Last week one of Psystar's lawyers said that the company is shutting down for good, but now another lawyer is refuting that claim by saying "Psystar does not intend to shut down permanently."

Apple's injunction against Psystar is permanent, so whatever they do after recovering from this legal firestorm won't involve reselling Apple software. If they're smart, that is. One thing's for sure: It's looking more and more like all this legal action was nothing but an expensive attention grab. [PC World]

Time Names Droid as Gadget of the Year, iPhone Last Seen Crying in Corner

Time made their list of Gadgets of the Year and it looks like the Droid came out on top, followed by the Nook. The iPhone doesn't even get bronze and instead sits at fourth place this year. Youch. Do we even care about these lists anymore though? [Electronista]

What if Women Were as Horny and Pervy as Men?

This one made a few of us laugh like crazy, but heads up: There's definitely some man-crack visible sometime during the pole dancing sequence. Yes, that means this video is definitely NSFW unless your boss is Jason Chen and giggles right along with you.

2010's Color of the Year is Seriously Ugly

Apparently Pantone picked a color of the year already and, frankly, the description is almost as bad as the color:

Combining the serene qualities of blue and the invigorating aspects of green, Turquoise evokes thoughts of soothing, tropical waters and a languorous, effective escape from the everyday troubles of the world, while at the same time restoring our sense of wellbeing

I have to be honest though, I probably only dislike #15-5519 Turquoise because I prefered 2009's #14-0848 Mimosa. [Crunchgear]

(Super Gay) Ron Livingston Does Not Understand the Internet

Alright, so I'm just baiting Office Space actor Ron Livingston a bit in that headline. I don't really know or care what his sexual orientation is or whether it's super or not. I just know that he's attempting to sue an anonymous Wikipedia editor for constantly changing his entry to state that "he is gay and officially confermed (sic) it in TMZ he is gay and darn proud."

Dear Ron, I've had far stranger things written about me, ranging from implications of vampirism to suggestions that I've got an obsession with space travel. I'm not suing. You shouldn't be either. [Wired]

Windows Server and Azure Get Blended Into Server & Cloud

Microsoft has created a new Server & Cloud Division which will include Windows Server and Azure. Like the name gives away, it'll focus on both on-premise and cloud solutions. Looks like it's mainly some reorganization for now and won't affect Microsoft's roadmaps. [ZDNET]

Dell's Twitter Account Generates $6.5 million in Revenue Over Two Years

I'd laugh at Dell for employing 100 people whose job is to man the company's Twitter accounts, but apparently it's paying off in the form of $6.5 million made from Twitter promoted offers. Not too shabby, Dell! [BGR]

While the injunction's been denied, Spring Design has been granted an expedited pre-trial process to push the entire mess into court a bit faster, but at the rate Barnes & Noble will be making the Nook available, there's hardly any rush. [Engadget]

The best part is, those are conservative estimates. According to Psystar's aggressive predictions, the company planned to move 12 million computers by 2011. 12 million! That's a far cry from the triple digit numbers they managed to sell.

The other best part is that Psystar pitched their inevitable legal battle with Apple as a competitive advantage, claiming other companies would want to stay away from that mess. Imagine asking the bank for a loan on a truck, saying you'll use it to haul stolen TVs, and arguing that fear of getting arrested will make yours the only TV truck in town. No wonder these guys are going under.

The documents were provided as part of the upcoming injunction proceedings, where Apple is trying to halt sales of Psystar's products. Hey Apple, I know this is all about protecting your IP and all, but going by those dismal figures, you really don't have to worry about Psystar's sales. [Computer Wold via BGR]

Canada Has Its Very Own Version of the AT&T vs. Verizon Ad Lawsuit

Telus and Rogers are sworn enemies in the Canadian wireless carrier arena, sort of like AT&T and Verizon but on a much more quaint, socialist and cold scale. And like our own two big dogs, Telus and Rogers have been at each others' throats recently about advertisements—Rogers has ads claiming it's "Canada's most reliable network" and that its speeds are twice as fast as any other network. Telus hit back, claiming it's not true (Telus did after all just launch a 21Mbps HSPA network) and Canadian courts actually forced Rogers to pull the offending ads, an interesting twist on the lawsuit pattern we Americans pioneered. Anyway, I know we're going to be crushed in the comments with high-larious anti-Canadian jabs, so let me pre-empt:

Igloo, cold, eh, hockey, The Arcade Fire, Bob and Dave MacKenzie, Pamela Anderson, who cares. [Boy Genius Report]

CollegeHumor Tackles Modern Warfare 2 (With Bonus Giz Appearance)

CollegeHumor just posted a video in which comedy nerds play (and are subsequently killed during) Modern Warfare 2, with a bonus appearance by our own Adam Frucci. I can exclusively report that Adam Frucci is a very old man who is several years removed from college, but the video's pretty funny despite this factual error. Discussed within: MW2's similarity to Crash Bandicoot, Dick Cheney quotes, a tax-funded sequel to Psychonauts, and why the glamorization of war is awesome. [CollegeHumor]

LG BL4 Gets Christmas Edition

You know, in America, Christmas editions are usually red and green, but in South Korea, it looks like they hang black tinsel on gold trees, because the LG BL40 Christmas edition is decked out in those colors. It's a small upgrade from the original BL40, with an 8MP camera (up from 5MP, though who knows if it's any better), a fancy case and entry into a contest with lots of prizes. It's in Remainders because only those black-and-gold-loving South Koreans can get their hands on it so far. [Engadget]

VUDU Adds Wikipedia, Possibly the World's Most Boring Update

VUDU is a pretty nice media service, built into set-top boxes and TVs and offering nice 1080p streaming, and adds to its repertoire Wikipedia integration. It's previously added Rotten Tomatoes, which is a little more obvious (and dare we say useful), and I personally might prefer IMDB rather than scrolling through prose paragraphs on my TV in Wikipedia, but it's good that Vudu is constantly updating its product. If you have to ask why it's in remainders, you probably haven't read this far: Vudu, Wikipedia, snore. [Engadget]

Datel maintains that Microsoft is "disabling or erecting technological barriers to Datel accessories" and thereby favoring its own products. For reference, Microsoft's 512MB memory unit is about $30, while a 2GB version from Datel is $40. Sounds like it might be worth supporting the little guy in this one. [Techflash]

Sorry about the previous typo, it's 512MB for $30 on the Microsoft memory unit, not 12MB.

Hank calls the technique equivalent to a virtual cover band playing The Beatles' songs. He bought all of their albums, had a computer analyze the waveforms to determine their pitch, timbre and other defining qualities, then destroyed the original copies of the music.

He then had a computer reconstruct the songs based on the data it collected from analyzing the waveforms. It wasn't a recording, but a complete mathematical rebuild of the song.

That's really cool, and incredibly impressive that he managed to recreate the tracks from scratch like that, but there's no way the defense stands a chance against EMI's lawyers. I think I remember this argument being tried before with MP3s. A defendant claimed that because a majority of the waveform data was thrown away during encoding, it was not identical to the original recording.

Nice try, said the judge. As long as it's audibly identifiable as a certain recording, it constitutes as copyright infringement. At least that's what I remember. If anyone knows the specific case or I'm completely wrong, please chime in. Have fun in court November 20, Mr. Risan. [FastCompany]

Based on the press release, the claim is that Barnes & Noble used information, including design details, gained from meetings with Spring Design which were intended to end in a joint product. Apparently the Spring Design camp was caught just a little bit off guard when the Nook announcements started coming out:

Spring Design Files Lawsuit against Barnes & Noble : Nook Violates Alex Intellectual Property

CUPERTINO, CA - November 2, 2009 - Spring Design today filed a lawsuit to protect its Alex™ e-book intellectual property. The lawsuit asserts Barnes & Noble misappropriated trade secrets and violated the parties' non-disclosure agreement when it copied Alex' features into its recently announced Nook e-book.

"Spring Design unfortunately had to take the appropriate action to protect its intellectual property rights," said Spring Design Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Eric Kmiec. "We showed the Alex e-book design to Barnes & Noble in good faith with the intention of working together to provide a superior dual screen e-book to the market."

Spring Design first developed and began filing patents on its Alex e-book, an innovative dual screen, Android-based e-book back in 2006. Since the beginning of 2009 Spring and Barnes & Noble worked within a non-disclosure agreement, including many meetings, emails and conference calls with executives ranging up to the president of Barnes and Noble.com, discussing confidential information regarding the features, functionality and capabilities of Alex. Throughout, Barnes & Noble's marketing and technical executives extolled Alex's "innovative" features, never mentioning their use of those features until the public disclosure of the Nook.

Alex, with its unique Duet Navigator™, provides the capability for interaction and navigation techniques of the two screens and furthermore utilizes the capabilities of Android to enhance the reader's experience by supporting interactive access to the Internet for references and links. As the first in the market to offer an e-book with full Internet browsing while reading and with easy navigational control via its touch screen, Alex is well-positioned to offer the most dynamic and powerful reading device in the market.

Spring Design is focused at working strategically with book store partners to jointly develop the market and revolutionize e-book with interactive multi-media open Internet access. "It is our desire to resolve this matter so that we can move forward together to expand and grow this e-book market with enriched user experience, bringing readers to a new level of reading enjoyment," said Eric Kmiec.

About Spring Design:
Spring Design, founded in 2006, delivers innovative e-reader solutions and products to the e-book market, offering overall "Link Notes", a content authoring and multi-media publishing tool as add on editions to original text. Spring Design is located in Cupertino, California with engineering offices in Taiwan and China. Spring Design pioneered its patent-pending dual screen design with Duet Navigator™ capability in 2006, and has been working with major book stores, newspapers and publishers over the last two years, sharing the vision and the capabilities of the dual screen device. Spring Design's innovative patented technologies incorporate the seamless interaction of dual display and multi-online access in a single device, benefiting and leveraging the technology and resources of the Web to enhance the reading experience with open Internet access.

TechCrunch is saying that Skype is looking to buy Gizmo5, a SIP-based service that isn't quite as popular as the former, but works pretty well. SIP is an open standard that works with many, many devices—Gizmo 5 works with Google Voice even—so this could be a pretty good move even if Skype gets out of legal trouble. Imagine piping your free Google Voice number through Skype to get free calls like you can now with Gizmo5. [TechCrunch]

As a result of the individual motions by both companies, two hearings have been set for November 12 to determine whether there'll be a January trial. I'm not-so-secretly hoping that Judge William Alsup will look at the "user license agreements for both Mac OS X 10.5 and Mac OS X 10.6," arguments about Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the whole disc protection circumvention mess and make Apple and Psystar duke it out in court. Hell, I'll volunteer to transcribe the case for everyone's entertainment, stupid argument by stupid argument. Just make it happen. [AppleInsider via Crunch Gear]

What's even funnier was that Dish had ads saying that its DVR service was "better than TiVo", an incredibly ballsy move when a court ruled that you've stolen technology from the party you're claiming to be better than. [Bloomberg]

Now a class action lawsuit has been filed that seeks punitive damages for those affected by the deletion as well as an injunction that forbids Amazon from improperly accessing Kindles in the future. Granted, after the fallout and subsequent Bezos apology, there probably wasn't much risk of Amazon crossing the line again. Still, I agree that they had this coming.

Again, the fact that Orwell's 1984 is at the center of all of this controversy is one of those delicious coincidences that is impossible to ignore. [Trading Markets]

Their recent suit of Monster Mini Golf caused loads of backlash onto the company, making the founder Noel Lee declare that they were going to change the way they do business. And by that, apparently he means NOT change the way they do business, because they're suing a fucking TRANSMISSION COMPANY. [Audioholics via Engadget]

Specifically, anyone with a time based clause in their contract with an ETF during that time is eligible. If you were charged an ETF and can provide proof, you stand to gain $90. If you did not cancel a contract during that time in order to avoid and ETF, you could gain an extra $35. Like all legal situations, there is a bit of a run around to go thorough—but a detailed explanation and information on how to file is available on the Sprint settlement website. [sprintetfsettlement via Consumerist]

Speaking with Edge, a Microsoft spokesperson explained:

While we have had some users contact us with concerns about scratched discs, it is much less than 1 percent of the total Xbox 360 user base...Xbox 360 is designed so that it will not damage a game disc as long as the console is not moved while the disc is spinning. Too much movement of any game console, not just Xbox 360, can cause scratches on a disc." The spokesperson said that this was the reason Microsoft added a warning on the disc tray that needed to be removed before the first time of use.

What do you think? Did Microsoft do due diligence? [Edge via Kotaku]

From a Nyko spokesperson:

• Wider shape to fit hands comfortably
• Curved Z button to reduce finger slippage ("Kama side" image shows this)
• Grooves for a better grip
• Rubber battery cover
• New color scheme of C/Z buttons and analog stick

In other words, Nyko made their Kama more visually distinguished (in both textures and colors) from Nintendo's Nunchuk, though none of the controller's fundamental functionality was altered. Under this rubric, I'm pretty sure that we could release our own Wii pending it was covered in variegated, non-slip material.

The new controller has already been distributed to retailers, but we're guessing that you can still pick up the old version at a few spots if you move quickly. [BusinessWire]

Psystar has agreed to drop their antitrust claim against Apple, but they still have no intention of surrendering. Instead, they have shifted their focus on to copyright issues. From the filing:

Psystar alleges that by virtue of Apple's leveraging of copyrights in the context of Apple's EULA, spurious litigation via the DMCA, and various other anti- and unfair competitive conduct, there is no viable alternative to the purchase and use of Apple-Labeled Computer Hardware Systems for users who wish to use the Mac OS, for a prospective buyer of the Mac OS, or for a user of an older version of the Mac OS.

They are also arguing that Apple's inclusion of code in OSX that results in "kernel panic" does not constitute a legitimate copy protection system.

In Psystar's view, Apple's abuse of their copyright is monopolistic and is in direct violation of the "misuse doctrine," which prevents copyright from being used to block competition. Naturally, this is a major longshot and only prolonging the inevitable at a considerable and unnecessary expense. [Appleinsider and CNET]