They sold out of Linux-based machines and declared the experiment a failure? Something stinks here … I know that my local Ford dealer would be only too happy to sell out of any model. Shoot … he’d be happy to sell out his stock of used Chevy’s!

Middle America Rejects Wal-Mart Linux Experiment | Epicenter from Wired.com

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As of last week, I would have responded that ‘predatory lending’ had been met with ‘predatory borrowing’ and, to a lesser extent, I still might today. But the following statistics have me questioning just how much (of what) went on. This is beginning to look like a sophisticated variation of ‘redlining’.

Some community banks believe there’s a racial component to the sub prime mortgage crisis, an idea supported by a Federal Reserve Study that found 55 percent of African Americans, compared to 17 percent of whites, were steered to subprime mortgages, even when they were qualified for lower interest rates. –

cbs13.com – The Role Of Race In The United States Mortgage Mess

Numbers CAN lie, so I am not entirely sold on that quote. For instance, is it saying that 55% of all African American loan applicants were steered toward the sub-prime loans or is it saying that 55% of those who were wrongly steered toward sub-prime loans were African Americans? That is a much smaller number. Moreover, 55% + 17% = 72% and that leaves 28% hanging … who are they? Considering the rise in home ownership among Latinos and Middle-Easterners, I can guess.

Moreover, there are a number of other factors not weighed in that number, such as the location of the real-estate. While the borrower may be qualified for a better loan, the property itself might not justify that. I don’t know that this was the case, but I am pointing out that the numbers can’t be read quite so simply.

I’d like to see some of the raw numbers. Does anyone have a link they would care to share on this?

cbs13.com – The Role Of Race In The United States Mortgage Mess

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Bill Gates might have to turn this down, but the rest of us would probably jump at the chance.

Mason, over on "SmallFuel Marketing Blog" offers up useful marketing information for small business owners.  Since I do accounting for small businesses and operate my own as well, I thought you might be interested in what he has to say. Don’t stop with this article … he offers up insight on gaining new customers and retaining existing ones, too. The information is not earth-shaking … think of it more as a series of gentle reminders to keep doing what you already know to do and to add to them as you go.

How I Gave Away 15 Minutes and Made $5700 | SmallFuel Marketing Blog

I normally wouldn’t make any sort of mention of porn … not even in jest … but this site uses it as just one example of the sort of information that might reside on your computer that you probably want to keep out of the hands of others. All of the techniques have a number of other uses.

For instance, I use TrueCrypt to securely store client accounting files in an encrypted directory and Eraser to delete other files existing outside the encrypted directory. This muddies the waters about the boundaries of the encrypted directory(ies). I do this so that I won’t get in legal hot water from my clients if the computer itself should be stolen. As long as I have physical custody of the (separately encrypted) USB drive and access to a fresh copy of TrueCrypt, the client data is safe and recoverable. If the USB drive is also stolen, I can still assure the client that no one can read the files. Not in this life, anyways … and maybe not in the next, either.

You can use any sort of file as the source of the encryption seed … even those .jpg files from the darker corners of the internet or those torrent download audio files that you’d just as soon no one knew you had. You might also take the output from a random number generator to use as a keyfile. Just copy and paste from the website to a text file. Save the text file using any name and any extension (Jillian_in_black.png, for instance or “TheWall_trk01.wav” or “2008q3.xls”) and tell TrueCrypt to use the file as a keyfile when encrypting or decrypting. Or, make a file like this as ‘bait’ and use a REAL photo, audio or ‘whatever’ file for the encryption seed.

Then, too, there is the issue of personal privacy. For several years now, technology has outstripped legislation so that there really IS no reasonable assurance of privacy anywhere. It is up to the citizen / end user to enforce their claim on privacy or lose it to ‘un-named others’. Just because I have ‘nothing to hide’ doesn’t mean that others get to gawk at it.

So, if you are interested in preserving your (US) constitutional rights to privacy, get on over to http://virtualhosting.com/blog and give them a thorough read. Just don’t tell ‘em that I sent ya, okay?