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Microsoft has announced yesterday that Windows XP Service Pack 2, and Windows Update Services release dates have been pushed back even further.

The world's largest software maker had originally aimed to release the update, called Service Pack 2, in June.

Mike Nash, Microsoft vice president for security, said that his group needed more time to ensure that the update was stable and would work with other programs when installed on personal computers running Windows XP, the latest version of the operating system found on more than 90 percent of the world's PCs.

Reuters has this story.

Yahoo! (and pretty much every other news service) is carrying a story on Infosys' remarkable first quarter results, which showed a net profit jump of 39.2 percent, well above market forecasts.

Infosys, which gets 70 percent of its revenues from the United States, boosted its revenue growth forecast to 39-40 percent for the year to March 2005 after saying in April it expected full-year sales to rise about 24 percent.

"These are mind-blowing results. Their guidance is also very good and the company will be adding a huge number of new recruits. This will increase the positive sentiments for all IT stocks as Infosys is a market leader," said Prakash Lala, director of brokerage Centaur Capital Services.

Click here for the complete story.

Four Indian companies - Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum, Hindustan Petroleum and Reliance Industries have made it to the list of 500 top companies worldwide compiled by prestigious 'Fortune' magazine.

Last to make the grade is Reliance Industries which occupies the 482nd position among the 500. Its revenue of 11,327.7 million dollars shows an increase of 19.4 per cent since 2002 and its profits at 1,125.5 million dollars are up by 32.7 per cent.

Both Hindustan Petroleum and Reliance Industries had not made the list last year. Discount retail giant Walmart, stores tops the list with a 26,3009 million dollars in revenue which give it a profit of 9,054 million dollars.

The Hindu has this story.

The BBC amongst many others is reporting on an article in The Independent, author by Prince Charles, which warns of the possible serious ramifications of research into cutting-edge fields such as nanotechnology.

"Discovering the secrets of the Universe is one thing; ensuring that those secrets are used wisely and appropriately is quite another.

"What exactly are the risks attached to each of the techniques under discussion, who will bear them, and who will be liable if and when real life fails to follow the rose-tinted script?"

He expressed concern that only an estimated 5% of the EU's nanotechnology research budget is being spent on "examining the environmental, social and ethical dimension".

"That certainly doesn't inspire confidence," he writes.

What seems to have caused a slight furore in acedemic circles is his equating the risks of nanotechnology with the Thalidomide disaster. The full article can be read here. Prince Charles' commentary can be read here.

A press release from Mandrakesoft announces the migration of 1500 Windows NT machines of the French Ministry of Equipment, to Mandrake Linux.

The Ministry of Equipment's central administration for IT (DCSI) is managing the migration's technological drive, in order to guarantee the information system's coherency and the use of state of the art technologies. Under its control, the Linux server migration project began in November 2003. It will continue through the end of 2005, to ensure a progressive deployment at the national scale.

The migration was established in terms of technical and organizational requirements. In order to meet the project's needs, two specific Linux distributions based on Mandrakelinux Corporate Server were developed.

To benefit from technology monitoring, technical assistance and personalized training, the Ministry has also subscribed to the Mandrakesoft Corporate Club.

Read the release here.

The Times Of India has a story on news that the Indian government is currently undertaking a pilot project providing Multi-purpose National Identity Cards (MNICs) for 3,000,000 Indians across 13 states and Union Territories.

"The success of the project would depend on timely and complete updating of this register which again partly depends on complete registration of births and deaths," Patil said.

The MNIC project, the Minister said, once completed will not only enhance the security cover of the country but also facilitate national level e-governance programme which is one of the important agenda items of the Common Minimum Programme to ensure that Government services reach people in every nook and corner.

Read the entire report here.

Reuters's notes that NASA's science satellite which was scheduled to be launched today has been delayed for two days due to technical reasons. Read the brief report here.

Brian Feeney, and his Da Vinci project are being covered in Wired, as a realistic competitor for the X-Prize.

The plan is for the bullet, with Feeney aboard, to be carried to an altitude of 70,000 to 80,000 feet above Kindersley, Saskatchewan, a prairie town about 250 miles east of Calgary, Alberta.

The rocket will hang about 750 feet below a 200-foot-tall helium balloon. When Feeney fires the rocket's engine, the ship will slip its tether and zoom to about 2,500 mph, 3.5 times the speed of sound. At an altitude of 50 miles or so, the capsule will separate from the rocket body, which will parachute back to the ground.

Then the capsule is supposed to streak to a maximum altitude "in excess of 110 kilometers," Feeney said, or about 70 miles. The capsule will free-fall toward Earth, using parachutes to slow it in the lower atmosphere and air bags to cushion its 15-mph landing.

The entire flight, from ignition to touchdown, is expected to take about 25 minutes.

The article can be read here. Gallery images of the "Wildfire" are here. The attempt is scheduled to be made in late September.

Wired has a story on a new take on collaborative technology, with the use of transparencies to aid blending of different tasks.

Called Facetop, the system simultaneously transmits a video feed of users along with a shared, transparent image of the desktop. It allows two colleagues to work on the same document, Web page or graphic, while communicating face to face.

The system also tracks the position of the users' fingertips, which can control a cursor. As well as operating the shared desktop -- opening and closing files or selecting text, for instance -- the collaborators can use natural pointing gestures to communicate ideas about the document.

The story can be reached here.

CNet News.com has a story on a rather unusual billboard in California, which has now been attributed to Google.

In a kind of geek jeopardy, the billboard read:"{first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits e}.com." The answer, 7427466391.com, would lead a puzzle-sleuth to a Web page with yet another equation to solve, with still no sign the game was hosted by Google.

Mastering that equation would lead someone to a page on Google Labs, the company's research and development department, which reads: "One thing we learned while building Google is that it's easier to find what you're looking for if it comes looking for you. What we're looking for are the best engineers in the world. And here you are.

Click here for the story.