nandemoari writes "Mozilla may be this year's winner in the 'browser battles' as they ready the next beta version of their tour-de-force, Firefox 3.1. Mozilla is resolving eight critical vulnerabilities found in the current version of Firefox — a move sure to garner applause from devoted Firefox users. As this year's crop of new browsers emerges, enhanced features are becoming secondary to one thing: speed. Mozilla is nearly ready to release the next beta version of Firefox 3.1 to the public for testing, and insiders predict that it will outpace even Safari 4, which has been the fastest browser in wide release since its beta began last week." It looks like they also will be upping the next major release to v3.5 to better show the significance of the release.

TechForensics writes "Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, is subtitled "the story of success." It is a book that purports to explain why some people succeed far more than others. It suggests that a success like Bill Gates is more attributable to external factors than anything within the man. Even his birth date turns out to play a role of profound importance in the success of Bill Gates and Microsoft Corporation." Look below for the rest of Leon's review.

Many readers noted an outage affecting Google's gmail service last night. Firmafest points to a statement from Google, according to which only a small subset of users were affected. According to reader CaptHarlock, mail itself remained accessible through IMAP clients, and the chat feature via external applications. jw3 asks "Of course, gmail is just one of the many providers of web-based e-mails. When I look around, almost everyone seems to be using them nowadays. So — what do you do? Do you trust that the site of your web-based e-mail provider will never go down? Do you make backups of all your e-mails?" (Some readers still seem to be unable to reach the site, too.)

IGN has compiled a list of gaming technology they expect to have a significant effect on this year's products. Leading the list is the 3D technology being pushed in television and films. A number of popular games are already set up to handle this, and more are on the way. They also suggest that improved Blu-ray technology, which allows much more storage, will pave the way for even bigger and better looking games. IGN hopes that brain-computer interfaces, such as Emotiv's headset, will become responsive enough to be taken seriously, and notes that DirectX 11 and a broader adoption for PhysX are on the horizon.

wild_quinine writes "The UK government stated in 2006 that they wished to see 100% of UK consumer broadband ISPs' connections covered by blocking, which includes images of child abuse. 95% of ISPs have complied, but children's charities are calling for firmer action by the government as the last 5% cite costs and concerns over the effectiveness of the system. According to Home Office Minister Alan Campbell, 'The government is currently looking at ways to progress the final 5%.' With a lack of transparency in the IWF list, firm government involvement, and blocking that only 'includes' (but may not be limited to) images of child abuse, it looks like the writing is on the wall for unfiltered, uncensored Internet connections in the UK."

Elliott's Hardware store offered George W. Bush a position as a greeter in an open letter in a Dallas newspaper last month. Bush walked in the store on Saturday and said, "I'm looking for a job." Andrea Bond, a manager at the store, said president Bush spent about an hour with his secret service security detail shopping and talking to customers during the surprise visit. Despite having a lot of free time, the former president turned the job down. I'm sure W would make a great hardware store employee as long as Karl Rove worked in the aisle next to him.

Jack Spine writes "Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has confirmed both to ZDNet UK and Wired's Threat Level blog that a dictionary attack was used to hack Twitter. After the hacker distributed details on the Digital Gangster forum, celebrities such as Britney Spears and Barack Obama had their accounts defaced. Wired spoke to the alleged hacker, while ZDNet UK got in contact with someone who had been on the Digital Gangster forum at the time."

diegocgteleline.es writes "Here is LWN's eleventh annual timeline of significant events in the Linux and free software world for the year. As always, 2008 proved to be an interesting year, with great progress in useful software that made our systems better. Of course, there were some of the usual conflicts — patent woes, project politics, and arguments over freedom — but overall, the pace of free software progress stayed on its upwardly increasing trend. 2008 was a year that saw the end of SCO — or not — the rise of Linux-based 'netbooks,' multiple excellent distribution releases, more phones and embedded devices based on Linux, as well as major releases of software we will be using for years (X.org, Python, KDE, ...)."

wmoyes writes "Back in September I ran into a Best Buy store to buy a Samsung BD-P2550 Blu-ray player. I didn't give the clerk my name, telephone number, or address, just my debit card. The player has sat happily in my living room without ever being networked or registered. Today I was shocked to find a package waiting for me at home from Best Buy — inside was a firmware update CD for the player. I used to think Windows Update was scary, but Samsung's update service tracked me to my house using the mag stripe from my bank card. Has this happened to any other Blu-ray owners?" Or is there a simpler explanation?

fuzzel writes "Today Google announced Google over IPv6 where ISPs can sign up their DNS nameservers so that their users will get access to an almost fully IPv6-enabled Google, including http://www.google.com, images and maps, etc., just like in IPv4. Without this only http://ipv6.google.com is available, but then you go to IPv4 for most services. So, start kicking your ISPs to support IPv6 too, and let them sign up. Check this list of ISPs that already do native IPv6 to your doorstep. The question that now remains is: when will Slashdot follow?"