Aruba Networks, which provided and maintained the wireless network for last week's Black Hat USA 2011 conference, today provided some interesting statistics around the network's use. Apple devices were most prevalent at 43.3 percent of all devices (28.4 percent alone for iOS iPad and iPhone, with another 14.9 percent running OS X). Linux users composed 35 percent of the total, while Windows users represented 21.8 percent. While the majority of attendees used the Black Hat PSK network, almost 200 attendees utilized the PEAP/EAP-TLS "secured" network. Aruba captured a huge amount of security events, the most interesting of which were IP spoofing, AP spoofing, Power save DoS attacks and Block ACK attacks. Talk about a hostile environment.

The beleaguered handset maker Nokia is setting itself up for what it hopes will be a lean and mean relaunch in the U.S. later this year: it has finally admitted that it will not launch its newest N9 device--the first and possibly only one based on the MeeGo platform--and that it plans to end sales of its Symbian-based devices as well as low-end Series 40 handsets, as it prepares for a generation of devices it is developing using Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 platform.

"'Terrified' by Amazon's Kindle e-reader and discounted e-book pricing, five major publishers allegedly acted together to increase e-book prices and compel Amazon to abandon its discount sales strategy. That's the gist of a new class action antitrust lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California by the Hagens Berman litigation group. The five book sellers named in the suit are HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, Penguin Group Inc., and Simon & Schuster Inc, plus one more defendant: Apple. 'Fortunately for the publishers, they had a co-conspirator as terrified as they were over Amazon's popularity and pricing structure, and that was Apple,' charges Hagen Berman attorney Steve Berman. 'We intend to prove that Apple needed a way to neutralize Amazon's Kindle before its popularity could challenge the upcoming introduction of the iPad, a device Apple intended to compete as an e-reader.'" I'm starting to see a pattern here.

Okay, the court case between Apple and Samsung started in The Netherlands today, over Samsung's various Android devices. The day has been pretty uneventful - up until just now. Andreas Udo de Haes, editor at WebWereld.nl, present in the court room, just tweeted that Samsung is accusing Apple of 'tampering' with the evidence - they claim it has been Photoshopped. The story is ongoing, more sure to follow. Update: The tampering of photos will be fully covered tomorrow. Update II: The general gist is that Apple supposedly manipulated photos of the iPad and Galaxy Tab to make the similarities stand out. This is a pretty harsh claim, I'm dying to see the evidence Samsung has for this one.

"Emulators for playing older games are immensely popular online, with regular arguments breaking out over which emulator is best for which game. Today we present another point of view from a gentleman who has created the Super Nintendo emulator bsnes. He wants to share his thoughts on the most important part of the emulation experience, accuracy."

InfoWorld's Neil McAllister questions whether slowing product development, legal woes, and rising bureaucracy will signal trying times ahead for Google. "With Google's rapid growth have come new challenges. It faces intense competition in all of its major markets, even as it enters new ones. Its newer initiatives have often struggled to reach profitability. It must answer multiple ongoing legal challenges, to say nothing of antitrust probes in the United States and Europe. Privacy advocates accuse it of running roughshod over individual rights. As a result, it's becoming more cautious and risk-averse. But worst of all, as it grows ever larger and more cumbersome, it may be losing its appeal to the highly educated, impassioned workers that power its internal knowledge economy." Note from Thom: Are Apple's Microsoft's Google's days behind it? I don't think you can call yourself a technology giant without a ' is dying'-article.

KDE is working on some interesting stuff. Wayland support for one, but they're also going to work on the frameworks for... KDE 5.0. Yes, I'd say KDE 4 still is far, far from done, but 5.0 is already on the horizon. This time around though, they're not going to pull a KDE 4.0, since this is mostly going to be about lower-level changes.

And yes, another item, right away. I'm on the hunt for a mini-ITX motherboard for use in a living room HTPC, and considering there's so much choice out there, I'm a little confused. Then I realised I have you people to help me out, and, well, one thing led to another.

There are two reasons for this news item. First, I want this issue resolved. Second, it allows me to post the most awesome picture ever and ever. The story is simple. Mojang, the company behind the immensely successful Minecraft, is working on a second game called 'Scrolls', which has been in development for a while now. As it turns out, Bethesda has sent a cease and desist notice to Mojang - they claim 'Scrolls' infringes on 'The Elder Scrolls' trademark. As a fan of both Minecraft and Bethesda, this is just silly.

Since we're on a CLI kick today, here's an "attempt at presenting some of the most important guidelines for CLI design."

Mona OS 0.3.4 has been released. Screenshots (1 | (2 | (3 | (4). Added Facebook application written in Scheme, Ported w3m text browser. Now you can tweet and check Gmail from Mona OS., Ported mg (Emacs clone), Kernel and core components become more stable and faster, New simple shell written in Scheme. They're considering porting webkit on the next release.

Linux on the desktop seems to be the perennial second class citizen, but with Adobe's upcoming 64 Bit Flash 11 beta, Linux is getting a seat at the adults' table. It's being released for Windows, Mac, and Linux simultaneously.

A couple of days ago I read a blog post by Stephen Ramsay, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a Fellow at the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. In it, he mentions that he has all but abandoned the GUI and finds the command line to be "faster, easier to understand, easier to integrate, more scalable, more portable, more sustainable, more consistent, and many, many times more flexible than even the most well-thought-out graphical apps." I found this very thought-provoking, because, like Ramsay, I spend a lot of time thinking about "The Future of Computing," and I think that the CLI, an interface from the past, might have a place in the interface of the future.

The Google-Microsoft patent war of words is continuing. Yesterday, Google (rightfully so, in my book) accused Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle partaking in an organised patent attack against Android, instead of competing on merit, claiming that they bought up Novell's and Nortel's patents solely to attack Android and its device makers. Microsoft struck back, claiming Google was offered to join in on the bids for the Novell patents, but rejected the offer. Google has now responded to this accusation - and to make matters even more confusing, Microsoft responded back. A public shouting match between two powerful parties? Count me in!