Double Tall Iced Mocha, Lite on the Chocolate

We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It’s the best deal man has ever made.

-M. Acklam

So I a little while back I gave my powerbook back to my previous employer.
They were nice enough to let me keep it over the Thanks Giving weekend even though
I left the day before Turkey Day. Well this week I recieved my new fangled
HP laptop from my new employer. Yes I could install linux on it, however I still am in the process
of asking people questions and most of my co-workers use Windows. Once I am comfortable with everything I might consider
it, but for the interim I am using Redmond’s finest. It has been about two years since I have setup
a Windows box as my daily driver, so I decided to keep track of all the crap I am installing on this thing to
make it more tolerable. With most linux and bsd based systems I would be able to automagically
install some these tools without having to go out and find the binaries to download, since they are usually available
via the built in package management system or ports tree. Here is what I have after a day or so.

See more …

There is a Zero-Day vulnerability in MS Excel for sale on ebay. From the auction:

“Up for sale is one (1) brand new vulnerability in the Microsoft Excel application. The vulnerability was discovered on December 6th 2005, all the details were submitted to Microsoft, and the reply was received indicating that they may start working on it. It can be assumed that no patch addressing this vulnerability will be available within the next few months. So, since I was unable to find any use for this by-product of Microsoft developers, it is now available for you at the low starting price of $0.01 (a fair value estimation for any Microsoft product).”

It should be noted that the seller is not providing exploit code with the auction, but will email an excel file that demonstrates the vunlerability by crashing excel along with a detailed description of the vuln. The final recipient would have to be skilled enough to take that information and create an exploit. The seller is offering a 10% discount to Microsoft Representatives. You must provide a microsoft.com email address as well as use the discount code “LINUXRULZ” while checking out.

I don’t know whats funnier, the auction itself or that I personally know the current highest bidder.

Update: The auction has been shut down, an copy of the email sent to bidders and screen shot can be found here