"The operating system is called Windows," claimed Steve Ballmer when asked about Microsoft's plans for the tablet/slate/pad form factor at the company's annual Financial Analyst Meeting on Thursday. He expressed dismay at the iPad's strong sales figures, "[Apple has] sold certainly more than I'd like them to have sold," he said. Ballmer then promised that Windows-powered devices will be shipping "as soon as they are ready," going on to explain that they would get a boost from Intel's low-power Oak Trail platform next year.

The message was clear: Microsoft still doesn't understand why its Tablet PC concept has repeatedly bombed over the best part of a decade. Apple sold more iPads in its first three months of availability than PC vendors sold Tablet PCs in the whole of last year; in fact, the number of iPads sold in that period is likely to eclipse the number of Tablet PCs sold both last year and this. But still the company is persevering: stick a regular PC operating system on a laptop, give it a touchscreen, and then take away the keyboard and pixel-perfect pointing device. Ballmer even reiterated the company's position: slates are just another PC form factor.

Corroborating a rumor from The Wall Street Journal earlier this summer, a new Bloomberg report cited "two people familiar with the company's plans" to build an iPad-like touchscreen device and release it this fall. Dubbed the "Blackpad," the device will ostensibly run the as-yet-unreleased BlackBerry OS 6, and help RIM deflect further encroachment from Apple into its declining mobile market share.

Bloomberg's sources note that the device will rely on BlackBerry's usual enterprise e-mail advantage, but it will also include features that Apple's iPad lacks. In particular, it will have both rear and front-facing cameras for video conferencing and image capture, as well as the ability to pair with a BlackBerry phone over Bluetooth to share its 3G connection.

But jumping into the current tablet market—already dominated by Apple's iPad and with Windows 7 and Android-based products expected soon—might be easier said than done. "With the success of the iPad, RIM faces an uphill battle," William Power, an analyst at Robert W Baird & Co, told Bloomberg. "RIM really has yet to demonstrate that it can roll out touchscreen technology to match the leaders in the space, most noticeably Apple."

The Blackpad is expected to be launched in November, not long after RIM launches a long-rumored BlackBerry Bold 9800. That device will be a touchscreen-only device and the first to be offered with the more consumer-oriented BlackBerry OS 6.

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Microsoft has announced plans to release of an out-of-band update on Monday to address the Windows Shortcut flaw revealed less than two weeks ago. The software giant has been keeping a close watch on the use of .LNK files exploiting the vulnerability and has concluded that it needs to act faster than usual.

Microsoft typically releases security patches on the second Tuesday of each month, with the next slated for August 10. Redmond is releasing this fix eight days early, at approximately 1PM EDT Monday. All currently supported versions of Windows are vulnerable, including Windows 7, so the majority of Windows users should be receiving this patch.

There have been multiple malware families that have picked up the .LNK attack vector, including a highly virulent strain named Sality.AT. Not only is Sality a very large family, but it is known to infect other files (making full removal after infection challenging), copy itself to removable media, disable security, and then download other malware. Microsoft has seen an increase in attack attempts as well as a change in the geolocation of the attack attempts across the systems it protects. In short, this new attack vector is becoming more widespread. The security team at the company believes more families will continue to pick up the technique, leading it to get the patch out as soon as possible.

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Students care about Facebook privacy more than the world thinks, and their use of privacy controls has skyrocketed recently, according to two researchers. Eszter Hargittai, Associate Professor of Northwestern University, and Danah Boyd, Research Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society published their findings in the online peer-reviewed journal First Monday, noting that young people are very engaged with the privacy settings on Facebook, contrary to the popular belief that their age group is reckless with what they post publicly.

The researchers surveyed first-year writing students at the University of Illinois-Chicago during the 2008-2009 academic year, and then followed up with them again in 2010. The large majority—87 percent—said they used Facebook in 2009, which went up to 90 percent in 2010. Among frequent and occasional users, more than half posted their own status updates in addition to checking up (and leaving comments) on those of friends.

Apple launched the iPhone 4 in 17 additional countries today, causing another round of debate over whether or not the iPhone 4's external antenna design is flawed or not. A UK consulting firm says its tests show the "death grip" problem is real, and "significantly" worse for the iPhone 4 than other smartphones. A review from Norway is less critical, suggesting the iPhone 4 gets better signal than competing phones and may be victim to AT&T's less "robust" wireless network.

Shortly after the iPhone 4 began shipping in the US last month, users started to notice a problem: gripping the device in a certain way led to signal attenuation and, in some cases, dropped calls or poor data connections. While Apple CEO Steve Jobs was somewhat dismissive of the issue early on, testing conclusively demonstrated that the iPhone 4 had a higher signal attenuation than other smartphones when bridging a small gap on the lower left side of the device's stainless steel bezel. 

The Federal Communications Commission has finally approved the first 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) phone for sale in the US. Though the first LTE handset will be available through MetroPCS, the FCC has now opened the door for other LTE devices, including those for Verizon's in-testing LTE network.

The Samsung SCH-r900 will be the first LTE phone to market in the US, which MetroPCS hopes to launch "this summer" according to InformationWeek. We're still mostly in the dark as to where MetroPCS plans to build out its LTE network (the company said earlier this year that it was targeting a number of metro markets, but only named Las Vegas), but regardless, it looks like Sprint will soon have to share the 4G limelight.

One company that has been keeping the world slightly more up-to-date with its LTE buildout plans is Verizon. The carrier is already testing its network in Seattle and Boston, with around 30 more markets expected by the end of the year. Those markets, according to rumors from Engadget, include a number of airports, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia.

Verizon apparently plans to make its first commercially available LTE devices laptop data cards, but the question many have been asking is whether Verizon's LTE rollout could hail the launch of the Verizon iPhone. In addition to rampant rumors of a possible January release, Ars has heard from someone in the know that Verizon is already testing an LTE iPhone in Boston and that the official launch is dependent upon the mass expansion of the carrier's 4G network. We hear an announcement could come as soon as September (a month when Apple traditionally holds an event to introduce new iPods), but we're still filing this one in the rumor category. 

If you're looking for a primer on LTE technology, check out our recent feature on the state of 4G.

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