Thursday, August 27, 2009
CostCo Recyle Program
Powered by Gazelle, the industry leader in electronics trade-ins, Costco’s new Trade-In & Recycle Program lets you responsibly trade-in electronic gadgets for Costco Cash cards good for anything in Costco warehouses or at Costco. Com. Electronics include laptops, cell phones, LCD monitors, digital cameras, camcorders, MP3 players, gaming systems, video games, GPS devices and more. And Costco members receive a greater return: Gazelle will pay Costco members about 2.5% more for their old electronics than it does through its normal service.
Free shipping is offered on all transactions with a value of at least $1. (Gazelle will even send you a box for most items!)
To participate, follow these four steps.
1. Click on the box on Costco.com’s home page or type “recycle” into the search window to visit the trade-in Web site.
2. From the menu, find the value of the items you would like to trade in.
3. Gazelle provides mailing labels. Print them, and ship the items to Gazelle for free.
4. Once your items are evaluated, receive a Costco Cash card within 10 days.
For security, Gazelle will remove personal data from the old gadgets prior to issuing the Costco Cash card. All items are wiped of personal data and reset to factory settings, according to Gazelle. As an added measure of security, for items with hard drives, the company uses Department of Defense-approved software and performs all tasks in a controlled, secure environment.
The Trade-In & Recycle Program is available to all Costco members.
Free shipping is offered on all transactions with a value of at least $1. (Gazelle will even send you a box for most items!)
To participate, follow these four steps.
1. Click on the box on Costco.com’s home page or type “recycle” into the search window to visit the trade-in Web site.
2. From the menu, find the value of the items you would like to trade in.
3. Gazelle provides mailing labels. Print them, and ship the items to Gazelle for free.
4. Once your items are evaluated, receive a Costco Cash card within 10 days.
For security, Gazelle will remove personal data from the old gadgets prior to issuing the Costco Cash card. All items are wiped of personal data and reset to factory settings, according to Gazelle. As an added measure of security, for items with hard drives, the company uses Department of Defense-approved software and performs all tasks in a controlled, secure environment.
The Trade-In & Recycle Program is available to all Costco members.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A community gardener puts crops within easy reach - OregonLive.com
A community gardener puts crops within easy reach - OregonLive.com: "A community gardener puts crops within easy reach
by Ruth Mullen, The Oregonian"
by Ruth Mullen, The Oregonian"
Monday, August 24, 2009
Railroads Abandoned in Washington State, at 1:500,000 - View
Railroads Abandoned in Washington State, at 1:500,000 - View
Shame. Imagine using RR right of ways for transport of people and goods instead of lots and lots of trucks tearing up the highways, belching smoke, throwing off bad recapped tires, smashing into grandma, making noise, etc. One diesel train can carry tons and tons of cargo, or people, or both.
Shame. Imagine using RR right of ways for transport of people and goods instead of lots and lots of trucks tearing up the highways, belching smoke, throwing off bad recapped tires, smashing into grandma, making noise, etc. One diesel train can carry tons and tons of cargo, or people, or both.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Foreigners Attending US Grad Schools Way Down: Wake Up, Xenophobes
Posted: 23 Aug 2009 07:00 AM PDT
It’s happening: Lou Dobbs’ dream come true and Silicon Valley’s worst nightmare. We’re already seeing the reverse brain drain as smart immigrants take their US educations and experience building companies and creating technology back to their home countries. But now, xenophobia and the lack of any sensible H-1B visa policy is keeping the world’s brightest minds from coming to the U.S. in the first place.
U.S. grad school admissions for would-be international students plummeted this year, according to the Council of Graduate Schools—the first decline in five years. The decline was 3% on average, thanks to increases from China and the Middle East, but some countries saw double-digit declines in interest in a U.S. education. Applicants from India and South Korea fell 12% and 9% respectively—with students turning their sights on schools in Asia and Europe instead.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. Much of the world’s economic growth—hence, jobs—is in emerging markets, the schools are far cheaper and in many cases competitive academically, and then there’s the H-1B issue. If America won’t allow a PhD just trained in our top schools to work here and contribute to the economy—why come here and take on the student loans to begin with?
Make no mistake: This is a huge blow for the United States, and particularly Silicon Valley. It’s killing diversity in graduate schools at a time future business leaders most need to understand other countries, especially Asian ones. Xenophobic, anonymous cowards may leave as much bile in the comments as they want: The reality is one out of every four tech companies is started by an immigrant. In the tech industry, immigrants have created more high paying jobs than they’ve “stolen.”
And nearly every CEO will tell you how much added cost and hassle there is in hiring a foreign-born worker—they do it because they physically can not find enough appropriately skilled workers in the U.S. (Below is an interview I did with LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman about this very subject a few months ago, and he wrote a guest post on TechCrunch discussing the issue as well.)
Indeed, a recent study by the Bay Area Council, the Campaign for College Opportunity and IHELP showed that we’d need a 90% upswing in people graduating with degrees in science, technology, math or engineering to keep up with all the new jobs being created in that discipline. What created Silicon Valley was a culture of openness and there is no future to Silicon Valley without it.
You know that American dream and American spirit of innovation we always talk about? Turns out, the bulk of it was built by people who came to America from somewhere else, not people born American. We have no birthright or natural lock on these things. Money and talent are fungible assets that flowed to the U.S.—and specifically the Valley—because that is where they were supported and rewarded.
Some people have blithely dismissed growth in markets like China and India saying Silicon Valley will always be the hub for tech; that everyone will come to us. Wake up: Because the numbers are showing money and talent is increasingly going elsewhere.
It’s happening: Lou Dobbs’ dream come true and Silicon Valley’s worst nightmare. We’re already seeing the reverse brain drain as smart immigrants take their US educations and experience building companies and creating technology back to their home countries. But now, xenophobia and the lack of any sensible H-1B visa policy is keeping the world’s brightest minds from coming to the U.S. in the first place.
U.S. grad school admissions for would-be international students plummeted this year, according to the Council of Graduate Schools—the first decline in five years. The decline was 3% on average, thanks to increases from China and the Middle East, but some countries saw double-digit declines in interest in a U.S. education. Applicants from India and South Korea fell 12% and 9% respectively—with students turning their sights on schools in Asia and Europe instead.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. Much of the world’s economic growth—hence, jobs—is in emerging markets, the schools are far cheaper and in many cases competitive academically, and then there’s the H-1B issue. If America won’t allow a PhD just trained in our top schools to work here and contribute to the economy—why come here and take on the student loans to begin with?
Make no mistake: This is a huge blow for the United States, and particularly Silicon Valley. It’s killing diversity in graduate schools at a time future business leaders most need to understand other countries, especially Asian ones. Xenophobic, anonymous cowards may leave as much bile in the comments as they want: The reality is one out of every four tech companies is started by an immigrant. In the tech industry, immigrants have created more high paying jobs than they’ve “stolen.”
And nearly every CEO will tell you how much added cost and hassle there is in hiring a foreign-born worker—they do it because they physically can not find enough appropriately skilled workers in the U.S. (Below is an interview I did with LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman about this very subject a few months ago, and he wrote a guest post on TechCrunch discussing the issue as well.)
Indeed, a recent study by the Bay Area Council, the Campaign for College Opportunity and IHELP showed that we’d need a 90% upswing in people graduating with degrees in science, technology, math or engineering to keep up with all the new jobs being created in that discipline. What created Silicon Valley was a culture of openness and there is no future to Silicon Valley without it.
You know that American dream and American spirit of innovation we always talk about? Turns out, the bulk of it was built by people who came to America from somewhere else, not people born American. We have no birthright or natural lock on these things. Money and talent are fungible assets that flowed to the U.S.—and specifically the Valley—because that is where they were supported and rewarded.
Some people have blithely dismissed growth in markets like China and India saying Silicon Valley will always be the hub for tech; that everyone will come to us. Wake up: Because the numbers are showing money and talent is increasingly going elsewhere.
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