Re:india is going to be real strong: something to
on
Joining the Global Village
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Mod this one -- better formatting
I don't get it. Why is it whenever countries like India start coming up some people in west like you get scared?
I think whenever people talk about fall of western civilization they make two serious assumptions which are wrong--
a)West has always been rich and powerful. FALSE
Figures for 1750
share of world manufacturing output China(32%)+ Old India(24%) ==56%
share of Asia == 80%
share of west = 18%
share in word population
west = 20%
asia = 60%
So, Asia outmanufactured west even propotional to it's population, and, this was true for pretty much all of the known history. Asia being even wealthier as you go back in time. Why do you think columbus wanted to discover india? for its famed money and riches. Ofcourse he ended up discovering America, and called the natives Indians which frankly causes so much confusion.
After 1750, bristish de-industrialized India,and it stagnated(for e.g. never in the recorded history were there any famines in India before 1800s. They cut off thubs of all the textile weavers becaus ethey couldn't compete-- simple solution no thumb no production etc. etc.), and China's wealth fell after 1800s.
Read this book: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.c gi/00/1 2509.ctl
and this article for the numbers http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/jun/08raj eev.htm
b) Rise of India+China means fall of west FALSE.
This is not a zero sum game. With world trade both west and asia will end up getting richer.
I don't get it. Why is it whenever countries like India start coming up some people in west like you get scared?
I think whenever people talk about fall of western civilization they make two serious assumptions which are wrong--
a)West has always been rich and powerful. FALSE
Figures for 1750
share of world wealth China(32%)+ Old India(24%) ==56%
share of Asia == 80%
share of west = 18%
share in word population
west = 20%
asia = 60%
So, Asia outmanufactured west even propotional to it's population, and, this was true for pretty much all of the known history. Asia being even wealthier as you go back in time. Why do you think columbus wanted to discover india? for its famed money and riches. Ofcourse he ended up discovering America, and called the natives Indians which frankly causes so much confusion.
After 1750, bristish de-industrialized India,and it stagnated(for e.g. never in the recorded history were there any famines in India before 1800s. They cut off thubs of all the textile weavers becaus ethey couldn't compete-- simple solution no thumb no production etc. etc.), and China's wealth fell after 1800s.
Read this book:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/1 2509.ctl
and this article
http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/jun/08rajeev.htm
b) Rise of India+China means fall of west FALSE.
This is not a zero sum game. With world trade both west and asia will end up getting richer.
from here
"Its unmatchable speed is its high point, making it invincible. The supersonic speed imparts it a greater strike-power as well. Possessing stealth characteristics, the 6.9-meter cruise missile weighing three tons has a range of 280 km. Its another outstanding feature is that it is highly accurate and can be guided to its target mainly with the help of an onboard computer. This has been established by the test-flight. "
PWDE is more efficient, but I don't think it can do hypersonic speeds. Also, if Read the article(the first link), you will find more details, how this concept of hypersonic craft involves scooping the oxygen from the atmosphere, and the kicking in the cryogenics to boost the plane into orbit.
Whenever people talk about fall of western civilization they make two serious assumptions which are wrong-- a)West has always been rich and powerful. FALSE Figures for 1750 share of world wealth China+India ==56% share of Asia == 80% share of west = 18% share in word population
west = 20% asia = 60% And, this was true for pretty much all of the known history, asia being even wealthier as you go back in time. Why do you think columbus wanted to discover india? and ended up discovering America. After 1750, bristish de-industrialized India,and it stagnated(for e.g. never in the recorded history were there any famines in India before 1800s), and China's wealth fell after 1800s. Read this book: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.c gi/00/1 2509.ctl and this article http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/jun/08raj eev.htm
b) Rise of India+China means fall of west FALSE. This is not a zero sum game. With world trade both west and asia will end up getting richer.
That is funny. Pakistan is 1/7th the size of India, and with stangnant economy, it is falling way behind with each passing year. Why do you think there is this sudden talk of peace etc.? Pakistanis are scared, that in a few years they will loose all leverage. The only thing that pakistanis have that makes people in US equate them is some chinese nukes with north korean missile. Anyway, India is developing its military potential not in race with Pakistan, but its other neighbor China.
Ah, the same old give a man a fish conundrum. If you had limited resources, would you invest them in building a boat, or buying fish from he market? By developing high tech, India is trying to keep all its good engineers to go to the good old USA. See it is those engineers/scientists from all the other countries immigrating into US which have kept it rich. So, coming back to the fish analogy, India has two choices a) Send the boat builders(engineers/scientists) to US, and get aids money b) keep some of the boat builders, and try to build a boat so that you don't need aid money anymore. Anyway, India at this is the world's 4th largest economy, and is one of the world's fastest growing economy, and they did not reach there by just giving free food to the poor, but y investing in IITs. Also, frankly USA with its 12% poor (compared to 26% in India), and huge number of homeless(link1 link2 people should provide enough excuses for you to fight the senators to stop investing in NASA etc. for producing high-tech.
What agreements? NPT? which requires India to give up the nukes before signing? what's the point in signing.
By the way India has a declared No-First-Use policy, while USA has a declared Pre-emptive-strike policy. And, US has exercised that poilicy once, and with the new tactical nukes it plans to do so again and again. which nuke power is more dangerous?
In another news to retailiate against the outsourcing backlash from US India has decided to ban US companies from selling cellphone equipment/chips/software in their market, which is expected to reach 100 million in next two years (another url says The user base is growing at about two million a month and is expected to cross 100 million by 2005.)(US market is about 110 million for comparison) and 500 million by the end of the decade. . Similar huge numbers are expected for PC and car markets. Also, they have decided to ban the cars companies like GM, ford and other US companies like Mcdonalds, Pepsi,coke and Hoolywod movies etc. from selling in India. The govt. of India said that the local people are losing jobs because of this trade.
P.S. in case you are clueless this story is made up. I just wanted to make a point that trade is benefitial to both US and India. So, it is stupid to put barriers against outsourcing/trade etc.
I will try to remove some misunderstanding about the voter's ID card and the voting machine --
1) The cost of Voter's ID card is paid by the govt. Individual voters do not pay anything. I just had to go to a temporary office in my locality to get photographed and pick it up in about 10 minutes. So, the 0.75 USD discrimination problem that you point out is non-existent.
2) The voting machines simply record the number of votes for each candidate, and no record is created about who voted for whom
3) Election commision in India is an independent constitutional body and has been know to re-conduct the elections in voting areas with slightest hint of fraud.
4) Each voting booth in India is allowed to have has one representative from each candidate to ensure that the other candidate does not tryto defraud the voter. This is not perfect but ensures that the fraud when it happens does not skew the result too much.
5) The voting machines contain no OS. The code is in assembly in tamper proof chips, making it very hard to hack
6) The voting machines are not linked together over a network. This implies that to tally votes the machine has to be taken to a central station where again representatives from each candidate ensure that no wholscale fraud takes place.
In some states this is indeed an issue. But, election commsion is an independent constitutional body, and has been known to conduct re-elections in areas with slightest hint of suspicion/problem. One check that makes sure that this is not rampent is the presence of a representative from each candidate in each polling booth, to make sure voting is fair.
Also, interestingly enough the states(UP, Bihar etc.) in which this is an issue are the very states with low-caste candidates holding the reigns of power in the state legislature. Now that would not happen if the low caste people were not allowed to vote, would it?
I think this is just a way to restrict the flow of technology
According to this article
http://www.itworld.com/Comp/1437/021217indiasuperc omp/
None of the PARAM series computers have been used in any defence establishment. I quote --
______________________
None of the PARAM supercomputers installed in India so far are used in defense organizations, according to Arora. "We have maintained throughout that our research is for civilian applications, and not for defense and nuclear applications," said Arora. "Some defense organizations in India have their own supercomputer projects. (My note: i.e. projects separate from the PARAM ones)We see the PARAM project as helping build our self-reliance, and also to help establish India's hardware design capability."
___________________________________
Since a lot of people are asking about the sanctions on India, here is some info from http://www.itworld.com/Comp/1437/021217india superc omp/ __________ India is included in the Tier 3 of the U.S. HPC Export Control Policy of the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC). Although the U.S. government relaxed in March this year the upper performance limit of computers that could be exported to India from 85,000 MTOPS (millions of theoretical operations per second) to 190,000 MTOPS, imports of supercomputers comparable to the new 1 TFLOP computer designed by C-DAC are still restricted, according to Arora. "The performance of the PARAM Padma in terms of MTOPS is in the vicinity of 500,000 MTOPS," Arora added. __________
From the guys who started it all.
By the way this company is no joke. These guys(Ambanis) started with literally nothing to turn into a fortune 500 company with an annual revenue of $13.5 billon in a short span 27 years. So, when they say we will do it, they are taken very seriously.
Reliance Infocomm Ushers a Digital Revolution In India
http://www.ril.com/eportal/media/NewsDetails.jsp?i d=N279&page_id=72
Second, in mid 2003, with an enterprise netway revolution by providing 100 mbps Ethernet links to every desktop and device to half a million enterprise buildings initially and eventually to 10 million buildings.....
Third, in end 2003, with a consumer convergence revolution by providing high speed Ethernet links to 80 million homes initially and eventually to every home.....
The Dhirubhai Ambani Developer Programme will create a new platform for innovations in information technology. One thousand developers of software solutions are being enrolled now to eventually grow to 100,000 developers by December 2003
I just want to make a few points here --
1) It's not a Palm, it's a full fledged Linux computer
2) They have applications with localisation in languages no standard OS supports.
3) Do u know how much it would cost to ship ur computers? And who would maintain all these different architectures/configurations etc.? Isn't that the same problem that schools in US have with donated computers?
4) Computers are given to villagers under govt. programs. So, not paying for the software is out of question. Individuals can and do pirate out there, but govt. cannot. There are copyright laws, it's just hard to enforce them.
5) Standardising the architecture and getting it out under GPL is a great idea to proliferate these things and reduce cost.
6) As, for using propritery OS, I thing being a/.er you do know the advantages of using a GPL OS like linux. So, I won't reiterate that.
P.S. Did you even read their FAQ?
India is now ranked 4th largest economy in terms of GDP PPP. This changed a few weeks ago according to new figures by World bank. It's behind only US, Japan and China.
Just wanted to buut in and put the facts right.
There have been lot of questions by a lot of posters as to what would poor rural India do with this computer. So, I will try to explain here what's already being done and how this new simputer can help.
Let's get some facts straight here. In India the development is very uneven. So, there are a few states which are very poor and most which are ok and some really well off.
What's happening out there currently is that the ok and the well off states actually have started giving computer access to people in villages. As to what they use it for --- An example from actual usage -- A soyabean farmer finds out price of soyabean in chicago, because the price in chicago effects the price in India in a few months, so , he can decide how much to sow. Also, when he is ready to sell his soyabean, he finds out which market gives him the best price and rentsa atruck to sell there. A widow is not getting pension for her husband because of beauracracy, she goes to the village computer and pays 5/- (about 10 cents) to send an e-mail to an high up official. He responds and she starts getting the money. Both of these examples are real life and actually happened.
So, what this computer will do is that it will make usage of computers in regional language easy and will give them a cheaper linus computer rather then the Windows one that is more common out there.
See these links to find out more about how computers are changing rural India.
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20010 409&fname=Cover+Story+%28F%29&sid=1
http://www.india-today.com/itoday/20001211/offtrac k.shtml
A satellite launch vehicle uses liquid propellent. The GSLV(Indian vehicle) main engine is cryogenic which is liquid propellent.
The problem with liquid propellent in cyrogenic engines is that they cannot be stored in the launch vehicle and have to be filled up at the time of launch. This can take 24-48hrs. Who would want an ICBM which takes 24-48hrs to launch and preparations for it are easily visible from space?
It would be insane to do that.
Its's not that there are no building standards. Infact BIS(Beauru of India Standards) has pretty good standards. But, the problem is one of corruption due to which they are not enforced.
Same goes for the power. It's the rampant stealing of the power which is causing problems.
As, for doing things which are 20-30 years old. The reason is that because of geographical advantage(launch sites near the equator) and cheap research and labour cost they can do it at 1/2 the cost if not lower. They have to launch lots of communication setallites(Important for infrastructure) and remote sensing satellites(important for agriculture). So, you see in the end they save money and not spend it.
Besides, this creates ancillary industries which creatres jobs and saves precious foriegn exchange. So, the money spent on these launches benefits Indian economy instead of some developed country.
So, the short answer is that it actually costs less in the long term for India to develop these capabilities then to pay high prices for them to some other country.
By the way the lower costs is the primary reason that US opposes Indian developing such capability not military applications which are a different ball game. After all US needs to protect it's launching market. Thuough IMHO India will not have enough capacity to take away more then a small but significant share of the launch market. It takes some time to develop that king of manufacturing capacity(note-- not capability)
In my experience, just looking at the code and understanding how your program works is the fastest way to debug. I have seen too many people spending hours on a piece of code stepping through a debugger.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate debuggers. But, most of the time I find that a simple "close your eyes and think under what situations your program would behave the way it is behaving" gives me an insight so that I only have to look at a few lines and viola I have my solution.
I have worked on really Large projects, and I have found this to be true always.
Another thing is that most people don't read there code after they have written and compiled it. They just run it and expect to use the debugger to take care of their problems. I have found it much more useful to give a quick walkthrough of teh code to myself before running it for the first time.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod this one -- better formatting
c gi/00/1 2509.ctl
j eev.htm
I don't get it. Why is it whenever countries like India start coming up some people in west like you get scared?
I think whenever people talk about fall of western civilization they make two serious assumptions which are wrong--
a)West has always been rich and powerful. FALSE
Figures for 1750
share of world manufacturing output China(32%)+ Old India(24%) ==56%
share of Asia == 80%
share of west = 18%
share in word population
west = 20%
asia = 60%
So, Asia outmanufactured west even propotional to it's population, and, this was true for pretty much all of the known history. Asia being even wealthier as you go back in time. Why do you think columbus wanted to discover india? for its famed money and riches. Ofcourse he ended up discovering America, and called the natives Indians which frankly causes so much confusion.
After 1750, bristish de-industrialized India,and it stagnated(for e.g. never in the recorded history were there any famines in India before 1800s. They cut off thubs of all the textile weavers becaus ethey couldn't compete-- simple solution no thumb no production etc. etc.), and China's wealth fell after 1800s.
Read this book:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.
and this article for the numbers
http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/jun/08ra
b) Rise of India+China means fall of west FALSE.
This is not a zero sum game. With world trade both west and asia will end up getting richer.
I don't get it. Why is it whenever countries like India start coming up some people in west like you get scared? I think whenever people talk about fall of western civilization they make two serious assumptions which are wrong-- a)West has always been rich and powerful. FALSE Figures for 1750 share of world wealth China(32%)+ Old India(24%) ==56% share of Asia == 80% share of west = 18% share in word population west = 20% asia = 60% So, Asia outmanufactured west even propotional to it's population, and, this was true for pretty much all of the known history. Asia being even wealthier as you go back in time. Why do you think columbus wanted to discover india? for its famed money and riches. Ofcourse he ended up discovering America, and called the natives Indians which frankly causes so much confusion. After 1750, bristish de-industrialized India,and it stagnated(for e.g. never in the recorded history were there any famines in India before 1800s. They cut off thubs of all the textile weavers becaus ethey couldn't compete-- simple solution no thumb no production etc. etc.), and China's wealth fell after 1800s. Read this book: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/1 2509.ctl
and this article
http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/jun/08rajeev.htm
b) Rise of India+China means fall of west FALSE.
This is not a zero sum game. With world trade both west and asia will end up getting richer.
from here "Its unmatchable speed is its high point, making it invincible. The supersonic speed imparts it a greater strike-power as well. Possessing stealth characteristics, the 6.9-meter cruise missile weighing three tons has a range of 280 km. Its another outstanding feature is that it is highly accurate and can be guided to its target mainly with the help of an onboard computer. This has been established by the test-flight. "
PWDE is more efficient, but I don't think it can do hypersonic speeds. Also, if Read the article(the first link), you will find more details, how this concept of hypersonic craft involves scooping the oxygen from the atmosphere, and the kicking in the cryogenics to boost the plane into orbit.
There is no known current defence against supersonic cruise missiles. By the way 300km range is only the first version.
Whenever people talk about fall of western civilization they make two serious assumptions which are wrong--
c gi/00/1 2509.ctlj eev.htm
a)West has always been rich and powerful. FALSE
Figures for 1750
share of world wealth China+India ==56%
share of Asia == 80%
share of west = 18% share in word population
west = 20%
asia = 60%
And, this was true for pretty much all of the known history, asia being even wealthier as you go back in time. Why do you think columbus wanted to discover india? and ended up discovering America.
After 1750, bristish de-industrialized India,and it stagnated(for e.g. never in the recorded history were there any famines in India before 1800s), and China's wealth fell after 1800s.
Read this book:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.
and this article
http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/jun/08ra
b) Rise of India+China means fall of west FALSE.
This is not a zero sum game. With world trade both west and asia will end up getting richer.
That is funny. Pakistan is 1/7th the size of India, and with stangnant economy, it is falling way behind with each passing year. Why do you think there is this sudden talk of peace etc.? Pakistanis are scared, that in a few years they will loose all leverage.
The only thing that pakistanis have that makes people in US equate them is some chinese nukes with north korean missile.
Anyway, India is developing its military potential not in race with Pakistan, but its other neighbor China.
Ah, the same old give a man a fish conundrum. If you had limited resources, would you invest them in building a boat, or buying fish from he market?
By developing high tech, India is trying to keep all its good engineers to go to the good old USA. See it is those engineers/scientists from all the other countries immigrating into US which have kept it rich. So, coming back to the fish analogy, India has two choices
a) Send the boat builders(engineers/scientists) to US, and get aids money
b) keep some of the boat builders, and try to build a boat so that you don't need aid money anymore.
Anyway, India at this is the world's 4th largest economy, and is one of the world's fastest growing economy, and they did not reach there by just giving free food to the poor, but y investing in IITs.
Also, frankly USA with its 12% poor (compared to 26% in India), and huge number of homeless(link1 link2 people should provide enough excuses for you to fight the senators to stop investing in NASA etc. for producing high-tech.
What agreements? NPT? which requires India to give up the nukes before signing? what's the point in signing.
By the way India has a declared No-First-Use policy, while USA has a declared Pre-emptive-strike policy. And, US has exercised that poilicy once, and with the new tactical nukes it plans to do so again and again.
which nuke power is more dangerous?
Read the article:
It scoops oxygen in the atmosphers at hypersonic speeds, and then oes into space.
In another news to retailiate against the outsourcing backlash from US India has decided to ban US companies from selling cellphone equipment/chips/software in their market, which is expected to reach 100 million in next two years (another url says The user base is growing at about two million a month and is expected to cross 100 million by 2005.)(US market is about 110 million for comparison) and 500 million by the end of the decade. . Similar huge numbers are expected for PC and car markets. Also, they have decided to ban the cars companies like GM, ford and other US companies like Mcdonalds, Pepsi,coke and Hoolywod movies etc. from selling in India. The govt. of India said that the local people are losing jobs because of this trade.
P.S. in case you are clueless this story is made up. I just wanted to make a point that trade is benefitial to both US and India. So, it is stupid to put barriers against outsourcing/trade etc.
I will try to remove some misunderstanding about the voter's ID card and the voting machine --
1) The cost of Voter's ID card is paid by the govt. Individual voters do not pay anything. I just had to go to a temporary office in my locality to get photographed and pick it up in about 10 minutes. So, the 0.75 USD discrimination problem that you point out is non-existent.
2) The voting machines simply record the number of votes for each candidate, and no record is created about who voted for whom
3) Election commision in India is an independent constitutional body and has been know to re-conduct the elections in voting areas with slightest hint of fraud.
4) Each voting booth in India is allowed to have has one representative from each candidate to ensure that the other candidate does not tryto defraud the voter. This is not perfect but ensures that the fraud when it happens does not skew the result too much.
5) The voting machines contain no OS. The code is in assembly in tamper proof chips, making it very hard to hack
6) The voting machines are not linked together over a network. This implies that to tally votes the machine has to be taken to a central station where again representatives from each candidate ensure that no wholscale fraud takes place.
In some states this is indeed an issue. But, election commsion is an independent constitutional body, and has been known to conduct re-elections in areas with slightest hint of suspicion/problem. One check that makes sure that this is not rampent is the presence of a representative from each candidate in each polling booth, to make sure voting is fair.
Also, interestingly enough the states(UP, Bihar etc.) in which this is an issue are the very states with low-caste candidates holding the reigns of power in the state legislature. Now that would not happen if the low caste people were not allowed to vote, would it?
I think this is just a way to restrict the flow of technologyc omp/
According to this article http://www.itworld.com/Comp/1437/021217indiasuper
None of the PARAM series computers have been used in any defence establishment. I quote --
______________________
None of the PARAM supercomputers installed in India so far are used in defense organizations, according to Arora. "We have maintained throughout that our research is for civilian applications, and not for defense and nuclear applications," said Arora. "Some defense organizations in India have their own supercomputer projects. (My note: i.e. projects separate from the PARAM ones)We see the PARAM project as helping build our self-reliance, and also to help establish India's hardware design capability."
___________________________________
Since a lot of people are asking about the sanctions on India, here is some info froma superc omp/
http://www.itworld.com/Comp/1437/021217indi
__________
India is included in the Tier 3 of the U.S. HPC Export Control Policy of the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC). Although the U.S. government relaxed in March this year the upper performance limit of computers that could be exported to India from 85,000 MTOPS (millions of theoretical operations per second) to 190,000 MTOPS, imports of supercomputers comparable to the new 1 TFLOP computer designed by C-DAC are still restricted, according to Arora. "The performance of the PARAM Padma in terms of MTOPS is in the vicinity of 500,000 MTOPS," Arora added.
__________
From the guys who started it all. By the way this company is no joke. These guys(Ambanis) started with literally nothing to turn into a fortune 500 company with an annual revenue of $13.5 billon in a short span 27 years. So, when they say we will do it, they are taken very seriously. Reliance Infocomm Ushers a Digital Revolution In India http://www.ril.com/eportal/media/NewsDetails.jsp?i d=N279&page_id=72
Second, in mid 2003, with an enterprise netway revolution by providing 100 mbps Ethernet links to every desktop and device to half a million enterprise buildings initially and eventually to 10 million buildings.....
Third, in end 2003, with a consumer convergence revolution by providing high speed Ethernet links to 80 million homes initially and eventually to every home.....
The Dhirubhai Ambani Developer Programme will create a new platform for innovations in information technology. One thousand developers of software solutions are being enrolled now to eventually grow to 100,000 developers by December 2003
I just want to make a few points here -- /.er you do know the advantages of using a GPL OS like linux. So, I won't reiterate that.
1) It's not a Palm, it's a full fledged Linux computer
2) They have applications with localisation in languages no standard OS supports.
3) Do u know how much it would cost to ship ur computers? And who would maintain all these different architectures/configurations etc.? Isn't that the same problem that schools in US have with donated computers?
4) Computers are given to villagers under govt. programs. So, not paying for the software is out of question. Individuals can and do pirate out there, but govt. cannot. There are copyright laws, it's just hard to enforce them.
5) Standardising the architecture and getting it out under GPL is a great idea to proliferate these things and reduce cost.
6) As, for using propritery OS, I thing being a
P.S. Did you even read their FAQ?
India is now ranked 4th largest economy in terms of GDP PPP. This changed a few weeks ago according to new figures by World bank. It's behind only US, Japan and China.
Just wanted to buut in and put the facts right.
Just wanted to get the links in better.
Digital Empowerment: Seeds Of E-Volution
Wired to the Future
There have been lot of questions by a lot of posters as to what would poor rural India do with this computer. So, I will try to explain here what's already being done and how this new simputer can help.0 409&fname=Cover+Story+%28F%29&sid=1
c k.shtml
Let's get some facts straight here. In India the development is very uneven. So, there are a few states which are very poor and most which are ok and some really well off.
What's happening out there currently is that the ok and the well off states actually have started giving computer access to people in villages. As to what they use it for --- An example from actual usage -- A soyabean farmer finds out price of soyabean in chicago, because the price in chicago effects the price in India in a few months, so , he can decide how much to sow. Also, when he is ready to sell his soyabean, he finds out which market gives him the best price and rentsa atruck to sell there. A widow is not getting pension for her husband because of beauracracy, she goes to the village computer and pays 5/- (about 10 cents) to send an e-mail to an high up official. He responds and she starts getting the money. Both of these examples are real life and actually happened.
So, what this computer will do is that it will make usage of computers in regional language easy and will give them a cheaper linus computer rather then the Windows one that is more common out there.
See these links to find out more about how computers are changing rural India.
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=2001
http://www.india-today.com/itoday/20001211/offtra
A satellite launch vehicle uses liquid propellent. The GSLV(Indian vehicle) main engine is cryogenic which is liquid propellent.
The problem with liquid propellent in cyrogenic engines is that they cannot be stored in the launch vehicle and have to be filled up at the time of launch. This can take 24-48hrs. Who would want an ICBM which takes 24-48hrs to launch and preparations for it are easily visible from space?
It would be insane to do that.
Its's not that there are no building standards. Infact BIS(Beauru of India Standards) has pretty good standards. But, the problem is one of corruption due to which they are not enforced.
Same goes for the power. It's the rampant stealing of the power which is causing problems.
As, for doing things which are 20-30 years old. The reason is that because of geographical advantage(launch sites near the equator) and cheap research and labour cost they can do it at 1/2 the cost if not lower. They have to launch lots of communication setallites(Important for infrastructure) and remote sensing satellites(important for agriculture). So, you see in the end they save money and not spend it.
Besides, this creates ancillary industries which creatres jobs and saves precious foriegn exchange. So, the money spent on these launches benefits Indian economy instead of some developed country.
So, the short answer is that it actually costs less in the long term for India to develop these capabilities then to pay high prices for them to some other country.
By the way the lower costs is the primary reason that US opposes Indian developing such capability not military applications which are a different ball game. After all US needs to protect it's launching market. Thuough IMHO India will not have enough capacity to take away more then a small but significant share of the launch market. It takes some time to develop that king of manufacturing capacity(note-- not capability)
Thanks for stereotyping people of Indian origin who constitue 36% of researchers in NASA at the last count. And you already know about Software.
In my experience, just looking at the code and understanding how your program works is the fastest way to debug. I have seen too many people spending hours on a piece of code stepping through a debugger. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate debuggers. But, most of the time I find that a simple "close your eyes and think under what situations your program would behave the way it is behaving" gives me an insight so that I only have to look at a few lines and viola I have my solution. I have worked on really Large projects, and I have found this to be true always. Another thing is that most people don't read there code after they have written and compiled it. They just run it and expect to use the debugger to take care of their problems. I have found it much more useful to give a quick walkthrough of teh code to myself before running it for the first time.
Link to the wired news cold fusion article
Wired news article