Brand new weekly paper launched up here. The Littleton Record. Vol 1 No 2 landed in my mailbox Friday. Sixteen pages with color photos. Front page color pix showing soggy WWII vets parading in the rain in Franconia right past Bob Warden's Mobil station. Local stories inside, even about local people that I know. Good photos of the Littleton boys playing baseball. Keep this up and it will give the long established Littleton Courier a run for its money.
And the Record is free, delivered with the usual load of Friday junk mail. Who says you can't make money in the newspaper business?
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
NYPD still paranoid from 9/11
They are so fearful of something, that they have blocked off a public street in Brooklyn. Brooklyn Police Hq on Johnson St has seven uniformed officers standing sentry duty 24/7. Two police cruisers, with police officers inside, engines idling, are parked across Johnson St blocking all traffic, even pedestrian traffic. Jersey barriers would be cheaper...
Putting seven officers on sentry duty 3 shifts a day, 5 days a week ties up 21 well paid uniformed officers. Covering the weekend uses five more cops and a fraction of a cop.
I heard NYC just raised the sales tax another 1/2 percent.
Will the last industry leaving New York please turn out the lights.
Putting seven officers on sentry duty 3 shifts a day, 5 days a week ties up 21 well paid uniformed officers. Covering the weekend uses five more cops and a fraction of a cop.
I heard NYC just raised the sales tax another 1/2 percent.
Will the last industry leaving New York please turn out the lights.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Windows enables cyber attacks worldwide
You might have seen headlines about cyber attacks on US government and South Korean websites. The attacks made the front page of the Wall St Journal today, so it isn't just a few system managers whining about spam. Attack traffic is so heavy that my internet access has slowed perceptibly.
Microsoft Windows is the root cause of these attacks. Windows is like swiss cheese, security holes everywhere. Attackers break into Windows computers thru these holes, and install robot code ('bot for short) which upon command fires off an endless string of requests to the victim computer demanding transmission of the website's first page. Each 'bot can fire off hundreds of requests per second. 'Bot nets of hundreds of thousands of captured Windows machines can overwhelm anything on the internet. Right now it's a major nuisance. But in the future when all bills are paid, all messsages go, all news comes from blogs, all music is downloaded over the internet, this kind of cyber attack will hurt more.
The only fix is to get on Microsoft's case and demand a secure Windows. It is perfectly doable. Microsoft doesn't fix the problem 'cause they don't see any money in security.
Microsoft Windows is the root cause of these attacks. Windows is like swiss cheese, security holes everywhere. Attackers break into Windows computers thru these holes, and install robot code ('bot for short) which upon command fires off an endless string of requests to the victim computer demanding transmission of the website's first page. Each 'bot can fire off hundreds of requests per second. 'Bot nets of hundreds of thousands of captured Windows machines can overwhelm anything on the internet. Right now it's a major nuisance. But in the future when all bills are paid, all messsages go, all news comes from blogs, all music is downloaded over the internet, this kind of cyber attack will hurt more.
The only fix is to get on Microsoft's case and demand a secure Windows. It is perfectly doable. Microsoft doesn't fix the problem 'cause they don't see any money in security.
Aviation Week blasts Wall St.
From the Viewpoint editorial on the last page of the July 6 issue.
"In the past decade commercial banks have forgotten their main purpose - lending capital - and have invented self-serving new ways to make money. They have created products and services of no value to the economy, which they buy and trade among themselves, racking up profits, commissions and bonuses."
Services of no value such as mortgage backed securities which ruined the housing industry and credit default swaps which crushed Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and AIG.
"Yet there is a bright spot for the smaller aerospace companies. While the big banks repay their TARP infusions so the can quickly increase their executive pay packets, small banks are jumping in to help companies in their local communities."
" These banks, numbering in the thousands, do not pay hefty executive bonuses for outrageous profits made through incestuous dealing. Their governance models, including community involvement, reward management for lending based on well-understood risk analysis tied to concentrated due diligence. Smaller players in the aerospace sector should end their fixation with Wall Street lenders and concentrate their credit hunt on Main Street."
Aviation Week is the bible of the aerospace industry. They have been around for ever. They are required reading at the airframe companies, the airlines, the avionics companies and the Air Force. The magazine speaks for its readers in a way the New York Times never has. The American aerospace industry is large, dominates the world markets, and exports to the entire world. We oughta listen to them, they are onto something. Namely Wall St banks bear great responsibility for Great Depression II and after $750 billion of taxpayer bailout, are doing little to bring us out of it.
"In the past decade commercial banks have forgotten their main purpose - lending capital - and have invented self-serving new ways to make money. They have created products and services of no value to the economy, which they buy and trade among themselves, racking up profits, commissions and bonuses."
Services of no value such as mortgage backed securities which ruined the housing industry and credit default swaps which crushed Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and AIG.
"Yet there is a bright spot for the smaller aerospace companies. While the big banks repay their TARP infusions so the can quickly increase their executive pay packets, small banks are jumping in to help companies in their local communities."
" These banks, numbering in the thousands, do not pay hefty executive bonuses for outrageous profits made through incestuous dealing. Their governance models, including community involvement, reward management for lending based on well-understood risk analysis tied to concentrated due diligence. Smaller players in the aerospace sector should end their fixation with Wall Street lenders and concentrate their credit hunt on Main Street."
Aviation Week is the bible of the aerospace industry. They have been around for ever. They are required reading at the airframe companies, the airlines, the avionics companies and the Air Force. The magazine speaks for its readers in a way the New York Times never has. The American aerospace industry is large, dominates the world markets, and exports to the entire world. We oughta listen to them, they are onto something. Namely Wall St banks bear great responsibility for Great Depression II and after $750 billion of taxpayer bailout, are doing little to bring us out of it.
Speed up Windows with Startup Manager
Windows loads and runs a vast number of programs behind your back. Some of them are necessary but most just slow your machine down and use up valuable RAM that would be better used running your programs.
Many of these secret ramhogs load when you start Windows. A worthwhile performance improvement (faster boot and livelier keyboard response) can be had by preventing unnecessary goodies from loading and running. Real techies can do this barehanded, but for most of us a software tool makes it a lot easier.
Reliable tool is Startup Manager V1.5 written by Brian Stowers of Creative Gaffers Software. You can download Startup Manager from the Aptiva Toolbox. This particular page offers three different programs, go to the bottom of the page and download startman.exe to obtain the software I am describing here. The program is a little old but it is still the best one out there in my humble opinion. It shows you what is loading at boot time and allows you to turn stuff off by just giving them a red checkmark.
The Startup Manager window shows a line for each piece of software that could be loaded at startup time. There is a status column (enabled or disabled). You turn stuff off by setting the status to diabled (big red X). If you change your mind, you can turn it back on just as easily, set it to enable (green checkmark).
You shouldn't have all that many programs starting at boot time. I am down to just three, the driver for the keyboard touchpad, Zone Alarm firewall, and something called kernelfaultcheck.
Which brings us to the tricky part. What can you turn off? Gotta be careful here, it is possible to turn off something needed and get all wrapped around the axle. Obviously you want to leave hardware drivers like touch pads and wireless modems running, if you still have the hardware in the machine. Naturally if you got rid of the wireless modem last month you can speed things up by not running the wireless modem driver. In fact you ought to use Add and Remove programs to clean such a driver right off your machine.
What can you get rid of? As mentioned, drivers for hardware you no longer have. "Speedup" or "helper" programs for Adobe and Office and Easyshare and Itunes and such. CTFmon.exe. Update schedulers for stuff like Java and Bios and Spybot and Adobe. I'd rather have a faster computer and just hit the "check for updates" tab inside Adobe or Spybot or Office when and if I want an update from the web.
Then there are the wierdo programs with wierdo names that mean nothing to you. If you want to really bear down on them you can google on the program name and some of the time you will get solid advice (Necessary part of Windows or Virus) and much of the time you get "This is a program that loads at startup" which means the website hasn't a clue. Conservative folk leave the unknown stuff alone. Daring folk disable it and usually everything works OK.
The column "Command" is actually the disk file name that would be loaded. The file name is often a clue as to what the software is for. The "Location" column shows from where the load and run command comes. Things marked [REG] load and run from keys stashed in the registry. This is only of interest for techies who might use Regedit to fiddle around, but things like that are not for the fainthearted. Things marked "Startup Folder" load and run from disk folders named startup.
As I mentioned, Startup Manager is a little dusty (my version is date stamped 2 Jan 2000), but it works well on XP. Before writing this post I googled around for something more up to date. There are such and I tried them all but cannot recommend any of them. Too complex, load to much adware, and support complex procedures that I'll never use, and in fact can cause real trouble. I vote for Startup Manager V1.5.
Many of these secret ramhogs load when you start Windows. A worthwhile performance improvement (faster boot and livelier keyboard response) can be had by preventing unnecessary goodies from loading and running. Real techies can do this barehanded, but for most of us a software tool makes it a lot easier.
Reliable tool is Startup Manager V1.5 written by Brian Stowers of Creative Gaffers Software. You can download Startup Manager from the Aptiva Toolbox. This particular page offers three different programs, go to the bottom of the page and download startman.exe to obtain the software I am describing here. The program is a little old but it is still the best one out there in my humble opinion. It shows you what is loading at boot time and allows you to turn stuff off by just giving them a red checkmark.
The Startup Manager window shows a line for each piece of software that could be loaded at startup time. There is a status column (enabled or disabled). You turn stuff off by setting the status to diabled (big red X). If you change your mind, you can turn it back on just as easily, set it to enable (green checkmark).
You shouldn't have all that many programs starting at boot time. I am down to just three, the driver for the keyboard touchpad, Zone Alarm firewall, and something called kernelfaultcheck.
Which brings us to the tricky part. What can you turn off? Gotta be careful here, it is possible to turn off something needed and get all wrapped around the axle. Obviously you want to leave hardware drivers like touch pads and wireless modems running, if you still have the hardware in the machine. Naturally if you got rid of the wireless modem last month you can speed things up by not running the wireless modem driver. In fact you ought to use Add and Remove programs to clean such a driver right off your machine.
What can you get rid of? As mentioned, drivers for hardware you no longer have. "Speedup" or "helper" programs for Adobe and Office and Easyshare and Itunes and such. CTFmon.exe. Update schedulers for stuff like Java and Bios and Spybot and Adobe. I'd rather have a faster computer and just hit the "check for updates" tab inside Adobe or Spybot or Office when and if I want an update from the web.
Then there are the wierdo programs with wierdo names that mean nothing to you. If you want to really bear down on them you can google on the program name and some of the time you will get solid advice (Necessary part of Windows or Virus) and much of the time you get "This is a program that loads at startup" which means the website hasn't a clue. Conservative folk leave the unknown stuff alone. Daring folk disable it and usually everything works OK.
The column "Command" is actually the disk file name that would be loaded. The file name is often a clue as to what the software is for. The "Location" column shows from where the load and run command comes. Things marked [REG] load and run from keys stashed in the registry. This is only of interest for techies who might use Regedit to fiddle around, but things like that are not for the fainthearted. Things marked "Startup Folder" load and run from disk folders named startup.
As I mentioned, Startup Manager is a little dusty (my version is date stamped 2 Jan 2000), but it works well on XP. Before writing this post I googled around for something more up to date. There are such and I tried them all but cannot recommend any of them. Too complex, load to much adware, and support complex procedures that I'll never use, and in fact can cause real trouble. I vote for Startup Manager V1.5.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Obama to move against "speculation" in oil market
Well, I'm all against speculation. Evil it is. Last year with the stock market, mortgage backed securities, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, and Bear Stearns going down the drain, a lot of money was invested in oil futures for lack of anywhere else to put it. Which drove the price of crude oil to $144 a barrel. Which drove the price of gasoline to $4 a gallon. Those are bad things.
Of course the bubble burst that summer and the price of crude dropped to $35 a barrel. A lot of people got severely burned. Couldn't happen to nicer people.
So is there any difference between an evil speculator and Southwest Airlines buying future contracts of jet fuel ? Especially as the futures contracts Southwest buys are sold by futures traders, guys who just buy and sell futures contracts, they never take delivery of physical product, they just buy and sell paper futures.
It's generally accepted that futures markets are economically useful, they allow buyers and seller to lock in a price for future production. With a price locked in, a farmer can get a loan, an bakery can predict his cost of flour, an airline can predict the price of jet fuel.
Once we have a commodities future market anyone can play. Last summer a lot of people thought crude oil futures were a sure thing, and nearly everything else looked like a loser. So money flowed into buying up crude oil, a scarce and valuable commodity, and the demand made it scarcer and more valuable.
If Obama really wanted to crack down on speculation in commodities, he could cut off loans. Right now you can borrow money to buy commodities futures. The banks lend, and use the value of the commodity as collateral for the loan. We could pass a law preventing banks from making commodity buying loans. In fact FIDC could probably just make a regulation against it. FDIC says to the banks "Don't loan federally insured money (all the banks money is federally insured) for the purchase of commodities."
The Southwest Airlines of the world could pay cash, but the hedge funds and the day traders would find their returns a lot lower when they had to put up real money to play the commodities market.
Of course the bubble burst that summer and the price of crude dropped to $35 a barrel. A lot of people got severely burned. Couldn't happen to nicer people.
So is there any difference between an evil speculator and Southwest Airlines buying future contracts of jet fuel ? Especially as the futures contracts Southwest buys are sold by futures traders, guys who just buy and sell futures contracts, they never take delivery of physical product, they just buy and sell paper futures.
It's generally accepted that futures markets are economically useful, they allow buyers and seller to lock in a price for future production. With a price locked in, a farmer can get a loan, an bakery can predict his cost of flour, an airline can predict the price of jet fuel.
Once we have a commodities future market anyone can play. Last summer a lot of people thought crude oil futures were a sure thing, and nearly everything else looked like a loser. So money flowed into buying up crude oil, a scarce and valuable commodity, and the demand made it scarcer and more valuable.
If Obama really wanted to crack down on speculation in commodities, he could cut off loans. Right now you can borrow money to buy commodities futures. The banks lend, and use the value of the commodity as collateral for the loan. We could pass a law preventing banks from making commodity buying loans. In fact FIDC could probably just make a regulation against it. FDIC says to the banks "Don't loan federally insured money (all the banks money is federally insured) for the purchase of commodities."
The Southwest Airlines of the world could pay cash, but the hedge funds and the day traders would find their returns a lot lower when they had to put up real money to play the commodities market.
Why the Porkulus isn't working
For one, only 11% of the $787 billion bill has actually been spent. That's only $86 billion, about the amount of money poured down GM.
A good portion of the Porkulus is tax cuts, which adds to the federal debt but don't stimulate the economy. With everyone worried about a layoff, nobody is spending any tax cuts/rebates/handouts. The money is going into peoples checking accounts and paying off bills or credit card debt. Nobody in their right mind is going to splurge on new cars, clothes, or anything but groceries with a layoff looming in the future. We aren't going to see consumer spending come back until unemployment has been licked.
You could get quite a bit of economic stimulus by just repealing the Porkulus bill. That would show people that the US government isn't completely spendthrift.
A good portion of the Porkulus is tax cuts, which adds to the federal debt but don't stimulate the economy. With everyone worried about a layoff, nobody is spending any tax cuts/rebates/handouts. The money is going into peoples checking accounts and paying off bills or credit card debt. Nobody in their right mind is going to splurge on new cars, clothes, or anything but groceries with a layoff looming in the future. We aren't going to see consumer spending come back until unemployment has been licked.
You could get quite a bit of economic stimulus by just repealing the Porkulus bill. That would show people that the US government isn't completely spendthrift.
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