Book Review:
April 23rd, 2009
I recently read Ari Takanen’s Fuzzing for Software Security Testing and Quality Assurance. This is a valuable book on fuzz testing, and timely. Read more…
Archive
Archive for April, 2009
Why is Facebook worse than TV?
April 23rd, 2009
I was just reading “Five Clues That You Are Addicted to Facebook” on cnn.com and it occured to me that Facebook should really be considered in the same light as television. Read more…
Hackint0shing Dell Mini: it Works
April 23rd, 2009
In my previous post I left off without telling you whether or not it worked. In the end, I bought a 32G SSD chip and installed it. (Installing is totally painless and trivial). After that, the Gizmodo instructions worked perfectly.
Basically, I wasted a ton of time trying to shoehorn MacOS X into an 8G SSD when it just wasn’t going to go. I also realized that, if I were to make it work, the system just wouldn’t be all that useful. I would have had maybe 1G free for applications and music and movies and such. With the 32G SSD and a healthy selection of apps, I still have 20G free.
My total cost, door-to-door, was about $334. Not bad, but not the $200 netbook that everyone talked about.
Five Reasons for Software Certifications
April 19th, 2009
Several people I respect (notably Gary McGraw) as well as others that I don’t really know (e.g., the author of this blog post “5 reasons why software certs suck”), have argued vehemently against certifications recently. I am a subject matter expert for the new Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional (CSSLP) certification. I help write the exam questions. Obviously I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t believe it had some value. So I’m going to try to write a few reasons why they are worthwhile. Read more…
Hackint0shing Dell Mini 9 on the cheap
April 6th, 2009
When I read about getting a Dell Mini 9 for $200 and hackint0shing it to run Mac OS X, I was all over it. I ran out and got one. I was a bit frustrated that it required some stuff that would put my total cost over $200. (I got a video camera on the Mini 9, which already put my actual cost at $244, delivered). Specifically, I didn’t have a USB DVD and I didn’t have an 8GB flash drive. Those were the two alternatives mentioned in the Gizmodo article. They also said it would be pretty straightforward if you had the 16GB hard drive on the Dell, but I elected to keep the cost low and get the 8GB disk. I decided to see if I could do it with just my 4GB USB stick and the 8GB SSD. Here’s what I did and how it turned out.
Read more…