Friday, December 27th, 2013

Time	Event
6:19p	Google sues Apple, Microsoft-backed patent troll Rockstar http://www.osnews.com/story/27485/Google_sues_Apple_Microsoft-backed_patent_troll_Rockstar Google has decided to fight back against the Apple and Microsoft-backed patent troll Rockstar. It has filed a lawsuit, asking the court to state that the Android platform does not infringe any of the patents the patent troll is asserting against Android, Google, and Android OEMs. Google describes Rockstar's trolling in no uncertain terms. Rockstar produces no products and practices no patents. Instead, Rockstar employs a staff of engineers in Ontario, Canada, who examine other companies' successful products to find anything that Rockstar might use to demand and extract licenses to its patents under threat of litigation. A very interesting tidbit is found further down in the legal documents - Google claims that Rockstar actually contacted companies that use Android, asking them to... Stop using Android. On information and belief, Rockstar contacted and met with these California-based companies in order to discourage them from continuing to use Google's Android platform in their devices, and to interfere with Google's business relationships. This Apple and Microsoft shell company is way, way dirtier than we already knew.
8:03p	The CDC 6600 architecture http://www.osnews.com/story/27486/The_CDC_6600_architecture The CDC6600 and its family members are part of the computer industry history. A decade before the Cray 1, the members of the CDC6000 family were not only expensive and the most powerful systems at the time of introduction. They were also lean and wonderful architectures ! The elegance was also conveyed in several publications (many by CDC), where all the necessary knowledge was explained from the ground up. All you needed to know was supplied, clearly laid out, not just hints for efficient programming. Basically, you could rebuild your own computer by reading these books. 50 years later, they are invaluable reminders and tools, we can see where the computer industry comes from and realise that it is not that hard to do it ourselves, too. Via HackerNews. This is an amazing resource.
10:11p	Sailfish updated yet again http://www.osnews.com/story/27487/Sailfish_updated_yet_again Jolla promised another big bugfix update before the year was over, and they delivered. Version 1.0.2.5 brings a whole boatload of bugfixes and stability improvements, but also brings in a few new features - such as one-way Google Calendar synchronization, camera support for Android applications, and a few more. Bigger new features are expected to arrive in January. The update rollout itself was a bit of a disaster - the servers became overloaded (at least, that's what it looked like), so many people couldn't download the update, or would have the download hang halfway through. As far as I know, the update seems to be rolling out fine now, but having this process go wrong when the userbase is as small as it is means they've got some work to do on this one. In the meantime, Christmas was packed with gifts for Sailfish users when it comes to applications. For instance, Sailfish has its own, native WhatsApp client now - and it works perfectly, and looks great. There's also a video player, and a native Facebook client - Friends - is getting daily updates. Then there's TinyWebBrowser; started out as a test project, but is already getting more useful than the stock browser, mostly because it supports landscape (a feature the stock browser will supposedly get in January). All in all, the rate of new applications, new versions to existing applications, and operating system updates is all very promising, especially if you take into the account the very small userbase (I would guess several thousands at this point). Let's hope they can keep it up. For what it's worth - thanks to the new applications, I already uninstalled the Android compatibility stuff from my Jolla.

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