Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

If at all possible, take some time today to reflect on what you have to be thankful for in this world.

Day before Thanksgiving, beautiful day for a walk through the nearby park.

Petroleum depletion and biofuels

First of all, let's get something straight: the world is running out of petroleum. Yes, there is some being produced by natural processes, but, no, that doesn't compensate for what is being used. What makes me suspect that we are going to run out sooner than people like? Things like this article. If you didn't read the preceding link, let me sum it up for you: it seems the International Energy Agency was pressured by the United States government to adjust the reports of oil production and reserves to make it look like there was more oil available than was actually available. And the accuracy of oil reserves accounting needs to be scrutinized, like this report on Kuwait's reserves concludes. The Air Force is planning ahead, and the rest of the world should be, too.

Of course, there is the problem that petroleum replacements rely heavily on other fossil fuels, which are also in finite supply. As fossil fuels start being used as petroleum replacements, their scarcity will increase. This will mean that not only transportation costs, but everything that relies on fossil fuels will be more expensive: including what we eat. A lot of the food the world consumes depends on cheap and readily available fossil fuel products. We as a species have gotten into some bad habits by using things like fertilizer (largely made from natural gas) to compensate for farming techniques that are degrading our topsoil. Thus, biofuels are problematic: the crops used (corn in North America being a prime example) are already using fossil fuel inputs in their production and producing fuel from them means diverting them from the food supply, producing fuels in this way exacerbates fuel scarcity, further degrades the environment and drives up food costs.

This is why I am happy to read that there are ways to make biodiesel that are quite renewable, although the scale and convenience will never equal that of petroleum. The answer in the long term is to become more energy efficient, plan ahead and work on repairing the damage that has already been done to the environment. None of this is impossible, even replenishing the topsoil can be done.

Want 50Mbps Internet in your town? Threaten to roll out your own - Ars Technica

Ummm, here's a little free advice to America's telecommunications companies: spend less money on John McCain and more money on upgrading your capabilities, and you won't look as bad. Simply put, our broadband Internet access is not the best in the world, and won't be until the broadband providers start getting serious about improving service.

Want 50Mbps Internet in your town? Threaten to roll out your own - Ars Technica

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Building with trees

I found a neat article in the New York Times about building with unmilled trees. It's another great example of building with less waste and more appreciation for the local ecology. The builder featured in the article forms structural arches with whole trees, and incorporates passive solar heating in his designs. This is a welcome alternative to a lot of what is seen in suburbia. Which is not to say that his particular designs will work everywhere, but that his design is formed by the local environment.

Designing residences based on the local environment is fairly common throughout history, but not in a lot of suburbia. I think part of the problem with a lot of suburban sprawl isn't simply the amount of land it covers, or the bland aesthetic uniformity (the "cookie-cutter" look) that it conveys, but also that the design of many of the houses doesn't vary much from Southern California to New England. The problem with that? Those are two different climatic regions, and one design of structure will not suit both of them. I realize that it is simpler (cheaper) for building firms to have one basic design of structure to build, but that isn't always going to be in the best interest of the person living in that structure in the long run. I also realize that there are local and state building codes that require certain features to be included or removed, but the designs are still often being created by architects who may never have been to the location in question. Finally, I realize that there are exceptions, and I applaud the architects who design housing with the specifics of the local environment in mind.

There is a great advantage to adapting to the local environment: less effort (a.k.a. energy, a.k.a. money) is required to keep things comfortable (or at least habitable) for the people living there. Take a look at the Passivhaus that originated in Germany for an idea of a more technology-intensive (though still energy-efficient) approach.

WINE works well... maybe too well.

It would seem that WINE (which lets you run some Windows software under Linux) actually works well enough to let some malware (in this case, a false antivirus utility) try to infect your Linux system. Of course, it doesn't get very far, as there are major differences between Windows and Linux "under the hood" as it were.

There are three basic points made as to why Linux is safer than Windows when it comes to malware:
1. It's not Windows, and since the majority of malware out there is designed to run on a Windows platform, it simply won't work on a Linux platform (even though it may "get its foot in the door" through WINE.)
2. There are many different distributions of Linux, and malware would need to be targeted at a specific distribution. (I think this may be overly optimistic... I can certainly imagine a polymorphic virus that adapts depending on which distribution it finds itself inhabiting.)
3. Linux users tend to be more computer-savvy than most Windows users, who tend to click on anything that pops up. (I am inclined to agree with this assessment based on my own personal experience providing technical support - though there will always be exceptions.)

The main article is a blog post Does Wine Make Linux Too Loose and features a link to the original post describing the experience, I Can Haz Virus.

Unrelated to the security topic, the LinuxInsider article also mentions the problems some people are having upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 (also known as Karmic Koala). Full disclosure: I use Ubuntu 9.10 and did not encounter any of those problems.

MetLife blimp over Goleta, California

Blimp over Goleta, 1:12pm, 11/3/2009