Just been reading the BBC news site and came across this story.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2894987.stm

I cannot believe that whilst there's still a war going on, some US fat cat is complaining that european manufacturers might get some business out of the rebuilding of iraq.

I read something similar about contracts to provide electricity, gas, phone services, water treatment were all given to US companies. It just reaffirms my opinion that it's all just 'jobs for the boys'. Even the UK (who've had far too many soldiers killed by US friendly fire) are left out of these contract negotiations.

Greedy money grabbing bastards....

Hmm... The new plan is to use the war as a excuse to try to get more money it seems... How nice of them.

- Trevor

some US fat cat is complaining

I overheard American tourists referring to the Euro as the Eurodollar, more than once over the weekend in Paris - so maybe that's Bush's next objective.

Mind you, Iraq spent £136,200,000 with the French in the first half of last year, making it their largest business partner, so maybe Bush needs to head that off and get in with some of the boy's contracts.

LMAO. People making money off of something? Perish the thought. Someone has to rebuild Iraq, why shouldn't it be the companies that work and get taxed under the countries that helped to liberate Iraq? They are paying the taxes for the military forces over there.

France has done nothing positive and in my option should get no benefits. They have insulted several EU and future EU members in trying to claim their stake in world policy - and yet that haven't done anything but talk, insult, belittle and badger - exactly what their past shows they do and will continue to do. If they get shut out, that's fine by half of the world.

In the end it should probably go for the company with the best "bang for the buck" - but I wonder where the money will come from to rebuild Iraq and it's government? UN? US? Iraq? UK? France? Russia?

France has done nothing positive and in my option should get no benefits. They have insulted several EU and future EU members in trying to claim their stake in world policy - and yet that haven't done anything but talk, insult, belittle and badger - exactly what their past shows they do and will continue to do.

HA! Reminds me of that Monty Python scene:
FRENCH GUARD: You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottom, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur King, you and all your silly English k-nnnnniggets. Thpppppt! Thppt! Thppt!


FRENCH GUARD:
I don't wanna talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

Well, they did give the oil well cleanup to Halliburton, the company Cheney was the head of. Suprise suprise.

Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time'

Check out this worthless drivel reprinted in the Austin American Spaceman from the Washington Post. I can't believe people actually care about/pay attention to this...

I don't see a problem with not allowing companies from countries that did not support the war to participate in the re-building process. Re-building is a means for boosting the re-building country's economy while simultaneously solidifying the dependency of the re-built country on the re-builder's resources. Countries that participate in the re-building process stand to gain enormously and those countries that currently are not supporting the war are well aware of this fact. This is why they're raising such a stink with the UN. In my opinion, however - if those countries want to reap the benefits of the re-build then they need to fork up. They can't expect to get something for nothing.

I certainly do hope, however, that when it comes time to rebuild that the US does include other coalition countries accordingly. That would only be fair.

- trs

(I also hope the grammar police don't cite me for this terribly awkward post )

Re-building is a means for boosting the re-building country's economy while simultaneously solidifying the dependency of the re-built country on the re-builder's resources.

But that's the whole point. Saddam, although an evil main, is the current legitimate ruler of Iraq. We may not like it, or the fact that he is a tyrannical dictator. The Iraqis may not like it, or the fact that he is a brutal dictator. But the fact remains that he has been in power for a long time. The US helped put him there, so I find the constant 'rogue nation' quips to be particularly hypocritical.

The US and UK have based their claims for the necessity of war on (a) humanitarian concerns, and (b) Global security.

Dictating the rebuilding process to favor one's own interests smacks to me of 'Unsolicited Services'. Saddam certainly didn't order any business from such companies. At the same time, this regime change will have an effect on both Russia's and France's trade balances. Assuming for the moment that all such business was legitimate under the existing sanctions, how could it then be fair for all post-war business to be US and UK only? How would this help with foreign perceptions of the US and UK? It would be especially hypocritical considering both countries claim to be supporters of the concept of free trade.

If this war really is about liberation, then a representative government should be installed ASAP. And then let *them* choose. If they really are grateful for the liberation, and US/UK products are priced competitively, then surely this would be a better solution.

Actually Haliburton has removed itself from the list of companies bidding on the post-war Iraq govt. contracts.
Wether they did this on their own, or if it was requested of them, I suppose we'll never know.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/892259.asp

Aw, that deadens the Daily Show's hubbub about it They were hilarious when that was announced.

worthless drivel

Mind you i've noticed that a great number of people being interviewed just recently are wearing fetching green, brown and black outfits, which makes a nice change from the old dark business suits.

Quoting from the article:

In reply to:

---

"CDMA is widely recognised as technically superior to European GSM technology. If the US Government deploys US-developed CDMA in Iraq, then American companies will manufacture most of the necessary equipment,"

---

Can someone confirm whether CDMA is actually technically superior? I thought it was inferior because it couldn't pass data as well as voice, or summat like that. Certainly my inability to send a text message to a CDMA phone would argue that it's not the wonder-technology these politicians like to think it is.

If there's one thing that really gets me angry about politicians, it's the way some of them comment on things they wouldn't have a clue about as if they're the new world expert on it. How many science ministers actually have science degrees? (Gareth Evans, former Australian minister for Science, did, but he's the only case I know of).

Overall this is the sort of thing that I expected to come out of the 'war on Iraq'. Not liberation - look what happened to Afghanistan. Just monetary interests being served.

Paul the Cynical

Can someone confirm whether CDMA is actually technically superior? I thought it was inferior

Oh 'eck! Get in your SUVs and head for the hills -- now we got us a flamewar a-comin'!

Peter

Can someone confirm whether CDMA is actually technically superior? I thought it was inferior because it couldn't pass data as well as voice, or summat like that.

Actually the article itself discusses this farther down.

Check out this worthless drivel reprinted in the Austin American Spaceman

Yeah, pretty bad. I will say, though, is that I haven't watched any TV or TV news in 5 or 6 days, ever since I saw Clarke in a pink and grey asymmetrical-patterned suit -- made her look like a villain in a Batman movie.

Now, I'm not *sure* this is why I have stopped watching TV news, but it certainly has *something* to do with it!

As little as I watch the news, I saw the same one!

The funny thing is that she was framed initially (in the boradcast I was watching) half offscreen, and looked normal. Then they panned over when she started talking and showed the grey half. I eeked and about jumped out of my couch. Then I thought, for a second, that my TV had turned B&W on the right half. It took quite a while for that one to sink in.

Can someone confirm whether CDMA is actually technically superior?

I'm sure I'm compleetly wrong in this, but from my understanding CDMA as a technology, is superior to the alternatives because it allows more simultaneous calls in the same bandwidth. It does this by dynamically deciding how much bandwith your conversation needs, as opposed to allocating it a fixed amount for the duration of your call.

Now, GSM as a standard, is far more usefull. Take your phone anywhere and use it. Flip a new sim in your phone, or flip your sim in a new phone and you're set to go. In theory, the next generation of GSM will use CDMA, but it won't be compatible with what we call "CDMA" stateside, which is the Verizon network.

Matthew

Here is the article I read on slashdot that is the basis for all my GSM/TDMA/CDMA knowlege. It was a good read, thought it should be taken with a grain of salt, as it's a ex Qualcomm engineer.

Matthew

Now, I'm not *sure* this is why I have stopped watching TV news, but it certainly has *something* to do with it!

Maybe instead of Ms. Victoria Clarke giving the briefings the Pentagon should get Victoria's Secret to give them.

Maybe instead of Ms. Victoria Clarke giving the briefings the Pentagon should get Victoria's Secret to give them.

Hmmm I think I would not hear any of the dialog if that were the case. My mind would be elsewhere...

>Can someone confirm whether CDMA is actually technically superior?

Sure. I have worked extensively on the R&D side of the cellular industry, and have taught Cellular Technology courses for nearly a decade. No doubt, CDMA is very slick stuff, the best technology I've seen. Kinda like the Sony Beta VCR format when compared with GSM.

GSM is also excellent, but not as versatile as CDMA, or as efficient in use of the airwaves. But it *is* good enough, and is the defacto universal VHS .. er.. digital standard nearly everywhere in the world.

Where the two basically differ is in the channelization scheme. GSM divides the airwaves into 200Khz frequency chunks called "RF channels", and then multiplexes 8 time slots of voice/data within each RF channel. The original North American CDMA scheme uses RF channels of 1.25Mhz each, and uses digital coding to mutliplex up to 20-30 streams of voice/data within each RF channel.

At first glance, it would appear that GSM gets more bang for the bandwidth, but it suffers a common radio flaw in that the same RF channels cannot be re-used in adjacent cells or sectors (a sector is a directional slice of a cell, kinda like a slice of a pie). So for GSM, each RF channel can only be used in every fourth cell or so. With CDMA, each RF channel gets reused in every cell, and even every sector of every cell.. and it actually works better when this is done than it would otherwise.. because the codes are different in each sector/cell, they generally sum to a nice white noise like background, preventing interference and reflections from having as much negative impact as they would have against a quieter or less-even background level.

CDMA improves further as larger RF channels are used -- newer schemes use 5Mhz and 10Mhz channels.

Cheers

Hey. Is there anything you don't actually know about? ATA/IDE, GSM/CDMA...

- Trevor

It's not so much that he knows about this stuff that bothers me. That he's an expert in it is giving me an inferiority complex though

One question, if CDMA is so great, why does VoiceStream use GSM? I roamed quite happily on my various trips to NY and NJ.

Actually the real problem with that article, if all you residents of the USA will forgive me for saying so, is that it's written by an American.

The "Morality Tale" at the end is the bit I'm specifically referring to. He's saying that the governmental process which standardised on GSM in Europe is inherently inferior to the free market of the USA which standardised on CDMA. Now, the wrongness inherent in that governmental process has come back to hurt them and they're having to come begging to a good old American company that's prepared to sell its technology to anyone. But we're not letting those cocky Europeans get our hard-earned knowledge, no way we're not, the free market is protecting itself by making sure that the experience is kept where it's needed most.

Now, play that back the other way around and think of it as the free market in Europe that happened to pick the VCR of the wireless phone world and is now being forced to come to heel and pay the royalties to a big American company. And this big American company, having dominated its own marketplace and by a combination of muscle and back-room deals, is now making sure that all other competitors are crippled by not knowing the best way to implement their networks. So ultimately they hope that everyone will be using Qualcomm everywhere because all the other competitors have been ground into the dust after making the mistakes in the process of implementation.

Gee, now where have I heard that story before? Damn, Internet Explorer has just crashed again, I'm going to have to reboot my Microsoft Windows PC.

Just my two cents worth (which is about 0.015 USD now...)

Have fun,

Paul

P.S. This is actually being written in Netscape on a Sun Solaris workstation. But you get the point...

Easy one.. when the USA PCS spectrum licenses were issued, CDMA was still a mostly theoretical unproven technology, with a few bugs still to be worked out.

GSM at the same time, was already in use in dozens of countries, and seemed (and was) a good choice for digital voice service. As was D-AMPS (without the AMPS portions). Each service area within the USA can have as many as seven digital cellular/PCS carriers (not including the two lower frequency "analogue" bands, on which digital D-AMPS is also now commonplace), each of whom gets to choose the technology they want to use. So it's only natural that several "competing" technologies might be deployed in any given area.

Talk about a nice environment for wireless confusi.. err.. evolution.

Key GSM advantages are roaming and SMS. WAP was not such success, but GPRS with multimedia functionality is growing.

Not only can you take your phone to any European and many other countries and place local SIM chip in it - you can continue using it with your original SIM and hence number (if your provider has roaming agreement with some local provider - and virtually everyone has them with everybody else). I remeber whan few years ago an American busieness partner called me and found me in Rome - the guy thought I must be on satphone.

SMS (short messages - up to 160 characters, but most phones can transparently combine several together) is extremely hot service among European kids. Although one message costs two or three cents, they are major source of income for providers, who then invent new ways to incite customers to use them (e.g. games, dating, sports news, or small paments - for example, in Zagreb I pay parking fee by sending an SMS). Now when SMS niche is pretty much saturated, operators are trying to incite users to send smapshots etc to each other.

Of course, I don't think there are serious technical obstacles for similar services using CDMA. As is very often the case, the point is not the particular technology, but interoperability. However, 'multisitem' hendsets what could be used in both Europe and US are unlikely.

BTW, one of out cellular providers still operates old analog NMT network.

SMS is universal.. all of the digital technologies have it.

But thus far, the SIM seems to be GSM-specific, and a really nice enabler for various features.

Cheers