Google Pulls Emulators From the Android Market

Over the weekend, Yong Zhang (yongzh), developer of emulators for old gaming systems on Android, has seen his developer revoked and all applications removed from the Android Market. While locally installed applications remain on user's device this time, they obviously cannot be updated or reinstalled by users who have legally purchased them. No warning or explanation has been sent, but the app and account removal is most likely the result of a complaint from one of the companies who own the right to those systems, as a complaint from Sega last month resulted in a couple of emulators getting removed already.

Linux Kernel 3.0 Announced to No Fan Fare

Well this makes a change. Linus Torvalds has announced that the next version of the Linux Kernel release is to be '3.0'. "I decided to just bite the bullet, and call the next version 3.0. It will get released close enough to the 20-year mark, which is excuse enough for me, although honestly, the real reason is just that I can no longer comfortably count as high as 40."

Microsoft Earns More from Android than Windows Phone 7

It turns out that a lot of people haven't been paying attention. Over the weekend, a story about how Microsoft is earning more from HTC's Android devices than from its own Windows Phone 7 sales spread all across the web, with surprised reactions everywhere. Anyone who has been paying attention to Microsoft's recent patent trolling regarding Android could've seen this coming.

Apple v. Samsung Gettin’ Good

In order to not overwhelm OSNews with even more legal news, I didn't report on the recent developments in Apple v. Samsung until we had some more stuff to consolidate. Well, since the goings been getting good lately there, let's talk about it. Samsung was ordered to hand over a slew of unreleased products and materials to Apple, and now, Samsung, for its part, has demanded that Apple hands over the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 to Samsung. If they exist. This is gettin' good.

The OS-periment: RPC-Based Daemon Model Goes ‘RC’

It's funny how trying to have a consistent system design makes you constantly jump from one area of the designed OS to another. I initially just tried to implement interrupt handling, and now I'm cleaning up the design of an RPC-based daemon model, which will be used to implement interrupt handlers, along with most other system services. Anyway, now that I get to something I'm personally satisfied with, I wanted to ask everyone who's interested to check that design and tell me if anything in it sounds like a bad idea to them in the short or long run. That's because this is a core part of this OS' design, and I'm really not interested in core design mistakes emerging in a few years if I can fix them now. Many thanks in advance.

PayPal Sues Google over Wallet Service

Ding ding ding ding - I think we have a record here. Launched yesterday, Google Wallet has already attracted a lawsuit. While patent lawsuits are teh shizzle these days, this lawsuit is a little different, so sadly I can't trot out my usual 'software patents bad' lines (aww). PayPal has sued Google over its Wallet service, claiming that one key former PayPal executive who accepted a job at Google took trade secrets with him.

Could You Live Without Blocking Calls?

After having an interesting discussion with Brendan on the topic of deadlocks in threaded and asynchronous event handling systems (see the comments on this blog post), I just had something to ask to the developers on OSnews: could you live without blocking API calls? Could you work with APIs where lengthy tasks like writing to a file, sending a signal, doing network I/O, etc is done in a nonblocking fashion, with only callbacks as a mechanism to return results and notify your software when an operation is done?

Amazon Launches Mac Software, Game Download Store

It seems that the fight between Amazon and Apple has just entered into a new phase. The two companies are already in the world's silliest tussle over the trademark for the term 'app store', and now Amazon has kicked it up a notch by launching a competitor to the Mac App Store. While not nearly as large as the Mac App Store, it contains a number of big-name titles which are not available through Apple's offering - such as Microsoft Office.

Nokia Symbian Support to Continue Well Into 2016

On a recent recent visit to Beijing, Anna Shipley of Nokia Conversations - China, caught up with Stephen Elop for a short interview. In the interview, Elop illiterates once again the importance of the partnership with Microsoft, their new strategy, roll out, renewal and challenges faced ahead - in his own words "Nokia has to move forward faster and more aggressively now, than we have ever done before because of the competition". He talks about the importance of creating a great environment for developers of applications so that they can be effective, especially with the new Windows platform on Nokia devices. He also mentions that investment in Symbian will continue with support and updates way into 2016, with new apps, customer service and all of the elements that Symbian customers are currently experiencing.

Native x86 Android Runtime: Android Applications on Windows

"A startup called BlueStacks has developed an Android runtime environment for the Windows operating system. It will enable users to run Android applications alongside conventional Windows software on Microsoft's operating system. The technology impressed some major investors who have supplied $7.6 million in Series A funding so that BlueStacks can turn its software into a business."

Genode 11.05 Gets New API for Type-safe IPC, Runs L4Linux

The concern for efficient and easy-to-use inter-process communication is prevalent among microkernel-based operating systems. Genode has always taken an unorthodox stance on this subject by disregarding the time-tested standard solution of using an IDL compiler in favour of sticking to raw C++ mechanisms. The new version 11.05 of the OS framework takes another leap by introducing a brand new API for implementing procedure calls across process boundaries, facilitating type safety and ease of use, yet still not relying on external tools. Furthermore, the platform support for the Fiasco.OC kernel has been extended to the complete feature set of the framework. The most significant new features are L4Linux (on Fiasco.OC), an experimental integration of GDB, ARM RealView PBX device drivers, and device I/O support for the MicroBlaze platform.

Smartphone Minecraft Xperia Play Exclusive First

"Minecraft developer Mojang has confirmed to Gamasutra that the previously revealed Android version of its PC indie hit will be arriving on Sony Ericsson's PlayStation-certified Xperia Play before other phones. The Xperia Play version of Minecraft will feature customized controls for the system's PlayStation-styled slide-out buttons, the company said. Mojang is also developing versions of the title for iOS and other Android phones, and said the smartphone versions of the game will be tweaked slightly to deal with the vagaries of the new platform." And we have video. I'll be buying an iPad 2 soon, and with that thing getting Minecraft... I fear for my life.

Apple Finally Addresses MAC Defender, Promises Fix

Well, it took them long enough. Apple has finally acknowledged the existence of the MAC Defender trojan, and has offered removal instructions. The company has also promised a security update to Mac OS X that will block MAC Defender and its variants from working. All this information was published in the form of a support document on Apple's website. Update: Well, that was fast. A new variant of the trojan, called Mac Guard, has been discovered. Unlike previous variants, this one does not require users to enter their administrative password.