Yup, it's true; Adobe not only knew about the security flaw that Shane Macaulay used to hack Vista, they even had a patched prepared. Only thing is, they hadn't got round to releasing it. In fact, the patch was scheduled for release in the next Flash Player update later in the month.

Thankfully, Adobe were not in the dark about the security risk, however, if they were in the know, don't you guys think they have a responsibility to release the fix ASAP? Putting our systems at unnecessary risk due to our choice to support third party software just doesn't seem fair. Further, asking for system stability and security to be made a priority should be a given at all times, or so we reckon. Worse still, the defect may have cost Vista the title of impenetrable OS, and that's gonna hurt the MS fanboys dearly. After all, imagine if OS X had been the only hacked operating system; we think said fanboys may have had something to brag about, or at least a reason to punch Mr Smug Mac in his face. [Ars Technica]

[Editor's note: The iPhone SDK limits what applications can do, and doesn't provide with a plug-in architecture for Safari, which is an application that Apple wants to keep as lean and stable as possible. There are, however, many possibilities open that could make this happen.

First, perhaps the most unlikely, Apple could provide Adobe with the framework they need to do a Safari plug-in. Even while Apple doesn't want to develop or license Flash from Adobe, they could be happy to enable the possibility. It won't be the first time that Apple has given Adobe this kind of special treatment: in the past, the Cupertino company had provided with special code to accomodate the migration of Photoshop into Mac OS X, and one could argue that Flash on the Internet is as important as Photoshop on the Mac.

The other possibility—which could be closer to reality—is that Flash in the iPhone could be a stand-alone player, just like Quicktime is now: a player that could be launched when you click on Flash content in Safari. While it may not sound perfect, as some Flash content works alongside HTML, this will easily put the majority of Flash content in the hands of iPhone users. And instead of having to work within the limitations of Safari, the player will fully enjoy the possibilities of running stand-alone, with a dedicated interface, and full access to the the hardware, running at full screen.

This last option will not require any major changes on Apple's part. The acknowledgement of Flash and Shockwave content in pages will be enough, adding a play button over it to launch the player which will grab these resources, being video or fully interactive applications. —Jesús Díaz] [WSJ]

The P5S holds 512 MB of MP3, WMA, WAV or JPEG files, while the P10 carries 1GB of your favorite music or pix, and both offer an OLED display, FM tuner, and a slightly funky-looking analog clock. We'll reportedly be seeing these in late May, with the P5S running $118, and the P10 going for $152.

Toshiba Gigabeat P5S/P10 [Tech Blog] Thanks, Steve!