The trash can metaphor in computing is as old as the desktop metaphor itself. It was first introduced with the Apple Lisa user interface, and found its way to the Macintosh. Apple patented the whole idea, and sued anyone who tried to use the same name, resulting in other user interfaces implementing the exact same principle but just named differently. Despite its old age, and the fact it barely changed over the decades, many people have issues with the traditional concept.

Last week, The Washington Post reported that hundreds of thousands of IIS webservers were hacked. Code was placed on them that installed malware on visitors' computers. Among the infectees were websites from the UK government and the United Nations. Initial reports said the attackers used a security vulnerability in Microsoft's IIS, but the company published more information on the attacks today, and denies IIS was compromised.

The latest version of Whitix, V0.1, has been released for download. "Whitix is a simple open-source operating system for your PC. It offers a range of applications, so you can do what you want without worrying about instability or poor performance. How often have you wondered why modern software is too complicated, too buggy or just too unclear? Whitix is a return to the ideal of simple software that works the way you want it to. Although the software itself is still in its early days, our vision is well established."

Back at MIX, the Live Platform Services team announced a new standard APP-based protocol for accessing your Live data, and at Web 2.0 the Live Mesh team has announced plans to extend that API with synchronization-ready access to data, devices, application and activity feeds. Ori Amiga shows a number of demos showing the native Mesh feeds, WPF applications using Mesh, a Silverlight client that supports working on and offline, a custom Facebook application that syncs Facebook photos with Live Mesh, a Mac client that sends photos to Live Mesh and even LINQ queries over Mesh objects.

As you surely know by now, the latest hype on the web is stories, news, or supposedly new quotes regarding the potential availability of Windows XP after June 30th, when Microsoft will cease selling the seven year old operating system. The latest development? Big PC companies like Dell and HP have found a backdoor to keep on selling XP after 30 June. And no, it doesn't involve Windows 2003.

When Asus released its Eee PC, praise was almost universal. People loved the device's size, low price, and the fact it came with Linux appealed to many geeks. Consequently, the device sold rather well, and was a hit for Asus. However, the device had two major shortcomings: its small screen (7" 800x480), and its relatively short battery life. Asus took the critcism to heart, and came up with the Asus Eee PC 900, which has a 9" 1024x600 screen. So, what's the verdict?

When PsyStar announced they would be offering their own Macintosch clone, pre-installed with Apple's Mac OS X Leopard, they opened up a whole can of worms. Despite the fact that the company itself was shrouded in mystery and dubiousness, the possible implications of their actions sparkled an interesting debate here on OSNews as well as other discussion venues: can PsyStar and its users just discard Apple's End User License Agreement for Leopard? Instead of relying on my own limited layman's understanding of Dutch Common Law, I decided to contact Dutch legal experts, and ask for their opinions on Apple's EULA, and EULAs in general.

We were always proud of OSNews' (and Gnomefiles.org's) mobile capabilities. We spent years collecting keywords to be able to automatically redirect or serve a mobile-formatted or WAP-formatted (wap.osnews.com) page to less capable browsers. We believe that this script can recognize 99% of the world's non-desktop browsers. We gave special care to not only phones, but PDAs, gaming devices, text browsers, even weird embedded systems browsers that most users have never heard of. Now, it's time to open source our PHP detection script so others can use it on their sites too. Download here, and read the included readme.txt file too before using. It explains what is what, and what its difference is compared to similar solutions found elsewhere. You can see the work this detection script does in our mobile statistics (OSNews serves about 1500 pageviews per day on non-desktop browsers via this script).

Enlightenment 0.17, the big, long awaited new release of the Enlightenment project, has been in the making for a long time now - since December 2000, to be precise. E17, as it became known, is a complete rewrite of Enlightenment, complete with a set of base libraries (the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries) turning it into a full-fledged desktop environment, complete with its own set of base libraries for building applications. Last November, main developer Carsten 'Rasterman' Haitzler stated that there were only two big to-do items left blocking the release of E17. We're now a few months ahead, so I contacted Rasterman to see what's what.

The Hardy Heron has taken flight: it's the second LTS (Long Term Support) release of the world's most popular distro. New features include the Wubi Windows installer and Firefox 3 beta 5. Grab a copy here, and check out Linux Format's overview of the release.

Yesterday (well, CET in any case), Apple posted its financial results for the second quarter of the 2008 fiscal year (which ended 29 March). While sales of Macintosh laptops and desktops soared to ever greater heights, and while sales of the iPod consolidated itself, the news is not so good for the iPhone. And the dodo will have an Apple TV to play with, soon.

Hot on the heels of our previous story outlining the fiasco that Vista's release has been, TechRepublic's Jason Hiner predicts that Microsoft is aware of its blunder and will respond by making a release of Windows 7 ahead of schedule (primarily by overhauling Vista and calling it Windows 7, it seems) in order to encourage its enterprise clients to upgrade directly from XP to Windows 7.

"What, exactly, is Live Mesh and what do developers, customers and partners need to know about it? Here are 10 things that grabbed me about Live Mesh, after distilling my notes from chatting with some of the Softies involved in bringing Live Mesh to fruition." IN short, Live Mesh is "a Software + Services platform for synchronization and collaboration."

Does anyone remember the chip start-up P.A. Semi? This company made its rounds around the internet in 2005, when it lifted the veil of secrecy on a new, highly efficient PowerPC processor it had been working on. 2005 Being the year that Apple announced its switch to Intel, people started to doubt Apple's reasons. A few months later, in May 2006, it became known that Apple had been working with P.A. Semi right before Apple made the switch. P.A. Semi released their chip a year later, and now the company has been bought by... Apple.