While I’m sure this won’t be of much interest to either of my readers today, I still think it’s pretty cool. Over on the forums at amiga.org, someone has written up a bit about his work rebuilding the Amiga custom chipset via FPGA. I never had an Amiga, but I always appreciated the technology that made them so good for their time. This is a pretty cool project.
Category: Interesting Reads
Malware advisor
Interested in keeping up with the latest goings on in the world of bad software? Make regular visits to the Malware Advisor. You’ll probably learn more than you ever knew you could about all the bad things some bad people do to get bad software on your computer and make it do bad things. There are lists of possible ways your machine got infected, likely hints that you are infected, fixes for various infections and links to forums where people talk how to fix the infections the advisor doesn’t yet show how to clean. Well worth visiting.
Security company using rootkits?
Hey, it’s my hobby, although I hope to make it my vocation again. After all the recent fuss over Sony’s use of a rootkit to protect honest consumers from doing things they have a legal right to do, I expect we’ll see more stories like the following come to light. Apparently, Symantec (aka Norton) uses rootkit technology to “protect” users from themselves when said users run Systemworks. Now I get the whole idea of wanting to help users avoid problems from accidentally screwing their systems up. I know that Symantec is just trying to help. But using technology to hide things from a user on their own system, without specifically spelling out that this will be done is just wrong. I understand it can be turned on and off, but I get the impression that the functionality of this feature is not spelled out in advance, and it really should be.
As the author of the linked column notes, there’s no known misuse of this rootkit technology to harm systems (that is, there are no known exploits of this “feature” by malware writers). But that doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t happen. It doesn’t even mean it hasn’t happened. As with the Sony fiasco, F-Secure appears to be the consumer protector we would like all security companies to be. This is a company that is getting my dollars when I next shop for security software. They just do things right. And they have a great security blog, too.
Smart power strip
I’ve got to get one of these. Please.
On Apple
This is brief. Another article from tingilinde. Read more about what makes Apple somewhat unique (yes, somewhat and unique can’t really go together, but work with me here).
Women on the night shift
No, it’s nothing dirty. Get your mind out of the gutter. Thanks to the fantastic site tingilinde, I saw this little article on the effect of working night shift on a woman’s body. In particular, the increased risk of breast cancer. Very briefly, the study mentioned in the article suggests that nighttime exposure to light interferes with the body’s production of melatonin, since this primarily occurs at night. This alteration in melatonin production might increase the risk of breast cancer.
A woman’s blood provides better sustenance for breast cancer just after she’s been exposed to bright light than when she’s been in steady darkness, researchers led by David E. Blask of the Bassett Research Institute in Cooperstown, N.Y., report.
“Light at night is now clearly a risk factor for breast cancer,” Blask says. “Breast tumors are awake during the day, and melatonin puts them to sleep at night.” Add artificial light to the night environment, and “cancer cells become insomniacs,” he says.
“Sleep per se is not important for melatonin,” says Russel J. Reiter, a neuroendocrinologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. “But darkness is.”
Read the whole article for more details. Very interesting reading.
Six rules for driving
This list of rules for driving sounds a lot like something I would write. In fact, I wish I had written this list.
Videogame journalism
I planned on pointing out this article titled “The Pointlessness of Current Videogame Journalism” tonight. The article starts with the author saying “I hate the videogame press.” It doesn’t really improve much from there. I was going to write on the problems with this article, but the fine folks at Joystiq beat me to it. Vladimir Cole’s write-up is much better than what I was going to do. Read his. Let me just say I agree with and had planned to write about one point in particular. Don’t write an article saying how bad the gaming press is, then not give any examples of just what you are talking about. Especially when your reason for not giving examples is because, apparently, you are looking to get work in the future with exactly those sources you think are so bad. It’s not really a great article, except for using as a focus of what’s wrong with gaming journalism.
NOTE: The fact that my writing is not really any better than the article in question is not lost on me. But I’m also not going around saying “Videogame writer’s are bad! I won’t tell you who, though, because I hope to work with them soon.”
Fun with comics
Now this is just plain interesting. Sometimes nonsense, sometimes very funny.
Ewwwww!
Yuck. That’s all there is to say.
Free Schematics
Interested in making stuff? How about some good, free schematics?
More predicitions
First, he did a review of his predictions from last year. Now, he’s written his predictions for the coming year. Ed Felton is a sharp cookie (is that mixing metaphors too much there?), and his stuff is always good reading. I’ll admit that I don’t find many of these predictions hard to see, so it’s not like this is a radically forward-thinking list. Still, it’s thoughtful and there are a few especially interesting predictions there.
I especially like
(16) Broadcasters will move toward Internet simulcasting of free TV channels. Other efforts to distribute authorized video over the net will disappoint.
(17) HD-DVD and Blu-ray, touted as the second coming of the DVD, will look increasingly like the second coming of the Laserdisc.
Also, it might just happen, but I’m skeptical of
(23) There will be a felony conviction in the U.S. for a crime committed entirely in a virtual world.