So, yeah, as we already detailed almost two weeks ago, MorphOS 2.6 has been released. We've already discussed this one and its new features last time around, so I'm having a little trouble coming up with stuff to write about, but I'll do my best to find anything interesting in the detailed release notes - as inexperienced as I am with MorphOS.

Yes, yes, it's that time of the year again - a new Fiona Apple album confirmed (which makes anything that happens between now and spring 2011 irrelevant and annoying), MorphOS 2.6 released (will be the next news item), and, of course, a new Ubuntu release showcasing the best of the best that the Free software world has to offer in the desktop world.

You think only "pirates" and "freeloaders" rail against current copyright laws? Well, think again - even the Library of Congress seemingly has had enough. The topic is recorded sound preservation, and in a 181-page in-depth study, the Library of Congress concludes that apart from technical difficulties, US copyright law makes it virtually impossible for anyone to perform any form of audio preservation. The painted picture is grim - very grim.

Well, this is interesting. The New York Times caught wind of a special and secret meeting between Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer and Adobe's frontman Shantanu Narayen. They claim the entire talk was dedicated to the fight against Apple, and one of the options discussed was... Microsoft acquiring Adobe.

ScaraOS is a 32-bit, multiboot-compliant, monolithic OS kernel. It has the beginnings of a paged VM system and VFS. It supports PCI, DMA, AT floppies (read only), EXT2, and can do all the low-level stuff expected of an OS kernel (program the PIC, handle interrupts, control the timer, etc.). It was written primarily to learn OS fundamentals. It boots using any multiboot bootloader, and it has been tested with grub on qemu and KVM. Bootable floppy images are available.

This is a painful article to write. I've been a longtime fan and user of what is affectionately known as PC/GEOS over the years. However, I'm fearing we're nearing the end of GEOS.

And so, the idiocy in the mobile industry continues. Motorola has just upped the ante in this already ridiculous spider web of lawsuits by suing the pants off Apple. Eighteen patents are involved, most of which seem to be actual hardware patents, but that doesn't make some of them any less obvious (apparently, you can patent the location of your antenna). Anywho, like Nokia, Motorola claims that Apple is unwilling to license Motorola's patents, and as such, suing was the only option.

While we rail on Apple for its closed and restrictive policies regarding its iOS, with Apple you at least know what you're getting into. When you buy a mobile phone running Android, many do so because of its open and more free nature than the competing platforms - so you can imagine the surprise when the hackers at xda-developers found out the brand-new T-Mobile G2 has a hardware rootkit that will always restore the phone's original operating system upon installing a different ROM. HTC says it doesn't know of any such feature, and points towards the carrier (or Google).

Let me tell you, when what you teach and develop every day has the title "Innovation" attached to it, you reach a point where you tire of hearing about Apple. Without question, nearly everyone believes the equation Apple = Innovation is a fundamental truth--akin to the second law of thermodynamics, Boyle's Law, or Moore's Law. But ask these same people if they understand exactly how Apple comes up with their ideas and what approach the company uses to develop blockbuster products--whether it is a fluky phenomenon or based on a repeatable set of governing principles--and you mostly get a dumbfounded stare. This response is what frustrates me most, because people worship what they don't understand.

As the third high-profile departure at Nokia in recent months Ari Jaaksi, vice president of MeeGo devices and operations, who had worked at the company since 1998, told Finnish newspaper Talous Sanomat that he resigned from Nokia last week. According to Nokia Communications Manager Tapani Kaskinen the departure will not affect MeeGo's development schedule. Nevertheless the news cast doubts on whether we'll see a MeeGo-based device from Nokia before the end of 2010.

In an e-mail to their announce mailing list, the The Document Foundation have shared details of their first week of public operation: "One full week has gone by since the announcement of The Document Foundation, and we would like to share some numbers with the people who have decided to follow us since the first day."

Since the launch of Opera 10.5 in March 2010, I've been using it as my primary browser, whether at work or at home. Using Ubuntu at work, and a Windows netbook at home, I wanted a fast browser for my netbook and a coherent browsing experience on both operating systems. And this is where Opera 10.5 (and newer) fits perfectly.

With the release of Windows Phone 7 upon us, the hype machine now goes all the way up to 11. While hype machines are generally relatively harmless and easy to poke a hole through, coordinated FUD campaigns by patent trolls are not. After Apple and Microsoft trolled HTC, and Microsoft now trolling Motorola, the actual FUD campaign against Android is in full swing.

So, Apple has to pay boatloads of money to some patent troll over cover flow and Time Machine-related patents.