Microsoft has launched (an appropriate metaphor this time) its Worldwide Telescope desktop application. You must download the software, but then you’re treated to a beautiful array of images and “guided tours” of the cosmos (see screenshots below). Intended for science education, “Worldwide Telescope stitches together terabytes of high-resolution images of celestial bodies, and displays them in a way that relates to their actual position in the sky”

Note that this is still an old-fashioned desktop application and is not a Web based application.

Obviously, Microsoft has a significant interest in making sure that users of the new breed of netbooks and MIDs hitting the market don’t get too comfortable using Linux. Many manufacturers have taken to installing various flavors of Linux on these devices to minimize footprint, improve performance, and reduce costs on low-power, low-margin hardware. Similarly, most modern Linux distributions provide features that are tough to find on Windows XP (especially XP Home); Vista clearly isn’t an option on these little guys.

ULPCs come up a lot in Ed Tech, partly because the OLPC XO, largely credited with creating this market, is an educational tool and also because ULPCs have the potential to make 1:1 computing realistic (or even to simply make any sort of computing realistic in developing markets). The OS of choice for students today will be the OS of choice in business tomorrow; hence, Microsoft’s concern over the use of Linux.

Microsoft’s penchant for bare-knuckle tactics is at work again. Its only interest is maintaining the Windows monopoly without any apparent concern about whether poor kids get a chance at having a PC. ComputerworldUK reports:

Microsoft is launching a program to promote the use of its Windows OS in ultra low-cost PCs, one effect of which will be to limit the hardware capabilities of this type of device, IDG News Service has learned.

Microsoft plans to offer PC makers steep discounts on Windows XP Home Edition to encourage them to use that OS instead of Linux on ultra low-cost PCs (ULPCs). To be eligible, however, the PC vendors that make ULPCs must limit screen sizes to 10.2 inches and hard drives to 80G bytes, and they cannot offer touch-screen PCs.

The programme is outlined in confidential documents that Microsoft sent to PC makers last month, and which were obtained by IDG News Service.

The goal apparently is to limit the hardware capabilities of ULPCs so that they don’t eat into the market for mainstream PCs running Windows Vista, something both Microsoft and the PC vendors would want to avoid.

Amid speculation that Microsoft is looking to make an acquisition, Powerset launched a public beta of its Wikipedia search engine. It brings a new, rich semantic dimension via natural language query processing to Wikipedia that greatly improves the search and reading experience.

The company calls it a first step in changing the way users search and consume Web content. “It’s a complete shift. You see this and you want to experience all content in this way,” Barney Pell, co-founder and CTO of Powerset, told me. “And, as an introduction, it will drive huge investment in semantic and linguistic technology, just as investments were made in information retrieval and scalable databases in the past.”

For a somewhat different perspective, read the New York Times Bits post that concludes:

But Powerset remains a long way off from its promise and faces a seemingly intractable problem: for a very large fraction, if not the vast majority, of searches, keywords work just fine.

Microsoft wants to turn your car into a Windows machine (please, no “crash” jokes). And Microsoft isn’t alone. In-dash “infotainment,” emergency and diagnostic systems — called telematics — is a fast-growing sector and, more important, one that will make cars more fun and safer to drive.

A huge number of companies and researchers are working on transforming your automobile into the ultimate “mobile computer.” And why not? Cars have available electrical power, space for electronics, a captive audience and a central role in our lives.

You may hate Windows Vista, laugh at the Zune media player and completely ignore Windows Mobile, but Microsoft seems to be making all the right decisions about its Windows for Cars product, which is really called Microsoft Auto.

Researcher David Vorel mapped interconnected, bot-infected IP addresses and created this geometric representation; CSO contributor Scott Berinato annotated the map and added interactive controls so you can zoom in and explore botnets’ inner workings.

Joe Stewart, director at US consultancy Secure Works, said the Srizbi Trojan is the biggest botnet in history and the most powerful. He said Srizbi, aka “Cbeplay” and “Exchanger,” can blast out 60 billion messages a day.

This is an especially insidious Trojan since it is of the variety called “rootkit”. The estimates are that the botnet contains 300,000 zombie computers.

To make money, you have to move up the economic food chain into higher-value, more profitable work and markets. That economic fact of life applies to nations, companies and individuals.

A study released this week shows how this natural law is being applied in the subculture of criminal computer hackers. Pilfered credit card numbers and bank account PIN numbers have become commodities on shadowy Web sites where stolen digital information is bought and sold.

Company e-mail, business documents and personal health information are the new targets of choice for illegal hackers, according to Finjan, a San Jose-based maker of Web security software and appliances.