Manufacturing In Elbonia – Dilbert Comic Strip on 2019-11-24 | Dilbert by Scott Adams
Sunday Not-So-Funnies
![Minneapolis by AD reader Gordon Scott [Updated by GS in comments]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/https___cdn.cnn_.com_cnnnext_dam_assets_200527104052-21-minneapolis-protests-0526-1-1024x682.jpg "Minneapolis by AD reader Gordon Scott [Updated by GS in comments]")
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
Gerard Van der Leun
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton’s horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth’s wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas’ Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
— Van der Leun
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
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And that is why the company I worked for never ever would have circuit cards fabricated or assembled in China. It’s a horrible regime, true, and they just end up stealing your IP. Don’t make it easier for them by sending them your design files.
My former position was as a telecom engineer, my primary product line was Nortel Networks. This is what China did to them.
Whenever us mere users or customers wanted to log in to get updates or new software; we had to use a user/password combination that had to be changed every thirty days. The new password had to be 12 digits and could not contain any sequence from the old password. Last, it took an hour or two for the new password to be active on the system. That was us ground pounders.
The executives of Nortel (we came to find out) didn’t put up with that. This was discovered many years after that company went belly up. Thanks to China! The Nortel exec’s traveled often to the Middle Kingdom and were wined and dined, leaving their laptop computers in their rooms. Chinese government agents entered those rooms, found them embarrassingly easy to hack having either only four digit passwords or being left open and unlocked on the desk. With the information on the laptops their got entry into the home office mainframes and then loaded spyware and worms that would spread throughout the entire companies computer network.
This is how China got access to all of Nortel Networks crown jewels and subsequently the market in China for Nortels products dried up. The Chinese could make their own Nortel tech and in fact took over much of Nortels worldwide business.
After bankruptcy the mainframes and other computers were sold off and many of the new owners (on the whole a lot smarter than the equipments former owners) discovered all the systems were hopelessly compromised by spyware and worms. They junked a lot of it.
Give them hell, Donald!
That’s a chilling tale, John. Not just for the rapaciousness of the Chinese but for the cluelessness of the execs. Heads for pikes.