Have the copyright enforcers been caught with their hands in the cookie jar? The blog TorrentFreak today published its claim that the US Copyright Group, which has filed more than 14,000 lawsuits against anonymous P2P movie sharers, ripped off another copyright settlement group in crafting its own settlement website.

The site was tipped off by a reader, who claimed that US Copyright Group had jacked code and visual elements from Copyright Settlements, which is in a similar business: sue P2P users, then send them letters demanding a settlement to avoid trial.

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"The operating system is called Windows," claimed Steve Ballmer when asked about Microsoft's plans for the tablet/slate/pad form factor at the company's annual Financial Analyst Meeting on Thursday. He expressed dismay at the iPad's strong sales figures, "[Apple has] sold certainly more than I'd like them to have sold," he said. Ballmer then promised that Windows-powered devices will be shipping "as soon as they are ready," going on to explain that they would get a boost from Intel's low-power Oak Trail platform next year.

The message was clear: Microsoft still doesn't understand why its Tablet PC concept has repeatedly bombed over the best part of a decade. Apple sold more iPads in its first three months of availability than PC vendors sold Tablet PCs in the whole of last year; in fact, the number of iPads sold in that period is likely to eclipse the number of Tablet PCs sold both last year and this. But still the company is persevering: stick a regular PC operating system on a laptop, give it a touchscreen, and then take away the keyboard and pixel-perfect pointing device. Ballmer even reiterated the company's position: slates are just another PC form factor.

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Corroborating a rumor from The Wall Street Journal earlier this summer, a new Bloomberg report cited "two people familiar with the company's plans" to build an iPad-like touchscreen device and release it this fall. Dubbed the "Blackpad," the device will ostensibly run the as-yet-unreleased BlackBerry OS 6, and help RIM deflect further encroachment from Apple into its declining mobile market share.

Bloomberg's sources note that the device will rely on BlackBerry's usual enterprise e-mail advantage, but it will also include features that Apple's iPad lacks. In particular, it will have both rear and front-facing cameras for video conferencing and image capture, as well as the ability to pair with a BlackBerry phone over Bluetooth to share its 3G connection.

But jumping into the current tablet market—already dominated by Apple's iPad and with Windows 7 and Android-based products expected soon—might be easier said than done. "With the success of the iPad, RIM faces an uphill battle," William Power, an analyst at Robert W Baird & Co, told Bloomberg. "RIM really has yet to demonstrate that it can roll out touchscreen technology to match the leaders in the space, most noticeably Apple."

The Blackpad is expected to be launched in November, not long after RIM launches a long-rumored BlackBerry Bold 9800. That device will be a touchscreen-only device and the first to be offered with the more consumer-oriented BlackBerry OS 6.

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US iPad users don't have the worst deal for 3G data pricing—in France it's especially egregious. Still, AT&T's certainly isn't the greatest compared to other areas of the world.

Read More: Tableau Software

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Microsoft has announced plans to release of an out-of-band update on Monday to address the Windows Shortcut flaw revealed less than two weeks ago. The software giant has been keeping a close watch on the use of .LNK files exploiting the vulnerability and has concluded that it needs to act faster than usual.

Microsoft typically releases security patches on the second Tuesday of each month, with the next slated for August 10. Redmond is releasing this fix eight days early, at approximately 1PM EDT Monday. All currently supported versions of Windows are vulnerable, including Windows 7, so the majority of Windows users should be receiving this patch.

There have been multiple malware families that have picked up the .LNK attack vector, including a highly virulent strain named Sality.AT. Not only is Sality a very large family, but it is known to infect other files (making full removal after infection challenging), copy itself to removable media, disable security, and then download other malware. Microsoft has seen an increase in attack attempts as well as a change in the geolocation of the attack attempts across the systems it protects. In short, this new attack vector is becoming more widespread. The security team at the company believes more families will continue to pick up the technique, leading it to get the patch out as soon as possible.

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Students care about Facebook privacy more than the world thinks, and their use of privacy controls has skyrocketed recently, according to two researchers. Eszter Hargittai, Associate Professor of Northwestern University, and Danah Boyd, Research Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society published their findings in the online peer-reviewed journal First Monday, noting that young people are very engaged with the privacy settings on Facebook, contrary to the popular belief that their age group is reckless with what they post publicly.

The researchers surveyed first-year writing students at the University of Illinois-Chicago during the 2008-2009 academic year, and then followed up with them again in 2010. The large majority—87 percent—said they used Facebook in 2009, which went up to 90 percent in 2010. Among frequent and occasional users, more than half posted their own status updates in addition to checking up (and leaving comments) on those of friends.

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Apple launched the iPhone 4 in 17 additional countries today, causing another round of debate over whether or not the iPhone 4's external antenna design is flawed or not. A UK consulting firm says its tests show the "death grip" problem is real, and "significantly" worse for the iPhone 4 than other smartphones. A review from Norway is less critical, suggesting the iPhone 4 gets better signal than competing phones and may be victim to AT&T's less "robust" wireless network.

Shortly after the iPhone 4 began shipping in the US last month, users started to notice a problem: gripping the device in a certain way led to signal attenuation and, in some cases, dropped calls or poor data connections. While Apple CEO Steve Jobs was somewhat dismissive of the issue early on, testing conclusively demonstrated that the iPhone 4 had a higher signal attenuation than other smartphones when bridging a small gap on the lower left side of the device's stainless steel bezel. 

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Fossil fuels may be doing an even more efficient job of warming the planet than we thought. A new study shows that black carbon generated by fossil fuels seems to warm the planet more than other sources, and sulfates generated by burning cheaper fuels help the black carbon absorb even more energy. The scientists who authored the paper note that policies will likely need to tamp down on both substances in order to make a dent in the rate of global warming.

Researchers have long considered black carbon a culprit behind the increasingly warm atmosphere, as it holds incoming heat rather than reflecting it. They haven't been able to decisively point fingers, though, because it's difficult to pinpoint how much warming the black carbon causes. The source of the carbon seemed to play an important role, as did the ambient amount of other substances, like sulfates.

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Microsoft is opening up three more stores, bringing the total to seven: Bellevue Square in Seattle; Mall of America in Bloomington, MN; and Oakbrook Center in Oak Brook, IL.

Read More: SeattlePI

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Microsoft has released Linux Integration Services v2.1 for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2.

Read More: Microsoft Download Center, Virtualization Team Blog

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If your government had decided to install a national, open-access fiber-to-the-home network to 93 percent of all residents, if the installation was free, and if the fiber hookup had no effect on your existing phone or cable service and committed you to nothing... wouldn't you take it?

Not if you live in Tasmania, where the Australian government's ambitious new National Broadband Network is getting underway with its first fiber deployments. The government-created NBN Co. has the right to dig up streets and trench along rights-of-way, but to install that "last-mile" connection to a home or apartment it needs permission—and Tasmanians have been slow to offer it.

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The Federal Communications Commission has finally approved the first 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) phone for sale in the US. Though the first LTE handset will be available through MetroPCS, the FCC has now opened the door for other LTE devices, including those for Verizon's in-testing LTE network.

The Samsung SCH-r900 will be the first LTE phone to market in the US, which MetroPCS hopes to launch "this summer" according to InformationWeek. We're still mostly in the dark as to where MetroPCS plans to build out its LTE network (the company said earlier this year that it was targeting a number of metro markets, but only named Las Vegas), but regardless, it looks like Sprint will soon have to share the 4G limelight.

One company that has been keeping the world slightly more up-to-date with its LTE buildout plans is Verizon. The carrier is already testing its network in Seattle and Boston, with around 30 more markets expected by the end of the year. Those markets, according to rumors from Engadget, include a number of airports, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia.

Verizon apparently plans to make its first commercially available LTE devices laptop data cards, but the question many have been asking is whether Verizon's LTE rollout could hail the launch of the Verizon iPhone. In addition to rampant rumors of a possible January release, Ars has heard from someone in the know that Verizon is already testing an LTE iPhone in Boston and that the official launch is dependent upon the mass expansion of the carrier's 4G network. We hear an announcement could come as soon as September (a month when Apple traditionally holds an event to introduce new iPods), but we're still filing this one in the rumor category. 

If you're looking for a primer on LTE technology, check out our recent feature on the state of 4G.

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Every year since 1990, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released an annual report detailing the state of the climate. Early versions were typewritten and authored by a handful of experts. The new version is a shiny, 218-page PDF penned by more than 300 scientists from around the world. Nevertheless, the message has changed little over the years: the world is warming.

The 2009 report continues to document a number of weather-related records, the number of which seem to be growing every year. This year's highlights: The hottest decade on record. The third-lowest Arctic sea ice extent since 1979. The warmest and second-warmest years on record for India and Australia, respectively. And carbon dioxide concentrations that are increasing at a rate well above average.

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Much of this post originally ran in July 2009, but the issue is still on the minds of gamers. We've edited the post to add some thoughts now that the game has launched, and added a section at the end dealing with the rumors of officially supported LAN play. We wanted to revisit the issue again to drive this point home: even if it doesn't directly hurt Blizzard's bottom line, LAN play matters.

When the first stories began to spread about StarCraft 2 not supporting LAN play, the Internet began to grumble with discontent. Sure, there were the usual online petitions and griping on various gaming forums, but there was a sense that something big had been taken from us. Why were people so upset about the exclusion of LAN play? It has much to do with nostalgia, and much to do with why so many of us fell in love with StarCraft in the first place.

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When it comes to preservation, video games are problematic. Hardware becomes outdated and the media that houses game code becomes obsolete, not to mention the legal issues with emulation. In short, one day, there may not be a way to play Super Metroid at all, and that's a scary thought. A new paper from the International Journal of Digital Curation, called "Keeping the Game Alive: Evaluating Strategies for the Preservation of Console Video Games," suggests several ways this problem can be tackled, and the pros and cons of each approach.

First, there's what the paper calls the museum approach, which is just what it sounds like: keeping the original copies of both game hardware and software in playable form. But since most consoles feature proprietary parts that are discontinued along with the system, this is really only a temporary solution, as eventually the consoles will break down and there will be no parts left to repair them.

Magnavox Odyssey.

Another approach outlined in the piece is backwards compatibility. This process is a great way of letting players enjoy old games, but it's not designed with preservation in mind: just because I can play GameCube games on my Wii doesn't mean I can play them forever. It's also not a guarantee, as the removal of backwards compatibility from the PlayStation 3 has shown us.

So the answer seems to lie in digital preservation, and the paper outlines two different options: the migration approach and emulation. Both allow you to play old software on modern computers, but present legal issues when it comes to ownership of the original game code.

The 27-page paper does a good job of outlining the potential upsides and downfalls of each of the various strategies, and is well worth a read for anyone interested in video game preservation. The conclusion notes that the only real possible, long-term solution is emulation, and that would only be possible with the consent and cooperation of hardware manufacturers, game developers, and publishers.

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Sprint has announced that an Android 2.2 update for the HTC Evo 4G will be available August 3.

Read More: Sprint

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Apple Store representatives have reportedly told customers that the updated Mac Pros will be available on August 9.

Read More: MacRumors, previous Ars coverage

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Google has added a weather layer to Google Earth.

Read More: Google

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As SIGGRAPH 2010 winds down, one thing has been obvious: GPU rendering has matured quickly. GPU-based rendering initially got a bad name because public attention has been mostly on real-time ray-tracing implementations for games, where corners are cut to keep frame rates high. In real-time rendering schemes like those shown by Intel, light bounces were limited, they lacked color bleeding, and ambient occlusion (a key component of realistic rendering) was also AWOL. The end result looked like something from a raytracing white-paper from the early '80s: flat, lifeless images that couldn't compete even with games like Uncharted 2 that used straight-up OpenGL with a combination of tricks like baked lighting and screen-space ambient occlusion for realism. 

Over the last couple years, with help from CUDA and OpenCL, GPU renderers have steadily progressed to exploit the speed of the GPU without sacrificing rendering quality. Now it seems we're spoiled for choice. There were a few on display here at SIGGRAPH, but the growing GPU renderer list is already impressive: iRay, Arion, Furryball, Octane (which I often use if I want a fast and stylish render, as seen above), V-Ray RT—and there's even the free and open-source GPU version of Luxrender. There are probably others that I'm missing—it seems like a new GPU renderer is coming out every month.

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For centuries, people have tried to pinpoint what makes humans unique. The most current scientific theory suggests that three main qualities separate Homo sapiens from other animals: the construction and use of complex tools, the use of symbolic behavior including language, art, and ritual, and the domestication of other plants and animals. However, in a new paper in Current Anthropology, Dr. Pat Shipman suggests a fourth trait unique to humans.

Shipman cites humans' long history of learning about and understanding animals as a unique trait, calling this tendency "the animal connection." She claims that this relationship is the common unifying factor that underlies each of the other three previously recognized human traits, and has played a major role in human evolution over the last 2.6 million years.

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