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Sep 11, 2011 2:00 PM 839 0

• What are some of the best ways to keep everyday meals interesting and not boring or closely related to each other?
• What are some careers out there that have plenty of room for advancement, where you can make a comfortable living, that don’t require a specific college degree?
• I am planning to customize a computer for my 91 years old grandpa. He has never used a computer before and he has very limited eyesight. The idea is to allow him to read news (he cannot read the small print in newspapers anymore). My idea was to get as big screen as reasonably possible (26″ or maybe larger LCD TV). The PC would run a browser in fullscreen showing an RSS reader with preloaded RSS sources (various news sites in general). Any advice?
• I’m interested in buying a tablet, but am totally on the fence about whether I should get an iPad, ASUS Transformer, or Samsung Galaxy Tab. I have heard great things about each, but people tend to pick their favourites early on, so it’s hard to get real-world advice.
• Router Question! If I’m getting 5Mbps on the speed tests, does that mean that’s what I’m really getting, or is it possible the router could still be slowing down my traffic?
• I have just (potentially foolishly) booked myself a couple of Gliding lessons. I’m slightly nervous in that I get vertigo, has anyone here ever participated in Gliding? Could you give me some advice?
• What have you done to explore a new genre of music?
• Does anyone know of any good to-do list applications for Linux? It would help if I could keep it on the desktop in some form, like a widget or something.
• I’m trying to help out my aunt with a computer problem. Is there an easy way to remote desktop to someone else’s laptop?
• When someone gives you a personal item like a wallet or purse and you don’t like it, what really is the best social way to not have them pissed at you for not using it.

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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/OkwHHa-rC3c/ask-the-commenters-roundup

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There are few things as maddening as being in the middle of a task on a computer, and having the software freeze up on you. This can be particularly enraging if you haven’t backed up your work recently, and you know that the only way of “thawing out” the program will be to execute a force quit – your work will be lost, all because the (insert word of your choice here) computer didn’t know what to do next. Fortunately, however, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a tool that jolts stalled programs back into action.

Programs commonly contain thousands of loops, that allow the computer to perform the same task over and over, such as systematically comparing each letter in a document to those in a search term. Should there be a slight error in the code, however, the computer can get stuck in an infinite loop, performing the exact same function indefinitely – it could keep comparing the same letter, for instance, instead of moving on to the next one.

In order to get computers out of infinite loops, MIT computer science professor Martin Rinard and his graduate students Michael Carbin, Sasa Misailovic and Michael Kling have created a software tool that is appropriately named Jolt. When activated by a user who thinks their computer might have frozen up, Jolt takes a series of “snapshots” of the computer’s memory after each run of a loop. If all of those snapshots are identical, then the machine is indeed stuck in an infinite loop.

Jolt then instructs the computer to move on to the next instruction within the program. In order to be able to do that, however, Jolt must first be aware of the beginning and end points of all the loops within the program’s source code. This requires it to also be used by software developers, when their complex programming language is being compiled into computer-friendly binary.

Getting developers to use Jolt could be asking a lot, however, plus it causes programs to run 7 to 8 percent slower. To get around these limitations, Rinard and his team are now working on a binary edition of the software, called Bolt. It is able to work directly on compiled, binary versions of programs. One of the challenges in the development of Bolt is the identification of the beginning and end points of loops in binary code – whereas such points are relatively easy to spot in programming language, they can difficult to locate within the strings of numbers that make up binary.

Kling has addressed this problem by developing an algorithm that allows Bolt to identify the highest-level function that is running in a program at any one time. If that still doesn’t provide enough information, then Bolt could conceivably even just start searching for new instructions at random, until it finds one that allows the program to move on. Although going to that next instruction might not be the perfect choice for the smooth running of the program, it would at least get the computer out of the loop, so that the user’s work could be saved.

The MIT team presented Jolt at the 25th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming in Lancaster, England, last month.

Source: http://www.gizmag.com/jolt-gets-frozen-computers-out-of-loops/19419/

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Enlarge Daniel Barry/Getty Images

Thanks to its gains in the computer and mobile device markets, Apple’s products are more attractive to hackers, says columnist Rich Jaroslovsky.

Daniel Barry/Getty Images

Thanks to its gains in the computer and mobile device markets, Apple’s products are more attractive to hackers, says columnist Rich Jaroslovsky.

Apple’s computers have been able to avoid most serious hacking attacks, but that era may be over. As Steve Jobs and his colleagues prepared for this week’s developers conference, the company was also taking steps to stop a malware “phishing” program.

The ploy, says technology columnist Rich Jaroslovsky of Bloomberg News, uses an infected website to install a piece of software on Apple computers. The software then pops up a new window, with an urgent message about a security vulnerability.

As Jaroslovsky tells NPR’s Renee Montagne, the rogue window includes “a scary-sounding message that tells you that your computer is infected, and that you need software to eradicate the infection ? and to please give your credit card number.”

While most people would not be gullible enough to do that, enough users fall for the phishing ploy, often called “scareware,” that it can pay off for the perpetrators.

Text in the pop-up window refers to a bogus security program, with names like MacDefender, MacProtector, or MacSecurity ? all “deeply ironic” names, Jaroslovsky says, for malware meant to steal financial information.

The phishing attack can be seen as an acknowledgment of the growing popularity of Apple’s devices, Jaroslovsky says. For years, most malware attacks focused on Windows computers, which have long dominated the market.

“In some ways, it’s almost a rite of passage for the Mac” he says, “because it says that it’s now mainstream enough so that the bad guys are targeting it.”

And because Apple’s various devices ? from computers to iPhones to iPads ? use elements of the same software, it’s not yet certain how easily a malware infection might spread.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to unveil the company’s latest operating systems ? Lion for Mac computers, and iOS 5 for mobile devices ? at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco Monday.

“The kernel of the Mac operating system, the sort of core of it, is also found in Apple mobile devices,” Jaroslovsky says. “So, a successful attack on the Mac theoretically could become something that would also affect mobile devices.”

Of course, Apple’s notoriously tight control of its App Store, which acts as a gateway for software to reach its mobile devices, is one more layer of protection for its customers.

But Jaroslovsky says that the lesson to be learned from the recent malware episode is that “it should be a wakeup call to consumers, to be extra vigilant, not only with their Windows computers, which they already know have issues, but essentially with any device that they use that connects to the Internet.”

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/06/136935143/apples-macs-hit-by-malware-are-iphones-next?ft=1&f=1019

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