Speak Out Thinking Free

Intel's Ivy Bridge processor

2012-01-24T00:33:00.002-05:00

INTRODUCING THE WORLD'S FIRST 3-D TRANSISTOR READY FOR HIGH-VOLUME MANUFACTURING

3-D, 22nm: New Technology Delivers An Unprecedented Combination of Performance and Power Efficiency

Intel introduces a fundamentally different technology for future microprocessor families: 3-D transistors manufactured at 22nm. These new transistors enable Intel to continue to relentlessly pursue Moore's Law and to ensure that the pace of technology advancement consumers expect can continue for years to come.

Until now, transistors, the core of microprocessors, were 2-D (planar) devices. Intel's 3-D Tri-Gate transistor, and the ability to manufacture it in high volume, mark a dramatic change in the fundamental structure of the computer chip. Learn more about the history of transistors.

This also means Intel can continue to lead in powering products, from the world's fastest supercomputers to very small mobile handhelds.

Smaller is Better

Outlook for the global economy 2012

2011-12-21T02:14:00.000-05:00

The outlook for the global economy in 2012 is clear, but it isn’t pretty: recession in Europe, anemic growth at best in the United States, and a sharp slowdown in China and in most emerging-market economies. Asian economies are exposed to China. Latin America is exposed to lower commodity prices (as both China and the advanced economies slow). Central and Eastern Europe are exposed to the eurozone. And turmoil in the Middle East is causing serious economic risks – both there and elsewhere – as geopolitical risk remains high and thus high oil prices will constrain global growth.

The world’s financial markets are on the brink, and 2012 could result in the global economy turning a corner — or crumbling, experts said on Saturday.

During a panel discussion at The Economist’s World in 2012festival, former U.S. Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, Morgan Stanley CFO Ruth Porat and Brookings Institute fellow Eswar Prasad agreed that 2012 would be the year that defines the path that the U.S., European Union and emerging economies for the next decade.

What they disagreed on was the likelihood of each option.

First, the United States. Rubin said he believes that there is “a material likelihood” of major government action on fiscal matters in the short period of time after the U.S. presidential election.

“If major action does occur, it is more than likely that it will be reasonably constructive in terms of mainstream agenda,” he said. “Though it is certainly possible it could be otherwise.”

The direct relationship between the success of business, citizens and politicians suggests that it’s more than likely that common ground for “fiscal rectitude” can be found, Rubin said.

Why? Rubin offered four reasons:

A bevy of events scheduled to occur at the end of 2012 and in early 2013 will be a major political and financial problem unless addressed, including the expiration of middle class tax cuts, sequestration, a possible payroll tax holiday and the reaching of the U.S. debt ceiling. If they all occur, the estimated fiscal demand will be reduced by four to five percent.
Continued economic duress could increase political pressure to act.
The 2012 election itself will produce impacts, “whatever they may be.”
A post-election period will increase political will to address the issues.

Decisions taken in the Summit Burssels Metting ; Europe moves ahead with fiscal union, UK isolated

2011-12-13T00:34:00.002-05:00

Fri, Dec 9th, 2011 8:06 pm BdST

BRUSSELS, Dec 9 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Europe divided on Friday in a historic rift over building a closer fiscal union to preserve the euro, with an overwhelming majority of countries led by Germany and France agreeing to forge ahead with a separate treaty, leaving the EU's third biggest economy Britain isolated.

The outcome of a two-day European Union summit left financial markets uncertain whether and when more decisive action would be taken to stem a debt crisis that began in Greece, spread to Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain and now threatens France and even economic powerhouse Germany.

A new treaty could take three months to negotiate and may require referendums in some countries. Two ECB sources told Reuters the European Central Bank would keep purchases of euro zone government bonds capped for now and not take extra action. Debt markets were wary. Interbank lending rates eased but Italian 10-year bond yields remained around 6.5 percent.

Twenty-six of the 27 EU leaders agreed to pursue tighter integration with stricter budget discipline in the single currency area, but Britain said it could not accept proposed EU treaty amendments after failing to secure concessions.

After 10 hours of talks that ran into the early hours of Friday, all 17 members of the euro zone and nine countries that aspire to join resolved to negotiate a new agreement alongside the EU treaty with a tougher deficit and debt regime to avoid a repetition of the debt crisis in future.

The nine non-euro states said they would consult their parliaments, where appropriate, on taking part in the process. After a long night of wrangling, Britain's few allies melted away in the Brussels dawn.

"Not Europe, Brits divided. And they are outside of decision making. Europe is united," Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said in blunt English.

One senior EU diplomat called British Prime Minister David Cameron's negotiating tactics "clumsy". Among other issues, he had sought a right to veto a proposed financial transaction tax, which may be voted through by a majority over the objections of the City of London financial centre.

ECB President Mario Draghi called the decision a step forward for the stricter budget rules he has said are necessary for the euro zone to emerge stronger from the turmoil.

"It's going to be the basis for a good fiscal compact and more discipline in economic policy in the euro area members," Draghi said. "We came to conclusions that will have to be fleshed out more in the coming days."

Two ECB sources said the bank's governing council decided on Thursday to keep bond buying limited to around 20 billion euros a week and there was no need to review the decision in the light of the summit outcome.

"You will see some further purchases but not the huge bazooka that some people in the markets and the media are awaiting," one central banker told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

But French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters the ECB's move to provide unlimited three-year funds to cash-starved European banks would be more effective, by enabling them to continue buying government bonds.

"This means that each state can turn to its banks, which will have liquidity at their disposal," he said.

"SEETHES, SULKS, GLOATS"

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was satisfied with the decisions. The world would see that Europe had learned from its mistakes and avoided "lousy compromise", she said.

Europe's most powerful leader said she had not given up hope that Britain would eventually agree to change the EU treaty to anchor stricter budget discipline, with automatic sanctions for deficit offenders.

Sarkozy sounded elated at having united a big group around the euro zone as the EU's core, long a French objective.

"This is a summit that will go down in history," he said. "We would have preferred a reform of the treaties among 27. That wasn't possible given the position of our British friends. And so it will be through an intergovernmental treaty of 17, but open to others."

One EU diplomat summed up the outcome as: "Britain seethes, Germany sulks, and France gloats."

Active ECB support will be vital in the coming days with markets doubting the strength of Europe's financial firewalls to protect vulnerable economies such as Italy and Spain, which have to roll over hundreds of billions of euros in debt next year.

Irish Europe Minister Lucinda Creighton said Dublin and many other member states expect the central bank to take a more pro-active approach to the debt crisis in the weeks ahead. Traders said the ECB bought Italian bonds on Friday to steady markets.

Creighton also said there was a 50/50 chance that Ireland would have to hold a referendum on ratifying a fiscal union treaty. Irish voters have rejected EU treaties twice in the last decade in plebiscites, holding up their entry into force, only to reverse their vote later under strong European pressure.

Voters in any referendum this time will cast their ballots in the knowledge that Ireland is receiving an EU bailout, and that it will not be able to prevent other countries going ahead without it.

The euro rallied in Europe but analysts said the summit had done little to convince markets that a solution to the crisis was at hand. Asked if the euro was safe now, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said: "I'm not sure."

BRITAIN OUTSIDE?

Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy had wanted to get the whole EU to agree to change the Lisbon treaty so that automatic sanctions to back budget and debt rules for eurozone states could be enshrined in the bloc's basic law.

But Britain, which is outside the euro zone, refused to back the move, demanding guarantees in a protocol protecting its financial services industry, roughly one-tenth of the country's economy. Sarkozy described Cameron's demand as unacceptable.

Cameron hinted London may now try to prevent the others from using the executive European Commission and the European Court of Justice, saying: "Clearly the institutions of the European Union belong to the European Union, they belong to the 27."

The rift may increase pressure from Eurosceptics within Cameron's Conservative party and outside it for Britain to hold a referendum on leaving the EU, which it joined in 1973. The prime minister strongly opposes such a course, which he has said would be disastrous for British interests. Britain conducts more than half of its trade within the EU and would suffer economically if it lost its priviliged access to the single market.

Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council and the summit chairman, focused on the success in securing agreement for tighter fiscal limits, including the need for countries to bring budgets close to balance.

"It means reinforcing our rules on excessive deficit procedures by making them more automatic. It also means that member states would have to submit their draft budgetary plans to the (European) Commission," Van Rompuy said.

"An inter-governmental treaty can be approved and ratified much more rapidly than a full-fledged treaty change, and I think speed is also very important to enhance credibility," he said.

But it could still take months of wrangling, with countries like Finland and Slovakia opposing a Franco-German drive to take decisions on future bailouts by an 85 percent supermajority to avoid being taken hostage by a single small country.

INTEL , 4G WiMAX Development

2011-12-07T02:30:00.001-05:00

Enjoy thhe convenience of Internet broadband all around town at speeds up to four times faster than 3G.¹ With 4G WiMAX, you get fast, easy access to blazing high-speed mobile performance so you can interact with friends, stream videos quickly, and download or upload large files in a flash.

Take advantage of the smart performance of a 2nd gen Intel® Core™ processor inside a laptop equipped with ultra-fast 4G WiMAX wireless technology, and you'll have access where you want it for great online HD entertainment, keeping in touch with friends, and staying productive on the go. So, stop worrying about where you'll connect from and start getting excited about what you'll connect to!¹

Smart performance, Ultra-fast connectivity.

4G WiMAX gives you incredibly fast wireless access to the internet – from four to ten times faster than 3G wireless – for your PCs and all the devices you use, in your home and wherever you go around the city. With 2nd generation Intel® Core™ processors and 4G WiMAX, say goodbye to hotspots and hello to smart performance with ultra-fast connectivity.

An industry solution to fast, wireless broadband everywhere

WiMAX is an industry standard, called IEEE 802.16e. Many WiMAX providers, technology companies, certification and testing laboratories, and software developers from around the world form the WiMAX Forum. The Forum is a not-for-profit organization created to standardize and promote the expansion of WiMAX technology.

Intel is a founding member of the WiMAX Forum and committed to its expansion, working with global providers and developers, and engineering products for WiMAX.

Learn how WiMAX works in this demo and in this white paper.

Learn about other wireless technologies and products.

Check out these WiMAX products and initiatives:

Make sure your next PC or laptop is WiMAX equipped, and get incredibly fast internet access at home and on the go.

Meeting in Brussels EU Heads of State on Dec 9th

2011-12-07T01:34:00.001-05:00

The EU Heads of State or Government will meet in Brussels on 8-9 December to discuss the economic situation in Europe. The European Council will also discuss energy issues and ways to promote growth. Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen will represent Finland at the meeting.

The European Council meeting will be prepared at the General Affairs Council convening in Brussels on 5 December. Minister for European Affairs and Foreign Trade Alexander Stubb will represent Finland at the General Affairs Council. Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja will attend the meeting when it is dealing with enlargement. In addition to preparatory work on the European Council, the General Affairs Council will discuss the proposal for the EU's multiannual financial framework 2014-2020 and EU enlargement on the basis of the annual enlargement package.

In line with the June and October European Councils, the December meeting will focus on economic growth and measures to support employment in the EU countries. Special attention will be paid to Internal Market sectors with the strongest growth potential, such as the Digital Single Market.

Smart Tv and Internet Connectable Google TV

2011-11-16T01:13:00.000-05:00

In the home theater world, there are now many options for getting Internet content onto your HDTV. This is an exciting development, but it means the world of TV is getting more complicated. Which product is the right one for you to buy? How do you connect your system to the Internet?

With the introduction of Google TV, there might also be confusion between "smart TV" and "Internet Connectable" products. This FAQ will help address the basic differences.

What do smart TV and Internet Connectable products have in common?

Smart TV and Internet Connectable products both allow you to view content from the Internet on your HDTV through specialized apps (Netflix*, Napster, Facebook, etc.). Usually, you will access them through a menu page of icons.

These apps are designed to work specifically and very smoothly with the television experience. Each product has its own specialized list of available apps. While some may offer access to Facebook, for example, others may not.

Is a Web browser included? Can I search the Internet?

Smart TV: In most cases, this will probably be the biggest difference between the two categories. Smart TV products like Google TV include a web browser and keyboard, so you can browse, search and type in content online using your HDTV, just as you do with your computer. They also feature significant processing power, which allows them to perform integrated searches across both Web and TV (see the next question for more info).

Internet Connectable: Most of these products do not come with a Web browser, so you cannot search the Internet. Instead, online content is accessed via a set of apps that are included with the product. In the near future, a small number of Internet Connectable products will include a Web browser with limited functionality.

Can I search for specific video content?

Smart TV: Yes, there is a robust and cleverly integrated search capability. Type in the name of a favorite program, hit Search and quickly see the time and channel the program is on, any DVR recordings*, plus any video content that's available on the Internet. You can then select any available program right from your search results.

Internet Connectable: There is a limited ability to search for video content within some specific apps. For example, within the YouTube app, you can use your remote to type in a search term and relevant videos will be returned.

What kinds of smart TV and Internet Connectable products can I purchase?

Smart TV: Google TV is the only smart TV product that is currently available. Sony has released HDTVs and a Blu-ray player that have Google TV built in. Additionally, Logitech has released a stand-alone Google TV box that can work with any HDTV.

Internet Connectable: There is a wide range of products that have this capability, including HDTVs, Blu-ray players, home theater systems, gaming systems and TiVo.

Read more »

Intel Ceo Otellini growing new market segments

2011-10-27T10:16:00.000-04:00

Intel’s President and CEO, Paul Otellini, made the announcements during the opening keynote of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

“Computing is in a constant state of evolution,” said Otellini, describing the opportunities and challenges facing Intel and the industry. “The unprecedented demand for computing from the client devices to the cloud is creating significant opportunity for the industry. Intel is innovating and working with our partners to deliver computing experiences that are more mobile, secure and seamless. I’m excited about the new experiences that will be created across a range of devices, and we’re just getting started.”

Growth in New Market Segments

Addressing a major corporate goal of growing Intel’s business in adjacent computing market segments, Otellini discussed the company’s recent efforts to accelerate its smartphone business and showcased a form factor reference design based on Intel® Atom™ processor, and running the Android™ platform.

Otellini then introduced Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile at Google*. The two executives outlined plans to enable and optimize future releases of the Android™ platform for Intel’s family of low power Atom™ processors. The joint effort is designed to speed time-to-market of Intel technology-based smartphones running the Android platform.

“Our collaboration with Google will bring a powerful new capability to market that helps accelerate industry innovation, adoption and choice,” said Otellini. “I’m excited by the possibilities of this collaboration. It will enable our customers to bring exciting new products and user experiences to market that harness the combined potential of Intel architecture and the Android platform.”

Today’s announcement builds upon the two companies’ recent joint initiatives to enable Intel architecture on Google products. Joint initiatives include Chrome OS, Google TV, and the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) and Native Development Kit (NDK).

Pushing the Limits of Low Power for Ultrabooks™ and Beyond

Otellini predicted that Ultrabook systems will provide the most satisfying and complete computing experience. The company is working with industry partners to deliver mainstream-priced products beginning this holiday season for this new category of lighter, sleeker compute companions.

Intel’s CEO said the company’s engineers will further accelerate Ultrabook innovation with Intel’s “Ivy Bridge” 22nm technology early next year with the help of the company’s revolutionary 3-D Tri-gate transistors.

He highlighted the broad enabling work between Intel and Microsoft, and pointed to the future opportunities that Windows 8 will present across tablets, hybrid devices and new form factors such as Ultrabooks™.

Otellini also described the new class of platform power management in development for the 2013 “Haswell” products for Ultrabooks. The advances in silicon technology and platform engineering are expected to reduce idle platform power by more than 20 times over current designs without compromising computing performance. Otellini said he expects that this design change, combined with industry collaboration, will lead to more than 10 days of connected standby battery life by 2013. The advancements will aid in delivery of always-on-always-connected computing where Ultrabooks stay connected when in standby mode, keeping the e-mail, social media and digital content up-to-date.

Looking further into the future, Otellini predicted that platform power innovation will reach levels that are difficult to imagine today. Intel’s researchers have created a chip that could allow a computer to power up on a solar cell the size of a postage stamp. Referred to as a “Near Threshold Voltage Core,” this Intel architecture research chip pushes the limits of transistor technology to tune power use to extremely low levels.

Microsoft Windows 8 will be launched Q3 2012

2011-10-25T07:47:00.000-04:00

Microsoft is gearing up for Windows 8, the latest iteration in the vaunted operating system family. While the official launch is still a full year away, Microsoft is trying to generate a lot of attention for the next generation of Windows. The new operating system will have a smaller footprint and support tablets. Early tests show it’s faster than Windows 7 which should make it more palatable for ultralight computers and other mobile devices.

And that’s what Microsoft wants: an operating system that can span the breadth of computing products – desktop to mobile.

Publicly, Microsoft allies and analysts are talking positively about Windows 8’s prospects. Dell and HP are expected to launch ultralight and tablets on Windows 8. And Microsoft is looking for another enterprise hit to repeat the rapid sales of Windows 7.

Privately, enterprise decision-makers and analysts are saying they’re in no hurry to jump to Windows 8. From their perspective, they just finished upgrading to Windows 7. They spent years on Windows XP because of delays in the development of Windows Vista. And Vista was an unmitigated disaster in which few businesses completed a full adoption. Even Microsoft admits Vista damaged its Windows franchise.
Read more »

Trends and drivers of the world in 2015

2011-10-14T03:45:00.000-04:00

In the globally networked world of today even slight changes of influencing parameters can have a huge effect on the development of society. With the fast changing political scenery, the soaring economic development and ongoing leaps in technology, a forecast into the future is a risky undertaking. Nevertheless, as the future development of the world’s energy is one of the backbones of the global society, the need for reasonable planning is obvious. Utilities need to make long term investment decisions for their power generation portfolio as well as the transmission and distribution infrastructure, providers of alternative energy solutions seek a sound decision platform and, last but not least, industrial groups and their suppliers want to know where market and technological development will lead.

six prominent trends with strong influence on the upcoming needs of people and requirements of the industry. These trends address

Changes in the global society

Globalization

Energy industry restructuring

Primary energy concerns

Electrical energy needs

Environmental issues

Exponential population growth, falling mortality and fertility rates, a shift in the demographic balance between young and old, chronic poverty in much of the southern hemisphere, urbanization and the growth of mega-cities, mass migration within and between countries, the rising influence of religion in some cultures and growing secularism in others, and the worldwide impact of the digital and IT revolutions – these are all factors that are driving societies and individuals towards increasingly rapid change.
Read more »

when politics can influence on main economics

2011-10-02T14:53:00.004-04:00

How much influence does the President (any President) really have on the economy? The answer according to most experts is "very little". And yet, we voters seem to have this opinion that politics and the economy go hand in hand.

A President's influence comes in two forms: monetary policy and tax policy. Both of these can "push" the economy up or down, but economic momentum tends to go where it wants regardless of who is in office. A president's influence on most specific economic factors, such as the Dow Jones average, is practically non-existent.

If a President has near God like control of the economy as the candidates want us to believe, then why would a President ever want the economy to go bad? The Communists had near total control of the economy, and every communist country has ended up with a economic disaster on their hands.

President actually has some control over, although Congress ultimately has more control over the budget than the President does. Obviously the economy overall has more influence as well. Incomes have been going down the last four years, which means income taxes and consumer taxes collected has gone down. Almost every state in the country has had budget problems . Add to that the fact that spending continues to rise despite the complete lack of inflation, and the result is record setting deficits.Of the four charts, this is the most useful one, even though it should be pointed out

The bottom line is, we should not pick a President based on economic factors, even though that is most likely how most people will vote this year. Pick you candidate base on what economic programs they want to implement, or what social issues they support. The economy is going to do what it is going to do regardless of who is in office.

The Atucha II nuclear power plant in Argentina

2011-09-30T00:17:00.010-04:00

Argentina launched on Wednesday the final start-up phase for the country's third nuclear plant, as it expands its reliance on nuclear power just as Europe starts to shy away from this technology.

Construction on the Atucha II plant began in the early 1980s but it was disrupted for years, raised by goverments policies and interest , special in Menem ´s times in 1989 , finnancial issues to assist the development

The plant will start producing energy in the second half of 2012 after a series of tests have been run, contributing 700 megawatts to the country's power grid. This will raise nuclear power generation to 10 percent of total capacity from 7 percent now.

"Our country nearly 40 years ago ... unveiled Atucha I, becoming the first Latin American country to operate a nuclear plant," President Cristina Fernandez said in a nationally televised speech on Wednesday.

Argentina's move is counter to action in Europe where countries such asGermany and Italy are moving away from nuclear power in part because of the tsunami damage to nuclear facilities in Japan.

Demand for energy has surged due to brisk economic growth since 2003, and the government has had to supplement local supplies with natural gas from Bolivia, diesel and fuel-oil imports and, increasingly, costly liquefied natural gas.

Energy shortages during the winter months often cool industrial production and economic activity and could prove an obstacle to longer-term growth, analysts say.

Work on Atucha II was revived in 2006 and the government has sunk $2.3 billion into the project, financed at least in part with money from the state pensions administrator, Anses.

Argentina aims to build a fourth nuclear plant, Atucha III, and construction on that would likely begin in late 2013,

Argentina has two nuclear reactors generating nearly one-tenth of its electricity.
Its first commercial nuclear power reactor began operating in 1974.
Completion of the country's third reactor is expected by early 2012.

Electricity consumption in Argentina has grown strongly since 1990. Per capita consumption was just over 2000 kWh/yr in 2002 and rose to over 2600 kWh/yr in 2007. Gross electricity production in 2007 was 115 billion kWh, 54% of this from gas, 27% from hydro, 9.4% from oil, 2.2% from coal, and 6.3% (7.2 billion kWh) from nuclear. In 2008, nuclear power provided over 6.8 billion kWh of electricity – about 6.2% of total electricity generation.

Argentina's electricity production is largely privatised, and is regulated by ENRE (Ente Nacional Regulador de la Electricidad). Installed capacity is about 35 GWe, about 11% of which is from autoproducers and private generators.

CAREM reactor

Another aspect of the 2006 plan was a move towards building a 27 MWe prototype of the CAREM reactor, and this is now reported to be at pre-construction stage in the northwestern Formosa province¹. It is proposed that this prototype will be followed up with a 150 MWe version there.

Developed by CNEA and INVAP (Investigación Aplicada),^d the CAREM nuclear reactor is a modular 100 MWt simplified pressurised water reactor with integral steam generators designed to be used for electricity generation (27 MWe net) or as a research reactor or for water desalination. Recent studies have explored scaling it up to 100 or 300 MWe. CAREM has its entire primary coolant system within the reactor pressure vessel, self-pressurised and relying entirely on convection. Fuel is standard 3.4% enriched PWR fuel, with burnable poison, and it is refuelled annually. It is a mature design which could be deployed within a decade.

Uranium resources

Argentine uranium resources listed in the Red Book² total only about 15,000 tU, though the CNEA estimates that there is some 55,000 tU as "exploration targets" in several different geological environments. Uranium exploration and a little mining was carried out from the mid-1950s, but the last mine closed in 1997 for economic reasons. Cumulative national production until then from open pit and heap leaching at seven mines was 2509 tU.

However, there are plans to reopen the CNEA Sierra Pintada mine in Mendoza in the central west, which closed in1997. It is also known as the San Rafael mine and mill. Reserves there and at Cerro Solo in the south total less than 8000 tU. A resumption of uranium mining was part of the 2006 plan, in order to make the country self-sufficient.

In 2007, CNEA reached agreement with the Salta provincial government in the north of the country to reopen the Don Otto uranium mine, which operated intermittently from 1963 to 1981. Block leaching is envisaged.

Australian-based Cauldron Energy Ltd holds leases over 16 km of outcropping uranium-copper mineralisation at Rio Colorado, Catamarca province. This was worked by CNEA in 1950s and 1960s, and Cauldron's exploration target is 6400 tU.

Fuel cycle

A 150 t/yr mill complex and refinery producing uranium dioxide operated by Dioxitek, a CNEA subsidiary, is at Córdoba.

CNEA has a small conversion plant at Pilcaniyeu, near Bariloche, Rio Negro, with 60 t/yr capacity.

Enrichment services are currently imported from the USA. Over 1983-89, INVAP operated a small (20,000 SWU/yr) diffusion enrichment plant for CNEA at Pilcaniyeu, in the Rio Negro province. This was unreliable and produced very little low-enriched uranium. In August 2006, CNEA said it that it wanted to recommission the enrichment plant, using its own Sigma advanced diffusion enrichment technology which is said to be competitive. The main reason given was to keep Argentina within the circle of countries recognised as having the right to operate enrichment plants, and thereby support INVAP's commercial prospects internationally. It was proposed to restart enrichment on a pilot scale in 2007 and work up to 3 million SWU/yr in three years but, as of 2010, it appears that commissioning will not begin until late 2011.

Production of fuel cladding is undertaken by CNEA subsidiaries. Fuel assemblies are supplied by CONAUR SA, also a CNEA subsidiary, located at the Ezeiza Centre near Buenos Aires. The fuel fabrication plant has a capacity of 150 t/yr for Atucha-type fuel and Candu fuel bundles.

Heavy water is produced by ENSI SE (Empresa Neuquina de Servicios de Ingeniería), which is jointly owned by CNEA and the Province of Neuquén where the 200 t/yr plant is located (at Arroyito). This was scaled to produce enough for Atucha 2 and the three following reactors, and so now has capacity for export.

There are no plans for reprocessing used fuel, though an experimental facility was run around in the early 1970s at Ezeiza.

Regulation and safety

In 1994, the Nuclear Regulatory Authority (Autoridad Regulatoria Nuclear, ARN) was formed and took over all regulatory functions from the National Board on Nuclear Regulation (Ente Nacional Regulador Nuclear, ENREN) and CNEA. As well as radiation protection, it is responsible for safety, licensing and safeguards. It reports to the President.

Non proliferation

Argentina is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) since 1995 as a non-nuclear weapons state, and has been a party to the Tlatelolco Treaty^e since 1994. However, full-scope safeguards have operated since 1991 in conjunction with the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for the Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC) under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Argentina has not signed the Additional Protocol in relation to its safeguards agreements with the IAEA. The country is a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

History :

Argentina has been one of the first countries worldwide to build up a nuclear infrastructure since the 1950s, focusing in the first years on R&D and different non-energy nuclear applications. Until the events in Fukushima, Japan on March 12th 2011, nuclear activities were not really in the centre of public debates, as they are seen, mainly by the political elite and some media, as a prestigious bridge to other high-tech-applications and essential part of scientific-technological progress - although Business sector is not deeply involved and military use or proliferation has never been a real issue. Nevertheless, Argentina’s three nuclear power plants only provide around 7 percent of the country’s national power production. After Fukushima, and in the context of possible financial restrictions in the coming years, the ambitious nuclear expansion plan presented by the government in 2010 of at least two more 700+ MW reactors seems less likely to be executed.
Nuclear activities have a long history in Argentina, starting with the creation of the CNEA, the Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica (the National Commission on Atomic Energy), through a presidential order issued by Juan Domingo Perón in his first presidency in 1950. The creation of the CNEA was part of wider initiative in investing in R&D and education as part of creating strong and wide scientific and technological capacities and knowledge as a base for industrialization and import substitution.

In its first years, the CNEA concentrated the scientific nuclear activities of various universities and focused on the development of a series of research centers and several research reactors. Up to now, the CNEA operates five of these research reactors in different parts of the country, one of the most important being the Atomic Centre in Ezeiza near Buenos Aires. On the other hand, the CNEA has developed, in its 60 years of existence, different research areas for nuclear applications in medicine, agriculture, food-radiation and also a centre for nanotechnology. Today, it also supports an observatory in an international research project on cosmic radiation.

Mining and Uranium Resources

In the early stages, the CNEA was also in charge of exploring and mining the Argentinian uranium reserves, mainly in the provinces of Mendoza, Salta, Córdoba and the southern province of Chubut, with the subsequent contamination impacts on the territories. In the 1990s, due to the US-Dollar parity of the national Peso, general production costs in Argentina soared, which together with cheaper uranium imports from international markets caused the shutdown of all uranium mining activities in Argentina. Only in the last years since the recovery (and flanked by a devaluated peso) new plans developed to reopen uranium mining activities within Argentina for domestic use, possibly in joint public-private ventures, and there are already exploration activities under way. The total Uranium reserves in Argentina are estimated by the IAEA at 7,080 metric tons, being the biggest Cerro Solo, in the southern Chubut province, and other older and problematic ones in Mendoza and Cordoba, New mining projects, like for example in the northern Jujuy province are, however, being firmly resisted by local civil society.

Large-Scale Nuclear Energy Production
There are two large-scale nuclear power plants that have been operating in Argentina since 1974 and 1984, respectively: the 335 MW plant Atucha I near Buenos Aires, and the 648 MW plant Embalse, near Cordoba.

The construction of a third, 750 MW reactor called Atucha II started in 1981, but lack of financing halted production various times until it was abandoned indefinitely in 1994, though by that time nearly 80 percent of the plant had been completed. The same year, 1994, CNEA transferred its responsibility for large-scale nuclear energy production and the administration of the two plants to Nucleoeléctrica Argentina SA (NASA), a limited company. This was not a casual coincidence with the new strategic economic orientation of the Menem-Administration, which aimed to drastically cut public spending, privatize and open up markets for imports and thus freeze any ambitions in national high-tech industries subsidized by the state. Plans of selling the shares of NASA to private investors - within in the broader privatization process of the whole energy branch in Argentina - apparently failed because of serious doubts about profitability. Therefore, the company today is still owned directly by the national ministry of energy, i.e. by the state, with up to 20 percent of the shares in the hands of the CNEA.

It was only in 2006 under the new, post-crisis government of president Nestor Kirchner, that a multi-billion Dollar investment-plan in nuclear energy was announced, mainly aimed at completing Atucha II and extending the life-cycle of the first two plants, Atucha I and Embalse. Partly following the spectacular economic recovery and the resulting needs for more electricity, this renaissance of the nuclear sector in Argentina had also a lot to do with, once again, a new strategic orientation in Argentine economic policies, based on more public spending to support demand, a low and competitive exchange rate for its currency, fuelling exports and import-substitution. As this strategy was aimed at reindustrializing the country, it was apparently widely accepted for such a huge amount of money to be poured into two 30-year-old plants which provide less than 10 percent of Argentina’s electricity supply - particularly as it also signaled a restrengthening of the public R&D sector and its academic institutions. Therefore, the argument for nuclear expansion is not only focused on securing an energy supply, but also, and ideologically perhaps more viable, on the added value of being a high-tech-industrial country which provides highly qualified jobs, supports a vast academic-scientific-technological infrastructure and thus secures and broadens technological-scientific sovereignty, with some potentials for the development of other technologies. This has recently been underlined again and again by president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, whose government announced, in 2010, further investments in the nuclear sector and the development of at least two new plants in the coming years in addition to extending support to support the three existing plants.

The CNEA also has subsidiary partner companies for fuel production, such as Cordoba-based DIOXITEK, which produces uranium dioxide for fuel assembly and cobalt 60 for medical applications. Fuel assembly is being done by CONUAR for Atucha I and Embalse, while other internal mechanical reactor elements are being built by FAE in the Atomic Centre of Ezeiza at the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

We are the leading country of peaceful use of nuclear energy, knowledge of the Argentine has never been used to destroy the lives of other human beings have always employed for peaceful purposes and also to generate economic growth, especially in health. The Argentines are people of peace, we are good people who [are in] a country that we have to include everyone.

We are putting in place a machinery that was our country, which used to be a leader in all areas in Latin America, nuclear, aerospace, automotive, [and even said that] we have three Nobel Prize. Look what country we are. We have been responsible for what happened but I also think that perhaps some was not interested in such development chelates Argentina had nuclear or workers do not take the role they played in the national income.

Back in setting up this machinery that has the best fuel we have, the Argentine people and their strength. We have to stand up, to make sure someone can never stop this machine, to continue to grow, to have more democracy, more equality, more justice, more homeland for all.

Argentina Golden Team won Preolimpics 2011 in MDP classified to Olympics 2012

2011-09-14T11:44:00.000-04:00

By Silvia Terigi

No matter how talented a person is,success can only be achieved through teamwork. So, in order to succeed, one must be prepared to park one's ego. This attitude can provide the formula for success as the Argentina basketball team prepares for the 2012 Olympics.

When working as a team, people learn about attributes of others - attributes that help achieving the winning edge. Focusing on each other's strengths, while minimizing attention on weaknesses, permits the team to pool the best each has to offer toward a common goal.

To be successful, team members need to display a degree of humility and respect for one another. Anger should be put in check. This engenders a sense of loyalty a common purpose.

These characteristics have contributed to the success of the Golden Team. One needs only to look at Julio Lamas to best understand this as a coach and Luis Scola, Manu Ginobili, Fabricio Oberto, Andres Nocioni, Carlos Delfino ,Pablo Prigioni, Paolo Quinteros , Pepe Sanchez , Hernan Jasen , Leo Gutierrez,, Federico Kammerichs

Because the team comes first, ,example of this Luis Scola repeatedly pushes himself beyond what he might otherwise expect of himself. Just when his physical strength appears exhausted, the adrenaline kicks in - the will to win takes over - and he appears stronger than ever. As we can say more like Fabricio Oberto who dedicated with allot of intense , care and conviction to be `part of this team .

The end result is a remarkable and unforgettable basketball team. One in which players set aside their desires to achieve individual success - working together for the one goal of winning.

It is a lesson that can be taken off the court and adapted in all walks of life.

We the fans owe a debt of gratitude to Manu Ginobili, Luis Scola , Carlos Delfino, Chapu Nocioni, Fabricio Oberto, Fede Kammerichs and the others. Not to be forgotten, the support the players get from sports reporters, coaches, trainers.

We look forward to great success as Team Argentina prepares for the 2012 London Olympics. As we cheer our team on, we should take the time to recognize as a nation that what we will see on the court is a metaphor for life itself. No matter what role we play in society.

Alan Krueger for CEA

2011-08-30T06:42:00.000-04:00

OK, the power is still out at home — but over on Route 1, civilization, plus even a signal (I have Verizon’s internet anywhere, which is actually anywhere except where I live).

So, while the battery lasts: Alan is a fine choice as chief economic adviser. He’s done excellent work, he’s a really good guy, whom I know pretty well, since we keep getting each others’ mail.

Now the question is whether anyone in the administration listens to him …

Update: I gather that there’s some commentary to the effect that Alan is a labor economist rather than a macro person like Christy Romer, and that this means less emphasis on actually increasing demand and solving the slump.

I think that may be reading too much into it. Alan may write about labor markets, but he knows macro and is pretty salt-water and activist by inclination, as far as I know. His advocacy of job tax credits comes from an attempt to work within political constraints, not lack of interest in more decisive solutions. And I think the administration was looking for a high-profile, first-rate economist willing to take the job, rather than tilting toward a particular field.

Also, the reason we get each others’ mail is that Princeton relies on the advanced mail-processing technology known as pigeon-holes, and our slots are next to each other in the Woodrow Wilson School set.

Note: Krueger, 50, served as the Labor Department's chief economist during the Clinton administration, and a look at his curriculum vitae (pdf) reveals that much of his research has focused on issues of employment and wages.
Krueger's study found that the amount of time a worker spends looking for a job decreases "sharply" the longer he's unemployed. Krueger also reported that the jobless are not any more likely to spend time looking for work when their unemployment benefits are set to expire--a finding that undercuts the claim that extending such benefits will discourage the jobless from looking for work.
"Given his expertise in labor economics, he is precisely the right choice to lead the CEA at this moment in history," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said of Krueger,

Of course, Krueger will face some institutional obstacles. Past economic advisers with the Obama administration have argued for more aggressive measures targeted at job growth, but were over-ruled after other aides convinced President Obama to focus on deficit reduction. And even with the White House now saying it plans to focus on jobs, Republicans in Congress likely won't support any significant spending measures of the kind most likely to spur growth.

One additional factor may have played a role in the White House's nomination of Krueger: For his Treasury post, he recently cleared the Senate confirmation process, meaning he's likely a good bet to do so again.

EUROPE’S BIG MISTAKE by James Surowiecki

2011-08-30T06:15:00.000-04:00

In July, 2008, on the eve of the biggest financial crisis in memory, the European Central Bank did something both predictable and stupid: it raised interest rates. The move was predictable because the E.C.B.’s president, Jean-Claude Trichet, was an inflation hawk; he worried about rising oil and food prices and saw a rate hike as a way of tamping them down. But the move was also remarkably ill timed. The crisis was already under way, European economic growth had slowed to a crawl, and within a couple of months the global economy had collapsed, inflation had disappeared, and the E.C.B. was forced to slash interest rates, in an attempt to avert economic disaster. That July rate hike was like kicking the economy when it was down

One might have thought that the E.C.B. would learn from the experience. No such luck. This year, Europe has been wrestling with high unemployment, slow growth, and a continuing debt crisis, with the economies of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain (the so-called PIIGS) struggling to avoid default. Given the situation, Trichet could have decided to keep interest rates where they were, as both the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have done. Instead, the E.C.B. raised interest rates in April and, once more, in July. Again, as if on cue, European economic growth stalled and the continent’s debt crisis deepened, which has created problems for markets around the world.

Policymakers make bad decisions all the time, of course. The E.C.B.’s failures, however, are the result not of mere bad judgment but of obsession. That obsession may not have created Europe’s problems, but it has amplified them. The continent’s economic woes boil down, really, to two issues: too much debt and too little growth. These things are connected to each other: the PIIGS are struggling with their debt loads largely because their economies are growing too slowly. By raising interest rates, the E.C.B. increased borrowing costs and slowed economic growth—the opposite of what was needed. And, while the E.C.B. did step up and buy Italian and Spanish government bonds last month, in order to keep those countries afloat, by doing this it was plugging a hole that its own actions had done much to create.

The E.C.B.’s actions have been especially damaging because they’ve come at a time when, in response to the debt crisis, European countries have been forced to take austerity measures, slashing government spending and raising taxes. When fiscal policy is contractionary, expansionary monetary policy can help make up the difference. This is what the Federal Reserve has tried to do in the U.S.—albeit not aggressively enough. The E.C.B., by contrast, has decided to tighten, which means that both fiscal policy and monetary policy are hitting the brakes on the economy.

The perplexing thing about the E.C.B.’s approach is that it’s hard to see who benefits. The traditional explanation for the bank’s anti-inflationary zeal hinges on the fact that the continent’s stronger economies, in particular Germany’s, don’t need any help growing, and don’t like the fact that inflation reduces the real value of assets. So while the PIIGS might prefer a monetary policy that shrank debts and spurred growth, Germany wants low inflation, and Germany wins. Yet right now the entire continent would benefit from easier money. Germany’s economy may have been doing well earlier this year, but it isn’t anymore; in the past quarter, it grew just 0.1 per cent, more slowly than the U.S.’s. Germany is heavily dependent on exports, including exports to the rest of Europe, which means that it can prosper only if other countries do. On top of that, the debt crisis has hurt German banks, which had lent heavily to the PIIGS. Once upon a time, you could argue that the E.C.B.’s approach was helping Europe’s big economies at the expense of the smaller ones. But the current tight-money strategy is making every country a loser.

To be fair, the E.C.B. isn’t alone in its paranoia about inflation. That bias reflects the preferences of many voters, whose hatred of inflation tends to be disproportionate to its real costs. (Cue Rick Perry saying that looser monetary policy would be “almost treasonous.”) Most studies of moderate inflation find that its costs are quite small, but a study of elections in thirteen European countries from the nineteen-sixties to the nineties found that voters were far more likely to toss out politicians when inflation rose than when unemployment did. Inflation hits everyone, after all, even those who have jobs, and it’s easier to get angry about expensive gasoline than about that raise you might have got if the economy were stronger.

Still, the fact that the E.C.B.’s attitude is widely shared doesn’t make it any more excusable. In times of crisis, policymakers need to identify the threats that matter most. Today, rising prices are not a real threat to Europe; recession and debt default are. Trichet is fond of pointing out that the E.C.B.’s primary mandate is to maintain “price stability.” But prices in Europe, where inflation is around 2.5 per cent, are not unstable. And, by acting as if Europe were in danger of repeating the nineteen-twenties, when Weimar Germany succumbed to hyperinflation, Trichet is running the risk of repeating the mistakes of the early thirties, when central bankers’ tight-money policies and zeal for austerity made a bad situation much, much worse. (It’s worth remembering that it was the Depression, not hyperinflation, that toppled the Weimar government and brought Hitler to power.) The E.C.B. has spent this year fighting off the phantom danger of inflation. It’s time for it to face up to the real danger of recession. ♦

Trebor Scholz : Social Web 2.0

2011-07-24T02:29:00.000-04:00

The Web 2.0 Ideology, the Power of Naming, and the Imagination of the Future of the Web

On the mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (iDC), the technologist and artist Adam Hyde writes that being annoyed by Web 2.0 obscures the fact that it is actually achieving what many of us have been hoping for. He asks “Isn’t it all just namespace?” While Hyde points to opportunities for expression enabled by current Web technologies that deserve to be celebrated, the Web 2.0 concept itself merely boxes current phenomena to launch them as a brand. Activist, organizer, and writer Naomi Klein:

“The astronomical growth in the wealth and cultural influence of multinational corporations over the last fifteen years can arguably be traced back to a single, seemingly innocuous idea developed by management theorists in the mid–1980’s: that successful corporations must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products… this corporate obsession with brand identity is waging a war on public and individual space: … on youthful identities, … and on possibilities of unmarketed space.”

The market ideology of Web 2.0 occupies the imaginary of near future scenarios for the World Wide Web on different levels. First, as Naomi Klein puts it, branding works on the level of identity formation (e.g., just take terms like the My —— Space). Much of identity formation and representation, in fact, takes place in the profile section of social networking sites. The Social Web determines a good part of the psychological lives of its users. Carr correctly characterizes it as a playground and laboratory for marketers whose wildest dreams of social control become true . He writes:

Each of us may make hundreds or even thousands of clicks a day, some deliberately, some impulsively, and with each one we are constructing our identity, shaping our influences, and creating our communities. As we spend more time and do more things online, our combined clicks will shape our economy, our culture, and our society.

Today, marketers can even learn about the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves; they are represented in the profiles of our social networking sites . As part of sea change toward the feasibility and importance of keeping private things private, American youth cares much less about their privacy than users of the Web a decade ago. Today, young people don’t mind so much that they share their “friends lists,” conversations, and navigational habits not only with their acquaintances but also the companies who interpret much of this data. With these firms (and possibly government bodies) as daily confidantes, latent possibilities for total control have opened up.
Second, considerations of the possibility of unmarketed space do not surface in public media discourse. Since its creation, market interests have increasingly dominated the Web. Technology writer Carr notes that:

By the end of 1995, half of all sites bore .com addresses, and by mid–1996 commercial sites represented nearly 70 percent of the total. … The Web had turned out to be less the new home of Mind than the new home of Business.

Market exchanges are, to be sure, necessary to any society but the dominating market ideology elevates them to complete dominance. This ideological imperative that affords little or no visibility to visions of unmarketed space, for example, severely limits visions of a future World Wide Web.
Example:
A fine example of the Web 2.0 Ideology is immaterial free labor, a fairly unpopular and very complex subject. The Web makes people easier to use. By “surfing” it, people serve their virtual hosts and they are not unhappy about it. Online, service platforms, rather than products are offered and users are encouraged to participate, communities become the brand. The Web makes it possible to “out–source” many tasks to the users who can create in “self–service” mode. The United States Army, for example, involved many programmers online to develop their recruitment game “America’s Army.” Jeff Howe of Wired introduced the term “crowdsourcing,” which is an additional instance of the market ideology of Web 2.0. “Crowdsourcing” means that a company outsources a job usually executed by an employee to a large, undefined group of people through an open call over the Internet. This group receives little compensation or no pay at all.
This phenomenon is not just limited to the Internet. Offline, small acts of shopping require low-level acts of labor previously performed by paid employees. Fast food restaurants require their costumers to properly discard their trash when they exit, shoppers check out their groceries in self–service mode, and air travelers are requested to print out their tickets on service kiosks.
The users/producers on the Social Web are the base to the super structure of virtual real estate owners. In Wikinomics, business writer Don Tapscott makes sense of online participation for the market–minded. He starts by explaining that the speed of innovation is speeding up.

Smart firms can harness this innovation by using peer production to involve way more people and partners in developing customer solutions than they could ever hope to marshal internally.
[There is] a new model of prosumption, where customers participate in the creation of products in an active and ongoing way. As in Second Life, the consumer actually co–innovates and coproduces the products they consume.
Second Life has no preset script, there are few limitations on what players can do. Residents just about create everything, from virtual storefronts and nightclubs to clothing, vehicles, and other items for use in the game. In fact, Second Life produces less than one percent of its content and now gets up to 23,000 hours of “free” development.

Social milieus like SecondLife or MySpace are provided and maintained for more and more people by an increasingly smaller number of media magnates like NewsCorp or companies like Linden Research, Inc. People like to be where other people are. They enjoy using these platforms: from entertainment, to staying in touch with friends and family, to chatting, remixing, collaborating, sharing, and gossiping, to getting a job through the mighty power of weak links. It’s a tradeoff. Presence does not produce objects but life as such that is put to work and monetary value is created through the affective labor of users who are either not aware of this fact or do not mind it (yet). MySpace, which was bought by NewsCorp in 2005 for US$580M . In 2008, its projected value is US$15 billion. The problem is not that Web presence is monetized but that more often than not, the social contract between user and platform owner is breached through a lack of transparency such as privacy “agreements” in the small print. In contrast to Tapscott and Howe, Nicholas Carr senses a kind of amplification of economic inequality.

In the YouTube economy, everyone is free to play, but only a few reap the rewards.

On the one hand, the social milieus of the Web allow for increased autonomy and “the practiced experience of democracy, justice and development, a critical culture, and community.” On the other hand, this clearly does not happen on “non–market” grounds as Yale Law School professor Yochai Benkler claims . “Non–market behavior,” for Benkler, denotes that market interests do not drive the motivations of users who participate. Conversely, the context of social life online is always entrenched in market relationships, no matter if users are motivated by profit.

Birds of a Feather

The takeover of the Web by business interests is also apparent when examining public discourse. The most visible authors, writing about the Social Web are lawyers, legal scholars at elite universities, business strategists, and corporate social media consultants. The bibliographies and acknowledgments in their books are almost exclusively pointers to others in their closed elite circle. This is surprising, especially as the phenomena that they write about (and frequently glorify), include the democratization of expert culture.
Favorite topics are ranging from copyright, to the “harvesting” of the fruits of networked social production, democratic government, the future of journalism, social justice, and the categorization of knowledge, and national defense, to name but a few foci. Peer–to–peer solutions only matter if they can be bent to squeeze out monetary value. Art and culture are rarely central to these discussions, unless copyright comes into play. While the mentioned issues are pertinent (!), they strictly operate within the market ideology. Their class consciousness, the oak panels that surround them, and the peers whom they reference shape the perspective of these professional elites and the issues that they care about. In 1995, Christopher Lasch wrote that it is white … elites who define the issues. He talks about an elite that has lost touch with the people . Loosing touch in the context of the contemporary Web means not taking in participatory cultures on a daily basis. How can writers who argue for the democratizing effects of the Web, ignore all conversational research by many qualified voices online? A partial answer is that the Web 2.0 Ideology simply filters all statements strictly for applicability to the market.
But deep in the forest there is a door to another land. Since the creation of the Internet, there have been many social experiments challenging its commercial takeover. Project Gutenberg (the first and largest single collection of free electronic books), Virtuellen Plattform (VP) or Digitale Stad (1994) are but a few examples of this “other Social Web.” Non–wealth–maximizing goals or unconventional, non–mainstream options are off the Web 2.0 map or they are subsumed into smooth business narratives. A serious look at these social experiments, and not–for–profit projects is needed to envision a future Web that grows out of the needs and desires of all of its occupants . The Web is empowering many individuals and also social movements today. However, users don’t just click for the good of all beings; more than 742,000 people make a living on Amazon.com’s used book “associate” program. The Social Web helps in the pursuit of individual self–interest. At the same time, it’s important not to forget that we, the users are guests in the house of Social Media giants. Standing on their shoulders, we are entering their rooms; we are banking on the hospitality of their server farms, we are trusting that all the data that we are sharing through our conversations and on our profiles are not abused in scenarios of total control, barely imaginable today.

To this day the definition of Web 2.0 is vague at best and those who claim novelty for the technologies associated with the phrase, are wrong. The widespread adaptation of the phrase, however, makes it hard to ignore it as a fad. The Web 2.0 hype drew broad media attention and financial resources to businesses that manage to profit from networked social production , amateur participation online, fan cultures, social networking, podcasting, and collective intelligence
The Web 2.0 Ideology, however, goes far beyond the confines of these recent phenomena. It does not solely embrace “a series of ethical assumptions about media, culture, and technology” that worships the creative amateur . This ideology is a framing device of professional elites that define what enters the public discourse about the impact of the Internet on society
By defining what is associated with the Web today as common sense, it directs the imagination of its future

The Shifting Definitions of Web 2.0

In 2004, the founder of a large technology publishing house, open source software proponent and multi–millionaire Tim O’Reilly coined the phrase Web 2.0, together with a colleague. The event producers needed a catchy title for an upcoming conference. Later, the event title was expanded into a concept that proposed a separation of various versions of the Web. “The Internet was back! This shiny new version of the Internet, the dream of a fully networked, always–connected society was finally going to be realized. The Internet would democratizeBig Media, Big Business, Big Government.”

Mr. O’Reilly characterized Web 1.0 through a set of static, one–way browser–based applications like personal Web sites and the encyclopedia Britannica Online, publishing, content management systems, and taxonomies. Subsequently, he distinguished Web 2.0 by associating it with the “new participatory architectures of the Web” that allow for online services such as the photo sharing site Flickr, blogs, the peer–to–peer file sharing standard BitTorrent, Wikipedia, event sites like Upcoming.org, the file–sharing service Napster, wikis (collaborative Web sites that allow for real–time editing), folksonomies (user–generated taxonomies), and the aggregation of online content through Web feeds

O’Reilly was onto something. Not only was he accurate about the network effect but he also understood the increasing importance of participation online. The network effect holds true for telephones and fax machines but also for social networking sites. The more people own a telephone, the more valuable this technology becomes. There is no point in owning a fax machine if none of your friends or clients have one at their avail. And equally, on Facebook, you will only be able to track down old buddies if very many people congregate on this site. People like to be where other people are. O’Reilly was also cognizant of the fact that now U.S. Americans at least had for a large part broadband access to the Internet, which set the stage for the success of Ajax, an important Web developing technique. His only possibly willful misinterpretation was that none of this had launched like a Web 2.0 rocket just in 2004.

The definition morphed considerably over time. Late in 2005 O’Reilly wrote that:

Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications & [are] delivering software as a continually–updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an ‘architecture of participation,’ and & deliver rich user experiences.

In 2007, O’Reilly, silently, hidden in the comment section of Jason Calacanis’ weblog, admits that he got it wrong.

... Web 2.0 was a pretty crappy name for what’s happening ... Web 2.0 is not about front–end technologies. It’s precisely about back–end, and it’s about meaning and intelligence in the back–end.

Unfortunately, Tim O’Reilly’s sea change is unlikely to take away from the popular appeal of the phrase that, by now, is dyed into the fabric of the mass media.

The New Newness of Technologies

Which technologies are commonly collected under the Web 2.0 umbrella? Evangelists of the phrase huddle technologies like the Web development technique Ajax , the Ruby programming language, CSS, RSS, OpenAPIs , wikis, blogs, mashups (digital media works that draw from already existing texts or audio), and podcasts (media files that are distributed over the Internet to be played back on portable media players) under its roof. They highlight user–friendly interfaces, activities like tagging, social networking and microformats as Web 2.0 descriptors .
So far, I walked you through the very short history and varying definitions of the phrase Web 2.0. Now I’ll argue against the novelty suggested by the phrase. Tim Berners–Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, is among those who questioned whether one can use the term in a meaningful way, since many of the technology components of “Web 2.0” have existed since the early days of the Web . Like with any bubble, the suggestion of sudden newness is aimed at potential investors. It is not completely unlike the techno–economic utopianism of the 1990s and a bit like McDonald’s re–stacking of their beef layers every six months ramping up for new ad campaigns. Newness sells conference tickets (and hamburgers); it drives up speaker fees and helps the circulation of books that are bought by those who are afraid (very afraid) to miss a hot new technology trend.

Social Networking Sites, RSS, CSS, and Blogging

A quick look into the history of the Web will also set the record straight about social networking sites. Classmates.com was founded already in 1995, soon to be followed by SixDegrees.com. One year later, the social networking site Lunarstorm opened as a platform for Swedish, Danish, and British teens and in 1999 the Indian social networking site Sulekha and the African–American social networking site Blackplanet.com launched.
Equally seasoned is Real Simple Syndication (RSS), which allows users to subscribe to a dynamic Web site such as a blog. The first version of RSS was created as a format for syndicating content based on XML by Netscape in 1999

Style sheets have existed since 1970s. Cascading Style Sheets were developed as a means for creating a consistent approach to providing style information for Web documents. The CSS Working Group published CSS in 1997 and it became the official (W3C) standard in 1998. In recent years CSS became important as it facilitated the separation of form and content, thereby allowing the same content to be delivered to different mobile platforms such as cell phones and personal data assistants.
Finally, it’d be hard to argue for blogging as a recent breakthrough technology as Justin Hall is known to have pioneered it in 1994 by posting exhibitionist diatribes to his Web page on a daily basis . A student at Swarthmore College at the time, these early blog posts largely contained detailed descriptions of his non–repressed sex life on campus. In 1997 Kuro5hin, a collaborative weblog where users vote for what goes to the front page, was released. Two years later, Blogger.com and the blogging platform LiveJournal started.

Podcasting and Folksonomies

Fairly new, however, is the podcasting phenomenon and the term folksonomy, which became popular in 2004. Folksonomy is defined as collaborative tagging, social classification, or social indexing. It is a method of collaboratively creating and managing keywords to annotate and categorize content.
These previous examples show that the novelty that Mr. O’Reilly’s phrase claims for the technologies that he embraces as part of Web 2.0, while readily accepted by countless adapters is, is fact, incorrect. O’Reilly’s phrase and its changing definitions describe and package technical trends, which are then presented with passion, authority, and the air of common sense. The language of Web 2.0 is a placeholder for several agendas. It burns the torches of 1960s–style rebellion, a “business revolution” of self–declared anarchists who frown upon authority and control as bad and deem openness as always good. But the fire is held by business elites who are trying to mobilize novelty as marketing ploy. There is some resemblance to the dotcom boom that captured the late ’90s (too much, too fast).

the brief history and evolution of Web 2.0 definitions leading up to Mr. O’Reilly’s admission that it was “probably a crappy idea.” I deflated its claims to a techno–social big bang. Instead I proposed a steady upward–moving line, not unlike the curve visualizing the process of learning a new language that can illustrate the historical development of social life online. The Web had an initial astronomical growth spurt but is now moving onwith unfaltering instead of explosive pace.

Conclusion

Flummoxed readers may, at this point, ask what else there is to the Web. Has not it always all been exclusively about commerce? Subtract the learned empathy with business needs and start searching for the essential needs of the millions using the Social Web including healthcare, a living wage, and job security. The Social Web is not and cannot be the all–mighty teacher, healer, and redeemer for everything that went astray in society. By defining today’s Social Web solely through the lens of business, however, we loose track of all that, which the Web could be. Re–imagine the Social Web as a place for unmarketed, non–mainstream projects that caters to all needs of those who inhabit it.

About the author

Trebor Scholz is a media theorist, artist, and speaker on technology, activism, and culture. As founder of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (iDC), he has co–published the book The Art of Free Cooperation (Autonomedia, 2007) and written chapters and critical articles about the Social Web.
Web: http://collectivate.net/journalismsThe Web 2.0 épistémè will not just go away. Therefore, it is important to have a clear understanding of its false claims, its ideological embedment, reinforced by professional elites. With Bill Thompson, a technology critic and essayist, I conclude that “If Web 2.0 is the answer then we are clearly asking the wrong question.”

THE FUTURE OF SOUTH AMERICA

2011-07-18T01:55:00.000-04:00

The global population of South America attains 375 million. It would reach about 484 million by 2030. The global GNI accounts for 1,089 $Billion in 2004. According to an optimistic vision, we can expect 2,070 $Billion by 2030.

Within the period 1999-2004, South America has experienced its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Most of the growth benefits of the nineties have been destroyed. A growth recovery happened in 2003 and 2004 but did not compensate the heavy losses of the previous years.

The global situation of South America, has always been a matter of astonishment and despair. The hedonistic mood of the population is the main cause of the situation and predisposes to populist and demagogic powers. As a result, the new democratic governments have followed the same poor economic management as the populists and the military. They have failed to apply sound economic policies (Or they applied them too late). Their weakness is both responsible of the economic situation and the coming anarchy in some areas. Population and leaders should be conscious that their entire society is presently on the edge of the razor: Time is coming to be serious and to face with responsibilities.

We recommend to apply the sound economic policies that have been delayed for too long. Moreover, the ruling elite must enhance his authority in empowering the safe segments of the civil society.

On the long term, an improved image should facilitate the immigration coming from Europe or Asia. The governments have to promote the quality of life, the freedom, the open ranges, and the bright prospects of South America. On the other hand, we also recommend to maintain the continental identity and notably the old Castilian legacy based on pride, courage and sense of honor. In short, you have to forget the negative experiences of the past and to visualize the success image of South America as a real New World.

These reforms could modify the bitter prospects that we have described regarding the economy.

According to our method, the first step is to draw up a diagnosis: It means that we shall just observe the region and describe its trauma. Then, we shall evacuate the false explanations and focus on the real cause of the malaise. Finally, we shall describe the cure. A short review limited to the countries I visited (9 out of 13) follows the main survey.

Warning: Go to Standards of quality about the sources of tables and stats: Economic stats-World Bank: www.worldbank.org/data. Population stats: UN: www.un.org/esa/

1-DIAGNOSIS 2-WRONG THEORIES 3-HEDONISM 4-SOLUTIONS 5-COUNTRY REVIEW

1-DIAGNOSIS

Let's us examine the region: Geography, population, economy, and political situation: We can take notice of four bad symptoms: Firstly a lack of confidence in the region future ( Emigration instead of immigration). Secondly a deep depression with an impoverishment of the middle class. Thirdly, a chaotic political situation in some sub region and finally a coming anarchy.

11-Geography

South America includes 12 independent countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela) and a French overseas department (French Guyana).

South America covers 17,819,000 square kilometers. It is a quite compact continent: 7,640 km from the North to Cape Horn, in the South. At its broadest point, the continent extends 5,300 km from East to West. It is washed on the North by the Caribbean Sea, on the East by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the West by the Pacific. Look at the map:

DRAWING 1

South America is composed with mountains (The Andes rise to numerous snowcapped peaks: Mt. Aconcagua 6,960 meters), highlands, the amazonian forest, pampas and deserts. It embraces different climatic zones: tropical, desert, high alpine, temperate. Vegetation varies accordingly.

The continent has petroleum and natural-gas reserves (notably in Venezuela and also in Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador). Thanks to the great rivers (Orinoco, Amazon, and Paraguay) hydroelectric plants produce most of the continent's electricity. Iron,copper, tin, gold, manganese and bauxite are abundant. Rainforests and steep slopes, limit the amount of cultivable land in the Andean and northern regions. On the contrary, large spaces in the southern part (South Brazil and Argentine) offer opportunity to use modern agriculture and low cost extensive cattle breeding.

Obviously, South America, and notably its southern part was convenient for an European settlement. Exploration and penetration started at the beginning of the 16th. Under the Treaty of Tordesillas, Portugal claimed what is now Brazil, and Spanish claims were established throughout the rest of the continent with the exception of Guyana, Suriname, and French Guyana. Spain and Portugal maintained their colonies in South America until the first quarter of the 19th.

12-Population

The population accounts for 375 million. By 2030, it would reach 484. The growth rate (1,2%) is decreasing. Only four nations exceed 30 million (Brazil: 174, Colombia: 43, Argentina 39). People concentrate in towns: In 2000, 77.2 % lived in urban areas. Sao Paulo (17.9 million), Buenos Aires (12 million), Rio de Janeiro (10.6 million) are the main towns. Outside the cities, the population density is very low, with large spaces uninhabited. People worship mainly Roman catholicism ( Evangelical churches and jews are also present). Spanish and Portuguese are the main languages in use (Only the business elite speaks English)

At this point a first question arises. Why does this large continent remain so sparsely populated? In the past, immigration has brought Europeans, particularly to Argentina and Brazil. Today immigration decreases sharply. Ten years ago, Brazil received one million migrants per year. It receives only 500,000 in 2002. Moreover, many people try to emigrate to Europe (Spain) or to the US. This trends indicates a symptom: Obviously, there is something wrong!

13-Economy

In 1990, the global GDP of the 12 countries accounted for 778 $Billion. It increased to 1,235 Billion in 1999 (GNI). It was quite a success story. Then, it fell and only attained 1,089 Billion in 2004! Of course erratic moves of currencies partly explain this situation but the region ( And notably Argentina) really endured a depression. The next drawing shows the evolution of the main economies over the five last years ( In yearly growth rate ):

DRAWING 2

Years----------- - 2000--- 2001--- 2002--- 2003--- 2004

Brazil ---------------4%------1%-------2%------1%-----5%
Argentina -----------1%-----4%------11%---- 9%-----9%
Venezuela ----------4%------ 3%-------9%---- -8%----1%
Colombia----------- 3%------ 1%------- 2%----- 4%-----4%
Chile--------------- 4%------ 3%------- 2%----- 3%-----6%
Peru----------------3%------ 0%-------5%----- 4%-----5%

In Argentina, according to official government statistics, about 5.2 million people belonging to the middle class sank below the poverty line between October 2001 and May 2002. A growth recovery happened in 2004 but did not compensate the heavy losses of the previous years.

In accordance with these figures, and taking in account the present political uncertainties (Chavez) , we may only forecast a yearly growth rate of 2.5% on average over 26 years. As a result, the Global GNI would reach 2,071 $Billion in 2030. (Brazil: About 1,190 in 2030).

Of course, all the economic history of South America has been characterized by successive stop and go but fatality is not a sound explanation. We shall have to seek carefully the cause of this situation.

14-Political situation

Among 12 independent countries, there are ten democracies and two partly free (Venezuela and Colombia). The progress to democracy began in 1980 and was a success story. Before, the region was a permanent theater of dictatorships, political instability, revolution and guerillas.

Today, the situation is going bad, notably in the Andean region (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru). In Columbia, the civil war is rising. Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela show a quite confuse situation. The Andean region is now a threat to the political stability of South America.

In the nineties, South America was a safe area. Today, in relation with these economic and political events, corruption and violence are increasing. The region remains the source of almost 75 % of the world’s supply of cocaine and drug trafficking is becoming a dominant plague: A large part of almost 30,000 homicides registered annually in Brazil are linked to drug abuse and trafficking. The narcotic trade favors a system of corruption that involves the highest public officials. Large segments of the entire society are poisoned by this plague.

15-Conclusion

We can take notice of four bad symptoms: Firstly a lack of confidence in the region future ( emigration instead of immigration), secondly a deep depression with an impoverishment of the middle class, thirdly a chaotic political situation in some sub region and finally a coming anarchy based on drugs, corruption and street violence's. What are the explanations of these symptoms?

Compared to the Middle East and Africa, we cannot invoke a lack of democracy: Since 1980, most of these countries are free. Moreover, the population is well educated with a good literacy rate. The resources are abundant. There are large open spaces with magnificent landscapes. The climate is good in many areas. When we compare with the USA that enjoy a quite similar geographical situation, we may be stunned by the bad results of South America.

1-DIAGNOSIS 2-WRONG THEORIES 3-HEDONISM 4-SOLUTIONS 5-COUNTRY REVIEW

2-WRONG THEORIES

The global situation of South America, has always been a matter of astonishment and despair. Many doctors have rushed to examine the sickness and most of them have used a marxist grid in order to find an explanation.

According to these scholars, South America suffers of colonialists and feudal structures based on races, social and land inequalities. As a result, a landlords minority often calls the military to maintain its privileges. By the end, the economy depends on the rent coming from latifundia and raw materials: The globalization enhances these negatives features and explains the present catastrophic situation.

We recognize easily the conceptual framing of the marxist and anti globalization speeches. If fact, this presentation distorts the reality and just corresponds to out dated facts. It means that our first task is to get rid of these wrong theories.

21-Social structures

Firstly, the social structures are not based on races and social inequalities.

211-Racial inequalities

According to this marxist speech, many people in Europe believe that South America is inhabited by a large majority of poor indians and black dominated by some white landlords. In fact, Indians and blacks only form a small minority compared to the white and mestizo. Look at the next drawing:

DRAWING 3

Categories--------------------- Million------------- %

Europeans descent (White)---------195------------- 55%
Mestizo--------------------------- 125------------- 35%
Native indians---------------------- 21---------------6%
Blacks------------------------------15---------------4%

Total----------------------------- 353------------- 100%

All the southern cone of South America (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Southern Brazil) has primarily European populations (95%). Most of the mestizo live notably in Brazil and Colombia. Native indians only represent a majority in two countries (Bolivia and Peru). Blacks are scattered in the North of the continent (Mainly North Brazil: About ten million). In countries with ethnic diversity such as Brazil, it is quite difficult to distinguish a mestizo from a white (Same habits and dressing, same religion, same behaviors). A common identity relies on religion and language. It means that there is no ground for race inequalities.

On the other hand, natives indians keep a strong identity. It is currently said that they endure some discriminations. This fact calls for a balanced judgment. In French Guyana ( a French department just like Normandy) there are yet some tribes living in the rain forest. For their preservation, it is absolutely forbidden to travel in a region as large as one third of the department. Why? Because through contact with Europeans, these indians could catch some virus harmless for us but lethal for them since they have not developed immune protections.

As you can see, the problem is more complicated than the scholars say. For indians, to live apart can be a vital issue. It’s not only a matter of discrimination and inequalities. For example, the fast disappearing of indians in Brazil (Only 700,000 on a population of 174 million) mainly results of diseases due to their contacts with the seringueros.

212-Social inequalities

Poverty and inequalities are a common motto in any description of the economy of South America. It is commonly said that a third of its population is living in shanty towns and that inequalities are the most extreme in the world. These asserts call for a balanced judgment.

Firstly, in visiting "favallas" (shanty towns) I observed that people have often TV set, radio appliances, refrigerators and so on. Moreover, people live constantly outside and their housing is adapted to the climate condition. Secondly, a large part of their poor budgets is devoted to dressing, sports articles, disks music's and so on. Thirdly, these people are constantly smiling and singing. They enjoy a high degree of conviviality that does not exist any more in Europe. They look more happy than our middle class. In short, I mean that you cannot judge poverty by comparison with our conditions (climate, habits, tastes) in Europe.

As for the inequalities, they usually rise with the economic development: Let's us suppose two persons: A earning 100 and B 1000: Their difference is 900. Now apply a growth rate of 10%: A earns 110 and B 1100. As a result the difference is now 990! Moreover, inequalities allow savings and investments. So all these speeches about poverty and inequalities must be relativized.

213-Land inequalities

Thousands scholars have written tons of surveys and books about this topic in Europe and America. It is well known that there are huge inequalities in the distribution of land. For example in Argentina, 2.5 % of the total ranches ("Estancias") cover two thirds of the cultivable land. Marxists repeat at large these figures opposing the land lords to the poor peasants.

In fact, with the economic progress the value of the land sharply diminishes and the decline of the agricultural economy is constant: Today, only 20% of the population is rural, and 10% of the national product comes from agriculture. It means that most of the former poor farmers have already moved to get jobs in towns. Of course, it is a progress since it's better to get a good salary in industry rather than to exploit a small agricultural plot in the pampas!

However, an agrarian issue only exists in the Andean countries. In this region the weight of the rural sector is above the South American average (Bolivia:44%, Ecuador: 29% and Peru: 33%). This situation is connected to the presence of native indians who cannot move towards the towns for the reasons exposed above. In fact, these countries have already abolished the large estates and distributed the land among the peasants. Of course, as in other countries where land reforms have been established, this policy did not improve the output because this small peasant agriculture cannot be profitable.

It means that all these speeches about land inequalities are just out dated stories. Presently, the South American agriculture relies on large agri business replacing former latifundia and exploiting the potential of these big spaces: biogenetic diversity ( pharmaceutical industries), as well as livestock, oil, and mining resources.

22-The political structures

According to their marxist grid, our scholars posit that the landlords minority relies on the military to maintain its privileges and to avoid a revolution. Once again, this explanation does not correspond to the reality.

Firstly, the risk of a revolution has never been obvious. The communist threat is mainly a Central America history with Castro in Cuba and the Sandinista in Nicaragua. The attempt to export the Cuban revolution in South America during the cold war has been a failure: Che Guevara complained that he could not rally the poor bolivians peasants. The Tupameros in Uruguay and the Shining Path in Peru were also rejected by the population. The only exception is Chile: In fact, Allende was elected as a democratic socialist and then placed himself under the control of Castro. The population perceived that like a treachery and Allende was overthrow by the military with the consent of the larger part of the citizens. Globally speaking, we may posit that the marxism failed because the rich and poor South Americans are not inclined to a Stalinist rule.

Secondly, the "land lords" were not the main instigators of the military takeover. A real analysis shows that the military were mostly a legacy of the failed populist powers in South America. The populist leaders (as Juan Perón in Argentina) rallied the poor's and the riches and emphasized social justice and national control of natural resources. They also believed that industrialization, modernization and export development could be achieved with a minimal amount of work and efforts. They made promises with a money they had not. So they lent abroad and generated a huge foreign debt. Of course, these policies usually ended with hyper inflation, unbearable foreign debt, and finally bankrupt and depression.

Thirdly, when the populism failed, the military took the power but they followed quite the same policy as the populists in economic matter (One exception is Pinochet who implemented real basic reforms in Chile). As a result, they benefited of the same popular support (both riches and poor's) as the populists. What is more, these dictatorships have never been really dreadful. We cannot compare them with the African or Middle East dictatorships (or with the European dictatorships in the past). Of course, we do not intend to make accounting with victims but the 3000 missing persons in Chile do not weight with the 30,000 victims of the marxist Shining Path in Peru or the 70,000 dead's due to the marxist rebellion in Colombia. Moreover, while Castro is yet exercising his dictatorship over Cuba, most of the military returned by themselves the power to the civilians (It was notably the case for Pinochet)

In short, the social structures and the "landlords" are not the real cause of the chaotic political evolution. On the other hand, this history shows that the South Americans are inclined to favor populist and demagogic policies rather than sound economic reforms.

23-Is globalization the cause?

By the end, the marxist scholars posit that the globalization enhances these negatives features and drives to the present catastrophic situation. We may oppose that the globalization cannot be responsible simply because most of the free market reforms have never been applied.

Firstly, it is fruitless to invoke the Asian financial crisis or the fall in the commodities prices. As we see it in another study, the South East Asia has quickly recovered. Moreover, except some countries such as Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela which remain dependent on commodities prices, the main economies such as Argentina or Brazil are well diversified with a strong industrial support and do not depend any more of the raw materials like in 1930!

Secondly, it is also fruitless to invoke the free market reforms because they have not yet been applied! As we shall see below, the new democratic powers have followed the same poor economic management as the populists and the military.

All the marxist and leftist explanations are just out dated theories. They could apply to the situation in 1930 and may be in some undeveloped countries such as Bolivia but are not pertinent regarding the real world. Unfortunately, they form the main bulk of the information's dispatched by the media's. Time is coming to present our own diagnosis.

1-DIAGNOSIS 2-WRONG THEORIES 3-HEDONISM 4-SOLUTIONS 5-COUNTRY REVIEW

3-HEDONISM

According to our idealistic vision, the real causes of the phenomenon must be found in the people minds. Our diagnosis do not care too much about past history, geographical potentialities, ethnicity or traditions. We mainly examine the mental events. What is really in the people mind? How do they perceive the external reality? What is their global vision? Thanks for this method, we focus on the magical background in Africa, the global schizophrenia in the Middle East, the mental depression in Europe and the moral values in South East Asia. Regarding South America, we diagnose an excess of hedonism.

31-Have fun

When you read the scholars books, you only find a gloomy description: Poverty, inequalities, slums and so on. In fact, such a picture only corresponds to the depressed mood of their European authors. The reality is quite different. Except, the Andean countries with their inward-looking indian communities, the most visible feature of the mainstream of South American population can be described in two words: Have fun. In fact South Americans are mainly hedonistic. And we could say too much hedonistic!

The most popular people are not politicians but sportsmen and show biz persons. The critical issues are not political or economical. The soccer cup, the car races are the main issues. Consumption mainly focus on material goods such as fashionable dressing, cosmetic surgery, festivals, carnivals and so on. There is a strong preference for leisure, music, dancing, and sex tolerance.

Have fun notably in Brazil is the main goal. Even outside the carnival period, it is current to see people dancing in the cafe or in the streets. Poor people that scholars described so oppressed rush to the sunny beaches and enjoy bathing and sea pleasures. In a more nostalgic way, the same observation applies in Argentina (Tango) Chile and Colombia. Despite economic hurdles, people are constantly looking for party, dancing, horse trip in the pampas and do not care about depressed facts. As a result, people are always smiling or laughing. They are very friendly and the large majority is composed with kind people, always enjoying to help you. Violence only exists in relation with politics and drug traffic.

This too much hedonistic way of life has some wrong consequences: Savings are spent in useless expenses rather than for business purposes. The need for quick money tends to favor corruption. Moreover, this way of life impedes responsibilities. Globally, we can say that the ruling elite is too much disturbed by hedonistic short term issues. This situation is the real cause of the chaotic political and economical situation of South America.

32-Economic consequences

An hedonistic way of life does not predispose to democracy ( because democracy requires responsible and serious citizens). On the other hand, it predisposes to populist powers. As a result, the new democratic powers are following the same poor economic management as the populists and the military. Of course, the leaders are conscious of the need of reforms but they face with political opposition and street demonstrations.

Firstly, the democratic governments have maintained overvalued currencies that reduced the exports and increased the imports at the detriment of local producers. It was more and more difficult to pay back the foreign debt. Finally the Brazilian government adopted a floating currency (the pesos lost 40% of its value against the $US) but it was to late for preventing the depression. For the same reasons, Argentine registered a default payment of its external debt and it resulted in a run to the banking system and a general collapse. Ecuador also defaulted on its external debt and the banking system collapsed. Of course these situations induce a fall of confidence among foreign investors. Today, the foreign debt is not matched any more by the foreign investments.

Secondly, any attempt to care the economic sickness met everywhere a strong popular opposition. In 2001 the former brazilian president Cardoso attempted to apply some free market reforms and privatizations. As a result he lost the elections and was replaced in 2002 by a former leftist Lula da Silva who campaigned against the globalization. In Argentina, Menem implemented an economic liberalization and soon lost the elections in 1997. The next president tried to cut spending's and to apply some unpopular labor reforms. He faced massive demonstrations and finally resigned. In others countries (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia) the same attempts to liberalize also resulted in riots, demonstrations and chaotic political evolution.

Today, many social democrat have taken the power and they are expected to delay the privatizations and the economic reforms. So the economy will going on with a chaotic process and it is yet impossible to forecast a steady growth like in Asia. The real cause of this situation seems quite simple: Clearly, huge segments of the population want to go on in living beyond their means. They cannot accept that their governments are bankrupt.

33-Political consequences

This hedonistic mood and the weaknesses of the governments also explain the coming anarchy. The new democracies are unable to contain street violence's and a revival of terrorism. Moreover, an atmosphere of permissiveness imported from Europe is spreading over. It is forbidden to forbid is becoming a motto in some ruling circles.

In 1998, the colombian government surrendered its national sovereignty (no police, no army, no administrative government presence) over an area the size of Switzerland to the 17,000 marxist insurgents (the FARC). As a result, FARC's "demilitarized zone" is actually a "state within a state" that the guerrillas used as a sanctuary for criminal activities such as drug trafficking and hostage warehousing.

In Peru, the Antiterrorist legislation, which played an essential role in eliminating the Shining Path, is being dismantled in the name of “human rights.” As a result, in 2002, the Shining Path made a small comeback, killing 10 people in a car bomb attack. In Bolivia, the new President only won by two points the 2002 election against a radical Indian leader of the country's coca growers: This victory only dispels for the present moment, the emergence of narco-marxist State in this poor Andean country. Finally, in Venezuela, the leftist President Hugo Chavez supports Fidel Castro (With oil subsidies to the bankrupt Havana regime).

One of the reasons of this general permissiveness is the influence exercised by nongovernmental organizations (NGO's), mostly those specialized in human rights. These groups often penetrated by Marxist sympathizers play a major role in the dismantle of all the anti crime and anti terrorist network. For example, in Columbia they have made not the FARC but the paramilitaries their main enemy!

In short, these democracies are unable to deal with the coming anarchy. This chaotic situation could impede the democratic process. Both marxist and the military can expect new opportunities.

1-DIAGNOSIS 2-WRONG THEORIES 3-HEDONISM 4-SOLUTIONS 5-COUNTRY REVIEW

4-SOLUTIONS

We have diagnosed an hedonistic mood and a lack of willingness and authority. As a result, population and leaders should be conscious that their entire society is presently on the edge of the razor: Time is coming to be serious and to face with responsibilities. According to our diagnosis we may set up the following recommendations:

41-A sound economic policy

Whatever the political inclination (socialist, liberal or conservative) there is only one possible economic policy. All the governments must apply the free market reforms delayed for too long. It includes a floating currency, the privatization of all the state enterprises (Telecom, energy, mining, railways and so on), the abolishment of a lot of regulations that impede the labor market, and finally the signature of as much free trade agreements as possible. It implies also a tax reform in order to channel the wealth toward more profitable activities than the existing latifundia and luxurious housing. On the other hand, the South American countries have to maintain their pressure to dismantle European barriers on agricultural products.

This economic policy can bring fast results: For example, thanks to the conservative policy of Vicente Fox, Mexico has completely outpaced the Brazil of Lula da Silva. It means that the old leftist should have better to listen the recommendations of the World Bank and the IMF rather than the cranky advices of his anti globalization friends!

In fact, most of the leaders agree with these reforms ( Including Lula da Silva ). All the difficulties rely on the application because of the strong opposition among both the riches and the poor’s who want to preserve their hedonistic way of life. The only way is to communicate and to explain that there is no choice. Moreover, thanks for some political improvements, a strong republic should be able to overcome all the street demonstrations that have impeded any progress toward the reforms in the past.

41-A strong republic

The new democracies have to struggle against the coming anarchy: violence's, drugs, corruption, criminal and radical organizations. The recent experience shows that only a strong power can achieve this goal.

It must be recall that a free republic does not mean the reign of the poor’s and the indigents. A free republic is not any more a soft marxism, a lunatic asylum, or a leisure center. Since many South Americans often refer to the French revolution, they may take notice that the former French republics were not weak or permissive. They were based on a determined elite supported by an active middle class. The republican leaders fought with an equal determination either the right wing (Nobility and church) either the left wing (early communists). Saint Just used to say that the Republic ought to be formidable to its enemies! He also said that the enemies of freedom cannot enjoy the republican liberty.

A strong power means a good institutional framework and motivated leaders able to impose respect and loyalty. Generally speaking, the institutional framework is good. Indeed, in most countries, it is founded on an elected president with large executive powers and a bicameral chamber. This framework is an asset against political instability as long as the leaders can resist street demonstrations. As we have seen, it was not the case. Consequently, we propose some improvements regarding the practical organization of the Power:

Firstly, we suggest that each government includes (as in Mexico) a military in charge of the internal security and defense. The South American countries are not at war with other countries. Today, the military are in their barracks and get paid for doing nothing. We recommend to use them to maintaining law and order in the streets.

Secondly, in the current situation, the free governments must not dismantle the existing anti terrorist network as it is suggested by irresponsible NGO and notably the so called human rights activists. The free governments must be very careful with all these new grass roots organizations only good to propagate unrest and demagogic claims.

Thirdly, we recommend to empower the safe segments of the civil society. Considering the corruption of the police and the judiciary, many citizens have already taken law and order into their own hands: For example, there are some 1.3 million private security guards in Brazil. In Colombia the paramilitaries composed with free citizens (Freedom fighters) are the main force against the marxist rebellion. In order to avoid abuses, the governments must recognize and organize these spontaneous movements of free citizens. For example, they should erect a national guard on a benevolent basis on the model of Switzerland. This national guard should be more effective that the corrupt police framework.

Regarding the policies, we may repeat some recommendations.

Firstly, do not negotiate with terrorist and criminal organizations ( Do not follow the bad colombian example). In the same way, do not allow the peasants to cultivate poppy.

Secondly, dismantle as much regulations as possible. South Americans dislike the regulations that are constantly fueling corruption.

Thirdly, apply tolerance zero to street violence and in case of emergency, do not hesitate to order the martial law in some bad districts. Of course these global recommendations must be applied in accordance with each specific country features.

43-Road map to the future.

Due to the biased scholars descriptions, South America has not a good image in the developed world. For example, when you speak about a new world, you usually target North America rather than South America. Indeed, this continent is also a new world with huge potentialities. It means that the governments must improve their image with sound and coherent policies in economic and security. It would be a first step but it is not enough and we shall provide with some global advices.

Firstly, South America has too much followed the European example. Santiago or Buenos Aires look like Paris or Madrid fifty years ago! It means that people are constantly looking backward with a vague nostalgia (notably in Argentina). In fact, some feudal habits and the Marxism imported from Europe impede any progress: For example, too many universities or foggy Andean institutes, established on the European model, are just good to produce marxist theorists such as Guevara or Guzman. They should be replaced by business and engineers schools.

Secondly, the South Americans have always been reluctant toward the “gringos”. They should have better to adopt the pioneer and the entrepreneurship spirit of their North Americans neighbors (just like Mexico is doing). For example, I observe that our entrepreneurship program gets very few visitors from South America (Most of our visitors come from North America, Eastern Europe and Asia). In short, we recommend a greater openness to the future.

Thirdly, the South Americans must keep their own continental identity: The hedonistic behavior is a better asset than the depressed European mood. Nevertheless, this hedonism should be channeled toward business activities rather than car races, soccer's, festivals and so on. The old Castilian legacy based on pride, courage and sense of honor is also a precious value in the present world (Do not compare with the European Spanish who have capitulated facing with terrorism!)

An improved image should facilitate the immigration coming from Europe or Asia. Just like Canada and Australia, the governments should develop a network of agencies promoting the quality of life, the freedom, the open ranges, and the bright prospects of South America. In short, you have to forget the negative experiences of the past and to visualize the success image of South America as a real New World.

These reforms could modify the bitter prospects that we have described regarding the economy.

Hot comments!

Do you agree? Do you not agree? Send your comments. Click Here

From: Manuel.Campos , Argentinian citizen, Buenos Aires.
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 9:02 PM

Somehow I agree with the study's conclusion about the mentality of the
Southamerican citizens. From our european inheritance (poor southern
Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese) we have a culture of escapism and
negation. What surprises me, is that the lack of will or national pride of
our governing elites has been grosely dismissed.

Since the early 1900's the architects of the southamerican new born
republics fostered a spirit of predestination, a fate of grandeur, not a
goal to be achieved with hard work. Quoting Argeninian ex-president Eduardo
Duhalde "Argentina is condemned to success". This policy of national pride
based on god-given natural resources was artificially indroduced to bolster
a national identity in countries with foreign population way over 60%, but
proved awefully destructive to the middle classes entrepeneur spirit.

Notice that the UBA, the biggest Argeninian state-owned university (much
like the Universidad Central in Venezuela) main's aim is to provide free
social movility to anyone willing to sit on a chair enough time. Beyond a
reality in which social movility has long been gone, the idea of exploiting
other people's business and ideas remains. Our middle class doesn't focus on
creating new business oportunities or markets, the common wish is to be a
professional and to earn enough to enjoy life at the expense of somebody
else's effort. That's why laws, psichology, and some other non productive
careers remain so popular. The problem is neither the political elite nor
the upper clases are interested on changing this because they follow the
same model, just replace a good administrative job for foreign capital or
state purchases providing a rent without having to move a finger.

The hedonistic spirit of the southamericans is not spontaneous, it's the
result of a historical experience and a socioeconomical model. Any
freemarket reform would only pour more gas to the fire if they are not
applied with some kind of a mentality change, a change that only a major
historical event could provoke (much like the 30's US depression).

During 2002, the worst year after the 2001 economical collapse, the mood on
the streets was pretty gloomy and the middle classes were forced to work
their way through in new and creative ways, but Argentina started to recover
around 2003 and all these changes were thrown into oblivion.

That quick recovery was due to one of the proposed measures: floating currency (kept artificially low to favor exports) which led to an impressive soybean exports boom. China's appetite for soybean has turned Argentina into a country-sized soybean plantation providing farmers an incredibly high rent without the need to reinvest or diversify. Many farmers are now leasing the lands because they find it easier than working the fields themselves. Needless to say, those profits are not saved or reinvested.

But here's the dark side of the story: in 10 years the soil will be depleted, in 20 years there's gonna be a widespread shortage of fertilizers because of the oil prices, and we'll spend another 10 years crying for those assets now vanished in the air and spent on populism just like we did in the 1940's with the extreme profits of the WWII food sales.

Looks good in paper but if the base problem is not tackled, things only get worst.

I agree on the diagnosis, but I don't see any possible solution and I don't
think the proposed scheme would do anything to make things better.

1-DIAGNOSIS 2-WRONG THEORIES 3-HEDONISM 4-SOLUTIONS 5-COUNTRY REVIEW

5-COUNTRY REVIEW

This review only includes the countries we have visited (9 on 13). It provides with some specific information's notably in business matters. Our short tourist advices are dedicated to businessmen, traveling in the main capitals and who have not too much time.

51-Brazil

Introduction: Brazil is the giant of South America (8,547,000 Km) with nearly half of the continent's area. It is composed with three main regions: The Southeast region contains more than 40 % of the country's population. The second region is the poor Northeast. North, dominated by the Amazon, is the largest region with the fewest people.

Population: 174 Million. White (includes Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish) 95 million, Mestizo: 69 million, black: 10 million. two-thirds of Brazil's population live near the coast. Rio and São Paulo are two of the world's great metropolises, and nine other cities have over a million inhabitants. Capital: Brasilia.

Politics: Free country

Economy: Brazil is today South America's leading economic power and a regional leader. In latin america, Brazil is outpaced by Mexico (see above). The GNI reaches 552 $Billion in 2004 (GNI per capita $3,090: Rank: 96 out of 208 countries). Taking in account the purchasing power parity method, the GNI per Capita reaches $8,020 (Rank: 86 out of 208). Brazil was the best location in South America. Friendly people and government, dynamism and the kindness of the population, first class infrastructures in the south part, big internal market, huge prospects, few State regulations. Unfortunately, the depression and recent change in political power bring a lot of uncertainties. Our small investor rating is **+ .

However, I would recommend to our scholars addicted to the raw materials theory, to visit the southern part of brazil, its heavy and light industry, its manufactures of aircraft, motor vehicles, machinery and fine chemical: Today, the real landlords are the big businessmen in towns!

Tourism : Brazil has no mountains like Argentina or the Andean countries but offers the best quality of life. In residing only fifteen days you feel yourself Brazilian! Very friendly people. Just avoid the wrong side of the town (For example, Copacabana poisoned by prostitution).

52-The southern cone

521-Argentina

Introduction: Argentina, is second largest in South America (2,780,000 Km). Its heartland is a broad plain known as the Pampas. The Andes form the boundary with Chile. The highest peak in the Western Hemisphere, Aconcagua, dominates the Andes at 6,960 meters.

Population: 39 millions (95% europeans) mostly from spanish, italian and german descent. Capital: Buenos Aires.

Politics: Free country

Economy: The GNI reaches 142 $Billion in 2004 ( GNI per capita $3,720: Rank: 91 out of 208 countries). Taking in account the purchasing power parity method, the GNI per Capita reaches $12,460 (Rank: 66 out of 208). Considering the potentialities, these results are pitiful: Argentina benefits of rich natural resources (lead, zinc, tin, copper, iron , manganese, petroleum, uranium), a highly literate population, an export-oriented agricultural sector (livestock, soybeans, grapes, corn) and a diversified industrial base (food processing, motor vehicles, consumer durables, textiles, chemicals and petrochemicals, printing, metallurgy, steel). Our small investor rating is *+.

Tourism. Due to the great distances, visiting Buenos Aires is the only issue for a business travel.

522-Chile

Introduction: Chile covers 757,000km. It extends like a ribbon down the west coast of South America for over 4,000 kilometers but averages only 150 kilometers wide. Mountains cover 80 % of Chile.

Population: 16 Million ( European 95%). Chile is highly urbanized, with 40 % of the population living in the Santiago area.

Politics. Free country.

Economy: The GNI reaches 78 $Billion in 2003 ( GNI per capita $4,910: Rank: 76 out of 208 countries). Taking in account the purchasing power parity method, the GNI per Capita reaches $10,500 (Rank: 75 out of 208). Chile has a market-oriented economy characterized by a high level of foreign trade. Copper mines rank as the world's largest. Iron, nitrates, precious metals, molybdenum are present. The agricultural sector is well developed: Vineyards, apples, pears, onions, wheat, corn, oats, peaches, garlic, asparagus, beans, beef, poultry, wool; fish; grapes. Industry includes foodstuffs, fish processing, iron and steel, and wood products. Our small investor rating is **+

Tourism: The country is safe and you feel at home. From Santiago, you may easily visit Valparaiso (one day trip by car)

53-Andean countries

531-Peru

Introduction: Peru extends on 1,285,000 Km. It is composed with a pacific coastal region, the highlands that occupy a third of the country, the Andes and finally a jungle bordering Colombia and Brazil.

Population: 26 million. Native Indian: 12 million, Mestizo: 10 million, White: 4 million. Capital: Lima.

Politics: Free country

Economy The GNI reaches 65 $Billion in 2004 (GNI per capita $2,360: Rank: 108 out of 208 countries). Taking in account the purchasing power parity method, the GNI per Capita reaches $5,370 ( Rank: 119 out of 208). Peru is among the world's top producers of silver, copper, lead, and zinc. Petroleum industry and fisheries are promising. Agriculture is diversified ( coffee, cotton, sugarcane, rice, corn). Industry includes clothing, food processing, cement, auto assembly, steel, shipbuilding, metal fabrication. Our small investor rating is*-

Tourism: Cusco and the Machu Picchu are a must but you need at least four days from Lima. There is some remnant insecurity. Do not camp ( notably around the Machu Picchu!). You have better to travel in group with a guide (Native indian in the Cusco region do not speak spanish or english).

532-Bolivia

Introduction: Bolivia (1,099,000 Km) is a poor, mountainous, and landlocked country.

Population: 9 millions. Native indian: 5 million, White and mestizo: 4 million. La Paz, is the world's highest capital city (La Paz airport: 4,100m above sea level!).

Politics: Free country

Economy: The GNI reaches 8 $Billion in 2003. (GNI per capita $890: Rank: 143 out of 208 countries). Taking in account the purchasing power parity method, the GNI per Capita reaches $2450 (Rank: 150 out of 208). Despite some large natural gas deposits, Bolivia is an under developed country. It remains a large cultivator of coca. Our small investor rating is*- .

Tourism: Coming from the US or Europe, you will need few days to be accustomed to the La Paz altitude: You can be really sick. Lake Titicaca (a day trip by car from La Paz is the main site to visit). You will need a guide outside La Paz.

533-Ecuador

Introduction: Ecuador (284,000 km) has four distinct regions: The coastal plain, The Sierra, the Andes and the jungles east of the Andes.,

Population: 13 million. Mestizo:10 million, Native indian: 2million, White: 1million. Capital: Quito. Europeans are engaged in land ownership in the Andean uplands where most of the native indians are living on small subsistence farms. They cultivate on the slopes by 4,000 meters high! As a result, land reform is always a source of unrest in this region.

Politics: Free country

Economy: The GNI reaches 23 $Billion in 2003 ( GNI per capita $1790: Rank: 118 out of 208 countries). Taking in account the purchasing power parity method, the GNI per Capita reaches $3440 (Rank: 136 out of 208). Ecuador has petroleum resources, which have accounted for 40% of the country's export earnings in recent years. It is also the world's largest exporter of bananas. Coffee and fisheries (shrimp) are two important modern agricultural sectors. Indians cultivate potatoes, manioc (tapioca), plantains, sugarcane and breed sheep's, pigs, pork's, and lama. The US dollar is the legal currency. Our small investor rating is*+:.

Tourism. From the capital Quito, and through one day trip, you can easily drive to the Cotopaxi: A magnificent snowy peak (6,000 meter high).

534-Colombia

Introduction: Colombia (1,139,000 Km) is the only South American country with coastlines on both the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. The Andes separate the western coastal lowlands from the eastern jungles.

Population: 43 million. Mestizo and mulatto: 32 Million, White: 9 million, Black: 1.5 million, Native indian: 0.5 Million. Capital: Bogota.

Politics: Due to the civil war, large parts of Colombia are beyond government control.

Economy: The GNI reaches 90 $Billion in 2004 ( GNI per capita $2,000: Rank: 122 out of 208 countries). Taking in account the purchasing power parity method, the GNI per Capita reaches $6,820 (Rank: 101 out of 208). Colombia is a producer of emeralds, gold, silver, and platinum. It also exports oil and renowned coffee. The main industries are related to textiles, food processing, beverages, chemicals, cement. Colombia is the world's leading coca cultivator and supplier of cocaine. Of course, our small investor rating is very bad:***

Tourism: Colombia is a violent country. More than 3,000 people are kidnapped each year. Of course, I cannot recommend this destination!

54-Other countries

To conclude, Just a few words about these two small countries:

541-Suriname

Suriname (163,000 km and 0.4 million inhabitants) was a dutch colonies and gained independence in 1975. Most people are descendants of African slaves and Indian or Indonesian servants brought over by the Dutch. Most Surinamese live in the coastal plain. It is a free country with a GNI of 0.8 $Billion. In 2003, the bauxite industry, accounts for more than 15% of GDP and 70% of export earnings. Rice is also well renowned. The capital Paramaribo shows many old dutch building (It’s quite astonishing in this mostly iberian continent). Due to the small market, our small investor rating is *

542-French Guyana

The European Space Agency launches its communication satellites from French Guyana ( a French department). The Space Center, fishing (shrimp), forestry and gold mining are important. Beside the fiscal paradises in the Caribbean, Guyana is a "social paradise". As a result all the poor's and indigents from the neighboring countries are rushing in this holy place!

Our small investor rating is *+:. There are a lot of business to do in connection with the launching of satellites. From Cayenne you can easily see the Forest ( It covers 90% of the country ). You can also visit the Devil Islands used as a penal settlement in the past.

1-DIAGNOSIS 2-WRONG THEORIES 3-HEDONISM 4-SOLUTIONS 5-COUNTRY REVIEW

Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed: Don Dodge, Joe Kraus, Paul Buchheit & Seth Priebatsch

2011-07-12T06:10:00.003-04:00

by Scott Edward Walker

A panel of extraordinary entrepreneurs and investors moderated by Don Dodge: Joe Kraus, currently a partner at Google Ventures; Paul Buchheit, currently a partner at Y Combinator; and Seth Priebatsch, the founder of SCVNGR. You can follow them on Twitter at @DonDodge, @jkraus, @paultoo and @sethpriebatsch, respectively.

In this very interesting, one-hour video (which includes a solid Q&A), the panel discusses “How to Get Your Startup Idea Funded by Venture Capitalists” and specifically notes the following:

the importance of persistence (“the number one characteristic of amazing entrepreneurs”);
two or three founders seem to be the “sweet spot” (“one is difficult”; “four, five or six is bad”);
if founders have worked together in the past, there is a greater likelihood that they will succeed;
in the early stage (seed or A round), the key to success is “all team”;
find an investor you really want to work with (that you’re so “excited” to work with that you look forward to their calls);
competitive dynamics increase your company’s valuation dramatically (investors have a “herd mentality”);
“if you’re a technology company and you outsource the coding, you’re basically outsourcing the thing that you do”;
you want a mind-meld among the team;
“VC’s are pattern matchers”; and
bootstrapping is “for real” and allows for small acquisitions/exit options.

I hope you enjoy it. Many thanks, Scott

Open Source

2011-07-12T05:47:00.000-04:00

Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software

In today’s increasingly competitive software market, the rising number of open source applications and the growing adoption rate of these same solutions is placing a lot of pressure on tech giants like Oracle, Microsoft, Apple and Sun to name a few. While this has always been the case in the server and database space, it is becoming evident that it is growing tremendously in the mobile platform space and maybe even in the operating system space for consumer computers.
In recent years the rapid growth and popularity of iOS powered devices, specifically the iPhone has given rise to the need for an alternative that could not only challenge the iOS platform, but make up for shortcomings found in iOS
Fast forward to the year 2010 and after several revisions and more than 30 handsets, the Android operating system is making its way into almost all new mobile phones and tablet devices. The proliferation of Android powered devices has brought an open source operating system to the masses like never before.
In terms of the PC, the Windows powered netbook is being threatened by the impending release of a Chrome powered netbook later this fall. Like Ubuntu and other Linux variants that are based on Linux, Google Chrome OS is derived from an open source project powered by Chromium OS. Google's Chrome OS may succeed where other operating systems have failed when confronted with Windows. Chrome OS has the advantage of being very similar to its cousin the Chrome browser which is now used by 17% of internet users this is where Google has done a great job of positioning their OS, their suite of apps, and the browser as the focal point of all user activities.
Linux flavors like Ubuntu do a great job of making things easier for the average user who may be new to Linux, but they lack the reach and adoption outside of the software-guru sphere. They also lack the resources a company like Apple employs via their Genius Bar to train Windows users to become familiar with the differences between Windows and Mac OS platforms.
the open source projects surrounding mobile device operating systems and operating systems powering netbook/tablet-like devices, but there is a whole other world of open source when we delve into the topic of the web. Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla run the vast majority of blogs and websites on the internet. Ever wonder what powers the blogs at the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, TechCrunch, Mashable, CNN and other top ranking news and content sites on the web? It's all open source, most blogs run on WordPress, others on Drupal, and the rest on Joomla and other Open source CMS scripts.

Nanotechnology Trends and Future by Dr James Canton

2011-06-27T03:19:00.007-04:00

The Top Ten Nanotech Trends for the 21st Century

Nanotech enterprises will provide the ultimate convergence of computers, networks, and biotech, and create products never before even imagined.

Nano-devices-invisible, intelligent, and powerful-will be used in every industry redefining the limits of what's possible.

Nanotech food compilers will create on-demand, low-cost, quality meals by assembling atoms into food.

Smaller than the head of a pin, surgical nanobots will operate from within the human body.

Nano-biology will prolong life, prevent illness, and increase people's health.

Nano-enhanced humans will have physical, intellectual, and sensing powers superior to other humans.

Nanotech will provide a cheap and available source of energy.

Nano-factories will build on-demand products in an inexpensive, flexible, and rapid process.

Nanotech will revolutionize the global economy, providing Power Tools that will produce high-tech products with low-cost and low-tech resources.

Nanotech will create new choices that will alter human evolution, raise dramatic ethical issues, and challenge social norms.

James Canton, Ph.D.

Futurist, Author and Visionary Business Advisor

Dr. James Canton is a renowned global futurist, social scientist, keynote presenter, author, and visionary business advisor.
For over 30 years, he has been insightfully predicting the key trends that have shaped our world. He is a leading authority on future trends in innovation and The Economist recognizes him as one of the leading futurists, worldwide.

He is the author of The Extreme Future: The Top Trends That Will Reshape the World in the 21st Century, Dutton 2006, and Technofutures: How Leading-Edge Innovations Will Transform Business in the 21st Century, Next Millennium Press, 2004.

Dr. Canton is CEO and Chairman of the Institute for Global Futures, a leading think tank he founded in 1990 that advises business and government on future trends.

He advises the Global Fortune 1000 on trends in innovation, financial services, health care, population, life sciences, energy, security, workforce, climate change and globalization.

From a broad range of industries, clients include: IBM, BP, Intel, Philips, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Boeing, FedEx, and Proctor & Gamble.
He is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Research in Innovation at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and on the advisory board of the Corporate Eco Forum. He has advised three White House Administrations, the National Science Foundation and MIT's Media Lab, Europe.

Recognized as “one of the top presenters in the 21st century” by Successful Meetings Magazine, Dr. Canton is a highly sought-after keynote presenter. He has spoken to thousands of organizations on five continents. He is noted for his fascinating, informative, dynamic and entertaining keynotes.

A frequent guest of the media, Dr. Canton is a commentator on CNN. He was named "the Digital Guru” by CNN and “Dr. Future” by Yahoo. Dr. Canton’s media coverage has included CNBC, Fox, PBS, ABC, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Bloomberg Report, The New York Times, US News and World Report, CEO, CIO and CFO Magazines. His Global Futurist blog is followed by a world-wide audience.

Dr. Canton serves as Co-chairman of the Futures and Forecasting Track at Singularity University. Singularity University is educating a new generation of leaders to use advanced technologies to transform the planet for the better. This first year of the program has brought together an outstanding faculty to enable the leaders of tomorrow.

Trends for 2020

2011-06-23T04:00:00.000-04:00

BYLou Adler

Technology, especially the use of advanced business networking tools, in combination with state-of-the-art Internet marketing techniques, are fundamentally changing the face of recruiting as we once knew it. Surprisingly, most major U.S. corporations are still moving too slowly to take full advantage of these important changes. Worse, many are actually fighting or are oblivious to these changes.

As you know, we’re now working with a number of major recruiting and technology companies to help shape the form of future technologies and recruiting processes circa 2015-2020, particularly Jobs2Web and LinkedIn. While some important trends are emerging, it’s very clear that most U.S.-based companies are still trapped in the past. Here’s a quick survey on what it takes to hire the best passive candidates. This will provide some quick insight on how advanced your company is in hiring top talent, and if it’s on the right trajectory or not.

While some of the following points are broad projections, most are reasonable extrapolations of current trends.

The Future of Recruiting 2015-2020: Six Key Major Trends to Consider

Category-based hiring will replace individual job requisitions. Rather than drive candidates to individual requisitions, jobs will be posted by groups or projects (i.e., sales, engineering, operations, product launch, etc.) regardless of level. From these “hubs” candidates will be automatically matched with potential opportunities that best meet their capabilities and interests. Specific requisitions will be written after a candidate is selected. The legal issues associated with this shift are now being identified and addressed. if you’d like to participate in these on-going advanced discussions on the future of recruiting.
Candidates will be hired based on their ability to successfully perform in comparable environments and cultures, rather than on their absolute level of skills and experience. Current requisition-based hiring is fundamentally flawed. For one thing, having or not having the skills and experiences described predicts neither success nor failure. Worse, top people, even those with the skills and experience described, won’t apply since they’re looking for career moves, not lateral transfers. Job profiles that define successful performance rather than list skills and experiences can eliminate this problem. These performance-based job descriptions, akaperformance profiles, have been shown to increase assessment accuracy, improve on-the-job performance, and reduce turnover. This is an important trend to consider from a performance management and organizational development standpoint. Here’s avideo you can watch to quickly gain a sense of how to convert jobs into careers. and we’ll show you how our co-executive search can be a useful means to tryout this new idea on a pilot basis.
Integrated workforce planning will drive the recruiting and hiring process. Workforce plans will be automatically generated during the business planning process and updated constantly based on actual operating performance. These plans will generate job requirements by category and automatically match the best prospects in a company’s internal and extended talent network.
360° talent networking will become the primary external candidate sourcing process. As everyone in the workforce becomes connected by one degree of separation with everyone else, it will be easy to instantly match potential prospects with open opportunities. Dynamic talent communities will allow companies to focus their sourcing and recruiting efforts on pre-qualified prospects. The results: maximize quality of hire, minimize cost, and move to a just-in-time hiring environment that best balances candidate supply with demand. Implementing PERP programs is the first step in this movement. if you’d like to get started with this using LinkedIn as the core technology.
The hiring manager self-serve recruiting model will change the role of corporate recruiting. As search and automated matching tools become more prevalent, hiring managers will be able to personally handle the bulk of their own recruiting efforts. This will change the role of the corporate recruiter and the corporate recruiting department. As part of this, tools and training will be pushed to hiring managers to enable them to define the work, conduct the assessment, recruit the candidate, and negotiate an offer. We provide the core interviewing and recruiting training for hiring managers as part of our Performance-based Hiring training programs. Check this out if you’d like to see how this can accelerate the trend to a self-service model like the one predicted.
Work will be customized to meet individual and demographic needs. As matching technology improves, it will be easier to accommodate the job and career needs of an aging and shifting workforce. Emphasis on project-based work will allow for more contingent workers, with career-based opportunities provided to those with the potential and desire to grow with, and lead, the company.

While these predictions are somewhat speculative, current technologies and trends suggest that something comparable is more likely to occur than not. The key is for company leaders to assess the validity of the on-going trends, quickly identify potential problems and roadblocks within their own organizations, take immediate action to address critical issues, and begin pilot programs to assess the value of different approaches. We offer a quick online audit to see where your company is on the recruiting technology adoption front. .

As seen by the rate of adoption of tools like LinkedIn and Jobs2Web, most companies are reluctant to change quickly, holding onto past practices with the hope that modest incremental changes will suffice. This strategy is likely to exacerbate the problem. Fundamental process changes in how top talent is found, recruited, and hired will be required to take full advantage of these and other emerging technological advances.

Rudyard Kipling

2011-06-18T22:11:00.006-04:00

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;
If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings -- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run --
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

Kipling gained reknown throughout the world as a poet and storyteller.

Intel Capital Invests in Cloud Computing and Mobile Phone Technology

2011-06-13T05:22:00.001-04:00

Intel Corporation’s venture capital arm, Intel Capital, announced recently their new ventures in 4 new companies whose focal point is cloud computing and more advanced mobile phone technology. This new undertaking will entail an additional investment of $24.5 million from the company bringing their total investments for the last 20 years up to $10 billion dollars for its expansion efforts.

Among the companies that Intel Corporation has partnered with is National Instruments Corp. (NATI) where they invested over $58 million. NATI is working on AWR Corporation’s automation software for several electronic designs. An independent institution owned by a chip giant, Intel Capital operates in Santa Clara, California. Its investments account to 1,140 companies in 49 countries all across the globe since 1991, 250 of these companies are now owned by Intel including NATI and 191 are now out in the public platform.

Arvind Sodhani, President of Intel Capital said in one of his statements that their primary and main focus now includes areas of cloud computing and data centers. This big investment is part of the company’s vision to further move forward their strategic interests and to inflate their market share in the areas of computing with the use of a technology that will become decisive in the next three to five years. This infrastructure will allow more control for the consumers by letting them run their programs and do back up information using various platforms such as hand-held mobile phones, security providers and different internet companies.

In a statement made during an interview by Dow Jones Sodhani said, “There is sizzling growth in those areas.” He also added, “Those areas are going through the roof in their usage and the innovation needed to be able to manage them.”

Intel Capital said last Monday that funding will be given to the developers of this new venture which includes the following companies: CrowdStar, a pioneer in developing social games on Facebook and different cellular platforms; iStreamPlanet, a key provider of live stream web videos; Music Mastermind, a developer of an audio processing program that will allow users to compose their own music and finally, PerspecSys, a strong security provider using cloud computing data.

Sodhani also said that Intel’s new business venture also included advancements in providing internet connection devices through flat-panel television, which they hope to achieve in the next three to five years. To accomplish this task of developing different ecosystems they have been working on WiFi with Smart TV.

Sodhani in one of his statement s said of Smart TV, “The entire ecosystem for smart TV needs to be developed, and we’re in the process of doing investments across the board in that space.” He also added “We’re going to be investing in a number of different areas”

Intel Capital continues to tap promising companies outside of the United States such as China and India. They are also exploring countries like Indonesia, UK, Israel and South Africa. Investments in these countries are normally placed at $300 million to $500 million each year.

Sodhani is excited and expects the first product activity to peak up this year especially those in China and the US. He is positive that internet users from social networking and gaming companies will also venture into enterprise software and cloud computing.

He said, “M&A tends to be constant over the years,” and also. “But the IPO markets go up and down. The return of the investor appetite has arrived with a big bang.”

He concluded that Intel will not stop making new ventures and acquisitions that will find specific solutions to specific technology and user needs.

And in his final statement he said, “We have a view of what Intel is coming out with three to five years from now.”

Intel Hybrid Cloud Platform

2011-06-13T05:16:00.000-04:00

Intel - like everybody else these days - has gone into the cloud business with a new subscription-based business model and its own special twist.
It's got a Hybrid Cloud Platform that it's pointing at server makers, ISVs and service providers so they can lease small businesses of under a hundred people plug-and-play Intel AppUp service of pre-packaged applications on an Intel Xeon server that the small businesses can run in-house and pay for like a utility.
The data won't leave the premises.
Charges will be monthly with Intel keeping the books and billing the service provider for what is used. The service provider in turn will bill the small business. Charges will be based on the number of users and software rented. Leases are supposed to run three years.
Intel's says customers' use of the applications on a platform is secured by the Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) in the Xeon chip. The server tracks software usage and is supposed to send a secure encrypted report to an Intel data center every month for invoicing.
Service providers can remotely manage the reference design servers using a web portal hosted by Intel and secured by a web application firewall and HTTPS encrypted communication.
Intel says they can also remotely troubleshoot, diagnose and support the servers complements of its Active Management Technology (AMT).
Intel also imagines virtual appliances providing pre-integrated operating systems and small business software that can be turned on or off as needed and maintained by the service provider.
It's using Citrix' XenServer to start but is likely to add the Free VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V and Red Hat KVM hypervisors.
Immediately the AppUp software catalog includes Astaro, GFI Software, gloStream, Intuit, Level Platforms, SIOS, Tally Vembu and Microsoft Small Business Server, the stuff with Exchange, SharePoint and Lync, as well as Windows Server 2008. Intel's trying care of the licensing.
It expects to add Allscripts, Apani, Asigra, ClearCenter, Coversant, Critical Links, Elina Networks, Ensim, eTurns, Fonality, KineticD, Lumension, McAfee, Novell, Pragma Systems, StorageCraft, Symantec and WorkSpace Communications.
The first single-socket servers are the Lenovo ThinkServer TS200v and a white box. Intel expects to add dual-socket models from Acer, NEC and others.
The new Intel Hybrid Cloud operation is being run by general manager Bridget Karlin, who's starting the service in North America and Intel.
Intel quotes a projection that has SMBs spending $49 billion on cloud computing in 2015.