In another major acquisition of a rival software maker, Oracle on Monday said it will buy up Siebel Systems in a deal valued at over $5.8 billion. Siebel, a maker of customer resource management software, will provide Oracle with 4,000 new customers and 3.4 million CRM users.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said the deal was intended to give Oracle an entire ecosystem of enterprise application software, and was pushed by companies such as General Electric who only wanted to deal with a single vendor.

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Mozilla developers acted fast to patch a new security vulnerability in Firefox, which slipped its way into the first beta build of Firefox 1.5 and exists in earlier versions as well. However, the patch simply disables the buggy feature while a permenant fix is worked out.

The vulnerability relates to Firefox's handling of IDN, or international domain names, and can be exploited by long Web links that contain dashes. The flaw causes a buffer overflow and opens the door for malicious code to be run on a PC. No code to exploit the problem has surfaced, but Mozilla developers say they are taking it seriously.

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Confirming rumors the two companies were in talks, eBay on Monday announced it would acquire Internet telephony provider Skype for $2.6 billion in cash and stock, with another $1.5 billion contingent on performance. Skype will be used to facilitate communication between eBay's buyers and sellers.

The move marks a major strategy shift for the ten-year-old company and a dramatic departure from past acquisitions. However, with eBay's stock price stagnant for much of the past year, eBay is looking for ways to restart growth as its core business matures.

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UPDATED Barely 24 hours after giving advanced notice of its monthly "Patch Tuesday" fixes, Microsoft late Friday said that it was scrapping the updates over a "quality issue." Microsoft had planned to release a single bulletin for a critical vulnerability affecting Windows.

"Late in the testing process, Microsoft encountered a quality issue that necessitated the update to go through additional testing and development before it is released," a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews. "Microsoft is committed to only releasing high quality updates that fix the issues in question, and therefore we feel it is in the best interest of our customers to not release this update until it undergoes further testing."

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Microsoft has apparently tried to hire open source evangelist Eric S. Raymond (known in the community as ESR), according to a post on his Web log late Thursday.

According to a copy of an e-mail he received from Mike Walters, a recruiter for the Central Sourcing Team at Microsoft, a member of the research team forwarded Raymond's name to Walters as a possible candidate for an engineering job at the Redmond company.

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Centercode is seeking beta testers for a new software application that automates the creation of comic books compete with bubble text using in-game screenshots, family photos, sports and other pictures. The test is open to users with Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP4.

Testers are recommended to have experience using graphical editing or layout software. Benefits for those who apply include priority selection on future Centercode beta tests as well as hardware and software incentives. More information and signup details can be found on the Centercode Callout.

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Korean rivals of the iPod are beginning to feel the squeeze of Apple's strength in the market, and some are even going as far as to accuse the company of collusion with fellow Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung.

The Korea Times reported Friday that while companies would not comment on the iPod Nano directly, several expressed concern that Apple's policy of competitively pricing its players were affecting their bottom line.

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Internet2 announced Friday that both the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have joined the consortium as corporate members. The two groups plan to assist in creating methods to distribute content using digital rights management technologies.

The move comes less than five months after the RIAA first unleashed the legal hounds on Internet2 users trading copyrighted material on college campuses. All told, nearly 500 college students were sued for trading files over the next-generation Internet network.

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For the past decade, Microsoft has largely ignored the Web as an emerging platform for application development with fears that it could render Windows obsolete. But that will all change next week, as Microsoft unveils a new strategy for transforming its Web properties into an open platform for developers.

The shift is a direct attack on Google, which has dominated the online space using that very same technique. Most of Google's offering, from its Search to Maps service to Desktop Sidebar all provide methods for third parties to extend -- and improve on -- the technologies.

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Close Intel ally Dell has agreed to retain documents relating to its partnership with the chipmaker, as the private antitrust case between AMD and Intel moves forward. The agreement was filed on Wednesday in a U.S. District Court in Delaware.

Dell has bought processors exclusively from Intel, and AMD hopes the documents could provide clues to how the chipmaker uses its agreements to push rivals out of the market. AMD has accused Intel of using its market power to exclude others from deals with computer manufacturers like Dell.

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Singapore based Creative on Thursday announced it had joined forces with Soundbuzz to launch the Soundbuzz Music Video Store. Creative hopes that the creation of the store will help drive sales of its new Zen Vision player as well as future video-enabled portable players.

Although Apple was thought to be moving towards the medium, Creative says that it's always had its eyes on music videos.

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The death knell may be ringing for the Palm OS as Japan-based Access announced on Friday that it had acquired PalmSource, the spin-off of Palm, Inc. that produces the operating system for Palm handhelds. The deal is worth $324.3 million or $18.50 per PalmSource share.

Access will pay an 83 percent premium on Thursday's closing price of $10.09, although by mid-morning PalmSource had skyrocketed $7.79 to $17.88 in heavy trading.

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A security researcher has issued an advisory on a new vulnerability in Firefox that could lead to the remote execution of arbitrary code. The flaw was first reported to Mozilla developers by Tom Ferris earlier this week, but he opted to publicly disclose the problem following a disagreement.

The vulnerability relates to Firefox's handling of IDN, or international domain names, and can be exploited by long Web links that contain dashes. The flaw causes a buffer overflow and opens the door for malicious code to be run on a PC.

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Mozilla has released the first beta of the long-awaited Firefox 1.5, the first major milestone since Firefox 1.0 debuted last November. The new release, code-named Deer Park, brings to the table a number of performance and usability improvements, along with new Web standards support.

Enhancements in Beta 1 include a better software update system to serve browser upgrades, the ability to reorder tabs through drag and drop functionality, and improved pop-up blocking. A new feature quickly clears private data using a menu item or keyboard shortcut.

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The re-release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is due next Tuesday, according to the Web sites of gaming retailers. GameStop lists the title as being available September 13, roughly two months after it stopped selling GTA due to the "Hot Coffee" modification, which allows the game's main character to engage in sex acts.

Every major retailer has pulled the game from their shelves, and Take Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games vowed at the time to have a new version of GTA: San Andreas available minus the "Hot Coffee" scenes within "six to eight weeks."

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