Saturday, December 31, 2005

 

President "votes" no-confidence for existing U.S. skaters

I dunno if anyone else sees it this way, but I see the insta-citezenship of Tanith Belman a slight towards U.S. born or conventionally naturalized citizens. Apparently he lacks confidence in anyone training and practicing here to be sucessful. Not that Tanith sucks (I'm sure she's a great skater), but apparently George thinks that nobody here is capable. Thus my seeing it as a "no confidence" vote for the ability of Americans to succeed. What's next? Bobsledding? The Luge?

(My guess is that if anyone deserves insta-citizenship, it should be the threatened family of an Iraqi who took on shrapnel to save U.S. soldiers. Not some trophy athlete for the Olympics.)

Although this probably isn't too new. Apparently the value of citizenship has been tokenized through the Reagan and Clinton presidencies via corporate welfare policy. Although this probably isn't said officially, it has been the defacto trend via the governments non-enforcement of tax and social security law. Thus it is committing corporate welfare by allowing illegal hiring practices to thrive unhindered. Yey... (So a no-confidence vote of the American worker has been going on for a while.) What has artificial negative wage pressure done for the middle class? Unless those considering themselves leaders take notice to start caring, the value of being a citizen of "The land of the free" is probably no more than Northern Quilted. Probably not the forefathers faught for, huh?

I guess the New Deal ideals that Rosevelt came up with are decidedly not a part of the New World Order.

Only other thing that sucks is that I don't see much in the way of other countries that make them worth leaving here. (Even though the U.S. is becoming crappier, it's still somehow not as crappy as other places. But I suppose our lawyers are working on that.) Well, at least not those with a tolerable climate.

 

Hacking Know My Name Elmo...

Apparently there's a neat article by Casey Halverson about hacking Know My Name Elmo. Provides quite a bit of info that should be fun. Imagine bringing your lappy to the toystore and then planting the seeds...

Casey doesn't know what the .rbf files for the audio are, but a bit of googling does the job easy. It turns out that .rbf is a compression format known as TrueSpeechâ„¢. But what's even better is that this compression is included on Windows Audio Recorder. That's right, what you need should already be there on your PC. :)

Also neat is that this Elmo includes a clock that allows for event triggering. If it's possible to figure out how to code for time-enabling, it might allow for more fun. Imagine if a hacker has some fun uploading to the Elmos at a toy store and sets Elmo to become "posessed" after some arbitrary date. Hey it's 2006! Why not have the fun begin on June 6? LOL!

Sunday, December 25, 2005

 

Whoaaaaah! Sandwich!!

Oh yeah, just so I didn't forget anyone who is reading this today... Merry Christmas! (Or any other timely holiday or celebration of your choosing.)

Anyhow, this sandwich was part of the topic of the day at the rendergods chat.

:)~~

Thursday, December 22, 2005

 

Mainstream science still not over the matter hump

Well when it comes to time and space travel that is. They still think of accumulating enough matter to bend space sufficiently in order to do something. Frankly this is a pretty dumb bang-your-head-into-the-wall way of going about solving the problem. The economic GPP (gross planetary product?) of Earth still wouldn't make a mass based time space device feasable within reason of a lifetime, let alone a couple generations. Why are they stuck on this retarded idea? Not that the people working on this aren't smart, but it's as if they have blinders on still. *shrug*

Anyhow, the closest I've seen to a non-gravitational (and therefore non-massive) solution comes from Brazil of all places. The only reasonable and therefore feasable way of large scale space or temporal displacement is via energetic methods. This involves quantum saturation and charge coupling via the photoelectric effect. (Big lasers and tesla technology anyone? Seems a lot cheaper than planetary sized chunks of depleted uranium or neutron star based unobtanium.) When it comes to realistic time travel, the folks who came up with the flux capacitor in Back To The Future really weren't that far off. If science can figure out how to put together the puzzle pieces with paired photons, quantum entanglement, zero point (Casamir) effect, and matter packet entrainment, they will have the problem licked. What's the hold up?

Thursday, December 15, 2005

 

Today wasn't so bad, but yesterday was...

When it comes to driving that is... What is it with people? It's slick, it's snowy, and visibility is crap. Yet it seems that 1/3 of the people out there are too dumb to turn their lights on. Then last night some jackass at my school had to do 40MPH in THE PARKING LOT! Do they teach the difference between a city street, a highway, and a parking lot in drivers ed anymore? WTF?! Anyhow it was annoying... Today was better though. Just luck I guess.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

 

I POST BLOG

Does anybody read this?

I could probably get away with saying anything, huh? Not like those little school kids who get reamed by the system because they make fun of or taunt their teachers...

So having an "invisible" blog isn't such a bad thing then. Nobody cares enough to infringe on my freedom of speech.

BRING FORTH THE GOLDEN PRETZEL OF DOOM!

Uhhh... Oh wait, nevermind. Somebody might read this.

If somebody does read this, post a comment.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

 

Orion Electric Outsourcing = bad mark on you!

Toshiba CRT based TVs... Guess what... Outsourced to Orion Electric. Google that name along with Toshiba... You'll get a list of postings on various forums all about quality control failures in manufacturing and complaints about dud TVs...

Now guess what new, hot, and vary popular electronic item has had various components outsourced to this particular company...

C'mon... You can do it...

Ok, if you haven't figured it out yet... IT'S THE XBOX360!!!!

Just another reminder that while you can outsource productivity to keep costs down, you can't outsource quality. Well not with out risking your own reputation. Way to gamble with your reputation M$!

 

Why the U.S. automobile industry is slumping...

Some people are wondering why the U.S. auto industry is having a hard time. Even after layoffs, quality improvements, and fresh designs, they still seem to have difficulty making ends meet...

I'll give a couple factors:
Quality Perception

Part of this problem is a holdover from the 1980's. Wage pressures caused U.S. automakers to skimp on materials and cut costs on the vendor side. Automation used to reduce other production costs also caused engineers to design things that robots could stamp together quickly, rather than something that would hold up well under use. Even if the fit and finish was rather nice at the beginning, it would tend to degrade rapidly as fasteners would loosen and inferior plastics would stretch or become brittle making things rattle. The other part is that competitors are working hard to stay ahead, even as "american" companies are improving. The sting of inferior quality remains with consumers for a long time, and it doesn't help even as the manufacturers are actually doing their part to remedy the problem.

Lack of Innovation

There used to some strict government standards and consumer demands that created strong technical innovation from U.S. makers. With the rollback of higher standards such as Z.E.V. and stagnation of EPA C.A.F.E. requirements, U.S. manufacturers are failing to innovate as they once did. Meanwhile foreign competitors are already moving on to implementing actual hybrid technology and not just talking about it. Opportunities exist to make 40MPG the standard rather than what is currently considered good at 30MPG. Cylinder deactivation technology being tauted as "new" is actually a fallback to an older attempt at an idea once tried in the early 1980's. It is a good thing, as modern engine management systems now succeed where past ones have failed. But it's still not moving the technology forward as fast as it could go. Also, there is a fear of trusting fully electric systems for propulsion. They're simple, reliable (maintenance on powertrain is virtually nil compared to internal combustion), and produce no emissions. Batteries, although they are a potential hazmat issue, often can be recycled in full which neutralizes that negative environmental aspect. The concern about displaced emissions in power production for such vehicles can be eliminated entirely by using "green" generation sources such as wind turbines or solar. Range is not the issue american manufacturers make it out to be, as many people often commute less than 100mi per day. Consumer education about daily recharging of such electric vehicles should make it clear that they are suitable for regular commuting. U.S. automotive companies had the opportunity to be the leader in electric commuter vehicles, but disposed of it completely with California's withdrawal of Z.E.V. requirements. Unfortunately, this is likely an opportunity to give foreign makers an opportunity to get ahead as Z.E.V. will likely become mandatory in places like China or India where population and environmental pressures demand it. (Once they fully realize what pollution sources limit productivity in dense population areas, you can bet cars will be near the the top of the list in being regulated.) When full electric vehicles are reintroduced to the U.S. market, the U.S. auto companies will once again be behind.

"McJobbing" of U.S.A.

The U.S. auto industry is suffering from a pinch point of economic pressures in the United States. Productivity is absolutely not the issue, as productivity can be outsourced, but existing U.S. automobile factories are more than capable of meeting production demands. Frankly, consumers are demanding a quality level that cannot be outsourced. Disposable goods can easily be outsourced, but long-term items require quality control that cannot be easily achieved by such methods. Getting over the quality perception hump is a big enough issue that cannot be risked against the introduction of real defects.
With quality manufacturing comes wage pressures such as union labor, pensions, and cost of living adjustments. Workers can and have made concessions to some degree, but it is still not possible to achieve marketable quality below a certain price point.
Unfortunately there's the price pinch from the sales end that comes with this demand for quality. The american job market has gone into the shitter as some would say. Sure, employment supposedly has made some gains - but guess what? It means doodly-squat if the per-capita income level is going downward. People may be working, but they have less disposable income available. It's funny how economists are confused by this even as they say that the stock market is doing well. It might be good for makers of short lived items that can be bought at Wallmart, but industries producing products producing high value or long term items are going to be hit hard by this economic trend. This is probably the same reason why the housing market may be overdue to bust in some areas. People can only work so hard to make ends meet before certain quality of life issues rear their head. Anyhow to balance the U.S. economy and maintain manufacturing and technical ability in the U.S. there will need to be a shift of perception from productivity to quality. Until that is done, the absurd market trend will continue and the U.S. will lose competency in what might be considered core strategic and economic capabilities.


And you've heard it here folks. Some average guy. Not an economist or anything like that, but a graphic artist. Just saying it how I see it.

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