US No Longer Technology King 815
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that according to a recent report from the World Economic Forum the US has lost the leading spot for technology innovation. The new reigning champ is now apparently Denmark with other Nordic neighbors Sweden, Finland and Norway all claiming top spots as well. "Countries were judged on technological advancements in general business, the infrastructure available and the extent to which government policy creates a framework necessary for economic development and increased competitiveness."
Re:well... (Score:5, Informative)
Don't mod me informative; it is just copy-and-paste magic for people as lazy as the parent poster.
Re:Well, that's not really unexpected (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Telecomm (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Telecomm (Score:3, Informative)
usa Density 31
finland Density 16
sweden Density 20
Re:Telecomm (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Validity of the criteria? (Score:5, Informative)
Also, there are several ways to avoid the high marginal taxes - at least in Denmark. The only thing that is really expensive is conspicuous consumption here and now - if you save it up for your old age, you will get a substantial tax discount. Also, there are significant tax breaks for companies.
I am in fact a successful innovator (not taking over the world any time soon tho), and I'm staying. Denmark has been very good to me, both growing up, and as an environment for innovation. Hey, in some countries I understand you have to pay for your education. In Denmark I got paid, both during my masters and during my PhD. That's pretty hard to beat.
Re:Agreed. (Score:3, Informative)
here is an interesting concept in science I think you should learn.
When someone puts forward a hypotheses, providing a single example, like you did, does not prove it is true.
But, when someone provides a single counterexample, like I did, it is considered sufficent to prove the hypothese false.
Re:Telecomm (Score:5, Informative)
Having been the Europe many times, I've often been asked by friends and colleagues why we in the US don't have high speed trains everywhere. Well, considering that - if we used the fastest TVGs and ICEs they have in the EU - it would still take about 7 hours to take a train from Seattle (where I live) to San Francisco - the nearest big city (assuming 300 KPH and slowing down for the occasional towns/crossings). Or 30 hours from Seattle to Miami, at the same average speed.
Compare that to under 2 hours for Paris to Brussels. It's just a different scale over here. And that makes telecom also difficult. Distances between big population centers would cover multiple EU countries. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money to pull more fiber from Seattle to Chicago, or Houston to Los Angeles... It's not a small 150-100 kilometer run of fiber; it's literally hundreds - if not thousands - of kilometers to cover.
Just for the record... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Is this "study" worth used toilet paper? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gitr/rankings2007.pdf [weforum.org]
The WEF is based in Geneva and run by the Swiss government
http://www.weforum.org/en/about/index.htm [weforum.org]
They had a pretty big meeting in Davos in January this year at which several heads of state were present - including Tony Blair and Angela Merkel (also Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and several other industry leaders)
Read about it at that other "USA hating jack-off organization":
http://www.forbes.com/2007/01/23/world-economic-f
But don't let the facts get in the way of your opinion.
The last mile (Score:3, Informative)
This is where European cities have a big advantage. Most people live in apartments with sometimes hundreds of families living in the same block of flats. The cable companies can just connect the whole building to a hub and draw the cables inside the house. In the US, where most people live in their own houses they have to draw the last mile outdoors. That means digging up roads and doing a separate installation for each household they want to connect. Of course that is going to be much more expensive.
That and subsidies. The Nordic countries try very hard to bring high speed access to everyone.
Re:Poor excuse! US population centers much larger (Score:5, Informative)
The first thing here is not to confuse broadband 'availability' with broadband 'subscribers'. Canada and Nordic countries have both high availability, and high subscription rates.
In the case of a region like NYC, I'm sure it has very high broadband *availability*. (Meaning that if you live in NYC you could get broadband if you decided to, and you probably even have a choice who you get it from.) But I concede that even in places like New York, the subscription rate falls short of other countries.
That said, to address your comment:
New York alone contains more people than all of Sweden and Norway combined. I am sure New York City takes up far less space than Norway and Sweden combined. So why don't cities like LA, New York and Chicago have at least as good broadband penetration as nordic countries? From what I read they don't.
You make a valid point.
New York, is actually the 4th most wired city in the United States, according to this article:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/articles/art030
That said, I don't know. If I were to speculate I would expect that the answer lies with social issues like poverty and illiteracy, and/or a lack of education. This strikes me as likely for two reasons:
Firstly, it seems logical to suggest that the poor/illiterate would be less likely to subscribe to high speed internet access
Secondly, this is an area where Canada and the Nordic countries differ from the US. Their inner city problems, poverty, and illiteracy rates are markedly lower than in the US, so its reasonable to suggest that it might be responsible for the difference.
regards
Re:utter horse pookey (Score:1, Informative)
Re: Were you there? (Score:4, Informative)
There's an even better answer. To wit, "How do you know there was a Jesus? Were you there?"
There is no historical evidence supporting the actual existence of Jesus. The earliest mention of Jesus is in the context of remarks made by Josephus, a man born about 7 years after Christ's supposed death. Then there is Tacitus, who was born about 55 AD. There are a couple more that come at about 80 AD and 100...110AD and then as the Christians gained followers, more and more mentions. The key thing, though, is that there is no mention anywhere in the records we have from 0 to 30 AD of Mr. Christus, and no mention by anyone whose personal timeline crossed that of Mr. Christus.
"What about the bible?" I hear the apologists winding up to ask. Well, what about it? There are no books of the bible that are any older than 300AD. The earliest documents we have - the Vatican, Sinaitic, and Alexandrin manuscripts - come from 300AD or later; they are supposed to be copies of earlier works, but as no such works have come to light, and of the 5,000 or so documents that went into the mix to be used as a basis for the bible (compared against one another and so on), these three are by far the best ones and the most used... we can pretty much limit the scope of trust to literally hundreds of years after Christus was supposed to have lived - in other words, the bible is actually less authoritative than either Tacitus or Josephus, and as I pointed out, those fellows never even knew the man.
A lot of people take the actual existence of Christ as a given, and then proceed to argue about his divinity. However, examining the history, it turns out there is no reason to even presume the man existed. We know there was a group of people - Christians - who were being a pain in the government's rear by the end of the first century AD. That's all we know.
One more step down the ladder - the argument that "because there were Christians, there must have been a Chirst." I point you to Scientology. Must there have been a Xenu? I point you to Mormonism. Must there have been golden tablets, an angel named Moroni? I can even point you to the wall of your veterinarian. Must there have been a "rainbow bridge"? I could go on (for pages!) but I think I've already made the point. These types of organizations are known to arise for reasons entirely aside from the claims that underlie the mythology. There is no need to assume truth because an organization arises based around certain ideas; quite the contrary. The ideas themselves are what need to be looked at, not the organization. And in the case of Christus, it turns out that there are no more convincing records of him than there are of Xenu.
As the claimant, the burden of proof falls upon the Christian. Presently, there is no historical evidence that backs up their claims; that pretty much cuts the feet right out from under any argument they might make. Much more to the point than the flood. Floods are known to happen. Divine children aren't.
Re:Telecomm (Score:5, Informative)
I was a little surprised about your 7 hour time quote from Seattle to San Francisco, so I did some fact checking:
Google maps says that the distance between the two cities is 808 miles, or 12 hours 40 mins by car. Google converts those 808 miles into kilometers: 808 miles = 1 300.34995 kilometers.
The time it takes to travel 1300 kilometers at 300km/hour: 4.33 hours. So you were off by a substantial amount of time - 2 hours and 20 minutes or so.
High speed trains will become more popular when gas prices go up. That will affect both car travel and airplane travel. Gas prices are already high in Europe for car travel, and trains are a lot more comfortable that planes, so that's probably why they are more popular there. Particularly when you take into account all the security checkpoints they force you through at airports these days, it's a royal pain to fly.
Re:Telecomm (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Telecomm (Score:2, Informative)
My parents live in Norway. (#10? What?! Damn you, Sweden!) Countryside. 2000 people town. 200 meter to the neighbour. Most people there had ADSL availiable years ago. Last summer a company put up a radio antenna on a hilltop and provided wireless broadband to the rest.
I think every farm boy there is connected, and pretty familiar with computers/Internet. My nephew is an elementary school student in said town. Most of his classmates seems to be connected, playing flash games and chatting.
Re:Telecomm (Score:5, Informative)
I've ridden ICE some rather nice distances. Except for construction work, it was straight. I've also ridden Amtrak around the Pacific NW between Spokane/Seattle, Spokane/Portland and Seattle/Eugene. This is 137,858 square miles for Germany, 98,466 for Oregon, and 71,342 for Washington. These two states are larger than Germany, with just over 9 million in the space of 82 million.
Spokane to Portland or Seattle takes about 8 hours. This is using a heavy sleeper liner that travels between Chicago and Seattle, taking approximately 46 hours. It is also available once a day, leaving at 2 in the morning from Spokane.
The Eugene-Seattle line is a newly built train from Taiwan based off the type used in Europe for regional lines. The train is available about 6 times a day, takes 5 hours to do Eugene-Seattle, partly due to layover. It's actually a really nice train and has a good bistro car along with it's own built in movie service. It's also slower than driving.
Much of the reason why they are slow is the US hasn't built new rail lines in a very long time. Most of these lines are just improved versions of the ones first laid down after the Civil War. And some of these lines skip major towns in semi-rural areas because their spurs don't have enough traffic. Southern Oregon lacks Amtrak service because of this. The line East of the Cascades was kept up, but the line going parallel to I5 (the major West Coast freeway) can't carry modern trains.
Most of these lines have to slow down every 5 to 10 minutes as they cross highways and city streets. Compare this to European dedicated lines that have their own right of way and don't need to slow down except for stations...
Now consider the coast of refurbishing the entire rail network in the US to have its own right of way. Billions upon billions. There's talk of going maglev in some small sections of the country along populated stretches. One plan to connect LA and Las Vegas has already spent billions for about 1 mile of track.
And one related note. The reason US telecom lags is because 15 years ago we were the best in the world. Billions upon billions were spent by the DoD to build a hardened land line network that can survive a nuclear war. Mandates extended this out to nearly every hamlet. It gave the US spare capacity for a number of years. While Europe and Asia didn't have this large infrastructure and skipped to new generation wireless.
Re:Telecomm (Score:4, Informative)
This always comes up (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Where do you live, btellier? (Score:3, Informative)
If you're from New York, I can understand how you can somehow ignore the rise of the Christian Right in American politics ever since the Reagan era. You need to get out and see the "Heartland" of the country. Try Dallas, or Oklahoma City, or Baton Rouge, or Jackson. How about that Crystal Cathedral in California?
The Christian Right is influential, but the presence of religious regions in the US isn't a new phenomenon. It's been around since the begining of the country's existence. And all those regions have been strongly religious for a long time.
You've got people who firmly believe that the US Constitution states that the USA is a Christian nation. I've got in-laws who used to believe that I was damned to Hell because I was raised Catholic and not a member of the Church of Christ.
So what? I have relatives who tell me the Earth is only a few thousand years old and that I'm going to hell cause I listen to scientists. Deeply religious people have been around for a long time.
Oh. And that CUNY study? Does it take into account that many black Southern Baptists are becoming Muslims? And the biggest immigrant groups in the US today are Hispanic Catholics (and Protestants) and Muslims from the Middle East and SE Asia?
Yes and yes. Read up on the methodology. It's a US-wide study that applies to all ethnic groups. As far as I know, there simply is no more definitive study on the matter in the US. They aren't just asking white New Yorkers.Re:Telecomm (Score:2, Informative)
I live in Europe, and as it happens we just got the "TGV Est". I live about 375km from Paris (according to Google maps, which gives road distance) and the "TGV Est currently has its terminal at Paris and (one of the other terminals) in the capital of my country". Now, the time it needs is 2 hours and 5 minutes. On this track it has exactly 4 stops, and they don't stay at these stops for very long. This means, on average that it drives 180km/hour. Not close to the maximum of 300km/hour.... (Which is normal)
So just assuming this speed can be maintained over 1300km (and thus keeping into account stops and slowdowns), then the total time required would indeed be 7 hours and 15 minutes.
Others mention the geographical situation, which cannot be counted in because it would impact all other road travel too. Besides, anyone who has been in the Alps and took the train there, knows how slow mountainous areas are in train. Same thing for cars though.
I've been to the US, and I know how big it is... However, a fast train is not required everywhere. You start off with the easy tracks, that are useful. As far as I remember one of the first TGV tracks was the North-South line Paris-Lyons, which is about 500km. This is about the scale of Washington DC to Pittsburgh. I'm not claiming that this would be a useful track (what do I know?), but it most certainly would be a start.
Anyway: the US is huge and people are not willing to travel for 8 hours straight anymore (well, I did, in Europe, yes, sir). On the other hand, with flight these days, doing any bigger flight will take a lot of time away due to controls and pre-checkin conditions. Even if a flight is only 2 hours, but you need 1 hour pre-flight and one hour post-flight, you still lost a lot of time. Sure, no 8 hours, but travelling by train is marvelously relaxing....
Re:Priorities (Score:2, Informative)
I do agree that immigration reform is necessary, but given that the United States has had this problem for years, I can't imagine it resulting in a loss of rank.
Also, the two co-editors made the point that it isn't a matter of the United States sliding, but more that its not growing as rapidly. They still concede that the United States is still the dominant information technology powerhouse in the world with an unrivaled tertiary education system and excellent startup environment. It should also be noted that prior to the 2006 report, the United States was ranked 5 in the 2004-2005 rankings. So a drop in rank this year is hardly a sudden shift in power. Always room for improvement though.