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By Charles M. Phipps on May 8th, 2019 
There’s been a lot of hullabaloo the past few days since Facebook banned some controversial activists – Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer, Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, and Louis Farrakhan – for what Facebook called promoting or engaging in violence or hate. Other pages were apparently taken down at the same time, with no notice or announcement given by Facebook. Dan O’Donnell o News/Talk 1130 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin reported the Wisconsin Conservative Union Facebook page was also removed without warning.
Newstalk 1130 – “I was surprised by this,” said Wisconsin Conservative Union administrator Bob Dohnal, who said on The Dan O’Donnell Show that a friend called him Thursday night to let him know that his page had vanished. “It’s about 2,000 of the conservative leaders around this state. Nobody is talking about revolution or anything like that. It’s just been a place where everybody can exchange ideas and talk about candidacies and stuff.”
Dohnal added that he never received any warnings […] → Keep reading
By Charles M. Phipps on September 12th, 2018 
Who would have ever thought that California liberals would want to put a stop to a free lunch? Well, it’s happening, due to tech companies providing free food to their employees so they don’t have to leave the building to eat.
Observer – In San Francisco, many local restaurants are suffering from a shrinking customer base as a result of an increasing number of tech companies in the area that offer employees free lunches provided by company-owned cafeteria. The problem has become so dire that the city is considering a new law to prohibit new companies entering the area from running employee cafeterias.
But as it turns out, San Francisco is hardly the only place in America’s hot tech scene that’s mulling an “anti-free lunch” campaign.
Facebook, which offers employees fully subsidized meals on its main campus in Menlo Park, Calif., won’t be able to offer the same perk to employees at its new campus in Mountain View, Calif., home […] → Keep reading
By Charles M. Phipps on June 8th, 2018 
The ‘Fight for $15’ movement at McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants is having an effect that the protesters probably didn’t count on. The demands for $15 an hour or a ‘living wage’ have motivated McDonald’s to begin mass deployment of self-order kiosks. I first wrote about these kiosks four years ago when they were in the testing phase and, apparently, they’ve been a huge success.
OK Politechs – These are automated cashiers. That’s right, these machines will take your order and your payment, but never walk off the job to demand more money, never talk back to management, never want an extra smoke break and never call in sick. The testing in Romeoville will answer some important questions for McDonald’s – Will the public want to use them? Can they perform the necessary functions while being user-friendly? Are they cost-effective?
To be cost-effective they need only cost less to purchase and maintain than the wages paid to a human. An […] → Keep reading
By Charles M. Phipps on August 20th, 2014 
It is beyond me how people can think the minimum wage should be increased anywhere from forty to two hundred percent, depending on who you listen to, and that prices would not go up along with the wage hike. Do people truly believe that business owners just have so much extra cash lying around that they can increase wages that much and just absorb the extra cost without passing it along to their customers? Or by cutting back on the number of employees?
Well it seems the wage complainers, protests and strikes have been noticed at the corporate offices and some relief may be on the way – for the businesses. Fast food employees who walked off the job and picketed for a ‘living wage’ may soon regret their decision to do so.
In Romeoville, Illinois, there is a McDonald’s restaurant right next to what McDonald’s calls their “Innovation Center.” New items, procedures, equipment and technology are tested at the […] → Keep reading
By Charles M. Phipps on April 7th, 2014 
Mozilla’s dumping of now-former CEO Brendan Eich has brought about a slew of negative attention to the Mozilla Corporation, which is being slammed by conservatives as well as some on the left. It appears Mozilla underestimated the backlash they would receive for their action against Eich, whose high-crime was making a private $1,000 to California’s Proposition 8, which was to have prevented gay marriage. Even gay journalist Andrew Sullivan jumped into the fray, berating Mozilla for their actions.
The Dish – Will he now be forced to walk through the streets in shame? Why not the stocks? The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else – then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay […] → Keep reading
By Charles M. Phipps on April 1st, 2014 
It seems that if you are a highly successful CEO, newly appointed to run a software corporation that produces a popular web browser and other products, your business acumen and the success of the corporation under your leadership are irrelevant if you have a personal social view that is in opposition to some of your employees and others on the left who don’t even work for you. Oh, and being the cofounder sixteen years ago doesn’t get you off the hook. I’m referring to Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript, cofounder of Mozilla in 1998, formerly the chief technology officer and now the CEO. Eich has been the CEO for exactly one week and is already on the receiving end of a huge backlash from Mozilla employees. The reason? In 2008 Eich gave $1,000 to Proposition 8, a California ballot that was intended to block same-sex marriages in the state. Oh, the horror! Liberal ‘tolerance’ rears its ugly head again.
Some […] → Keep reading
By Charles M. Phipps on March 25th, 2014 
If you have service with Verizon you might want to rethink that. The broadband and telecommunications giant has been named to Morality in Media’s 2014 Dirty Dozen list for providing hard-core porn with child and incest themes. Verizon’s video on demand service provides videos such as “I Banged My Stepdad,” “Pigtail Teens Pounded” and “Mom, Daughter and Me.” This wholesome family entertainment is provided by Verizon not only on your television, but on smartphones and tablets if you have them as your Internet Service Provider. Providing pornography was defended by Verizon’s Associate Director for Advertising and Content Standards, John P. Artney, who said, “Consumers today have extraordinary choice in and control over the content available to them across these networks. The explosion in choice is a tremendous benefit to customers, but not all consumers want to have access to all content for themselves and their families all of the time. Not all content is desirable to or appropriate for all […] → Keep reading
By Charles M. Phipps on March 10th, 2014 
Last week a federal judge dismissed a $10,000 fine the FAA had levied against a drone operator, saying there is no law to ban the commercial use of small drones. Small drones are those that fly at less than 400 feet, as opposed to larger military-style drones that share the skies with airplanes and helicopters. The court’s ruling deems small drones to be the same as model airplanes and not subject to current FAA regulations. The FAA had levied the 10K fine against Raphael Pirker for allegedly operating a drone recklessly while filming a commercial for the University of Virginia’s medical school. So far, Pirker is the only person to have a fine levied for using a drone, but the FAA has sent letters and made calls to other drone operators. The FAA announced after the ruling that they would be proposing a rule on small drone use by the end of the year, but in the mean time, it […] → Keep reading
By Charles M. Phipps on March 8th, 2014 
Since the Bill of Rights came into effect in 1791, Americans have had certain rights delineated in the Amendments and also certain protections coming from restrictions placed on the government. Among these restrictions is the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure. The Amendment requires the government to obtain a warrant based on probable cause before a search of a someone’s property can be made. The interpretation of the Amendment has varied over the last two centuries, slightly changing the protections that courts will enforce, but the overall tenor of the bill has remained the same. But does the protection granted citizens in the Fourth Amendment apply when foreign agents conduct the search? Apparently not.
The Guardian in the UK has reported that Britain’s surveillance agency GCHQ (Government Communication Headquarters) has been intercepting and storing webcam images from millions of internet users. The relationship between the GCHQ and U.S. intelligence began long before computer technology was around but has […] → Keep reading
By Charles M. Phipps on February 20th, 2014 
The more I read about the Obamacare website the more it becomes clear that it is a wealth of information for identity thieves. U.S. health officials deny this, of course, but from what I’ve read they don’t even know for sure who is writing the software for the website. In June 2013, the director of High Technology Park in Minsk, Belarus, Valery Tsepkalo, told Radio Russia that “one of our clients is the health ministry of the United States – we are being paid to help Obama with the healthcare reform.” Since the U.S. health officials apparently don’t know who is writing the software they launched a probe to find out if Tsepkalo’s statement was true. The report on the probe was issued earlier this month and found no evidence of the claim being true. Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for Obama’s National Security Council, said investigators for the Department of Health and Human Services found “no indications that any software was […] → Keep reading
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