1193305
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
This is the kind of work that makes a body wish President Bush would read books. The author's point is that diplomacy is America's strength, and it should be used first with force held as a last resort, especially in a world where the US is not the only superpower anymore due to the growing influence of countries in the developing world.
'The Rise of the Rest' is what Mr Zakaria uses to refer to the economic and political growth in developing countries, principally (but not limited to) India and China. Globalization and the opening of international trade has generated great improvements in living standards lifting many millions of people out of poverty across the globe. India and China have been most noticeable because of their sheer size, accounting for over a sixth of the human race between them. India's and China's stories are, of course, slightly different. China has a lot of advantages (from their government's point of view) in that they can ride roughshod over the wishes of its people in the interests of achieving economic goals, whereas in democratic countries such as the UK, people have more freedom to object to development that will adversely affect their standard of living or property values. A proposed expansion of Heathrow Airport meets many obstacles in the form of objections from local residents, whereas in China it's possible for the government to just build an entire airport and sweep anyone out of the way who gets in it. India also has similar checks and balances as Western countries in that great public works projects are subject to objection from local people, and so their growth isn't quite at the same breathtaking pace as China's, but it is still impressive nonetheless.
However strong their performance on the economic stage, it will be a long time before China or India reach the same levels of domination as the US has today. Nor do they seem to want to. China certainly has no interest in becoming the world's policeman. Ending centuries of self-imposed isolation, China's main interest for now is in securing its own borders, reining in runaway regions, and protecting its own interests. Similarly, India is more interested in continuing to build its own prosperity than imposing its own democratic values on the rest of the world. The USA is likely to remain the only major power wishing to export its values as well as its goods.
While international political structures are useful, some of them, like the UN Security Council, are hopelessly out of date. Japan and Germany are among the world's biggest economic powers but still don't have permanent seats on the council just because they were on the losing side in the second world war. Nevertheless, the USA remains the power that people go to in search of a diplomatic solution to international disputes, and that is likely to remain the case for quite some time.
Zakaria goes on to discuss the complexities of nuclear proliferation and to make suggestions on how to deal with this and other problems. The Iraq war is touched upon, remarking on how it is sign of America's unchecked power that it was able to launch an unprovoked war on Iraq and dupe other countries into helping it. The author approves of the end result of ousting of Saddam Hussein, but disapproves of the botched post-invasion occupation and the sheer incompetence of it.
The overall tone is non-partisan and contains none of the childish and heated conservative/liberal bombast that pollutes so much of the bookshelves these days. This writer doesn't fall neatly into the liberal/conservative pigeonholes that some commentators seem determined to push everyone into. The facts are there, the bibliography is extensive, and the case is made very well. If only work of this caliber were more widely read.
1088743
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
The BBC is reporting that the UK Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that a television advert for the iPhone misled consumers. Two complaints to the watchdog noted that the advert said "all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone". But the ASA said because the iPhone did not support Flash or Java — the claim was misleading. Apple had argued its claim referred to availability of webpages, rather than their specific appearance.
533644
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
I've been a Mac believer since the 1980s, but my latest experiences have made me truly question my beliefs. I got the first video iPod and found that watching a single TV episode would be enough to drain the battery almost completely. OK, I can live with that. But after spending $1400 on a new Macbook and finding a selection box of problems (basic tools like tar missing, mysql claiming to be running from the control panel but nowhere to be found in the terminal, sharp edges that hurt the wrists, etc.) I have to ask: has Apple lost its way?
368271
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
The San Jose Mercury News is speculating about Silicon Valley's potential for becoming the Detroit of a future electric car industry. Among the valley's strengths is an ability to adapt to rapidly changing business environments and develop new business models, something that the Big Three can hardly be accused of. On the downside, it's a capital-intensive business and isn't like raising $40 million and having an IPO. Apparently there are five companies in the valley already pursuing electric car technology, most notably Tesla.
Last week's announcement by Shai Agassi, a former SAP executive based in Palo Alto, that he's raised $200 million for a company that will try to revolutionize the electric car industry is the latest sign of this region's growing role in one of the hottest sectors of the automotive industry.
271665
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
The Economist has an extensive article about Google. The main points are: the core advertising business is doing well, there are privacy concerns, they have built a massive infrastructure that allows them to easily launch new experimental products, creative employees have come up with cool products like GMail and Google News, but others have come through acquisitions like Google Earth and YouTube. There are satisfied employees who love the college atmosphere and disgruntled ex-employees who resent aspects of the regime, the concentration of geeks means a lot of clever people in the same place don't necessarily get along, and it'll be interesting to see how well it does when it faces a big crisis.
240229
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
The BBC is now making its broadband quality news service available to internet users outside the UK.
"We did not want the BBC's UK licence fee payers meeting this cost and in effect subsidising the service for people outside the UK. Now, with the help of our partners in BBC World, the BBC's commercially funded international TV news channel, we are making our broadband video news service available internationally."
235475
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
NASA's HR policies are coming under more scrutiny now as it emerges that shuttle crewmembers have been drunk during missions. Maybe they've been listening to too much Zephram Cochrane — "I sure as hell ain't goin up there sober!"
[A special review] panel report said that doctors and other astronauts had raised concerns that the two drunken crew members posed a flight safety risk, but the astronauts were not grounded. The report did not say when the incidents took place, or whether they involved pilots.
226853
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
The BBC says that draughts has been solved by Canadian scientists who have created a program that can "win or draw any game, no matter who the opponent is."
With the vast number of playing possibilities, draughts is the most complex game to have been solved to date — it was about a million times more complicated to solve than Connect Four.
Researchers are now hoping to move on to even bigger problems, however it seems that grand master of the board games — chess — may remain unsolved for some time.
95166
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
The BBC is reporting that more UK companies are reversing the call-centre outsourcing trend.
"Hello, it's my car." ''Your cat, sir?." "No, my hatchback." "Your bad back, sir?" "No my car, it's a hatchback." "Your cat has a bad back, sir?" "Arghhhhhh!" ...Just 4% of people have had a good experience when dealing with a call centre, according to a recent survey by YouGov. Over half of those asked said their biggest gripe was having to contact call centres outside the UK and more than a third admitted to shouting and swearing at agents because they got so frustrated.
70730
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
According to the BBC, Cisco is suing Apple for trademark infringement, for using the iPhone name for its new phone.
Following the launch Cisco said it hoped to resolve the matter by Tuesday evening after negotiations.
Cisco said it thought Apple would agree to a final document and public statement regarding the trademark.
70548
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
The BBC is reporting that the backers of the XO '$100 laptop' are now pushing this thing towards deployment in the developing world.
"The backers of the One Laptop Per Child project plan to release the machine on general sale next year. But customers will have to buy two laptops at once — with the second going to the developing world. Five million of the laptops will be delivered to developing nations this summer, in one of the most ambitious educational exercises ever undertaken."
Currently it costs $150, the aim is to bring the price down to the magic $100. Reminds me of the ZX80 that first got me into programming.
65176
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
Why is it taking so long for Battlestar Galactica episodes to appear available for download on iTunes? And whenever they do, why won't it play properly on my Mac in full-screen mode? It's so choppy it's unwatchable. I see that the iTMS is being flooded with complaints of this nature, so I know I'm not the only one affected. Are you?
60562
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
The Economist is reporting on how consumer-driven software products are increasingly making their presence felt in the corporate world. Web-based applications are now making more in-roads into IT departments despite the fears of IT managers who previously tried to block such things.
From the article: "...most IT bosses, especially at large organisations, tend to be sceptical of consumer technologies and often ban them outright. Employees, in return, tend to ignore their IT departments. Many young people, for instance, use services such as Skype to send instant messages or make free calls while in the office. FaceTime, a Californian firm that specialises in making such consumer applications safe for companies, found in a recent survey that more than half of employees in their 20s and 30s admitted to installing such software over the objections of IT staff."
58332
submission
fiannaFailMan writes:
Richard Dawkins has attracted a lot of attention with The God Delusion, and for good reason. He pulls no punches with a robust defence of atheism and reason as opposed to using faith as a means of making important life decisions. The tone of the book is shamelessly opinionated, and he leaves you in no doubt as to where he stands. His aim is to encourage more people to 'come out' as atheists, and to 'raise the consciousness' of those who tolerate the widely-held assumptions that blind faith in a higher existence is a virtue and that faith and science are both equally valid. Atheists remain one of the last social groups who are openly vilified and discriminated against on account of what they think, and Dawkins wants that to change.
The damage that has been done to the world by faith-based reasoning and organised religion is covered in a fair amount of detail with plenty of anecdotal stories thrown in to give the reader something to latch onto on an emotional level. The supression of scientific development, the teaching of ignorance at the expense of scientific fact, the subjugation of women, the abuse and brainwashing of children, the fallacy that only faith has a moral code, and of course the jihads and religious wars are all covered.
The philosophical arguments in favour of the God Hypothesis, as he calls it, are presented and knocked down one by one in incisive detail, and many are exposed as circular reasoning. The foundations of religion, the ancient scriptures, are examined closely, and the cruelty and violence of the old testament God is explained in shocking clarity. God is portrayed as an insecure, vengeful, jealous, genocidal maniac. Interestingly, there are examples of scripture that look suspiciously like they were duplicated during centuries of editing. For example, Lot's departure from Sodom (after he showed God how righteous he was by offering his daughters up to a mob to be raped in order to protect some angels who came to visit, Genesis 19:7-8) is suspiciously similar to another story in Judges 19:23-4. The mysoginist tone of the monotheistic holy books is made very clear throughout all of this, indicating how it was all written by men in a time when women were considered almost sub-human, and there are people in the world today who still want to adhere to such inhumane principles both in Christendom as well as the Islamic world.
There is an interesting exploration of the Catholic church's talent for making things up as it goes along using its own self interest as a motive and warped reasoning as the justification. Purgotory was invented as a means of justifying prayer (also exposed as ineffective elsewhere in the book) for the dead and as a means of generating revenue in the form of 'indulgences,' something the author describes as 'the medeival equivalent of the Nigerian internet scam.'
At all times, Dawkins keeps yanking the reader back to the reality of how the world works as explained by science. Natural selection is described not as an unlikely 'chance mutation' but as a gradual process in which the development of complex organisms is actually inevitable in many places in the universe wherever the conditions are suitable. Intelligent design advocates look for holes in scientific knowledge that can only be plugged by a god, only to retract whenever science plugs the gap with new discoveries.
Some people deride atheism as an 'empty existence' and having 'no meaning.' Dawkins extolls the virtues of atheism coupled with a deep understanding of the wonders of science. The universe as known to science is much bigger and much more impressive than the relatively small and young concoction of the ancient peoples who needed simple stories for simple people to explain that which they did not yet have the scientific knowledge to understand.
If you are an atheist and have been shy about voicing your beliefs (or lack thereof) in the presence of religious people, reading this book will give you new confidence and pride in your preference for reason over faith.
