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Not-Horrible iPad Cases: a round-up of the best

The following round-up is from our esteemed colleagues at The Wirecutter. We recently were discussing this very topic in the Editor's household, where children abound and the SmartCover fails to do much protecting.

Some people think the iPad is so gorgeous it doesn't need a case. I disagree, and my favorite overall case is Joy Factory's SmartSuit 3.

I'm surprised we could narrow it down; this took some doing. After about 70 hours of trolling published reviews and surveys of every case available for the new iPad, we called in roughly a dozen finalists to check the fit and feel ourselves. We eliminated the obviously ugly, cheap-feeling, poor-fitting, ill-reviewed cases in previous iPad 2 iterations, and selected the most protective, ergonomic and aesthetically pleasing models available. We looked at every model from makers like Speck, Targus, XtremeMac, G-Form, Switcheasy, Marware, DODOcase, Grovemade.

(An up-front tip of the hat to iLounge's Nick Guy is in order here, because he is clearly the best iPad case reviewer around. We gained a lot, not only from his insights but from the sheer number of cases reviewed. His work represents as complete a catalog as you'll find.)

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Free 20GB cloud storage for MobileMe subscribers extended to Sept. 30

MobileMe users who transition their accounts to iCloud will be able to keep their free 20GB of extra storage for an additional three months after MobileMe's shutdown, according to Apple. The company has updated its FAQ page on the MobileMe-to-iCloud transition (hat tip to MacOtakara), explaining that MobileMe users who want complimentary iCloud storage upgrades will be able to take advantage of the upgrade through September 30, 2012. That deadline has been moved back from June 30, when MobileMe shuts down, most likely in an attempt to lure more users into transitioning their accounts instead of letting them die.

When Apple introduced iCloud in October of 2011 along with iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S, the company explained that the cloud service was meant to replace MobileMe—itself a successor of Apple's old iTools service launched in the year 2000. iCloud's services are somewhat similar to those offered through MobileMe; users who transition their accounts to iCloud can still use their MobileMe e-mail accounts, Back To My Mac, and Find My iPhone, but will also gain a handful of new services, like Find My Mac, iTunes in the Cloud, Photo Stream, and document syncing services over iOS devices.

MobileMe users will also lose a few services when they transition. As noted by Apple last year, iWeb publishing, iDisk storage and file sharing, and MobileMe's photo/video gallery feature will all only exist until MobileMe is shut down in June of this year. Apple was quick to give some benefits to its paid MobileMe subscribers, though, offering them 20GB extra cloud storage for free when they migrate their accounts to iCloud—normal users signing up for a new iCloud account receive 5GB of free storage automatically.

With the free storage expiration date extended for another three months after MobileMe goes dark, we're willing to guess that Apple hasn't yet seen as many MobileMe accounts transition to iCloud as it would like. It's possible that some MobileMe users are aware of the June 30 deadline but are planning to just let their accounts expire along with it. The extension to September could mean more MobileMe customers making the jump after all and giving iCloud a try, though the rest of MobileMe's services will still be going away in June.

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Hands-on: testing the GIMP 2.8 and its new single-window interface

The developers behind the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) have announced the official release of version 2.8, the first stable update since 2008. The new version brings a number of significant technical enhancements and user interface improvements, including the long-awaited single-window editing mode.

The GIMP is an open source raster image editor with advanced features, such as support for layers and scripting. It was originally created by students at UC Berkeley in 1996 and later became part of the GNU project. The GIMP has spawned several other notable open source software projects, including the Gtk+ widget toolkit with which it is built.

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A near-future prognosis for television: surprisingly strong, driven by more choice

Television remains at the center of American life, and whatever threats exist from outside the realm of the Great BoobTube, those threats (including the Internet) are not making huge dents in TV consumption patterns. In fact, technologies like the DVR and on-demand services appear to be gaining momentum, largely making up for declines in live TV consumption. 

This is hardly a surprise. Television isn't dying—it's continuing to post strong viewership numbers (and we know that Nielsen and the like capture only a portion of the real audience). The data we have, however, makes it clear that audiences are changing the way they relate to TV. Companies that figure out the best way to service viewers' various demands—better content, served up when they want it, and viewable where they want it—will reap the profits. 

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Leave only footprints: how Google's ethical ignorance gets it in trouble

"According to a well written and thorough article in the Virginia Journal of Law & Technology, what we've been saying for over three years has been determined to be true: WarDriving is not a crime."

That's the text of a September 8, 2004 blog post by Marius Milner, the engineer who developed NetStumbler, a tool used to map WiFi networks using a WiFi card and GPS (also known as "wardriving"). Milner is also the engineer Google has claimed was solely responsible for the code that collected personal data from WiFi networks, including e-mail addresses and passwords, with the company's Street View cars between May 2007 and May 2010.

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LA smog: more cows than cars?

Much to the chagrin of California tourism promoters, smog is likely one of the things you picture when you think about the city of Los Angeles. The haze of pollutants that often hangs over the region is more than just an eyesore; it's a source of considerable respiratory stress. And where does that air pollution come from? Smokestacks, tailpipes, and cows. You read that right—cows. In fact, a new study estimates that cows contribute at least as much as automobiles.

There are two main factors that control the formation of smog. The first is the air pollution. This includes a range of volatile organic compounds, as well as oxides of nitrogen (referred to as NOx compounds. These pollutants react in sunlight to produce the ground-level ozone that triggers asthma advisories. The second necessary condition is stagnant air. A stiff breeze moving through the city will clear away pollution before it can collect. Areas that experience smog typically have the right topographical and meteorological conditions for air masses to hang around for a while.

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Sen. Al Franken to FCC: Still unhappy about Comcast-NBC merger

Another year, another complaint from Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) against Comcast and its merger with NBC Universal that was approved last year. Just as he did before, the senator—now in a letter published publicly on Monday (PDF)—is "urging [the Federal Communications Commission and the United States Department of Justice] to proactively monitor, investigate, and enforce the conditions you adopted in the merger order."

As the Minnesota senator has outlined previously, he "hates the merger." In this letter he notes that "a number of complaints regarding Comcast's compliance with the merger conditions…have languished" before the FCC.

In an e-mail sent to Ars, Comcast denied any wrongdoing.

"Comcast and NBCUniversal are fully complying with (indeed exceeding) the transaction orders as detailed in our recently filed Annual Compliance Report," wrote Sena Fitzmaurice, a Comcast spokesperson.

Specifically, Franken notes that it took the FCC 10 months to deal with a dispute involving the Bloomberg news channel, and Comcast’s refusal to put it in the same "neighborhood" as other similar channels. (The FCC ruled in Bloomberg’s favor last week). Franken also noted that a similar conflict with the Tennis Channel is also pending.

"The one complaint by an outside party regarding the NBCUniversal FCC Order has been brought by another very large media company, Bloomberg LLP - and it has been preliminarily adjudicated," Fitzmaurice added. "We respectfully disagree with the Media Bureau’s interpretation believe the full Commission will agree on appeal to enforce conditions as they were originally negotiated and intended."

Franken took the FCC to task too, noting that "at least one online video distributor (OVD) has encountered problems negotiating programming deals with Comcast." This resulted in Comcast arguing that it needs a "full, unredacted copy of the underlying peer agreement before it can provide its programming." CBS, News Corporation, Sony Pictures, Time Warner, Viacom, and Disney argued earlier this year (in their own letter to the FCC) this was "overbroad and will harm competition…[as it would allow] one entity to possess detailed nonpublic information about its competitors' business dealings—which would appear to be counter to relevant competition laws."

Franklin concludes: "I am concerned that these sorts of delays always inure to the benefit of Comcast and give Comcast further incentive to challenge any aspect of its compliance with the merger order." He's also "very concerned" about Comcast’s announcement last month that its Xbox Live television streaming would not count against existing data caps. Comcast argues the video is "being delivered over our private IP network and not the public Internet."

However, Comcast spokesperson Sena Fitzmaurice added that the On Demand service, is "indisputably part of our Title VI cable service which is not subject to the FCC's Open Internet Rules - and we are not aware of anyone who has taken a contrary view."

But Senator Franken does appear to have a differing opinion.

"I am not yet prepared to say that this appears to be a technical violation of the Commission's merger order or DOJ's final judgment, but I urge both of your agencies to investigate this conduct immediately," Franklin wrote. "Even if this does not amount to a technical violation, it certainly raises serious questions about how Comcast will favor its own content and services to the detriment of its competitors."

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When Google alone doesn't cut it: help us tackle tough sync scenarios

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

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