Google Watch, Pakistan Watch, Kirk-Watch

All I have left is a judicial process take-home test, but it’s a doozy and my brain is dying.

So keeping it brief.

Google-Apple Monopoly Watch. Google CEO Eric Schmidt says it’s no big deal.

In a media session held Thursday before Google’s shareholders meeting in Mountain View, Schmidt said he hasn’t considered stepping down from Apple’s board because he doesn’t view the maker of the iPhone, iPod and computers as a “primary competitor.” He echoed that sentiment when a shareholder later asked him to step down from Apple’s board to avoid further government scrutiny.

…Walker told reporters that Google is “comfortable” that it doesn’t generate enough revenue in the same markets as Apple for Schmidt’s and Levinson’s dual roles on the companies’ boards to violate antitrust law.

Color me cynical. But I think antitrust laws are antitrust laws. They’re both tech. They’re both producing phones. It’s the principle of the thing. It sets a bad precedent. I think both these companies are good for the future of tech…they should set a good example.

Switching gears to Pakistan watch. Warring in the Swat Valley is producing thousands of refugees and people who are stuck in the middle of the violence.

A half a million people have either already left the Swat Valley and nearby districts or want to leave but can’t because of the fighting, Pakistani officials and the U.N. say, bringing the number of people likely to be displaced due to anti-militant offensives across Pakistan‘s volatile northwest region to 1 million.

..

Tens of thousands of people remain trapped in Mingora. Some have said the Taliban are not allowing them to leave, perhaps because they want to use them as “human shields” and make the army unwilling to use force.

“We want to leave the city, but we cannot go out because of the fighting,” said one resident, Hidayat Ullah. “We will be killed, our children will be killed, our women will be killed and these Taliban will escape.”

“Kill terrorists, but don’t harm us,” he pleaded.

Reading that gives me a pit in my stomach…I don’t feel good about the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan at all. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the U.S. have some sort of involvement in this fighting. I mean, it’s the Big Bad Taliban and part of Obama’s plan to “refocus” on Afghanistan. But if we’re getting civilians tangled up in this, what do you think that will do to the perceptions abroad that we’re supposedly trying to fix with this new administration?

Where do you think terrorists come from, anyway?

I have no problem with Pakistan taking control of its country. But you don’t make things more stable by killing your innocents. Being humane reaps a lot more benefits than merely a clear conscience.
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Today’s controversy: Star Trek, which I am seeing tonight in Christiansburg. Since it’s not a real controversy, here’s a video from Not a real news network:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Lauren Buys a POS / AIG Hate is so in vogue

I’m back!

My apologies for the long absence. I’ve been fighting off some sort of plague that threatened to incapacitate me for Riker’s birthday. Given the choice on focusing my energies on getting better so we could take Riker downtown or blogging, I chose the former. But Riker is now very, very much 21, the weekend was a succeess and I just have some nagging vestiges of the disease left, so…back to work.
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First, a look at the new Microsoft ad:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Well, well, well…buying on a budget, looking to fill certain needs, going to Best Buy…sounds familiar. But unlike Lauren, I started out trying to get a PC for my mom and we ended up getting a Mac (three weeks later and she’s still in love with it). So where did we diverge? Looks like screen size, for the most part.

In my case, we were lucky that Best Buy was actually selling last generation’s white 13-inch MB for $999. Looks like, officially, the cheapest new Macbook starts at $1299. Ouch, Apple, not helping your case.

CORRECTION: Finn brought it to my attention that the $999 MB is, in fact, still being offered. It’s just in a different category than the “Macbook.” It’s the “Macbook White.” [eye roll]. In my opinion, it’s the best option for budget notebooks meeting comprehensive needs.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, they’re not telling people anything they don’t already know. Macs cost money. And not money you’d spend without thinking long and hard about it, I hope. That’s Apple’s market. Brand-loyal hipsters with cash to burn. And, in my case, communication majors at Virginia Tech.

So, yes, if you absolutely can’t spend over $1000 and you really need a 17-inch screen, then mayhaps PC laptops are for you.

Ah, but how does it taste?

Like I said, I tried to get my mom a PC. The Best Buy guy flat out told me that 2GB of RAM on a Macbook work as efficiently as 4GB in the PC machines. And while that point may be debatable, my experience is pretty solid: Three years of abuse and this Macbook Pro is still running strong. My family has never had a PC laptop in a satisfactory state past its second year.

WHY ARE THREE TASKS EACH USING 100% OF MY MEMORY???

When you factor in performance, operating system usability, included software,  included technical support, system security, and supposedly battery life for these new MBs….well, maybe it’d be better to pay the $1300 for the base Macbook and buy a bigger monitor for cheap. What you’re paying for in those few extra hundred dollars is essentially healthcare, since you’d be avoiding hate-induced stroke. Or I guess you could get a Mac Mini and be creative.

Does Apple have a pricing problem? Yes. Honestly, I don’t see Apple continuing to do well as long as it continues to ignore people in the $800 to $1200 range. With Netbooks being all the rage these days, I’d be surprised if Apple sticks to these guns for too long. They are a stubborn company, though.

So today’s losers: Both Microsoft and Apple. The latter for ripping you off by dickishly insisting that more expensive is better. And the former for ripping you off by offering you a turd in a big box and sniggering at the other guy’s turtleneck and hipster glasses.

And Im a..HWWAARRRGH. BAAAAGH. BLEH. AAAAH....sorry, I just...I just did stuff out both holes.

Bonjour, je suis un Mac. Do you like my $5000 bedsheet?

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Okay, and next…something that was overdue from possibly before last week.

Two weeks ago, I jumped on the hate on AIG bandwagon. And now I’m jumping with others in backpedaling that wagon. There are now bigger bailout recipient news stories, but, as with this one, a better truth might be found in the ensuing details rather than from kneejerk reactions. I feel really stupid for not calling the outcry against the bonuses for what it was — a lynching mob fueled by groupthink.

Did the AIG executives deserve bonuses or retention pay? I don’t know. And I doubt most people know. It seems like in this situation it’s very hard to distinguish who was doing a good job, who was simply doing their job and who had a hand in bringing about a giant corporate FAIL  We need much more transparency now that we essentially own many of these companies, especially when it comes time to get them off of our collective udder.

Even so, whether the bonuses were deserved or not…it was never illegal. Dodd at the very least knew what was going to happen with those bonuses and payment plans. I highly doubt it was him alone actually. I highly doubt Obama was as bewildered and outraged as he made it seem. It was written into the bill. These were contracts, after all. If we didn’t want executives to make bonuses, we should have made it part of the law.

I actually doubt AIG would have taken the money if such tough provisions were put in there, but I never believed that we would have seen the end of the world if several of these huge failures collapsed. Tough times, yes, but paving the way for better business models at least.

I’m not going to make a big point about how small the bonuses were in comparison to the actual amount of “taxpayer money” that was poured into American International Group. This is a matter of principle, after all. But I will ask where people thought the money was going to go. Did we really specify? In a way, aren’t we contributing to everyone’s paycheck in that company? Maybe we should be angry that AIG has four too many janitors or five too many secretaries.

Hey, pal! I expressly wrote my senator and told him that the money was for a bowling alley named after me in the corporate headquarters!

I get the feeling that none of us know how to efficiently use bailout money to get us out of the recession. Not even corporates. And least of all politicians. This was an example of the media crusading to “root out injustice” and forcing politicians to react rather than think and lead. 90% taxation? Doesn’t this only confirm perceptions of government taxation that make people like Ron Paul popular?

Some days I get tired of defending a government that strains so hard to shit all over itself.

I wish we’d never given these people money. I would have liked to see companies either sort themselves out or collapse. I would have been interested to see what would have come out of the ashes. Instead, like I told Bear Force, what we’re seeing is an adult and a child. The child has a record of arson. The adult gives him matches. Then the adult publicly hangs the child after it sets another fire. He then applies for another adoption.

We’re prolonging the problem. Someday there will be nothing worth saving and we’ll keep trying anyway.
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“He’s Our You” review tomorrow, Lost fans.
Currently listening to: Hazards of Love by the Decemberists

Bonuses for Bums / Pakistan Doesn’t Explode

In response to American International Group paying out $165 million in bonuses to executives, the President says he’s going to try and use “every legal means” to rescind them.

Interesting.

If I had to default on an opinion, I’d say “Yeah, screw ’em.”

Their argument: AIG is contractually obligated to pay these bonuses. If they don’t pay them, they could get seriously sued. Also, I was talking to my conservative friend, General Custer, and he did bring up examples he knew of people who basically treated those bonuses as a granted part of their salary. In other words, without those bonuses, supposedly some executives would get about as screwed as the smaller guy in the company who got laid off. But then he said that, on the whole, he disagreed with the idea of bonuses as an entitlement anyway. So we’re on the same page.

Basically, if I was a little younger or maybe in more of a rabble-rousing mood, I would be as outraged as Mr. Boughttoday who created a video for the explicit purpose of saying how much he the bonuses pissed him off (video at the end of the section). Plenty of self-proclaimed internet watchdogs are claiming this is a high example of corporate corruption, a declaration of war on the normal, working American.

I see it as corporate America being blind and dumb.

Basically, the way it seems to me, AIG (and probably most of the companies on the bailout payroll) don’t know how to function without exorbitant bonuses. They don’t know how to NOT reward complacency and incompetence. When they’re caught with their pants down, they shrug their shoulders. What else can they do? This is how corporations have been working for a long time. As a country, we just laughed at Dilbert, The Office, and raised our eyebrows at Enron, but we never really figured how much this affects our economy until our money was more explicitly put into their outstretched palms.

I like to see Obama slap them across the face. But it’s more like a parent disciplining a child for eating too many cookies than punishing a criminal. What these companies did with people’s mortgages and overleveraging…that might be criminal…criminally stupid at least. This just seems symptomatic of the lack of accountability in our corporate system.

America, meet your corporations. Corporations, meet America.

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In other news, the situation in Pakistan has improved.

I’m pleasantly surprised.

There’s been a lot of political unrest in the country concerning the blocking of certain judges including prominent figure Iftikhar Chaudhry who apparently scared Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani with the spectre of corruption charges.  Protests to Chaudhry’s blocking had become notably violent recently as had the government’s attempts to stifle opposition leader Nawaz Sharif.

Correction – Ignorant American student that I am, I misread the BBC article and claimed Gilani was Benazir Bhutto’s widower. The President, Asif Ali Zardari, was married to Bhutto, not the Prime Minister. Thanks, anonymous tipster.

I guess it’s sort of like if Obama cancelled Rush Limbaugh’s show after firing Antonin Scalia from the Supreme Court. Except, in this country, people wouldn’t really protest if Rush Limbaugh were shut up.

Anyway, conceding to the pressure, Chaudhry has been reinstated, preventing a march on Islamabad and the people seem pretty impressed with themselves. I’m glad that a) not too many people got hurt in violent protests today and b) a vocal opposition got its voice heard.

If I’m not mistaken, aside from human rights, democratic functioning and opposition to corruption and tyranny, we’re supposed to care because Pakistan is a nuclear power that borders Afghanistan where we’ve been letting the Taliban grow stronger. If the country becomes too unstable, we could see terrorist organizations infiltrate a country with nukes.

Here’s an apparently well thought-out and well-informed editorial on the situation in Pakistan. It means I didn’t read all of it, but maybe you should.

Hey, don’t worry, guys, I’m sure if things get too rough, we’ll just invade them and make it all better. *rolls eyes*
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Questions of the day:

Are the AIG bonuses that outrageous? Do you see any justification for them? How are you feeling about the bailout these days? If it was a bad idea, how do we stop our government from giving away more of our money?

And anyone who knows more about the situation in Pakistan, please enlighten me.

Here’s a picture of a squirrel:

Currently listening to: “United States of Pop (2008)” – DJ Earworm