Can it be? Is Hollywood's new DRM posterchild AACS actually quite breakable? According to a post on our favoritest of forums (Doom9) by DRM hacker du jour muslix64, his new BackupHDDVD tool decrypts and dismantles AACS on a Windows PC. Just feed the small utility a crypto key (it comes bundled with keys for a few popular HD DVD titles, with the promise of more on the way), and it'll dump the video right off the disc onto your hard drive, supposedly playable in any HD DVD compatible player.

Throughout the (longer than expected) development of Vista, Microsoft has worked hard to push the idea that it wouldn't be burdened by the same sort of security problems as older versions of Windows. The company has beefed up the built-in security features and services of the software, much to the chagrin of some third-party security developers and the European Union, and one of its execs gave people the idea that Vista wouldn't need anti-virus software. Given all that, it's still not surprising to hear that researchers and hackers have found plenty of flaws in Vista, even before it's been released to consumers. It's the same type of stuff that's plagued Windows XP, like a browser flaw and a user-privileges hack, and just the sort of thing most people were expecting despite the company's incessant talk about Vista being more secure. The bad news for Microsoft is that things are probably only going to get worse: a new version of Windows was bound to be a massive target for hackers, and the company's security hype has likely only made it an even bigger one.

While we're waiting for Google to launch its own Google OS (if the rumours are true, of course), I've checked out 10 web operating systems and what they can do. Not many of them feel like finished and fully usable products, but there are some true gems among them.

There are over 10 fully functional WebOS applications out there, and a couple more that are announced or in closed betas.

I'd say that YouOS, Goowy and DesktopTwo are the names you should watch now and in the near future, while the others *might* turn into promising products, but we'll have to wait a month or two for that to happen. Also, keep in mind that while it's relatively easy to judge who has the best functionality, it's much harder to see who has the best code, or the most solid framework to build upon, so it's safe to say that we can expect a few surprises to happen here.

Microsoft has filed for two patents covering technology used to organize and read syndicated Web feeds, such as those delivered via the widely used Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, family of formats.

Redmond actually filed for the patents on June 21, 2005. That date, incidentally, is just three days prior to the company's formal announcement that it planned to build support for RSS into the next version of its Internet Explorer browser and into its planned Windows Vista operating system--then referred to as Longhorn.

The invention, for example, could allow a user to "subscribe to a particular Web feed, be provided with a user interface that contains distinct indicia to identify new feeds, and...efficiently consume or read RSS feeds using both an RSS reader and a Web browser."

A related application, titled "content syndication platform," appears to describe a system that can break down feeds into a format that can be accessed and managed by many different types of applications and users.

Tech companies don't care much about Vista today. They know that the deadline is the end of January 2007 and they can relax until then.

Real troublemakers are peripherals such as printer, scanner and copy machines. There are no Vista drivers for our all-in-one device so I can forget about using it.

Naturally, we thought we'd try it out anyhow and tried to access the printer across the network from our Vista machine. Well, Windows Explorer crashes every single time we click on the shared printer. It really isn't a good sign.

It gets even worse. There are a few machines running on the network here in the Vienna Labs. We use a Buffalo WHR-G54S 108Mbit Wlan router and 100Mbit LAN router but there is no way to convince Vista to see the XP machines.

So take this from an office-lad perspective, in secretary mode, where you are supposed to write, print and access files. Vista doesn’t like XP and it doesn’t want to interconnect.

We are talking about build 6000, the final code - that is the scary part. Crashing Explorer every time you access your printer is just what you and your friendly Sysadmin need during your super-busy day.

The software maker said Thursday that the update is aimed at thwarting a technique that was letting some people use pirated versions of the operating system without going through the software's built-in product activation. Microsoft has dubbed the approach "frankenbuild" because it works by combining test versions of Vista with the final code to create a hybrid version.

Although Vista was only released to businesses last month--and won't hit retail shelves until late January--it has been making the rounds on the Internet, and there have been several reported hacks to bypass its built-in security mechanisms.

"Piracy is evolving and has made the expected jump from Windows XP to Windows Vista," David Lazar, director of Genuine Windows, told CNET News.com. "We are already starting to see some workarounds to the Vista licensing requirements."

"Vista is the hardest system to pirate that we have yet released," Lazar said.

Throughout the beta, Deep Sleep in Windows Vista went great. It's the default option (so long as it's configured in the BIOS) when you click the shutdown button. It would put your computer in a low-power mode that recovered in a matter of 2 or 3 seconds, and didn't crash! But in the final version of Windows Vista, something is very, very majorly wrong.

When recovering from a hibernate: "Cannot find uxtheme.dll" appears whenever you attempt to run (almost) any program. No matter what you do, you can't even run Task Manager.

Failure to establish a network connection. Everything looks OK, but you can't connect to the internet.

Poor performance: though Task Manager will show normal CPU load, some of the drivers (they don't appear in TaskMan) will attempt to use 100% of the CPU, resulting in a very laggy PC.

For no reason, DWM just won't re-appear. This happens on ATi and nVidia, with or without the latest official drivers from the companies themselves.

BSOD on recovery. This is usually caused by the video drivers, and may or may not indicate something wrong with the kernel itself.

No sound. Vista goes mute. Nothing you can do about it, no way to revive it, you just have to restart and let the re-done sound-stack load-up the way it should.

All of the above errors and more occur randomly and make using hibernation down-right impossible (unless you're willing/eager to run System Recovery from the DVD!) and Deep Sleep a waste of time (seeing as you have to restart to "quick recover").

Despite Microsoft's anti-piracy measures, cracked copies of its Vista operating system are already available on torrent sites, it's claimed.

One cracked version is called VistaBillGates and comes with a product key, and an "activation crack" that bypasses Vole's activation process.

Apparently Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise Edition has also been cracked. So far Microsoft has refused to comment about hacks, but claims it is working hard to stop pirates.

Apparently the weapon it will use is software that deactivates pirated copies of Windows Vista by sending a patch through Windows Update that can invalidate certain product keys.

No doubt the pirates have already worked their way around that one and it will only be countless legitimate Vista users who will find themselves suffering in the crossfire between Vole and the pirates.

Touted as being backward compatible with older models, it turns out the machine can't run about 200 PS and PS2 games.

Sony's complaints department, which is probably the busiest part of Sony these days, has admitted that audio features do not work on some software titles when played on the PS3 and other games just do not work at all. A spokesSony said that the unit will fix the PS3 problems by offering online upgrades for system software.

No-one is wondering why, when the console was delayed so long, that no one spent a weekend going through the Playstation back catalogue seeing if the games worked.

It looks like Europe, which has been told it can't have any PS3s till March, will really miss much. It might take that long to sort out all the glitches.

It appears to have been leaked ahead of the downloadable MSDN release and can be found on various torrent sites and the FTPs of unscrupulous individuals.

Also to note is that installing from a previous version of Windows will not work stating a read error, suggesting that the release is far from perfect.

We certainly don't condone the download or use of pirated software, but it is interesting this download has come prior to any actual official release from Microsoft.