In what's turning out to be a busy week for Microsoft, the company announced last night that the code has been finalized for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 -- a unified code base that upgrades both operating systems. This after the only release candidate for SP2 was released for final testing on March 4.

In a Betanews check Wednesday morning, SP2 was not yet being distributed to MSDN and TechNet subscribers, although we can probably expect to see it turn up there in the next few days.

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The twenty people named to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) bring together hundreds of years of research, four MacArthur grants, the most interesting guy at Microsoft, the most interesting grownup at Google, experts on geriatric medicine and evolutionary biology and the Stock Exchange and climate change, and three Nobel laureates. And some astronomers, because those guys have all the fun.

PCAST, founded in 1990, exists to advise the President and Vice President in matters of science, technology, and innovation. President Obama announced the lineup this week at the National Academy of Sciences. Brief biographies of all twenty are available on PCAST's site, but a few groupings are worth noting here:

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Last week, after AMD's conference to reporters last Wednesday updating its roadmap for server CPUs, we reported that the licensing situation for Nvidia and Broadcom chipsets for use in AMD-based servers looked bleak. This afternoon, AMD spokesperson Phil Hughes contacted Betanews to say that the company made no comment with regard to licensing, and continues to make no comment.

"We haven't made any comment with regard to licensing," stated Hughes. He reiterated Server Business Unit Vice President Pat Patla's comment that AMD has only made a decision to go with AMD-branded chipsets for use in motherboards built for new Opteron processors. But when we asked Hughes whether licensing played any role in AMD's decision to only use AMD chipsets and not extend licenses to Nvidia or Broadcom, Hughes repeated that the company has made no comment with regard to licensing, only that it has chosen to use AMD chips for this purpose.

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What can you say after you've said "Oracle made us an offer?" Nothing worth saying to analysts, apparently, as Sun on Tuesday canceled its Q3 earnings call. Still the earnings reports must be released, and one feels one ought to look.

Shall we start with the good news? Billings were up a combined 4% year-over-year in the Total Software, Open Storage, Solaris-based SPARC CMT Servers, and X64 Servers categories, and those billings in turn accounted for 40% of total billings, up 10%. Total Software and Open Storage billings were up 28% and 63% year-over-year respectively, and SPARC CMT Servers billings were up 3%.

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As we inch closer to the anticipated marketing launch that will reveal to the public exactly what the project code-named "Pink" is, Verizon has reportedly been in talks with Microsoft to secure a contract for the device central to the project.

Rumored to be the touchphone that will finally catapult Windows Mobile into competition with the Apple iPhone, HTC G1, BlackBerry Storm, and Palm Pre, "Pink" is believed to be the product of Danger Inc. makers of the Sidekick OS and part of Microsoft's new Premium Mobile Experiences team. The team is led by Roz Ho, formerly the General Manager of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit, which developed and marketed Office for Mac.

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Download Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 from Fileforum now.

Now all Office users will have the option to load and save OpenDocument files, with today's distribution of Service Pack 2 of Office 2007. In something of a surprise -- contrary to what many at Microsoft led us to believe -- upon installing SP2 on our test systems, we immediately located an option for saving files in ODF by default. That means you don't have to "Save As" and export to ODF if you don't ever want to use Microsoft's OOXML or Office 2003 "compatibility mode;" you can at least try to use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as substitutes for OpenOffice.

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It's another loss for Yahoo as Hulu in March rose to the #3 spot in total number of videos served, according to comScore numbers released Tuesday. Hulu served up 380 million videos during the month, or 2.6% of videos viewed. Yahoo continues to hold down the #3 spot in total unique users with 42.6 million, with Hulu just a million behind in fourth place.

Google, of course, continues to rule the video category as a whole, with 100.4 million unique viewers and 5.9 billion videos viewed. Fox Interactive holds down second place in both categories. But Hulu's growth -- it has been on a tear ever since their Super Bowl commercial -- has a couple of noteworthy angles. According to comScore, the service accounted for just 2.6% of videos viewed, but a very respectable 4.9% of all minutes spent watching online video. And with a deal with ABC-connected Disney Online (#9 in total videos, #10 in unique visitors, but they've got Lost) reputedly all but inked, expect continued good times for the video upstart. (Because that's how they roll.)

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A few weeks ago, Microsoft made indications that it would be delivering Office 2007 Service Pack 2 and Internet Explorer 8 as important automatic updates to Windows users on the same day. That day ended up being today, and now many Windows users are being prompted for the first time to install IE8 as an update to their operating system. Since the product's release last month, upgrades have only been voluntary.

Though two-thirds of the world's Web traffic is attributable to browsers identifying themselves as Internet Explorer, according to the latest up-to-the-minute data from analytics firm NetApplications, under 5% of that traffic comes from IE8. In fact, only in the last week has IE8 traffic by NetApplications' measure eclipsed HTTP requests hailing from Apple Safari version 3.2, which runs on Mac, iPod Touch, and iPhone. Requests from Mozilla Firefox 3 accounts for nearly one-fifth of analyzed traffic; but now, with IE8 becoming an "in-your-face" update for the very first time, Internet Explorer traffic in total may experience a bump.

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I'm in the market for a bike, but as a skateboarder of more than twenty years, bicycling has been something of a taboo subject for me. Bikers were the guys who destroyed skate spots with their pegs and caused horrific skatepark collisions that could have been easily avoided if both parties involved were riding skateboards.

But now that I'm older, those prejudices have faded and I find that I know practically nothing about bicycles. I'm clueless about the kind of bike that will suit my needs, much less what brand would be best. However, I do know that I plan to ride more on paved roads than off-road, that I'll be riding for exercise, and that I plan on spending between $500-$900. I will take my case to hunch.com.

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Download Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 for Windows from Fileforum now.

There are now (once again) three simultaneous development tracks for Mozilla's Web browser, as the first public beta of Firefox to be numbered 3.5 has officially hit the streets; the first private Beta 5 of Firefox 3.5 is being distributed to Mozilla testers; and the latest Firefox 3.6 Alpha continues to make headway.

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Two weeks ago, a developer preview of Android 1.5 SDK was released, promising developers an early look at what the OS update had to offer if they hadn't already. Now, RC 1 of the Android 1.5 SDK is available from Google for use by emulators, and from HTC for testing on the Android Dev Phone 1 (ADP1).

The SDK overview says the Android 1.5 production system image will be deployed starting in May, so there is a possibility of "Cupcake" coming to users even before the week is out.

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Nokia is doing some sculpting. Since last year, the Finnish mobile phone leader has been pressing hard in the field of software and services, and has rolled a broad range of outside services into its Ovi portal, such as Mapping, Gaming, Music, and cloud-based file sharing.

It's got a lot to offer, but apparently not obviously enough for users and at too great a cost for Nokia.

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The editors of Time's current "World's Most Influential Person" poll would like you to think that their online poll wasn't owned hard by the denizens of 4chan's /b/ realm: "TIME.com's technical team did detect and extinguish several attempts to hack the vote," says the overview. Maybe, if by "extinguish" they mean "were kitten-helpless against." If you doubt the power of /b/, check out the first letters of the first 21 entries on the list.

Maybe the editors were making a meta-statement about the power of creative hacking, because the collection of exploits run against the poll are a nifty little set. Music Machinery's got a nice overview of how the multipart effort came off. So was Time asking for it by including 4chan founder moot (Christopher Poole) on their nominees list and implementing such slack security, or did they just include him for the lulz and get the excitement as a big /b/onus?

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If everyone will just calm down for a few minutes, there's plenty of good information out there on what's happening with the swine flu. (Yes, it's more fun to freak out, and your humble reporter wishes to report that children of her acquaintance are already using breathless news reports concerning the flu to beg for a day off from school. Note to children: When operating in pairs, try to get your story straight re your symptoms. I digress.)

First rule: Remember that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," and resist the urge to gorge on me-too mainstream coverage or strained local angles on the situation. Instead, get your propagation information from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control. Who's got a dedicated swine-flu page in place. So does the CDC, and they also have tips for keeping yourself and your overwrought friends and co-workers safer -- hand washing is recommendation #1. Their Travelers' Health page (on which the organization currently warns against nonessential travel to Mexico) is a good site for practical folk in any case. (WHO, by the way, advises no restriction of regular travel or closure of borders.)

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After an apparent victory in her efforts to prevent the UK from establishing a central database for private citizen communications, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding said she wants her government to create a post for a point-man for the continent's cybersecurity.

"Although the EU has created an agency for network and information security, called ENISA, this instrument remains mainly limited to being a platform to exchange information and is not, in the short term, going to become the European headquarters of defense against cyber attacks. I am not happy with that," stated Comm. Reding (PDF available here). "I believe Europe must do more for the security of its communication networks. Europe needs a 'Mister Cyber Security' as we have a 'Mister Foreign Affairs,' a security tsar with authority to act immediately if a cyber attack is underway, a Cyber Cop in charge of the coordination of our forces and of developing tactical plans to improve our level of resilience. I will keep fighting for this function to be established as soon as possible."

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