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I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
-- Abraham Lincoln |
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| So I picked up some Sony Reader Touch Editions for me and the family... |  I've been watching the eReader market from the sidelines since well before the Kindle launched, but hadn't jumped in until this 2009 holiday season. After examining the offerings out there, I went with the middle model of the new Sony eReaders, the so-called "Touch" Edition. One reason was for the touch screen. But the biggest reason was the formats (ePub, BBeB, PDF, etc) the Sony reader and supporting software can utilize. The most important of these formats is likely the ePub format, as this is the one that will allow you to check out digital books (including current best sellers) from your local library, and they will delete themselves off of your reader in 2 or 3 weeks (whatever the loan period is for your library). A far cry from the Kindle, that requires you to buy every book you want to read (exceptions being the Gutenburg project public domain books, which you can also load to the Sony). For more on the Sony Touch reader click here
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| 313 Reads | comments?   |
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| H-1B visa immigrants now outnumber unemployed US IT workers |  September 3rd, 2009
For those who don't already know, H-1B is a program that allows a foreign worker to enter and live/work inside the United States for a 6-year period, after which they can apply for and receive a so-called "Green Card" (permanent residency). These people aren't sought after for their talents, but rather for the company sponsoring their visa to reap the double benefits of paying them low wages (along with lesser benefits, if any) and flooding the US IT job market with cheap labor, which artificially drives wages down across the board. The H-1B wording stipulates that the US company should have searched for a US candidate for the job, but most don't even put up a pretense. In fact I've personally seen positions that were simply posted to corkboards internally within the same company used to qualify. Another stipulation without effect in the H-1B rules is that the employer must pay "the prevailing wage" for the job being offered. But this again is far too nebulous (and ignored) to do any real good; there are wide disparities in pay even within a job title or classification - the companies end up paying what they want, which is invariably a lot less than a comparable American would or should receive. In addition they can lord the H-1B's immigration status over them, resulting in the visa holder being essentially an indentured servant. If the H-1B gets fed up and quits or is asked to leave by the sponsoring company they are either deported, or if they can find a new employer quickly enough, they can move to that employer, but must pay a fine and start their 6-year immigration clock all over again. The bottom line is this program only exists to serve the interests of those who seek cheap labor and want to depress the wages of US IT workers. How can I say that so definitively? Read on...
In the current recessionary economy the H-1B issue is getting more visibility than usual (most people ignore these things unless it directly affects them, unfortunately). So what's changed that is bringing this problem to light? For one, how about the fact that this is the first time in nearly two decades of importing workers with the H-1B program that the number of them living and working inside the USA (at mostly IT jobs) actually OUTNUMBERS the number of unemployed US IT workers? Add the recession's economic pressure on all US citizens, sprinkle in news of rampant abuses of the program by businesses looking to milk it for even more labor cost savings and you have a recipe for a groundswell of public opinion against the program and hopefully the will to reform or abolish it altogether.
Click for more on this issue
"However, there are those in the technology industry who take advantage of H-1B to bring in workers and pay them less than prevailing wages. Waving the flag of immigrant rights gives them cover to push down wages and keep the domestic workforce from organizing. It's dishonest, and it's unfair."
"It's not only laid-off workers who are suffering. In the last 10 years or so, the number of people forced to work as contractors has increased exponentially. Full-time jobs that might have gone to them are being filled by holders of H-1B visas. And that's a double whammy: Self-employed workers generally don't qualify for unemployment insurance, and they pay a substantial chunk of their income for benefits that companies don't offer them as contractors."
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| 427 Reads | comments? |
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| I Love to Singa |  OK this really doesn't have that much to do with technology, but I thought I'd share. Remember that cartoon from WAY back (1936 to be exact) that has little "Owl" Jolson, the unappreciated jazz-loving son surrounded by classically-inclined family members? I liked that cartoon and looked it up a while back. It's still a hoot ;-) and I thought it might make a good ringtone so I sampled a small part and make it available here for your listening (or ringtone) pleasure. You can grab it here.
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| New program now available - Disk Search |  I've made a new app I've developed available in the PowerUsers Downloads section. It's called DiskSearch and it does what it sounds like - it searches for things on your disk. It can search by name, last access date and last modification date. This can be useful for IT administrators who are asked to generate reports of large hard disks on servers where some items may not have been touched in months or years. This app is console-based and can be run directly or via BAT files. The syntax looks like this:
ds [-a nn] [-m nn] [-n name] x:
where -a is a search by number of days since last access,
-m is number of days since last modification, and
-n is a name/term you wish to find somewhere in the filename
(either in the filename itself or its extension).
You can also combine an access or modification search with a name search term to restrict the results to what you're looking for.
Click "Read more" below or click Downloads in the pane on the left to get access to the app.
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| New downloads in PowerUsers Downloads section | I've added two new applications to the downloads area. Well, actually, one is new and the other is an updated version of an older app. The first is an updated version of Switch. Switch is a text replacement program that lets you quickly and easily make changes to text files. If you've ever tried to do a find and replace on a large document in Notepad and seen how LONG that can take, you'll appreciate the speed of Switch which can make changes to even the largest documents in a couple of seconds or less.
The second application is a new one I call DefragBySize and it does just what it sounds like it does - defragment files based on their filesize. You can run it manually or from a BAT file or by scheduling it (for, say, automated weekly defrags) and it will defrag the subdirectory (or whole drive) you give it file-by-file in order from the largest files to the smallest. The theory here being that this increases the chances of large files being defragmented properly since they will get first stab at large areas of contiguous free space. Or, at a minimum, it saves the defragmenting app from having to move the already-fragmented small and medium-sized files out of the way when you get to the large ones that need more contiguous space which is being occupied by them.
Both of these utilities are self-documenting as all my apps are. See the accompanying text document with each download for more details. Click "Read More" below to get the direct download links or simply click "Downloads" at the left menu and go into "PowerUsers Downloads" to find them.
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| Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme demolishes benchmarks | Intel's new CPU looks like it's set to retake the CPU performance crown that AMD has been holding the last two or three years. Intel had hit a wall of thermal/electrical breakdown in their attempts to keep the P4 architecture moving towards higher clock speeds. The P4 was originally believed to eventually be capable of speeds up to 10Ghz but these limits dashed those hopes. So Intel's long-pipelined P4 took a back seat to AMD's chips for some time as Intel regrouped. And regroup they did. Using the low wattage Pentium M as the inspiration/foundation for this new chip they have created a monster of a CPU that runs cool and pushes performance ahead more in a single leap than we've seen in a decade. Some benchmarks are showing speed increases of as much as 75% over AMD's best chips, including the FX-62. In addition it's doing it without generating excessive heat levels. More information and a review of this new chip is here.
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| Apple finally admits MacBook Pro has CPU whine problem |  I like Apple more than most, but the whine on my MacBook Pro was unacceptable and so was Apple's delay in admitting it was a flaw in the design or manufacture of the MacBook Pros. My 15" 2.0 Ghz model was silent if I ran it off of AC power, but as soon as the power was unplugged and the battery took over (and the power savings circuitry was engaged), a whine began that altered in pitch and volume. Bad in any event but infuriating in a high-end product like a MacBook Pro. Apple has finally admitted to the problem and will resolve it with a "logic board" swap (not sure if they mean the whole motherboard or simply a daughterboard, but I suspect the former) if you take it to your local Apple store. Mine is in the shop right now being fixed and I'll try and follow this post up with the results and whether it truly got resolved or not.
Apple's reluctant (and brief) admission/acceptance of the problem is here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303365
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| Bootable Network Toolkit - 'Frenzy' | A new bootable toolkit for sysadmins is now available. It's called 'Frenzy' (not sure why) and it contains a lot of useful utilities for system and network administrators. Based on Free BSD 6.1 it contains tools for everything from tuning and analyzing networks, to testing computer hardware. It boots to a GUI environment making it a nice tool to keep in one's arsenal alongside a BartPE disk and a bootable Linux distro. It's free and available for download now.
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| Why LCDs are bad for gamers |  A couple of years ago I began a thread here in the PowerUsers forums about which type of display is best for gaming, an LCD or a CRT. It sparked a bit of debate and I went into some great detail about why LCDs are the loser in the contest. Some disagreed with me, or put up various defenses for their beloved LCDs. I have new evidence in the battle that demonstrates one of the principal problems I listed with LCDs that make them unfit for gaming. The rest of the article including a screenshot of the problem and a link to the original forum thread with all the details is here.
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On a day like today...
1783
U.S. Revolutionary War ends.
1838
Frederick Douglas, dressed as a sailor and carrying forged identification papers, escapes from slavery.
1918
The Army hangs five Black soldiers for allegedly participating in a Houston riot.
1934
475,000 textile workers nationwide go on strike.
1971
Nixon's "plumbers" burglarize Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. |
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