Module# 9 (WSU FALL 2024)

Building A Dell Laptop involves many components within a supply chain.  The first part of that chain is when a customer orders the laptop online, or in a store.  The person taking the order knows exactly how many they have in stock, and can either ship it to the customer after the transaction is completed, or they have to get the customized laptop built from different companies from around the globe.  China plays a huge role in the manufacturing of Dell laptops.  Several different vendors will be utilized for different components of the laptop, such as the case, motherboard, hard drives, keyboard etc.  Once the Laptop has all of the components assembled,  it ships out directly from the manufacturer that assembled it to the customer.  Generally they provide the customer with a tracking # and invoice for the purchase.  It is remarkable when you think that the laptops are ready to go when you order it online, and then you see that there is a huge supply chain that works on such an exact time frame.  Coordinating all of the individual components, along with the actual fulfillment of the laptop is a big job, but they have it down to a science.  Any delay in the process means a delay for the customer in receiving their goods,  which means bad business and reviews for the company. 

Al-Qaeda has an old school supply chain that seems to be a branch of of our American traditional chain.  However, they use their supply chain to promote terrorism, and bring weapons into their countries of origin.  Friedman said that "The mutant supply chains are formed for the purpose of destruction, not profit."  These people do not need investors, they only need sneaky dishonest people to carry out their wishes.  The US calls it the Virtual Caliphate, and it's leaders understand their supply chain just as much as Walmart does.  Friedman said that they use the flat world to their advantage, meaning that they have they ability to use the internet globally to deliver messages of terrorism with a click of a button. Al-Qaeda is built on Ideologies that mobilize and energize the Muslims, and it is a barbaric attitude that serves no one.  I am tired of worrying about the Middle East, and the terrorists, and the way that they feel that the world owes them something.  The world owes them nothing, and I honestly hope that the evil-doers get what they deserve.  I personally feel that it will never change, because there will always be that one guy that people will follow to the death.  It is a very sad world, and I feel for the women and children growing up with such pig-headed morons. 

The curse of oil, what more can I say.  I have heard people say that all wars start either over oil, or religion, and in the middle east, it is the combination.  Oil is money, money is power, and power controls humans.  According to Friedman the curse of oil stems from the leaders of a country trying to get rich off of the oil, rather than utilizing the people to grow the country.  When the sole focus of the economy is oil, there is no room for people to grow in any other business other than oil.  There will be no entrepreneurs, as the oil is the god of the economy.  It amazes me that all of the countries won't pull together and stop purchasing oil from these terrorist countries.  If we decrease the cashflow into the country, how will they survive.  I have read where we have enough oil reserves in the US for hundreds of years, and you would think that eventually we would stop supporting the middle east.  I don't get politics, and I never will, but I do know that oil is what it is all about. 

Module # 8 (WSU Fall 2014)

MODULE 8 (Computers and Education)

     I think I have been very lucky to grow up before computers, and watching them take over the world.  I owned a Texas Instruments TI-99 in 1982, and began learning to program my own graphics and create cheesy animations at 12 years old.  I graduated high school in 1988, and computers were not that big yet.  We had a Lotus 123 class in highschool, and that was about it.  Lotus was a database management software, and was used for businesses for things like inventory, and customer management.  I really did not use computers very much, till I started working for a digital sound library company in Santa Cruz California in 1994.  I have always worked with music, or around music, and my first computer was a Macintosh LC with 2 megabytes of ram.  I remember how excited everyone in the office was when we upgraded to a whopping 4 megabytes!   It is amazing how I could create music with such a slow computer that had little hard drive space, or memory.  The data back then was not as big, and 16 bit 44.1 khz was what we recorded at because of drive space.  We used to back everything up to Iomega Zip drives, Jazz drives, and Ditto drives.  Iomega drives were SCSI and the throughput was very fast, and you backed everything up to tape.  When external drives started to surface, you could utilize 10,000 rpm SCSI drives, and they were very fast.  They were comparable in speed to the "Raptor" drives of today from Western Digital, but they were less then 500 Megabytes, so they could not hold alot of data.  Needless to say we thought we were in heaven with our lightning fast machines, and huge hard drives.  I remember once at a music conference called the NAMM show, a panel from apple discussed the terrabyte, and exobyte drives that were on there way, we all just kind of laughed. 

      When I first started college in 1996, Netscape was our browser at WSU, and Altavista was our search engine. The internet was very slow, and it was very buggy, and things always crashed.  I do believe that the Technical Sales department at WSU was one of the first in the country to offer online classes.  I took some of them, and they were very slow, but efficient.   After I left college, I embarked on my career in music, and after 20 years am still in the business.  My early adulthood found me building Digital Audio Workstations or "DAWS, "and configuring them for music recording all across the country.  The music world changed with the advent of Windows 98 and even more with Windows XP.  The computer components were faster, bigger, and able to handle great amounts of stress from processor intensive tasks.  The Pentium 3 processor was probably one of the greatest computer inventions I can remember, as it enabled me to record more tracks in a session than ever before.  Also, the ability to have gigabytes of ram played a very important role in my work.   I have worked for several audio software manufacturers, and have seen the technology grow from nothing.  I still own a recording studio powered by a 12 core Mac with 32 gigs of ram, and SSD drives that are extremely fast.  There is no audio or video task that I cannot perform on that computer.  I have seen computer technology go through every phase of it's evolution, and have actively participated in it;s growth.  I eagerly anticipate new technology, as it has shaped who I am, and influenced my education in ways that I never thought possible.  I envy the children of today, being born into the speed and power of today's computers, it can be a blessing for them, but I also feel that technology is a curse.  Children today are growing up a little bit lazy, and Googling everything is a lazy approach to research, and life.  God Speed!

Module # 7 (WSU FALL 2014)

            Comparative Advantage is the key in determining why some countries are better than others at doing certain things.  Comparative Advantage is an economic theory about the potential gains from trade for individuals, firms, or nations that arise from differences in their factor endowments or technological progress.  From an economic standpoint, a company has a comparative advantage over another in producing good if they can produce cheaper.  The principle according to Wiki, holds that under free trade, an agent will produce more of and consume less of a good for which he has a comparative advantage. I think that education plays a huge role in comparative advantage also.  As some countries cannot produce as many educated people as other countries, and that education will go a long way as far as the economy goes.  In poor countries it is difficult to have any advantage over rich countries, as they really have nothing to offer.  Friedman said that Mexico has been replaced by china as The # 2 U.S. expoter, because mexico has been engulfed by the low cost manufacturing of China.  It is a cat and mouse game, or as a Mexican journalist told Friedman, “We were afraid of the wolf at first, then we wanted to dance with the wolf, now we want to be the wolf!”  It just goes to show you how a strong economy can dictate the world.

Self Directed Consumers, are people that use the Internet to their advantage to search, compare, and buy products.  I am definitely a Self Directed Consumer, as I refuse to buy anything until I get the best price.  One of my examples is Kayak.  I will search on Kayak for the best deals on Hotels, Airfare, and Rental cars, anytime I am going out of town.  Priceline is kind of the same way, as it operates in a similar fashion.  I use Ebay almost every day, and I use it as a template to gauge how much things are actually being sold for.   I will find something that I want to buy, then go to Ebay, do a search, and look at what the completed listings sold for.  This gives me a bottom line price, and an average as to what I should purchase something for, or sell it for.  I think Ebay is one of my best tools when I am selling things on KSL or, of course Ebay, as it gives me an amazing overview of almost every item in the world.  

I think in many respects Globalization is synonymous with Americanization.  If you look at fast food chains like McDonalds, expanding into other countries, and becoming a global fast food source all over the world, it is Americanization, taking on the face of Globalization.  America greatly benefits from Globalization.  I think it is a free for all in our flat world.  American companies, European companies, and many other global companies compete on the same level.  There are several companies in Europe that are in America, is this Europeanization?  I think that Globalization is for the taking, and can be had by anyone in the flat world, and it does not mean that we are modernizing Iraq by putting a Mcdonalds there…..It just means we are giving them more options…….Americanization is about presenting options to communities on a global scale. 

Module # 6 (WSU FALL 2014)

Free Trade is basically a policy where a government does not restrict imports and exports, where we trade freely amongst a global community.  According to Friedman, by the way of a man named David Ricardo says that “If each nation specializes in the production of goods in which it has a comparative cost advantage and then trades with other nations for the goods in which they specialize, there will be an overall gain in trade, and overall income levels should rise in each trading country.”   Friedman did not want to see Americans lose their jobs to foreign competition etc…His bottom line was that he believed that even as the world gets flat, America should continue to do free trade as we always have, instead of erecting walls and barriers.  He also believed that by bringing more countries into the Global free trade system, that it would increase demands for goods, spur innovations, and create jobs across the globe.  I can see his point, because I believe that doing free trade as we always have, creates better global relationships, and can create jobs within the United States. Utilizing a protective type trade would look bad to other countries, and ultimately lead to a bad reputation and I think that would create a bad global view of the U.S.

The New Middlers, are those that are collaborators in sales, marketing, maintenance and management.  Those same people used to be considered untouchable.  Meaning they are so specialized that they cannot be duplicated.  Friedman breaks this down into 3 categories.  The first category are the specialized people that perform functions in ways that can never be outsourced, automated or made tradeable.  He uses people like Michael Jordan as an example.  The second type are people that are localized, meaning that there are local people with local knowledge, working in a local specialized market, or locale.   The third category we call “old middle”, meaning the tradable ones that were once thought to be untradeable.  Friedman believes that our ability to keep global integration advancing, will depend on workers feeling that globalization and free trade is a positive effect on their lives. 

            The simple formula is: CQ (Curiosity quotient)+ PQ (Passion Quotient) > IQ (Intelligence Quotient.  Give him a kid with passion and a curiosity to learn, and he will take that over a kid with a high IQ any day of the week.  People that can self educate and self motivate are mor important in todays world than some one with a high IQ.  I have always been told that employer’s would rather hire some one with passion and experience over a 4.0 student fresh out of college.  These kind of kids and people create and invent new technologies, because the have a passion for doing it, and a curiosity to discover.  You can be the smartest person in the world, and never invent anything.  I think that technology companies really look for more creative, self motivated people to join their companies, as the benefit far outweighs the risks involved.  Hiring someone just for IQ, you will never know what they are capable of achieving.