Thom Holwerda Archive

"Samsung has now filed an unredacted version of its motion for judgment as a matter of law, a new trial, and/or remittitur. That's the one that was originally filed with a redacted section we figured out was about the foreman, Velvin Hogan. The judge ordered it filed unsealed, and so now we get to read all about it. It's pretty shocking to see the full story. I understand now why Samsung tried to seal it. They call Mr. Hogan untruthful in voir dire (and I gather in media interviews too), accuse him of 'implied bias' and of tainting the process by introducing extraneous 'evidence' of his own during jury deliberations, all of which calls, Samsung writes, for an evidentiary hearing and a new trial with an unbiased jury as the cure." It's a treasure trove of courtroom drama, this. Like this one: Hogan got sued by his former employer Seagate in 1993, causing him to go bankrupt. The lawyer in said case is now married to one of the partners of the law firm representing Samsung in this case. Samsung seems to implicitly - and sometimes explicitly - argue that Hogan had a score to settle in this case, because - get this - Samsung has been Seagate's largest shareholder since last year. Hogan failed to disclose the Seagate lawsuit during voire dire, which is a pretty serious matter. No matter whose side you're on, this is John Grisham-worthy.

"This week marked the real launch of the new Microsoft.com home page. And as someone who has been involved on and off with the project from the moment it was conceived, I thought I'd tell you the story, albeit extensively abridged, behind the new Microsoft.com. Grab a seat." I love the new Microsoft site. It looks very clean and focused.

Microsoft has its own Windows Phone 8 phone in the works, according to WPcentral and BGR. "Details about what it looks like, hardware specifications, launch times, etc. have not been shared with us by the person(s) who have provided the information. The only thing we do know is when compared to current WP8 hardware it's something unique." Seems elementary. Not a big vote of confidence for Nokia though.

After a few months of relative silence and vagueness, we're finally getting something tangible from Jolla, the promising mobile phone company which came forth from former Nokia employees. It's ambitious - they're not just going to create a mobile operating system, not just a mobile phone, but an entire ecosystem, including cloud services and data centres. At its heart? The beautiful city of Hong Kong. The prime target market? China.

"Everyone seems to have a replacement for JavaScript - Google even has two. Now Microsoft has revealed that Anders Hejlsberg has been working on a replacement and it has released a preview of TypeScript. TypeScript is open source - Apache 2.0 license - and a superset of JavaScript. As you would expect from a Hejlsberg language it incorporates type checking, interfaces and lots of syntactic sugar."

"Apple has changed its iOS developer guidelines, adding a clause (on September 12, a source tells me) that reads: 'Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected.' That's a change that could have wide-reaching effects, especially on promotion models that offer developers a paid top slot on app recommendation offerings like FreeAppADay, Daily App Dream and more." Weird clause. Doesn't really seem to address any issue I can think of.

"The ObjectScript is a new programing language that mixes benefits of JavaScript, Lua, and PHP. The ObjectScript has syntax from JavaScript, multiple results from Lua, OOP from PHP and much more."

"Slackware 14.0 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.10.0, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and KDE 4.8.5, a recent stable release of the 4.8.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment. Slackware uses the 3.2.29 kernel bringing you advanced performance features such as journaling filesystems, SCSI and ATA RAID volume support, SATA support, Software RAID, LVM (the Logical Volume Manager), and encrypted filesystems. Kernel support for X DRI (the Direct Rendering Interface) brings high-speed hardware accelerated 3D graphics to Linux."

"When I started writing programs in the late 80s it was pretty primitive and required a lot of study and skill. I was a young kid doing this stuff, the adults at that time had it even worse and some of them did start in the punch card era. This was back when programmers really had to earn their keep, and us newer generations are losing appreciation for that. A generation or two ago they may have been been better coders than us. More importantly they were better craftsmen, and we need to think about that." I'm no programmer, but I do understand that the current crop of programmers could learn a whole lot from older generations. I'm not going to burn my fingers on if they were better programmers or not, but I do believe they have a far greater understanding of the actual workings of a computer. Does the average 'app developer' have any clue whatsoever about low-level code, let alone something like assembly?

"Today, the GNOME Project celebrates the release of GNOME 3.6, the latest version of the popular free desktop, as well as the GNOME developer platform. GNOME 3.6 is the third major update of GNOME 3. It builds on the foundations that we have laid with the previous 3.x releases and offers a greatly enhanced experience. The exciting new features and improvements in this release include a new login experience, integrated input methods, a refresh of the message tray, support for more online accounts, improved accessibility, and many more."

"I was in a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon and happened to spot Linus Torvalds sitting alone at a window table. I asked the creator of the Linux operating system and the Git source code control system if I could join him. Over the next fifteen minutes we talked about programming and programmers." Editor's Note: We've realized it's unclear whether this is a satirical interview or not. We don't know, so YMMV.

You'll be forgiven for thinking Tizen is dead and resting in the large cemetary of failed mobile operating systems. Not only has the Tizen SDK 2.0 alpha been released, with highlights that include broader HTML5 support, USB accessory function support, web UI framework, Tizen web API's, improved IDE and development tools, but also an actual (insert rumour) phone, named the GT-i9300_TIZEN. Yup, an SIII running Tizen.

ActiveWin.com has just posted their 45-page, 40-screenshot review of Microsoft Windows 8. The review covers many different aspects of the OS including performance, security, application compatibility, and more. "Is Windows 8 a hit or miss? It's a hit, it is clearly Microsoft's most bold development in years, it probably beats out the transition from Program Manager (Windows 3X) to Windows 95, the move from Windows 9x to the NT Kernel. The Windows 8 platform represents so many things: truly touch centric, support for modern processor architectures, fast and fluid as Microsoft puts it and also represents where the majority of the world is heading when it comes to computing, entirely mobile."

"RIM has just unveiled the latest iteration of the BlackBerry 10 operating system, set to be released on new devices early next year. We have finally gotten a look at the UI RIM will be shipping, and it's an interesting mix of user interaction metaphors we've seen on multiple devices to this point and a strong progression from the version of the software we first saw back in May." It looks nice. I like it.