What’s this Large Hadron Collider thing all about then?

I know what you’re thinking; you’ve heard all about this Large Hadron Collider on the news and by now you’ve realised it’s not some sort of French estate car. You’ve worked out that Higgs Boson doesn’t play scrum half for London Irish. You don’t want to appear a dummy when other people talk about it, but you simply can’t be arsed to read technical explanations like this really quite excellent feature by the BBC.

The Large Hadron Collider. I've seen bigger.

And to top it all, what you really want to see is an explanation set to a laid back modern hip-hop beat featuring a pseudo-sexy European female rapper, featuring a video with silly scientists doing UK hip hop dancing. And you’re thinking to yourself, “I guess that’s never going to happen …”

Fear not, friend: relief is close at hand.

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BT’s third Phorm trial starts tomorrow • The Register

Story from The Register early today:

“BT will invite thousands of its broadband subscribers to voluntarily participate in a third trial of Phorm’s advertising targeting system starting tomorrow, the two firms said this morning.”

Finally, the second coming of Satan himself will be unveiled. Phorm and BT’s third attempt to persuade the UK that it’s good to talk have spyware on your PC will be rolled out to 10,000 helpless victims, or “customers” as the company condescendingly refers to them.

In case you’re a little hazy on your recent history, the facts in the matter are these. BT and Phorm illegally intercepted the web traffic of over 100,000 UK internet users. The intention was to collect data from the browsing habits of these customers to sell targetted advertising. This contravenes the 2000 RIPA Act, but that hasn’t stopped the UK Government and the City of London Police turning a blind eye; after all, it’s not like they’re big into snooping into people’s private lives or shooting innocent civilians in the head.

If you’re wondering what the big deal is, think of it like this: imagine the Royal Mail opening all your letters (both the ones you send and recieve), photocopying them and making a note of anything interesting and then selling the details to advertisers.

Remember, BT customers don’t get anything out of this: it’s no safer, despite BT’s protestations; customers don’t make any money out of it; and they don’t get a rebate on their (extortionately expensive) BT services. This illegal act only serves to make more profit for a company that made £2.5 billion in profits last year. That’s the bottom line.

If you want more background to this story, click on the Phormwatch link on the right side of the page.

For the full story, visit:

BT’s third Phorm trial starts tomorrow • The Register.

And here’s the BBC’s usual sanitised, half-assed attempt at covering the story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7641754.stm

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Secret Windows 7 screens leaked

It was uber-technology website The Register that first broke the story that secret screenshots from the closely guarded Windows 7 had been released onto the web:

“Despite Microsoft’s efforts to keep Windows 7 information secret and safe within a close circle of partners and testers until its good and ready, another round of screenshots has found its way to the web.”

The full story can be found here, but you need to move swiftly because the Microsoft’s Darth Lawyer is going round serving cease and desist notices on all and sundry. However, we managed to get into the cache and save some of the screenshots which we are happy to reproduce for you here:

Windows 7 screenshot one

Windows 7 screenshot two

Windows 7 screenshot three

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Microsoft release patch for Windows SP SP3

Hot on the heels of the news that the Windows XP Service Pack 3 is causing a large number of problems, Microsoft have released a small patch file that they say will fix all problems that Windows XP users are experiencing. The text of Microsoft’s press release reads:

“Here at Microsoft we understand the frustration that XP users are experiencing, and we are delighted to release this new patch, which will remove all the problems caused by using Windows XP”

The tech guys here at AF downloaded the patch and asked a passing 11-year old to look at the code and make sense of it. And sure enough, the young scamp confirmed that after running the patch, Microsoft would experience no further problems running Windows XP. Obviously it made no sense to us, but we re-produce the full code here in the hope that cleverer readers than us will be able to make sense of it.

IF windows.version <> 'VISTA'

THEN format c:

ELSE quit

END IF

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