Greetings, and welcome to all readers. According to the most recent log, people are reading the ShortWoman in 40 countries.
A special thanks to some of the folks who have linked to me, and the folks who have clicked through. A particular thanks to Renpro, Paxtonland, Jay Currie, Chief Wiggles, foomart, Fecundity, and Jerry Kindall.
And of course, thanks to those who clicked through from Google, Blogdex, Weblogs, or any of the other “usual suspects.”
This is a big, important news story that you probably haven’t been keeping tabs on unless you work in heavy industry, either making steel or making things out of steel.
Almost 2 years ago, the Bush Administration approved a hefty tariff on imported steel. This protectionist measure was designed to combat alleged “dumping” of cheap steel by foreign nations. This made American steel more competitive and foreign steel more expensive, at least within the United States.
Like many things, there were unintended consequences. American manufacturer’s costs were driven up because they no longer had access to “cheap” foreign steel. By contrast, overseas competitors were not subject to the American tariffs, allowing them to buy steel for 30% less than American companies could. It does not take a genius to see that foreign manufacturers would be able to make product much more cheaply with such steel. So, although hundreds of thousands of American steel workers’ jobs may have been protected by this measure, the millions of workers who made things out of that steel found their jobs endangered by uncompetitiveness.
As if this were not a serious enough consequence, the World Trade Organization found the tariff illegal. This opened the door for countries harmed by the tariff to impose punitive trade measures, including duties of 100% on some goods exported from the United States to the European Union. It would be polite to say this would not help the American manufacturing sector, which has already shed millions of jobs since 2000.
Repealing this tariff should have been a complete no-brainer. It should not even be an issue today. However, politics got involved. It seems that Bush needs votes from steel producing states to get re-elected. Here is where it gets even more complicated: he also needs votes from states where they make things out of steel.
Just today, the Bush Administration announced that they will do the right thing, abide by international trade law, and dump the anti-dumping tariffs. They will however, keep a “licensing system” designed to prevent “surges” in steel imports. This has already been described as “little more than a fig leaf” for the steel industry.
It will be interesting to see whether there is a new measure which will have the same net effect of the old tariff, or whether the Administration will let bad rules die.
I am confused.
There is at least one person shooting at cars on an Ohio Interstate freeway. There also may be at least one copycat shooter. There have been 12 reported shootings, and one fatality. This has made national and international news. People are afraid to let their kids play outside at recess, and afraid to let them ride the bus to school. Drivers are doing everything within their meager power to feel safe on the road.
Why doesn’t Ohio have an Orange Alert, or maybe even a Red Alert? Why exactly is this not terrorism? Because nobody has claimed credit and published a list of demands yet? I don’t recall Mohammed Atta’s list of demands. Would it be considered terrorism if a minority neighborhood were targeted? If it happened near Jerusalem instead of near Columbus? What if it were Dearborn?
Speaking of terrorism, I have been informed that if you are planning on bringing Christmas gifts with you when you travel by airplane, do not wrap them. They will have to be unwrapped by the TSA if they are in a bag they decide to search (checked or carry-on). You will need to plan on wrapping gifts at your destination — don’t forget that the scissors need to be in your checked baggage.
How is a wrapped gift in your luggage — in the same plane as you yourself — a greater security risk than a wrapped gift sent by the United States Post Office and placed on a passenger plane? I am not trying to make trouble, I just want to know.
… for buying IBM.
Or at least that’s how the saying goes.
Today, IBM announced a radical new sales initiative to actually give customers what they want! More specifically, “the company believes customers want to buy software that is already tailored to their industry, making it cheaper and easier to use.” That means there will be IBM products specifically designed and marketed for various types of businesses. After all, the needs of a Real Estate Management office are very different from the needs of a hospital. As the nice people at Ziff-Davis put it, “For example, many companies in the healthcare industry need to change their computing systems to adhere to privacy regulations, and financial firms need to address new guidelines to process securities transactions.”
There are to be 12 such industry specific divisions and “60 software products tailored to each industrial sector.” These would appear to include their Telecommunications Division and Life Sciences Division. Of course a lot of money is involved, and a lot of people will have their job descsriptions changed. At least they still have jobs.
If there was ever an era of one size fits all computing, it is long since over. There are precious few computer programs that “everybody” needs, like word processors and email clients. Frankly, it’s about time companies like IBM (and Microsoft for that matter) realized that not everybody needs the same things in business software.
What took them so long?