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Two days into the Pwn2Own hacking challenge, only a few still remain.

So far, hackers have not been able to exploit Mozilla Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome, and the mobile Android OS.

Victims of the contest include Internet Explorer 8, Apple Safari 5, iOS 4 and BlackBerry.

All the security researchers who manage to exploit the browsers or operating systems take home a cash prize of $15,000 and a laptop. If Chrome gets beaten, the researcher takes home $20,000.

Charlie Miller beat the iPhone 4 with iOS and has taken home the prize in 2007, 2009, 2010 and this year.

Firefox fixed 10 security flaws the day before the contest started, and Google fixed 9. Chrome has yet to be defeated since its launch in 2008, while Firefox was beaten in 2009 and 2010.

Security researchers from VUPEN beat Safari 5, rather easily: "We pwned Apple Safari on Mac OS X (x64) at Pwn2Own in 5 seconds."

According to multiple analysts, Apple will likely sell 600,000 iPad 2 during its debut, doubling up on first generation iPad launch sales.

"Apple has such a huge lead," says Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies. "Competitors are going to be chasing Apple for many years."

Bajarian has 20 years experience in the tech sector and expects 500,000 sales.

He expects the bump in sales due to the increased retail partners (Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy) at launch.

Analysts from Rodman & Renshaw LLC and Piper Jaffray & Co. expect anywhere between 500,000 and 600,000 and Ashok Kumar of R&R even says "the iPad 2 is essentially the tablet market."

The iPad 2 adds a dual-core A5 processor, a new GPU, dual cameras, is 33 percent thinner and adds first-party apps like iMovie and GarageBand.

Adobe has confirmed today that Flash 10.2 for Android devices is coming on March 18th for owners of Android 2.2 and 2.3 phones and tablets.

A beta form for 3.0 Honeycomb will also be available very soon for Xoom owners with the 3.0.1 update.

There is a chance, however, that your device will not be able to use 10.2, so make sure to check here.

10.2 for Honeycomb brings hardware-acceleration for video, which should lead to less lag and possibly better battery life.

The updated software will also finally be able to take advantage of dual-core processors, like those seen in the Atrix and Xoom.

Adobe also notes that 10.3 is already in development.

According to new figures from the NPD Group, Call of Duty: Black Ops is now the "top-selling video game of all-time" in the U.S., surpassing Wii Play.

The game sold 13.7 million copies since its launch in November, an impressive number that easily eclipses its predecessor, Modern Warfare 2.

Activision knows it has a winner, as well, and is planning Modern Warfare 3, an online version of the game and an "action adventure" COD, all before 2013.

While Black Ops may be the best-selling game in the U.S. ever, it has a long way before it can surpass the global sales of some other notable games.

Wii Play has sold 27.38 million copies worldwide, Mario Kart Wii has sold 26.50 million copies and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is nearing 20 million.

IDC has posted their tablet and e-reader shipment figures for 2010, and it appears that 18 million media tablets were shipped for the year, and 12 million dedicated e-readers.

10 million of those tablets shipped in the Q4 alone.

Apple remained the dominate force, with a 73 percent share of the market, but that number fell substantially from the 93 percent share the company had at the end of the Q3.

Samsung took 17 percent share with their Galaxy Tab, while all other companies took the final 10 percent.

The e-reader market saw significant gains, as well, following the release of the refreshed Amazon Kindle and the Nook Color.

E-reader shipment growth grew 325 percent to 13 million, with the Kindle taking 48 percent share. B&N took second place, with their Nook and Nook Color devices. Pandigital was a close third, followed by Hanvon and Sony to round out the top 5.

AOL is prepared to cut up to 20 percent of its global workforce, this week, with as many as 900 people losing there jobs.

The company will cut 400 jobs in India and 200 in the U.S., while outsourcing another 300 to other companies.

At its peak during the tech bubble, AOL had 20,000 employees. After this week, the company will have just over 4000.

Says CEO Tim Armstrong (via Reuters):

We want to go from taking arrows to catching arrows. Today is a difficult one for our company.

AOL will turn around.

Apple has said today that it will begin selling the iPad 2 online at 4am EST tomorrow morning, give buyers a chance to purchase the tablet before it is available in stores.

Apple stores will begin selling the device at 5pm tomorrow.

All of the company's retail partners, Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Target, will begin selling the tablet at 5pm, as well.

Carriers AT&T and Verizon will do the same.

The iPad 2 adds a dual-core A5 processor, is 33 percent thinner, adds two cameras, new magnetic covers, and some first-party apps like iMovie.

The Chinese Commercial Times paper has reported on a pretty crazy rumor this week, stating that PC giant HP may be looking to sell its entire PC division to Samsung.

Lenovo and Foxconn were also contacted, but apparently do not have the same financial resources to effectively steal the bid away from Samsung.

The deal was close to being sealed in late 2010, but the paper says it was "called off for unknown reasons."

So far, there has been little follow-up on the potentially blockbuster deal.

While the deal would be great for Samsung who is looking to fill its notebook product line gap, the paper speculates that chances of HP selling are very low, as the division still brings in sizable profits and revenue.

HP is the top global laptop vendor and was the top desktop PC seller in the Q4 2010.

Eurogamer posted an interesting article today, pointing to the Enterking shop when claiming that the Nintendo 3DS may be able to tell when gamers are using a flash cart.

A flash cart gives gamers the ability to play DS and DSi games from a microSD card, or add homebrew apps.

When you connect to the Internet, Nintendo can then see what systems have been playing pirated games and remotely disable them via firmware update.

The Enterking site posted this warning:

Dear customers who resell Nintendo 3DS:

Non-purchase able 3DS system: if you use equipment which is illegal or unapproved by Nintendo or if you do customisation which is unapproved by Nintendo, there is a possibility that Nintendo 3DS becomes non-bootable by system update.

Download it here: Firefox 4 RC

Mozilla has released the first Firefox 4 RC this week, meaning the final release of the browser is likely coming within weeks.

All beta testers have been automatically upgraded to the RC, which has over 8000 bug fixes since the first beta last year.

The browser features a minimalist interface, much improved JavaScript performance, increased HTML5 support (including WebM) and "a revamped plug-in architecture called JetPack," says PCM.

Firefox 4 adds the ability to create tab groups (dubbed Panorama), and adds tab pinning, as well. Frequently used sites, like Gmail and Twitter can be created into App Tabs, which means they will pin, and glow when updated (new tweets, new emails).

As with past versions, you can sync all settings, passwords, bookmarks and open tabs to mobile devices via secured 26-character key.

70 percent of add-ons are compatible with the RC.

IDC has posted their latest figures for European smartphone sales and unsurprisingly Android has taken the top spot, with 31 percent share.

Overall smartphone sales increased 100 percent to 25.6 million in the Q4 2010, while feature phone sales dropped 25 percent. Combined, Western European phone sales grew 3.2 percent to 58.7 million units.

Android saw the highest growth, 1580 percent, to 8 million units sold. iOS saw its constant strong growth continue at 66 percent. Windows Phone 7 saw 18 percent growth but the number is artificially high because Windows Mobile sales were so low to begin with.

Says the research firm (via press release):

The last quarter of 2010 clearly shows the trends for the coming years in Western Europe. The Western European mobile phone market will be dominated by smartphones, and Android will be the king of the hill. Android surged from 4% to 31% market share in less than a year to become the market leader in 4Q10 and the fastest growing operating system ever. IDC estimates at that Android will grow at a 37% compound annual growth rate between 2010 and 2015 in Western Europe, overtaking the overall market growth in the period and that of its direct competitor, the iOS from Apple.

Starting in 2012, new HP computers will all come with the ability to dual-boot Windows and webOS, the mobile operating system the company acquired with its purchase of Palm last year.

HP has done hardly anything with the popular operating system since its acquisition of Palm, although it did release version 2.0 earlier this year, and plans to release tablets with the OS later this year.

Palm was purchased for $1.2 billion and many wondered if HP overpaid. Palm had less than 9 months of cash left and was burning through money at a furious rate before it put itself up for sale. Sales of the Palm Pre and Pixi devices were slower than anticipated.

It is unclear what advantages users will have booting into WebOS over Windows 7.

HP has announced a number of new webOS smartphones, each of which were received with little fanfare.

Bob Iger, Disney CEO, has said this week that the DVD market is not healthy, but also "not dead yet."

Speaking to Charlie Rose, the CEO explained Disney is looking at all distribution channels but still believes in physical media.

Says Iger (via TR):

The home video business is more challenged than ever before. And that’s the problem.

People are still buying [discs]. … They’re just not buying as many of them. And the primary reason, I would argue, is that they have other things to do.

Microsoft has announced today, via blog post, that Internet Explorer 9 will be available on March 14th.

The release candidate of the updated browser was launched at the end of February.

Microsoft has transformed IE9, adding a URL/Search bar like Chrome, and going or a "minimalist" look, leaving more room for actual browsing.

IE9 users will also be able to pin sites and bookmarks to the Windows taskbar, use a built-in download manager (for the first time ever) and see hardware acceleration for HTML5 video.

ActiveX filtering and other security features have been added, as well.

While most of the IE9 features were visible in the Release Candidate, but the company promises they "have a few surprises left."

Microsoft has announced today that Kinect motion control system sales have topped 10 million since release in early November of last year.

Sales of the sensor also led to a bump in games sales, says the company, with over 10 million Kinect games sold so far, as well, not including the ones bundled with the system.

The software giant also notes that the Guinness World Records has "officially named Kinect for Xbox 360 the fastest-selling consumer electronics device, which sold an average of 133,333 units per day for a total of eight million units in its first 60 days between November 4, 2010 and January 3, 2011."

Says Guinness:

The sales figures here speak for themselves. According to independent research, no other consumer electronics device sold faster within a 60-day time span, which is an incredible achievement considering the strength of the sector.