KCSM-TV, a San Mateo, CA Community College District noncommercial station was fined $15,000 for airing an episode of the Emmy-award-winning Martin Scorsese-produced documentary "The Blues." In it, a hip-hop musician says "I'll buy some [expletive].. This is the kind of [expletive] I buy!"
A key issue is financing. Interest is not allowed in Islam under Sharia law, nor was it allowed for much of Christian history. During the Renaissance, Christians utilized Jews to provide loans (only made possible through the use of interest). Eventually Christians decided the interest thing was a good idea as well.
In Arab countries, financing continues to be challenging, however the field of Islamic economics has found ways to replace "interest" with "rent" and other concepts.
It sounds like it is more appropriate to say that Islamic Arab Al-Khwarizimi developed the positional notation of Hindu-Arabic numerals, including zero. That is the more powerful contribution.
Why would a chinese or indian buy an American product when they can buy something made in their own country by people making one tenth what our workers make?
The question is what do you mean by an "American Product." Is this one whose intellectual property was developed in the US, one where the business management of the company is in the US, or one where the manufacturing occurs in the US?
Obviously low-skill workers in the developing world will make less then low-skill workers in the U.S., and low-skill manufacturing will occur in the developing world - Until the point where robots can perform the low-skill jobs cheaper than the workers.
However the U.S. still leads the world in business management and R&D. We should expect that the developing world will continue to expand their capabilities in this area as well, but the economic expansion of the developing world will help to fuel greater global need for R&D and business management, so there should be plenty of jobs to go around.
As robots get better, there will be significant limitations to how low-skill a job would be affordably done by any human, regardless of location.
The empirical evidence is that high-skill jobs (such as computer programming) in India and China are demanding higher and higher salaries, and it won't be long before those differences equilabrate with the developed world.
Talk about "brick wall," ATSC (digital TV) has an emission mask that is 47dB down from your total average power once you 3 MHz from the channel center, then 110dB down 6 MHz from the channel center.
Who knows why the FCC really does things, but one can argue that broadcast bands should be limited in terms of modulation schemes because they serve the public at large over free airwaves, whereas cellular providers only serve their customers and often use purchased spectrum.
Of course it probably would be better to let the market decide both issues.
Another note, NPR in on a 10 year plan to take all of its stations digital using HD Radio. Currently over 50 NPR stations are multicasting using HD Radio today.
The FCC requires stations not to interfere with each other outside of their core broadcast areas. The article complains about an HD Radio station interfering with a non-HD Radio station in an area which is outside the non-HD Radio station's core broadcast area.
HD Radio is in demand by AM stations that wish to improve the fidelity of their signals. On the FM side, it is being used more for delivering multichannel (aka "multicast").
Besides which you're still studiously ignoring that economic prisoner's dilemma. Whatever you do there, you do here, just on a slight delay.
When has this occured? During the rise of South Korea from abosulte poverty? Taiwan? History has plenty of examples of developing countries moving forward starting with low paid labor and becoming high human capital countries.
Moreover, the US has done pretty well since China began its market reforms in the 1970's. Total compensation continues to rise, we have low unemployment, and all-time high home ownership.
Infact the only clear examples of countries experiencing significant periods of depressions in their economies come from 1) reductions in economic freedom and 2) inflationary monetary policy.
Just because someone is ignorant of the real world of devlopment economics doesn't mean they are racist. Just ignorant!
A lot of horrible things are done in this world because of ignorance of economics (Mao's starvation of 20 million Chinese due to forced communal farming comes to mind).
Anti-market means reductions in economic freedom. There have been plenty of research like this one, and the results are pretty clear: economic freedom combined with well-functioning institutions enhance economic growth.
It is easier for institutions to be well-functioning with economic freedom, as there is less opportunity for corruption in obtaining industrial licenses, etc.
In the west, we abolished child labor around 1900 when our economies had risen to the point where we could go beyond farming and we could afford to invest the human capital in teaching children more than basic skills. Most of the developing world has not reached this level (or even the GDP per capita of the US in 1900).
Research shows that economic growth is the most sure way to end child labor. Artificially trying to end child labor before an economy is ready is bound to fail. There are plenty of devloping countries with child labor laws on the books, yet children still work there illegally because poverty is high and it is better than them starving.
Labor regulations that are premature (given the existing economy in a country) will fail in large part as well as reduce economic growth by pushing production into the illegal informal sector and also encourage corruption.
Economic growth enhances wealth and allows for people to move up the chain of human capital to the point where saftey and obtaining skilled education can actually pay off.
Hundreds of thousands of engineers have been unemployed or underemployed (in menial jobs) as a result.
Electrical engineering is seeing real US job losses. The only thing to do it to get out of hardware, and get into software.
In a way, we knew this was going to happen. Moore's law means that hardware would eventually overpower software. Today, the challenge is writing good software to keep up with the hardware.
There are a few areas of US hardware innovation such as wireless, however. RF is tough stuff, it needs good minds.
Digital design is now second hand to figuring out device physics at small dimensions (not really electrical engineering at all, but more physics and material science). Digital design is highly automated.
"IT joblessness is falling at a faster pace than overall unemployment."
"The number of Americans employed in IT approached 3.38 million in the first quarter [2005]. IT employment levels haven't been this high in about three years...That's still about 82,000 fewer jobs than at the end of the second quarter of 2002, when the analysis of bureau data pegged IT employment at nearly 3.46 million. The second quarter of 2002 marked the apogee of IT employment."
"The two IT job categories to see the biggest percentage of year-to-year employment growth are database administrators and network and computer systems administrators, increasing at an annualized rate of 28% and 19%, respectively. The biggest drops came from network-systems and data-communications analysts, down 7%, and computer programmers, off 4% for the year."
"The number of unemployed Americans looking for IT jobs last quarter fell to 131,000 from 149,000 from the previous quarter. That's a marked improvement from the first quarter of 2004, when some 192,000 American IT professionals found themselves unemployed."
A Chinese person now makes $2.50 a day instead of $1, and has to do it in the inhuman working conditions...That's what you're so happy about?
Yes, because there are plenty of places on the planet (such as Sub-Saharan Africa) where large numbers of people making under $1 per day are rising up to $2.50 per day, because their governments are so anti-market that they can't be part of the offshoring revolution. Niger, for example, has tougher labor laws on firing people than the USA, despite people starving there.
I'd like to see that $2.50 go up over time, and no doubt it will as money continues to come from the U.S. to allow investing in more efficient factories in China and the workers there can acquire skills to make themselves more productive.
On the other hand, I'd hate to see that $2.50 go back down to under $1 or to $0/unemployment because of U.S. protectionism or Chinese return to over-regulation of markets.
Regarding "inhuman working conditions," perhaps you haven't spent all day toiling in waste-deep water in a rice paddy under the hot sun or in the freezing cold, but hundreds of millions of Chinese are voting with their feet and racing as fast as they can to leave the countryside to get into factories. There they can make enough to purchase things like bicycles they've never had before, and some even save up enough to allow their children to go to school.
Considering that if you HAVE no work to pay for things, at some point it breaks down and you end up with a depression in the economy
In a situation where products are becoming cheaper and profits are decreasing, you have to enhance productivity through technology. That is how you stay ahead.
Recessions are part of natural business cycless, but the truth is that real depressions (like the US Great Depression) are a combination of a recession with a massive macroeconomic mistake by the central bank (in the US, the Federal Reserve) not to expand the money supply to avoid deflation.
Ben Bernake, the current Fed Chairman, in a speech admitted that the Fed was ultimately responsible for the depth of the Great Depression.
That "slave labor" of globalization has brought 100 million people out of absolute poverty (making under $1 per day) in China, but perhaps you would prefer if they returned to absolute poverty.
It's helped IT workers the same that it helped Autoworkers 20 years ago
Indeed, autoworkers working in Toyota factories in the U.S. are far more productive than those in American-owned factories. Of course, this is because of restrictive union contracts.
On the other hand, in Japan it is mainly robots on the assembly line.
Not always. That's why there used to be a vicious cycle of depressions until the 1950s
The "vicious cycle of depressions" before 1950 was mainly a macroeconomic effect because of poor central bank management (as was Stagflation in the US during the 1970's).
Paul Krugman has been more right than wrong
Can you document this, or are you just making up this data?
Everyone I know in IT in DC is well-employed now! If you have a security clearance, you can go to jobs fairs where they serve caviar!
In DC, Monster.com lists 255 jobs for "web developer", 225 jobs for "systems administrator", 146 for "programmer", 100 for "tech support", 51 for "web designer".
Perhaps not up to "dot com" era, but then at that point totally unqualified people were being hired. Wrapping nail artists who spent two weeks with "Perl for Dummies" were doing production code work!
Outsourcing has failed to entirely destroy the economy, therefore outsourcing is good for the economy.
When you say "destroyed," what do you mean? US GDP growth continues to be higher than OECD averages, US unemployment remains below OECD averages, and with the exception of one recent quarter US average total worker real compensation has been rising (most of the increase going to health care, but since we aren't outsourcing that it remains expensive).
Compare with Germany, a country with a trade surplus, but much lower GDP growth than the US and much higher unemployment rates.
The more people on the planet involved in the global economy, the more we will ALL benefit. The global economy is not a zero-sum game.
This doesn't mean you can get complacent and stop learning and innovating. Just that everyone can learn, innovate, create, and all humanity can benefit and get wealthier.
Slashdot Mirror
Even a PBS station was fined by the FCC today.
KCSM-TV, a San Mateo, CA Community College District noncommercial station was fined $15,000 for airing an episode of the Emmy-award-winning Martin Scorsese-produced documentary "The Blues." In it, a hip-hop musician says "I'll buy some [expletive].. This is the kind of [expletive] I buy!"
For a station their size, $15,000 is a major hit!
A key issue is financing. Interest is not allowed in Islam under Sharia law, nor was it allowed for much of Christian history. During the Renaissance, Christians utilized Jews to provide loans (only made possible through the use of interest). Eventually Christians decided the interest thing was a good idea as well.
In Arab countries, financing continues to be challenging, however the field of Islamic economics has found ways to replace "interest" with "rent" and other concepts.
It sounds like it is more appropriate to say that Islamic Arab Al-Khwarizimi developed the positional notation of Hindu-Arabic numerals, including zero. That is the more powerful contribution.
Why would a chinese or indian buy an American product when they can buy something made in their own country by people making one tenth what our workers make?
The question is what do you mean by an "American Product." Is this one whose intellectual property was developed in the US, one where the business management of the company is in the US, or one where the manufacturing occurs in the US?
Obviously low-skill workers in the developing world will make less then low-skill workers in the U.S., and low-skill manufacturing will occur in the developing world - Until the point where robots can perform the low-skill jobs cheaper than the workers.
However the U.S. still leads the world in business management and R&D. We should expect that the developing world will continue to expand their capabilities in this area as well, but the economic expansion of the developing world will help to fuel greater global need for R&D and business management, so there should be plenty of jobs to go around.
As robots get better, there will be significant limitations to how low-skill a job would be affordably done by any human, regardless of location.
The empirical evidence is that high-skill jobs (such as computer programming) in India and China are demanding higher and higher salaries, and it won't be long before those differences equilabrate with the developed world.
Talk about "brick wall," ATSC (digital TV) has an emission mask that is 47dB down from your total average power once you 3 MHz from the channel center, then 110dB down 6 MHz from the channel center.
Who knows why the FCC really does things, but one can argue that broadcast bands should be limited in terms of modulation schemes because they serve the public at large over free airwaves, whereas cellular providers only serve their customers and often use purchased spectrum.
Of course it probably would be better to let the market decide both issues.
Another note, NPR in on a 10 year plan to take all of its stations digital using HD Radio. Currently over 50 NPR stations are multicasting using HD Radio today.
The FCC requires stations not to interfere with each other outside of their core broadcast areas. The article complains about an HD Radio station interfering with a non-HD Radio station in an area which is outside the non-HD Radio station's core broadcast area.
HD Radio aka IBOC was tested pretty extensively.
HD Radio is in demand by AM stations that wish to improve the fidelity of their signals. On the FM side, it is being used more for delivering multichannel (aka "multicast").
IBOC is a depricated term. It is now HD Radio
Your roommate considers this a "feature," not a "bug."
An economic analysis on the sale of human organs.
6000 Americans will die this year because of the lack of available organs. A (regulated) market could ensure this doesn't occur.
Besides which you're still studiously ignoring that economic prisoner's dilemma. Whatever you do there, you do here, just on a slight delay.
When has this occured? During the rise of South Korea from abosulte poverty? Taiwan? History has plenty of examples of developing countries moving forward starting with low paid labor and becoming high human capital countries.
Moreover, the US has done pretty well since China began its market reforms in the 1970's. Total compensation continues to rise, we have low unemployment, and all-time high home ownership.
Infact the only clear examples of countries experiencing significant periods of depressions in their economies come from 1) reductions in economic freedom and 2) inflationary monetary policy.
Frankly, I think that you are the real rascist.
Just because someone is ignorant of the real world of devlopment economics doesn't mean they are racist. Just ignorant!
A lot of horrible things are done in this world because of ignorance of economics (Mao's starvation of 20 million Chinese due to forced communal farming comes to mind).
Anti-market means reductions in economic freedom. There have been plenty of research like this one, and the results are pretty clear: economic freedom combined with well-functioning institutions enhance economic growth.
It is easier for institutions to be well-functioning with economic freedom, as there is less opportunity for corruption in obtaining industrial licenses, etc.
In the west, we abolished child labor around 1900 when our economies had risen to the point where we could go beyond farming and we could afford to invest the human capital in teaching children more than basic skills. Most of the developing world has not reached this level (or even the GDP per capita of the US in 1900).
Research shows that economic growth is the most sure way to end child labor. Artificially trying to end child labor before an economy is ready is bound to fail. There are plenty of devloping countries with child labor laws on the books, yet children still work there illegally because poverty is high and it is better than them starving.
Labor regulations that are premature (given the existing economy in a country) will fail in large part as well as reduce economic growth by pushing production into the illegal informal sector and also encourage corruption.
Economic growth enhances wealth and allows for people to move up the chain of human capital to the point where saftey and obtaining skilled education can actually pay off.
Hundreds of thousands of engineers have been unemployed or underemployed (in menial jobs) as a result.
Electrical engineering is seeing real US job losses. The only thing to do it to get out of hardware, and get into software.
In a way, we knew this was going to happen. Moore's law means that hardware would eventually overpower software. Today, the challenge is writing good software to keep up with the hardware.
There are a few areas of US hardware innovation such as wireless, however. RF is tough stuff, it needs good minds.
Digital design is now second hand to figuring out device physics at small dimensions (not really electrical engineering at all, but more physics and material science). Digital design is highly automated.
Article on BLS Data
"IT joblessness is falling at a faster pace than overall unemployment."
"The number of Americans employed in IT approached 3.38 million in the first quarter [2005]. IT employment levels haven't been this high in about three years...That's still about 82,000 fewer jobs than at the end of the second quarter of 2002, when the analysis of bureau data pegged IT employment at nearly 3.46 million. The second quarter of 2002 marked the apogee of IT employment."
"The two IT job categories to see the biggest percentage of year-to-year employment growth are database administrators and network and computer systems administrators, increasing at an annualized rate of 28% and 19%, respectively. The biggest drops came from network-systems and data-communications analysts, down 7%, and computer programmers, off 4% for the year."
"The number of unemployed Americans looking for IT jobs last quarter fell to 131,000 from 149,000 from the previous quarter. That's a marked improvement from the first quarter of 2004, when some 192,000 American IT professionals found themselves unemployed."
A Chinese person now makes $2.50 a day instead of $1, and has to do it in the inhuman working conditions...That's what you're so happy about?
Yes, because there are plenty of places on the planet (such as Sub-Saharan Africa) where large numbers of people making under $1 per day are rising up to $2.50 per day, because their governments are so anti-market that they can't be part of the offshoring revolution. Niger, for example, has tougher labor laws on firing people than the USA, despite people starving there.
I'd like to see that $2.50 go up over time, and no doubt it will as money continues to come from the U.S. to allow investing in more efficient factories in China and the workers there can acquire skills to make themselves more productive.
On the other hand, I'd hate to see that $2.50 go back down to under $1 or to $0/unemployment because of U.S. protectionism or Chinese return to over-regulation of markets.
Regarding "inhuman working conditions," perhaps you haven't spent all day toiling in waste-deep water in a rice paddy under the hot sun or in the freezing cold, but hundreds of millions of Chinese are voting with their feet and racing as fast as they can to leave the countryside to get into factories. There they can make enough to purchase things like bicycles they've never had before, and some even save up enough to allow their children to go to school.
Considering that if you HAVE no work to pay for things, at some point it breaks down and you end up with a depression in the economy
In a situation where products are becoming cheaper and profits are decreasing, you have to enhance productivity through technology. That is how you stay ahead.
Recessions are part of natural business cycless, but the truth is that real depressions (like the US Great Depression) are a combination of a recession with a massive macroeconomic mistake by the central bank (in the US, the Federal Reserve) not to expand the money supply to avoid deflation.
Ben Bernake, the current Fed Chairman, in a speech admitted that the Fed was ultimately responsible for the depth of the Great Depression.
That "slave labor" of globalization has brought 100 million people out of absolute poverty (making under $1 per day) in China, but perhaps you would prefer if they returned to absolute poverty.
It's helped IT workers the same that it helped Autoworkers 20 years ago
Indeed, autoworkers working in Toyota factories in the U.S. are far more productive than those in American-owned factories. Of course, this is because of restrictive union contracts.
On the other hand, in Japan it is mainly robots on the assembly line.
Not always. That's why there used to be a vicious cycle of depressions until the 1950s
The "vicious cycle of depressions" before 1950 was mainly a macroeconomic effect because of poor central bank management (as was Stagflation in the US during the 1970's).
Paul Krugman has been more right than wrong
Can you document this, or are you just making up this data?
Everyone I know in IT in DC is well-employed now! If you have a security clearance, you can go to jobs fairs where they serve caviar!
In DC, Monster.com lists 255 jobs for "web developer", 225 jobs for "systems administrator", 146 for "programmer", 100 for "tech support", 51 for "web designer".
Perhaps not up to "dot com" era, but then at that point totally unqualified people were being hired. Wrapping nail artists who spent two weeks with "Perl for Dummies" were doing production code work!
Outsourcing has failed to entirely destroy the economy, therefore outsourcing is good for the economy.
When you say "destroyed," what do you mean? US GDP growth continues to be higher than OECD averages, US unemployment remains below OECD averages, and with the exception of one recent quarter US average total worker real compensation has been rising (most of the increase going to health care, but since we aren't outsourcing that it remains expensive).
Compare with Germany, a country with a trade surplus, but much lower GDP growth than the US and much higher unemployment rates.
The more people on the planet involved in the global economy, the more we will ALL benefit. The global economy is not a zero-sum game.
This doesn't mean you can get complacent and stop learning and innovating. Just that everyone can learn, innovate, create, and all humanity can benefit and get wealthier.