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.

There's a new REBOL like programming language in town. It's called Red, it's BSD licensed and contrary to REBOL and Boron, Red is a compiled language. The Syllable project is proud to announce that Red programs now run on Syllable Desktop. Here is a screenshot from a demo program. Syllable is the third Red target platform, after Windows and Linux.

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.

You don't need a Chromebook to try Google's Linux-based Chrome OS. Here's how to give it a try today.

Well, this is some good news on this fine morning. After Sony Ericsson announcing official support for bootloader unlocking on their Android phones, HTC has just stepped it up a notch: the company's CEO (no less) has announced on Facebook that going forward, HTC will no longer lock down any of their phones' bootloaders.

"KDE has released a first beta of the upcoming 4.7 release of the Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces, the KDE Applications and the KDE Frameworks, which is planned for July 27, 2011. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing new and old functionality."

"Just as expected, Google unveiled its wireless payment system and its new Groupon-like deals site at a press event in New York on Thursday. Called Google Wallet and Google Offers, the two features can operate either separately or together to make it easier to pay for things in person and get deals while shopping."

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.

A few weeks ago, we talked about Dutch mobile phone carriers planning to charge for the use of different kinds of application, such as Skype, WhatsApp, and so on. They would check people's data traffic using deep packet inspection, and charge accordingly. This led to a massive outrage here in this glorified swamp - and this outrage has had its effect.

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.

"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.

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.

I'm going to become short of suitable title suffixes pretty shortly... Anyhow, I have also reviewed interrupts on the MOS 6502 for the sake of extreme completeness, bust most importantly have tried to address some very incomplete and misleading statements of the interrupt handling model about pop-up threads and service-providing processes in a rather extensive way, see this post.

"Apple has been assigned rights to over 200 patents and pending patent applications by Freescale Semiconductor, the chip design company spun off from Motorola in 2003. Though the exact details of the transaction aren't discernible from the public records, the bulk of the patents appear to be related to wireless communication hardware technology." Uh-oh. World, be prepared for even more patent lawsuits as Android continues to grow. Sigh.