A recent article in the New Yorker disclosed that the penny, thanks to rising costs in copper, costs 1.7 cents to produce. That means that it costs more money to make the penny than the penny is actually worth. With that in mind, it no longer makes sense from a productions standpoint to still make the penny, however from a consumer and retail standpoint it would be difficult for sellers to change their pricing strategies - they seem to be addicted to charging a penny under the dollar amount in order to make things seem cheaper. The average 2.99 product would have to go to either 2.95 or 3.00 - and it is unlikely that they would choose the 2.95 option. Does it really matter? No, but business and resellers would fight hard to keep that penny around so they could continue their largely successful pricing strategy. Aside from the retail aspect, states that have sales tax would have to adapt. For instance, Texas has an 8.25 percent sales tax, that sales tax rate would lend itself to amounts that require the penny. One option is to simply change the value of the penny from one cent to two cents, make it a two cent piece. Stores could probably get by with their prices being at 2.98 and it wouldn’t interfere as much with states ability to have sales tax - registers could simply round up to the next even number in order to deal with the new two cent piece. For instance, that 2.99 product with tax would be 3.23, round that up to 3.24 and the problem of the lack of the single penny is solved.

Ever since the release of Vista, there has been some sort of widespread nostalgia for the days of Windows XP - to the point that many vendors still offer the old operating system to meet with the demand from customers for it. Having used XP from the day it was released up until 2005, I am a little curious as to where the fondness for the old operating system comes from. While I never had any real problems with XP such as viruses or spyware, I did have issues with it slowing down over time, needing the occasional reinstall after a year or so of constant use, and always struggling to keep third party applications from installing themselves in my system tray. The experience I had with XP was acceptable but not good enough to keep me from always looking for something better - I went through various distributions of Linux in an attempt to find something that was more stable, faster, and less susceptible to problems. I have now landed on OS X and, having used Vista, I can say that it feels an awful lot like XP only shinier and with more noises and pop up windows. With that in mind, the main problem people seem to be having with Vista is largely an issue of third party drivers and incompatible programs that need to be updated - so why keep XP around so those companies can put off developing the needed drivers and updating their software? Microsoft and other vendors have merely been postponing the inescapable truth that XP has been replaced by Vista and it is time for them to pull the plug on the old operating system and let those third parties focus on Vista rather than hanging on to the idea that XP will somehow last until Windows 7 comes out.

1. Student Custodian - It is by far the easiest job to get when you are in college and looking for a part time job that is truly flexible for your schedule, but it is also one of the most disgusting and exhausting jobs I have ever had.  We’d start out our day by loading up into the university’s Housing Department truck and heading to each of the dorms, once at the dorms we would empty out all the trash, pick up any trash in the hallways, clean out any massive spills in the bathrooms, and mop up any vomit that a drunk 19 year old had left in the hallway on his way to his or her room at 4:00 in the morning.  Nothing says “good times” like cleaning out a bathroom sink full of Macaroni and Cheese from some student’s hot pot - as if those bathroom sinks might also double as a kitchen sink in a pinch.

2. Fish Monger - A part time job in a seafood department while I went to school for my Bachelor’s degree.  I read a top ten list once of signs that your job was truly terrible - number one on that list read: “Your job involves dead fish.”  That just about sums it up, my job involved dead fish, raw octopus, killing lobsters, and occasionally dealing with large amounts of live crawfish - it sucked when they got loose.  It is not a job that anyone should ever have unless they truly love fish, and I hate seafood.

3. Community Organizer - It is a great term for someone that goes door to door asking for people to give you money in order to join your politically motivated group that is going to change the world for the better - so long as they fork over 36-60 dollars at the door.  Nothing wears you down quite like having doors slammed in your face, having people yell at you because they hate your cause, and dealing with all the apathetic people that you run into working as a canvaser.

4. Sales - As a general rule, most sales jobs suck, but my sales job was selling baby pictures to people who had signed up for a single free portrait.  It was a crazy operation, going to their homes to show them a wide range of pictures that had been taken by our “professional” photographer.  The families could choose their one free portrait and, for a price ranging from 60 dollars on up to 360, could then purchase additional pictures or even get the digital copies.  The job was purely based on sales, that lasted all of about two weeks.

5. Tech Support - After having worked in tech support now for a mere 3 weeks, I have already come to the conclusion that perhaps the whole computer revolution has gone too far, and that too many people have computers now - people that have no idea how to use them and call tech support at the slightest sign of something strange or different.  The constant stream of calls from people who have issues ranging from a frozen program to a full on system meltdown can really wear a person down.  98 percent of the problems I see could have been solved with a tiny bit of troubleshooting, 1 percent have actual problems, and the other 1 percent are just dicks calling to complain that their new computer they just plopped down 3 grand for is behaving like an actual piece of technology and isn’t at all like the wonderful and pain free magic box the salesperson said it would be.  Dealing with the public on a daily basis in tech support can destroy your faith in humanity.

Those are the top five jobs you should avoid at all cost, unfortunately I’ve had them all.

Ask any die hard Windows user what the problem is with Windows and many of them will tell you that Windows itself is fine if you know how to use it, the problem comes with users who do not know how to keep up with their system and who do not know how to follow basic security steps to keep it free of malware. I myself used Windows up through Windows XP and the only times I ever met with problems was when my roommate would screw it up by loading strange software or by trying to modify thing that he had no clue about. The Macintosh has not had to deal with those sorts of problems because many of the users were longtime Mac users and were familiar with how the computer ran and because there were very few if any viruses or malware programs for them to install. Windows, as the default operating system of the vast majority of computers that were available to consumers everywhere from high-end computer stores all the way down to the local Wal-Mart, was cursed in a manner of speaking by having the vast majority of new computer users start out on their system. People who are not technically inclined in the least bit were turning on their new Windows machines, logging onto the internet with their Internet Explorer, and start playing with email and opening attachments without looking. With users like that it is no wonder that Windows had such horrible security and why people had generally negative views of the operating system. Well, now many of those people are turning in their Windows computers and moving to the Mac under the false idea that the Mac will be so elegant and flawless that they will never have another computer problems and that things will “just work” for them. But those users who couldn’t master the basics of Windows will have the same problems trying to figure out the Mac. As the Mac continues to grow in popularity the number of Windows users who had bad computing habits will bring their problems over to the Mac platform and then blame the Mac for their problems rather than ever attempting to change their own habits. In five years there will be a growing rumble about the problems of OS X led largely by these types of users - they will say that the Mac sucks and after they get fed up with it, then the Linux users can look forward to the coming storm of angry users looking for the next great computing platform that has been heralded as being rock solid and easy to use. They’ll screw that up too.

Ralph Nader has recently announced that he will be running for President as a third party candidate for the 2008 elections, some have said that his running will make it easier for the Republican party candidate to win in key states and possibly turn the election because Nader will split the youth vote.  However, that is probably just wishful thinking by certain conservatives.  People remember what happened the last time they voted for Nader and ended up giving us George W. Bush.  The pull of Nader was that he was an outsider and represented something different, something aside from the cookie cutter Republican and Democratic candidates that many saw as one and the same.  Now people have a sense that maybe the Republican and Democratic candidates are different, and that which one they vote for really does make a difference as to which direction that nation takes.  With that scenario, the chances of electing the wrong candidate make it imperative that voters who want change put their vote behind a single candidate with the best chance of getting elected, in this case that is Barack Obama rather than Ralph Nader - who will not even have a major party backing him.  My prediction for the 2008 election is that Ralph Nader will not even make it to the ballot and will not have any affect.

This Thursday, Turkish ground forces infiltrated into Iraq in order to carry out strikes against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.  The story has been reported on news sites such as CNN and The Washington Post, but that isn’t the main point that I took from those stories, the main point was that a major military offensive, backed by warplanes and artillery was able to infiltrate the Iraqi boarder and the U.S. military did not know what they had accomplished in their mission or how far the Turkish forces had advanced into Iraq.  That tells me that we have little to no control over the boarder, not only that, we do not seem to be at all concerned with how little control we have.  If 500 to 1000 Turkish soldiers could slip into Iraq, how easy would it be for smaller groups to sneak in unnoticed?  If the boarders of Iraq can’t be controlled, how can the country be secured for democracy?  If nothing else, this latest incursion should be viewed as a wake up call for both the American public and for those in charge of oversight in Iraq.

My first computer of note was an NEC computer that I got for college in 1996, it ran Windows 95 and came with all sorts of great programs that seemed like they could change my life for the better.  If I wasn’t sure how to do something on my computer I could call up the built in help wizard, his name was “Merlin” and he was a recorded actor that would walk you through such things as changing the wallpaper and double clicking on Internet Explorer.  There was another great program to answer my telephone and take messages, no need for a answering machine in my dorm anymore, as it turned out that program had a tendency to stop working after about thirty minutes so I missed a lot of calls.  It had the usual fluff programs as well that I never really needed such as the AOL trial and a few shareware games and such, but I got rid of those easily enough and life was good.  I kept that NEC with the 133MHz processor for a long time, by the time I got around to getting a new computer things had changed in the PC world, Windows ME was out and there were a lot more bundled programs on the newer computers, of course, those bundled programs seemed okay from time to time.  My HP Pavilion came with a media player that was absolute garbage but I bypassed that by installing Winamp and downloading a start up filter called “Start Up Cop” from some PC website that blocked programs such as Real Player and Music Match from starting up automatically and asking me if I wanted to upgrade to the paid version every time I clicked on a media file.  I could easily trash the trial software and shareware games when I first started using the computer so the intrusion level was not that great, but things seemed to be getting worse.  Enter Windows XP on my next computer and the rise of the trial versions - I had to remove the trial version of Norton, the trial versions of Real Player and Music Match, the shareware games and the links to online services that I did not want.  It took a few hours to clean the system up and get it running the way I wanted it too, but the problems keeping the system clean kept getting harder and harder, the system tray on my new XP system seemed to be overflowing with icons in the system tray that would start without my permission and would fight like mad to stay on and to keep contacting their home servers.  XP was the beginning of my search for a better way of computing.  I dabbled with Linux, which came only with programs that were full featured and free from annoying pop ups begging me to buy a better version and taking up my processor cycles by always running in the background looking for any excuse to pop open and start taking over my files.  In 2004 I broke free of the world of the PC makers and bought my first Macintosh, running OS X 10.3 Panther.  To my surprise, there were only a few pre-installed programs that I needed to get rid of, mainly Tony Hawk and a small package of shareware games that I could easily drag to the trash and delete.  None of those programs were intrusive and they never did anything unless I manually opened them.  It was a different world, a world free from pop up windows asking me to upgrade to the latest version of some shareware program that I never used, a world free of resource hogging applications that would arbitrarily decide to load at start up and a world free of bloatware that required third party programs such as firewalls just to keep them from communicating with the outside world without my permission.  Life was good and I forgot all about the world of the PC, until I started working at a computer store.  Windows Vista had just come out and the new models from major manufacturers seemed to be teeming with third party programs that did nothing aside from asking for your money.  There were Netflix trial accounts, Vongo trials, AOL broadband trials, Norton trials, Microsoft Office trials, strange start up programs that manifested themselves on the desktop and tried to control every aspect of your life from your favorite TV shows to what kind of desktop wallpaper you would like to have, in short, the computers were loaded down with so much junk that they took over 5 minutes to boot up and the system trays would have at least 8 programs running from the start.  The store I worked at used to charge 50 dollars to get rid of the trial and bloatware, and they got a large number of takers.  My newest computer, a MacBook running OS X Tiger, came with no such programs and would start up in under 40 seconds and ran like a dream.  The difference between the world of the PC and the world of the Macintosh is staggering, and I would never make the trip back to PC land after seeing how sweet life can be without all the third party clutter.  Perhaps if these PC makers could tone it down a bit, offer freeware or open source programs in stead of money grabbing commercial junk that could only exist as a pre-installed application since no one would ever buy it in a box.  There are plenty of great programs out there that could handle media files, manage a firewall, and even work with word processing documents that there is little to no need to burden consumers with crapware out of the box.  Until they decide to do that, I won’t even consider visiting the world of the PC.

Will allegations of a sex scandal hurt McCain?  The Republican Party has long held themselves up as protectors of traditional family values and morality, but those days are apparently behind them as they continue to endorse a man who is an admitted adulterer and who supports the act of torture by the United States.  The reality for the Republican Party is that they want to win elections and they don’t care about anything else, talking about family values and the need to protect the morals of the nation were just talking points with nothing to back them up.  Will a scandal in the McCain camp make the Republican party have a shift towards the camera friendly and relatively scandal free former preacher Mike Huckabee?  Not likely, because the Republican base, the true Republican base, never cared about those things.  At least now we can all see that.

Typically, a candidate who has little or nothing to lose and everything to gain has the power to speak their mind and to tell how they really feel without having to remain political and trying not to offend anyone.  When a dark horse candidate has an impact, that will usually get the front runners to take a look at what he or she is talking about and adjust their strategy to talk to those issues - mainly because they want the dark horse’s supporters for their own.  In 1992 it was Ross Perot and the focus he brought to the national deficit, in 2000 it was John McCain and campaign finance reform, in 2008, the dark horse candidate speaking his mind is Ron Paul.  But unlike those other election years, no one in the Republican Party seems to be notice dark horse Ron Paul’s core issues - reforming the U.S. monetary policy, reducing the power of the federal government, and withdrawing troops from Iraq.   Indeed, just a few nights ago the two Republican frontrunners, McCain and Romney, sparred over the notion that Romney supposedly supported a timetable for troop withdrawal, something that Romney strongly denied - he would like to keeps the troops in Iraq indefinitely.  With that in mind, why has Ron Paul’s success in the online and grassroots arena not translated at all into shifting the debate in the Republican primary?  It might be that Ron Paul’s message does not sit well with Republicans, at least the type of hard core Republicans that vote in the primaries.  An anti-war Republican with notions of changing the U.S. fiscal policy and actually reigning in spending and reducing the power of the federal government has no voice with the party faithful apparently.  Indeed, even some Republican leaning news channels have tried to exclude him from debates and have occasionally dropped him from the polls results entirely.  Not only do they not want Ron Paul, they don’t even want his supporters.  Perhaps it is time for him to change his party affiliation, and for all those who have supported him to do the same as well.  The one thing this country could use at the moment is a viable and strong third party that caters to issues that neither of the big two parties are focused on - a sound fiscal policy and reducing the size and power of the federal government.

Microsoft has recently put up an unsolicited offer to buy up Yahoo for 44.6 billion dollars in a bid to increase their online search and advertising presence according to various news sources.  Yahoo, who is second to Google in search and ad revenue would instantly give Microsoft a more competitive standing in the field of online search and ad revenue, but what I can’t understand is why the people at Microsoft feel that this would be a good investment for their core business.  Why can’t Microsoft, who is having a world of problems with their new Vista operating system, focus on their core business and stop trying to do everything for everybody?  Instead of shelling out 44 billion dollars for a search engine and advertising company, why not focus on making Windows 7 a worthy competitor to Windows XP, why not get the next version of Office to be something so compelling as to make users of Office XP switch over, many people are bypassing Office 2007 due to some incompatibilities with the new .DOCX format.  Instead of trying to get into every single aspect of the internet and technology, why doesn’t someone at Microsoft say, “Hey, let’s cool it a little here, we need to fix the problems with our current products before we try and screw up yet another market.”  If the deal goes through, and I don’t believe that it will, you could see the biggest mess since the AOL Time Warner deal.  Microsoft should focus on their core business - creating operating systems and office productivity software, to divert their attention, and their money, away from that not only hurts Microsoft, but it also hurts the consumers.