I love how fast the hardware detection is.  In Windows when you plug in some new piece of hardware you have to wait for that “ba-doop” sound (and the driver to load).  It can take an especially annoying length of time when booting up with new hardware attached (especially a mouse).  In Linux hardware detection is nearly instantaneous.

I just plugged in a new mouse and it was recognized and working properly before I could even put my hand on it.  Also, no annoying sound.

Desktop customization

I love how I can customize everything.  If I don’t like the boot screen graphic I can change it.  If I don’t like my login screen, desktop, window decoration, or even what happens when I move the mouse over a window, I can change it in almost any way imaginable.  I can make it look and operate like Windows or a Mac or I could make it completely unique; *my* desktop.

Not only can anything and everything be customized but most of these changes don’t even require administrative privileges.  Linux puts a lot of power in the hands of users without sacrificing security.

Available software

I love how I have easy access to tens of thousands of applications for free.  Most poeple don’t know this but there’s far, far more software for Linux than there is for any other platform.  If you combined all the available software for Windows and Macs it wouldn’t even come close to what’s available for Linux.  Best of all, you don’t have to pay a cent.  Just about all of it is completely free.

Solutions are just a Google away

I have a saying, “To find a solution with Linux you merely search the Internet. To find a solution with Windows you have to search your IT budget.”  If I want to do something new with my Linux desktop all I have to do is perform a quick search and I’ll likely find a swath of easy-to-follow HOWTO articles.  In Windows when you search the Internet for solutions, nine times out of ten the only way to do what you want is to pay for some proprietary software package.

If the (Windows) product you just purchased doesn’t do everything you want you’ll likely have to purchase more software to fill the gap.  In Linux, because of the nature of open source software, adding new functionality is usually just a matter of mashing up your existing free software with some new free software.

Linux distributions are the perfect example of “mashing up” disparate free software packages to create a system that has comprehensive functionality.  Best of all, there’s hundreds of them to choose from for all sorts of generalized or specialized purposes.  You can try a few and pick the one that best meets your needs and desires.

What is FoxyProxy?

FoxyProxy is a great add-on to Firefox that lets you define multiple rule-based proxy servers.  It lets you do things like define a rule that loads all URLs through a certain proxy server except those that match a given pattern.  Rules can be wildcards (*whatever.com*) or regular expressions (https?://.*.whatever.com.*).

The problem (need an IP address regex)

I had a problem with FoxyProxy where IP addresses (e.g. 127.0.0.1, 10.0.0.1, etc) were being loaded through my work’s proxy server when they shouldn’t be using a proxy at all.  This is because I had a proxy setup with a “Match all URLs” rule along with a blacklist rule for local URLs (*.myworkintranet.com*).  What I needed was a blacklist rule that would tell FoxyProxy to load all IP addresses directly.  Specifically, I needed a regular expression that would match any IP address.

The solution (regular expression matching any IP address)

https?://[1-9][0-9]?[0-9]?.[0-9][0-9]?[0-9]?.[0-9][0-9]?[0-9]?.[0-9][0-9]?[0-9]?.*

There you have it.  I know this will also match invalid IP addresses (e.g. 999.999.999.999) but it shouldn’t matter since there’s no number-only top-level domains (i.e. .999 as opposed to say, .com).

Also, in case you were wondering FoxyProxy uses the Javascript regular expression format.

Other regular expressions you might find useful

Same thing but for FTP URLs:

ftp://[1-9][0-9]?[0-9]?.[0-9][0-9]?[0-9]?.[0-9][0-9]?[0-9]?.[0-9][0-9]?[0-9]?.*

Match reserved (non-Internet) IP addresses (i.e. 127.X.X.X, 10.X.X.X, 192.168.X.X, and 172.16-31.X.X):

https?://(127|10|172|192)\.(1[6-9]|2[0-9]|3[01])\.[0-9][0-9]?[0-9]?\.[0-9][0-9]?[0-9]?.*

As a nation (the USA for foreign readers) we need to stop looking for scapegoats and place the blame where it belongs: US.  Speculators are not the cause of high oil prices.  The oil companies/countries are not consipiring to make our lives miserable (Hint: You don’t intentionally destroy your biggest customer).  The Man is not trying to keep you down.  It’s not THEM it’s US.

WE did not prepare for Peak Oil.  WE ignored the warning signs.  WE did not want to change our lifestyles.  WE did not want to hear about all that “tree hugger BS”.  WE thought the market would save us.  WE thought (think?) the government could fix everything.  WE only paid attention to people/media that only told us what we wanted to hear.  WE ignored the gas mileage sticker when WE bought our horribly gas-inefficient vehicles.  WE blame everyone else while WE stare at the price on the pump instead of the gallons.

Still want someone to blame other than yourself?  If you must, take your pick:  The guy driving that giant SUV, the people who made that giant SUV, or the government that didn’t bother to regulate the efficiency of that giant SUV.  How about the airline industry?  How about the everything-shipped-from-far-far-away consumer marketplace (where were your shoes made?  Where were those Apples grown?)?

An economy based on the consumption of fixed resources will consume itself…  and WE have one hell of an appetite for irreplaceable fossil energy.

1. Non-technical people should never be allowed to make technical decisions.
2. Never buy anything from a vendor that doesn’t offer their product documentation for free to the public.
3. Before you solicit bids or start looking for an off-the-shelf solution always ask your existing IT staff what it would cost in time and resources to DIY.
4. The only ‘investment’ you can make in Information Technology is hiring or training technical workers. All else is just expense.
5. Big IT mistake: Taking market market research into consideration when making IT decisions.
   Bigger IT mistake: Making decisions and then using market research to justify them.
   Market research is nothing more than documented hearsay.
6. To solve problems with proprietary software you have to spend time and money.  To solve problems with free software you only have to spend time.
7. Making things easier for management is usually the opposite of making things easier for workers.  Management would do well to remember this when they want improved productivity.
8. If you use a trouble ticket system as a blame thrower you will get burned.
9. Having someone to blame is not an effective IT strategy.
10. Migration is always an option.
11. Just because something works doesn’t mean it is the best solution.
12. Quality of implementation is always more important than quality of software.

I will add more as time goes on.

But some other experts said that while job losses are climbing, the job market is still relatively strong by historic standards, although even they expressed concerns about growing weakness.

Note that this was placed directly after the following:

“The job market is a lagging indicator,” said Arpitha Bykere, economic analyst at RGE Monitor.com. “We can expect the picture to get gloomier. We won’t see a positive picture any time soon, even if the economy recovers.”

Notice how CNN actually quoted someone? As in, a real person—with a name attached. Then they followed it up with “some other experts”. Otherwise known in mass media circles as bullshit.

You know CNN, “some other experts” think you’ve sunk to a whole new low of propaganda. Even if your intentions are good (trying to prevent market panic perhaps?) your methods are unacceptable and inappropriate. If there’s cause for panic there’s no reason not to tell it like it is! Yelling “fire!” in a movie theatre can save lives!

Note: I’ve saved the page text in case CNN decides to do some stealth post-publish editing.

The truth is that every oil-saving measure you can think of can only conserve so much oil.  No matter what the price, people and businesses will pay it as long as they can make more money out of it than they put in.  That is capitalism!  So what happens then when the supply of oil isn’t enough to meet demand?  When there’s not enough gas at the station for all the customers?  Rationing won’t help much if supplies will decrease forevermore.

This scenario is going on right now as I type this.  The available supply of oil has been down 13-20 million barrels of oil for the past several weeks compared with this time last year.  We’re quickly approaching the point where “how much we’ve got” is less than “how much we expect” or even “how much we need”.  Even as our economy enters a recession and gas prices go up the demand for oil has not decreased an equivalent amount.

No one knows for sure how long we can sustain our current lifestyles while oil supplies diminish.  I fear that the answer is, “not very long at all.”

What a load of crap

I’m going to call their bluff: OPEC isn’t producing more oil because they can’t. World oil production has peaked. Don’t just take my word for it, have a look at the US oil inventories. We’re presently humming along at a 14-day supply of oil (don’t believe the “Days of Supply” graph on the EIA website—do the math yourself: 14 days!).

Last week we were down 20.5 million barrels/day from this time last year. This week we’re down “only” 18.5 million barrels/day… HOWEVER, we just had a major refinery go up in flames so you’d expect oil inventories to be UP and gas inventories to go DOWN. Essentially, that refinery fire is making the oil inventories look better than they would be otherwise.

Even President Bush (long time oil industry apologist) had this to say (from the NYT article):

As a sign of growing impatience with oil producers, President Bush said on Tuesday that it would be a “mistake” for OPEC not to increase supplies. As the oil group was meeting in Vienna, the president repeated his assault on Wednesday, saying it was “obvious” that demand was stripping supplies, and pushing up prices.

This could very well be the day that historians determine as the start of peak oil economic collapse.

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“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.

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