Plus the government's undredacted web blocking document, and the joys of hacker stock art – watch for leather gloves
A quick burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
When patents attack Android >> Official Google Blog
"...But Android's success has yielded something else: a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.
"They're doing this by banding together to acquire Novell's old patents (the "CPTN" group including Microsoft and Apple) and Nortel's old patents (the "Rockstar" group including Microsoft and Apple), to make sure Google didn't get them; seeking $15 licensing fees for every Android device; attempting to make it more expensive for phone manufacturers to license Android (which we provide free of charge) than Windows Phone 7; and even suing Barnes & Noble, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung. Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it."
Google: Patently Absurd >> Daring Fireball
"How is Google's argument here different than simply demanding that Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, et al should simply sit back and let Google do whatever it wants with Android, regardless of the patents they hold? And, let's not forget, give Android away for free."
Forrester: Windows 7 powering 21 percent of corporate desktops; XP still at 60% >> ZDNet
A little late, but: "By the end of March 2011, Windows 7 was powering 20.9 percent of corporate PCs, according to a new Forrester Research report, while Windows XP was on 60% of business PCs -- down from 69% a year ago.
"Forrester's report, "Corporate Desktop Operating System And Browser Trends, Q2 2010 To Q2 2011? included results from Forrester's analysis of more than 400,000 client PCs at 2,500 companies. The June 16 report includes 12 months of data collected between the start of the second calendar quarter of 2010 through the end of the first calendar quarter of 2011."
The table is interesting: well worth the clickthrough.
Online dating in 2011: The most niche sites for love on the Internet >> The Next Web
Simply brilliant. Is it just us laughing at the picture that goes with the "Yes! Mrs Robinson" [sic] site, or is everyone enjoying it too? "For pairing cougars with their prey". Indeed. And plenty more that still manage to stay SFW.
Site Blocking: What the UK Government would prefer you not to see >> TJ Mcintyre
So the DCMS put out a redacted PDF. Turned out the redaction was easy to reverse. "The full, unredacted version now appears on Scribd. As can be seen from that document, the material which was redacted was all improperly removed. The tactics discussed to circumvent blocking are all well-known, even to a mere lawyer such as myself, and the redactions appear to be motivated more by considerations of security theatre than anything else."
Good news, IE users: Media flunked IQ test, not you >> GeekWire
Todd Bishop: "More evidence: AptiQuant's site was registered on July 14, less than a month ago, despite the company's statement that it was founded in 2006. This morning I called the phone number associated with AptiQuant's domain registration, but the man who answered started speaking another language after I identified myself as a reporter, and he ultimately hung up after we weren't able to communicate.
"News outlets that reported on the study -- including the BBC, Business Insider, CNN and many others -- are now reporting it was a hoax."
Oh, hell. Who's going to tell the Opera users?
Aaron Swartz / JSTOR case has State felony charges, not just Federal >> Seth Finkelstein
"Many, many, years ago, back before Twitter and blogs, when USENET was one of the centers of net.influence, I argued about the David LaMacchia case. I eventually turned out to be right about the legal outcome. But personally, it wasn't worth all the flaming over "theft" and similar. I don't need to relive that experience, I'm trying to learn from my mistakes.
"Anyway, to say something people haven't heard, news only started to circulate last Friday that in addition to the Federal government charges of "Wire Fraud", "Computer Fraud", "Unlawfully Obtaining Information from a Protected Computer", "Recklessly Damaging a Protected Computer", there are also two State government charges."
Hacker stock art >> Boing Boing
Nobody knows how to illustrate stories about hacking. In fact, they struggle a lot with stories about technology generally.
Why brown M&Ms were Van Halen's real-life checksum >> Chris Dickson
Clever: why would you specify such an arcane and trivial element as "no brown M&Ms" in your contract? Think about it for a bit. (Original article that he links to is gone, but he does explain it himself.)
And you thought they were dumb rock musicians.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/aug/04/technology-links-newsbucket
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