Dawn of the Geeks

I recieved an e-mail today about palmwalk.com from someone who contacted the ASU Police about it. Apparently it’s not illegal unless it turns sexual. I know that in Arizona the FBI really deals only with exploitation of children. If the site owner was being sexual about the pictures (which he was slightly with the “fork me” and “shocker” cartoon images) he would be locked up quick in a pound-me-in-the-ass federal prison. The reason for that is that if you want to run a porn site you MUST have prove of age of all the models readily available for all law enforcement. I highly doubt he was able to convince any of the girls to give him their driver’s license so he could make a photocopy for his file. Not all students at ASU are 18 or older and since he can’t prove the age of any of the girls on his site he’d be charged with dozens if not hundreds of counts of “exploitation of a minor” charges. The FBI office is right in town to prosecute.

In Montana it is illegal to publically post pictures of people without their consent. Arizona apparently doesn’t have those types of laws yet. Looking up information on google just turns up people giving cautionary statements. Never anything definite. It really just depends on what state you’re in. What makes the site morally reprehensible is not just that the pictures are being used, but that these girls are being rated, judged. If the girls wanted to be judged they’d post their pictures on hotornot.com. It’s not anybody’s place to force someone to be judged on their looks or any other quality for that matter.

The writer of the e-mail also stated that the police are dealing with the owner of the site. So, they know who he is. If I were law enforcement I’d know who he was too. That was the only reason I couldn’t get his name from the hosting company of the site, I’m just some random guy.

When I called the hosting company the employee was surprised by how much bandwidth was being used by the site. The site currently can’t be accessed. It may be because the alloted bandwidth was used up. Or maybe the cops managed to shame some sense into this bozo and he pulled the site. He was trying to be anonymous and now that he’s found out maybe he just can’t do it anymore.

It’d be nice to get his name and photo to plaster over campus or at least in The State Press. Since the cops know, I’m sure the press could get that information if they really wanted to. We’ll see what happens.

I’ve also managed to get in the top results for “palmwalk.com” on Google so I’ll be sure to keep this site up to date on all the info.

palmwalk.com is a site run by some slimeball snapping pictures at Arizona State University and then posting them to be rated without the consent of those in the picture.

If anyone knows of any specific National, Arizona or Utah laws covering this act please use the contact form and let me know.

Canadian Royalty Trusts

What is a Royalty Trust?

Wikipedia Says

A royalty trust is a type of corporation usually involved in mining. It is taxed according to special regulations, whereby its profits are not taxed at the corporate level provided a certain high percentage (e.g. 90%) of profits are distributed to share holders as dividends. The dividends are then taxed as personal income. This system, similar to real estate investment trusts, effectively avoids the double-taxation of corporate dividends.

Royalty trusts typically own oil or natural gas wells, or the mineral rights of wells. Corporate shares generally trade on the public stock markets. They are a powerful investment tool for people who wish to invest directly in oil or natural gas, but who don’t have the resources or risk-tolerance to buy their own well. Additionally, since trusts often own numerous wells, they represent a convenient way for the average investor to diversify investments across a number of properties.

Royalty trusts often attract investors with their relatively high yields. This makes the shares sensitive to interest rates, as share prices are likely to decline in periods of rising interest rates, and to rise when interest rates fall.

Royalty trusts are found in Canada and the United States. Canadian royalty trusts, called CanRoys, typically trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange, while some of the larger trusts also trade on the New York Stock Exchange. CanRoys usually offer higher yields than U.S. trusts; for non-Canadian investors, this higher yield is somewhat reduced by a foreign tax withholding that is absent in the U.S. trusts.

Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royalty_trust”

What CanRoys are on the US Markets?

Enerplus Resources Fund (ERF)
Pengrowth Energy Trust (PGH)
Petrofund Energy Trust (PTF)
PrimeWest Energy Trust (PWI)
Provident Energy Trust (PVX)

They don’t come cheap though. PVX is currently the lowest cost at nearly $12 a share. It’s history shows strong growth so I think the risk is really low and the potential gain is very high.

Provident Energy Trust is a Canadian company that has it’s hands in many areas of the oil business. Looking at it’s steep upward stock trend and the consistant 10% monthly dividend payout, I decided to spend a bit of cash and buy 11 shares. So that’ll be around $11 a year just from dividends on top of what looks to be a guarenteed inflation of stock value.

I’d really recommend checking them out and considering buying several hundred shares.

Gas prices have finally started to drop a little. Here in Phoenix it’s still over $3.00 a gallon. I remember when milk was more expensive than gas. The blame for this drastic rise in prices was going to be the Labor Day holiday. Then the hurricane hit and now the blame falls on that. More than likely it’s a combination of the holiday, the hurricane knocking out refineries and gas company greed.

Ronald Reagan during his term removed government regulation on gas prices so we’ve really got no recourse. Bill O’Reilly is advocating not buying gas on Sundays. That won’t actually do anything except delay when you empty your wallet to fill up your tank. What people just need to do is drive less and drive more efficiently. Don’t speed, take your time accelerating, make use of cruise control to keep your speed constant which minimizes gas usage when going longer distances. Air conditioning also lowers your miles per gallon.

Of course you could also ride a bike to wherever you’re going. Free excise and cut down on your gas usage.

The alternate server is back up and running. The IP address had changed so it may take a day or two for everyone to be able to check out the ringtones, devcenter and drivers.

I’ve also added a script to the server that will tell me the current IP every hour. This should help avoid unnecessary downtime.

Hurricane Katrina Timeline

Bush called the Governor on the 28th. The day before the hurricane hit. The same day the Mayor ordered an evacuation but failed to actually do anything to move that evacuation forward.

Unfortunatly the BBC’s timeline is horribly weak. It refers to the government but fails to specify which one. There’s the federal, state and city governments all involved. It mentions things and fails to give any real details.

I’ll continue trying to build up this timeline and giving sources to help piece together this mess.

New Orleans mayor orders mandatory evacuation, but Louisiana Gov. Blanco says she will not sign off on decision

Kathleen Babineaux Blanco has completely lost it. Bush called her to tell her to get evacuations under way days ago. She failed to act. Now she’s playing the blame game whining that Bush isn’t doing enough.

Bush was on top of the evacuation idea. Blanco failed to act. Bush has allocated at least 10Bil in federal aid, (now 40Bil I think) to New Orleans. Blanco bitches that it wasn’t fast enough. Meanwhile she’s still dragging her feet getting people out of there. Bush sends 12,000 troops, Blanco wants 40,000.

The state government (Blanco) has also blocked the Red Cross and the US Government from sending direct aid to various parts of New Orleans including the Super Dome where there were huge criminal problems and a big need of aid.

She’s pathetic. The Mayor of New Orleans is a man and he’s got his head on straight. Blanco, a woman is having power trip at the expense of human lives. I have nothing against women in office. What I have against Blanco is her sexist attitude that prevents her from doing the rights things simply because men are telling her what to do. She’d rather let thousands die than listen to a man. Women in office, fine. Stupid bitches that can’t stand listening to men simply because they’re men, not okay.

For that I hope she loses her job in disgrace.

It’s one thing for Democrats to hate GW. It’s another thing when a person in a position of power allows their hatred to lead to the deaths of thousands.

The alternate server is down again. This means that the ringtones, devcenter, homebrew and drivers are unavailable at this time. They should be back up later this evening.

Red Cross Gets Squatter’s Number

Acting on an emergency request from the American Red Cross, the FCC on Friday handed over control of the toll-free number 1-800-RED-CROSS to the nonprofit group, unceremoniously plucking it from the hands of corporate digit-squatters who’d been hoping for a six-figure payday.

“They weren’t going to give it to us, and they were going to charge us ridiculous amounts of money to use it,” says Chuck Connor, senior vice president of communication and marketing for the American Red Cross. “They were talking about the kinds of money that changed hands for 1-800-FLOWERS, which is ridiculous.”

…

But would-be contributors will experience something more puzzling if they try to reach the organization through the most obvious, though wrong, phone number. Calls from Wired News to 1-800-RED-CROSS (1-800-733-2767) were answered Tuesday by a cheery male voice announcing, “Thank you for calling 800-Ideas.com Inc. of San Diego, California. We offer telecommunications service to the business community.”

The upbeat recording refers callers to the company’s main number, then hangs up.

According to Connor, “somebody was asleep at the switch” at the Red Cross when vanity 800 numbers became available decades ago, allowing the number to fall into the hands of squatters.

But Steve Parker, chairman of 800-Ideas.com, claims he acquired the phone number after founding a company called Red Arms, which by pure coincidence happens to share the same alphanumeric phone-pad translation as the Red Cross.

When he realized the situation, he began charging local Red Cross chapters a small per-minute fee to get the calls originating from their nearby calling area, he says.

My my my, what a co-winky-dink. A quick search on Google turns up nothing about the company “Red Arms”