₦airaland Forum

This is something you can quite easily google, no?

Beaf, are you secretly the commander of MEND, lol? Everyone seems to look to you as an authority on this issue.

Hrm, Soludo actually has a track record of success and understands economics. A lot of these other guys do not, they think borrowing money to build white elephant projects is the way to run a gov't.

I'd trust someone like Soludo to get the most out of the economy possible.

Long distance relationship in which the chick is mostly interested in your account balance and playing emotional games with you?

Break up with the broad ASAP. Too many women in the world to be wasting your time with a gold-digging ho like that.

She isn't looking for a relationship, she is looking for somebody to pay her bills for her.

^-- Agreed. Note that to go from 10 to 30 billion in 8 years requires roughly a 15% annualized growth rate. While this is possible, it will require some concrete plans, and most importantly a lot of money to accomplish. Power supply needs to be guaranteed, roads fixed, and other things need to be done to ensure an enabling environment for business in the state.

I like the ambitious goal, but will remain a skeptic until he provides a specific road map for achieving it.

homerac7:
I still don't c anything incriminating in d declared manifest. I think we r getting paranoid.

Err, someone is building or has already built a fighting force in Nigeria, likely. So you should be a bit paranoid. It is a bad sign that imported weapons keep showing up. For every shipment that shows up in the news, that means 100 that were not found.

carnal:
someone toasted my wife (who is 25 with 2kids) while i was standing by d car waiting for her,d guy kept givin her gist,disturbin so tey d madam hv to point to him dat (me) d oga is one standin overthere ooo and do u kn what d dude did?he came to me and said "your wife is very beautiful and lovely sir,can i meet any of her sisters"?i was shocked but laffed.

Lol. I've been that guy before But in my case, I thought the woman was single! Then later I found out her husband was in the club too

How was I supposed to know a woman would go to a club with her husband and dance with other dudes 

If it were me and I'm married, I'd hope my woman would have enough sense not to do that. . .

Katsumoto:
The classification came in 2001 in a paper (The World Needs Better Economic BRICs) written by Jim ONeil but the first meeting of the presidents did not occur until 2009. Classification in itself will not do much for Nigeria other than make the world notice Nigeria. Nigeria has a lot of work to do to be accepted by these heavyweights. I suspect that if Nigeria were suddenly to get visionary and competent leadership and improved several aspects of its economy, it could be invited by the BRIC countries to join.

Goals of BRIC
1. Economic cooperation amongst members.
2. Better involvement in global affairs
3. Replacement of dollar as world reserve currency
4. A reform of financial institutions

Interestingly, Nigeria is ranked 18th by GDP between 2006 and 2050 in a study (BRICs and BEYOND) by Goldman Sachs. SA did not make the top 22 nations.

Thanks for the overview. Perhaps the carrot of joining will be additional motivation to fix the country. Who knows, it worked for some of those EU countries, maybe it can work for us.

Eziachi:
what the heck are you talking about? Construction- construction of what exactly? Benin-Ore-Onitsha dead trap road or Lagos-Ibadan for example or the falling 50 years old River Niger?

Agriculture- He only improve in his Otta farm when he monopolised the license on importation of certain things and confisticating lands across Southern Nigeria even Outside Yorubaland and how many companies moved to Ghana under his watch?
I want you to name one or two of his policies that bring what you seems to be claiming as his achievement.

During his time, oil price rose to it highest price since that black liquid was discovered compared to the price of oil during the evil days of Abacha when oil was as low as $20 per barrel at one point,  but still, Naira was stronger during Abacha's evil era.

Despite swimming in unexpected oil boom price, he could not fix even a single of the out of work refineries, talkless of bilding a new one, as he ditches out import license to his cronies to import petrol and even kerosine in a country tagged as the world's 5th oil producer.

I don't blame people like you, because, Jonathan/Yar Adua makes OBJ looks like Ronald Reagan/Bill Clinton in terms of achievement and that is one thing anyone will easily predict about the basket case (Nigeria), that every new leader makes the person he succeeded looks like the messiah.

I judge the effectiveness of a president primarily by how much the economy grows under his tenure. Not really interested in presidents who spend a lot of money building public works while letting private industry stagnate. Say what you will about how you'd have liked OBJ to accomplish more, but no one can deny the economic gains under his tenure.

houvest:
Your Opinion and I respect it now be humble and respect others' opinion.

Fair enough. Sorry for any arrogance I showed. If he were only claiming stuff about oilfield simulations or whatever, then I'd mostly keep quiet, since that is something I know nothing about.

But in this case, I know at least a little bit about how the internet and WWW came into being.

passyjango:
@DapoBear read this qoute originally posted by another advocate of Emeagwali. There you will see why he claims to be a father of the internet. I know you may have seen it but have decided to play blind. But I just want to give you the benefit of the doubt. To you it may not be enough, but to him, me, BBC, Time, CNN, Bill Cliton, the FG?, and millions of other people that matter worldwide it is enough. It is a matter of opinion.

Simply put, looks like millions of people (including Time, CNN, BBC, Bill Clinton) got 419ed. This will not be the first or the last time that it happens, unfortunately.

Am I "A Father of the Internet?"



First, I demonstrated that the original blueprint for the international network only applies to a flat Earth and invented a global network that applies to a round Earth.

This "flat Earth"/"round Earth" is mumbo jumbo. What does the flatness of the earth have to do with the algorithms you use for transporting data across a network?

Second, the United States government acknowledged that I used the NSFnet (precursor of the Internet) to break the barriers of space and time. The latter was hailed as an NSFnet "success story."

Again, deceitful mumbo jumbo. He ran some simulations on NSFs network. Fine, but that doesn't mean you had anything to do with inventing it. And how again was NSFNet the precursor to the Internet? Is he not aware of ARPANet?

Third, I developed the first personal Web site on the NSFnet.

Lol, wtf? A personal website is now the same as inventing something? BTW, notice he doesn't claim he made the first "website." Just the first personal one! 

Fourth, I contributed to the development of parallel processing technology, which provides the horsepower that runs Web sites.

What contributions did he make, specifically? In what way did he contribute?

Fifth, I demonstrated the power of parallel computing, a technology that is now accepted and is widely used on the Internet.

Is he claiming that parallel computing is his invention? Or that nobody realized its use or significance before him? Obviously neither claim would be true.

kettykin:
some of the fathers of CDMA in telecommunication have only equations to thier name unlike comapnies like qualcom that make CDMA chips

But the key point is their algorithms have been implemented on the physical device. If you are consuming CDMA technology, then you are directly using something that was invented by Viterbi, for example.

I cannot say the same for Emeagwali. My laptop which I'm using to access nairaland, absolutely nothing in it has anything to do with Emeagwali. No part of my use of the internet can be credited to him. So how then can he be called a father of the internet?

kettykin:
do you have to be an inventor before you father the internet ?

How can you be a father without any children? Where is the fruit of his fatherhood?

Again, what tangible benefit will this classification provide? Perhaps the benefits are obvious, but hopefully it is not too much to ask for them to be explained for non-experts like myself.

I hate to say it, some of you guys don't know how to reason.

What is the matter of semantics here? What technology did Emeagwali invent that is being used? If he is/was a father of the internet, where is the fruit of his works and labors?

Any of the other "founders of the internet", you can name specifically how their technology is being used to access nairaland.com, for example.

How come we cannot say anything specific for Emeagwali? Put sentiment aside, use your brains and REASON. Thinking a little bit won't kill you.

What is the point of organizations like this?

Guys, let's put it this way. The internet has been around since at least the 70s in one form or another (Read about ARPANet here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET). During that time, wasn't Emeagwali still in Nigeria?

How could he be one of the fathers of something that was fully grown in 1989 or whenever he won this prize?

Hrm. Quite interesting.

Good point. I apologize

Lol. And what if I can show many counterexamples to your opinion? Opinions not based in any sort of reality don't have much value.

Mrs. Eve:
City brides are sought after by men who are successful and modernized,

Village brides are sought after by men who are less than successful and traditonal,

I'm traditional, but this doesn't suggest any lack of success. At least as far as these things are measured by most. Let's not generalize, please.

daroz:
Akitu?  what an easy meat. But the problem is that just after PDP primaries(which of cos jonathan will have a flawless victory), most of the key pdp members who have been agitating for a northen president will massively leave pdp and join other northen candidate in other parties like Ribadu or Buhari in other to form a great force against GEJ who is from the south.

And thus the PDP will be shattered and broken!

It really will be a wonderful outcome, if that happens.

vigasimple:
ATIKU TI KU.

I like that, and am tempted to make it my sig

SalisuOri:
This reeks of conspiracy. IBB was the one who could depose Jonathan, hence the GEJ camp concentrating all their efforts against IBB and ignoring the other "aspirants".
Reports already in that Patience and co are popping champagne,  would they have been popping champage if IBB was chosen?,  they'd be having sleepless nights instead.

+1. I'd be popping champagne too, lol. IBB would be a formidable opponent, Atiku less so, imo. Do northerners sef even like the guy?

And with all the pending corruption investigations still circling him, lol. I'm happy the North chose him as their candidate, dude is doomed to fail.

Pharoh:
@Kobo

That's what i have been trying to let him know, does he want Macmillan to close shop?  We should look into multiple publishing licenses and set a price control mechanism in place that you cannot sell below or above a certain price. Make the incentive so low for piracy to be considered.

How will I be hurting Macmillan? Also, price controls are not a good idea (and difficult to enforce, anyway.)

Now i am getting your point, it is a very good idea and i think it should be accessible to anyone and not the cheap printers. Let me ask you this, don't be offended please, i have also been away from Nigeria for a long time. How long have you been away from nigeria and what do you know about the reading culture?  When i was still there we have these mentality of only reading recommended textbooks and that is if you can even afford it. I am sorry but except for few or those who come from education oriented families, nigerians don't have the zeal to read anything that comes their way.

I grew up here in the US, on the east coast and south, so don't know much about the reading society. I know that in my own village and state they love to read books, though. But don't know much about other places.

The mentality is to just read something and pass, the society does not reward handwork but the end result and it does not matter how it was done. I can speak for myself and walked kilometers to read in libraries and walk from ebute metta to lagos island, yaba and ojuelegba  to look for cheap textbooks and anything to be educated. But these mentality is not widespread, i was advocating for the recommended books and not just cheap access to books at first. It will do you good first to make the recommended books cheap before trying to shove other books in their face.

Trust me go to any secondary school in Nigeria and ask arts students how many novels they have read or commercial students how any different textbook they have read. Even the recommended one self na wahala, most are just inching towards examination malpractice at the end of the day.

You might be right. But we should at least try, no? For every lazy kid you know, there are probably ten who cannot afford to buy books for school. Those kids deserve a chance. And I think commoditizing education in this way will give them a better chance.

Kobojunkie:
Sigh!

Honestly, I think it is a good idea but not a great idea. Making public license-free copies of texts will not necessarily solve the main problem I see here. I mean it will maybe increase circulation of better fake books but I see it also creating some problems that might come back to bite us in the butt later on.

For one it requires supporting bootleggers with no guarantee that there will be a serious reduction in costs for the end users. If paper and ink costs do not follow suit(fall), I am not certain that a digital copy will save the day here.

Economics and the free-market alone will drive down the costs of books. And I'm not just speaking abstractly here, that is the way Nigeria is for things which have been turned into commodities. I want to turn textbooks into a commodity like garri or peanuts, not a luxury item.

Also, have we considered the effect this may have on business for the reputable printing companies we have in the country? I am referring to companies that have for years fought against the flooding of markets with bootlegged books. Isn't it possible this will move will force some of them to finally close shop?

How it will affect them? It isn't their copyright being violated, is it? In fact, if they want to get in and print, they can also join. I wont be flooding with bootleg books, I'll have chosen these specific books as the standards for Ekiti State education. And it just so happens that they can be freely downloaded online, without royalty, fee, or any cost.

Do go ahead and fill us in on how it goes. I would definitely love to know.

Yeah, I'll think about it further and see if there are any flaws. But if/when it progresses, I'll let you all know.

Pharoh:
Your point is well noted but the problem is the products or book does not belong to the fake re-distributor. The author and publisher also needs to get compensation for their works, if they do not make profits then what will be the incentive to write good books?.  My brother trust me some people still cannot afford the present cheap fake books and the quality is so bad.  I am on for a way of reaching 90% of the population at a cheaper price than reaching 20% at the current price. Most students do not have even these so called fake books because it is not cheap, these fake re-distributors should just obtain license rights to publish these books as well.

Ah, that is the beauty of it. Generally the authors are professors, academics, not money-grubbing billionaires. They aren't out to make huge money here from their books. Moreover, they will not be dogmatic about extracting a pound of flesh for a calculus book that is ten years out of print. Like I said earlier, there is company called Dover Books that buys up the rights to out of print math books and resells them at very low costs. That is their entire business. If you think about it, a calculus book from the 80s is just as good content-wise as one printed now; the amount of advancement in very fundamental areas like that is very small. Yet Dover is able to sell you a reprint of the 80s calculus book for $8-15 bucks, versus paying $100 for a new calculus book written recently.

For a non-profit cause such as this, which aims to improve the education levels in Nigeria, it would not be very difficult to convince the professors and publishers to open-source such textbooks.

Pharoh:
Printers of fake books i think normally use colored scanners and printers, i don't think any Nigerian textbook sold in Nigeria is in digital format. I am sure only those on sites like amazon you will find on digital formats. I think at the end of the day what you will create is just a cheaper product because those who do the fake business now will still print it in mass and sell at a cheaper rate than you printing yourself. A publisher i think will only make a digital copy of his or her works provided is profits are not eroded and how will you do that with this idea?. Amazon and other big digital book stores have DRM along with those books so they cannot be easily copied.

So think of this printer of fake books. Rather than using the colored scanner or even having to scan at all, he downloads this 3MB PDF onto his computer. So no time wasted manually scanning, no OCR issues, none of that. Just print and go. See what I'm saying? I've reduced the cost of the printing for the fake bookseller. So the book he is selling is not a low-quality scanner version, but (depending on the quality of his paper, ink and binding), a version just as good as the one sold by amazon.com.
Do you see how this helps drive down costs of books by not requiring him to bother scanning anything? And if I drive down the costs of his business (while increasing the quality of his product), then I help those who seek to purchase books for school.
To illustrate, you buy crappy version of the book from fake bookseller for $X. Now you buy a high-quality version of the book for $Y, with Y quite possibly being less than X.

Kobojunkie:
So are you operating under the assumption then that he does not have access to high quality digital copies of the textbooks and already uses that for his fake copies now?

It takes a lot of time and energy to produce a high-quality copy of a textbook. Think of a biology book for example, with hundreds of pictures in it. It will take you a lot of time to scan by hand in the pages. And the quality of the pictures (and text) will be poor.
So yes, I am assuming that bootleg book publisher doesn't have high quality digital copy of textbook.
You have to remember that the ebooks or whatever you get written by O'Reilly, Wrox, or whoever for computing topics, typically the same doesn't exist for calculus, physics, chemistry, biology, economics, etc.