Proof positive that greed doesn’t pay. We may be nothing but “self-loading cargo” to the airlines, but we’re not completely stupid.
“Proving a Computer Program’s Correctness”
It sounds great, but isn’t viable in practice.
“Sawfish: mining the forgotten forests of the sea”
Interesting use of resources.
“Idle wild: how Intel’s mobile Core i7 speeds up to slow down”
It seems that Intel has found a way around the major complaint about multi-core CPUs, which is that they run single-threaded applications slower than single-core CPUs: they’ve come up with a technology to shut down unused cores to boost the speed on the remaining active cores.
It’s not a perfect solution, but it’ll probably help us get over the single- to multi-threaded hump.
“Nice Use of Diversion During a Robbery”
Wow, those Swedes even have smarter bank robbers! 😉
“Was our oldest ancestor a proton-powered rock?”
Some fascinating evidence suggesting just that.
“2012 isn’t the end of the world, Mayans insist”
Sorry, but you’re not getting out of your credit card payments that easily. 😉
“You have won [RANDOM_AMOUNT] USD. Annual e-mail lottery.”
Haven’t seen one of these in a while, but this one appeared recently in my spam folder:
Congratulations!
You have won money in our annual e-mail lottery!
You may find the gift check in attachment to this e-mail.
Please print the check, to get your money prize.E-mail lottery.
USA Mega Millions.
[URL removed]
The attachment is Bank_check_XXXXXXXX.zip (the Xs are a presumably-random hexadecimal number), containing a 64KB executable by the same name. These days, it almost certainly installs a back-door Trojan, to open the systems of anyone foolish enough to run it to further exploitation.
Maybe in a recession more people succumb to greed (desperation?) and stupidity, so this kind of thing gets better results. Or maybe the scammers are doing as badly as everyone else, and they’re getting desperate and trying all the moldy oldies to see if anything will sucker people these days.
Now that I think about it, I like that mental image. 😉
“How to read articles about health”
Always a handy skill to have.
“The Chipmunks: From Rags to Riches”
Ever wondered where that horribly-overplayed Christmas song came from? Here you go, now you’ll have something to bellow over it (and maybe drown it out, if you’re lucky) when it’s playing for the umpteenth time this year.