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Advertising in Free Apps Saps Your Smartphone's Battery Life

By John P. Mello Jr., PCWorld Apr 6, 2012 10:25 AM

As much as 75 percent of the energy spent by some popular smartphone apps, such as Angry Birds and Fchess, is spent on marketing and advertising aimed at you.

That's what some first-of-its-kind research will reveal next week in a paper to be presented by a team of scientists from Purdue University and Microsoft at EuroSys 2012 in Bern, Switzerland.

"It turns out the free apps aren't really free because they contain the hidden cost of reduced battery life," one of the Purdue researchers, Y. Charlie Hu, said in a statement.

Hu, colleague Abhinav Pathak, and Microsoft's Ming Zhang noted in their paper [PDF] that free apps like Fchess and Angry Birds spend under 25 percent to 35 percent of their energy on game play, but more than 65 percent to 75 percent on user tracking, uploading user information, and downloading ads.

A Tool to Measure Energy Consumption

In their paper, the researchers describe a tool they've developed to precisely measure energy consumption within Android and Windows Phone mobile apps and show how that tool, called Eprof, can be used by developers to reduce the power consumption of their apps by as much as 65 percent.

"Eprof tells you how much energy is spent where," Hu explained.

A smartphone app can contain tens of thousands of lines of code, broken down into subroutines, threads, and processes. Eprof maps how much energy comes from each component. It offers researchers and developers a new way to study smartphone energy consumption without using expensive equipment such as a power meter.

"This is the first tool of its kind ever developed for modern smartphones," Pathak said. "We've seen around one million apps written since smartphones emerged roughly five years ago, but there has been no systematic way for the developer to see how much energy the different components consume. Using this tool, you can see what should be changed to improve energy efficiency."

Not only is that good news for developers in the app market--which is expected to reach $38 billion by 2015--but for consumers, too, who should see more efficient apps in the market.

"Despite the incredible market penetration of smartphones and exponential growth of the app market, their utility has been and will remain severely limited by the battery life," the researchers wrote.

"As such, optimizing the energy consumption of millions of smartphone apps is of critical importance," they added. "However, the quarter-million apps developed so far were largely developed in an energy oblivious manner."

Where Does the Energy Go?

Apps can waste energy in a number of ways, such as through programming bugs and "tailing." For example, the research team discovered some advertising software embedded in a game that failed to close its connection to the Internet. That forced another program to clean up for it, wasting energy in the process.

Tailing occurs when a connection to the cellular network isn't immediately cut by an app. As much as seven seconds of power per interaction can be wasted that way. That power drain can take its toll on a battery, especially when playing interactive games over a 3G network.

Follow freelance technology writer John P. Mello Jr. and Today@PCWorld on Twitter.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/253370/advertising_in_free_apps_saps_your_smartphones_battery_life.html

Researchers find a way to keep quantum memory and logic in synch

by Chris Lee | Published about 5 hours ago

A quantum computer, like any other computer, requires a way to store and retrieve information. In other words, some sort of memory. But because of the rich quantum entanglement gooey center of quantum computing, the memory and the logic need to be linked in a manner that's very different from that in classical computing: the magic of entanglement.

Physicists have been crowing about how they can create entangled states for a while now. Unfortunately, quantum computing requires something more: a memory state should last for a long time, independently of the logic parts, while the logic part should be accessible and fast. This makes coupling these two elements together in a useful way difficult... until now, that is.

How to check for�and get rid of�a Mac Flashback infection

By Jacqui Cheng | Published about 2 hours ago

Here's hoping you get nothing but a series of "does not exist" responses!

So you're a Mac user who has heard that more than half a million Macs have been infected by the recent Flashback malware. When the news began to spread about how the malware took advantage of a previously unpatched Java vulnerability on the Mac, the the horror stories began pouring in. "My dad heard about the Flashback malware and subsequently deleted his Java folder. Now his Mac won't boot," a friend told me.

Needless to say, this is not the way to properly nuke a possible Flashback infection or prevent yourself from catching one. Still, there is a reasonable level of concern out there. Maybe you haven't been keeping up on your antivirus software (and let's be honest, most Mac users don't), or perhaps you simply have suspicions about your Mac acting funny. How do you check if you have Flashback, and if you do, how do you (properly) get rid of it?

Head to the Terminal to check for infection

These Terminal commands will give you an easy way to find out whether you have a possible Flashback infection.

First, launch Terminal from /Applications/Utilities on your Mac. Then individually type or paste these three lines into the Terminal:

defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

defaults read /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

If the Terminal returns back to you lines that look like this:

The domain/default pair of (/Users/jacqui/.MacOSX/environment, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES) does not exist

The domain/default pair of (/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info, LSEnvironment) does not exist

The domain/default pair of (/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Info, LSEnvironment) does not exist

Then you're home free and you're not (yet) infected by Flashback. You can proceed to the "Run Software Update" section of this post. If they do return results, then it's likely that you are infected. But worry not, as there are ways to get rid of the malware that will only hurt for a second.

How to get rid of Flashback

Here's where things might get complicated. These removal instructions are from security research firm F-Secure's removal page. Take us away, F-Secure! (Cue Keyboard Cat now.)

Run the following command in Terminal:
defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

Take note of the value, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES
Proceed to step 8 if you got the following error message: "The domain/default pair of (/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info, LSEnvironment) does not exist"
Otherwise, run the following command in Terminal:
grep -a -o '__ldpath__[ -~]*' %path_obtained_in_step2%

Take note of the value after "__ldpath__"
Run the following commands in Terminal (first make sure there is only one entry, from step 2):
sudo defaults delete /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/InfoLSEnvironment

sudo chmod 644 /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info.plist

Delete the files obtained in steps 2 and 5
Run the following command in Terminal:
defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

Take note of the result. Your system is already clean of this variant if you got an error message similar to the following: "The domain/default pair of (/Users/joe/.MacOSX/environment, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES) does not exist"
Otherwise, run the following command in Terminal:
grep -a -o '__ldpath__[ -~]*' %path_obtained_in_step9%

Take note of the value after "__ldpath__"
Run the following commands in Terminal:
defaults delete ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

launchctl unsetenv DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

Finally, delete the files obtained in steps 9 and 11.
Run the following command in Terminal:
ls -lA ~/Library/LaunchAgents/

Take note of the filename. Proceed only when you have one file. Otherwise contact our customer care.
Run the following command in Terminal:
defaults read ~/Library/LaunchAgents/%filename_obtained_in_step15% ProgramArguments

Take note of the path. If the filename does not start with a ".", then you might not be infected with this variant.
Delete the files obtained in steps 15 and 17.

In addition to these steps, F-Secure recommends checking for another variant of Flashback, Flashback.K. The instructions can be found on another page on F-Secure's website.

Run Software Update

Apple has now released some Java updates that will patch the vulnerability targeted by the current variant of Flashback, so if you're free from infection, you can apply the patch via Software Update. (It's a mystery as to why Apple waited so long to patch Java for Mac OS X when Oracle released an update in February.) You can also manually download the update for Lion and Snow Leopard, respectively, from Apple's support site.

Do you really need Java running in your browser anyway?

This raises an important question: do you even need Java running in Safari? Some people do—my parents, for example, play bridge on a website that requires a Java applet to run, and they will not switch to another service—but many of us don't. If you don't, it could be worth turning off just to keep yourself extra secure. You can do this in Safari by going to the Safari menu and then Preferences. Then click over to the "Security" tab:

Unchecking Java in Safari will let you find out if you can live without it

Uncheck "Enable Java." (You can always turn it back on if you have to.) If you can live your life without it, this will be an extra step to help protect you against similar attacks in the future.

Conclusion

Once you've performed these steps and updated your installation of Java, you're inoculated against the current version of the Flashback malware, but that doesn't mean the variant won't change again sometime in the future to exploit a different vulnerability on your Mac. Stay vigilant! Keep your software up to date, don't ignore strange files that appear from strange places, and if you can, be aware of odd network behavior coming from your Mac. You can do this by installing software like Little Snitch to monitor your Mac's network activity. (And a side effect of having Little Snitch installed is that the latest variants of Flashback won't install themselves if you already installed Little Snitch!)

The files don't necessarily come from spammers, either—a Google Image Search might bring you to a malicious website, for example, that could try to execute the code once you visit the site for that cute cat picture. So it's not just about avoiding file attachments in e-mail; malware can be found lurking in all corners of the Web.

As for whether the "half a million Macs" number is accurate, Dr. Web malware analyst Sorokin Ivan said on Twitter that "BackDoor.Flashback.39 uses Hardware UUID (IOPlatformUUID) to identify bots," and Dr. Web's statistics are based on that ID. Even if the numbers aren't accurate, the latest scare is another wakeup call for Mac users who have been ignoring malware and virus threats up to this point. What steps are you taking to make sure your Mac is protected?

What was that about Macs being virus proof?

Virus hits half a million Macs: How to protect yourself against malware

All right, Mac users — the day of reckoning has come.

Thanks to a well-documented flaw that Apple didn't patch for three months, a nasty piece of malware called Mac Flashback seems to have infected nearly 600,000 Macs worldwide (according to Russian security firm Dr. Web).

Here are three things you need to do today:

— Check to see whether your Mac is infected by Mac Flashback. The social-networking news site Mashable has created a script that will do so for you. The instructions are on the Mashable website.

If the script does find an infection, which can be at either or both of two different places in the Mac OS X file system, removal is a bit complicated.

You'll have to go into the Terminal app and take the Mac Flashback removal steps detailed by Finnish security firm F-Secure.

— Update OS X with the latest security patches from Apple. Apple patched OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and OS X Lion earlier this week, but it just updated the patch for Lion Thursday, April 5.

If you're on a PowerPC-chip-based Mac running OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple no longer cares about you (see below).

— Take a deep breath and say to yourself, "Steve Jobs is dead and my Mac is not immune to malware." Then install a solid anti-virus product. Today, right now, ASAP.

The weak anti-virus software that Apple bundles into OS X 10.7 Lion doesn't cut it, and neither will the half-hearted Gatekeeper feature in the upcoming OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Take a look at the paid products reviewed by our sister site TopTenReviews, or go to the website of the British security firm Sophos and download and install their free Mac anti-virus software.

Additionally, there are two things you probably should do:

— Disable the Java run-time engine, if you're not using it.

Java, the platform-independent environment used to run Web apps and perform other tasks, has too many flaws to justify its use unless it's absolutely necessary. (Apple tacitly acknowledged this when it didn't bundle Java into OS X 10.7 Lion.) Open the Java Preferences utility in Mac OS X, uncheck all selections and reboot.

Unfortunately, some software, such as the applications in Adobe's Creative Suite, including Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, requires that Java be enabled.

In that case, you'll just have to trust Apple once more, even though it was remarkably late about riding to the rescue in this instance. The Java flaw that Mac Flashback exploited was patched two months ago for Windows and Linux.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/06/how-to-protect-your-mac-against-malware/#ixzz1rHzNnd26

No, Canada! ISPs ordered to out users in Hurt Locker case

Published a day ago - by Jacqui Cheng | Posted in: Law & Disorder

If you thought North American P2P lawsuits were limited to the US, you thought wrong. Three Canadian ISPs have been ordered to disclose the identities of accused file sharers, bringing the IP address debate to the Great White North.

Canadian Internet users are getting a taste of the P2P lawyering that had previously been confined to the US and UK, as Hurt Locker lawsuits have begun moving up to the Great White North. Three ISPs have already been ordered to disclose the identities of users accused of downloading the film, and if the ISPs decide to comply, there could be plenty more lawsuits.

As noted by University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist, the producers behind Hurt Locker, Voltage Pictures, filed suit against a number of John and Jane Does in Quebec towards the end of August. The suit accuses the anonymous users of downloading, copying, and distributing the film via P2P networks—the users are only identified by IP address, and the Voltage Pictures maintains that the only way to proceed with the case is to obtain names and addresses from their ISPs.

On August 29, the Federal Court in Montréal issued an order to the three ISPs in question—Bell Canada, Cogeco Cable, and Videotron—giving them two weeks to cough up the identities of the users associated with those IPs. Those two weeks expire next Monday, September 12, and the ISPs have yet to give any sort of signal that they won't comply.

Voltage Pictures first began suing users in May of 2010 in the US for allegedly torrenting Hurt Locker—a case that started out with a massive 5,000 users, but quickly bloomed into a much larger (and precarious) monster of P2P lawsuits all over the country. Ever since then, the Washington D.C. District Court has been bombarded with letters claiming innocence, highlighting some of the major problems with using IP address to identify users.

Among other things, the accused have argued that their routers—identified by a single IP address—are used by numerous guests or simply that they don't even know how to download illegal music or movies. Though the claims are difficult to vet, it's clear that using an IP address in an attempt to pinpoint a single individual is problematic to say the least.

Geist pointed out that the prospect of thousands of P2P file sharing suits making their way to Canada makes him all the more grateful for Canada's Bill C-32. The copyright modernization bill makes the distinction between commercial and noncommercial infringers, and limits statutory damages on noncommercial infringers to a maximum of CAN$5,000 for all infringements. "This case confirms that mass lawsuits with the threat of thousands in liability is a real possibility in Canada and why changes to the law are needed," Geist wrote.

Privacy-violating, useless AVG antivirus app pulled from Windows Phone Marketpla

Published a day agoLast updated a day ago - by Peter Bright | Posted in: One Microsoft Way

An anti-virus application surprisingly appeared on Windows Phone Marketplace earlier this week. It's now been pulled, amidst claims that it violates user privacy and doesn't actually do anything useful.

Last updated a day ago

To the surprise of many, an antivirus application was published on the Windows Phone Marketplace earlier in the week. The publication of AVG Mobilation for Windows Phone was peculiar for two main reasons. The first is that Windows Phone simply doesn't have any viruses to scan for. Second, Windows Phone applications are sandboxed; they have no access to the system files or other applications. Even if a virus were to be developed for the platform, the virus scanner would not be able to detect or remove it.

AVG was apparently undaunted by these obstacles, and developed the free, but ad-supported, Mobilation regardless. Though Windows Phone gives applications no ability to access most files on the system, there are some exceptions. Third-party software can access photos and music stored on the device, and so, for lack of anything better to scan, this is what Mobilation examines.

Or at least, what it pretends to examine. Analysis by Rafael Rivera suggested that it was not even particularly thorough in the scanning it did perform: it checked the names of the files it scanned and if they matched the string "eicar" or "עברית" it flagged them as "suspicious". "eicar" is a reference to the EICAR file used to test anti-virus software. "עברית" is Hebrew written in Hebrew. Its significance is not obvious.

Being merely useless is not, however, against the terms of the Windows Phone Marketplace, and even with its restrictions, there is the possibility that the platform does attract viruses. Some of these might even use music and image files to propagate. AVG putting the infrastructure in place to scan these files is not entirely unreasonable.

However, further investigation showed that the software was not merely useless. Ex-Microsoft employee Justin Angel decompiled the program and found that it collects a range of information—including the phone's unique ID, the network operator, the owner's e-mail address—and then sends this information, along with the phone's GPS location, to AVG's servers.

The relevance of this information to a virus-scanner appears to be negligible.

The evidence of shady behavior led to Microsoft pulling the application late last night, so that it could investigate fully.

AVG in turn made a lengthy blog post in support of its product. However, the post is remarkably quiet about any of the allegations made of Mobilation. It talks about another security product for Windows Phone that AVG released at the same time, a "Safe Search" application that verifies the safety of URLs to block access to malicious websites—but this is irrelevant to the complaints being made.

The post also talks about the malware threat on Android and attempts to use this to justify the development of the Windows Phone product; it describes it as a "step in the right direction." That there are marked differences between Windows Phone's curated Marketplace and Android's free-for-all Market has been ignored.

Finally, the post concludes with a statement that AVG takes privacy very seriously, that it won't sell the data it collects, and that nobody should have anything to worry about. It avoids explaining why it needs the data in the first place.

Repeated requests to the company for further information have gone unanswered.

Update: AVG says that the data collection is for the phone tracking feature that their software provides. It's enabled by default, they say, because they don't want users to be in the position of having lost their phone without enabling the feature. Quite how it works on a platform with no multitasking is unclear, as is the necessity of a second location tracking feature: Windows Phone itself already includes this functionality.

As well as talking about its own software, AVG also took great pains to claim that the software was produced with the full knowledge and involvement of Microsoft, and that it made alterations at Microsoft's request. Exactly what this means is unclear; it could mean simply that the application was initially rejected from Marketplace and that AVG had to make changes in order to have it approved for publication at all, or it could mean that Microsoft was actively involved in the product's development. We are awaiting comment from Microsoft to clarify the situation.

Update: Microsoft tells us only that "AVG's app has been removed from Windows Phone Marketplace while we work with AVG to ensure that the app is in full compliance with our published policies."

If the product was indeed written with Microsoft's involvement, that raises further questions. The presence of a virus-scanner, even if useless, does Windows Phone no favors. The image of desktop Windows is seriously tarnished by the malware specter, and allowing a (largely bogus) anti-virus program onto the phone platform serves only to taint that, too.

P2P lawyer fined $10,000 for "staggering chutzpah"

Published about 19 hours agoLast updated about 15 hours ago - by Nate Anderson | Posted in: Law & Disorder

Texas lawyer Evan Stone hoped to cash in by suing accused file-swappers of downloading porn. Instead, he owes $10,000 after sending subpoenas and settlement letters without the judge's permission.

In September 2010, Stone brought suit on behalf of Mick Haig Productions against 670 accused file-swappers, and he asked permission to take early discovery. Judge David Godbey said no; instead, Godbey brought in the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Citizen to represent the interests of the Does, since none of them had yet been named and therefore had no counsel to speak for them. EFF and Public Citizen lawyers soon began hearing from people who said that Verizon had turned over their information to Stone, information generally obtainable only by subpoena.

The lawyers asked Judge Godbey to find out what was going on, and to sanction Stone if he had in fact issued subpoenas without the court's permission. Turns out that he had—at least four times. Godbey ruled (PDF) yesterday that Stone "grossly abused his subpoena power," obtained subscriber names he was not entitled to learn, and then, "almost unbelievably, Stone used the information he received to contact an unknown number of potential Does, presumably in the form of demand letters and settlement offers."

This wasn't even the first time Stone had run into subpoena problems. In a separate Texas lawsuit over anime, Stone sent a subpoena more than a month after the judge in that case withdrew permission to do so; even more shockingly, "Stone issued the subpoena on the same day that he voluntarily dismissed the underlying case," according to Godbey.

The judge's anger at Stone burns clearly throughout his order, especially when he sums up the entire situation:

To summarize the staggering chutzpah involved in this case: Stone asked the Court to authorize sending subpoenas to the ISPs. The Court said “not yet.” Stone sent the subpoenas anyway. The Court appointed the Ad Litems [EFF and Public Citizen] to argue whether Stone could send the subpoenas. Stone argued that the Court should allow him to - even though he had already done so - and eventually dismissed the case ostensibly because the Court was taking too long to make a decision. All the while, Stone was receiving identifying information and communicating with some Does, likely about settlement. The Court rarely has encountered a more textbook example of conduct deserving of sanctions.

Judge Godbey fined Stone $10,000, which he hopes will be enough to "deter similar misconduct and adequately reflects the gravity of the circumstances." In addition, Stone has to pay the attorney fees for EFF and Public Citizen, and must tell the court if he has settled with anyone in the Mick Haig case, and if so, for how much.

Finally, Stone has to send a copy of Judge Godbey's order to each judge overseeing any federal or state case in which Stone currently has a hand—whether or not it has to do with file-sharing.

Those are serious penalties, but as Judge Godbey noted, "The adage 'it is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission' has no place in the issuance of subpoenas."

Stone has not yet responded to our request for comment.

Update: Stone tells me by e-mail, "After three rewrites, I finally decided I'm just going to have to let Justin Bieber do my quoting for me: 'Whenever you knock me down I will not stay on the ground.'"

Judge calls $1.5M file-sharing judgment "appalling," slashes to $54,00

by Nate Anderson | Published 2 days agoLast updated about 24 hours ago

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the first US resident to have the file-sharing lawsuits against her go all the way to trial and verdict back in 2007, “lied in her trial testimony," said federal judge Michael Davis today. And her “past refusal to accept responsibility for her actions raises the need for strong deterrence."

But that deterrence won't come courtesy of a jury, which last year found Thomas-Rasset liable for $1.5 million dollars—$62,500 for each song she was accused of sharing on the KaZaA peer-to-peer network. That case was her third time through a trial; the first two trials had ended with Thomas-Rasset on the hook for $222,000 and $1.92 million, respectively. In each case, Judge Thomas has altered or set aside the jury's verdict, and he did so again this morning.

Davis has found that the $1.5 million award was unconstitutional; he slashed it to $54,000—$2,250 per song. And even then, the amount was "a higher award than the Court might have chosen to impose in its sole discretion.”

Davis has done this before. After the second trial and its $1.92 million verdict, he also reduced the award to $54,000, but he elected not to do so on constitutional grounds. That decision led to Thomas-Rasset's third trial, but today's constitutionally based decision should end the matter at the District Court level. If this case is pursued—and we suspect it will be—the trial phase will end and a federal Appeals Court will take over.

Sections of the verdict are worth quoting in full; they illustrate Judge Davis' deep common sense about the case and provide a worthwhile framework for thinking about similar P2P cases.

The Court concludes that an award of $1.5 million for stealing and distributing 24 songs for personal use is appalling. Such an award is so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense and obviously unreasonable. In this particular case, involving a first-time willful, consumer infringer of limited means who committed illegal song file-sharing for her own personal use, an award of $2,250 per song, for a total award of $54,000, is the maximum award consistent with due process.

This reduced award is punitive and substantial. It acts as a potent deterrent. It is a higher award than the Court might have chosen to impose in its sole discretion, but the decision was not for this Court to make. The Court has merely reduced the jury’s award to the maximum amount permitted under our Constitution.

Davis had nothing positive to say about Thomas-Rasset, who he faulted for lying and for denying responsibility by “casting possible blame on her children and ex-boyfriend.” As for her argument that she caused no harm to the music industry, Davis “rejects her suggestion" and calls for a penalty in order to enforce copyright law, compensate the record labels, and “deter future copyright infringement.”

But Davis was at his most Old Testament when blasting the huge damage awards handed down.

There is no doubt that a multimillion dollar penalty is overkill to deter a private individual from obtaining free songs online… Although Thomas-Rasset played a role in the web of online piracy, she played a minuscule role… It cannot be that she must pay the damages caused by millions of individuals because she was one of two users caught, sued, and subjected to a jury trial… [Joel Tenenbaum in Massachusetts was the other.] This award constitutes the maximum amount a jury could award, consistent with the due process clause.

His $2,250 per song figure is three times the minimum statutory damages of $750, though Davis does acknowledge the difficulty of drawing exact lines between fair and unfair judgments. “Any specific dollar amount will appear to be somewhat arbitrary,” he wrote. “Why is an award of $2,251 per song oppressive while an award of $2,250 is not?" The "3x" multiplier seemed to him a fair one, as such multipliers are routinely used to punish willful offenses (the same amount was chosen in the Tenenbaum case when the judge likewise gutted that verdict).

Thomas-Rasset has made clear to me at her trials that she can't and won't pay even a reduced $54,000 amount, and she has apparently rejected music industry settlement offers that would have her pay even less. Where we go from here is therefore anyone's guess—but continued court action looks likely.

(Sidenote for copyright wonks: Judge Davis declined to include in his injunction against Thomas-Rasset a clause that would bar her from "making available" the songs at issue here. "The Copyright Act does not provide a making-available right," he wrote.)

Update: An RIAA spokesperson tells Ars, "We disagree with this decision and are considering our next steps."

Kiwi Camara, a lawyer representing Jammie Thomas-Rasset, called today's decision "an excellent result. I am sure that the recording industry plans to appeal; when they appeal, we will file a cross-appeal also."

As for Camara's one-time plan to file a class action lawsuit against the entire music industry, I asked him if that was still in the works. "As for the class action," he replied, "you know [Harvard Law's] Charlie [Nesson] and you know us—anything could happen!"

Roku adds gaming to streaming media with sub-$100 Roku 2

by Chris Foresman | Published 3 days agoLast updated about 24 hours ago

Roku announced a new line of compact streaming video players on Wednesday, dubbed Roku 2. Aimed squarely at competing with the second-generation Apple TV, the new Roku 2 is smaller, lighter, uses less power, and, unlike the Apple TV, can play Angry Birds.

Apple announced the Apple TV 2 at the beginning of September last year. The Lilliputian device was essentially a fourth-generation iPod touch packed in a tiny case with a power supply. It runs iOS, and offers an optimized 10-foot interface. Because of its iOS-underpinnings, it was speculated that Apple would allow developers to build and sell apps for the device, including popular casual games. However, Apple has yet to offer developers an SDK to build apps for the big (flat) screen.

Roku followed up three weeks later with a line of three new players that cut the size down considerably, though still not as small as the Apple TV. This new line ditched standard definition resolution, offering 720p at the low-end, but essentially offered the same features as the older Roku hardware they replaced.

The Roku 2 is smaller than the already-tiny Apple TV 2.

Roku

But Roku didn't rest on its laurels for very long. The new Roku 2 is 3.3 inches by 3.3 inches by 0.9 inches thick (9.8 cu. in.) versus Apple TV's 3.9 inches by 3.9 inches by 0.9 inches thick (13.7 cu. in.), and weighs just 3 ounces—less than a third of the Apple TV's 9.6 ounces. The tiny device consumes as little as 2 watts when streaming HD content, compared to the Apple TV's 6 watts.

Roku also offers a wider variety of content. Apple TV can stream content from iTunes, Netflix, and YouTube, and can access subscriptions for streaming MLB and NBA games. Roku has, among its 300 channels, Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, Hulu Plus, Crackle, YouTube, and more. It also streams music from Pandora, Last.fm, Rdio, and others, and you can buy subscriptions for NBA, MLB, NHL, and UFC sports coverage.

The new Roku "enhanced remote" with motion sensor.

Roku

Topping that, Roku 2 is now a gaming platform. All three updated devices now include Bluetooth for connecting to a motion sensor-equipped, $30 enhanced remote for a Wii-esque "casual gaming" experience. Roku worked directly with Rovio to bring on Angry Birds as a launch title, and that's currently the only game being highlighted. However, Roku said that more games are coming soon.

Roku 2, like its predecessors, comes in three different models. All three are equipped with 802.11n WiFi, HDMI and composite output, a microSD slot for storing game and channel data, and Bluetooth 3.0 for connecting to the game controller remote. The HD costs $59.99 and is limited to 720p resolution. The XD costs $79.99 and boosts resolution to a full 1080p. The XS, for $99.99, adds a wired Ethernet port, USB port to playback video, music, and photos from a storage device, a game controller remote, and a free copy of Angry Birds.

The new family of Roku 2 devices. From left to right: The $60 HD, $80 XD, and deluxe $100 XS.

Roku

Users of the lower-end models can add an enhanced gaming remote, bundled with a 2GB microSD card, for $29.99. It looks as though a single Roku device may be able support up to two game controllers simultaneously for head-to-head gaming (though Roku didn't respond to our request for more information). Either way, the $100 Roku 2 XS seems like the better value if you're interested in playing some games on a second TV or don't already have a Wii or other console.

Samsung-funded study finds 3D video causes extra eye strain, fatigue

by Casey Johnston | Published 2 days ago

3D displays cause extra eye fatigue, according to a study published by the Journal of Vision today that was funded in part by Samsung's R&D arm. A group of researchers from the University of Califonia-Berkeley found that when test subjects watched 3D displays, they reported more eye strain and fatigue and less vision clarity afterward than when they watched 2D video. The disparity between the depth of the screen and the depth of the 3D image caused the most problems, though researchers also found the relationship between image depth and nearness of the screen also played a role in eye strain.

Twenty-four participants in the study were shown 3D and 2D video at various viewing distances, and then responded to questionnaires on their eye fatigue, neck and back pain, and vision clarity. In the video clips, the authors were varying the focal point, which is the surface of the screen, and the vergence distance, which is where in the image the eyes are trying to focus on. For 2D video, these points are always one and the same, but in 3D video the vergence distance varies, and can be either deeper than the surface of the screen or in front of it.

The participants responded that they experienced more eye strain and fatigue from the video with different vergence and focal distances, a feature of 3D that has long been supposed to cause eye strain. The self-reported differences between 3D and 2D were not drastic, but they were significant.

A second part of the study found that though 3D was fatiguing in general, the participants had more problems with distant displays showing an image with a vergence distance deeper than the screen and with near displays showing images popping out of the screen.

This research is highly relevant to 3D content designers, who could determine what to recess or pop out of the screen based on the expected viewer distance. However, the study also means that 3D video that is more comfortably viewed in a movie theater is necessarily much more uncomfortable to look at when viewed in a living room.

Unfortunately for Samsung, financial supporters of the study and manufacturers of 3D TVs, the research appears to indicate that they're hurting the eyes of their customers.