Car analogies are quite popular on internet discussion forums, and ours is no exception. The problem with these analogies, however, is that they are usually quite flimsy, and a recent popular one is no exception. A number of people are now arguing that computer makers' move towards closed platforms (Apple, Sony, and so on) is akin to people no longer being able to service cars on their own. This analogy, which looks sound on a superficial level, breaks down when you spend more than five minutes contemplating it.

Alex Brown, the convener of ISO's OOXML subcommittee (SC34), criticized Microsoft last week for failing to properly support the standard in Office 2010. Brown declared that Microsoft's office format was "heading for failure" due to the growing number of unresolved technical deficiencies and Microsoft's own apparent lack of interest in implementing ISO's revised version of the standard. Microsoft technical evangelist Doug Mahugh responded on Wednesday in an effort to clarify Microsoft's intentions for OOXML support. He said that Microsoft is strongly committed to the standard and plans to achieve full compliance with the ISO-approved specification. He explained that Microsoft was unable to support strict OOXML compliance in Office 2010 due to various logistical issues and time constraints.

Good times, good times. Sony received a ton of deserved flak after it announced it would remove the PlayStation 3's "Install other OS" feature, despite advertising the machine with said feature, and despite promising only a few weeks earlier not to remove the feature. iPhone and PS3 hacker George "Geohot" Hotz promised to restore the feature - and less than a week later, he delivers.

Websites for over a decade have been transitioning to the Model-View-Controller paradigm, separating data from formatting and user interaction in their code bases. Unfortunately, this has meant not only the end of ugly early 90's vintage Geocities pages, but also of the era of digital, or more specifically computeral craftsmanship. The future of computers will depend on those artists, scholars, and programmers who can reunify content with format and remake programming as an art.

Via Ha.ckers.org, we get news of a cross-domain flaw using Flash or Silverlight content that allows the attacker to use the victim's browser as a proxy, including access to the user's session. Erlend Oftedal, the developer, explains how the system works and demonstrates the concept with a video. The flaw stems from developers lackadaisically allowing cross-domain requests from Flash across their whole domain (which obviously includes the user-account interactions); even Flickr and YouTube were culprits at one point.

"Last Friday HTC unveiled its entry-level Smartphone, aptly named the Smart. However, what we'd like to tell you about is not the new handset, but instead what happened during the press event inside the Taipei 101. This news story hasn't made it outside of Taiwan so far and we felt it was worth reporting on, despite the event taking place a few days ago. As the press conference was drawing to a close and the group photos were about to be taken, the event was gate crashed by representatives for one of HTC's suppliers. A woman came in shouting with several other people following her and there was a general confusion among the media at the event. The HTC PR representatives were doing their best to drag her away from the stage, while she was trying to hand over some kind of a list to Peter Chou, the president and CEO of HTC."

A few years ago I wrote on OSNews several articles (1,2) about workstations. After three years I had to stop, because there were no workstations left on the market, they became legacy and were not sold any more. Now with the rise of mobile devices with touchscreen and wireless network connectivity virtually everywhere, the question becomes valid, what will happen with the desktop computers, are they still needed, or will they follow the workstations on their way to computer museums?

And thus our true colours reveal. IBM made a patent pledge in 2005, promising not to sue open source projects over a list of 500 patents the computer giant holds. Today, however, IBM has threatened to sue TurboHercules, a French open source software house which provides support for the Hercules open source s390 mainframe emulator. Some of the patents in question are on the 500 list.

Engadget has managed to get hold of a very interesting internal presentation slide from Hewlett-Packard which compares Apple's iPad to HP's very own Slate. Since we didn't yet know anything about the Slate's specifications, this one is pretty revealing. While that's interesting in and of itself, the slide is also interesting in that it illustrates so well what sets Apple apart from companies like HP.

Ah, Intel's IA-64 architecture. More commonly known as Itanium, it can probably be seen as a market failure by now. Intel consistently failed to deliver promised updates, and clock speeds have lagged behind. Regular x86-64 processors have already overtaken Itanium, and now Microsoft has announced that Windows Server 2008 R2 is the last version of Windows to support the architecture.

I wanted to post this just because Barbara and David Mikkelson of Snopes.com are heroes of mine. Any savvy internet user knows that their web site is a great source for unraveling the never-ending stream of false internet rumors. The New York Times article also mentions FactCheck.org and PolitiFact, which are two other truth-telling sites that educated people ought to be aware of.

Swedish company People of Lava has announced an Android-based internet-connected television. Say what you will about this particular product, but I personally think this is a very good idea that is a long time coming. I don't really care that much about having a TV that can do things. I use a TV as a glorified monitor, hooking it up to various boxes like DVRs that do the heavy lifting. But what I do care about is having electronics that don't suck. And I think I can make a blanket pronouncement here: by and large, the software that consumer electronics firms make for their hardware is very, very bad.

Even we are eager with iPad news - especially this variety. How long has the iPad been out and about in the US? A day or so? Yeah, pretty much. That's all it took: the iPad has already been jailbroken. Rooted. This means that if you didn't plan on buying the iPad because you don't want to be shackled to Apple, and were waiting for a jailbreak, you won't have to wait long.

"There is a lot of misconception around support for multitasking in the iPhone and its giant cousin, the iPad. What follows is my analysis of the situation. I am not privy to any insider Apple information. Moreover, while my knowledge is certainly colored by my work on Android, I'm not drawing a comparison or using any Google-specific knowledge." Interesting stuff about how Android does multitasking.