InterviewLet's forget the last few years ever happened — the last five, at least. Possibly 10. In the 1980s Sun Microsystems was on fire.

Nimbula — the build-your-own-cloud startup founded by Amazon's former vice president of engineering — has released a public beta of its so-called cloud operating system, Nimbula Director.

ExclusiveThe Apache Software Foundation – one of tech's most influential open-source groups – is closer to quitting Java's governing body after losing a stand-off vote against Oracle on Java.

The "Pure Google" Nexus S, announced Monday, enters an increasingly crowded, turbulent smartphone marketplace in which the eventual winner — or winners — are far from certain.

Well before Oracle was even close to buying Sun Microsystems, the company was kind enough to tweak its per-core pricing for its eponymous database software to make it competitive on processors with fewer threads and higher clock speeds. Now, the company is making its software pricing less attractive on servers using Itanium 9300 processors from Intel - which pretty much come from only Hewlett-Packard these days. The idea is to help Oracle's new Sparc T3 Unix boxes steal some business in HP-UX shops.

A computer consultant is embarking where Apple has refused to go, adding a security measure known as ASLR to iPhones to make them more resistant to malware attacks.

Server wannabe Cisco Systems and application and system management tool maker BMC Software have forged a tighter partnership to peddle cloudy infrastructure. Cisco has stopped short of shelling out big bags of cash to have BMC all to itself, though.

2010: it's a wrap

Julian Assange's lawyer said he is talking to the Metropolitan Police this morning, after which he and his client will decide what to do next.

Samsung has worked out a way to stack memory chips vertically, increasing memory density and decreasing power needs.

Startup StorSimple is SAShaying to the cloud with a small and medium business on-premises appliance for active data storage – and bulk data banished to the cloud.

Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange has been arrested by police in London and will appear in court later today.

British soldiers on active service will get an extra half-hour of phone calls home this Christmas, and cheaper calling from Afghanistan too.

Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn will punch out 400,000-600,000 iPad 2s within the next 100 days, the company's factory managers have been told.

The European Commission has launched a plan to restore bee health in response to widespread reports of increases in bee mortality.

Apple looks set to release the next version of its iPad in February next year – that is if a claim bubbling up in Taiwan is to be believed.

The financial squeeze has been put onto Wikileaks, with MasterCard refusing to process donations to the whistleblower site and the suspension of the personal bank account of founder Julian Assange in Switzerland.

Google and Samsung have jointly announced the Nexus S, but the new flagship Android handset has more wireless than previously seen with Near Field Communications built in.

Security watchers have warned that Facebook's latest revamp will create the tendency to expose more user information.

Wikileaks has always been a commercial enterprise hiding behind a narcissistic "public interest" PR, says Cryptome operator John Young in a scathing critique of the site.

Five advisers have been appointed to Ian Hargreaves' review into intellectual property growth, the IPO announced yesterday. Two of the choices may cause consternation among creators' rights representatives.

The Iranian government has been attempting to co-opt the country's Ninjas and other martial artists to help out with some light repression duties, US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks claim.

Google's Andy Rubin has been showing off Honeycomb, the next version of Android and one with proper tablet support, explaining how Android applications will work across form factors.

Microsoft has written to Salesforce.com and Oracle punters urging them to ditch the cloudy database offerings of Marc Benioff and Larry Ellison in favour of its own CRM system.

BSkyB is closing down its Sky Songs subscription music service, blaming poor take-up. The fiver-a-month offer bundled unlimited ad-free listening to a catalog of 5 million songs, and five MP3s to keep a month.

Dreamforce 2010Larry Ellison's got a new database competitor in the form of Salesforce.com, with the launch of Database.com from his one-time protégé Marc Benioff.

Spam levels – hit by recent botnet takedown efforts – have begun to return to their previous noxiously high levels.

Britain's schoolchildren have slipped down the international league in reading, maths and science, according to the latest batch of numbers from the OECD.

Apple is now a more successful global seller of mobile computers than Dell, according to new third-quarter numbers from market watcher DisplaySearch.

Home Secretary Theresa May has said that police forces need to ensure that they protect frontline staff by making cost savings on IT.

Sage Pay has apologised for a four hour outage yesterday that left online merchants with no way to process payments for Christmas orders.

Wikileaks editor Julian Assange told Westminster Magistrates Court he would not consent to extradition to Sweden where he is wanted for alleged sexual offences.

Alan Sugar showed UK business how to secure tip top service from BT today, pursuing a dual strategy of ranting on twitter while pulling the "don't you know who I am" line on the call centre staff.

Tumblr has blamed a database problem for an outage that left the popular microblogging service largely unavailable for more than 24 hours.

IBM sometimes behaves like a bank, and sometimes like a private equity firm. Sometimes it even behaves like an IT vendor.

Whatever you think of Sky news, the fact is you can now view it on internet-connected Sony Blu-ray Disc players and Bravia TVs.

Samsung's Developer Challenge is over, with the top app earning a prize of $300,000 as the company continues to big up its third mobile platform.

A dispute has emerged between experts in quantum cryptography over the effectiveness of a recently discovered attack that takes advantage of implementation flaws in high-security key exchange systems.

Google has announced that the first Chrome OS netbooks will arrive in "mid-2011" from Acer and Samsung. Originally, the company said that devices would arrive by the end of this year.

Microsoft says it will offer a privacy setting in the next version of Internet Explorer that will make it easy for users to keep their browsing habits from being tracked by advertising networks and other third-party websites.

Dreamforce 2010Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, has fired back at Larry Ellison and his beloved Exadata for cloud computing, saying that the server fails the cloud test and that Oracle lacks a genuine vision.

Whitehat hackers are tracking a new botnet that's quickly become a popular platform for launching web attacks.

Google has uncloaked a new incarnation of the V8 JavaScript engine that underpins its Chrome browser. Dubbed "Crankshaft," the updated engine is roughly 50 per cent faster on Google's own V8 benchmark suite, according to the company's internal tests.