Perhaps as much as its friends around the world, Africa is especially interested in how the upcoming American elections will pan out with a number tuning in to watch the Presidential debate on September 26, 2008 (which almost didn't happen). Blogger and Ushahidi co-founder Ory Okolloh encourages Americans to really think about their choices and the potential outcomes by participating in the “Dear American Voter Project”:

“Dear American Voter” is inviting you to be a part of a global dialogue featuring responses from around the world to the question, “What should Americans think about as they cast their ballot? ” (Uumm…if you vote for McCain…goodbye USA, hello Russia and China).

Meanwhile, Blackyard notes that Barack Obama's performance at the debate appears to have given him a slight boost in the Gallup Polls. Everest Chiali wrote about the night's exchange in Swahili.

But there are other concerns as well. Siasa Duni suggests that the McCain-Palin ticket suffers from a lack of transparency and wonders if Sarah Palin is being protected from scrutiny by advisers who recognize that she isn't ready for serious questions from reporters, especially after one of Palin's first national interviews with Katie Couric drew an uproar of criticism when Palin embellished her own diplomatic record as Governor of Alaska:

In order to minimize the fallout from the Hail Mary selection of Ms. Palin, the Republican presidential campaign organizers have been limiting Ms. Palin’s exposure to scrutiny. While reporters are allowed to ask her questions, she’s never placed in a situation where she has to answer. In the past four weeks, I have only seen two reporters who have been blessed with access to Ms. Palin. There was the much ballyhooed interview with Charles Gibson of ABC News who was careful to handle Ms. Palin with the softest of kid gloves, even though he still managed to expose her as having limited-to-no understanding of international issues with a question about the Bush Doctrine and its interpretation (America has the right to preemptively attack other nations perceived as threatening).

Angry African likens America's current dilemma to gangs terrorizing a neighborhood:

So you got a guy who was a bit stupid but you liked having him around for a barbeque. Never a good reason to select him, but hey, there you go. You thought, “How bad can it get?” And boy did it get bad. He started fights with neighbouring communities even though they did nothing to your community. Oh, they talked tough, but you knew their community is way to weak to do anything. But he started fighting them in any case. Instead of those guys who kept on throwing bombs over your fence. The fights started sucking you dry and the place started falling apart. The houses started to crack, the lights went off in the streets, and the roads are falling to pieces. Basically your little community is just not the same anymore. And almost everyone agrees that this guy sucked big time. He is not coming to the next barbeque. It’s time to select someone else to run the show and fix up the place again.

So it has come down to two guys you can vote for. One is a guy who doesn’t look a lot like you, he is a bit young, tell you he has all these big ideas to make it better, but also tells you that you will have to pull your weight to make it better. Now he might be a bit shaky.

Apparently some hackers are have hacked her personal email and have posted screenshots thereof. They even boast that they went so far as to call daughter Bristol on her phone using the information on the email, just to be sure it really was Palins mail.

Knowing how some hackers operate, I would tend to think they were attracted to Palin because a- She, being inexperienced on the national stage doesn’t know how to protect her data as well and b- messing with her will get them a ton of attention.

Regardless it’s an unacceptable (not to mention illegal) invasion of personal privacy, something I hope the police can explain to them as soon as they can be found and arrested.

©2008 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.

The invasion of privacy comes at a time when Palin and her husband are being questioned about the firing of Alaska’s former public safety commissioner Walt Monegan. Palin’s campaign manager released a statement saying: “This is a shocking invasion of the Governor’s privacy and a violation of law.”

World bloggers agree.

English blogger Graham Cluely wrote in his blog, although using a Yahoo! account for government work was “silly of her,” the hack was an offensive.

“Breaking into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account is an offence. Yes, there may be interest in what she has been doing in her “private” email account but that is no excuse for breaching security and breaking the law.”

Cluely, who is a technology consultant, added his tech-savvy expertise in the matter.

“Of course, none of this explains exactly how Palin’s email account was hacked. Did she access her Yahoo account from an insecure PC? Had she logged into her account using an unencrypted Wi-Fi connection in a public place? Had she chosen an easy-to-guess or easy-to-crack password (like a dictionary word)? Had she chosen the same password for every website she used? (Our research shows that 41% of people do precisely that).”

Israeli Avi Green wrote in his blog, Tel-Chai Nation, about what extremes certain people will go to reach their objectives.

“Palin Derangement Syndrome has reached a pure low now, as this shows that leftists are willing to commit federal crimes to achieve their goals. The criminals who committed this offense must be caught and jailed and made to pay considerable fines for their crime.”

Spanish-American blogger Claudia, writes in PoliGazette, that the incident was “nasty” and begged for attention from the hackers, themselves.

“Apparently some hackers have hacked her personal email and have posted screenshots thereof. They even boast that they went so far as to call daughter Bristol on her phone using the information on the email, just to be sure it really was Palin's mail.

Knowing how some hackers operate, I would tend to think they were attracted to Palin because a- She, being inexperienced on the national stage doesn’t know how to protect her data as well and b- messing with her will get them a ton of attention.

Regardless it’s an unacceptable (not to mention illegal) invasion of personal privacy, something I hope the police can explain to them as soon as they can be found and arrested.”

Twitter is an amazing tool; living in Ireland one of my biggest dislikes is that the time difference screws up me watching certain political events that occur in America. A great function of twitter until a few weeks ago was that you could follow certain people like Barack Obama on your mobile phone and twitter would send you an SMS:

politifact Joe Biden: Says McCain “supported George Bush’s policies 95 percent of the time.” http://tinyurl.com/5c4bxe about 19 hours ago from twitterfeed

The problem for international users like myself is that it was costing Twitter $1,000 a person so they don’t offer that service anymore unless you live in America. Regardless, Twitter is an example of a social service Senator Obama’s media team has used to keep his supporters informed when he makes speeches and on other events like his choice of a VP.  Senator McCain does not need to use technology because his focus is on the seasoned voter, the older voter etc… however does this lack of technology use reduce involvement with his campaign?

Senator Obama can maintain a level of involvement with his supporters through social media that allows him to keep up donations while reminding his supporters to spread the word, get their neighbors involved or make people aware about any nasty smear by right-wing organizations.Senator McCain on the other hand has to rely on TV and the radio which is not as fast, or personal as spreading issue awareness compared to a simple SMS to a cellphone or a post on Senator Obama’s  Facebook group.

Will this new method of involvement make the difference, only the next two months will tell the whole story but I believe the McCain camp is at a distinct disadvantage:

Foliofn Investments launched in May of this year help customers automatically screen out companies on the Genocide Intervention Network’s “highest offenders” list of firms that operate or trade in Sudan and thereby, according to the network, share complicity in marginalizing portions of the country’s local population.

On the web.

This recent debate on the price of oil is pointless and typical short-term thinking of the GOP. America needs to think in the long term and make a plan to embrace renewable energy. I want you to imagine a scenario where America is the leader in the world in terms of renewable energy, that can be a reality if America catches up to Europe and surpasses the EU in embracing green technology. When burgeoning economies like China and Russia exhaust their oil supplies, the majority of Americans will be using renewable energy therefore preventing the economy from suffering any impact from such a energy disaster.

The key is to start planning now and invest money in a green infrastructure that will be malleable to the changes within American society as more people adopt environmentally friendly ways of living. In that future, every American family owns a hydrogen powered car or electric car, where 50% of American households have solar panels attached to their houses making use of the abundant sunlight that we lack here in Ireland. This may sound like a pipe dream but it is something I hope for as I would not want any other country to be an example for environmental leadership than the good old U.S.A.

Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time.

That statement coincides with my beliefs when it comes to technology, I believe it can provide the solution to many of mankind’s problems if we allow the relevant research. The world’s greatest invention came from America in the form of the first microprocessor created by Intel and technology will play an even more pivotal role in the future of America for generations to come. The government and the leadership of the United States has a role to play in this process by doing everything possible to foster the growth of the science and technology industry to hopefully maintain America’s domination online and offline.

The problem as noted by Mother Jones is that on Senator McCain’s website, his policies with regards to technology vary from general to non-existent:

John McCain, as of yet, has few such fans in the tech sector. His campaign website does not have a section about technology. Sprinkled throughout the site are a handful of references to tech issues

Senator Obama’s website on the other hand has a specific section of his site designated as a place for people to inform themselves about his stance on issues of Technology:

The two points that Senator Obama stresses that I feel are quite significant are the lack of emphasis on math and science in schools today. If America is to remain competitive in the technological environment, it needs to source its future engineers, scientists, and programmers from within the country rather than importing people from India and China . Federal funding should be increased for schools to provide more comprehensive education in the sciences and mathematics fields and maybe even financial incentives for students to enter these fields after high school.

For America to truly succeed in the 21st century, it needs a leader who is in touch with the way technology influences our lives. This influence is only going to grow and being able to effeciently intergrate technology into all levels of society will create a new kind of America, a better America where the United States continues to lead the world in innovation, invention and intellect for centuries to come.

Francisco Toro, who runs the blog Caracas Chronicles, shared his opinions on how the U.S. elections will affect Venezuela and the rule of Hugo Chavez:

This table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2008 election cycle. The organizations themselves did not donate , rather the money came from the organization’s PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals’ immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

I don’t encourage people to vote for a candidate based on who supports them but this should show the American people who the biggest technology companies in the world want to win, i.e. Google and Microsoft. I am just guessing…but Senator McCain is not the most technologically literate person and has actually admitted not knowing how to use a computer.

The second trend focuses on the Education sector which if we compared Senator McCain’s top contributors, we see that he has received no donations from some of the top educational institutions in this country, I wonder why that is? Maybe because these institutions know Senator McCain is not going to be good for this country.

Lastly the only organization I don’t like out of that list is Time Warner who are noted as being “big bad” business. They are currently facing a string of lawsuits with regards to their practices without a care in the world according to dmnews.com:

Time Warner Cable is facing lawsuits for alleged failures in customer service, but the company appears to not be making any specific moves to address litigious consumers.

Beyond this Time Warner issue, the majority of the top Contributors indicate to me that Senator Obama is the right person to lead the United States into a technologically competitive world where education is the key.

Blogger gothedistance generally agrees with the contents of the New York Times article. It would seem that there is a shared recognition of the situation described in the NYT article among most Hatena users (many of whom are said to be programmers and people in IT-related fields), and many comments on the entry expressed agreement and sympathy with the blogger.

Commenter mkusunok, also known as blogger Masanori Kusunoki , writes:

NYT侮り難し。書いてあること全部正しいし、ヤバ過ぎて日経には書けないよねー

The NYT is impressive. Everything that is written [in this article] is correct, and this something that is so terrible that the Nikkei [a Japanese newspaper] can't write about it.

goyoki comments:

高齢技術者の高待遇ポストが少ないのは問題だと思う。技監やフェロー、CTOなんかは普通は管理職扱いだし、例えば５０代上級プログラマなんてのは日本では半端な待遇で激務、なんてイメージしかわかない

I think the problem is that there are not many posts with good working conditions for older engineers. Engineers-in-chief, fellows and CTOs are generally handled like managers, and I can only imagine that senior programmers over age 50 would be exhausted with this level of halfway treatment.

Some went as far as to express opinions like this one, posted by elm200:

このエントリと直接関係無いけど、まだこうやって日本の記事を書いてくれる New York Times はありがたい。BBC News なんてほぼシカト状態からね。”China” の五文字を見ない日はないのに

No relation with this particular article, but I am really thankful to the New York Times for doing this kind of thing and writing this article. Because BBC mostly just ignores [this issue]. Although not a day goes by without seeing the five letters of “China”.

In his book “Economics of excess and destruction” (過剰と破壊の経済学), blogger Ikeda Nobuo earlier wrote the following about the peculiar “general contractor-style multiple sub-contractor architecture” (ゼネコン型の多重下請け構造) of Japan's IT industry:

(親会社が開発・設計を行い入札で安く請け負う企業に発注するアメリカの企業に対して)トヨタは開発段階から「デザイン・イン」などによって下請けと情報を共有する(中略)。トヨタと下請けを結びつけているのは、アメリカ的な契約でも資本関係でもなく、属人的な長期的関係である。(同書 P128)

(In contrast to American corporations, where the parent company carries out development and design and then places orders with companies contracted cheaply through bidding,) from the development stage onwards Toyota shares information with subcontractors through “Design-In”. […] This connection between Toyota and the subcontractor is neither an American-style contract, nor is it capital ties, but rather is a long-term relationship through personnel. (p. 128)

In his blog, Ikeda Nobuo argues that the root cause of the problem indicated in the New York Times article is to be found in this relationship:

この閉鎖的な産業構造は、長期雇用や企業別組合など戦後にできた制度によってつくられたもので、ある種の製造業には適していたが、オープン・プラットフォームのもとでモジュール化された技術を組み合わせるには適していない。

This insular industry structure was established as a result of the system of long-term employment and enterprise unions created after the war, and while such a system is appropriate for certain types of manufacturing industries, it is not suitable for joining together modular technologies based on open platforms.

正社員だけを過剰保護する雇用慣行のおかげでSI業者が人材派遣業になってしまったため、企業のコア部門にITのわかる人材が育たず、情報システムでイノベーションが生まれないから若者のIT離れが進む・・・という悪循環が急速に進行している。

The SI [System Integrator] industry has become a temp-services industry as a result of the employment practice of excessively protecting only full-time positions. Because of this, no personnel in core departments of the industry have been brought up to understand IT, and since there is no innovation in information systems, young people are losing interest in IT… this vicious circle is rapidly getting worse.

Drawing from an awareness of the issue in his daily live, gothedistance then identifies a structural problem of Japan's IT industry, that “the industry called SIer (System Integrater) is not characterized by IT services, but by the human resources industry.”

In an earlier entry , he explains this in the following way:

日本のITビジネスは脆弱なビジネスモデルです。最も品質を問われるべきソフトウェアにおいて派遣による偽装請負なんかがまかり通っているのは、日本だけです。70〜80年代にプログラマの絶対数が足りなくてとにかく人をかき集めて現場に派遣するようなスキームが横行したのと、時間がかかればかかるほどコストがかかり結局その分売上が立つという人月商売モデルの２つの悪因が両輪となって、今のような奇形児になりました。簡単に言うと、腐れエンジニアをかき集めて仕事を進めるスキームになり、腐れエンジニアもできるエンジニアも同じ「１人月」だということですね。

Japan's IT businesses have a fragile business model. It is only in Japan that fake contracts with temp agencies go unmentioned in the software [industry], where there should be the greatest demand for quality. The scheme in the 70s-80s, when there was a lack in the absolute number of programmers, of gathering up people and dispatching them to the scene, and the person-month trade model in which the more time you spend, the higher your profits will be, these two factors were like the wheels, leading to the deformed child that we have today. Simply put, it is a scheme of gathering rotten engineers and moving ahead with the work, where rotten engineers and capable engineers are treated as the same “person-month”.

Next, he refers to an article by Matsubara Tomo, introduced by blogger codemaniax :

ソフトウェア開発ビジネスで、成果責任を負わない派遣形態がかくも横行しているのは日本だけである。

In the software development business, it is only Japan where a structure of temp agencies has flourished in which no responsibility is bourne for actual results.

派遣ビジネスはソフトウェア開発作業を成果で請け負うのではなく、一ヵ月いくらというように、技術者の時間を売る。派遣指向のソフトウェア会社にとって最大の関心事は、人月単価と、人の稼働率であって、稼ぎが減る開発プロセスの改善や、余計な金を使う技術教育は、できればやりたくない。特に品質は、技術者だけの問題とみなされ、経営者は関心を持たない。極端な話、派遣プログラマーが自分で埋め込んだバグの摘出に時間を掛ければ、会社の実入りは増える。

Temp business do not contracts software development on the basis of actual results, but rather sell the engineers' time at some rate per month. The most important concern for software companies that are oriented at temp agencies is the person-month unit and people's operation rate; if possible they want to avoid improvements of the developmental process that decrease earnings, as well as avoid technical training that makes use of surplus capital. Quality in particular is regarded as a problem of the technician alone, something about which managers do not have an interest. In the extreme case, this means that time spent picking out a bug buried by a programmer from a temp agency results in an increase in the actual profits of the company.

Elsewhere, in a thread about the NYT article on Slashdot Japan, the following two comments received a score of 5. This one :

まずは、技術職の給与を見直し、生涯賃金が一般職と同等、もしくは上に設定し一般職に振り回されない体制を作ることができれば改善できるのではないでしょうか？

To begin with, if it was possible to review the contribution of engineering work and create a system that sets lifetime earnings at the same level as that of general office work or higher, a system that is not swayed by office workers, that improve the situation, wouldn't it?

And this one :

今の政治の流れでは海外の労働者に今後ゆだねていくことになるのでしょうが、技術蓄積を行わないままでは、賃金も技術も海外に流出。と思うのですが、この想いをどうやれば現実に反映できるんだろう。

It would seem that with the current trend in politics, [work] in the future will start being entrusted to foreign workers, but if we remain as we are, without accumulating any technology, then wages and technology will flow overseas. That's what I think, but I wonder what will be done to realize this idea.

It seems that there is an irritation that this sense of crisis, which is shared among the younger generation, is not managing to have any significant influence within society.

Translated by Chris Salzberg.