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About five days ago a hacker that goes by the name of Reckz0r kicked off a new group called SpexSec which created quite a stir. We talked about the group’s appearance and just as sudden disappearance. They showed up made three dumps of data and after a short exchange with someone on Twitter all three of the SpexSec members announced their retirements.

Well the cat is out of the bag now and the winner is a new tablet called Surface from Microsoft. The thin (.5 inches) tablet was shown off today at the big event that Microsoft had planned for a long time. From the pictures we have seen it looks like a nice device 10.6 inches long with a gorilla glass display, full sized USB port, MIMO antenna for WiFi a track pad, 64 or 128GB of storage, and a built in kickstand. There is just one problem; Microsoft’s partners. By entering into the market like this Microsoft runs the risk of alienating their major partners for Windows based tablets.

We are hearing that more companies are moving to the “free-to-play” gaming model as a response to piracy and also failing retails sales and subscriptions. Of course if you are a gamer then you will know that free-to-play does not mean free. Sure you can get in the games (usually online only) and play around, but to get anywhere you have to buy add-on packs and equipment packs. This is a nice way for companies to regain their lost revenue from retail packaging and also from the continual battle with new and more elaborate DRM mechanisms.

The tablet and smartphone market is exploding there is no doubt about that. Although Apple was the first to market with a widely accepted consumer product in the iPad they were not the first and are certainly not going to the be last with a device. The same goes for the smart phone where other companies had the idea of a smart phone long before Apple brought the iPhone out on stage. Still we will not argue that Apple did help pave the way for the boom that is coming.