My Representative in Congress sent me a disturbing email recently so I replied with the following. Enjoy.
—BEGIN EMAIL—
The message below has been held in our queue with status LOW PRIORITY. Your message will remain in this state for 48 hours after which it will be delivered via our spam relay. The reason for this status is given below:

UNPAID NEUTRALITY FEE

If you wish your message to be delivered immediately you may pay PROFITABLE ISP, CORP a priority handling fee of $10. This fee will cover all future emails for a period of ONE YEAR after which the fee will be automatically re-billed to your account.

NEW SERVICE OFFERING: Rush delivery! Beginning July 4th PROFITABLE ISP will hold all NEUTRAL-level member emails for 4 hours before delivery. If you wish your emails to be delivered immediately you can sign up for PRIORITY HANDLING which, for the low price of $100/year your email will be delivered immediately—just as if the Net was Neutral!

Make checks payable to PROFITABLE ISP, CORP.

NOW FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY: Do you deliver emails regularly to PROFITABLE ISP customers but keep getting rejected by our spam filter? Sign up today for GUARANTEED DELIVERY service. For $2,000/year you can send all the spam you want to any or all of our customers. Contact our SPAM DESK. Customer email lists are also available at cheap rates!
—PROFITABLE ISP, CORP
“Scamming the public since Republicans decided Net Neutrality was a Democrat thing.”

On Thursday 14 February 2008 4:41:49 pm you wrote:
> Dear Daniel:
>
>
>
> Thank you for contacting me to express your opinion regarding “net
> neutrality”. I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts
> with me on this matter.
>
>
>
> As you may be aware, Senator Byron Dorgan introduced S. 215
> on January 9, 2007 to regulate internet service providers and prevent
> them from prioritizing the traffic to some Web sites over others – > sometimes referred to as “net neutrality.” Freedom has been the hallmark
> of the Internet since its inception, and I believe this so called “net
> neutrality” threatens to destroy the very principles that have made the
> Internet so successful.
>
>
>
> The Internet has benefited greatly from the absence of regulatory
> restrictions. Beginning to implement restrictions now would have a
> detrimental impact. Americans are used to comparison shopping. From the
> cars we drive to the clothes we wear, consumers are accustomed to having
> the opportunity to shop around for the best deal and finding a product
> that best suits them. As we all know, healthy competition will continue
> to foster new services at affordable prices.
>
>
>
> Unfortunately, net neutrality would ultimately limit
> competition by instituting Federal regulations on how internet providers
> choose to supply their services. As this important issue continues to be
> debated here in Congress, rest assured that I will keep your views and
> thoughts in mind.
>
>
>
> Again, I want to thank you for taking the time to contact me. Please
> feel free to contact me if I can be of any further assistance on this
> matter or if you would like additional information on this topic or
> other issues facing Congress, please visit my Website at
> http://crenshaw.house.gov .
>

Oil hit $100/barrel today. Why? Oil inventories are plummeting. Could this be the beginning of the hydrocarbapocalypse (Note: I invented that word)? Probably not, but it could be our first taste of it (beating my original July estimate by ~6 months). I’m going to explain why but first here’s a graph to better illustrate my points:

There’s two things that are scary about this graph and the price of oil reflects it pretty accurately: First, the “norm” of oil inventories rising briefly in November never happened this year. Second, the weatherman is predicting one heck of a cold winter for much of the U.S. and we’re already burning oil more rapidly than normal (we typically have a slow decline in oil inventories between December and March).

So here’s my prediction for the next few weeks: If the inventories continue to fall at the rate in this graph, the price of oil will likely hit $120/barrel in two weeks. If after two more weeks inventories continue to decline investors are going to freak and we’ll start seeing $200/barrel by the end of January. However, at some point during this crisis (depending on the intelligence of the President) the U.S. will likely try to counter the problem by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This will cause inventories to rise back to their historic norm which will be immediately followed by OPEC announcing slightly increased production at the beginning of February. The resulting “normalcy” of things in March will bring the price per barrel back down to the $100 range.

During this time frame it is likely that the U.S. Congress will do something meaningless that SOUNDS like it might help—such as passing legislation that allows drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR). Any increase in oil production from such a law being passed would take decades to bear fruit and the media will be nearly silent of this fact.

I still hold that the real hydrocarbapocalypse will kick off on the weekend of July 4th this year.

I’ve been running Gutsy for a few weeks now (including pre-release) and I just recently figured out all my java problems. I googled all over the place and couldn’t find these fixes ANYWHERE so I did what any Linux geek would do: I debugged and fixed them myself. So if you’re having problems with Java on Gutsy here’s some fixes…

The proxy server problem with java 7 (icedtea)

My first problem was that java applets were not connecting through the proxy server (which is the only way for me to connect where I am). For whatever reason the default for the icedtea-java7 package(s) is to NOT get the system default proxy settings. The fix is to edit /etc/java-7-icedtea/net.properties and change

java.net.useSystemProxies=false

to be:

java.net.useSystemProxies=true

Easy enough!

The java.net.SocketPermission problem

My second problem was that no applet would load because the default policy in the icedtea-java7 package(s) is defaults to DENY for java.net.SocketPermission for everything but the “listen” attribute. to fix this I had to add some permissions under the “grant {” section in the /etc/java-7-icedtea/security/java.policy file:

// allows anyone to listen on un-privileged ports
permission java.net.SocketPermission "localhost:1024-", "listen";
permission java.net.SocketPermission "*", "resolve";
permission java.net.SocketPermission "*", "connect";
permission java.net.SocketPermission "*", "accept";

The first two lines should already be there. Just add the resolve, connect, and accept lines then restart Firefox. Java should now be working properly. Test it here

As some of you may already know, I launched a new business recently: https://vpnout.com. It is an anonymous VPN service that can break through firewalls and keep your data and IP address private. The feedback I’ve gotten so far has been extremely positive so I’ve decided to unleash it to the world at large.

We’re currently having some issues with Mac OS X so if you’re a Mac user and want to help me out, I’d be happy to give you free service if you’re willing to do some troubleshooting.

Please have a look and let me know what you think!

I titled this, “Network Neutrality or Network Brutality”. It was written via the form at Save The Internet (check out that site if you haven’t already).

Network Neutrality or Network Brutality

The current state of the Internet in the U.S. is abysmal and it will get much, much worse if we do not guarantee the neutrality of the network. As so much speech exists in the form of bits and bytes it is essential that we guarantee freedom from discrimination on the network it traverses.

Big ISPs do not like the idea of network neutrality precisely because they plan to reserve the majority of their pipes for their own channels of communication. Their vision of the Internet has them as both the carriers of information as well as its source. They want to divide everyone’s connection into two unequal parts: An incredibly fast connection reserved for their own purposes and a slow connection for everyone else.

I ask you, if we allow ISPs to have their own exclusive dedicated connections into everyone’s homes how can any business or individual compete with that kind of access? The answer is that they won’t and they can’t. All it would take for an ISP to crush a business is to start offering the same services over their extremely fast, exclusive connections. Every business that exists on the Internet today will either have to pay the ISP extra for access to their upper-tier channel or will suffer with slow speed into people’s homes.

But it is the citizens who will suffer the most. They will have high-speed access to content chosen for them by their ISP and slow, unreliable access to everything else. Even worse, the voices of our own citizens will be relegated to the lowest class of service. ISPs have absolutely no intention of allowing home users to compete with their own services and will remove perfectly legitimate speech that becomes too popular—just as they do today with unspecified bandwidth caps and unjustified disconnections of service.

We must stop the ISPs before they enshrine these abusive systems into the networks. Before it is extremely expensive to replace them. Before businesses are destroyed. Before citizen voices are choked into irrelevance. NOW is the time to protect America from this threat.

It would be extremely unwise and naive to allow the market to be afflicted by this destructive force before anything is done about it. The FCC must embrace Network Neutrality and enforce it as quickly as possible before the networks are all built and any damage is done. The longer it takes, the more we’ll end up paying.

I’ve been arguing with a certain individual about health care and as a result I’ve looked up lots of numbers. Since this information is likely to be useful for anyone talking about health care I’ve decided to share it—some might call it being a good Samaritan.

How much do we pay for health insurance?

Employers:

9.95% of salaries: In the U.S. employers currently pay on average 8.5% of their payroll on private health insurance (goes up every year). They also pay 1.45% on Medicare taxes for a total of 9.95% of their payroll.

Employees:

Varies: Family health care premiums for employees are currently averaging about $3000 annually (taken from here) regardless of how much a person makes (no idea how good that coverage is). Therefore; the more money you make the less of a percentage it is of your income. Also, the less money you make the more of your money you’re devoting to health insurance premiums. This does not include co-pays for doctor’s visits, hospital care, drugs, etc.

Totals:

$2.16 Trillion: That’s how much the U.S. spent on private health care in 2006. Or, about 16% of the U.S. GDP.
~25%: That is how much of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to corporate profits, executive salaries, advertising, marketing, and the cost of paperwork (related to billing). In other words, that’s the overhead of private health care. Otherwise known as “inefficiencies”.

How much would we pay in a single-payer system?

The following assumes that HR 676 is what we go with for a single-payer system

Employers:

4.75%: 3.3% on top of the 1.45% they’re already paying for Medicare via payroll taxes (i.e. not taxed on income).

Employees:

1.45%: What you already pay for Medicare. HR 676 does not call for increased income taxes on individuals unless you’re in the top 5% of income earners (more below).

The Rich:

6.45%: The top 5% of income earners will have to pay a “health tax” on top of their existing 1.45% to Medicare. How much money do you have to earn to break into the top 5%? According to the IRS, about $137,000 (AGI)/year (AGI stands for Adjusted Gross Income which is IRS BS for about $330,000/year in reality—this is an injustice in itself, I’ll put more info in the comments).

Totals:

1.85 Trillion: That is a conservative estimate of how much it would cost yearly to give all Americans health coverage with zero co-pays and no premiums (i.e. free health care). It will probably cost considerably less (the reduced drug prices and paperwork costs alone could cut this figure in half).
3%: The overhead associated with a single-payer system. You can’t get away from all the paperwork, just most of it. This is actually the overhead associated with Medicare right now (believe it or not).

Other scary statistics:

• On average, if you’re under 65 and already spending more than $2000 on health care, you’re spending 41.3% of your income on it (2003 figure from the nchc.org link above).
• Half of all bankruptcy filings in 2006 were the partly result of medical expenses. 68% of them had health insurance.
• 30% of Americans say someone in their family delayed getting treatment (in 2006) due to the high cost of health care.
• Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem.

• 46 million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever.

Evans Data Corporation (EDC) just released the results of their yearly survey of software developers. The results are astounding:

The market research firm said that about 65 percent of developers targeted Windows client operating systems in 2006, down from 74 percent the year before, and likely to fall another couple of points this year.

…but it gets better:

“Some of Windows’s marketshare loss appears to be Linux’s gain. Client-side versions of the open source OS were targeted by 11.8 percent of developers in 2006, up from 3.3 percent the year before, the report suggests.”

3.3% to 11.8% in a single year?!? My goodness! If the developers surveyed represent the market accurately (+/- who knows what) then that is about 1.1 million developers jumping on the Linux bandwagon (assuming the current estimate of worldwide developers is correct).

Looks like now is a great time to be an open source geek =)

Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!

I finally fixed the last thing: Formatting. If you’re curious, I use the Textile 2 markup language with my wordpress posts. You can see what it is like here. I find that it is much easier to work with than the WYSIWIG editor that comes with WordPress.

The plugin I was using before broke with Apache 2.0 (which is freaky weird) so I searched and searched and finally found one that worked

Thank you Joel ‘Jaykul’ Bennett!

Update: Oops, I didn’t realize that permalinks weren’t working (which meant people couldn’t access full articles or comments). I just fixed it (.htaccess was broken).

I know I still haven’t fixed my website yet but I just had to post about this movie:

It was amazing

If all my economic arguments for a single payer healthcare system haven’t convinced you yet, you need to see this movie. It shows the other side of the argument. It shows precisely how and where private healthcare fails. Michael Moore has done an amazing job.

You owe it to yourself to see how health insurance companies intentionally bankrupt people to save money (they hire private investigators to invent undisclosed pre-existing conditions), how hospitals abandon patients that don’t have insurance (they drop them off at Skid Row, literally!), and how DOCTORS ARE PAID TO DENY TREATMENT to people so companies like Humana, Blue Cross, and Kaiser Permanente can save a few bucks… At the expense of people’s lives. They are literally killing people with their business practices.

Sicko also made passing mention of the drug companies but that could probably be its own movie (any takers?). There were so many details in this movie that you might miss… A drug that costs $120 in the U.S. costs $0.05 in Cuba. Why? Is it simply because the Cubans subsidize it through their taxes? Actually, no: it is because Cuba negotiates prices on behalf of all Cubans (and doesn’t allow bullshit patent extensions). If Cuba can get that drug for $0.05 imagine what the U.S. could get negotiating on behalf of all Americans.

Private healthcare is failing America. It is time we ended it.

I just upgraded my server to from apache 2.0 to apache 2.2 and it broke some things. Most notably my image gallery, my random quotes, and the excellent TextControl plugin that makes my posts pretty =(

I’m going to be working on this as much as I can over the next few days but my son is in the hospital so all you readers will have to just deal with the ugly formatting for a while =)

Update: I fixed everything but the gallery and the TextControl plugin. Still working on it.

Update 2: I fixed the gallery.