Reliant Energy (one of the independent generators selling power in California) has issued a report explaining that they aren’t turning a higher profit in California now than they were before the energy crisis. Their report, Myths Debunked: The Real Story of Wholesale Power Costs in California (PDF) puts their higher revenue down to greater demand and higher cost for natural gas. Interestingly, the way the spot market for power works in California is that everyone sells their power at a rate set by the least efficient plants, which happen to be natural gas fired plants. So companies selling power that’s cheaper to produce (like nuclear or hydroelectric) are, in fact, making out like bandits. The gotcha here is that the hydroelectric and nuclear plants are owned for the most part by the California utilities, not the independents.
MotherJones.com just published Debt to Society, a special report on the current state of the US prison system. If you’re short on time, check out this atlas. The graphs on the front page alone convey a lot of astounding information.
You may be depressed about the ongoing collapse of the tech industry, but be glad that you’re not a shepherd. Working 90 hours a week for about .25 cents an hour with no human contact, running water, or electricity has to be about as bad as it gets. This is in America, too.
For some reason, the fact that Andrew Sullivan hits his readers up for donations rubs me the wrong way. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s a big name journalist, or the actual verbage on the contribution page that ticks me off.
The thing about Windows XP is that it’s amazingly frightening. I feel a total lack of control that I’ve never felt with any other operating system. I think the biggest reason for this is that it’s the first operating system that is really connected to the mothership pervasively. It starts out by asking whether you want to activate Windows over the Internet. I went ahead and did that. It loads Windows Messenger automatically and asks you for your Passport information. Why? I don’t think it just wants me to try instant messaging, but I have no way to be sure, and I have no idea what else it does. Then there’s Windows Update. I used it with Windows 98, but I have to admit that it scares me with Windows XP. What information is it sending when it connects? I feel like I have little to no control over what gets shared between me and Microsoft. Let me put it this way: it feels more like Microsoft owns my PC than that I own their operating system. It’s really quite creepy.