Archive for March, 2008
Biofuels Wreak Havok On The Amazon
Saturday, March 29th, 2008
“One groundbreaking new study in Science concluded that when this deforestation effect is taken into account, corn ethanol and soy biodiesel produce about twice the emissions of gasoline.”
Nuclear Energy doesn’t cause deforestation and has little impact on the environment, assuming the waste is treated appropriately. Biodiesel, Hydro, Wind? All these technologies cause signifigant damage to the environment in some way or another.
Update: I didn’t realize this was going to be on the front page of the latest Time, which just came out today. Hopefully this article spur conversation on the subject in the current presidential race. I’ll be looking forward to that considering both Obama and Clinton highlight biofuels as a “solution” to energy independence on their sites.
Time On Market
Saturday, March 29th, 2008
I’ve decided to forgo purchasing in the Carolinas and instead look at purchasing undervalued rental condos as an investment / income source. Miami and Clearwater look to be good candidates. I’ll get my “place in the country” later in life. The great thing about condos is, these days, you can pick up two for the price of one. :/ I plan on experimenting with shopping here in Destin, but I won’t buy here. It’s too risky having multiple housing investments on the same coast.
Lot’s of good info in this presentation by Freddie Mac’s chief economist. (Found on Calculated Risk.)
PWND Vista Style
Friday, March 28th, 2008
Thanks to Adobe’s Flash!
Vista Laptop was Won!: Congratulations to the team of Shane Macaulay and Derek Callaway (both from Security Objectives) and Alexander Sotirov! – they have just won the Fujitsu U810 laptop running Vista Ultimate SP1 after it was installed with the latest version of Adobe Flash. Not only are they the official winner of the laptop, but also $5,000 from us. The new Adobe Flash 0day vulnerability that they exploited has been acquired by the Zero Day Initiative, and has been responsibly disclosed to Adobe who is now working on the issue. Until Adobe releases a patch for this issue, neither we nor the three contestants will be giving out any additional information about the vulnerability. You will be able to track the vulnerability on the Zero Day Initiative upcoming advisories page.
Pictures forthcoming.
So at the end of the contest, only the Sony VAIO laptop running Ubuntu was left standing.
All the more reason to uninstall Adobe web based software and rely on something else.
PWND
Friday, March 28th, 2008
The third and final day of the PWN to OWN contest at the CanSecWest security conference begins today, March 28th at 12:30pm local time (PST) in Vancouver. Yesterday, on day two of the contest, the MacBook Air was successfully compromised first and won by a team from Independent Security Evaluators, also winning $10,000 from us (the Zero Day Initiative).
As of today, since the Vista and Ubuntu laptops are still standing unscathed, we are now opening up the scope beyond just default installed applications on those laptops; any popular 3rd party application (as deemed “popular” by the judges) can now be installed on the laptops for a prize of $5,000 upon a successful compromise. For a refresher on the full rules and cash prizes, check out the PWN to OWN contest guidelines.
Check back on this page for the latest updates throughout the last day of the contest, including pictures from the PWN to OWN awards ceremony that will be held at the end of the conference today.
Firefox will be one of the common apps installed on both the remaining laptops. (Fingers crossed.) Some others include Skype, Acrobat (oh dear), MSN Messenger, and possibly Office. They should have kept the Mac Air in the running just for fun.
ATI vs. nVidia For Vista
Friday, March 28th, 2008
“That huge bundle of damning emails and documents Microsoft produced as part of the Vista-capable lawsuit is full of fascinating information about how the company developed, planned, and launched Vista, but the latest juicy nugget to come out if it suggests that a lot of problems faced by the troubled operating system are actually NVIDIA’s fault — nearly 30% of logged Vista crashes were due to NVIDIA driver problems, according to Microsoft data included in the bundle.”
I switched from an nVidia card to to an ATI card that fit in my mini-form a while back, so far it’s been completely stable. If you have a Dell XPS 210, I highly recommend the Vision Tek X1300 or its successors. It fits the case just fine, the fan is silent with the case sealed up, and I’ve yet to have any crashes related to video drivers since installing it. No overheating problems either as far as I can tell. The card is recommended by Dell as an upgrade – you can purchase it through the “Accessories and Upgrades” section of the Dell Vista Support Center.
PGO In Nightlies
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
Sunspider results:
Safai 3.1 Total: 3108.8 ms +/- 3.8%
Firefox Beta 5 Nightly Total: 2660.2 ms +/- 0.9%
Oh dear, it looks like somebody is going to have to update their web site. Related – Fx3 nightlies now being built using PGO.
Home Prices
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
“Unfortunately it does not look like early 2008 is marking any turnaround in the housing market, after the declining year recorded throughout 2007. Home prices continue to fall, decelerate and reach record lows across the nation. No markets seem to be completely immune from the housing crisis, with 19 of the 20 metro areas reporting annual declines in January and the remaining – Charlotte North Carolina – eking out a benign 1.8% growth rate.”
Bah! It just figures the one area I’m curious about is the one area eking out modest gains.
For a good look at areas doing well and areas that are not, Zillow recently released their interactive querterly report. The map interface is excellent, check it out.
Iraq Oil Report
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
If you’re interested in keeping up on the latest developments related to Iraq infrastructure, look no further than The Iraq Oil Report blog. I’ve been subscribed to IOR now for about three months and find it provides a wealth of detail you’re never going to find on the front page of CNN. The author is Ben Lando, the editor of United Press International’s Energy Resources desk. There doesn’t appear to be any bias in his reporting. Most of the content Lando links too comes from the international press. He reports on the great, the good, the bad, and the ugly. The blog has only been around since last fall, so the readership isn’t very large yet. I highly recommend you check it out and subscribe.
Side note, I show up on his cluster map. 
The Two Mavericks
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
Interesting article on how McCain’s been traveling and campaigning with Joe lately. I know the conservative base of the party would have a shit fit if McCain picked Joe to be his running mate, but I honestly don’t care – I’d vote for that ticket. I think in this election that’s exactly what the Reps need to win.. the question is, do the Reps know this? I think a large majority of the party do, otherwise they wouldn’t have ignored the party blowhards and voted McCain into the candidate seat in the first place. Together the two could beat an Obama or a Clinton by highlighting experience and unity over some amorphous “change” message that really isn’t clearly defined, or the divisiveness of Clinton. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.
Dirty Politics
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an Administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years. Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people (like their middle names) not use it for political purposes. This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama for what purpose.
– Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton
The State Department investigation of improper computer access to passport records of three presidential candidates is focusing on one remaining employee — a contract worker with a company headed by an adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama.
The probe by State’s inspector general will include polygraph tests for supervisors in the passport section to find out whether the three contract employees who accessed the records had a political motive or were part of a political operation to obtain personal data on Mr. Obama, Sen. John McCain or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
