An iOS security researcher who submitted a tainted iPhone application meant to expose a weakness in Apple's App Store security process has been suspended from Apple's developer program. And rightly so -- he violated clear terms of service. But what does that say about the security of all those random apps on your iPhone, iPad and iPod?

The Nokia N9, the very desirable piece of technology running MeeGo, and quite possibly the last truly unique Nokia device (at least, for now), will be getting its first update over the coming days. It comes with several improvements and fixes to Bring MeeGo on the N9 up to par with MeeGo on the N950.

This is massively off-topic since we barely cover the video game industry on OSNews, but in select cases, I'm willing to make exceptions. I just got home from picking up my pre-order copy of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Special Edition (Xbox 360), and just want to gloat a little bit for all the peasants among us that won't get it until Thursday or Friday. You can imagine OSNews will be shutting down for the coming, oh, seven months or so.

We've all had the idea, even if we've never pursued it. We just know we could make money in the stock market, based on our tech knowledge. We live and breathe tech. Why not profit from it?

In the commercial software world, user interfaces are generally designed by one group. Like Microsoft for Windows or Apple for Mac OS. Those desktop environments were designed by one company who did things like user testing and statistical analysis to try and make the desktop they thought would work best. Linux is different. Large groups definitely DO perform user testing and statistical analysis, but one group can also say "Here's what we want" and, if they have the ability to code it, their idea comes into being. It's pretty amazing, when you think about it. Linux lets people create what they want. If you don't like what's out there, fork it! Or start from scratch! You're in control!

Linux advocates have for so long advocated browser-accessed software as a service as a way to break out of Microsoft's proprietary desktop. Now that this world has arrived, there's less incentive to work on native Linux apps.

Why oh why does big news always break when I'm already in bed? This is a big one, guys: Motorola has been granted an injunction in Germany against Apple, which, as far as we can tell right now, covers Apple's entire portfolio of mobile products. Motorola can enforce this injunction, barring all of Apple's mobile products from the German market. In addition, Apple has to pay Motorola damages from 2003 and onwards. Update: Apple has responded (see Engadget article linked to above): "This is a procedural issue, and has nothing to do with the merits of the case. It does not affect our ability to sell products or do business in Germany at this time." At this time huh? Huh.

"Google is considering ditching the U.S. Chamber of Commerce out of frustration with its support for legislation that would force Internet companies to police websites that peddle pirated movies and fake Viagra. The rumblings of a defection - a potentially serious blow to one of Washington's most powerful lobbies - come weeks after Yahoo left the Chamber in October, largely over its support of Sen. Patrick Leahy's online piracy bill, the PROTECT IP Act." What, the US Chamber of Commerce is a front for the pharmaceutical and content industries? I'm shocked.

This is probably not entirely surprising. The European Commission has announced that it is investigating both Apple and Samsung because they may have breached antitrust rules with regard to patents used as standard in the mobile phone industry - otherwise known as FRAND patents. While the EC states it's investigating both Samsung and Apple, it's likely the investigation focusses on Samsung.

Open source history suggests vendor-backed Eucalyptus will ultimately win out over the foundation-based Open Stack as the open source cloud platform of choice for IT going forward. 'History has shown that when an open source project is dealing with a valuable layer of the software stack, that project has tended to be controlled by a single vendor that can directly make money from the project,' Rodrigues writes. 'History also shows that when an open source project is dealing with a commodity layer of the software stack, the project tends to be controlled by a foundation.' The question then boils down to whether cloud platforms are indeed a valuable layer, and thus directly monetizable, as Red Hat proved with Linux, or are they a commodity layer, like Apache HTTP Server or Eclipse. Ultimately, Rodrigues believes that the private cloud will prove to be a valuable component of the IT stack, thereby favoring Eucalyptus' AWS-based private cloud platform.

And so the iOS-ification of Mac OS X continues. Apple has just announced that all applications submitted to the Mac App Store have to use sandboxing by March 2012. While this has obvious security advantages, the concerns are numerous - especially since Apple's current sandboxing implementation and associated rules makes a whole lot of applications impossible.

A big issue right now in the world of operating systems - especially Linux - is Microsoft's requirement that all Windows 8 machines ship with UEFI's secure boot enabled, with no requirement that OEMs implement it so users can turn it off. This has caused some concern in the Linux world, and considering Microsoft's past and current business practices and the incompetence of OEMs, that's not unwarranted. CNet's Ed Bott decided to pose the issue to OEMs. Dell stated is has plans to include the option to turn secure boot off, while HP was a bit more vague about the issue.

A small company called AppMobi is enabling developers to create HTML5 apps that tap into native hardware and OS capabilities of mobile devices, such as gravity sensing, accelerometer, GPS, camera, sound and vibration, and the file system, InfoWorld reports. 'Its MobiUs browser for iOS implements HTML5's DirectCanvas API for gaming, as well as the HTML5 local storage API for saving executables and data in the browser cache so that apps can run offline. But what makes MobiUs more than just yet another browser is the set of libraries AppMobi provides app developers to access native hardware and enable push messaging from Web apps.'

What's it like to be hacked? James Fallows over at the Atlantic Monthly tells us his experience. One night his wife left her computer on when she went to bed. The next morning she discovers her Gmail account is inaccessible!