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CDMA vs. GSM in Post-war Iraq
An anonymous reader submits: "Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is pressing congress to favor CDMA over GSM for mobile phone service in U.S.-funded reconstruction plans. One reason for pushing this is that a CDMA system would benefit American companies, such as California-based Qualcomm, while GSM would favor European companies. Currently, GSM is the most widely used mobile standard in surrounding countries."
I think for the benefit of the Iraq people it would be best to either, us the existing standard and what the surrounding countries use. But if they want some of the benefits of the CSMA as they say in the article, they should at lest do a dual implantation of it. Why? Well so the Iraq people can chose what standard they want, the one they don't go for will by default die away, I am sure they probably will not go for CDMA since it would not be useful outside for the boarders of Iraq. Can CDMA and GSM phones exist in the same area? That is the big question that could stand in the way of my idea. But this is all thinking and we should be consternating more on the war that is going on now then rebuilding, yes we also have to look at humanitarian aid now, but that is still different from rebuilding.
Before they're hatched. Can I be on the occupied Iraq new currency designing committee? More importantly, will occupied Iraq choose Direct TV or Dish Network as its standard?
I can tell this esteemed Rep. has his priorities straight.
If this is going to be US funded I thinks it's okay to favor US companies even though I personally like/use GSM. If the money will be loaned to Iraq and later recouped via oil sales, etc. then GSM should be used. It's not like Sony-Ericsson is a French company!
They could forfiet their patent royalities on that technology which was originally developed for the military at taxpayers expense.
I really hope this lays to rest any argument about the US going there to "save the civilians from Saddam's evil."
Come on people, war hasn't even finished, and all they can think about is US cellphone company's benefits? what about FOOD, WATER, MEDICINE?
sheesh...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Seriously folks, in percentage of population, the US Military has already killed more Iraqi civilians than 9/11 killed Americans. Let's not worry about what cell phones the Iraqis will use after we win, and worry instead about whether or not it's possible for us to win.
Peace. As salaam alaikum.
I'd just like to remind you that the U.S is NOT the boss of the world, for lack of a better phrase.
Any country should be able to FREELY make their decision on participating in a conflict, and not be expected to march to Start Spangled Banner.
You may label the Frech as, 'Surrender monkeys', but maybe the U.S could be labelled as a, 'Government Sanctioned Terrorist Unit'
As an Australian, I support our troops, but that does not mean I support the actions of our Government.
There's already that sort of aid on the way, and Bush wants another 8 billion or so to be spent on that in the first 6 months. That's not counting other private group charities. They have to look at all these different issues as part of rebuilding. It's like saying we shouldn't bother fighting the common cold until we've got cancer taken care of.
I've had a CDMA phone for over two years now, and love it to death! There are a number of benefits, including longer range, lower amounts of microwaves hitting your skull, and so on.
:-)
GSM phones can exist in the same area as CDMA, I know this for a fact because all my friends have GSM...
What will probably happen is that the standard competitive environment will emerge anyway -- company A puts up GSM towers, company B puts up CDMA towers, and both try to convince the public that their system is better. Some people buy one system, some buy the other, based on what's important to that individual. This is, in my opinion, a much better system than relying on one technology -- and it's a system that will emerge without any form of legislation. Why can't political leaders just keep their noses out of it?
I am artificially intelligent.
There is an old and VERY familar saying. "Don't count your chickens before they hatch." We don't even have Baghdad yet and we are already arguing for what CELL phone STANDARD to use?!?!?! Come ON... I would be more worried about how to take Baghdad and what is needed to keep Baghdad before we start worrying about CDMA vs. GSM.
Generally speaking, it would probably make the most sense to allow something resembling competition. Barring that, I would vote for GSM. It has nothing to do with which is a better standard. The point is, the middle east is a relatively small region. Cell-phone interoperability would be a huge boon -- so it would be great if the whole region used one standard. Iraq is about the size of a mid-sized state. Imagine if you couldn't use your New York cell phone in Connecticut because of standards problems.
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
Cryptome is hosting more information on the whole rebuilding effort in Iraq. One such article is this one which is the text of a new york times article and two pdf's from USAID. Should be of interest to anyone who's following the whole Iraq war and is interested in the aftermath.
I THINK NOT.
This is just another example of politics being influenced by corporate desires and lobbying.
-davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
It's nice to see that in a country where citizens debate principles on both sides of an issue with global ramifications ... that congress reps first thoughts are still, "Mmmm ... pork ... " *drool*
Maybe we should get our rebuilding plans for oil production, water treatment, and transportation infrastructure taken care of first? Hey, maybe we can get DRM established there -- we can shape the future of the Middle East, and then the world!
GSM is a digital voice protocol with data services built on top of it. CDMA is a digital data protocol over which voice is one of the things you can send.
CDMA has a lot of things going over GSM, technically-wise, which I'm not going to bother to get into, because I haven't had several years of education in data encoding and communications so I can't speak with any great deal of force, but I do know that CDMA offers high-bandwidth, very reliable service (assuming the network is built properly), it's a newer protocol that builds upon the faults in GSM, TDMA, etc., and the method they use for encoding the data is just plain cool.
In the end, I vote CDMA, because other countries should consider upgrading (when GSM was the latest greatest thing, Europe locked themselves into it), and if I ever (read: when) go to Baghdad, I'd like to be able to use the phone I have now and just get subscription or roaming. It sucks that I can't do that anywhere else because the US and Canada are, amazingly, ahead of the cellular game for once.
--Dan
American companies and American forces will be there.
I'm sure the forces currently based in Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will rebase to Iraq, so why not use the same standards as used in the US?
I would feel much better if the US made the commitment to not have any economic interest in Iraq. There should be no US based company getting contracts for oil. Same goes for cell phone standards. KEEP YOUR GREEDY LITTLE HANDS OFF OF IRAQ! We are going to war with Iraq for the freedom of the people, not the plunder. Right?
Whatever is deployed - it will be done by Americans using American equipment.
Think of all the wire-taping opertunities if we use our equipment.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
The more damage US military does to Iraq's infrastructure, the more money will US corporations make on rebuilding. US government is planning to use Iraqi oil to pay for this enterprise.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
When it comes to rebuilding, the US tend to be big on words and small on deeds. See Afghanistan, see Gulf War I. Methinks for the moment there is a lot of posturing going on about what all we'll be doing in Iraq since "we'll be paying anyway", but eventually, after suitable redirection of the public attention to other things ("look, a shiny object!"), the US is going to work out things with the Europeans by "allowing" them to contribute to rebuilding to get "friendly" with them again, and the Europeans are going to oblige to get on the good side of the US again. Then the US will be enjoying the great PR of rebuilding Iraq, while someone else is footing the bill. Given the state of the budget, I really don't see us pouring billions into Iraq.
"We are at a very serious moment dealing with very serious issues and we are not focusing on the name you give to potatoes."
--Nathalie Loisau, French embassy spokeswoman.
Please help metamoderate.
not only do they want to keep the dollar as the oil monitary standard but now they also want american standard technology as well. pretty hard to explain how this war is not profiting American now isn't it...
VoiceStream Wireless had a nation-wide GSM network in the US. When T-Mobile, a German based GSM provider, purchased VoiceStream Wireless and Powertel, they became a Global GSM provider. AT&T is also building out a GSM network. Japan, Europe, Israel, and even Kuwait has a GSM network - in total, something like 40 or 50 countries uses GSM. My point is, GSM is the defacto world-wide standard, and it is in the interest of Iraq to use GSM so that interoperability with the international community is more easily achieved.
Why do these people need cell phones? So they can order pizza?
These beaurocrats are jumping the gun... There are a lot of starving people in that country, and the war is only going to make it worse.
The Iraqis people need food, shelter, clothing, and above all... peace. Not cell phones.
Second of all, this would be like trying to put Arkansas on a GMS system while the rest of the country was on CDMA. It just makes no sense. We picked a shitty standard, and most of the rest of the world gets to enjoy some nice features and utility we lack. No reason Iraq should suffer for that choice. Understand that Iraq isn't the size of the U.S., they need to be able to interact with other European states, and so they need GMS. If we force CDMA on them, we'll just be stealing that money for a couple of U.S. companies and then giving them something they will trash for it as soon as they get us out of there.
The CDMA receivers have GPS argument is pretty lame too. It wasn't part of the CDMA design, it was added in later because big brother here wanted to be able to better track us. It could be added into GNS phones too, but hasn't been mandated by the E.U. yet.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Imagine if you have a surgeon doing surgery on you. During the operation, he is discussing excitedly with the nurse how he is going to take some crazy vacation from the money he's gonna get from the operation.
Now, would you say that he is concentrating on saving your life, or that's just a means to help himself, and he doesn't really care about you as long as there are no mal-practice suits?
In fact, if he actually recommended this operation to you while you were "on the fence," would you not start to doubt if this operation was really meant to benefit YOU?
grow up man... if they really was doing this for the people, they should not have the energy to worry about such trivial things. And yes, Qualcomm's stock prices is trivial compared to the human lives lost there.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
If you leave the last big town, to go bush
in Australia, you might as well leave your
GSM handset behind, in favor of a CDMA unit.
Cheaper than sta.phones, the CDMA had greater
range (over flat terrain) & about the same
air-time costs as GSM, here...
So, that's the terrain of Iraq like, then?
Kurdish territory already has some cell phone service. I'm gonna take a shot in the dark and guess that it's the same that's being used everywhere else.
I used to think the imperialistic aspects of this war were secondary to the ideological ones. Lately my opinion has been headed in the other direction, not that either one is good.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
If this isn't enough to make one sick, discussing of who's tech to use after you finish dropping bombs on people... just... wow. Capitalism has some really nasty looking sides when you step back a little bit.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
Of course, once the Americans left, petrol was being sold in litres again, and Okinawa was once more driving on the left. No doubt, it cost lots of money to revert.
Really? When did we leave??? Last time I checked Okinawa had quite a few U.S. military bases.
First of all, whatever your beliefs regarding this war, I think it's disgusting that while people are dying on both sides - combatants and civilians - that someone can calmly try and make a fast buck on what happens to Iraq after the war.
Sure, you can say that the Congressman is just looking after the interests of his constituents, but I'm sure that he's received (or at least he will in the future) some hefty financial support from Qualcomm to finance his election campaigns. Morally, I find his haste to divide up what will be a war-torn country repugnant.
And why should the American government be deciding how Iraq should be rebuilt? Why should American companies profit from the devastation caused by America? Because America bore the brunt of the cost of a war that only it and only a few of its very closest allies wanted? Doesn't such unilateral carving up of post-war Iraq smack of colonialism?
Shouldn't a free market economy decide what kind of phone network Iraq eventually is left with? Isn't an arbitrarily imposed system a bit imperialistic? Is Nokia (of Finland) or Ericsson (of Sweden) any less entitled to compete for new business than Qualcomm (of the US of A)? Why?
It's not like America's track record on rebuilding nations scarred by it's "War on Terrorism" is anything to shout about. It's not like Afghanistan is undergoing radical change with roads, hospitals, power plants and other infrastructure being rebuilt is it? Mind you, Iraq does have the world's second largest oil reserves so at least they can pay for the lovely American-built goods that Dubya and Co. hope will soon be flooding the markets of Baghdad.
Most of the world believes that American foreign policy is about using other countries as much as possible one day and then throwing them out with the garbage the next morning. It's a shame and a tragedy (and it should be a national disgrace) that George W. Bush is making that belief a reality.
(I'll say this now. This is Slashdot, where anything the questions American actions, and especially Republican actions, can only be flamebait and/or trolling. Moderators, do yourselves and others a favour: don't moderate down other people's opinions just because you don't agree with them. Instead, respond logically and rationally with your own opinions. This is called debate. It's democracy in action.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
A benevolent boss? You gotta be kidding me. Maybe it was, but it certainly isn't anymore. What was the mantra about being a boss and a leader? Wasn't one of them, to be a leader you have to have respect? Your Dubya made the US lose all the respect most of the world had for it, vote for a real leader next time.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Here in New Zealand we have both networks. I do development of communications products using both systems. As I see it, for the end users, CDMA really only has an advantage if you need faster data. The other 99% of the users would be better off with GSM. CDMA proponents will give plenty of sound technical reasons why CDMA is better and they are right but from a practical point of view GSM wins almost every time. Some of the reasons for GSM are:
1. Don't have pay the Qualcomm fees so the pones are cheaper.
2. Sim cards allow the user to choose where and when to get their phone from instead of having to get permission to change from their telco.
3. There is generally a larger range of phones (see 2.), although some GSM telcos control network access, ours doesn't. The local CDMA phones are just plain ugly !
4. Roaming is better, my phone works in almost any country including the US, and you can count the number of countries a CDMA user can roam to with one hand.
On a political note I have to say this isn't a good look for country claiming to be there to help the local, not themself...
No one ever died from a cold, but a cure for the common cold would be far more lucrative than a cure for cancer by the sheer fact that people get colds more often than they get cancer. But if you're actually interested in saving people's lives, we really should pursue the cure for cancer instead of the cure for the common cold. In the same vein, I think making sure people get food and water is a hell of a lot more important than determining what their cel phone standard is going to be.
In summary, I don't think dead people or people dying of starvation and thirst really need cel phones. And I don't think people with terminal cancer will feel all that much better even if you manage to stop their nose from running.
Anyone else notice that Halliburton (formerly helmed by Dick Cheney) got a nice contract to put out the oil wells that have been set on fire? Another coincidence?
Yes, bombs are going off all over Iraq now. BUT that is where the similarity to 9/11 ends.
On 9/11, there were no bombs, just commercial jets used as missiles. The invasion of Iraq and the attacks on 9/11 are not similar at all, even from the civilian perspective.
9/11 was a secret attack inflicted by a rogue group mainly to cause maximum deaths of civilians. (I'm not including the Pentagon attack because that was a valid military target)
Our invasion of Iraq is a pre-planned, well-announced attack on the regime running Iraq (and its figurehead, Saddam) by national military forces against military targets. The coalition forces are not purposely targetting civilians, however, as war is ugly, collateral deaths are inevitable. I truly believe the coalition forces are doing everything possible to avoid killing civilians. The Iraqi regime has gone out of their way to put its own citizens in harms way by embedding SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) in residential neighborhoods, even hiding a tank inside a hospital (which is against the internationally accepted rules of warfare; the Geneva Convention, which Iraq is a signatory to).
The Iraqi are also launching a moderately successful political game based on complete lies. Seems thats the regular mode of business for them. How about those chemical weapons they said they don't have but have warned us they will use if we try to take over Baghdad? Or the Iraqi POWs telling debriefers that their superiors told them to fight hard because the Americans would inject poison in their veins if they were caught.
So simply comparing numbers based on population size has no merit unless you also look at the overall situational factors, including history.
- mobster1975!
No, Clinton did that, and I did vote for a real leader, and he almost didn't get voted in because of a sore loser named Lieberman and a bigger sore loser name Gore. Both of these sore losers used the preconception that old people are feeble and don't vote correctly, and used the state of Florida (which is full of old people). Swallow that Mr. Moore. Respect is something European countries never got the concept of anyway (Zeig Heil anyone?). I sure hope Europe will get a grasp on the value of morality, rather than the pseudo-morality that has been bred into them since the dark ages.
Support Israeli punk bands. Man Alive.
Well, of course a US congressman would choose something other than GSM...to benefit US companies and their regime that contols them...or is it vice-versa? Why do you think the we invaded Iraq to begin with? It was not to liberate anything, but to serve a select few in the US hierarchy. Go murder a bunch of folks we have no business telling what and how to live their lives, do this based on fear and misinformation, lie to the US public, and then have the regime here in the US sell stuff to the new regime in Iraq that is not like anything used in surrounding countries, geesh...it makes total sense huh? Of course...all for the benfit of the Bushies and their crew, and those ignorant US citizens that buy into it all. What fools...and what crap. I just figure that by the time the US gets through there will not be any civilians left to use phones anyway.
If you were to look through previous post on CDMA vs TDMA (which is used by GSM) you will actually find that CDMA is indeed a better technology.
The 3G network is all based on CDMA since it is better at utilising bandwidth than TDMA. In fact most of Europe is slowly switching to CDMA though it will be an expensive process.
Qualcomm were right all along in the CDMA vs TDMA wars and now they should reap the benefits.
I think Iraq would do well to avoid all these problems and just move to 3G since they wouldn't have to support older phone/existing customer base.
BTW: I use a GSM phone
Oz
that they'd choose CDMA (favour's US) over GSM (favour's EU). I mean, why would anyone want to choose what's best for the Iraqis?
... and then there were none
Of course the US should be paying for reconstruction because the US is doing the damage. If I break a window in a neighbour's house, I pay to replace the window; it doesn't matter if they're a millionaire.
CDMA and WCDMA are more advanced technologies over GSM - the next generation. CDMA One is to used mainly in US and WCDMA elsewhere, especially Europe. I am not an expert on US CDMA, but European WCDMA is probably more flexible and more expensive, better solution. Only that WCDMA it has been hyped, delayed and overpoliticised a lot, as everyone wanted to standartize their patents and nobody had the money to replace the GSM infrastructure.
Petrus.
No, we're not getting food into Iraq because the priority for this war is the Oil.
Yes, that's right. It's all about oil. We want the oil, must have the oil. Got to have the oil.
Let me ask you a question, though. This war, including the postwar reconstruction, is probably going to cost us around 200 billion dollars, and that doesn't count the cost of the munitions we're using. We've used over a billion and a half dollars' worth of cruise missiles alone so far, and the war's only a week old. Two hundred billion dollars plus would have bought us practically all the Iraqi oil we could have hauled off. Why didn't we just buy it, and save everybody a lot of time, money, and trouble?
Why didn't the Coalition PLAN for the mines?
We did. That's why we thought to bring mine detection equipment-- not to mention a platoon of highly motivated bottlenose dolphins and sea lions-- to the party.
Second, Kuwait is right next door. Why can't we just land in Kuwait and deliver the food that way.
We are. Read the article.
I write in my journal
They should have thought of this before they started importing all the crap from Mexico and China.
Don't put a bowtie on a turd and call it well dressed.
Does Qualcomm really want to sell to only the United States and Iraq? Why not give them GSM, then Qualcomm loses the burden of dual development and gains a wider market for the single product line. Simple economics.
Also, Motorola is an American company, they do GSM as well...
You guys are way too cynical! This isn't about American corporations exploiting war for market-share - this congressional action just demonstrates how deeply American companies and their Congressional Representatives care about the Iraqi people, partially their cell-phone reception.
If you could accuse them of anything, it would be caring *too much*, too deeply, being too committed to making sure very Iraqi can get downloadable ring-tones and caller-ID. We should be proud of these corporate leaders, these *American* leaders, for caring on our behalf!
Christ, I should write this stuff for a living. Or I could just cut to the chase and start stealing cars
Arkansas is home to the fastest growing metro area in the united states (greater NW Ark area), as well as the largest retailer in the world (Walmart), the largest Poultry company in the world (Tyson), and some of the largest trucking companies in the world.
Now, if you were looking for a bumpkin state, try Mississippi on for size.
James
So because Germany had a bad tyrant ruler, and did some bad things, which they've been trying to atone for since (and the people that actually did these things are mostly dead as well), the whole of Europe is doesn't deserve respect?
Does that include your hero Dubya's pal Blair?
That's it america... keep alienating your allies. You don't need anyone. The universe revolves around you.
--
"The Greatest Nation in the World" can't even feed it's poor.
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
GSM is an aging standard. Code division multiplexing is the way of the future, and the engineers know this. It offers better reception, better capacity, and makes for a much better 3G infrastructure with mixed high-speed data/voice traffic.
China is rolling out a WCDMA network, folks. Qualcomm isn't necessarily the flagbearer for the technology or the platform; it's no longer a US-only phenomenon.
GSM will be phased out over the next decade, cohabitating with WCDMA, as peoples' handsets are replaced by shiny new models with ridiculous multimedia features they won't use for years. Check the market for dual-band WCDMA/GSM mobile phones and notice how many of the major manufacturers are producing them.
Regretably, none of that matters to our friend, Mr. Issa. He and his backers are interested solely in making a quick buck. It's obvious to me that Iraq would be better served by allowing a privatized Iraq Telecom corporation to arise from the ashes of the old state-run telecom. Iraq Telecom should make its own decision about what kind of cellular technology to deploy, perhaps with the help of a US bank loan. That would be a minor boon for the US and a blissful telecommunications future for Iraq.
But, honestly...what'd you expect, from a politician?
Zeig heil??? Fucking moron.
If the French hadn't helpt out your puny revolution, US would still be a British colony. Which, thinking of it, would have been just as well, anyway.
A nation of misfits, rejected from the civilized countries now trying to rule the world.
But never mind, your society is going straight to hell anyway.
Reasons?
Segregation.
Ignorance.
Megalomania.
Crime rates.
Social security.
Inability to handle international affairs.
I could add a few more, but that ends the lesson for today.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam
Another report said he still gets about $1M a year in compensation.
Besides which, you know damned well he will go right back to them after he loses the next election. Or family will.
Anyone who thinks politicians are honest and ethical simply hasn't been paying attention.
Infuriate left and right
The fact that people are such twits to actually think a damn blow job is a big deal while the patriot act is just swell demonstrates the perverse sense of morality my fellow Americans have. I take that back. They're scared little blood thirsty fascist sheep.
Go ahead, call me a traitor. From traitors, that is a complement. Good thing the constitution transcends the toilet paper this administration thinks it is. There's going to be hell to pay when the brainwashing wears off. I think that shall be soon since there are already cries for Blair's head. When American death toll in this very *avoidable* war exceeds 1000, Bush may join blair at the Hague trial.
Obviously this guys is being influenced in a huge way by corporate entities or he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. As a Canadian who is constantly travelling overseas, the CDMA standard that North America has adopted is a major pain in the ass. The premium phones that are being manufactured right now always come out in GSM form first, most of them only supporting the two standard frequencies, and those that support the third you can't even use in North America most of the time because of a lack of carriers that will support the phone (some carriers won't allow phones that they don't sell to be connected to their networks).
The fact that people are such twits to actually think a damn blow job is a big deal while the patriot act is just swell demonstrates the perverse sense of morality my fellow Americans have.
Have you ever read the USA-PATRIOT act? Be honest, now. Have you ever read it, or have you just read a couple of op-eds about it and formed an opinion based on them?
Go ahead, call me a traitor.
You're not a traitor. You're an American citizen. The framers of our government recognized the necessity of keeping the actual decision making power out of your hands, and from here it's easy to see why.
When American death toll in this very *avoidable* war exceeds 1000, Bush may join blair at the Hague trial.
For what? We don't try people for war crimes just because we don't like them, you know. (Well, the people who wrote the Rome Treaty would disagree with this statement, but that's neither here nor there.)
I write in my journal
GSM? WHICH GSM? Africa, US or European frequency?
GSM not as universal as most think.
CDMA is head and shoulders above - look at where the highspeed wireless is going - CDMA, not GSM. Plus CDMA is more efficient in its bandwidth usage than GSM. Remember GSM is still TDMA at its roots. So CDMA has better spectral efficiency.
Example: GSM provides 8 slots in a channel 200 kHz wide, while IS-136 provides 3 slots in a channel only 30 kHz wide. GSM therefore consumes 25 kHz per user, while IS-136 consumes only 10 kHz per user.
Plus you should take into account the terrain and desnity - Iraq probably is not all that population dense outside of Baghdad and Basra. CDMA really comes into its element when you are out in the countryside with few sites covering large expanses of land. Under these conditions CDMA provides extremely stable audio with few frame errors to mess things up. This is because Channel Pollution is almost non-existent in these situations. Under similar conditions TDMA suffers too readily from interference and it will often blank the audio. Many people who use CDMA systems in sparsely populated areas have given this technology extremely high marks.
Nex you should look at GPRS versus CDMA2000/1xRTT, and the costs to upgrade from these technologies to genuine 3G communications. Without going into the specifics, CDMA holds a slight advantage here as well.
So despite the obvious political motivations behind this decision, technologically speaking, it s actually a good decision to favor CDMA.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
When the US says frog, the world damn well says "how high?"
And there we were thinking that much of the tension between US and the rest of the world stemmed from their not saying "how high", when US said jump.
Either you are an idiot or we were wrong.
I am pretty sure we weren't wrong.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam
First the war, then we introduce cell phones.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Option 1: Pay 200 billion to a dictator you don't like for some oil, dropping the UN sanctions you have vetoed being dropped and also potentially getting yourself into a mess with opec.
Option 2: Spend 100 billion on a war, with nearly all of it going directly to your corporations (I suspect the army wages are around 1-2 billion a month and therefore negligible) and hence providing a boost to your economy that doesn't attract to much attention from the WTO. Install your companies to run the oil process in the newly overtaken country and hence start seeing a percentage of all oil purchases from the country providing another boost to your economy. Take oil as payment for all your reconstruction work which again is providing more investment into your economy by providing the reconstruction from US companies AND don't forget US companies are now profiting from the oil you are buying! If you haven't managed to get as much oil as you would have "just bought" you can just by it now at an effectively discounted price as some of the money is recirculating back into your economy.
Do the math and see which is better!
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Blow them to kingdom come then provide aid in the form of contracts to US companies to rebuild their country at the cost of their oil.
One hell of an economic stimulus package.
As someone who supports our troops and the war effort, I'm disgusted that this crap is going on. It should be about what is best for Iraq, not US companies!
This is the same reason that we are still using the inferior imperial system of measurements instead of the metric system.
GSM would be the obvious choice in Iraq, because it is compatible with GSM that is being used in the surrounding countries. It would be extremely short sighted and irresponsible to push CMDA in the region for no other reason than US convenience.
Grr.
— darco
Mirlip of the Tits:
Have there ever been a post on Slashdot that say anything negative of the US that hasn't set you off into another raving rant in less than five minutes after it was posted? Be honest, now.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam
"march to Start Spangled Banner"
I didn't know that Microsoft had bought advertising space on the US flag. WOW, I've really been out of the loop!
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
Yes, I agree we (the U.S./U.K./Spain coalition) should show some resistance towards Europe for their stance on Iraq. However, bickering over GSM vs CDMA gets us nowhere.
Even though GSM is a "European" standard, it is becoming much more pervasive throughout the civilized world. (Even Albania has GSM access!)
As we all know, boycotting products/services always ends up hurting the little people. To boycott a protocol that is loosely associated with a union of countries is an asinine method of forcing a country's will upon others.
$DEITY bless $NATION
In the outback (or deseret) CDMA is much better than GSM. GSM does not work over as long of distance. CDMA can work over long distances. CDMA signal strenth is supreme to that of GSM over long distances. With CDMA phones i think the wave length is much longer and there for travells better. It also works better in vallys and in mounternous regions. CDMA phones can also access more than one tower at a single time to boost there signal. I have heard someone say that the CDMA tower can also alter its signal strenght to certain phones if they are far away. (heard this don't flame me if I am mistaken) In a post war Iraq it would be a much better investment to go with CDMA.
"You win again Gravity!" -Futurama (Zapp)
Have there ever been a post on Slashdot that say anything negative of the US that hasn't set you off into another raving rant in less than five minutes after it was posted?
;-)
I'm not perfect. I've probably let one or two slip through.
I write in my journal
Spending our money? I haven't seen the appropriations for "fixing" Iraq yet (judging by the pitiful quantities being spent on Afghanistan I won't hold my breath), and as I recall we are taking control of their fields to pay for rebuilding. It would seem to me that if we are spending their oil to rebuild it should be in the interest of those living on top of it.
Spending it in OUR interests basically says that the left was totally right about our intentions.
God, what a perfect representation of what is important to the bush administration. I thought Slashdot may actually avoid this type of propaganda called "reporting."
Women and children are being killed. Our friends, neighbors, brothers and sisters are killing them/being killed, and what is the US media reporting? What do we hear about?
Who makes the bucks from war.
Never mind that has already taken a heavy toll on any US legitimacy (the founding principles of the nation itself are threatened to be as illegitimate as its current "president"). Never mind that it's at a cost of billions in tax dollars (that our children, and their children will be paying for). Never mind that it will cost thousands of lives before it is finished (and possibly hundreds of thousands of lives as the ranks of Al Qaeda grow). Never mind that it's barely even begun!
Have you no decency? If you want to report on Iraq, report on something legitimate. Report on what's happening rather than the propaganda puff-pieces.
Report on the 28 year old plumber who drowned after being ordered to cross a canal in full battle dress. Or the 20 year old lifeguard who drowned trying to save him.
Report on the seven year old girl lying in a pool of her own blood, her intestines laying beside her.
Report on the fact that the people of Iraq don't want to be "liberated." And that our friends and families will be the ones to pay the highest price of all because of the dreadful mismanagement and miscalculation of the bush administration.
Fuck rebuilding. Fuck Saddam. There's an unjust war being wrought upon the innocent civilians of Iraq, as well as the innocent soldiers of the United States. This is not their war, this is the war of a few greedy people who don't even legitimately hold the positions they currently abuse.
The bush administration has shown time and again that it has no care for legitimacy, or truth. From the moment the first Florida recount started, they have shown that they care only for protecting their own interests. They have never had the interests of the US in mind. They have never cared about those men and women who are suffering and dying right now.
With a smug smile they say, "We will liberate you from your God, your money, and your dignity."
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
... Senator Strom Thurmond is backing a motion to ensure post-war Iraq is properly converted to US measurements.
Softening from his earlier hard line of pressing both the US and Iraq adopt to British measurements, the Senator is quoted as saying that there is "no way in hell we're gonna let the French get anything out of Iraq, and the metric system is as French as Napolean's testicles."
Thurmond's supporters went on to point out that nearly all of the countries unwilling to attack Iraq have adopted the metric system, and the 'coalition of the willing' have not. A senior aide said, "The brits use miles and gallons like us 'mericans. Coincidence they are with us in the war? I think not. Even though the miles and gallons they use are different than ours, I think I made my point."
An unnamed staffer summed the plan up this way: "It's gonna get reeeal hot in Baghdad this summer. Mostly because the thermometers will be in Fahrenheit instead of that pinko metric crap. I mean jeez, 45 degrees is nothing in 'American'. We'll set the bastards straight."
Anybody want a peanut?
Yhis way America will not only became victorious from this war, but also renovated at the hardware level.
Really. It's the same question. How about winning that little war thingy first?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Seriously.
Consult with the Britts and the Aussies. The three of us can decide what benefits us most and we go from there.
No consideration need be made for Europe.
A McDonalds on every corner and beef at every dinner plate. That is my postwar plan for Iraq.
The answer is simple. If we just bought the oil, only the well connected oil men would get rich, and Iraq might even be a significant regional power.
This way, the oil men AND the defencse contractors get the G$200 twice and only have to share a token fee with whatever puppet regime we cobble together to replace Saddam.
"The coalition forces are not purposely targetting civilians, however, as war is ugly, collateral deaths are inevitable. I truly believe the coalition forces are doing everything possible to avoid killing civilians. "
That's not exactly right. We are using massive airpower and large bombs and cruise missles knowing full well that a few of them will stray and kill civilians. To us that's an acceptable risk because the alternative would be to send in ground troops and fight house to house.
We would rather risk their civilians lives then our soldiers lives and that's a cold hard fact. The lives of our soldiers are worth much more then the lives Iraqis.
Also of course most of the iraqi soldiers are draftees who are soldiers because the alternative is death. TO me they are pretty much civilians.
War is necrophilia.
I haven't seen the appropriations for "fixing" Iraq yet
It's called a supplemental: $74.9 billion, and it went to Congress yesterday. While most of that is for the war effort itself, something on the order of $6 billion is for humanitarian aid and reconstruction.
judging by the pitiful quantities being spent on Afghanistan I won't hold my breath
Nearly a billion dollars is "pitiful quantities?"
and as I recall we are taking control of their fields to pay for rebuilding.
You recall incorrectly. No such plan has even been floated, must less approved. There's been talk of paying for the reconstruction out of unguaranteed loans against future Iraqi oil revenues, but that's just in the idea stages right now. At present, the plan is for the reconstruction to come out of the American taxpayer's pocket.
I write in my journal
Ah, yes, there's the funny thing. "We're not in it for the oil, see, because this war is costing so much, the profit that will be made from Iraqi oil is very small compared to not going to war and just buying the oil". But you have to consider that the government is paying for the war. The government gets his money through taxes, big corps, small corps, inviduals, they all pay the taxes. Government money is taxpayers money. It's not like Bush is spending for the war from his pocket. It's not his money.
So, the whole American people is paying for this war. Who will benefit? To an extent, the whole american people, from a revitalised economy. Whether that'll balance the cost of the war we shall see. But a few corporations will get a FUCKLOAD of money from this. They'll have invested a part of their taxes - which they would have paid anyway - and some money in politics and will get loads and loads of money. Their balance is on the plus side. A lot. Mucho money they're getting,and the best part is that THEY reap in the benefits, but the whole population financed the whole thing.
And really, Bush is only there for a few years. Taxpayer's money isn't his money. But - is Bush by any chance into the Oil business? Yes? And tell me, is there a chance that with all that oil money that will be moving around after Iraq has been conquered, is there a chance some of that money *might* find its way into his pockets? There IS?!? Well, shit, there I was thinking he was doing it all cuz he's such a nice guy, y'know.
Of course, it's not just Bush. There are lots of people who will benefit from this war - and probably not just on the Republican side. What do you think, that the White House is full of people who have the American people's best interest at heart? Shit man, you're dreaming. It takes a lot of money to get into the White House. And the people who have enough money to play politician usually didn't come into all this money by giving it away - they invested, they invest all the time, and politics is just another investment.
Karma: Could be worse (could be raining)
But - is Bush by any chance into the Oil business? Yes?
;-)
No. Before becoming governor of Texas he managed a major league baseball team.
Yet another insidious conspiracy theory impaled on the pointy sticks of truth.
I write in my journal
Of course! How could I have forgotten the military-industrial complex! Now that I realize that they were really behind it all along, I understand that this war was, in fact, the product of a giant global conspiracy more than a decade in the making, and not the result of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the international politics that followed after all.
Thanks for clearing that up for me.
I write in my journal
We're not nearly done killing people, and we're already planning ways to fuck them by pushing inferior wireless standards on them.
Not only that, Iraqis will be forced to get their Internet access from either AOL or MSN, depending on which gets me better karma for this post.
The correct website is http://www.iraqbodycount.net or http://www.iraqbodycount.org. When I was linked from iraqbodycount.com to the current count page, I was greeted with a notice (probably checking referrer tags) that said "WARNING: You may have been sent to this page by iraqbodycount.com, a website that is illegally masquerading as the Iraq Body Count Project for commercial gain. To visit the true Iraq Body Count site, please Follow this link to iraqbodycount.org (and .net). (And then close this window and the one that sent you here!)" .net and .org versions do not suffer this same problem.
Their claim appears to be supported by fact: iraqbodycount.com brings up two pop-up windows on visit (which my hosts file blocks: both are from media.popuptraffic.com); and all of the "news" links are on www.interestalert.com, a web site which hosts free (and questionably reliable/plagiarized "news"--most of it copyright United Press International) and has banner ads. Nasty.
The
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
have we decided what toilet paper they should use?
before we concern ourselves with cell phones, shouldn't we decide whether they will get starbucks or caribou?
Rumsfeld has been in DC since the Kennedy Administration. So has Valenti. It's not
a giant global conspiracy, it's just that US politics moves slower than our attention span.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"Have you ever read the USA-PATRIOT act? Be honest, now. Have you ever read it, or have you just read a couple of op-eds about it and formed an opinion based on them?"
4 19 8,00.html
As a matter of fact, I've had a good look at the patriot act. Couldn't make heads nor tails of it. But I trust the Electonic Frontier Foundation's analysis of it.
"For what? We don't try people for war crimes just because we don't like them, you know. (Well, the people who wrote the Rome Treaty would disagree with this statement, but that's neither here nor there.)"
For violating international law. Nothing in UN resolution 1441 specifies that a massive attack and invasion is authorized. Speaking of reading things. Why don't you read the UN charter? Now that's something I am able to understand. US is a member of the United Nations. When the world said NO to war, Bush should have listened. Now he's going to take the fall like Blair. For getting the US into Vietnam II, hell yes Bush will be fessed up for a Hague trial. And if you weren't suckled onto the teet of mainstream news outlets, you'd realize the world is overwhelmingly against this war. Even Britain's people. I'm not joking when I say they're thinking about trying Blair like a war criminal. Here's the link:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,463
Heh, we haven't even won the war yet... and our boys are risking their lives over there. So what do you think that the American political elite should be doing? That is right, they need to spend their energy and our money deciding which cell phone standard should Iraq get!
Here is a radical thought: Since we are pretending that we care sooo much about the poor opressed Iraqui people, and we're are about to "liberate" them. Why don't we let them choose? Of course this war is not about oil, is not about economic kickbacks, it is not about anything but the interest of the Iraqui people... right? So there you go, now Iraquis can employ their new found freedom and democracy, and they can start by debating and deciding what cell phone standard they want to implement, to replace their old cell phone infraestructure graciously destroyed by the Americans...
Oh, and just a little advice: Before planning the reconstruction of a country after a war. You must make first sure that you have won the war. I am pretty sure that the Iraquis are thrilled to be "liberated" by us, afterall they are literally "dying" to get on the bandwagon of prosperous
This is rediculous. This issue is similar to the fact that Iraqi oil contracts already have been delegated to Halliburton corp; vice president Dick Cheney was CEO before assuming his current position. Why can't we allow the Iraqi's to decide their own future? I mean, it is their country, isn't it? If they prefer CDMA or GSM, it's their choice.
His family made its money in the oil business, AFAIK. He comes from Midland, TX, a place that lives because of this business. And I could easily find information about him setting up "limited partnerships" to drill for oil.
He may not have been very active in the business in recent years, but the fact remains - I'm sure the Bush empire has lots of money invested in the oil business, and I'm also sure they'll have substantial gains from Iraqi oil - both monetary and through favor trades.
Karma: Could be worse (could be raining)
There already is a GSM network in Iraq - KurdTel. CDMA would be utterly insane; GSM is the world standard; in use on every contient and nearly every country. CDMA is only in a handful of countries, and you cannot travel with a CDMA phone.
I'm no experts on cell phone technology, so I go by what I've read. It is entirely possible I've missunderstood something along the way. With that disclaimer out of the way...
GSM is a simplier system and is probably cheaper to implement the infrustructer. It's also the standard used in that part of the world.
CDMA is a more advanced system, the infrustructer is more complex, thus more expensive. The new features popping up in cell phones require the CDMA system (or massive changes to GSM??).
Tough call, I'd say. Personally, I prefer investing for the long term, but there's a lot to be said for local standards (globally speaking).
Would a dual standard infrustructure be too expensive to implement?
Who pays for it? If the Iraqi's pay for it (and they should), then let them decide. Hell, they're sitting on 300 trillion dollars worth of oil, so they can afford it. They SHOULD pay for it. However, if American taxpayer's are going to pay for it, then it better be a CDMA system so we can get some of our investment back.
And before anyone jumps on me, I don't care if we don't make a dime from Iraq. Getting rid of that butcher Saddam and his evil offspring is simply the right thing to do.
Next stop, Zimbabwe. Let's get rid of that evil fuck Mugabe.
-- Will program for bandwidth
The largest fraction of that money goes to salaries and corporate profits. So, in effect, the money turns right around and gets spent on US companies and US workers. And that means that it is really just a gigantic subsidy of US industry and US workers. There is nothing wrong with that, Europe subsidizes as well, but let's not kid ourselves about what it means.
Money that we could spend on ourselves,
No, we couldn't. The US government is perpetually unwilling to increase spending substantially on domestic issues, like health care or education. If anybody had proposed adding $100bn for such programs, they would have been booed out of Congress as a "tax-and-spend" politician.
but that we're spending on Iraq instead for no other reason than because it's the right thing to do.
It may or may not be "a" right thing to do, but it is without a doubt one of the least useful things to spend $100bn on. With $100bn, the we could have saved millions of people overseas. Instead, we are bombing some third rate, irrelevant country back into the stone age.
This has nothing to do with "helping" anybody, it's simply a convenient gimmick for domestic political purposes: it feeds on US paranoia and xenophobia, it lets Bush funnel money to corporate donors, and it lets Bush distract folks from his abysmal record.
Let me ask you a question, though. This war, including the postwar reconstruction, is probably going to cost us around 200 billion dollars, and that doesn't count the cost of the munitions we're using. We've used over a billion and a half dollars' worth of cruise missiles alone so far, and the war's only a week old. Two hundred billion dollars plus would have bought us practically all the Iraqi oil we could have hauled off. Why didn't we just buy it, and save everybody a lot of time, money, and trouble?
It's not quite that simple.
Most of the money that's spent on the war is actually spent paying US companies for products and services (those cruise missiles were actually bought from someone) + salaries for servicemen.
That money is thus transfered from the US government to other sectors of the US economy.
From the point of view of the global US economy, most of the money spent on the war stays in the US.
Now, if we assume that after the reconstruction the entities that will benefict the most from the new status quo in Iraq will be US oil companies, then what this war ammounts to is:
- Having the US government spend taxpayer's money in the Defense industry to subsidize the US oil industry.
-------------
Please note that i'm only touching the economical side here. There's the whole human side (lives lost in both sides, the future of the surviving Iraqui people); political side (Bush's approval rates); and geopolitical side (will the rest of the world still trust the US?).
Iraq = Vietnam II. The problem with the arrogant ignorant twits running our US is that GW and Rummy didn't go to Vietnam. If they had, they wouldn't be so friggin confident and we wouldn't be fighting this bloody war. Well they can enjoy their Stalingrad and hope they can escape the country before the blood thirsty mob comes after them.
Personally, I'd rather see them go through a Hague trial.
George Bush had nothing to do with oil? Are you kidding?
Have you heard of Arbusto, Harken and Spectrum 7? Bush Jnr has done exceptionally well out of the oil industry, and largely due to his political connections and borderline inside trading rather than his skill.
On June 22, 1990, George Jr. sold two-thirds of his Harken stock for $848,560-a cool 200 percent profit. The move was well timed. One week after Junior sold his stock, Harken announced a $23.2 million loss in quarterly earnings and Harken stock dropped sharply, losing 60 percent of its value over the next six months. On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops moved into Kuwait and 541,000 U.S. forces were deployed to the Gulf.
What's best for Iraq? or What's best for Bush's friends?
USA is not the only ones "paying" for this and yet there are no open tenders, even within the USA economy, stuff is going directly to the republican cronies of GW Bush.
Eg Cheney's company Halliburton has the oil well capping project already, nobody else got a look in.
Surely if the USA people are paying for this (which I dispute that they are the only contributors), then shouldn't they be getting the best value for money available - which usually means some form of tender process, even if evaluation is fast tracked. This stuff shouldn't be automatically awarded to Bush's mates.
So what the hell happened to the "best interests of Afghanistan" after they were "liberated"?
USA global domination manifesto These people want to stop anyone anywhere from acting against their interest. So the only interests allowed will be their own. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Presently the rest of us who are not "against the USA" will be paying tribute taxes just to be left alone.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
There comes a time to recognize that our war is morally superior to France's desire for no war. There is no reason to allow the regime of Saddam Hussein to exist. None.
That the bulk of the Europeans prefer to deal with Saddam is the biggest justification for excluding their business interests.
(Call me a troll or flamebaiter all you want. I don't care for responses--I'm just disgusted at those siding against the US/UK)
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
The truth is that CDMA itself is not patented by Qualcomm. Yes, it was originally developed by the military. Qualcomm simply patents the way it is used by cell phones. The idea is that there's a right way and wrong way to use CDMA. The wrong way is to not have it be efficient and have it waste lots of power on the device. The right way is a patented process that Qualcomm owns.
Here's a much better explanation of the whole thing. Great reading if you're interested in cdma, gsm, wcdma, cdma2000, evdo, gprs, etc.
Also, there are more posts floating around on this article saying that the Qualcomm is evil because it's monopolistic. That is complete BS. If there is to be any finger pointing to be done it should be directed towards Europe and their protectionist laws. Several countries in Europe made laws years back that made cell technologies except for GSM illegal to operate. Wow, I wonder why. Qualcomm is from the U.S., and the other GSM companies were from Europe. Did the U.S. do the same thing? Obviously not. Hence the [healthy] competition between CDMA and GSM carriers. The link I gave above explains a lot of this.
According to this article Britain realises that the best people to be running Umm Qasr are, oddly enough, the people who have been running the port up till now.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
However, your view of infrastructure is twaddle. This isn't "Field of Dreams" - just because you build it, doesn't mean shit. That's the idea of infrastructure - a foundation supporting the functioning of society. Wait, I have an idea - let's pave all the roads in Afghanistan and make them 8-lane highways! Yeah - those Afghani citizens would love to have good roads to tool around on in their BMWs and Maseratis. Let's build powerstations all over the country so they can use all those wonderful consumer products they're so keen on. Dammit - it's been almost a year and a half! Why haven't we done this already?
As to the pros and cons of empire, read this [chronicle.com]. Perhaps it'll inspire some deeper thought on the whole topic.Oh, piss off and stop whining. Modding down other's opinions is a form of democracy. Majority rules and all that. (Cue Monty Python - "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!")
You've forgotten one tiny little detail (well, two if you include your balls; I see you "forgot" to login before you posted): before, during and after the US/Allied intervention in Afghanistan to hunt for Al Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban, George W Bush and his adminstration promised, on countless occasions, that they wouldn't just get what they want and get out but that they would play a major role in helping to rebuild Afghanistan. It was Bush who said that they would rebuild what the Soviets, the civil war and the fight against Al Qaeda destroyed. And it's Bush that has broken this promise.
And if I was worried about losing karma (as you seem to suggest) then I would have taken the cowardly option and posted as an AC, as you chose to do. What I was suggesting was that people who had a logical and rational alternative viewpoint should contribute to the greater debate, rather than just dismiss an argument that they didn't personally believe in.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
uh, well, if the US want to control everything, everywhere as a boss of the world, I think that we, people outside US, should be able to vote for the next US President/Administration. Else, in no way they should be considered as the boss of the world.
Hmm, well, that's about $700 per capita per American, so it adds up to a couple of months of energy supply. Iraq has, what 15 % of the world's proven oil reserves? (I heard it was second only to Saudi.) Just because $200 Bn is a big number doesn't prove it is a bigger number than the value of the oil reserves. Which it clearly isn't.
If you want more evidence, consder that the charming optimists running this fiasco are claiming that everything after the first $75 billion are going to be paid for by the oil. Let's not dwell on the fact that the first $75 billion comes out of the US taxpayer's pocket, into Hughes', Raytheon's, etc. The point is that Rumsfeld just said that the intention is to sell as much of the oil as needed to pay for the reconstruction.
Let me repeat this for emphasis. The publicly stated plan is that once Iraq is invaded and successfully captured, er, liberated, its oil is to be extracted and sold with the profits used to pay for large-scale industrial projects that, apparently, US firms will be contracting for almost exclusively.
Essentially, this is like if you owned, say, a grocery, and you bonked a rich guy on the head with a baseball bat, rendered him incompetent, obtained legal guardianship of him, and used that guardianship to spend his entire wealth on your grocery's surplus cabbage. Oh yeah, while you're at it he might as well pay for the baseball bat too.
The administration is probably capable of convincing itself, and through its tame press convincing much of the public, that this amounts to a clever way to fund a genuinely benign act of liberation.
There sure are a lot of convenient side effects if it all goes according to plan, though. These side effects which notably don't apply to North Korea, another place with a cruel dictator, an actual, verified ongoing WMD program, and violations of treaties. So if the difference isn't oil, what high moral principle do you suppose is at work?
mt
Congratulations, you're a Fuckin' Moron(tm). Here's a quarter; go buy yourself an argument.
I don't agree fully with the actions of my government (as an American) but that doesn't mean I resort to making silly, baseless accusations.
Yes, the congressman here is a self-serving loon. Yes, he's an example of what's wrong with America. But does that give you a right to puke up a stream of senseless, hateful gibberish? I think no.
If you're not going to contribute anything useful, then just keep to yourself.
Only on slashdot can a posting be rated "Score -1, Insightful".
Now I can get a phone that will work both in the States AND in Iraq! I just can't wait!
No thanks, I'll just stick to my world-wide GSM phone.
Kevin
"It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in" O. Nash
Wow!
Good Job. Sounds like you're a white rapper with some street knowledge.
So I'm a little confused. Is this what you mean by tolerance?
Let's replace the destroyed water pumps with Coca-Cola machines at every street corner. Why not give a push for American companies rather than resort to this old-style water thing. For the service of most diverse Iraqians we would add a few Pepsi machines here and there.
-- Imperial units must die --
Not talking about "abstract" justice, or international legallity, which are after all "subjective" concepts, it seems reasonable for a given country to grab as many resources as it can to assure survival and power about other countries.
Huh! After all natural selection operates at country level too!
So, if this Iraq war thing were an intelligent move by George W. Bush to further empower his country, I'm sure a lot of other countries would be looking at the USA with envy about not having been able to so themselves first.
But, please, American people, don't piss off the rest of the world's intelligence. This whole war is about money for American companies. Stop telling us that this war has the idealistic goal of freeing Iraqi people and giving away a full new free country for them.
Unless... of course...
You actually think that the former claim is true, which, IMHO, would tell us mostly about intelligence in only one country.
Yes, that's the voice of Darrell Issa, who made his money in car alarms before running for office. as if you didn't already think he was evil.
sulli
RTFJ.
Yanks worried about the mobile phone system.
In other news: Iraqis get the shite bombed out of them.
Hello! - what part of "I've got other things to worry about" don't you understand?
The fact that the heart is removed from the patient so efficiently and so clinically is the thing that really makes me wonder WTF the world is coming to.
The ruthlessly efficient way that this cultural terrorism is executed makes me shudder.
Like the average iraqi has effing money for a effing mobile phone?
The phone system is not for the iraqis. It's for the people that invaded their land!
Read my lips. V-e-r-y W-r-o-n-g.
But I trust the Electonic Frontier Foundation's analysis of it.
;-)
;-)
You shouldn't. Their analysis got several points seriously wrong. Don't depend on their interpretation; educate yourself more thoroughly before forming an opinion.
Nothing in UN resolution 1441 specifies that a massive attack and invasion is authorized.
Resolution 678 authorized "all necessary means" to enforce relevant UN resolutions (which includes the subsequent ones such as 1441) and restore peace and security to the area. This war is many things, but a violation of international law is not one of them. Why? Because the people who make these decisions are not idiots. They know how to read and interpret the various applicable treaties and resolutions, too.
Why don't you read the UN charter?
Oh, believe me. I have.
When the world said NO to war, Bush should have listened.
The world did not say no to war. The world was never asked, because neither the endorsement nor the permission of the world was required.
Now he's going to take the fall like Blair.
Seeing as how the latest polls show Mr. Blair's support skyrocketing since last week, I certainly hope President Bush takes the fall in just that same way.
And if you weren't suckled onto the teet of mainstream news outlets, you'd realize the world is overwhelmingly against this war. Even Britain's people.
Fortunately the world is not a democracy.
I'm not joking when I say they're thinking about trying Blair like a war criminal. Here's the link:
I hope you'll understand if I don't rely on an op-ed in the Guardian for insightful political commentary. That's right up there with going to RJR for hard science on the health consequences of smoking.
I write in my journal
Pretty damn weak, dude. If you want to pull a conspiracy theory out of your rear end, you'd be better off pursuing the Cheney-Halliburton connection. That one's nonsense, too, but at least it's slightly less absurd nonsense.
I write in my journal
Will the US force Iraq to switch to the imperial system? Because, ya know, the metric system was invented by the French.
Batlock...
Shocking. Invade a country and then try to sell them mobiles :O :D Blimey.
I suppose the moral high ground would be to back a system that benefits the Coalitition nations least.
A blog I run for the wealth
... people are dying in Iraq. Soldiers and Civilians. The latter die of hunger, precision bombs lack of water, stray bullets and other such things.
So here comes a US senator whose only concern is what mobile phone system one should install when it's all over. Quite frankly, this is so cynical. Not only against the iraq people but also against US soldiers. As a soldier, I'd really like to get the message: 'Go soldier, risk your life, so we can open up some market for mobile phones.'
If some European politician made any such proposal or in fact any attempt to "secure a market" at this point in time he'd be thrown out of office.
That is what makes people turn away from the US. The lack of tactfullness. Double standards (Yes, we respect the Geneva Convention - whenever it is useful to us). Turning one or two blind eyes (Who gave Saddam weapons of mass destruction when he was the bulwark against Iran?). The will to break international law whenever it serves the purpose.
The rest of the world may be afraid of the US. But there is no respect.
"Terrorism is the war of the poor and war is the terrorism of the rich. I can't see any difference between them."
Sir Peter Ustinov, UNICEF
DI Robert Lichtenberger effad@gmx.at
A subtle point though. It costs only if you actually spend it. Even the CNN says the cost of war is much higher than what is intended for reconstruction. I ask you again, what makes you think US actually spends that much taxpayer money for altruism? Honestly, who'll point a finger at us about reconstruction? The UN? Other countries?
All this talk about electronical gadgets... millions of people in Iraq suffer every damn day because there is no water or too less water or only dirty water and not enough food.
And the US of A can only talk about cellphones. I don't know but then you really are out of touch with reality. Give the iraqi people food and water and let them rebuild basic infrastructure first. This will cost a few years. After that the debates about the unnecessary gadgets can begin.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
You don't think business leaders are incapable of seeing profit opportunities when politics creates them? If Iraq didn't have oil it would get as much aid as Afghanistan, which as you said is Jack in comparison. Do you honestly believe Businesses don't try to twist global politics to their advantage? You think they just stick to municipalities and their state Congressperson? How naive.
CDMA-the-signaling-scheme rocks, yes. In fact, it rocks so hard that *all* 3G systems use it in one form or another.
;) [I'll readily agree that the consumer gets screwed in the current US situation. A lot could be remedied simply by making phones legally transferrable; as it is, if I buy your old Cingular phone and you buy my Sprint one, we both face hell in trying to get them reactivated.] ...But getting back on track, a *different* aspect of regulation is that, in the US, we've mandated that the cellular providers must strive to provide GPS-accurate location info from callers requesting emergency services (and hopefully, not under other circumstances, barring a warrant at least). The first Google hit referencing the system. In practical terms, this means that pretty much every CDMA-network phone being built has the GPS chipset integrated (being destined mostly for the American market, with some penetration in Korea and Japan, IIRC), but a lot of GSM phones are being built for a market without the requirement. (Yes, GSM phones/hardware sold in the US are required to meet the same standard; at this point, it's a question of 'but if it's easy for the Evil Baddies to order a bunch of locator-free phones from France, we're back to triangulation...')*
That includes 3G GSM systems- which result in royalty payments to Qualcomm- and China's new standard, which attempts to avoid paying same.
Confused? "GSM" is a standard for creating cellphone networks (think the top layers of the OSI stack). Old GSM networks used a link-layer/physical-layer scheme called TDMA, which kinda sucks compared to CDMA, in the sense that CDMA can cram many more bits into the same volume of aether. (Whether you use those bits for more voice calls- dig up oldschool GSM's max-callers-per-cell sometime, and you'll see it's ludicrously small for urban areas- or for high speed data is up to you.)
Now, Qualcomm, being the original CDMA pimps, have their own proprietary network standards, which, when implemented, generally leave out the features people do like about GSM- "features" being SIM cards, a useful aspect of telecoms regulation in Europe. They call these standards things like "CDMA2000" and "CDMA1X," hence the confusion.
So, I just ask that everyone realize how many independent variables exist:
0. Spectrum allocation - How many 'slots' will be reserved for competing telecom providers, if any?
1. Modulation (physical/link-layer techniques) - as noted, these mostly boil down to flavors of CDMA, if current-model hardware is used. An old TDMA network could probably be built entirely out of cheap surplus hardware, of course.
2. Network standard - How your cells coordinate with eachother; how your phones authenticate to your cells; etc etc etc. Basically, "stuff that goes in software." This is where the "CDMA vs. GSM" debate lies... but then we have:
3. Regulation/deregulation - GSM was raised in an environment regulating competition, meaning that a lot of thought has been given to allowing a choice of provider. In America, we never mandated a physical/link-layer standard, thus allowing Omnipoint to show up with GSM, Sprint with CDMA, and Verizon with their tri?-mode analog/TDMA/CDMA? network. As such, it's now technologically "impossible" (read: difficult; you'd need tri-mode multiband phones, *and* a shared billing/authentication standard) to allow the European ease of provider-switching, but we do get the benefit of being able to argue CDMA vs. GSM while holding A's Sprint phone up against B's Cingular.
So, those are the issues at hand, and they're mostly independent of eachother- you could mandate GPS-enabled GSM, you could build a 3G network on TDMA links (but that'd be an exercise in futility), you could demand Qualcomm add SIM-card equivalents to allow consumer choice among providers (who would, then, all still be Qualcomm customers, of course) if Qualcomm tech was decl
As others in this thread have pointed out, Bush did work in the oil business first. However, he worked in the oil EXPLORATION business, which COMPETES with Iraqi oil, not the refining or distribution business which would benefit from the lifting of sanctions on Iraqi oil.
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
Hey, don't beat yourself up. Europeaens are equally a bunch of morons, they just do a better job of hiding it, or in some cases, label it culture.
-oO In the beginning there was nothing...which exploded 0o-
Most of the money that's spent on the war is actually spent paying US companies for products and services (those cruise missiles were actually bought from someone) + salaries for servicemen.
It's not a matter of where the dollars are going. If we were running out of dollars, we could just print more. The problem is that the raw materials, effort, and ingenuity that went into blowing up selected pieces of Iraq are raw materials, effort, and ingenuity that didn't go into making refrigerators and optical routers.
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
Less than one tenth the amount of money devoted to fighting the war in the first place. If it takes $85 billion to reduce a county to shambles in 30 days, what do you think the real price tag for reconstruction will be?
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
...much of the equipment used to build the cell phone system would be manufactured in France, Germany, and elsewhere in western and northern Europe
The biggest manufacturers are Nokia (from Finland) and Ericsson (from Sweden), both of which employ loads of people in the UK (remember us, we're your "allies").
Strikes me that what the US is doing is extreamly dangerous for World Trade, especially between the them and Europe, which, contrary to popular belief, includes the UK, the only country left that seems to believe that what the US is doing in Iraq isn't purely selfish trade protectionism. Sadly this kind of propoganda just undermines the UK's position.
Furthermore, given that the US and UK invaded a sovereign country, they should foot the bill for the reconstruction, but (here's the kicker) they should be forced to use Iraqi contractors! Why should contractors in the foreign invaders' economy get to benefit?
Ultimately, this looks like it's going to be another "liberated on our terms" deal where the only people who really benefit are first world countries...
Using a standard that's different from what all the surrounding countries use is just silly. It'll annoy people when they make the 2 hour trek to a neighbouring country to visit a friend and their phone doesn't work there. Also, I'm sure some of the Iraqis that will be living there will still have mobile phones that use their current standard. Why force them all to buy new phones? That's not being very friendly.
Follow me
I think, for a "Green Field" install, CDMA is an automatic winner over GSM (and the Chinese agree).
1: CDMA is a superior technology for a number of reasons:
(a) It makes better use of spectrum = more bandwidth
(b) It takes less power = longer battery life
(c) It doesn't totally screw with hearing aids or anything else that picks up its dumb-ass pulses. After the pounding Iraq is taking, not messing with hearing aids will probably be a big issue. Nothing like a MOAB within a few clicks of you to make Mettalica seem GOOD for your hearing!
2: Since we are the ones who will be rebuilding Iraq, we should get to decide what we donate.
3: fsck the French (or En Francais: Allez vous faire foutre chez les Grecs, bande de Laches, faineants!), so we should choose a technology that they DON'T make, so they NEVER get a DIME from the country.
BTW: Issa is a Lebanese American. I've actually sat next to him on a plane. Bright guy. EE who started a car alarm company, which is how he got the $ to run for congress. Apparently he thought the perspective of people who actually understood the value of the freedom in this country and worked to build a company was needed in DC. Go figure!
What can I say to that? This isn't discussion, it's trying to win an argument by saying I'm a looney.
Bush, Cheney and everyone else are looking after their own personnal interests - like probably 99.99999999999% of human population. That's not absurd, that's not conspiracy theorist, that's human nature. Those guy are just a bit more ruthless about it than the rest of us. Okay, a lot more ruthless. But my point is that they are NOT doing this for the Iraqi people, and people who believe in this nonsense have got to be lunatics.
I'm not saying that oil/money is the only reason for the war. I'm pointing out that yes, oil is a reason (and a big one), and no, the fact that the war costs more than the value of all Iraqi oil isn't proof that money isn't a motivation. Some people will benefit greatly from this war, even though the whole nation may not; and the prime movers of the war overlap largely it's main beneficiaries.
Okay now, you can accuse me of being a conspiracy theorist again. I'd like to remind you though, that as the accuser, the burden of proof is yours.
And before you go look at my history, see that post about Michael Moore, and associate me with him, I'll offer a preemptive defense; I think what Moore says is *interesting*, but I don't think it's the truth. He can be entertaining, but for the most part, I think he's too much of a showman and not objective enough. He's going to prove his point and he won't let anything get in his way - he's pretty much like Bush in this way, ruthless. I'm cynical enough to find ruthless people amusing, but that doesn't mean I trust them, far from it.
Karma: Could be worse (could be raining)
simply disgusting... anybody remember vietnam and the bodycounts back then?
I cannot believe that someone actually thought about this. First you're going to attack a country without the support of any international union, only with a loosely-knit "coalition of the willing". Only to immediately start contemplating about which mobile communication technology you're going to implement that will benefit US companies the most. And likely choose the worst technology, and have it paid for by the UN, since Bush is obviously not asking for any budget to build up Iraq after he bombed it back to the stone age. I am so disgusted by the debauched Bush administration.
The only thing I can say is that I find this very distasteful lobbying on the part of Qualcomm. It is disappointing to see that a Qualcomm is attempting to use the current conflict in Iraq for its own end. This is not a time to have a sort of VHS vs. Betamax discussion. The reconstruction of Iraq must be for the betterment of its people. We should not allow opportunistic behaviour to besmirch efforts in Iraq. Moreover, why tie oneself to a decision now? Surely the operators who win the right to construct and run the new networks should determine the optimal technology. The proposed Qualcomm line appears to be directly opposed to the US Government's line in 1999 on 3G in Europe. Citing WTO obligations, they were successful in arguing that Europe should not mandate W-CDMA but permit any IMT-2000 standard. Qualcomm seems to want the US to mandate a particular 2G standard in Iraq.
A friend at "3" (the first 3G network to roll out in UK) showed me a working 3G phone, it was made by NEC and on the back in small print "Qualcomm CDMA"
Extremely neat phone system by the way, 384kb/s mobile data via USB port *drool*
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
Don't you love half-truths when you see 'em? GSM is not only the most widely used standard "in surrounding countries", it's the most widely used standard, period.
GSM: 330 million world wide users
CDMA: 67 million world wide users
But, it seems more important to purchase national patriotic technology than good technology. (That must be why Americans still use Windows. After all, Linux originates in Europe and must so be inferior, by definition. ;)
Let's buy steel from US companies, even if it's more expensive because they neglected to modernize their factories (in Europe, just about everything was rebuilt after WW2 - and the debts for foreign help, also from the US, have long since been paid. It was a very painful process, but it paid off). And because foreign steel is now cheaper and better, phone George to introduce some nice import taxes.
Forget that the white "paint" which is used for most national buildings (eg. white house) is made in Germany. Forget that most of the cars that run the US are produced in Germany or by German companies. (BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, anyone?). Forget that under the hood of most cars made in the US you see European labels like Bosch, Siemens, Philips, etc.
While you're at it, ban not only french fries, french toast, and french kissing, but also french red wine (which might be considered a merciful fate for the wine, considering that Americans mix it with Coke!). And all that just for the fact that - understandably - most of Europe has a problem with war, for any reason whatsoever. It's even in the German constitution: Germany is not allowed to participate in non-defensive warfare. The constitution which was written by the US after WW2.
I'm waiting for the USA to ban Hamburgers, which originate from Hamburg (the 'ham' story is a myth!), Franfurters, Schnitzel, Mortadella, etc.
I remember a quote from a demonstrant in the US: "If we had invested the money now spent in war in proper education soon enough, the war wouldn't even have started."
Right.
Home Page
Wouldn't another option be to ask the postwar Iraqi regime what system they want? I mean, this war is about giving the Iraqis real freedom, not replacing one dictatorship with another, right?
Virtually serving coffee
But really, what does Iraq use now? Do they really have no mobile network in place. If that is the case, W-CDMA seems to be the way networks are moving in Europe and Asia.
I would also like to say that everyone on the North American continent are stupid because someone from USA wrote something I don't agree with. Thank you.
I vote GSM. On a worldwide scale, it's more prevailant and that means there's more hardware floating about that could be donated to Iraq. I'm sure millions of people must have a spare GSM phone/charger lying around that they wouldn't mind being shipped to Iraq (or similar causes). I expect US/UK will probably set up an organisation to run some kind of phones-for-oil relationship with Iraq (that's a good thing BTW).
Nick...
... country in the entire region with an incompatible system. If you ever want to attract any business (besides .US ones), you'll need to have a compatible communicationsystem. Someone doing business in the region will have 2 options: buy 2 phones and 2 contracts, or skip Bagdad....
It should be noted that Motorola also are in the GSM business. However forgetting the modulation (CDMA is better), the GSM system of caller-pays and roaming is much more effective. GSM Phase 3 is CDMA type modulation anyway.
See my journal, I write things there
In other news, industrialists announce plans to build factories in post war Iraq. These are expected to produce goods for internal use only, and are expected to include NTSC Tv's, Betamax VCRs and the Ford Edsel, renamed the Liberator.
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
Open http://www.gsmcoverage.co.uk/coverage.html and click on Iraq
Core points:
1. There already is a limited GSM network in Iraq, KurdTel 900
2. The Iraqi government has ordered a GSM network to be installed, but UN sanctions have delayed it
3. gsmcoverage.co.uk has this article on the subject:
Plans to deploy a CDMA network in Iraq (28-Mar-03)
The California, USA, Congressman Darrell Issa has initiated a campaign to promote CDMA as the technology of choice for any future mobile phone network in Iraq. He has written to U.S. Agency for International Development demanding that the American CDMA system be used in preference to a system that he considers inherently European, and specifically French.
His letter harks back to the older, and long abandoned name for GSM - Groupe Speciale Mobile, presumably for its French language overtones, as opposed to Global System for Mobile Communications, its anglophile name today. He says that if "European" GSM technology is deployed in Iraq, much of the equipment used to build the cell phone system would be manufactured in France, Germany, and elsewhere in western and northern Europe. Furthermore, royalties paid on the technology would flow to French and European sources, not U.S. patent holders.
He seems to be under the impression therefore that Motorola has no interest in bidding for a GSM infrastructure contract - nor would Lucent, or Canada's Nortel Networks. This may well concern the shareholders of those companies who would be expecting them to bid for any available contracts.
He also says that CDMA phones incorporate GPS location technology, which may be a surprise to the vast majority of cell phone owners who will be hunting through their handset manuals looking for this function. His legitimate concern is that relief workers could be kidnapped or attacked, and a location aware handset would then enable them to be found. However, inserting GPS into a cell phone is nothing to do with whether it is GSM or CDMA - but down to the handset manufacturer simply implementing a location based solution. Also, GPS is not the only solution for locating a cell phone, network based solutions exist that can be deployed on both technology platforms. The fact that a GPS handset will be able to give its location anywhere in Iraq is pointless if the phone is out of cellular coverage though.
Of course, the greatest irony could be that a CDMA network is deployed - and Nokia wins the bulk of the handset sales contracts. Ironic, as Nokia, one of the "northern Europe" companies that Issa wants to block from working in Iraq makes CDMA handsets, but uses its own proprietary chipsets and doesn't pay royalties to Qualcomm.
It may be worth noting that Congressman Issa represents San Diego, hometown of Qualcomm who owns the CDMA technology used in cell phones. Also, in January, the US government's, National Communications System (NCS) awarded a priority connection contract, ensuring phone service would be unaffected by network congestion to T-Mobile, a GSM network.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
GSM is the better, more modern system. Its also the most widely accepted globally.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
The fact that you posted that comment anonymously seems quite a reflection is how much integrity you lack.
Back to the topic: Since you used the word planning, I'll assume you've heard of it; maybe you've been to busy making idiotic, kneejerk comments to think much about it, though. Apparently, they think they'll need a stable cel-phone network once the area is stablized; apparently, they -- being whoever's in charge of it, and apparently not you -- are up for promoting the interests of their own nation; would you find this surprising? It's no different than what people supporting GSM would be up for. Apparently, they don't agree with your unfounded claim that CDMA is "inferior".
Whatever gripe you have about the way our military is actually handling things in Iraq, did you ever have something substantitive to say about the benefits of GSM over CDMA? Or do you enjoy just sounding like an ass?
That is all true, but still we use VHS instead of
Betamax or Video2000, and we use Windows instead of Unix.
Morale: the better technology doesn't necessarily win. In fact, it often loses because the company rolling out the inferior technology somehow makes it good on better marketing or better cooperation with other companies and governments.
Does that include your hero Dubya's pal Blair?
As A Brit, I can inform you that Mr Blair has lost a lot of respect and credibility for following GWBs lead in this. Now that they are there, people support our armed forces and hope for a succesful and fast resolution to this conflict.
That said, there are a lot of people who think that the whole war is illegal. I'm sure someone else will correct me but doesn't it say in Areicle 2 of the UN charter something like "all other possibilities must be exhausted before turning to armed action" to do these things?Your president and his friends may have no time for the UN. That is his problem. We do.
As for the sub-intelligent insults of the French, I don't know their real reasons for them trying to delay war. Whyever they were doing it, they were trying to delay an illegal war. That is beyond reproach! Anyone who criticises them for saying that weapons inspectors should be given more time is either a warmonger themselve or has not considered the matter properly.
Back to the real topic...
There are basically 2 mobile phone systems in the world. One is in use in Korea and North America. The other is used on earth. It is not limited to France. It is used in the UK and the rest of Europe. Apparently, it is in use in a number of developing countries. As has been said, GSM is quite popular in the surrounding countries.
So this idiots plan is that:-
1. You bomb **** out of the Iraqis
2. You send in your construction companies to start repairing years worth of damage.
3. You send in your Oil companies to 'run' their oil
4. You send in your civilian aministrators rather than legitimate UN ones.
5. You give them an inferior phone system that stops them communicating with their neighbours
Ok those may not all be his immediate idea but that seems to be the plan...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Isn't this the Mafia MO?
Bust up a business, then take a share in it during the rebuilding.
I'm distrubed by the comments that the US is somehow entitled to make these kind of deals. It is a conflict of interest. When the United States seeks to profit from the conflict, it invites doubt in the motivation that has presented to date - that being disarmament and regime change.
If you belive these are truely the primary goals of the United States, then you cannot condone this kind of deal being made by the government.
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
Don't you know already who will be the winners in this war? Certainly not the "freed" Iraqis. It's Haliburton, Qualcomm, and other US corporations.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
GSM may be an an abbreviation for French words, but GSM is a global standard originally designed by a group of European companies and organisations. Loads of countries were involved, not just France.
This argument that French products shouldn't be used is racist. I know Americans like their country, but this is racism and xenephobia on a huge scale. Shame on you all.
Finally, who gave the USA permission to build this stuff? Privatising the services in Iraq doesn't benefit them, and definately isn't democracy - it's THEFT. The services and infrastructure belongs to Iraq and after they have a democratic elected government the choice of how to run public services belongs to them.
Please note that I am not against Americans in any way, but your government really pisses me off.
A latent existence
and apparently you havent noticed the american government doesnt give a shit about iraqi people, their just in for the money.
because if they did give a shit, they would realize that GSM is better for them, because every other nation around them uses it!!!.
but no, they'll force them (because thats what the US government is used to do) to use CDMA in the interest of a couple of greedy corporations.
and btw, who the fuck is the US congress to decide which mobile phone service protocols is the iraqi people going to use ???
operation iraqi freedom indeed...
They made a wasteland and called it peace.
Tacitus, Roman historian. - 1st century AD
so much for the security clearance excuse
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
resistance is futile. Your life as it has been is over. From this day forward, you will service us.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I say yes to this because, well, wait a minute, I say no to both technologies.
Iraqis, at the moment, don't exactly look like they really need cellphones. And that's coming from the rose colour glasses that would be IraqTV. They can't even get a signal over from their only international TV station here better than an EP VHS tape and we think they need CELL PHONES? Heck, their TV station only has ONE microphone for everything! Their music videos look like they came out of 1960! Yikes!
Holy screwed up priorities people! Maybe they would like... radios first? That's if they need gadgets. I think most Iraqis would rather, right now, have their homes rebuilt after the US bombs the hell out of them. You know, rebuilt with running water, and toilets inside! Wow!
CDMA vs. GSM vs. Surviving in Iraq. What's your choice?
Because I'm sure the first thing on the Iraqis mind, when they're liberated, is exactly how they're going to rebuild their cell phone network. It'd be the first thing on my mind too!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
If the French hadn't helpt out your puny revolution, US would still be a British colony.
Dude, that was two hundred years ago. Get over it.
The liberation of Old Europe was two generations ago and we *are* currently getting over it thanks to the current US administration.
He saw some dirty arabs and fired. Too bad it was just some friendly kurds, BBC reporters and his fellow cowboys.
"You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, and Germany doesn't want to go to war."
Personally I wasn't sure of the difference between CDMA and GSM, in the UK and the entire EU I think GSM is the de facto standard and always has been.
I found this to be of interest, you may too
Snippet:
When Reliance India Mobile released its first ads, the deal looked like a steal. STD at 40 paise a minute, free handset, just Rs 500 a month, et al. Now that other mobile services companies are into price-cutting themselves, it's time for a rethink.
If you are among those who still cannot decide whether to go in for Reliance's Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)-based 'limited mobility' phones or the 'full-fledged' cellular phone services provided by GSM (Global System for Mobile) operators, welcome to the club.
Which one is cheaper, which one better? While a number of issues still need clarity from the regulatory angle, let us take a close look at what Reliance is offering compared to a GSM phone.
First, the service: one of the limitations of a WLL (limited mobility) phone is that the user cannot go beyond a short distance charging area (SDCA) - which is roughly a radius of 25 km.
While Reliance has attempted to overcome the problem by offering multiple registrations, this still is not the equivalent of the roaming services offered by cellular operators.
For instance, if a subscriber in Delhi travels frequently to Mumbai, Reliance will register the subscriber in both the cities at an additional cost of Rs 20 to Rs 30.
So when the subscriber is in Mumbai, all calls landing on the user's Delhi phone number will be forwarded to a pre-allocated number in Mumbai. The user does not have to change the handset or put in a new SIM card for availing this facility.
However, when the user is in transit between the two cities, the phone does not work, unlike a GSM phone which offers roaming anywhere in the world.
Reliance is also offering text messaging services to cash in on the popularity of SMS. However, for the moment, any text message sent by a Reliance phone user can only be received by another Reliance user as GSM operators do not recognise this as a legal service. Even Tata Teleservices, another WLL operator, is awaiting clarity on this issue.
When it comes to data services, there is not much difference between GSM cellular operators and Reliance in terms of offerings.
Subscribers on either network will be able to send and receive e-mail, surf the Net, watch video clippings, send multimedia messages, and download games and ringtones.
The difference here is that while Reliance offers these services to all its subscribers, cellular operators offer such services only to those subscribers who have taken a General Packet Radio System (GPRS) connection - which requires a GPRS-enabled handset. The difference is also in the way the services are priced.
Full article available here.
This sig has been deprecated.
You shouldn't. Their analysis got several points seriously wrong. Wrong. Their analysis sums upp the patriot act very good. But since you don't agree, can you please point out which points their analysis got wrong, according to you.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam
Your phone wasn't ringing because no one was calling you. Don't you know you have to switch to verizon, and you'll get girls coming to your house in the rain crying, or if not that, at least chicks who are cute even though they can't put one foot in front of the other? *DON'T TRIP* *OH* btw, I"ve had a cdma phone for more than 2 years, and I'll never ever go back to cingular, they were, and according to my friend who has them, still are, total crap. I won't even get started on T-mobile.
What should also be looked at is the incredible world-wide coverage given by GSM. I think it it would be very short-sighted to be using CDMA when there is already a well established global standard. When rebuilding any country you should be helping the inhabitants, NOT the paying ransom money to the country that 'liberated', the country in question.
It is true that GSM was put together by European cell phone companies, but they did not want to repeat the mistake of the old incompatible analogue systems.
Most CDMA phones manufactured these days are in fact feature reduced GSM phones, and old models. While Qualcomm seems to insist on sticking to CDMA. Most cell phone manufacturers put their effort into the GSM range, which has a world-wide market: Motorola, Handspring, Alcatel, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Sagem, Sendo, Siemens, NEC and Sony Ericsson.
If Qualcomm finds it too expensive to switch to GSM, then it should fork out the cost for building the wireless system in Iraq, NOT the US tax payer. Since in the long run in a GLOBAL market GSM provides a level playing field for everyone to make better products upon. Infrastructure is best without fragmentation, so that the real competition can exist above it!
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
They don't HAVE a cell-phone infrastructure. You can return your right hand to your lap now. Geeze...
Blar.
What about other standards... NTSC vs. PAL,
110 volts vs. 220 volts, etc.
And while weren't at it might as well impose
the same stuff on Afganistan.
Oh and lets replace the language with English too.
(Hey the Brits did that in Hong Kong and India)
and now im getting sick of you.
didnt you read the post ? i already made my point by noting that if the US congressmen were really thinking about iraqi peoples future they would have chosen GSM over CDMA, but instead they take their decisions based on profit.
so yes, the american government (or 1/3 of it as you naively put it) is in for the money.
look, if you cant see that the actions of your government through history have nothing to do with "liberation" and everything to do with profiting then you must be really blind.
or really patriotic (orwellian style).
i come from south america and ive seen lots of this things happening. and i know from experience what im talking about. whenever the US government gets into "helping out" some south american country it means fucking the people there and getting away with as much as they can in their wallets
of course its not like they get into that countries national reserve and start filling their pockets... its more like setting up a friendly "representative democracy" - or if that fails, a "moderately repressive regime" - and tell them to start signing out contracts for US corporations to start exploiting its oil, gold, silver, etc. etc.
and that of course with very low to none at all taxes.
here is a list if you care to see of _some_ of the things US government has done "in the name of freedom".
yeah, in the name of their freedom to profit
They made a wasteland and called it peace.
Tacitus, Roman historian. - 1st century AD
Personally, I don't give a rats ass either way, it's fucking phones for Christ's sake. I say build whatever would be best for the Iraqi people, screw everything else, because it's the right thing to do. But assholes from both sides of the pond will lobby for what they personally want.
Furthermore, unilateral my ass! America + Great Britain + 40 other countries != unilateral. I could go on and criticize you Europeans as a whole, but I won't stoop down to your level.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
My phone is old and cheap and works on all GSM networks (900-1800-1900). Try again.
Oh and ALL phones currently on sale in Europe work on both 900 Mhz and 1800 Mhz. This is only a problem if you go to the US, but who would want to go there, with all that terror they get?
Or more appropriately, a variant of CDMA that no one has been able to build a handset for that had good battery life/didn't overheat. (Look at what happened to DoCoMo's name in Japan after they rolled out UMTS...)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Almost everything in the statement was incorrect. Those posts which aren't pro-war jingoism tend to miss this.
I could point to all the errors individually - GSM is the world standard; America is the only significant nation to use CDMA; GSM works in America and is the fastest-growing standard there; it isn't French; lots of American companies make and sell GSM kit; and so on and so on.
But it's been done already, by noted industry commentator Guy Kewney. Go read and learn. He has responded in an open letter directly to congressman Issa.
Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
There's an implicit belief behind most of the anti-American, anti-war comments here that only pure motives are good - that if you have more than one motivation for an action, and some of those motivations are of economic benefit to you, then the entire action is tainted.
... and each year after that he had stayed in power. He has worked to acquire vicious weapons in the past, and has the wealth to buy nukes from elsewhere (impoverished North Korea, for example). If he were to plant a few of those nukes in US cities, then set off one as an example while, say, invading Saudi Arabia, would we be willing to sacrifice more cities to stop him? Or do you think he's too nice a guy to enter into such a scenario?
But consider what's at play here: 9/11 demonstrated that American cities are vulnerable to catastrophic attack by terrorists. At that point it was prudent to ask what nations are in the position of being (1) run by sociopaths with a record of mass killings which (2) have or can afford to acquire catastrophic weapons and (3) are in ideological or religious proximity to those with demonstrated terrorist abilities. The whole claim of the Bush administration is that it is legitimate self-defense to remove such threats to our cities.
Saddam is a sociopath who has killed many hundreds of thousands. It is extremely unlikely this war will kill more Iraqis than Saddam's own forces would have killed this year anyway
Given the overwhelming historical logic that requires that we act against him now - not in a couple of years after he's got things set up to his best advantage - is there something evil about our being concerned that in return for the vast cost of this action to us in lives and treasure that we receive some small economic opportunities afterwards? If the US finances a new phone system after the war, should we do it to French specs? This level of "purity" would be absurd, IMHO.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Just wondering.
How about getting yourselfs (US/UK) out of this mess first??? And then maybe let the Iraqi people decide what they want... Americans get killed, they call it terrorism Americans kill, they call it 'colateral damage' Go figure...
By the way....have you heard....that bomb that went off in a civilian section of Bagdad was not ours! Also, the Iraqi militia is firing on the same civilians they are supposed to defend. The Iraqi's are the only people that I see targetting their own people! Collateral Damage is going to happen. Not might happen....GOING to happen. It's unfortunate that is does happen. This whole thing could have been solved before a single bomb was dropped if Saddam and his regime would have left the country.
Gorkman
First time I've ever used a swear word on Slashdot and I apologise for it in advance.
Here goes-
Fuck you. The US is not my boss, I live in a western liberal democracy and I choose my own government - not some fat tosser in middle America who wants to go to war so that he can drive his barge sized (and crap) American SUV for a dollar a gallon, feel good about getting revenge on those damn muslim terrorists and wants to kick off the second coming of Christ.
As for benevolent, this is the same country who responded to my country's support after 9/11 and in Afghanistan by imposing steel tariffs.
No, not joking. Technically we have support from ~40 countries. Haven't you been listening to the brig. General Debriefings at Centcom on CNN?
Sheez.
) The whole "democracy for everyone!" idea is bunk. What makes you think that a system of government that works well for a rich, industrialized nation will work equally well for a decentralized nomad country (Afghanistan) and a very conservative religious society (Iran).
It worked fine for the US in the late eighteenth century, when it was an agrarian economy. It worked fine in post war Japan which had a ruined economy. Take postwar Germany or Korea today; these are as close to laboratory experiments on the relative effectiveness of democracy and authoritarianism in promoting progress as you'll ever get. The problem isn't that democracy doesn't work in backward countries -- it's that authoritarianism keeps countries backwards.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out why. In any system other than democracy the only criteria for success is the vanity and personal power of some ruler or clique. Provided that you keep the people in enough fear so that they would rather endure in sullen silence than risk speaking out, the consequences to an authoritarian regime its failure to promote social progress are nil. Only complete social collapse, or arrogance so severe it evokes suicidal anger can touch them.
Take Iran as a test case. The current government was put into place by a revolution of the people. That's the government they chose. If given the option, right now, they'd choose it again. Is it "right" to remake their country in our own image?
OK let's take Iran as an example. They are arguably the most democratic regime in the entire region. They have elected executive and legislative branches. The problem is that they don't have a judiciary that is ultimately selected by them and which is commited to enforcing laws created by the people. So, the people are electing reformers, but the courts are busy putting them away on trumped up charges. It's become a regular public ritual. It sounds to me like their problem is constitutional not sociological.
The idea that some societies somehow intrinsically can't handle democracy is pseudo-intellectual claptrap, like the racial hygeine theories of the nineteenth century eugenicists.
Democracy can succeed in the Middle East, and in the long term our interests are aligned with it.
Democracies don't go to war unless they genuinely feel threatened -- because the people have no way of shielding themselves from the costs of war the way the elites do. However, once in war, democracies field the most motivated and formidable armies. This is an ideal recipe for stability, and political and military stability would lead to stable energy supplies.
Right now, we are one palace coup away from economic disaster (Saudi Arabia).
Unfortunately we are not starting from square one. If the countries of the middle east were all suddenly democratic, there is little doubt we'd be cut off from much of our energy supplies due to the reservoir of resentment we've built up. It was short term thinking during the geopolitical struggles of the cold war that lead us to where we are today, working towards the maintenance of a situation that is against our long term interests. It is the short term thinking today in our need to maintain stable short term energy supplies that keeps us maintaining a system which threatens stability in the long term.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Give them the newest and greatest!
> Yes, that's right. It's all about oil. We want the oil, must have the oil. Got to have the oil.
> Let me ask you a question, though. This war, including the postwar reconstruction, is probably going to cost us around 200 billion dollars, and that doesn't count the cost of the munitions we're using. We've used over a billion and a half dollars' worth of cruise missiles alone so far, and the war's only a week old. Two hundred billion dollars plus would have bought us practically all the Iraqi oil we could have hauled off. Why didn't we just buy it, and save everybody a lot of time, money, and trouble?
Ah, but the war is being paid for by US taxpayers, but the oil profits will go into the hands of US energy companies. It's a sweet deal for the people who matter to the Bush Administration, not for the US public at large.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Want to know why US is at war now?
Two words: Wolfowitz Doctrine
Interestingly, that topic has been discussed more in non-US media. Our beloved CNN, Fox, and MSNBC seem intent to entertain us more than educate us.
This war is not just about oil or "liberating" the Iraqi people. This war is about maintaining the US's political, economic and military dominance in the world.
If we are succesful, the conflict won't end. There is a group who would see the US taking a first strike policy to keep our dominance, whether the rest of the world agrees or not.
--
hecubas
Hecubas
Can you not respond to any points with anything except "The US is the world's boss"?
And Americans wonder why even most Europeans are becomming anti-American. If America were to tell me what to do my first response would be to give them the finger, as would most people. If, like Rumsfeld has, their government tells mine what to do then I would expect my government to give them the finger as Chirac has done.
Dude, this is something one individual congressman is doing. He is not running the US, so his actions say nothing about US war motives.
I live in America and I switched to GSM about a year ago -- and I'm never going back to anything else! Why do we insist on forcing our incompatible, lame standards on everyone else? Can you say the Imperial system of measurement? Farenheit? CDMA? The list goes on and on.....
Choose the standard that sucks the least. Go with GSM! Fuck Qualcomm. The decision should be up to the Iraqi people.... not the US Gov't.
99.99999999999% of human population [look after their own interests].
Interesting tidbit: It that were true, only about 0.06 people in the world would not look after their own interests.
Even when you exaggerate, you should use some moderation.
CDMA is not inferior, it is just not as widely adopted. In my cell phone experience I have had less trouble with DCMA than with GSM. I can actually talk on the subway with my Motorola CDMA phone when my roommate's GSM phone cannot get any reception. This is of course just annecdotal(sp?) evidence. I did see the dear colleague letter yesterday (Im interning in a congressman's office; I know I won't become a Clintern because my congressman is ethical), and the letter was rather convincing.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
In the UK (GSM, Vodafone, Nokia 3310)...
In the US (CDMA, Sprint, Kyocera 2345 by Qualcomm)...
What I'm trying to say is that although CDMA may be technically better than GSM, the way the networks in the US don't interoperate for SMS,MMS,etc means that those services will never take off in the way that they deserve to. SMS is HUGELY popular in the UK and Europe.
Of course I could just be pissed off that I can't have my servers SMS me when there's a problem on the network, but hey
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
Here in the UK the metric system is widely used, the Imperial system as well, mainly to keep happy the oldies while they remaing active amongst us younger folk ;-).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
and yes i am dyslexic. CDMA not DCMA
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
At least France and Russia have at least an equal economic interest in Iraq as the U.S. has in it's oil. Why do you think they stopped supporting the Weapons inspectors in '93?
France and Russia have dealt heavily with Iraq. Russia is owed billions from selling Iraq military equipment.
"National Interests"? I would think Iraq isn't a 'threat to their national interests' because France and Russia would like to get PAID for what they've sold. It's not often you sell equipment to a country, and have them turn around and use it against you.
The reason Fance and Russia are against the war, is they want to get their money out of the sale.
Now I'm not blaming them for selling to Iraq, but you seem to be pushing your point of view without including some very important pieces of information. People seem to ignore the fact that BOTH sides have a great economic interest in this war.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
This is News for Nerds, and in spite of some disgusted people, it is stuff that matters.
/.!
We need to ask the kind of questions everybody is asking here to people like this politician.
Infuse the life back in
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you think that is crony capitalism, check out Donald Rumsfeld and Aspartime (Nutrasweet). He was CEO and chairman of G.D. Searle & Co during 1977 to 1985 to add some political pressure on the FDA to approve Nutrasweet after Searl got caught falsifying the data about a bunch of monkeys and rats dying.
e nutrasweet controversy (if you believe them):
h ttp://www.rense.com/general33/legal.htmr esidiotex.com/nutrapoison/
His Bio: http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/rumsfeld.html
Th
http://www.swankin-turner.com/hist.html
http://p
etc...just Google Donald Rumsfeld and Aspartime.
-- Making computers see, hear, and think... http://www.componica.com/
" But CDMA is a waste of fucking money in that region because ALL their neighbours use GSM. Eventually the GSM people (i.e. Vodaphone et al.) will move in and people will change to GSM anyway just so they can use their phones when away from their own country. Even in the States you can use a GSM phone. Whilst CDMA is a better, newer technology than GSM it's losing out to GSM in the world, and GSM has an upgrade path to next genereation stuff."
Who cares if the neighbors use GSM? 99% of the Iraqi population won't care because most of them won't ever need to use their phones in the country next door.
Iran? Fat chance, even after regime change there's too much bad blood between Iran and Iraq.
Turkey? Good luck getting through that border. Because of the situation with the Kurds, the Turkey/Iran border is going to be VERY tight.
Oh, GSM doesn't have a true upgrade path to 3G. UMTS requires new frequency bands, new handsets, and new antennas. CDMA2000 requires none of the above. (Well, you need a new handset if you want the additional 3G features, but a cdmaOne phone will happily talk to a CDMA2000 tower, it's just restricted to the old circuit-switched 14.4 data. An old GSM phone, on the other hand, CANNOT communicate with a UMTS tower.)
"So fine, install a hugely expensive CDMA network. The GSM people will move in anyway, people will buy GSM phones and your precious US network will go bust. That's the price for FORCING a choice on someone."
Oh, like Voicestream/T-Mobile? Or Cingular?
Yes, I'm sure the Iraqis will enjoy seeing their "Service Unavailable" messages. In every country where CDMA has been allowed to take on GSM in an open market, CDMA has won. The smallest CDMA provider in the US (Sprint) still has better coverage than Voicestream/T-Mobile or Cingular, the largest GSM providers in the US. AT&T may eventually become larger, but their GSM network can't compare in any way to their old TDMA network in coverage.
Or look at Japan. DoCoMo rolled out UMTS (3G GSM) while KDDI rolled out CDMA2000 1xEV-DO or EV-DV. Guess who has more subscribers for their 3G services? (Hint: Not DoCoMo).
If GSM is so much better than why can Verizon get away with charging so much more for their CDMA service? (Hint: You get what you pay for in terms of service quality.)
The only countries where GSM is dominant are ones where GSM was *forced on the customer by the government* - Exactly what you're arguing against.
If the Europeans want to build a GSM network in Iraq - Fine. Let them do so on their dime. But if it's on the USA's dime, it's going to be with the technology that won in the open market. GSM and CDMA can coexist in the same area, so I see no problem in the US installing CDMA and Europe installing GSM and seeing which one wins. If Europe wants to see GSM in Iraq - Pay up or shut up.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I know everybody loves to blame everything on the US, but this whole argument of "US sactions killing billions of innocent children" is just a steaming pile.
And, lest we try the "but the US forced the UN to do it" argument, let's not forget that the UN told the US 'no' about this war. So if America has such enormous influence in the UN, then why didn't they get what they wanted? Obviously the UN is capable of making it's own decisions, so these sactions imposed on Iraq can't simply be blamed on the US...every country in the United Nations is also resposible.
This is absoloutely sick! Who are these people in government who claim that we are not "occupying" Iraq, that we just want to "liberate" its people? This idea seems far from it, it seems that a lot of rich, sinful, criminal, white men, mostly Republican, have decided that what Iraq really needs is for the US to come in, set up shop and create a puppet government to provide as much economic benefit to US companies as possible.
How would you feel if you lived under a brutal dictatorship only to find out that a so-called liberating force has already made all the decisions relating to your new form of geovernment, the makeup of that governement, services provided, and the providers of those services.
Sorry Iraq, but really, it is much better that Haliburton run your oil wells because it is much better for us, but remember, you are "liberated" now.
Of course probably 75% of Iraqis will still probably live in poverty while some small percentage gets rich off of the oil that will be pillaged by Bush and his cronies.
What ever happened to freedom of choice and government? Should not the Iraqis decide what is best?
It's good to know that the Iraqi people will get to decide on what cellular system THEY want. They are not ALL blitherin fanatical idiots - some of them might have something to say about it..
;)
But it's always good to see the American Government looking out for Number #1 - The American Corporation.
Now, How do I get me a chunk of that 75 Billion !? I have some toilet seats we can sent to the Iraqi people at a decent price
Time travel is possible. We are quickly heading for 1984.
There we go, thanks for the link, didn't have the patience or desire to look up the obvious last night. I wish people would remain more open to conflicting data, rather than turning into shills for their POV. We can best support our troops by making sure they aren't abused by misguided polititians and policy.
Here's the link w/o the space in it.The US gov't doesn't care at all about the Iraqi people, just money. First thing we need to change about the way things are going is cut the proposed 73 billion dollar funding to support the war and help surrounding nations back to 45 billion dollars, so that we don't help anyone else out but ourselves. Do you read the newspapers? Most of the funding goes to the troops fighting and for materials, but almost a 1/3 goes to help other nations. The funding for reconstruction in Iraq isn't even considered in that funding.
Second, if the US didn't care, then why are they planning rebuilding Iraq and why do they care about not hitting vital systems to the iraqi people?
Third the US obviously cares more about the Iraqi people than their own republican gaurd who uses their own citizens as sheilds and mines the ports that the US is trying to use to send in relief and supplies for the iraqi people
You are not the only one that has lived in latin america, and most of the people that I know in Panama were pretty happy to act independant and want to kick the US out of the canal zone until they realized their nation would be losing most of it's tourism and other industries major consumers with the absence of the military. They all admit that if the US had never come in they'd still be getting sick with malaria, have horrible highways, have a horrible water supply, and wouldn't be one of the most industrialized and modern countries in all of latin america.
The US might be in most of the endeavors for itself and might put it's own interests first, but don't even try to act like they don't care about the iraqi people. That's just about as insane as the iraqi representative to the UN saying that the US is trying to exterminate the people of Iraq.
If the US didn't care at all, I would imagine that they would bomb all of Iraq to utter destruction kill every citizen they saw and only secure the oil wells and create military compounds around them. That would be easiest, cheapest, and the greatest return on the investment.
Back to GSM vs CDMA topic, it's way better to use NMT. Screw the weight, design and "harmful radiation" reasons, these exist only in over-fed western consumers, but NMT requires way less base stations. Yes, it can't handle as much subscribers as GSM/CDMA, but most of Iraq population won't be able to afford mobiles for a long time, and base station price is the main concern. Note that while GSM rules in Moscow, St. Petersbourg and other big cities (I use GSM motorola T260) NMT covers whole Russia and that's the main concern of anyone of importance if he wants to be connected everywhere.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
That's funny...and here I was thinking that we pulled out of Vietnam because it was a political thing.
FYI, we didn't lose Vietnam because we couldn't win, we lost because we weren't allowed to win by the administration. Something to do with limited targets, Presidential approval of the vast majority of major targets, etc.
In other words, we weren't allow to win.
I thought that the reason for this came about because the US government was planning to use the GSM based system that is already in place and being used by the Iraqi Leaders.
The implication is that the US government will have any easier time listening in to Iraqi cell phone conversations if they continue to use GSM versus CDMA that the congressman is pushing.
Both standards have their merits. But I prefer to have standards that we ALL can use. GSM has limited coverage in the US, but I can take my PocketPC with me when I travel (read worldwide) and use it. All I have to do is tell the phone that I'm in Europe and viola. Now I'm not planning on taking a trip to Iraq anytime soon, but I've heard of plans to bring VoIP and Internet to Iraq for "free" speech. Why not also give them a wireless standard that will alow them to speak freely and surf the internet.
Popularity does not superiority make. Look at the unpopular Brits, Americans, and Aussies in Iraq. They are unpopular, but they are cleaning house in kill to loss ratio. Whats popular is not always right, and whats right is not always popular.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
With the highest immigration rates of any country, past or present. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to get really rich and live lives of unimagined luxury. . I guess you were born here, because only morons like who were born here can say such things. I agree that things were bad when many of the immigrants left their country. Yes, this land is the land of opportunity and you can have more freedom. But many people come here imagining a better life, only to come here and find out how miserable and alone you are, unless you adapt to this country and become one of you.
A whole new approach to getting market share in foreign countries: destroy the infrastructure (on the taxpayers dime)and then rebuild it, without any worries about competitive building or conflicts of interest. No complaints about congressional pork barrel politics, because they abdicated their responsibility and handed it over to the CEO of America. No dang disclosure to shareholders, hell Cheney and Rumsfeld don't even have to disclose their dirty little secrets from Nixon-Reagan days, because 30 years isn't long enough to figure out whats protected under "national security".
Don't know if this is in duplicate, but here's the full text of the GSMA's reply.
Nice read, I might add, especially the bit about an American company installing a GSM network in (US-bombed) Afghanistan.
More than mere navel gazing.
Regardless of the technology they use, I think it will make it easier for the US to tap everyone there.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
... that this Congressman is from San Diego, the home of Qualcomm. He is doing his job, fighting for his constituency, just like I'm sure the senators and represenatives from the home states and jurisdictions for Lucent and Motorola will be saying much the same things.
BTW: MOT and LU both make GSM equipment, so the argument that GSM = EU manufacturers is completely invalid. This congressman is just saying that because his constituent (Qualcomm) only makes CDMA stuff.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Iraq will be humanitarian nightmare, we all can agree on that. The Revolt in Basra was due to people wanting water. Now imagine this on a much grander scale. Say imagine this little country that 'pacification' was tried in...lets call it Somalia...great success there.
But worse yet is that thinking that the new government is going to truly be democratically elected is somewhat naive. The concept of the Kurds and the Iraqis staying at peace is about as realistic as an evening stroll on the Moon next week for either of us. Nobody in the middle east likes the Kurds, the Iranians, the Turks and the Iraqis regularly attack Kurds on their own territory.
So having already established that post war violence will exist, I'll leave you with saying that the US had already put in a friendly regime in '68 the same fellow they are trying to get rid of now, gave the Iraqis intelligence that was used in gas attacks in the '80s against the Kurds and Iran.
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
As Clausewitz said "war is politics by other means". Vietnam was won by the Vietcong because they forced the Anericans into a position whereby they couldn't win without taking politically unacceptable actions.
There's a good chance Saddam could, by skillful political and military manouvering, manipulate the situation to the same effect.
because they know best.
Maybe this issue sooo far into the future, it doesn't currently deserve attention. If the Iraqi people are truly lacking drinking water and food, I think, providing them with necessities should be a priority. Last time I checked cell phone was something you wanted. Food was something you needed to say use a cell phone among other things
Fact is the cheapest way of doing telcos is by having a govt monopoly & a single protocol.
Simply because the fixed costs make up such a huge proportion of the costs. Meaning dividing the market between competing carriers multiplies the costs by a huge amount.
http://a8.cpimg.com/image/E8/0F/17578728-2521-0131 00D3-.jpg
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/030 4.marshall.html
2 65 28748.html
s tm
5 -0 83116-7747r.htm
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/07/10468
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2852299.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/2003022
etc, etc, etc
Some people might argue that it is his job to promote a local company.
In my opinion, this whole ordeal were supposed to be a liberation of Iraq. While it is very obvious to everybody who are not blinded by jingoism, that the US is in this "liberation" for economical gain, not many are ready to say that quite as openly as Issa.
Some might even consider it to be in poor taste to bring this up before there's even an end in sight to the conflict.
Anyway, the business of USA is business, and some lame europeans aren't going to stop that. I suggest y'all educate yourself a bit with the info from the nice guys over at Open Secrets.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
You are so wrong in so many aspects that it is difficult to believe.
1. The USA did do business with Iraq as did France, the UK, Germany, Italy and Russia. France and Russia might have done more than the USA but that does not mean much.
To which I reply:
I am not disputing the fact we do business with Iraq, some companies do. However, we are not willing to use those business interests in deciding issues such as biological and chemical weapons. That is the problem here. Countries which decide to use these weapons, MUST BE ELIMINATED.
Otherwise discussions like this will only be possible UNDER PAIN OF DEATH.
---
2. Only 3 out of 15 countries in the security council agreed to vote with the USA. Singleling out France is ridiculous.
To which I reply:
That is not true. There was complete support in private discussions about the final vote/resolution, at the end of February, discussing a timeline and benchmarks for Iraq to comply.
France, told everyone in the private session of the council that they would veto ANY RESOLUTION that had teeth in it. (i.e. an ultamatum.)
The US then decided to not even bother.
It is very possible, that if France would have voted for the resolution, to which all 13 security councils agreed to before it hit the floor of the UN, Sadaam Hussein, confronted with a united front from the UN, would have fled the country or complied.
Now we are at war either way. Frankly, I don't see the logic of Frances indecision because at least if they would have agreed to vote for the final resolution, there would have been a CHANCE we would not be at war right now.
--
3. think it would have been VERY probable, that if the UN security council was unaminous with a ultimatum, Sadaam probably would have either fled the country or complied immediately.
It is nice to be sure about things but completely stupid. There was no unanimity at the security council with or without France and there is not the start of the beginning of a hint that Saddam would have left or complied.
To which I reply:
That is true officially. Unofficially, these measures were discussed at length behind closed doors, which is typical before any resolution is passed to iron out a vote. See my message above.
The point is, the final resolution never made it passed France, and I am sorry if the truth hurts.
It is a matter of UN record, now, so it is pointless to argue about it.
--
4. What if the US troops are attacked by biological weapons that have been sold by the US to Iraq?
Many countries exchange and sell strains of Small Pox, including the US and most if not all member of the security council so your point is what?
There is nothing wrong per se, of selling small pox. What its intended uses are, is the problem.
Small Pox is used and studied all over the world in Biology.
Problem is not all governments use them as weapons. I think the point you are trying to make, is that we sold Iraq small pox with US knowingit would use them in a biological weapons program.
I would love to see proof of that.
--
5. But, defending a war politically, AT ANY COST, such as what France, Germany and Russia has done is morally wrong, in this case.
The French foreign minister said it many times: France is not a pacifist country. And Russia certainly isn't either.
To which my reply is:
France is not a pacificst country? Prove it!
My point with this comment is,
1) France split the Security council over the final vote over the Iraq.
2) France sent its ministers to Morocco, and all over the place offering money for votes against the US, Britain and New Europe, Italy, Spain, and former members of the Eastern block countries.
4) France has split NATO and destroyed an entire political arena for what gain?
To keep its oil interests and investments sound to support a petty dictator in the world that uses gas,
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
masses of innocent civilians dead who wouldn't otherwise be dead
"Take Iran as a test case. The current government was put into place by a revolution of the people. That's the government they chose."
I think saying "revolution by the people" discredits you completely. There was a revolution, but it was by the extremeists.
It would be like saying the copy-protected CDs were "introduced by the people of the US" because the RIAA happens to employ a few US Citizens. Clue - the RIAA is not a valid representative of the US people, and the extermeists in Iran are not valid representatives of those people either.
half these stories are made up by PR firms employed by Washington or Likudnik neo-con think tanks.
Such useless rethoric and really quite sad. I would say that the congressman is not the only one apparently. Cheers
Not for long, home-boy.
Every other nation around them didn't speak English fifty years ago, either, but the times, they are a-changin'.Okay, all you Yanqui-bashing whiners out there, this is how Pax Americana works:
You speak English - and like it. Brits are allowed to speak with their humorous accent, but that's only because they're grandfathered.
You use CDMA for your cell phones, SAE for your nuts and bolts, S/M/L/XL for your clothing sizes. (And nobody -not even Bozo the Clown- wears a size 42 shoe.)You eat at your local McDonalds at least once a week. You do have the freedom to choose: Pepsi or Coke!
And, since we're being vulgar here, who the fuck gave Europe permission to go to daylight savings time a week early. Those doofuses almost made me miss my wife's birthday party and for that, I say:
NUKE FRANCE !!You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
As Clausewitz said "war is politics by other means".
I don't disagree with this completely, but, to be honest, sometimes war isn't political, at least for one side anyway. I think there's definatly a situation where it could be self defence and survival, not political.
Vietnam was won by the Vietcong because they forced the Anericans into a position whereby they couldn't win without taking politically unacceptable actions.
I see your point, but I still disagree. I don't belive the Vietcong "forced" anything like it. I think our leaders were simply morons who didn't really care and didn't listen to the military as to how to go about it. I think they were simply playing games.
And, though the US didn't "obtain" Vietnam, as in occupy it (that wasn't the goal anyway), there is a sense in which the US actually did win. Linebacker I and II forced N. Vietnam to the barganing table and that's what resulted in the ceasefire, and, I think the outcome was acceptable. The tide of agression was checked. And, really, when thinking about this, one needs to keep in mind that the fight really wasn't about N. and S. Vietnam, it was about the US and the USSR. Anyone who says that the US and USSR was a cold war is full of crap. It was a "hot" war, but for the USSR it was a war by proxy.
There's a good chance Saddam could, by skillful political and military manouvering, manipulate the situation to the same effect.
Militarily? Not really. His troops are really no match for the US/British toops. Yeah, the troops will take casulties, maybe more maybe less, but they'll still win. I think the fact of this is demonstrated by his use of forced human shields. He knows he can't win militarily, so he's trying a political, emotional ploy, namely try and make the US troops look bad for shooting civilians that are being forced to shoot at them, and thereby try and sway public opinion against this conflict. But, that's not a military strategy, it's a political one.
Could it work? Definatly, because the vast majority of people are way too shallow in thir thinking. They will see the effect of his actions, namely the shooting of civilians by the US military, and they will stop thinking at that point and turn against the US troops. The reality of the matter, however, is that the US troops wouldn't be taking that action if it wasn't for Saddam's forcing that hand. But too many people will stop thinking prior to reaching a more root cause, and that actually may work somewhat against the US. But I don't think it actually will change things, personally.
The other thought that comes to mind, with an initial thought toward a possible military manouver that might work, is if he can convence another country to get deeply involved. But, then, that's more of a politial manouver, not a military one. And, I think the US would end up taking them both out in the end.
fixed costs are huge in telcos
singler nation wide protocals save heaps too.
All this means economies of scale are king, meaning govt telco monopolies are the most efficient way to go.
Afterall that's how Nokia, Ericsson & Alcatel all started.
Oh well then, I guess the American revolution was started by "extremeists" as well considering 20% percent of the colonists actively opposed independence, and probably an equal number were passively loyal, and a further 30% couldn't have cared less.
History link 1
History link 2
- CreationLTD
The only thing that will save the Americans here is the latest mobile phones are small enough to fit when the Iraqis give them back. Saddam Hussein is not a nice person, and cleaning out his political machine is a good idea. Replacing it with a worse one is not, because we will need to clean out the replacement, also. Governing any country in the Middle East ourselves is guaranteed disaster. Muslims do not take kindly or gently to infidels telling them how they will live and behave. We have opened a can of poisonous worms. These people do not and will not live by our rules, customs, or mores. Any attempt to force our system on them is doomed. The best we can hope for is modest reform and a government that is not openly hostile. So far, we have Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey as allies and examples. With friends like this, we do not need another enemy.
Operation Iraqi Liberation, but that was a dead give-away....
So, not only do we have different frequencies, but we have different frequency ranges used by different companies, who often used different technologies.
Because of this, each mobile service provider has its own phone models. You cannot use the same phone to get service from Verizon and T-Mobile. If you switch service provider, you need to get a new phone.
That is a big part of why the US market is like that.
Oh, for crying out loud. I don't want to take the time to school you on this, so I'm just going to cherry-pick a few key points. You have the responsibility, as a thinking adult, to read the act for yourself and draw your own conclusions. If you don't want to read the act itself, you have the responsibility to read and compare the interpretations of many groups, not just left-wing lobbyists who have a clear agenda to push.
The first thing the EFF got wrong was their interpretation of the "expanded surveillance" stipulations. Yes, USA PATRIOT defines some new surveillance procedures. But these new procedures cannot be employed without getting a warrant from a federal judge, and that's no trivial task. The EFF misses this completely:
The government may now spy on web surfing of innocent Americans, including terms entered into search engines, by merely telling a judge anywhere in the U.S. that the spying could lead to information that is "relevant" to an ongoing criminal investigation.
This is incorrect. You can't get an electronic wiretap warrant by merely telling a judge anywhere in the US that such a warrant is needed. You have to convince a judge in the appropriate district that the warrant is needed. This is no different under USA PATRIOT than it was before.
The EFF also says, pertaining to roving taps:
The government need not make any showing to a court that the particular information or communication to be acquired is relevant to a criminal investigation.
That's simply untrue. The standard for relevance and appropriateness has not been modified. It's just as hard to get a warrant after USA PATRIOT than it was before; in fact, because the powers of the FBI have been expanded in some ways, it's even harder, because the judge must weigh the invasiveness of the surveillance against the benefits to be gained from it.
The EFF says First it allows ISPs to voluntarily hand over all "non-content" information to law enforcement with no need for any court order or subpoena. sec. 212.
Section 212 of the USA PATRIOT act is titled "Emergency disclosure of electronic communications to protect life and limb." To protect life and limb. The section amends title 18 of the US Code, which previously prohibited an ISP from revealing any information about its users, to add an exception: an ISP may voluntarily reveal information to the FBI if the provider reasonably believes that an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure of the information without delay. In other words, if an ISP thinks they have information pertaining to "immediate danger of death or serious physical injury," they can call the FBI. This is something every individual has the right, in fact the obligation under law, to do whenever the need arises. Extending the privilege to ISP's is not the bugaboo that the EFF seems to think it is.
The EFF goes on: They are 1) 802 definition of "domestic terrorism" (amending 18 USC 2331), which raises concerns about legitimate protest activity resulting in conviction on terrorism charges, especially if violence erupts.
The definition of "domestic terrorism" in the statute as amended by USA PATRIOT is: "the term 'domestic terrorism' means activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States." In other words, domestic terrorism is any serious crime-- acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of criminal law-- that is intended to scare people, influence the government by scaring people, or
I write in my journal
Please mod this up to at least four for humorous content!
Actually, I think many Americans will agree that the US government doesn't give a shit about Americans, nevermind Iraqis. In a different thread, you might be complaining about how Disney influences lawmakers. Why do you assume they can act honorably in Iraq?
That thing you're smoking is probably illegal.
- The $100B comes from US tax payers.
- The Iraqi people get a lot of stuff blown up
and rebuilt, using their own money. Oh,
and some of them have to be "collaterally
damaged", sorry.
- Saddam Hussein pays for all he's done.
- Billions in profits go to oil companies.
- Millions in donations from oil companies go
to Bush's re-election campaign fund.
This is how your political system is designed to work. Who the losers are is left as an exercise for the reader.Oh yeah and when we are done blowing everything up, we can change their flag and build a bunch of MC Donalds, and set up a clearchannel hip hop station
The sound of the vultures starting to circle a little lower...
No, they don't have the right to do that. Even if the US pours its entire fucking budget for the next 50 years into Iraq, it has no right to enforce its own standards on Iraq. It will be the right of the Iraqi people to determine for themselves what standards they pick. It's their country, not the US's.
Money from the US is effectively a donation.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Reason is that Iraqis are not being forced to have US standards. They are simply being provided to them for free. If they chose to go with GSM or any other standard they are more than able (as New York has done) to build have both systems simultaneously. The US just won't foot the bill.
I happen to use a Motorola phone that I paid to purchase and I pay Verizon a monthly bill. If someone gave me a free GSM Nokia phone and took care of monthly MCI bills, instead of saying "screw off you imperialist bastard", I would say: "Thankyou very much".
Hunger is the best sauce.
A bunch of mexican-americans are diyng on the iraqui war, I have seen a bunch of family members being interviewed in mexico, all damning bush and insisting that americans take a good look at whos blood is being spilled by their bullshit.
I am sure there are also indian, chinese and almost every other nationality represented in the US armed forces
1. Yes $100B out of US tax payer pockets.
2. Yes, lots of "collateral damage". Living in downtown New York, I appreciate how much this sucks. And yes, they will pay for much of the reconstruction, but they will have substantial help from Britain (~$70B pledged) and the US (not fixed yet, but estimated at $50-100B that the US will pay to rebuild Iraq). Furthermore, the Iraqi people will get a lot more benefit off their oil revenues when they are not being used to build Saddam's palaces, torture chambers, weapon programs, etc.
3. Yes, Saddam is major a**hole and I believe deserves anything he gets.
4. Actually, oil companies probably make less money in the long run. Although oil countries get the lions share of the profits when the prices are high, oil companies also substantially benefit. The result of this war will likely A) increase stability in the Gulf (with Saddam gone) and B) increase oil supply (with Iraq oil sources opened up). The net result of these two should substantially reduce the cost of oil and hence profits for oil companies.
5. Yes, but that was laready the case.
Hunger is the best sauce.
This is NOT the opinion of the American government! It's just the idiotic comment of one U.S. congressperson!
So try to chill just a little on this issue. There's a lot more important things to be passionate about right now, mkay?
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
AT&T is switching to GSM. Cingular is switching to GSM. Verizon is considering switching to GSM, and probably will when they start rolling out 3G. The only company in America sticking with CDMA is Sprint PCS, and we all know how much they suck.
Seems to me that Qualcomm is becoming irrelevant, and is seeking a cash injection from the taxpayer via good old American back-room deals.
Having experienced the quality of CDMA and Sprint PCS, my main feeling is: haven't the poor Iraqis suffered enough?
Then again, Al Qaeda was reported to be using cellphones... Maybe someone thinks Iraq and Al Qaeda really are working together, and they're hoping that by giving Iraq a useless cellphone system they'll throw a spanner in the works.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Food, hospitals, schools, buses, the road system, basic telephony and other things are a priority.
Would that require Iraq to buy US and UK products? If so, isn't that like... US taxpayers subsidizing US companies?
Furthermore, the Iraqi people will get a lot more benefit off their oil revenues when they are not being used to build Saddam's palaces, torture chambers, weapon programs, etc.
Sure, but would they be even better off if US oil companies don't end up controlling the oil wells? In whose interest would these companies be acting?
4. Actually, oil companies probably make less money in the long run. [...]
5. Yes, [Bush gets political donations]
Hmm, I wonder what makes oil companies donate money to a president who causes them to make less money.
The result of this war will likely A) increase stability in the Gulf (with Saddam gone) and B) increase oil supply (with Iraq oil sources opened up). The net result of these two should substantially reduce the cost of oil and hence profits for oil companies.
You mean like how companies moved manufacturing overseas to cut costs, and pass on the savings to the consumer? Oh, wait, did that happen?
... if you need 300,000 green suits to sell it ;)
I still disagree.
The Iraqi parliament will have the right to set down the law as to which standard is used in their country. If they say no-go to the US standard, then that's the way it should be.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
A few basic principles of finance:
-There is no such thing as a donation.
-When money is loaned, it has to be paid back at some point.
-A financial aid is just a loan. The basic idea is that a broke country would have trouble getting such money (impossible most of the time). That's where powerful come into the game. They get the loan (at a good interest rate because of their good credit), and transfer it to the broke country: this is called an aid. Therefore, it should be paid back.
Zeb.
Research Guide to the Palestinian-Israeli Co
I want to make a few points:
1. I personally believe (and this has been my opinion from the very start of this campaign) that the motives behind the war are clear and lied about. The motives are: oil, contracts for rebuilding Iraq, establishing a new military base in Middle East and the final one: World Domination.
Most people outside of US and some people in US understand what actually is motivating this war, and human rights of some poor Iraqi arabs are at the very of this list. This list, on the other hand, does include such things as oil, war contracts, rebuilding Iraq contracts, Israeli agenda (10 billion given to Israel? Donald Rumsfeld is a card holding member of the Likud party - Israeli governing party,) world domination.
It is simply insulting that the US started this war under pretence of getting rid of WMD, which are not there (and even if he has a shoebox filled with anthrax, guess who should check their anthrax receits... the US) WMD is a joke, Saddam Husein could have been taken out without this massive war. The American "Liberators" were surprised to see the level of resistance by those, who they are going to "liberate". Liberate from their lives - that is more like it.
I am disgusted by this war, by the lies, by pretence, by cynism and by double standards. Bush says those Iraqis who show POWs on TV are war criminals? Well, holly shit, what a troll! He started an illegal war! He tried to assassinate another country's leader! *(this is also against the Geneva convention, don't tell me that Saddam is also a millitary leader, it does not matter, he is still head of the government.)* Iraqi POWs have also been on TV. The reason why Bush got pissed to see the american POWs on TV is simple - in the US it is important to look GOOD ON TV. Isn't it like the doctrine of the states? No matter what, it should look good on TV?
2. Why is it that 42% of the US people believe that Iraq had anything at all to do with the 9/11 attacks? 20 hours after the attacks the identities of the terrorists were already established. They were mostly from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
I guess when the US starts war with Iraq, it is Iraq who is responsible for the 9/11. When the US will start another war with Iran, it will be Iran. I am just left wondering, when the US will start a war with Korea, will they blame Korea for 9/11 as well? (I doubt very much they will attack Korea, that state has nukes now.) It is very convenient to say that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, but it is just factually wrong. There is no correlation between Iraq and 9/11. There was never found a correlation between Iraq and 9/11. If you believe that Saddam would have given Al Qaida members the WMD, you are just a fool. Saddam is not that stupid, he lasted for over 20 years in that country doing whatever. He would not attack the US or allow someone to implicate him in that kind of an attack. He probably could use this power as leverage against his neighbours, sure, like Israel for example (why is US helping Israel anyway, they are actually also terrorists?)
3. I think the biggest prove that Iraq has no WMDs is that the US attacked Iraq. I don't believe the US would attack a country with WMD capabilities.
4. http://newsobserver.com/nc24hour/ncnews/story/2379 455p-2217701c.html - there are Iraqi kids who are dying now in battles against the allied troups. These are the same kids that are supposedly going to be liberated from the regime of Saddam Hussein. At what point will the world say to america "enough is enough"? How many dead civilians is acceptable to the american public? How many dead kids is acceptable? How many kids whose lives are destroyed now will become terrorrists? Can you blame them for it? Should America and England take responsibility?
5. I believe that every nation has the government that it deserves. If Iraqis do not believe that the change of Saddam's regime is worth fighting for and is not worth risking lives over, then they do not deserve any other regime. I
You can't handle the truth.
Again, this is another example of European arrogance where they think that just because THEY use it and the Asians use it, it must be better.
At least CDMA is expanding faster around the world than GSM at this point.
Now I know what they mean by "freedom for the Iraqi people": Free evenings and weekends.
I think Clausewitz would say that self defense and survival *is* politics. However the pertinant point in this war is that the Baathists are fighting for survival, America is not, so in the final analysis America's will can be broken before the Baathists if the war can be extended sufficiently long.
I see your point, but I still disagree. I don't belive the Vietcong "forced" anything like it. I think our leaders were simply morons who didn't really care and didn't listen to the military as to how to go about it.
You make the error of seeing the war in purerly military terms. Clausewitz's assertion highlights that war must be seen as part of a wider political process. It really doesn't matter if the Vietcong won because they defeated America militarily, or because they made the cost of America winning politically unacceptable. The result is the same
Militarily? Not really. His troops are really no match for the US/British toops. Yeah, the troops will take casulties, maybe more maybe less, but they'll still win....
...US troops look bad for shooting civilians that are being forced to shoot at them, and thereby try and sway public opinion against this conflict. But, that's not a military strategy, it's a political one.
There is no difference. The political is military and vica versa. Not that this simple truth seems to have been grasped by the truly dreadful Donald Rumsfeld - a man who seems to posses the dialectic sophistication of Lenny Osborne.
Following the bomb in the Baghdad Market this evening, and the consequent achievement by America in uniting all Arab opinion against it, I am now firmly of the conclusion that the Baathists will most probably win. Of sure, they'll be a battle and the republican guard will be defeated, but America will not be able to take and hold Baghdad in the long term without unacceptable political consequences.
I'm not at all sure however this will apply to the whole country. The British experience in Northern Ireland may well stand them in sufficiently good stead that in Basra and the Shi'ite south a viable peace could be achieved. Similarly in the Kurdish north.
To paraphraise Mr Banks...
All the usual rules of uprising realpolitik will still apply, especially that concerning the peculiar dialectic of dissent which - simply stated - dictates that in all but the most dedicatedly repressive hegemonies, if in a sizable population there are one hundred rebels, all of whom are then rounded up and killed, the number of rebels present at the end of the day is not zero, and not even one hundred, but two hundred or three hundred or more; an equation based on human nature which seems often to baffle the military and political mind.
Fuck! This is sick, simply. I mean, phone companies could *at least* wait for the first corpses to be cold before they start competing for the Iraqi market.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
...and don't forget to mention, that it was chief-war-monger-no-1 Donald Rumsfeld himself you equipped Saddam with all the stuff they (all them good Americans) now find themselves being shot at with...
& still chose to invade, start the war
"and btw, who the fuck is the US congress to decide which mobile phone service protocols is the iraqi people going to use ???"
Because they're paying for it.
Vote for Pedro
cdma2000 is worthy of asking for by name.
cdma2000 conveniently interoperates with cdma traffic while allowing cdma2000 features to resize the channel per frame to 2^[1-5] channels out of 128 total. (cdma only sees 64 fixed channels).
as t goes to infinity so does infrastructure capacity double by this sort of channel-doubling.
The equipment's sensitivity and noise filtering limits, defined by component cost, supports "g3" today, but the sky's the limit for your regime's application without compromising the installed base...
I cant comment on any recent progress with gsm for fair contrast, except that it's a wee bit simpler to code for.
That said, I honestly believe that 5 years from now Iraq is going to be self run and much better off regardless of which mobile standard they end up with.
Hunger is the best sauce.
Well, our economic colonization of Iraq has started already, and we aren't even in Bahgdad yet. "Congressman Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) Wednesday introduced a bill based on a letter to the Pentagon, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other lawmakers demanding that the Department of Defense and USAID show favor to CDMA technology made by San Diego-based QUALCOMM". Iraqs current (or is it already former) cellular infrastructure is based on GSM, like their neighbors.
You see this war isn't just about the oil in Iraq and the threatened oil in neighboring countries. It's also about selling our crappy cellular technology standard to a country that would then be incompatitble with every country it borders with. Now this bill hasn't passed, and CDMA hasn't been installed there yet. It's quite possible this bill will be shot down, and even then, the military endorsement might not be enough to outweigh the technology's disavantages. But god damn, this is pretty balsy shit, trying moving our companies in 10 days into the war. And to think that some people wonder how Unocal was awarded 46.5% of the rights in the Afghanistan gas pipeline they wanted for years.
Yeah I'm pissed. But this time I'm not pissed at the present administration. I'm pissed at the millions of American who choose to believe this shit doesn't happen.
-no broken link
When I last looked at the bill on the House website it had no cosponsors. That's a good sign!
On a clear disk you can seek forever
I think Clausewitz would say that self defense and survival *is* politics.
...so in the final analysis America's will can be broken before the Baathists if the war can be extended sufficiently long.
...which bomb, by the way, is still yet to be proven to be even a "bomb", let alone dropped by US aircraft. All that has been made is an assertion by the Iraqi government that the US did an atrocious thing, and you and a lot of other Arab and non-Arabs seem to have chosen to accept that as an explanation uncritically.
...I am now firmly of the conclusion that the Baathists will most probably win. Of sure, they'll be a battle and the republican guard will be defeated, but America will not be able to take and hold Baghdad in the long term without unacceptable political consequences.
...dictates that in all but the most dedicatedly repressive hegemonies, if in a sizable population there are one hundred rebels, all of whom are then rounded up and killed, the number of rebels present at the end of the day is not zero, and not even one hundred, but two hundred or three hundred or more
And I think I would still disagree with Clausewitz. I think self defense and survival is simply that, self defense and survival. The will to survive, and to survive without harm isn't a political thing, in its base form, it is basic human nature.
Yet to this assertion there is no guarantee, neither that the war *can* be extended sufficiently long enough, nor that the Baathists will can't be broken. I'll grant that maybe it can't be broken completely, but that in no way implies that they will still be able to concentrate a measure of power great enough to make a significant impact on that post-war society, and therefore there is still the possibility of calling this exercise successful, even if the Baathists still exist to some measure.
You make the error of seeing the war in purely military terms. Clausewitz's assertion highlights that war must be seen as part of a wider political process. It really doesn't matter if the Vietcong won because they defeated America militarily, or because they made the cost of America winning politically unacceptable. The result is the same
Ah, but the same result doesn't mean that the causes are the same. War *may be* somewhat political, but I was making a distinction between *military* strategy and *political* strategy. He asserts that they are one in the same, but tell a military strategist that and you will get laughed out of the room. Military strategy may be used to effect a political means, I'll agree, but it, in of itself, is not political. The political is about just that, politics. Military strategy is about fighting, maneuvering, and control of enemy forces. It's about flanking, bombing, attacking, and control of key positions so that the forces can do more of that, more effectively. That these plans and actions effect an ultimate political end does not mean that they are the same as politics at their core. I assert that they remain separate.
And, as I indicated before, there is a valid sense in which the US achieved what the US needed to achieve in Viet Nam, namely the halting of aggression.
Following the bomb in the Baghdad Market this evening, and the consequent achievement by America in uniting all Arab opinion against it
That's fine, I'm not. And, by the way, since neither of us can predict the future, both positions are resigned to be mere opinion, nothing more. Further, it doesn't appear to me that the US has any intentions of "holding Baghdad in the long term".
And this blanket statement, that is written to imply that it applies without question every time, falls prey to the reality that there is the possibility that it may not be true. It is left to assertion, or at the most, an educated prediction, but there is no reason to think that this is or ever will
So they weren't in it just for the oil. They want the telco industry too. What next? To force the Iraqis to choose Xbox (M$, USA) over PS2 (Japan)? What happen to 'doing it fer the good of the poor Iraqi people'?
Carpe Diem: Seize The Day!
1) Qualcomm is based near his home district in southern California.
2) Qualcomm's PAC was the sixth largest campaign contributor to his last election campaign.
3)He served on the board of Directed Electronics, a company that makes automobile telematics based on CDMA; the products were originally a project for Wingcast, Ford and Qualcomm's now-defunct joint venture.
Gee, I wonder if he'll make any money off this deal.