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PERSPECTIVE: Security firm claims Mac security fall short may be exaggerated
by Wayne Billing 27 Apr '12

27 Apr '12

…from: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/04/kaspersky-trolls-apple-claims-mac… Security firm claims Mac security is "10 years behind" Microsoft By Chris Foresman | Published a day ago Not content to dispel the "myth" that Macs are impervious to malware last week, Kaspersky Lab CEO Eugene Kaspersky is sounding the Mac malware alarm again this week. During the Info Security 2012 conference, he claimed that Apple is 10 years behind Microsoft on the security front. "I think [Apple is] ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security," Kaspersky told CBR. "For many years I've been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It's always been possible to develop Mac malware, but [Flashback] was a bit different. For example, it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms." Kaspersky suggested that OS X's relatively low incidence of malware over the last decade has caused Apple to fall behind, while the abundance of viruses, worms, and trojans targeting Windows forced Microsoft to step up its game. There's some truth behind that thinking—Windows 7 is by far the most secure operating system Redmond has built. But Apple hasn't entirely rested on its laurels for the last ten years. The company has added malware detection to OS X, continued to remove default installs of popular exploit vectors like Flash and Java, and added features like address space layout randomization (ASLR) and sandboxing to prevent one application exploit from affecting the whole system. Furthermore, Apple intends to improve security in the next version of OS X, dubbed Mountain Lion. Features like ASLR and sandboxing will have a more robust implementation in Mountain Lion. Meanwhile, Apple is also adding a new feature called GateKeeper, which allows users to limit software installs to either the Mac App Store or to only verified developers. The recent hubbub over the Flashback trojan has certainly raised concerns over the security of OS X, and we agree that Apple could do more to be responsive to malware threats when they are discovered. But to suggest Apple is "10 years behind" belies the efforts it has made to secure the OS from different angles.

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FYI: Office for Mac 2011: "Please upgrade the Office database" procedure
by billing 23 Apr '12

23 Apr '12

…from: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2702740 Share Article ID: 2702740 - Last Review: April 20, 2012 - Revision: 5.0 Outlook 2011 start error: "Please upgrade the Office database" View products that this article applies to. System Tip This article applies to a different operating system than the one you are using. Article content that may not be relevant to you is disabled. Expand all | Collapse all SYMPTOMS After Service Pack 2 (SP2) is installed for Office for Mac 2011, you may receive this message: Please upgrade the Office database …but an easier to follow explanation can be found at: http://www.macworld.com/article/1166434/undoing_the_damage_wrought_by_micro… Undoing the damage wrought by Microsoft's Outlook update by Christopher Breen, Macworld.com Apr 18, 2012 1:30 pm Reader Charles Dane has entered a hellish loop of Microsoft’s design. He writes: COMPLETE COVERAGE Review: Outlook for Mac 2011 SIMILAR ARTICLES Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2011 Modernizing an email client Lion: The Complete Macworld Review Microsoft Entourage 2008 Panther Secrets Declassified Outlook 2011 tips that owe a debt to Entourage I installed the latest Office 2011 update and now I can’t open Outlook. When I try I’m told that I must update my Office database. I do that and some tool appears that updates my identity. When it completes I’m then told that there’s a problem with the Office database and I have to rebuild it. Okay, so I do that and then I’m told that my identity is older than the version of Outlook that I’m now using. The solution is to launch Outlook to rebuild the identity, but when i do that, the loop starts over. Help!! I wish you were the only affected party, but I’m afraid you’re not alone. I encountered the same problem as I’m sure many others did (particularly given that Microsoft issued a support documentthe same day the latest upgrade shipped that explains the way out). This is a document you should read as it outlines every inconvenient step you must take to make Outlook usable again. For those non-Outlook-using readers following along who take some pleasure in the discomfort of others, here’s the gist. First, you quit Outlook. Then, locate the Office 2011 Identities folder, found via this path—youruserfolder/Documents/Microsoft User Data. Duplicate the Office 2011 Identities folder. (My folder included more than 650,000 items that consumed 20.6GB of data. It took nearly 50 minutes to duplicate.) This is simply a backup copy should something go wrong. Now that you have a backup copy, launch Outlook while holding down the Option key to open the Microsoft Database Utility. In that window click the Plus (+) button to create a new identity—it will be called Identity 1 by default. Don’t set this identify as the default and close the utility window. Return to the Microsoft User Data folder inside your Documents folder, open the original Office 2011 Identities folder, and seek out the Identity 1 folder. Open this folder and then open the Data Records folder within. While holding down the Control key click on the Database Headers folder and choose the Copy Database Headers command from the resulting menu. Once you've replaced Outlook's Database Headers with a working copy, you can rebuild your main identity's database Return to the Office 2011 Identities folder, open the Main Identity folder, and open its Data Records folder. Choose Paste Item from the Finder's Edit menu and then click Replace All in the alert that appears. Not done yet. Now, launch Outlook with the Option key held down to open the Microsoft Database Utility. Choose the Main Identity (or whatever you’ve called your main identity) and click the Rebuild button. If you have a lot of items the rebuild process can take a very long time—time you might devote to thinking about moving to a different email client that doesn’t demand this kind of rigmarole. Once the database has been rebuilt you can go back to using Outlook. Wayne Billing Classroom Technology Support Audio Visual and Classroom Technology Support 130 Machray Hall Building 474-6649 474-7625 (fax) Wayne_Billing(a)umanitoba.ca

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INTEREST: Oracle, Google wrangle over Android's use of JAVA
by billing 02 Apr '12

02 Apr '12

….from: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-oracle-going-to-trial-as-settlement-ta… Google, Oracle going to trial as settlement talks collapse By Rachel King | April 2, 2012, 1:22pm PDT Summary: After trying to give an out-of-court settlement one last chance, it is definite that Google and Oracle will now go to trial. It’s on: Google and Oracle are set to go to trial two weeks from today now that a last-ditch attempt at a settlement has failed. Last week, Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal asked both parties to give settlement talks another chance, with a decision required by April 9. Even though they had another week, it must have been clear that a settlement just isn’t in the cards. Google did propose an offer that included a cut of Android’s revenue stream through 2018, which was a stipulation for damages if (and only if) Oracle prevails on patent infringement. Grewal — the same judge who presided over similarly failed settlement talks last fall — issued a memo on Monday explained that “the parties have reached an irreconcilable impasse in their settlement discussions with the undersigned,” and that “no further conferences shall be convened.” Even more simply, Grewal wrote “in the end, some cases just need to be tried.” He also wished them both “good luck” when Google and Oracle’s legal teams meet up at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco in front of Judge William H. Alsup on April 16. This latest turn of events is just one of many in the patent infringement battle between Oracle and Google. Oracle is suing Google over Java-related patents and technology that appear on the Android mobile operating system. Google’s lawyers have repeatedly responded by discussing Google’s relationship with Sun Microsystems, Java’s creator now owned by Oracle. Google argued that Sun was a big fan of Android from the start, seeing it as a tool to “spread news and word about Java.” Since last July, there have been a number of delays to getting a trial underway with proposed failed start dates in October 2011 and March 2012.

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FYI: iOS: access to UofM EXCHANGE requires new certificate
by Wayne Billing 26 Mar '12

26 Mar '12

IST did maintenance to the Microsoft EXCHANGE environment over the weekend to improve performance. One side effect of this maintenance is the need to accept a new security certificate on iOS devices and the addition of the "ad" domain name in your email configuration for the UofM EXCHANGE account. See the image below for where to add the "ad" domain in your configuration. The Exchange Maintenance has been completed successfully. We have tested and verified that everything is working as expected. Due to the change there will be one item to note: On the iPhone/iPad (possibly other Activesync devices as well) you will need to enter the domain name now which is "ad" if you have not already done so (see image below) in SETTINGS > MAIL, CONTACTS, CALENDARS > ad.umanitoba.ca<http://ad.umanitoba.ca> (or whatever you've called your EXCHANGE account). [cid:88E71E02-7863-48D3-A3F8-DB5F56552D6A] Wayne Billing Classroom Technology Support Audio Visual and Classroom Technology Support 130 Machray Hall Building 474-6649 474-7625 (fax) Wayne_Billing(a)umanitoba.ca<mailto:Wayne_Billing@umanitoba.ca>

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INTEREST: This American Life #460 “Retraction” 3/16/12
by billing 19 Mar '12

19 Mar '12

….from: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction 460: RETRACTION Originally aired 03.16.2012 We've discovered that one of our most popular episodes contained numerous fabrications. This week, we detail the errors in Mike Daisey's story about visiting Foxconn, which makes iPads and other products for Apple in China. Marketplace'sChina correspondent Rob Schmitz discovered the fabrications. Play podcast: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcast.thisamericanlife.org/podcas… This American Life #460 “Retraction” 3/16/12 PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE 100% ACCURATE AND MAY CONTAIN MISSPELLINGS, FORMAT MISTAKES AND OTHER INACCURACIES. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction © 2012 Chicago Public Media & Ira Glass From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International, I'm Ira Glass And I'm coming to you today to say something that I've never had to say on our program. Two months ago, we broadcast a story that we've come to believe is not true. It's a story that got a lot of attention. More people downloaded it than any episode we've ever done. This is Mike Daisey's story about visiting a plant in China where Apple manufactures iPhones and iPads and other products. He's been performing this story onstage as a monologue since 2010. We didn't commission this story, we didn't send him to China. We excerpted the stage show that he's been telling in theaters around the country. We did factcheck the story before we put it on the radio. But in factchecking, our main concern was whether the things Mike says about Apple and about its supplier Foxconn. which makes this stuff, were true. That stuff is true. It’s been corroborated by independent investigations by other journalists, studies by advocacy groups, and much of it has been corroborated by Apple itself in its own audit reports. But what's not true is what Mike said about his own trip to China. As best as we can tell, Mike's monologue in reality is a mix of things that actually happened when he visited China and things that he just heard about or researched, which he then pretends that he witnessed first hand. He pretends that he just stumbled upon an array of workers who typify all kinds of harsh things somebody might face in a factory that makes iPhones and iPads. And the most powerful and memorable moments in the story all seem to be fabricated. At the time that we were factchecking his story we asked Mike for the contact information for the interpreter that he used when he was visiting China, who he calls Cathy in his monologue. We wanted to talk to her to confirm that the incidents that he described all happened as he describes them.   1  And When we asked for her information he told us her real name wasn't Cathy, it was Anna and he had a cellphone number for her but he said when he tried it, it didn't work any more. He said he had no way to reach her. And because the other things Mike told us – about Apple and Foxconn – seemed to check out, we saw no reason to doubt him, and we dropped this. We didn’t try further to reach the translator. That was a mistake. I can say now in retrospect that when Mike Daisey wouldn't give us contact information for his interpreter we should've killed the story rather than run it. we never should've broadcast this story without talking to that woman. Instead, we trusted his word. Although he's not a journalist, we made clear to him that anything he was going to say on our show would have to live up to journalistic standards. He had to be truthful. And he lied to us. All this came to our attention because the China correspondent for the public radio program Marketplace, Rob Schmitz, who lives in Shanghai, heard the story and had questions about it, he had suspicions about it. And he went out and he found the translator. And although Mike told us her name is Anna - he now admits, to keep us from finding her - her name actually is Cathy, just like he says in his monologue. Rob ran the details of Mike's monologue by Cathy and learned that much of the story is not factual. Cathy gave Rob emails between her and Mike that corroborated her version of some of the events. Today on our show we're going to hear what she said to Rob, and then we're going to talk to Mike Daisey about why he lied to all of you and to me, off the air, during the factchecking process. And we're going to end our show with someone who actually knows the facts of what happens in Apple's suppliers in China, who’s going to review those with us. I should say, I am not happy to have to come to you and tell you that something that we presented on the radio as factual is not factual. All of us in public radio stand together and I have friends and colleagues on lots of other shows who – like us here at This American Life – work hard to do accurate, independent reporting week in, week out. I and my coworkers on This American Life are not happy to have done anything to hurt the reputation of the journalism that happens on this radio station every day. So we want to   2  be completely transparent about what we got wrong, and what we now believe is the truth. And let's just get to it. Here's Rob Schmitz, who usually reports for Marketplace, in Shanghai. [Act one. Cathy's Account.] Rob Schmitz: One of the big things that didn’t sit right with me came early on in Daisey’s monologue, when he talks about arriving at the gates of the Foxconn factory.    [CLIP] Mike Daisey: And I get out of the taxi with my translator. And the first thing I see at the gates are the guards. And the guards look pissed. They look really pissed, and they are carrying guns.   I’ve done reporting at a lot of Chinese factories, and I’ve never seen guards with guns. The only people allowed to have guns in China are the military and the police...not factory guards. Later, Daisey meets with factory workers who he says belong to an illegal union, one that’s not authorized by the Chinese government.   [CLIP] Mike Daisey: And I say to them, how do you know who's right to work with you? How do you find people to help you organize? And they look at each other bashfully, and they say well, we talk a lot. We have lots of meetings, and we meet at coffeehouses and different Starbucks in Guangzhou. And we exchange papers...    Wait, hold on. Rewind.   [CLIP] Mike Daisey:  ...we meet at coffeehouses and different Starbucks in Guangzhou. Factory workers who make fifteen, twenty dollars a day are sipping coffee at Starbucks? Starbucks is pricier in China than in the US. A reporter friend of mine didn’t believe this, either. He said Chinese factory workers gathering at Starbucks is sort of like United Auto Workers in Detroit holding their meetings at a Chinese teahouse.  I talked to other reporters over here - we all noticed these errors - and it made us wonder ... what else in Daisey’s monologue wasn’t true?      3  I decided to track down his translator, Cathy, who’s a big character in the story.     I could pretend finding her took amazing detective work.     But basically, I just typed “Cathy and translator and Shenzhen” into Google.     I called the first number that came up.  Rob Schmitz: I’m looking for somebody in Shenzhen named Cathy, and that’s why I’m calling you; who worked for a gentleman named Mike Daisey, and I’m wondering if you ever worked with a man named Mike Daisey?   Cathy Lee: Yes! He’s from America, right?  Rob Schmitz: Did you work with him?   Cathy Lee: Sure.   Rob Schmitz: So that was you, actually?   Cathy Lee: Yes.    Her name is Li Guifen, but with westerners, professionally, she goes by the anglicized name Cathy Lee.     I tell her that Daisey put her in a stage show about Apple and Foxconn. I ask her if she knows about this. Nope. She knew Daisey was writing something, but that’s it. She hasn’t heard from him since 2010, when he hired her in Shenzhen.    So I fly there to see her and the next day, she takes me to the exact spot she took Daisey – the gates of Foxconn.    [ambient noise] Rob Schmitz: You guys came here – what, in 2010?   Cathy Lee: Yeah, 2010.  Rob Schmitz: The night before, I sent Cathy a link to the This American Life episode with Daisey. And I brought a copy of his script with me to the gates.   Cathy Lee: You know, I listened to the radio of Michael Daisey. I think it’s ok he write things. But some of them he write is true, some of them he write is not true.   4  But he’s not telling the whole truth.  She says a lot of details were exaggerated...some of them were just plain made-up. We start with their itinerary: Daisey makes it sound like he talked to lots of workers - in interviews he’s said hundreds - but Cathy says it was maybe 50 people on the outside - they were just at Foxconn’s gates for two mornings. And emails between Daisey and Cathy, which she gave me, show that the chronology of the story that Daisey tells on stage is a fabrication. In his monologue he says he visited Foxconn’s gates and then decided to pose as a businessman to get tours of factories. In fact, he visited Foxconn the morning after he arrived in Shenzen a factory called KTC technology that very afternoon. It was all set up in advance.    Daisey told Ira that he and Cathy visited ten factories, posing as business people. Cathy says it was only three.    And then, there’s the guns.      Cathy Lee: You know guns are not allowed to be carried by security guards. It’s illegal.     Cathy says she’s never seen a gun in person, only in the movies and on tv, so she’d remember it.     And there are more important parts of Daisey’s story that she says didn’t happen.    The biggest is the children. Daisey describes meeting a worker from the iPhone assembly line.     [CLIP] Mike Daisey: And I say to her, you seem kind of young. How old are you? And she says, I'm 13. And I say, 13? That's young. Is it hard to get work at Foxconn when you're-- and she says oh no. And her friends all agree, they don't really check ages. I'm telling you ... in my first two hours of my first day at that gate, I met workers who were 14 years old, 13 years old, 12. Do you really think Apple doesn't know?  Rob Schmitz: did the guards have guns when you came here with Mike Daisey?   Cathy Lee: No. Definitely no.  Rob Schmitz: So he wasn’t telling the truth about that.   5  In fact, underage workers are sometimes caught working at Apple suppliers. Apple’s own audit says in 2010 when Daisey was in China, Apple found ten facilities where 91 underage workers were hired ... but it’s widely acknowledged that Apple has been aggressive about underage workers, and they’re rare. That’s 91 workers out of hundred of thousands. Ira asked Mike about this on the This American Life broadcast, and he admitted it might be rare, but he stuck by his story:    [CLIP] Mike Daisey: I know that I met people who were there. And I know that I talked to them. I mean there weren’t very many as a proportion of the total group. I talked to more than 100 people I met 5 or 6 that were underage. Ira Glass: All in one group? Mike Daisey: Yes they were. They seemed like savvy kids honestly.     Rob Schmitz: Do you remember meeting 12 year-old, 13 year-old, and 14 year- old workers here?   Cathy Lee: No, I don’t think so. Maybe we met a girl who looked like she was 13 years old, like that one, she looks really young.   Rob Schmitz: Is that something that you would remember?   Cathy Lee: I think that if she said she was 13 or 12, then I would be surprised. I would be very surprised. And I would remember for sure. But there is no such thing.    She’d be surprised, because she says in the ten years she’s visited factories in Shenzhen, she’s hardly ever seen underage workers.    Then there’s the meeting Daisey says he had with workers from an unauthorized union, a secret union. Cathy confirmed that this did happen.     Daisey told Ira that they met with twenty-five to thirty workers, in an all-day meeting. Cathy remembers two workers, she says maybe there were two or three others, and it was couple hours over lunch, at a restaurant.     Daisey describes a birdlike woman who showed them a government-issued blacklist of people companies weren’t allowed to hire. She remembers the blacklist, but she also remembers that it didn’t have an official government stamp. Anything government- issued in China carries an official stamp. So she wonders if the blacklist was real.    Here’s another part of that meeting with the illegal union, from Daisey’s monologue:    6      [PLAY SIMULTANEOUSLY AND THEN CROSSFADE INTO]   Rob Schmitz: ..shake uncontrollably. Some of them can’t even pick up a glass. Did you meet people who fit this description?  Cathy Lee: No.   Rob Schmitz: So there was nobody who said they were poisoned by hexane?   Cathy Lee: No. Nobody mentioned the Hexane.   Rob Schmitz: Ok. And nobody had hands that were shaking uncontrollably?   Cathy Lee: No.     So where did this come from?    Two years ago, workers at an Apple supplier were poisoned by n-Hexane. It was all over the news in China. But this didn’t happen in Shenzhen. It happened nearly a thousand miles away, in a city called Suzhou. I’ve interviewed these workers, so I knew the story. And when I heard Daisey’s monologue on the radio, I wondered: How’d they get all the way down to Shenzhen? It seemed crazy, that somehow Daisey could’ve met a few of them during his trip.     Cathy suggests that Daisey saw reports about this in the news, and copied and pasted it into his monologue.    Which bring us to the most dramatic point in Daisey’s monologue – apparently onstage it’s one of the most emotional moments in the show. It comes at this union meeting.    Daisey describes an old man with leathery skin who used to work at foxconn ... making metal enclosures for ipads and laptops. ... he says the man got his hand caught in a metal press, and that it was now a twisted claw. He says he got no medical attention, and then Foxconn fired him for working too slowly.  [CLIP] Mike Daisey: There's a group that's talking about hexane. N-hexane is an iPhone screen cleaner. It's great because it evaporates a little bit faster than alcohol does, which means you can run the production line even faster and try to keep up with the quotas. The problem is that n-hexane is a potent neurotoxin, and all these people have been exposed. Their hands shake uncontrollably. Most of them...can't even pick up a glass.   7    [CLIP] Mike Daisey: And when he says this, I reach into my satchel, and I take out my iPad. And when he sees it, his eyes widen, because one of the ultimate ironies of globalism, at this point there are no iPads in China. .... He's never actually seen one on, this thing that took his hand. I turn it on, unlock the screen, and pass it to him. He takes it. The icons flare into view, and he strokes the screen with his ruined hand, and the icons slide back and forth. And he says something to Cathy, and Cathy says, "he says it's a kind of magic."      Cathy Lee: No. This is not true. You know, it’s just like a movie scenery.   Rob Schmitz: it sounds like a movie.   Cathy Lee: yeah. Very emotional. But not true to me.    Cathy does remember this guy. But she says the man never told them he had ever worked at Foxconn.    There are other details of Daisey’s monologue Cathy says never happened when she was with him: The taxi ride on the exit ramp Daisey says petered out into thin air 85 feet up off the ground. The workers with repetitive motion injuries. The factory dorm rooms Daisey claims they saw. Cathy says they never saw any dorm rooms. The emotional conversation between them, where Daisey touches her hand. Didn’t happen that way, she says. Even the conversation where Cathy warns Daisey that interviewing workers at the gates of Foxconn wouldn’t work....of course it would work, she told me. She’s taken other foreigners to Foxconn and other factory gates for years — it’s part of her job. It always works.    Now of course Cathy’s memory isn’t perfect. This was nearly two years ago - June 2010 - and neither she nor Mike took notes. On some of these things, her memory’s hazy. She didn’t seem mad at Mike at all.      Cathy Lee: He is a writer. So I know what he say is only maybe half of them or less actual. But he is allowed do do that right? Because he’s not a journalist.   Rob Schmitz: I don’t know. You’re right. He’s a writer. He’s a writer and an actor.   Cathy Lee: Yeah.  Rob Schmitz: However, his play is helping form the opinions of many Americans.   Cathy Lee: Um....As a Chinese, I think it’s better if he can tell the American   8  people the truth. I hope people know the real China. But he’s a writer and he exaggerate some things. So, I think it’s not so good.    Rob Schmitz: I wanted to talk to you about what you saw in China....     It’s a week later. I’m in my tiny Shanghai studio talking to Mike Daisey, who’s sitting in This American Life’s studio. Ira’s there too - with questions of his own.    Rob Schmitz: How many factories did you visit when you were there?    Mike Daisey: I believe I went to 5.    Rob Schmitz: You told ira 10.    Mike Daisey: I know. Rob Schmitz: OK. Mike Daisey: But, now that I’m looking at it, I believe it was 5.     Cathy remembers three.    Daisey also revises the number of illegal union members he met. He originally told Ira 25 to 30. Now he knocks it down to ten. Cathy remember, said it was between 2 and 5.    I ask Mike about the underage workers. I explain to him that Cathy said there weren’t any. I tell him that foreigners often think Chinese people look younger than they actually are.  Mike Daisey: Well they did look young, but the girl I spoke with told me she was 13. So I took her at her word, and that’s what happened.  Rob Schmitz: Why would Cathy say that you did not meet any underage workers?   Mike Daisey: I don’t know. I do know when doing interviews a lot of people were speaking in English. They enjoyed using English with me and I don’t know if she was paying attention at that particular point. I don’t know. There was a lot of wrangling that Cathy was doing, talking to people and sort of pre-interviewing.   Rob Schmitz: So Mike, according to what you’re saying, these are migrant workers who are preteen, 13 or 14 years old, there English isn’t going to be very   9  good. You’re telling me that they were speaking English to you, in a way that you could understand?   Mike Daisey: Well, I only know – only one of them was really talkative and that was the main girl I was talking to. Rob Schmitz: So you have a clear recollection of meeting somebody who was 13 years old? Mike Daisey: Yes. Rob Schmitz: And twelve years old? Mike Daisey: Yes of the girl who was thirteen and her friends who represented themselves as being around her age and so the spread there is just an effort to cover the ages that I suspect they are around that age.   Ira Glass: Mike did somebody actually say 12, or did somebody say they were 13 and then you looked at group and you’re like OK, maybe one’s 12?   M: Yes one person said they were 13. The others with her, and those were the friends I talk about.   Ira Glass: But none said them said they were 12, right? Like, you have one who gave age who was 13, and the others didn’t actually give their ages and you’re just kind of guessing.   Mike Daisey: That’s correct. That’s accurate.   Rob Schmitz: Let’s talk about the hexane poisoned workers. Cathy says that you did not talk to workers who were poisoned by hexane and were shaking uncontrollably.   Mike Daisey: That’s correct. I met workers in Hong Kong going to Apple protests who had not been poisoned by hexane but had known people who had been, and it was like a constant conversation we were having about those workers. So no, they were not at that meeting.   Rob Schmitz: So you lied about that. That wasn’t what you saw.   Mike Daisey: I wouldn’t express it that way.   Rob Schmitz: How would you express it?   Mike Daisey: I would say that I wanted to tell a story that captured the totality of   10  my trip. So when I was building the scene of that meeting, I wanted to have the voice of this thing that had been happening that everyone been talking about.   Ira Glass: So you didn’t meet any worker who’d been poisoned by hexane?   Mike Daisey: That’s correct.  Daisey has not just said these things in his show and on This American Life. The script of his monologue, which is called “The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” was posted online, for anyone to download for free and then perform. In the first 48 hours, 42,000 people downloaded it, according to Daisey.     Since he appeared on This American Life he’s been in the press constantly...  in newspapers and magazines...he’s written op-eds, he’s been on television programs and online news sites ... he’s become one of the most visible outspoken critics of Apple, and he usually says things like this, from an appearance on MSNBC a month ago:    [CLIP MSNBC ]   I saw all the things that everyone’s been reporting. I saw underage  workers, I talked to workers who were 13, 14, 15 years old, I met  people whose hands have ben destroyed by doing the same motion again and again on the line. HOST: Making Apple products? MD: Yes! [FADE UNDER] carpal tunnel on a scale you can hardly imagine. Making products     Rob Schmitz: Thing is, people believe he saw these things.    And except for the n-hexane, Daisey insisted in our interview that he did see them.    Talking to Daisey was exhausting. There were so many details that didn’t check out, and even when he admitted that he didn’t see what he claimed he saw, he’d qualify it with something. For instance he admitted that he didn’t go on the exit ramp with Cathy like he says in the monologue .... but insisted that the whole thing did happen ... it’s just that Cathy wasn’t there.    He insisted that he did see the inside of workers’ dorm rooms, but admitted, no, there are no cameras there like he claims in his monologue. There are only cameras in the hallways.      11  It was never simple. He never just said: “I lied.”    Rob Schmitz: Does it matter if the things you’ve said in this play are untrue?  Mike Daisey: Yeah I think the truth always matters, truth is tremendously important. I don’t live in a subjective universe where everything is up for grabs. I really do believe that stories should be subordinate to the truth.   Rob Schmitz: Then in parts of this why didn’t you tell the truth?   Mike Daisey: Everything that’s in this monologue is built out of the trip I took and time I spent on the ground. So I don’t know that I would accept that interpretation. I don’t know that I would agree with that.    The morning after this interview, Ira and I called Cathy, to see one last time if we could square Mike’s story with hers.    We asked her a bunch of questions: Were you and Mike ever separated at the gates of Foxconn? Could that have been when he met the 13 year old? She said no, she doesn’t remember any time when they were separated. Did Mike ever talk to workers in English? She said no, she doesn’t remember that, and it’s very unlikely the workers would speak English.     Cathy says some things from Daisey’s monologue were true: He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. They did pose as business people in the factories they visited.   And before they did that, Daisey did have a conversation with her about his plan. She says this conversation probably happened on June 2nd when she first met Daisey. He told her that he would pretend to be a businessman and he needed her help. Here’s how he tells the story:     [CLIP] Mike Daisey: And she listens to this, and she says, but you are not a businessman. And I say, that's true, I am not a businessman. And she says, and you aren't going to buy their products. I say, that's true, I'm not going to buy their products. And she says, you will lie to them. And I say, yes Cathy, I'm going to lie to lots of people.  That part, says Cathy, was true.

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INTEREST: Google, Motorola Mobility Must Give Android Development Data to Apple
by Wayne Billing 06 Mar '12

06 Mar '12

…from: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-06/google-ordered-by-judge-to-give-ap… Google, Motorola Mobility Must Give Android Data to Apple By Andrew Harris - Mar 5, 2012 11:36 PM CT Google Inc. and a Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. (MMI)<http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/MMI:US> unit were ordered by the U.S. judge presiding over an Apple Inc. (AAPL)<http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/AAPL:US> patent lawsuit to turn over information about the development of Google’s Android operating system. The Motorola Mobility unit and Google must also hand over to Apple information about Google’s pending $12.5 billion acquisition of the mobile-phone maker, U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner in Chicago<http://topics.bloomberg.com/chicago/> ruled yesterday. Posner’s decision came in a patent lawsuit filed in 2010 by Cupertino, California-based Apple against Motorola Mobility, which has countersued. “The Android/Motorola acquisition discovery is highly relevant to Apple’s claims and defenses,” Apple’s attorneys’ said in a March 2 filing requesting the judge’s order. Apple, maker of the iPhone, has been waging a global fight with the former Motorola Inc. unit that sells phones using Google Inc. (GOOG)<http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/GOOG:US>’s Android operating system. Posner, a federal appeals court judge who is presiding over the trial court-level case, has scheduled back-to-back trials before separate juries starting June 11. The first will address six Apple patents, and the second will cover three Motorola patents. “Motorola shall be expected to obtain full and immediate compliance by Google with Apple’s liability discovery demands,” the judge said in a February order. Motorola’s Opposition Motorola Mobility opposed Apple’s request, arguing that Google, the operator of the world’s most-visited Internet search portal, isn’t a party to the lawsuit. “Google’s employees and documents are not within the ‘possession, custody, or control’ of Motorola, and Motorola cannot force Google to produce documents or witnesses over Google’s objections,” lawyers for the mobile phone maker said in a court filing earlier yesterday. Motorola Mobility was spun off from Motorola Inc. -- now Motorola Solutions Inc. (MSI)<http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/MSI:US> Jennifer Erickson<http://topics.bloomberg.com/jennifer-erickson/>, a spokeswoman for the Libertyville, Illinois-based company, declined to comment on the ruling. Niki Fenwick, a spokeswoman at Google, said in an e-mail that the company wouldn’t comment beyond what was submitted in court papers. The case is Apple Inc. v. Motorola Inc., 11-cv-08540, U.S. District Court, Northern District ofIllinois<http://topics.bloomberg.com/illinois/> (Chicago).

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INTEREST: Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview: Email
by Billing Wayne 01 Mar '12

01 Mar '12

Today saw the end of the Mobile World Congress 2012 (MWC - http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/virtualtour.html) taking place in Barcelona, Spain. With 67,000 attendees which include all of the major mobile technology manufacturers, the description of the MWC is not far wrong: No longer limited only to communications, mobile is now a force transforming our world in an unprecedented way. Mobile connects, entertains, informs and inspires us, ultimately changing how we live and who we are. Mobile World Congress is the global epicenter of this redefinition as our participants enable, lead and accelerate it. One of the major events at MWC was Microsoft's Consumer Preview for Windows 8 (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/consumer-preview?ocid=O_MSC_W8…). …from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8#Consumer_Preview_.28The_Public_Beta.… Metro UI Windows 8 will employ a new user interface based on Microsoft's Metro design language. The Metro environment will feature a new tile-based Start screen similar to the Windows Phone operating system. Each tile will represent an application, and will be able to display relevant information such as the number of unread messages on the tile for an email app or the current temperature on a weather application. For the first time since Windows 95, the trademark Windows "Start" button will no longer appear - instead being replaced by a sliding panel-based menu. …from: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2012/03/windows-8-mail-client-gets-ra… E-mail shines in Windows 8 with radical overhaul of mail client By Jon Brodkin | Published about an hour ago The Windows 8 Consumer Preview comes with a pre-installed e-mail client for webmail and Exchange. While it's designed with the touch-friendly Metro interface in mind, it's quite usable even in traditional desktop mode, at least for the basic tasks of reading and writing messages. Windows 8 Mail is an alternative to the mail client in Windows Live Essentials, a free productivity suite for download on the stable versions of Windows in use today. Microsoft has not yet released a Windows 8-specific version of Outlook, the fee-based, business-class e-mail client that is part of Office. A beta version of "Office 15" is expected this summer, Office President Kurt DelBene said this week. For now, we have the free, consumer Mail client to look at, and it's one of the highlights of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. It's not as fully functional as Windows Live Mail, yet it outshines much of the rest of this experimental version of the operating system. So far, I have a hard time picturing myself using the Metro interface as my regular desktop. One reason for that is it so clearly geared toward touch usage. Peter Bright explains just how to use Windows 8 with a mouse and keyboard, including the proper use of those pesky "hot corners," but many of the operating system's applications are still in a proof-of-concept phase. The Mail app stands out in Windows 8 because it is quite usable for daily e-mailing, even with a mouse and keyboard. Let's take a look at Windows Live Mail running in Windows 7: Windows Live Mail in Windows 7 And now, here is the Mail client that comes with Windows 8: Mail in Windows 8 Consumer Preview As you can see, there is a big difference. Windows Live Mail looks a lot like Outlook, with the familiar ribbon interface offering tons of options for reading, sorting, and flagging e-mail. Windows 8 Mail is far more basic, yet perfectly usable and (to my eyes) easy to look at. If I could separate the Mail application from the rest of the operating system, I'd probably have no trouble using it today despite its status as a beta product. That's not a criticism of Windows 8—this is a preview version of the operating system that Microsoft does not intend for daily use. I set up the Windows 8 Mail client with Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft Exchange, and all three accounts loaded perfectly with no hassle or extra configuration required—just type in your e-mail address and password. The available options are the basic ones, with the ability to move e-mails to folders, mark as unread, search through mail, and more. One limitation arises from Microsoft's decision to create separate Windows 8 clients for Mail and Calendar. Windows Live puts your e-mail accounts and calendars into the same program, making it easy to add events from your inbox. In the Consumer Preview of Windows 8, there's no integration between the separate Mail and Calendar applications. Both work fine, they just don't work together. Early screenshots of Office 15 show a fusion of the ribbon and Metro interfaces, and an integrated mail/calendar client. Outlook for Windows 8 will be the premier mail client, but it will cost money, and many people—particularly those tablet buyers Microsoft wants to court—will be satisfied with an easy-to-use, free mail application. While it will be months until we see a final version, Microsoft looks set to deliver just that.

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INTEREST: Pressure Drives Changes at Foxconn
by Wayne Billing 20 Feb '12

20 Feb '12

…from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/technology/pressures-drive-change-at-chin… Pressure, Chinese and Foreign, Drives Changes at Foxconn [cid:09F4190D-0FBE-4BE3-AFA4-DF14E71C0104] Xuan Hui/European Pressphoto Agency Foxconn, which recruited workers at a 2010 job fair in Shenzhen, China, said Saturday it would sharply raise its wages. By DAVID BARBOZA<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/david_barboza/…> and CHARLES DUHIGG<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/charles_duhigg…> Published: February 19, 2012 BEIJING — The announcement Saturday that Foxconn Technology<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/foxconn_technology/in…>— one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers — will sharply raise salaries and reduce overtime<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/technology/foxconn-to-raise-salaries-for-…> at its Chinese factories signals that pressure from workers, international markets and concerns among Western consumers about working conditions is driving a fundamental shift that could accelerate an already rapidly changing Chinese economy. Enlarge This Image<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/technology/pressures-drive-change-at-chin…> [cid:41EE66C2-5D45-404A-AB02-130D013F5BC0]<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/technology/pressures-drive-change-at-chin…> Thomas Lee/Bloomberg News Trainees at a Foxconn industrial park in Shenzhen, China, walked beneath a poster of Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn's parent, Hon Hai Precision Industry. Enlarge This Image<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/technology/pressures-drive-change-at-chin…> [cid:C7AE0457-39FF-452D-98BC-8D787237EAC1]<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/technology/pressures-drive-change-at-chin…> Ym Yik/European Pressphoto Agency Foxconn employees in Shenzhen. The company has announced plans to invest in automation. But the true meaning of Foxconn’s reforms, analysts say, will depend in part on how effectively the company can remake an economic system that has relied for much of the last decade on luring migrants to work cheaply for long hours in mammoth factories building smartphones, computers and other electronics. Plants depend on workers’ being at assembly lines six or seven days a week, often for as long as 14 hours a day. Such facilities have made it possible for devices to be turned out almost as quickly as they are dreamed up. For that system to genuinely change, Foxconn, its competitors and their clients — which include Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and the world’s other large electronics firms — must convince consumers in America and elsewhere that improving factories to benefit workers is worth the higher prices of goods. “This is the way capitalism is supposed to work,” said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “As nations develop, wages rise and life theoretically gets better for everyone. “But in China, for that change to be permanent, consumers have to be willing to bear the consequences. When people read about bad Chinese factories in the paper, they might have a moment of outrage. But then they go to Amazon and are as ruthless as ever about paying the lowest prices.” Foxconn, with 1.2 million Chinese employees, is one of China’s largest employers. It assembles an estimated 40 percent of the smartphones, computers and other electronic gadgets sold around the world. Foxconn’s decisions set standards other manufacturers must compete with. The announcement by Foxconn, which said that it would raise salaries as much as 25 percent, to about $400 a month, came after an outcry over working conditions at its factories. In recent weeks, labor rights groups have staged coordinated protests in various countries after reports that some of Apple’s Chinese suppliers operate harsh, abusive and dangerous facilities<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-hum…>. To stem criticism, Apple hired a nonprofit labor group<http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/apple-announces-independent-factor…> to inspect the plants it uses. Workers welcomed the announced raises and overtime limits, though some were skeptical they would cause much real change. “When I was in Foxconn, there were rumors about pay raises every now and then, but I’ve never seen that day happen until I left,” said Gan Lunqun, 23, a former Foxconn worker. “This time it sounds more credible.” By bowing to such demands, Foxconn has conceded that employees and consumers have gained a sway once possessed only by Chinese bureaucrats and executives at the global electronics firms that hire Foxconn to build their products. Foxconn’s announcement also reflects how quickly China’s economy is shifting. Many of the country’s employers are facing labor shortages, which also puts upward pressure on wages, as do inflation and government demands to raise minimum wages. Over 100 million migrant workers returned to their village homes this month to celebrate China’s Spring Festival, otherwise known as the New Year. Traditionally, factories have had no problem luring those workers back. But many Chinese cities are still confronting serious labor shortages, even though the holiday ended weeks ago. A recent Chinese government report said this year’s labor shortage was more pronounced than those in previous years. And just as China’s exporters are struggling to cope with labor shortages in coastal regions, they are also confronting higher raw material costs and a strengthening Chinese currency, which makes Chinese goods more expensive in other nations. “China can’t guarantee the low wages and costs they once did,” said Ron Turi of Element 3 Battery Venture, a consulting firm in the battery industry. “And companies like Foxconn have developed international profiles, and so they have to worry about how they’re seen by people living in places with very different standards.” No other company in the world has quite the manufacturing scale of Foxconn. Nearly every global electronics company has some tie to the manufacturing giant, and while much of its work can be done cheaply, with low-skilled workers, the sheer volume of goods and scale of its operations make it China’s single biggest exporter. Some of its campuses are considered small cities, with as many as 200,000 workers. Many are housed in dormitories near the assembly lines and are expected to be ready to rush into work should new orders flow in. The Foxconn model, though, is under pressure. While most companies operate with similar dormitories, wage structures and work schedules, staffing Foxconn’s large sites has grown increasingly difficult. A new generation of young people in China are more reluctant to migrate to coastal cities, live in factory dorms and toil long hours. Many are staying closer to home, because of new opportunities in inland provinces. That has created labor shortages on the coast. Social scientists say young people here are also less willing to accept factory jobs for long periods. Meanwhile, demographic changes have meant China has fewer young people to join the work force. If the workers will not move to the coast, the logic is that the coastal factories ought to move to where the workers are living. Big manufacturers like Foxconn have responded to such challenges by moving factories inland. And worried that the old model is dying, Foxconn has announced plans to invest in millions of robots and automate aspects of production. Wayne Billing Classroom Technology Support Audio Visual and Classroom Technology Support 130 Machray Hall Building 474-6649 474-7625 (fax) Wayne_Billing(a)umanitoba.ca<mailto:Wayne_Billing@umanitoba.ca>

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INTEREST: The Dilemma of Cheap Electronics
by Wayne Billing 19 Feb '12

19 Feb '12

…from http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/the-dilemma-of-cheap-electronics/… [Pogue's Posts - The Latest in Technology From David Pogue]<http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/> February 9, 2012, 2:37 PM The Dilemma of Cheap Electronics Last week, an important Times article<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-hum…> set off shockwaves in the consumer tech industry by focusing on tragedies and working conditions at Foxconn, the Chinese electronics factory that makes Apple iPhones. It describes excessive overtime, crowding in worker dorms, improper disposal of hazardous waste and unsafe working conditions. These revelations have shocked a lot of Apple fans — and fired up a lot of Apple foes. There are petitions and flooded comment boards. This morning, protesters delivered petitions at six major Apple stores, including the new one in Grand Central Terminal. The article and the response are healthy. Nobody wants to see workers exploited, and if Apple can pressure Foxconn to clean up its act, it should. Apple is the poster child for the conditions at the Foxconn factory, and no wonder: it’s the most profitable electronics company. It makes a big, spectacular target. There’s an important factor, however, that seems to be largely missing from the conversation, though it was noted in the article: Apple isn’t the only company that builds electronics at Chinese factories. The truth is, almost all of them do. Foxconn’s other clients are a Who’s Who of popular electronics. They build cellphones, TVs, computers, e-book readers, routers, circuit boards, game consoles and on and on. Its customers include Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Asus, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Intel, I.B.M., Lenovo, Microsoft, Motorola, Netgear, Nintendo, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and Vizio. And that’s just Foxconn. There are other big Chinese electronics makers. As the Times article says, “Bleak working conditions have been documented at factories manufacturing products for Dell, Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and others.” It’s safe to say that most electronics sold in the United States are made in these Chinese factories. So yes, we should pressure Apple to continue putting pressure on Foxconn. But at the same time, we seem to be ignoring a much bigger and more important question: How much do we care? That Chinese workers are paid less than American workers is no big shock. We’ve known that forever. That’s why everybody outsources to China in the first place. There’s a long list of Chinese manufacturing costs that are lower than American manufacturing costs: hourly employee rates, worker benefits, taxes, the cost of power, buildings and equipment, and more. Bringing workplace standards and pay in Chinese factories up to American levels would, of course, raise the price of our electronics. How much is hard to say, but a financial analyst for an outsourcing company figures a $200 iPhone might cost $350 if it were built here. Do we care enough about Chinese factory conditions to pay nearly twice as much for our phones, tablets, cameras, TVs, computers, GPS units, camcorders, music players, DVD players, DVRs, networking gear and stereo equipment? Not everybody will say yes. But suppose they did. How would we get there? Which electronics brand would jump first? In other words, what assurance would the Apples and Dells and Panasonics have that if they forced their Chinese contractors to adopt American-level wages and conditions, their competitors would all do so simultaneously? That’s the part that the protests are missing. Is Apple supposed to be the only company that takes on the costs of improving conditions? Are the protesters seeking a world where an iPhone costs $350 and a competitive Android phone costs $200? Or don’t we really want all of the companies to make that move simultaneously? The issue is complicated. It’s upsetting. We, the consumers, want our shiny electronics. We want them cheap, yet we want them built by well-paid, healthy workers. But apparently, we can’t have both. Sooner or later, we’ll have to make a choice. The fault, dear Brutus, is not just at Apple, or in China — it’s also in ourselves.

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INTEREST: Foxconn: 1 million robots by 2013….
by billing 09 Feb '12

09 Feb '12

….from: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-07/30/c_131018764.htm Foxconn to replace workers with 1 million robots in 3 years File photo SHENZHEN, July 29 (Xinhua) -- Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn will replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency, said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, late Friday. The robots will be used to do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding and assembling which are now mainly conducted by workers, said Gou at a workers' dance party Friday night. The company currently has 10,000 robots and the number will be increased to 300,000 next year and 1 million in three years, according to Gou. Foxconn, the world's largest maker of computer components which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia, is in the spotlight after a string of suicides of workers at its massive Chinese plants, which some blamed on tough working conditions. The company currently employs 1.2 million people, with about 1 million of them based on the Chinese mainland. = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = …from: http://www.economist.com/node/21525432 Robots don’t complain Or demand higher wages, or kill themselves Aug 6th 2011 | HONG KONG | from the print edition WITH more than 1m workers, Foxconn may be China’s largest private employer. The secretive electronics giant is renowned for taking designs from Western firms, such as Apple, and using cheap labour to crank them out in huge quantities. But its fantastically successful business model seems to have run its course. At a closed retreat in late July, Terry Gou, the chief executive of the Taiwanese-owned company (which is also known as Hon Hai), unveiled a plan to hire 1m robots by 2013. In a public statement, Foxconn talked about moving its human workers “higher up the value chain” and into sexy fields such as research. But at least some will surely lose their jobs. Robots are easier to manage. Several Foxconn employees have committed suicide; in the latest case, a 21-year-old threw himself off a building in late July. In May an explosion at a new factory in Chengdu killed three employees and, it is believed, caused delays to the production of Apple’s iPads. To pacify its increasingly restive workers, Foxconn has repeatedly bumped up their wages, improved facilities, provided counselling and swathed its factories with nets to catch anyone leaping from a window. All this costs money. China’s competitive edge has long been its vast supply of cheap hands. But as the country grows richer, skills shortages are driving wages rapidly up. Foxconn’s decision to alter its mix of capital and labour is thus logical, and mirrors what many smaller firms are already doing. But the switch may not be smooth. Foxconn’s expertise has been in running well-regimented armies of people making goods for highly visible global companies. It is not known to have skills in running automated production lines; and moving in this direction will put it in competition with companies that do. Rising wages are good for Chinese workers, and for firms that want to sell them things. But they also raise questions. Do they spell an end to the cheap “China price” for manufactured goods? Will multinational firms shift production elsewhere? Or will Chinese firms adapt nimbly to automation and remain fearsome competitors? They might, but Chinese robots may be no cheaper than robots elsewhere. Finally, will the shift to a more capital-intensive capitalism throw legions of workers onto the streets? The Chinese authorities will be watching nervously. Wayne Billing Classroom Technology Support Audio Visual and Classroom Technology Support 130 Machray Hall Building 474-6649 474-7625 (fax) Wayne_Billing(a)umanitoba.ca

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