Doesn't that give their view a legitimacey they don't deserve? Wouldn't it be better to just resign yourself to the fact that certain people are just lost and that it's a waste of time trying to retrieve them?
As the old saying goes "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." It seems to me that people have had plenty of opportunity to get a hold of the water, especially in the age of the internet, but decided to go fro the Koolaid instead.
for a commercially viable car (which I assume they are going for), shouldn't the range be more like 300 miles? 200 seems a little low for some reason and the lowest range I got on any number of gasoline cars was maybe 260-280....
if you don't require privacy. Hopefully, they put in an extremely good encryption scheme with this and not one merely "good 'nough'. Still a good leap forward in many areas, our country is way behind as it is, and it has next to nothing to do with population density for the east and west coasts many areas of which has poor, overpriced service as well.
I often wondered what is stopping a mesh network from spreading. It would be basically the type which the OLPC has, except essentially a router with an antenna could be put on top of your house and connect with others of its type, from spreading. Of course, there would have to be a central hub connected into a fat pipe every so often so the signal doesn't hop around like mad.
A bit of a handholder, this book starts out basic but is really accesible for the beginning programmer (or someone just trying to wrap their head around lisp never having used a Functional language):
I know enough people who didn't switch from W2K to XP-Pro until XP SP2. May be the case here too. That, or when they get a new computer -- as it's not worth the standalone upgrade cost alone for most people.
CFLs for indoors (and certain inclosed fixtures outdoors) will continue to be the norm in energy efficiency. Metal Halide light outdoors (available at Lowes, but not Home Depot, last I checked) make good outdoor driveway lights and the light with much better color rendering than the old sodium light and excellent energy efficiency as well. It would be nice to get LEDS, no doubt, but the lumens output and price just ain't there yet. Hopefully these type of developments will change that.
While all the hoopla is around lighting these days, that only comprises about 10% of a houses electrical energy use these days, IIRC. So your max savings is 10% -- a good and worthy start but not enough. Many electrical devices are already operating at high efficiency (electrical motors for instance) so many appliances can't be improved. Other devices just need to be used less (washer, dishwasher) through conscientous use, and things like Computers just need to be set correctly for energy savings on the software level (or make sure things like Printers come with their own print server rather than have a computer act as one... sometimes it's good to get a router with a harddrive as well...
But all this doesn't change the fact that most houses themselves are built to use way too much energy. Until that is solved, the other problems are at least orders of a magnitude smaller: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
An increase of capacity at around roughly 1000x in a decade. I don't know if the trend will continue.... but if it does we'll be at 32TB in another decade.
I guess even those who don't use music players can be thankful for those devices as they, along with digital cameras, were really were the commercial products on the market that really sold and pushed the flash envelope. Sure there were PDAs/GPS units and other stuff, but in comparison they really niche markets that were happy with 256MB or whatever in most cases. Now things like the airbook (and all the SSD notebooks to follow, yes there were earlier ones I know), iPhone and the convergence of devices will further drive the market for more space.
And now, I'm not saying it happened here or is happening here, but there are alarming paralells. You may be right, GWB has good intentions (such as they are) but it will be abused later.
Open Source has free and open standards inherently by its very nature.
Propietary TENDS to have closed standards by its very nature - it's just a logical procession by the coders of closed source unless forced to otherwise by outside circumstances.
Windows does not compete with Linux distros like Ubuntu (for example, as being the friendliest to newbs) in many areas.
The one inherent advantage Windows has is in the big name and industry niche applications written for it (Linux wins hands down on small size apps normal people use day to day - for instance k3b > nero). If the big name apps were ever to migrate their software, I could forsee big troubles for Microsoft. Today looking for tax software at Walmart, I saw a dozen different packages produced by 3 competing reputable companies (Intuit, H&R Block, forget the third). It would take only one of those companies to see Linux desktop as a great untapped market and transfer their product to it to start the slide in that area.
And with Walmart sucessfully selling low end Linux PCs, I could see that happening. When? I don't know. But Vista helped. I have it, I run it. It's okay on a powerful machine but it uses too many resources out of the box compared to Ubuntu. Thus people can get cheaper machines to check their email and surf with Ubuntu on it.
So many small businesses/people tend to stick to Windows because of just one or two apps as well. I know several business that just used Quickbooks and/or ebay's Blackthorne that would love to get off of windows if a decent alternative was present. For some, that alternative is available today (not true many years ago when websites were IE only). For others, they'll have to wait.
I don't know if it's getting smaller. The notebook market is increasing every year. Although I'm sure a lot of those are low-end laptops that trend won't hurt the high-end ones except marketshare % - Apple supplies about 15% of the notebooks sold in the US and their cheapest is over a grand.
It's not that I disagree with you. But the reason I don't buy multiple computers as you suggest is because of power consumption - even 24/7, laptops use much less than the traditional PC. Since I live in an area with one of the nation's highest electrical costs (close to 20 cents a kwh after all the surcharges tacked on) it is a longer term concern for me beyond just initial costs.
Once I'm done with the notebook, it will get passed on to others in the family and having 5 laptops with correctly programmed sleep/hibernate is much less of an electrical hit than 5 PCs where those are afterthoughts (at least years back).
It seems that in the military traditionally it was always looking for people fresh out of highschool for EMs and if you wanted to get anywhere in the military you had to be either college educated or, to really have a high end military career, start really young in something like the Valley Forge Military Academy and work from there.
In a traditional branch of the army/navy/airforce that is probably as it should be.
But in this area people have to be trained for years, still not know as much as the older hands in the private industry, and before they really know enough their enlistment would be over. Also, it would be unacceptable for an older IT person to join but take a pay cut to a Private's level or perhaps even a Lieutenant's -- so I imagine this branch would have to be somewhat different.
Is the military going to do to reach out toward the older folks who have extensive experience and knowledge outside the military?
There have been lots of laptops between $450-650 there lately.
The people who spend $2000 do so purely because they want to. I do too, because it's a usually a better machine and one that I use all the time and with the numerous storage options these days, most notably the external drives, - a Desktop replacement.
The same way a chef may buy a set of knives that cost several hundred dollars instead of a set that cost $50 - because it's worth it to them. The better knives may cut marginally better at first but the real secret is that they hold their edge a lot longer.
But yes, $2000 for an email appliance is overkill.
It's not in Apple's best interest to cripple all the software out there equally -- otherwise it means that they intentionally want to give the average Mac user gets a slow experience unless they are the 1 in 1000 using Apple only software.
There's too much OS competition to allow that. Even if Microsoft is doing a great job of crippling all software equally with Vista, including their own.
I would conjecture is that it's not a plan from top, it's just a result of there being a nice, proper way to do things and a quick n' dirty way and Apple engineers have the quick n' dirty way down in the few parts due to access to the code. That's all.
I hate the idea because the idea of property taxes are repugnant to me to begin with. Look, not all your property gets taxed either - would you like having to pay yearly for the stuff you own? I don't like the idea that the government so thoroughly owns everything that they can even take what you "own" for ransom and make you pay a yearly rent on it. It makes me sick to my stomach when I think about all the elderly people I knew who had to move out of the home they owned for XX years just because they didn't have the income to pay property/school taxes.
I much prefer an excise tax to pay for things.
However, another tax is not the answer here either. A massive bureacracy will have to be built up to keep track of these thing and calculate the taxes - I mean how do you even begin to calculate such a thing to meet the propose purpose of the summary? - which I assure you the major corporations will find the right accountants/lawyers to underpay while the small business owner suffers under more paperwork.
A bad, stupid idea. Only the government would love it where it decides it will tax others to fix the failings of its own original bad system it imposes on the rest of us.
Isn't that the draw only in idle mode? That, when active, it's slightly higher?
Still, when running I read the screen uses 2W instead of the typical notebook LCD 25-35W. And it's also readable in daylight (alas in B/W). The rest of the savings come from it being a relatively low performance CPU and the SSD harddrive.
Why can't the 2 grand Macbook Pros have this screen? Or any notebook for that matter? I read that the OLPC leader refuses to commercialize the patents, but that seems myopic on his part -- he could be doing something for the environment (less electrical use all around) while directly financing his project and making the economies of scale really work if everyone starts producing these for notebooks/desktops/TVs/etcetera.
A green PC would be okay but for many cases it saves more overall energy if people stick with their current PCs as long as they can instead of throwing them out after a few years. For the typical home user, strategies as setting them to go on standby or, better yet, hibernation after 1/2 hour helps a lot. Unless it's a server of a type, there is no need to keep any of them running 24/7. Try consolidating several servers onto one computer. These also can be set to go off and on at certain times in the BIOS. No need to keep a file or print server running in middle of the night in most cases. Most modern printers also connect to ethernet directly these days which can completely cut out a print server and some routers have harddrives that act as file servers that use much less energy than an entire computer.
Anyway, most home users will probably affect the environment more if they switch from incandescent bulbs to CFL bulbs. It's cheaper too, and you recoup your investment between 2 months to a year.
I can CHOOSE to use google to surf the net. There are many search engines. I can also use Tor to access Google anonymously if I'm paranoid.
My ISP choices are limited, and I can't change them as fast as a search engine either. Plus once I click onto a site, google pretty much loose track where I am, especially if I block ads.
ISP can know every place I go.
Moreover, I don't pay google to use their service. I do pay an ISP. They have an revenue stream.
The real target should have been DVD-R/DVD-RW. With computers are where you can be reasonably sure the monitors on them are HD quality. Being able to write ~50GB instead of 8GB would be the killer app.
VHS sucked. Rewinding/forwarding sucked on VHS (although DRM-crap on DVDs sure is trying to make it hard to sabotage a paying customer's experience with ads/fbi_warning/regioning). It was the same difference between cassette and CDs.
Notice that music didn't move to Music DVDs. It went straight to digital.
If HD-DVD were serious about winning the format wars, they should have tried getting a burner to the market as fast and cheaply as possible. Hi-end computers would have started shipping with them and people with money to burn would be buying HD-DVD that they could rip to their harddrive as well.
Even though I can get a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drive, there is absolutely no incentive for me. I'm sure DVDs are good enough for the vast majority of the audience as well for the time being.
If Blu-ray will win for any reason at all, it was because people would have bought PS3 anyway. Otherwise it would have stayed a niche product like Laserdisc.
And DVD would have kept it spot (is keeping its spot) and 5-10 years down the line some digital/internet solution would have been agreed upon by the major studios. Itunes is attempting it already.
I don't know if the equipment is much cheaper. A lot of precision scientific equipment comes from Germany, Japan and America still -- which China does not make (yet).
What scares people about China is not that it is getting ahead but that we're open to their citizens but they are not really open to us (for instance, no foreign companies can have more than 49% ownership in a domestic company over there).
In some ways, other than the cheap doo-dads, it seems like a one sided relationship and that in the long term only China will benefit from it.
In the end, all great countries have declined. This has happened to China as well in the past. From what I see in history, it's usually when a people, as a whole, want to live for today with no thought of tomorrow.
It can be achieved by living off the riches of their past instead of working/producing themselves which got their predecessors to where they were. It's seen in our media companies who can't bear the thought of letting go of old systems or even 80 year old cartoons (Steamboat Willy), songs, etcetera. It's seen in many rich families too - the 1st generation works hard and brings in the billions, the second generation generally doesn't have to work quite as hard but enough to keep the empire afloat, and the 3rd generation tends to squander the luxury they grew up with. You can see the same trend in successful immigrant families as well.
Nationwide -- just look at the deficits being run up this year (3 trillion dollar budget!) -- the politicians are directly mortgaging our and our children's future for some frivolous spending today -- and there will be consequences even though they seem distant -- extremely high taxes or high inflation wiping out the middle class.
America isn't falling behind because of China's size. Switzerland never really looked America enviously and wistfully wondered if only they had our size and population, what great things they could achieve technologically - they are the leaders in many technological areas of the world. And China only surpassed Germany as top exporter recently even though Germany has less than 1/15 the population.
Slashdot Mirror
nuts?
Doesn't that give their view a legitimacey they don't deserve? Wouldn't it be better to just resign yourself to the fact that certain people are just lost and that it's a waste of time trying to retrieve them?
As the old saying goes "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." It seems to me that people have had plenty of opportunity to get a hold of the water, especially in the age of the internet, but decided to go fro the Koolaid instead.
for a commercially viable car (which I assume they are going for), shouldn't the range be more like 300 miles? 200 seems a little low for some reason and the lowest range I got on any number of gasoline cars was maybe 260-280....
if you don't require privacy. Hopefully, they put in an extremely good encryption scheme with this and not one merely "good 'nough'. Still a good leap forward in many areas, our country is way behind as it is, and it has next to nothing to do with population density for the east and west coasts many areas of which has poor, overpriced service as well.
I often wondered what is stopping a mesh network from spreading. It would be basically the type which the OLPC has, except essentially a router with an antenna could be put on top of your house and connect with others of its type, from spreading. Of course, there would have to be a central hub connected into a fat pipe every so often so the signal doesn't hop around like mad.
A bit of a handholder, this book starts out basic but is really accesible for the beginning programmer (or someone just trying to wrap their head around lisp never having used a Functional language):
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/index.html
I know enough people who didn't switch from W2K to XP-Pro until XP SP2. May be the case here too. That, or when they get a new computer -- as it's not worth the standalone upgrade cost alone for most people.
CFLs for indoors (and certain inclosed fixtures outdoors) will continue to be the norm in energy efficiency. Metal Halide light outdoors (available at Lowes, but not Home Depot, last I checked) make good outdoor driveway lights and the light with much better color rendering than the old sodium light and excellent energy efficiency as well. It would be nice to get LEDS, no doubt, but the lumens output and price just ain't there yet. Hopefully these type of developments will change that.
While all the hoopla is around lighting these days, that only comprises about 10% of a houses electrical energy use these days, IIRC. So your max savings is 10% -- a good and worthy start but not enough. Many electrical devices are already operating at high efficiency (electrical motors for instance) so many appliances can't be improved. Other devices just need to be used less (washer, dishwasher) through conscientous use, and things like Computers just need to be set correctly for energy savings on the software level (or make sure things like Printers come with their own print server rather than have a computer act as one... sometimes it's good to get a router with a harddrive as well...
But all this doesn't change the fact that most houses themselves are built to use way too much energy. Until that is solved, the other problems are at least orders of a magnitude smaller:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
for under $200!
http://www.pricewatch.com/flash_card_memory/usb_32gb.htm
An increase of capacity at around roughly 1000x in a decade. I don't know if the trend will continue.... but if it does we'll be at 32TB in another decade.
I guess even those who don't use music players can be thankful for those devices as they, along with digital cameras, were really were the commercial products on the market that really sold and pushed the flash envelope. Sure there were PDAs/GPS units and other stuff, but in comparison they really niche markets that were happy with 256MB or whatever in most cases. Now things like the airbook (and all the SSD notebooks to follow, yes there were earlier ones I know), iPhone and the convergence of devices will further drive the market for more space.
Enabling Act?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933
And no, it was not the only time in history similiar measures were done, just the most famous.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment
And now, I'm not saying it happened here or is happening here, but there are alarming paralells. You may be right, GWB has good intentions (such as they are) but it will be abused later.
A hybrid "steam" engine may come back:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_stroke_engine
Open Source has free and open standards inherently by its very nature.
Propietary TENDS to have closed standards by its very nature - it's just a logical procession by the coders of closed source unless forced to otherwise by outside circumstances.
Windows does not compete with Linux distros like Ubuntu (for example, as being the friendliest to newbs) in many areas.
The one inherent advantage Windows has is in the big name and industry niche applications written for it (Linux wins hands down on small size apps normal people use day to day - for instance k3b > nero). If the big name apps were ever to migrate their software, I could forsee big troubles for Microsoft. Today looking for tax software at Walmart, I saw a dozen different packages produced by 3 competing reputable companies (Intuit, H&R Block, forget the third). It would take only one of those companies to see Linux desktop as a great untapped market and transfer their product to it to start the slide in that area.
And with Walmart sucessfully selling low end Linux PCs, I could see that happening. When? I don't know. But Vista helped. I have it, I run it. It's okay on a powerful machine but it uses too many resources out of the box compared to Ubuntu. Thus people can get cheaper machines to check their email and surf with Ubuntu on it.
So many small businesses/people tend to stick to Windows because of just one or two apps as well. I know several business that just used Quickbooks and/or ebay's Blackthorne that would love to get off of windows if a decent alternative was present. For some, that alternative is available today (not true many years ago when websites were IE only). For others, they'll have to wait.
I'm interested in not if, but how long.
What about Windows/Microsoft and Bill Gates?
Though in this case due to his Philanthopic efforts, Bill Gates is liked more and more while they hate MS as much as ever.
I thought requirements were relaxed in the mean time to attract recruits because of Iraq (and even the age requirement got greatly bumped up).
Hmmm....
I don't know if it's getting smaller. The notebook market is increasing every year. Although I'm sure a lot of those are low-end laptops that trend won't hurt the high-end ones except marketshare % - Apple supplies about 15% of the notebooks sold in the US and their cheapest is over a grand.
It's not that I disagree with you. But the reason I don't buy multiple computers as you suggest is because of power consumption - even 24/7, laptops use much less than the traditional PC. Since I live in an area with one of the nation's highest electrical costs (close to 20 cents a kwh after all the surcharges tacked on) it is a longer term concern for me beyond just initial costs.
Once I'm done with the notebook, it will get passed on to others in the family and having 5 laptops with correctly programmed sleep/hibernate is much less of an electrical hit than 5 PCs where those are afterthoughts (at least years back).
It seems that in the military traditionally it was always looking for people fresh out of highschool for EMs and if you wanted to get anywhere in the military you had to be either college educated or, to really have a high end military career, start really young in something like the Valley Forge Military Academy and work from there.
In a traditional branch of the army/navy/airforce that is probably as it should be.
But in this area people have to be trained for years, still not know as much as the older hands in the private industry, and before they really know enough their enlistment would be over. Also, it would be unacceptable for an older IT person to join but take a pay cut to a Private's level or perhaps even a Lieutenant's -- so I imagine this branch would have to be somewhat different.
Is the military going to do to reach out toward the older folks who have extensive experience and knowledge outside the military?
There have been lots of laptops between $450-650 there lately.
The people who spend $2000 do so purely because they want to. I do too, because it's a usually a better machine and one that I use all the time and with the numerous storage options these days, most notably the external drives, - a Desktop replacement.
The same way a chef may buy a set of knives that cost several hundred dollars instead of a set that cost $50 - because it's worth it to them. The better knives may cut marginally better at first but the real secret is that they hold their edge a lot longer.
But yes, $2000 for an email appliance is overkill.
It's not in Apple's best interest to cripple all the software out there equally -- otherwise it means that they intentionally want to give the average Mac user gets a slow experience unless they are the 1 in 1000 using Apple only software.
There's too much OS competition to allow that. Even if Microsoft is doing a great job of crippling all software equally with Vista, including their own.
I would conjecture is that it's not a plan from top, it's just a result of there being a nice, proper way to do things and a quick n' dirty way and Apple engineers have the quick n' dirty way down in the few parts due to access to the code. That's all.
I hate the idea because the idea of property taxes are repugnant to me to begin with. Look, not all your property gets taxed either - would you like having to pay yearly for the stuff you own? I don't like the idea that the government so thoroughly owns everything that they can even take what you "own" for ransom and make you pay a yearly rent on it. It makes me sick to my stomach when I think about all the elderly people I knew who had to move out of the home they owned for XX years just because they didn't have the income to pay property/school taxes.
I much prefer an excise tax to pay for things.
However, another tax is not the answer here either. A massive bureacracy will have to be built up to keep track of these thing and calculate the taxes - I mean how do you even begin to calculate such a thing to meet the propose purpose of the summary? - which I assure you the major corporations will find the right accountants/lawyers to underpay while the small business owner suffers under more paperwork.
A bad, stupid idea. Only the government would love it where it decides it will tax others to fix the failings of its own original bad system it imposes on the rest of us.
Isn't that the draw only in idle mode? That, when active, it's slightly higher?
Still, when running I read the screen uses 2W instead of the typical notebook LCD 25-35W. And it's also readable in daylight (alas in B/W). The rest of the savings come from it being a relatively low performance CPU and the SSD harddrive.
Why can't the 2 grand Macbook Pros have this screen? Or any notebook for that matter? I read that the OLPC leader refuses to commercialize the patents, but that seems myopic on his part -- he could be doing something for the environment (less electrical use all around) while directly financing his project and making the economies of scale really work if everyone starts producing these for notebooks/desktops/TVs/etcetera.
A green PC would be okay but for many cases it saves more overall energy if people stick with their current PCs as long as they can instead of throwing them out after a few years. For the typical home user, strategies as setting them to go on standby or, better yet, hibernation after 1/2 hour helps a lot. Unless it's a server of a type, there is no need to keep any of them running 24/7. Try consolidating several servers onto one computer. These also can be set to go off and on at certain times in the BIOS. No need to keep a file or print server running in middle of the night in most cases. Most modern printers also connect to ethernet directly these days which can completely cut out a print server and some routers have harddrives that act as file servers that use much less energy than an entire computer.
Anyway, most home users will probably affect the environment more if they switch from incandescent bulbs to CFL bulbs. It's cheaper too, and you recoup your investment between 2 months to a year.
You forgot:
Something that takes normal AA or AAA batteries.
Spare yourself from taking a million adapters that may or may not work, plus it's less devices to plug in once in the hotel.
I can CHOOSE to use google to surf the net. There are many search engines. I can also use Tor to access Google anonymously if I'm paranoid.
My ISP choices are limited, and I can't change them as fast as a search engine either. Plus once I click onto a site, google pretty much loose track where I am, especially if I block ads.
ISP can know every place I go.
Moreover, I don't pay google to use their service. I do pay an ISP. They have an revenue stream.
So I think your analogy is flawed.
That post was really tangent to the whole discussion.
The real target should have been DVD-R/DVD-RW. With computers are where you can be reasonably sure the monitors on them are HD quality. Being able to write ~50GB instead of 8GB would be the killer app.
VHS sucked. Rewinding/forwarding sucked on VHS (although DRM-crap on DVDs sure is trying to make it hard to sabotage a paying customer's experience with ads/fbi_warning/regioning). It was the same difference between cassette and CDs.
Notice that music didn't move to Music DVDs. It went straight to digital.
If HD-DVD were serious about winning the format wars, they should have tried getting a burner to the market as fast and cheaply as possible. Hi-end computers would have started shipping with them and people with money to burn would be buying HD-DVD that they could rip to their harddrive as well.
Even though I can get a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drive, there is absolutely no incentive for me. I'm sure DVDs are good enough for the vast majority of the audience as well for the time being.
If Blu-ray will win for any reason at all, it was because people would have bought PS3 anyway. Otherwise it would have stayed a niche product like Laserdisc.
And DVD would have kept it spot (is keeping its spot) and 5-10 years down the line some digital/internet solution would have been agreed upon by the major studios. Itunes is attempting it already.
Not that I disagree with you, that many countries in the West have allowed this to happen numerous times.
I don't know if the equipment is much cheaper. A lot of precision scientific equipment comes from Germany, Japan and America still -- which China does not make (yet).
What scares people about China is not that it is getting ahead but that we're open to their citizens but they are not really open to us (for instance, no foreign companies can have more than 49% ownership in a domestic company over there).
In some ways, other than the cheap doo-dads, it seems like a one sided relationship and that in the long term only China will benefit from it.
In the end, all great countries have declined. This has happened to China as well in the past. From what I see in history, it's usually when a people, as a whole, want to live for today with no thought of tomorrow.
It can be achieved by living off the riches of their past instead of working/producing themselves which got their predecessors to where they were. It's seen in our media companies who can't bear the thought of letting go of old systems or even 80 year old cartoons (Steamboat Willy), songs, etcetera. It's seen in many rich families too - the 1st generation works hard and brings in the billions, the second generation generally doesn't have to work quite as hard but enough to keep the empire afloat, and the 3rd generation tends to squander the luxury they grew up with. You can see the same trend in successful immigrant families as well.
Nationwide -- just look at the deficits being run up this year (3 trillion dollar budget!) -- the politicians are directly mortgaging our and our children's future for some frivolous spending today -- and there will be consequences even though they seem distant -- extremely high taxes or high inflation wiping out the middle class.
America isn't falling behind because of China's size. Switzerland never really looked America enviously and wistfully wondered if only they had our size and population, what great things they could achieve technologically - they are the leaders in many technological areas of the world. And China only surpassed Germany as top exporter recently even though Germany has less than 1/15 the population.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/11/23/wto.germany.role/index.html
It's generally in the attitude of the leaders and people as a whole. Not the size of the country.