The GNOME community's design and usability experts gathered for a week-long hackfest hosted by Canonical in the UK to shape the next major iteration of the GNOME desktop environment. GNOME 3, which is tentatively scheduled for release in September, will introduce new user interface paradigms and include an upgraded desktop shell environment.

The participants at the hackfest are aiming to improve the usability of existing applications, enhance the look and feel of the desktop with new theming concepts, and brainstorm ideas for extending the functionality of the new shell. They are actively publishing mockups, design documentation, usability notes, and other materials that provide insight into their vision for the future of GNOME. By reading all of this material, I was able to get an understanding of their goals and plans.

Supreme Commander was a strategy game that got a great many things right, and it earned a ton of critical acclaim. As a result, the game's soon-to-be-released sequel, Supreme Commander 2, has some high standards to measure up against. Gas Powered Games' founder and CEO Chris Taylor is not only planning meet these expectations, he's certain that his studio will exceed them without a problem.

Though the original game was published in 2007, it only had one expansion before the sequel was announced in November 2008. The announcement took many fans by surprise, as plans for another expansion, Supreme Commander: Experimentals, had been mentioned; but these expansion plans were never seen through to completion. When Ars asked Taylor about what happened, he explained, "we were very hopeful about that expansion as well, but with the economy shifting under our feet, we instead chose to focus on the projects further along in development." However, based on what Taylor's revealed about Supreme Commander 2, it sounds like it will have been worth the wait for fans of the series.

More than fifty million netbooks have been sold since the phenomenon's beginnings in late 2007, and of those, only a small fraction run Windows 7. With cheap licenses available in family packs and academic discounts, and XP installs increasingly decrepit, ugly, and vulnerable to malware, lots of Windows 7 upgrades are going to happen. However, a quick install from a USB DVD-ROM or thumb drive won't let users get the most out of a netbook. As with the Hindu Saptapadi wedding vows, there are seven steps to optimizing your netbook for maximum Windows 7 performance.

The number of music buyers in the world tanked in 2009 compared to just two years prior, according to market research firm NPD Group. Speaking at the Digital Music Forum: East conference in New York this week, NPD analyst Russ Crupnick said that the number of people buying any kind of music—CD or online—dropped by 24 million between 2007 and 2009. Still, total spending per user was up over that same period of time and P2P use was down, meaning the industry still has hope.

It seems the decrease in buyers is largely due to the continued tanking of CD sales—when isolated for just CDs, there were actually 33 million fewer buyers between 2007 and 2009, according to Billboard. Essentially, the number of buyers going for digital (online) music went up over those two years, but not enough to offset the massive drop in physical media.

In a world that is slowly and surely moving away from depending on plugins to provide advanced features, the decision to release new browser plugins for Internet Explorer is surely a little surprising. Even the popular, widely used Flash is coming under fire, with many advocating a switch to native HTML 5 capabilities in favor of using the proprietary plugin.

Two new plugins are looking to turn the tide. First up we have Vision Engine 8 from 3D game engine developer Trinigy. The company's engine runs on a variety of platforms, and with the new plugin, the Web browser does too. The engine boasts Direct3D 11 support, Havok physics, and sophisticated multithreading support. This plugin allows complex 3D games to be played in the browser.

Apple's retail plan for China, its massive stockpile of cash, and the environment were all topics of discussion during the company's annual shareholder meeting on Thursday. Though it was a fairly average shareholder meeting, these tidbits helped reassure investors that China's plan for Asia is as serious as the company says and that Apple's plan for its money is to keep investing in talent.

One of the biggest tidbits of news out of the meeting was that Apple plans to open "up to" 25 retail stores in China in the near future. The company's first store was opened in Beijing in 2008, not long before the 2008 Olympic Games took place there. Apple has always said that it has big plans for the Chinese market, so the news isn't so much a surprise as it is a commitment to expanding Apple's presence in a huge market. According to CNBC, the time frame for these stores to open is within the next 24 months.

On top of the China news, Steve Jobs defended Apple's $40 billion cash hoard by saying that it gives the company "tremendous security and flexibility," according to the Associated Press. By flexibility, he means it lets Apple strategically buy companies like Lala and Quattro in order to acquire talent and expand its business operations. "Who knows what's around the next corner?" Jobs reportedly said.

Apple's board also discussed a recent sustainability proposal with shareholders. Jobs told investors that the company had taken numerous steps with suppliers to use nontoxic materials and reduce waste, though environmentalists still wanted more out of the company. Extra measures might have included a detailed report out of Apple or even a sustainability committee, but those proposals were voted down by shareholders.

A few jabs at Apple board member and environmental frontman Apple Gore took place, as well as numerous observations about the health and appearance of Steve Jobs, but otherwise it was largely a run-of-the-mill meeting. In the past, Jobs has speculated about possible successors (COO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer, of course), but it seems this time around that no one is wondering whether Jobs is here to stay—at least for a while longer.

The Bad Company 2 beta on the PC has been one of the larger time sinks for shooter fans in recent years. While the code is slightly rough, the mechanics and gameplay are polished and tight if played with a good group of players. If you hide inside a building, mortar rounds can take it down. If you see an enemy creeping towards an objective, call him out to your squad mates and have your friends hunt him down.

The question on the lips of PC gamers: is this going to be better than Modern Warfare 2? What's the server situation? We tracked down Anders Gyllenberg, who is the the producer of the PC version of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, to get our questions answered.

Botnets—large networks of malware-infected PCs remotely controlled by criminals—are a serious problem on the Internet. The spam, phishing attacks, and malware that these networks send accounts for a massive proportion, in excess of 80 percent, of e-mail traffic. One such network, known as Waledac, has been stopped in its tracks after Microsoft got a court to issue a secret temporary restraining order. The restraining order took 277 domain names used by the criminals to communicate with the botnet offline. Without these domain names, it is hoped that the controllers of the botnet will permanently lose access to the machines running their malware.

The Waledac botnet is presumed to be run by Eastern Europeans and to be made up of hundreds of thousands of compromised machines. It sends hundreds of millions, if not billions, of e-mails each day, as well as distributes malware to help recruit new machines to the network. Microsoft's complaint describes in detail how the botnet is organized, with a complex hierarchical control system. At the root of the system is the command-and-control servers. The botnet uses the 277 domain names to connect to the command and control servers to download new commands. These commands are then distributed through the different tiers of the network using peer-to-peer transmission.

By obtaining the restraining order, this command-and-control system was disrupted; with the domain names offline, the machines in the botnet were no longer able to locate their control servers, rendering them mostly harmless. The court action had to be taken in secret to avoid warning the botnet's operators; with sufficient warning, they might have been able to set up new domain names and new control systems, thereby circumventing Microsoft's efforts. The names have now been offline for three days, presumably sufficient to cause permanent disruption, and the injunction is now public.

Similar action against past botnets has been attempted by security researchers before, but the results were only temporary as new command and control servers were set up. Microsoft's intent is for this action to be more permanent. "Operation b49," as Redmond has called it internally, still has further work to do to ensure that the peer-to-peer communication between computers in the botnet is disrupted.

This is critical if the mission is to be successful; the company notes that the operation is not a "silver bullet," as it does not remove the malware from the infected PCs. Though the operation has taken them out of the hands of the hackers, they are still infected, and are still trying to contact the control system. The ultimate solution is for those with infected PCs to ensure that they are patched and have the malware removed as soon as possible.

Even if Operation b49 is ultimately successful and the Waledac network is taken offline, it unfortunately generates only a small fraction of the spam sent each day. Microsoft insists that this will not be the last such action, and that we should "stay tuned" for more. The botnets have had the upper hand for many years now; if this action has lasting success, it could be the first real step in the fight against spam.

The iPhone is twice as popular as comparable smartphones among young'uns and older folks. This from a survey conducted by the analysts at mobile advertising firm AdMob, who polled a total of 963 iPhone, Android OS, webOS, and iPod touch users on their demographics and usage patterns. The survey was part of an opt-in initiative sent to users on their mobile devices.

According to the statistics, 14 percent of those on the iPhone were 55 or older, while only eight percent of Android users and seven percent of webOS were in the same age group. Similarly, iPhone users under the age of 17 made up for 13 percent of the sample, while Android and webOS users of the same age made up for less than 10 percent combined. Apple could do especially well if its young iPod touch demographic (65 percent of all iPod touch users were under 17) eventually upgrades to the iPhone, too. 

It's difficult to tell just how accurately the statistics portray the entire smartphone-using demographic. Likewise, without RIM's series of BlackBerry devices, it's even harder to see the whole picture. Nonetheless, the numbers are at least representative of users receiving ads on the AdMob network, and it seems at least a little curious as to why the upper and lower echelon of age are so heavily in Apple's favor. The teenagers are most likely using the device as a status symbol while the handset's ease of use might have a hand in attracting the older demographic. But twice as much as other smartphones? Let us know what you think.

Streaming video websites like YouTube face growing pressure from consumers to provide support for native standards-based Web video playback. The HTML5 video element provides the necessary functionality to build robust Web media players without having to depend on proprietary plugins, but the browser vendors have not been able to build a consensus around a video codec.

Although the h264 codec has gained dominance due to its excellent compression and broad support in the consumer electronics ecosystem, it is covered by patents that preclude broad royalty-free usage. Several browser vendors, including Opera and Mozilla, favor the Ogg Theora media codec, which is believed to be unencumbered by patents. Ogg may offer advantages from a licensing standpoint, but there are still many unanswered questions about its quality and suitability for Internet video streaming services.

After missing numerous deadlines, Intuit has finally shipped a new, modern version of Quicken for Mac OS X, dubbed Quicken Essentials for Mac. Long-time Quicken users may be disappointed that many features, in particular stock tracking and online bill pay, are missing after waiting four years for a new version. However, the company says this release is just a first step in a major overhaul of its personal finance software.

Quicken Essentials for Mac tosses aside the user interface from older versions of Quicken, opting for a cleaner, Cocoa-based, more "Mac-like" interface designed to be more intuitive and easy to use. It simplifies the process of connecting to your bank and credit card companies for automatic importing of transaction data from over 12,000 institutions, with another 6,000 expected to add compatibility in the coming months. The new version will also import data from Quicken for Mac 2005, 2006, and 2007; Quicken for Windows 2007, 2008, and 2009; and Microsoft Money. The latter is especially handy for switchers.

Despite the much nicer looking graphs and tag clouds showing you where your money is going, though, there isn't much here for users with needs beyond the basics of tracking bank accounts, credit cards, loans, and spending habits. Quicken Essentials for Mac doesn't include integrated online bill paying, nor does it allowing detailed tracking of stocks and other investments. The latter is probably not a need of a majority of users, but the former has certainly become commonplace. Quicken Essentials for Mac also lacks the ability to export data to Intuit's own TurboTax software.

Aaron Patzer, who became the new VP and general manager of Intuit's personal finance group after the acquisition of his online financial site Mint.com, agrees that Quicken Essentials for Mac isn't going to appeal to all users. "It's called 'Mac Essentials' because it's got the essential features used by 80 percent of the users we've surveyed and talked to," he told Macworld. "So we had to decide, do we want to put a product out that serves 80 percent of the market and is a vast improvement in so many ways, or do we delay it again?"

A new version of Quicken for Mac was first demoed at Macworld Expo 2008, but it suffered a number of delays over the last two years. The long absence of an update of Quicken for Mac opened up an opportunity for a number of shareware tools to gain in popularity, including iBank, Cha-ching, and Money, to name a few. Quicken has an advantage with having support for the de facto standard format for financial data, but Intuit may have its work cut out for it to keep Mac users interested in its products.

Patzer told Macworld that next year we can expect an updated version of Essentials as well as Quicken Deluxe for Mac, which is expected to include the missing functionality from the Essentials. Users that need those features now can either stick with Quicken for Mac 2007, or run a newer Windows version in Boot Camp or a virtual machine.

Quicken Essentials for Mac is $70, and can be downloaded directly from Intuit's website. You'll need an Intel-based Mac and either Leopard or Snow Leopard to run it. Quicken for Mac 2007 is still available (also $70) for those running Tiger and/or PowerPC-based Macs. We'll be posting a more in-depth look at the new software as soon as we have a chance to spend some quality time with it.

Last night, a number of Facebook users began getting hundreds of private messages and friend requests intended for other users, according to a Wall Street Journal report. While the problem was only temporary, it adds to the growing concern that Facebook doesn't do enough to ensure the privacy of its users' data.

The issue was apparently caused by a problem in some updated code that is used to route messages to users in Facebook's system. "During our regular code push yesterday evening, a bug caused some misrouting to a small number of users for a short period of time," a company spokesperson told WSJ. "Our engineers diagnosed the problem moments after it began and are working to get everything back in its rightful place."

The short time span of the problem may explain why it only seemed to affect users that had signed up with Facebook early on in its existence, since Facebook relies on user numbers internally to identify a particular user. However, in that timeframe users received hundreds of messages intended to be private. Though Facebook engineers deleted the errant messages, copies were e-mailed to users that are set to receive automatic notifications of such messages.

The glitch is just one in a growing collection of privacy problems that Facebook has had to address. The company was sued over privacy concerns with its Beacon marketing service—which tied users to data from other websites automatically and without permission—and was shut down as part of the settlement. Most recently, the site has faced complaints to the FTC and a probe from Canada's privacy commissioner over recent changes to Facebook's privacy controls.

The FCC's long-awaited, Congressionally mandated, already-castigated, Big-Content-anticipated National Broadband Plan will arrive in all of its glory on March 16, missing the ill-omened Ides of March by a day. The FCC's release strategy for the report has borrowed heavily from Hollywood—create "previews" of your blockbuster and use them to both whet audience interest and to gauge audience reaction. The latest trailer for the Plan rolled today as FCC Chair Julius Genachowski previewed the bits of the plan focused on public safety (PDF), which is about to get as much money for broadband and wireless as Verizon spent on FiOS.

In the eight years since the World Trade Center was destroyed, talk about "interoperable public safety" systems has been cheap; implementation has been hard. The FCC's contribution to the issue was 20MHz of spectrum set aside in the massive 700MHz auction of a few years back, when the "D Block" of spectrum was auctioned to private firms who wanted to pay a bazillion dollars for the spectrum and then build a completely new national wireless network to support both the public and public safety users (and to high public safety specs).

Sound like a pipe dream? It was; despite huge amounts of work, the bids never materialized. The D Block still sits unused and unauctioned.

Hot on the heels of Microsoft's X10 event, Nintendo held its own Media Summit in San Francisco. Yesterday's event was bursting with just as many big reveals as Microsoft's, and there are plenty of reasons for fans to get excited.

With a new DS refresh and a slew of new games for both the Wii and DSi consoles, 2010 should continue the company's success. Here is what to expect in the first half of 2010. We'll be hearing about the second half at E3.

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland hits the theaters today in London, but it almost didn't thanks to some DVD release window controversy. But it's not what most of us would think—the studio, Walt Disney Co., wants to release the DVD earlier than usual, thereby shortening the release window between theater and disc. The theater hosting Alice's premier, however, is upset about the situation, prompting Disney to strike some last-minute deals in order to appease the lucrative box-office gods.

Disney announced during its earnings call earlier this month that it planned to bump up the DVD release of Alice by a month from the original plan, according to BusinessWeek. This didn't go over well with the UK's largest theater chain Odeon, which immediately announced that it would not carry the film "as a result of Disney's insistence on reducing at short notice the theatrical window for a major 3D title."

What's Odeon's problem? It doesn't want to lose out on a full month of box office sales—theaters fear that consumers will go straight to Blockbuster or Walmart and skip the movie-going experience altogether. In some cases, they could be right, but box office sales soared in the US in 2009 while DVD sales tanked. Nonetheless, Disney flew to London to strike a deal with Odeon, one of which included a limit on early DVD releases to just two or three per year.

We have always supported smaller windows between theater and DVD release, but it's clear the studios are trying to pull out all the stops in order to resuscitate dying DVD sales. In this case, they're trying to move the DVD launch up, but in other cases, studios have worked to push back rental windows to encourage impatient movie fans to buy DVDs. In January, Warner Bros. struck a deal with Netflix to hold off its new releases until 28 days after the DVDs hit the stores, and a month later, a similar deal was made with Redbox.

In accordance with US trade law, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) is required to conduct an annual review of the status of foreign intellectual property laws. This review, which is referred to as Special 301, is typically used to denounce countries that have less restrictive copyright policies than the United States.

The review process is increasingly dominated by content industry lobbyists who want to subvert US trade policy and make it more favorable to their own interests. We have already noted the targeting of Canada for its supposedly lax copyright laws, but that is not the only nation drawing the ire of Big Content. One of the organizations that plays a key role in influencing the Special 301 review is the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a powerful coalition that includes the RIAA, the MPAA, and the Business Software Alliance (BSA). The IIPA, which recently published its official recommendations to the USTR for the 2010 edition of the 301 review, has managed to achieve a whole new level of absurdity.

Thirty-four movie studios today appealed a crucial Australian ruling which found that ISPs have no obligation to act on letters that allege copyright infringement by subscribers.

iiNet, the third-largest ISP in Australia, received tens of thousands of such notices, but its policy was to treat them all as mere allegations until a judge had ruled that "infringement" actually took place. Disconnecting or otherwise sanctioning its own customers without this judicial oversight would essentially make the ISP a copyright cop—a notoriously tough job, and one that was outside the company's realm of expertise.

A federal judge agreed, writing a 200-page opinion on the case, but the studios have now appealed the ruling on 15 separate grounds. At issue is Australian law, which (like American law) does require ISPs to take action against infringers in certain circumstances. According to the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), which represents the studios, the judge's ruling means that ISPs get the benefits of "safe harbor" rules without having any corresponding duties.

"This decision allows iiNet to pay lip service to provisions that were designed to encourage ISPs to prevent copyright infringements in return for the safety the law provided," said AFACT head Neil Gane in a statement today. "If this decision stands, the ISPs have all the protection without any of the responsibility."

The issue of what ISPs need to do in the "war on piracy" has been a contentious one around the world, with few ISPs willing to take action against customers without some form of legislative mandate or judicial decision. The iiNet case will help to establish the limits to ISP responsibility under existing copyright law; if the AFACT appeal fails, expect the copyright industries to seek a change in that law over the next few years.

It's no secret that online service providers cooperate with law enforcement agencies and will hand over personal information of various kinds when subpoenaed, subject to court order, or compelled by search warrant. What is secret has been exactly what information these companies store about their users, and what they will hand over to the authorities when required. In recent days a series of these documents have been leaked to whistle-blowing site Cryptome. The policies of (among others) Facebook, AOL, and Skype have all been posted to the site, and several more were posted last December, including those of Verizon, Sprint, and Yahoo.

While most companies have not responded to these leaks, Yahoo, back in December, and Microsoft, whose Global Criminal Compliance Handbook was posted on Saturday, both issued DMCA takedown notices to have the documents removed. In both cases, Cryptome refused to take any action. Yahoo's demand went no further, but Microsoft decided to take things to the next stage, and told Cryptome's ISP, Network Solutions, to take the document down. Network Solutions duly responded by removing the entire site. Microsoft now has 14 business days to begin litigation, after which the site will be reinstated.

Tuesday, Comcast announced a public trial that any Comcast cable Internet access user can participate in. And a year from now, DNSSEC validation will be rolled out throughout all of Comcast's DNS resolvers. Comcast will also be signing all of the domains it hosts, including comcast.com, comcast.net, and xfinity.com.

The DNSSEC extensions to the DNS protocol make it possible for a validating server or a validating host to determine whether information in the Domain Name System is legitimate or not, the same way that it's possible to determine whether a signed e-mail message did indeed come from the holder of the e-mail address. In the past, it was trivial to inject fake information in DNS servers. 

Google's threat to pull out of China may have been met with a shrug in some circles, but there's a population of Chineses citizens who appear to be genuinely worried about the prospect: scientists. Nature conducted an informal survey of Chinese researchers, and got nearly 800 responses. Well over 90 percent of those who responded say they use Google for searches, and 48 percent felt that the loss of Google would create a significant problem for their research.

There are a number of reasons for the scientists' attachment to Google. Although Baidu has done well by tailoring its search service to the sites frequented by the Chinese public, science has remained a field where most of the top research takes place in English. As such, Google's massive index of English-language material, especially works that have found their way into Google Scholar, provide the company's search offerings with distinct advantages. In fact, Google Search and Scholar were the services most often used by the respondents (Maps and Mail were also heavily used).

There are specialized scientific search services, such as the PubMed index, but these don't offer the same level of sophistication as Google. They also don't bring in a broad set of additional materials from outside the realm of academic publishing, such as faculty webpages and the sites of scholarly organizations. Although searching for papers accounted for the largest use of Google cited (at 82 percent of respondents), basic science news and information about other labs were cited by 57 percent, accessing databases by 46, and searches for conferences and meetings by 40 percent.

To be sure, some of those polled didn't feel that Google offered anything special—one told Nature that "It doesn’t matter whether we have Google for science—we have PubMed." But others were equally adamant that the company provides an essential service for researchers (one compared its loss to going blind), and the numbers seem to suggest this group is in the majority. Chinese scholars are increasingly engaged in the international scientific community, training, working, and publishing abroad with regularity. As such, they need access to services that provide full access to that community; the loss of Google would apparently limit their options when it comes to those services.

Nature, 2010. DOI: 10.1038/4631012a