Saturday, January 28, 2012

A slippery slope


A slippery slope:  It would seem the word "Freedom" doesn't really correlate with "America" like it used to.


"Reporters Without Borders released its 2011-2012 global Press Freedom Index. The indicators for press freedom in the U.S. are dramatic, with a downward movement from 27th to 47th in the global ranking, from the previous year. Much of this is correlated directly to the arrest and incarceration of American journalists covering the 'Occupy' protest movements in New York and across the country. 'This is especially troubling as we head into an election year which is sure to spark new conflicts between police and press covering rallies, protests and political events.' Only Chile, who dropped from 33 to 80, joined the U.S. in falling over 100% of their previous ranking. Similarly, Chile was downgraded for 'freedom of information violations committed by the security forces during student protests.'"


http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Apple, Evil Badass


I've got to hand it to Apple. 


 They've taken this we're gonna be the most evil badass you've seen since Gates version of Microsoft in the 90's really seriously.


Love the timeline:


January 2005 – Pixar senior executives (which include Steve Jobs) draft written terms for a no-poach agreement and send them to Lucasfilm
May 2005 – Apple and Adobe make agreements
2006 – Apple and Google make agreements shortly after Eric Schmidt joined Apple’s board of directors
April 2007 – Apple and Pixar make agreements
June and September 2007 – Google enters into agreements with Intuit and Intel that are identical to the agreements between Apple and Google, Apple and Adobe, and Apple and Pixar


I'm trying to figure out why a company with $100 Billion in cash would want to cheat the employees that made that cash pile possible.  And it wasn't some low level HR person doing this.  It was Steve Jobs.  He started it, personally.


Major alien puke on the 'do no evil' company as well.  Google, we hardly knew (the non-evil) you.


I am getting very (very) tired of the Steve Jobs worship in the tech industry.  If this is the guy we want to emulate as the best of the best, long term, we are lost.


http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/26/apple-google-consipracy/

An excellent read from an ex-evangelical.

  As you know, I once was an evangelical megachurch pastor and my pastoral career stretched over many years. Eventually, I could no longer t...