Not a good day for Apple. First, the Australian court has lifted the Australian sales ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Second the Motorola has won an injunction against Apple's 3G products in Germany. What else is there to say at this point? Software and design patents still suck, even if karma is a female dog.

"Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other international leaders urged countries and private businesses on Thursday to fight increasing efforts to restrict access to the Internet by repressive governments and even some democratic ones. Opening a two-day conference on digital freedom here sponsored by Google and the Dutch government, Mrs. Clinton warned that restrictions on the Internet threatened not only basic freedoms and human rights, but also international commerce and the free flow of information that increasingly makes it possible." Uhm, Mrs. Clinton... SOPA...?

"Google's Android operating system has undergone a pretty incredible metamorphosis in the three short years since it debuted on the T-Mobile G1. Think about it: three years, eight major releases. Eight. To put that in perspective, there have only been ten major consumer-grade releases of Windows (give or take, depending on how you count) in over twenty-five years of retail availability. You could make a pretty convincing argument that no consumer technology in history has evolved as quickly as the smartphone, and Android has been at the very center of that evolution. With the release of Android 4.0 - Ice Cream Sandwich - on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus, we wanted to take a look back through the years at how Andy Rubin's brainchild has evolved into the industry titan that it is today. What's changed? What has (sometimes stubbornly) stayed the same?" Fantastic article.

So, Marco Arment, John Gruber, and MG Siegler (has anyone ever seen them in the same room?) all jumped on a quote from Eric Schmidt which was supposedly very arrogant and proves Schmidt knows no developer likes Android. The joke's on them, though, since none of them actually bothered to watch the source video to verify Schmidt was quoted properly. As it turns out, he was not, as Julian Yap notes. Update: Arment, Siegler, and Gruber have posted updates.

"Apple could face disruption to its iPad sales in China after a court rejected its claim to own the iPad trademark in the country and a rival sought to halt sales of the tablet device in two Chinese cities. The developments are the latest in a long-running dispute between Apple and Proview Technology (Shenzhen), a struggling Taiwanese-owned company that registered trademarks for the name IPAD in many countries long before Apple conceived its smash hit tablet computer." Apple is clearly copying from this innovative Chinese company. If Apple fanatics are actually consistent (*), they would condemn Apple for this clear case of theft.

"The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in a case that raises a fundamental question: whether a physician can infringe a patent merely by using scientific research to inform her treatment decisions. Unfortunately, this issue was barely mentioned in Wednesday's arguments. A number of influential organizations had filed briefs warning of the dire consequences of allowing medical patents, but their arguments were largely ignored in the courtroom. Instead, everyone seemed to agree that medical patents were legal in general, and focused on the narrow question of whether the specific patent in the case was overly broad." One day, American policy makers are going to wake up and realise they've made their country irrelevant. The amount of stupidity American policy makers exhibit never ceases to amaze me.

I guess this is something many Americans hope would happen in the United States: the Dutch competition watchdog has raided offices of T-Mobile, Vodafone and KPN, the three Dutch carriers. The three carriers are accused of illegal price fixing, something they've already been found guilty of about ten years ago.

In a recent site update, CNET Download.com listings have begun redirecting product download links for popular freeware and opensource applications to their own "downloader and installer" utility which bundles a number of adware components alongside the requested application and changes the users' homepage and default search engine to Microsoft Bing. Freeware authors are sending CNet cease and desist orders demanding virgin download links, something affected open source developers may or may not be able to do due to FOSS license terms.

"The Software Freedom Law Center has announced that it has filed comments with the US Librarian of Congress, asking for an exemption to the DMCA, so that users can legally control their own devices. Specifically, SFLC 'asks that the Librarian of Congress exempt from 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)'s prohibition on the circumvention of access control technologies, for the period 2012-2015, computer programs that enable the installation and execution of lawfully obtained software on a personal computing device, where circumvention is performed by or at the request of the device's owner'. That's legalese for 'When you buy a device, you ought to be able to control what goes on it and be allowed to run legal software of your choosing on your own device'."

"In Mozilla's recently released 2010 annual report, the foundation indicates that 86% and 84% of royalty revenue came from one contract in 2009 and 2010, respectively. Mozilla separately confirms that Google is its largest contract." Evan Niu at Motley Fool then estimates that of Mozilla's last year royalty revenue of $121.1 million, $101.7 million came from Google. The article speculates that Google might eventually kill Firefox by withdrawing its financial support.

There are a lot of browsers these days, some being bloated with features, others serving the bare minimum of web browsing tasks. Marco Peerboom began developing his minimalist web browser xxxterm for OpenBSD in 2010. Within a year the browser became popular enough in the OpenBSD community to find its ways to major Linux repositories. And here's why.

Patch up warmly this winter if you're running Java. That's the advice from .NET shop Microsoft, which reckons Oracle's platform is the single biggest target for hackers. Java proved the single most popular target in the 12-month period to the end of June, according to Microsoft's latest Security Intelligence Report has found here Running Java as a Web-browser Plugin is much more dangerous than Flash, and should disable the Java Applet Plugin.

Valid Windows NTFS folder names, rogue antivirus products, dual-boot Windows 7/Windows XP systems - find out how much you really know about everyone's favorite whipping post OS by taking the Windows IQ Test.

And yet another ruling. In April this year, Apple sued Samsung over several design patents and a single software patent regarding various Galaxy smartphones and tablets. Late last night, US District Judge Lucy Koh denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction against Samsung. The actual ruling, though, is a mixed bag - Samsung is found infringing (but it's a "close question") on Apple's design and software patents (no real patents in play here, folks), but Apple has failed completely in providing any form of proof that Samsung is causing irreparable harm to Apple.