Why are gas prices at the pump not directly correlated to crude oil prices?

3 months
by in Economics

While the overall trend in the graphs seems correlated, the contrast lies in the details. If you look closely, the disparities will stand out. You will notice that the prices are not bound only to supply, demand, and the price of crude oil. Crude does not entirely affect the price at the pump most of the time. Below are a few factors that interfere with that relation:

Commodity Trading: In the stock market, you have people that trade futures for commodities like oil, gold, and sugar. These future stock traders buy contracts from the commodity seller for the price that they anticipate the commodity will sell for in the future. When traders do that, they are moving the price for the gas in directions, sometimes utterly unrelated to the market oil price, because they are creating a price bubble based on pure speculations.

Taxes, Tariffs, and sanctions: While the price of oil might be low, imposing a tariff on a specific country can cause a price jump for the importing country consumers, although the oil price might be low worldwide. Another example of high prices for gas at the pump that doesn’t relate to the oil spot price can be specific taxed locations. As of July 2019, California, for example, charges $0.55 per gallon as a gas tax and an additional 23.7 percent sales tax, while Mississippi charged a $0.18 gas tax per gallon and a 9.8 percent sales tax (Stebbins, 2019). Sanctions are also another example of affecting prices at the pump. At the same time, the United States imposed sanctions on Iranian oil in 2018-2019 did not benefit the USA on the pump, the European Union benefited greatly from the U.S. sanctions by buying cheap oil from Iran.

Scarcity and Abundance: When it comes to the Oil price, there are additional factors to take into consideration. Oil price reached an all-time high of $165.20 in 2008, world oil reserves were increased year over year but would not reflect the price of $20.19 an all-time low in 2020 (Bloomberg, 2020). Since the reserves did not increase significantly and the demand is higher because the world population is increasing every year, add to that the increase in appetite for the developing nations for oil consumption due to economic expansion and growth (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2020). The question becomes, how do abundancy and scarcity come into play in the oil situation? Since the amount of oil we have on the planet is not increasing and we don’t have discoveries of new oil fields, we conclude that the scarcity of a commodity such as oil is dependent on the other factors. Factors like politics, wars, and production come into play; therefore, in this situation, oil is abundant but can be scarce depending on several factors (Macrotrends, n.d.).

Government Regulations: Take a regulation like tax breaks for electric vehicles. This regulation can help ease the consumption of gas at the pump. This government regulation can interfere with the price of the gas relative to the price of crude oil.

Gas Additives: In the USA, gas additives can severely affect the price of gas. The number of additives can hide the initial cost of oil. For example, ethanol additives account for about 10-15% of the gas price in the U.S. (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2019). Although this additive is incredibly cheap in the USA because it is extracted from corn, a local produce, it can be expensive somewhere else.

Currency Valuation: While oil prices might drop, a country that has shaky finances with its national currency can have its citizens end up paying more for gas at the pump, especially if the country is an oil importer (Farley, 2019).

Refining costs, retail markup, and transportation expenses: If you take Alaska as an example, While Alaska has the lowest gas tax price, the lowest sales tax across the USA, it has the 4th highest gas price. This is due to the fact that Alaska is so remote and has limited refineries (Minemyer, 2018). The increased need for transport in remote and harsh conditions makes the retail markup high compared to other states (Minemyer, 2018).

As we can notice, several factors affect the price of gas from the time it is crude oil to the time it reaches the pump. Economic, social, technological, and trade factors all come into play to regulate the price of this commodity that has made some countries flourish, and others get torn apart.

Reference

Stebbins, S. (2019, February 5). How much gas tax adds to cost of filling up your car in every state. Retrieved April 20, 2020, from https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/02/05/gas-tax-state-what-costs-fill-up-your-car-across-country/38908491/

Minemyer, D. (2018, December 30). Why gas prices are so high in the Last Frontier. Retrieved April 19, 2020, from https://www.ktuu.com/content/news/Remembering-why-gas-prices-are-so-high-in-the-Last-Frontier-503690871.html

Bloomberg. (n.d.). Crude Oil & Natural Gas Prices. Retrieved April 13, 2020, from https://www.bloomberg.com/energy

U.S. Energy Information Administration. (n.d.). World Crude Oil Reserves by Year. Retrieved April 13, 2020, from https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?product=oil&graph=reserves

Macrotrends. (n.d.). Crude Oil Prices – 70 Year Historical Chart. Retrieved April 13, 2020, from https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart

U.S. Energy Information Administration – EIA – Independent Statistics and Analysis. (2019, May 14). Retrieved April 20, 2020, from https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=27&t=4

Farley, A. (2019, August 12). Understanding the Correlation of Oil and Currency. Retrieved April 20, 2020, from https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/092415/oil-currencies-understanding-their-correlation.asp

The most important trait for a Software Engineer

3 months
by in Software Engineering

When you are dealing with other people in life, you need to treat them how you expect to be treated. Projecting a positive attitude will most of the time reflect it back at you. However, the world can present you challenges, and you have to handle them graciously, especially if you’re a team leader (Carpenter, Bauer, & Erdogan, 2010).

As a software engineer, you build the roadmap for other software developers to follow when constructing a software product. While a balanced combination of all five personality traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism is essential (2MinutePsychology, 2013), it is smart to adjust the dimension to suit based on the situation.

An essential personality trait as a software engineer would be openness. Being open with your team covers most of the spectrum. When you are engineering software, most of the time, you don’t have the complete picture instantly. On the one hand, this situation would require you to be open to receiving ideas, criticism, and suggestions. On the other hand, you will need to be transparent with your team about problems, evaluation, and cost (Iqbal, Aldaihani, Shah, 2019). Any software that does not establish this two-way route in openness will face many hurdles when dealing with his developers. While a software engineer might see the bigger picture, the developer sees the details and is the first in the line of offense (Iqbal, Aldaihani, Shah, 2019). Therefore, feedback from and to your developers is critical.

Openness can also streamline motivation, innovation, and trust. When you are honest, the team of developers wants to help you achieve the final goal because the benefits are clear on the table to everyone. Openness can also be a pillar for innovation, which is at the center of programming. The power of openness to achieve imagination and interest for your team can catalyze to produce the best product (Carpenter, Bauer, & Erdogan, 2010).

A smart team leader generally or a software engineer specifically can be at the center of innovation for their firm (Iqbal, Aldaihani, Shah, 2019). Through a routine practice of openness, the daily tasks at hand can make the workplace an enjoyable and pleasant bond based on trust and mutual respect.

Reference

Carpenter, M., Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2010). Management Principles, v. 1.1. https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/management-principles-v1.1/index.html.

2MinutePsychology. (2013, September 16). The big five personality model [Video]. YouTube.

Waude, A. (2017, May 8). Five-Factor Model Of Personality. Retrieved April 19, 2020, from https://www.psychologistworld.com/personality/five-factor-model-big-five-personality#references

Iqbal, A., Aldaihani, A., Shah, A. (2019, October 12) International Journal of Innovative Technology and Exploring Engineering ISSN: 2278-3075, Volume-8 Issue-(IJITEE) Retrieved April 19, 2020, from https://www.ijitee.org/wp-content/uploads/papers/v8i12/J97550881019.pdf

Greek Polis

The Greek Poleis

0
11 months
by in History

Archaic Greece was the period that witnessed the rise of the polis states. Archaic Greece thrived during the era around 800-480 BC (Brand, n.d.). The founding of these city-states was a breakthrough for human civilization. A study of all the occurrences of the word polis in the Archaic and Classical sources showed that there are some 11,000 which shows the importance and relevance of this new way of life (Hansen, 2006). This period brought people into a well-structured community and away from poverty living in small rural villages as nomadic groups.  

A new form of Government: During Greek dark ages people lived scattered in small farming villages (History.com Editors, 2010). The Archaic period brought two revolutionary forms of government, the Oligarchy in Sparta and the Democracy in Athens. Sparta was predominantly an Oligarchy where the military men in a democratic vote appointed the Ephors to supervise the kings and legislative branch of the government. Sparta had a complicated form of government that consisted of predominantly Oligarchy, Democracy, Monarchy and Tyranny (Hornblower, 2019). 

On the other hand, Athenian democracy was separated into three parts: The Assembly, The Council, and The Courts. Athens was the first city-state to have a proper and effective form of democracy. It was very straight forward, mostly every Athenian citizen had a vote, the majority ruled (Brand, n.d.). There was abuse by wealthy aristocrats and noblemen but Athenian democracy was far from perfect with characteristics like slavery, gender bias, and control by rich aristocrats. 

Community-based life: The community became more important than any individual. The loyalty to a polis central government was cherished as a central value of life. The new world they lived in within the city-state was regarded as a form of life-improving factor. In Sparta it is evident with practices like the Syssitia where Spartan men were eligible to join exclusive dining, men competed ferociously to get into a group (Brand, n.d.). 

The people make up the polis: In contradiction with any prior civilization in Archaic Greece, the people were more important than temples, structures, and stones. People were the essence of the existence of the polis. This is evident during the evacuation of Athens “Themistocles organized the naval resistance and the evacuation of the city of Athens itself” (Brand, n.d.) it showed that Athens itself was not important as a polis that can be rebuilt but rather the people that lived in it. 

Economic powerhouse: The polis city-state was an economic powerhouse promoting a marketplace for trade and agriculture (Hansen, 2006). The olive oil and pottery industries were booming and served as an export market to pay for the large amounts of grain that were used to feed the Athenian growing population (Brand, n.d.). Democratic Athens attracted immigrants that enriched the city intellectually and in trade. “They worked as merchants, craftsmen and in other lucrative trades such as philosophers who served as private tutors to the sons of wealthy Athenians” (Brand, n.d.). 

In conclusion, Greece during the Archaic period did not always have the same shape and size polis. Poleis changed over time in shape, size, and location. Governance was also another aspect that had a progressive momentum at times and a controlled Monarchy in others (Brand, n.d.). Wars internally among Greeks and with external powers like the Persians were certainly the most important factor that shaped the change in the structure and governance of the city-state. 

Reference: 

Brand, P. J. (n.d.). Athens & Sparta: Democracy vs. Dictatorship [PDF]. 

History.com Editors. (2010, March 05). Ancient Greece. Retrieved June 23, 2019, from https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/ancient-greece  

Hornblower, S. (2019, June 20). Ancient Greek civilization. Retrieved June 23, 2019, from https://www.britannica.com/place/ancient-Greece  

Hansen, M. H. (2006). Polis: An introduction to the ancient Greek city-state. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com  

Searching through all columns in datagridview

0
10 years
by in Visual Basic.Net

Assuming you are searching for the name John, the following procedure will search all existing columns regardless

Dim x As Integer = 0
 While x < DataGridView1.Rows.Count
 Dim y As Integer = 0
 While y < DataGridView1.Rows(x).Cells.Count
 Dim c As DataGridViewCell = DataGridView1.Rows(x).Cells(y)
 If Not c.Value Is DBNull.Value Or Nothing Then
 If CType(c.Value, String) = "John" Then
 MessageBox.Show("Found!")
 End If
 End If
 System.Math.Min(System.Threading.Interlocked.Increment(y), y - 1)
 End While
 System.Math.Min(System.Threading.Interlocked.Increment(x), x - 1)
 End While
 MessageBox.Show("Search complete!")
 End Sub

Filtering a datagridview

0
10 years
by in Visual Basic.Net

assuming you have a datagridview that has data in it.

you want to avoid recalling sql from the database & just want to filter the datagrid.

you can do the following, What you need (1 datagridview (data), 1 button (search), 1 textbox (string to search), 1 variable to precise the criteria your searching for)

Dim findcrit as string
Dim dt As DataTable = Ds_Pos.Employees
 Dim dv As New DataView(dt)
 
 Dim _RowFilter As String = ""
 Dim _FieldType = dt.Columns(findcrit).DataType.ToString
 
 Select Case _FieldType
 Case "System.Int32"
 _RowFilter = "convert(" & findcrit & ", 'System.String') like '" & Me.TextBox1.Text & "'"
 Case "System.Int64"
 _RowFilter = "convert(" & findcrit & ", 'System.String') like '" & Me.TextBox1.Text & "'"
 Case "System.Double"
 _RowFilter = "convert(" & findcrit & ", 'System.String') like '" & Me.TextBox1.Text & "'"
 Case "System.String"
 _RowFilter = findcrit & " like '" & TextBox1.Text & "*'"
 End Select
 dv.RowFilter = _RowFilter
 EmployeesDataGridView.DataSource = dv

The cases are to cast the type of variable from any type to string because you can only use the method on string data types.

the idea is to move the content to a data table then filter then return it back to the datatable.

using c# and vb in the same web project

0
10 years
by in Visual Basic.Net, Visual C#

Can you have both c# and visual basic in the same web site project?

Definitely! It simply wouldn’t make sense from a new project standpoint, code reviews, coding standards, continuity, project maintenance, etc.

however, people still want it.  to-date i never really tried (and that’s been my answer).  i was presented with a usable scenario of why you may need (not want, need) to do this, so i finally tried it.  the answer: yes…kinda…sometimes.

let’s assume we have a web site structure like this:

we have the App_Code folder and a .cs and a .vb file in the same projects (separated into sub-folders).  note that the project sees them as folders (yellow folder icon) in the special folder.  each class within there basically has a “hello world” function only, like this in the c# file:



public string SayHelloCS()
    {
      return "Hello from CS";
  }


and the visual basic file has a similar function emitting "Hello from VB."


now, if you run default.aspx in this structure, this is what you will see:




The files ‘/WebSite5/App_Code/VBCode/Class2.vb’ and ‘/WebSite5/App_Code/CSCode/Class1.cs’ use a different language, which is not allowed since they need to be compiled together.


interesting?  probably not, but it makes sense…so how do we overcome.  we use a configuration option called .  here’s what we need to add to our <compilation> node in our web.config:




<compilation debug="false">
          <codeSubDirectories>
            <add directoryName="VBCode"/>
            <add directoryName="CSCode"/>
          </codeSubDirectories>
       </compilation>


once we add those codeSubDirectory nodes, let’s “look” at what the project structure looks like now:


as you can see the code folders are now “special” in the eyes of visual studio.  now if we browse default.aspx we will see:


Hello world from CS. Hello world from VB



       


              

                           

       
    


    
  

  

  
                                  
  
  


    


       
       
Custom error pages using .htaccess


              0
       
       


         
10 years


         


           
            by            

           in Php/Mysql         

       



       

         
We’ve all seen the dreaded Error 404 message – the result of broken  links and mistyped URLs. You’ve probably been on some websites where the  error pages are customised with their own logo and message, and I’m  sure you’ll agree that it looks far more professional than the standard  one.


In this article we’ll show you how to use Apache’s .htaccess  file to make your own customised error 404 pages.


Create a new text file on your computer, and call it “htaccess.txt”.  Enter the following lines:


<Files .htaccess>

order allow,deny

deny from all

</Files>




Now you need to create the 404 page. Make a new web page called  “error404.htm” and enter “This is my 404 page”. Enter it a few dozen  times, as Internet Explorer won’t display it unless the file is over 512  bytes.


Once it’s done, login to your webspace with your FTP client,  and create a new folder called “errordocs”. Upload the file  “error404.htm” to this directory. Upload “htaccess.txt” to the root of  your webspace and rename it to “.htaccess” — there’s no .txt at the end,  no name in front, just “.htaccess”. If the file seems to vanish don’t  worry, some FTP clients don’t display it — the file’s still there.




ErrorDocument 404 /errordocs/error404.htm


The first part stops people viewing your .htaccess file. The  second part tells Apache to redirect any 404 errors to the file  “error404.htm”.

       


       
    


    
  

  

  
                                  
  
  


    


       
       
You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page” after WordPress upgrade


              1
       
       


         
10 years


         


           
            by            

           in Php/Mysql         

       



       

         
If you’ve done a wordpress upgrade which included either copying  another wp database or changing the current one’s table prefix (as well  as changing the $table_prefix PHP variable in your config file,) you  will most likely be met with this warning when you try to log in:


You do not have sufficient permissions to access this  page.


The reason for this is that everything in wordpress that accesses  info in the db does so from PHP using the $table_prefix variable, and  when you first installed your blog, a couple of options are set in the  database that include that value, which makes it not really so dynamic!  😉


After rooting through my db, I found 5 or 6 values that still had the  old table prefix in – mostly in the `usermeta` table, but also one in  the `options` table. To make sure I got them all, I ran these simple SQL  statements in phpMyAdmin to update all the values:


_usermeta table and _options table

       


              

                                

       
    


    
  

  

  
                                  
  
  


    


       
       
Split Command Sample Code (VB NET)


              0
       
       


         
10 years


         


           
            by            

           in Visual Basic.Net         

       



       

         
Preparations : 1 Textbox and 1 Button




Code :


Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
 
    Dim strInput As Array 'make array variable
 
    Dim strResult1 As String 'text variable
 
    Dim strResult2 As String 'another text variable
 
    Try
 
    strInput = Split(TextBox1.Text, " ")
 
    'split the textbox if there is space.
 
    'you can also use chr(32) to replace " "
 
    strResult1 = strInput(0) 'split first text
 
    strResult2 = strInput(1) 'split second text
 
    MsgBox(strResult1 + strResult2)
 
    'combine first and second text with no space
 
    Catch ex As Exception
 
    End Try
 
    End Sub


Test the code, type space  character between 2 words :




What we have done here?


Explanation :


    

  1. We have 2 words with a space  character (“jenni” and “fer”)
    2. 

  2. We split those words using “Split”  command into array, the process is identified with space character, so  we had 2 lines.
    3. 

  3. We combine those words back together in one  line, but this time with no space character in it.
    4. 


       


              

                  

       
    


    
  

  

  
                                  
  
  


    


       
       
Getting IP Address (VB NET 2008)


              0
       
       


         
10 years


         


           
            by            

           in Visual Basic.Net         

       



       

         
Note: if  you’re not a beginner and just want to look for the code, you may skip  these 1-6 steps and go straight to the sample code.


1) Let’s start with new project “Windows forms  application”






2) Put one TextBox and a Button in the Form






3) Add reference to our project by clicking :  Project –> Add Reference






4) Scroll down and select  “System.Net” as our  reference. Click OK to proceed.






5) Open the Coding Window or you can just simply  double click on the Button1, or you can also use F7 for shortcut.






6) Type “Imports System.Net” in General as shown  in the picture below






7) Now the code part, on your Button1_Click  event add this code as shown in the picture below




8) Run your program or press F5

       


              

                 

       
    


    
  

  

  
          
                    

            

            
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