L u k e n . o r g

Oh yeah, here we go….. back on my rampage of the “American” car industry.

Let’s say you have a high degree of patrism, or feel that to be patriotic, you have to buy “American”. If so, here’s a tip. The Nissan Titan has ~85% of its parts manufactured right here in the good ‘ol US of A. That’s the highest percentage of any “American” made vehicle. Also, the vehicle is assembled in Mississippi.

So, using these metrics, the Nissan Titan should be considered the most patriotic vehicle in America. Not Ford and not Chevy, but Nissan. So if you are concerned about the american worker and the loss of automobile manufacturing jobs going to Mexico, buy the new line of vehicles that are manufactured and assembled right here in the USA.

Nissan, BMW, Toyota, Honda ….. the new face of American Patriotism.

Finally, Nero has been written for Linux. Yet another key application barrier removed for the Linux desktop migration effort Nero [NeroLINUX]

While listening to the radio today, I heard something “funny”. An excerpt from Martha Stewart where she says “during my five month stay, I got to meet a great cross section of America”. So…..prision is a cross section and great representation of America ……

Quite simply the easiest upgrade of any application I’ve ever done.

Note, since this is is a virtual server, much snapshotting and reverting occurred during testing. and retesting.

Step 1: deleted everything in my wordpress directory except wp-config.php and my wpimages folder
Step 2: tar’d -xzvf the v1.5 wordpress file
Step 3: pointed firefox to /wp-admin/upgrade.php location
Step 4: clicked upgrade ….
Step 5: added the moblog setting for the image wrapping into the style.css file

Well, we did it. We’ve finally taken the plunge into building a new home. We figured we’d better do it now before home prices get out of our reach. This is the artist’s view of what it will look like when it’s done. Basically, this room is focused around the kitchen and breakfast area, where most of the money will go. Then there’s my hangout, the basement. Yup, a basement. Being from the north, we couldn’t live without it any longer.

From The Mac Observer. Here’s the storybut I just had to put it here ….

Apple’s iPod is infecting every corner of the world including, to Microsoft’s dismay, its own corporate campus.

“About 80 percent of Microsoft employees who have a portable music player have an iPod,” one high-level manager who asked to remain anonymous told Wired “It’s pretty staggering.”

That translates into about 16,000 iPods on Microsoft’s Redmond, WA campus that’s home to 25,000 employees. In an after to curtail the white headphone trend, Microsoft executives have taken to sending out memos frowning on iPod use. After hearing the nearby Apple retail store was selling out of hundreds of iPods regularly, Dave Fester, general manager of the Windows Digital Media division, sent a note to the group saying “I sure hope Microsoft employees are not buying iPods. We have great alternatives. Check out http://experiencemore.”

Many employees have taken to hiding their iPod use by swapping out the white headphones for a pair of third-party black ones, although workers in the Macintosh Business Unit proudly tote their iPods with them.

“These guys are really quite scared,” said the source of Microsoft’s management. “It shows how their backs are against the wall…. Even though it’s Microsoft, no one is interested in what we have to offer, even our own employees.”

Just goes to show you, even folks at microsoft want a better platform ……

Just when you get out of it, they suck you right back in. Now, investors and analysts alike are scratching their heads over this one. I for one am puzzled because it’s the math that’s driving me nuts.

Try to follow this one … MCI has approximately $6B in cash, and carrying about $6B in dept. Qwest is offering around $7B to buy the company. Qwest already has $17B that’s lugging around on its balance sheet. So let’s look at this mathematical wizardy. Qwest buys MCI for $7B, and gains access to the $6B in cash. So essentially, they use that money to finance the purchase.

MCI now becomes a company that had 6B in dept and 6B in cash to a company that has .02 cents in cash and $23B in dept. The winners, bond holders and preferred stock holders itching to cash out. Oh, I temporarily win myself when I sell my few shares. The odd thing is that over the last several months, it’s been speculated that potential MCI suitors would be Bellsouth and Verizion. Nobody even remotely considered Qwest to be in the running. But then again, nobody thought of LDDS > WorldCom.

I’ve always wondered, with the balance sheet that MCI has, and with the industry’s most highly valued customers, and MCI’s vast network, why not take the company private? I think creditors would line up to help with capital expansion. Sure the long distance market is rapidly declining, and the baby bells bought enough steak dinners to convince legislatures to enhance their welfare by locking out residental competition (due to pricing), but there are so many more opportunities. How about expanding our partnerships with cable companies to carry their long haul traffic as they exploit the backdoor into the residential market for starters.

Ahhh, the discussions are already flying around the office from what I hear. And the natives are getting restless tonight ……

From a forwarded email. I post this because I love my country, and if cannot criticize ourselves, how can we improve?

No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is “No. 1,” “the greatest.” Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name “America Is No. 1.” Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled “un-American.” We’re an “empire,” ain’t we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We’re No. 1. Well … this is the country you really live in:

* The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (The New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).

* The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).

* One-third of our science teachers and one-half of our math teachers did not major in those subjects. (Quoted on The West Wing, but you can trust it – their researchers are legendary.)

* Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the Earth. Seventeen percent believe the Earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).

* “The International Adult Literacy Survey … found that Americans with less than nine years of education ‘score worse than virtually all of the other countries'” (Jeremy Rifkin’s superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).

* Our workers are so ignorant, and lack so many basic skills, that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12,2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!

* “The European Union leads the U.S. in … the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised” (The European Dream, p.70).

* “Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature” (The European Dream, p.70).

* Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).

* Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28% last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56%, Indians 51%, South Koreans 28% (NYT, Dec. 21,2004). We’re not the place to be anymore.

* The World Health Organization “ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was] … 37th.” In the fairness of health care, we’re 54th. “The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world” (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.

* “The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens” (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a “developed” country? Anyway, that’s the company we’re keeping.

* Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That’s six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)

* “U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower” (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look “developed” to you? Yet its the only “developed” country to score lower in childhood poverty.

* Twelve million American families – more than 10% of all U.S. households – “continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves.” Families that “had members who actually went hungry at some point last year” numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).

* The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).

* Women are 70% more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).

* The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).

* “Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its work-force in the 1980s. … In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1%” (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.

* “Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies” (The European Dream, p.66). “In a recent survey of the world’s 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one was European” (The European Dream, p.69).

* “Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European. … In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world’s leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European. … The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world’s top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European
giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies … are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top 10. Only four U.S. companies are on the list” (The European Dream, p.68).

* The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005).

* U.S. employers eliminated 1 million jobs in 2004 (The Week, Jan. 14, 2005).

* Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million – one in five – unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).

* Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40% of our government debt. (That’s why we talk nice to them.) “By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom” (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.

* Sometime in the next 10 years Brazil will probably pass the U.S. as the world’s largest agricultural producer. Brazil is now the world’s largest exporter of chickens, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Last year, Brazil passed the U.S. as the world’s largest beef producer. (Hear that, you poor deluded cowboys?) As a result, while we bear record trade deficits, Brazil boasts a $30 billion trade surplus (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).

* As of last June, the U.S. imported more food than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).

* Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn’t show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That’s more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don’t show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.

* One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).

* “Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined” (The European Dream, p.28).

* “Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable” (The European Dream, p.32).

* Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).

* “Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available” (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).

* “The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever” (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004). No. 1? In most important categories we’re not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.

Q. Where do we rank “No. 1”?

A. weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.

Microsoft notices revenue hole and quickly fixes it. It seems that M$ has just created a new revenue stream for $59 a year, per each uninformed soul. It seems that M$ is now charging to connect the Outlook email client for Hotmail (something that you could do for years till M$ pulled the plug on that freebie). More here ….

So where have our protest songs gone? Apparently, still around with very strong influences seeping abroad. With the current situation in the Ukraine and their quest for fair elections, it’s good to see the engagement.

The Orange Revolution Website: The Orange Revolution (or Chestnut Revolution, depending on your source) is a movement of Ukrainian citizens to protest election fraud in the second round of their election on Sunday, November 21, 2004.

Check out the Chestnut Revolution Theme Song, “Razom Nas Bahato”. This song is very much 60’s with Urban hip-hop influences and the mp3 can be downloaded from their site or click Here and the lyrics Here