In Fridays hearing at the Oracle v. Google trial, Oracles president and CFO Safra Catz testified that Google was forceful about not licensing Java. The court also instructed the jury to decide the case assuming that Javas APIs are copyrightable, although the APIs actual legal status has yet to be determined.

via Oracle President testifies, jury told to assume APIs are copyrightable.

Almost anyone who uses the Internet and is slightly curious about their own digital existence has, over the past decade, had what might be termed a Google moment. These are times, as you type your name into the search engine box, that you realize you don’t have control, that whatever you’ve done in your life is free to be appropriated and contextualized in all sorts of ways. We have identities, and then we have digital identities; and it’s not hard, when you’re looking through the digital looking glass of a Google ego surf, to wonder which is more important. My strangest Google moment came one day last year when Google’s search engine monkeys led me to an article in the Las Vegas Sun revealing that I had just been sued. The plaintiff in the lawsuit was Righthaven, a company founded in early 2010 with the express purpose of suing copyright…

via The Righthaven Experiment: A Journalist Wonders If a Copyright Troll Was Right to Sue Him – Magazine – ABA Journal.

Cyberattacks: Computer Warfare Looms as Next Big Conflict in International Law – Magazine – ABA Journal.

Todays proceedings in the Oracle/Google trial included prototypes of Googles early plans for Android and estimated Android revenue figures.

via Oracle/Google trial: Android prototype, proposed 9.99 data plan revealed.

Sun asked Google for $30 million to $50 million for the rights to use Java in Android, but Google declined and built its own implementation, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt testified.

via Sun wanted up to $50 million from Google for Java license, Schmidt says.

With its two distinct interfaces, what is Windows 8 like as a desktop operating system? Our 8,000-word answer: better than feared, worse than hoped. Get ready for some Metro in your desktop.

via Windows 8 on the desktop—an awkward hybrid.

howtogeek.com has an excellent article on how to create shortcuts to toggle your windows power settings at the click of a shortcut. I personally use this so that I don’t experience any performance when I’m using the machine, but also so that I use reduced power consumption when I’m going to bed.

Link: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/create-a-shortcut-or-hotkey-to-switch-power-plans/

the simplest way that I’ve found to install Sun’s java is to install the JDK from yum:
‘yum install jdk’ and then to run alternatives. For whatever reason, alternatives doesn’t just look at the link provided, but also requires a ‘name’ parameter. The command I ended up running was:

‘alternatives –install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_06/bin/java 301′

Where 301 is the priority and could really be any big number.

Having gotten fed up with the slow speed on my Droid, I recently installed Cyanogenmod 7. A few notes:

1. You’ll definitely want to install “Google Apps,” which may sound like Google’s corporate version of its web suite, but is not. Rather, “Google Apps” refers to all the wonderful Google Apps that your manufacturer usually includes on your phone, things like: the Market, Navigation, etc. Thankfully, you can just boot into recovery mode, and install the market zip from the Cyanogenmod site.

2. It took me awhile to get text-to-speech working on navigation. Every time I opened up the car home app, and tried to navigate, it told me that I needed to install text-to-speech. The specific error message I got was: “for voice-guided navigation, you need to install text-to-speech support.” After googling around for awhile, I realized that not only do you have to download the app when prompted, but you also have to go into the app drawer and run the installer to get all the sounds installed.

Trademarked keyword sales may soon be restricted in Europe.

The USPTO should be following suit, but are behind the curve as usual.