Well, the jury has reached a verdict, and rounded corners are worth... $1,000,000,000.00!

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48783982

Apple scored a sweeping legal victory over Samsung Electronics on Friday as a U.S. jury found the Korean company had copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone and iPad and awarded the U.S. company $1.05 billion in damages.

As for the countersuit, the jury found Apple did not violate any of Samsung's wireless standards or feature patents.

http://www.zdnet.com...t-matter-7000003164/

This verdict doesn't even matter in the long run. This was just another clash.

This case was going to be appealed, no matter who won, the second it started. This is just one more encounter on the case's way to the Supreme Court. Samsung has lost this skirmish, but not the war.

...

Antarctica may be the only continent where the two aren't locked in battle.

...

This case really shows only one thing. The patent system, especially when it comes to software, is utterly and totally broken. While I tend to side with Samsung—come on Apple you really believe that your patenting the rectangle makes sense in any sane world?--the whole fouled up patent system is doing nothing but blocking innovation, raising end-user prices, and enriching no one except law firms.

https://www.eff.org/...attle-in-marketplace

As you’ve likely heard, Apple and Samsung continue to duke it out in what commentators have called the “patent trial of the century.” The case involves more than three dozen devices (such as iPhones, iPads, and Galaxy phones and tablets) and various patents, allegedly covering Apple’s designs, “double-click-to-zoom,” 3G technology, and various other functionalities. But what’s really at stake?

...

Apple v. Samsung is not the problem in itself, but it’s a symptom of a broken system. You can find some of our proposals to fix it at defendinnovation.org.

https://defendinnovation.org/

The patent system is in crisis, and it endangers the future of software development in the United States. Let's create a system that defends innovation, instead of hindering it.

• A patent covering software should be shorter: no more than five years from the application date.
• If the patent is invalid or there's no infringement, the trolls should have to pay the legal fees.
• Patent applicants should be required to provide an example of running software code for each claim in the patent.
• Infringers should avoid liability if they independently arrive at the patented invention.
• Patents and licenses should be public right away. Patent owners should be required to keep their public records up-to-date.
• The law should limit damages so that a patent owner can't collect millions if the patent represented only a tiny fraction of a defendant's product.
• Congress should commission  a study and hold hearings to examine whether software patents actually benefit our economy at all.

Now, on to the next stage of the blood-letting!

EDIT: Actually, $1,049,343,540. But who's counting after a billion?

http://www.huffingto...dict_n_1829119.html?

A very interesting article:

http://www.marketwat...s-library-2012-08-23

Many of us will accumulate vast libraries of digital books and music over the course of our lifetimes. But when we die, our collections of words and music may expire with us.

Someone who owned 10,000 hardcover books and the same number of vinyl records could bequeath them to descendants, but legal experts say passing on iTunes and Kindle libraries would be much more complicated.

And one’s heirs stand to lose huge sums of money. “I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family would be OK with losing a collection of 10,000 books and songs,” says Evan Carroll, co-author of “Your Digital Afterlife.” “Legally dividing one account among several heirs would also be extremely difficult.”

Part of the problem is that with digital content, one doesn’t have the same rights as with print books and CDs. Customers own a license to use the digital files—but they don’t actually own them.

Apple and Amazon.com grant “nontransferable” rights to use content, so if you buy the complete works of the Beatles on iTunes, you cannot give the White Album to your son and Abbey Road to your daughter.

...

Here’s how it works: Goldman will sell his software for $150 directly to estate planners to store and manage digital accounts and passwords. And, while there are other online safe-deposit boxes like AssetLock and ExecutorSource that already do that, Goldman says his software contains instructions to create a legal trust for accounts. “Having access to digital content and having the legal right to use it are two totally different things,” he says.

The simpler alternative is to just use your loved one’s devices and accounts after they’re gone—as long as you have the right passwords.

...

This just posted at Tom's Hardware (link here)

Crisis Believed to be First Malware Infecting Virtual Machines
12:20 PM - August 24, 2012 by Wolfgang Gruener - source: Symantec

Crisis, a previously detected trojan, has turned out to be much more sophisticated malware than originally described.

Instead of just infecting Macs, Crisis also infects Windows PCs as well as Windows Mobile devices and, for the first time, a VMware virtual machine. Security researchers originally believed that the malware was limited to simply monitoring the applications Adium, Firefox, Skype and MSN Messenger.

Crisis is distributed via social engineering and tricks a user into running a Java applet Flash installer. The malware then identifies the operating system and uses the respective executable file. The trojan is carried in a JAR (Java ARchive) file, which is based on the ZIP format and usually includes Java class files, metadata and resources in one file to distribute a Java application or Java libraries.

What makes Crisis interesting is that it appears to be specifically looking for virtualized environments and is therefore believed to be the first malware to spread onto a virtual machine.

Tech details can be found over at Symantec. (link here)

The threat searches for a VMware virtual machine image on the compromised computer and, if it finds an image, it mounts the image and then copies itself onto the image by using a VMware Player tool.
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It does not use a vulnerability in the VMware software itself. It takes advantage of an attribute of all virtualization software: namely that the virtual machine is simply a file or series of files on the disk of the host machine. These files can usually be directly manipulated or mounted, even when the virtual machine is not running as is the case above.

This may be the first malware that attempts to spread onto a virtual machine. Many threats will terminate themselves when they find a virtual machine monitoring application, such as VMware, to avoid being analyzed, so this may be the next leap forward for malware authors.

Just one more thing to have to start looking for.

The Windows 8 hits keep coming:

"Windows 8 review: Yes, it's that bad"

"Windows 8 is a failure -- an awkward mishmash that pulls the user in two directions and ends up as a desktop OS for tablets and a tablet OS for desktop."

"Windows 8 is guaranteed to disappoint nearly everyone."

These harsh words come from Woody Leonhard, of all people, writing in InfoWorld today.

Not having tried Windows 8 yet, I'll reserve my own judgment, but while I have read good things about the underlying engine, there seems to be almost unanimous condemnation of the Metro Modern UI.


http://www.infoworld...w-yes-its-bad-200113

This is an article about phone apps you can install to find your phone when you lose it: Find My iPhone,(and for Android phones) Where’s My Droid and Plan B. The author isn't theoretical, he had his phone stolen and recovered with one of these programs. You can't use them if your phone is part of the Robot Rebellion.

Hey guys, long time no talk, but lurking daily.

I'd love to hear your take on this: Samer from freewaregenius concludes that copy acceleration utilities on Windows make things actually worse:

http://www.freewareg...s-our-tests-say-yes/

What now? Do copy acceleration software works? From a technical standpoint, can it work?