» Ghosts In The Machines

Microsoft has announced the release to manufacturing of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3).

According to their press release:

We are also in the final stages of preparing for release to the web (i.e. you!) on April 29th, via Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center. Online documentation for Windows XP SP3, such as Microsoft Knowledge Base articles and the Microsoft TechNet Windows XP TechCenter, will be updated then. For customers who use Windows XP at home, Windows XP SP3 Automatic Update distribution for users at home will begin in early summer.

Lots of people like to give The Register all kinds of grief for it’s … umm … informal style of reporting?

Of course, it has nothing to do with their ability to ferret out such gems tech companies would prefer not to become common knowledge, such as Phorm’s proposed deep-packet inspection or BT’s still inexplicable secret testing of the same against a large number of users without their knowledge.

Honest.

It almost certainly isn’t because of stories such as this one, which tells of a potential problem with Windows Defender (a Microsoft security application). It seems that a recent update to Windows Defender is causing USB devices to die.

Either something is in the tap-water-from-a-spring PR drones in the UK are drinking, or an intrinsically abject failure of intelligence is coming to the fore, but they seem to be losing their “magic” touch of late.

“We were adware, not spyware, honest” Phorm was caught with its hand in the cookie jar (no pun intended) recently, making some rather intriguing “clarifications” of the Wikipedia entry about the company.

Having read the differences between the two versions (pre and post PR drone assault), I can understand why Phorm might want to “clarify” their entry.  Parts of the entry they “clarified” include

In recent months, there has been growing discussion online regarding the proposed deal between major ISPs in the UK, such as BT, Virgin Media, and Carphone Warehouse, and a company called Phorm.

The basic premise goes something like this¹:

1. A customer of an ISP signed up for the system types in a URL.
2. The page request is routed through the ISP to Phorm’s servers.
3. Phorm’s servers modify a cookie on the user’s computer.
4. Phorm’s servers forward the request for a URL to the website being requested.
5. The website being requested sends back all the relevant page data to Phorm’s servers.

I love space. No, really, I do. That’s one of the reasons I write science fiction. Between “Inner Space”, the world’s oceans, and outer space, what lies outside our atmospheric cocoon, it’s hard to tell which one is the most “alien”, and the most fascinating for me.

But space … To paraphrase Douglas Adams, it’s big - mind-bogglingly big. The potentials for me, as an author, are obvious.

Tom Simonite over at New Scientist magazine reported recently about a new development in thought-to-* devices.

Named “Audeo”, the device intercepts and interprets the nerve impulses your brain sends to your vocal cords, reproducing the words you thought to speak electronically. Outwardly, it’s just a neckband, but it’s hard to determine from the information what other equipment is needed, assuming the neckband is just the “receiver” that catches the impulses.

The device was “unveiled” at a Texas Instruments conference, with Michael Callahan, co-founder of Ambient Corporation, demonstrating the device in a cross-stage phone call.

El Reg was kind enough to tell geekdom of Nine Inch Nails‘ new album, Ghosts.

Why would El Reg care? Probably because of the way NiN is distributing it. The first nine tracks are available for free download, with the option to order the rest of the album (36 tracks in all) either as high quality downloads or the 2-CD set.

… Might not be great right now.

Microsoft’s woes with the long heralded but problematic replacement for Windows XP seem far from over.

Service Pack 1 (SP1), due for widespread release in mid-March 2008, has a worrysome knowledgebase article¹:

Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista is an important update for Windows Vista. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) contains many security, reliability, and feature updates for Windows Vista. A program may experience a loss of functionality after you install Windows Vista SP1. However, most programs will continue to work as expected after you install Windows Vista SP1.

Back in the depths of time (or at least in ‘Confirmation Of Faith’), I jumped feet-deep into the whole cyber-era with the introduction of the Starwolves to the Legion Universe. One of the devices mentioned was the ‘Halo’, a non-implanted system to allow protagonists to interface with the ships. The ‘Halo’, for those of you who haven’t been keeping up with the latest and greatest developments over the past 750 thousand years of a race of hyper-intelligent artificial sentiences, acted as the analog of Neural Cores, linking the temporary versions of the other implants together to provide a limited emulation of the cybernetic abilities full-blown implants offered.