java

Judge to Oracle, Google: Did you pay off bloggers?

Though now eclipsed by Apple v. Samsung, there is still digital paperwork floating around for Oracle v. Google.

Judge William Alsup issued a brief but specific order on Tuesday afternoon from the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, demanding both parties to basically fess up if they have kept any journalists and/or commentators on the payroll during the duration of the case.

Here's the order, which much like Alsup's style in the courtroom, cuts right to the point:

The Court is concerned that the parties and/or counsel herein may have retained or paid print or … Read more

Motion for new Oracle v. Google trial denied by judge

If Oracle wants to keep fighting for its copyright and patent infringement lawsuit against Google, it's going to have to do so in an appeals court.

Judge William Alsup returned with a ruling on Friday in regards to Oracle's motion for judgment as a matter of law for a new trial. Given that the original 12-person jury couldn't come to a unanimous, complete verdict during the copyright phase of the trial, Oracle hoped it could get the chance to present more evidence with a new argument.

However, the judge denied the motion, so a new trial will … Read more

Intel OS X binary of latest multiplatform malware discovered

Earlier this week security company F-Secure uncovered a new Web-based malware attack that uses Java to identify and distribute platform-specific malware binaries to OS X, Windows, and Linux installations. In the company's first findings, the malware being issued for OS X was a PowerPC binary, which prevented it from running on many Macs using Snow Leopard and Lion; however, new developments have unveiled an x86 binary for the malware.

This new variant of the malware is essentially the same as the previous findings, with the exception that it will run on Lion and Snow Leopard systems without the need … Read more

Apple gives Java more attention after security snafu

One of the recent security holes that Apple dug itself into recently was the mishap that resulted from its lack of attention to the Java runtime for OS X, whereby leaving it unpatched for over a month allowed the Flashback malware to take advantage of many OS X systems. Since this incident, Apple appears to be paying more attention to security updates for its supported Java runtime.

Today Oracle released a new version of the Java runtime, and while in the past Apple has lagged a number of weeks behind Oracle's releases, the company was hot on the heels … Read more

Judge William Alsup: Master of the court and Java

For several weeks, U.S. District Judge William Alsup showed that he was the smartest person in the courtroom as high-priced lawyers for Google and Oracle pleaded their cases. On Thursday afternoon, he basically slammed the door in Oracle's face, explaining in a 41-page ruling that the 37 Java APIs used in Google's Android platform do not fall under U.S. copyright laws. The ruling on APIs followed a jury verdict on May 23 that absolved Google of violating two Oracle patents.

Oracle was asking for more than $1 billion in damages, but in the end the jury … Read more

Ellison: Oracle's cloud will cast a shadow over enterprise software world

Larry Ellison likes racing yachts, which he said are fast but inherently unstable.

"It can be dangerous. Every time I'm on one of these boats there's some kind of injury," he said. When he isn't racing yachts, Ellison has been uncannily stable, co-founding Oracle in 1977 and turning it into a leading enterprise company over the last 35 years.

In a wide-ranging interview today at the D10 conference in Palos Verdes, Calif., the Oracle CEO talked about everything from his idea of the networked computer and the Sun Microsystems acquisition to lawsuits and forthcoming … Read more

Twitter tweaks service to be faster, snappier

Twitter announced today that its Web site is getting new enhancements geared toward being "optimized for speed." Besides getting rid of the hashbang (#!) in URLs, the social network is also focusing on reducing the "time to first Tweet" and ensuring only what's necessary will load with each Web page.

"To improve the twitter.com experience for everyone, we've been working to take back control of our front-end performance by moving the rendering to the server," Twitter engineering manager Dan Webb wrote in a blog post. "This has allowed us to drop … Read more

Back up data, settings and more with Areca Backup

Areca Backup is a free, open-source, Java-based backup utility. It's designed to be extremely easy to use for backing up files, directories, and settings. It supports incremental, differential, and full backups. But it's not designed to be a primary system backup tool like Windows Backup or Acronis. It's a fast, lightweight, and easy-to-use tool for backing up, recovering, and searching your archives. It requires an up-to-date version of the Java Runtime Environment, a free download.

Areca Backup's user interface has a familiar layout and look. A left-hand sidebar let us select an archive to display, and … Read more

Jury foreman: Oracle wasn't even close in patent phase

After a jury today decided that Google did not infringe on two of Oracle's patents, it was revealed that most of the jury seemed to embrace Google's patent arguments during the trial.

After the verdict was handed down at the U.S. District Court of Northern California and the jury was dismissed, jury foreman Greg Thompson stopped in the hall to answer reporters' questions regarding deliberations. At one point during deliberations in the Java API copyright phase, Thompson said, he was the lone holdout, managing to swing a couple of jurors to his side, according to a report … Read more

Don't expect a patent offensive from victorious Google

Today's jury verdict that Google's Android didn't infringe Oracle Java patents no doubt left many at Google breathing sighs of relief.

As Android programming evangelist Tim Bray tweeted, "F***ing A."

Google took this case to the brink, refusing to settle on either Oracle's copyright or patent infringement charges, and has emerged with minimal scarring so far. Some copyright issues remain unresolved, and there are always appeals. So far, things look a lot better than the prospect of the $2.6 billion Oracle sought. But it ain't over 'til it's over, as … Read more