Sometimes, you really do get what you pay for. In this week's roundup of CNET's top-rated gear, I'll explore some premium choices, but prepare yourself for sticker rage.

HTC One S shows T-Mobile customers how the other half lives
Case in point: On T-Mobile, cheaper phone plans mean fewer high-end smartphone choices -- and by fewer, we mean no Android Ice Cream Sandwich smartphones at all...until now. This week, T-Mo joined the ICS club with the HTC One S, which our reviewer Brian Bennett calls T-Mobile's best phone yet. It's thinner than the iPhone 4S or the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, with an 8-megapixel camera that plays with the big boys. The One S' dedicated image processer and HDR mode make your photos look deeper and brighter, too. (Don't know about HDR photography? Educate yourself with this fantastic tutorial from Sharon Vaknin of CNET How To. Your photos will thank you.)

The HTC One S doesn't have a quad-core CPU, but sometimes quad-core doesn't matter, and we found the phone snappy nonetheless. You'll have to pay $200 for the One S, though -- a lot when you can buy phones like the Nokia Lumia 900 for $50 from other carriers.

Ultrasone Signature Pro headphones sound like (really freaking expensive) butter
The One S is a downright bargain compared with the $1,300, German-engineered headphones we reviewed this week. The Ultrasone Signature Pro over-the-ear headphones sound like they cost, though: rich. Our reviewer says that this set has "vivid clarity, producing remarkable sound even compared with other high-end headphones." Plus, these headphones are made of leather. Can't beat that for fancy, but to put these cans in perspective pricewise, most rave-reviewed, audiophile-ready sets of headphones cost between $150 and $300.

The high-end products this week don't stop at headphones -- there's plenty more to make you jealous of your rich friends. Lori Grunin says that the $1,700 Fujifilm X-Pro 1 approximates a Leica with bar-none image quality, and TV reviewer David Katzmaier gives the $3,300 Samsung PN64E8000 positive marks for the kind of picture quality only plasma can muster, plus "the industry's most capable Smart TV platform."

Via - http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cnet/tcoc/~3/S1RVDTQLONs/

I am a fan of the 7 inch tablet form factor since I tend to take these sized devices on the go with me more than the larger 10 iPad. Samsung has released some amazing Android tablet hardware over the past year and the Galaxy Tab 7.7 with Verizon LTE is one of the best ever. However, with the Kindle Fire at $199, it is tough to compete with a $500 tablet that comes with at least a $720 value 2-year contract ($700 tablet price without a contract). You can check out a few photos of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 in my image gallery.

In the box and first impressions

The Galaxy Tab 7.7 comes in an attractive black box with bright Verizon red interior. Inside you will find the Galaxy Tab, USB cable, A/C adapter, and Quick Reference Guide.

I previously took a look at the Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1 and the Galaxy Tab 7.7 continues with a super sleek, attractive, and well built design. I couldn’t believe how thin it was with barely enough room to squeeze in a 3.5mm headset jack on the top. The display is fantastic and extremely vibrant and when I saw it before the iPad 3 I thought it was the best display ever on a tablet and I almost pulled the trigger on one.

Specifications

Specifications for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 include the following:

• 7.7 inch Super AMOLED Plus display at 1280 x 800 pixels resolution
• 1.4GHz dual core processor
• Android 3.2 Honeycomb
• CDMA and LTE
• 16GB internal memory, microSD card expansion capability
• 1GB RAM
• 3.2 megapixel rear camera with LED flash and 1080p video recording capability
• 2 megapixel front facing camera
• Bluetooth 3.0, 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi, and GPS
• Dimensions: 7.74 x 5.24 x 0.31 inches and 12 ounces

The Galaxy Tab 7.7 is one of the best Android tablets I have ever tried out and the specs are top notch. The display is stunning and Samsung certainly knows how to get AMOLED display right.

I was a bit disappointed that ICS was not installed on the device since I don’t like relying on possible updates that never seem to arrive on a timely basis. LTE is wicked fast and I have gotten great coverage where I live and work.

Walk around the hardware

Can you tell I like the Galaxy Tab 7.7 display? This Super AMOLED Plus display takes up most of the front and will likely blow you away the first time you turn it on. You will find the 2 megapixel front facing camera (perfect for Google Talk) above the display and that’s about it on the front.

The traditional Samsung power button is on the upper left with a volume button below that and an interesting infrared port in the middle. I understand this can be used to control your media player.

The microSD and SIM card slots are on the left side. The Samsung charging port is on the bottom, which is a bit of a bummer because I prefer to use microUSB for all of my charging needs. The 3.5mm headset jack is on the top.

The 3.2 megapixel camera and flash are in the upper left of the back. There is a cool brushed silver back panel dominating most of the back with cool dark gray plastic above and below it.

Walk around the software

The Galaxy Tab 7.7 comes with Honeycomb and Samsung’s TouchWIZ UI. Now that I have the similar ICS OS on my Galaxy Nexus, I am getting more used to Honeycomb and find it to be fine. There still are not that many tablet-optimized apps for Android though, but if you want a tablet mainly for the Google experience then you may find it worth a purchase.

Samsung includes a couple of their apps and utilities, including Samsung Apps, Social Hub, and AllShare. Verizon included a couple of their own utilities , including Media Hub, My Verizon, VideoSurf, and VZ Navigator.

The Peel Smart Remote application uses the IR port on the right side to allow you to control your entertainment system with your Galaxy Tab 7.7.

I thoroughly enjoyed using the tablet-optimized calendar and the Gmail application on the Galaxy Tab.

Daily usage and experiences

The Galaxy Tab 7.7 form factor is tough to beat and even though my iPad 3 has a super display, the vibrant colors of Samsung’s Super AMOLED Plus is also compelling. Android still has lots of work to do in the tablet space and Samsung seems to be overwhelming the market with tablets that don’t have much of a market. Do they really need a tablet at every 2 inches in display size and why is there a 7 and 7.7 tablet released at the same time? I understand people want choices and if Samsung has the funding that is their decision, but it seems like they could try to focus a bit in the tablet space.

I carried the Galaxy Tab 7.7 all over with me and if it was priced at $500 with no contract and the option to buy a month of data here and there then I might have purchased one. LTE on Verizon is a joy to use and like other LTE devices I was seeing download speeds in the 20+ Mbps range. Samsung should update this device to ICS soon, but that remains to be seen.

Now that I have my own Samsung Galaxy Note I think my 7 inch HTC Flyer will see less use. The 5.3 inch tablet is nice for on the go usage while my new iPad will be rocking the tablet space at home.

Related ZDNet topics

Via - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-gadgeteer/verizon-galaxy-tab-77-lte-beauty-c...

The City of Boston tacitly acknowledged today that arresting a man for recording a police officer in public may not exactly have been the wisest -- or most constitutional -- choice.

That acknowledgement comes in the form of a $170,000 payment to Simon Glik, a Boston attorney who was prosecuted under criminal wiretap laws for using his cell phone to record police arresting someone on the Boston Common. They prosecuted the wrong fellow: Glik himself specializes in criminal defense.

A spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department told CNET this afternoon that the city has taken steps to ensure arrests-for-recording don't happen again. That includes "conducting training sessions for all department officers regarding the state wiretap statute," including updating the curriculum at the police academy, and publishing multiple training bulletins for officers, Elaine Driscoll said.

Even though Boston has learned an expensive lesson in constitutional law, other police departments have not: As cameras have become embedded in more consumer electronic devices, more Americans are finding themselves in legal jeopardy for digital snapshotting that's likely protected by the First Amendment. Embedded eyeglasses cams like the ones from ZionEyez (available for pre-order for $200) promise to accelerate developments.

The list of camera-shy police departments is a lengthy one. Seattle police arrested a man who photographed an arrest. So did Minnesota police. And Miami police. And Baltimore police. And Richmond police. And Rochester police. And so on.

In January, the National Press Photographers Association labeled the prosecutions an "ongoing assault on the right to photograph [and] record in public." This trend, accelerated by citizen-videography related to the Occupy protests, is one reason the United States dropped so precipitously, from 20th place to 47th, in the most recent rankings of media freedom compiled by the Reporters Without Borders advocacy group. It's even led to a blog titled Photography is Not a Crime, written by Carlos Miller, who can claim to have been arrested three times for photographing cops.

From law enforcement's perspective, the technological advance that gave rise to low-cost video recording and even lower-cost Internet distribution can cause some problems. It can prompt retaliation against officers. It can reveal the identities of undercover cops or confidential informants.

But cameras can also highlight police wrongdoing -- as the death of Oscar Grant and the beating of Rodney King demonstrated -- and provide a useful check on law enforcement's version of events. More to the point, "wiretap" laws weren't intended to apply to public confrontations, and if they did, they would likely run afoul of the First Amendment's right to freedom of speech.

"Updates in technology frequently present new circumstances for officers," says Driscoll, the Boston police spokeswoman. "We strive to keep our officers informed and updated to assist them in addressing new issues."

Adding extra impetus to Boston's training regimen was a ruling last August in the Glik case from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Glik filed suit after being charged with violation of Massachusetts' wiretap statute, disturbing the peace, and aiding in the escape of a prisoner (the original fellow being arrested by police, who did not actually escape).

Glik said he made the recording because he believed excessive force had been used during the arrest. Eventually, prosecutors dismissed the charge of aiding in the escape. Only after the case went to court did they abandon the other charges; Glik responded filed a civil rights lawsuit alleging, among other things, First Amendment violations.

The First Circuit sided with Glik, saying that "numerous circuit and district courts" have reached similar conclusions and that the First Amendment's newsgathering protections apply beyond traditional media organizations:

The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these (First Amendment) principles... This is particularly true of law enforcement officials, who are granted substantial discretion that may be misused to deprive individuals of their liberties... Such peaceful recording of an arrest in a public space that does not interfere with the police officers' performance of their duties is not reasonably subject to limitation.

If the judges had ended there, that would have been a sweeping win for Glik and his attorneys, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which helped him file the civil rights lawsuit. But the First Circuit went further, saying the police should have known Glik's arrest was illegal -- and therefore the cops could be held liable for damages.

"The law had been clear for years that openly recording a video is not a crime," Glik said. "It's sad that it takes so much for police to learn the laws they were supposed to know in the first place. I hope Boston police officers will never again arrest someone for openly recording their public actions."

Boston probably won't. But the First Circuit's ruling has the force of law only in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico.

Which means the legal skirmishing is likely to continue. A likely future point of contention: whether recording police in a public park like the Boston Common is the same as recording them during traffic stops.

That's led to arrests including that of Anthony Graber, a staff sergeant in the Maryland Air National Guard who was pulled over on his motorcycle by a gun-waving fellow lacking a uniform who did not immediately identify himself as police. (The case was thrown out, according to a report by the Baltimore Sun.) Earlier this month, a Temple University photojournalism student was arrested and charged with a felony for taking photos of a routine traffic stop.

The Third Circuit, which includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, has said a traffic stop is an "inherently dangerous situation" and the right to film it is not clearly established. Even the First Circuit hinted that that they may view it differently: "A traffic stop is worlds apart from an arrest on the Boston Common."

Source - http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cnet/tcoc/~3/fsRm4uK3msQ/

Facebook today updated its filing for an initial public offering (IPO) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This is the third time it has done so, and two updates stand out in the amendment; both of them are legal matters: Yahoo’s impending patent lawsuit against Facebook and Facebook’s motion to dismiss Paul Ceglia’s lawsuit.

When Facebook amended its IPO filing the second time earlier this month, the company briefly mentioned its potential legal battle with Yahoo. This was soon after Menlo Park received a letter from Sunnyvale, but still before Yahoo sued Facebook over 10 patents (which is why 13 are mentioned instead of 10, and why Facebook says Yahoo still hasn’t sued):

We presently are involved in a number of lawsuits, and as we face increasing competition and gain an increasingly high profile, including in connection with our initial public offering, we expect the number of patent and other intellectual property claims against us to grow. For example, on February 27, 2012, we received a letter from Yahoo! Inc. that alleged that a number of our products infringe the claims of 13 of Yahoo’s patents. We are still in the process of investigating the allegations contained in the letter. To date, Yahoo has not commenced any legal action against us, but it may do so in the future.

Here’s the relevant excerpt from today’s IPO filing update:

From time to time, we receive notice letters from patent holders alleging that certain of our products and services infringe their patent rights. Some of these have resulted in litigation against us. For example, on March 12, 2012, Yahoo filed a lawsuit against us in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that alleges that a number of our products infringe the claims of ten of Yahoo’s patents that Yahoo claims relate to “advertising,” “social networking,” “privacy,” “customization,” and “messaging.” Yahoo is seeking unspecified damages, a damage multiplier for alleged willful infringement, and an injunction. We have not yet filed an answer or asserted any counterclaims with respect to this complaint. We intend to vigorously defend this lawsuit. This litigation is still in its early stages and the final outcome, including our liability, if any, with respect to these claims, is uncertain. If an unfavorable outcome were to occur in this litigation, the impact could be material to our business, financial condition, or results of operations.

Interestingly, Mitel isn’t mentioned at all in today’s update. Mitel sued Facebook over two patents soon after Yahoo filed its lawsuit. In the meantime, Facebook has been bulking its patent portfolio: by my last count, the company has 812 patents.

As for the Ceglia lawsuit, here’s the tidbit that was added:

On March 26, 2012, we filed a motion to dismiss Mr. Ceglia’s complaint and a motion for judgment on the pleadings. We continue to believe that Mr. Ceglia is attempting to perpetrate a fraud on the court and we intend to continue to defend the case vigorously.

Last but not least, here is the relevant document filed today with the SEC you may want to check out for more information: Amendment No. 3 to Form S-1 REGISTRATION STATEMENT.

See also:

Credit - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-amends-ipo-a-third-time-warns-abo...

(CBS News) WASHINGTON - In the fight over President Obama's health care law, this was the main event. On Tuesday, the nine justices of the Supreme Court heard arguments on the part of the law that requires all Americans to have health insurance or pay a fine. It's called the individual mandate. The Obama administration said that the mandate will make sure everyone has health care while keeping insurance affordable. Opponents say it's a dangerous new power for the government by forcing citizens to buy a product.

In a rare move, the court is releasing audio tapes of the arguments. CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford reports on the justices' views.

The health care law is considered President Obama's signature achievement, but Tuesday it appeared a majority of the justices were ready to describe the individual mandate another way: unconstitutional. The conservative justices--and that key swing justice, Anthony Kennedy --expressed serious doubts about the law.

Justice Kennedy, who often provides the decisive fifth vote, appeared troubled that Congress for the first time was ordering Americas to buy a product like insurance.

Court's conservatives question insurance mandate
Outside Supreme Court, a battle for attention
Could health care law survive without mandate?

"That is different from what we have in previous cases. That changes the relationship of the federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way," he said.

That's the issue at the heart of the case: the federal government's power in people's lives. The Constitution gives Congress specific, limited powers -- one being the authority to "regulate Commerce."

Opponents argue that doesn't give Congress the power to create commerce by forcing people to buy healthcare.Supporters say uninsured people already are consumers of healthcare who just leave hospitals and taxpayers stuck with their bills.

The conservative justices and Kennedy, a moderate, expressed concerns the law gave Congress broad new powers to dictate behavior.

Chief Justice Roberts asked if Congress could force people to buy insurance -- since everyone will need it someday -- could it also require them to buy cell phones to call 911 when they eventually needed emergency assistance.

"You don't know if you're going to need police assistance," said Roberts. "You can't predict the extent to emergency response that you'll need. But when you do and the government provides it."

Roberts also seemed troubled that if the Court upheld the law requiring Americans to buy insurance, what would Congress try next.

"And we can compel people to do things -- purchase insurance in this case, something else in the next case," he said.

Justice Scalia offered one idea. "Can I tell you what the something else is while you're answering it?" he asked. "The something else is everybody has to exercise, because there's no doubt that lack of exercise causes illness, and that causes health care costs to go up. "

All four of the court's liberal justices defended the law. In one exchange, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg tossed a friendly question to the administration's top lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.

"I thought a major, major point of your argument was that the people who don't participate in this market are making it much more expensive for the people who do," she said.

There was a lot of talk outside the courtroom after the argument that Verrilli, the administration's lawyer, really struggled under these tough questions. In these kind of complex cases, the justices always hammer the lawyer. These questions go back and forth, rapid fire, just like we saw today, just like Verrilli. As many of the questions proved, it was not the easy ride defenders of the law had been confidently predicting.

"Evening News" anchor Scott Pelley pointed out to Crawford that she had warned earlier not to draw too many conclusions from the questions that the justices asked.

"That's exactly right," she said. "I think if we had to guess today what the justices would decide, they would strike down this individual mandate. But think about what happens next. They go into their conferences, they discuss this case among themselves. Then they start writing their opinions and sometimes they change their minds. If you look back over history over the last 20 years, one of the justices who's often changing his mind is Justice Kennedy."

Original - http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsMain/~3/LBpuk_emwLs/

3D phones may not have exactly caught on like wildfire here in the U.S., but that isn't going to stop engineers at LG and Samsung from innovating around it.

In fact, representatives for the rival Korean manufacturers both had something to say to me about 3D image technology for smartphones, and it doesn't stop at playing 3D golf games or watching "Avatar" on your phone without those dorky 3D glasses.

In fact, those use cases, which formed the cornerstone of the marketing campaigns for the LG Thrill 4G and the HTC Evo 3D, are just the beginning.

Instead, Nick DiCarlo, Samsung's vice president of product planning, sees mobile 3D technology as a gateway to more immersive entertainment in the coming years.

Just think of a smartphone that can simultaneously power 3D HD video streams on different screens, say a monitor and a TV. Sound far-fetched to you? With the ever-growing power of mobile processors, said Samsung's Nick DiCarlo, and smart developers pushing the envelope, there's room for this magnitude of evolution.

More to the point, mobile phones and tablets will quickly become people's primary vehicle for video consumption. You may not watch full movies on the cell phone screen all the time, but more and more features are bound to arise that will have you relying on your device more often.

"There's nothing to keep your phone or tablet from taking over your set-top box," DiCarlo emphasized.

An engineer, Henry Nho, Mobile Platform Architect at LG, also sees the 3D potential that's tied to juiced-up processing power. When you record video and pictures, Nho says, the smartphone camera will have the power to take 2D and 3D images and movies simultaneously, so you can later choose which version you want to view.

Sharing 3D images will also become more important. Many high-end LG TVs already have 3D feature more or less built-in, Nho said. An HDMI cable connection is an extra expense and an unsightly one since it literally tethers your phone with a cord. One day you'll be able to share 3D content with your TV over Wi-Fi, using just a fingers swipe to start playing content.

3D now
Although research and development engineers like Nho's colleagues at LG experiment with 3D new products and use cases, it's up to marketers and managers to work the technology into future products.

With the Optimus 3D Max announced last month at Mobile World Congress, LG is putting some of its 3D R&D to the test. Designed to make lighter, thinner, and faster than last year's Thrill 4G, the Optimus 3D Max is pre-loaded with goodies like a games converter that can render a number of games into 3D -- so long as they're written with OpenGL standards and can play in landscape mode.

The Optimus 3D Max will also receive a smart focus app, which uses both cameras and some rendering tricks to blurs the photo's background so that the image resembles a DSLR photo. In addition, a later release will include software that promises to smooth out blurred image edges when you connect the phone to a large screen display with a higher resolution. LG demoed the feature at MWC.

Unfortunately, 3D fans in the U.S. won't get a chance to try out the Optimus 3D Max anytime soon, unless they snag it from Europe, where it's headed in April. The handset won't have LTE support.

While LG is actively marketing 3D smartphones, the advances his team will be able to accomplish in the next two or three years is what really excites Nho. It's then that a new type of 3D display technology will enter the smartphone market. "Lenticular lens," are known for adding depth. These lenses steer the light, Nho explained, to brighten the image without consuming more battery power.

"I think that 3D has a very interesting future," Nho told me -- one that promises to be far less one-dimensional than it seems.

Via - http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cnet/tcoc/~3/LfAbIFysXI8/

More than 50 percent of the world’s largest corporations have open source applications with security vulnerabilities.

That’s because more than 80 percent of software applications built in-house by enterprise developers incorporate open source components and frameworks that may be vulnerable.

Those are data points that most open source backers might dismiss. Still, one joint research report issued today by Silver Spring, MD-based Sonatype and Aspect Security say they’re true.

The report — based on a survey of 2,550 developers, architects and analysts — maintains that the widely held view that open source software is consistenly high quality “overlooks ecosystem flaws,” chiefly that lack of a notification system alerting developers about vulnerabilities and new versions with fixes.”

“80% of the code in today’s applications comes from libraries and frameworks. The risk of vulnerabilities in these components is widely ignored and underappreciated,” wrote Jeff Williams, CEO and Arshan Dabirsiaghi, Director of Research at Aspect Security, a Columbia, MD-based  application security consulting firm.

The report claims, for example, that there have been 46 million downloads of insecure versions of  the most popular open source libraries and frameworks, including Google Web Toolkit, Spring MVC, Struts 1.X. and Hibernate.

The report found that Struts 2  – which was reportedly downloaded more than one million times by 18,000 corporations — contained a critical vulnerability.

The survey results also maintains that 37 percent of all versions of 31 top components tested contained a CVE or OSVDB vulnerability, and that popular components are only 10 percent less likely to have vulnerabilities than less popular ones, the study found.

The report also claims that only 32 percent of organizations “maintain an inventory of the dependencies in their production applications, complicating issue resolution when a new vulnerability is discovered.”

“With more than 80 percent of typical software applications using open-source components and frameworks consumed in binary form, the results of this research are a wake-up call to nearly every organization developing software to run business-critical functions,” according to a statement issued by Aspect Security, a firm with application security expertise and a founding member of the Open Web Application Security Project.

Sonatype, which markets its Nexus Intelligent Repository Manager to improve the quality of software component development, is led by CEO Wayne Jackson, the former CEO of open source network security firm Sourcefire. The company was founded in 2008 by Jason van Zyl, creator of the Apache Maven build system.

The conclusion? That enterprises should maintain and strictly manage inventories of software components.

Some top open source developers had a different take on key findings of the report.

“The numbers don’t surprise me at all… It is certainly the case that there are organisations that continue to run vulnerable software (open and closed source) without realising what they are doing. I do not believe this is a problem unique to open source nor one that is particularly worse or better with open source compared to closed source,” said Mark Thomas, a member of the Apache Tomcat Project Management Committee who is also on the Tomcat security team.

Thomas noted that many enterprises likely already have workarounds. Here are some possibilities that Thomas proposes:

1. The vulnerability applies to certain configurations and the organisation is not using a vulnerable configuration.
2. The vulnerability may be mitigated by another component in the stack. I can think of some Tomcat vulnerabilities that could not be exploited if Apache httpd was used as a reverse proxy in front of Tomcat.
3. The risk of continuing to use the vulnerable component is less than the risk of upgrading the component.

Andrew Aitken, founder and managing partner of Olliance Group, which is now owned by Black Duck Software, took issue with the sentiment of the report.

“It’s unfortunate to see this and we disagree with the tone of the study inferring that open source is low quality and risky,” said Aitken, Founder and Managing Partner of Olliance Group.

“All software has vulnerabilities, and this study doesn’t compare open source to other code. It just says open source has “x”,  and there have been many studies showing that OSS is higher quality than most other code,” wrote Aitken, who cited key findings from a 2010 Coverity Open Source Integrity Report.

That report, based on Coverity’s 2009 analysis of 280 open source projects including Linux, Apache, Firefox, Samba, PostgreSQL, OpenVPN and others, found that the open source software defect density is four times lower than the software industry average. Android’s defect rate was said to be less than half the software industry average.

“It shows open source is generally higher quality,” Aitken wrote, in response to the Sonatype-Aspect Executive Brief: Addressing Security Concerns in Open Source Components.

It’s important to note that the Sonatype-Aspect study focuses on components, frameworks and libraries, as opposed to commercial open source applications or open source projects.

The Sonatype-Aspect execs — who are major proponents of open source software — were quick to respond to criticism with this lengthy e-mail explainer of its findings:

“At no point in the study do we say that Open Source is low
quality.  Sonatype after all is a company of open source software
developers, a key contributor to the open source community through
support and contribution to projects including Apache Maven,
M2Eclipse, Nexus, Tyco and firm believers in the superiority of open
source software.

What we’re attempting to point out by this study is that open source is great for development and there’s lots of benefit, but there’s also risks that organizations need to be aware of — mainly the idea that the open source ecosystem has no notification infrastructure — so to date, there’s no good way for developers to known when flaws are found in the components they are using to build software. Imagine your PC without auto-update, having to dig through release notes, searching for security bulletins, tracking down
critical fixes.

Sonatype is committed to changing that and we view the Central
Repository, the software development industry’s canonical exchange for
software components as a key Sonatype asset and vital to this mission.
Central enables real-time visibility into the software development
ecosystem.  Sonatype is uniquely able to know when any of the hundreds
of thousands of components in Central are updated and who, among tens
of thousands of organizations, are getting what components from
Central every day. No other organization can provide this detail.

Our study simply brings to light the activity occurring in the Central
Repository every day — by thousands of development team around the
world.  We are not comparing open source code to proprietary software
as other studies have done.  We are examining how components (the
building blocks of modern applications) are being used by
organizations to build software, and bringing to the forefront of
conversation, the need for better component intelligence and change
awareness.

Source - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/study-more-than-50-of-global-500-use-vu...

We knew the political grab-fast stemming from the privacy brouhaha over employers requesting access to Facebook accounts was only just getting started.

Today U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on two federal agencies -- Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- to investigate what they call a "new disturbing trend" of prospective employers demanding job applicants to turn over their user names and passwords for their social networks.

"I am alarmed and outraged by rapidly and widely spreading employer practices seeking access to Facebook passwords or confidential information on other social networks," said Blumenthal, in a statement announcing the request.

"Employers have no right to ask job applicants for their house keys or to read their diaries -- why should they be able to ask them for their Facebook passwords and gain unwarranted access to a trove of private information about what we like, what messages we send to people, or who we are friends with?" added Schumer.

Just Friday, in response to complaints from employees, Facebook published a post expressing its opposition to the practice, which it said undermines both the security and the privacy of the user and the user's friends. Erin Egan, the company's chief privacy officer for policy, offered that employers who demand password information for prospective employees might just end up getting sued.

And earlier in the week Blumenthal said he was going draft legislation banning employers from requesting access to Facebook accounts as a term of employment. Legislators in Maryland and Illinois are also pushing state laws to enact prohibitions against a practice they say is not isolated. Recent reports about the issue from MSNBC and the American Civil Liberties Union have also stirred up debate.

Below are copies of the letters the congressmen sent to the federal agencies:

Dear Attorney General Holder,

We write concerning reports in the media that some employers are requiring job applicants to provide their usernames and passwords to social networking sites like Facebook as part of the hiring process.

We urge the DOJ to investigate whether this practice violates the Stored Communication Act or the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The SCA prohibits intentional access to electronic information without authorization or intentionally exceeding that authorization, 18 U.S.C. § 2701, and the CFAA prohibits intentional access to a computer without authorization to obtain information, 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C). Requiring applicants to provide login credentials to secure social media websites and then using those credentials to access private information stored on those sites may be unduly coercive and therefore constitute unauthorized access under both SCA and the CFAA.

Two courts have found that when supervisors request employee login credentials, and access otherwise private information with those credentials, that those supervisors may be subject to civil liability under the SCA. See Pietrylo v. Hillstone Restaurant Group, 2009 WL 3128420 (D.N.J. 2009); Konop v. Hawaiian Airlines, Inc., 302 F.3d 868 (9th Cir. 2002). Although these cases involved current employees, the courts' reasoning does not clearly distinguish between employees and applicants. Given Facebook terms of service and the civil case law, we strongly urge the Department to investigate and issue a legal opinion as to whether requesting and using prospective employees' social network passwords violates current federal law.

Dear EEOC Chair Berrien,

We write concerning reports in the media that some employers are requiring job applicants to provide their usernames and passwords to social networking sites like Facebook as part of the hiring process. By requiring applicants to provide login credentials to social networking and email sites, employers will have access to private, protected information that may be impermissible to consider when making hiring decisions. We are concerned that this information may be used to unlawfully discriminate against otherwise qualified applicants.

Facebook and other social networks allow users to control what information they expose to the public, but potential employers using login credentials can bypass these privacy protections. This allows employers to access private information, including personal communications, religious views, national origin, family history, gender, marital status, and age. If employers asked for some of this information directly, it would violate federal anti-discrimination law. We are concerned that collecting this sensitive information under the guise of a background check may simply be a pretext for discrimination.

We strongly urge the Commission to investigate and issue a legal opinion as to whether requesting and using prospective employees' social network passwords violate current federal law.

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(AP) WASHINGTON — A discarded chunk of a Russian rocket missed the International Space Station early Saturday. However, it came close enough to force six astronauts to seek shelter in escape capsules.

NASA says the space junk was barely close enough to be a threat. Had it hit, however, the situation could have been dangerous. So the astronauts — two Americans, three Russians and a Dutchman — woke early and went into two Soyuz vehicles ready to rocket back to Earth just in case.

The debris came closest at 2:38 a.m. EDT. It wasn't noticed until Friday, too late to move the International Space Station out of the way.

This is the third time in 12 years that astronauts have had to seek shelter from space junk.

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(CBS/AP) TOULOUSE, France - The French Interior minister says Mohammed Merah, the prime suspect in seven murders in and around Toulouse, died Thursday morning in a jump from an apartment window after "shooting madly" at police who raided the building.

French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said police entered the apartment Thursday after hearing nothing from Merah overnight, only to be ambushed by the suspect who "came out of the bathroom shooting madly at everybody."

"At the end, Mohammed Merah jumped out of the balcony window with a weapon in hand, continuing to shoot. He was found dead on the ground below," said Gueant. One of the elite officers involved in the raid said, according to Gueant, "he had never seen such violence." Merah had boasted of bringing France "to its knees" with an al Qaeda-linked terror spree that killed seven people before taking refuge in the surrounded apartment for a 32 hour standoff.

Riot police set a series of three large explosions outside the apartment building, and then gunfire was heard and there were reports that gas was fired into the apartment to try and subdue the suspect before the special operations officers entered the building for the raid which ended with Merah's death and three police officers injured, one of them seriously.

French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said earlier in the morning, before the explosions and gunfire, that it was "unclear" whether the suspect was even still alive. He had not contacted negotiators since Wednesday night, raising suspicions that he may have committed suicide.

One of the last things Merah told police, according to Gueant, was that he wanted to die "with a gun in hand."

Hundreds of heavily armed police, some in body armor, surrounded the five-story building in Toulouse where Merah had been holed up since the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday.

Authorities said the shooter, a French citizen of Algerian descent, had been to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he claimed to have received training from al Qaeda.

One of two trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan that Merah is thought to have made, he was arrested by Afghan forces on charges which remain unconfirmed. CNN reported Wednesday that Afghan forces offered to hand him over to the U.S. military, but the Americans declined and suggested he be handed instead to French forces, given his nationality. According to the CNN report, it was French forces who put him on a plane back to France.

The year in which that arrest and return to France took place remains unclear, but an Afghan prison official told CBS News on Wednesday that a north African man of the same name was jailed in 2008 but escaped later that year. It is believed that Merah also traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2011.

French killings suspect liked "cars, girls"

They said he told negotiators he killed a rabbi and three young children at a Jewish school on Monday and three French paratroopers last week to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children and to protest the French army's involvement in Afghanistan, as well as a government ban last year on face-covering Islamic veils.

"He has no regrets, except not having more time to kill more people and he boasts that he has brought France to its knees," Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference.

French authorities — like others in Europe — have long been concerned about "lone-wolf" attacks by young, Internet-savvy militants who self-radicalize online since they are harder to find and track. Still, it was the first time a radical Islamic motive has been ascribed to killings in France in years.

Merah espoused a radical brand of Islam and had been to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region twice and to the Pakistani militant stronghold of Waziristan for training, Molins said.

He said the suspect had plans to kill another soldier, prompting the police raid.

The standoff began after a police attempt at around 3 a.m. Wednesday to detain Merah erupted into a firefight. Two police were wounded, triggering on-and-off negotiations with the suspect that lasted into the night.

As darkness fell, police cut electricity and gas to the building, then quietly closed in to wait out the suspect. It was not clear from Gueant's statement what prompted the decision to launch the definitive raid on Thursday morning, given knowledge that Merah was a skilled gunman, and was well-armed.

The gunman's brother and mother were detained early Wednesday. Molins said the 29-year-old brother, Abdelkader, had been implicated in a 2007 network that sent militant fighters to Iraq, but was never charged.

The siege was part of France's biggest manhunt since a wave of terrorist attacks in the 1990s by Algerian extremists. The chase began after France's worst-ever school shooting Monday and two previous attacks on paratroopers beginning March 11, killings that have horrified the country and frozen campaigning for the French presidential election next month.

Merah has a long record as a juvenile delinquent with 15 convictions, according to a regional French prosecutor.

An Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Merah had been under surveillance for years for having "fundamentalist" Islamic views.

French authorities said Merah threw a Colt .45 handgun used in each of the three attacks out a window in exchange for a device to talk to authorities, but had more weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle. Interior Minister Claude Gueant said other weapons had been found in his car.

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