Archive for the 'Outsourced' Category
‘There’s a joke among executives whose livelihoods depend on Foxconn: In 20 years, there will be only two companies. Everything will be made by Foxconn and sold by Wal-Mart.’
September 13th, 2010As I read this breathtaking account of Foxconn and its founder, Terry Gou, it kept reminding me of Hunter S. Thompson’s drug addled evening at the Circus-Circus casino in Las Vegas. Here’s an excerpt from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to help put you into the right frame of mind to read about Gou’s […]
U.S. Navy Makes $3 Billion “Hostage Payment” to HP for Crappy Computer Network
September 6th, 2010Via: Wired: Normally, it’s hard to get anyone but the geeks fired up about information infrastructure. But the Navy Marine Corps Intranet isn’t your normal network. With 700,000+ seats, it’s the world’s second-biggest network, after the internet itself. NMCI’s technical complexities and hiccups are the stuff of dark legend around the Navy. The fights it’s […]
Blackwater: The Cutout Formed Cutouts
September 4th, 2010Via: New York Times: Blackwater Worldwide created a web of more than 30 shell companies or subsidiaries in part to obtain millions of dollars in American government contracts after the security company came under intense criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq, according to Congressional investigators and former Blackwater officials. While it is not clear how […]
Blackwater Founder Moves to Abu Dhabi
August 22nd, 2010Via: New York Times: Erik Prince, whose company, Blackwater Worldwide, is for sale and whose former top managers are facing criminal charges, has left the United States and moved to Abu Dhabi, according to court documents. Mr. Prince, a former member of the Navy Seals and an heir to a Michigan auto parts fortune, left […]
Oakland: Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong
August 16th, 2010It’s right out of Snow Crash. Where are the Kong Bucks? Via: New York Times: In a basement office that serves as a police headquarters and community center, Oakland Chinatown leaders pored over maps of the neighborhood with representatives from a private security firm last week. “Many of our merchants are already installing cameras,” said […]
TheAntiTerrorist on The Big Business of Being Behind Bars
August 9th, 2010Via: TheAntiTerrorist: Related: Land Of The Free: Never In The Civilized World Have So Many Been Locked Up For So Little
U.S. Government Funding Program to Train Foreign Workers So American Firms Can Outsource Jobs
August 5th, 2010In other news: The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a record 40.8 million in May as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government reported yesterday. Via: Information Week: Federally-backed program aims to help outsourcers in South Asia become more fluent in areas like Java programming—and the English […]
Adrian Lamo Is a “Volunteer” for Project Vigilant, a Private Internet Surveillance Company Closely Linked to U.S. Intelligence
August 2nd, 2010Via: Forbes: A semi-secret government contractor that calls itself Project Vigilant surfaced at the Defcon security conference Sunday with a series of revelations: that it monitors the traffic of 12 regional Internet service providers, hands much of that information to federal agencies, and encouraged one of its “volunteers”, researcher Adrian Lamo, to inform the federal […]
Land Of The Free: Never In The Civilized World Have So Many Been Locked Up For So Little
July 28th, 2010And not a word about the profit incentive to lock people up! America’s Private Gulag is over a decade old, but worth reading if you’re new to the concept of the prison industrial complex: To be profitable, private prison firms must ensure that prisons are not only built but also filled. Industry experts say a […]
Chinese Manufacturers Looking to Replace Workers with Machines
June 22nd, 2010Mmm hmm. New Sharp Flat Panel Factory: No Humans on Assembly Line Etc. etc. etc. Via: Bloomberg: New minimum wage laws, a looser yuan and worker strikes like those affecting Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. are raising costs at plants in China’s Pearl River Delta, leading to increased automation of assembly lines. Foxconn […]
