Geneticists at the Johns Hopkins University announced Monday that an estimated seven million people worldwide carry a distinctive genetic marker linking them to a single smooth-talking common ancestor. Gwilym of Many Conquests is believed to have smelled amazing for a ninth-century Welshman. According to the study, which analyzed blood samples from 4,000 participants in 17 countries, the lineage appears to have originated with a highly virile ninth-century Welsh nobleman known as Gwilym of Many Conquests.

According to lore, Gwilym was a persuasive mead-house balladeer known for his "gilded, tunic-dropping verse." Many texts note his total lack of standards concerning the age, weight, and appearance of the women he bedded, claiming that his silk-adorned pallet never lay cold for even a single night after his 17th birthday.

Gwilym, our smooth talking ancestor. I like it.

via Onion.

I was using Windows Vista from the early betas until just about 4 months ago. I liked many of its features such as search and aero and the new start menu, but after a while I have just realized that there is something wrong with it and I have given up. Formatted my hard disk and installed Windows XP and did use my computer that way ever since. For me, the experience was a little bit like when someone meets this really nice and nice girl and decides to live with her. First it goes really well, but after a while the realization comes, there is no love in this relationship anymore or maybe never ever has been and then moves out of the apartment.

With Windows 7 it is totally different though. There is chemistry here and it feels like we have known each other for years. It has everything that is important for you and much more… There is hope! There is love!

There are many things I like a lot in Windows 7, but one thing I like the most is its speed and smoothness. It just works. No senseless pauses sprinkled with flashy animation when copying files, no freezes. It does what it needs to do.

Things I like…

The new taskbar is really good. It resembles the dock from OS X, but I think it is a very nice improvement in Windows.

I like the themes in Windows. I was never a big fan of the plus packs in earlier versions, nor the different themes, but I love the ones that come with Windows 7. I even like them better than the themes can be found in OS X.

I also like Aero snap, the full-screen previews on the taskbar,  jump list and finally the desktop gadgets are starting to be useful too. The best is to check What’s coming Windows 7.

Things I didn’t like…

My only complaint is around Apple Bootcamp. I did not have any problems with the drivers, except the speakers are not working for some reason. My headphone jack socket shines out with red light and if I plug-in headphones the audio works through the headphones, if I take it out then the no audio.
Then I tried to install Bootcamp on Windows 7, but the setup told me that it works only with Windows Vista and Windows XP.  It would be nice to see an update from Apple for the drivers, but I guess this should wait until Windows 7 is released.

I think we are looking forward to a really nice next version of Windows. It is an evolutionary step, with smaller changes and little features, but I think if Windows needs to copy anything from OS X then it needs to copy these small steps…

A very good visualized explanation of the credit crisis. From CrisisOfCredit.com

Part 1.

Part 2.

QR codes are beginning to gain ground in the UK so I’ve decided to write an article covering the brief history of barcodes and the lead up to the introduction of QR Codes to give you an understanding of the technology. I’ve been in IT for 20 years and, as with most technically orientated people, I tend to fall into the ‘techie’ trap when writing articles explaining technology. The article normally ends up reading like a technical manual for NASA’s space shuttle so I’ve made a conscious effort to stick to layman’s terms to make the article clear for a wide audience.

What is a barcode ?

Barcodes are simply a mechanism to capture information without the need to type in letters and numbers at the keyboard and virtually everything you buy these days in supermarkets have a barcode which simply contains a unique product code. The actual number printed beneath the barcode is the actual number that is encoded in the barcode. The human-readable number is not actually read by the barcode scanner, It’s just there for us to quote to customer services departments when you have a issue with a product.
If you quote this number the exact product can be identified when the call center adviser enters the number into their stock system.
Barcodes you see on everyday supermarket items are in a format (symbology) known as EAN (European Article Number) and are classed as 1D (One dimensional) barcodes as the vertical stripes represent a series of numbers.

Go to the original article to continue reading.

QR code is a 2 dimensional barcode system. Opposed to the traditional barcodes (1D, 1 dimensional), because of storing information in 2D QR code can store about 4296 characters of information. For example the barcode above is a link to this blog. Some mobile phones are capable of recognizing QR codes using their cameras, so you just point your mobile toward this QR code on the screen and your mobile recognizes the encoded url and navigates to this sites.

From time to time when I visited this site from other machine I noticed that there is a weird component wants to install itself on that computer. I did not pay attention to it, until very recently.

It just started to bug me as I did not remember that I ever used this ActiveX so I did a quick search on google and found a topic in a forum suggesting that this might be a little more than an innocent mistake.

From time to time, I also received this dialog urging me to install OP component from HIPOINT Ltd. – I found not trace of them, when goggling them. I could not reproduce this problem in a consistent fashion, it just showed up randomly.

I was also suggested this article: Can you spot the fake. So I turned to Fiddler as well to find out what is going on.
“Fiddler is a HTTP Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP Traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data.”

I found the tinyurl.com reference really weird, as I never ever used this service on my blog, also I was quite positive that I never linked to vipasotka.com either. I also found references to golnanostat.com. I tried to search for these references in my pages, but could not find anything.

“ This website wants to run the following add-on: Microsoft Data Access – Remote Data services Dat… from Microsoft Corporation. If you trust the website and the add-on and want to”

Navigating to the tinyurl reference produced the well known message above and the dialog urging me to install the java component.

I also noticed that the very first request after my main page is to r52hosts.org and for the page /stat/wpjsofif.js. This does not ring a bell either. So I searched the html code that came from the www.littlebigtomatoes.com/blog , but again no luck. Then I tried all kinds of combination and found the following code snippet with comments

The javascript between the script tags was obfuscated, but debugging the script in the Visual Studio revealed that the script creates an iframe pointing to r52hosts.org and pulls in another encrypted javascript file.

After following and debugging several obfuscated scripts I got to the final page, that creates all the prompts in my browser. I still do not understand what the code exactly does, but it does not look very promising. Debugging the script shows that it is probing for class ids and the second screenshot shows that the script also tries to find the Start Menu Autostart folder. Also, it tries to run some kind of install.exe from http://golnanosat.com/adw.files/so14/7f751f….

After finding out these, I am convinced that this script is malicious and I do not want anyone to download it from my site. After removing the scripts from my wordpress template between the <!– start counter :rkgi58s:wpjsandif –> comments solved my problem. There is no more r52host.org references, when I access my blog.

Of course, I will keep monitoring my site as I do not exactly know, how this piece of script got there in the first place.

• “The [new Zune] touchpad works like a dream, letting you scroll through long horizontal and vertical lists–it may be the first portable player interface from a company other than Apple that’s an improvement on the original iPod clickwheel.”- Matt Rosoff, C|Net
• “Microsoft’s answer to iTunes….is quite attractive and makes iTunes seem like a big, boring spreadsheet” – Tim Gideon, PCMagazine
• "The upgraded Zune Marketplace promises to be the real draw to the new Zune."- Mark Hopkins, Mashable
• "The possibilities are endless with Zune Social…Using the site, music lovers can discover new music and artists and labels can promote their work."- Nick Paschal, ComputingNews
• “Zune Originals will blow you away: Microsoft is actually out-cooling Apple.”- Charlie Sorrel, WIRED

I am now reading a book called 4-Hour Workweek from Timothy Ferris and this is a great book. I am not usually into these i-got-rich-quick-i-show-you-how-i-did-it kinds of books, but this one seems to offer solutions for my problems and make my life easier. One of the concepts introduced here is called "Low Information Diet". It’s about how to break down the flow of information that comes to you. Web sites, newspapers, magazines, books, radio and television deliver so much unnecessary and unwanted information. While you are consuming information in large quantities, at the same time information is consuming your attention and time and I realized early on that my most precious resource is time itself. 

I read hundreds of rss feeds daily, but I cannot really think of anything useful I gathered from them in the last week or so. I listen to dozens of podcasts and while I do really enjoy them, sometimes I feel that I am obliged to listen to them, so I will keep up with the episodes. When I start my browser, it opens up several tabs with search engines, news sites and forums. It is basically begging me to stop doing what I am doing, and start browsing…

So, I decided that I will try to fix my attention deficit and I am going to try the "Low Information Diet" for a week and see how this goes. The first thing that came to mind is to replace my homepages with one single page. My home page looks like this right now:

Low Information Diet – 5-day trial.

Rules
No newspapers, magazines, audiobooks or non-music radio.
No news websites, blogs or rss feeds.
No television at all except 1 hour pleasure viewing each evening.
No reading books, except for this book and one hour of fiction pleasure reading prior to bed.
No web surfing at the desk unless it is necessary to complete a work task for that day.
No email checking, but only in the permitted hours: 12:00 AM and 4:00PM

Permitted websites
LBT Project Page and blog
Work related tools

I copied the rules from the book, so whenever I open up my browser, It will remind me what I can and cannot do. When I was trying to loose weight, I taped the rules of my diet along with my weight graph onto the fridge door, and it helped me to say no whenever I wanted to get some unauthorized snacks. I also created a section of the permitted web sites on this new home page. I will use this as my starting point for any kind of web activity. I have only work and project related sites and tools in this section that I use to do my work.

I will stick to these rules over the next 5 days and will see how it goes!