Ed Oswald

Mozilla: Firefox 3 bug claim 'horses**t'

Mozilla developer Asa Dotzler used the term to describe his feelings toward a claim that it is bypassing as many as eight out of every 10 Firefox bugs.

A story in the New York Times Thursday by IDG analyst Gregg Keizer claimed that only 20 percent of the bugs within Firefox 3 would be fixed by the time it will be released next year.

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Amazon fires up e-book market with reader device

One of the nation's biggest online retailers is reportedly close to shipping its own electronic book reader, sources report.

Details of the actual unit are not available, although the 'Kindle' as it is called, apparently has an EVDO data connection. Reports seem to suggested that at least a dozen media partners will be available at launch.

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CBS links up billboards for NYC Wi-Fi network

Using its billboards across downtown New York City, CBS is creating a Wi-Fi hotspot that will give nearly 20 city blocks free wireless Internet access.

The service, called the "CBS Mobile Zone," will extend 20 city blocks from Times Square to Central Park South, and 6th to 8th avenues when it is fully complete. Portions of the network are already up and running.

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Some Zunes being anti-social due to glitches

While it is to be expected, users of Microsoft's newest Zunes are seeing some sporadic problems with both the players and the service.

New product launches are never immune to growing pains and glitches, and the latest Zunes are certainly no exception. Within 48 hours of their launch, reports of problems have surfaced across the Web.

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Warner Music CEO: 'We were wrong'

The chief of one of the labels leading the fight against P2P has a surprising change of heart: The industry, he says, was wrong about digital music.

Edgar Bronfman's comments came as part of a broader talk about mobile music at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress. He seemed to admit that the industry itself was at fault for the piracy problem that now plagues digital music.

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New Russian movie download site follows AllofMP3's lead

Although it is apparently not related to the music download site that was the bane of the music industry's existence, a new site is promising cheap downloads of movies.

Called ZML, the new site offers about 1,500 different titles for download that are free of any digital rights management restrictions. Among the titles available include recent hits 300 and Transformers, as well as classics Apocalypse Now and Aliens.

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Comcast sued over file sharing practices

The nation's largest cable provider has been taken to court by a San Francisco man who says its efforts to throttle the bandwidth of file sharers is illegal.

Jon Hart sued the company in Alameda County Superior Court, alleging the company misleads the customer by claiming "unfettered" access to the Internet. He is seeking monetary damages for its loss, as well as class-action status.

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Apple's eye isn't off Tiger just yet

In a somewhat surprising move, Apple pushed its eleventh and likely final update to Mac OS X 10.4, before devoting itself to Leopard.

As is typical with Apple's regular updates to its operating system, the patch includes a bevy of fixes for various issues. However, in somewhat of a break from the norm, the update also includes a new feature: Safari 3 for Tiger.

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Sony capitalizes on Wii's supply shortage

Lowering price and making the best of its competitors' slip-ups are how the PS3 will come back from the brink, its CEO says.

The discounting of its PlayStation 3 by $100 and the introduction of a cheaper model has caused sales in the US to double, CEO Sir Howard Stringer told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

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Creative Ships 25 Millionth MP3 Player

Beleaguered electronics company Creative took a moment to toot its own horn on Wednesday, saying it had recently shipped its 25 millionth player.

Even though Creative was in the digital music market two years before the first iPod even shipped, it took the company eight years to get to this level, whereas Apple passed the same milestone in 2006, in only five years.

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VeriSign to Focus on its Traditional Businesses

VeriSign is exiting the business sector, instead opting to focus on its core businesses of running the .com and .net registries and securing online transactions.

The announcement was made during a conference for analysts in New York Wednesday. CEO Bill Roper said that the company had reviewed its business and made changes to improve returns for its shareholders.

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Comcast, Microsoft Team on SMB Services

Comcast said Wednesday that it had teamed with Microsoft to offer its small and medium-sized business customers new Internet-based communications services built on the Redmond company's productivity platform.

The services include the same Microsoft Communication Services that are now mostly used by larger companies with dedicated IT staffs. Now SMBs can utilize the same e-mail, calendaring, and document sharing.

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Germany Passes New Data Retention Laws

Germany's Parliament passed new data retention laws last week that require Web and phone providers to retain their logs for up to six months, despite the opposition of privacy advocates.

According to the law, the information within those logs could be used by law enforcement if they have reason to suspect criminal activity. Supporters claim it is also an anti-terrorism measure -- aimed at preventing another attack like those in London or Madrid.

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XM Shareholders Approve Sirius Merger

XM and Sirius' proposed merger received near-unanimous support from shareholders, as the two companies announced they had cleared the next hurdle in becoming a single entity.

According to tabulations by XM, 99.8 percent of shareholders voted in favor of the transaction. The merger agreement calls for each XM shareholder to receive 4.6 Sirius shares for each share they own.

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Tiny Patch Tuesday Brings Two Fixes

Compared with previous Patch Tuesdays, November's version was quite small with Microsoft releasing only two patches for the Windows operating system: one rated critical and the other important.

The critical patch addresses an issue with how the Windows shell handles URIs. A specially crafted URI could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code due to an error in the way it is validated.

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