Every now and then (or, actually, rather often) you come across a story which once again exemplifies why governments should keep their paws off anything remotely related to technology. It seems that not knowing anything about technology is one of the prime reasons why governments the world over fail so spectacularly when it comes to technology-related lawmaking. The latest in the series? France. My southern neighbours (I never acknowledged Belgian independence) are thinking about extending their piracy levy, normally found on CD-Rs and mp3-players and such, to cover tablet computers as well. However, tablet computers running Windows are exempt.

Microsoft added a couple of new Christmas themed HTML5 demos to their IE9 test drive site which included Vorbis audio in addition to the AAC audio in the audio tags. They've since modified both demos to remove the Vorbis audio. It seems Microsoft is happy to use Vorbis in HTML5 pages internally, just not publicly.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a plan for transition of power structures and the federal budget to free software. According to the document, the introduction of Linux in government should begin in II quarter 2012.

RIM had a complete internal panic when Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007, a former employee revealed this weekend. . . "Imagine their surprise when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it."

Logitech International SA Monday denied Google Inc. had asked the Swiss electronics firm to suspend production of television set-top boxes until the U.S. Internet giant irons out software problems. "Suggestions that production of the Logitech Revue companion box might need to be halted to address software issues are unfounded. As those familiar with the product know, it is not necessary for Logitech to make changes to the companion box to accommodate future enhancements to Google TV," Logitech spokeswoman Nancy Morrison said in a statement to Dow Jones Newswires. Logitech was addressing a report in trade publication Digitimes that Logitech is delaying shipments through January.

"Available in this release is a prebuilt hypervisor toolkit for userspace application development. The release contains a prebuilt hypervisor project for creating userspace applications, Versatile Express/quad core Cortex-A9 QEMU emulation environment, and Insight/GDB debugger and full documentation for software development. Note, this release contains an installer for easier installation of tools. The purpose of the toolkit releases are to provide a simple and smooth application development experience on top of Codezero Embedded Hypervisor."

"The team behind the popular open-source video player VLC is busy working on an Android app, which could be released in early 2011. Lead VLC developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf told me on Thursday that it will be 'a matter of weeks' until the release of the first VLC app for Android-based mobile devices."

In a story about an upcoming tablet from MSI launching in March, the Taiwanese website Digitimes might just have spilled the beans about the approximate launch date of Android 3. The tablet mentioned will ship in March-April next year with Android 3. Android 3 will be optimised for tablets and some big name companies, including Motorola and Lenovo, were holding back on these tablets until the version 3 release. On Techradar, Google's Andy Rubin already showed off an Android 3 prototype tablet from Motorola that gave some clues as to what Android 3 might be capable of. This includes easier navigation requiring absolutely no physical buttons, as well as 3D processing power. Android 3 is also said to have a redesigned UI, support for higher resolution 1280x760 displays and has a strict minimum hardware requirement of a 1Ghz CPU, 512 RAM and a minimum display size of 3.5".

Check out the new screencast presenting the Genode Live CD 10.11. For those of you who like to get a glimpse of the recently released Live CD but hesitate to download and boot the ISO image, the Genode developers have prepared a screencast on Youtube with a guided walk-through.

Oracle VM VirtualBox enables desktop or laptop computers to run multiple operating systems simultaneously, and supports a variety of host operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, most popular flavors of Linux (including Oracle Linux), and Oracle Solaris. Version 4.0 delivers increased capacity and throughput to handle greater workloads, enhanced virtual appliance capabilities, and significant usability improvements. Support for the latest in virtual hardware, including chipsets supporting PCI Express, further extends the value delivered to customers, partners and developers.

"Spain last night killed a controversial anti-P2P bill that would have made it easier to shut down websites that link to infringing content. The move was a blow to the ruling Socialist government, but it may be of even bigger concern to the US, which pushed, threatened, and cajoled Spain to clamp down on downloading. And Wikileaks can take a share of the credit for the defeat."

"From its inception in 1991, Microsoft Research has hewed to a remarkably unwavering mission. Its tenets are threefold: to invest in basic research to advance the state of the art in computer science, to transfer technologies into Microsoft products when appropriate, and to collaborate openly with the scientific community. The year 2010 has not varied from this established, successful tradition. But unlike 1991, when Microsoft Research was in its nascent stage, the organization is now fully mature, has grown into a worldwide presence, and has gained eminence as that modern-day rarity: an industrial research unit dedicated to pursuing pure research, in dozens of areas, that is helping to transform the future. Such a track record, naturally, has its own rewards. It's little surprise, then, that a review of Microsoft Research's 2010 highlights are bookended by a pair of illustrious awards, with others - including the biggest - sprinkled throughout the year."

A new version of ScorchOS has been released. ScorchOS (formerly known as ApolloOS) is still in the pre-alpha stage but aims soon to provide a minimal GUI-based operating environment which others can improve, extend and learn from. Don't expect to be using your latest productivity tools on it however for a good long while! This is a hobbyist operating kernel based on bkerndev and inspired by the MikeOS project. At the moment it shows the next step you can take with the kind of tutorials you may find on osdev.org.

"A developer event in South Korea appears to have yielded the first details on what Bada 2.0 will bring when it launches next year, and needless to say, it adds a bunch of smartphone-worthy stuff to the mix: an honest-to-goodness ad framework of some sort, better support for apps that use web technologies, multitasking, NFC capabilities, and an brand new SDK that'll support Mac and Linux."