Topics

51

Living Room / Color Theory

« on: November 25, 2007, 09:15 PM »

Found a fascinating color theory tutorial, including links to additional resources and a bibliography:

http://www.worqx.com/color/



This is general stuff, easy to read and organized so that it's amenable to topic hopping.  It's applicable to paper documents, application & web design, or simply making sure your chosen Windows color palette won't give you a siezure.

Simply reading the section about Perceptual Opposites led me to an "aha!" moment, when I finally understood why some colors just look nasty together, like they want to vibrate each other off the screen.  I'd subconciously recognized the phenomenon, but now I know why that happens.

Unfortunately none of this will not stop Mrs. Maximus from painting the kitchen green.

52

Living Room / Save Fred!

« on: November 25, 2007, 08:46 PM »

An... interesting... flash game, wherein you try to save the life of a stuffed bunny, Fred.

http://www.10mg.nl/



It's SFW, but will probably freak kids out.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention... the site's apparently the work of an advertising/web design agency; their "About" link is kinda fun too.

53

Living Room / VectorMagic: Convert Bitmaps into Vector Art (Free)

« on: November 25, 2007, 05:44 PM »

VectorMagic is an online experiment of Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence lab, taking bitmaps you upload and converting them to vector graphic files while-u-wait.  Vectorization really excels at simple logos and line art, but this bad boy will take anything you throw at it and deliver interesting results.  It has a clean and simple interface, with a Wizard that walks you through the process and then back again if the results make you go "meh".

http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/


They even include a brief tutorial for those new to vectorization, or why it's a Good Thing for certain applications.  Oh, and while the site has "Login" and "Signup" links in the upper right, rest assured you can vectorize all you want without registration.

I've included some before/after samples by way of demonstration.  Each took less than 4 minutes to process from beginning to end.  The first is an Audrey Maximus pencil sketch of the Mona Lisa:



Not bad.  Kind of screams "Impressionist", but it's a nice effect.  It's not a 100% perfect conversion, but I intentionally chose something that would be a challenge, and it worked out well.

Next up, the president of the RIAA:



Whoa!  It handles photographs well, don't you think? There's obvious problems with the reflection on his shoulder, but other than that most people wouldn't notice.  Note that while these samples are bitmaps (I converted them back again for posting) you can download your vector masterpiece in EPS format.

Vectors!  They're not just for making geometry students cry any more.

54

Developer's Corner / Visual Studio 2005 or 2008?

« on: November 24, 2007, 06:33 PM »

Microsoft has announced Visual Studio 2008 has gone RTM.  It should be available in lovely shrink-wrapped boxes in time for the Christmas rush.  I know what Aunt Mildred's getting in her stocking!

But is migration from VS2005 (or even 2003) warranted?  Is the juice worth the squeeze?  What exactly's in that smokin' new code, and how stable is it?

Here's one blogger's take on upgrade strategies, and a nice enumeration of the new stuff sprinkled liberally with helpful links.

http://weblogs.asp.n...hat-s-more-risk.aspx

The comments, as usual for these kinds of things, are as good as the article itself.  For instance, one VS 2008 beta user reports it to be the most stable version of the product he's tried yet.

55

Living Room / Procrastination Flowchart

« on: November 24, 2007, 01:51 AM »

Courtesy of Buy My Drink comes this terrifyingly accurate (in my experience) flowchart.  I plan to start my day navigating its serpentine twistiness.  Soon.

56

Living Room / Interesting Signs

« on: November 23, 2007, 11:18 AM »

An ongoing effort of Dark Roasted Blend, their "Outrageous Signs" series is up to part 8.



http://www.darkroast...us-signs-part-8.html

Surprisingly, only a few are photoshopped, and are clearly marked as such.  Most are simply the result of unfortunate culture collision.

57

Living Room / How often do you reboot your primary workstation?

« on: November 23, 2007, 12:48 AM »

By "reboot" I mean turning your machine on in the morning (if you do that) or any time you do a shutdown/restart, whether forced into it by circumstance or just because you're mad at your computer and want to show it who's boss.

This one's open to anybody, regardless of operating system.  Laptop users can vote, but unless it's your primary workstation that's kind of silly.

If you select "Only as needed" please provide clarification about your tolerance for pain: if you reboot because things seem "a little slow" or you typically wait until the mouse stops responding.

People whose machines reboot spontaneously without user intervention are NOT allowed to vote and are urged to seek technical assistance.  Go!  Go take care of it now.

58

Living Room / Credit Card Calendars

« on: November 22, 2007, 05:11 PM »

I usually resist posting items found at BoingBoing, but this one's entirely too cool and worth the risk of irritating BB RSS readers.  A challenge to create a business card sized calendar that doesn't suck.



http://elzr.com/post...infodesign-challenge

My personal favorite: the one pictured.  But by golly some of the others are just wonderous.

59

Living Room / Happy Thanksgiving 2007!

« on: November 22, 2007, 04:10 PM »

In America, around this time today (1700 hours EST) many families have either gorged themselves on succulent feasts or are wondering if that damned turkey is ever going to thaw out.  Burned rolls are greeted at the table with accepting smiles, and Aunt Mildred's mincemeat pie has once again befuddled the family as to what it's actually made of.

Yes, America is once again celebrating that long ago event when Arnold Schwartenegger returned from the future and tried to kill us all and was soundly defeated.  No wait...  I'm being told it's a celebration steeped in more mystery than that.  It observes the successful first winter harvest of our Pilgrim forefathers, foremothers, and foreoffspring way back in 1921.  No, sorry... 1621.

The traditional story goes that boatloads of puritan British settlers braved the stormy Atlantic hoping for a new life free from religious persecution.  They made landfall in what is now New England, where they set about the usual stuff settlers engage in: chopping down trees, gathering resources, and avoiding a huge mysterious icon that would come down from the sky and click on their buildings occasionally. 

The first winter of 1961 was harsh... wait, make that 1619... but somehow they made it through with the help of their loyal manservant and ex-British slave, Squanto, who being a local native, knew not to eat the delicious holly berries.  The actual first thanksgiving celebration is pegged at 1621, which implies it took a few winters before anyone was comfortable celebrating anything.  Man, I would love to see a live video feed of some of the conversations during that time:

"Miami!  Miami, I said.  Head south, I said, where it's warm... but nooooo, you wanted New England!"

"Putz, that place is crawling with Calusas indians -- you want we should be met by 10,000 natives in war canoes?"

"Hey, when did we start talking like Jewish stereotypes?"

And by the way, it was a very near thing indeed... had the Plymouth colonies failed, it would've been a major setback for British presence in the new world.  Hard to imagine?  You don't have to.  A wonderful alternate universe trilogy exists describing what a Dutch ruled North America might be like by the late 1990's. 

So with Native American help, the pilgrims managed to feed themselves and decided that by 1621 things were stable enough to actually throw a party.  Details are unclear, but evidence suggests it really was a multicultural event:

The Governor of Plymouth invited Grand Sachem Massasoit and the Wampanoag people to join them in the feast. Evidence to support that claim came from diaries of Plymouth. The settlers fed and entertained the Native Americans for three days, at which point some of the Native Americans went into the forest, killed 5 deer, and gave them to the Governor as a gift.

--Wikipedia entry on the Terminator movie franchise.

So now, almost 400 years later we Americans celebrate this wonderous event by having Native Americans over for turkey and pie, XBox Live tournaments, and... really?  Oh.  I was just informed that most Americans -- the non-Native variety, those white fellows with a God fixation -- do not in fact invite Native Americans over for dinner.  But they should, because that would be cool and in no way ironic.

So what do we God-fixated Americans do to give humble thanks for our prosperity?  Lots!

- Take off a minimum of four (4) days from work and/or school.  Sometimes five.  The whole damned week if you work in government.

- Travel.  The weeks before and after Thanksgiving are the busiest of the year.  Normandy invasion?  Feh.  You should've seen Atlanta Hartsfield airport this time yesterday.  And because everyone slips away from work early and jumps into their car to "beat the rush" there are massive traffic jams across the continent.

- Stuff ourselves mercilessly on dangerous amounts of colesterol, starch, and alcohol.

- Speaking of alcohol, we love to debate religion, politics, sports, abortion, the Iraq war, and just about anything that will make Mom cry and run into the kitchen requiring an intervention by others at the table who are not Uncle Bob to go in there and reassure her that no, the dinner isn't ruined just look at these fabulous pies you cooked oh sorry, they're store bought?  Well they're still delicious and why don't you come back to the table we'll get you a nice sherry or something, okay?

- SHOP LIKE CRAZY!  See "Black Friday" below.

- Watch sports on television.  Actually going to a sporting event is unheard of.  No, the true American tradition is to push oneself away from the table, turn 90 degrees, and focus blearily on the 65 continuous channels of college football games dominating the spectrum.  Can't decide which obscure contest to watch?  ("Today, the Musk Weasels battle the Serbian Sheep!")  TIVO them all and you'll be set through next Thanksgiving!

- Sleep.  Any human who can ingest 6,000 calories in one sitting and not fall into a coma is possessed by Satan and should be reported immediately.

- Reconnect with family and friends.  This is the one time a year when many Americans are surprised to discover they actually have cousins, and that the family tree is growing in weird and unpredictable directions.  "Bring home a date that will shock Dad silly" is a fun game engaged in by both genders with equal skill.  Tip: Nowadays same-sex and different-race is sooooo last century.  Try instead to find somebody who is only barely recognizable as human, say one of those nice Terminator robots everyone is talking about.

So yes, America is steeped in rich tradition dating back hundreds of years. 

Above the laughter of our european cousins I can hear a question... yes?  Speak up please.  Oh!  Right.  About the shopping.  Around here we celebrate yet another holiday, the perfectly named BLACK FRIDAY.

Some believe that as its name implies, it really is a day to worship the Dark Lord (Amazon.com) but really the name has much happier joyjoy origins:

The earliest uses of "Black Friday" refer to the heavy traffic on that day, an implicit comparison to the extremely stressful and chaotic experience of Black Tuesday (the 1929 stock-market crash) or other black days. The earliest known references to "Black Friday" (in this sense) are from two newspaper articles from November 29, 1975, that explicitly refer to the day's hectic nature and heavy traffic.

--Wikipedia entry on shopping habits of Terminator robots

Thus, the day after Thanksgiving a typical American family gets up at 5:00 AM, fires up the Suburban and roars to the nearest megamall for a day of bargains and contact violence.  The frenzy is tabulated by American news programs using the same methodologies employed to track pandemics, "credit card receipt" numbers spinning crazily like slot machines behind breathless anchorpeople.  Oh, it is quite a day.

Afterwards, the numbers are crunched, and because Black Friday is theoretically the busiest shopping day of the year, predictions are made as to what the Christmas season will be like.  Because, you know, now that Thanksgiving is out of the way Christmas is breathing hot on your neck.  Decorations!  Now!  Get that tree up!  Throw those hideous turkey leftovers out; it's Monday goddamnit!  Time to plan for Christmas before it's too late!

But rest assured, any British and European cousins reading this, you too may participate in the frenzy.  Just Google for "Black Friday deals" and soon your monitor will overflow with offers you'd be nuts to pass up.  Just stay away from anything with the words "cranberry" and "sauce" near each other.  It's not a "uniquely American gourmet treat"; rather it's a rude joke foisted off on us by the American Cranberry Association (motto: "Trust Us, These Things Really Are Edible").

So that's Thanksgiving in America.  Rest assured, I feel extremely blessed, and very thankful for all the wonderous things in my life.  But honest to God, if I don't put things into perspective I'd go crazy... I mean, they're selling Christmas ornaments next to the Thanksgiving decorations!

60

Living Room / Domo Arigato, Robot Drobo!

« on: November 21, 2007, 06:36 PM »

While they call it a "robot", Drobo is really just a fancy NAS box.  Four bays, built-in processing & intelligence, an array of connection options.  Yawn.  So what?

http://www.drobo.com/



What makes Drobo different is its ease of use.  Apparently it's totally automated.  No configuration.  Just plug in up to four SATA hard drives -- any size, any manufacturer -- and it reconfigures itself on the fly to manage them.  It's like RAID for dummies.

And, you might be a dummy to pay $499 USD for the thing (with no drives), since cheaper solutions exist.  But then again, how much time have we all wasted troubleshooting a RAID system, or discovering that the new drive you just bought isn't compatible with the other in the pair, or figuring out that your SATA cables are just *this* much too short to reach the freekin socket? 

Drobo takes care of all that technical shiat for you.  And for Mac users: it's 100% TimeMachine aware.

Might be worth a look if grandma starts editing videos or something.

61

Living Room / Q: What's 1 foot square, flat, covered in hair, and greasy?

« on: November 21, 2007, 06:23 PM »

A: The answer to San Francisco's recent oil spill

http://www.60seconds...-home-grown.php#more



Apparently what you've suspected all your life is correct: you're using the wrong hair conditioner.  No, wait, that's not it... here it is.  Apparently human hair has tremendous abilities to soak up oil, due to its scaly cracked nature. 

So the clever citizens of San Francisco, California are deploying 2000 1x1 foot mats of human hair, all harvested from sleeping homeless people.  No, wait... harvested from... it really doesn't say.  But anyway, they're deploying the mats and cleaning up the spill, then tossing them into the world's largest dumpster or something.

No wait, here it is... they take the discarded mats and seed them with fungi, which eats the organics and leaves behind rich, fertile soil.  No, I am not making this up: tragic oil spill --> giant floating mats of human hair --> fertile top soil.

Which they'll use to grow corn to convert into biodiesel and the Circle of Life will be complete.

62

Living Room / I Don't Remember Seeing This Before

« on: November 20, 2007, 08:59 PM »

Courtesy of National Geographic, this fascinating account of two unique individuals with memory problems, and a backgrounder on how scientists think memory works.

http://magma.nationa...emory/foer-text.html



One guy (can't remember his name, har) is 81 years old but due to a brain infection, can't remember anything prior to about 1960.  Not only that, but he's lost all ability to memorize new information, short of a span lasting hours, perhaps minutes.  Researchers visit him almost daily, and each visit is as the first: he answers their ridiculous questions, never realizing he's answered them before.

But other than that, he's a completely normal, intelligent, engaging adult.  It's like his RAM is fine, but there's a fault in his harddrive.

Another case (damn, can't remember her name either) revolves around a woman with perfect recall.  She remembers every day of her life with disturbing precision.  She can tell you the weather for June 10, 1990.  She can play back for you the dialog from every television program she's ever watched, ever.  She can tell you what her apartment smelled like during each episode, who she spoke with on the phone, what was said -- for most of her life.

Is it a blessing?  A curse?  How many of us have wished for perfect recall?  Well, her story might sober you right up and make you GLAD you can't remember what you just stepped into the kitchen to get.

Assuming you remember to click the link at the top of the page.

63

Living Room / Man uses Wii Calendar Function to Catch His Cheating Wife

« on: November 20, 2007, 08:36 PM »

In this sad story, a soldier returns from abroad and hears from his friends that his wife has been less than faithful.  He investigates, and using his Wii's colaborative calendar function discovers that indeed, she has been...  ah, playing games with somebody else.

http://gonintendo.com/?p=29938



It's bound to happen: as technology becomes more intertwined, privacy is compromised.  In the case of somebody being bad, it takes more work to cover your tracks.  Otherwise, products that "clean your browser's cache" or promise anonymous surfing wouldn't be nearly as popular.

To be fair, it kind of sounds like she wasn't trying that hard.  OR, she possessed almost no knowledge of how the Wii calendar works and why it'd be a Bad Idea[tm] to use it for coordinating naughty rendevouzes. Rendevii?  Rendevouzen.

Which reminds me: If my wife logs in and asks anyone here, it's a total coincidence that Darwin and I often post at the same time.  It's completely innocent, I tellya.

64

Living Room / The "Blonde Effect"

« on: November 20, 2007, 10:41 AM »

University of Paris researchers have discovered that blonde women really do have an effect on male intelligence.

http://women.timeson...e/article2890531.ece


Simple knowledge tests were conducted on groups of men, with a severe downward spike in performance noted after they were shown pictures of blonde women.

Further analysis convinced the team that, rather than simply being distracted by the flaxen hair, those who performed poorly had been unconsciously driven by social stereotypes to “think blonde”.

The photos' depicted levels of undress were not reported.

Theories for the results include a kind of "contact stupidity" wherein people adopt stereotypical behavior based on their environment.  It is not stated if test scores returned to normal after being shown pictures of Albert Einstein or plummeted further after Paris Hilton.  Another theory is that pale hair is deeply associated with babies & children in our psyche, leading to "dumbed down" behavior in adults.

Another site discussing the research is Mitchieville.  Men, cover your monitor with tape before viewing, lest you fall victim to the blonde woman pictured therein.

65

Living Room / Breaking News: Multiple Universes Exist!

« on: November 20, 2007, 09:53 AM »

Well, not exactly breaking since it was back in September, but a team of UK mathematicians led by Dr. David Deutsch have "showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes".


Briefly, events observed (har) at the quantum level really do split into alternate dimensions.  Every decision made results in the opposite decision also being made, repeated with infinite regression.  If you play the lottery and don't win, rest assured that some other version of you has won the lottery.  And yet another you won it twice.  And so on.

Note that this being a work of mathematics, nothing has been really proven.  But if validated, it lays an excellent foundation for experimentation, and finally, building the Time Travel device of my dreams.  I'm coming to kill you, great-great-grandfather!

Article from Breibart & The Press Association here.

Came up dry on finding the actual paper referenced, but the good Doctor's websites are here:
http://www.qubit.org/people/david/
http://www.qubit.org...ple/david/David.html

(Lots of dense scientific papers at the 2nd site: Eyes-Crossed Index Rating 8.7)

Interesting related DC thread about Time here.

Cow-related events that can only have occurred in a parallel dimension here (streaming video cartoon thingy).

66

Living Room / Gender Genie!

« on: November 20, 2007, 09:25 AM »

Using text snippets, the Gender Genie uses complicated scientifical text analysis to guess the gender of an author:



I'm a boy!  My gender confusion is finally over.  *sob*

If I were writing such a thing, I'd just flip a random number.  Leaving out transsexuals and folks who are unsure, there'd be a 50% shot at getting it right.

Links to a paper describing the algorithm are included at the site, but I gotta wonder... what real application does this have?  Extra-better spam target profiling?  Fewer ENHANC3 YR PEN!S!!! emails sent to my sister?

67

Living Room / New MSM Messenger Trojan

« on: November 20, 2007, 09:04 AM »

Via MaximumPC comes this alarming news:


A new trojan was discovered in the wild November 19th, that utilizes MSM IM to hoist its greasy, hazardous payload around the internets.  Once activated, it scans the victim's contact list and retransmits itself to friends and family, disguising itself as a harmless file attachment that looks like happy friendly fun pics.

Folks around here are savvy enough to know when something looks fishy, but get the word out to grandma and dad: don't open anything without verifying it was really sent by the sender.

What makes this one even more alarming is that it contains code specifically targeting virtual machines (VMs), the first time I've ever heard of that.  So even running suspicious attachments within a VM may not keep you safe.

No word on if this is an MSM specific threat, or if other clients that talk with MSN (Trillian) are vulnerable too.  But for safety's sake, assume the worst.

UPDATE: Durn attachment fell off.  D'Oh!

68

Living Room / Your Tin Foil Hat Will Not Save You Now

« on: November 19, 2007, 08:08 PM »

From Techdo.com comes the alarming news of the world's smallest RFID tags.

Smaller than a grain of sand, sixty-times smaller than those RFID's pictured above, the new RFID "powder" can be dusted on anything, safely ingested by humans, or (one would assume) snorted up the nose.  Each microchip -- finally, that word has meaning again -- contains a 128-bit ROM encoded with a unique ID which, when scanned with standard RFID equipment, gives itself up quicker than Paris Hilton locked in a liquor store.

Suddenly I feel the need for a shower.

You know... to get clean.

Aw, quit it.

Anyway, thanks to Big Brother's magic pixie dust, anyone and anything can be assigned a unique ID and then tracked.  Now, the good news: RFID technology is proximity sensitive, working over very short distance.  Most RFID rigs I've played with have ranges measured in inches, and usually max out at a few feet.  So even if you were coated head to toe with the new RFID powder (sit back a moment and imagine how that might accidently happen) you'd have to walk within a few feet of a pylon calibrated to read your chips.

But that's now.  In a few years when Happy Meals come pre-dusted, things may be different.

Despite the induced willies, it's cool technology.

69

Found Deals and Discounts / Thanksgiving Special: $400 Dell Vostro Laptop

« on: November 19, 2007, 02:35 PM »

Holy smokes, it's the real deal:

Cheap, but not a toy:

    - AMD AthlonTM 64 X2 Dual-Core processor TK-53 (1.7GHz/512KB)
    - 15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA LCD Anti-Glare Display
    - 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHZ, 2 Dimm
    - 120GB 5400RPM Hard Drive
    - 8X DVD+/-RW w/Double-layer DVD+R Write Capability
    - ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 256MB HyperMemory™ (integrated)
    - Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Wi-Fi Mini Card
    - FREE SHIPPING

One micro-catch (you knew there was one, right?) is that you have to order it through the business division.  But there appears to be no requirement that you actually have a business.  So really -- no catch!

$400 bucks (+tax) for a new, dual-core 1GB RAM laptop.  Quite the bargain.

UPDATE: Fogot to mention you get your choice of Windows XP or Vista.

70

Living Room / Amazon's Kindle eBook Reader

« on: November 19, 2007, 12:37 PM »

Just announced, Amazon's Kindle eBook reader.


Weighs just 10 oz., has build-in wi-fi, costs $399, and handles a variety of eBook formats.  Naturally, you can browse Amazon directly and click the "Buy" button to download books seamlessly.  It'll store about 200 books in memory at a time and features a display optimized to look "just like paper".

I've evaluated eBook readers in the past and found them wanting.  The technology has been clunky, and manufacturers seem to go out of business constantly, leaving users of proprietary eBook formats out in the cold (I'm looking at you, RockIt).  This one has the backing of Jeff Bezos' insane fortune, combined with the throw-weight of Amazon's 600 pound gorilla.  How can it fail?

I'm not sure if it'll revolutionize the eBook experience as all the hype suggests, but it will certainly reKindle interest in this mostly forgotten library branch of the paperless experience.

71

Living Room / Help Name Our Cat!

« on: November 17, 2007, 08:39 PM »

Ms. Audrey Maximus will be turning 8 years old on November 27th.  For her birthday, we have agreed to get her a cat, to be added to the pack of existing animals at House Maximus: two weiner dogs (Oscar & Bryndal) and two cats (Pixel & Storm).  She's a total animal person and takes care of the critters now, so this is a logical extension of her passion.

We've started the process of meeting the local cat rescue folks, and are planning a trip to the shelter.  The new kitty will be female, and will be out of kittenhood, but beyond that Ms. Audrey can select whatever she wants.  I just hope there's no escaped Pumas or anything at the shelter.

Here's our wee problem.  Ms. Audrey is bound and determined to name the new kitty (I kid you not) "www.smellsalot.com" ...oh, sweet jesus, this would be so cute in other circumstances, but I can't imagine saddling a noble creature like feline domesticus with a domain name.  A really bad domain name. 

And no, I ain't registering it.  Not gonna happen.

So, please post suggestions for an alternative name.  Please.

72

Living Room / What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away

« on: November 16, 2007, 09:23 PM »

Fascinating article chronicling what we've all suspected: that each version of Windows + Office consume all available workstation horsepower, no matter how new the hardware.

http://exo-blog.blog...oft-taketh-away.html

Included are interactive benchmarks of every conceivable combination of Windows and Office since 2000.

Found via Raymond Chen's superb blog, the current topic as I type is a research paper on "Who would win in a fight between a penguin and a lemur?".  No, I'm not kidding.

73

Living Room / 40+ Free Professional Fonts from Smashing Magazine

« on: November 15, 2007, 09:22 AM »

Smashing presents a critique of over 40 free fonts, all professional quality.  Examples abound, so it's incredibly easy to spot the ones that really kern your descenders.  They even have some nifty monospaced fonts I haven't seen before.

Windows, Mac, and (sometimes) Linux formats are available, but since the article is a collection of links to the actual font makers, each has their own offerings.

74

General Software Discussion / Patch for new Critical Windows Flaw (MS07-061)

« on: November 15, 2007, 08:51 AM »

As queasy as I get whenever I run Windows Update nowadays, I think I'll do so for this one:

A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the way that the Windows shell handles specially crafted URIs that are passed to it. If the Windows shell did not sufficiently validate these URIs, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability and execute arbitrary code. Microsoft has only identified ways to exploit this vulnerability on systems using Internet Explorer 7. However, the vulnerability exists in a Windows file, Shell32.dll, which is included in all supported editions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

My understanding is that this flaw has already been exploited in the wild, and has nasty consequences.  Theoretically an evildoer could execute *anything* on a compromised Windows workstation.

Windows NT, 2000, and Vista users: you're safe.

75

Living Room / UFOs are real!

« on: November 14, 2007, 11:12 AM »

Well, at least this one is.  A heavy-lifter prototype made by Lockheed-Martin, it sure looks like the classic fat saucer UFO.  Kind of flies like one, too.  Go humans!



Wiki page here.

Video of the thing cavorting around the skies here (about 2.2MB WMV file).