It has become a parlor game in some quarters to try to divine where Apple is going and how it intends to get there -- and not just at the dozens of blogs that traffic in Apple rumors ... Apple doesn't make the game easy; Jobs is famously secretive and detests leaks -- just ask the kid from Harvard whom Apple recently sued after he posted details of the Mac Mini before the stripped-down computer was unveiled at Macworld.

Jobs wouldn't talk to Business 2.0, but in various public forums, he has stressed how the $499 Mac Mini, the low-cost iPod Shuffle, and an advanced operating system called Tiger, due out this spring, are meant to build on the digital-music momentum. In truth, they are but the tip of a very long spear. Discussions with past and present company officials, Apple partners, and longtime acquaintances of Jobs, as well as clues in patent applications and other evidence, point to a gargantuan effort to leverage the iPod's success by creating an entire line of breakout consumer electronics devices. Dozens of gadgets -- from an iPod phone to wireless iPods that talk to one another to the ultimate all-in-one home-cum-car media hub -- appear to be on the drawing board or, in some cases, already in prototype.

FireTune for Mozilla Firefox v1.x was developed for an easy and fast optimization of your browsing experience with Firefox. It is based on a collection of popular and well working optimization settings used and tested by the experts. Usually you have to optimize Firefox manually, which can be time consuming and difficult for the novice user. FireTune helps you here - it includes all the performance optimizations. The only thing you must do is: make your selection. FireTune does the work for you.

FireTune is available for free.

A group of underground programmers has posted code online they say will reopen a back door in Apple Computer's iTunes store, allowing Linux computer users to purchase music free of copy protection.

The release comes just a day after Apple blocked a previous version of the program, called PyMusique, in part by requiring all iTunes customers to use the latest version of Apple's software.

In a blog posting, Norwegian programmer Jon Johansen, who was previously responsible for releasing software used to copy DVDs online, said he had been successful at reverse engineering the latest iTunes encryption.

Cody Brocious, a Pennsylvania high school student working with Johansen, said they saw the project as "necessary for the Linux community," despite Apple's opposition.

PyMusique was created to provide access to the iTunes Music Store from alternative OS’s such as Linux, BeOS, and even cell phones. I assumed that the DRM was done server-side until I started working on implementing purchasing in PHPTunes, the precursor to PyMusique. Our intent was not to circument copy protection, and if Apple did DRM on the server, we would leave it in place! But applying DRM in an opensource project is not worth the time it would take to code it.

We've just pushed the Thunderbird 1.0.2 update to FTP (it may take an hour or more to hit all the mirrors, though.) This update is the first security release for the wildly successful Thunderbird 1.0 - which has already seen about 5 million downloads.

The Thunderbird 1.0.2 release resolves several important security issues since 1.0 and all Thunderbird users are encouraged to ugrade. You can find more about the security issues over at the Known Vulnerabilities page.

Thunderbird 1.0.2 can be downloaded at:

Windows
Linux
Mac

In case you're wondering whether or not you missed a release, the answer is no. We shipped Thunderbird 1.0 in early December and had planned our first security update to coincide with the Firefox 1.0.1 security update. Before we could get Thunderbird 1.0.1 finalized, a new issue surfaced that required we ship another round of releases (Firefox, Thunderbird, and 1.7.x) so we shelved the Thunderbird 1.0.1 release and started to tackle the issue we needed fixed for a 1.0.2.

Apple Computer has closed a security hole that allowed an underground program to tap into its iTunes Music Store and purchase songs stripped of antipiracy protections.

The PyMusique software, created by a trio of independent programmers online, emerged last week as a copy protection-free back door into the popular iTunes store. One of the creators was Jon Johansen, the Norwegian programmer responsible for releasing DVD-copying software in 1999.

Apple released a statement Monday saying the problem had been fixed, and that some iTunes customers would need to upgrade their software.

"The security hole in the iTunes Music Store which was recently exploited has been closed, and as a consequence the iTunes Music Store will now sell music only to customers using iTunes version 4.7," the company said in a statement.

In America, spring no longer falls on March 21. In 2005, for instance, the vernal equinox, the first day of spring for the Northern Hemisphere comes on Sunday, March 20, at 7:33 a.m. ET.

Now this doesn’t seem right. I mean, when we were all growing up, the first day of spring was always on March 21, not March 20, right? Now, all of a sudden, spring comes on March 20.

How did that happen?

While it’s true that we’ve traditionally celebrated the beginning of spring on March 21, astronomers and calendar manufacturers alike now say that the spring season starts one day earlier, March 20, in all time zones in North America. Unheard of? Not if you look at the statistics. In fact, did you know that during the 20th century, March 21 was actually the exception rather than the rule?

Do you want to produce Windows Media 9 content faster, easier and cheaper on your Mac?

Popwire's WMV-9 QuickTime Export Component is the answer for you.

Combining industry-leading coding technologies from Popwire with the ease-of-use of QuickTime, you enable new possibilities to your workflow.

It's so easy – just open any media format supported by QuickTime and Popwire's WMV-9 Export Component will do the rest. With full support for QuickTime based applications like: Final Cut Pro, iMovie and Discreet Cleaner, creating Windows Media content on your Mac has never been easier!

Best of all, with its professionally designed presets, Popwire's WMV-9 Export Component lets you produce windows media content of unsurpassed quality at any given bitrate or connection in no time on your Mac.

$29.95

The fastest Mac is a G5, Dual 2.5GHz machine with 4GB of memory, and it's beaten in every test but one by a Dual Intel Xeon 3.4GHz PC with only 2GB. The Xeon machine also beats a Dual AMD Opteron 248 (2.21GHz) PC with 2GB of memory in all but one test, where the scores are level. As we know, the PC also blows the Mac G5 out of the water running an optimised DOOM 3.

I'm now waiting for Steve Jobs to buy some TV advertising that looks back at previous ads -- you know, showing a Pentium on the back of a snail, or someone being blown out of the house by a G5 Mac -- and apologising.

There's no shame in being marginally slower than a not-very-popular PC configuration. The shame is in misleading people about it.