Q:

Convert ESRI Integer ASCII Grid to something useful

How could I convert a file(s) which is "DIGITAL Map data stored in ESRI ARCInfo Integer ASCII Grid format" into something the rest of us can use?  i.e import into QGIS. 
The main file has no extension and is 70 MB, the accompanying files are a *.dbf and a *.prj.  
It does appear to be of the format described here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esri_grid
but how do I convert it? 

A:

gdal_translate-of gtiff foobar.asc foobar.tif, where .asc is optional, will do the trick of converting to the more usable geotiff format (and save a whack of disk space too).  I'm not sure how one would go about associating the attribute values to the raster cells in qgis, that could be a separate question as it's probably not file format specific operation.