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Christopher Scott, accomplice to the largest heist of credit card numbers, ever, has been sentenced to seven years in prison this week, following buddy Albert Gonzalez (pictured), the mastermind behind the scheme.

Gonzalez was convicted of stealing and reselling over 170 million credit and ATM card numbers, and received 20 years in prison for his role in over 20 counts of identity theft, wire fraud, computer fraud and conspiracy that led to $200 million in losses for banks, insurers and retail companies.

Scott was pegged as a "key lieutenant" to Gonzalez, with Gonzalez allegedly paying up to $400,000 to Scott for his services over the course of their years as thieves.

Update: We have been contacted by Ira P. Rothken: "I am the lawyer for Isohunt in their litigation against the Major Movie Studios. There is no injunction in the Isohunt case. The parties are still briefing what an injunction, if any, will look like."

In a decision that will likely take down the giant torrent indexer, a judge has ordered IsoHunt to remove all torrents linking to infringing content.

The massive site has over 30 million unique users per month, and was one of the largest public trackers behind The Pirate Bay and Mininova.

The MPAA had sued IsoHunt in 2007, and last year a judge ruled against the indexer, saying it created a venue for illegal file sharing.

Writes Judge Stephen Wilson: "It is axiomatic that the availability of free infringing copies of plaintiffs' works through defendants’ websites irreparably undermines the growing legitimate market for consumers to purchase access to the same works." Continuing (via Wired), Wilson says: "Upwards of 95 percent of all dot-torrent files downloaded from defendants' websites return infringing material or works at least highly likely to be infringing."

Gary Fung, the owner of IsoHunt, must now remove all infringing content by April 12th, as well as start filtering against keywords. "It amounts to nothing less than taking down our search engine," says Fung of the request.

As the headline states, the extremely popular Apple App Store is now available through Facebook as a group you can become a "fan" of.

The link let's you see the top game, both free and paid, as well as search for titles you may already know about.

There is a "Featured" category and a "Discussion" tab, which is full of user comments on games and other apps.

If you are a Facebook user and need your fix of apps you can check the Store here: http://www.facebook.com/AppStore

MartinSchirr from AndroidForums has compiled a build of Fennec (Firefox Mobile) to run on Android devices, and has documented the browser running on video.

This is all the info provided (he's German), but the videos are more informative:
"maybe it is interesting for you.
I compile Fennec for Android.
It is running on my Motorola Milestone.
I made 2 Videos and a site with further information."

A thread for those testing: [APP] Fennec (Firefox) for Android

The Hollywood Reporter is saying today that over 20,000 individuals have been sued for alleged illegal downloading of movies by the under-the-radar US Copyright Group, a firm based in the nation's capital.

Making the suits different from those in the past is that these suits are over small independent films, for example the films "Steam Experiment," "Far Cry," "Uncross the Stars," "Gray Man" and "Call of the Wild 3D."

All of the users were "caught" downloading the films from torrent trackers.

The Group says there are up to 30,000 more suits coming, for five different films.

The users were caught thanks to new German technology dubbed Guardaley IT, which "allows for real-time monitoring of movie downloads on torrents." The software captures IP addresses when a user begins downloading, and then back checks the files to make sure it is the correct copyright protected movie.

We will certainly keep you updated.

Adobe's Flash is one of the most used plug-ins available for current browsers as it allows for support of a good number of videos, games and other content on the Internet.

Google says the plug-in's interface is limited in capability, however, and varies depending on what OS or browser you are using, which leads in turn to security holes and an overall reduction in performance. They want to change that.

Says the Chromium blog:

"That’s why we are working with Adobe, Mozilla and the broader community to help define the next generation browser plug-in API. This new API aims to address the shortcomings of the current browser plug-in model. There is much to do and we’re eager to get started.

As a first step, we’ve begun collaborating with Adobe to improve the Flash Player experience in Google Chrome. Today, we’re making available an initial integration of Flash Player with Chrome in the developer channel. We plan to bring this functionality to all Chrome users as quickly as we can.

Microsoft has announced today that they will be releasing a 64GB model of the Zune HD media device, double the largest capacity of currently available units.

The device will be available in Platinum, Black, Blue, Red, Green, Purple and Magenta when it goes on sale on April 12th.

As an added bonus, the company is slashing the price of the 32GB and 16GB models, dropping the MSRP to $270 and $200, a $20 cut.

The Zune HD was recently in the headlines when Microsoft announced that the much-anticipated v4.5 firmware was "coming soon," bringing with it SmartDJ and native Xvid support.

A handful of tech journalists and bloggers have been given iPads to try out and the first reviews have appeared. They are overwhelmingly positive.

Most reviewers praised the iPad's speed. That's understandable considering it has a much faster CPU than any generation of the iPhone or iPod Touch, while most of the apps available for it now were actually designed with those devices in mind.

The user interface also got its share of kudos. The Houston Chronicle's Bob LeVitus calls the on screen keyboard "eminently usable," adding that in landscape mode he can almost touch type on it.

Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times called the iPad "a computer that’s designed for speed, mobility, and tactile interaction above all other considerations."

But that leaves us to think about what other considerations might be important. Perhaps the biggest is what consumers will expect from a device priced about the same as a budget laptop.

As all the reviewers make clear, the iPad is no substitute for a laptop.

Everyone was quite pleased with its multimedia playback and e-book reader capabilities. But they were equally unanimous about its unsuitability for things like working with word processing or creating spreadsheets.

As part of an effort to update patent law, New Zealand legislators have proposed a bill which would make it impossible to patent software. If it becomes law it would no doubt cause friction with US ACTA negotiators, who are pushing to make software patents standard internationally.

Currently they are recognized in just a few countries, including the US and Japan. Ironically there is a good chance that the court decision which started the software patent mess in the US has recently been reinterpreted, potentially invalidating nearly all of them.

Along with business processes, software has been the most controversial patent subject matter for several years. It's also behind much of the current smartphone patent war. If you own a phone with a touch screen, but not multi-touch, you can thank a software patent for it.

Other notable software patents include Amazon.com's infamous one-click patent for e-commerce websites and Netflix's patent on their queue system.

Early this morning, the WSJ revealed that a new Apple iPhone was coming this summer, although they had very scarce details.

Says the article: "Apple plans to release a new version of its current iPhone this summer, continuing its practice of annual upgrades at about the same time of year, said people briefed on the matter. The model is likely to be thinner and have a faster processor, two people familiar with the device said."

Later in the day, John Gruber of DaringFireball revealed some specs for the upcoming "iPhone HD," which should see launch in the summer.

Says Gruber: "And they have no actual details of the next-generation iPhone. Nothing. Not the A4-family CPU system-on-a-chip. Not the 960 × 640 double-resolution display. Not the second front-facing camera. Not even the third-party multitasking in iPhone OS 4. All they have is that there’s going to be a new iPhone this summer, period."

The iPhone HD rumor mill has begun.

Verizon Wireless , who for weeks has been promising the release of the Android 2.1 firmware for Motorola Droid owners, has started rolling out the firmware as an OTA update.

However, the rollout will be staggered so some users will not get the update until Thursday or even later.

Reads the official memo:

Starting 03/30/2010, Verizon Wireless is pleased to announce a new software update for the DROID by Motorola. Users will be able to upgrade their software to version AP: ESE81/BP: C_01.3E.03P to receive new improvements and enhancements.

*Key Advantages:*

o Email - Yahoo Mail is now supported - customers can simply
sign in with their Yahoo! Email address and password. Note:
Yahoo! Email is not available over Wi-Fi
o Pinch to Zoom now available in the Browser, Maps, and Gallery
o Speech-to-Text - Customers can now use their voice instead
of typing whenever a text-entry box appears
o Google Goggles is now preloaded
o The new Gallery application uses 3D layout and shows both
pictures taken with the customer's Android device and images
from Picasa Web Albums account online

Zune HD users should be pretty happy to hear that firmware v4.5, first leaked in January, is "coming soon," and will bring native XviD support to the device as well as streaming Smart DJ.

Microsoft says the player will soon have native support for the MPEG-4 Part 2 ASP codec, and the player will playback XviD videos, which is still the codec of choice for most videos downloaded online. The format will play via your HDTV as well if you own the Zune HD Dock.

Smart DJ playlists, a "Genius"-esque song playlist creator, will also be available on the player and not just the desktop software.

TomTom,, the popular GPS maker, has announced that they will begin offer "lifetime map updates," a feature that gives customers automatic updates to the latest digital maps when they become available instead of needing to download them manually.

Adds Jocelyn Vigreux, president of TomTom: "Roads are continually changing– from new street names to closed bridges - so it's important for users to always have the most up-to-date maps. With the introduction of Lifetime Map Updates, customers can rest assured that the directions their TomTom device provides will always be the most accurate and efficient available."

The lifetime map updates will use "Tele Atlas" maps, which are continually updated with millions of miles of road and points of interest.

The company says "in order to download TomTom’s Lifetime Map Updates, TomTom users need to simply connect their device to TomTom HOME, TomTom’s free desktop software, and if map updates are available, they can be downloaded to the device. Registered TomTom users will be notified of new map updates as they become available. Typically, Tele Atlas releases maps on a quarterly basis."

Yesterday we reported that Sony was set to kill off the popular "OtherOS" support feature of older "fat" PlayStation 3s on April 1st with a firmware update.

Notable iPhone hacker "Geohot" has posted today on his blog that he is working on a CFW (custom firmware) that will work around the dropping of OtherOS support, also telling PS3 owners to avoid updating their consoles, for the time being. Says the post:

"A note to people interested in the exploit and retaining OtherOS support, DO NOT UPDATE. When 3.21 comes out, I will look into a safe way of updating to retain OtherOS support, perhaps something like Hellcat's Recovery Flasher. I never intended to touch CFW, but if that's how you want to play...

Two things, some people seem to think CFW will enable some sort of piracy. It won't. It'll just be a custom version of 3.21 that doesn't lose OtherOS support. Hacking isn't about getting what you didn't pay for, it's about making sure you do get what you did.

After years of planning and months of coding, we're happy to announce the launch of Spanish AfterDawn. Spanish version is the fifth localized version of AfterDawn - and second one for this year.

As with the other locales, the Spanish version differs from its big sisters (namely, English and Finnish sites that have been up and running for more than a decade) in a way that only selected site areas have been translated. Spanish version launches with:

• Software section
  • Selection of appx. 500 software items with translated descriptions and another 2000 with download links (but no descriptions yet)
• Discussion forums
  • Obviously still very, very empty. But help us out to get the Spanish forums up and running by posting there too.
• Tech support
  • Same as with forums -- empty, waiting for you guys to get the ball rolling with this one.