Bob Morris @ Jun 11th 2008 23:34 - Category: Unfiled Tags: Teatro del Agua, Water;
The Teatro del Agua requires no fuel to create its massive amounts of freshwater. It will instead rely on the sea, sun, and wind to create the energy needed to create the water. The technology is quite amazing.
Bob Morris @ Jun 11th 2008 20:35 - Category: Unfiled ;
Independent tests show that Red Hat Linux pulls as much as 12% less power than Windows 2008 on identical hardware.
Yes, this takes serious tweaking of servers and software, but it can be done. Think how much power could be saved if all the server farms on the planet used 12% less power.
Bob Morris @ Jun 11th 2008 16:15 - Category: Unfiled Tags: gas prices;
The award goes to the deeply comatose GM who just “announced a range of strategic initiatives to aggressively respond to growing demand for fuel-efficient vehicles.”
Bob Morris @ Jun 11th 2008 14:15 - Category: Unfiled Tags: gas prices;
High gas prices are causing British motorists to drive less and switch to mass transit. Which is something many US motorists probably wish they could do, but if you live in the suburbs where there is no mass transit and drive long distances to work, then you’re stuck.
When we lived in Connecticut in the exburbs, while there was some shopping nearby, visiting friends or other shopping required a 10-15 mile drive or so. Now that we’re in the San Francisco Bay Area in a much more urban area with a BART station a three minute walk away, well, everything changes. We use the cars much less, and when we do, drive shorter distances. In fact, we will probably sell Sue’s 2001 VW New Beetle Diesel (Interested? Let me know, it gets 40 mpg) because we only need one car.
With high gas prices unquestionably here to stay, areas where automobiles are a necessity will increasingly be at an economic disadvantage to areas where they are not.
BTW, The CostCo across a parking lot from us often has a quite long line of cars waiting to buy gas at $4.29 a gallon (vs. $4.41-4.69 elsewhere.) Question. If you sit in line for twenty minutes waiting to gas up while the engine is idling in order to save 12 cents a gallon, how much are you actually saving?
Bob Morris @ Jun 11th 2008 10:46 - Category: Election 2008 Tags: Obama;
Because a black man in the White House would shock the nation and maybe even ignite a race war. Shades of Charlie Manson and Helter Skelter. But then, Manson was a white supremacist too. And equally not in touch with reality.
This demented reasoning isn’t just on the right. You see it sometimes on the Left too. If the repression gets real bad and the economy collapses, then the masses will rise up in righteous wrath and join our cause.
(Why they will join the cause is never really explained. You could make an equal case they will rise up, blame the Left or the Right, then shoot them.)
Bob Morris @ Jun 11th 2008 10:30 - Category: Unfiled Tags: RFID;
RFID News has a straightforward, clear explanation of the issues with RFID security and privacy, presenting possible solutions.
One primary issue is that RFID readers and tags generally communicate using unencrypted messages. This means scanners can read them plaintext. However, adding encryption to the tag would increase its size, complexity, and cost.
Encryption would also mean that all readers would have to be able to decrypt (unless you specifically did not want this, like for passports) else the tag would be useless.
The State Department added several new levels of security to passports after getting huge flack.
1. Encryption: The information would be encrypted in the RFID chip.
2. Access Control: The key to decrypt the data would be encoded in the passport and could only be obtained by scanning the passport with an optical reader. The passport reader would then decrypt the information using that key.
3. The passport covers would contain a metallic mesh that would create a Faraday Cage, essentially rendering unreadable the RFID chip when the passport covers were closed.
BTW, some envision RFID in everything, like on clothes. Thus, your RFID-enabled washing machine would be able to determine how best to wash your clothes. (Would it refuse to operate, issuing stern warnings if you mixed white and colored clothes? Would there be an override button to tell the machine to shut and just wash the clothest?)
The conspiracy theory
The most aggressive privacy concern groups claim that governments could potentially gain access to all commercially controlled RFID databases and, therefore, have full access to the consumer, travel, and general habits of its population. Or governments could achieve this by deploying wide-area RFID infrastructures where all the activities of its citizens could be tracked, from what they buy, to what they read, to where they travel, to what they watch on videos.
Paranoid? Maybe… But privacy advocates need to keep the pressure on governments to insure that this never happens.
Another problem is compatibility across all systems. Wal-Mart requires vendors to put RFID tags on pallets shipped to them. Not all vendors have, at least in part because doing so means buying the same equipment Wal-Mart uses. But maybe CostCo uses a completely different system. Sounds like the early days of BBSing when modems from different vendors had competing standards and didn’t always talk to each other.
Bob Morris @ Jun 11th 2008 07:30 - Category: Unfiled Tags: RFID;
The RFID chip on US passports can be read when the passport is even slightly open, a design flaw that needs to be fixed. Why? Watch the proof of concept. A dummy with a barely open passport on a moving clothesline is scanned, then a bomb is triggered automatically. An outlandish example? Sure. But still…
In probable response to such critics, the State Department has added new levels of security to passports, but flaws still exist.
Given how insecure passport information appears to be, the ACLU says, imagine what could happen if Homeland Security builds that giant database with our personal and sensitive data on it.
From security expert Bruce Schneier writing in 2005.
The State Department downplayed these risks by insisting that the RFID chips only work at short distances. In fact, last week’s publication claims: “The proximity chip technology utilized in the electronic passport is designed to be read with chip readers at ports of entry only when the document is placed within inches of such readers.” The issue is that they’re confusing three things: the designed range at which the chip is specified to be read, the maximum range at which the chip could be read and the eavesdropping range or the maximum range the chip could be read with specialized equipment. The first is indeed inches, but the second was demonstrated earlier this year to be 69 feet. The third is significantly longer.
And remember, technology always gets better — it never gets worse. It’s simply folly to believe that these ranges won’t get longer over time.
Bob Morris @ Jun 11th 2008 03:30 - Category: Unfiled Tags: RFID;
From the YouTube description
On today’s episode of Boing Boing tv, hacker and inventor Pablos Holman shows Xeni how you can use about $8 worth of gear bought on eBay to read personal data from those credit cards — cardholder name, credit card number, and whatever else your bank embeds in this manner.
Fears over data leaks from RFID-enabled cards aren’t new, and some argue they’re overblown — but this demo shows just how cheap and easy the “sniffing” can be.
Thus, RFID makes it easier to steal credit card info than before. No need to hack into a website or copy a card number at a restaurant, just read the RFID as the person walks by.
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