"Microsoft Corp. today announced record fourth-quarter revenue of $17.37 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2011, an 8% increase from the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $6.17 billion, $5.87 billion, and $0.69 per share, which represented increases of 4%, 30%, and 35%, respectively, when compared with the prior year period. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, Microsoft reported record revenue of $69.94 billion, a 12% increase from the prior year. Operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share for the year were $27.16 billion, $23.15 billion, and $2.69, which represented increases of 13%, 23%, and 28%, respectively, when compared with the prior year."

Today, the technology world is gripped by what can only be described as a dirty war between iOS on one side, and Android on the other. While the parties in this war fight it out in the US court system, the web has latched onto this conflict like a starved leach to a nice juicy ankle, and this focus on just iOS and Android has had a rather unpleasant side effect. This effect was subtle at first, but now, it's everywhere. Yes, if you were to believe the web, iOS and/or Android invented everything when it comes to mobile operating systems. I will have none of that, and my PDA collection begs to differ too.

Phoronix has conducted some preliminary benchmarks, comparing Debian GNU/Hurd to Debian GNU/Linux. "There was only a handful of tests that could be successfully run under Debian GNU/Hurd and in those results the numbers were generally close, though Debian GNU/Linux was running about 4% faster in some and with the MP3 encoding the Linux OS was nearly 20% faster. Debian GNU/Hurd is an interesting project but for now its support is still in shambles, the hardware support is vastly outdated, and there is also no SMP support at this time. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how Debian GNU/Hurd turns out for the 7.0 Wheezy milestone."

"Scientists have taken the next major step toward quantum computing, which will use quantum mechanics to revolutionize the way information is processed. Quantum computers will capitalize on the mind-bending properties of quantum particles to perform complex calculations that are impossible for today's traditional computers. Using high magnetic fields, Susumu Takahashi, assistant professor in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and his colleagues managed to suppress decoherence, which is one of the key stumbling blocks in quantum computing."

Introduction not necessary. Read it.

As widely anticipated, Apple's new major OSX release is available this morning, download-only, for $29.99 USD in the Mac App Store. There's a quick copy and paste job of the feature list after the jump. Also as expected, there's a new, Sandy Bridge-based Macbook Air. Update: A reader pointed out John Siracusa's Lion review at Ars.

"Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2011 third quarter ended June 25, 2011. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $28.57 billion and record quarterly net profit of $7.31 billion, or $7.79 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $15.70 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.25 billion, or $3.51 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 41.7 percent compared to 39.1 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter's revenue. The Company sold 20.34 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 142 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.25 million iPads during the quarter, a 183 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 3.95 million Macs during the quarter, a 14 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.54 million iPods, a 20 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter."

"Aaron Swartz, a 24-year-old programmer and online political activist, has been indicted in Boston on charges that he stole more than four million documents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and JSTOR, an archive of scientific journals and academic papers." The weird part? JSTOR dropped all claims against him, because "they've suffered no loss or damage, and asked the government not to prosecute". Weird.

For the first time, Google has opened its mouth against the patent trolling by Apple (and by proxy, Microsoft) against Android manufacturers. By way of Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman, the company took stand against the legal actions, and stated they aren't too worried. If need be, Google will ensure HTC doesn't lose the patent case against Apple.

So, there's a bit of a hubbub going on at Engadget, Daring Fireball, and other Apple blogs, about a Galaxy Tab case made by Anymode, a company with ties to Samsung (the story came from 9to5mac). It is claimed the case is a copy of Apple's Smart Cover. Of course, those of us without any special affinity for one single company remember full-well that Apple itself took the idea for the Smart Cover from InCase, while InCase's design was a massive improvement over Apple's original iPad case. Lo and behold, Anymode's case resembles the InCase design much more closely than it resembles the Apple design (no magnets). Weird that Engadget would leave InCase out of the picture (no surprise when it comes to Daring Fireball, of course, even though I pointed it out to Gruber), even though they reported on it when the Smart Cover was announced. Anywho, Samsung already denied that this product received the 'Designed for Samsung Mobile'-logo, and Anymode has removed it from sales. None have been sold.

InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp provides an in-depth tutorial on how he rooted and upgraded his Motorola Cliq XT, one of many Android phones made infamous for not receiving further Android updates beyond 1.5. 'It turned out to be quite an odyssey, with twists and turns I describe here in order to help those who wish to embark on a similar journey,' Yegulalp writes. 'Was it worth the trouble? Yes, in the sense that learning how to jailbreak your own phone is a valuable skill, and I got much more functionality out of the Cliq, when I was expecting to simply junk it. '

In Taiwan, Google recently stopped showcasing paid applications in its marketplace owing to the continuing fight that arose merely because of the change in the return policy, when it was dramatically reduced to just fifteen minutes from 24 hours. In related news, "Apple has rolled out a new refund policy in the Taiwanese versions of its App Store, Mac App Store, and iBookstore. The changes, reported by IDG News this morning, give app buyers the option to get a refund on paid applications and e-books within seven days of buying them from one of Apple's digital storefronts."

"Back in the 80s, the Commodore C-64 had an intelligent floppy drive, the 1541, i.e. an external unit that had its own CPU and everything. The C-64 would send commands to the drive which in turn would then execute them on its own, reading files, and such, then send the data to the C-64, all over a propriatory serial cable. The manual for the 1541 mentioned, besides the commands for reading and writing files, that one would read and write to its internal memory space. Even more exciting was that one could download 6502 code into the drive's memory and have it executed there. This got me hooked and I wanted to play with that - execute code on the drive. Of course, there was no documention on what code could be executed there, and which functions it could use." Very interesting. I'm most interested in how he describes others taking his work, and making it better. This would be impossible today, thanks to Microsoft, Apple, and other patent trolls.

"The Lookout Security Team has identified a new variant of DroidDream Light found in the Android Market, which Google already removed from the Android Market. Fortunately the malware was available in the Android Market for a short period of time so the number of downloads was limited to 1000 - 5000. This is the third iteration of malware likely created by the authors of DroidDream; the first was discovered in early March (the original DroidDream) and the second in early June (DroidDream Light)."