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Android

Submission + - B&N Responds to Microsoft's Android Suit (groklaw.net)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "You're probably familiar with Microsoft's long running assault on Android but, as noticed by Groklaw, Barnes and Noble has fired back saying, 'Microsoft has asserted patents that extend only to arbitrary, outmoded, or non-essential design features, but uses these patents to demand that every manufacturer of an Android-based mobile device take a license from Microsoft and pay exorbitant licensing fees or face protracted and expensive patent infringement litigation.' Barnes and Noble goes on to assert that Microsoft violates 'antitrust laws, threatens competition for mobile device operating systems and is further evidence of Microsoft’s efforts to dominate and control Android and other open source operating systems.' The PDF of the filing from two days ago is rife with accusations including, 'Microsoft intends to utilize its patents to control the activities of and extract fees from the designers, developers, and manufacturers of devices, including tablets, eReaders, and other mobile devices, that employ the Android Operating System.' and 'Microsoft has falsely and without justification asserted that its patents somehow provide it with the right to prohibit device manufacturers from employing new versions of the Android Operating System, or third party software.' Barnes and Noble does not mince words when explaining Microsoft's FUD campaign to both the public and developers in its attempts to suppress Android. It's good to see PJ still digging through massive court briefs to bring us the details on IP court battles."
The Courts

RIAA Litigation May Be Unconstitutional 281

Posted by timothy from the what-about-ritchie-chaz-and-margot? dept.
dtjohnson writes "A Harvard law school professor has submitted arguments on behalf of Joel Tenenbaum in RIAA v. Tenenbaum in which Professor Charles Nesson claims that the underlying law that the RIAA uses is actually a criminal, rather than civil, statute and is therefore unconstitutional. According to this article, 'Nesson charges that the federal law is essentially a criminal statute in that it seeks to punish violators with minimum statutory penalties far in excess of actual damages. The market value of a song is 99 cents on iTunes; of seven songs, $6.93. Yet the statutory damages are a minimum of $750 per song, escalating to as much as $150,000 per song for infringement "committed willfully."' If the law is a criminal statute, Neeson then claims that it violates the 5th and 8th amendments and is therefore unconstitutional. Litigation will take a while but this may be the end for RIAA litigation, at least until they can persuade Congress to pass a new law."
The Internet

Submission + - Senators call for universal internet filtering (pressesc.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "US senators today made a bipartisan call for the universal implementation of filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet in order to protect children at the end of a Senate hearing for which civil liberties groups were not invited. Senators call for universal Internet filtering Senators call for universal Internet filtering"
Privacy

Submission + - Potentially huge legal boost for EU file-shareres (businessweek.com)

Submitted by Mishtara2001
Mishtara2001 writes: BusinessWeek reports that: "An EU high court adviser says Internet service providers are not required to disclose data on people suspected of music piracy". If this is adopted across the EU then it can potentially spell doom for the IFPI's (the global RIAA) efforts to litigate against European P2P users.

More here: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2 007/gb20070720_372166.htm?chan=globalbiz_europe+in dex+page_top+stories
http://torrentfreak.com/major-victory-within-reach -for-european-file-sharers/
X

Submission + - New Linux desktop environment built on Firefox (pyrodesktop.org)

Submitted by
IL-CSIXTY4
IL-CSIXTY4 writes: "
Pyro is a new kind of desktop environment for Linux built on Mozilla Firefox. Its goal is to enable true integration between the Web and modern desktop computing.
This looks like an interesting marriage of the web and the desktop. In Pyro, Web apps run in windows on the desktop, right alongside desktop apps (through compositing). Features expected in a desktop environment, like task/window selection and an Expose-like function, are written in Javascript."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Sees Stronger XP Sales in FY08 (pcworld.com) 1

Submitted by Rude Awakening
Rude Awakening writes: Microsoft Corp. Thursday said that it expects Windows XP, the operating system supposedly made moot by Windows Vista, to make up a significantly larger part of sales in the coming year.

I thought this was a misprint and they really meant Vista sales would be stronger in '08 instead of XP, but it is no misprint. Is Vista bad enough to breathe new life into XP sales, or is this part of an insidious plot by Microsoft to sell two OS licenses for each new PC shipped?
AMD

Submission + - Study: AMD beats Intel in power-efficiency study (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
Ted Samson
Ted Samson writes: "AMD Opteron servers proved up to 15.2 percent more energy-efficient than those running Intel Xeon in server-power-efficiency test performed by Neal Nelson and Associates, InfoWorld reports. The translates to annual electricity savings between $20.29 per server and $36.04 per server, depending on the workload, the study concluded. The benchmark tests were conducted on similarly configured 3GHz systems running Novell SUSE Linux, Apache2, and MySQL."
Quickies

Submission + - Massachusetts Makes Health Insurance Mandatory (npr.org)

Submitted by Iron Condor
Iron Condor writes: Massachusetts is the first state to require its residents to secure health insurance, a plan designed to get as close as practically possible to statewide universal health care. Presidential hopeful and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney originally introduced the idea in 2004.

Effective July 1, 2007, the law, which uses federal and state tax dollars, is aimed at making health insurance affordable to all residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, including low-income populations. Those who fall below the federal poverty line may be eligible for health care at no cost. A Health Disparities Council has been created to monitor and reduce racial and ethnic health disparities.

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