Google Kills Bush's Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs.

After just over two years, Google has finally defused the "Google Bomb" that has returned US President George W. Bush at the top of its results in a search on miserable failure. The move wasn't a post-State Of The Union Address gift for Bush. Instead, it's part of an overall algorithm change designed to stop such mass link pranks from working.

Story and screenshots here: http://searchengineland.com/070125-230048.php/

Funny, this made the SlashDot front page with a different post that was submitted just a couple of hours after I submitted it. Someone is asleep at the switch, (or is it just someone playing favorites?)

China internet users to overtake US in two years, report says

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/China_internet_users_to_overtake_US_01232007.html/

dpa German Press Agency Published: Tuesday January 23, 2007

Beijing- China is likely to overtake the United States as the world's largest online population within two years, after the estimated number of internet users soared by 23 per cent to 137 million last year, state media said on Wednesday. "We believe it will take two years at most for China to overtake the United States," Wang Enhai of the state-run Chinese Internet Network Information Centre told the official China Daily.

"We are expecting even faster growth in 2007 and 2008 given that internet penetration now has exceeded 10.5 percent in the country," Wang said.

From the horses mouth (the "Windows Vista Team Blog") comes confirmation of every horrible charge leveled at Vista by Gutmann. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html/

Windows Vista Content Protection - Twenty Questions (and Answers) http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/01/20/windows-vista-content-protection-twenty-questions-and-answers.aspx/

Over the holidays, a paper was distributed that raised questions about the content protection features in Windows Vista. The paper draws sharp conclusions about the implications of those features for our customers. As one of the Lead Program Managers for the technologies in question, I would like to share our views on these questions.

Here are some examples of the Microsoft Lawyer version of Q & A.

Will echo cancellation work less well for premium content?

We believe that Windows Vista provides applications with access to sufficient information to successfully build high quality echo cancellation functionality.

Will Windows Vista content protection features increase CPU resource consumption?

Yes. However, the use of additional CPU cycles is inevitable, as the PC provides consumers with additional functionality. Windows Vista's content protection features were developed to carefully balance the need to provide robust protection from commercial content while still enabling great new experiences such as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray playback.

What is revocation and where is it used?

Renewal and revocation mechanisms are an important part of providing robust protection for commercial audiovisual content. In the rare event that a revocation is required, Microsoft will work with the affected IHV to ensure that a new driver is made available, ideally in advance of the actual revocation. Revocation only impacts a graphics driver's ability to receive certain commercial audiovisual content; otherwise, the revoked driver will continue to function normally.

Nice...

Here is a good quote from the Inquirer article about this "Blog" entry: http://uk.theinquirer.net/?article=37091/

"Microsoft confirms just about every point in the Gutmann pieceand tries to spin it as good. It is one of the most amazing piece of PR weaselwork I have seen for years. Try this one on for size."

Time to remove the restriction on MP3s

By Nick Farrell: Monday 22 January 2007

RECORD COMPANIES are closer to removing restrictions on MP3 distribution over the Internet.

According to iht.com, a meeting of executives in Cannes over the weekend revealed that the major record labels are wrestling with the question of unrestricted internet access to content.

John Kennedy, head of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said that this year it is likely at least one of the big names will experiment with dumping DRM or providing MP3 songs as a way of generating publicity that could lead to future sales. Apparently the music business is at a loss as to what to do about the Internet which has destroyed the monopoly of the leading record producers over the worldwide distribution of music in the past decade.

Now it seems that the only reason that the music industry has not gone to such music distribution sooner is because of technology companies which insist on flogging them DRM systems that they claim is 'hacker proof'. Of course the music industry executives do not blame themselves for investing huge amounts of cash in the technological equivalent of snake oil.

However, the music industry has its own religious movement to tackle before it can make any shift towards DRM free content. The Recording Industry Association of America is still convinced that it can stop the rot with expensive and increasingly less supported court cases.

http://http//uk.theinquirer.net/?article=37094/

http://http//www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/21/yourmoney/music.php/

Nanomaterials Produce Heterogeneous Three-Dimensional Electronics
Researchers at the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory of the University of Illinois have developed a new, experimentally simple approach for combining broad classes of dissimilar electronic materials into heterogeneously integrated systems with two or three dimensional layouts on rigid or flexible substrates. The materials and techniques, published in the December 15 issue of Science, provide capabilities that can complement those achievable with conventional methods.
We have developed a simple approach to combine disparate types of semiconductor devices into three dimensional, heterogeneously integrated (HGI) electronic systems, added Rogers, who has appointments in the departments of materials science and engineering, chemistry, electrical and computer engineering, mechanical science and engineering, and is also a researcher at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.
The process starts with the synthesis of semiconductor nanomaterials, in the form of micro and nanoscale ribbons, wires, tubes and bars, on specialized growth substrates. Repeated application of a printing technique that uses soft, elastomeric stamps with these nanomaterials as solid inks followed by device integration yields heterogeneously integrated electronics that incorporate any combination of these or other semiconductor nanomaterials on virtually any type of device substrate, ranging from rigid inorganic materials to flexible plastics. Circuits built in this way offer electrical and mechanical (e.g., bendability) attributes that would be impossible to achieve using conventional, wafer-based approaches to electronics.
A key feature of the strategy is that it occurs at room temperature, thereby enabling the electronics to be placed on unconventional substrates such as thin sheets of plastic.
This work shows that it is possible to liberate high performance electronic devices from semiconductor wafers and to integrate them onto surfaces and substrates that better serve important end applications, Science News from: scitizen.com