Late last night (CET), we reported on the story that the VLC project needed more developers for the Mac version of this popular video player, or else the Mac variant may disappear. Just about every website out there reported on this issue, but it turns out it all got a bit exaggerated (on the internet? Surely you jest...). We spoke to VLC developer Pierre d'Herbemont to clarify the issue, and they've also put up a wiki page about the so-called demise of the Mac version of VLC. He also detailed what, exactly, they meant by "Apple is blocking us".

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."