Posted: March 28th, 2008 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: General | 1 Comment »
Earth Hour is a call for a conservation, green gesture on Saturday, April 29 at 8:00 PM, wherever you are:
“… Starting at 8 p.m. on Saturday in Christchurch, New Zealand, citizens from around the world will shut off their lights for an hour, to draw attention to the connection between energy use and climate change. From New Zealand, the event will move westward with the sun to Australia, Manila, Dubai, Dublin, New York, Chicago and finally end in San Francisco, where both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge will go dark for an hour.”
link: Earth Hour ‘08: Will It Matter?
As to the question of “will it matter?”, it is a step to raise awareness. It is a step towards being involved in addressing a continuing problem. To those who are skeptical, perhaps a better questions is… “what is the alternative?”.
Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/
[tag]earth hour, 8:00 pm, awareness, conservation[/tag]
Posted: March 28th, 2008 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: General | No Comments »
One of the benefits of outsourcing to foreign countries is that there is a financial saving. Nevertheless, there is a cost. For the financial benefits, the company or country relinquishes some control. The regulatory legislations are determined by a foreign government. That has been a consistent concern whenever the issue of outsourcing has been raised.
That concern, along with a myriad of security issues, arises when the manufacture of passport components is outsourced to a foreign country. For the average citizen, the passport is one of the most important pieces of documentation. It holds sensitive, confidential information. It is a document that most citizens would guard closely.
Would citizens not be concerned that this guarded document has components outsourced to a foreign country? The probability of counterfeit increases enormously.
“…GPO had contracted with two European companies to produce computer chips with a wire antenna assembled at a plant in Thailand. The company in Thailand, Smartrac, charged in a court filing in Netherlands last year that its technology was stolen by China.”
link: Outsourced passport work scrutinized
Is there no American company that can be financially competitive? With a piece of documentation that most citizens would want secured to the highest degree, what ever happened to “Made in the U.S.A.”?
Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/
[tag]outsourcing, passports, security, made in the u.s.a.[/tag]
Posted: March 28th, 2008 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: General | No Comments »
In the competitive Western Conference, the L.A. Lakers can ill afford losing their best player, Kobe Bryant. However, he is just one technical foul away from an automatic one game suspension. With ten games remaining in the regular season, Kobe Bryant has fifteen technical fouls. The suspension rule kicks in when the player reaches the sixteen mark.
This ruling has playoff implications too. If the sixteenth technical foul mark is reached in the final game, the suspension rule would hold. The Lakers would be missing Kobe Bryant for the next game, which would be the first game in the post season play.
In the technical foul category, Kobe Bryant is well ahead of the pack. Here is the list, as of March 28:
- Kobe Bryant: 15 technicals
- Baron Davis: 11 technicals
- Rasheed Wallace: 11 technicals
link: technical fouls
Kobe Bryant has been ejected twice. A more mellow Rasheed Wallace has not had an ejection. In the final ten games of the Lakers season, the L.A. fans will be watching what Kobe Bryant does on the court… and also what he doesn’t do.
Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/
[tag]nba, l.a. lakers, kobe bryant, technical fouls, suspension[/tag]
Posted: March 28th, 2008 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
In the competitive Western Conference, the L.A. Lakers can ill afford losing their best player, Kobe Bryant. However, he is just one technical foul away from an automatic one game suspension. With ten games remaining in the regular season, Kobe Bryant has fifteen technical fouls. The suspension rule kicks in when the player reaches the sixteen mark.
This ruling has playoff implications too. If the sixteenth technical foul mark is reached in the final game, the suspension rule would hold. The Lakers would be missing Kobe Bryant for the next game, which would be the first game in the post season play.
In the technical foul category, Kobe Bryant is well ahead of the pack. Here is the list, as of March 28:
- Kobe Bryant: 15 technicals
- Baron Davis: 11 technicals
- Rasheed Wallace: 11 technicals
link: technical fouls
Kobe Bryant has been ejected twice. A more mellow Rasheed Wallace has not had an ejection. In the final ten games of the Lakers season, the L.A. fans will be watching what Kobe Bryant does on the court… and also what he doesn’t do.
Catherine
Posted: March 27th, 2008 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: General | 3 Comments »
It is a small story that was reported by Reuters news service. It is not a story that grabs that headlines but it is a huge condemnation about what is happening in the schools across the country:
“…”We’re having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs,” AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told a business group in San Antonio, where the company’s headquarters is located.”
link: AT&T CEO says hard to find skilled U.S. workers
This is a search to fill customer service jobs. It is not ‘rocket science’. If the AT&T analysis is correct, then the tax dollars directed at education are not producing enough educated young adults who can hold down a job that can be handled overseas.
If the AT&T conclusions appear incredulous upon first impression, there are corroborative data from the school drop out rates. These educational statistics are complicated by how the data are collected and interpreted. Nevertheless, a 2006 report in Time is indicative:
“…Of the 315 Shelbyville students who showed up for the first day of high school four years ago, only 215 are expected to graduate. The 100 others have simply melted away, dropping out in a slow, steady bleed that has left the town wondering how it could have let down so many of its kids.”
These kids who dropped out were thirty two per cent (32%) of that initial high school class in Indiana. They were not left behind; they disappeared. The educational system did not turn out a ‘finished product’. What does this say about those kids who drop out and still need a means to make a living? What does that say about the forthcoming disaster of social security? Those problems can not be outsourced overseas; and it is a slow growing catastrophe.
Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/
[tag]at&t, skilled workers, schools, drop out rate, education[/tag]
Posted: March 27th, 2008 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: General | No Comments »
More specific details are coming forth on the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls data breach. It seems that there was a slight under-estimation of the number of files that were compromised:
“…TJX said last March that at least 45.7 million cards were exposed to possible fraud in a breach of its computer systems. Court filings by banks that sued TJX estimated the number of cards affected at more than 100 million.”
link: FTC Settles With TJX After Hacks Expose Millions
Opps! Just missed by fifty four million or so…
Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/
[tag]data breach, privacy, security, identity theft, t.j.maxx, marshalls, estimates[/tag]
Posted: March 27th, 2008 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: General | No Comments »
The data breach involves approximately seventy five thousand people:
“…The Dental Network — a CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield dental HMO — exposed the personal information, including Social Security numbers, on a public Web site last month but didn’t notify members until three weeks later, the Baltimore Sun reported Wednesday. The information was on Dental Network’s site for about two weeks because of a technical error.”
link: Dental HMO data accidentally posted online
It is curious why there was a delay of three weeks before notification was made public. Is there any plausible good reason for such a wait before informing the victims that their personal information had been compromised?
At standard rates, credit monitoring is about ten dollars per file. If just twenty five to thirty per cent of the people avail themselves of the credit monitoring, the costs to the HMO runs into the hundreds of thousand dollars. The unfortunate part is that credit monitoring for a year is just the bare minimum. The people who have had their personal information, including Social Security numbers, will have to monitor their credit for well over a year.
Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/
[tag]dental hmo, data breach, privacy, security, identity theft, credit monitoring, social security numbers[/tag]
Posted: March 27th, 2008 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: General | 4 Comments »
How big can an eleven year old be? An eleven year old might be in grade five, perhaps grade six. Apparently, an adult country deputy could not control this eleven year old girl and used a Taser to subdue the student:
“…Orange County Deputy Donna Hudepohl pulled out her Taser and fired it at the Moss Park Elementary School student after repeated efforts to control her. The student, whose name was not released, faces charges of battery on a law-enforcement officer, disrupting a school function, as well as resisting with violence, the arrest report shows.”
link: Student punches deputy in nose, gets shot with Taser
There will be those who will say that the child deserved it. However, would those same sentiments hold if it was your eleven year old child who had been stunned with a Taser weapon?
Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/
[tag]taser, security, school, county deputy, child[/tag]
Posted: March 27th, 2008 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: General | No Comments »
It is free. It is from Adobe and it is a basic version:
“…San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe Systems Inc. says it hopes to boost its name recognition among a new generation of consumers who edit, store and share photos online.
…Adobe says providing Photoshop Express for free is part marketing and part a strategy to create up-sell opportunities. It hopes some customers will move from it to boxed software like its $99 Photoshop Elements or to a subscription-based version of Express that’s in the works.”
link: Adobe launches online version of Photoshop program for free
link: Photoshop Express
Since this online version is intended to generate future sales, it is probably very good. This marketing campaign itself will return much publicity. In any case, the price is difficult to match - it’s freeware.
Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/
[tag]adobe, photoshop express, free, marketing, publicity[/tag]
Posted: March 27th, 2008 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
It is free. It is from Adobe and it is a basic version:
“…San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe Systems Inc. says it hopes to boost its name recognition among a new generation of consumers who edit, store and share photos online.
…Adobe says providing Photoshop Express for free is part marketing and part a strategy to create up-sell opportunities. It hopes some customers will move from it to boxed software like its $99 Photoshop Elements or to a subscription-based version of Express that’s in the works.”
link: Adobe launches online version of Photoshop program for free
link: Photoshop Express
Since this online version is intended to generate future sales, it is probably very good. This marketing campaign itself will return much publicity. In any case, the price is difficult to match - it’s freeware.
Catherine
