Mayweather set to fight Pacquiao - in court

Unbeaten US boxer Floyd Mayweather will fight Filipino star Manny Pacquiao after all, although it will be a legal dispute after a federal judge denied a motion to dismiss the case.

Pacquiao filed a defamation lawsuit against Mayweather, among others, that US District Judge Larry Hicks ruled can proceed because there is sufficient evidence of malicious acts in accusing Pacquiao of being a dope cheat.

"The truth did not stop Mayweather and the others," Pacquiao's lawsuit contends. "That is because they are motivated by ill will, spite, malice, revenge and envy."

"Mayweather and the others set out on a course designed to destroy Pacquiao's career, reputation, honor and legacy and jeopardize his ability to earn the highest levels of compensation."

Pacquiao has never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) but in the 2009 lawsuit he claims that Mayweather, his father Floyd Snr and uncle Roger, promoter Oscar de la Hoya and his employee, Richard Schaefer conducted a campaign in a set of interviews to make people think he used them.

"Defendants argue that Pacquiao has failed to sufficiently allege malice because defendants could not have known one way or the other whether Pacquiao had actually taken PEDs when they made the alleged defamatory statements," Hicks wrote in the order upholding the lawsuit.

"However, the court finds that Pacquiao has sufficiently pled malice in the amended complaint."

Unbeaten Mayweather and Pacquiao were in talks to stage a megafight between two of boxing's biggest stars but negotiations collapsed over demands by Mayweather that both fighters have blood and urine tests up to 14 days before the bout.

Pacquiao said he would feel weakened by blood tests within 24 days of the fight and would not agree to tests any closer to a bout.

Mayweather Promotions attorney Mark Tratos said he would continue to push for dismissal of the case, saying comments at the time were made about Pacquiao's hesitancy regarding blood tests and did not claim he was a dope cheat.

Pacquiao attorney Dan Petrocelli said his client's career would suffer major damage if fans believed he used banned substances.

"Manny has an unblemished reputation and has earned all of his achievements through hard work and his natural-born talent and to call him a cheater is something he cannot and will not tolerate," Petrocelli said.

"None of these defendants have had any evidence to back up the assertion that he has taken performance-enhancing drugs because he didn't."

Mayweather, 34, faces an April 25 trial date on a battery charge over an altercation with a security guard for his homeowners association, who claims Mayweather poked him during a November argument regarding cars parking outside Mayweather's home.

Mayweather also faces a court hearing on April 28 on domestic violence charges that could send the fighter to prison for up to 34 years in prison if convicted of all charges, which include felony counts of grand larceny, coercion and robbery.

Mayweather is accused of striking and threatening former girlfriend Josie Harris, stealing her mobile phone and threatening two of their children in an incident on September 9.

Boxing fans have hoped that Mayweather, 41-0 with 25 career knockouts, would fight Pacquiao but Mayweather's legal woes have put such talk on hold.

Pacquiao, 52-3 with two draws and 38 knockouts and a winner of 13 fights in a row in the past six years, is set to face 39-year-old US fighter Shane Mosley, 46-6 with one draw and 39 knockouts, on May 7 in Las Vegas.

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FireFox 4 Release

Mozilla will officially launch its Firefox 4 web browser today, after about eight months after its first public beta. But many of the features in Firefox 4 really date back to 2006, and the lengthy time to market for this release--during which Firefox usage essentially stop growing in the face of faster moving rivals--has caused the firm to step back and reevaluate its product plans. And the goal going forward is to ship smaller releases on a far timelier schedule.

The question, of course, is whether it's already too late. Google has shipped an astonishing 10 major releases of its Chrome browser since its initial release over two years ago, and that company says it is able to maintain this pace by thinking of Chrome as a web service instead of a traditional software product. Even Microsoft, not known for moving quickly, has made Mozilla look sleepy by comparison: It shipped the final version of its new browser, Internet Explorer 9, last week after just 6 months in beta.

Mozilla has historically had trouble meeting release dates, and Firefox 4 required an astonishing 12 beta release and two release candidate builds before the company was able to sign off on the product. For the new schedule to work, Mozilla doesn't just need to deliver smaller, more conservative updates, it needs to do something it's never done: Ship them on time.

"The intention here is not to rush features, it's to let features that are done get to users without waiting for features that aren't." Mozilla VP Mike Shaver explained. With Firefox 4, certain browser features were ready to ship months earlier, but because they relied on other pieces of that browser version, Mozilla had to wait before shipping them.

As for Firefox 4, Mozilla's new browser hopes to differentiate itself in important ways. It runs on Windows XP, for example, whereas IE 9 supports Windows Vista and 7 only. Firefox 4 has a nice new user interface, an overhauled, faster JavaScript engine, bookmark syncing, and more.

It's not all peaches and cream. Firefox 4 supports only partial hardware acceleration, a far cry from the performance users will see in IE 9. And it trails both IE 9 and Chrome, overall, from a performance standpoint. Some don't like its old-school separation of address bar and search bar into two separate UI elements; most other browsers have integrated these into a single control.

Download it HERE
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