This graph comes was produced after hours spent crunching nubmers using matlab. S&P has recently upgraded their stock from a strong sell to “Sell”, but with our data we were able to accurately make a prediction of Sony’s stock in the future.

It was encouraging to find in our research that the money Sony will loose when PS3 is released will partially be recovered through their aggresive lawsuit tactics against children and the elderly.

With Sony you can be assured that your content will be “protected” from the evil consumers with aggresive use of DRM. Even so far as to install rootkits on everyone’s computer without their permission. We all look forward to the new DRM that is included, as an added bonus, on every Blu-Ray disc that you buy.

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Here were the things that were wrong and that I wanted to fix

• Comments were not working
• The default WP .htaccess file wasn’t redirecting people to the correct thread, had to resort to using custom made one
• Tried to upgrade to 2.0.2, but it was saying that I was using 2.0.1.
• The link to –Previous Posts was not working

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Here are two PDF’s that I think everyone should read. If you filled up your car recently I think for many of us it is really hitting home. Western civilization needs to come up with an alternative to gasoline. We can only hope that the big three (Oil Companies, Car Makers and our Government) are working together to find a solution.

The first is a copy of a Popular Mechanics article that I created in PDF form because it had good general information on alternative fuels to gasoline. Make sure you download the comparison chart to see in more detail the differences between the proposed fuels of the future. From it you can tell that only two fuels (Compressed Natural Gas and BioDiesel) appear as viable alternatives to gasoline.

The second PDF gives a good explanation on why gas prices are so high now and also justification for the high profits the Oil Companies are making now. It was put together by Chevron so it has a bit at the end on how Chevron is working to make things better, but other than that there is some good information like a graph showing the price increase of gasoline in relation to other general goods and services.

Comparing that to our Health Care industry isn’t saying much. Of course we need to redo our entire Health Care system, but if we can’t afford to do business or feed our population because the our most important natural resource is running out, than the price of that doctor’s visit isn’t going to matter much.

Congress readies broad new digital copyright bill

How come it seems that Congress is doing everything opposite of what we WANT them to be doing? This bill is downright scary that has evil Orwellien overtones that gives me nightmares. I really really really hope that it doesn’t pass. It would be a sad sad day in America.

• Permits wiretaps in investigations of copyright crimes, trade secret theft and economic espionage. It would establish a new copyright unit inside the FBI and budgets $20 million on topics including creating “advanced tools of forensic science to investigate” copyright crimes.

• Amends existing law to permit criminal enforcement of copyright violations even if the work was not registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

• Boosts criminal penalties for copyright infringement originally created by the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997 from five years to 10 years (and 10 years to 20 years for subsequent offenses). The NET Act targets noncommercial piracy including posting copyrighted photos, videos or news articles on a Web site if the value exceeds $1,000.

• Creates civil asset forfeiture penalties for anything used in copyright piracy. Computers or other equipment seized must be “destroyed” or otherwise disposed of, for instance at a government auction. Criminal asset forfeiture will be done following the rules established by federal drug laws.

• Says copyright holders can impound “records documenting the manufacture, sale or receipt of items involved in” infringements.

Things to do to make sure this crime against humanity doesn’t become law:

Contact the new republican Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

MAIL:

U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

EMAIL:

AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

Login to EFF and contact your representatives!

Join IPAC

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Why Windows is less secure than Linux

I knew it all along, but it took some really clever people to make some imagery that outlines this simple fact.

Windows is inherently harder to secure than Linux. There I said it. The simple truth.

Many millions of words have been written and said on this topic. I have a couple of pictures. The basic argument goes like this. In its long evolution, Windows has grown so complicated that it is harder to secure. Well these images make the point very well. Both images are a complete map of the system calls that occur when a web server serves up a single page of html with a single picture. The same page and picture. A system call is an opportunity to address memory. A hacker investigates each memory access to see if it is vulnerable to a buffer overflow attack. The developer must do QA on each of these entry points. The more system calls, the greater potential for vulnerability, the more effort needed to create secure applications.

If you look at the two images, the windows image has many more system calls which means there is a greater potential for a vulnerability. The secunia site is interesting when comparing Windows Server 2003 and RedHat Enterprise Linux AS 4 it is apparent that windows had a greater percentage of security problems that were rated Medium - Extreme. Also given the fact that Microsoft has been notoriously slow to patch, the choice seems obvious to me. Although, unfortunately the better choice in operating systems is sacrificed becuse your developers are unfamiliar and unwilling to work with Linux.

Global Warming Capable of Sparking Mass Species Extinctions

So what is worse, overpopulation and millions of humans dying from starvation or causing mass extinction of other species? It seems to me if we had less people and all worked together and had a fair, equitable, egalitarian global society we wouldn’t have to consider that tradeoff. That is what we are faced with now.

The study expands on a much-debated 2004 paper published in the journal Nature that suggested a quarter of the world’s species would be committed to extinction by 2050 as a result of global warming. This latest study picks up where the Nature paper left off, incorporating critiques and suggestions from other scientists while increasing the global scope of the research to include diverse hotspots around the world. The results reinforce the massive species extinction risks identified in the 2004 study.

“Climate change is rapidly becoming the most serious threats to the planet’s biodiversity,” said lead author Dr. Jay Malcolm, an assistant forestry professor at the University of Toronto. “This study provides even stronger scientific evidence that global warming will result in catastrophic species loss across the planet.”

One problem would be a further increase in global warming as healthier people produce more greenhouse gasses.

Real Networks to Linux - DRM or Die

Comment from /. on DRM. I thought it was a good analysis of the situation. DRM is evil. You should write your congress person to put a stop to this nonsense.

The content industry sees DRM as its saviour from the pirates. In fact, it will be their doom. Let’s take a look at what DRM will do, and to whom.

For this we’ll be looking at four groups of people:

1. The joe average sixpack crowd, who buy some music, copy some more from his friends and generally think DRM is the new acronym for the thingie to plug into your car to make it faster. He’s getting some music online, doesn’t make heavy use of torrent and is still plugged into Kazaa, but complains he doesn’t find much anymore.

2. The people who use suck the net dry, whether they need it or not. It’s there, it’s free, it’s on my HD. They don’t know jack about the inner workings of the DeCSS, don’t know who broke it, but they use it to rip it, with the neat and foolproof tools provided.

3. The people who know what DRM means to their privacy and who fear, hate and fight it. Not necessarily in that order. Out of principle, not because they want to pirate what’s available. But it’s a privacy thing.

4. The people with The Clue to actually break DRM.

A good way to fight back is to donate money to the EFF. They also provide methods for contacting your representives easier, not that contacting them will gaurentee action, but it does help and makes you feel better.

Well Connected - The Center for Public Integrity
In addition to corporate spending on lobbying and campaign contributions, the total includes industry-funded trips for members of the House and Senate committees that oversee the FCC. Center researchers also undertook an unprecedented study of former key FCC and congressional officials who left their government jobs for positions in the communications field.

A breakdown shows:

* Total lobbying expenditures from 1998 through mid-2004 by the industry were more than $764 million.* In comparison, the oil and gas industry less than $400 million over the same period, the Center has found.
* Campaign contributions from 1998 through September 2004 were $145.6 million. The total includes both hard and soft money donations from industry employees, labor unions representing employees in the communications industry and political action committees.
* The Center identified 450 industry-funded trips valued at $704,229 from 2000 through March of 2004.

The study is part of the Center’s ongoing examination of the companies that control the nation’s airwaves, telephone and cable lines and the hundreds of millions of dollars they spend to influence policies that affect how electronic communications are regulated in the United States. The survey took roughly eight months and involved the work of as many as a dozen researchers.

Pelosi Hints at Democrats’ ‘Unified’ Agenda

Found a link to this article on /. and I thought it was a good one.

America lags behind other countries that have universal broadband deployment, Pelosi said; but the Democrats’ agenda “guarantees” that every American will have affordable access to broadband within five years.

“We also believe that the nationwide deployment of high speed, always-on broadband and Internet and mobile communications will fuel the development of millions of new jobs in the United States,” Pelosi said.

Well here is my list ranked in order of importance. Call them the 9 Points of Demarcation. They are my reasons for voting Democrat, because I believe they have the best chance at implementing them.

1. Fix Intellectual Property Laws
2. Get out of Iraq
3. Clean our Energy and Reduce greenhouse emissions
4. Government programs to promote fuel economy to reduce the price of more fuel efficient vehicles
5. Prevent lobbying by corporations
6. Cheaper and Better Broadband/Wireless Networks
7. Get rid of the Patriot Act and the DMCA
8. Enact Net Neutrality Laws protecting and preserving the Internet
9. Find/Kill Bin Laden
10. Reduce the national debt

(ranked by priority)
I think some republicans have some good ideas, but they still don’t have any idea of what is really wrong with this country. The Democrats need to connect to the younger generation in a way they have never before and they will be assured of victory. The Democrat vision 8 years ago was much better than the republican vision, we wouldn’t be in this mess we are now if we elected better leaders.