Feb. 15 – The public-relations gloss that has long wrapped the Bush administration is fast becoming a blemish on the White House, according to lawmakers who have uncovered some $1.6 billion in federal funds spent on promoting various administration-sponsored programs.

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress’s research and auditing body, tracks more than 340 contracts negotiated between several government departments and PR, advertising and media firms from 2003 through the first part of 2005.

The study, requested by the House of Representatives Democratic leadership, found that from 2003 to mid-2005, the administration racked up some $1.4 billion in contracts with advertising agencies to broadcast positive messages about its policies and initiatives. Another $200 million went to public-relations companies, and $15 million were spent building connections with media outlets. Individual members of the press received a total of $100,000 in promotional contracts.

Bush Administration Spent $1.6B on ‘Propaganda’ Efforts

Where some other outfit might put a router, Google is putting an entire data center, and the results are profound. Take Internet TV as an example.....

PBS: Google's Secret Plans For All That Dark Fiber?

* Be used as a training platform, with software used in real world. It would allow people to become more familiar with Cisco devices.

a cool project to boot a 7200 IOS image on x86:

For those of us who can't afford a 7200, and / or have girlfriends who don't think that a 7200 fits nicely in the living room, this is a project to track :)

Cisco 7200 Simulator

“attacker can perform the aforementioned attack by deploying an uncooled microbolometer thermal imaging (far infrared) camera within up to approximately five to ten minutes after valid keycode entry”

interesting stuff from Michal Zalewski

Cracking safes with thermal imaging

Last week Black Hat, the Vegas security conference that was at the center of the Ciscogate controversy last summer, was purchased by CMP Media. The sale has the internet hens clucking about whether ownership by a larger, wealthier corporation will protect Black Hat from future legal challenges, or make it more susceptible to pressure from companies wanting to control vulnerability disclosures.

Wired News: Dark Cloud Hovers Over Black Hat

Barbara rules. Owns the house, despite how she hasn't lived here in over 13 years. Laura can only look at her in numb awe, her own stiff skirt pleats appearing humble and small in comparison to Barb's massive teal dress ensemble, so epic and balloon-like it would seem to envelope all it comes near, like a giant ocean algae bloom, a massive amoeba, a cloud of righteous know-it-allness that makes easy mockery of Laura's little beige blouse of meek sexless humility. Barb is a force of nature, commanding the staff and chatting up the various heads of state and smiling at everyone with that glassy omnivorous stare. They all hate her.

Scenes From A Bush Thanksgiving / Dubya pouts, Cheney scowls, no one brings pie -- and why is Rove looking at Barb that way?

some very cool LIVING web-art. Much of this is coded in actionscript2.

Levitated | Levitated Daily Source, the good source

This paper describes a technique that can be used to bypass Windows hardware-enforced Data Execution Prevention (DEP) on default installations of Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows 2003 Server Service Pack 1. This technique makes it possible to execute code from regions that are typically non-executable when hardware support is present, such as thread stacks and process heaps. While other techniques have been used to accomplish similar feats, such as returning into NtProtectVirtualMemory, this approach requires no direct reprotecting of memory regions, no copying of arbitrary code to other locations, and does not have issues with NULL bytes. The result is a feasible approach that can be used to easily bypass the enhancements offered by hardware-enforced DEP on Windows in a way that requires very minimal modifications to existing exploits.

This is a fairly technical computer security whitepaper that deals with M$ Windows internals, so beware. This is part of the uninformed journal.

Bypassing Windows Hardware-enforced Data Execution Prevention

Ruby Queue software package lowers the barriers scientists need to overcome in order to realize the power of Linux clusters. It provides an extremely simple, economic, and easy-to-understand tool that harnesses the power of many CPUs while simultaneously allowing researchers to shift their focus away from the mundane details of complicated distributed computing systems and back to the task of actually doing science. The tool set is designed with a K.I.S.S, research-focused, philosophy that enables any ordinary (non-root) user to set up a zero-admin Linux cluster in 10 minutes or less. It is currently being used successfully in such diverse fields as bio-chemical research at the University of Toronto, geo-mechanical modeling at IGEOSS, and studying the nighttime lights of the world at the National Geophysical Data Center.

Linux Clustering with Ruby Queue: Small is Beautiful

Just to remind all the haters that Google Labs isn’t the only research game in town, Microsoft Research has just busted out VirtualWiFi: a bit of software that makes your computer believe a single WiFi card is multiple configurable cards, allowing connections with multiple networks. There are all sorts of applications for this — beyond tricking people into thinking that you have more WiFi cards than them — such as connecting to multiple ad-hoc networks, or getting your internet from a for-pay WiFi subscription and then sharing it over ad-hoc. Sounds like fun, no? =]

VirtualWiFi: Software