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.

The Journal of Information Technology and Politics will host JITP 2010: Politics of Open Source on May 6 & 7, 2010 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The conference will also stream live via the conference website. The Politics of Open Source is an interdisciplinary conference that examines the politics associated with the Free/Libre and Open Source Software Movement. The conference features two keynote lectures. The first is by Eric von Hippel, Professor and Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. Dr. Von Hippel's keynote, "Democratizing Innovation" will discuss the development and impact of democratized innovation systems.

"Beginning in June 2010, Microsoft will begin closing newsgroups and migrating users to Microsoft forums that include Microsoft Answers, TechNet and MSDN. This move will centralize content, make it easier for contributors to retain their influence, reduce redundancies and make content easier to find. Overall, forums offer a better spam management platform that will improve customer satisfaction by encouraging a healthy discussion space."

"Microsoft's Kin One and Two will be available to prospective buyers within days, though the pricing and data plans seem to fall in an awkward spot for a device the companies are targeting at teens. Microsoft announced Wednesday that the two devices would be available on Verizon Wireless' website as of May 6 and show up in stores on May 13. After a $100 mail-in rebate and a new two-year contract with Verizon, the Kin One will cost $49.99 and the Two will cost $99.99."

Wait, news on an actual operating system? What, no H264 news? It's not even Apple-related? Yes, you're not the only one who's cynical. Anyway, we always assumed that Windows Phone 7 would be built on top of Windows Embedded CE 6.0, but as it turns out, that's not entirely accurate - it actually uses the next version of Windows CE: Windows Embedded Compact 7. No information has been made available about this new version as of yet. Update: And here's an article on how the rumour mill suggests the future of Microsoft's mobile strategy includes replacing Windows Embedded Compact with... Windows NT. Yeppers.