Apple releases USB Lion Installerjust Rs of $69

Broadband-choked masses, rejoice: You too can enjoy Lion, Apple’s newest Mac operating system, as the company on Tuesday released an official $69 USB thumb drive installer. The OS X Lion USB Stick was announced when Lion shipped back in July; now, anyone can purchase the $69 drive from the Apple Online Store, though the product description highlights those without a broadband connection as Apple’s primary focus. 

The Lion installer drive—which resembles the USB thumb drive packaged with the previous iteration of the MacBook Air—functions almost-identically to its Mac App Store compatriot, with one exception: According to Apple's, those installing Lion from the USB stick will not be able to reinstall Lion using Lion Restore. Instead, if your computer runs into a problem, you’ll need to boot from the USB stick to address it (or bring it into your local Apple Store). 
Alternatively, if you want a boot drive on hand but would prefer not to shell out $69 for it, check out Dan Frakes’s tutorial on creating your own boot disc or drive using the Mac App Store Lion Installer, or his walkthrough on using the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant. Or, heck—both! If you're planning on using the USB installer to upgrade to Lion, keep in mind the system requirements. You'll need a Mac running OS X 10.6.6 or later with a minimum of 2GB of RAM, 8GB of free hard drive space, and one of the following Intel processors: Intel Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7, or Xeon (early Intel-based Macs with Core Solo or Core Duo processors aren’t eligible). You can determine your Mac's processor and the amount of installed RAM by choosing About This Mac from the Apple menu and looking at the Processor and Memory lines, respectively.

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Symantec discovers Dog Wars Android App with Hacktivist Agenda

Symantec has discovered a new Trojan malware app circulating for the Android OS. The app is a rogue version of a controversial app involving dog fighting, and is aimed at sending a hacktivist message. 

Dog Wars is a game that involves raising your dog to be the most vicious dog on the circuit and taking on other virtual dogs in fights to the death. The app itself is offensive to many--in fact, it prides itself on being so provocative that you would never find something like it on the iPhone app store.The app sparked some backlash from animal activists that wanted the developer to voluntarily pull it. Those protests landed on deaf ears, so apparently some more resourceful animal activists decided to create a rogue version to try and publicly shame users who partake in the barbaric game.

When you install the rogue app it asks for various permissions to access information on your Android device. Once installed, it looks almost identical to the real deal except for one important difference that should be a hint at the motives behind the malware version. The icon for the real Dog Wars app has the word "Beta" written at the lower right of the icon, while the rogue version says "Peta" instead.

A Symantec spokesperson explains that once you start the app, the Trojan kicks into action. "Using software packages and services aptly named "Dogbite" and "Rabies," it first sends out the following text message to everyone on the contact lists of infected devices: "I take pleasure in hurting small animals, just thought you should know that."," adding, "The threat then goes one step farther by attempting to register compromised devices for a text message alert service operated by PETA." As a side note, there is actually an app in the iPhone App Store called Dog Wars. However, it is absolutely nothing like this one and it is completely unrelated. The iPhone version is apparently a different sort of attempt to prey on those looking to viciously fight dogs, but it just makes stupid barking noises.

Personally, I don't see dog fighting as any more graphic or offensive than assassinating people in Contract Killer, or shooting people in the head from long range in Sniper. If you are going to download Dog Wars, be careful where you get it from and pay attention to make sure you don't have the Trojan malware version. The good news for Google and for most Android users is that this hacktivist malware app does not appear to have infiltrated the official Android Market.

Android vs iOS

As Google and Apple continue to grow in the mobile market, Android and iOS are quickly becoming the predominant operating systems for phones and tablets. There are many statistics to look at and comparisons to be made. Here, we present a visualization tackling the debate. 

Thanks to our friends at Hunch, we now know that Android users are 10% more likely to be men. We know that iOS users are 50% more likely to have been on the internet before 1992. We know who is more likely to prefer General Tso’s Chicken over Pad Thai. It may not be the most important demographic data, but it’s definitely interesting.