eMarkLee

I am going to share my tips on how to save money. When I was younger it was referred to as being a cheap bastard. Now, it is called “personal finance”. At the end of the day, these blogs will put money in your pockets, which you can then PayPal back to me.

We’re going to start with travel as next week I will be taking an excursion to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. As part of my pre-trip research, I wanted to see how I will be getting my pesos there. If you do everything in dollars, you will get hit by an exchange rate tax for EVERY transaction you make…that’s non-optimal. You also don’t want to take the hit at a currency exchange booth since you get a crappy exchange rate. So what do you do? The same thing you do in the US. You use your ATM card. The problem is that your ATM card will charge you for making international transactions. For example, BofA charges you $5 for the withdrawal AND 1% of the amount you withdrew. So they will take 6% out of your $100, leaving you with $1. WTF.

What you really want to have are accounts with these banks:

Credit cards:
Capital One
Discover

ATM Cards:
Bank of Internet
Presidential Bank
State Farm Bank

Check out this wiki to see how your CC or ATM card stack up on fees. Basically, if you use Wells or BofA, you’re assed out and should get a different bank or credit card.

Just heard about and looked up this clip on YouTube. Wow, I thought UFC was violent.

Of course, anything ice skating brings back some memories of this(skip to the 2 minute mark):

It’s about time the Chargers fired Marty Shittyheimer. The problem, however, is that it is too late. The offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, and a bunch of other coaches have since left. If the Chargers management had fired Shittyheimer day 1, one of those coordinators probably would have become head coach. Great job, Chargers management…thanks for a shitty 2007-2008 season.

We still need to get rid of the kicker Nate Kaeding….

This past week, the RSA Conference, the biggest information security conference of the year, went down. Some highlights of the RSACon for me include seeing what new technologies are on the market, getting free stuff, meeting up with the hardcore security folks at the WASC, and hitting some free parties afterwards. It’s gotten more commercialized in the past few years as security has become more and more of an issue for users and corporations. There are still a lot of new players in the space that can hijack your computer in 90 seconds, though.

Here are some pictures that I took there:

RSA, the company that runs this event.

What the information security space does not look like. (except for this one day of the year).

The Aqua Teen Hunger Force blinking sign purchased on eBay

Verisign

From one of the hanging signs.

At first glance, I thought I had read another Onion article with a title of “Romania “built our country on pirated Windows“. It is, however, a real article and a fact of life. All of those phishing emails and identity theft stories you read about probably came from Romania in some shape or form.

The reasons are pretty simple: Economics. When you can get a month’s wages from scamming fat Americans in one day, the incentive is there. Also the laws are so lax internationally, that you almost never see arrests being made. It’s especially true with Americans being hated internationally because of George Bush. Good job, Dub-ya. You see the same attacks by China, Nigeria, and Romania…but each have their own characteristics:

1. Romanians – highly technical and skilled. They are good at finding exploits and writing tools that are then sold on the Black Market to other countries.
2. Chinese – Medium technical skills but good at copycatting. Will take existing exploits and try to reproduce it everywhere. Also likes to apply brute-force attacks.
3. Nigerians – Low skill, low technical. Rudimentary 419 scams are their trademark. These Africans basically use the most basic of social engineering attacks. Basically you get the emails that say to use Western Union and wire them $10,000 and they will return the favor with $1 million. Sounds like a great deal! Unfortunately, some dumb-asses actually fall for these, keeping them in business.

You gotta love the Onion. I get a laugh just looking at the headlines…

They found this thing in the ocean:

Brings back images in from my childhood of giant octopuses and well, giant pusses.

Ah yes, the beauty of the Internet combined with an efficient market means certain social arbitrage type of scenarios. In this case it is our very own Anna Nicole Smith, who tests have revealed was killed by a mixture of Trim Spa, alcohol, and Tabloiditis.

How do they sleep at night? (I’m referring to those people that outbid me.)

Done deal. There was a war between HD DVD and Sony’s Blu-Ray. I hate Sony’s proprietary technologies, including Memory Stick. I would never buy a Sony digicam just because they keep everything proprietary. It’s like Apple.

There is good news, though.

First, the Blu-Ray DRM has been cracked. That was quick. HD-DVD was cracked earlier and the extra piece of protection on Blu-Ray was cracked a short time later. Thank goodness. DRM is all doomed to failure at the end of the day. Why even try?

Second, but definitely not least, the pr0n industry has decided to go with HD-DVD because it is easier and cheaper to produce.

So if you’re thinking about the future and want to pick one technology, HD-DVD is the way to go. Although, the future is probably going to bring us combo drives that allow either format.

Check out this eBay listing. It has ended, but these show up on eBay Motors from time to time. Total blast from the past. Anything that has any relation to David Hasselhoff is great.

You still need the leather jacket, chest hair, and afro to be Michael Knight.

The button on the right is for jumping over semis.