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So you need a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate? Microsoft will give you a free copy if you let them snoop on you for 3 months. Infact its not just vista you can get, perhaps you’d prefer these instead ?

• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit DVD)
• Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007
• Microsoft Money Plus Premium
• Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008
• Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008

So where’s the catch ? well there isn’t one you just download their spying software, fill out a 15min survey and you’re good to go. Further details are available here

http://wfp.microsoft.com/

A Google scientist will join a controversial demonstration of a claimed quantum computer on Monday–but scientists doubt the validity of the system being shown.

During a session at the SC07 supercomputing conference in Reno, Nev., Hartmut Neven, a Google specialist in image recognition, will show an image recognition algorithm running on a device, made by start-up D-Wave Systems, which is claimed to be the first practical quantum computer.

The system is said to be the first commercially viable quantum computer, implementing the idea of speeding up computation by carrying out multiple calculations simultaneously using different quantum states of a system. In such a system, all possible quantum states exist, so hypothetically, a quantum computer could find the best answer to a problem by testing all possible answers at the same time, in what are sometimes described as “parallel universes.”

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