New and Noteworthy: Nvidia Buys PortalPlayer; Mac virus author admits coding difficulties

Nvidia Buys PortalPlayer Digital Trends reports that graphics chipmaker Nvidia announced that is acquiring PortalPlayer, a company which makes system-on-a-chip technology to power display devices including older versions of iPod; Nvidia will be paying $357 million for the company. More.

Mac virus author admits coding difficulties The proof of concept Mac OS X virus, which we reported on last week as more of a publicity stunt than actual threat, includes comments in the code that indicate the author had a difficult time creating the malware according to ZDNet. "According to antivirus firm Symantec, Macarena was discovered last Thursday and has infected less than 50 machines. Macarena has a very poor replication mechanism and is unlikely to cause problems for the majority of Mac users. Peter Ferrie, senior security response engineer at Symantec, explained in his blog that the virus does not cause any serious problems and is unlikely to spread very far. 'There is no payload in this virus -- it simply replicates. However, it won't replicate very well, because it is restricted to the current directory,' said Ferrie." More.

Previously on MacFixIt

• Symantec warns of "OSX.Macarena" proof-of-concept exploit; threat level (if any) undetermined
• Aperture 1.5.1 (#2): Resolved issues; Download RAW support update as well; more
• Downgrade AirPort Extreme firmware for repeated dropouts (lapses in connectivity)
• iTunes 7.0.2 (#3): Explanation of permissions changes in this release
• Increasing performance by quitting remnant or unnecessary system processes

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