Slashdot Mirror

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=891505&p=16510422#p16510422 - a collection of apk (Alexander Peter Kowalski) trollspam.
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1046804http://www.thorschrock.com/2008/05/19/how-to-respond-when-people-threaten-to-sue-you-on-the-web/
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1046804
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=453001
http://www.jeremyreimer.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=4128 The "I have a lawyer and I'm going to sue the Internets" thread - very funny. Thee are updates on subsequent pages mixed in with the comments.
http://www.jeremyreimer.com/APKware/index.html screenshots

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=891505&p=16510422#p16510422 - a collection of apk (Alexander Peter Kowalski) trollspam.
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1046804http://www.thorschrock.com/2008/05/19/how-to-respond-when-people-threaten-to-sue-you-on-the-web/
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1046804
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=453001
http://www.jeremyreimer.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=4128 The "I have a lawyer and I'm going to sue the Internets" thread - very funny. Thee are updates on subsequent pages mixed in with the comments.
http://www.jeremyreimer.com/APKware/index.html screenshots

Quad-cores had a lot to do with performance, while this technical innovation is more to do with cost.

Not only cost, but also system design. Also, the cost side has more sides than the one you present: Two smaller chips will have larger yields than one large, and Intel is ahead of AMD when it comes to chip manufacturing.

Check it: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/11/21/0022253/Try-Out-Chrome-OS-In-a-Virtual-Machine?from=rss

Also, this is a pretty interesting article about Chrome OS: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/01/chrome-os-interview-1.ars

The question has been asked: how is the iPad so much faster than the iPhone 3GS, despite having the same processor (sometimes more than double the speed)? The simple answer is: double the memory bandwidth!

iPhone 3GS: 32-bit memory bus, 600 MHz core
iPad: 64-bit memory bus, 1000 MHz core.

And this is assuming the memory technologies / clock speeds did not change. If they also increased the memory clock, the bandwidth increase could be 3x or more. And since rich web media craves memory, bandwidth is a key limiter for rendering complex websites. Thus, it's not hard to see how a %66 faster core speed could translate to a double-or-more average benchmark improvement.

Why did you link to an article about software patents there weren't granted?

Also the article isn't excxactly correct.

If I make a device the does A. You can not make the exact same device just because it does B. You can modify and patent the resulting thing.

If I patent a hammer, you can't patent the same thing and call it a 'glass breaker'

I think this article may be a better description of software patents and lays out why they are bad:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/resurrecting-the-supreme-courts-software-patent-ban-not-ready.ars/3

you honestly don't understand how malicious software patents are

please read up:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/us-patent-office-tightens-the-screws-on-software-patents.ars

Fantastic how they're crying for "openness" a mere day after they announce Selective Output Control DRM in Flash.

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/05/adobes-new-flash-drm-comes-with-selective-output-control.ars

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90.ars

People pirate because they don't want to pay. It's really that simple.

DRM is pointless in some cases and works very well in others like the PS3. Yes this doesn't conform to the Slashdot view but then the Slashdot view is partially based on wishful thinking.

Regarding my #2 being wrong, there is nothing in your reply that rebuts it. Intel needs to be able to continue providing excuses for continuing computer/chip sales, that is capitalism and there's nothing wrong with it (except from an environmental view!) One needs to upgrade to run the latest version of the bloated and inefficient MS Windows.

"Even lowly i5 CPU can boot Win7 is under 10 seconds with an SSD and can run any game and decode any video with ease." Right, if it's a clean install. So you agree with me. Without hardware compensating for the additional bloat we have a turkey besides the number of cores on a CPU does not make any great affect on boot time. As to running any game or encode/decode video, these are task best left to your video card not the CPU -- and the last time I looked, gamers were still overclocking because they had to for improved gaming.

"Most people may not need a quad core, but even a dual core makes your OS experience seem much more responsive." Very few, if any people need a quad core; absolutely agree. And for those that do, what software out there efficiently utilizes any SMP based machine? Nothing I know of for the typical user. As to dual core, as per your previous statement, an SSD is what really would make a difference -- not dual core. Besides, again, what software make efficient use of an SMP dual core?

"AMD and Intel do not "convert" their chips into single cores." True, but it's a pretty good layman's example of what is happening; some cores are shutdown with power boosts to the remaining core(s) increasing their speed. Any way you look at it, you just bought cores that are not needed and can slow down your system.

"It's just logical that if you're loading the whole CPU, why not make one part faster." Actually that is exactly what Intel used to do till some thermal barriers were hit forcing Intel to move to multi-core. Logically, and in the hardware/software world I grew up in -- Intel and embedded -- the first thing you do is get rid of the inefficiencies so the system can handle the load (as in proper design) Logically, as well, if by speeding up CPU you can make the system more efficient why have more cores in the first place? Doesn't it strike you as odd that after all the hype about multi-core, the latest and greatest is the ability to not use multi-core? There's not much software out there that uses multi-core, efficiently or otherwise. Again, as you stated, "Most people may not need a quad core"

All the discussion about how to increase throughput for a single thread is pretty much not relevant. I will state that the best ways to increase throughput for a single thread are by optimizing architecture, design (eg algorithm chosen) and implementation. Unfortunately in the PC world (thank you MS) engineering is more often hacking/programming than real engineering. (See TGMLC.)

"In the end you have two things. 1) single threaded performance about hit a brick wall and was going almost no where. 2) If you don't go SMP, someone else will and you'll die a corprate death for not advancing." 1) single threaded performance did not hit a brick wall nor was it any where near hitting a brick wall -- I/O bound was/is a much greater problem. The CPU thermal barriers to increased speed have nothing to do with the level of parallelism of any program, process, or task. 2) Maybe. In the server world the quest is to find the best all around solution which may or may not be SMP on a single core. In the end user world, it a question of marketing and, right now, marketing is pushing SMP on a single chip. (See TGMLC)

Finally, why add complexity where none is needed. Many of the difficulties of parallel programming are quite well documented. Here's yet another: http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/05/multicore-cpus-move-attack-from-theoretical-to-practical.ars

Except that it still got pirated.

Good question. Techcrunch reported it at 20%. Ars gave it 17% here.

But your point is fairly made - measuring browser usage is difficult - some sites report Chrome usage as low as 6%. From what I see, many people are mixing browser usage, with Firefox for development and plugins, and Chromium for other sites.

Good question. Techcrunch reported it at 20%. Ars gave it 17% here.

But your point is fairly made - measuring browser usage is difficult - some sites report Chrome usage as low as 6%. From what I see, many people are mixing browser usage, with Firefox for development and plugins, and Chromium for other sites.

Except filesharers represent the largest customer base.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/file-sharers-are-content-industrys-largest-customers.ars

http://bit.ly/9AvjLc:

The Mozilla development team released Firefox 3.6, codenamed Namoroka, on 21 January 2010 after some anticipation; Firefox 3.5 was a step forward in features but two steps backward in performance. As a minor update, Namoroka was a chance to optimize the last release.

So, now that it's out, did it alleviate some of these problems? Well, let's find out by looking at what 3.6 offers over 3.5.

First and most visible is support for skins, called personas. Firefox developers have been tinkering with the XUL format and they cite its power. They also claim that it has been under-utilized, so personas were a "natural addition."

TraceMonkey received a performance boost, caching more bytecode in RAM using the new "Stored History Integration Table" system which dynamically stores each JavaScript routine as an object in memory in order to more quickly access it during execution.

Firefox's plugin system also received an overhaul, and now lets the user know when a plugin is incompatible. Mozilla also included support for full-screen Theora and WOFF, the Web Open Font File format, as well as additional but otherwise unspecified performance and security enhancements.

Overall, it's a nice list of bullet points for the bump from 3.5 to Nakamora, but the fact that performance wasn't a priority already points away from optimization and to new features. And the features are actually not new at all, but fixes for issues that should have been taken care of during the initial design stages or other numerous upgrades.

For instance, Firefox has been skinnable for years using XUL, and personas are just a hack to this system that allows the user to use bitmapped images as toolbar backgrounds. You are not mistaken if you just had a flashback to Internet Explorer 3.

These personas also slow the browser down, negating any advantage from the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. One writer on the web even suggests that the TraceMonkey enhancements were done in anticipation of new-feature bloat. Talk about the tail wagging the fox!

Plugin incompatibility usually occurs when a plugin was written for an older version of the plugin system, which demands a question about the wisdom of upgrading the plugin system for Nakamoru the first place. But that's just how Firefox developers roll.

Now, if you're running an incompatible plugin, Firefox alerts you at startup and launches the plugin manager, a JavaScript-based app that contacts Firefox's plugin server and swaps all kinds of metadata in a frantic attempt to update your third party add-ons.

Several of the changes are plainly just developmental masturbation. For example, Theora is the least-used web video codec, with the penetration that the newer QuickTime X has. And WOFF is an open standard that Mozilla wants to support for political reasons that isn't actually in use anywhere.

So what exactly are Mozilla development managers doing?

If a private company with an opaque development model like Apple can apply the breaks and optimize an entire operating system, à la Leopard to Snow Leopard, why can't a public, transparent development team be bothered to do the same for something much less complex like a web

In the digital age, what constitutes a copy? Is a car DVD player that buffers 15 seconds of video making a copy? How about it it buffers a minute? All but the last minute? The whole thing, but only until you remove the disc?

You're right that it's unclear. The judge in such a case will likely distinguish an unfair "copy" from a fair "transitory" embodiment by the purpose of the buffer, how much is buffered, and whether additional copies can be made from the buffer. Start with the Cablevision case.

How do time shifting and format shifting fit in to this?

I only remember Sony v. Universal (seminal decision on time shifting) applying to broadcasts, not video on demand. There is an explicit exception for format-shifting for audio (17 USC 1008) but not for video.

Humble Bundle gives pirates what they want, gets ripped off

Really? seems to differ and wasn't the only reference I could find for microsoft.com defaced (seventh link).

SQL injection != Kernel Flaw

Not an example of bad security but bad programming.

http://www.xatrix.org/article.php?s=3640
"They found the administration page and performed a SQL injection attack, allowing them to manage the content of the section."

OMG!!! Linux is SUPAR UNSAFE!!! It is vulnerable to SQL injection attacks!... Every OS has this issue because some moron decided to not validate their SQL string and/or didn't use parameterized variables.

Actually, I went through and googled a bunch myself and all the results for the past decade where SQL injection or they didn't specify but mostly SQL.

Next time you feel like showing off how un-secure and OS is, I'll load up SELinux, set it up to let root telnet in, give root a blank password, open up all the ports on my firewall and see how long it takes for SELinux to be "hacked"

Really? seems to differ and wasn't the only reference I could find for microsoft.com defaced (seventh link).

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/04/google-planning-to-open-the-vp8-video-codec.ars

Apparently, Google is planning on doing just that.

It's pretty rare for small businesses even to order just one machine unless it is through a supplier.

You'd be surprised, especially in a business that hovers around the 20-employee limit at which certain wage and fringe-benefit guarantees come into force under United States law.

How is Chrome Frame out? Those same businesses don't need to work with suppliers and clients that are starting to use HTML5, like major airlines and Google?

More suppliers and clients use Flash and not features new to HTML5 than use features new to HTML5 and not Flash.

They're pretty comparable from an IT perspective excepting that the latter is less of a security risk

Perhaps IT managers who think Chrome Frame is a security risk are pulling something out of their Ars. The article quotes a Microsoft spokesperson: "Google Chrome Frame running as a plugin has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts."

It's great marketing but I'd be interested to see a side-by-side comparison of Chrome and a few other browsers rendering in slow motion for comparison. Chrome is the fastest, but only by about 30%. Still stands out as a great ad campaign though.

Apple's US smartphone marketshare is 25% ... I'd ask for a refund on whatever it was you spent on your "education."

Well, at least he has some where he can get a refund. You clearly never even tried to go past middle school.

Apple has 99.4% of the mobile application market.. Microsoft never came close to that.

Gates: DOS aint done until Lotus wont't run.
Jobs (in the same situation): You are not allowed to run Lotus 1-2-3 on Windows.

No company ever has been as evil as Apple is now. Not Standard Oil, not Microsoft. Nobody

Your arguments and comparisons are predicated on Apple being a monopoly in a space. Smartphones, tablets/netbooks, whichever. This is not currently even close to the case.

Apple had 99.4% market share of the mobile application market in 2009.

Ars Technica

Which part of that doesn't qualify as a monopoly?

Andrew

It was an issue with their EULA;
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/09/ubuntu-firefox-eula-dustup-reignites-oss-licensing-debate.ars

Well, whitehouse.gov switched to Drupal not too long ago. That would sort of imply that somebody, somewhere did some testing against it. Heck, they even contributed code.

WOFF is the answer to both questions. It is an open font format that allows browsers to download the font on demand, and all the browsers have committed to supporting it in their next release. It has no DRM, but since it isn't the same format as operating systems use, and the browser will be downloading it to a temporary directory behind the scenes, most users won't know that it is possible to copy the fonts - most don't even know how to install a TTF when you give it to them. The foundries have decided that being too restrictive about the use of fonts means that no one will use them, and have pretty much unanimously decided to support the WOFF format - which is what this article is about with all the tech info filtered out.

This article has more info.

After the second .xxx proposal was approved in 2005, the Family Research Council (FRC) mobilized its forces in an all-out crusade. Claiming that the creation of a .xxx TLD would allow pornographers to "expand their evil empires on the Internet," the FRC urged its supporters to express opposition to the proposal. The Department of Commerce alone received nearly 6,000 letters expressing concern on the subject. The Department of Commerce eventually requested that ICANN spend more time considering the implications of the proposal before reaching a conclusion.

(source)

While the porn industry also opposed it for other reasons, the ones that actually caused ICANN to reverse it were the Puritanical minority.

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/youtube-to-kill-ie6-support-on-march-13.ars

Wierd: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/youtube-to-kill-ie6-support-on-march-13.ars

Since Bertrand Serlet got up at WWDC and announced that Snow Leopard would have no new features and it was pretty much just a bug fix release.

There are lines that you cannot legally cross, and Apple very well may have done so.

They do it indiscriminately; who cares? They even have their own iPolice to raid into blogger's homes.

Now awaiting for the john gruber wannabe acolyte zombies (see above) to mod me

Hey, at least it's better than the liberal socialist backyard Kumbaya drum circle! It's about time we told those damn hippies with their "free exchange of information" and "open source" and all that communist bilge where to get off -- only good old fashioned American capitalism can produce successes like Netscape!

The only real impact is that the FCC will start using Title II instead of Title I.

They'll sue Google?

The pictures I've seen with Google servers are caseless and don't have many fans other than CPU and probably one in the PSU. I don't think that Google can be compared to the typical rackmount server the rest of us would use.

I recommend you read arstechnica's rebuttal of Steve Jobs's claims. Pot, meet kettle indeed. http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/pot-meet-kettle-a-response-to-steve-jobs-letter-on-flash.ars

All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now

(emphasis mine)

Google recently acquired On2 and plans to Open Source the VP8 codec.

All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now

(emphasis mine)

Google recently acquired On2 and plans to Open Source the VP8 codec.

The porn industry chooses its standards. Everyone else follows.

It's interesting how often this myth gets repeated. If anything, the porn industry went with HD DVD in the high definition disc format wars. And we all know how well that worked out:

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/01/8602.ars

I think it's kdawson's subtle dig at all those people who bitched and moaned about how hypocritical Apple is for embracing an open standard (HTML5) over a closed one (flash) when their platforms are sometimes closed as well as the software they themselves produce. Somehow I guess we won't see much outrage about MS endorsing html5. They were a little more tactful than Apple was though: they hedged their bets by saying that flash is still useful. But then again, MS actually has a good working relationship with Adobe, that's a big contrast to Apple whose relationship has been strained (from a user's perspective) since Photoshop never got ported to cocoa for OS X.

As an interesting aside, this is coming fresh on the heels MS canceling its tablet, following great sales of Apple's tablet. I can see that this sign from a few years ago is still relevant today. Shit, the last time I was actually impressed by the innovation in an MS product, it was Windows 2000.

P.S. The irony is that Safari itself has multiple components that are actually open source, i.e. the html renderer is webkit and gui is editable using xcode, which is a lot more open than IE. I myself removed the brushed metal texture from Safari a few years ago back before ditched that look completely anyway. But a lot of /. users have decided that Apple is completely and irrevocably evil and thus can't possibly do any good features. I'm guessing there will be a lack of vitriol here though, despite the fact that IE is more closed than Safari, and historically has resulted in weak compliance for standards on the web, in fact, IE6 enforced a lot of non-compliance due to the OS monopoly and IE6's poor implementation.

I merely said that this letter from Steve was less than up front about the reasons why nobody had hardware accelerated video before April of this year. While Adobe may be "lazy" in their own rights, Apple is "lazy" too. If Apple is getting blamed for Flash's crashes, then Adobe is getting blamed for Apple's lack of hardware acceleration.

You present self-defeating arguments in this comment. The Jobs letter doesn't have anything to do with the API just released--because Flash uses a legacy codebase, it was ineligible to use modern APIs that would have provided hardware acceleration, including but not limited to the one announced a week ago. Adobe's failure to offer hardware accelerated h.264 video playback was not a criticism leveled against it. Adobe's failure to write a plugin with acceptable overall performance was, and that's got nothing to do with Apple.

H.264 video playback is hardware accelerated by all kinds of third party software products, none of which had to wait until the past two weeks to take advantage of those features, because of the OS-level Quicktime frameworks. Flash performance was equally terrible before any platform had h.264 hardware acceleration. Again I ask rhetorically, what was the hold up before? Hardware accelerated Flash is relatively new, period, and doesn't explain Flash's terrible performance relative to other platforms, all of which had the same tools available. As the blog post concludes,

"Compared to QuickTime based video playback support in Safari 4.0.x on Mac OS X 10.6.3 (or your standalone VLC/QuickTime player that is) there is still room for improvement in Flash Player."

Both the issue and the resolution are recent and merely collateral issues that have little to do with the Flash performance/hardware leveraging/battery life issue you purport to respond to.

Apple has been dragging their feet on this for much of the last decade

How so?

Citations please -- I'm not finding these benchmarks

Open Activity Monitor and see for yourself. Alternatively:

http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/p/3015/10847.aspx
http://www.tobinharris.com/past/2008/8/30/performance-of-silverlight-vs-flash-vs-javascript-vs-tracemonkey/ (even using Silverlight 1.0, it was still almost 3 times faster than Flash)
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=35496

Besides, Silverlight 4 does use hardware acceleration, and does use this new API, so I'm not sure where you're getting your (mis)information. You're obviously out of date, and I'm starting to distrust the authority of your words.

Silverlight 4 was finalized in early March (before the new API was publicized) and released a week after the Apple API was announced. Unless you're suggesting that it has time-traveling capabilities, it does not use the just-publicized method. It uses the same hardware acceleration that has been available to developers for months to years--APIs that Flash could have used but for their own inaction. The real question is your apparent confusion over what's happening here, while you speak of setting the record straight.

There are three types of hardware acceleration: (1) hardware rendering (i.e. Quartz, CoreImage, CoreAnimation), (2) GPGPU acceleration of Flash functions, and (3) hardware decoder access for video playback (specifically, h.264). Adobe doesn't currently support any of them fully on the Mac.

(2) is relatively new, so no fault there. (1) has been available to developers for years in Windows, OS X, and more recently, even Linux. Adobe implemented hardware vector rendering 10.1 for Windows and finally rewrote some of the Mac v

So, if I write a browser plugin or standalone program that implements the SWF file format (PDF) [adobe.com], it won't work? Why?

If it's a browser-based app written in JavaScript, it will likely be unusably slow. If it is written in Objective-C, Apple will reject it the way it rejects any other interpreter.

Here, I'll quote what the GP said, bolding the important parts.

"Flash is closed, it is not an open standard. If adobe closed up tomorrow the amount of flash that we rely on would become a problem."

Do you see the problem with your answer yet? Well, I'm going to explain it anyway.

The iPhone/iPad doesn't support flash, so "flash that we rely on" doesn't apply to the the iPhone/iPad. Thus, both the point and counterpoint made by the GP and myself are unrelated to the iPhone/iPad.

H.264, which is what Apple is advocating to use for video on the web instead of Flash

Not entirely accurate. For one thing, Flash uses H.264 in either the FLV container or the MP4 container.

Not entirely accurate. For one thing, Flash supports multiple codecs, of which H.264 is a recent addition.

For another, Flash's original reason for existence was vector animation, and these become much bigger when transcoded to H.264.

That would be why I said "to use for video." Like it or not, video is a much larger market on the Internet than vector animation is, and thus is Flash's main use on the web now.

However, SVG animation does not appear to have widespread support yet, so good luck finding another vector animation source on the web.

[H.264] is not an open standard either.

At least the specification is published and the patents are available under a uniform royalty license, as opposed to relying exclusively on a case-by-case negotiated license.

That's implying you have to pay to license a codec at all. If you expected me to mention Theora here, you're right... but not in the way you thought.

It's a well known fact that H.264 outperforms Theora (AKA VP3)... but Google is apparently preparing to release the VP8 video codec as open source at next month's Google I/O conference.

"I've never had any of my computers, running Mac/Windows infected by anything that I know of, I don't use any sort of protection either..."

Well there's you're problem right there. If you're running Windows and connecting it to the net, it is infected as a matter of course whether you choose to become aware of it or not. The only way to prevent it, is to not use Windows.

So on behalf of all the Fortune 500 companies, for whom I do not represent, and on behalf of all the rest of us, whom I don't represent either, who feel the pinch from there elevated operational costs may I be the first to extend a heartfelt, sincere "FUCK YOU, VERY MUCH" to you and any horse you might have ridden in on.

The most amusing is that the federal government have been running immigration status checkpoints inside the US for years, and nobody knows and/or cares about it.

Witness: http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2008/10/aclu-23-of-us-population-lives-in-constitution-free-zone.ars

Or am I missing something about this new law that's substantially worse?

Ads are sold on a per-view basis . More views = more ad revenue.

IAAB (I am a Brazilian). Sure, anonimous posting is forbidden by Constitution. So is interest rates greater than 12%/year. It's more complicated than that. I think judges have a problem understanding how internet works and are trying to not lose power (like when a judge tried to block all of youtube because Cicarelli's sex video: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/06/youtube-wins-privacy-case-against-brazilian-supermodel.ars ). I feel sorry for Google.

Really? So you discount the US Government Accountability Office's statement that it is "difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the economy-wide impacts."?

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/us-government-finally-admits-most-piracy-estimates-are-bogus.ars

Here's another beautiful GAO quote: "Three commonly cited estimates of U.S. industry losses due to counterfeiting have been sourced to U.S. agencies, but cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology."

Even the MPAA admitted its numbers were bogus: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/01/oops-mpaa-admits-college-piracy-numbers-grossly-inflated.ars

So why don't you calm down, take a deep breath, and let out some of the hot air stuck in your noggin?

Hentai.

On this issue, here is some threads from Ars Technica's forums:
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20687&hilit=actiblizzard
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=50015&hilit=actiblizzard