In a society where wealth generation and investment is paltry and risky, you need more kids to support you in your old age. So you have more children. Population increase. The kids can actually end up individually poorer because you split your limited land between them when you die.
In an agricultural society, you can use children as "slave labor." Even in the US, farm children do not have much child labor protection. So you have more children. Population inctease.
In a society where investment in education is not paid back by a booming technological economy, it is not worth the effort to make significant investments in children and their education. If you could benefit from investing in a child, you may only be able to afford one. Population decrease.
The most toxic export from the "Western World" to Asia was communism/socialism.
It killed tens of millions in China, and hobbled both China and India until about ten years ago when people there woke up to economic reality and began free market reforms.
In 40 years, China and India will be as rich as South Korea does today.
Multicasting, as a standard service, has not been seriously brought into the Internet because of the difficulty of billing between AS's. There has never been an effective agreement for this (unlike unicast flows). You can imagine the trouble of not knowing how many packets you send out of your network for each one that comes in. Plus ISPs did not want to canabalize their existing unicast customers who might spend less through multicasting.
Moreover, multicast routing has never reached a level of technical competancy, in part because of the billing problem. No one ever really pushed Cisco to make things like PIM-Sparse Mode work properly, and as of 1-2 years ago, it still barely worked.
This brings us to legacy equipment, like dial-in routers and DSLAMs that are not multicast enabled. To turn on mulitcast everywhere you would need to make it a useful service would require something aking to IPV6 switchover (which also, uh, isn't happening fast).
Multicast is alive an well in intra-AS niches like satellite and DTV IP datacasting, as well as special large Internet customers on specific backbones.
US Federal receipts have been rising at a fairly close to exponential rate of a power of ten every 20 years from about 1950 until today. The total debt has been tracking Federal receipts very well for a long period of time, with debt 2-3 times yearly receipts.
Federal receipts have been slightly down since 2000, but I suspect they will rise shortly.
The big economic threat to the US Federal financing is Social Security pension system. But I suspect that will be restructured shortly once people realize how horrible it is going to get.
In the 70's and 80's, 80% of the USSR's hard-currency earnings came from oil exports. The Ruble was worthless outside the USSR, so it depended on oil trade to afford to import grain. In the 80's, the USSR imported nearly 40 million tons of grain a year from non-communist countries, including a lot from the US.
The USSR definately industrialized, which is clearly what also happened in South Korea and the other Asian Tigers. The difference is that the Asian Tigers industrialized to produce manufactured products in demand by the rest of the world, such as radios, cars, tractors, etc.
The USSR, on the other hand, did not manufacture much for export, except weapons. The USSR did have an excellent industrial capability to produce weapons both small (AK-47) and large (nuclear submarines, ICBMs). What they couldn't do is manufacture consumer products that would sell to export markets. The consumer exports of the USSR were oil, fur, and vodka.
The reason is clear, isolated from market forces, how could Soviet factories get market messages to make high-quality manufactured products for consumers and businesses? On the other hand, if you angered the military with a sub-standard product, you would end up in Siberia. So the weapons were top-notch. And the Russians knew good Vodka. Automobiles, on the other hand, they didn't do too well at.
I believe the Dollar will encounter some mild devaluation over the next 12 months, but not as much as you might think. Increasing returns on the stock market will return Dollars from overseas back to the US as the economy strengthens, reducing the oversupply of foreign Dollars.
A mild devaluation will actually help the US trade deficit by making US products slightly more competitive in pricing to foreign products. But I don't think Dollar devaluation is a good idea for the following reason:
You are right, if the Dollar massively devalues, that is the end of all world economics, because the Dollar is the reserve currency of the planet. Every central and private bank will fail.
How about Nazi Germany from a poor country to somewhat wealthy one?
Nazi Germany did have extensive trade with European countries, and even neutral countries during WWII, including Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, and Argentina.
While Germany was in an economic crisis after WWI, and there was poverty, it had far more infrastructure intact than most "developing" poor countries. But it is true that the Nazis also did a lot of plundering of countries they conquered.
The USSR also did a great deal of trade. As early as the 1920's, the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade was set up. There was an Anglo-Soviet trade treaty, followed by one with Germany. During the 1930's, the USSR exported massive amounts of grain to pay for British and American machinery imports. After WWII, the USSR set up Soviet-owned and joint-stock companies in Eastern Europe and China. In 1949, Comecon, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance was founded, which tied the economies of Eastern Europe to that of the USSR, creating a trading bloc that endured until the fall of the Berlin Wall. The USSR also depended on oil exports during the 70's and 80's for hard currency.
But keep in mind that USSR GDP per capita reached one fourth of that of South Korea and Taiwan today, and a sixth of Singapore or Hong Kong today.
USA has massive trade deficits with a lot of these countries so one would expect them to get rich. I wonder what will happen when USA can't afford to do that.
This is an issue, with regard to the value of the Dollar, but I believe it will solve itself as other developed countries move from net exporters to net importers. Already Britain has a $74 billion trade deficit, Spain has a $50 billion trade deficit, and Austrailia has a $14 billion trade deficit.
Also as "developing" countries become more developed, we can expect that their trade surplus will decrease as wages and costs rise.
The key to Federal Debt is whether you can afford to make the payments on it (the same situation you have with your mortgage). So far, the US has never missed a payment. US Federal Debt as a percentage of GDP was near 100% during WWII, dropped to 25% in 1975, rose to a high of 50% in 1993, and is now at 35% of GDP.
As a country's GDP grows, the country can afford more debt. There certainly isn't anything wrong with paying it down when possible, though.
The recently declassified info on the US considering takeover of oil installations I believe refers to a time shortly after their nationalization by local totalitarian dictatorships, which in the case of Saudi Arabia, are still in power today. It had nothing to do with terrorism.
Saudi's oil riches from the nationalized companies firmed up the grip on power by the family of dictators, and the wealth helped to fuel the creation of terorism (in the same way Irish Americans fueled the IRA with money).
Saudi citizens saw an incredible increase in wealth (arguably good?) but the oil riches have stagnated its society and is keeping it from growing, with recent GDP growth actually negative (arguably bad?) along with an uprise in Wahhabist Islam and militant jihadism (definately bad).
The US, of course, in the end did not try to de-nationalize the oil installations. I wonder how the world would be different if the US did.
Maybe the people in the village built the Sony CD player at the local factory, to earn better wages than subsistance agriculture.
The mariachis, of course, should be allowed into the US as guest workers to make more money (I had mariachis at my wedding). Why should they play for a few pesos when they can make a few hundred dollars? GW Bush is moving forward with a new guest worker program for Mexico right now.
During the 20th Century, no country has gone from poor to rich without substantial foreign trade. Key examples include Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea. I'm sure the 21st Century will see the end of poverty in India and China as well.
The rich get richer, but the historical trend of free market economics is that the poor get richer as well. Increasing free trade and free movement of labor while reducing government subsidies is the way to go.
India is a democracy. What has happened over the last 20 years is that socialism is being defeated at the ballot box. During that time hundreds of millions of Indians have left abject poverty.
You can read about the booming Indian middle-class. There are now 500 "middle-class" Indians, with at least 30 million who would pass for middle-class in the US.
The truth is the same thing is happening in China without much democracy...yet I believe there will be a tipping point of political revolution there soon.
You are wrong. People working in Maquiladoras are making more money than they were in agriculture.
In Mexico, however, you have the problem of 1) the Peso crisis messed up the economy for many years, only now has it recovered and 2) lots of Mexicans in the agricultural sector are losing their jobs because of imports of subsidized US corn (which most people would call "socialism").
Foreign workers of American countries typically make much more than any local jobs pay. You may not believe it, but hundreds of millions of people have been brought out of absolute poverty in India and China, to a large extent because of global trade.
Nuclear weapons (per se) are very old techology. Several countries developed them in the 40's and 50's pretty much without electronic computers.
With regards to nuclear war being "against the basic psyche of the country," keep in mind that in 1992, Hindu extremists tore down a 16th century mosque sparking nationwide riots, in which about 3,000 people were killed. There is a lot of ethnic conflict and religous nut activity in India (and Pakistan). India is now ruled by a Hindu-nationalist party.
With a per capita income of $480, India is still an unstable country with a long way to go. I hope they make it OK!
The same rule would also apply to all steam-cycle thermal plants including coal or solar-steam plants. Although you can minimize the thermal damage on the river by using giant cooling towers and such.
Actually I've seen fisherman hang around the outlet of the coal-burning powerplant in Alexandria, VA, because the warmth appears to attract some kinds of fish. But I am sure it is doing some environmental damage as well.
Yes, I don't see the resolution improving on (ATSC) HD in the near future.
However, it is possible that MPEG-2 coding may be replaced with H.264 or (heh) Windows Media to provide a higher quality filling of that resolution at the same broadcast bandwidth (19.39 Mbps - or in some cases, less).
Already there is a satellite HD service (VOOM) that intends to move from MPEG-2 to H.264 through a remote software upgrade.
Strangely enough, if you have an HD set-top-box receiver with analog video output, HD broadcast images will look sharper on an analog set than standard NTSC analog broadcasts.
This is due to NTSC broadcast bandwidth limitations, which are more strict than even composite analog connections, and much more strict than S-video analog connections.
Sony is very serious about getting broadcasters interested in Blu-Ray professional...we all know that even when Betamax failed as a home format, the professional version, Betacam, was adopted by broadcasters for ENG cameras. Will history repeat?
Slashdot Mirror
...is to work in a rice paddy, and make under $1 per day.
Aha, the first pictures are here
Does anyone have the pictures? They aren't really well visible on NASA TV, especially the streaming version.
In a society where wealth generation and investment is paltry and risky, you need more kids to support you in your old age. So you have more children. Population increase. The kids can actually end up individually poorer because you split your limited land between them when you die.
In an agricultural society, you can use children as "slave labor." Even in the US, farm children do not have much child labor protection. So you have more children. Population inctease.
In a society where investment in education is not paid back by a booming technological economy, it is not worth the effort to make significant investments in children and their education. If you could benefit from investing in a child, you may only be able to afford one. Population decrease.
The most toxic export from the "Western World" to Asia was communism/socialism.
It killed tens of millions in China, and hobbled both China and India until about ten years ago when people there woke up to economic reality and began free market reforms.
In 40 years, China and India will be as rich as South Korea does today.
The new Indian middle class growing up on technological jobs are actually least likely support the caste system or have religious hatred.
I think it is THEIR CHOICE whether they leave their "traiditional way of life". No one is forcing them to.
Multicasting, as a standard service, has not been seriously brought into the Internet because of the difficulty of billing between AS's. There has never been an effective agreement for this (unlike unicast flows). You can imagine the trouble of not knowing how many packets you send out of your network for each one that comes in. Plus ISPs did not want to canabalize their existing unicast customers who might spend less through multicasting.
Moreover, multicast routing has never reached a level of technical competancy, in part because of the billing problem. No one ever really pushed Cisco to make things like PIM-Sparse Mode work properly, and as of 1-2 years ago, it still barely worked.
This brings us to legacy equipment, like dial-in routers and DSLAMs that are not multicast enabled. To turn on mulitcast everywhere you would need to make it a useful service would require something aking to IPV6 switchover (which also, uh, isn't happening fast).
Multicast is alive an well in intra-AS niches like satellite and DTV IP datacasting, as well as special large Internet customers on specific backbones.
US Federal receipts have been rising at a fairly close to exponential rate of a power of ten every 20 years from about 1950 until today. The total debt has been tracking Federal receipts very well for a long period of time, with debt 2-3 times yearly receipts.
Federal receipts have been slightly down since 2000, but I suspect they will rise shortly.
The big economic threat to the US Federal financing is Social Security pension system. But I suspect that will be restructured shortly once people realize how horrible it is going to get.
In the 70's and 80's, 80% of the USSR's hard-currency earnings came from oil exports. The Ruble was worthless outside the USSR, so it depended on oil trade to afford to import grain. In the 80's, the USSR imported nearly 40 million tons of grain a year from non-communist countries, including a lot from the US.
The USSR definately industrialized, which is clearly what also happened in South Korea and the other Asian Tigers. The difference is that the Asian Tigers industrialized to produce manufactured products in demand by the rest of the world, such as radios, cars, tractors, etc.
The USSR, on the other hand, did not manufacture much for export, except weapons. The USSR did have an excellent industrial capability to produce weapons both small (AK-47) and large (nuclear submarines, ICBMs). What they couldn't do is manufacture consumer products that would sell to export markets. The consumer exports of the USSR were oil, fur, and vodka.
The reason is clear, isolated from market forces, how could Soviet factories get market messages to make high-quality manufactured products for consumers and businesses? On the other hand, if you angered the military with a sub-standard product, you would end up in Siberia. So the weapons were top-notch. And the Russians knew good Vodka. Automobiles, on the other hand, they didn't do too well at.
I believe the Dollar will encounter some mild devaluation over the next 12 months, but not as much as you might think. Increasing returns on the stock market will return Dollars from overseas back to the US as the economy strengthens, reducing the oversupply of foreign Dollars.
A mild devaluation will actually help the US trade deficit by making US products slightly more competitive in pricing to foreign products. But I don't think Dollar devaluation is a good idea for the following reason:
You are right, if the Dollar massively devalues, that is the end of all world economics, because the Dollar is the reserve currency of the planet. Every central and private bank will fail.
How about Nazi Germany from a poor country to somewhat wealthy one?
Nazi Germany did have extensive trade with European countries, and even neutral countries during WWII, including Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, and Argentina.
While Germany was in an economic crisis after WWI, and there was poverty, it had far more infrastructure intact than most "developing" poor countries. But it is true that the Nazis also did a lot of plundering of countries they conquered.
The USSR also did a great deal of trade. As early as the 1920's, the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade was set up. There was an Anglo-Soviet trade treaty, followed by one with Germany. During the 1930's, the USSR exported massive amounts of grain to pay for British and American machinery imports. After WWII, the USSR set up Soviet-owned and joint-stock companies in Eastern Europe and China. In 1949, Comecon, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance was founded, which tied the economies of Eastern Europe to that of the USSR, creating a trading bloc that endured until the fall of the Berlin Wall. The USSR also depended on oil exports during the 70's and 80's for hard currency.
But keep in mind that USSR GDP per capita reached one fourth of that of South Korea and Taiwan today, and a sixth of Singapore or Hong Kong today.
USA has massive trade deficits with a lot of these countries so one would expect them to get rich. I wonder what will happen when USA can't afford to do that.
This is an issue, with regard to the value of the Dollar, but I believe it will solve itself as other developed countries move from net exporters to net importers. Already Britain has a $74 billion trade deficit, Spain has a $50 billion trade deficit, and Austrailia has a $14 billion trade deficit.
Also as "developing" countries become more developed, we can expect that their trade surplus will decrease as wages and costs rise.
The key to Federal Debt is whether you can afford to make the payments on it (the same situation you have with your mortgage). So far, the US has never missed a payment. US Federal Debt as a percentage of GDP was near 100% during WWII, dropped to 25% in 1975, rose to a high of 50% in 1993, and is now at 35% of GDP.
As a country's GDP grows, the country can afford more debt. There certainly isn't anything wrong with paying it down when possible, though.
Oh yeah, horrible things in Pakistan as well. Neither India or Pakistan is safe with nuclear weapons. Pakistan is even less safe!
The recently declassified info on the US considering takeover of oil installations I believe refers to a time shortly after their nationalization by local totalitarian dictatorships, which in the case of Saudi Arabia, are still in power today. It had nothing to do with terrorism.
Saudi's oil riches from the nationalized companies firmed up the grip on power by the family of dictators, and the wealth helped to fuel the creation of terorism (in the same way Irish Americans fueled the IRA with money).
Saudi citizens saw an incredible increase in wealth (arguably good?) but the oil riches have stagnated its society and is keeping it from growing, with recent GDP growth actually negative (arguably bad?) along with an uprise in Wahhabist Islam and militant jihadism (definately bad).
The US, of course, in the end did not try to de-nationalize the oil installations. I wonder how the world would be different if the US did.
Maybe the people in the village built the Sony CD player at the local factory, to earn better wages than subsistance agriculture.
The mariachis, of course, should be allowed into the US as guest workers to make more money (I had mariachis at my wedding). Why should they play for a few pesos when they can make a few hundred dollars? GW Bush is moving forward with a new guest worker program for Mexico right now.
During the 20th Century, no country has gone from poor to rich without substantial foreign trade. Key examples include Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea. I'm sure the 21st Century will see the end of poverty in India and China as well.
The rich get richer, but the historical trend of free market economics is that the poor get richer as well. Increasing free trade and free movement of labor while reducing government subsidies is the way to go.
I find myself much more relaxed and less distracted with a cellphone in the car.
That way, if I get in a traffic backup, I can call someone and tell them I'll be late.
Otherwise, I'd be going nuts worrying about people wondering where I was. This is distracting.
Just a data point.
India is a democracy. What has happened over the last 20 years is that socialism is being defeated at the ballot box. During that time hundreds of millions of Indians have left abject poverty.
You can read about the booming Indian middle-class. There are now 500 "middle-class" Indians, with at least 30 million who would pass for middle-class in the US.
The truth is the same thing is happening in China without much democracy...yet I believe there will be a tipping point of political revolution there soon.
You are wrong. People working in Maquiladoras are making more money than they were in agriculture.
In Mexico, however, you have the problem of 1) the Peso crisis messed up the economy for many years, only now has it recovered and 2) lots of Mexicans in the agricultural sector are losing their jobs because of imports of subsidized US corn (which most people would call "socialism").
Foreign workers of American countries typically make much more than any local jobs pay. You may not believe it, but hundreds of millions of people have been brought out of absolute poverty in India and China, to a large extent because of global trade.
Ha, have you seen the golf game of the average hacker? Pretty poor!
Nuclear weapons (per se) are very old techology. Several countries developed them in the 40's and 50's pretty much without electronic computers.
With regards to nuclear war being "against the basic psyche of the country," keep in mind that in 1992, Hindu extremists tore down a 16th century mosque sparking nationwide riots, in which about 3,000 people were killed. There is a lot of ethnic conflict and religous nut activity in India (and Pakistan). India is now ruled by a Hindu-nationalist party.
With a per capita income of $480, India is still an unstable country with a long way to go. I hope they make it OK!
The same rule would also apply to all steam-cycle thermal plants including coal or solar-steam plants. Although you can minimize the thermal damage on the river by using giant cooling towers and such.
Actually I've seen fisherman hang around the outlet of the coal-burning powerplant in Alexandria, VA, because the warmth appears to attract some kinds of fish. But I am sure it is doing some environmental damage as well.
More info on the cane toad. Heck, but the video.
Yes, I don't see the resolution improving on (ATSC) HD in the near future.
However, it is possible that MPEG-2 coding may be replaced with H.264 or (heh) Windows Media to provide a higher quality filling of that resolution at the same broadcast bandwidth (19.39 Mbps - or in some cases, less).
Already there is a satellite HD service (VOOM) that intends to move from MPEG-2 to H.264 through a remote software upgrade.
Strangely enough, if you have an HD set-top-box receiver with analog video output, HD broadcast images will look sharper on an analog set than standard NTSC analog broadcasts.
This is due to NTSC broadcast bandwidth limitations, which are more strict than even composite analog connections, and much more strict than S-video analog connections.
This is insightful!
Sony is very serious about getting broadcasters interested in Blu-Ray professional...we all know that even when Betamax failed as a home format, the professional version, Betacam, was adopted by broadcasters for ENG cameras. Will history repeat?