I previously reported on the "Amazon Tax" Bill (HB 3659) making its way through Illinois Legislation and landing on the Governor's desk. Two months later, Governor Pat Quinn (recently elected Governor by .9%) has signed the bill into Public Act 096-1544. The Act "closes the loophole" (a.k.a. twists the law in lobbying groups' favor) so that the same law that requires businesses … [Read more...]
What Does MS Paint Sound Like?
From YouTube, user r2blend has discovered that importing an executable into an audio editing program can have some interesting results. To be specific, they imported the MSPaint executable from Windows 7 x64 into Adobe Audition as 22050hz 8-bit stereo audio raw PCM data. The description of the YouTube video: Just made a really weird and awesome discovery. If you import an EXE … [Read more...]
The Zero Day Initiative Pwn2Own Contest Takes Place Later This Week
The Zero Day Initiative team is having the annual Pwn2Own contest later this week, March 9th, 10th, and 11th of 2011 in Vancouver. The contest always seems to be an interesting spectacle - seeing how fast certain systems are compromised, learning how companies respond to the vulnerability disclosures, and seeing patches come out up to the very last minute. The targets this year … [Read more...]
Countdown to the Disappearance of Internet Explorer 6
A year ago yesterday, a funeral was held for IE6, the browser from Microsoft that had a strong grip on its market share despite its age, limitations, and superior replacements. Regardless of the funeral, IE6 continues to be used. IE6countdown.com is a website run by Microsoft to monitor the market share of IE6 until it is below 1% (it is currently at 12% worldwide).10 years ago … [Read more...]
Drip, drip, drip, drip! Four Independent Sites Posting Leaks
Has the hype of Wikileaks finally died down? The discussion of making a movie based on WikiLeaks or Julian Assange, the Editor-in-Chief of Wikileaks, is still rolling right along. Wikileaks has received a lot of attention from the media previously for leaking Iraq and Afghan war-related documents and the USA's diplomatic cables. As a result of some of this "attention", the … [Read more...]