There’s this idea floating around in people’s minds regarding oil that I feel compelled to dispel:  That if we just drill more oil, build more renewable/nuclear power plants, and sell more energy efficient vehicles we’ll be able to go back to Business as Usual (BAU).  It is a myth.  We’ve reached Peak Oil.  All that stuff, if done 10-30 years ago could have made a difference but now it is too late.

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.

We’ve all heard the term, “Best Practices” but what they entail tends to vary from person to person.  Especially in the realm of Information Technology (IT).  I’ve been involved in IT for a while now and I’ve decided to share a few of my own, “Best Practices”:

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 was reading an article on CNN.com saying that in March we lost 80,000 jobs (according to the Labor Department) when I came across the following text right in the middle of the story:

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.

“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.”

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.

If you ask someone filling up their gas tank, “At what point will you stop going to the gas station to fill up?” they will respond in a confused manner, “What do you mean? No matter how much you cut back you still have to get gas sooner or later.”  Yet most Americans believe that as oil supplies diminish the price of gas will reach a point where demand will decrease.  Which among us will be the first to make the sacrifice of not commuting to work?  Which trucking and shipping companies will stop delivering as much and as fast as they can?  Which oil-fired power plants will shut down to save money?

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.”

Oil hit $104/barrel today. This comes right after OPEC met to talk their usual talk about how much oil they want to pump out of the ground. OPEC is not going to increase production and they claim it is because “supplies are sufficient”. They’re blaming “speculators” for driving up the cost.

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.

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.