Business Tech

Oracle, Google lawyers outline potential trial roadmap

Both legal teams arrived to the U.S. District Court of Northern California her early this morning, discussing (and sometimes arguing in heated whispers) about the nuts and bolts of the stipulation, which can be read below.

Reading more like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" game, there are several possibilities as to where the case could go from here, including up and down the appeals chain with new juries and all. Here are some of the major highlights:

With respect to copyright issues only (NOT patents), there will be no further work by the current 11-person jury.
On copyrights, there

Facebook's latest filing: Insiders are cashing in

Facebook today revealed that it will have more shares than expected available to investors when it goes public on Friday. But the social network won't be the one cashing in on it.

Facebook will now offer up to 484.4 million shares of class A common stock, including overallotment, when it goes public on Friday. In a filing yesterday, Facebook revealed that it was only planning to go public with a maximum of 388 million shares. The increase has pushed the maximum amount of cash potentially secured in the offering up $3.66 billion from $14.7 billion to $more

Apple on Siri lawsuits: Throw them out and be done with it

Apple has been smacked with a host of Siri lawsuits charging the company with overstating the abilities of its virtual personal assistant. And now, in a recent court filing, it has fired back.

In a motion filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Apple asked the court to dismiss the consolidation class-action complaint against its Siri offering, saying that the plaintiffs used "only general descriptions of Apple's advertisements, incomplete summaries of Apple's Web site materials, and vague descriptions of their alleged -- and highly individualized -- disappointment with Siri."

"Tellingly, although Plaintiffs more

Facebook ups IPO again -- this time with more shares

Facebook today revealed that it will be offering more Class A common stock than initially anticipated, in a move that bulks up its breathlessly awaited IPO by almost 25 percent.

In a revised S-1 Registration Statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this morning, Facebook said that it will now offer 421.2 million shares of class A stock when it goes public on Friday. The company has also upped the amount of shares it will allow for overallotment from 50.6 million to 63.2 million. All told, the company could offer 484.4 million shares when it more

EU regulators: We'll scrutinize Windows RT browser behavior

European authorities who earlier cracked down on Microsoft's browser behavior are now are keeping an eye on its upcoming Windows RT operating system -- but they aren't saying yet whether they have any objections.

Mozilla last week criticized Microsoft's choice to deny browsers other than Internet Explorer privileges necessary to make what it sees as a competitive browser on Windows RT, the new version of the operating system for ARM processors. Specifically, IE gets access to deeper Win32 interfaces, but Firefox, other browsers, and any other third-party software only get access to the new and more limited WinRT interface. more

Windows RT devices will see limited release initially

Only a handful of Windows RT devices will appear initially, as Microsoft wades slowly into new Windows waters, sources told CNET.

Chipmakers Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments will initially get two "slots" each for devices, according to sources familiar with Microsoft's plans.

"ARM is restricted to two designs each, meaning six total initial designs," one source said, referring to the chip design from U.K.-based ARM that those three suppliers use.

Windows RT -- aka, Windows on ARM -- is the first mainstream, desktop-class Windows operating system to run on ARM chips. This presents a challenge for Microsoft more

Nvidia accelerates gaming in the cloud

Nvidia announced graphics-chip based cloud tech today, claiming to deliver fast gaming to almost any device.

"GeForce GRID represents a massive disruption in how games are delivered and played," said Phil Eisler, general manager of cloud gaming at Nvidia, in a statement.

The trick is to power the games remotely with brawny servers that tap into Nvidia's new Kepler graphics processing units (GPUs).

Each Kepler chip has 3,072 Nvidia "CUDA" processor cores and packs 4.7 teraflops (trillion floating point operations per second) of 3D shader performance. Shaders are instrumental in rendering realistic effects in games.

All of more

Oracle could end up with nothing in its Java suit, judge warns

It's becoming more about what the judge has to decide rather than what the jury must decide, including if APIs are copyrightable, Google's motion for a mistrial on phase one dealing with copyrights, and putting off the third phase on damages altogether. Given that we're still waiting for decisions on all of these things, the schedule and future of this trial becoming increasingly unclear.

Legal teams from both sides of the courtroom met in front of Judge William Alsup in an afternoon hearing without the jury on Tuesday to discuss motions heading into phase three of the more

Google sums up: No 'shred of evidence' for patent claim

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google's counsel followed up with its closing statements in phase two of its legal battle against Oracle at the U.S. District Court of Northern California on Tuesday morning.

Attorney Robert Van Nest delivered closing arguments on behalf of the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, starting off by reminding the jury that "this case is not about Java versus Android."

With that in mind, Van Nest outlined Google's three core points in its case:

Google made "fundamentally different design choices for Android" without any specific knowledge of Sun Microsystems's patent portfolio
Android's

Big data is worth nothing without big science

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Alex Yoder's bio below.

We are living in "the age of big data," according to The World Economic Forum. Renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil agrees. I do too.

As the likes of Google, Facebook, Adobe Systems, and IBM embrace big data with gusto, startups are also popping up with the promise to help companies discover what one of the most valuable assets in the world can accomplish for them. No industry is untouched by big data, which is notably transforming the way social networks work today. However, the key factor that will more