The Contiki operating system allows tiny wireless battery-operated devices to communicate using IPv6 - a concept known as the Internet of Things. The Contiki team has just released Contiki 2.5, which brings ContikiRPL, the new default low-power IPv6 routing protocol, and ContikiMAC, which allows nodes to keep their radios off more than 99% of the time yet communicate with each other using wireless multi-hop networking. The Contiki Wiki has more information on Contiki.

"Like for the previous survey, there aren't much answers anymore after about one week, so I think it's time to thank everyone and close the survey, in order to publish the results along with some interpretation." As before, everything is released under Creative Commons CC0 license.

More news on Windows 8. This time around, Gabe Aul, a director of program management in Windows, blogged about the changes Microsoft has made to Windows 8's boot process. The results are impressive - a boot time not much slower than waking from sleep on current Windows 7 and Mac OS X machines. This is, of course, a vital component of getting Windows NT ready for tablets.

The German court in Duesseldorf has just ruled that the injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 will remain in effect, hereby contradicting the Dutch courts which threw out all of Apple's claims. This limited injunction only covers Germany, and is based on a Community Design; the rest of Europe is not affected.Update IV: We finally have some more information from the courts, as well as a short response from Samsung. Big small reveal? The judge didn't handle the iPad at all - he only handled the community design. Read on for more. Also, older updates are in the 'read more' as well.

"The new chief executive of MediaNews Group, publisher of the Denver Post and 50 other newspapers, said it was 'a dumb idea' for the nation's second-largest newspaper chain to sign up with copyright troll Righthaven. The Denver-based publisher's year-long copyright infringement litigation deal with Righthaven is terminating at month's end."

A new chapter in the lost iPhone 5 prototype saga. Sergio Calderon, the man who claimed he was intimidated into allowing police officers to search his house (and, as it turns out, these people were Apple employees who didn't identify themselves as such), is talking to an attorney about this case. In addition, the SFPD has launched an investigation into the case to find out if somebody crossed any legal bounds. Update: More details here.

Microsoft has announced today that it has reached patent licensing agreements with Acer and ViewSonic that cover Android smart phones and tablets. These companies join HTC in paying Microsoft for each deployed Android device. Microsoft's strategic approach to Android is very different from Apple's. Where Apple is attempting to stop or otherwise delay the deployment of Android devices Microsoft is lining their coffers with royalties paid by OEMs for the privilege of shipping them. It's a strategy that is already generating more profit for Microsoft the its less then successful Windows Phone platform and could contribute dramatically to Microsofts bottom line going forward.

Ah, so that's what Google's masterplan is regarding the defense of Android against the patent trolls. HTC has just launched a few more defensive patent lawsuits against Apple, and while that's by far no longer newsworthy, it is this one time. You see, HTC is suing Apple over 9 patents that have only very recently been transferred (namely, a week ago) from Google to HTC. The patents come from Palm, Motorola, and others. This means Google is giving away its patents to Android device makers. Nice of them.

"The typical way to increase capacity on a network is to add more infrastructure, but that's an expensive undertaking. It can also be time consuming and frustrating for network operators who have to get permission to put up new towers, or dig up the ground to lay cables. This is especially true in heavily populated areas where more antennas and traffic disruption are not what anyone wants to see. Rice University has come up with a groundbreaking solution, though. One that promises to at least double the capacity of existing networks with the addition of minimal extra hardware. That solution is full duplex wireless communication. This isn't a new concept, but one that hasn't been possible until now due to the inherent obstacles it throws up."

Sources close to Canonical and IBM are telling me that Ubuntu may soon be certified on IBM's System p mini-computers and blades and System z mainframes.

"There's confusion - way too much confusion - about my status at TechCrunch and TechCrunch's status at Aol after last week's announcement that I was launching a venture fund, partially backed by Aol. The multiple conflicting statements made by Aol on Thursday and Friday of last week are evidence of that confusion, but that isn't the core issue. My employment relationship with TechCrunch and Aol is not the core issue. The only issue being discussed at this point, the only issue that matters, is TechCrunch editorial independence and self determination. Regardless of my role, if any, going forward. I believe that Aol should be held to their promise when they acquired us to give TechCrunch complete editorial independence." I honestly don't care about TechCrunch all that much (more ads, Siegler, and nonsense than actual content), but still - raise your hand if you're surprised by this. AOL is pure, concentrated evil.

"The hack of Dutch certificate authority DigiNotar already bore many similarities to the break-in earlier this year that occurred at a reseller for CA Comodo. Bogus certificates were issued for webmail systems, which were in turn used to intercept Web traffic in Iran. Another similiarity has since emerged: the perpetrator of the earlier attacks is claiming responsibility for the DigiNotar break-in. Calling himself ComodoHacker, the hacker claims that DigiNotar is not the only certificate authority he has broken into. He says that he has broken into GlobalSign, and a further four more CAs that he won't name. He also claimed that at one time he had access to StartCom."

Thanks to the hard work of Google Summer of Code student Mike Smith, a set of early VirtualBox guest addition drivers are now available for the Haiku operating system. Information, source code, and a binary package can be found on the haiku-development mailing list.

"andLinux is a Linux distro with a difference. It's based on a port of the the Linux kernel to Windows coupled with an X server and other software. In short, it allows you to run Linux software seamlessly on the Windows desktop without recompiling it or using a virtual machine."