While many users have posted complaints of hardware unresponsiveness, the surprising shoddiness of the gear may ironically resonate with real-life musicians.

Amid a swarm of complaints regarding its unresponsive Strat controller, Harmonix has issued a software patch for MTV's Rock Band, addressing the guitar's downstrumming problems.

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Wal-Mart economics made simple: sell it cheap, sell more of it. This strategy seems to be well-received by consumers this holiday season, but may handicap the sales of higher-end competitors.

Discount retail giant Wal-Mart is driving its sales by diminishing profit margins. A random sale item pulled from walmart.com, Garmin's StreetPilot c330 Vehicle GPS Navigator, is cheaper than all competitors by a fraction. The lowest price on most comparative shopping sites is $169.00, today on Walmart.com, the item sells for $168.88. The same product on Amazon.com costs $224.95.

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Consumer electronics retailer Circuit City is showing an early improvement in holiday sales, thanks in part to widespread employee cutbacks.

Circuit City sales this past weekend were reported to have risen 3.7% over the previous year, although things could perhaps only gotten better after its apparently disastrous 2006. The good news gave Circuit City shares a 25.6% boost in early trading this morning on the New York Exchange, though shares settled back to near their Friday lows of $6, perhaps after investors did the some research on the back end.

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Verizon announced today's availability of the Samsung Flipshot 3.0 megapixel cameraphone in the US -- a slightly re-tooled version of the previously available A990.

Verizon today announced the availability of Samsung's new U900 FlipShot camera phone in the US. The 3.0 Mp handset is designed around the camera functions. And its rotating 2.2" 240 x 430 display is mounted in such a way that it can swivel and lock into a position more like a traditional dedicated digital camera.

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Facebook's new Beacon advertising platform, which leverages its users' news feeds as a sort of personal endorsement for products and services used, is already coming under heavy criticism.

On November 6, Facebook launched an advertising system called Beacon that consists of a partnership between the popular social network and 44 other sites. The system allows a user's activity outside of Facebook to be recorded and then posted on his or her news feed.

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GameStop exceeded its projected income in the third quarter so much that it threw off analysts' projections for the fourth quarter.

Wall street analysts cannot seem to get a bead on GameStop right now. The company surprised everyone in its third fiscal quarter, exceeding revenue forecasts by $200 million, and posting a $52 million net income, or 31 cents per share.

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Sony, Fujifilm, and Hitachi have been fined €74.8 million for fixing the prices of standard definition videotapes most commonly used for broadcasting. Manufacturers of cathode ray tubes are up next.

Commissioner Neelie Kroes, former Belgian cabinet minister, and current head of the EU Competition Commission has spearheaded another effort at discouraging unfair trade practices in the European Union, without even the aid of a whistleblower.

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Though it has announced more members joining its newspaper advertising group, the future of Yahoo's consortium is not looking strong.

The Associated Press reported today that Yahoo has added 17 more participants to its newspaper consortium, bringing the total to about 415 daily publications, and 140 weekly.

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Pioneer-funded SyncTV claims an a la carte selection of DVD quality cable programming, but looks like another Vongo.

As the potential for a la carte cable programming is speculated upon, SyncTV has opened in private beta, adding more cable content to the online market.

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Singapore's video game market has been given a temporary ratings system after the Bioware Xbox 360 game Mass Effect came under scrutiny for "lesbian activity."

While a permanent classification system will not be in place until January, the Board of Film Censors said in a statement that highly-anticipated games will be selectively given ratings so that the public may better understand why such a system is beneficial. The game, slated for release on November 20, was widely reported yesterday to have been banned, but today it has been given a rating of "M18," the film board's equivalent of an "R" rating.

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A Pacific Crest Securities analyst has indicated that Nintendo is sitting on a new DS design that includes on-board storage.

Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson has issued a report speculating on the existence of a newly-designed Nintendo DS system. He says the company's contacts indicate that a thinner, larger-screened version with on-board storage is already complete, but will not be announced until global sales for the DS Lite and Wii begin to taper off.

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An Associated Press survey recently revealed the real and perceived value of instant messaging, especially among teens.

The survey, conducted online from October 25 - November 5 showed why folks are really using Instant Messaging. Of 410 teens age 13-16 surveyed, 200 use instant messaging as a communications tool. But of the 836 adults surveyed, only about 167 say they use instant messaging. Adults were shown to prefer e-mail over IM. But what purpose does IM serve to teenagers that adults would not also need?

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As Dell re-asserts its relevance as a PC manufacturer, the company takes another gamble on completely new form factors, including a hybrid portable.

At Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, CEO Michael Dell made a keynote speech showing off two forthcoming Dell products that shed the company's traditional desktop-or-notebook form factor: the XPS One (no relation to the similar Gateway model of the same name) and the multi-touch capable Latitude XP convertible tablet.

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With networking a major feature of modern game consoles, the first tools for game system security are inevitably beginning to appear.

Trend Micro is the first to throw its hat into the ring, with a security suite released a week ago as part of a PS3 system upgrade. Trend Micro Web Security for PS3 checks the reputation and security of unknown sites, and has user-defined filters to block certain other types of sites. It is touted as a family product, with password-enabled free browsing.

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One of the lasting contributions of the "dot-com" era, the way consumers interact with retailers, is changing, as evidenced by online pizza ordering.

Papa John's International Inc. first rolled out its online ordering option in 2001, and it now accounts for almost 20% of the company's domestic sales. Competitors Pizza Hut Express and Domino's Pizza Inc., which began to offer comparable services shortly after, are also seeing the option more frequently used.

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