Why Star Trek (Film 2009) is Science Fiction

Because in circa 2243 Nokia still exists as a company/brand.

Ripkoff Stories

Here is the latest from Ripkoff Stories.

ChiCom Censors As Just Another Form of Executive Meddling

Read an interesting article in Foreign Policy about a journalist and her censor, Me and My Censor. I have read many other stories, historical and fictional, of censorship in the past, Newspeak and Stalinist airbrushing being the most notable. This story show something else, it makes scary ChiCom censorship as something no worse than Executive Meddling, see TV Tropes, which is pretty bad itself.

However we before start having positive feelings for soft and cuddly commies is that there worse things that resistance to executive meddling can cause such as unemployment/underemployment. Communists on the other hand play hard ball in very hard and nasty ways. See an earlier post at this blog, Death of a Communist Hitman 40 Years Ago. Check out this talk by a KGB infiltrator, Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press, 1984 - Complete.We need to remember that Commies are evil, and if they are not they are stupid, check out Odd Definition of Loyalty / Treason Among America's "Civil Rights Community" which explores Paul Robeson's moral blindness.

The Perils of Auto-Transcribing

After looking at some puzzles at the Wall Street Journal I clicked on the discussion above, Why Buffett Is Betting Big on Housing. The man above is talking about the housing market and made reference to [the] Case-Schiller [index] instead that got transcribed into Kaye Scholer. Kaye Scholer seems like weird stretch of a personal name until wiki revealed that they are a high level law firm. The problem seems to be that incomplete references that are understood by humans can confuse programs by the lack of  small words like [the] and [index].

Workforce Dumping - Update

There is a move by the Canadian government and business interests to admit 700,000 people in one year to clear the immigration backlog. In a move to support this action there have been a number stories sprinkled throughout the media about worthy small business that have trouble recruiting enough people. There was a story last night of a truck manufacturer and its trouble recruiting welders. Today in the Globe and Mail Jeffery Simpson had a snarky column about how Canadian employers have to recruit aboard because locals are unreliable. In this Simpson gave the example of Stanfield, Underwear makers, and how it has trouble recruiting locals (id est Canadians) because they (a) can't work (b) won't work (c) work badly.

My answer to these champions of free enterprise is pay more money. People are willing to do more for union wages (living) than for a few bucks above minimum. For the sake of saving $5 bucks a hour our champions of industry want more people in the country.

In Alberta there is an example of the difference over time between high quality, high wage, low turnover, jobs with low quality, low wage, high turnover, jobs. A couple decades ago when meat packing plants were primarily in cities there was a long strike at Gainers against Peter Pocklington. Pocklington wanted to reduce the wages at Gainers, a union shop, to a couple of dollars above minimum wage. Now the biggest Albertan packing plant is in Brooks. The wages there are $10/hr versus $20/hr twenty years ago at Gainers. After the plant was established it quickly ran out of people who would work at slaughterhouse for $10/hr. So the company turned to mass immigration.

In the NY Times there is a story of illegal immigrants that have been hired by contractors to clean up New Orleans. The locals are very angry with this development. The question is why would government contractors would feel they are free to hire illegals. Because in America immigration policy is aimed at maximizing are creating a large pool of insecure workers. Otherwise their illegal immigration problem would disappear if the crime of immigration violation would apply equally to employers as with the employees.

Mass immigration is crutch for bad employees. Productivity improvements occurs when more value added is created for each additional input. Attempting to get discounts on labour, raw material and energy is just way of getting productivity increases on the cheap. Technological improvements are more long lasting than any slight temporary saving. Also the business may be saving money through negative externalities as its costs are borne by the wider public.

Note

National contractors in New Orleans preferring to hire illegal immigrants over locals, In Louisiana, Worker Influx Causes Ill Will

I can't link to the Jeffery Simpson oped. The Globe and Mail's website has gotten worse. They have put more and more of their content behind a paid registration screen.

Update: November 6, 2005
Here is a recent story, link in cutout limbo, from the wire service AP about the abuse of illegal workers. A number were employed by subcontractors of a subsidiary of Haliburton. The entire crew were stiffed out of their pay. These "white collar" crimes are fraud, theft, and conspiracy. The local authorities should lay these and RICO charges all the way up the chain from subcontractor to Haliburton. The local law enforcement should actually lay charges and enforce laws but the practice of condoning immigration offenses by employers in the US has become traditional. 

Update 08/04/2012: For greater visibility.

The Killer Within - At Microsoft

The first time we met face-to-face, I thought, This guy looks like an operative for the N.K.V.D. (sic)

Paul Allen, quoted in  Microsoft’s Odd Couple

describing Steve Ballmer.

Interesting article about the early years of Microsoft by its co founder Paul Allen, Microsoft’s Odd Couple, linked from slashdot, Microsoft's 'Cannibalistic Culture'. I also read the Isaacson biography of Jobs recently. The major similarity between Jobs and Gates is that they are/were complete and total bastards willing to screw their friends/partners for just a little more money/power.  

Disclaimer: I use a PC.

Dog eat Wolf in the Business World

Great Wolf Resorts is being taken over by some outfit (shell company?) called K-9 Holdings. Link to SEC filling.

"What Is the Internet, Anyway?"

This was linked from the comment thread on Boingboing about some painfully out of touch comments from some flack from Hollywood, MPAA's number two admits industry "not comfortable" with the Internet. This mashup was produced by a a site called Urlesque. in the cooments at Urlesque blackbelt_jones mentions:

The thing that struck me as hilarious was "the internet yellow pages" Right in
the beginning, I paid about 20 dollars for that book. It seems like a joke now:
a search engine in book form!

Our Valued Customers: The worst thing about any business

Our Valued Customers is a blog drawn by a guy who runs a comic store about the people who wander into the his store and occasionally buy things. I unfortunately recognized myself in several of the cartoons.

Breaking into the Board Game Market and the Reluctance to Learn New Rules

I play different board games with two very different groups of players. I play games like Apples to Apples to Apples or Scrabble with groups of people who only want play games they already know and/or easy to play. With hard core gamers I play much more complicated games. I have played roleplaying games each of which consists of volumes of rules. I have played Avalon Hill games including Advanced Squadleader, ASL "rulebook" is a thick binder with space for future rule expansions. I have played home brew games, variants and beta tests.

That being said there are the hard core gamers might spend more time and money. However there are many people who play games, family games, party games. In the The Globe & Mail's ROB article about a company trying to break into the board game market, How Spin Master learned to play with the giants, there is this explanation of this phenomenon.

“Consumers feel comfortable when they know the rules from a game of the past[and] don’t have to read the rule book.