And so Microsoft released Halo 3. And for at least 48 hours developers (being the geeks that most of us are) ‘were off sick’ and then came back to work to notice that the Borg had also released two other items to the wild.

It’s not with some ironic rolling of eyes and shrugging of the shoulders that after watching the whole summer’s online pressure on the Vista team to justify exactly where the extras were to make Vista Ultimate, well ‘ultimate’, they released DreamScene, possibly the world’s most underwhelming bit of software. It lets the wallpaper move like a screensaver, does it? Oh bravo. And exactly why is the build date on this v1.0 product mid-July? It was never really going to impinge on Silverlight and IronRuby at Mix 07 was it, so why the delay? At least it comes in x32 and x64 flavours. Oh wait, but it won’t run on any machine (like mine) that has two (cheap GeForce 8400GS) graphics cards in it? Exactly why or how did the scenario of DreamScene running on a two card machine (which I can’t help thinking the typical gamer-type owner target audience type person for Vista Ultimate is more likely to own than other demographics) get dismissed so easily? So I repeat: exactly which is the Ultimate bit of Vista Ultimate then?

That’ll be the stuff in the other release of the week: the first release candidate of WIndows Server 2008, the only possible replacement for the many thousands of development machines still running on XP and 2003 Server because Vista just doesn't kick it. It’s clean, fast and it works on the premise that if you want a feature you’ll switch it on, rather than the other way round. And no signs that Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 won’t all make the official February launch date MS has set. By all account, we might even get Visual Studio for Christmas.

Who needs DreamScene anyway? No really…

Lots of interesting stuff from the last ten days or so.

• Windows Antispyware has been rebranded Windows Defender as is now available as a beta 2 product.
• Windows Vista Feb CTP is apparently feature-complete and available for download. Yet to see where though.
• For the movie fan with lots of hard drive space, try DVDWMV to rip your DVDs to wmv files and DVD Audio Ripper to get at the soundtracks.
• PC Mag details components to choose and how to build your own Media Centre PC.
• If you're still ripping music, you can also look at albumart.org for some of the harder to find CD covers.
• Warren Ellis and Joss Whedon got into a bit of a bitch fight in a thread on Warren's forums. Comment 17 is cracking....
• MSDN has put out a complete list of all command-line tools it has released here
• Lifehacker has put out an advanced user guide to Flickr, a large list of bittorrent sites and pointed to a nice article on choosing the right career for yourself and a neat utility called WhyReboot.
• Pointlesswasteoftime lists his top ten sci-fi films that have never been made.
• Racketboy starts his series on games that truly pushed the platform they were written for. Part 1 covers Atari 2600 to Sega CD.
• Public Domain Torrents offers an extensive collection of Classic and B-Movie torrents. The copyright of these movies has expired so you are free to share them.

• Something is going to have to change soon. It's getting harder to write or work at home again.
• Jim wants to know if I'll be at any conferences this year. Much as I'd liek to say yes, the answer is probably not. Mix 06 / Web Tech Ed:TNG or ICANN Wellington would be nice though.
• I mispelt an entry a search on wikipedia the other day and found the GTD style of time management which seems to suit me well. More investigation required.
• Another addition to the folksonomic world side of Web 2.0 - ma.gnolia - is recruiting beta testers as we speak. I hope this beta is more friendly than the last few I've seen - neither Flock nor IE7 were that great.
• Want to build a Vista VM running the Expression suite and Winfx libraries. Can't think of a point when I'd have the time to play with them though. Karli has been kind enough to give me some copies of Beg and Pro C# 2.0 which I probably will run through.
• Something will be done with hmobius.com soon
• Warren's Nextwave and Blackgas comic series have both been released in the shops. Nextwave #1 has already sold out but is being reissued next month and Blackgas is still around if you like a good old-fashioned zombie storyline.
• Went to see Soufly last night at the Academy supported by Skindred. Very similar bands in the response they get and the type of songs they perform (albeit with different styles). Unfortunately Max had almost lost his voice and kept disappearing off the stage throughout the gig leaving time for the kind of uncalled for extended solos that gave guitarists the 'widdly' and 'self-loving' catcalls they don't often deserve. Bad timing I guess. Max and crew can be so much better. Will have to check out more Skindred stuff though. Benji is putting out music that's jsut as good as Dub War ever made.
• Devin's latest newsletter pointed out his new album Synchestra is now out (Kerrang gave it 4K this week as well) and the MySpace area he's put up for some nice clips from it to listen to. I've never given MySpace much of a look before, but I can feel a lot of music being streamed my way.

Bart De Smet has some Longhorn milestone dates.

It's been an interesting bank holiday weekend. MS announced that they are cutting WinFS out of Longhorn which means I need to stop using my PDC Longhorn copy to add metainfo to my photos : what's the point if I can't use it for another four years? And now Apple has announced the G5 iMac. Mark three looks remarkably like the monitor I use at work. It's pretty incredible they've managed to fit all the hardware into a 2 inch thick TFT monitor but I hope the screen doesn't wobble as much as my monitor does. One nudge of the table and your eyes go funny trying to keep up with the tiny up and down motions of the text you're trying to read \ type. Maybe its development has been sponsored by opticians and the like. Viral marketing by effect. Kinda like how terrorist bombings in urban areas benefit glassmakers and windowfitters. Probably.