Petty Apple is petty. Amazon, Kobo, and others have changed their applications to conform to Apple's App Store rules, and if there's one word that describes the situation these booksellers are in, it's petty. Still, it's leading to good things: Kobo has announced it's going to bypass the App Store by writing an HTML5 e-reader for iOS (and thus, for other HTML5-capable mobile devices).

And the patent and lawsuit related news just keeps on coming. Sorry. Anywho, this one's a doozy. As we all know, Oracle - led by Larry Elison, who just so happens to be one of Steve Jobs' best friends, but this is of course entirely coincidental - is suing the crap out of Google over the use of Java in Android, claiming not only patent but also copyright infringement. Well, when Sun was still on its own, its CEO, Jonathan Schwarz, publicly and explicitly endorsed Android's use of Java in a blog post - a post that has since been removed by Oracle. But, as we all know, the internet never forgets.

Forbes' Timothy B. Lee has dug up a remarkable piece of history regarding IBM and Sun Microsystems that's an almost one-to-one copy of the situation between Microsoft and Android. Thirty years ago, IBM knocked on Sun's door. We've got some patents, IBM said. Please pay up.

We at OSNews would like to extend our thoughts and sympathies to the victims of the horrible events that took place in Norway, yesterday. There really are no words to describe what has transpired, and as such, I won't even attempt to do so. Suffice to say, OSNews will be silent until after the weekend. I have lost my interest in writing and quibbling about stupid ones and zeros, at least for now. "No one will bomb us to silence, no one will shoot us to silence, no one will ever scare us from being Norway."

"Lightweight Portable Security (LPS), created by USA's Department of Defense, is a small Linux live CD focusing on privacy and security, for this reason, it boots from a CD and executes from RAM, providing a web browser, a file manager and some interesing tools. LPS-Public turns an untrusted system into a trusted network client." Complete with backdoor so they can spy on all of us I'm sure!1!!

"Now everyone can use Google's Go language on the company's App Engine cloud platform as the company has announced that the Go runtime, which has been in development since it was announced at Google I/O, is now generally available."

"If you thought Lodsys was done making a spectacle of itself and dragging app developers to court, you were sorely mistaken. The king of the patent trolls has amended its original complaint against mobile devs, removing one company, but adding five new ones - all of them big names. Rovio, Electronic Arts, Square Enix, Atari, and Take-Two Interactive have been added to the list of defendants in the suit filed back in May." All part of the patent system Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM fight to maintain.

"Ailing Nokia on Thursday surrendered its lead in the global smartphone market to rival Apple and shed more market share as it reported a steep net loss for the second quarter. Nokia's outloook for its handset business to be profitable in the current quarter brought some relief to its battered share price but analysts doubted it would dispel fears about the future of the onetime cellphone leviathan. Nokia, still the world's largest phone maker by volume, has failed to come up with an attractive smartphone offering to compete with Apple's iPhone, Research In Motion's BlackBerry and a wide array of handsets using Google's Android software. Nokia said it sold 16.7 million smartphones in the quarter, falling behind Apple's 20.3 million iPhones." Hard to believe Windows Phone 7 - as great and fresh product I find it - can turn the tide for Nokia. Still, every phone maker today owes pretty much its entire business to Nokia (and Motorola).

"Microsoft Corp. today announced record fourth-quarter revenue of $17.37 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2011, an 8% increase from the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $6.17 billion, $5.87 billion, and $0.69 per share, which represented increases of 4%, 30%, and 35%, respectively, when compared with the prior year period. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, Microsoft reported record revenue of $69.94 billion, a 12% increase from the prior year. Operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share for the year were $27.16 billion, $23.15 billion, and $2.69, which represented increases of 13%, 23%, and 28%, respectively, when compared with the prior year."

Today, the technology world is gripped by what can only be described as a dirty war between iOS on one side, and Android on the other. While the parties in this war fight it out in the US court system, the web has latched onto this conflict like a starved leach to a nice juicy ankle, and this focus on just iOS and Android has had a rather unpleasant side effect. This effect was subtle at first, but now, it's everywhere. Yes, if you were to believe the web, iOS and/or Android invented everything when it comes to mobile operating systems. I will have none of that, and my PDA collection begs to differ too.

Phoronix has conducted some preliminary benchmarks, comparing Debian GNU/Hurd to Debian GNU/Linux. "There was only a handful of tests that could be successfully run under Debian GNU/Hurd and in those results the numbers were generally close, though Debian GNU/Linux was running about 4% faster in some and with the MP3 encoding the Linux OS was nearly 20% faster. Debian GNU/Hurd is an interesting project but for now its support is still in shambles, the hardware support is vastly outdated, and there is also no SMP support at this time. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how Debian GNU/Hurd turns out for the 7.0 Wheezy milestone."

"Scientists have taken the next major step toward quantum computing, which will use quantum mechanics to revolutionize the way information is processed. Quantum computers will capitalize on the mind-bending properties of quantum particles to perform complex calculations that are impossible for today's traditional computers. Using high magnetic fields, Susumu Takahashi, assistant professor in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and his colleagues managed to suppress decoherence, which is one of the key stumbling blocks in quantum computing."

Introduction not necessary. Read it.

As widely anticipated, Apple's new major OSX release is available this morning, download-only, for $29.99 USD in the Mac App Store. There's a quick copy and paste job of the feature list after the jump. Also as expected, there's a new, Sandy Bridge-based Macbook Air. Update: A reader pointed out John Siracusa's Lion review at Ars.