Anybody besides me notice that Google's searches have become sloppy to the point of being completely useless to do specific searches?

The default behavior used to be that Google would only return results for pages that contained EVERY word in your search term, unless you went into "Advanced" - but now, it may turn up thousands more hits, mostly with pages that only contain two or three of your search terms. A few years ago, this sometimes happened as people stuffed metadata into their pages to "catch" searchers, but this isn't the case with thes errant results. So what is going on with Google? Even going into "Advanced Search" and specifying the terms in the "Must Contain All These Words" entry doesn't return the correct search results.

This whole mess wouldn't bother me so much if it still managed to return useful results, perhaps with pages that had all my words in the body of the pages at the top, metadata following below those, and the partial hits past that, but often the top result contains half my keywords (and none present in metadata, including the "cached" version Google indexed, which is sometimes gamed by unscrupulous web admins to include extra data when it sees the google crawler accessing a page), and that's just unacceptable. I will start my search (pardon the pun) for a search engine that actually does what it says it's doing, returning results based on my keywords, and not some vague notion of results. I'm not sure why Google is doing this, but if Bing, or some other searh engine can provide more accurate results. It's interesting that for the 9 term search I was using, Bing returned a reasonable 1600+ results, while Google returned 23,400+, and if any of Google's actually had all 9 terms, I didn't find them in the first few hits. Yahoo returned 1200+ hits, and again, using the cached versions, found the terms I had searched on.

OK, I've had to deal with numerous trojan infections on my sons' machines over the years, ad a few on my Mom's machine, as well (usually thanks to my youngest being a bit overzealous about installing downloaded programs). It's always a pain, and I'm always reminded, when I begin the long task of recovering from these infected computers, of the severe lack of effective tools when it comes to dealing with the problem.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that the evil people designing malware are just too smart, but it amazes me how spotty the anti-malware/trojan tools really are.

Hijackthis is always lauded for being such a great tool, yet all too often, checking "fix" to disable a startup item results in no action whatsoever. Most antivirus and anti-malware apps have also become victim of the "cry wolf" syndrome, insisting that many legit programs are some sort of virus-infected apps, because they may be keygens or patchers (yeah, yeah, piracy is bad, whatever, my antivirus program shouldn't be giving me inaccurate information, at any rate.). Worse, many of the apps never do a damn thing when a trojan "tweaks" policies or registry entries to disable programs.

On a recent recovery operation, MalwareBytes came through in spades (after I had manually cleaned out the trojan executables), discovering some confounding registry entries that were causing many critical apps to fail, including my antivirus app!! Made aware of this incredibly dangerous registry entry, I've decided to create my own tool, HeatSeeker, to ferret out applications that perform suspicious hooks into the system and give those of us with some bit of knowledge, a more powerful tool in rooting out infections.

I'm currently working on it, so that's all I'll say for now, but expect a post here in a few weeks. My idea is simply to suppliment the existing tools, with an app you run in Safe Mode/Administrator to find anything suspicious, and present the user with a list, and REAL INFORMATION that will allow them to make a semi-informed decision. I expect to delve deep into the internal functions of Windows to figure out what apps might be dangerous, remove those files and registry entries, and give you a fighting chance to recover your system without having to re-install Windows. Files marked as  hidden, or with permissions tweaked to prevent their access will no longer be a problem.

In short, I'm sick of getting punked by the scum that write these apps, and I'm fighting back.

How will this tool be used? As I stated above, you'll run this in SAFE MODE, and after it provides a list of potential villians, you'll "fix" those villians and then run your normal suite of antivirus/malware tools to clean out the rest of it. Ideally, I'd also like to add in lspfix functionality (for trojans that hook into your network stack) and even the ability to read registry hives directly (so you can run this from a "bootable windows" disc)

Wow... played on a touch screen table, this really looks cool. My only issue is that a touch screen table is of limited usefulness for a lot of the things I do now.

This is pretty cool... a company is taking buildings, developing a 3-D model to synchronize the animation, and projecting fantastic displays including balls of light, water falling, and even a collapsing facade!

It reminds me of what these guys did... projecting  a "prison escape" onto the wall of an actual prison - realistic enough to cause the guards to sound the alarm!

I'd like to take a moment to discuss where video technology will take us in the next decade with movies. Let's start by looking where we've been and where we are....

In the dawn of the TV era, the only movies we could enjoy on TV were those broadcast from TV stations. In the late 60s/early 70s came cable and the "pay channel" stations, which revolutionized TV by bringing commercial-free, first run movies into your living room... but even that was a short-lived revolution, as the video tape recorder made its debut. We all know the battle between Betamax and VHS, and for a little more than a decade after VHS won that battle, tape ruled. Laserdisc, a superior (though still "analog") technology was relegated as a sideline, due to its inability to record and higher cost. DVD came along in the mid 90s, and finally started overtaking VHS by 2000. DVD offered a clear difference in quality, didn't require rewinding, and (barring scratches and dirt) played the same the hundredth time as it did on the first.

Today, our choices have become more "muddy" - Not everybody has hi-def TVs, and many of those that do have a hard time imagining that a movie might look better in a hi-def format over what they see from a DVD. We had HD-DVD, which lost the hi-def disc wars against Blu-Ray, but we also have hi-def content being delivered by broadcast TV thanks to the digital switchover, on demand content delivered by cable providers, and even hi-def content streamed from the broadband internet. Industry pundits have lauded all of these methods of delivering the sharp hi-def content into the future, but few of them focus on what I believe will be the future of hi-def content delivery in the future.

Before I get into what my thoughts on the future are, however, let's talk about Blu-Ray, and why the industry is backing it currently... as well as my reasons for believing it will have a very short life-span. Blu-Ray, like DVDs before it, are built on the idea of encrypting the content to prevent the everyday user from copying commercial discs. Some parts of this scheme have worked quite well
(HDCP), but ultimately, Blu-Ray, like DVD before it, have been cracked open like eggs by the rather large pirate community that thrives on the trade of movies (now in 1080p content, too) over the internet and on the streets. Blu-Ray is the victim of its own arrogance, in some ways.... a technology that is too overpriced to get into enough homes to gain critical mass, with encryption that barely challenged the hacker community. More importantly, all of the tools that were non-existent during the VHS reign, and in their infancy during the opening decade of DVD, have become mature in the past 4 years, offering everyday consumers the means to decrypt and recode with minimal quality Blu-Ray releases; broadband offers internet users an easy avenue to distribute or download these hi-def movies, and a whole host of affordable (i.e. cheaper than a Blu-Ray player) options exist to play back that material on HDTVs. In short, the primary reason the movie industry pushed Blu-Ray is gone... and it's continued high cost makes it more convenient for all but the most scrupulous consumers to simply hop onto a torrent site and get what they want via P2P.

With Blu-Ray already relegated to the "almost could have been" corner, like Laserdisc, the movie industry needs to start thinking outside of the box to deliver the next generation of packaged content, and like Star Trek movies, perhaps the consumer will look at Blu-Ray as an odd-numbered movie, worth skipping for the next media platform. What will that platform be? Memory cards. Not flash memory cards... that would not be practical, nor would it deliver the features consumers and content owners (the movie studios) require.

I propose a new ROM card format, similar to SDHC in form factor, but with added encryption (imagine that, a live encryption chip embedded in the device), and capacities from 8GB to whatever (at least 64GB, but let's keep that standard open ended). It would have an HDCP encryption chain that starts at the Memory Card and ends at the display. How much for a player? I'd be amazed if you couldn't deliver a player for less than $50 today, and the media could probably be produced for less then $5 for 16GB (Masked ROM, not flash, which saves on complexity and an encryption chip). Times have changed since Nintendo flamed out trying to push expensive cartridge technology with their N64 console, and memory technology has gotten dirt cheap, and grown into usable densities. By creating a specific slot for a movie content memory card (Let's call it MCMC for now), consumer devices can be made that handle all sorts of media.... an MCM slot, an SDHC (flash memory card) slot, USB ports for external hard drives and thumb drives... recording done to flash memory, while commercially pre-packaged movies getting their own slot and the protection of active encryption technology. The "trust" chain changes slightly, but should be stronger for the inclusion of an on-board, handshake-able chip. Even better.... companies that create media players (like the iPod/iPhone, Zune, Zen, etc...) could include an MCMC slot - effectively removing the need for people to make "fair use copies" to play on their media players. Such an interface would only add a few dollars to the Bill of Materials (what it costs to manufacture a product) right now, and eventually, would only add pennies.

By being open ended on capacity and display format, such devices could also provide a very long lifecycle for the format. What comes next? Holographic displays? Perhaps my proposed format can take that in to consideration... with enough capacity, it certainly could deliver content into foreseeable technologies that might come along in the next decade or two. Long life and future-proofing the media provides consumers with the confidence to invest in the new format, along with inexpensive players and the added convenience of portability, my proposed "MCMC" format offers far more reason to upgrade form DVD than Blu-Ray or any of the other choices.
 

Sorry there haven't been many updates.... I've been busy with a lot of things.

Here's a great special from National Geographic on the 4th of July. Enjoy!

Primrose flowers blooming just before it gets dark, after sunset.

I am not into the wii and I bought it because of the 1 game and 1 game only "Fire Emblem"

Anywho, here is what's going on in the wii universe in Japan (will come to the US market soon hopefully)


Black Wii available from 2009/8/1

http://gamez.itmedia.co.jp/games/articles/0906/04/news076.html

Ordering pizza via Wii

http://gamez.itmedia.co.jp/games/articles/0906/02/news073.html


and please, whatever you do, do NOT purchase the fake one "Vii"

I tried to purchase it, but it hard to come by even in Japan.

Thanx

This is always cool.... hacking hardware, "old-school". I love the idea of a community lab, and this is just very cool. I imagine digging through the tables a tthe San Jose flea market and plopping gear onto a table and building "something" interesting.

Cool to watch these tigers and leopards enjoy playing with, and eating pumpkins.