George Hotz is in the middle of what could be a long, punishing legal battle with Sony, and his money is running out. "Media, I need your help. This is the first time I have ever asked. Please, if you support this cause, help me out and spread the word," he wrote on his newest blog entry. "I want, by the time this goes to trial, to have Sony facing some of the hardest hitting lawyers in the business. Together, we can help fix the system." Ars Technica contacted Hotz's lawyer to make sure this plea for cash was legitimate, and attorney Stewart Kellar confirmed that yes, the money raised goes to Hotz's legal fund to fight Sony. It also appears Hotz has friends with deep pockets; the first round of fundraising is already over, and more lawyers will be hired for Hotz's defense."

The 0.7 version of the Visopsys desktop operating system has been released. "More than four years in the making, this is a major new release offering an updated look and a number of new features, including JPEG image support, image resizing, 64-bit disk support, UDF (DVD) filesystem support, and GPT partition table support, as well as lots of new icons, wallpaper images, and file browsing functionality. New administrative applications and functionality have been added, and the ATA/IDE driver has been enhanced, including the ability to better support backwards-compatible SATA controllers. FPU context saving has been improved, and a number of tweaks and bug fixes are also included."

Okay, source material is more than 10 years old so this is not exactly news, but I think it's interesting anyway. This BeOS promotional video is a good reminder of how powerful modern hardware truly is, what hardware should be needed for light computer use, and how laughable modern desktop&mobile OSs are as far as performance is concerned. Here are part 1 and part 2 on YouTube.

"AT&T chief Randall Stephenson in an event at Mobile World Congress on Tuesday called for a system that let users keep app ownership across platforms . He argued it was frustrating that buying an app on one platform didn't give you the rights to the app on another. He saw solutions such as the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) or HTML5 as being better models, although few phones actually support WAC or use HTML5 in a major way for apps."

"PCLinuxOS is a great distro for individuals who favor rolling updates, performance, and a dedicated community. If you're a first-time Linux user or if you favor aesthetics over technological prowess, better choices are available."

"Samsung Electronics has announced the bada 2.0 smartphone platform with support for near field communication (NFC), HTML5, the Wholesale Applications Community, multitasking and voice recognition. According to Samsung, bada 2.0 also comes with a new and improved software development kit (SDK) that opens up the platform to more developers working across different PC operating systems."