Since MIX10 is still under way, we're going to have quite a few Microsoft items this week, with Windows Phone 7 Series and Internet Explorer 9 being the main points of focus. We've been speculating a while now about if and how Microsoft would support multitasking on their upcoming mobile operating system reboot, and now we finally have answers: no, it won't do multitasking - at least, not right away.

And yes, the legal news just continues to come. With high-profile lawsuits going on in the world of technology (Nokia vs. Apple, Apple vs. HTC), we really can't get around lots and lots of news about the subject. This latest tidbit we have for you is most interesting, and only serves to further confirm the rumours that Bing might become the default on the iPhone: Microsoft has more or less endorsed Apple's lawsuit against HTC.

Jim Bray, who played a major role in the XML standardisation effort, has joined Google to work on Android, and his words for the iPhone are pretty harsh. "The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet's future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger. I hate it."

"Following two unsuccessful attempts at forcing ISP Telenor to block The Pirate Bay in Norway, the IFPI and performing rights outfit TONO have abandoned their legal action. The case will not now head to the Supreme Court but instead the entertainment groups will pin their hopes on new legislation."

"A number of humorous yet undocumented features are hiding beneath the surface of some of the most popular open source software applications. Although easter eggs are generally easy to spot when you can look at an application's source code, there are a few that aren't widely known."

All Linux users have their own vision of the ideal distribution. Some people crave stability, others want new and exciting features, some people are very security focused and others are concerned about licensing. Warren Woodford has his own vision and he's made it accessible to the world via MEPIS. This week he was willing to take a few minutes to talk about his creation.

It's no secret to anyone that while Apple sued HTC, the lawsuit is more about Google than HTC itself. Since Android is open source, and owned by no one, it's kind of hard to go after Google itself, and as such, HTC was the prime target, since it is the number one Android smartphone maker. The New York Times has an in-depth article up about the subject, with a whole boatload of quotes from people within the two companies, and it paints a picture of all this being a highly emotional and personal vendetta - especially from Apple's side.

And thus, our true colours reveal. Since Obama was the young newcomer, technically savvy, many of us were hoping that he might support patent and/or copyright reform. In case our story earlier on this subject didn't already tip you off, this certainly will: Obama has sided squarely with the RIAA/MPAA lobby, and backs ACTA. No copyright and/or patent reform for you, American citizens!

While we are all busy discussing Apple suing HTC for patent infringement, we're almost forgetting that Nokia and Apple are also embroiled in about ten million lawsuits going either way. The most recent move comes from Nokia, who seeks to dismiss Apple's antritrust claims using pretty much the same arguments Apple used to counter Psystar's antitrust claims.

As most of you will know, Microsoft lost the patent lawsuit filed against the Redmond giant by i4i, while also losing the first appeal. Microsoft was forced to remove the infringing functionality from Word for US customers, but they also filed a second appeal. This appeal, too, has been lost.

Common wisdom has it that Flash is a resource hog, and that HTML5 will prevent your processor from having to work really, really hard to show animations of videos. Well, a number of people have conducted benchmarks with the latest browsers and Flash betas, and common wisdom is starting to show serious signs of crackage.

Version 0.4.2 of the little-known microkernel-based multiserver operating system HelenOS has been released. See their official release notes to find out what other bleeding-edge features besides an experimental and highly modular networking stack this release brings.

"Khronos Group, the association behind OpenGL, has today announced the fourth generation of its cross-platform API spec, which takes up the mantle of offering a viable competitor to Microsoft's DirectX 11. The latest release includes two new shader stages for offloading geometry tessellation from the CPU to the GPU, as well as tighter integration with OpenCL to allow the graphics card to take up yet more duties off the typically overworked processor."

Earlier this week, it was time for the Association for Computing Machinery, ACM, to announce the winner of the 2009 Turing Award, one of the more prestigious prices in the computing industry. The award was awarded to Charles P. Thacker; a name you might not recognise, but certainly one that has influenced the world of computing a great deal.