To install SP2, please OK the breakage waiver

After some last minute bolt tightening, Microsoft finally released its oft-delayed Windows XP Service Pack 2 to manufacturing Friday, all 80 MB of it. SP2, Microsoft's response to the conga line of security woes that have plagued its flagship operating system in the past year, will be distributed to approximately 100 million PCs via automatic updates during the next two months, and still more once it's released on CD. With such a vast user base, some complications and incompatibilities are inevitable, but this time around it's going to be worse than usual. SP2 disrupts and, in some cases breaks, applications, among them Microsoft's own customer relationship management software. And while Microsoft has warned of this a number of times in recent months, it's a safe bet that not everyone who should have been paying attention was. And that's inspired at least a few companies, IBM and HP among them, to advise their employees against installing the update. "Unlike other similar updates, this will break applications," Peter O'Kelly, a Burton Group analyst, told InternetNews.com. "Microsoft knows that and warned people, and there's nothing they can do about it. Some applications were built with the expectation that it's OK to drive around the Internet with your windows down. This will be a very difficult upgrade for many people, but you have to give Microsoft credit here. They're biting the bullet and doing what is right, whether customers recognize it or not."

"Fetche la vache!" "Huh?" "Fetche la vache!" PZoinnng! MOOOOOOO!!! Real Networks isn't the only one crying foul over Apple's refusal to open up its iPod music player to rivals. Virgin Mega is as well. In late June the music retailer, whose overtures to Apple were, like those of Real Networks, summarily rebuffed, lodged a complaint with the French Competition Council alleging Apple has wrongfully refused to license its FairPlay technology to its competitors. "Virgin is seeking 'Interim Measures,' pending the determination of the merits of the case," Apple said its latest 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "A hearing on Virgin's request for such measures will likely be heard in October or November 2004."

iMovie dev. team, please report to human resources immediately: Apple, which has responded with a heavy hand to efforts to free iTunes music files from their digital rights management restrictions, is a bit red in the face today over reports that its own software can be used to do the job. "iMovie users can use the 'Share' feature of iMovie to export any imported [protected] song from the iTunes Music Store," reports Germany's Macnews.de. "The exported songs can either be stored in the unprotected AAC file format (used by Apple at the iTMS) or in the raw WAV file format; both of these formats are supported by iTunes."

Q  U  O  T  E  D "From now on I'm going to use an abacus." -- U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch says he's through checking his BlackBerry during debates.

But wait, there's more. Buy an 80 hour TiVo today and we'll give you a share of our soon-to-be penny stock ABSOLUTELY FREE!: If you don't yet own a TiVo, now's probably as good a time as any to consider buying one. TiVo this morning lopped $100 off the price of its digital video recorders as part of a plan to rapidly increase subscribers to its service. Beginning Wednesday, TiVo will offer a $100 mail-in rebate that will drop the price of its 40-hour set-top box to from $199 to a more palatable $99. For TiVo, which today faces heated competition from cable and satellite TV companies, the rebate is a final attempt to reclaim some of its eroding market share before the cable companies begin rolling out their DVRs in earnest next year. Said Greg Ireland, a research analyst at IDC: "When you look long-term, we see the stand-alone machine as an endangered species."

Your search for "details of my awful divorce" returned 5000 pages in 6 seconds: "You already have zero privacy. Get over it," Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy once said, and never has that been more true than today, when a Google or Wayback Machine search on your name is as apt to pull up the details of an acrimonious divorce as it is your resume. And that could soon become a liability for those services. "Like libraries, Google and its search rivals do not assume responsibility for the content that they catalog," David Whelan writes in Forbes. "But with lawsuits filed at the drop of a hat, search services should take note. In June Varian Medical Systems won a case against two former employees who defamed company executives online, winning $775,000 in damages in what's become a landmark Internet speech case. A judge ruled last year in New Hampshire that Docusearch, a purveyor of personal information, could be sued for the death of a stalking victim whose murderer used its services."

Time to replace that Kensington laptop lock.

Waiter! There's Prozac in my drinking water!

Off topic: Let me get this straight: we've kept the hydrocoptic marzelvanes, but the ambifacient lunar waneshaft is now used in a positive side fumbling configuration with a single-ended girdlespring? (WMV file, but entirely worth it. Here's some background on the video, via Metafilter), and the Homeland Insecurity Advisory System

Send an Office in a Bucket to Jpaczkowski@realcities.com.

Good Morning Silicon Valley is written and edited with the able assistance of John Murrell.