The basement is rapidly approaching completion. I've got a professional drywall crew in there today and tomorrow finishing the tape and plaster and maybe a little texturing. Carpet is confirmed for Thursday afternoon. Almost done.

• Hackers Can Modify Your Processor! - If you have an AMD K8 processor (Athlon64 or Opteron) it turns out that the microcode can be updated... without any security checks! Ouch. [via August 15 Cryptogram]
• DES Encryption Withdrawn - The federal government has proposed to withdraw the DES standard saying, "NIST determined that the strength of the DES algorithm is no longer sufficient to adequately protect Federal government information." [via August 15 Cryptogram]
• Forbes: Seattle Is Most Overpriced City - Yipee! This make me excited to move there next week!
• AT&T CallVantage - AT&T has joined the VoIP fray with this offering that looks like it could be a Vonage killer. Is anyone using this service? How about Vonage? I'm thinking about going with one of these in my new house.
• Background Noise on Agile Teams - Brian Button talks about the way the EntLib team worked and how background noise effected them.
• Pixies Say No To Record Company - Kick ass! Screw the record companies! I always had respect for Fugazi for living by their own rules, now the Pixies are doing it too.
• What If The Build Is Broken? - Kris Syverstad asks the question... what do you do? Can you commit changes? Must you wait? I say commit, but if the build stays broken, who is responsible? Methinks the guy who originally broke it.
• The Core Protocols 1.0 - I first blogged this back in March of '03 and it is still a cool idea. Software for your head. Eli Robillard has collected a number of related links.

Now playing: Big Sugar - Dear Mr. Fantasy