U.S. power: Down but still unrivaled

BOOK REVIEW

Balance: The Economics of Great Powers from Ancient Rome to Modern America, Authors: Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane.

By Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane – Hard power. Soft power. Smart Power. Superpower. This is the language of foreign affairs, full of meaning but empty of measurement. Vagueness is, of course, purposeful in the hands of skilled diplomats and politicians, but it can signal shallowness, ignorance or worse. Lacking clear metrics for power, the U.S. national security establishment speculates about possible rivals while being led astray by trendy catchphrases.

The United States itself has a larger GDP and higher productivity than 10 years ago, but its long-term growth rate has slowed by half. That’s a reflection of internal imbalance – budget deficits, heavy taxes that hinder incentives to work and innovate, unfunded entitlements and more.

Existential threats hide in plain sight. If the United States wants to be a superpower for another century, it needs to focus on the barriers to economic growth within — not phantoms abroad. more> http://tinyurl.com/q8yjmvl

Embedded education

By Colin Walls – How do you acquire the specialist skills needed to develop software for embedded systems?

Learning at college may be difficult, so many engineers pick up the skills on the job, starting with an electronics or computer science background. An intelligent engineer can learn a lot from more experienced colleagues. Indeed this is largely how my own career started and I have mentored quite a few younger guys who had come out of college with few clues. more> http://tinyurl.com/amyc6ft

Related>

• Renesas Electronics America, Micrium and IAR Systems Bring Expanded RTOS and Middleware Bundle to Embedded Developers on IAR Systems Tools Platform, BusinessWire/Yahoo! News

The US Market & Design for Test

By W. Scott Fillebrown – The challenge is that the US market is made up of high-technology/low production quantity assemblies. In many circuit bed of nails cases, test is not an option because of development time, cost and the difficulty associated with finding a place for a 30-40 mil test point.

Depending on the technology, the challenge can be as simple as making minor design changes that can happen at the gerber level to requiring a significant revision to the board in question. First let’s conquer the simple. For analog, RF and lower technology digital boards the approach is the simplest. Typically, straightforward flying probe test is the answer. more> http://tinyurl.com/cdnzdlr

Respect For Trial & Error, & Success

By Alan Nicol – I’m working on a project with a friend of mine and it strikes me how differently we approach the development of our vision. He finds it simpler and quicker to run calculations and probabilities. I prefer to lie out a scenario and try it to see what happens.

It seems that many prefer to find ways to model the problem or the solution and run simulations to arrive at an answer; the minority will prototype, test, and experiment.

Trial-and-error, experimentation, and testing are important tools for developing new solutions and for innovation or product development. more> http://tinyurl.com/cv4yrso

Updates from SIEMENS

Chuck Grindstaff on how Siemens gets the core of PLM right

By John Hayes – This video on Siemens is the fourth in a series of interviews on the future of PLM.  Verdi Ogewell talks to Siemens PLM President Chuck Grindstaff about the future for Siemen’s Teamcenter, NX and Solid Edge. He also includes commentary from analysts Mark Halpern of Gartner and Joe Barkai from IDC. Others include:

• Jim Hepplemann, CEO of PTC about their vision to bring Service Lifecycle Management and Application Lifecycle Management to users
• Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk on PLM in the Cloud
• Bernard Charles, CEO of Dassault Systemes about the future direction for CATIA, Solidworks and how the rest of the Dassault PLM suite will enable unique 3D experiences.

more> http://tinyurl.com/bnuhmm2