" despite Oracle pointing out the commercial success of Android - which would tend to weigh against a finding of fair use - it was clear that Judge Alsup wasn't inclined to side with the company. The judge even scolded Oracle counsel Michael Jacobs when he first argued his case, pointing out that the company's legal team had insisted on a jury trial and that 'now we got their verdict and you want something else'." Someone must be having a bad day.

John Sullivan, executive director of the Free Software Foundation: "Were it grounded in reality, Oracle's claim that copyright law gives them proprietary control over any software that uses a particular functional API would be terrible for free software and programmers everywhere. It is an unethical and greedy interpretation created with the express purpose of subjugating as many computer users as possible, and is particularly bad in this context because it comes at a time when the sun has barely set on the free software community's celebration of Java as a language newly suitable for use in the free world. Fortunately, the claim is not yet reality, and we hope Judge Alsup will keep it that way." Couldn't agree more.

"Will the two screens be shown back to back? Will each screen last for 10 seconds each? Will each screen be unskippable? Yes, yes, and yes. An ICE spokesman tells me that the two screens will 'come up after the previews, once you hit the main movie/play button on the DVD. At which point the movie rating comes up, followed by the IPR Center screen shot for 10 secs and then the FBI/HSI anti-piracy warning for 10 secs as well. Neither can be skipped/fast forwarded through.'" That'll surely teach the pirates who don't buy DVDs or Blu-rays.

Apple has released OS X Lion 10.7.4, which, among several other bug fixes, plugs a hole in FileVault that affected some users. Nothing particularly interesting going on otherwise.

"Leo Apotheker's disastrous tenure as HP's CEO revealed a dysfunctional company struggling for direction after a decade of missteps and scandals. Can his replacement, Meg Whitman, fix the tech giant?" As a consumer, I wish they simplified their product line-up. They have the engineering skills - I just have no idea what I'm supposed to buy when I visit their site. The choice for the ZenBook late last year instead of anything HP had to offer was elementary.

"Dragging and dropping is a great way to get stuff done on your Mac, but DragonDrop makes it even better. DragonDrop lets you set down what you're dragging, leaving you free to find your destination without worrying about keeping the mouse button held down." Great utility (found via Daring Fireball), but shaking with the mouse is a horrible interaction - it's very intensive and error-prone (Aero Shake, anyone?). I'd love for that little drop container to be permanently visible (oh, and a Windows/Linux version would be awesome, of course).

Yeah, this is pretty awesome for us Dutch (all 16 million of them) here in this glorified swamp. Today, our new telecommunications act was accepted by the senate - usually a formality, but still a possible point of failure. Why is this news? Well, this new telecommunications act includes unconditional net neutrality, making us the second country in the world to codify unconditional net neutrality (after Chile). Mobile or regular, net neutrality for all. We're running ahead of Europe here, so hopefully the rest of the EU is going to just copy/paste this one.

"The Apache OpenOffice Project today announced the availability of Apache OpenOffice 3.4, the first release of OpenOffice under the governance of the Apache Software Foundation." I don't think OpenOffice could have ended up in a better foster home.

This is fun. The number one iOS carrier duking it out with the company behind the world's most popular smartphone operating system. Last month, Google's lead for the Android Open Source Project, Jean-Baptiste Queru, more or less blamed carriers (see comments) for Android's upgrade woes. Yesterday, AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson retaliated, blaming Google for the delays. And yes, Google already responded to that, too.

Tizen reached 1.0 only recently, but there's already a Tizen Conference going on - and during that conference, Samsung had a relatively barebones reference device running Tizen 1.0. The Handheld Blog has a seven minute video of the device in action, and while I'm very happy big players are investing in all these alternative platforms, I do have to wonder - how viable are they?

"ACTA is effectively dead, the European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda admitted Friday. An official spokesman said the 'political reality' was the fight was over. Neelie Kroes, speaking at a conference in Berlin, told delegates: 'We have recently seen how many thousands of people are willing to protest against rules which they see as constraining the openness and innovation of the Internet. This is a strong new political voice. And as a force for openness, I welcome it, even if I do not always agree with everything it says on every subject. 'We are now likely to be in a world without SOPA and without ACTA.'" That's how we roll, web.

This is absolutely fascinating. Steven Troughton-Smith has gotten his hands on one of the two early Android prototypes - the Google 'Sooner'. The Sooner is the BlackBerry-esque Google phone, which was supposed to be released first, followed by the much more advanced Google Dream (yup, what would eventually become the G1). Lots of high-res screenhots to get a good look at early Android. Update: Fascinating comment.

"The gains themselves are significant. We measured a 15% increase in our web browsing battery life, a nearly 30% increase in gaming battery life and an 18% increase in video playback battery life. Although Apple hasn't revised its battery life specs, the iPad 2,4 definitely lasts longer on a single charge than the original iPad 2." For the same $399 price (but no way to know beforehand which model you're getting). Alternative headline: why Apple owns the tablet space.

Daniel Hooper has come up with a number of tweaks to the iPad keyboard to make text entry better. Various websites are in awe, but the basic gist is something I've mentioned before: just implement a few arrow keys - default on many Android keyboards - and be done with it. Hooper uses gestures to perform the functions of the arrow keys, but they are non-discoverable and most likely error-prone (you'll hit the keys) - and thus more complex. Arrow keys. All I ask for.