1. Fourth time's a charm? Why Apple has trouble with cloud computing
Apple's perennial difficulty with creating scalable online services is not a coincidence. Apple has a corporate culture that emphasizes centralized, designer-led product development. This process has produced user-friendly devices that are the envy of the tech world. But developing fast, reliable online services requires a more decentralized, engineering-driven corporate culture like that found at Google.
2. Feature: World IPv6 Day looms: what might break (and how to fix it)
When the clock hits midnight on Wednesday, June 8 UTC, World IPv6 day begins. Many Web destinations—including the four most popular (Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Yahoo)—will become reachable over IPv6 for 24 hours. (In the US, that's 8PM EDT, 5PM PDT on Tuesday). As the current IPv4 protocol is quickly running out of its remaining 32-bit addresses, adopting its successor's Brobdingnagian 128-bit address space is long overdue.
3. FOSS Hacker's Reverse-Engineering Has Skype Seething
Skype's code has been hacked and its innards published on the Web by Efim Bushmanov, a self-described freelance researcher in the tiny Komi Republic, about 870 miles from Moscow. His aim, he said, was to make Skype open source. Another goal: to find "friends who can spend many hours for completely reverse it" because he hadn't finished the task. The move has Skype fuming. "We are taking all necessary steps to prevent or defeat nefarious attempts to subvert Skype's experience," said spokesperson Sravanthi Agrawal.
4. NGP renamed PlayStation Vita: WiFi-only $249, AT&T-only 3G $299
As rumored, Sony's PSP successor has been rebadged as the PlayStation Vita and given a retail price. The WiFi-only version of the device will run users $249, while the 3G model will cost $299, which puts the handheld in direct competition price-wise with Nintendo's 3DS.
Sony also announced that AT&T will be the exclusive provider for the handheld in the US, which was met with derision from the assembled audience at the E3 keynote, who openly booed the announcement.
Several new titles were revealed for the handheld, including portable versions of LittleBigPlanet, ModNation Racers, Wipeout, and Street Fighter vs Tekken, which will feature Cole from inFamous as a playable character. Also revealed was a Diablo-style action RPG called Ruin, which will also be available on the PS3 and will support cloud-saves, allowing users to switch back and forth between the handheld and console versions of the game.
The PSVita is set to be released at the end of this year.
5. CERN traps antimatter for long enough to do serious science on it
Earlier this year, a research collaboration at CERN announced that it had created a few dozen atoms of antihydrogen, the antimatter equivalent of the more familiar hydrogen atoms. These anti-atoms were kept in existence for just under 200 milliseconds before they annihilated in collisions with the container walls. Now, the same team is back with the announcement that it has created hundreds of atoms of antihydrogen, some of which were kept around for over 15 minutes—long enough to start contemplating doing some serious science with them.
The trap used to catch the antihydrogen is the same one used in the last experiment. It uses superconducting magnets to keep the antiatoms away from the container walls, taking advantage of the tiny magnetic moment created by the spatial distance between the antiproton nucleus and the positron (antielectron) orbiting it. The differences are so tiny that the trap will only work if the antihydrogen has an energy of 50μeV (micro electron Volt), which makes for quite a challenge, since the antiprotons start the process at 3keV. The big increase in the number of trapped atoms has largely come about through better ways of slowing down and cooling the starting materials.
6. Oracle and OpenOffice: The Final Insult
Things are never dull here in the Linux blogosphere, but there's no doubt they would be a whole lot less entertaining without Oracle. How else, after all, would we get the opportunity to ride on a thrilling emotional roller coaster such as the one Oracle's had us on since it acquired Sun? Regarding OpenOffice.org, in particular, it's been one hair-raising twist and turn after another. The latest was felt last week, when Oracle decided to snub the Document Foundation and give the software suite to the Apache Software Foundation instead.
7. Gmail Spear-Phishing Attacks Net FBI Scrutiny
The Gmail accounts of hundreds of high-profile individuals were hijacked through a so-called spear phishing campaign originating in China, according to Google. Hackers apparently gained access to users' accounts using passwords likely obtained through malicious software and targeted phishing techniques. The individuals targeted included Chinese political activists, senior U.S. government officials, South Korean government officials and government workers of other Asian countries, journalists and military personnel.
On Monday, Apple unveiled iCloud, a new service for remote storage of user data. Some people, including our own Jon Stokes, are skeptical of Apple's chances of getting iCloud to work at scale. And history seems to be on their side. iCloud is at least Apple's fourth attempt to create a viable cloud computing service. The previous incarnations included iTools in 2000, .Mac in 2002, and MobileMe in 2008. As Fortune wrote about MobileMe a few weeks ago, "MobileMe was a dud. Users complained about lost e-mails, and syncing was spotty at best." iTools and .Mac were not exactly resounding successes either.
Apple's perennial difficulty with creating scalable online services is not a coincidence. Apple has a corporate culture that emphasizes centralized, designer-led product development. This process has produced user-friendly devices that are the envy of the tech world. But developing fast, reliable online services requires a more decentralized, engineering-driven corporate culture like that found at Google.
2. Feature: World IPv6 Day looms: what might break (and how to fix it)
When the clock hits midnight on Wednesday, June 8 UTC, World IPv6 day begins. Many Web destinations—including the four most popular (Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Yahoo)—will become reachable over IPv6 for 24 hours. (In the US, that's 8PM EDT, 5PM PDT on Tuesday). As the current IPv4 protocol is quickly running out of its remaining 32-bit addresses, adopting its successor's Brobdingnagian 128-bit address space is long overdue.
3. FOSS Hacker's Reverse-Engineering Has Skype Seething
Skype's code has been hacked and its innards published on the Web by Efim Bushmanov, a self-described freelance researcher in the tiny Komi Republic, about 870 miles from Moscow. His aim, he said, was to make Skype open source. Another goal: to find "friends who can spend many hours for completely reverse it" because he hadn't finished the task. The move has Skype fuming. "We are taking all necessary steps to prevent or defeat nefarious attempts to subvert Skype's experience," said spokesperson Sravanthi Agrawal.
4. NGP renamed PlayStation Vita: WiFi-only $249, AT&T-only 3G $299
As rumored, Sony's PSP successor has been rebadged as the PlayStation Vita and given a retail price. The WiFi-only version of the device will run users $249, while the 3G model will cost $299, which puts the handheld in direct competition price-wise with Nintendo's 3DS.
Sony also announced that AT&T will be the exclusive provider for the handheld in the US, which was met with derision from the assembled audience at the E3 keynote, who openly booed the announcement.
Several new titles were revealed for the handheld, including portable versions of LittleBigPlanet, ModNation Racers, Wipeout, and Street Fighter vs Tekken, which will feature Cole from inFamous as a playable character. Also revealed was a Diablo-style action RPG called Ruin, which will also be available on the PS3 and will support cloud-saves, allowing users to switch back and forth between the handheld and console versions of the game.
The PSVita is set to be released at the end of this year.
5. CERN traps antimatter for long enough to do serious science on it
Earlier this year, a research collaboration at CERN announced that it had created a few dozen atoms of antihydrogen, the antimatter equivalent of the more familiar hydrogen atoms. These anti-atoms were kept in existence for just under 200 milliseconds before they annihilated in collisions with the container walls. Now, the same team is back with the announcement that it has created hundreds of atoms of antihydrogen, some of which were kept around for over 15 minutes—long enough to start contemplating doing some serious science with them.
The trap used to catch the antihydrogen is the same one used in the last experiment. It uses superconducting magnets to keep the antiatoms away from the container walls, taking advantage of the tiny magnetic moment created by the spatial distance between the antiproton nucleus and the positron (antielectron) orbiting it. The differences are so tiny that the trap will only work if the antihydrogen has an energy of 50μeV (micro electron Volt), which makes for quite a challenge, since the antiprotons start the process at 3keV. The big increase in the number of trapped atoms has largely come about through better ways of slowing down and cooling the starting materials.
6. Oracle and OpenOffice: The Final Insult
Things are never dull here in the Linux blogosphere, but there's no doubt they would be a whole lot less entertaining without Oracle. How else, after all, would we get the opportunity to ride on a thrilling emotional roller coaster such as the one Oracle's had us on since it acquired Sun? Regarding OpenOffice.org, in particular, it's been one hair-raising twist and turn after another. The latest was felt last week, when Oracle decided to snub the Document Foundation and give the software suite to the Apache Software Foundation instead.
7. Gmail Spear-Phishing Attacks Net FBI Scrutiny
The Gmail accounts of hundreds of high-profile individuals were hijacked through a so-called spear phishing campaign originating in China, according to Google. Hackers apparently gained access to users' accounts using passwords likely obtained through malicious software and targeted phishing techniques. The individuals targeted included Chinese political activists, senior U.S. government officials, South Korean government officials and government workers of other Asian countries, journalists and military personnel.
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