The more I look at what HP has had to say about webOS; the more I think the project's as dead as a doornail.

When HP announced it was releasing webOS to open source on Friday afternoon, it surely didn't kill it, but it left the operating system badly wounded with few prospects for success.

The idiom 'don't judge a book by its cover' can be extended to 'don't judge a computer game by its graphics'. Whilst the games featured in this article have extremely basic graphics, they have many redeeming qualities beyond evoking fond memories of the early days of computer gaming. Text-based games are often forgotten and neglected in the Linux press. However, there are some real ASCII gems out there waiting to be explored which are immensely addictive and great fun to play.

Google Chrome offers more protection against online attacks than any other mainstream browser, according to an evaluation that compares exploit mitigations, malicious link detection, and other safety features offered in Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox.

Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister writes in favor of new programming languages given the difficulty of upgrading existing, popular languages. 'Whenever a new programming language is announced, a certain segment of the developer population always rolls its eyes and groans that we have quite enough to choose from already,' McAllister writes. 'But once a language reaches a certain tipping point of popularity, overhauling it to include support for new features, paradigms, and patterns is easier said than done.' PHP 6, Perl 6, Python 3, ECMAScript 4 -- 'the lesson from all of these examples is clear: Programming languages move slowly, and the more popular a language is, the slower it moves. It is far, far easier to create a new language from whole cloth than it is to convince the existing user base of a popular language to accept radical changes.'

Just when I thought the company I once admired greatly couldn't sink any lower. "Over the last two years, Apple has been engaged in vicious legal battles over smartphone patents, many of which are aimed at squelching (or squeezing money out of) manufacturers of devices running Android. And now, for some reason, it has given valuable patents to a patent troll - which is using them to sue many of the top technology companies in the world."

Think companies only use patents to block competition? Heck no, they apparently also use them to hinder the w3c standards process. As Opera's Haavard details, Apple is yet again using patents (or even just patent applications) to hinder or block the development of open standards. Sickening.

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.

Heck yes. This is one fine way to toast the weekend, ain't it? HP has just announced it's going to release webOS under an open source license. While the company will cease making hardware for the platform for now, it will continue development on it together with the open source community. Hey Access, you listening? Update: More good news: HP's CEO just told The Verge that HP will be putting webOS on hardware after all - tablets!

"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... I have finally gotten around to finishing the Haiku tutorial I set out to complete over a year ago. I was hoping to have it done sooner, but I decided to then prolong graduation for another year. However, my thesis project has been a rocking success, and you can finally see the fruits of my labors. This production should be incorporated into the project as official tutorial material." Okay so yeah it's a tad bit cheesy, but heck, it's BeOS, so shut up.

"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.

Yesterday, Microsoft finally unveiled all the details regarding its Windows Store, which will be the default way to distribute Metro applications on Windows 8. Most of the details are all pretty standard and mirror those of other stores, but there's one interesting twist that is sure to make a lot of you happy: Microsoft has made special exceptions for open source software.

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.