The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) has just released the new Serial ATA Revision 3.0 specification. With the new 3.0 specification, the path has been paved to enable future devices to transfer up to 6Gb/sec as well has provide enhancements to support multimedia applications.

Like other SATA specifications, the 3.0 specification is backward compatible with earlier SATA products and devices. This makes it easy for motherboard manufactures to go ahead and upgrade to the new specification without having to worry about its customers legacy SATA devices. This should make adoption to the new specification fast, like previous adoptions to SATA 2.0 (or 3Gb/sec) technology

Being able to separate the famous from the hoi polloi has certain financial implications for YouTube. Stars attract viewers, so being able to identify videos with A-List talent might suggest where to direct marketing and promotional resources. And because stars tend to feature prominently in videos uploaded to YouTube without authorization, being able to identify popular icons could help spot copyright violations.

Such speculation may offer some hint as to why Googles researchers have been working on celebrity facial-recognition technology.

In a paper titled Audiovisual Celebrity Recognition In Unconstrained Web Videos, presented at a conference in Taiwan last month, Google researchers Mehmet Sargin, Hrishikesh Aradhye, Pedro Moreno, and Ming Zhao describe work they ve been doing to recognize the faces of celebrities in videos.

The problem is that facial recognition on video doesn t work very well in many circumstances. The researchers note that successful examples of facial recognition on video tend to involve constraints, such as a TV anchor appearing as a talking head, without much movement, under controlled illumination.

Thus, the researchers have developed an automated technique to associate faces detected in an image with people s names found in Web pages text or tags. The system doesn t need to be taught and can accommodate the scale at which YouTube operates.

The Internet is in a constant state of flux, and new celebrities are constantly added to the popular culture even as the celebrities of the past fade, the paper states. This ability to learn autonomously to constantly add to the existing gallery of celebrities is therefore a major design principle of our work.

The system can recognize hundreds of thousands of celebrity faces by exploiting the tremendous depth of the Internet, according to the paper.

Yet another breach of sensitive, unencrypted data is making news in the United Kingdom. This time the breach puts Royal Air Force staff at serious risk of being targeted for blackmail by foreign intelligence services or others.

The breach involves audio recordings with high-ranking air force officers who were being interviewed in-depth for a security clearance. In the interviews, the officers disclosed information about extra-marital affairs, drug abuse, visits to prostitutes, medical conditions, criminal convictions and debt histories — information the military needed to determine their security risk.

The recordings were stored on three unencrypted hard drives that disappeared last year.

After a lengthy development cycle that included delays and furious testing, Microsoft has finally given the public Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (final build is 6.0.6002.18005). You can download the installer from the Microsoft Download Center: 32-bit (348.3MB), 64-bit (577.4MB), and IA64 (450.4MB). There’s also an ISO image (1376.8MB) that contains these installers. The installers will work on English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish versions of either Vista or Server 2008. Other language versions will arrive later. Those interested in slipstreamed versions of Vista and Server 2008 with SP2 will need to get an MSDN or TechNet subscription.

If you have any beta versions of SP2 installed, they must be uninstalled prior to installing the final version. To do this, use the Control Panel applet called Programs and Features, select View installed updates, and then under Windows look for KB948465. SP2’s main requirement (assuming no incompatible drivers are detected) is that SP1 is already installed. During the beta phase, it was speculated that this is because SP2 is not yet finalized, but the truth is that SP1 is a prerequisite even now.