Regardless of what the state of version control and bug tracking and development tools are used within a company I always have my own available. If the company I am working with has a suitable suite of tools then I use them. When no such suite exists mine is available as either a standalone or server installation on my own workstation or laptop.
If I am working with a team that has nothing I generally offer to setup and deploy a basic infrastructure if the existing one is missing or broken. Normally a suite of Trac/SVN works reasonably and only takes an hour or so to setup.

As a consultant for many years I have seen the full range from none to a full suite of tools supporting a rigorous development process. I've help with roll outs of CVS, SVN, AccuRev, and ClearCase. Personally Trac and SVN do everything thing I need and do it really well. That said I normally augment those tools with my preferred setup of RabbitSVN + meld or TortoiseSVN and WinMerge and some personal scripts for diffing and merging.

It's worked wonders in the garment industry for years.
Many tier 1 retail corps inspect and verify to ensure their products and good name are not trashed.

I think Apple is an excellent example of the type of corporation that is very susceptible to open protest and well as the quiet protest of not buying from companies that do not work with reputable manufacturing partners.

Make no mistake. We are hearing about Apple because they are one of the worst offenders, not just because they are popular at the moment.

Sort of.
AT&T used to be a large player in Rogers (Canada). And if you think the US is bad, Canada is worse. Rogers is easily the worst GSM provider in the world. As compared with AT&T (USA), T-Mobile, Orange (Spain), TIM (Italy and Brazil), Vodafone (Hong Kong and S. Africa), China Moblie (China), China Unicom (China), and Telkomsel (Indonesia).

I am strongly of the opinion that if/when AT&T swallows T-Mobile in the USA they will quickly be in competition with Rogers for worst in the world. Interestingly WIND in Canada (Running a T-Mobile freq) appears to be a much better option in the Great White North) and comparable to T-Mobile USA.

With regards to subways, there is a vast difference between NYC / Chicago which can be very sketchy vs San Francisco, D.C. and Boston. It has a lot to do with the culture of the cities and the age of the system.

In my personal experience I lump (worst to best).
NYC, Chicago, Mexico City, Barcelona, Paris roughly together.
Sau Paulo with Rome
San Francisco, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen
Hong Kong and Singapore
And finally Athens as the best public transport I've used.

Can you elaborate? I am doing a fair amount of arm dev and would appreciate any pointers on chips to avoid and why of course.
Thanks!

I think you should be looking to the Cargil's and ADM's of the world as they set the price of corn and grain on the world market, which allows them the ability to manipulate the price on the domestic market by adjusting demand.

It was a known and planned for scenario.

ny times

No shit. Especially when you consider where the RMB will float to without the middle kingdoms downward pressure.

Unfortunately that slightly higher rate needed to make up for China's absence is a 'death spiral' where the interest rate offered to sell will quickly push the short term debt beyond the amount likely for the US tax base being able to pay, which drives the rate higher, which ... yeah, death spiral, no more debt issuance for you. Yikes.

Nope, the US and China are tied together in this game of chicken. It's not going to end well.

Actually, as a comparison to when I worked in a factory in high-school vs the factories I've visited in China (very, very many) it looks to me to be about the same level of work, or a little less work, for about the same pay and benefits relative to what I got back then. At least on the East coast of China, I hear the middle/west is not as nice but I have not had any dealings out there.