I am sure it is reported elsewhere, but I found an article on a proof of concept virus that targets AMD processors on a magazine site in Australia.  The article dismisses the threat of such an item and pretty much holds it up as just a curiosity in the fight against hackers, but I see it differently.

In order to win, eventually security has to be hardware based.  The whole Palladium (now known by the horrible NGSCB acrynym) effort is just the most public manifestation of this realization and even it has gone dark.  Hacking the hardware is hard, hacking the software is easy.  Software provides the security of a screen door while hardware security done well can be like a steel cage.  Watch as this develops.  Like gas prices driving the frantic (and belated) search for alternative fuels, it will be a mind blowing security threat that finally forces us to invest in security via hardware in real terms.

If the barrier to enter the hardware market in a significant way weren't so large, I expect this problem might already be solved...

I know it is simple and probably not an amazing tool, but I am finding www.dnsreport.com to be amazingly helpful in some troubleshooting I have had to do recently.

Sometimes the most important thing is to just have the right tool...

Microsoft has released a 12 step plan to help its image and communicate their intent to prevent the kinds of lawsuits like the one going on with the EU.

While I think the plan will work on a number of levels, I am disappointed that it had to happen this way.  I am not of the belief that Microsoft has never acted in the name of profit or that sometimes there have been less than the fairest of practices employed, but is this any different than any other company?  I would prefer that the oil and gas companies were held to such high standards or even just the cable companies.

The Twelve Tenets to Promote Competition are outlined on the MS site and should make anyone who has dealt with Microsoft in the past feel a bit better.  The reason for this is that in all my dealings with Microsoft the staff there have been zealots about dogma.  If it is a defined part of the company culture (as these tenets are sure to be) then it is embraced pretty thoroughly.

I have no doubt that this will help Microsoft by actually influencing the internal culture and that it will help competition.  I just wish the pressure it took to make a single software company do this were either applied to the industry instead or better yet to an industry that actually needs it.

I normally don't post twice in one day, but this blog post by Rob Caron was VERY helpful in understanding VS2005 licensing and the relationship between the products.  I expect it will help alot of people grasp it since I get asked this question a fairly often in my roaming.

Thanks Rob and Enjoy!

I was just thinking about one of the bugs listed in the latest hotfix from MS and realized that while aspx and config files are not at risk since they are mapped to aspnet, the express database if stored in App_Data probably is.

We don't typically use SQL Express, but my bet is that this is the greatest risk factor for this bug.  Thoughts?