politics

working at ipod city for apple

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back in mid june, nick webster wrote an investigative piece on the living conditions of apple contract workers in china. today, after a thorough investigation, apple answered the article, and many of the conditions described by the journalist were true. the chinese manufacturing facilty employs some 200,000 folks who only half make more than the local minimum wage, and around 25% of the time works more than six days straight without breaks.

read the apple report to find out more on who makes the products we use every day.

bill gates falls on his sword?

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someone could expound that the departure of bill gates from microsoft is just part of the natural business cycle. when john warnock and charles geschke left adobe systems, it could have been a ending point to photoshop, illustrator, and postcript, but the transition team was successful and i know microsoft will drive toward its inevitable end.

microsoft has it’s foothold, some say a monopoly on the desktop, server, and database industries. microsoft is moving rapidly into the storage arena, and trying to grab the digital living room. bill gates is just one guy, but he was the headliner for microsoft making presentations at comdex, CES, RSA, and winHEC. a portion of the microsoft initiatives have broken, but other actions have become dominant like windows OS, and the office suite. microsoft powerpoint is synonymous with presentation. microsoft word and .doc is equivalent to digital documents.

bill gates is not leaving due to windows flaws, windows viruses, windows spyware, or delayed windows vista. he truly wants to spend his billions on making a dent in world health and education. will bill gates become the next andrew carnegie? we’ll see.

fixed pricing

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every few years a new must have service appears in the marketplace that is not a one time purchase but a reoccurring price. before one leaves their home, the bills come in for all these services. for example:

$ 9.95/month napster music
$24.99/month sirius satellite radio
$24.99/month brinks home security monitoring
$12.95/month TiVo
$39.99/month mobile phone service
$16.95/month OnStar in-vehicle system

so these basic services will set you back around $130 a month, and that still does not include other utilities (gas, electric, water, and phone), automobile services, magazines and newspapers, and cable/satellite television. will 2006 finally bring in the monthly computer rental, where over a large broadband pipe, you get to use a computer with many applications, but administer nothing?

8 year legacy

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it was after labor day 2004, that the presidential campaign began in ernest. people tuned in to hear the candidates espouse their positions on north korea, iraq, climate change, nuclear proliferation, and other global issues. now, a year later, we have the same tired president of five years ago.

i wonder if history will look back on this era and highlight the major foci of this generation. first we had 9/11, followed by the iraq occupation, followed by abu ghraib, and today katrina. this is my country’s legacy and heritage that will most likely outlive us all.

los angeles power problems

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someone shorted out the city of los angeles (LA). millions of customers of the LA department of water and power lost power at 12:30 PM on 12 september 2005, and half the city continued to be electricity free for most of the afternoon. it was a massive power surge that took out the city of los angeles.

this is a cold test of the vulnerability of LA to any type of attack. in a scenario of radiological or biological strike, a blackout event draws people out of their homes and business into the street to find out what happened. in a few short minutes the toxic agent is released, and since a bulk of the community is outdoors, gets an exposure. fortunately, it was not an attack, but shear incompetence. still, it is a terrible test that LADWP failed miserably, that a crossed wire could cripple a city for over three hours, and for some ten hours!

national tragedy

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the worse case scenario sometimes happens. in any disaster plan, always the question has to be asked: not that is the least likely outcome or least costly outcome, but what will hurt the most and how can we prepare for complete tragedy? the situation in the gulf coast region of the USA is a national scar and appalling.

in a recent press stop, while the president toured the area, the crude oil pipelines and mississippi river shipping lanes are 80% up and running, while people die of dehydration and starvation in the streets of new orleans. where is the berlin air drop? i see shadows of the fall of Bagdad, when the oil ministry was protected, while looters raided the city and burned it down.

now new orleans is baghdad! where was the planning for the worst case, that is now reality?

end of privacy

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we have no place to hide. the company (VNU) that owns nielson media research and other information gathering systems last month bought IMS health for 7 billion dollars.

IMS health collect data from pharmacies on what drugs people order and consume. now a more complete profile of buying trends will be developed to track your habits. this information will be supplied to the government and to the highest bidder. we are living in a “total information awareness” world. do we like it?

http://www.eff.org/Privacy/TIA/
http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/

election 2002

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the election in los angeles is over. the democrats keep the seats in state government, and the schools get their money to build classrooms. the los angeles county museum gets its money to destroy the LACMA campus, and install a new vision that is earthquake resistant. in 2014, the new LACMA will rise from the rubble, and a new day will be born. in the national side president bush gets control of both the senate and the house, hopefully to keep the USA in peace, but it seems that his war advisors want destruction.

have you followed the military buildup in western asia? do you want a summary? the USA, us, the military has established a war machine at diego garcia in the indian ocean, along with a massive base in qatar. last week several aircraft carriers, including the battle group USS constellation, left their bases in san diego, and the largest transport vessels, including the USNS bellatrix, also left fully loaded from military sealift command. drone aircraft are murdering terrorist suspects. senators are dying in plane crashes. this war on terrorist is going full bore, with the murder of russian citizens in moscow, a bombing in indonesia, murder of diplomats in lebanon, and now bush has control of congress. messiah come!

mike bonin outreach

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in the last five days i’ve put out some leads to make contact in the offline world. i’ve written letters to mike bonin, deputy chief of staff of the sixth council distict, to see if he needs help improving citizen outreach on the city of los angeles. i’ve written mike horton of the los angeles final cut pro user group to see if you needs a presenter on troubleshooting mac OS X, so final cut and DVD studio pro can run, and lastly i’ve written the DVDA to work with their website and update since the july 2002 meeting. i have lots of skills that have matured enough to make a dent in the bricks and mortar world. i’ll keep you abreast of what the outcomes are.