This is pretty big news for those who do Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning research -- it opens up a huge collection of high quality papers that are now available to the public.

It's long long overdue for academic publications and conferences to have all of their papers available for free download -- and this is another great step in the journey.  Some really good stuff here.

The AAAI Library contains a number of high-quality proceedings in the field of artificial intelligence. Included in the AAAI Member’s Library are proceedings of the AAAI National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, the Innovative Application of Artificial Intelligence Conference, the Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Conference, the AI Planning Systems Conference, the Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology conference, and the Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference, among others.

http://www.aaai.org/...ferences-library.php

According to a TechNewsWorld post, around the same time that Ash Pringle dove into Linux for a week, Kevin dean at Monochrome Mentality was doing the opposite:

I'm going to give Windows Server 2008 a spin on my personal computer for the next week or so, full time.
...
So, in the next week or so, I'll be trying to use my computer and relearn a whole new way of doing things. Just as new Linux users balk at the changes, I'm sure I will, and in the process I hope to learn a little bit more about what I use my computer for, what I depend on and what flexibilities I have.

The Beginning
The Windows Seat - Day 0: BIOS
The Windows Seat - Day 0: Virtualization and Bitness
The Windows Seat - Day 1: Shutdown
The Windows Seat - Day 3: Interfaces

A little less reading, and a little less entertaining, but informative nonetheless.
The last one was posted on Jan. 2 so I'm hoping there will be more forthcoming...

I have developed a platform for users to create a personal knowledge management application. The material and methods are unique and the whole is built from generally freeware or open source tools. It is the methods and model techniques which are unique.

I wish to publish the platform as a set of tutorials and will sell it for a modest sum. The revenue of Euro 30,00 per licence will be donated to a charity we are to fund.

To protect the material against download or illicit copying I wish to use a secure method of compiling the HTML pages into an EXE.

Who has such, knows of such, has experienced the use of such or can program such? He or she can please take contact with to discuss the method or tool.

OK, apparently this started around the middle of last month, and it's still happening. It's happened twice to my co-worker and I wonder if there's a definite fix as the AV companies apparently haven't nailed it down yet.
Here's what's happening...

All Google and Yahoo searches through IE and Firefox are being redirected through the address 7.7.7.0
When using Firefox, you'll notice "7.7.7.0" instead of "connecting to Google" in the status bar.
The subsequent search terms show relevant results in the text and all, but the associated links are horribly wrong.
When this happens, you will also find a file named wdmaud.sys and/or sysaudio.sys in C:\windows\system32.
Also there will be an associated registry entry at HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\drivers32
It will be a key named "aux" with a value of "wdmaud.sys"
The general consensus of opinions is that the attack vector is a tainted PDF that gets payloaded from a banner ad or hidden iframe, and it may also be a rootkit.

Temporary fixes include turning off javascript, redirecting 7.7.7.0 to Google via a HOSTS file, all kinds of things.
The reality is that this is a new threat that needs to be dealt with quickly.

Read up:
http://www.google.co...h?q=7.7.7.0+redirect

The game provides an amusing, multimedia retrospective of the measures that the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have taken in response to the economic crisis.

Players get to guide Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke down Wall Street, making decisions about which institutions to save and which to let fail.

The game changes with the choices a player makes. The goal is to make it all the way across the board without running out of bailout money or ushering in a recession -- or worse. Players who get stuck can even seek advice from former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan.

Test your bailout skills here: http://www.thebailoutgame.us

Long time members of DC will know that programmer martin aignesberger has been a friend to DC -- always giving us free copies of one of my favorite programs (WebsiteWatcher) to give away, and just being nice in general to DC.

Since i don't think it has been mentioned yet i just wanted to point out that martin has officially released Website Watcher 5, and mention that martin has a blog which describes the new features and may be interesting reading: http://www.aignes.info/blog/