No no no! No Corvette! No Mustang! Those are just all-american-lazy-fat-ass-comes-with-soda-cup-holder excuses for a car. No! Trans-Am was a real car! You need a real bad ass car for Knight Rider! And when you want bad ass car the only choice is black BMW M3, CLS preferably. And you know what... you need a real man to drive that car, you need David Hasselhoff to play the part of Michael Knight not some lame excuse for a man.
Actually I'm little disappointed that they haven't recruited Hasselhoff to do the movie, or a new series. The plot could something like... Michael Knight, the lone crusader, victim of an conspiracy, has been in the coma for the last 20 years. As he wakes up, the world around has changed. Knight Foundation over ran by the conspiracy has put him and his friends underground. Michael has no choice, but to fight back, go underground, find his friends and overthrow the conspiracy that has taken over the country... Basically it would be something like X-Files added with The Fast and The Furious, and with a little hint of romance. That's the only choice, to target the same people who watched the original series, but with more mature content and plot... oooh... and KITT... he could pronounce his English with a German accent... that would be the comedical twist;-)
Actually 6,7 L/100KM is moderate for now, but in 2020 that should be considered more or less crap. In example new BMW 3-series with 3 liter diesel gets 6,1 L/100 KM and the 2 liter version gets 4,8 L/100KM. Even X3 with 2 liter diesel gets 6,5 L/100 KM. So in that sense that todays cars can get to that standard easily, it's really abysmal to set the standard for the future on the level what can be achieved in today.
In my opinion the standards should be set so that they make the car industry to invent and make innovations in order to stay in business. Actually in developed markets, I would say that it's actually a good way to protect own car industry by setting the standards higher as then the low cost low R&D manufacturers from developing countries can be easily closed from the markets. Thought as the US car industry really hasn't spend any money to R&D in the last 20 years, maybe in the point of view of US administration, that wouldn't be so good idea.
I think you miss the point of this machine. Robotic tanks and tanks general are intended to be used in conventional warfare where you are facing an organized army, and where your objective is to destroy that enemy force. Tanks are more or less useless when you have won the war and you are policing the population, also known as occupation.
In occupation you are policing and controlling the population, or if you are into total war you continue war against civil population until they are submissive to the new rule and there is 100% certainty that they wont resist. Total war of course is wrong as seen in the many fronts of WWII. In normal occupation like Iraq, terrorism has been breaded from power vacuum that was created by US politicians who didn't have any real plan on how to control the country. Usually it's not a good idea to disable army, police and government all together without a capability to by self act on those roles effectively.
Of course you may be right that by having another advantage against third world armies, US may get involved into occupation of more countries and hence increases terrorism.
The playing field is global. Qualcomm has offered its CDMA and EV-DO around the world. CDMA and EV-DO are competitors to GSM and WCDMA. If Qualcomm can get CDMA and EV-DO adoption rate higher, that threatens Nokia as they are mostly based on GSM and their patent portfolio concentrates on this area. So by trying to undermine CDMA and EV-DO by alls means possible, including abandoning CDMA handset sales, Nokia can make CDMA less attractive in both local, like US markets, but also globally. That's the point.
Also if you have looked on news, Nokia and Qualcomm are now currently at patent war with each other. They both are trying to get each other, and in case of Nokia, they really wouldn't mind nailing Qualcomm from telecom business once and for all.
It's all about patents. All the mobile phone companies have lots of patents and they share them. Qualcomm has very much patents concerning CDMA, and if Nokia wants to make CDMA handsets they have to pay royalties to Qualcomm. By not making handsets to CDMA, Nokia can cut Qualcomms revenue stream and they make CDMA less likable: lesser handsets you can offer to consumers mean lesser reasons for them to take your service. As Nokia has much better position in patents in GSM & WCDMA standards, it's for Nokia beneficial that CDMA is used less and less.
Also one reason for Nokia leaving the CDMA market all together was that Qualcomm was subsidizing their chipset business via royalties, so that put competing chipset manufacturers like Texas Instruments in an unfavorite position.
And to question about Nokias handsets, they might not be double the better than competitors, but they are better and there is more to choose from. You might want to take a look at Nokias web site, just don't choose US as your location, but choose Europe and use the general European site, there you will find quite a big collection of phones that you have never seen before.
This is all about telecoms versus mobile phone manufacturers, also known as business as usual. If a telecom thinks that is business is more than just offering connection, as in being a carrier, and as more being an service provider or an experience, then the number one competitors are the handsets manufacturers as they are the ones beside operator to influence and have place in customers hand.
Just to give some examples... Nokia has worldwide market share of approximately 40%, but in US its market share is only 5%. Why is it? Well it could be because they don't manufacture CDMA based handsets anymore (direct attack against Qualcomm), but mainly because in US handset business in operator business where operators offer to consumers what they think suites best for operators not for the consumers. To operators it suites that handsets are limited or walled, and to operators it suites better that the brand power of an handset is less than the branding power of operator. This has meant that operators don't want to offer Nokias handsets as to them Nokia is too powerful player in branding and service base, and so offering Nokias handsets more would hurt their position in longer time-frame.
What basically AT&T is doing to Apple is just business as usual. Kick them where it hurts. Weaken their position and try to make a better deal with them. Also it should be noted that market situation has changed as major handset manufacturers and also lesser known Asian manufacturers are all offering and bringing iPhone clones to markets. For AT&T it could be lucrative to just get some iPhone clones from far east with bargain price and brand them by themselves.
Of course there is remote possibility that mobile operators in US are colluding against Apple. There are only few GSM based operators in US, and I could easily imagine them speaking with each other to maintain status-quo in the market. So in example AT&T kicks Apple first, then as Apple talks to T-Mobile or other player, they just throw their hands up and say "oh, but we are not interested at that price", and voila telecoms win.
Easy. Lets imagine you are an metal worker. At work you want to maybe use an simpler, roughed and cheaper phone, and when you are in private, you have more advanced and expensive smart phone. Or you could have one cellphone with work number that you use at office hours, and another one that you use in private. Either way, as new services like multisim, which allows you to have multiple phones with the same account and number, people for surely will have more and more phones.
This might be useful for companies too. We have in example been thinking about releasing our software in open source to expand the usage of our software and to gain more knowledge in the markets about us. However as we are business and a rather small one, releasing the software in example in GPL would be more or less commercial suicide, as our software is purely web based, some bigger service company could just take it and give nothing back...
I really have to read more about AGPL. I think that by combining AGPL + MPL + strong attribution clauses, for us and maybe to many more small developers it could come more lucrative to open source our software, because we still would get changes back, we would have more freedom and we would get attribution for our work. Definitely very good for FSF to publish this license. I really think that in time as there comes more licenses that cover different things, it will come more and more easier and secure to publish software and other works in open source.
Great:) Hopefully you will enjoy your time in Finland.
Word of advice from ex-inhabitant of Eurajoki (the community to which Olkiluoto belongs). If you are planning on partying then go straight ahead to Rauma. In Rauma Fridays are dead. The only club/bar to go is Onnela. In Saturday you have better situation as then both Onnela and the bar at Sokos Hotel are open. It should also be noted that the natives are somewhat violent, but usually good tempered. Don't in any case go to Pori (about 30km from Eurajoki), even thought its bigger place it's really more dangerous also (not kidding)... Also if you want cheap beer, go to Citimarket or Prisma as they usually have packet of 12 beers costing from 6.95 to 7.95 euros.
I would argue that nuclear power, when used only to make electricity and not weapons material, is always much cheaper than any other alternative. Even when you have just one or two plants, it's more economical.
Case in point.. here in Finland we have four nuclear plants, and a fifth is currently being build. The first two were designed and made in Soviet union. The Soviet mentally actually renders in these quite well: they couldn't transport the reactor core in one piece so they cut it in half and welded it in Finland. Luckily Finnish were able to persuade Soviets that they could buy the safety systems from western suppliers. The other two were from Swedish company ASEA. The first two were government owned, the second two were privately owned. All plants to this day have been commercially hugely profitable. Now a fifth reactor is being build by Areva, and already both TVO and joint EON and industry backed consortium is looking on building sixth and/or seventh power plant.
I would say that there is nothing wrong or uneconomical in nuclear power. Maybe the biggest thing making nuclear power in some places uneconomical is general management. In example here as they build the nuclear plants and discovered that at night time they generated way too much electricity, they opted on selling electricity on lower price at night, when it's generally used in house holds to warm up both house and water tank, and thus enabling very high run time for the reactors.
General Electric and Honeywell were going to merge in 2001. The merger got blessing of FTC, but it didn't get the blessing of European Commission, and thus merger was called off as General Electric didn't want to fight and take the matter into European Courts.
The general question in these cases where two companies are merging, does the combined company via merger gain dominant position in said market. If the answer is yes, there are two possibilities, the merger will be called off or Commission sets remedies that make sure the merging company doesn't achieve dominant position in market via merger, i.e. the merged company must sell of some assets. It should also be noted that the EU Commission works both in European wide level and also in regional level, meaning that if by merger companies create a European wide or at least regional monopoly, the Commission will intervene.
I myself think that the EU Commission is doing the right thing here and in other cases. If there wouldn't be any safe guards the corporations would sooner or later collide against consumers and form artificial monopolies. It should be mentioned that if a company gets into a monopoly position by fair competition, the EU Commission wont intervene, only if a company tries to play dirty of leverage it's dominant position from one market to another, then the Commission gets into action.
PS. The EU Commissions right to intervene in merger or acquisition stems from having those companies operating and having major operations in the area of European Union. If Google nor DoubleClick wouldn't have business in EU, EU Commission couldn't do nothing, but as they do, and as the European Commission is in charge, the companies have to also answer to commission on regards on their activities.
I don't know about you others, but I seriously think that Android is over hyped. Yes, it's Linux based platform for mobile devices, but so what? There's already Maemo, but you don't see it hyped to death. Yes, the Android can also run Java ME applications, so what? All mobile phones can run Java ME applications...
And one last thing... there are no devices yet! No nothing! And you know what, there probably won't be even many of them. If you look at the alliance that Google has put together, the only serious vendors are Motorola and Samsung. But hey hey hey, Motorola just bought half of UIQ from Sony-Ericsson. UIQ is an user interface used primarily by Sony-Ericsson on top of Symbian. How serious Motorola is about Android when they have just made an serious investment into an Symbian company? And Samsung... they are just as much flip flopping as Motorola.
You know I'm not saying that you should not discuss about Android or not develop applications to it. I just say that Android seems to be again an over hyped thing. If I would be developing mobile applications running native in a phone, I would be damn sure that there is adequate installation base before jumping in, otherwise it could be very well be just seriously wasted time.
Treo 3G Blazer and Windows Mobile 3G? I haven't even heard of them, or heard of anybody else use them. Actually I haven't seen anybody use any Treo nor any Windows Mobile device. If you want a true 3G phone then you take one phone from Nokia or Sony-Ericsson.
When talking about how iPhone with EDGE beats down 3G, I won't buy that. When you have good 3G networks that are not congested, as they usually aren't, 3G and especially with HSDPA there is no question which network connection blasts the other. It should also be noted that EDGE and 3G are not competing technologies, usually all 3G phones, and all Nokias 3G phones, have also GPRS and EDGE capabilities that they fall back when they fall from 3G network.
All the talk about EGDE beating 3G is just a symptom on the poor condition of US 3G networks. Outside the US the 3G networks really work as they are intended. Actually they are currently starting to phase out older networks, just in this week in example it was notified here in Finland that parts on 900mzh that has been used only with GSM can no be used with 3G.
Also about the bluetooth connection and syncing... really... ca'moon... it works. Just once try with a real phone.
Er... So long as Nokia is the biggest mobile phone manufacturer in the world and largest share holder in Symbian, Symbian is not going to die. Actually usage of Symbian is just going to increase as Nokia and other handset manufacturers are pushing Symbian into their middle to low price models.
It should also be noted that as most of the price of mobile phone comes from the design and manufacturing, and not from the software, mobile phone companies like Nokia can just kill their competition by leveraging their massive economies scale. Nokia currently manufacturers about 40% of all mobile phones in the world and they enjoy very much of their position, by both having components cheaper and having a number one position in the logistical scale (when Nokia needs parts, component manufacturers will diverse shipments from smaller companies to Nokia). If Google or any other will seriously threaten that leadership Nokia and others will surely answer that by just dropping their profit margins (Nokia has currently 20% profit margin).
Also I don't consider Apple as a serious contender in phone markets. They had a one hit with old hardware and few innovations in software. Those innovations are now copied by Nokia and others. For Apple to become serious player in mobile phone markets they would have to manufacture massive amounts of phones to have some change to compete in price and they would have to have newer technology and software. Technology they can buy, but software front may become their soft spot as in example Nokia just bought Navteq (hint: they provide the maps and software to Google Maps and others).
In the end, I would have to say that seeing Google jump to mobile phone markets is more a sign that hype in Google has gone overboard and the company is over extending itself into what ever front they can think of. As soon as the current boom in the stock markets goes away, the management of Google will for sure cut of all the projects that are not in its core competency.
...but who even uses Windows Mobile? It has an abysmal market share of 6.1% of all smart phones. Even Linux based smart phones have bigger market share compared to it (13.3%), and Symbian with its' 72.4% is over the top. This situation won't be changing for the benefit of Windows Mobile. There is no way Nokia would turn its back on Symbian. Also Microsoft has tried to push Windows Mobile to mobile markets for almost 10 years with out success. They could have succeeded by tying the Windows and Windows Mobile develop environments together and allow easy transition path for traditional desktop applications to mobile phones, but as now both desktop and mobile applications are migrating to pure net based service, there is yet another reason less to even think Windows Mobile.
When reading continues flow of articles talking about iPhone that and gPhone this, I just get a feeling that what is the point? What's new? What's revolutionary? And when I think about it more, all I get it is pretty much nothing. The only explanation that I can find for this phenomenon is that as US lacks behind the rest of the world both in available cellular networks and phone models, and so anything new, even if it's been available for the rest of world for years, seems exciting. I can understand this from the consumers as they don't know any better, but why is the same true with the management of international corporations that should have a larger view on the matter?
I can understand that Apple wants to break into mobile phone businesses and deliver a phone with their touch. I can't understand why Google would ever want to do that. Google is concentrated on information and information deliverance business, they are not an hardware company. For Google it would be better to make an integrated Google mobile suite of applications, starting from blogging and imaging tools to email and calendars. Then they would work out a deal with leading smart phone vendors, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and Sony-Ericsson, so that they would include the package with their phones including an Google icon in the main menu of a phone. This way Google, if they wanted it enough badly, they could make an world wide penetrations to mobile markets quick and effectively. Also if for some unknown reason, Google would really want an phone carrying their name, they could just re-brand a phone from one of their partners.
Of course this all with gPhone could be just a byzantine styled political battle with the telecoms where Google tries to intimidate telecom operators to open up more and develop their services and offerings. Thought bringing a new phone to the markets doesn't actually do this. The only way for Google to open up US mobile markets would be to make Congress and FCC open up the mobile networks for other companies and thus allowing virtual operators to enter the stage.
Actually EU doesn't have anything to do with patents right now. A few years down ago EU Commission tried to bring legislation that would have introduced EU wide harmonization of patents and brought unified judicial system. As the European Parliament didn't accept the directive, the attempted legislation was withdrawn. More about the subject.
How ever there is European Patent Organization which works by the power of European Patent Convention. EPO is fully independent organization and isn't part of EU. EPO actually is the only organization in Europe causing real grief in regards of patents. They award software patents even if they don't have any power to do so. Many big corporations and also smaller companies have applied basically pure software patents from EPO. How ever as the EPO really doesn't have power to award these kind of patents, the situation is that those patents are more or less worthless. They also will stay worthless even if EU would make software patents legal as those patents were filed and awarded before they were legal.
In my company we have talked and researched the software patent issue some what. My own point of view is that software patents are worthless and as long as the member state we operate doesn't allow software patents, we don't have any reason to worry. I really do hope that this situation will stay the same as the business of software company is to make software and solve customers problems, not pay big fat checks to lawyers.
I think that one reason for much of the negative feedback here in Slashdot is that you make general judgment based on the American mobile infrastructure and market which both are less developed than in Europe and Japan.
Also in your follow up article you touch some subjects and say that what consumers want is low-latency mobile applications including plain phone calls, messaging, web etc.. Unfortunately you forget that 3G is absolutely must if you are mobile user in urban areas. The original reason for introduction of 3G wasn't to have a higher data access, but to enable plain phone calls in heavily congested European cities. If my memory deserves me right, in the late 90s many mobile operators were very afraid that with out new networks, mobile networks would fulfill and the rate of dropped calls would skyrocket. So having a 3G network and 3G phone are definitive pluses. I also don't agree that there wouldn't be need for data heavy applications like mobile radio and TV, and mobile shops for music and video.
It should be also noted that it's not 3G versus EDGE, as in any good 3G network and phone you can use all the networks GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS. In urban areas you get UMTS and when you enter countryside you get EDGE or GPRS. In that sense it's quite futile to even discuss about 3G versus EDGE as they are complementary to each other.
People get those kind of representatives that they deserve. Plain and simple. If the population is stupid enough to fall from election to election on same kind lies that they previously had been told, then the people get what they deserve. On the other hand, if the people use their common sense and at least ask themselves is a proposition or view sensible or practical or workable that a politician has. If the people just ignore this question, they won't get good representatives.
Just to give an simple example. In Finland we don't have many 'slick' politicians, at least when it comes to economical policy. That's mainly because most of the Fins remember the quick crash course on economic realities in the beginning of 90s', or namely deep depression. As Finland was near being bankrupt by the depression, and was only saved with fairly quick action and straight talk. In example you could almost here something like this coming from ministers "If we don't cut dramatically expenses and make changes to how our whole system works, it's game over and there is nothing left than to hand the keys over the IMF.". After that there hasn't been a snowballs change in hell that politicians would promise moon from the sky or do election year budgets. The people wont just bite it anymore.
I trust representative democracy as long as the general population keeps it obligation on to use their brains for once and then and at least consider different things before just randomly going to vote some guy. I would not trust direct democracy more, actually far less as it seems that putting people to think every 4 year is for some too much to handle.
Who even wants to use something else than Gmail? I use Gmail as my personal email, and my company uses Gmail for domains for our email. From the day one Gmail has offered easy to use and intuitive web mail with enough free space. In about three years that I have used Gmail for my personal use, I have only succeeded in using 312Mb of it. My own company mail address has only gathered 157Mb. For those people who use web mail for email, I don't think that the space requirement has been after Gmail was launched a key part on comparing different email services. Even if Gmail still had only 1Gb limit, I still wouldn't even consider other services.
Also if somebody from Google is reading this message, what I need and want right now, that you are not offering is J2ME mobile client for Gmail for domains. It's ridicules that Google offers mobile client for regular Gmail, but for Gmail for domains there is non. There should be no technical reason for denying the client. If you don't want to offer it free, maybe you could offer it as a part of subscription for Gmail for domains. And no, I don't want to use mobile version via mobile browser, that just doesn't work as well as pure mobile client.
Another wish that I have is that Google besides raising email space would raise space for photos. I love Picasa and I have saved some of my personal photos to Picasa Web. The only thing why I haven't moved all my personal photos to it is that there just isn't enough space for it. Also I don't want to order subscription for it, as for me it's unclear what happens to photos if I end the subscription. Does Google just delete all photos after day 1 of non subscripted time? In example if I hurt my self or get sick, or my credit goes bad, and I can't afford to pay the subscription, I really wouldn't want all my loved photos just disappearing in bit space.
What's wrong with Prussian style system? What's wrong with repetition, pouring down facts and memorizing? In my mind these items are the key ingredients that you just have to study in order in later life to be able to abstract things and think critically. At earliest abstracting and critical thinking should be practised at high school and only at university level should be requirement.
Also it should be mentioned that having Prussian modeled school system doesn't mean bad results. If you in example go to Finland or in Germany to Bavaria, you will get excellent learning results.
PS. Remember the Southpark episode where all the class started to took Ritalin, and the ad about alternative method. That alternative method, also known as 'SHUT UP AND LEARN' would be my solution to make schools better.
The only one talking bullshit is you. If you had some knowledge about the world, about industries, about business and the overall size of development you wouldn't been so quick to call something bullshit.
To make my case, please in example look to Finnish Association of Graduate Engineers. They have 40000 graduated engineers as their members and this represents only a part of all engineers in Finland. Wikipedia tells that there are 70000 engineers in Finland practising their profession. Every year 7500 student graduate and become engineers. (Referens in second page of the PDF) If you now think "gee, where do they need so much engineers", well the answer is for the service of industries mainly to telecommunication, electronics, software, electricity, machine building etc.. There is just so huge amount industrial production going and the amount of engineers required to work is huge. Multinationals like Nokia, Kone, UPM, Stora-Enso, Wärtsilä, Fortum, ABB, TietoEnator, EADS etc.. and also great number of small and medium sized firms employ lots of engineers.
Going back to Iraq, okay 100000 is a good number for developing/third world country, but not comparable with developed countries. And as there isn't more data about Iraqi collages and universities I won't touch that subject more, only saying that in all Arab countries the university system is very weak / low. As what comes to Iraq being the most industrialized Arab country, that unfortunately doesn't still make much of it as when you compare it to other then developing countries as South-Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia it paled in comparison.
And what goes to reason for war, yes the oil was the motivator and I'm not denying it. I only said that first Gulf war happened because of Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened to invade Saudi-Arabia. The second war, as I said happened as the time was right to try to replace Saddam and hopefully avoid civil war. What comes to Israel, they are not a reason to go war, oil is. Besides Israel has it's own quite large amount of nuclear weapons, so having an Arab state industrializing doesn't make it a threat to Israel. Only if an Arab state would have an nuclear weapon, then that would be threat to Israel. Even so, that wouldn't be a reason to go war. As you said and as I believe too, oil and control of it and control currency on which oil is traded are reasons to go war. Thought not morally right.
For instance 100000 engineers in a country of 26 million is not big archievement. Even here in Finland where have we only 5 million people, we have over 70000 engineers. Also it's a one thing to get a degree from a third world countries collage or university than get them from European, American or Japanease school. So comparing numbers in more or less meaningless if we can't measure what does the degreas give to their holders. I'm not saying that there weren't good school, what I'm saying that 100000 engineers is an empty number if we can't have data on what the quality was.
What comes to Saddam and how he spent money, then that is something to also discuss. Saddam didn't start huge infrastructure projects, what he did with the money was to please ordinary Sunnis and keep others from starting a rebellion. The rest of the money he put on his army and his weapon research projects. This army was used to invade Iran and Iraq-Iran war did swallow lots of money. The money put on research allowed Saddam to kill Kurds with gas and almost gave him nuclear weapon. What Saddam didn't do with the oil money was to build serious infrastructure and industrialize Iraq. Actually in Saddams rule previously rich and developed places such as Basra fell to misery and poverty.
As what comes to first Gulf war, that happened only as Saddam tried to avoid bankruptcy and invaded Kuwait and tried to take over Saudi-Arabia to form an oil imperium. If Saddam hadn't invaded Kuwait nor threatened Saudi-Arabia there would have not been any war. As what comes to second Gulf war and US invasion to Iraq, that was solely because of strategic circumstances. Everybody knew that Saddam and his regime would eventually fall, but nobody knew when. As in the time Russia was still, China didn't have the muscle and Europe was to divided it was the perfect opportunity to try to replace Saddam. Other option would have been to wait Saddam fall and see who at the aftermath of collapse of the regime, probably after an civil war would have come as victorious.
So what more can be said. Saddam and his regime wasn't good. It's good that they are not in power anymore. It's sad there had to be war before Iraq was free from him, and it's sad that the US is still there and seems unable to go home as the country is in the brink or in fact in the state of civil war. It's also sad in what state the civil infrastructure in Iraq is. That however should not be put on US blame as US in reality didn't destroy that infrastructure as it did in second world war or could have done now.
Well I would advice these Wikipedia articles to you. They have quite good sources, so if you don't want to settle just for the agregated information you can go directly to the source.
I would say that reading those articles, you get a quite good idee on what was happening in Germany before and after the war. To me these articles tell that the industrial machine was quite much alive and well after the war. Yes the civilian centers were in ruins, but then again if you have your industries running then just by diverting resources for a while from normal civilian production quickly repairs and constructs what was lost in the war. It's much easier to construct a house than a steel mill or rail road. In war it's also more harder to destroy factories as they are heavily defended and roads and rail road lines are just too big to be totally destroyed.
As what comes to Iraq, yes they have problems with electricity production, water and waste management, but the reason isn't that they don't have their pre-war plants, it's more about they either don't have working equipment as the current equipment is so old, or because sabotage made by the insurgency. Even so, the Iraqi civilian infrastructure was far from developed world even before first Gulf war. After basic civilian infrastructure the only industry that you can find in Iraq is oil production and that's running fine when oil lines are not cut by sabotage. All in all the two Iraq wars have been very non destructive when you compare on what was done in second world war and especially what you can do even with a one fully loaded B-52.
Thought I would like to add here that in both cases in Germanny and Iraq, the occupaying force has done big mistakes. In Germanny millions died in hunger after the occupiers had disabled the industrial machine and couldn't realize that their actions in the long term would put more people to grave than the war alone. In Iraq it could be said that US could have made more friends and created much more security if they had diverted more resources to serving the civilian centers and making sure that basic infrastructure works. That would have not even costed or taken time much as the pre-war levels of service were so low.
I just had to comment on this one as I'm very much fed up with the myth that US destroyed the infrastructure of Iraq.
The truth of the matter is that even before first Gulf war, there wasn't much infrastructure up in Iraq compared to developed countries. In Iraq you basically had few roads, few railroad connections, oil production industry and some civil infrastructure. When the US in the first Gulf war attacked Iraq, US didn't do blind bombing of Iraqi cities as they did in the second world war. In the second Gulf war US did even less damage to infrastructure as they had more advanced weaponry available and as they were making a land invasion there was no need for massive world war two style bombing runs. The fact of the matter is that Iraq was before first Gulf war a third world country without industrial production and transportation infrastructure, and that should not be counted to the fault of US.
It should be also said that it's a myth that Germany and Japan were totally destroyed. They weren't. After the second world war both Germany and Japan had most of their industrial and transportation infrastructure up. Yes, the population centers in both countries were very heavily bombed and to late 50s you could find ruins in many Germans cities, but the factories, electric plants and damns, railroads, roads and harbors were very much intact. Actually the German infrastructure was in so good shape that the allies had to do demolishing to try to achieve the vision of pasteurized Germany as visioned in Morgenthau plan. It should also be noted that after the war, German agricultural and industrial production didn't collapse because of failure of the infrastructure, but for the politics of occupying forces: there were no effective occupation government, monetary system was by purpose shut down and major German corporations were halted. After the implementation of remnants of Morgenthau plan was shut down and there some governing happening, the economy recovered and started to boom. In this context Marshall loans given to German government didn't start the recovery, but made the recovery more snappier.
Now I want to point out that I'm not denying that the US as and occupation force in Iraq hasn't had difficulties and they wouldn't be free from critic. What I'm saying is that Iraq was before a third world country without developed infrastructure and it still is, and that is not the fault of US.
PS. I'm not an American, and I'm not trying to defend US nor it's action. I just want that false arguments are not used in a discussion. The myth of destroyed Iraq infrastructure is one and the same myth about post war Germany and Japan is second.
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No no no! No Corvette! No Mustang! Those are just all-american-lazy-fat-ass-comes-with-soda-cup-holder excuses for a car. No! Trans-Am was a real car! You need a real bad ass car for Knight Rider! And when you want bad ass car the only choice is black BMW M3, CLS preferably. And you know what... you need a real man to drive that car, you need David Hasselhoff to play the part of Michael Knight not some lame excuse for a man.
Actually I'm little disappointed that they haven't recruited Hasselhoff to do the movie, or a new series. The plot could something like... Michael Knight, the lone crusader, victim of an conspiracy, has been in the coma for the last 20 years. As he wakes up, the world around has changed. Knight Foundation over ran by the conspiracy has put him and his friends underground. Michael has no choice, but to fight back, go underground, find his friends and overthrow the conspiracy that has taken over the country... Basically it would be something like X-Files added with The Fast and The Furious, and with a little hint of romance. That's the only choice, to target the same people who watched the original series, but with more mature content and plot... oooh... and KITT... he could pronounce his English with a German accent... that would be the comedical twist ;-)
Actually 6,7 L/100KM is moderate for now, but in 2020 that should be considered more or less crap. In example new BMW 3-series with 3 liter diesel gets 6,1 L/100 KM and the 2 liter version gets 4,8 L/100KM. Even X3 with 2 liter diesel gets 6,5 L/100 KM. So in that sense that todays cars can get to that standard easily, it's really abysmal to set the standard for the future on the level what can be achieved in today.
In my opinion the standards should be set so that they make the car industry to invent and make innovations in order to stay in business. Actually in developed markets, I would say that it's actually a good way to protect own car industry by setting the standards higher as then the low cost low R&D manufacturers from developing countries can be easily closed from the markets. Thought as the US car industry really hasn't spend any money to R&D in the last 20 years, maybe in the point of view of US administration, that wouldn't be so good idea.
I think you miss the point of this machine. Robotic tanks and tanks general are intended to be used in conventional warfare where you are facing an organized army, and where your objective is to destroy that enemy force. Tanks are more or less useless when you have won the war and you are policing the population, also known as occupation.
In occupation you are policing and controlling the population, or if you are into total war you continue war against civil population until they are submissive to the new rule and there is 100% certainty that they wont resist. Total war of course is wrong as seen in the many fronts of WWII. In normal occupation like Iraq, terrorism has been breaded from power vacuum that was created by US politicians who didn't have any real plan on how to control the country. Usually it's not a good idea to disable army, police and government all together without a capability to by self act on those roles effectively.
Of course you may be right that by having another advantage against third world armies, US may get involved into occupation of more countries and hence increases terrorism.
The playing field is global. Qualcomm has offered its CDMA and EV-DO around the world. CDMA and EV-DO are competitors to GSM and WCDMA. If Qualcomm can get CDMA and EV-DO adoption rate higher, that threatens Nokia as they are mostly based on GSM and their patent portfolio concentrates on this area. So by trying to undermine CDMA and EV-DO by alls means possible, including abandoning CDMA handset sales, Nokia can make CDMA less attractive in both local, like US markets, but also globally. That's the point.
Also if you have looked on news, Nokia and Qualcomm are now currently at patent war with each other. They both are trying to get each other, and in case of Nokia, they really wouldn't mind nailing Qualcomm from telecom business once and for all.
It's all about patents. All the mobile phone companies have lots of patents and they share them. Qualcomm has very much patents concerning CDMA, and if Nokia wants to make CDMA handsets they have to pay royalties to Qualcomm. By not making handsets to CDMA, Nokia can cut Qualcomms revenue stream and they make CDMA less likable: lesser handsets you can offer to consumers mean lesser reasons for them to take your service. As Nokia has much better position in patents in GSM & WCDMA standards, it's for Nokia beneficial that CDMA is used less and less.
Also one reason for Nokia leaving the CDMA market all together was that Qualcomm was subsidizing their chipset business via royalties, so that put competing chipset manufacturers like Texas Instruments in an unfavorite position.
And to question about Nokias handsets, they might not be double the better than competitors, but they are better and there is more to choose from. You might want to take a look at Nokias web site, just don't choose US as your location, but choose Europe and use the general European site, there you will find quite a big collection of phones that you have never seen before.
This is all about telecoms versus mobile phone manufacturers, also known as business as usual. If a telecom thinks that is business is more than just offering connection, as in being a carrier, and as more being an service provider or an experience, then the number one competitors are the handsets manufacturers as they are the ones beside operator to influence and have place in customers hand.
Just to give some examples... Nokia has worldwide market share of approximately 40%, but in US its market share is only 5%. Why is it? Well it could be because they don't manufacture CDMA based handsets anymore (direct attack against Qualcomm), but mainly because in US handset business in operator business where operators offer to consumers what they think suites best for operators not for the consumers. To operators it suites that handsets are limited or walled, and to operators it suites better that the brand power of an handset is less than the branding power of operator. This has meant that operators don't want to offer Nokias handsets as to them Nokia is too powerful player in branding and service base, and so offering Nokias handsets more would hurt their position in longer time-frame.
What basically AT&T is doing to Apple is just business as usual. Kick them where it hurts. Weaken their position and try to make a better deal with them. Also it should be noted that market situation has changed as major handset manufacturers and also lesser known Asian manufacturers are all offering and bringing iPhone clones to markets. For AT&T it could be lucrative to just get some iPhone clones from far east with bargain price and brand them by themselves.
Of course there is remote possibility that mobile operators in US are colluding against Apple. There are only few GSM based operators in US, and I could easily imagine them speaking with each other to maintain status-quo in the market. So in example AT&T kicks Apple first, then as Apple talks to T-Mobile or other player, they just throw their hands up and say "oh, but we are not interested at that price", and voila telecoms win.
Easy. Lets imagine you are an metal worker. At work you want to maybe use an simpler, roughed and cheaper phone, and when you are in private, you have more advanced and expensive smart phone. Or you could have one cellphone with work number that you use at office hours, and another one that you use in private. Either way, as new services like multisim, which allows you to have multiple phones with the same account and number, people for surely will have more and more phones.
This might be useful for companies too. We have in example been thinking about releasing our software in open source to expand the usage of our software and to gain more knowledge in the markets about us. However as we are business and a rather small one, releasing the software in example in GPL would be more or less commercial suicide, as our software is purely web based, some bigger service company could just take it and give nothing back...
I really have to read more about AGPL. I think that by combining AGPL + MPL + strong attribution clauses, for us and maybe to many more small developers it could come more lucrative to open source our software, because we still would get changes back, we would have more freedom and we would get attribution for our work. Definitely very good for FSF to publish this license. I really think that in time as there comes more licenses that cover different things, it will come more and more easier and secure to publish software and other works in open source.
Great :) Hopefully you will enjoy your time in Finland.
Word of advice from ex-inhabitant of Eurajoki (the community to which Olkiluoto belongs). If you are planning on partying then go straight ahead to Rauma. In Rauma Fridays are dead. The only club/bar to go is Onnela. In Saturday you have better situation as then both Onnela and the bar at Sokos Hotel are open. It should also be noted that the natives are somewhat violent, but usually good tempered. Don't in any case go to Pori (about 30km from Eurajoki), even thought its bigger place it's really more dangerous also (not kidding)... Also if you want cheap beer, go to Citimarket or Prisma as they usually have packet of 12 beers costing from 6.95 to 7.95 euros.
Cheers and happy visit!
I would argue that nuclear power, when used only to make electricity and not weapons material, is always much cheaper than any other alternative. Even when you have just one or two plants, it's more economical.
Case in point.. here in Finland we have four nuclear plants, and a fifth is currently being build. The first two were designed and made in Soviet union. The Soviet mentally actually renders in these quite well: they couldn't transport the reactor core in one piece so they cut it in half and welded it in Finland. Luckily Finnish were able to persuade Soviets that they could buy the safety systems from western suppliers. The other two were from Swedish company ASEA. The first two were government owned, the second two were privately owned. All plants to this day have been commercially hugely profitable. Now a fifth reactor is being build by Areva, and already both TVO and joint EON and industry backed consortium is looking on building sixth and/or seventh power plant.
I would say that there is nothing wrong or uneconomical in nuclear power. Maybe the biggest thing making nuclear power in some places uneconomical is general management. In example here as they build the nuclear plants and discovered that at night time they generated way too much electricity, they opted on selling electricity on lower price at night, when it's generally used in house holds to warm up both house and water tank, and thus enabling very high run time for the reactors.
General Electric and Honeywell were going to merge in 2001. The merger got blessing of FTC, but it didn't get the blessing of European Commission, and thus merger was called off as General Electric didn't want to fight and take the matter into European Courts.
The general question in these cases where two companies are merging, does the combined company via merger gain dominant position in said market. If the answer is yes, there are two possibilities, the merger will be called off or Commission sets remedies that make sure the merging company doesn't achieve dominant position in market via merger, i.e. the merged company must sell of some assets. It should also be noted that the EU Commission works both in European wide level and also in regional level, meaning that if by merger companies create a European wide or at least regional monopoly, the Commission will intervene.
I myself think that the EU Commission is doing the right thing here and in other cases. If there wouldn't be any safe guards the corporations would sooner or later collide against consumers and form artificial monopolies. It should be mentioned that if a company gets into a monopoly position by fair competition, the EU Commission wont intervene, only if a company tries to play dirty of leverage it's dominant position from one market to another, then the Commission gets into action.
PS. The EU Commissions right to intervene in merger or acquisition stems from having those companies operating and having major operations in the area of European Union. If Google nor DoubleClick wouldn't have business in EU, EU Commission couldn't do nothing, but as they do, and as the European Commission is in charge, the companies have to also answer to commission on regards on their activities.
I don't know about you others, but I seriously think that Android is over hyped. Yes, it's Linux based platform for mobile devices, but so what? There's already Maemo, but you don't see it hyped to death. Yes, the Android can also run Java ME applications, so what? All mobile phones can run Java ME applications...
And one last thing... there are no devices yet! No nothing! And you know what, there probably won't be even many of them. If you look at the alliance that Google has put together, the only serious vendors are Motorola and Samsung. But hey hey hey, Motorola just bought half of UIQ from Sony-Ericsson. UIQ is an user interface used primarily by Sony-Ericsson on top of Symbian. How serious Motorola is about Android when they have just made an serious investment into an Symbian company? And Samsung... they are just as much flip flopping as Motorola.
You know I'm not saying that you should not discuss about Android or not develop applications to it. I just say that Android seems to be again an over hyped thing. If I would be developing mobile applications running native in a phone, I would be damn sure that there is adequate installation base before jumping in, otherwise it could be very well be just seriously wasted time.
Treo 3G Blazer and Windows Mobile 3G? I haven't even heard of them, or heard of anybody else use them. Actually I haven't seen anybody use any Treo nor any Windows Mobile device. If you want a true 3G phone then you take one phone from Nokia or Sony-Ericsson.
When talking about how iPhone with EDGE beats down 3G, I won't buy that. When you have good 3G networks that are not congested, as they usually aren't, 3G and especially with HSDPA there is no question which network connection blasts the other. It should also be noted that EDGE and 3G are not competing technologies, usually all 3G phones, and all Nokias 3G phones, have also GPRS and EDGE capabilities that they fall back when they fall from 3G network.
All the talk about EGDE beating 3G is just a symptom on the poor condition of US 3G networks. Outside the US the 3G networks really work as they are intended. Actually they are currently starting to phase out older networks, just in this week in example it was notified here in Finland that parts on 900mzh that has been used only with GSM can no be used with 3G.
Also about the bluetooth connection and syncing... really... ca'moon... it works. Just once try with a real phone.
Er... So long as Nokia is the biggest mobile phone manufacturer in the world and largest share holder in Symbian, Symbian is not going to die. Actually usage of Symbian is just going to increase as Nokia and other handset manufacturers are pushing Symbian into their middle to low price models.
It should also be noted that as most of the price of mobile phone comes from the design and manufacturing, and not from the software, mobile phone companies like Nokia can just kill their competition by leveraging their massive economies scale. Nokia currently manufacturers about 40% of all mobile phones in the world and they enjoy very much of their position, by both having components cheaper and having a number one position in the logistical scale (when Nokia needs parts, component manufacturers will diverse shipments from smaller companies to Nokia). If Google or any other will seriously threaten that leadership Nokia and others will surely answer that by just dropping their profit margins (Nokia has currently 20% profit margin).
Also I don't consider Apple as a serious contender in phone markets. They had a one hit with old hardware and few innovations in software. Those innovations are now copied by Nokia and others. For Apple to become serious player in mobile phone markets they would have to manufacture massive amounts of phones to have some change to compete in price and they would have to have newer technology and software. Technology they can buy, but software front may become their soft spot as in example Nokia just bought Navteq (hint: they provide the maps and software to Google Maps and others).
In the end, I would have to say that seeing Google jump to mobile phone markets is more a sign that hype in Google has gone overboard and the company is over extending itself into what ever front they can think of. As soon as the current boom in the stock markets goes away, the management of Google will for sure cut of all the projects that are not in its core competency.
...but who even uses Windows Mobile? It has an abysmal market share of 6.1% of all smart phones. Even Linux based smart phones have bigger market share compared to it (13.3%), and Symbian with its' 72.4% is over the top. This situation won't be changing for the benefit of Windows Mobile. There is no way Nokia would turn its back on Symbian. Also Microsoft has tried to push Windows Mobile to mobile markets for almost 10 years with out success. They could have succeeded by tying the Windows and Windows Mobile develop environments together and allow easy transition path for traditional desktop applications to mobile phones, but as now both desktop and mobile applications are migrating to pure net based service, there is yet another reason less to even think Windows Mobile.
When reading continues flow of articles talking about iPhone that and gPhone this, I just get a feeling that what is the point? What's new? What's revolutionary? And when I think about it more, all I get it is pretty much nothing. The only explanation that I can find for this phenomenon is that as US lacks behind the rest of the world both in available cellular networks and phone models, and so anything new, even if it's been available for the rest of world for years, seems exciting. I can understand this from the consumers as they don't know any better, but why is the same true with the management of international corporations that should have a larger view on the matter?
I can understand that Apple wants to break into mobile phone businesses and deliver a phone with their touch. I can't understand why Google would ever want to do that. Google is concentrated on information and information deliverance business, they are not an hardware company. For Google it would be better to make an integrated Google mobile suite of applications, starting from blogging and imaging tools to email and calendars. Then they would work out a deal with leading smart phone vendors, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and Sony-Ericsson, so that they would include the package with their phones including an Google icon in the main menu of a phone. This way Google, if they wanted it enough badly, they could make an world wide penetrations to mobile markets quick and effectively. Also if for some unknown reason, Google would really want an phone carrying their name, they could just re-brand a phone from one of their partners.
Of course this all with gPhone could be just a byzantine styled political battle with the telecoms where Google tries to intimidate telecom operators to open up more and develop their services and offerings. Thought bringing a new phone to the markets doesn't actually do this. The only way for Google to open up US mobile markets would be to make Congress and FCC open up the mobile networks for other companies and thus allowing virtual operators to enter the stage.
Actually EU doesn't have anything to do with patents right now. A few years down ago EU Commission tried to bring legislation that would have introduced EU wide harmonization of patents and brought unified judicial system. As the European Parliament didn't accept the directive, the attempted legislation was withdrawn. More about the subject.
How ever there is European Patent Organization which works by the power of European Patent Convention. EPO is fully independent organization and isn't part of EU. EPO actually is the only organization in Europe causing real grief in regards of patents. They award software patents even if they don't have any power to do so. Many big corporations and also smaller companies have applied basically pure software patents from EPO. How ever as the EPO really doesn't have power to award these kind of patents, the situation is that those patents are more or less worthless. They also will stay worthless even if EU would make software patents legal as those patents were filed and awarded before they were legal.
In my company we have talked and researched the software patent issue some what. My own point of view is that software patents are worthless and as long as the member state we operate doesn't allow software patents, we don't have any reason to worry. I really do hope that this situation will stay the same as the business of software company is to make software and solve customers problems, not pay big fat checks to lawyers.
I think that one reason for much of the negative feedback here in Slashdot is that you make general judgment based on the American mobile infrastructure and market which both are less developed than in Europe and Japan.
Also in your follow up article you touch some subjects and say that what consumers want is low-latency mobile applications including plain phone calls, messaging, web etc.. Unfortunately you forget that 3G is absolutely must if you are mobile user in urban areas. The original reason for introduction of 3G wasn't to have a higher data access, but to enable plain phone calls in heavily congested European cities. If my memory deserves me right, in the late 90s many mobile operators were very afraid that with out new networks, mobile networks would fulfill and the rate of dropped calls would skyrocket. So having a 3G network and 3G phone are definitive pluses. I also don't agree that there wouldn't be need for data heavy applications like mobile radio and TV, and mobile shops for music and video.
It should be also noted that it's not 3G versus EDGE, as in any good 3G network and phone you can use all the networks GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS. In urban areas you get UMTS and when you enter countryside you get EDGE or GPRS. In that sense it's quite futile to even discuss about 3G versus EDGE as they are complementary to each other.
People get those kind of representatives that they deserve. Plain and simple. If the population is stupid enough to fall from election to election on same kind lies that they previously had been told, then the people get what they deserve. On the other hand, if the people use their common sense and at least ask themselves is a proposition or view sensible or practical or workable that a politician has. If the people just ignore this question, they won't get good representatives.
Just to give an simple example. In Finland we don't have many 'slick' politicians, at least when it comes to economical policy. That's mainly because most of the Fins remember the quick crash course on economic realities in the beginning of 90s', or namely deep depression. As Finland was near being bankrupt by the depression, and was only saved with fairly quick action and straight talk. In example you could almost here something like this coming from ministers "If we don't cut dramatically expenses and make changes to how our whole system works, it's game over and there is nothing left than to hand the keys over the IMF.". After that there hasn't been a snowballs change in hell that politicians would promise moon from the sky or do election year budgets. The people wont just bite it anymore.
I trust representative democracy as long as the general population keeps it obligation on to use their brains for once and then and at least consider different things before just randomly going to vote some guy. I would not trust direct democracy more, actually far less as it seems that putting people to think every 4 year is for some too much to handle.
Who even wants to use something else than Gmail? I use Gmail as my personal email, and my company uses Gmail for domains for our email. From the day one Gmail has offered easy to use and intuitive web mail with enough free space. In about three years that I have used Gmail for my personal use, I have only succeeded in using 312Mb of it. My own company mail address has only gathered 157Mb. For those people who use web mail for email, I don't think that the space requirement has been after Gmail was launched a key part on comparing different email services. Even if Gmail still had only 1Gb limit, I still wouldn't even consider other services.
Also if somebody from Google is reading this message, what I need and want right now, that you are not offering is J2ME mobile client for Gmail for domains. It's ridicules that Google offers mobile client for regular Gmail, but for Gmail for domains there is non. There should be no technical reason for denying the client. If you don't want to offer it free, maybe you could offer it as a part of subscription for Gmail for domains. And no, I don't want to use mobile version via mobile browser, that just doesn't work as well as pure mobile client.
Another wish that I have is that Google besides raising email space would raise space for photos. I love Picasa and I have saved some of my personal photos to Picasa Web. The only thing why I haven't moved all my personal photos to it is that there just isn't enough space for it. Also I don't want to order subscription for it, as for me it's unclear what happens to photos if I end the subscription. Does Google just delete all photos after day 1 of non subscripted time? In example if I hurt my self or get sick, or my credit goes bad, and I can't afford to pay the subscription, I really wouldn't want all my loved photos just disappearing in bit space.
What's wrong with Prussian style system? What's wrong with repetition, pouring down facts and memorizing? In my mind these items are the key ingredients that you just have to study in order in later life to be able to abstract things and think critically. At earliest abstracting and critical thinking should be practised at high school and only at university level should be requirement.
Also it should be mentioned that having Prussian modeled school system doesn't mean bad results. If you in example go to Finland or in Germany to Bavaria, you will get excellent learning results.
PS. Remember the Southpark episode where all the class started to took Ritalin, and the ad about alternative method. That alternative method, also known as 'SHUT UP AND LEARN' would be my solution to make schools better.
The only one talking bullshit is you. If you had some knowledge about the world, about industries, about business and the overall size of development you wouldn't been so quick to call something bullshit.
To make my case, please in example look to Finnish Association of Graduate Engineers. They have 40000 graduated engineers as their members and this represents only a part of all engineers in Finland. Wikipedia tells that there are 70000 engineers in Finland practising their profession. Every year 7500 student graduate and become engineers. (Referens in second page of the PDF) If you now think "gee, where do they need so much engineers", well the answer is for the service of industries mainly to telecommunication, electronics, software, electricity, machine building etc.. There is just so huge amount industrial production going and the amount of engineers required to work is huge. Multinationals like Nokia, Kone, UPM, Stora-Enso, Wärtsilä, Fortum, ABB, TietoEnator, EADS etc.. and also great number of small and medium sized firms employ lots of engineers.
Going back to Iraq, okay 100000 is a good number for developing/third world country, but not comparable with developed countries. And as there isn't more data about Iraqi collages and universities I won't touch that subject more, only saying that in all Arab countries the university system is very weak / low. As what comes to Iraq being the most industrialized Arab country, that unfortunately doesn't still make much of it as when you compare it to other then developing countries as South-Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia it paled in comparison.
And what goes to reason for war, yes the oil was the motivator and I'm not denying it. I only said that first Gulf war happened because of Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened to invade Saudi-Arabia. The second war, as I said happened as the time was right to try to replace Saddam and hopefully avoid civil war. What comes to Israel, they are not a reason to go war, oil is. Besides Israel has it's own quite large amount of nuclear weapons, so having an Arab state industrializing doesn't make it a threat to Israel. Only if an Arab state would have an nuclear weapon, then that would be threat to Israel. Even so, that wouldn't be a reason to go war. As you said and as I believe too, oil and control of it and control currency on which oil is traded are reasons to go war. Thought not morally right.
I don't know even where to start so...
For instance 100000 engineers in a country of 26 million is not big archievement. Even here in Finland where have we only 5 million people, we have over 70000 engineers. Also it's a one thing to get a degree from a third world countries collage or university than get them from European, American or Japanease school. So comparing numbers in more or less meaningless if we can't measure what does the degreas give to their holders. I'm not saying that there weren't good school, what I'm saying that 100000 engineers is an empty number if we can't have data on what the quality was.
What comes to Saddam and how he spent money, then that is something to also discuss. Saddam didn't start huge infrastructure projects, what he did with the money was to please ordinary Sunnis and keep others from starting a rebellion. The rest of the money he put on his army and his weapon research projects. This army was used to invade Iran and Iraq-Iran war did swallow lots of money. The money put on research allowed Saddam to kill Kurds with gas and almost gave him nuclear weapon. What Saddam didn't do with the oil money was to build serious infrastructure and industrialize Iraq. Actually in Saddams rule previously rich and developed places such as Basra fell to misery and poverty.
As what comes to first Gulf war, that happened only as Saddam tried to avoid bankruptcy and invaded Kuwait and tried to take over Saudi-Arabia to form an oil imperium. If Saddam hadn't invaded Kuwait nor threatened Saudi-Arabia there would have not been any war. As what comes to second Gulf war and US invasion to Iraq, that was solely because of strategic circumstances. Everybody knew that Saddam and his regime would eventually fall, but nobody knew when. As in the time Russia was still, China didn't have the muscle and Europe was to divided it was the perfect opportunity to try to replace Saddam. Other option would have been to wait Saddam fall and see who at the aftermath of collapse of the regime, probably after an civil war would have come as victorious.
So what more can be said. Saddam and his regime wasn't good. It's good that they are not in power anymore. It's sad there had to be war before Iraq was free from him, and it's sad that the US is still there and seems unable to go home as the country is in the brink or in fact in the state of civil war. It's also sad in what state the civil infrastructure in Iraq is. That however should not be put on US blame as US in reality didn't destroy that infrastructure as it did in second world war or could have done now.
Well I would advice these Wikipedia articles to you. They have quite good sources, so if you don't want to settle just for the agregated information you can go directly to the source.
Morgenthau Plan
The Industrial Plans for Germany
Science and technology transfer from Germany
Eisenhower and German POWs
German Economic Miracle
And when talking about war, you can always see what is happening from the production statistics...
German armored fighting vehicle production
German aircraft production
And here is more about how effective bombing dams really was. Not very.
Attacks on German dams
I would say that reading those articles, you get a quite good idee on what was happening in Germany before and after the war. To me these articles tell that the industrial machine was quite much alive and well after the war. Yes the civilian centers were in ruins, but then again if you have your industries running then just by diverting resources for a while from normal civilian production quickly repairs and constructs what was lost in the war. It's much easier to construct a house than a steel mill or rail road. In war it's also more harder to destroy factories as they are heavily defended and roads and rail road lines are just too big to be totally destroyed.
As what comes to Iraq, yes they have problems with electricity production, water and waste management, but the reason isn't that they don't have their pre-war plants, it's more about they either don't have working equipment as the current equipment is so old, or because sabotage made by the insurgency. Even so, the Iraqi civilian infrastructure was far from developed world even before first Gulf war. After basic civilian infrastructure the only industry that you can find in Iraq is oil production and that's running fine when oil lines are not cut by sabotage. All in all the two Iraq wars have been very non destructive when you compare on what was done in second world war and especially what you can do even with a one fully loaded B-52.
Thought I would like to add here that in both cases in Germanny and Iraq, the occupaying force has done big mistakes. In Germanny millions died in hunger after the occupiers had disabled the industrial machine and couldn't realize that their actions in the long term would put more people to grave than the war alone. In Iraq it could be said that US could have made more friends and created much more security if they had diverted more resources to serving the civilian centers and making sure that basic infrastructure works. That would have not even costed or taken time much as the pre-war levels of service were so low.
I just had to comment on this one as I'm very much fed up with the myth that US destroyed the infrastructure of Iraq.
The truth of the matter is that even before first Gulf war, there wasn't much infrastructure up in Iraq compared to developed countries. In Iraq you basically had few roads, few railroad connections, oil production industry and some civil infrastructure. When the US in the first Gulf war attacked Iraq, US didn't do blind bombing of Iraqi cities as they did in the second world war. In the second Gulf war US did even less damage to infrastructure as they had more advanced weaponry available and as they were making a land invasion there was no need for massive world war two style bombing runs. The fact of the matter is that Iraq was before first Gulf war a third world country without industrial production and transportation infrastructure, and that should not be counted to the fault of US.
It should be also said that it's a myth that Germany and Japan were totally destroyed. They weren't. After the second world war both Germany and Japan had most of their industrial and transportation infrastructure up. Yes, the population centers in both countries were very heavily bombed and to late 50s you could find ruins in many Germans cities, but the factories, electric plants and damns, railroads, roads and harbors were very much intact. Actually the German infrastructure was in so good shape that the allies had to do demolishing to try to achieve the vision of pasteurized Germany as visioned in Morgenthau plan. It should also be noted that after the war, German agricultural and industrial production didn't collapse because of failure of the infrastructure, but for the politics of occupying forces: there were no effective occupation government, monetary system was by purpose shut down and major German corporations were halted. After the implementation of remnants of Morgenthau plan was shut down and there some governing happening, the economy recovered and started to boom. In this context Marshall loans given to German government didn't start the recovery, but made the recovery more snappier.
Now I want to point out that I'm not denying that the US as and occupation force in Iraq hasn't had difficulties and they wouldn't be free from critic. What I'm saying is that Iraq was before a third world country without developed infrastructure and it still is, and that is not the fault of US.
PS. I'm not an American, and I'm not trying to defend US nor it's action. I just want that false arguments are not used in a discussion. The myth of destroyed Iraq infrastructure is one and the same myth about post war Germany and Japan is second.