Here is a great overview of the technique that was used:

http://www.virusbtn.com/pdf/conference_slides/2009/Maciejak-Lovet-VB2009.pdf

While they are targeting IIS and MSSQL the real issue is developers that don't sanitize the parameters that get sent to the database. The SQL is encoded in at least 2 different layers, so the only keywords that appear in the URL are ;dEcLaRe%20@s%20vArChAr(8000) and ;EXEC%20(@S); and It would be pretty difficult for Microsoft to block those without affecting legitimate usage. If you are using LINQ, Stored Procedures, or Parameterized Queries based on SqlCommand then this wouldn't work against your site or library. Mainly queries created as raw text strings have this vulnerability, and in this case it appears that some library or module used by a number of sites used raw SQL strings instead of the best practices recommended by Microsoft and every other SQL and web server vendor.

Jailbreaking an iPhone constitutes copyright infringement and a DMCA violation, says Apple in comments filed with the Copyright Office as part of the 2009 DMCA triennial rulemaking. This marks the first formal public statement by Apple about its legal stance on iPhone jailbreaking.

Link to full article on EFF

You should record the presentations and put them up on youtube...

I hope this means there will be an HTML5 video option for Ted.com. Their flash player is horrendous! I had to make a Ted.com userscript for full-screen video just be able to view videos full screen without it closing when using multiple monitors.

I just saw a video on Channel 9 showing that the Hard Rock Cafe is using Microsoft Surface and other touchscreen devices in a few of their restaurants. Considering the device was only release about 2 years ago and has such a large price tag I am still impressed with what they have done. Check it out:

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LarryLarsen/The-Tech-Behind-The-Hard-Rock-Cafe/Default.aspx

Wikipedia mentions AT&T, Harrah’s, Disneyland, Sheraton Hotels and MSNBC as users of the Microsoft Surface too. I have yet to see one, but it still is making it's way into the market.

I use VirtualBox for building a test environment and it works very well. Also the graphics acceleration worked fine for the games that I tested with. Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme looks interesting, but the only "Certified hardware platform" is a HP Z800 Workstation, which costs $2000 to $5000. Add in $400 for the Parallels license and that gets to be a bit steep. Plus the announcer on the video sounds like he is trying to sell you a used car.

There was a video showing the features of Excel Web App, Powerpoint Web App, and Word Web App here on channel 9: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/dtzar/Office-Live-Applications-First-Look/ They look a little slow and not as responsive as Google Docs, but they do have more feature. Interesting to see the final product.

I have a Hauppauge WINTV HVR 1600 digital TV tuner card running on a Windows 7 RC x64 box with 6 GB of memory. Works fine in GBPVR. I did however have issues getting the onboard RAID controller working, but thats another story.

When Resolver Systems started their $25,000 competition for the best spreadsheet examples for Resolver One, I saw it as a great opportunity to learn IronPython and play around with a new program that looked interesting. I spent some free time having fun coding in a new language, and the Texas Holdem Monte Carlo Hand Evaluator worksheet that I made ended up being pretty useful. Oh... and it won one of the rounds, so I see it as time very well spent :-P

Now this competition is a bit more structured and has much less of a "fun" factor, but it still is a good incentive to look at the data that is available and try and think of new ways to visualize or use it.