Infinite Adventure

As part of my preparations for my move to SF I decided to upgrade my cellphone and service to something a little more up to date. I figure that I’ll more and more find myself wanting to work from areas away from home (Coffee shops, mountain tops, et. al.) and most of these locations will at best have over-laden wireless nodes or (more likely) nothing at all.

After loads of research and conversations with users of the various networks I finally made my decision: do nothing. I really found no compelling reason to leave Sprint. I’ve always loved my trusty Treo 650. The only thing I could improve would be better bandwidth.

I wonder what kind of throughput I could get if I upgraded to a 755p and the EVDO data service…

Today I read about the plight of Dave Steward, a guy who was fired for sharing a Dilbert cartoon on an office bulletin board. In the the strip there is a comparison made between managers and “drunken lemurs” which Dave’s management decided would not only entitle him to a pink slip, but a legal battle over unemployment benefits.

Needless to say, the hearing over his unemployment insurance entitlement went against his humorless former employer. More importantly (at least to me) it prompted a very pointed comic from Mr. Adams, who had heard about the incident. Apparently he also feels the situation was pretty ridiculous. Today’s Dilbert is pointed towards a particular group of lemurs.

Hahaha! Just thought I’d share, in case you missed it.

Recently there has been a lot of talk about the current recession (Yes Virginia, I used the ‘R’ word) and what to do about it. Some of this discussion has manifest itself in the form of a tax refund that taxpayers will be receiving sometime in the semi-distant future. For the time being, I will not comment on the non-effectiveness of this. I have very strong opinions regarding how we got here in the first place (War for Oil, Tax Cuts Piddling Away the Surplus, et. al.), but more importantly I think I have the best idea on how to pull our country and the world out of this downward spiral of fear, uncertainty and doubt:

If Barack Obama should win the nomination of the Democratic party to run against Senator McCain in the upcoming Presidential election, I will donate my entire stimulus check to the Obama ‘08 campaign fund. I invite you to do the same.

What does this have to do with stimulating the economy? A lot more than getting your average Joe to run out and buy a new TV.

The greater policies of the current administration have brought about a massive drag upon the economy that our grandchildren may very well be laden with to sort out: Multi-trillion dollar deficit, unsustainable healthcare policies that not only overburden the existing infrastructure but make for a less-healthy less-productive workforce and long term poltical and military commitments that will hang like an albatross on whomever occupies the oval office next. More exuberant consumerism that will simply widen our trade deficit may give the economy a quick sugar rush, but will cause more harm than good in the long haul.

I prefer to approach issues with a strategic view. This means first getting a man at the helm who can steer the Titanic in a safer direction, and Obama is most definitely the man for the job.

Other than my quip about XKCD, I haven’t posted anything in *months*…with good reason. Life has been so insanely busy I really haven’t had the time to turn around twice. Not that I have much time now, but things have slowed down enough that I’ll take some time in the evenings to do some retro-active posts to put some detail behind the following summary.

So what exactly have I been up to? Check it out:

• Black Hat / Defcon
• Bachelor Party
• Started Dating Girl
• Left Honeywell
• Totalled Car (Other driver’s fault!)
• Bought a New Ducati
• My Birthday
• James and Nina’s Wedding
• Contract Work in SF
• Stopped Dating Girl
• Litigation from Drunk Driver Accident in ‘05
• Litigation from Auto Accident in 09/07
• Toorcon
• Thanksgiving
• Disaster Recovery
• Contract Work in LA
• Media Center Madness
• Christmas / NYE
• Working to Help Obama ‘08
• Snowboarding in Wolf Creek
• Snowboarding at Sunrise
• Snowboarding in Telluride
• Joined a Running Club
• Prepping House for Rental
• Prepping Me to be a Landlord
• Selling Off 2/3 of My Posessions
• Re-Assembling 1978 280Z
• Moving to SF

I’m sure I’m forgetting a few hundred smaller items, but you get the idea.

I’ve been under the weather the past couple days…this was just the thing to lift my spirits. I feel better already.

I *was* planning on writing about the upgrade I just performed on my primary workstation…but my dinner tonight was far more interesting, so the tech stuff will just have to wait.

As with most Wednesdays, I started off this evening with a trek across the desert on my trusty mountain bike. All in all, an uneventful and enjoyable 9.5 miles interspersed with breaks for water and to enjoy the scenery. On the way home I made and executive decision not to grill, and to head out to Mesa to the only known (to me) free standing Chick-Fil-A with a drive through. Normally I order a “twelve piece chicken nuggets” and a large cole-slaw, but today I’m especially hungry and inquire with the girl if they have any other sizes other than the 8 and 12 piece on the menu. (20 nuggets seemed a bit much).

Ms. Chick-fil-a: “Yes sir! We have one, four, six, eight and twelve piece orders for chicken nuggets.”

Me: “Bwhat?!? You sell a ONE NUGGET sized order?!?”

Ms. Chick-fil-a: “Yes sir!”

I have never laughed so hard at a restaurant. Who would order such a thing?

Buwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahhahahahahahahahahahahah!

Another blow to BlackHat 2007. Nitin and Vipin Kumar were going to present at BH this month…one of the demos on the block was an example of how to login and access data on a system running Microsoft Vista with TPM + Bitlocker enabled.

Recently I was talking with a colleague who attended a security seminar on Vista; during which he inquired on the implications and use of Bitlocker with IT investigations…which the MS rep completely sidestepped. I wonder if one might be related to the other.

In any case, the planned Black Hat demo is off the schedule with no explanation given.

After a close look and some careful consideration: Not me, that’s who. I’m far more interested in OpenMoko and more impressed by Nokia’s N95.

The iPhone had a lot of potential, and certainly had its share of hype; but what’s it all about? It certainly is pretty. I’l give them that much; but it more reminds me of an expensive rice racer. It makes a lot of noise, looks pretty and being built from a Honda Civic will allow for an acceptable lifespan…just don’t look under the hood. The iPhone seems to be missing some critical components and really isn’t all that innovative for a consumer device costing upwards of $750 (if you can find one). To top it off, Apple has made the phone exclusively available to AT&T customers (You may remember them as the company that collaborated with the NSA to illegally wiretap and data­ mine American’s communications) and it is shackled with limitations on applications and DRM.

The iPhone enables the user to play videos and audio, has a nice web browser and a few functional applications. How is that any different than my 2+ year old Treo 650 or the even older Treo 600? Over the past year or so, I’ve watched more television on my phone while waiting in life’s ubiquitous queues than I have at home. Thanks to TCPMP I’ve been able to keep up on The Daily Show, BSG and even knocked down a few movies. I also have a very nice SSH client, web browser, email, camera (still and video), IRC, IM, and MP3 player. I can also do things like record phone calls, blog and find my way around town. I suppose there is the much touted WiFi capability, which is a nice feature. I wish I had it on my 650 for use around town when I’m in range of the Tempe Muni WiFi, or out in S.F. but I consider it secondary to the data communication provided by my carrier. On the iPhone it is the old EDGE technology, which is even slower than the now ancient 1xRTT data network from Sprint. Seems to me that Apple and AT&T are riding the hype-tsunami right into the breakers; when they will announce an upgraded version with GPS and 3G data stream. (Did I mention it doesn’t come with GPS?) I’m guessing this will occur just in time for the Christmas rush…and I’m a betting man. Any takers?

Compare this with the N95 from Nokia, a truly advanced phone for the US market. Check out the list of features on this baby:

• Cellular Bands: HSDPA / GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
• Data Networks: GPRS, HSCSD, EDGE, 3G and 802.11 b/g WiFi
• 5 Megapixel camera with flash
• 480p 30fps Video (That’s nearly DVD quality folks)
• Built-in GPS navigation (Over 100 country maps included AND you can use Google maps as well!)
• Not only plays standard format multi-media, but also plays unencrypted AAC and WMA
• Standad 3.5 mm audio jack (2.5mm jacks are annoying)
• TV Out (What? TV OUT on a phone???)
• FM Radio receiver
• Industry standard USB interface (None of that $50 proprietary cable crap!)

It also has your standard smartphone applications like “office document viewer”, organizer, etc…Ah yes, but it doesn’t do that nifty scrolly album jacket thing when looking at my iTunes acquired DRM-shackled media. Damn.

I for one am excited for the release of the entirely open source OpenMoko phone due out on the 9th of July. The goal of the project is of course a free and open mobile phone operating system. The long term goal being “…phone software won’t be tied to a phone. You can install any OpenMoko software over the whole range of phones, and if you upgrade your phone, you don’t lose the software.”

That is an exciting idea to me.

To add fuel to the fire, it looks as though they now have serious, committed corporate sponsorship ala Ubuntu (see Canonical) from First International Computer (You may know them from all those years of building your own PCs…Mobo’s anyone?) FIC has backed the project and they now officially are part of the FIC Group.

They will be putting up two models to start. Developer and Hacker editions of the Neo 1973 (GTA01B_v4). Yes, they are inviting us to pick apart, develop and generally hack on their phone. Everything but the carrier GSM protocol stack is open source and fair game. The commercial version will ship sometime in October. Like the N95 and unlike the iPhone, it will have both WiFi as well as G3 connectivity…and even better: it will be completely open source.

This is the most disappointing news I’ve had in quite a while. For the past few months I’ve been following the interaction between Joanna Rutkowska and Thomas Ptacek regarding her claim of a 100% undetectable rootkit. Named “BluePill”, it is a virtualized rootkit taking advantage of AMD64’s hypervisor environment. Unfortunately, it now seems she has conceded defeat. So much for going to BlackHat.

Don’t worry, I’ll still be up there to meet with all the OWASP and WASC folks.

This evening there will be screenings held at the Arizona Mills and the Gateway Pavillions; sponsored by the Maricopa County Democrats. Radio host Jeff Farias will be greeting attendees starting at 18:30 and the film begins at 19:30. I’ll be attending at the Arizona Mills if anyone would like to meet up. Tickets are $35 and include an MCDP T-Shirt.