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.

"The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance. In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned. The FBI general counsel's office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly." I no longer know what to say. You will be monitored by The State. If you oppose such monitoring, you're a terrorist.

While it's technically a regression, and while it will surely make those of us who remember having to install DVD support on Linux from third-party repositories smile, it's still a major change and a sign of things to come: Windows 8 will ship without support for DVD and Blu-ray playback.

It's here: the GIMP 2.8. Its biggest feature is something that many, many people have been requesting for as long as I can remember: single-window mode. No longer do you have to fiddle with a gazillion palette and dialog windows (unless you choose to do so, of course). Great work by the team.

Theo de Raadt has announced the release of OpenBSD 5.1. The OpenBSD 5.1 release page has a detailed list of all changes and improvements. As always, I would love for someone to write proper items about OpenBSD releases - it's outside my interests and cursory glances don't do it justice.

"EdX is a joint partnership between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University to offer online learning to millions of people around the world. EdX will offer Harvard and MIT classes online for free. Through this partnership, the institutions aim to extend their collective reach to build a global community of online learners and to improve education for everyone." They really have nothing to lose here. People who want to go to MIT or Harvard will go regardless, and people who otherwise would have no interest in them may be exposed to them. Smart move.

"The European Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that application programming interfaces and other functional characteristics of computer software are not eligible for copyright protection. Users have the right to examine computer software in order to clone its functionality - and vendors cannot override these user rights with a license agreement, the court said." Bravo. A landmark ruling, for sure. If the US courts decide in favour of Oracle in the Google-Oracle case, Europe would instantly become an even friendlier place for technology companies.

"It's never the offence; it's the cover-up. And if there's one thing that the last few years have taught us, it's that the suggestion of a 'rogue' worker having acted alone to do something which led to an intrusion is never correct. There has to be a failure of management oversight as well. That's why Google is in such hot water now over the revelations contained in the Federal Communications Commission report into what went wrong with its Street View Wi-Fi data collection program." What a total and utter surprise: company does bad stuff, tries to cover it up. Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the world who grasps that companies - they are not to be trusted. This really isn't rocket science, people.

"Firefox is receiving yet another interface overhaul. Dubbed Australis, the new UI (and UX) will span, embrace, and unify the desktop, tablet, and smartphone versions of Firefox." I like the Metro one - very curious to see what Chrome has up its sleeve for Metro.