The cost of gasoline in the US and IPac at Daniel Spisak on Technology

First we’ll start off with something that is useful for all of you and then follow it up with something that will only be useful if you all support it.

So what is something everyone here in SoCal can use? Information about gas prices but of course! There is an awesome site at GasBuddy.com that has some good tools for discovering what the price trends over time for gas as well as oil are as well as presenting a map of gas prices by state, county, zip code, city and more. Check it out and maybe you can help save yourself some money next time at the pump.

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

Next up is something that I feel has been long due in our country. Right now most of you probably see news stories about how the MPAA or the RIAA are trying to impose some new wonderful draconian DRM, or sue the world into not stealing music, or trying to make that HDTV you bought last year not show your HD content at HD resolution because its not protected by HDCP or some such garbage. Basically, the RIAA and MPAA and certain members of Congress like that asshole Orin Hatch or the Honorable Congressional Asshole of the Month, Lamar Smith (more on him later)are waging a war against your rights to the ability to have Fair Use rights on media you lawfully purchased. In the process of fighting this fight you have large well funded political action committes who are funneling dollars into various members of the House and Senate in order to get new stricter copyright laws and harsher punishments enacted. On our side we have the likes of the EFF and the CATo Institute, but these are non-profit organizations and as such cant funnel money directly to Congresscritters they want to support. Enter IPac to solve this long unanswered need! IPac is a political action committee that stands for:

“We believe that technological innovation and individual creativity are vital to the future of this country. We believe that a prosperous and democratic society depends on freedom for all individuals to pursue scientific invention and artistic expression. Unfortunately, new, more draconian copyright and patent laws threaten to stifle these freedoms and restrict public participation in science, art, and political discourse.”

I believe that supporting IPac is the best way that we as citizens can start to take the fight against our rights back to our elected Representatives and I highly suggest and urge all of you to check IPac out and to contribute to their cause if you feel strongly about these issues.

http://ipaction.org/index.html

Be sure to check out IPac’s blog regularly. Currently its going over how Congressmen that were sent iPod’s as campaign contributions were sent back by some and attempting to understand how Senators like John Kerry or Conrad Burns would decline an iPod but gladly take thousands of dollars in donations from Hollywood cartels!

http://ipaction.org/blog/
Lastly we have an article about how to hack the apperance of the Login window on Mac OS X. Shows how to customize it to your hearts content. I imagine that doing these hacks might go away after doing a point upgrade of OS X but I dont know from firsthand experience as of yet so YMMV.

http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/hack-the-login-window/

About the Author

Daniel Spisak was born from the fiery depths of fusion and now roams the pale blue dot known as Earth. I obtained my bachelors degree in Computer Science from UC Irvine at the end of 2007.

I am also involved in technology & security consulting firms as well as being a freelance technology writer. I also contribute to Jerry Pournelle's website and Chaos Manor Reviews. Additionally I am also a freelance photographer as well and you can find my photos either on my own personal gallery or up at my Flickr account or on Zivity.

This blog is one of the main locations where I do my writing, which is then automatically sent to my LiveJournal, VOX, and MySpace accounts. I can also be found on a variety of social networking and microblogging sites like Pownce, Twitter, Brightkite, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

If your viewing this site with Internet Explorer it may not look correct because IE is horrible about following W3C web standards properly or consistently. I suggest you try browsing the Internet with Firefox. It is much better and not as vulnerable to security flaws as IE can be.

2 Responses to “The cost of gasoline in the US and IPac”

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1 brownout Apr 28th, 2006 at 3:21 pm

You mean all I have to do is drive to Arizona and back (burning at least one tank in the process) and I can save 10 cents per gallon? Sign me up!
2 Daniel Spisak Apr 28th, 2006 at 4:14 pm

As you can see from the image I attached to the post you can drill down a lot father then what I have showing, so it is possible to save between 10-20 cents if you look closer. Plus the website can help you find the cheapest gas stations near you too. According to its listings, the most expensive gas in OC is 3.59 a gallon whereas the cheapest is 3.01 a gallon so its not totally useless.