Samsung's filings in one of the cases with Apple (I lost track because I have a life) are actually pretty cool. "Samsung has been researching and developing mobile telecommunications technology since at least as early as 1991 and invented much of the technology for today's smartphones. Indeed, Apple, which sold its first iPhone nearly twenty years after Samsung started developing mobile phone technology, could not have sold a single iPhone without the benefit of Samsung's patented technology." Another gem: "Contrary to the image it has cultivated in the popular press, Apple has admitted in internal documents that its strength is not in developing new technologies first, but in successfully commercializing them."

The article I'm about to link to, by Oliver Reichenstein, is pretty terrible, but it's a good way for me to bring up something I've been meaning to talk about. First, the article: "Apple has been working on its file system and with iOS it had almost killed the concept of folders - before reintroducing them with a peculiar restriction: only one level! With Mountain Lion it brings its one folder level logic to OSX. What could be the reason for such a restrictive measure?" So, where does this crusade against directory structures (not file systems, as the article aggravatingly keeps stating) come from?

Java (OpenJDK) version 1.6.0 Build 25 GA3 had been released for OS/2 and eComStation. This release contains the long awaited OS/2 version of the Java plugin for Mozilla, IceTea-Web 1.1.2.

"I read earlier this week about a developer who made their Android version free after the $1 game was extensively pirated. Stories like this come as no surprise, but the industry press rarely deals with the core problem - and nor does Google. Whilst the aforementioned story about the Android game didn't surprise me, it did horrify me. Android is designed to be difficult to make money from, and the core issue is that it's open - with the corrosive mentality that surrounds such openness."

"Though Windows 7 doesn't quite have the same experience when it comes to resolution and scaling control as OS X does - it can be a bit of a chore to get it just the way you like it - it's still quite useable on the Retina MacBook Pro's 15" 2880 x 1800 pixel screen. I recommend running Windows at full resolution with the 150 percent scaling setting - that seemed to give the best overall usability. 'Retina' class desktop displays are still a relative rarity today, so it will be some time before software developers adapt applications to best take advantage of such a resolution. In the meantime, you should have no trouble running Windows on the Retina MacBook Pro if the need arises." A look at how Windows 8 handles the display would've been nice, too.

"Nokia is set to market their first Windows Phone 8 hardware differently, according to a report by the Financial Times. The manufacturer will be entering into partnerships with a handful of EU carriers to exclusively launch their next generation Windows Phone. The newspaper states the company has already entered into talks with a number of operators including France Telecom." Not to be a spoilsport or anything, but doesn't carrier exclusivity kind of rely on people actually, you know, desperately wanting a certain device? It's like Nokia's executives live in this fairytale land where people are actually buying Lumias and plan their actions accordingly. It's uncanny.

"It's an urban legend that the government launched the Internet. The myth is that the Pentagon created the Internet to keep its communications lines up even in a nuclear strike. The truth is a more interesting story about how innovation happens - and about how hard it is to build successful technology companies even once the government gets out of the way."

Without giving any detailed information, Madfinger Games announced that because the piracy rates of their game Dead Trigger were so high on Android, they made the game available for free. This sucks balls. I'm interested in more detailed statistics, especially where, exactly, the piracy rate is highest, considering you can only get paid Google Play applications in 31 countries, and then, often only with a credit card (which many people outside of the US don't have and/or use). It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if those piracy rates mostly come from places without paid applications support and/or with lousy payment options. In any case, Google needs to get its act together with the Play Store.

Mike Elgan at Cult of Mac: "It must surely be a sign of the impending apocalypse that Microsoft's operating systems have 'more taste' than Apple's. I'm referring, of course, to Apple's inexplicable use of skeuomorphic design in iOS and OS X apps, and contrasting that with Microsoft's stark avoidance of such cheesy gimmickry in the Windows 8 and Windows Phone user interfaces. A skeuomorphic design in software is one that 'decorates' the interface with fake reality - say, analog knobs or torn paper. The problem is worse than it sounds." Won't come as a surprise to anyone that I wholeheartedly agree with this one. iOS and Mac OS X are ruined by an incredibly high Microsoft BOB factor. I have no idea how - or if - Apple will address this, or if the current downward spiral is going to continue.

Okay, so this is entirely new to me. Sparrow is was an email client for Mac OS X and iOS (and Windows), which brought a decent Gmail experience to these platforms - as opposed to Apple's own not-so-good Gmail support and Google's Gmail iOS application which, well, is just a webpage. Google has now acquired Sparrow, and basically all hell has broken loose, to the point of Rian van der Merwe writing that 'we' lost "faith in a philosophy that we thought was a sustainable way to ensure a healthy future for independent software development, where most innovation happens".

"Nigeria's Saheed Adepoju is a young man with big dreams. He is the inventor of the Inye, a tablet computer designed for the African market. According to the 29-year-old entrepreneur, his machine's key selling point is its price - $350 opposed to around $700 for an iPad. He believes that, because of this, there is a big market for it in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, particularly amongst students. He is also hoping to sell his tablet - which runs on the Google Android operating system - to the Nigerian government and plans to have at least one computer in each local government area." Mobile phones have had a huge impact on Africa, so just imagine what tablets, with their larger screens and easier access to the web, can do. Amazing initiative.

"Back in May of this year, Internet security firm Bitdefender launched an app and service designed to help iOS users get a grip on what the apps installed on their mobile devices may be up to. The app tells owners of iOS devices which applications may be accessing more information than they need, and identifies potentially 'misbehaving' apps, giving users an inside look at all the information app developers can gather about a user. Seems legit, right? Apple doesn't think so. Or at least they have an issue with something behind the app that sparked them to pull it from the App Store this week." That seems odd. Why would they do such a thing? "Interestingly, Bitdefender did share some data that they gathered based on Clueful's analysis of more than 65,000 popular iOS apps so far: 42.5 percent of apps do not encrypt users' personal data, even when accessed via public Wi-Fi; 41.4 percent of apps were shown to track a user's location unbeknownst to them; almost one in five of the apps analyzed can access a user's entire Address Book, with some even sending user information to the cloud without notification." Oh, right. Informing users their data is wholly unsafe? Not on Apple's watch!

"Microsoft today announced quarterly revenue of $18.06 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2012. Operating income and loss per share for the quarter were $192 million and $0.06 per share. The financial results reflect the previously announced non-cash, non-tax-deductible income statement charge of $6.19 billion for the impairment of goodwill and the deferral of $540 million of revenue related to the Windows Upgrade Offer."

"Mozilla is creating a new kind of mobile operating system that is aligned with standards-based Web technologies. The platform, called Firefox OS, consists of the Gecko HTML rendering engine, a thin hardware enablement layer built on the Linux kernel, and a user interface layer called Gaia that is implemented entirely in HTML and JavaScript. The project was first announced in 2011 with the codename Boot2Gecko. It has matured considerably since then and is expected to arrive on handsets next year. Developers who want to get a head start will be pleased to learn that Mozilla has started producing daily builds of a B2G test environment that runs on conventional desktop computers."