What’s wrong with American manufacturing and industry

Dave Farquhar Society , , , , ,

I read a disheartening story today. It’s the story of an entrepreneur, making models out of his garage and selling them. A competitor took a liking to his models and started selling crude copies of them, made in China. The competitor is so much larger than him, he can’t afford to sue.

There’s something even more sad than this story, however. It was some people’s reaction to it.The whole thing started out as hearsay on a train forum. Someone noticed a striking similarity between two companies’ competing products. Fans of the larger company rushed to its defense, and someone who claimed to know someone came in with claims about the larger company copying the smaller. Eventually the person who designed the originals chimed in and confirmed that yes, the designs were his, right down to the placement of the cracks on the sidewalk being identical.

He went on to say in very human terms who it hurt. He’s a guy in southwestern Missouri who could make more money as a draftsman, making buildings out of his home for the love of making buildings. He sells the design to another small company in Maine who buy materials, produce parts, and assemble them into kits for sale, employing a handful of Americans along the way.

And, if sales deteriorate too far, eventually he may have to go back to work as a draftsman. Which most likely means some other draftsman will be looking for a job.

Buying the crude, cheap Chinese-made knockoffs from the other company hurts the designer. But not only that, it ripples over to the manufacturer/distributor and its suppliers, all of whom are employing Americans who are just trying to earn an honest wage working for small businesses.

But the copies sell for about half the price.

To some of the people hearing this story, the end–half-priced models–entirely justifies the means. The cheap copy is, well, cheaper, and more convenient–requiring less assembly and being easier to find, since the larger competitor sells its products in more stores–so that’s all just fine and dandy. Who gets hurt doesn’t matter as long as the purchaser is happy.

Maybe the guy just likes jerking people’s chain, or maybe he really believes this, but he was painting the people who felt empathy for the designer as the ones with the problem.

Others present an easy solution: Sue. Well, he’s not stupid. One look at his models should tell you that. He looked into that. The problem is that a one-man operation can’t hope to compete with a company that sells $50 million worth of product per year. Imagine what happens if the larger company generates a mere 100 hours’ worth of billable work for the smaller company’s lawyer, at $400 per hour. That’s a $40,000 legal bill. If the kits sell for $75, their wholesale price is less than 25. That means he has to sell 1,600 kits to cover the legal bill. And in the meantime he also has to sell enough kits to pay himself enough to pay his mortgage, utilities, and put food on the table.

If that $40,000 doesn’t sink him, maybe the next 100 hours’ worth of work will. All they have to do is delay the trial long enough to make giving up look like the best and most reasonable alternative. They don’t have to be right, and they don’t have to win. They just have to make sure the other guy runs out of money first.

Now I know the majority of Americans have no interest in wood and tin 1:48 scale models of general stores. But the wonderful thing about American capitalism used to be that someone working out of a garage or spare bedroom could make niche products and sell them to the people who want them without breaking any laws. It’s one of the ways our ancestors got ahead in life.

I’m not sure my son’s generation is going to have those same opportunities. Not when a big company can come steal products from guys like Dale in Carthage, Mo. with no fear of recourse, and self-centered consumers will gladly snap them up, just because they’re cheaper, even if they know they’re buying stolen property.

People can blame Barack Obama or George W. Bush or Bill Clinton or NAFTA or unions or any of the other usual scapegoats for being the reason why jobs are hard to find. But none of those guys caused the predicament that Dale in Carthage, Mo. is in.

That’s purely the fault of the people who buy knockoff products, with a narcissistic, end-justifies-the-means attitude, and the people who tolerate it.

But it’s a lot easier to blame the politicians than it is to look in the mirror.

A real world example of TEMPEST

Dave Farquhar Hardware ,

In studying for my CISSP, the topic of TEMPEST came up. TEMPEST is, essentially, interpreting the electromagnetic waves given off by electrical devices to recover the data they contain. This can happen accidentally, or on purpose.

An accidental example of this happened to my neighbors in college.Darren lived directly below me. Scott lived across the hall. Darren had a cheap, no-name 486SX clone, and he lived on it. Problem was, it interfered with Scott’s TV.

One night, Scott got fed up with it and called Darren on the phone. "Get off your computer," he said.

"Can’t. I’m doing my homework."

"No you’re not, you’re playing Solitaire. Cut it out so I can watch TV."

Not only was Darren’s computer interfering with Scott’s TV, but Scott could see what Darren was doing. Not plain as day, but close enough.

The next semester, Darren traded his PC in for a slightly faster Dell, and Darren’s Dell got along just fine with Scott’s TV.

Extreme examples like this are rare, but possible. Even today.

How to buy a laser printer

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

I had to buy a laser printer in a hurry over the weekend. I bought a Samsung ML-2525, which I believe to be a reasonable choice, but not necessarily the best choice I could have made. It’s tiny, whisper quiet, and very fast, and it was on sale for 70 bucks, though sometimes you can get one for as little as $59. At that price, it’s hard for buying it to be a terrible decision.

Please note that this advice is for home and light small-business use. For business use, scroll to the end.

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Twice-monthly mortgage payment alternatives

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , ,

The debate whether making a twice-monthly mortgage payment saves money is making the rounds on some popular blogs right now. The idea is paying your mortgage every two weeks rather than every month in order to save money. Whether this trick works depends on several things, but the most important part is that you shouldn’t pay a penny extra for this service. You should also consider twice-monthly mortgage payment alternatives.

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Misguided security

Dave Farquhar Servers and Networking

I once worked someplace whose management laid an egg when they found out that it was possible to sniff network traffic over hubs. So they replaced all the hubs in their network, at considerable expense, with switches for an extra layer of security.

That’s fine. Except…Except the back door of the building never closed right, so it was pretty easy for anyone to just waltz right into the office. Nobody ever did, that I know of. But still, that’s not good.

But that’s not the end of it. One time I saw one of the other IT guys pick the lock on the server room. With a sheet of typing paper.

Yes. He grabbed a piece of paper out of the closest wastebasket, folded it in half, then in half again, pushed it into the gap in the door, made an upward motion, and freed the catch. Then he just walked in. It was easier than remembering the combination.

They spent tens of thousands of dollars out of paranoia that some employee would bring in a sniffer and plug it into the network, but wouldn’t pay the $200 or $300 it would cost to have a contractor come in for a couple of hours to make sure the doors were secure.

One of my clients had an incident with a door in a secure room yesterday, and that reminded me of this former client’s door problems. This current client fixed the problem in about 30 minutes.

It’s been five years, but I probably could still get into that former client’s server room. The hardest part would be remembering where the doors are.

How to go bankrupt and/or lose your house

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , , ,

I have a Saturday ritual. On Saturday mornings, about 49 times a year, I go to estate sales. On numerous occasions, I’ve been to estate sales of millionaires who, for one reason or another, were downsizing.

And on Saturday afternoons, I’ve been known to go look at foreclosure houses. Or, now that my wife and I have bought one, working on the foreclosure house.

I see a pattern.It’s unusual for the last owner of a foreclosure house to be in the house for very long. And almost invariably, I see a lot of home improvement projects. Often there’s at least one unfinished project still sitting there.

Often the projects are pointless–tearing out plaster walls to put in drywall, only because that’s what the stupid shows on HGTV say you should do.

But it’s always pretty clear from looking at the house and the information available in public records what happened. They bought the house, they made some payments, the house increased in value during the real estate boom, they took out a home equity loan and started changing things, then eventually they got in over their head.

Often the changes weren’t worth it. They’d start out with a $60,000 house in a questionable neighborhood, sink tens of thousands into modernizing the kitchen and bathroom and finishing the basement, and if everything had gone well, they would have a modernized house, still in a questionable neighborhood, and contrary to the promises they saw on TV, the house didn’t increase in value at all. Someone ends up buying what’s left of it for $35,000 or $40,000, fixing whatever is wrong or unfinished, and renting it out to someone for $700 a month. A rather inglorious end to those TV-inspired dreams.

I see another pattern on Saturday mornings at estate sales.

More often than not, the family stayed in the same house for decades. The kitchen appliances are usually dated. Sometimes they’re from the 1990s, sometimes the 1970s, and on rare occasions, you even see a range from the 1940s or 1950s. And generally most everything about the house gives the impression of age. Sometimes you see kitschy trends that have come and gone, like shag carpets and dark wood paneling. Sometimes you see timeless craftsmanship. The latter is particularly common in the homes of the wealthy–when they did buy things, they bought things that wouldn’t go out of style, so they’d only have to buy once in a lifetime.

None of these houses will show up on HGTV or any other TV, and for good reason: Houses like that don’t make you run out to Lowe’s or Home Depot and buy their crap.

But at the end of the career or life, there’s something to show for it. A paid-off house with things in it that have to be liquidated, which then goes into the estate. The money from all of it then helps pay for retirement, end-of-life expenses, or goes to the heirs.

The foreclosed houses look a lot more like what you see on TV, even if you have to wipe some grime away to see it. The appliances are certainly newer, the kitchen cabinets are usually newer, and somewhere there’s at least one TV-inspired project, maybe still brewing.

But what’s left to show for it? Years of payments, lost. A wrecked credit score. Possibly some other maladies. Nothing anyone would want.

Clearly it’s much better to just live within one’s means, even if it means sacrificing coolness points in the short term.

In the long term, I’m pretty sure the people who chased the newest trends, overextended themselves and ultimately lost their houses ended up with about the same number of coolness points. Maybe a little less.

Is linoleum out of fashion? It shouldn’t be.

Dave Farquhar Saving money , ,

Every so often someone tells me linoleum is out of fashion. I don’t understand it. We have a linoleum kitchen floor and we love it.

A former coworker told me his ex-wife cleans a lot of high-end houses, and the cool kids are all replacing linoleum with stone or tile.

The cool kids are making a mistake. In 2009, I replaced a trendy tile floor with Marmoleum, a brand of linoleum. It’s one of the best things I ever did. If my son takes a tumble on the linoleum, it’s usually not a big deal. It’s not like it’s foam rubber or something, but he has to tumble really hard to hurt himself.

On tile, he was more prone to fall because that junk was slippery. And if he did fall, it hurt. It was like falling on concrete.

But the tile was exceptionally high maintenance. You pretty much had to mop it every other day for it to look decent. It attracted and held onto dirt like a magnet.

The linoleum looks great if you mop it once a week. If my wife gets busy and misses a week, I never notice, although she seems to. What I do know is that she mopped it on Saturday morning, and right now, four days later, it looks like she just mopped.

The other problem with tile was breakage. After about five years, every tile around the refrigerator was broken, due to something falling out of the freezer. Popping tile up and replacing it is possible, but it’s a project. I did it a couple of times and I can’t say I miss it.

Stone theoretically ought to hide dirt better than ceramic tile in the cleaning department, but my wife’s family likes to rent a condo on the Gulf Coast every summer, and invariably the kitchens have stone floors. We’re cleaning them every single day. No thank you.

I do think a lot of people confuse vinyl with linoleum. Given where my boss lives and the age of the houses there, I think vinyl is a lot more likely. He also said after 9 years, his “linoleum” is shot. Given that it’s common to find 100-year-old linoleum in old houses that’s still perfectly serviceable, I think he has vinyl rather than linoleum. I can see vinyl wearing out in 9 years.

Tile, and especially stone, are very trendy right now. But they’re high maintenance, and I suspect they’re just a trend, like wood paneling in the 1970s and 1980s. Back then it was the thing to do, but now when people run into it, they either tear it out or paint over it.

If I were faced with a kitchen in need of a new floor, I’d put linoleum down in a heartbeat. Pick a shade or shades that go with pretty much anything and don’t go out of style, lay it down, and forget about it. You may never have the trendiest floor on the block, but it will be functional, and it will outlive you.

It sure beats having to put down a new floor every decade.

Buy wooden trains cheap

Dave Farquhar Saving money, Toy trains , , , , , , , ,
Buy wooden trains cheap

My son likes wooden trains. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since I like the bigger metal (and sometimes plastic) trains that run on O gauge track. The downside to Brio and Learning Curve (Thomas) trains is that sometimes they seem to cost nearly as much as Lionel, even though they’re essentially carved blocks of wood. But I learned how to buy wooden trains cheap.

There are several ways to save money on them, it turns out.

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Wouldn’t you agree, more income is the answer?

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , ,

So a friend of a friend came over the other night, pitching a pyramid scheme. He just told me he’d started a business. I figured (and kind of hoped) he wanted to sell me handyman services. Actually he wanted to get me out of debt.

“But I have no debt,” I said. He told me I needed to keep an open mind.

I remember the last time someone told me that. It was two Mormon missionaries. To be nice, my wife and I let him keep talking.

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Best public DNS – finding the best for you

Dave Farquhar Servers and Networking , , , , , , , ,
Best public DNS – finding the best for you

If your Internet connection is slow, it almost always helps if you optimize your DNS. But there’s more to the best public DNS than just speed. I’ll tell you how to find the fastest DNS, but using a DNS that offers improved security gives your computer protection beyond what your antivirus and firewall provide.

Sometimes it’s enough, and it’s definitely cheaper than buying a new router. Even if you do get a new router, using fast DNS helps. Here’s how to find the best public DNS to use, to improve your speed and your security.

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