Bizzy’s AM Coffee Biz-Econ Links (030106)

Free Links:

• Hmm. It’s “interesting” how someone at a foreign-based transplant car company was the first to come up with this marvelous idea for helping returning soldiers (HT S.O.B. Alliance member MilTracker).
• Canada’s Decaying Health System Slowly Getting a Private Boost (HT S.O.B. Alliance member Ohio Guy) — Recall that back in June, the Canadian Supreme Court declared that the country’s national health system monopoly “is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services,”, and that private insurance and private clinics would be legal in cases where that is true. Since waiting periods for various procedures range from 6 months to even 2 or 3 years throughout most of the country, the system is by (my) definition not delivering reasonable services in most of the country. So its good to see (quote is from a blog entry that references this NY Times piece, which will become unavailable shortly) that “Private clinics are opening around the country by an estimated one a week, and private insurance companies are about to find a gold mine.” Let’s hope so, for the health and longevity of our neighbors to the north.
• UPS is hiring 1,500 part-timers with full health benefits in Louisville. Apple just bought a $450 million state-of-the-art data center in New Jersey that had been mothballed by MCI, and presumably will need more than a few people to operate it. ADP, the payroll processing king (yes, I know they do a lot of other stuff), is bringing 1,000 new jobs to El Paso, Texas. These are just a few events worth noting to partially offset the constant drumbeat of layoff news, even while the number of jobs in the economy continues to increase month after month.
• I’ve regretted hitting the “Send” button before, but this is a doozy (HT Techdirt):
  

  Edward Tom, director of admissions at the University of California, Berkeley, law school, was training a new office worker last week when it happened.

  Tom was demonstrating the e-mail software used by the school and was highlighting several features, including how the user can filter mail and set it to send messages to one recipient or many at the same time.

  That’s when he chose what happened to be a standard congratulatory message on being admitted to the university’s prestigious law school and accidentally sent it to all 7,000 students who have applied for admission to the law school. The problem, which the school quickly admitted, is that all of the applicants won’t be admitted. In fact, there’s only room for 800 to 850 of them. The e-mail congratulated the applicants on their recent “admission” to the school and invited them to an annual reception co-hosted by alumni and several student organizations.

  He sent out an apology e-mail 20 minutes later and a formal apology letter in the mail the next day.

  A similar incident occurred 3 years ago at Cornell when 550 undergrads were falsely informed that they had been accepted.

• I Don’t See Why This Is So Controversial — “While some people are being sent to jail for using open WiFi connections, an ethicist for the NY Times Syndicate is saying there’s nothing ethically wrong with piggybacking on an open WiFi connection, assuming you’re not sucking up all the bandwidth. His point is that it’s the responsibility of whoever owns the WiFi access point to secure it, if they don’t want it used. He also points out that if you find an open connection, you should try to figure out who owns it to let them know it’s open — in case they want to cut it off.” To be stealing you either have to cause the other person some kind of financial loss, be taking something away from somebody that they should be able to use, or at be least making things inconvenient for them. If you are doing none of those things, you may be freeloading, but you’re not stealing. Additionally, as the item points out, if those radio waves from somewhere else (say, the neighbor next door) migrate onto property that you own, the argument that your piggybacking would somehow be wrong is even weaker. Counterarguments are welcome.