Nvidia’s response to ATI/AMD – with translation

The Inquirer gets some funny reader letters. Here’s one concerning a Q&A with Nvidia’s director of PR:

> Why do you think ATI went for this? It’s financial status?

GeForce has taken 80% of the performance market. Quadro is over 80% of the workstation market. We are taking share at OEMs. We are taking share in notebook. ATI needs to explore strategic options.

translation: Hellooo are you born yesterday? Of course it’s because they’re tired of eating our gpu dust! Asians are just plain better engineers than Canadians.

> I don’t believe so, but can we expect something in the likings of NVIDIA/Intel.

Our strategy is to be an independent supplier of GPUs and MCPs for the PC market.

translation: Of course we are! We are currently assessing how much capital we need to raise in order to acquire Intel.

Crypto Malware

Malware that encrypts files and asks for a ransom to decrypt them has become a popular alternative to the standard business model of malware (installing adware/spyware). It’s still very much in its infancy but it shows promise. Consider a virus “renting” a user his files… DRM for the worse guys (the bad guys being the current DRM pushers).
Malicious cryptography, part one
Malicious cryptography, part two
Crypto Malware Nearly ‘Uncrackable’

Keep IE7 out

Microsoft is providing a Toolkit to Disable Automatic Delivery of Internet Explorer 7. For now.

No net at home…

I don’t currently have internet at home. Tvtel has been sucking hard for the past few months and it’s now certain I’m going to change providers. Probably to clix or claranet. Not having internet means that I can waste my time in other equally non-productive ways. I finished watching Friends – best non sci-fi show I’ve seen. I also watched a movie called Derailed. Derailed is a Drama/Thriler which isn’t the type of movie I usually watch (action, comedy, sci-fi, horror) and perhaps that was one of the reasons I liked it so much – it’s rare for me not to guess the plot of a movie after the first 15min. In fact I didn’t realize where the movie was going until much later (1h15min). I think Vincent Cassel’s and Jennifer Aniston’s acting was amazing, perhaps she should stick with Drama/Thrilers instead of romantic comedies. Clive Owen’s acting on the other hand was mediocre at best.

More making fun of the mac

The ctrl-alt-del strip was funny but VH1’s Best Week Ever spoof of the ads is even more funny.

Open Galileo

Thanks to a group of Americans, Galileo will be open. God job. I’m also happy to find out about this:

Afraid that cracking the code might have been copyright infringement, Psiaki’s group consulted with Cornell’s university counsel. “We were told that cracking the encryption of creative content, like music or a movie, is illegal, but the encryption used by a navigation signal is fair game,” said Psiaki. The upshot: The Europeans cannot copyright basic data about the physical world, even if the data are coming from a satellite that they built.

End of the tabs-vs.-spaces war?

Elastic tabstops – the solution to the tabs-versus-spaces issue (via Joel on Software). This is great. I can’t wait untill all (relevant) editors implement this [unbridled optimism]. This will make programming a lot less painful. Try the demo.

Next up: The Church of Emacs and The Cult of Vi burry the hatchet and make new editor that combines the best of both editors in perfect harmony. The new editor solves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and autocompletes, from a single letter, a theory of everything.

Don’t Hassel the Hoff

Remember Knight Rider? Baywatch? Hooked On A Feeling? Now there’s Jump in My Car.
UPDATE: fixed, tks Relax (see comment)].

A pact with the Devil

A pact with the Devil (PDF) is a very interesting paper even if you’re not a fan of computer security papers. It’s a paper for the whole family to read. Abstract:

We study malware propagation strategies which exploit not the incompetence or naivety of users, but instead their own greed, malice and short-sightedness. We demonstrate that interactive propagation strategies, for example bribery and black-mail of computer users, are effective mechanisms for malware to survive and en-trench, and present an example employing these techniques. We argue that in terms of propagation, there exists a continuum between legitimate applications and pure malware, rather than a quantised scale.

Skip to “2.2 The instantiation” if you don’t feel like reading the whole thing. My Highlight: 1. Temptation 2. Monitoring 3. Blackmail 4. Voluntary Propagation 5. Involuntary Propagation.

Gimmie

Gimmie is looking good (presentation, images and videos). IMO, it’s about time they did something like this. Gnome is without a doubt my favorite DE but it’s not perfect. Gimmie is going to make it pretty damn close to perfect

Gimmie is an elegant way to think about how you use your desktop computer.

What Gimmie Can Do

* Integrated display of:
o Applications from the system menu
o Recently used documents, applications, printers, network shares, etc
o People you’ve recently chatted with
o People currently logged in for IM
o Your Gaim buddy list’s group organization
o All devices, printers, mapped network shares, and system settings
* Show open conversations, opened documents, and running applications (both new and legacy) in the Gimmie Bar
* Bookmark apps, documents, and people in the Gimmie Bar for quick access
* Allow log out, shutdown, or switching to another user
* Shows the current time, a desktop switcher, and a trashcan
* Search for items with instantly displayed results
* Zoom in and out on recently used items, from today, to this month and beyond