Sunday, January 29, 2012

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The Great Disruption

In a podcast from the Commonwealth Club ....  "It's time to stop just worrying about climate change, says Gilding; instead, we need to brace for impact, because global crisis is no longer avoidable. "

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

(Couldn't be?) Made in America

This article in the NY Times is a pretty sobering account of why the iPhone is built in China (spoiler alert, it is not the cost of labor).  It leaves a different sense of timeline (decades rather than years) for any recovery in the US economy, a little different from the folksy ad run by Americas Power.  But maybe we are looking for a return to a past that can no longer be afforded.

When the price of carbon and thus transportation is unrealistically low, the incentive is to centralize production.  If we were to meaningfully deal with global warming, production would move closer to the markets and revitalize the local supply chains, likely at a lower level of per capita consumption. Intellectual property can be distributed cheaply ... maybe what is needed is for FoxConn to become truly multinational and for the domestic labor markets to adapt to a changed world.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Employment in the US

In his article, Zakaria: Romney's Real Problem, Zakaria states:  "If you look at job creation over the last 20-25 years in America, you’ll notice that we haven't been able to create any jobs in what is called the “tradable sector” of the economy - those jobs that are subject to global competition. The only jobs we’ve really created have been in industries like health care, government, and construction, which are basically local industries shielded from global competition. You can't outsource the building of a New York skyscraper to a Chinese worker."  Looking a little further, the Economist has an article Moving to Stagnation, which discusses job growth and movement in the US (and certainly is not happy news for NM).  Foriegn Affairs has a nice, longer article (for fee), Globalization and Unemployment, on the structural issues facing jobs in the US.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Setting up a project using Libcoap in Eclipse CDT

For those new to Eclipse CDT (as I am), a couple of things may be very helpful.

Look at Eclipse C/C++ and Linux Libraries for a quick tutorial on configuring Eclipse CDT.
Then look at the thread Linker cannot find lib file for how to point the linker to the appropriate library file.
This is likely all pretty obvious to an experienced C programmer, but to a newbie it may be frustrating.

So in my case, under GCC C Compiler/Includes it was necessary to define the include path to where libcoap was installed (the File Browser helps here).
Then you have to go to the GCC C Linker/Libraries dialog and declare "Libraries (-l)" with "coap" and "Library search path (-L)" again to where libcoap was installed.
Refer above:

If your library is called "libmysqlclient.a" you specify -lmysqlclient 
to the linker (it automatically adds "lib" prefix and ".a" (or ".so") 
suffix.