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Submission + - Contents of leaked HBGary emails reveal wrongdoing (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by chargersfan420
chargersfan420 writes: Ars Technica has sifted through the contents of the HBGary emails leaked last week in the attack by Anonymous and posted an interesting story about some of the things they were up to (which include rootkit development, selling rootkits to the private sector, and an entire list of 0-day exploits in a variety of OSes and other software, among a variety of other devious plans). Today they are reporting a democratic push for a congressional investigation of HBGary Federal.
Android

Submission + - Google's Nexus S, A Look At Gingerbread (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Google's Nexus S smartphone has a lot of interesting features, but the one that attracts the most attention is the fact that it ships with the latest version of the Android smartphone operating system, version 2.3. Otherwise known as Gingerbread, this OS is said to be the fastest version of Android yet. In addition to Gingerbread, the Nexus S touts a 4-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor, and 16GB of internal memory. It's network performance numbers turned out to be relatively impressive as well."
Crime

Submission + - Smart Phone Gets Driver Out of a Speeding Ticket 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Sahas Katta writes in Skattertech that a traffic cop pulled him over while driving home and gave him a speeding ticket but thanks to his Android, he ended up walking out of traffic court without having to pay a fine or adding a single point to his record. "I fortunately happened to have Google Tracks running when an officer cited me for speeding while heading back home from a friend’s place," writes Katta. "The speed limit in the area was a mere 25 miles per hour and the cop’s radar gun shockingly clocked me driving over 40 miles per hour." Once in court Katta asked the officer the last time he attended radar gun training, when the device was last calibrated, or the unit’s model number — none of which the officer could answer. "I then presented my time stamped GPS data with details about my average moving speed and maximum speed during my short drive home. Both numbers were well within the posted speed limits," says Katta. "The judge took a moment and declared that I was not guilty, but he had an unusual statement that followed. To avoid any misinterpretations about his ruling, he chose to clarify his decision by citing the lack of evidence on the officer’s part. He mentioned that he was not familiar enough with GPS technology to make a decision based on my evidence, but I can’t help but imagine that it was an important factor.""
Firefox

Submission + - Firefox 4 Beta 12 out. Fixing over 650 bugs (internetnews.com) 2

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: At last! Firefox 4 Beta 12 is now available. There are over 650 bugs fixes in this massive update including a fix for a memory leak that kept Firefox consumer RAM even without opening new tabs. The other big thing that many users have asked for is that FINALLY, when you hover over a link, the URL is displayed in the status bar, instead of the location bar.
Google

VP8 Decoder Implemented In Flash Using Alchemy 94

Posted by Soulskill from the dark-sorcery dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla's Chris Double has an interesting post on his blog about a port of the VP8 decoder to Flash. He writes, 'Ralph Hauwert has been posting on twitter about work he's done on getting WebM decoding to work by compiling the libvpx source code using Adobe's Alchemy technology. Alchemy is a research project that allows compilation of C and C++ libraries into code that runs on the ActionScript virtual machine used by Flash.' Of course, it's very slow and Adobe says that they'll bring native VP8 support to Flash in due course, but implementing a VP8 decoder in ActionScript is an interesting project nonetheless."
Microsoft

How To Get Around the Holes In IE9 Beta's Implementation of Canvas 111

Posted by timothy from the canvas-the-neighborhood dept.
mudimba writes "Microsoft has made grand announcements about how great their implementation of the HTML5 canvas specification is. However, while I was porting a large HTML5 application to work with IE9 beta I found that there are some key features missing. Workarounds are provided where possible. (Disclaimer: I am the author of the submitted article.)"
Google

Ars Thinks Google Takes a Step Backwards For Openness 663

Posted by CmdrTaco from the logic-has-many-letters dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Over at Ars Technica, Peter (not so) Bright gives a long-winded four pages of FUD about how Chrome dropping support for H.264 is a slight against openness. 'The promise of HTML5's video tag was a simple one: to allow web pages to contain embedded video without the need for plugins. With the decision to remove support for the widespread H.264 codec from future versions of Chrome, Google has undermined this widely-anticipated feature. The company is claiming that it wants to support "open codecs" instead, and so from now on will support only two formats: its own WebM codec, and Theora. ... The reason Google has given for this change is that WebM (which pairs VP8 video with Vorbis audio) and Theora are "open codecs" and H.264 apparently isn't. ... H.264 is unambiguously open.'"

Comment Re:What part of recent events (Score 1) 1698

by Jeeeb (#30029314) Attached to: Landmark Health Insurance Bill Passes House
What part of recent events represented free markets? BTW, freer markets are recovering and us Keynesians are still bleeding jobs.

I'm sorry but that assertion just seems completely wrong. For example recovery in Asia is being lead by China which launched a massive state run stimulus program in response to the crisis. Japan is slowly moving to the recovery... with a massive government stimulus package. Australia had a massive government stimulus package which probably helped avoid recession and now is being pulled out of the slump by China.
Programming

Road To Riches Doesn't Run Through the App Store 305

Posted by timothy from the handful-of-winners dept.
Etienne Steward writes "Turns out that while a few fortunes can be made with Apple, Steve Demeter made most of his money by buying Palm (of all companies) at $1.76 and selling at $12. Apparently, there aren't as many iPhone App millionaires as we would like to be believe. From the article: 'In almost a dozen interviews conducted by NEWSWEEK, Apple consultants and programmers jettison the idea that the App Store is a world of easy opportunity, or a fast track to quitting the rat race. Instead they describe an anxiety-wracked marketplace full of bewildering rules, long odds, and little sense of control over one's success or failure. "It's kind of a crapshoot," says Demeter, who spent the last two weekends partying in Las Vegas and New York. "I think we've reached a point where people are thinking I shouldn't quit my day job for this."'"

Why AT&T Should Dump the iPhone's Unlimited Data Plan 501

Posted by Soulskill from the traffic-shaping-on-the-go dept.
Pickens writes "Farhad Manjoo has a provocative story at Slate asserting that while the iPhone has prompted millions of people to join AT&T, it has also hurt the company's image because all of those customers use their phones too much, and AT&T's network is getting crushed by the demand. The typical smartphone customer consumes about 40 to 80 megabytes of wireless capacity a month, while the typical iPhone customer uses 400 MB a month. As more people sign up, local cell towers get more congested, and your own phone performs worse. He says the problem is that a customer who uses 1 MB a month pays the same amount as someone who uses 1,000 MB, and the solution is tiered pricing. 'Of course, users would cry bloody murder at first,' writes Manjoo. 'I'd call on AT&T to create automatic tiers — everyone would start out on the $10/100 MB plan each month, and your price would go up automatically as your usage passes each 100 MB tier.' He says the key to implementing the policy is transparency, and that the iPhone should have an indicator like the battery bar that changes color as you pass each monthly tier. 'Some iPhone fans will argue that metered pricing would kill the magic of Apple's phone — that sense of liberation one feels at being able to access the Internet from anywhere, at any time. The trouble is, for many of us, AT&T's overcrowded network has already killed that sense, and now our usual dealings with Apple's phone are tinged with annoyance.'"

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