Download AnyDVD HD 6.5.0.3 from FileForum now.

With its usual ostentatiousness, the makers of the media disc backup program AnyDVD HD released a new version that it claims decrypts "all commercial Blu-ray releases," including those which feature the latest BD+ copy protection.

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Yesterday, discount retailer Wal-Mart began selling the iPhone 3G, and as if to welcome customers to their new devices, AT&T suffered a substantial network outage.

AT&T representative Meghan Roskopf told the Chicago Tribune that at 9:30 am Eastern Time, only a matter of hours after Wal-Mart locations opened for business, the Bloomfield, Michigan AT&T facility experienced a power outage, causing "intermittent disruption of mobile services for customers in some Midwest states."

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The primary research and development arm of the Department of Homeland Security will operate under a fresh set of privacy principles for research projects, as per a report delivered to Congress this month.

DHS presented Congress with its "Data Mining: Technology and Policy" summation in December, explaining how it handles the sensitive aspects of data mining. The main body of the report covered progress or lack of it for the Automated Targeting System (ATS), best known as the group that gifted America with the no-fly list; the Data Analysis and Research for Trade Transparency System, which looks into money laundering and the like; and the Freight Assessment System (FAS), TSA's watch-the-ports endeavor.

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Rather than wait a week, Hewlett-Packard is hoping the post-Christmas bargain hunters are out an about this week, as it unveils its latest MediaSmart home server at a potentially attractive price.

There's no question that there's a respectably healthy niche market in the field of home servers -- computers that fulfill the function of a small business server, only with a more turnkey-style management approach. They're a way of leveraging another high-power CPU and high-capacity hard drive (maybe more than one) into a household that already has at least one of each, and probably more. And since home servers don't require monitors, their package price doesn't have to be "rounded up" by two hundred bucks or so.

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Screenshots and user-uploaded videos of OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard) have been popping up as the first quarter of 2009 inches ever closer.

During WWDC last June, Apple's Jordan Hubbard gave a presentation which included a slide saying that Snow Leopard was slated for a Q1 2009 release. The OS update is comprised mainly of un-flashy improvements that are geared toward increased performance and optimization of the new hardware architecture of the latest Macs.

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Although it might have a tough time locating the perpetrators and collecting the loot, Verizon has been awarded $33.15 million in a court judgment touted as the biggest in cybersquatting history.

Verizon has won $33.15 million in a lawsuit against OnlineNIC, in which the San Francisco-based domain registrar was accused of both trademark infringement and cybersquatting.

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Download Mozilla Fennec Alpha 2 for Windows from FileForum now.

Apple's Safari for iPhone truly did raise the bar for the Web browsing experience for mobile devices, though it may not have redefined the way browsing should work there. Mozilla Fennec continues its work on that goal.

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In a departure from some other recent activities around tech exec job flight, RIM is suing Motorola for allegedly impeding its plans to hire current and laid off Motorola staffers.

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has filed a lawsuit against fellow electronics manufacturer Motorola seeking to officially invalidate a pact between the two companies not to solicit one another's employees.

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As 2008 winds down, we at BetaNews would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude for all of the support we have received from our devoted readers, software authors and downloaders over the past twelve months.

This has been a difficult year for many, but one that has also inspired a generation to stand up and participate in a way that hasn't been seen in decades. The arrival of 2009 brings promises of change, and hope that better days are ahead, that we can fix the problems caused by years of bad governing and a corrupt financial system.

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It may not cover all of the good boys and girls in Manhattan, but Google Earth's 3-D option has bulked up enough to make a virtual traveler feel a little like an airborne Santa.

The 3-D-layer option in Google Earth is old news, but it wasn't very thickly populated in its early incarnation. However, a data increase earlier this month adds thousands of photo-textured buildings to the original set, which included pretty landmarks such as the Empire State Building and the Woolworth Building, but not more prosaic locales such as, say, the intersection of First Avenue and 65th Street.

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Last year, one of the most stunning announcements to come out of CES was from, of all places, Comcast -- a CATV provider. One reason could be because technology is giving viewers clear alternatives to scheduled programming.

2008 was a monumental year for television. NBC declared this year's Olympics the most-viewed event in television history, with the 17-day coverage attracting 86% of US television viewing households, or 214 million viewers.

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It wouldn't be the Christmas season without the tinsel, the holly, and the zero-days. Since early this month, an exploitable buffer overflow has been known to exist in SQL Server, and today Microsoft is acknowledging its existence.

In a security bulletin released yesterday, Microsoft is saying a somewhat simply exploitable vulnerability exists in all presently used versions of SQL Server dating back to SS 2000 Service Pack 4. It has to do with a Transactional-SQL (T-SQL) statement which apparently uses a parameter that isn't checked for type.

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In its latest defense filed in US District Court in San Francisco last week, Mac clone-maker Psystar buffered its well-reasoned claim that it didn't violate the DMCA as Apple has charged, with no fewer than 41 other claims, some unexplained.

Among the single-sentence defenses that Psystar's attorneys have added to the company's defense are some which appear on the surface impossible to be true simultaneously. One states that Apple can't claim copyright infringement since it failed to file proper claims with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Another states that Apple's copyrights (which apparently include the non-existent ones) may be invalid on the grounds that 1) the covered material isn't original enough to merit copyright; 2) Apple may not have been the original creator of the copyrighted material.

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Is there anyone you know whose holiday wish list includes a computer weighted down, by design, to his desk? Lack of portability may be becoming a real liability for the desktop PC, but that doesn't mean it'll disappear anytime soon.

It should come as no shock to anyone that general demand among consumers for the desktop PC form factor is at its lowest point in years. The exceptions are at the very bottom of the value chain; but even there, as notebook PCs start to make a respectable value proposition for themselves at $500 and under, it's more and more difficult for their desk-bound competition to compare.

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Linux anchor Red Hat spent the past quarter coping with currency discomfort and taking advantage of tough times -- buying back its bonds and stock, and eventually kicking up its total revenue 22% above its numbers a year ago.

The company released its third-quarter 2009 earnings report this afternoon, and in the quarter ending November 30, reported $165.3 million in total revenue, which also represents a 1% increase over last quarter. Subscription revenues, at $135.5 million, were up 17% year-to-year and flat from Q2.

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