Firefox 5 now available to download

By Gregg Keizer
Edited By Anthony Ian G. Etcobanez


One thousand improvements later

Mozilla today delivered the final version of Firefox 5, the first edition under the new faster-release regime it kicked off earlier this year.


The company also patched 10 bugs in Firefox 5, including one in the browser's handling of the WebGL 3-D rendering standard that rival Microsoft has called unsafe.


Firefox 5 met Mozilla's self-imposed deadline of 21 June, notable because the company has historically struggled to ship browser upgrades on time.


Firefox 5 looks identical to its predecessor, Firefox 4, but Mozilla's made changes under the hood.
Shortly after Mozilla launched Firefox 4 in March, the company committed to a faster release schedule that puts the browser on a six-week refresh cycle that lets developers add features as they're completed, rather than hold them until all work on the next upgrade is completed. If a feature presents problems, it's yanked and re-inserted into a later cycle after fixes have been applied.


Mozilla has denied copying Google Chrome's upbeat schedule - that browser was the first to institute a fast-release strategy - but analysts have noted the similarities and pointed out the need of all browser makers to step up the pace.


Because of the shorter development cycle, Mozilla called out relatively few new features in Firefox 5.
Although the company said it added more than 1,000 improvements to the browser, most were minor bug fixes or tweaks. Among the most significant changes were enhanced support for HTML5 and new support for CSS (cascading style sheet) animations.


Firefox 5's user interface is nearly identical to Firefox 4, for instance.


Mozilla also dropped a feature it had touted during the testing phase, dumping a tool that let users change development channels from, say, the final to either Beta or Aurora, rougher builds that precede the most stable edition. The company decided that few were using the channel switcher, and rather than devote time and resources to maintaining the feature, pulled it.


Mozilla did not make a major marketing push for Firefox 5, another departure from past upgrades when it has touted the number of downloads and gotten supporters to throw release parties.


On the security front, Mozilla patched vulnerabilities in both Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 5.


Ten of the 11 bugs fixed in Firefox 3.6, which Mozilla said it will continue to support "for a short amount of time," were rated "critical," the company's most serious threat rating; the one exception was tagged as "moderate."


Seven of the 10 bugs quashed in Firefox 5 were also rated critical, two were labelled moderate and the last was pegged a "low" threat.


One of the moderate vulnerabilities patched in Firefox 5 was in the browser's implementation of WebGL , a 3-D rendering standard that both Chrome and Firefox rely on. The bug was reported to Mozilla by Context Information Security some weeks ago, which has cited several serious security issues with WebGL, including information theft.


Users running Firefox 4 will be offered the upgrade to Firefox 5 through the browser's update mechanism, which is triggered when the "About Firefox" dialog is opened. In Windows, users can select "Help/About Firefox" from the Firefox button at the upper left of the browser Windows. On a Mac, "About Firefox" is the first choice under the Firefox menu.


The next version of Firefox is currently on schedule for an early August release.

Apple posts upgrade instructions for Mac OS X Lion

By Lex Friedman and Serenity Caldwell
Edited by Anthony Ian G. Etcobanez

Business and consumer pricing confirmed

If you're an IT manager worried about how Lion's Mac App Store-only distribution will affect your deployment of the new OS, perhaps some official instructions from Apple will alleviate your fears. On Friday, the company posted a PDF to its sales website detailing exactly how business and education customers can upgrade come July.

First reported by TUAW, the document offers a basic overview for upgrading to Lion in regards to business and education, as well as confirmation regarding newly purchased Macs being eligible for a free OS upgrade. The PDF is available only to authorised purchasers on Apple's sales website, though MacRumors has posted a copy to its servers.

For those of you who don't feel like reading over the PDF, we've broken down the information for you in a few simple steps. The pricing refers to US copies of the operating system, no details of UK pricing are available as yet, aside from the standard consumer pricing of £20.99.

Buying Lion

Business customers: According to the document, business customers will be able to purchase Lion and Lion Server through the online Business Store or by calling Apple's business line. Buyers will be able to purchase volume licences for $30 each (minimum 20 licences).

Maintenance contracts, which offer three free subsequent years of OS updates as part of Apple's Maintenance Program, will cost $50 a licence (minimum 20 licences). Lion Server will be available for an additional $50 from the Mac App Store. If you're currently running Snow Leopard Server, you'll have to buy both Lion and Lion Server at the same time to upgrade.

Education customers: Those buying Lion for a school can upgrade through their Apple Education Account Representative or through Apple's online Education Store. Lion will be automatically bundled with iLife and iWork as part of the company's Apple Software Collection, which starts at $39 per licence (minimum 25 licences).

New Mac owners: The PDF also confirms that customers who recently purchased a Mac should be entitled to a free upgrade to Lion. If you bought a qualifying new laptop or desktop from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after June 6, you'll be entitled to a free upgrade to Lion as part of the company's Up-to-Date programme. According to the PDF, you'll have 30 days after Lion's release to request an update code.

Downloading and dissemination

Downloading Lion: Business or education customers that buy the requisite licences will receive a single redemption code for use on the Mac App Store. Once redeemed, this code will download the Lion installer. From there, you can copy the installer to a disk, flash drive or networked drive to transfer it over to another system.

Installing Lion: You can go about actually installing Lion a couple of different ways: by dragging the installer to the computer in question and having it install in place, or if you're running Lion Server by using NetInstall to make the Lion installer a startup disk on your company's local network. If your business has a copy of Apple Remote Desktop, you can use that to automate system installation, as well.
But what about updates? You can download updates for both Lion and Lion Server through Software Update on each respective computer. No Mac App Store patch downloading necessary.

Questions and answers

In its announcement that the Mac App Store would be the exclusive way to upgrade to Lion, Apple raised several concerns among consumers and IT professionals alike. If this document is any indication, however, it looks like the company is beginning to address these issues.
That being said, Apple has yet to discuss upgrade paths for other types of customers, namely people with limited bandwidth or a data-capped Internet connection, who might run into problems downloading large files from the Mac App Store.

Also left out in the cold: Mac users who haven't upgraded to Snow Leopard, as you need to be running Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later to use the Mac App Store. We hope to get more details on those issues from Apple in advance of Lion's July arrival.

NASA looking for new ideas for space travel

By Sharon Gaudin


100 Year Starship Study Symposium looking for bright sparks

DARPA and NASA want the U.S. to be sending humans on interstellar space missions by 2111, and officials are seeking your help in accomplishing that goal.

The two agencies today jointly put out a call today for ideas and abstracts for possible presentation at the 100 Year Starship Study Symposium.

The project pairs up the Department of Defense's research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, with NASA's Ames Research Center. With DARPA footing the bill, the two agencies are working to come up with a plan for creating technology that can help humans travel to the stars within 100 years.


"One hundred years is a pretty good period of time to inspire research, to go out and tackle problems that will have you asking questions you didn't even know to ask at the beginning," said David Neyland, director of the Tactical Technology Office for DARPA. "The investment must have a long term goal and ancillary benefits to the government and NASA."

The overall effort kicked off last year and continued in January with a DARPA-hosted workshop that featured an eclectic mix of sci-fi authors, physicists, educators and biologists discussing why humans should travel to the stars. The group also talked about the physics of interstellar travel and who should go on such a long and perilous trip.

"We want to capture the imagination of folks who might not be thinking of coming into research and development," said Neyland.

Neyland was adamant in contending that technology developed as a result of this project would likely reap great benefits for the US military as well as the population as a whole.

We want to feed research and development" to create technology to use in building starships that would also "have ancillary payoffs," Neyland said. "Clearly, a starship would have to be energy neutral. It's not going to be able to stop off at a gas station on the way. That kind of research could benefit us now."
He also cited technologies that could be used to produce food, water and oxygen in outer space.
The papers can focus on several subjects, such as: time and space manipulation, near speed-of-light navigation, interstellar communication, the religious implications of finding life on other planets, creating medical facilities in space and what items should be taken on starships.

What is the reason behind of Lulzsec cyber attack? - Bloggers Talks

What is the reason behind of Lulzsec cyber attack? - Bloggers Talks

LulzSec hackers take down CIA website

US intelligence agency main public site brought down temporarily.

The CIA's main public facing web site appears to have been taken down by hacking group LulzSec earlier today.

The group, which has previously claimed responsibility for hacking into Sony Pictures, tweeted this afternoon about bringing down the CIA site. "Tango down - cia.gov - for the lulz," the loosely organised group said in the post.

As of late this afternoon, the CIA's main website at cia.gov appeared to be resolving somewhat slowly or not at all in some cases. It is not immediately clear if the intrusion resulted in any information being compromised.

The CIA hack adds to what has already been a very busy week for LulzSec. The group this week also claimed credit for breaking into servers belonging to the US Senate and to game maker Bethesda Software.

A spokesman from the Senate's sergeant at arms had noted that the group had managed to break into an account at a Senator's office and used that access to compromise the Senate server.

LulzSec, which until recently was a relatively unknown group, also announced earlier this week that it would accept hacking requests from anyone who wanted specific websites targeted. "Call into 614-LULZSEC and pick a target and we'll obliterate it," the group announced.

Tweets posted by the group Tuesday and Wednesday suggest that those who dialed the numbers were being automatically redirected to other numbers. "Our number literally has anywhere between 5-20 people ringing it every single second. We can forward it anywhere in the world. Suggestions?" LulzSec said in a tweet earlier today.

The group dubbed yesterday as Titanic Takeover Tuesday and claimed credit for breaking into several gaming sites including Eve Online, Minecraft and League of Legends. "Welcome to #TitanicTakeoverTuesday where everyone is laughing at crybabies getting Lulz Cannoned!," the group said.

The continuing string of attacks show "how just about everyone's perimeter defences are vulnerable to attack," said Josh Shaul, CTO at Application Security.

"Security teams need to focus their efforts on securing data where it lives, in the database, instead of continuing in the failed strategy of protecting the borders of the network," he said. "Hopefully some good will come from this string of high profile hacks. For a long time organisations have vastly under invested in it security. This could be the inflection point where that all changes."