More of Those Annoying Captcha Images
Posted 4:14 PM

I just built a service captcha.cc which makes it easier for people who build web forms to paste code in that will block form spam. Not that there aren't other people who do this, but the popular ones are often weird or insecure. Recaptcha is too easy to break, tesseract and a bit of gaussian scrubbing and dict-guessing makes short work of it, makes me wonder what OCR engine they are using in the first place that fails so often.

Nifty features include server-validation without requiring a callback (md5 hash does the trick), ajax-friendly javascript code to prevent unnecessary form reloads on failures, ability to block proxies, and support for English, Spanish and French languages.
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Comprehensive list of all Senate votes which Barack and John disagreed on
Posted 11:03 AM

I think the list is very telling and allows you see a clear difference between the candidates. You can click on the bills to view details about the bill, and what it was for.

Bear in mind, the title of the bill very often is "loaded", and is can be quite the opposite of what the bills effect will be. (Help America Vote is one that comes to mind). So you should at least glance at the bill if it looks interesting to you. Links are provided.

Click here to see the full list.
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Why not pay your doctor a monthly fee?
Posted 12:03 PM

If you paid your doctor a monthly fee, and then, if you get sick the fee doesn't change, then that would be equivalent to insurance, but your doctor would have incentive to keep you well... instead of the other way around.

Same for hospitals. You should pay a monthly fee to your local hospital, and your doctor, etc. There can be "networks", so paying for your local hospital also gets you in to other participating ones - but there would always be a benefit to being the chosen doctor/hospital.

If it was done this way, hospitals would be competitive - patients could choose from any of their local hospitals to support as their "primary" hospital. And the medical/pharma industry would be busy trying to keep people healthy... instead of trying to keep them sick and on meds (which is what their job is now, essentially).

Providing national taxed and mandatory healthcare - like some people advocate - would only reduce incentive on the part of providers to keep people well. We need to increase that, not reduce it.
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Articles of Impeachment
Posted 9:30 PM

I like the list, with the exception of the "Establishment of Permanent Bases" clause. Another big thing that's missing is that we went into Iraq *seemingly* for the purposes of inflating global oil prices in cooperation with OPEC.

Now I say "seemingly" since, well, that's what it seems to have been done for. Saddam was leaking oil at half-market value. Opec hated him. He's gone. Oil went through the roof. Bush's oil buddies get to laugh all the way to the bank. And we all get stuck with the bill.

Of course, since Bush & Co.'s buddies are in control of all the resources, he'll just have to lower the prices before the election, finger "new gains" in the war in Iraq as the cause, and then McCain will win... followed by 3 and a half more years of record-high oil.

IMHO, Americans won't be fooled in 2012. By then, a trained dog will be able to win running as a Democrat. Which is unfortunate. Because the socialist nutjob who will be winning in 2012 will make Obama look like a right-winger.

Labels: politics

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Solar Prices going Up
Posted 6:11 AM

With natural gas prices tripling, and oil heading to $200/barrel, you may be thinking of investing in solar power for your home. If you do it yourself, a solar system costs far less than the retail cost of electricity. Most solar industry reports claim that solar "will never" compete with wholesale natural gas electric generation. That's because it doesn't have to. Solar only has to compete with retail. And at 10-cents per KWH, it does.

The time to buy a system is now. Solar prices are also going up with the costs of energy, and a system bought 2 years ago is already worth more (watts per dollar) than a system bought today.

In fact, there's a case to be made that early investment in solar, with the rising costs of energy, will pay for itself twice over whereas late investment will be worth little.
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