The ReactOS project has released version 0.3.11 of their operating system. A lot of changes in this delayed release, but the two main points of interest are a more or less rewritten memory manager, as well as many improvements in the sound stack.

This news is already a week old, but it only got submitted to us today, and I didn't notice it all. As it turns out, two malicious software packages had been uploaded to GNOME-Look.org, masquerading as valid .deb packages (a GNOME screensaver and theme, respectively).

Last week, OSNews received an interesting email from a German attorney. It informed us that a company called Smartbook AG has a trademark in several countries to the term "Smartbook" and admonished us (semi-threateningly) not to use the term for anything but his client's company's products. Our first reaction was, "huh?" But a quick search reminded us that several companies, most notably Qualcomm, have started referring to low-power mini-notebooks as smartbooks. It turns out that OSNews, and many other news sources, have been caught in a trademark dispute between Smartbook AG and Qualcomm. This prompted me to do a little research on trademark law.

"Windows Server 2008 R2 may sound a lot like its predecessor, but in many substantial ways it's a brand new product, despite the simple 'R2' tacked on the end. Ars takes a detailed look at all the new stuff that's hidden under that 'R2' moniker."

Well, this pretty much seals the deal. Psystar is now officially burnt down to the ground, nothing left, it's all over. Judge William Alsup has granted Apple's motion for a permanent injunction, and even though the actual legal case only involved Leopard, the injunction specifically covers Snow Leopard and Rebel EFI as well.

In the item we ran yesterday about GNOME and the GNU Project, one aspect got snowed under a little bit. It turns out a claim made in the iTWire article about the role a blog post by Miguel De Icaza was false, and even though the claim wasn't ours, I did repeat it, and therefore, should correct it too. I also need to offer apologies for not framing the opening of the article clear enough - had I framed it better, a lot of pointless discussion and name-calling could've been avoided.

Now that Windows 7 has been out and about for a while, the first balance sheets regarding its success start popping up. Consumer helpdesk firm iYogi surveyed 100000 of their customers, and the results of that test paint a relatively positive picture for Microsoft's latest operating system release - but one problem point sticks out like a big eye sore.

The groups responsible for standardizing the language used to build Web sites have begun tackling technology to provide a direct interface to Webcams. The World Wide Web Consortium has begun work on the HTML Device addition to the Hypertext Markup Language specification. "The device element represents a device selector, to allow the user to give the page access to a device, for example a video camera," according to a December 11 draft of the specification.

"An increasing number of machines are equipped with hardware that can be used to support trustworthy computing. Trustworthy computing enables applications to make strong assurances about their behavior. Existing operating systems do not provide the right execution environment for trustworthy computing, and so are unable to fully exploit this emerging opportunity. The Nexus is a new operating system for trustworthy computing. Its microkernel architecture greatly reduces the size of the trusted computing base (TCB) by moving functionality out of the kernel."

"On behalf of the developers behind the open source BusyBox project, the Software Freedom Law Center has launched a major lawsuit against 14 consumer electronics companies. According to a complaint filed by the SFLC, the companies named in the suit failed to comply with the requirements of GNU's General Public License, the free software license under which the BusyBox code is distributed."

Version 0.7.7.0 of KolibriOS, the OS with its kernel and most applications written in assembler, is out. One of the biggest improvements is the port of the linux ATIKMS driver (meaning, resolutions such as 1920x1080 now work). Other changes include new games and improvements on the network applications.

Over the weekend, there has been a bit of a ruffling of the feathers over in the GNOME camp. It started with complaints received about the content on Planet GNOME, and ended with people proposing and organising a vote to split GNOME from the GNU Project.

After Linus began criticizing Red Hat over not upstreaming the Nouveau driver and Red Hat then attributing this on microcode issues less than a day ago, David Airlie has prepared a patch to introduce the Nouveau DRM in the Linux 2.6.33 kernel. This free software NVIDIA driver will finally be entering the mainline Linux kernel.

"On the heels of last week's vote to ratify the new Java specification, Sun Microsystems, the leader of the Java community, formally announced the release of Java EE 6. Along with the news, Sun today also released Glassfish version 3--the first Java EE 6-compliant Java server--as well as NetBeans 6.8 IDE, which also includes full Java EE 6 support. With the releases, Sun is providing the first major update to the Java EE platform in over three years. This month also marks another significant milestone with the tenth anniversary of the first J2EE release (the former name of Java EE) in 1999."