In Firefox 3.6.4, Mozilla has included protections to keep crashes caused by third-party plug-ins from disrupting the user's browsing experience. Right now, this feature is only available for Windows and Linux users.

"When a plug-in crashes or freezes while using Firefox, users can enjoy uninterrupted browsing by simply refreshing the page."

According to Mozilla, as many as one in three Firefox browser crashes are caused by problems with various third-party plug-ins.

The biggest new capability -- multitasking -- is for all intents and purposes not available, and it won't be until individual apps are updated to take advantage of it.

Apple has made much of iOS 4's unified inbox, which lets you see all your emails in one list, as well as switch to specific accounts to see just their emails. The unified inbox is fine, except for a big flaw: You can't tell what account each message was sent to.

Although the code is functional and available for download (but not production-ready yet), it cannot be merged upstream or shipped in binary form with the Linux kernel due to a licensing conflict.

In a message on the ZFS-Fuse mailing list, Behlendorf says that his team has unsuccessfully been urging Oracle to change the ZFS license in order to resolve the compatibility problem.

Sun (and now Oracle) has declined to do so for Solaris, creating artificial barriers for adoption of the code in Linux. A native Linux ZFS port has considerable technical value, but it won't see much adoption as long as the licensing conflict exists.

The Federal Trade Commission has come to an agreement with Florida-based CyberSpy Software that allows it to resume sales of its Remote Spy commercial spyware application.

RemoteSpy is a commercial spyware application that registers keyboard inputs, records instant messages, regularly takes screenshots, logs visited web pages and sends all the data it collects to a server. The users of RemoteSpy can log into the server and retrieve the data collected about the victim from there. RemoteSpy is said to employ rootkit techniques to hide from virus scanners.

Do you have a PIN code on your iPhone? Well, while that might protect you from someone making a call or fiddling with your apps, it doesn't prevent access to your data... as long as the person doing the snooping around is using Ubuntu "Lucid Lynx" 10.04.

This data protection flaw exposes music, photos, videos, podcasts, voice recordings, Google safe browsing database, game contents... by in my opinion the quickest compromising read/write access discovered so far, without leaving any track record by the attacker.

EA does not like when you buy used games, and it keeps coming up with ways to incent gamers to avoid the used game section at their local retailer.

If you bought it used, you had to pay $10. With its sports games, however, EA is playing hardball: it will cost you an extra $10 if you want to play online with a secondhand game.

Will gamers balk, or shrug their shoulders and pay?

The most difficult circle Jobs squares is the issue of open vs. proprietary: He acknowledges that Apple's products are closed but that devices and products are different than the web.

"Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free."

Game publisher and developer Ubisoft on Monday announced that it would no longer be shipping them in its future console titles on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

This is the same kind of offering Ubisoft's been doing with its PC games since last month. According to the company, the first console title to feature such a paperless experience will be Shaun White Skateboarding, which is set for release sometime this holiday season.

Sun released the Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office, as a closed source but free application which allowed Microsoft Office users to export and import documents in Open Document Format.

Users clicking through will find that Oracle are now charging $90, per user, for a right-to-use license for the plug-in and offering support costing $19.80 per user for the first year. Oracle also requires a minimum order of 100 licenses, which means the minimum purchase is $9,000.

"More than three weeks after the release of The Settlers 7, with the controversial 'always on-line' DRM, a lot of people still can't connect to Ubisoft's DRM servers."

"One reason for the lack of fixes or responses from support seems to be that the people responsible were on vacation during the Easter holiday, despite the promise of 24/7 monitoring of the servers."

So far, Ubisoft hasn't shown any sign that they're reconsidering the requirement of a constant connection.