Author: Peter Bright

Despite a final verdict, the recent Oracle v. Google trial leaves plenty of questions about the future of APIs, fair use, copyright, development, and more. While their views do not necessarily represent those of Ars Technica as a whole, our staffers wanted to take a look at the outcome and potential ramifications from both sides. Below, Peter Bright argues that software is about to suffer. Elsewhere, Joe Mullin says Google's win sends a powerful message against a familiar legal tactic. You can also find guest op-eds from professor Pamela Samuelson (pro-Google) and attorney Annette Hurst (pro-Oracle).

Oracle's long-running lawsuit against Google has raised two contentious questions. The first is whether application programming interfaces (APIs) should be copyrightable at all. The second is whether, if they are copyrightable, repurposing portions of those APIs can be done without a license in the name of "fair use."

In the first trial between the companies, the court ruled that Google had copied portions of Java but that these copied portions were mere APIs; as such, they were not protected by copyright law. An appeals court later reversed this part of the decision, asserting that the "structure, sequence, and organization" of an API was in fact protectable by copyright. The case was then returned to the trial court to ascertain whether the (previously acknowledged) copying of (now copyright-protected) Oracle material was an infringement of copyright.

Microsoft's HoloLens holographic headset runs a special version of Windows 10, Windows Holographic. At Computex today, the company announced that Windows Holographic is coming to more than just the HoloLens: Microsoft wants it to be available for all virtual reality and augmented reality/mixed reality systems, from the tethered, fully immersive virtual reality headsets already on the market, to a new generation of untethered HoloLens-like devices.

Windows Holographic builds on the common Windows platform—the NT kernel, the Windows Store, the Edge browser, and the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) APIs—that is collectively called OneCore. To this, it adds a range of components designed for mixed-reality computing—things like a custom shell; human-interaction systems that integrate voice, gaze, and hand gestures; and spatial mapping to build models of the world around you—along with specific APIs to use these capabilities in software, extending the core UWP platform.

Today's announcement shows Microsoft's intent to develop Windows Holographic into a broader platform still, running not just on Microsoft's own hardware, but also that of third parties. With PC-based virtual reality currently split awkwardly between the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets—a split that's enforced by DRM—an attempt to bridge the gap and unify the hardware can only be a good thing. Bringing AR into the mix is also sensible; AR and VR have areas of significant overlap (such as spatial mapping and gestural control), such that it doesn't seem sensible to reinvent the wheel for each approach.

The investigation into the attempted $1 billion electronic heist at the Bangladesh central bank has expanded to as many as 12 more banks that all use the SWIFT payment network.

Security firm FireEye, investigating the hack, has been contacted by numerous other banks, including some in New Zealand and the Philippines. While most of the attempted transfers in the original heist were cancelled, some $81 million was sent to the Philippines and subsequently laundered through casinos. The SWIFT organization in a statement said that some of these reports may be false positives, and that banks should rigorously review their computing environments to look for hackers.

Symantec, meanwhile, has corroborated earlier claims from BAE Systems that the hackers that stole from the Bangladesh central bank are linked to the hackers that have attacked targets in the US and South Korea since 2009, and that hacked Sony Pictures in 2014. The FBI claimed that those hackers were North Korean. Symantec's rationale is the same as that of BAE; malware found at the bank, Sony, and other victims, all appears to share common code for securely deleting files to cover its tracks.

Much of the time at Ars we look at laptops that tend towards the thinner and lighter end of the spectrum. These are great for portability, but they all tend to give up a little, and sometimes a lot, when it comes to raw performance. HP's new Omen gaming laptops tilt things much further in the performance direction, and they manage to do so while still offering decent portability, competitive pricing, and, refreshingly, looks that aren't too gamery: turn off the red backlit keyboards, and they'll not look too out of place as capable workhorses too.

Shipping on July 10, $899.99 will get you the 15.6 inch 1920×1080 IPS screened 4.6lb laptop with a quad core Skylake Core i7-6700HQ, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 950M GPU with 2GB dedicated memory, and a 1TB 7200rpm hard disk. Spend a bit more and you can go up to a GTX 960M with 4GB dedicated memory, 16GB RAM, and add a 128GB SSD alongside the spinning disk. All the systems have 2×2 802.11ac Wi-Fi, 2 USB 3 ports, wired gigabit Ethernet, and a full-size HDMI output. The keyboards make full use of the 15 inch form factor, sporting a full number pad alongside the keys—something that we know many of you look for in these larger laptops.

For $1029.99 you can get a 17.3 inch 1920×1080 IPS screen in a 6.3lb package. This has the same processor and 8GB RAM as the 15 inch system, but a faster Nvidia GTX 960M GPU with 4GB dedicated memory, and a 128GB SSD alongside its 1TB hard disk. Pay for options and you can get a 512GB PCIe SSD, 16GB RAM, a GTX 965M GPU, and a 4K screen. The larger laptop has all the same connectivity and networking options as its smaller sibling, and even adds an integrated DVD burner.

The last remaining vestiges of Nokia at Microsoft are being closed down as the company "streamlines" its smartphone hardware business. "Up to 1,850" people will lose their jobs (1,350 in Finland, 500 elsewhere) as the company essentially exits the phone market.

Microsoft bought Nokia's Devices and Services business in 2013 for $7.1 billion. In July last year, Microsoft laid off 7,800 of the staff from that acquisition and took an impairment charge of $7.6 billion. The remaining feature phone portion of the business was sold off last week for $350 million. With today's announcement, the smartphone hardware business is being all but wiped out. There will be one last impairment charge of approximately $950 million, of which $200 million is severance pay.

CEO Satya Nadella insists that the company is still working in the phone space, but in a much narrower way, saying "We are focusing our phone efforts where we have differentiation—with enterprises that value security, manageability and our Continuum capability, and consumers who value the same."

In 2014, Hewlett-Packard announced that it was splitting into two separate companies: Hewlett Packard Enterprise, selling servers and enterprise services, and HP Inc, selling PCs and printers. That split completed last year at the cost of more than 30,000 jobs. In a surprise announcement today, the company is about to embark on a second split: Hewlett Packard Enterprise is spinning off its IT services business.

The low-margin outsourced IT services business, which HP got into with its $14 billion acquisition of EDS in 2008, is to be merged with Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) to create a new company currently known only as SpinCo. HPE will own half of the new company, HPE CEO Meg Whitman will be on the new company's board, and HPE and CSC will each nominate half of the board members. CSC's current CEO, Mike Lawrie, will become CEO of the new company.

HPE says that the deal will save around $1 billion in operating costs. HPE shareholders will own shares in both companies, owning half of the combined company, with their stake valued at around $4.5 billion. They'll also receive a $1.5 billion cash dividend. Additionally, the merger will see some $2.5 billion in debt moved to SpinCo's books.

Windows Vista was a shock to many Windows users, as its hardware requirements represented a steep upgrade over those required to run Windows XP: most 32-bit versions required a 1GHz processor, 1GB RAM, DirectX 9 graphics, and 40 GB of mass storage with 15GB free. But those 2006-era requirements looked much less steep once Windows 7 rolled out in 2009: it required almost the same system specs, but now 16GB of available disk space instead of 15. Windows 8 again stuck with the same specs and, at its release, so did Windows 10.

But the Windows 10 Anniversary Update (referred to in documentation as version 1607, so it ought to ship in July) changes that, with the first meaningful change in the Windows system requirements in almost a decade. The RAM requirement is going up, with 2GB the new floor for 32-bit installations. This happens to bring the system in line with the 64-bit requirements, which has called for 2GB since Windows 7.

The changed requirements were first spotted by Nokia Power User and WinBeta.

Microsoft outlined new anti-terrorism policies today. Terrorists are no longer welcome to use Microsoft's online services, and the company will remove terrorist content when it's reported to be on the company's systems.

With the change, terrorist content joins hate speech and the advocacy of violence against others as expressly prohibited. Microsoft says that it will be using the Consolidated United Nations Security Council Sanctions List to determine whether something is terrorist or not; content posted by or in support of the individuals and groups on that list will be prohibited.

The policy for Bing will be different; links to terrorist content will be removed only in response to a takedown demand compliant with local law.

The Windows 10 Anniversary update, due later this summer, represents a major landmark for Microsoft. As well as being a significant update for Windows 10 on the desktop and Windows 10 Mobile on phones, the release is also coming to the Xbox One. For the first time, the Xbox One will be running essentially the same operating system as desktop Windows. Critically, it will also be able to run many of the same applications as desktop Windows.

In a lot of ways, this represents the realization of a vision that Microsoft has been promoting for more than 20 years: Windows Everywhere. Always important to Microsoft's ambitions for Windows as a platform, the Windows Everywhere ideal has a renewed significance with Windows 10 and CEO Satya Nadella's promise that Windows 10 will have one billion users within the first three years of its availability. The purpose of that promise is to send a message to developers that Windows is a big platform, a platform that they should still think about and create software for.

But if it is to have a hope of hitting that one billion target, Microsoft needs more than just PC users to get on board, which makes it important for Windows to run on more than just PCs. Hence the need for Windows Everywhere.

As part of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update this summer, the Xbox One is being upgraded to support application development. In preparation for this change, Xbox One consoles enrolled in the preview program can be flipped into developer mode to allow development and experimentation to commence.

Whenever a system is newly opened up to developers, it's inevitable that it will soon be used to run either Windows 95 or Doom, and it appears that the Xbox One is no exception to this rule. The Dosbox emulator has been ported to the Universal Windows Platform, and that emulator has been used to boot and run Windows 95. Disappointingly, no Doom was attempted, but the shareware version of Duke Nukem 3D and the ZSNES emulator were both also demonstrated running.

The emulator is very slow, as it's using Dosbox's interpreted mode, wherein the processor is fully emulated in software. Dosbox has a faster dynamic mode that uses the host processor to execute as much code as possible, but the person who made the port, YouTube user vcfan, writes that this feature is currently suffering from some crashes in 64-bit mode. When enabled, vcfan says that the system "flies."