Or stated differently: Have the ill-winds of fate caught the Lulz Boat's sails?

Today, quite unexpectedly, LulzSec Security announced its retirement. "This is our final release, as today marks something meaningful to us. For the past 50 days we've been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could", according to a statement from the hacker group. "Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind -- we hope -- inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love".

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Firefox 5 may be short on visible new features, but look under the hood and you'll find plenty of useful tweaks that both cut resource use and improve performance. If you like the browser but would prefer even more speed, though, there is an alternative in Pale Moon 5, which was released today.

The program looks more or less exactly like Firefox 5, which is no great surprise as it's based on the same source code. So there's no learning curve, everything works more or less as it always did, except Pale Moon has been carefully optimized to improve its speed and efficiency.

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The web is packed with tools which claim they're the best choice to accelerate your Internet connection. Most of them promise too much and deliver nothing at all, though, so installing another probably isn't high on your list of priorities.

But wait. Auslogics Internet Optimizer, a free version of a module in the company's BoostSpeed 5 suite, is different -- and it could be worth a closer look.

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I was a late-comer to covering Microsoft's antitrust troubles in the United States. I missed the first case, which the software giant and Justice Department settled in 1995, a short time before Windows 95 shipped. But I was on the case(s) from 1997, logged many courtroom hours and can say without boasting that my reporting on the three antitrust trials -- 1997 extension of the first, the big one filed in May 1998 and remedy hearing in Spring 2002 -- was among the best in techdom. I've reported on the European case, as well. It's from that vantage point, I look at Google's response to its US antitrust investigation.

Yesterday, in a blog post, Amit Singhal, Google Fellow, confirmed that the US Federal Trade Commission had opened an investigation into Google's business practices. The FTC has broad authority, meaning it can and likely will look at more than just antitrust issues (I'll expand on that topic in a few paragraphs). Google also has put up a "Facts About Competition" website. Microsoft used similar informational tactics during its US antitrust investigation and trial -- and strangely, or not, Google's defense is eerily the same: That the company's products and services enable consumer choice and businesses to grow.

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That number might not seem like much compared to the gazillion apps at Android Market or Apple's App Store, but those 20,000 apps answer a question on many techies' lips this week: Why didn't Nokia pick MeeGo? Windows Phone Marketplace passed the 20k threshold about a month ago.

The N9's unexpected launch on June 21 was one of the most perplexing mobile phone announcements in recent memory. The N9 is a stunning piece of hardware that runs smart-looking software -- MeeGo 1.2. But Nokia has all but abandoned MeeGo and Symbian, which despite market share declines is still the most widely used mobile operating system on the planet. The N9 had lots of gawkers drooling over its sexiness but disappointed that with MeeGo there's no point.

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Politicians and celebrities are used to being mocked during late-night talk show monologues or skits. But computer software -- and, gasp, made by the entertainment industry's beloved Apple? Quick, call the "Adjustment Bureau".

As if Final Cut Pro X wasn't proving to be enough of a stinker, Conan O`Brien and his video production team have thrown a little more angst into buyers' turbulent emotions. What's really scary about the video above? It might not have been made to be funny. This could be for reel.

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LulzSec's theft and disclosure of "law enforcement sensitive" documents and personal information from the Arizona Dept. of Public Safety has caused quite an uproar over privacy and security, but it has also provided a glimpse into crime in the American Southwest, where cross-border drug trafficking is a major concern. For us, It has provided a look into the impact consumer technology has had on the criminal underworld in the last three years.

1. Laptop Drug Mule -- According to an intelligence bulletin from the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), a passenger flying on Copa Airlines from Colombia to New York in March was caught with 1.6 kilos of heroin smuggled inside an HP laptop, mouse, external hard drive, ipod speakers, digital picture frame and mp3 player.

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It's all very well buying a photo editing package with lots of bells, whistles and complicated tools, but actually having to learn and use all that functionality can, to put it mildly, be slightly off-putting. Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 3 is designed to simplify the process of improving your photos by providing a number of one-click tools that can quickly improve individual photos or entire albums up to scratch.

Ordinarily, Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 3 would cost you $9.99, but the good news is that you can download and use the software for free via this link -- all you have to do is register by email within 10 days and you won't have to pay a dime.

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If you're the kind of person who regularly runs Firefox with multiple tabs open, you might find keeping track of which website is where challenging. In those circumstances, Tab Scope for Firefox is the perfect add-on for your needs.

Tab Scope for Firefox allows you to preview any tab by rolling the mouse over it, just like the Aero Peek feature in Windows Vista and 7. A small pop-up preview of that tab's contents will appear, allowing you to quickly locate the tab you're looking for. But while that's impressive in itself, there's more: not only does Tab Scope provide you with some handy shortcuts for that tab via its preview window, it's also infinitely customizable too.

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Opera Software co-founder and former CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner announced he is leaving the browser company in one week's time, giving no word as to what his next move will be.

Von Tetzchner had been serving in an advisory position after stepping down from his position as CEO last year, and his resignation today came as the result of differences he held from the executive board.

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From Twitter to tablets, cameras to mobile phones, geolocation services are everywhere. And if you just want to record exactly where you took a set of holiday photos, then that's fine. But, of course, there are privacy implications. A new program called Creepy shows just how serious they can be, by attempting to locate anyone through their tweets or web images.

Give the tool a Twitter or Flickr user name and it'll go to work, using Twitter's own tweet location information, geolocation data from image hosting services, the EXIF data in any photos it finds, and more. And if it finds any locations then they can be displayed on Google Earth, Virtual Earth or OpenStreetMap, or exported as a KML or CSV file.

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Editor's note: Yesterday, hacker group LulzSec Security released a cache of documents taken from Arizona Dept. of Public Safety servers. The data dump included personal information, such as home address and spouse's name, for cops. Here, a victim from an earlier LulzSec data dump -- 62,000 stolen usernames and passwords, many connected to public services like AOL and Gmail -- has something to say about the group. This commentary is edited together from separate emails. Fearing reprisals, the LulzSec victim requests anonymity, so we can't fully verify the story. But based on email exchanges we're confident it's legit.

The feelings that morning as all my accounts were being shut down for no apparent reason was like my experience in Washington, DC on 9/11-- initially confusing. Then as news reports leaked out and I realized that I was a target, the panic ensued. Just [like] we were hearing that our building might possibly be a target of an aircraft on 9/11.

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If you use online banking, chances are good that you see the same things in your account that I see when I log into mine (albeit with different numbers): a lot of transaction data, and maybe some basic budgeting tools or low-level personalization.

But over the next few months, many of the United States' top ten largest banks will replace their current online banking experience with something more akin to an app store model, where customers are presented financial apps to make their banking experience more personal and more effective.

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Rapid updates, manageability gaps make Chrome and especially Firefox tough to accept for large businesses with managed networks and stability concerns.

In my experience dealing with businesses, it's rare to find them using anything other than Internet Explorer as their preferred web browser, and no surprise why. The other major browsers make life really hard for IT support. Whatever your opinion, it's way easier to support IE in an enterprise than Firefox or Chrome.

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Would WikiLeaks be so bold as to release personal information -- like home address and spouse's name -- of cops? That's exactly what hacker group LulzSec Security did late today. The hackers took the sensitive information from Arizona Dept. of Public Safety servers. The agency has confirmed the data breach.

Key takeaways you'll find in this post: 1) LulzSec chose a target that would be divisive regarding public opinion -- is this a hacktivist/anarchist group of do-gooders or terrorists? 2) One victim of LulzSec's earlier data disclosure calls the group "terrorists". 3) A Betanews poll finds respondents to be equally divided about whether LulzSec is a hacktivist group revealing secrets or cybercriminals who should be prosecuted.

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