Hasta La Gadget!

Until I actually played a bit with an iPad Mini, I could see no reason why anyone would want to own an iPad and an iPad Mini at the same time. Though once I saw one up close, I like the small form factor, and lightweight, especially when you compare it side-by-side, to the iPad.

While the iPad Mini has been available for a few weeks in China, the cellular models haven’t yet hit the market. Apple has revealed they will release the cellular models starting this Friday, as well as the fourth-generation iPad.

As much as I love the design of the lightweight Mini, one thing that’s I’d like to see changed ASAP is the screen. In order for me to buy an iPad Mini, it needs to have a Retina screen. I won’t buy a mobile device from Apple without one, having had these on both my phone and my tablet already, I’m now spoiled for the image fidelity.

[via Apple]

This week the Moscow-based antivirus company Kaspersky Lab has revealed details of a five year long campaign that apparently targeted diplomatic, governmental and scientific-research organizations across the former Soviet Union. This attack used software known as Operation Red October, aka Rocra, a piece of malware designed to locate and make copies of both encrypted and non-encrypted documents in a target’s computer. This attack appears to have been spread across hundreds of victims since 2007 with an intent on gathering classified information as well as geopolitical intelligence.

Kaspersy chief malware expert Vitaly Kamluk spoke on the situation this week, noting that “there are about 300 computers infected that we know about.” These computers include those owned by embassies, government research centers, and aerospace facilities throughout former Soviet states as well as Belgium and India. Most of the attacks appear to have been directed at former Soviet states while Belgium and India each suffered a total of 15 infections, while the United States and Iran were confirmed to have suffered six and seven attacks, respectively.

The team at Kaspersy noted that though they’d found a set of 60 “command and control” servers throughout Germany and Russia that were responsible for these attacks, they each appeared to have been controlled by a sort of “mother ship” server which they’ve not yet located. Each of the attacks thus far appear to have been attached to Microsoft Word or Excel documents and delivered via email. When the document was downloaded and opened, a connection was made between the computer and one of the many command and control servers which then delivered the files necessary to collect secure data.

This Rocra malware was also spread with USB drives as well as through smartphones, not just through desktop machines. Mentions of Russian words throughout the discovered malware systems have been suggested to either point towards the software as being Russian in origin or placed deliberately to make the software appear to have come from Russia when in fact it was made by a different group entirely.

We’ll see more information on this relatively widespread attack in coming weeks, without a doubt. Stay tuned to SlashGear’s hacking tag to see all the action as it comes down.

[via Wall Street Journal]

Operation Red October cyberattack detailed by Kaspersky Lab is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Gartner recently published its latest metrics for the computer market for Q4 2012. According to the company, worldwide PC shipments totaled 90.3 million units in Q4 of 2012 for a 4.9% decline compared to Q4 2011. The analytics firm says that tablets have dramatically changed the landscape in the PC market.

Gartner notes that tablets aren’t as much cannibalizing computer sales as leading computer users to shift their consumption to tablets rather than replacing older computers. Gartner says that it believes that most individuals will shift consumption activity to a tablet while performing creative and administrative tasks on a shared PC. The analytics company believes that individuals retaining both a tablet and PC will be the exception rather than the rule.

Gartner also says that it believes buyers won’t replace secondary PCs within the home. Instead once those machines age out consumption will be shifted to a tablet. The holiday shopping season of 2012 saw some very low-priced notebooks being offered as part of holiday deals but that trend reportedly did very little to boost holiday PC sales.

Gartner also reports that the launch of Windows 8 didn’t have a significant impact on computer shipments during Q4. Gartner does believe new products coming to market could help drive churn within the computer user base. Gartner lists HP as the number one computer shipper globally during Q4. The second place spot in global shipments went to Lenovo with Dell in third, Acer in forth, and Asus in fifth.

Declining global PC shipments signal market shift says Gartner is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

There’s something to be said about taking care of your computer monitors, especially about the ones that come included in all-in-one computers. You can’t really change those easily when there’s something wrong with them, so it makes sense to be very careful, just in case.

Apart from being spelled somewhat annoyingly, Radtech’s ScreenSavrz is a good way to protect your screen from physical damage. It’s an ultra-light, stretchy cloth cover for your iMac screen, designed to protect the display from dust and dirt when it’s not in use. It also doubles as a way to clean and polish fingerprints from your screen.

You can get the ScreenSavrz for iMac for $39.95(USD) for the 21-inch model and $54.95 for the 27-inch model directly from Radtech in a variety of fabric colors. They also make covers for Apple Cinema Displays, laptops, and mobile devices.

[via BlessThisStuff]

We haven’t heard much out of IBM and its impressive Watson supercomputer in a while. Watson is the supercomputer that IBM fielded as a contestant on Jeopardy back in 2011. Despite the fact that Watson was able to perform impressively well on the game show, it’s still been unable to pass the Turing test designed to determine if a computer can think for itself.

The Turing test says that a computer capable of carrying on a natural conversation without giving itself away can be considered intelligent. The problem for Watson is that human language has a lot of subtlety and is packed with slang. IBM research scientist Eric Brown decided to help Watson learn human slang by setting the machine free to ingest content from Urban Dictionary. You can see the beginnings of a problem about now.

As instructed, Watson gobbled up all of the material on Urban Dictionary. However, the supercomputer was unable to tell the difference between acceptable language and curses. According to the IBM scientists, Watson even use the word “bullshit” in response to a question posed to him by researcher. Apparently, the IBM researchers tried a filter to stop Watson from cursing but were ultimately forced to wipe all the content from Urban Dictionary from the supercomputers memory. I think they should have left it alone. I find the idea of a multi-million-dollar supercomputer cursing at scientists undeniably entertaining.

[via CNN]