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Make America Great Again. That President Trump sure goes out of his way for the forgotten people of America.

What do you think going to happen to US agricultural sector when China inevitably retaliates for US torpedoing ZTE?

Of course, this actually has nothing to do with the Trumped-up trade war with China. ZTE is in trouble with the US because they illegally shipped telco equipment to Iran and North Korea, broke US law and lied to the US Government. From Secretary Ross Announces Activation of ZTE Denial Order in Response to Repeated False Statements to the U.S. Government

In March 2017, ZTE agreed to a combined civil and criminal penalty and forfeiture of $1.19 billion after illegally shipping telecommunications equipment to Iran and North Korea, making false statements, and obstructing justice including through preventing disclosure to and affirmatively misleading the U.S. Government. In addition to these monetary penalties, ZTE also agreed a seven-year suspended denial of export privileges, which could be activated if any aspect of the agreement was not met and/or if the company committed additional violations of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR).

Now our President wants to let them off the hook because "reasons".

Want to know why people locate to Shenzhen? Go there. The actual wages there are pretty damn high actually and the cost of living rivals most of the US. But if you have an idea for a gadget or product, you're up and running in easily 1/10th of the time it takes in the US and to ramp up production to the millions? That ain't happening anywhere in the US.

I don't believe that wages and costs of living are even close to parity. This US government site says that even though Chinese wages are indeed increasingly much faster than in the US, US wages would still be 4 times higher even three years from now, i.e., there is currently about an order of magnitude difference in wages. Costs of living comparisons from just about any online cost of living website show that living costs in Shenzhen are about half of the costs in the cheapest US cities.

There is probably some truth in the idea that China sometimes offers fewer regulatory barrier to manufacturing. However, some significant part of those lower barriers is based in turning a blind eye to abuses of working conditions, the environment, product quality/safety, etc.

Ran across this interesting tidbit while looking up some stats for myself last time one of these articles got posted here.
Of the 7.6 million STEM workers, only 24% are women.

Of the 3.7 million public schoolteachers, only 24% are men.
I'll start taking all this gender equality stuff being reported seriously when I see at least half as many articles complaining about the latter as I see about the former. If one is a "problem", so is the other. Otherwise I'll take it there's an implicit assumption that women like to teach (or are better teachers) than men. And likewise men like STEM (or are better at STEM) than women.

Small sample - in my city there is IBM campus.
Field engineers - mostly males (and with few exceptions white)
Field engineers managers - as above
Software development - mostly males with larger share of females (and with few exceptions white)
Business Professional Services - (this is HR & accounting) - mostly females with very small share of males (4:1 or 8:1 ratio)
BPS managers - half and half males/females
As total gender ratio m/f perhaps 60%/40%

Perhaps humping disk arrays and servers at 2AM is not so interesting for females if they can choose job "under roof".

Ran across this interesting tidbit while looking up some stats for myself last time one of these articles got posted here.

Of the 7.6 million STEM workers, only 24% are women.
Of the 3.7 million public schoolteachers, only 24% are men.

I'll start taking all this gender equality stuff being reported seriously when I see at least half as many articles complaining about the latter as I see about the former. If one is a "problem", so is the other. Otherwise I'll take it there's an implicit assumption that women like to teach (or are better teachers) than men. And likewise men like STEM (or are better at STEM) than women.

The problem with so few women in IT is that one has to ask is there something that is preventing women from getting jobs in IT. It's a fair question. In our society, there should be nothing that stops someone from getting a job - equal access is important. The problem is that no one is asking what sucks about IT.

Actually the first question that comes to my mind is, why isn't there a similar crusade to stamp out gender bias in public education? 76% of public school teachers are female. That's actually the exact same ratio as STEM, where 76% of STEM employees are male. Why do STEM jobs get all the press while public education gets none? You would think with them being public school teachers, it would be a lot easier problem to address it first since they all effectively have the same employer.

Your source says the Panama Canal generated $800 million profit last year. If you look at their budget (same page) of $2.4 billion you can see there are a lot of costs as well, so revenue is much higher than $800 million.. we can estimate $3.2 billion if the 2015 budget is similar to the expenditures for last year.

The reason I bring up revenue instead of profit is that the new canal will not necessarily face the same costs as the Panama Canal. For example, the Panama Canal is currently undergoing an expansion program at a cost of about $6 billion since 2006, which is included in their budget and thus affects profits. Clearly the newly built Nicaraguan Canal would not need an expansion program, so that cost should be ignored and counted as profit.

Furthermore, the reason they are expanding the Panama Canal is to allow bigger ships and more traffic which will increase revenue. The Nicaragua Canal is designed to allow bigger ships as well so those projected numbers are perhaps more applicable. Based on http://www.commerce.gov/blog/2... they expect profits after the expansion program is complete to be around $3 billion per year.

If the Nicaraguan Canal is similar to that figure, it's looking like a pretty good investment, especially since as others have pointed out they have more to gain than just profits from tolls... substantial control of a major shipping lane is worth something.

[Citation needed]

Bugger off!

Here are the rules concerning that. See page 10.

http://www.commerce.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2012/january/pto_summary_of_ethics_rules_2012-e_0.pdf

And the moral of the story is?
Dont travel to the US.

The #1 reason why the US was quickly ruled out as my holiday destination this year is because of the horror stories like this.

When I read statements like yours I'm often left wondering, why do you think the American security services will single you out of the other 64 million travelers to the United States per year? And do you truly believe that nobody is arrested due to misunderstanding or mistake in your or other countries?

According to new data released today by the Commerce Department, the U.S. can expect 6-8 percent average annual growth in tourism over the next five years, and this year, 64 million foreign travelers are projected to visit the United States -- New Report Forecasts Strong U.S. Travel and Tourism Growth During Next Five Years

My suggestion is that you don't read any medical textbooks.

I concur on going to DC, but I bet he will be more useful on a different tack...

National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspac

Next Steps to Enhance Online Security

Yes, it does. http://www.commerce.gov/

Commerce is just business. Slashdot is a business and provides a service. DO you live outside the state the /. servers reside?

Also the FBI comes into play if they suspect any crime has been committed that may have crossed the state border.

You are wrong. Google data centers fulfill the EU Safe Harbor Directive, as stated in the Safe Harbor homepage at the US Department of Commerce Export site. It's perfectly safe for EU companies to have their data stored in Google's servers.

There seems to be some confusion over what, exactly, the position entails. I know this is /., and I know people like to jump to conclusions, but get the facts! Look at how the office of Technology Administration fits into the overall Commerce org chart. You see what he's not? (Undersecretary for Intellectual Property) Then read the list of offices controlled by the Technology Undersecretary.

I think most Americans respect the Census department. But I can't quite see them leading a coup. "Stand up and be counted!" Well, it does have a certain ring to it...

The census is handled by a Bureau, not a Department. The Census Bureau is part of the Department of Commerce.

It's a shame that people don't know the basic organizational structure of the executive bureaucracy. (Unless you are not a U.S. citizen, which is a valid reason to not know.)

• Doubleclick exec takes a top post at Commerce Department
• The original article from "Wired" is here. The O'Connor part of the story starts about halfway down.
• Here's another article from "Wired", about a week after O'Connor started.
• Last year, O'Connor became Chief Counsel for Technology for the Department's Technology Administration

There are plenty of government sources of data that is free and open to anyone. The Census Bureau, Energy Information Administration, Commerce Department, a good starting place is FirstGov .

In addition, most state governments and even county level governments publish large amounts of data.

DO NOT waste space toadying to your chief bureaucrat at the expense of useful content.

For example, the top of the menu bar at NASA is a paean to NASA administrator Daniel Goldin: links to his bio, his welcome letter, his speeches. Click hot topics and the menu bar full of juicy Dan Goldin information is still there. In contrast, try to find out what's up with the NEAR mission to Eros. Go ahead-- I gave up.

This problem isn't isolated. Pick another site, say Department of Commerce. The "tribute link" to the chief bureaucrat is top-right, and you get a biography, speeches, op-eds, even "official photographs".

Here's the USDA site, where prime position is taken by a big picture of Secretary Glickman at the ribbon cutting for a new wing of the Dept. of Agriculture.

Gag.