A lot of articles lately have been focused on why Apple and Microsoft are the bad guys by supporting H.264 and not Theora. Well, yes, they are bad guys, but there really is not much point whining to them. It will in all likelihood fall on deaf ears, simply because they are acting in their own best interests--as MPEG stakeholders and commercial, DRM-encouraging, royalty-loving, proprietary-operating-system-hawking corporations. But that could all change--if the HTML5 spec didn't allow H.264.

It has long been rumoured that Apple and AT&T signed an exclusivity deal for the iPhone covering five years since the launch of the original iPhone (2007). Apple has confirmed in a court case that this is indeed true; in other words, there is not going to be a Verizon iPhone before 2012. However, it is important to note that the original agreement may no longer be valid (for instance due to AT&T problematic service). This same court case also touched upon another important issue. "The plaintiffs argued that Apple exerts illegal monopoly power over the iPhone applications market by barring third-party apps from iPhone OS 1.0, and the court ruled the argument was valid enough to go forward." Should be of interest to Adobe and the FTC.

Two news items about alternative operating system news in a row? What is this, Christmas? In any case, the Haiku project, the darling of OSNews (hey it's okay now), has released its second alpha release. This new stable development release contains some serious improvements over the first alpha.

Ah, the AmigaOne x1000 - now that the summer is approaching, the powerful next-generation Amiga machine is getting ever closer to being officially unveiled and launched. The hardware is being developed by A-EON Technology, who formed a strategic partnership with Hyperion Entertainment, the company behind AmigaOS 4.x, with the "express purpose of developing new hardware for AmigaOS 4 and beyond". Obligement has a long and detailed interview up with Trevor Dickinson, long-time Amiga enthusiast and collector, and one of the prime forces behind A-EON.

An attorney for Google slammed a controversial intellectual property treaty on Friday, saying it has "metastasized" from a proposal to address border security and counterfeit goods to an international legal framework sweeping in copyright and the Internet. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is "something that has grown in the shadows, Gollum-like," without public scrutiny, Daphne Keller, a senior policy counsel in Mountain View, Calif., said at a conference at Stanford University.

"Dear Ubuntu, for the last couple years life has been good. Every time I've shown you to a friend or family member, they've compared you to what they're familiar with--Windows XP or Vista, mostly--and by comparison you've looked brilliant. Yeah, your ugly brown color scheme was a bit off-putting at first, but once people saw how secure, simple, and reliable you were, the response was almost universally positive. But recently, things have changed ..."

Whatever products we use, I think we can all agree that the United States patent system and the US Patent and Trademark Office need a serious overhaul. Not only has the USPTO a history of granting ridiculous patents (massive prior art, obviousness, incredibly vague, the USPTO grants them all), it also has a backlog of about 750000 patent applications. The USPTO now has a plan to combat these issues - sadly, they once again display their utter incompetence.

Wolfire blog writes: "It's 'common knowledge' that Mac and Linux gaming are so unimportant that they might as well not exist. Everyone 'knows' that Mac games sell a tiny fraction of the amount that Windows games sell, and that Linux games simply don't exist. But are these ideas based on reality? Where did these figures come from? Anyone who has ever worked with statistics knows that it's unwise to trust 'common knowledge' without data to back it up. I decided to ask some developers about their sales distribution, and get some real data about Mac and Linux game sales."

"Samsung has finally released the public version of their bada SDK. Samsung has been seeding new SDK releases to partners but it's the first time, they've released it to the public. It's a beta version and the final release is expected later this month. You can download the full SDK now by registering for free on the bada developer site." More here.

Canonical has explained why it has licensed H264. As it turns out, the license does not cover the distribution as a whole - since Ubuntu is entirely Free software, the license cannot be included. Canonical has licensed H264 so that it can offer it as an option to OEMs, just as it does with Flash, Fluendo, and some others. Since this is just an option for OEMs, it does not mean that every pre-installed Ubuntu system comes with the H264 license - it depends on whether or not your OEM decided to include it (good luck finding that out). And people actually promote this complicated spaghetti licensing situation.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics. A really annoying overused catchphrase which sadly happens to be an adequate description of a story which appeared on Fortune's website, in which a Morgan Stanley report is quoted as saying that the introduction of tablet computers - the iPad specifically - have caused netbook sales to plummet. It seems like the researcher in question, however, needs to learn how to read her own graphs.

"I have been writing about Moorestown since Intel started talking publicly about it in 2007, so the official unveiling of Intel's first x86-based SoC aimed at the smartphone market marks the end of a long journey. Moorestown's appearance also marks the beginning of another journey, as Intel prepares to face down ARM in its quest to win handset and tablet makers over to the x86 camp. In many ways, this is the biggest and most important Intel product launch since the original Atom introduction."

Another blow for Flash. As Adobe is stating that they will make the best tools for HTML5, another major website using Flash has announced they're switching over to HTML5. Scribd, which provides in-browser access to all sorts of documents and e-books uploaded by users, will ditch its Flash-based website in favour of a brand-new HTML5 version.

In 2009 ARM showed off prototype netbooks "capable of driving HD content, can surf the web for 8 hours, and will cost round and about 250 USD". Yet still, none have made it to the market. Why do you think this is so? Because ARM signed a deal with Adobe in 2008 to bring Flash and AIR to the ARM architecture, a promise they will finally deliver later this year. And you wonder why Apple won't have Flash on the iPhone when it can hold back an entire product category for two years.