Updates on UC Regents protests today and tomorrow

The protests at the Regents' meeting have escalated to skirmishes between students and police. At least 14 arrests have already been made inside the meeting, before noon. Students keep disrupting the meeting, and the police have just announced that the entire gallery (public seating) is an "unlawful assembly." Students have been fighting with police outside, with unconfirmed rumors that students are throwing rocks at police; police have tased one student and clubbed several more. One student broke their leg, though it is not yet known how. Police helicopters are overhead, police have donned riot gear, and have threatened to use tear gas on campus. Lynn Tierney, spokesperson for UCOP, has denied that any students were tased, although this has been confirmed by legal observers. About 500 protesters outside, talk of encircling the building if students aren't allowed into Covel Commons. Police have drawn pellet guns on students and ordered them to disperse. 15-20 students remained and have possibly been arrested. Students are being forced away from Covel by police, where the meeting is taking place.

Yudof had the audacity to post on twitter: "Protesters' problems not with me or Regents, but with Sacramento and even voters."

The Afrikan Student Union at UCLA reported that at least 3 members were tased by police.

Updates at UC Regent Live
Updates at Student Activism
UC Regents Protest Schedule
LA Times | Eight arrested at UC Regents meeting at UCLA
Photos and more LIVE updates at The Daily Bruin

tonight

bunnies in spa-a-a-ace

I am going to have a radio show called Bunnies in Space. Go here for more info.

"I know how to do this. I've got all the parts."

Who makes the Apple iPod? Here’s a hint: It is not Apple. The company outsources the entire manufacture of the device to a number of Asian enterprises, among them Asustek, Inventec Appliances and Foxconn.

But this list of companies isn’t a satisfactory answer either: They only do final assembly. What about the 451 parts that go into the iPod? Where are they made and by whom?

Three researchers at the University of California, Irvine applied some investigative cost accounting to this question. (…)

The retail value of the 30-gigabyte video iPod that the authors examined was $299. The most expensive component in it was the hard drive, which was manufactured by Toshiba and costs about $73. The next most costly components were the display module (about $20), the video processor chip ($8) and the controller chip ($5). They estimated that the final assembly, done in China, costs only about $4 a unit.

One approach to tracing supply chain geography might be to attribute the cost of each component to the country of origin of its maker. So $73 of the cost of the iPod would be attributed to Japan, since Toshiba is a Japanese company, and the $13 cost of the two chips would be attributed to the United States, since the suppliers, Broadcom and PortalPlayer, are American companies, and so on.

But this method hides some important details. Toshiba may be a Japanese company, but it makes most of its hard drives in the Philippines and China. (…)

The researchers estimated that $163 of the iPod’s $299 retail value in the United States was captured by American companies and workers, breaking it down to $75 for distribution and retail costs, $80 to Apple, and $8 to various domestic component makers. Japan contributed about $26 to the value added (mostly via the Toshiba disk drive), while Korea contributed less than $1.[...]

Those clever folks at Apple figured out how to combine 451 mostly generic parts into a valuable product.

Who Really Makes the iPod?

title: wired interview