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New report shows Congress’ favorite BitTorrent downloads

Congress has become gun-shy about putting together Internet-related legislation after the attempt to pass SOPA generated unprecedented public outrage, but Internet piracy is still on its radar. Still, it turns out that digital copies of pirated movies and TV shows aren’t just the subject of committee debates on Capitol Hill—they’re also being downloaded onto Capitol Hill computers. A post today in US News & World Report’s tech blog published new information from anti-piracy forensics company ScanEye , a company that offers BitTorrent monitoring services in the name of fighting piracy. The ScanEye report [ PDF ] shows apparently pirated movie files being downloaded via IP addresses associated with the US House of Representatives. Congressional employees downloaded episodes of Glee , CSI , Dexter , and Home and Away in October and early November. There are more TV episodes downloaded than movies, but the report also shows downloads of films, such as Iron Sky , which was downloaded by a Congress-owned computer on Oct. 4; Life of Pi , downloaded on Oct. 27; and the Dark Knight Rises , downloaded on Oct. 25. Another download listed is Bad Santa 2 , a movie which has not been released yet. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Fastest Wi-Fi ever is almost ready for real-world use

Wilocity’s wireless chips allow 4.6Gbps transmission over the 60GHz band. Wilocity In a quiet suite removed from the insanity of the Consumer Electronics Show expo floor, a company aiming to build the fastest Wi-Fi chips in the world demonstrated its vision of wireless technology’s future. On one desk, a laptop powered a two-monitor setup without any wires. At another, a tablet playing an accelerometer-based racing game mirrors its screen in high definition to another monitor. Across the room, a computer quickly transfers a 3GB file from a wireless router with built-in storage. The suite was set up in the Las Vegas Hotel by Wilocity , a chip company specializing in wireless products using 60GHz transmissions, which are far faster than traditional Wi-Fi. Avoiding the show floor is a good idea if you’re worried about Internet connectivity, because thousands of vendors are clogging the pipes. But that’s not why Wilocity was here—they’d be able to perform the demo even in the busiest parts of CES without interference because they’re not relying on the congested bands used by regular Wi-Fi. Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Fastest Wi-Fi ever is almost ready for real-world use

Amazon AutoRip: How the labels held back progress for 14 years

Michael Robertson Gabe Lawrence When Michael Robertson heard news of AutoRip , the new Amazon service that automatically adds high-quality MP3s to Cloud Player when you buy a CD, he must have had a sense of deja vu. After all, the entrepreneur introduced a similar service way back in 1999. Unfortunately, it wasn’t licensed by the recording industry, and they sued it out of existence. He tried again with a licensed service in 2007, but only one label would cut a deal and the company failed to gain traction. In a Friday interview with Ars Technica, Robertson told us that the major labels’ decision to license AutoRip represents a sea change in their attitudes toward cloud music services. Until the last couple of years, the labels were relentlessly hostile to the idea that consumers should have the freedom to store DRM-free music online. But a series of business failures and legal defeats forced the labels to face reality. And so fourteen years after Robertson first floated the concept, consumers finally have the freedom to instantly get an MP3 when they buy a CD online. Robertson’s first company, MP3.com was one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley when it launched what we would now call a cloud music service, My.MP3.com, in 1999. The service included a feature called “Beam-It” that allowed users to instantly stock their online lockers with music from their personal CD collections. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Amazon AutoRip: How the labels held back progress for 14 years

Adobe almost does something amazing by accident

It seemed like an intriguing deal. An old version of Adobe Creative Suite—the 2005 vintage CS2, to be precise—became freely downloadable from Adobe, with nothing more than a free-to-create Adobe ID required from users. Although basically useless for Mac users, as CS2 is only available for PowerPC, for Windows users this is a powerful, if not quite cutting edge, suite of graphics apps. This looked like a clever move from Adobe. Photoshop is widely held to be one of the most routinely pirated applications there is. In making an old but still servicable version of the software it appeared that Adobe was offering a good alternative to piracy: instead of using a knock-off copy of CS6, just use CS2. A free CS2 would also go some way toward starving alternative applications of oxygen. Given the choice between a free copy of CS2 and downloading, say, the GIMP, one imagines that many users would plump for the commercial application. It’s more of a known quantity, with a more polished user interface. And Photoshop is, frankly, the gold standard of bitmap image editing. Even an older version has a prestige that GIMP doesn’t. This is not to say that CS2 is necessarily superior to the GIMP; it may or may not be. It doesn’t really matter; Photoshop has a reputation and respect that the GIMP doesn’t have, and even if some might argue that it was undeserved, it influences the decisions users make. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Adobe almost does something amazing by accident

Satellite Internet: 15Mbps, no matter where you live in the US

billrdio America is a land of haves and have-nots when it comes to broadband Internet. While many of us enjoy downloads speeds of 50 or even 100 Mbps, 119 million Americans lack broadband access (defined as 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up). Out of those 119 million, 19 million live in areas where there is no option to buy a wired broadband connection, according to government data. Wouldn’t it be great if we could provide broadband speed to nearly every American, without costly construction projects to bring cables to the home? Apparently, we already can . At least that’s what providers of satellite broadband Internet services said today in a panel at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Latest-generation satellites operated by HughesNet and ViaSat offer 10 to 15 Mbps down and 1 to 3 Mbps up to nearly any home in the US, representatives of those companies said. They believe the industry simply suffers from an awareness problem. Previous-generation satellite products offered only a fraction of that speed, and even people who realize satellite is available to them may not know that the latest products are as fast as they are. Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Satellite Internet: 15Mbps, no matter where you live in the US

Lenovo talks up new 27-inch “table PC” at CES

Lenovo’s IdeaCentre Horizon 27 Lenovo Lenovo is just one of the many PC makers bringing new designs to CES this week. Many of these will simply be refreshed or refined versions of the first round of Windows 8 computers—either convertible laptops or more traditional desktops and laptops with integrated touchscreens—but a few particularly interesting designs may yet rise above that fray. One of these PCs is Lenovo’s IdeaCentre Horizon 27, a 27-inch all-in-one desktop PC with an integrated battery and 1080p ten-point touchscreen. Lenovo is marketing the device as a “table PC.” Sure, a kickstand can be unfolded to allow the computer to sit on a desk as would any all-in-one. But this PC can also be laid flat on a table for use by multiple people, or mounted on the pictured roller table for use while standing. (We’ve previously stated a touchscreen all-in-one makes the most sense ergonomically while positioned at about waist height on a standing person.) Enlarge / A roller table will change the Horizon into a standing workstation, when needed. Lenovo In concept the Horizon is quite similar to Sony’s Tap 20 , a smaller all-in-one that also included an integrated battery and foldable kickstand allowing it to be laid flat on a table. The Horizon’s larger size will mean more people can gather around it at once (and the roller table may make it more useful for people who prefer to stand at their desks), but the two machines are definitely cut from the same cloth. Like the Tap 20, multiplayer touch-enabled games figure heavily into Lenovo’s promotional material for the device. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Leader of BitTorrent piracy ring sentenced to five years in prison

The leader of the notorious IMAGiNE BitTorrent piracy ring, Jeramiah Perkins, was sentenced on Thursday to five years in prison, the largest sentence for the group’s five top administrators. In August 2012, Perkins pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. After being given the maximum sentence today, Perkins was also ordered to serve three years under “supervised release” and must pay $15,000 in restitution. As we reported in April, the group used infrared and FM receivers and camcorders to capture new releases in movie theaters. In a statement , the Department of Justice cited testimony from the Motion Picture Association of America, calling the group “the most prolific motion picture piracy release group operating on the Internet from September 2009 through September 2011.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Leader of BitTorrent piracy ring sentenced to five years in prison

Apple says Do Not Disturb scheduling is broken until January 8

After reports that iOS 6’s new Do Not Disturb feature stopped resetting according to schedule on New Year’s Day, Apple says scheduling won’t work until next Tuesday, January 8. The Do Not Disturb feature was added to iOS 6 in order to silence what might otherwise be distracting notifications, like those during a meeting or while sleeping. Users can manually turn Do Not Disturb on or off, or can set a scheduled time for Do Not Disturb to kick in automatically and then reset later. For instance, many users set Do Not Disturb to turn on around bedtime and reset the following day. However, users discovered on January 1 that Do Not Disturb did not automatically reset as scheduled. Furthermore, after manually resetting, it wouldn’t engage as scheduled that evening. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple says Do Not Disturb scheduling is broken until January 8

FreedomPop launches free home wireless to compete with low-end DSL

FreedomPop’s new Hub Burst will begin shipping in January 2013. FreedomPop Just over three months after launching its free portable hotspot , FreedomPop now says its ready for the second phase of its expansion plan—a free home wireless connection. Like its portable device, which requires an $89 deposit to get 500MB of free mobile data over WiMAX, this new device (also with an $89 deposit) will offer 1GB of free data in nearly all of the 80 largest urban markets across the United States. “You’ll get speeds of 9 to 12Mbps when it’s fully optimized,” FreedomPop’s CEO Stephen Stokols told Ars, saying that it would be comparable to DSL. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Why Gmail went down: Google misconfigured load balancing servers

Portions of the Internet panicked yesterday when Gmail was hit by an outage that lasted for an agonizing 18 minutes . The outage coincided with reports of Google’s Chrome browser crashing. It turns out the culprit was a faulty load balancing change that affected products including Chrome’s sync service, which allows users to sync bookmarks and other browser settings across multiple computers and mobile devices. Ultimately, it was human error. Google engineer Tim Steele explained the problem’s origins in a developer forum : Chrome Sync Server relies on a backend infrastructure component to enforce quotas on per-datatype sync traffic. That quota service experienced traffic problems today due to a faulty load balancing configuration change. That change was to a core piece of infrastructure that many services at Google depend on. This means other services may have been affected at the same time, leading to the confounding original title of this bug [which referred to Gmail]. Because of the quota service failure, Chrome Sync Servers reacted too conservatively by telling clients to throttle “all” data types, without accounting for the fact that not all client versions support all data types. The crash is due to faulty logic responsible for handling “throttled” data types on the client when the data types are unrecognized. If the Chrome sync service had gone down entirely, the Chrome browser crashes would not have occurred, it turns out. “In fact this crash would *not* happen if the sync server itself was unreachable,” Steele wrote. “It’s due to a backend service that sync servers depend on becoming overwhelmed, and sync servers responding to that by telling all clients to throttle all data types (including data types that the client may not understand yet).” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments