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Apple and China, or Why the U.S. Middle Class is Shrinking

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized January 22, 20121950s, 1980s, apple, Apple Computer, New York, new york times

“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That’s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”

Apple Computer, currently the highest-valued company in the country, at its peak employs 1/10 the number of Americans as General Motors did in the 1950s. Apple is an easy target because it’s big, but the problem isn’t unique to Apple. Technology companies as a whole employ fewer people than the heavyweights of ages past like General Motors and General Electric. It’s the nature of the work.

Digital distribution, not SOPA and PIPA, is the best long-term solution for the MPAA

Dave Farquhar Copyright January 21, 20121980s, journalism, legislation, netflix, PIPA, piracy, RIAA, VHS

Fightforthefuture.org declared victory yesterday, saying that SOPA and PIPA have been dropped. Their e-mail said some other important and interesting things, but most importantly, it made some references to China. Communist China. Totalitarian Communist China.

The distinction is important.
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Get Acronis for free

Dave Farquhar Software January 20, 2012

There isn’t much time left, and I apologize, but for the rest of the day, you can get the home version of Acronis for free. Details at the link. It’s not a bad idea to be familiar with Acronis, since it’s so widely used by businesses. Getting it and using it on your home PCs will get you some relevant experience. I’m not sure what the differences are between the home and business versions (I haven’t seen the home version yet myself), but using it will put you in position to figure it out. And you can’t beat the price, right?

The contractor who built systems via P2P

Dave Farquhar security January 20, 2012January 23, 2022firewall, wi-fi

Today I was helping one of my coworkers study for the Security+ exam, and one of his study questions reminded me of a story.

I wrote a few days ago about spending some time in an unhealthy IT shop. One of my cohorts supported one of the departments that decided to outsource its IT to a contractor, rather than use the internal IT department. It was a form of shadow IT on a large scale. The hand-off didn’t exactly go as it should.

The difference between how I eat and how Paula Deen cooks

Dave Farquhar Cooking January 19, 2012April 15, 2017Nutrition, Rabbit Hole

I don’t pay a lot of attention to food, and certainly not to celebrity chefs. I don’t think the name Paula Deen would have meant anything to me a week ago. Most likely I’d have heard the name, but if you’d given me a multiple choice test, I probably would have gotten it wrong.

I know who she is now. Read more

And it seems that today things worked how they’re supposed to

Dave Farquhar Copyright January 18, 20121980s, legislation, PIPA, sony, VCR

Today, the Web protested SOPA and PIPA in various ways. And though momentum seemed to start shifting as long as a week ago, the protest went on, and some Washington politicians started changing sides, suggesting that maybe, just maybe, sometimes representative government can’t be bought.

I even saw a quote somewhere–I wish I’d written down where–that attributed one side-changer as saying it’s more important to get this legislation done right than to get it done fast. Read more

I may have a cure for the slow web browser

Dave Farquhar Software January 18, 2012firefox, john c dvorak, ramdisk

John C Dvorak lamented last week about slow web browsers.

I’m working on a cure.

The difference between piracy and linking

Dave Farquhar Copyright January 17, 2012Fair Use, piracy, UEFI

Rupert Murdoch doesn’t understand the difference between piracy and linking. So I’ll explain it in terms any middle-school-aged kid should be able to understand.

Don’t reuse your Zappos.com password

Dave Farquhar security January 16, 2012passwords, spam

Online shoestore Zappos.com got hacked. Among other things, the hackers got names, addresses, e-mail addresses, and encrypted passwords. That’s not as bad as getting unencrypted passwords, but there are some things you need to do immediately if you shop at Zappos.com.

The upside of the brave new Windows Server GUI-less world

Dave Farquhar security, Windows January 16, 2012turnkey, Turnkey Linux, unix, vulnerability, windows 2000, windows 8, Windows Server

So the server version of Windows 8 is losing the GUI. And some people aren’t happy about it.

Let’s talk about upside.
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