I ran into this interesting article on the Computerworld blogs and the upcoming trend is that the IT workers in the U.S. will eventually have to equalize with workers in other parts of the world in order to stay competitive.
IBM is increasingly outsourcing the IT work to India while keeping the high paid executives here in the U.S. (sound familiar?) to manage offshore teams. I guess its sort of like Walmart buying cheap chinese goods and selling back to the consumers here in the U.S but instead its technology being developed in places like India and China and being resold back to the U.S. corporations.
From the article:
Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of Outsourcing America, says this chart represents a departure point for IBM.
“I think this moment was so important because it was when Big Blue made the fateful decision to compete by substituting low cost workers in India and elsewhere for high-cost American workers,” said Hira. “Instead of choosing to compete by investing in better tools, technologies, and training for their American workforce, they chose to compete their American workers head to head with workers in other countries who can afford to be paid less. And they gave those workers in low-cost countries the same, or better, tools, technologies and training, as their American workforce,” he said.
Probably one of THE coolest ideas for a TV show ever. Its a show hosted by mixed martial arts fighter named Jason “Mayhem” Miller (a former bullying victim himself). The premise? A diminutive guy sends in a video to Mr. Miller saying that they need help because they are being terrorized and physically pummled by the local neigborhood bully.
Mr. Miller confronts the bullies and challenges them to a match in the ring. It’s sort of like a mobile “My bodyguard”. Watch the delicious trailer below:
The good news, it debuts on March 22nd. The bad news, its airing on MTV
The United States Naval Institute is reporting that the Chinese military has an operational anti ship ballistic missile (ABSM) system that can sink a U.S. aircraft carrier with one strike. It supposedly has a 2000 kilometer range and flies at speeds of Mach 10!
From the article:
The size of the missile enables it to carry a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capability of destroying a U.S. supercarrier in one strike.
Because the missile employs a complex guidance system, low radar signature and a maneuverability that makes its flight path unpredictable, the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased. It is estimated that the missile can travel at mach 10 and reach its maximum range of 2000km in less than 12 minutes.
Supporting the missile is a network of satellites, radar and unmanned aerial vehicles that can locate U.S. ships and then guide the weapon, enabling it to hit moving targets.
What is even more troubling is that according to the article there is no reliable defense systems on ships that deter ballistic missiles.
I can’t help but to wonder that while China stresses engineering and mathematics in their school systems while the U.S. wallows in beer bong fraternities and M TV spring break. Was this disconcerting news ever in doubt?
Once again the American corporate controlled media fails to report important world news (for example, this is the front page article from CNN.com at the time of this post). What happened this time? Only a potential worldwide avian bird flu pandemic that could have infected and killed millions of people worldwide!
Thankfully, catastrophe was narrowly averted by a subcontractor who ran a series of last minute tests on a batch of “flu vaccines” from an Austrian plant owned by Baxter Pharmaceutical which was scheduled to ship to three other countries. From the AP article:
People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled in the Orth-Donau facility. That is a dangerous practice that should not be allowed to happen, a number of experts insisted.
Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could have resulted in dire consequences.
While H5N1 doesn’t easily infect people, H3N2 viruses do. If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people.
So basically, the H5N1 Avian bird flu virus, which is THE most deadly and pathogenic strain of the bird flu (according to WHO, it has a 50-70% fatality rate when contracted by humans) was somehow “accidentally” mixed with the common flu virus (which is very easy to transfer from human to human). This “virus cocktail” which could have easily mutated into a super lethal, easily transmittable world wide killer, would’ve been unleashed on unsuspecting recipients and caused untold damage.
There are “suspect” actions that are associated with the delivery of this batch of “flu vaccines”. Primarily, the contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses were labeled appropriately, but the H5N1 viruses were not labeled at all. How could this happen? What is the explanation behind this potentially disastrous mistake? According to Daily Kos:
Yes, Baxter is in the midst of finalizing it’s own version of a bird flu vaccine. Here’s a recent clinical trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
So just in summary: Here you have a company finalizing a license on a bird flu vaccine that ‘accidentally’ ships out the exact formula in it’s vaccines for creating a potential bird flu pandemic. A flu that would have at least a 60% kill rate among humans.
So a pharmaceutical company releases a super contagious strain of the most deadly form of avian bird flu on the unsuspecting public and then swoops in to save the day with the exact vaccine to stop any further infection? Sounds like a plot line for the next Resident Evil game…
So, you would think that some heads would roll after this incident right? Someone is losing their job if not sanctions, fines and possible prosecution right (quote from daily Kos below)?
And according to this interview with a spokesperson at Baxter, all procedures were followed correctly and no one is losing their job. Well, it’s good to know everything’s just fine.
I just want to personally thank the subcontractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany. I owe you a beer.
Erik Prince, the founder of the beleaguered Blackwater security company, announced Monday he has stepped aside as the company’s chief executive officer.
Prince said he has appointed a new president and a new CEO. The management shake up, he said, was part of the company’s “continued reorganization and self-improvement.”
What happens when your “brand” is ruined? Just rename yourself. Blackwater is now known as Xe (pronounced as “z”). So the next time you hear of a mass of civilians from a third world country getting massacred by a group of mercenaries from a “new” group named Xe, then just know that its Blackwater.
Oh what interesting times we live in. The once mighty GOP party has now been reduced to a sideshow. While I’m not exactly a fan of either the democratic or republican party, the recent events in the world of conservative politics are bizarrely entertaining.
First, lets start off with CPAC (a.k.a. Crazy People Are Congregating), because thats exactly what it was. It first started out with Michael “Slum Love” Steele giving a speech at the conference dropping urban knowledge on the crowd when it came to horrid mismanagement by the republican party during the last 8 years.
“Tonight, we tell America: we know the past, we know we did wrong. My bad.”
My bad? On no no no, what the republican party was responsible for is waay beyond “my bad”. The last 8 years is definitely in the “oh Snap!” territory homie. The only thing that could’ve made that speech worse is if he was chewing on a leg of southern fried chicken and waving it around blessing the crowd with flying bits of crispy crust as he was speaking on the podium.
The speech was then it was followed up by the most bat shit crazy member of congress ever, Michele Bachmann yelling off camera to Mr. Steele “You be da man! You be da man!”. Watch the piece below by Keith Olberman for the bizarre video:
This was followed up by the “climactic” passionate speech by Rush Limbaugh dressed in all black, who looked like a seedy porn producer before a casting couch session with his shirt unbuttoned displaying his hairy chest (wheres your “Bling” Rush?). At one point of his speech, he was fist bumping fellow panel members as to denote that he was “hip” and knew how to communicate in an urban fashion.
This is a new low point for the republican party. When a former drug addicted, gluttonous, delusional talk show host becomes the “unofficial” leader of one of the two major political parties of the most powerful country in the world, you’ve hit the bottom of the barrel folks.
The only thing the republican party has managed to accomplish is to show traditional conservatives how much the GOP party is out of touch with them, and more glaringly, it poignantly illustrates the fact that the party is full of posers and fakes who are struggling to try to adjust to a world that has already passed them by.
Instead of reiterating the fact that he wants Barack Obama to fail, why doesn’t Rush steer the GOP flock to solutions instead of criticism?? First the republicans put us in a war on two fronts in the mid east, they then stand idley by as the corporations rape the American public. Our nation is on the verge of complete insolvency, and he’s dreaming for the country as it used to be. If I didn’t know any better, I’d still think hes on getting high on Oxycontin. Needless to say, at this point the state of the GOP party is so out of touch, I wouldn’t even blink an eye if they held a CPAC after party with Vanilla Ice as the musical performer.
They got one part of the “urban” behavior down, they are acting like genuine crazy ass crackheads.
