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Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta 2 Available For Download
Apart for addressing 652 issues, performance has also been tweaked to offer faster javascript, improved scrolling and better startup times - to test things out without affecting your existing Firefox install you can use the Firefox 4 Beta 2 Portable version download provided below.
Download Firefox 4 Beta 2 :
Apple Responds to “Jailbreaking is Legal”
Yesterday, a court in United States ruled jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones as 100 percent legal as long as it does not violate any copyright laws.This decision was a blow for Apple who has always been against jailbreaking of iPhones. When asked about this ruling, Apple at the moment at least has adopted defensive strategy, saying that jailbreaking may have been declared as legal but it will still void your iPhone’s warranty with Apple.
This what an Apple spokesperson said to the Cult of Mac site:
Apple’s goal has always been to insure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience. As we’ve said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably.Well there is nothing wrong with Apple’s spokesperson statement above, but that last remark that jailbreaking will cause your iPhone to become unstable and unreliable is a bit too much in my opinion. After all, if jailbreaking iPhone was so problematic, you wouldn’t have an estimated 10 percent of jailbroken iPhones. And now since the jailbreaking has gone officially legal, expect this number to go even higher in the coming months!
So there you go.. if you have a jailbroken iPhone and for some reason you are in need to take it to Apple Store, make sure you restore it back to factory settings by simply restoring it to the official firmware via iTunes.
Jailbreaking and Unlocking is Now Officially Legal in United States
The United States government today has announced that jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones rooting of Android phones and ripping DVDs (for educational purposes) is completely legal as long as they are not violating copyright law. Jailbreaking and Unlocking of iPhones has never been illegal, it was just that Apple had strict policies right from the start which prohibited users from installing apps on their device which were not approved by Apple, along with locking the phone so that it can be used on one carrier only.
So in case you previously had any doubts about getting into legal trouble for jailbreaking or unlocking your phone so that you can run it on multiple carriers, you don’t have to because as of today, it is officially legal in United States to run unauthorized apps, along with unlocking the cell phone to use it on any carrier you like.
Full details of this new DMCA legislation are as follows:
Section 1201(a)(1) of the copyright law requires that every three years I am to determine whether there are any classes of works that will be subject to exemptions from the statute’s prohibition against circumvention of technology that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work. I make that determination at the conclusion of a rulemaking proceeding conducted by the Register of Copyrights, who makes a recommendation to me. Based on that proceeding and the Register’s recommendation, I am to determine whether the prohibition on circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works is causing or is likely to cause adverse effects on the ability of users of any particular classes of copyrighted works to make noninfringing uses of those works. The classes of works that I designated in the previous proceeding expire at the end of the current proceeding unless proponents of a class prove their case once again.[Source: Gizmodo]
This is the fourth time that I have made such a determination. Today I have designated six classes of works. Persons who circumvent access controls in order to engage in noninfringing uses of works in these six classes will not be subject to the statutory prohibition against circumvention.
As I have noted at the conclusion of past proceedings, it is important to understand the purposes of this rulemaking, as stated in the law, and the role I have in it. This is not a broad evaluation of the successes or failures of the DMCA. The purpose of the proceeding is to determine whether current technologies that control access to copyrighted works are diminishing the ability of individuals to use works in lawful, noninfringing ways. The DMCA does not forbid the act of circumventing copy controls, and therefore this rulemaking proceeding is not about technologies that control copying. Nor is this rulemaking about the ability to make or distribute products or services used for purposes of circumventing access controls, which are governed by a different part of section 1201.
In this rulemaking, the Register of Copyrights received 19 initial submissions proposing 25 classes of works, many of them duplicative in subject matter, which the Register organized into 11 groups and published in a notice of proposed rulemaking seeking comments on the proposed classes. Fifty-six comments were submitted. Thirty-seven witnesses appeared during the four days of public hearings in Washington and in Palo Alto, California. Transcripts of the hearings, copies of all of the comments, and copies of other information received by the Register have been posted on the Copyright Office’s website.
The six classes of works are:
(1) Motion pictures on DVDs that are lawfully made and acquired and that are protected by the Content Scrambling System when circumvention is accomplished solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the use in the following instances:
(i) Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students;(2) computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset.
(ii) Documentary filmmaking;
(iii) Noncommercial videos
(3) Computer programs, in the form of firmware or software, that enable used wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telecommunications network, when circumvention is initiated by the owner of the copy of the computer program solely in order to connect to a wireless telecommunications network and access to the network is authorized by the operator of the network.
(4) Video games accessible on personal computers and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully obtained works, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing for, investigating, or correcting security flaws or vulnerabilities, if:
(i) The information derived from the security testing is used primarily to promote the security of the owner or operator of a computer, computer system, or computer network; and(5) Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace; and
(ii) The information derived from the security testing is used or maintained in a manner that does not facilitate copyright infringement or a violation of applicable law.
(6) Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.
All of these classes of works find their origins in classes that I designated at the conclusion of the previous rulemaking proceeding, but some of the classes have changed due to differences in the facts and arguments presented in the current proceeding. For example, in the previous proceeding I designated a class that enable film and media studies professors to engage in the noninfringing activity of making compilations of film clips for classroom instruction. In the current proceeding, the record supported an expansion of that class to enable the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into documentary films and noncommercial videos for the purpose of criticism or comment, when the person engaging in circumvention reasonably believes that it is necessary to fulfill that purpose. I agree with the Register that the record demonstrates that it is sometimes necessary to circumvent access controls on DVDs in order to make these kinds of fair uses of short portions of motion pictures.
Youtube Update Breaks Video Downloading, Download Link For A Working Youtube Video Downloader
While most other video downloaders are still broken our beloved "Easy Youtube Video Downloader" is still working after an update, to get on track again all you need is update to v 3.5 from the link provided below.
Adobe’s FlashTime to bring free p2p videocalling to all Androids out there, a touch of sarcasm too
On the course of working on the latest beta builds of Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR 2.5 for Android smartphones, Adobe dropped a tingling teaser – their FlashTime video chat app. Still not included in the beta software builds, the playfully named video chat runs real-time between two Nexus One phones on the video demo following the break.
FlashTime for Android is far from a finished product/service but it serves as a nice proof of the power of the Adobe’s platform. What can I say, I sure hope I see that P2PChatMobile.swf application freely running on Android smartphones out there.
FlashTime Demo - P2P Video on Android with AIR2.5 from Mark Doherty on Vimeo.
[New] Font with Indian Rupee Symbol
The Rupee Font
Download it from here : Rupee.ttfHow to use ?
1. Download font Rupee.ttf
2. Install the font. (It is easy. Just copy the font and paste it in "Fonts" folder in control panel)
3. Start using it. :)
How to type the Rupee symbol ?
The developers mapped the grave acent symbol - ` (the key just above "tab" button in your keyboard) with the new Rupee symbol. Just select "Rupee" font from the drop down list of your fonts in your application and press the key just above your tab button. It will display our new rupee symbol. Try it.
No iPhone 4 Recall, Free iPhone 4 Bumpers for Every iPhone 4 User ! [Update: Free Case, Not Bumper]
If you were expecting a full iPhone 4 recall from Apple, you will be disappointed. Buy hey, something is better than nothing right? Steve Jobs today at iPhone 4 press conference announced a free iPhone 4 bumper for every iPhone 4 user. If you have already bought a bumper, you will get full refund. Oh and yea, if you still don’t like your iPhone 4, you can return it within 30 days of purchase.
We think this has been so blown out of proportion… it’s fun to have a story, but it’s not fun on the other side. So here’s what we’re going to do to make our users happy. The first part is the software update that fixes the way the bars report and other bugs, that’s out now. Second, people said the bumper fixes everything… ‘why don’t you give everybody a case’? Okay — we’ll give you a free case.
A free case for every iPhone 4 buyer. If you got one, we’ll give you a refund.
We’re going to send you a free case. We can’t make enough bumpers. No way we can make enough in the quarter. So we’re going to source some cases and give you a choice.
And if you’re not happy, you can bring the phone back. We’ll give you a full refund within 30 days. No restocking fee. We want to make everyone happy, and if we can’t make you happy we’ll give you a full refund.
Google launches “Fiber Communities” to share the broadband love
While Google won’t make any announcements on which cities will be chosen for the their Google Fiber project until the end of the year, Google today launched a new site called Google Fiber for Communities to, “learn more about fiber networks and keep up-to-date on our project.” The site offers FAQs, a “take action” section for grassroots support of fiber projects, and other resources.
Google also came up with a thank you video (below) for the 1,100 or so communities that have applied for the Google Fiber project.
Oh, and we’d like to also mention something here about a fun service that ZoomProspector has put together, which aims to help Google figure out which cities to choose for the project:
“Looking for the best city to provide your ultra high-speed broadband network but don’t know which to choose? Just select what is most important to you to search for the top 5 Google Fiber communities. This quiz is for fun and selects only from communities that have performed some of the wildest promotions, but the data is all real.”
Here’s the thank you video:
Impressive Future Concept For Windows 8
Microsoft Windows 7 is doing good business and we are yet to see the final version of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 but rumors are that Microsoft has already started working on Windows 8 and fans have started creating cool futuristic GUI concepts mock-ups of the next Microsoft operating-system. Here is a video demo of an fan created concept which I would definitely like Microsoft to have a look at (video after the jump).
Firefox 4 Beta 1 released for public download, get yours now
The new Firefox 4 brings a host of new features plus improved performance and responsiveness. HTML5 video with support for the WebM format is what most of the fuss is about but you also get crash protection (which allows you to continue browsing even if a plug-in crashes) and improved security.
I just did a quick benchmark test with the newly released beta and it performed 82 percent better than Firefox 3.6.6. It’s still about 60 percent slower than Opera 10.60 but the general performance of the two browsers is quite comparable (those browsing JavaScript-heavy sites feel free to disagree).
The bad news is that most plug-ins are incompatible with Firefox 4 yet so the early upgrade will cost you one of the browser’s key features for a while.
If you are still willing to give it a spin, head for the Mozilla site and download the Firefox 4 beta 1. Just remember to post a comment with your first impressions afterwards.
Source: Mozilla Blog
uTorrent Serenity Mod - Highly Tweaked Torrent Downloader For Faster Downloads And Ratio Cheating
Although pretty much unethical Torrent ratio spoofing is very popular specially amongst users having slow connections, we have shared quite a few tricks to cheat your torrent ratio and here is yet another one of them.
uTorrent Serenity Mod Pack is an custom built of the popular uTorrent bittorent client, the modder tweaked this little software for cheating user share ratio to the tracker in a more secure and comprehensive way - a complete list of features with download link is available after the jump.
The leecher pack contains the following mods:Download Links :
-uTorrent Serenity.exe – The mod, has all features below except multi
-uTorrent Serenity x2.exe – Will 2x your total upload (fake upload) (and DHT-patch)
-uTorrent Serenity x4.exe – Will 4x your total upload (and DHT-patch)
-uTorrent Serenity x8.exe – Will 8x your total upload (and DHT-patch)
-DHT-Patch:
Ignores the private flag, so DHT and Peer Exchange is enabled for ANY new torrent.
(DHT FTW! *_*)
-NoReport:
Your upload and download aren’t reported to the tracker, always reported as zero so you don’t have to worry about your ratings and fake stats.
-NoComplete:
The completed event isn’t sent to the tracker. (No entry in the snatchlist) *And yes it is really not reported, not like in other mods, here it just doesn’t send anything to tracker when you complete a torrent.
-ZeroLeacher:
Your “left to download” stat is always reported to tracker as 100%, So that says you didn’t download anything.
-NoCorrupt:
Your “downloaded corrupt file-parts” stat isn’t reported to tracker (always zero), If you didn’t download anything, how come you downloaded something corrupt?!
Other:
-Removed adware installation of nasty toolbars etc for uTorrent setup.
-Changed default uTorrent icons with some bright nice ones
-Changed about page and added this website there as a button ^_^
Compared to other mods:
-ZeroLeacher feature (from other mods only Extreme mod has it)
-noComplete works way better (not sending any data at all)
-announce is fully correct and doesn’t differ from normal uTorrent reports to tracker (no corrupt session_id’s or decreasing “left to download” stat, so tracker won’t instant-ban you)
-no ads in title (that’s little annoying in my opinion, click “web site” in about page instead)
-not removed updating *if you want to see when new version comes out, and if it does, come here and get a new one :> *it can be ready in less than a day if I know about new version
[PICS] Must See - Solution To iPhone 4 Reception Issue !!
Full strip after the jump, must see.
Opera 10.60 Released, Steals The Crown For Being The World's Fastest Web-browser
iDetector - A Simple Utility To Tell Whether Your iPhone 3GS Has Old Or New Bootrom
If you are owner of an iPhone 3GS and still scratching your head whether your device is jail-breakable or not because of the old bootrom requirement by both redsn0w and Sn0wBreeze here is a simple tool which will tell you whether your iPhone 3GS has the newer bootrom (which is sadly not jailbreakable yet) or the older which can be exploited by redsn0w or sn0wbreeze.
iDetector is a simple and small utility by iH8sn0w which will provide you the answer telling whether your iPhone 3GS has an old bootrom or the new bootrom, to get it working all you need to do is to put your device in DFU mode and click the button 'Is my Bootrom Old or New ?' and you will have the straightforward answer.
Download Links For iDetector [Filename : iDetector-V1.0.exe , Size : 370 KB] :