Apple Reports Bizarre First Quarter Results

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?

Dutch Court Obliterates Apple’s Appeal, Tab 10.1 Not Banned

Summer last year, the Dutch courts ruled that Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 did not infringe on Apple's community designs, and as such, would not be banned from The Netherlands. This was a "quick case", and as such, Apple had the right to appeal and turn this into a "full case". Apple did, but I now think they really wish they hadn't - the Court of Appeal in The Hague has pretty much ripped Apple a new one , and upheld the District Court's ruling.

The Rust Compiler 0.1 Released

"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."

CPU Startup Combines CPU+DRAM – and a Whole Bunch of Crazy

"The CPU design firm Venray Technology announced a new product design this week that it claims can deliver enormous performance benefits by combining CPU and DRAM on to a single piece of silicon. We spent some time earlier this fall discussing the new TOMI (Thread Optimized Multiprocessor) with company CTO Russell Fish, but while the idea is interesting; its presentation is marred by crazy conceptualizing and deeply suspect analytics."

SOPA, PIPA Shelved, Internet’s Defeat Postponed

Supposedly we've won today. Both the PROTECT-IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House of Representatives have been shelved by their respective sponsors. However, these acts have been shelved before, and the bags of money sent to DC didn't suddenly devalue, so I'm sure the next SOPA is being written as we speak. What did make me happy, though, was Neelie Kroes: the EU commissioner for the digital agenda has unambiguously distanced herself from SOPA, which she calls "bad legislation". Obama, the next time you want to make a statement with teeth, just wait for Kroes to do it for you.

US Government Shuts Down MegaUpload.com, Arrests Four

And bam, MegaUpload.com is no more. The FBI has arrested four people behind the popular file-sharing website, and is looking for three more, in a worlwide investigation into the website. Apparently, the site is super-dangerous - the indictment behind the arrests minces no words. As a countermeasure, people claiming to be from Anonymous took down the websites of ViaCom and the Department of Justice. Update: Ars has analysed the indictment. It's pretty damning, but does have a few weird odds and ends. Update II: And more and more sites are falling by Anonymous' hands. Largest operation in their history.

Apple’s Education Event: On the Road to Vendor Lock-in

Apple's education event just ended, and just as Ars Technica said, Apple announced better support for textbooks, as well as a textbook authoring tool. The textbook authoring tool is heavily inspired by Keynote and Pages, and hence, I already know it's going to be top-notch and very pleasant to use. In addition, the company also repositioned iTunes U as a Blackboard competitor. As great as all these new tools are, several large red flags went up in my mind: I remember what it was like being the only student who didn't use Windows. Update: "Any e-textbook author that wants access to the iPad-toting masses must make his or her work an exclusive to iBooks 2."

Whited00r Brings iOS5 Features to Older Devices

Custom ROMs on mobile devices have been a staple-mate of the mobile industry since the Windows Mobile PocketPC CE Phone Edition Whatever days. Android took over here, with a lively custom ROM scene, allowing you to tailor your device to your own needs - including updates to operating system versions your device maker of carrier doesn't allow. Custom iOS ROMs, on the other hand, are pretty damn rare, so it's interesting to see a custom iOS ROM that brings several iOS 5 features to devices that can't actually run iOS 5. Welcome to Whited00r.

OSNews Blacked Out for 24 Hours in SOPA Protest

...and we're back. Like so many other sites on the web, OSNews joined the worldwide protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT-IP Act, which threaten to end free speech, economic innovation, privacy, and the free exchange of information on the web. I don't wish to waste too many words on our participation, so consider this item as a sort of comment lightening rod to make sure that when the next story is posted, we can focus fully on its topic. Update: DC seems to be getting the message the internet sent today.

Google Contractors Vandalised OpenStreetMap Data

Fascinating. After the whole Mocality story, we were greeted by another story of Google misconduct. This time, it's OpenStreetMap, which claims that users connecting from the same Google IP addresses in India as in the Mocality incident are vandalising OpenStreetMap data. Google has confirmed to ReadWriteWeb that two contractors acting on their own behalf while on the Google network were responsible. Another, less serious instance of Google misconduct, perhaps, but OpenStreetMap's handling of this issue does smell fishy.

Apple To Announce Tools, Platform for Textbook Publishing

"Apple is slated to announce the fruits of its labor on improving the use of technology in education at its special media event on Thursday, January 19. While speculation has so far centered on digital textbooks, sources close to the matter have confirmed to Ars that Apple will announce tools to help create interactive e-books - the 'GarageBand for e-books', so to speak - and expand its current platform to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users." While the textbook industry needs some massive disruption, am I the only one who thinks a solution over which Apple has total editorial control and which is limited entirely to Apple PCs and iOS devices is a really stupid idea? That's like going from Scylla to Charybdis.

Windows 8 Server Gets New File System: ReFS

Along with Storage Spaces coming in Windows 8, ReFS forms the foundation of storage on Windows for the next decade or more. Key features of the two when used together include: metadata integrity with checksums; integrity streams providing optional user data integrity; allocate on write transactional model for robust disk updates; large volume, file and directory sizes; storage pooling and virtualization making file system creation and management easy; data striping for performance and redundancy for fault tolerance; disk scrubbing for protection against latent disk errors; resiliency to corruptions with "salvage" for maximum volume availability in all cases; and shared storage pools across machines for additional failure tolerance and load balancing.

Copyright King: Why the “I Have a Dream” Speech Still Isn’t Free

"Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech is considered one of the most recognizable collection of words in American history. It's the rhetorical equivalent of a national treasure or a national park. The National Park Service inscribed it on the Lincoln Memorial and the Library of Congress put it into its National Recording Registry. So we might hold it to be self evident that it can be spread freely. Not exactly. Any unauthorized usage of the speech and a number of other speeches by King - including in PBS documentaries - is a violation of American law. You'd be hard pressed to find a good complete video version on the web, and it's not even to be found in the new digital archive of the King Center's website. If you want to watch the whole thing, legally, you'll need to get the $20 DVD." I'm probably too young and too non-American to really fully grasp just how important Mr King was to a segregated America, but the fact that his influential and world-changing speeches are locked up because of copyright, as well as the fact that EMI is actually actively pursuing its copyright, is downright insane. If anybody ever needed even more proof the content industry is a vile, rotting, stinking and utterly putrid clump of pure, concentrated evil, this is it. Absolutely unbelievable.

Fragmentation Is Not the End of Android

"The fragmentation of Android is very real and very problematic for end users, developers, mobile operators, device manufacturers, and Google. However fragmentation does not mean Android is going to 'die' or 'fail' as some seem to think. On the contrary I think we can count on Android playing a significant role in our world for a long, long time. I also am confident that Google has already lost control of Android and has zero chance of regaining control. This post explains why I'm so confident about this."