Brazilian Coffee-bean BioDiesel

The Brazilians get a lot of press for their efforts with Ethanol, but it looks like they are also making real inroads with biodiesel technology as well. The Inter Press Service reports:

The production of biodiesel from low-quality coffee, from the oils extracted from urban runoff, or from cattle fat is a pioneering initiative in Brazil, where efforts are under way to diversity the raw materials used as clean fuels, the consumption of which is on the rise.

Under the Brazilian system for the voluntary addition of two percent biofuel to petroleum diesel (B-2), the demand currently stands at about 800 million litres annually. This mixture will be obligatory beginning in 2008, and the proportion will rise to five percent in 2013, driving up total biodiesel consumption to an estimated 2.5 billion litres a year.

[…]

Fat from cattle is another promising raw material. In this case, the technology has been imported from Italy, where it has been used for some time. The company Ponte Di Ferro is ready to begin production, but bureaucratic questions have put the brakes on the project, the firm’s director Carlos Zveibil Neto told Tierramérica.

The surplus of animal fat on the market would allow production of biodiesel that is about 10 percent cheaper than soy-based fuel, a considerable advantage in the energy market. An estimated 23 million head of cattle are consumed in Brazil each year, which could produce 350 million litres of fuel from animal fat annually.

Mandatory B-2 seems like a really good idea. Technology from Italy? What’s taking the US so long to get these types of initiatives underway? Bureaucratic questions?

Naval safety advice

bang The US Naval Safety Center has an amusing story and photos to help explain why communication for safety sake needs to be clear.

They also have a page that shows the danger of gasoline. Biodiesel does not have the same issue, as it’s not classified as an explosive (no diamond necessary), but it’s still a fuel source and needs to be handled with care.

I found an obscure news story about a man who was recently killed in Idaho while welding a biodiesel tank. And then there was a biodiesel plant fire recently in California. While a lighter or even butane torch might not light up biodiesel, welding a tank full of oil or biodiesel seems like a really bad idea. Safety first.

Israeli’s receive SMS threats

YNet reports that the phone company is trying to find a way to block the messages:

Dozens of Israeli customers of the Orange cellular service provider received unexpected SMS messages on their phones Wednesday evening, with the English message:

“Now Now Now…Go out from your home Hizballah willing shelling of the area, Israel Government Cheating you And refuse recognition Defeat.â€?

[…]

Rani Rahav, a spokesperson for Orange, responded that the text messages were coming from a small service provider “somewhere out there in the Pacific Ocean. We are working right now to block the provider from transmitting further messages to Orange customers.�

Who pays for those SMS threats? We always hear about the Internet being a concern in modern information warfare, but cellular phones clearly play a more significant role since they are so mobile and resilient. Blocking an entire provider sounds like the system does not have granularity, which may turn into a sticky problem for Orange if the attackers can spread the origin of their messages. Denial of service also blocks helpful messages.

Kansas State loses ID computers, but IDs might be safe

I haven’t seen this in the press yet, perhaps because breaches are so common in the news that people have become desensitized, but Kansas State University just announced it had a fair amount of computer equipment stolen via social engineering:

About $25,000 of computers and equipment was stolen the evening of Wednesday, July 19, from the K-State ID Center in the K-State Student Union. Police are searching for two white males in their early 20s, according to a July 20 news release from K-State’s Media Relations. Anyone with information about the crime is asked to call Detective Donald Stubbings, K-State Police Department, 785-532-6412.

The two subjects, described as wearing blue jumpsuits with “Fox Business Systems” logos, gained access to the ID Center by showing the on-duty Union manager what may have been a forged document and saying they were hired to do repairs on the center’s computers. Several computers, monitors, cameras, and printers were later found missing from the center.

No personal data was lost because it’s stored on a secured server, said Craig Johnson, manager of the ID Center. “Although we have a very secure database, we added enhancements Thursday and Friday to ensure a higher level of security, including a firewall and IP lockouts on the specific workstations stolen,” he said.

I’m not sure why the ID Center announced to the world that they are using IP blocks for the stolen computers. I think the reporter should have stopped with “the center took extra precautions after the theft”. The less info about the exact counter-measures in the immediate aftermath the more chance you have of catching the perpetrators.

On the other hand it’s great to hear a University say they had several control measures in place to prevent (and detect?) loss of identities, especially since the attack appears to have been well planned and very specific to their ID Center. Incidentally, a Kansas breach notification law (SB 196) went into effect July 1st, 2006, a little more than two weeks before the breach.

I wonder how they arrive at the “very secure” description of the database, and of the safety of the IDs on the stolen computers. Is that an independent assessment? Does it conform to a standard? After all, we have to wonder if the stolen equipment was also considered “very secure”? Over thirty states now have breach disclosure laws so I expect the clarification of “reasonable” security precautions is likely to become an interesting issue.

Oh, and good luck to the police with that descripton of two white males in their twenties wearing jumpsuits on a college campus in Kansas. Hopefully someone will have more detail. Otherwise they might as well put a search out for wheat, no?