OSNews

I promise we'll have more on ACTA next week, but for now, I'm too busy to properly cover the subject. In any case, the European Commission signed it today, but that means little - each individual member state's parliament still has to ratify it, and if one votes against it, it's over. The European Parliament has to accept it too - not a done deal either. My opinion on the matter is clear.

KDE has announced its latest set of releases, providing major updates to KDE Plasma Workspaces, KDE Applications, and the KDE Platform. Version 4.8 provides many new features, and improved stability, performance and dynamic power management.

"It's no longer possible to write a single app that takes advantage of the full range of Mac OS X features. Some APIs only work inside the Mac App Store. Others only work outside it. Presumably, this gap will widen as more new features are App Store-exclusive, while sandboxing places greater restrictions on what App Store apps are allowed to do." Anybody surprised by this, here's the clue stick. Please proceed to hit yourself with it.

"Android accounted for 39% of the market in the final three months of last year, up from 29% a year earlier, Strategy Analytics said. Apple's share fell to 58% from 68%. Microsoft's share stood at 1.5%." Really now.

Microsoft is giving an unusually long advanced look at their next edition of Windows 8, both for client and server, and Tom Henderson (who has been writing about networking and security for decades) takes a look at the implications of the features in the "pre-beta" tuned for businesses and network admins. The client version of the operating systems is known to have support concerns, for instance, as long-time APIs are retired and new ones introduced, as he writes in Windows 8 Client Pre-Beta: Five Important Implications. And the Windows 8 Server Editions promise more radical changes than the operating system has seen in a decade: It’s a re-thinking of how server roles are accomplished for Microsoft. He discusses the impact on your Windows Server deployment in Windows 8 Server Pre-Beta: 5 Important Implications.

"HP today began executing its plan to deliver an open webOS by committing to a schedule for making the platform's source code available under an open source license. The company aims to complete this milestone in its entirety by September. HP also announced it is releasing version 2.0 of webOS's innovative developer tool, Enyo. Enyo 2.0 enables developers to write a single application that works across mobile devices and desktop web browsers, from the webOS, iOS and Android platforms to the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers - and more. The source code for Enyo is available today, giving the open source community immediate access to the acclaimed application framework for webOS."

"Google's efforts to improve Internet efficiency through the development of the SPDY (pronounced 'speedy') protocol got a major boost today when the chairman of the HTTP Working Group (HTTPbis), Mark Nottingham, called for it to be included in the HTTP 2.0 standard. SPDY is a protocol that's already used to a certain degree online; formal incorporation into the next-generation standard would improve its chances of being generally adopted."

InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp takes an in-depth look at six Chromium-based spinoffs that bring privacy, security, social networking, and other interesting twists to Google's Chrome browser. 'When is it worth ditching Chrome for a Chromium-based remix? Some of the spinoffs are little better than novelties. Some have good ideas implemented in an iffy way. But a few point toward some genuinely new directions for both Chrome and other browsers.'

Apple reported its quarterly results, and thanks to the iPhone 4S and the iPad, Apple is putting out bizarre figures - 37 million iPhones, 15.5 million iPads. "The Company sold 37.04 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 128 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 15.43 million iPads during the quarter, a 111 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 5.2 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 15.4 million iPods, a 21 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter." Is this the end of Android's dominance, or just a single uberquarter due to the new iPhone?

"Today Mozilla and the Rust community are releasing version 0.1 of the Rust compiler and associated tools. Rust is a strongly-typed systems programming language with a focus on memory safety and concurrency. This is the initial release of the compiler after a multi-year development cycle focusing on self-hosting, implementation of major features, and solidifying the syntax. Version 0.1 should be considered an alpha release, suitable for early adopters and language enthusiasts. It's nifty, but it will still eat your laundry."