"Keen observers may recall that Asus's debut of the Padfone back at Computex in May was accompanied by another, albeit less-trumpeted announcement. Specifically, the company promised a $199 netbook computer - the MeeGo-based Eee PC X101 - and this week that device took several steps closer to reality."

"Java SE 7 is officially released today! After nearly five years of collaboration within the worldwide Java community, Java Platform, Standard Edition is ready for download! It's an important step in Java’s evolution. Thanks to everyone who suggested features, reviewed specs, argued on mailing lists, talked about Java 7 at your JUG meeting, submitted bugs, wrote blogs and tweeted about #java7."

Two different graphs. Both happen to be published at Ars Technica, with one of them coming from a different source. Seemingly completely unrelated, but when you ponder the waterfall of recent lawsuit-related news, these two graphs suddenly tell all there is to tell. These two innocent little graphs illustrate why Apple is attacking Android so ferociously.

MeegoExperts reports that NVIDIA just released a set of video drivers enabling MeeGo to run on the numerous Tegra 2 tablets, such as the Advent Vega, Adam, Asus Transformer, Motorola Xoom and also the new range of Tegra 2 handsets. This will enable MeeGo and potentially other Linux distros using hardfp video drivers to compete in environment previously dominated exclusively by Android OS.

"Earlier this morning, the Windows Phone development team officially signed off on the release to manufacturing build of 'Mango' - the latest version of the Windows Phone operating system. This marks the point in the development process where we hand code to our handset and mobile operator partners to optimize Mango for their specific phone and network configurations. Here on the Windows Phone team, we now turn to preparing for the update process. The Mango update for current Windows Phone handsets will be ready this fall, and of course will come pre-installed on new Windows Phones." Myself and those three others who use a WP7 device rejoice.

"Mozilla today announced Boot to Gecko , a very ambitious project that aims to create a 'complete, standalone operating system for the open web'. This project's goal is to develop what seems like a ChromeOS-like operating system where all the apps are based on HTML5."

Petty Apple is petty. Amazon, Kobo, and others have changed their applications to conform to Apple's App Store rules, and if there's one word that describes the situation these booksellers are in, it's petty. Still, it's leading to good things: Kobo has announced it's going to bypass the App Store by writing an HTML5 e-reader for iOS (and thus, for other HTML5-capable mobile devices).

And the patent and lawsuit related news just keeps on coming. Sorry. Anywho, this one's a doozy. As we all know, Oracle - led by Larry Elison, who just so happens to be one of Steve Jobs' best friends, but this is of course entirely coincidental - is suing the crap out of Google over the use of Java in Android, claiming not only patent but also copyright infringement. Well, when Sun was still on its own, its CEO, Jonathan Schwarz, publicly and explicitly endorsed Android's use of Java in a blog post - a post that has since been removed by Oracle. But, as we all know, the internet never forgets.

Forbes' Timothy B. Lee has dug up a remarkable piece of history regarding IBM and Sun Microsystems that's an almost one-to-one copy of the situation between Microsoft and Android. Thirty years ago, IBM knocked on Sun's door. We've got some patents, IBM said. Please pay up.

We at OSNews would like to extend our thoughts and sympathies to the victims of the horrible events that took place in Norway, yesterday. There really are no words to describe what has transpired, and as such, I won't even attempt to do so. Suffice to say, OSNews will be silent until after the weekend. I have lost my interest in writing and quibbling about stupid ones and zeros, at least for now. "No one will bomb us to silence, no one will shoot us to silence, no one will ever scare us from being Norway."

"Lightweight Portable Security (LPS), created by USA's Department of Defense, is a small Linux live CD focusing on privacy and security, for this reason, it boots from a CD and executes from RAM, providing a web browser, a file manager and some interesing tools. LPS-Public turns an untrusted system into a trusted network client." Complete with backdoor so they can spy on all of us I'm sure!1!!

"Now everyone can use Google's Go language on the company's App Engine cloud platform as the company has announced that the Go runtime, which has been in development since it was announced at Google I/O, is now generally available."

"If you thought Lodsys was done making a spectacle of itself and dragging app developers to court, you were sorely mistaken. The king of the patent trolls has amended its original complaint against mobile devs, removing one company, but adding five new ones - all of them big names. Rovio, Electronic Arts, Square Enix, Atari, and Take-Two Interactive have been added to the list of defendants in the suit filed back in May." All part of the patent system Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM fight to maintain.

"Ailing Nokia on Thursday surrendered its lead in the global smartphone market to rival Apple and shed more market share as it reported a steep net loss for the second quarter. Nokia's outloook for its handset business to be profitable in the current quarter brought some relief to its battered share price but analysts doubted it would dispel fears about the future of the onetime cellphone leviathan. Nokia, still the world's largest phone maker by volume, has failed to come up with an attractive smartphone offering to compete with Apple's iPhone, Research In Motion's BlackBerry and a wide array of handsets using Google's Android software. Nokia said it sold 16.7 million smartphones in the quarter, falling behind Apple's 20.3 million iPhones." Hard to believe Windows Phone 7 - as great and fresh product I find it - can turn the tide for Nokia. Still, every phone maker today owes pretty much its entire business to Nokia (and Motorola).