You also have to keep in mind that Baghdad and Basrah are as different as Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. There are plenty of very "emancipated" women in Baghdad, but fewer out in the country.
More precisely, Baghdad itself was the center of global scholarship. From About.Com:
In about 762 A.D., the Abbasid dynasty took over rule of the vast Muslim world and moved the capital to the newly-founded city of Baghdad. Over the next five centuries, the city would become the world's center of education and culture. This period of glory has become known as the "Golden Age" of Islamic civilization, when scholars of the Muslim world made important contributions in both the sciences and humanities: medicine, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, literature, and more. Under Abbasid rule, Baghdad became a city of museums, hospitals, libraries, and mosques.
Most of the famous Muslim scholars from the 9th to 13th centuries had their educational roots in Baghdad. One of the most famous centers of learning was Bayt al-Hikmah (the House of Wisdom), which attracted scholars from all over the world, from many cultures and religions. Here, teachers and students worked together to translate Greek manuscripts, preserving them for all time. They studied the works of Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Euclid, and Pythagoras. The House of Wisdom was home to, among others, the most famous mathematician of the time: Al-Khawarizmi, the "father" of algebra (which is named after his book "Kitab al-Jabr").
While Europe festered in the Dark Ages, Baghdad was thus at the heart of a vibrant and diverse civilization. It was known as the world's richest and most intellectual city of the time, and was second in size only to Constantinople.
After 500 years of rule, however, the Abbasid dynasty slowly began to lose its vitality and relevance over the vast Muslim world. The reasons were partly natural (vast flooding and fires), and partly human-made (rivalry between Shia and Sunni Muslims, internal security problems).
The city of Baghdad was finally trashed by the Mongols in 1258 A.D., effectively ending the era of the Abbasids. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers reportedly ran red, with the blood of thousands of scholars (a reported 100,000 of Baghdad's million residents were massacred). Many of the libraries, irrigation canals, and great historical treasures were looted and forever ruined. The city began a long period of decline, and became host to numerous wars and battles that continue to this day.
I organized a chat between the College Perk coffeehouse near the University of Maryland and the Baghdad Internet Cafe. The Cafe has about 50 computers, and during the chat they had six people in the Cafe for an Internet training course.
They reported being able to buy cheap computers ("200 USD FOR P4"), but power was an issue - it goes down a lot - fortunately the Cafe has a generator.
I plan to do another chat with them in February.
It is important to keep in mind that during the mid-70's, Baghdad was practially a "European" city in terms of infrastructure, based on high oil prices and Saddam's desire to create a showplace for the glory of his regime. Things didn't really go downhill structurally there until the war with Iran, then Gulf War I, the sacntions, etc.
Also, a lot of businesses now depend on email for communications to and from Iraq, as the phone lines are often less than dependable.
The Baghadad Internet Cafe opened August 1. It is my feeling that it would not have been possible to have an open public Internet chat like the one we had before operation Iraqi Freedom without some kind of government political official there to monitor things. I'll have to ask next time.
Right -.NET actually turned into something, a managed common language runtime on Wintel PCs, combined with a massive common class libary, and a move away from crazy DCOM calls to Web Services, the main value of which is that even dumb people can now do interproccess communication over the network.
Digital recording equipment in use today just doesn't have a high enough sample rate or wide enough bandwidth analog-digital conversion to compete with high-end analog recording gear.
This is totally wrong. Digital systems do have high enough sampling rates and wide enough A/D bandwidth for 100% perfect reproduction of analog audio waveforms.
There are plenty of 96 kHz sampling systems, which will perfectly reproduce sound up to 48 kHz, way beyond any possible human hearing. These systems often have 24-bit A/D, giving a potential 144dB of dynamic range, which matches that of the best possible microphones. Many digital systems have dynamic ranges beyond which any analog recorder could possibly have. THD of these systems are as low as 0.002%, with flat frequency responses that change less than 0.1 dB over at least 20 kHz.
Now certainly there is a difference in the distortion of analog and digital systems. Analog systems distort more, and some people like that sound. If you identify the distortion transfer function, it can be replicated in digital signal processing.
Couldn't Google basically launch a denial-of-service attack of unimaginable proportions by putting a link to a Web site on the top of every Google search page?
BTW, if the Dollar massively devalues, and the world banking system can't handle it, there will be no productivity because there will be a global depression. We've already had one of these, but the next one will be worse because of global fincancial interconnections.
The Euro won't survive a severe Dollar slide, as European countries need an American export market. Asia needs is even worse. If the American market goes under, they will as well.
Dollar devaluation is not inevitable. Clearly we could take the economy into a depression and deflate the Dollar...
So the question is how to minimize devaluation while not damaging the economy (much).
First, Bush needs to get up and say "We're dedicated to a strong dollar policy, and we're doing this..." which is the "PR"/psychology part of the strong dollar effort.
Secondly, something real has to be done. Like significant budget cuts or tax increases to decrease the deficit. Even small efforts along these lines would help keep the dollar afloat, like targetting next year's deficit to be less than this year's.
I agree that there will be a period of time of gradual change, but again look at some of the South American and Asian currency devaluations over the last 30 years. It starts slow, but is a landslide at the end as people rapidly move money from one currency to another trying to find a safe harbor.
I do suppose everyone could buy up gold to replace the dollar as a reserve, but it would be so much as to really drive up the price of gold. Not being a real economist, I can't imagine what that would do.
I think the trade imbalance will work itself out as India and China grow their economy. But, Social Security and Medicare will have to be changed drastically:
Fund officials warned that the long-term fiscal outlook was far grimmer, predicting that underfinancing of Social Security and Medicare would lead to shortages as high as $47 trillion over the next several decades, or nearly 500 percent of the current gross domestic product in the coming decades.
The dollar devalues, reducing real US investment gains for foreigners. Foreigners sell off US investments (such as stocks). They get dollars in return, increasing the offshore supply of dollars, driving down the value of the dollar. Chain reaction. See several South American countries for an example of what this is. Only now it could be the US.
But the dollar is the main reserve currency of banks globally. This keeps the dollar artificially stabilized, until a "tipping point" is reached. No there isn't that much gold out there left in reserve in comparison. Or Euros, especially after the US economy goes under. The extreme devaluation of the dollar would destroy the global banking system.
We should not be screwing around with dollar devaluation! The world depends on us.
And, oh yeah, did I mention those guys who lived in this backwater town in Michigan (where the most exciting event is the yearly tulip festival), and they single-handedly created an open-source web news community empire?
I know some people who founded an ISP, suriving on Ramen noodles at first, but later became millionaires, helping to found a good portion of an entire industry...
I know a maid who came to this country from El Salvador, saved up enough to start a restaurant, and now has a chain of pupuserias...
I founded my own company, and while it didn't make it in the long run, it gave me enough experience to get an engineering management position.
1) If jobs are done by people for less money, thep products will become cheaper for us, lowering our cost of living. This is pretty evident in most consumer electronics and clothing today.
2) If jobs are done by foreign workers and it makes them richer, they will buy more products, including from the US. For example, US exports to China are way up, including server sales.
Hundreds of millions of people in India and China have been lifted out of absolute poverty over the last 20 years due to freer markets, and developing countries around the world are raising their minimum wage as their economies grow (Beijing and Mexico just have, for instance).
3) There are particular industries that are tough for developing countries to get into without higher education systems, including research and development of technology and bioscience. This is definately being done in India and China, but not to the extent of lower skill manufacturing, call centers, and "simple coding".
4) The US GDP has been moving primarilly to services over the last 50 years. A lot of these are difficult to offshore growth markets, such as health care, business management, and MarCom.
If they had to be paid US minimum wage, they would be out of a job.
Please read The Noble Feat of Nike, by Johan Norberg, where he visits a Nike factory in Vietnam and talks with the workers about why they like working for them.
The main value-add of software technology is in the business process analysis done before any code is written. That is, knowing how to use technology to achieve business results and efficiency.
Once you have planned a technological transition, the actual coding is often not that tough. Some experience is needed to do it well, non-buggy, and secure. But there isn't a need in most business software development to know some super-efficient algorithm.
That said, there are some kinds of software (scientific, massive modeling, high-performance servers, etc.) where you do need to really be a "computer scientist" and not a "coder." These are rare, especially in the age of nearly limitless amounts of CPU, RAM, and HD.
I'm sure there are all kinds of skills needed in textile mills, but there is a big difference between a few months of on-the-job training and, for instance, knowing organic chemistry.
The textile quotas kept a false sense of security for these jobs. They should have left the country about 30 years ago. It put off the inevitable, leaving a population ill-prepared for the modern American information, business, and service economy.
Of course, most of the textile mills required no real skills (by which, I define the need of several years of study).
Despite the serious trade barriers to textiles, the mills are still closing in North Carolina. Perhaps if they didn't spend so many years depending on the textile quotas to keep them afloat, they could have gone to college so they could work in the massive biotech campuses of Research Triangle.
All of my "middle class" relatives in El Salvador have at least one live-in maid, some have several as well as a driver and gardener. Interestingly enough, some of my relatives there work in the computer industry.
What I am saying is that without arms and oil exports, the USSR would have collapsed during the 70's. You are correct that the country was able to industrialize to produce some goods without exporting them, but that those goods did not lead to a sustainable economy. Unlike export-lead industrializations like the "Asian Tigers."
Why does the US government ever have to pay off all of the debt? GDP also rises exponentially, federal income rises exponentially, and debt payments (bonds) are paid on time.
I think you miss the point. The vast majority of the poor in China are independent farmers. And it sucks, but less than it did when the Chinese government made selling your rice in markets illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
You also have to keep in mind that Baghdad and Basrah are as different as Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. There are plenty of very "emancipated" women in Baghdad, but fewer out in the country.
More precisely, Baghdad itself was the center of global scholarship. From About.Com:
In about 762 A.D., the Abbasid dynasty took over rule of the vast Muslim world and moved the capital to the newly-founded city of Baghdad. Over the next five centuries, the city would become the world's center of education and culture. This period of glory has become known as the "Golden Age" of Islamic civilization, when scholars of the Muslim world made important contributions in both the sciences and humanities: medicine, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, literature, and more. Under Abbasid rule, Baghdad became a city of museums, hospitals, libraries, and mosques.
Most of the famous Muslim scholars from the 9th to 13th centuries had their educational roots in Baghdad. One of the most famous centers of learning was Bayt al-Hikmah (the House of Wisdom), which attracted scholars from all over the world, from many cultures and religions. Here, teachers and students worked together to translate Greek manuscripts, preserving them for all time. They studied the works of Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Euclid, and Pythagoras. The House of Wisdom was home to, among others, the most famous mathematician of the time: Al-Khawarizmi, the "father" of algebra (which is named after his book "Kitab al-Jabr").
While Europe festered in the Dark Ages, Baghdad was thus at the heart of a vibrant and diverse civilization. It was known as the world's richest and most intellectual city of the time, and was second in size only to Constantinople.
After 500 years of rule, however, the Abbasid dynasty slowly began to lose its vitality and relevance over the vast Muslim world. The reasons were partly natural (vast flooding and fires), and partly human-made (rivalry between Shia and Sunni Muslims, internal security problems).
The city of Baghdad was finally trashed by the Mongols in 1258 A.D., effectively ending the era of the Abbasids. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers reportedly ran red, with the blood of thousands of scholars (a reported 100,000 of Baghdad's million residents were massacred). Many of the libraries, irrigation canals, and great historical treasures were looted and forever ruined. The city began a long period of decline, and became host to numerous wars and battles that continue to this day.
I organized a chat between the College Perk coffeehouse near the University of Maryland and the Baghdad Internet Cafe. The Cafe has about 50 computers, and during the chat they had six people in the Cafe for an Internet training course.
They reported being able to buy cheap computers ("200 USD FOR P4"), but power was an issue - it goes down a lot - fortunately the Cafe has a generator.
I plan to do another chat with them in February.
It is important to keep in mind that during the mid-70's, Baghdad was practially a "European" city in terms of infrastructure, based on high oil prices and Saddam's desire to create a showplace for the glory of his regime. Things didn't really go downhill structurally there until the war with Iran, then Gulf War I, the sacntions, etc.
Also, a lot of businesses now depend on email for communications to and from Iraq, as the phone lines are often less than dependable.
The Baghadad Internet Cafe opened August 1. It is my feeling that it would not have been possible to have an open public Internet chat like the one we had before operation Iraqi Freedom without some kind of government political official there to monitor things. I'll have to ask next time.
When I was chatting with the Baghdad Internet Cafe, there was at least one woman present at the Cafe who was a "student in computer college."
Right - .NET actually turned into something, a managed common language runtime on Wintel PCs, combined with a massive common class libary, and a move away from crazy DCOM calls to Web Services, the main value of which is that even dumb people can now do interproccess communication over the network.
Here is a Linux-powered satellite receiver appliance. I actually use these.
Digital recording equipment in use today just doesn't have a high enough sample rate or wide enough bandwidth analog-digital conversion to compete with high-end analog recording gear.
This is totally wrong. Digital systems do have high enough sampling rates and wide enough A/D bandwidth for 100% perfect reproduction of analog audio waveforms.
There are plenty of 96 kHz sampling systems, which will perfectly reproduce sound up to 48 kHz, way beyond any possible human hearing. These systems often have 24-bit A/D, giving a potential 144dB of dynamic range, which matches that of the best possible microphones. Many digital systems have dynamic ranges beyond which any analog recorder could possibly have. THD of these systems are as low as 0.002%, with flat frequency responses that change less than 0.1 dB over at least 20 kHz.
For example, the Audiosport Quattro is about $250.
Now certainly there is a difference in the distortion of analog and digital systems. Analog systems distort more, and some people like that sound. If you identify the distortion transfer function, it can be replicated in digital signal processing.
Couldn't Google basically launch a denial-of-service attack of unimaginable proportions by putting a link to a Web site on the top of every Google search page?
BTW, if the Dollar massively devalues, and the world banking system can't handle it, there will be no productivity because there will be a global depression. We've already had one of these, but the next one will be worse because of global fincancial interconnections.
The Euro won't survive a severe Dollar slide, as European countries need an American export market. Asia needs is even worse. If the American market goes under, they will as well.
Dollar devaluation is not inevitable. Clearly we could take the economy into a depression and deflate the Dollar...
So the question is how to minimize devaluation while not damaging the economy (much).
First, Bush needs to get up and say "We're dedicated to a strong dollar policy, and we're doing this..." which is the "PR"/psychology part of the strong dollar effort.
Secondly, something real has to be done. Like significant budget cuts or tax increases to decrease the deficit. Even small efforts along these lines would help keep the dollar afloat, like targetting next year's deficit to be less than this year's.
I agree that there will be a period of time of gradual change, but again look at some of the South American and Asian currency devaluations over the last 30 years. It starts slow, but is a landslide at the end as people rapidly move money from one currency to another trying to find a safe harbor.
I do suppose everyone could buy up gold to replace the dollar as a reserve, but it would be so much as to really drive up the price of gold. Not being a real economist, I can't imagine what that would do.
On the other hand, architectural deconstruction has lead to some wild buildings, like Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao.
I think the trade imbalance will work itself out as India and China grow their economy. But, Social Security and Medicare will have to be changed drastically:
Fund officials warned that the long-term fiscal outlook was far grimmer, predicting that underfinancing of Social Security and Medicare would lead to shortages as high as $47 trillion over the next several decades, or nearly 500 percent of the current gross domestic product in the coming decades.
The dollar devalues, reducing real US investment gains for foreigners. Foreigners sell off US investments (such as stocks). They get dollars in return, increasing the offshore supply of dollars, driving down the value of the dollar. Chain reaction. See several South American countries for an example of what this is. Only now it could be the US.
But the dollar is the main reserve currency of banks globally. This keeps the dollar artificially stabilized, until a "tipping point" is reached. No there isn't that much gold out there left in reserve in comparison. Or Euros, especially after the US economy goes under. The extreme devaluation of the dollar would destroy the global banking system.
We should not be screwing around with dollar devaluation! The world depends on us.
And, oh yeah, did I mention those guys who lived in this backwater town in Michigan (where the most exciting event is the yearly tulip festival), and they single-handedly created an open-source web news community empire?
I know some people who founded an ISP, suriving on Ramen noodles at first, but later became millionaires, helping to found a good portion of an entire industry...
I know a maid who came to this country from El Salvador, saved up enough to start a restaurant, and now has a chain of pupuserias...
I founded my own company, and while it didn't make it in the long run, it gave me enough experience to get an engineering management position.
The global economy raises US standard of living.
Or would you prefer to go back to 1950, when 50% of Americans did not have flush toilets.
You like your computer? Microwave over? CD Player? The affordability of it all is based on foreign trade.
The last time we tried a serious attempt to slow global trade, it was a contributor to the Great Depression.
1) If jobs are done by people for less money, thep products will become cheaper for us, lowering our cost of living. This is pretty evident in most consumer electronics and clothing today.
2) If jobs are done by foreign workers and it makes them richer, they will buy more products, including from the US. For example, US exports to China are way up, including server sales.
Hundreds of millions of people in India and China have been lifted out of absolute poverty over the last 20 years due to freer markets, and developing countries around the world are raising their minimum wage as their economies grow (Beijing and Mexico just have, for instance).
3) There are particular industries that are tough for developing countries to get into without higher education systems, including research and development of technology and bioscience. This is definately being done in India and China, but not to the extent of lower skill manufacturing, call centers, and "simple coding".
4) The US GDP has been moving primarilly to services over the last 50 years. A lot of these are difficult to offshore growth markets, such as health care, business management, and MarCom.
If they had to be paid US minimum wage, they would be out of a job.
Please read The Noble Feat of Nike, by Johan Norberg, where he visits a Nike factory in Vietnam and talks with the workers about why they like working for them.
The main value-add of software technology is in the business process analysis done before any code is written. That is, knowing how to use technology to achieve business results and efficiency.
Once you have planned a technological transition, the actual coding is often not that tough. Some experience is needed to do it well, non-buggy, and secure. But there isn't a need in most business software development to know some super-efficient algorithm.
That said, there are some kinds of software (scientific, massive modeling, high-performance servers, etc.) where you do need to really be a "computer scientist" and not a "coder." These are rare, especially in the age of nearly limitless amounts of CPU, RAM, and HD.
I'm sure there are all kinds of skills needed in textile mills, but there is a big difference between a few months of on-the-job training and, for instance, knowing organic chemistry.
The textile quotas kept a false sense of security for these jobs. They should have left the country about 30 years ago. It put off the inevitable, leaving a population ill-prepared for the modern American information, business, and service economy.
Yes, they are hiring, here is a company my cousin runs, it is a Central American tech employment site.
Of course, most of the textile mills required no real skills (by which, I define the need of several years of study).
Despite the serious trade barriers to textiles, the mills are still closing in North Carolina. Perhaps if they didn't spend so many years depending on the textile quotas to keep them afloat, they could have gone to college so they could work in the massive biotech campuses of Research Triangle.
All of my "middle class" relatives in El Salvador have at least one live-in maid, some have several as well as a driver and gardener. Interestingly enough, some of my relatives there work in the computer industry.
What I am saying is that without arms and oil exports, the USSR would have collapsed during the 70's. You are correct that the country was able to industrialize to produce some goods without exporting them, but that those goods did not lead to a sustainable economy. Unlike export-lead industrializations like the "Asian Tigers."
Why does the US government ever have to pay off all of the debt? GDP also rises exponentially, federal income rises exponentially, and debt payments (bonds) are paid on time.
I think you miss the point. The vast majority of the poor in China are independent farmers. And it sucks, but less than it did when the Chinese government made selling your rice in markets illegal.