Summary of this week:

One a cruise - slow "broadband" all week
Google to build antenna farm in Iowa
Apple to build solar power plant in North Carolina
Working conditions are rough in Chinese factories, but people still flock to them

Monday February 20, 2012

There are U.S. manufacturing jobs available, but not enough skilled people to do the work. It is no longer "lift this and put it there" in the factory. The worker looks at a computer display of one sort or another and has to think. Guess what? The U.S. high school education system has failed us.

Speaking of jobs, Wal-Mart invests more in China.

Facebook hacker gets eight months in prison. I know, the punishment does not fit the crime. Steal billions of dollars from pension funds and you get less.

Guess who is discriminating (illegally) against war veterans? The U.S. Government. And I bet that none of the discriminators are getting eight months in prison. Your tax dollars at waste.

Georgia Tech researchers have an app that allows the blind to text etc. on the iPhone. Excellent.

ACTA was negotiated in secret. Funny, governments want us to trust them, but... And I thought the current U.S. President was supposed to usher in a new era of transparency or something like that.

And everyone has a photo of what is supposed to be the circuit board from the iPad 3.

Intel's new line of Atom processors have WiFi built onto the processor chip. Wow, neat.

This is short today. The slow Internet connection on the cruise ship is eating up my minutes.

Lots of talk this week about Apple and its Foxconn supplier. Much of the talk is not favorable to Apple, but that does not matter to the average Chinese person as they flock to the cities to compete for the factory jobs. This story calculates that workers are paid under $2 an hour. That is a good salary in many parts of the world. Whatever happened to import taxes?

This would be a funny story if it weren't for all the tax dollars that will be wasted. The President is creating a Consumer bill of privacy rights or some other such nonsense. They want companies to pledge not to watch the viewing habits of browser users. This is technical folly, but it is a great example of a politician holding up a piece of paper and saying, "Look! We did something good for you!"

Something to try on the iPad: OnLive Desktop Plus.

Some Air Force units cancel iPad orders once they learn that the iPad has critical software developed in Russia. Is everyone ready for national electronic health records?

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This is a travel day. I had time for a little internet viewing at the airport.

Here is a video of a man shooting himself to prove the worth of his "bullet-proof" vest. The writer of the post seems to think this highly unusual. It is, however, the standard marketing ploy for makers of such devices and has been for at least three decades.

HP's Whitman announces that they will release a Windows 8 tablet this year.

Intel has joined the Document Foundation and is distrubing LibreOffice in its apps package.

This billboard uses face recognition technology. It looks for females. Once a female observer is identified (90% accuracy), it shows a video aimed at women.

Some thoughts on the success of DropBox. Basically, it works and it is simple to use. Those are two good attributes.

The Reddit community has written The Free Inernet Act. This is in response to that SOPA thing that has gone away for now, but will return.

Facebook is bringing Digg back from the dead. Traffic is up.

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