This article actually came as quite a shock to me. Because DISH and AT&T are breaking up? No. Because DISH needs AT&T to survive? No. Then why?

Satellite TV provider Dish Network said Tuesday that AT&T will end its agreement to bundle its TV service with AT&T’s broadband and phone service at the end of the year.

AT&T and Dish have had a joint marketing deal since July 2003, which allows AT&T to package the Dish TV service with AT&T’s phone and Internet packages. But AT&T has decided not to renew the agreement, and as required by the contract between the two companies, AT&T is giving Dish six months notice that the deal will expire December 31, 2008.

I was shocked because I never got a chance to bundle all my services. Not that I would have, but here in former Bellsouth territory, all of the bundles I have seen are with DirecTV.

I never received an offer to bundle my services. I had no idea DISH and AT&T were working together. Now that’s marketing for you. Great job guys!

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Should eBay be held responsible because the crap people sell on the site? Should we really expect them to examine each item that is put up for sale and guarantee the authenticity of that sale? Well, apparently a French court does.

A French commercial court Monday ordered eBay Inc. to pay more than $59 million to a high-end fashion company because counterfeit goods were sold on the auction site.

Maybe we should all get together and file a class action suit and demand our money back for all the items we bought that were clearly marked “in excellent condition” that ended up being just mediocre in quality.

Would I be mad if people were counterfeiting my products? Sure I would. I would also work with eBay to get those items removed, you know, like eBay already does.

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I need to take a moment and talk about a new application I have been using for the past couple weeks, that I think you might like. The application is called Digsby.

For years I have used Trillian for all my instant messaging needs. In fact, I paid for the “pro” version within days of first using it. It worked flawlessly for me. I heard rumors from others that it did not work on their systems, it crashed all the time, and they stopped using it. Not me. I had no issues with it, and it worked well for me. Well, it did, until about a month ago.

For some reason it started crashing on me. I know, I know, that’s what everyone kept telling me for years. One day it would crash, and some days I wouldn’t get a message from anyone on my list, and they wouldn’t receive any of my messages. It was time to look elsewhere for instant messaging.

I tried Pidgin. I had a couple issues with it. I didn’t like the interface, and sometimes it wouldn’t connect.

I tried Miranda. I really liked Miranda, except it told everyone I was away or offline no matter what I tried to change on my end.

Then I found Digsby via a tweet from @ponzarelli on Twitter. What makes Digsby different from all the others? Well, let’s see. I will count the ways.

#1 - It connects.
#2 - It shows me I am connected.
#3 - It shows others that I am connected.
#4 - It allows me to change statuses, and lets others see those statuses.
#5 - It does not crash midway through my day.
#6 - It delivers instant messages from me to people on my list.
#7 - It delivers instant messages from other people on my list to me.
#8 - It’s interface is customizable. I can make it look the way *I* want.
#9 - It just doesn’t suck.

and last but not least

#10 - They have a support staff that is second to none. They monitor Twitter and answer every question posed to them. When you have an issue, they work with you to solve that issue, get this, until it is solved.

Oh, and Digsby does more than just instant messaging too. You can monitor your email and social networking sites too. It works reliably, and it’s shiny and new.

When Trillian started acting up and I could not get Pidgin or Miranda working the way I wanted them too, I was really frustrated. I am very picky about the way things work when it comes to instant messaging. The buddy list has to look the way I want, the messages must be formatted the way I want, and most of all, the application has to work as I expect it too.

Digsby meets, and exceeds, all of my expectations.

If you are looking for a good instant messaging client (which allows you to watch your mail and monitor your social networking connections), that works in Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux, then Digsby is the application you should be checking out.

Crossposted at Slobokan’s Site O’ Schtuff.

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Brand new off the shelf and it already needs repairing. Welcome to the big time, Firefox.

The same day Firefox 3 was shipping, Tipping Point, a research organization for vulnerability analysis and discovery, released an upcoming advisory (ZDI-CAN-349) about a new security vulnerability that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code, affecting Firefox 2 and 3 in their Zero Day Initiative site.

Following their own policies, Tipping Point has not disclosed any details about the vulnerability besides it would require user interaction, while Mozilla works on a patch. Mozilla Security reports that there is no known public exploit for this bug at this time.

Over 8 million people downloaded Firefox 3 on “download day”. No, 8 million people will be anxiously awaiting Firefox 3.01. They’ll truly hit the big time if they need to send us security updates once a month like you know who.

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As far as days go, I was quite let down today. Mozilla let me down.

Mozilla’s big plan on Tuesday to set a world record for downloads with the Firefox 3 browser hit a snag when its Web site would not work properly.

Though the big “Download Day” was set to begin at 1 p.m. ET, Mozilla’s Web site was down or working sporadically all morning on the East Coast, and users still could not download Firefox 3 from the site more than an hour later.

Was it because of their “downtime”? No. Was it because Firefox 3 is no good? Of course not. What was it then?

As of 5pm I was still trying to download a “new” copy of Firefox. You see, I have been downloading the betas and release candidates, so it’s not like I have been “out of the loop”, but I was quite disappointed when I downloaded Firefox the first time today.

Before I started, I wrote down the information on the about screen, and then after the new install had downloaded, I installed it, of course. The first thing I noticed was the end-user license was dated “May 2008″. An easy mistake yes?

After installation, I checked the about screen. Same exact thing. Nothing changed. Here is my post on Slobokan’s Site O’ Schtuff, with the screenshots of the firefox website and installation.

Were there no changes between release candidate 3 and the final release? If not, why the hype today to set a record? Why bother with a “final” release if nothing changed? I just don’t get it.

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It seems there is a rumor that Apple will announce the new Mac Fusion today at WWDC. Better yet, those rumors say it’s aimed at the developer crowd.

I don’t care if it’s just a rumor. I WANT. I haven’t wanted anything this bad, since I was watching my weight last year, contemplating taking diet pills, and staring a warm chocolate brownie in the eye.

On WWDC Eve, we at TUAW are hard at work keeping an eye out for the unknown and unexpected. We just received a tip showing what appears to be the Mac Nano computer that we’ve all wanted — and it looks to be aimed towards the developer crowd.

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After years of selling us junk, Best Buy is now going to take some of it back.

Under pressure to help dispose some of the electronic waste it helped create, Best Buy Co. is testing a free program that will offer consumers a convenient way to ensure millions of obsolescent TVs, old computers and other unwanted gadgets don’t poison the nation’s dumps.

The trial, expected to be announced Monday, covers 117 Best Buy stores scattered across eight states that will collect a wide variety of electronic detritus at no charge, even if the Richfield, Minn.-based retailer didn’t originally sell the merchandise.

The pilot stores are in Best Buy’s Northern California, Minneapolis and Baltimore markets, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Now if they would just lower the music that plays in the store so you don’t go deaf just walking in the door.

Seriously though, I think this program is awesome and I hope they expand it to all their locations soon.

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My work laptop started acting up two days ago. I haven’t installed anything new, the laptop hasn’t moved, nothing is different. Well, except for the way the laptop is operating.

Six reboots in six minutes. Can your Mac do that? You just got to love toys.

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Yes folks, Service Pack 3 is just another wonderful update from Microsoft.

Users who thought the Windows XP operating system would be more reliable than its younger sibling Vista are being buffeted by reports that the latest update for XP, Service Pack 3, has its own problems.

A variety of complaints about SP3 are being posted on the Web, with users complaining about system crashes, spontaneous reboots, and other issues. On the Windows XP forum at Microsoft.com, for instance, a poster named Doug W. said that, after installing SP3, he had to use system restore “after three attempts, with different configurations each time.” He mentioned that his system has an Athlon chip from Advanced Micro Devices, and other users have reported similar problems with SP3 on AMD machines.

I ran the update the other day and haven’t had any problems. I have an AMD Athlon 64, so I guess I should just shut up and be thankful. It wasn’t like I was trying to install a walk in tub or anything like that.

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While it never should have happened in the first place, it’s good to see Mozilla doing something about this. Then again, with all the different sources of code out there in the hundreds if not thousands of plugins for Firefox, I am surprised we haven’t seen more of this already.

Mozilla warned Wednesday that a malicious program inserted adware code into a Firefox plugin that has been downloaded thousands of times over the past three months.

Because of a virus infection, the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 was polluted with adware, Mozilla security chief Window Snyder said in a blog posting. “Everyone who downloaded the most recent Vietnamese language pack since February 18, 2008 got an infected copy,” she wrote. “Mozilla does virus scans at upload time but the virus scanner did not catch this issue until several months after the upload.”

Mozilla is now going to add additional scans of its software to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, she said.

Maybe next time they will send the code to drug rehab before releasing it to the public? The sad part is, they have no idea how many people’s computers might be infected already. Yikes.

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