Foxconn is a 24-hour operation. Employees work six days a week, sometimes in 12-hour shifts. They’re on their feet for so long that their legs begin to swell. There are underage workers. They live in crowded dorms on the factory’s campus. In recent years, there have been reports of workers leaping from buildings in apparent suicides.

And so on.

The story even describes the gruesome death of one Foxconn worker after an explosion in a facility that made iPads in Chengdu, China. The worker’s “skin was almost completely burned away” by the blast, the Times reports. He died a few days later with his family by his side.

Of course, these articles fail to mention that this is not an American problem. This is a Chinese problem with an American dimension to it.

Like it or not, this kind of behavior is fairly common in China. Chinese work conditions suck, as they did in the past in places like Japan. As unfortunate as it is, this is (at least hopefully) the process by which all modernized nations go through: periods of great industrial growth followed by greater individualism and the development of policing mechanisms against companies, including the development of collective bargaining, tort, products liability, and worker’s comp laws.

The thing is, boycotts would not fix this problem, at least in my mind. In the most immediate sense, a boycott might hurt the specific factory involved in China that caused these abuses, but it would not further the general policy of workplace fairness. Rather, would Apple simply move their production to the US, China would be that much more poor — and thus, their progress towards fairer working environments will be hindered as their people remain poor and desperate for work. Like it or not, our money has a modernizing power, and pulling the plug on it abruptly would harm the very interest we would be seeking to serve.

Moreover, it’s not entirely clear that requiring Apple to contract with a company in China to enforce workplace fairness would do any better. First, America would likely lack jurisdiction on such a claim. Second, it’s not entirely clear that Chinese companies and factories would care to follow such contracts, nor is it clear that Apple would be in the best position to police them. Finally, as the CNN article linked above seems to imply, fair working conditions are expensive, and thus there would be little reason for Apple to contract with a Chinese factory where an equally expensive American factory is available closer to home.

The point here is simple: this whole situation is a lot more complex than one might initially want to admit. Personally, I tend to prefer the idea that companies should move back to America regardless of work conditions in China, predominantly because I want to see the American jobs market grow. But my preference is flawed precisely because it would draw money away from a developing superpower and further lock them into a period of economic and social development. Whereas American jobs may be good for America, a destitute and problem-beset China may not be good for America because it may encourage animosity between the two countries.

The object, it seems, is to basically be as blunt and unyielding about the topic of childhood obesity as possible. There’s something to this, as being weak-willed on the topic seems to be too lenient for a group of people (namely parents) who are causing issues by being too lax and lazy. In my opinion, if being nice to parents (via food charts, ads, the stupid White House “Let’s Move” program) doesn’t work, scaring the hell out of them just might.

There’s no technical reason why MS would support disabling Secure Boot for one CPU architecture but enabling it for another, which leaves us with non-technical justifications — of which there are plenty. By locking out alternate OS’s, MS ensures that Windows customers stay Windows customers.

Microsoft has responded to complaints about this, albeit in a kind of awkward, “get the hell off my lawn” sort of way.

Some quick thoughts:

1. This is an antitrust suit waiting to happen.
2. Despite (1), this isn’t going to stop anybody.  Reverse engineers of Windows products are always faster than Microsoft.  Hell, Hazar’s RemoveWAT was around before the final build of Windows 7 hit stores, if I remember correctly.
3. This is going to destroy a lot of goodwill that Microsoft has built up in the past few years.  Where Microsoft has (somewhat) behaved itself recently and refrained from making ridiculous attempts at creating monopolies, behavior like this smacks of “old Microsoft”, and it’s going to cede territory to Apple.  Where Apple is already being critiqued for being too restrictive and leaning too heavily on the walled garden, Microsoft needs to go the opposite direction and become the corporate equivalent of the cool older brother that is cool with a lot of stuff.  That’s how you build up goodwill with programmers and techies, who wield a lot more power than the (oblivious) regular consumer.

From what I can gather from Mr. Johnson’s original, horrible, misspelled, and poorly constructed blog post, Johnson’s story is quite simple:

[I]mmigration officials at Narita misunderstood or falsified my statements, disregarded my proof, confiscated my passport and belongings, and arbitrarily denied me permission to enter Japan, where I have built up a career as a journalist covering Asia since 1987. An officer wrote “no proof, entry denied” on a document, and asked me to sign it. I refused. I was then put in a dungeon over night, harassed, robbed, denied rights, and forced onto a flight to Canada, charged to my credit card at an exorbitant price, against my will. They gave me an “Exclusion Order” bearing no written explanation, just a flight time and an official stamp of approval. Suddenly, my life in Japan was over.

So basically, Johnson wasn’t let into Japan. Obviously, a question emerges: why would Japanese officials do that?

To preface this, allow me to (as best I can) summarize the “gaijin” (that is, slang for 外国人 [gaikokujin], meaning “foreigner”) problem in Japan. Ever since the early ’00s or so, Japan has had to deal with a strong influx of gaijin who have a bad tendency to overstay their visas. The Japanese, who tend to associate foreigners with the influx of foreign crime (for semi-good reasons), view such overstaying as a serious issue, and the Diet has actively attempted to crack down on rogue gaijin in order to more or less “clean up the streets.” Of course, because shipping people back to their respective home countries is expensive and time consuming, oftentimes Japan detains citizens in what are essentially prisons, a not-terribly-ideal solution that they have devised for national security. On a personal note, I can’t exactly blame the Japanese too much for this behavior, as Japan has to suffer a seemingly constant onslaught of creepy otaku foreigners that try to overstay their visas and/or become “real” Japanese.

According to Johnson, he had “documents from the immigration department regional office in Tokyo in 2011 that acknowledged they were processing my application to renew my visa to continue working legally in Japan as a freelance journalist.” In other words, Johnson’s immigration status was questionable at best. Johnson has seemed to imply as much on a recent Twitter post (now deleted) he made in response to a query about his visa status, implying that readers’ queries about his visa status were tantamount to asking a raped teenager whether or not she was dressed provocatively. Johnson also implies that he believed some sort of administrative agency in Japan was monitoring his status as a journalist and maintaining his visa for some reason. Suffice to say, Japanese immigration had no duty or obligation to let the questionably-authorized Johnson into Japan, regardless of whether or not he had been “loyal” to Japan (as he so alleges in his blog post).

Johnson seems to imply that this whole affair may be the result of some sort of conspiracy on the part of the Japanese government due to articles he has written (I’m guessing on his blog?) criticizing Japan. Not only is this highly implausible, but if it were true, I would have also been banned from entry at Narita in the past. Suffice to say, the Japanese government probably has bigger and better things to be doing than monitoring online bloggers.

The rest of the story seems equally implausible, if only because I can’t find out what it is. Johnson claims he was taken by G4S employees (who, by the way, allegedly never work at the Narita airport), was extorted out of a lot of cash, and was locked in a cell and told to buy a plane ticket home. The closest thing I can get to an outright allegation is the following:

The immigration officer, upon convicting you, hands you off to a guard who shakes you down for 30,000 yen. He then delivers you to another guy in the dungeon who takes away your baggage — and rights. He in turn releases you to another guy who forces you to buy a rip-off plane ticket. If Amnesty is correct in estimating 7 cases per day on average, this syndicate could earn 200,000 yen per day in extortion fees, and 300,000 to perhaps a million yen per day on marked up airline tickets. Where does the money go? Are these guys drinking together after work? Who can stop them from doing this?

After doing a little bit of investigation of the above and other paragraphs, Johnson at least appears to be referencing recent Amnesty International reports on the Japanese and their general reluctance to take refugees and asylum-seekers. Pointing to some stories where those demanding asylum in Japan died or went on hunger strikes, Johnson seems to make the connection to normal work-visa type people like himself, implying that he is tantamount to a refugee or immigration detainee.

There is something quote offensive about Johnson’s implication that he is tantamount to a refugee. As best I can tell from his nonsense blog post, Johnson is first and foremost a Canadian citizen, meaning he is well within his right to return home to safety and (relatively cold) happiness. Johnson is not attempting to escape from some sort of totalitarian regime or legal system, nor is he a special individual deserving of importance in Japan. Rather, Johnson is a man offering to do “freelance journalis[m]” in Japan, which in and of itself has questionable meaning.  Japan has absolutely no legal obligation to grant him entry, no legal obligation to let him pursue his job in Japan, and no obligation to provide him free airfare home when he tries to sneak into the country with a questionable visa.

In short, Christopher Johnson’s story should be wholly ignored as the rantings of a histrionic lunatic. Until his lawyer can prove up his story beyond his wild allegations, Johnson’s blog post (and the horrible recounting of it by The Economist, which should know better) serves only to animate foundation-less racism against Japan by people who have no idea what they are talking about and by those who emotionally connect with stories that make them think that foreign countries are inherently evil. Since when is Japan guilty until proven innocent?

What it Does:

So what happened?

From what I can gather, it all began with the mediocre game being updated with a 1.1 patch.  The long story short, as perhaps best illustrated by this video, is that the 1.1 broke the game by making it possible for one set of players (those playing for the Empire) to basically massacre an entire other set of players (those playing for the Republic).  In fact, the Empire can kill the Republic at spawn points, basically meaning that players on the side of the Republic cannot play the game, and are in effect stuck in a constant loop where they do nothing but die.  For some reason, TOR developer Bioware is “investigating” rather than simply “fixing” this issue, despite the fact that the problem is pretty self-evident and game-destroying.

So, as one might guess, a lot of Republic players got pissed off about this and decided to suspend their subscription to the game.  This is a pretty logical choice to make: after all, it makes no sense to pay for a game you cannot play.  The problem?  Bioware removed the “cancel subscription” button and is hiding the mechanisms by which players can stop paying for the game.  Bioware has not only hidden the “cancel subscription” button, but some players are complaining that customer service is hanging up on them.  Thus, most players are forced to pay for a game they cannot play.

They seem to be pretending it’s a browser issue:

Of course, as a former web developer/programmer, I can assure you that buttons don’t disappear.  Website designs can cause all sorts of hell, but of the many things that can happen, buttons do not conveniently disappear because someone uses a special web browser.

Thinking this whole affair was unfair, user “Kraiten” decided to help his fellow gamers by providing them the following link to unsubsribe from TOR:

https://account.swtor.com/user/subscription/Cancel

But what did Bioware do?  Hide the post and punish Kraiten for posting it:

For those of you keeping score at home, this means that Bioware has not only massively screwed up their game, but that they are actively trying to lock players into subscriptions for their game in order to make it profitable for as long as possible.  The company is even trying to bribe players to stay on the game by providing a “Founder’s Medal”  to all players who maintain their subscription to the broken game.

The company has also seemingly threatened players “taking advantage” of the broken game (presumably, by killing Republic players or something), but it seems somewhat ludicrous for them to purport to punish people for playing the game in a way they designed it.  Of course, Bioware refuses to actually roll the game back and fix the issue so that everyone is on an equal level — rather, they seem to want to just find a scapegoat and punish them to avoid discussing their horrible game.

It appears that Bioware is in trouble.  If this game — and the behavior of their staffers — in any way indicates their standard for good business, then they are going to die off quickly.  Stuff like this doesn’t go unpunished.

Edit:
To hell with my law degree, mommy, I’m a budding games journalist because people are quoting me:

• IGN/Voodoo Extreme
• The Rift Forums
• GRcade

“The criticism of this bill is completely hypothetical; none of it is based in reality,” Smith said in a statement to Roll Call. “Not one of the critics was able to point to any language in the bill that would in any way harm the Internet. Their accusations are simply not supported by any facts.”

I disagree. Vehemently.

No, really.

There goes 50% of the voter base.

Several times over the last three weeks, readers have asked why I am using a Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet instead of the more popular iPad for my experiment on replacing a laptop with a tablet. . . . Well, I am writing this entry on an iPad to see if it does a better job handling some of the compatibility issues I’ve had.

This isn’t Shoenberger’s first article on tablets.  For some reason, Mr. Schoenberger is trying to stretch out a series of articles trying to see as to whether or not a tablet PC (i.e. an iPad, Galaxy Tab, or the like) can replace a normal laptop or desktop PC.

Let me go ahead and spoil his article series ahead of time: no, you probably shouldn’t replace your laptop with a tablet. No, the iPad is not inherently better at processing (or anything) than any other well-made tablets. No matter the tablet, laptops (and desktops) will continue to be superior to tablets.

Why? Rather than list out the many technical ways that larger traditional computing solutions beat tablets, allow me to list out a few things that tablets can’t do:

• Multitask efficiently or well
• Utilize an advanced OS that is actually designed to be used for anything other than basic tasks
• Handle heavy-duty web browsing, e-mail use, gaming, or do pretty much anything that a cell phone couldn’t do
• Utilize multiple monitors, high quality speaker systems, most input devices, or (for most tablets) wired Internet connections
• Run 95% (or more!) of programs available today, from relatively common and useful programs like Microsoft Word to more specialized but essential programs like programming applications and photo editing software.
• Allow users to change anything at all, unlike laptops and desktops, which can be modified with a moderate level of knowledge
• Following from the above, be repaired or fixed easily.
• Store high amounts of data over what can be stored on the internal storage cards (usually no more than 100GB).
• Not make you look like an idiot as you attempt to use a glorified oversized cell phone as a primary computer

No matter how many fluff pieces come out on news websites, tablets aren’t going to take over the laptop/PC market.  They may kill the netbook market, but that’s about it.  Tablets are like iPhones — they are expensive and can do a lot of interesting things, but they aren’t really going to do much other than serve specific niches.

Facing slipping poll numbers, an angry Newt Gingrich lashed out at his Republican presidential rivals Monday, calling their criticism of him “reprehensible” and helpful only to President Obama’s reelection.

Gingrich is probably right.

At the moment, the worst thing the Right can do is attack itself, even if it has to debate itself.  Gingrich has recently experienced spikes in support after “dressing . . . down” moderators at various debates after they attempted to ask questions that were clearly intended to pit Republican candidates against Republican candidates.  If this is any indication of the current political weather right now, Republicans need to maintain a “big tent” campaign approach to gain traction against President Obama and to have a shot at the Presidency in 2012.  Suffice to say, infighting is the worst thing that Republicans could do right now, even if it does bring attention to them.

So how do Republicans manage to make news without harming other Republicans?  Easy: you externalize attacks. Republican presidential candidates must focus their hatred towards Democrats and other non-Republican groups if they wish to be negative.  Doing otherwise risks destroying the very “Big Tent” that would be of use to them post-primaries and it will refute the obligatory “everything is okay” sort of ads that the Obama campaign will begin to run soon.

Of course, I don’t think this sort of clever campaigning will actually happen. My prediction of what will really happen is quite simple: Rick Perry is going to (continue to) freak out about his loss of attention and swing a battle axe at any candidate he can, particularly Mitt Romney. The other campaigns will in turn feel obligated to respond and begin to waste more time with negative campaign ads that lose elections (or absolutely stupid ads that draw political ire) than they do with positive ones that win them.  This, like the Democrats in 2008, will create frictions within the party that threaten electoral victory.