BlueBeat says Beatles songs are its own creations

Recently I wrote about BlueBeat, a Website that was not only selling MP3 downloads of The Beatles (something the Fab Four doesn't yet allow, although you will be able to buy an apple-shaped USB drive with the remastered catalog soon), but also selling music in general for the cut-rate price of 25 cents a track. A few days later, EMI-the record company that controls the Beatles' music-and others filed a lawsuit against BlueBeat for copyright infringement and asked for a temporary restraining order (TRO). And that's where things get really weird. Something seemed fishy. As Ars Technica reports, Media Rights Technologies (MRT), the company behind BlueBeat, has a very reasonable explanation for why what it's doing is legal.

How's that, you wonder? You see, according to MRT's co-founder and CEO Hank Risan, the songs BlueBeat is selling are in fact his original creations. Apparently Risan told the RIAA's general counsel Steven Marks that he authored the songs using "psycho-acoustic simulation" so they are new recordings and not subject to copyright restrictions. In its response in opposition to the TRO, BlueBeat's lawyers claim that the Website is "entirely lawful and does not constitute piracy" and that the plaintiffs are not likely to succeed. Well, that explains everything.

Also, the plaintiffs are well aware that the defendants "developed a series of entirely new and original sounds that it allows the general public to purchase" and that "copyright protection does not extend to the independent fixation of sounds other than those contained in their copyrighted recordings." Uh huh. The Abbey Road album page, for example, list the artist, album title, track titles, record label, and release date-you would reasonably assume that's what you're buying. Even if BlueBeat could somehow convince a judge that it's completely legit-and that isn't going to happen, mind you-there's still the fact that the company doesn't actually tell you that you're not buying the originals. So at the very least, BlueBeat is misleading users into believing they are buying something that's not actually for sale. BlueBeat pays royalties or it owns everything it sells? Oh yeah, and the Website's FAQs say, "our mp3s are fully-licensed audio-visual works and BlueBeat.com pays all applicable royalties," yet at the bottom of every page it reads, "All audio-visual works copyright BlueBeat." So which is it?

Seems like if its own Website is so schizophrenic, there's not much chance of convincing anyone else that it deserves to survive.

Eyes on with Sony's 360 degree 3D display

Sony on Thursday unveiled an impressive 3D display that can be viewed from any direction. The screen sits in the upper half of a black, circular case that's 13 centimeters in diameter and 27 centimeters tall - about the size of a small blender. The screen, development of which was announced earlier this week, is on show until Sunday at the DC Expo in Tokyo. Sony is keeping the technology used in the display under wraps except to say it uses an LED light source.

Objects displayed on the screen included a globe, car, cartoon character and model. The produced image appears to have depth to it and can be viewed through 360 degrees around the device. Sony created the objects either in 3D on a computer or by keeping them still while taking photographs from all around. So, for example, when a model's head was being displayed a visitor could walk to the other side of the screen and see the back of her head. As a result it's possible to walk around the display and view each object from any angle on the horizontal plane.

The screen has a resolution of 96 pixels by 128 pixels, which doesn't sound like it would make for a very good image but is surprisingly good, especially when images of people are displayed. While it has taken Sony roughly three years to develop the prototypes, it will not take a great leap to make versions with larger screens, said Naoya Eguchi, general manager of the photonics development department at Sony's core device development group. Sony has two of the displays on show at the DC Expo, both of which are early prototypes - and possibly the only two prototypes judging by the "No.1" and "No.2" stickers on them - but bigger screens could be on the way. He hinted that a larger version would be ready sometime in 2010. Sony sees several potential uses for the screen. "This is a very good display for educational purposes and there are many design applications," said Ryoji Chubachi, vice chairman of Sony, in an interview. "There are so many, I'm expecting to accept many proposals from visitors." As for when it might come to market, Chubachi said that for now Sony is soliciting ideas on how it might be used and then will consider future plans. "It all depends on the application," he said regarding commercialization. "If we can develop a good application then we'll invest more."

Students show how to heat, cool, watch TV electric bill-free

WASHINGTON - The 20 suburban houses standing this week on the National Mall are demonstrating the use of alternative energy systems. The end results are remarkable. One of many interesting aspects of this government-sponsored project is how IT is used to manage and monitor energy consumption via iPhone apps and Web interfaces.

Undergraduate students from Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley, for instance, have built a solar powered house that monitors and measures every aspect of energy generation and consumption. Along with solar energy and computerized management technologies, these houses put a lot emphasis on things like blinds and shades for directing light. The house produces 150% more energy than it uses, making it a net supplier of electricity to the power company. Some of the homes are costly, but mass production could make them affordable in many housing markets. A Canadian team , for instance, made up of three universities, says it has built a house that can produce about double the amount of energy its occupants consume. "I don't think people realize we can build that," said Lauren Barhydt, the team's program manager, and a graduate student in architecture at the University of Waterloo.

And affordability only improves once the cost of living without an electric bill, or the price of oil for a furnace, is considered. Students from Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, are also involved. Its windows are floor to ceiling, creating a loft-like, cube shape, open structure. The Canadian entry in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon is designed for the snowy north and its physical appearance defies the conventional look of housing in cold climates. But the windows are as sturdy as a normal Canadian stud wall that doesn't allow heat to escape. The construction includes solar panels on the side so the building can capture light from low angles, another aspect of northern climates, said Lauren.

The house includes salt-hydrate packets under the floor that absorb heat, with the help of sunlight directed by blinds that is released as the temperature cools. Electric power is measured at every circuit, which is done through a branch circuit power meter by Schneider Electric. An industrial computer by Beckhoff Automation manages the control system but also works with a Windows-based, touch-screen system, which has controls that are also accessible via an iPhone application . From the iPhone a user can control lights, exterior shades, interior blinds, temperature and humidity, as well as a switch that will retract the bed into the ceiling to create more floor space in this 800 square-foot house, the maximum limit for any house in the biannual decathlon. The solar systems are also monitored, as well as hot water used. The Department of Energy selects 20 universities, which receive a grant to get the project going but typically have to seek donations for much more. The houses are rated in 10 categories, including architecture, market viability, engineering, lighting design, communications, appliances, metering, among others.

The houses must be built in such a way that they can be moved to the National Mall for display and judging. The final winner will be announced on Friday. Architectural Juror Jonathan Knowles, a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design and architect, said that one of the things the judges looked for is how successfully the designers used technology and incorporated it into a house. Team California won the architecture award in judging held on Monday. He was impressed by the use of iPhone apps in many of the houses.

Eventually, these homes may save people a lot of money. Being able to monitor and control a house via a device that you carry around is something "I think is pretty incredible," he said. Rice University, which took second place in the architectural judging, has an entry in the Solar Decathlon that cost $140,000 to build . "That's affordable by any metric," said Knowles. Although it cost Team California about $550,000 to build its house, Preet Anand, an engineering and physics major at Santa Clara University and the water systems and digital communications lead on the project, said a mass produced model of its home would cost about $300,000 to build. Team Ontario's house, including research and development work, cost $1.2 million, but if mass produced it may cost $400,000 (Canadian), said Barhydt.

New technology from Cisco Systems Inc. is used to control all the home's systems. A Mac Mini aggregates in all the data. Integration work is required because a lot of the systems in the house, such as those that provide the radiant heating and cooling, speak their own language, said Anand. The energy use in the Team California house can be monitored, shades adjusted, lights turned off and on, air and hot water temperature adjusted all via iPhone. You can even swivel a TV to face the kitchen via the remote application, if you happen to be working there. "Our house was designed to save people time," said Anand. This remote management allows occupants to cut circuits to appliances remotely, turning off any energy consuming sources.

Three-year-old Office patch stymies most attacks

Users running Microsoft Office can stump nearly three-fourths of all known attacks targeting the suite by applying just one three-year-old patch, according to recently published data. The flaw was fixed in the MS06-027 security update issued. Almost three-out-of four attacks - 71% of all those spotted in the first half of 2009 - exploited a vulnerability in Word that was patched in June 2006, Microsoft said in its bi-annual security intelligence report, released Monday.

The second-most popular exploit, with a 13% share, aimed at a bug that was quashed in March 2008, Microsoft said. The 2006 update patched Word 2000, Word 2002 and Word 2003, while the 2008 fix affected Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003 and Excel 2007. Microsoft made the point that patching Office was as important as keeping Windows up-to-date with security fixes. "The majority of Office attacks observed in [the first half of 2009], 55.5%, affected Office program installations that had last been updated between July 2003 and June 2004," the company said in its report. "Most of these attacks affected Office 2003 users who had not applied a single service pack or other security update since the original release of Office 2003 in October 2003." Unfortunately, users are far less likely to update Office than they are to patch Windows. The flaw was one of seven patched by the MS08-014 update. According to Microsoft's data, the median amount of time since the last Office update was an amazing 5.6 years, compared to just 1.2 years since the last Windows update. "Users can keep Windows rigorously up to date and still face increased risk from exploits unless they also update their other programs regularly," Microsoft warned. They do what's required of them," he continued, hinting that they often do little more than that. "Windows' security has a high profile, and so they're patching Windows.

Wolfgang Kandek, the chief technology officer at security vendor Qualys, echoed Microsoft's take on Office patching patterns. "We see the same in our data," Kandek said. "People just don't patch Office, and when they do, they patch it much slower than Windows." That especially holds true in the enterprise. "This is a major security hole in the enterprise," Kandek said. "IT admins are not focusing on Office as they are on Windows. I don't think they're looking at Office, to tell you the truth." Qualys obtains its data from PCs that it manages for its clients, most of which are companies. Office 2007 SP2 hit the street in April 2009. Nine out of 10 Office exploits in the first half of 2009 involved a Trojan downloader, or backdoor malware. "These kinds of threats allow attackers to access compromised systems later to install more malware," Microsoft said. One way to stay up-to-date without patching every month is to apply the infrequent service packs that Microsoft issues for Office. "If the Office 2003 RTM users in the sample had installed SP3 [Service Pack 3] and no other security updates, they would have been protected against 98% of observed attacks," Microsoft said. "Likewise, Office 2007 RTM users would have been protected from 99% of attacks by installing SP2." Microsoft delivered Office 2003 SP3 in September 2007, fixing more than 450 bugs in the application suite, and adding other security measures, including file blocking of older formats, a move that confused users well into the following year. Microsoft urged Office customers to use the Microsoft Update service, a superset of the better-known Windows Update that pushes patches for Windows and Office. Office was last patched Oct. 13 when Microsoft unveiled a record number of security updates and fixed flaws.

Here, too, Kandek was stumped by Microsoft's practice of offering two separate update services. "I'm not sure why that's the way they do it," he said, speaking of Microsoft's providing Office updates to consumers and small businesses only through Microsoft Update. "I don't see why they simply can't replace Windows Update with Microsoft Update, and patch everything." Microsoft offers Office, as well as Windows patches, to businesses that use its Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) patch management system. The security intelligence report can be downloaded from Microsoft's site in PDF or XPS document formats.

MySpace replaces all server hard disks with flash drives

Social networking site MySpace.com announced today that it has switched from using hard disk drives in its servers to using PCI Express (PCIe) cards loaded with solid state chips as primary storage for their data center operations. MySpace said the solid state storage uses less than 1% of the power and cooling costs that their previous hard drive-based server infrastructure had and that they were able to remove all of their server racks because the ioDrives are embedded directly into even its smallest servers. "We looked at a number of solid state solutions, using many different kinds of RAID configurations, but we felt that Fusion-io's solution was exactly what we needed to accomplish our goals," Buckingham stated. The PCIe cards, from Fusion-io Inc., have allowed MySpace to replace multiple server farms made up of 2U (3.5-in high) servers that had used 10 to 12 15,000 RPM Fibre Channel drives each with 1U (1.75-in high) servers using a single ioDrive . "In the last 20 years, disk storage hasn't kept pace with other innovations in IT, and right now we're on the cusp of a dramatic change with flash technologies," said Richard Buckingham, vice president of technical operations for MySpace, in a statement.

MySpace's new servers also have replaced its high-performance hosts that held data in large RAM cache modules, a costly method MySpace had been using in order to achieve the necessary throughput to serve its relational databases. Salt Lake City-based Fusion-io claims the ioDrive Duo offers users unprecedented single server performance levels with 1.5GB/sec. throughput and almost 200,000 IOPS. The system can reach such performance levels because four ioDrive Duos in a single server can scale linearly, which provides up to 6GB/sec. of read bandwidth and more than 500,000 read IOPS. The cards come in 160GB, 320GB and 640GB capacities. MySpace said its new servers using the NAND flash memory modules give it the same performance as its older RAM servers. A 1.28TB card is expected in the second half of this year. "Social networking sites and other Web 2.0 applications are very database dependent. Ethernet pipe," David Flynn, CTO of Fusion-io, said in an interview. Our 320GB ioDrive can fill a 10Gbit/sec.