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> Nothing is going to happen.

I'm a bit more pessimistic than that. They'll spend a ton of money buying (because we can't build -or even design - it ourselves) before we withdraw and declare success.

> and not because we don't know how, it was because of politics.

Politics contaminate our universities and research centers so deeply that it masks any selection for actual competence. I seriously doubt we could develop a window. Putting someone on the tourist track was the only way a Brazilian could fly. The tab was about US$ 20 million.

For all that it's possible to know, the AEB repeatedly attempted the incredibly stupid idea of launching satellites into LEO using solid-rocket fuel engines. Naturally, all attempts failed, but that didn't stop them from trying until they got 21 people killed on a launch pad explosion. Some conspiracy theorists say it was sabotage, but I don't think such a design warrants the effort - physics alone can take care of it.

Couldn't agree more.

>Politics contaminate our universities and research centers so deeply that it masks any selection for actual competence.

This is a serious claim backed by no evidence whatsoever. It's an idea that permeates brazilian academia, it's understandable to some extent, but fails to accomplish anything other than undermining ongoing researches.

C'mon, the Latin America's biggest and most populous nation remains a long way behind the OECD average and in most cases lags behind most of its Latin American neighbors.

Research in Brazil is a joke, as anything else related to education. Privately funded research is almost non-existent and public universities have typically a 2:1 relation between staff and students - all of them are pretty inefficient. Private universities are expensive scams.

With all its deficiencies, USP is a top university and produces valuable researches. That's no joke at all. Just look at the Lattes curriculum of both its faculty and graduates. MIT, Harvard, Princeton —those are awesome universities but they are expensive too, not a thing most people can afford. Studying at USP costs nothing. That's quite an achievement. I don't mean to be overlook the problems. I'm just pointing out an important difference.

> Studying at USP costs nothing.

It just doesn't cost for the (few) students themselves.

And isn't that remarkable? I think it is.

It's remarkable you think there is something like free money.

USP tuition is paid for by taxpayers.

Wait, careful with the strawman there. Yes, USP is funded by taxpayers but the students themselves don't have to pay anything. The reasoning behind this choice is that the cost of a student in that University can be shared by everyone because the value of the knowledge produced there is also shared by everyone. People who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford college-level education are given the chance to study.

It's a decision that is aligned to the principles of social democracy. You could argue against it, take a more neoliberal stance, but that's not the point. My point is that USP is trying to do something different.

I wish I knew more about how private universities in US are funded. I have a feeling that aside from the tuition students pay they still receive some sort of aid from the government.

True, everything has it price. But it's also true that free market is not really free.

Given how heavy taxation is, how many chairs it offers (10k) for the whole country, and how unequal is the access to those chairs for the average citizen, I don't find it as remarkable.

Richard Feynman on education in Brazil:

http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education

After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn’t know what anything meant. When they heard “light that is reflected from a medium with an index,” they didn’t know that it meant a material such as water. They didn’t know that the “direction of the light” is the direction in which you see something when you’re looking at it, and so on. Everything was entirely memorized, yet nothing had been translated into meaningful words. So if I asked, “What is Brewster’s Angle?” I’m going into the computer with the right keywords. But if I say, “Look at the water,” nothing happens – they don’t have anything under “Look at the water”!

(...)

Since I had gone to Brazil under a program sponsored by the United States Government, I was asked by the State Department to write a report about my experiences in Brazil, so I wrote out the essentials of the speech I had just given. I found out later through the grapevine that the reaction of somebody in the State Department was, “That shows you how dangerous it is to send somebody to Brazil who is so naive. Foolish fellow; he can only cause trouble. He didn’t understand the problems.” Quite the contrary! I think this person in the State Department was naive to think that because he saw a university with a list of courses and descriptions, that’s what it was.

I wouldn't be surprised if the same criticism could be applied to several institutions throughout the world. When I think about how U.S. is one of the countries where creationism thrives the most, it's clear to me that the problem Feynman is talking about affects everyone and every science. Also, this is not proof of politics masking actual competence.

As someone that is friend of people of Serpro.and know some of Air Force research I feel offended.

Brazil do have researchers and brains and money, and politics get in the way.... We have even particle accelerators of our own design! Also, the rocket project was not scrapped, it is only waiting for new engineers to be trained, since.the last accident killed all of them.

Did you knew, that the card to pay a phone is a Brazilian invention? Or the language Lua that drives games like World of Warcraft, Baldur Gate, Far Cry 2... Or that no country matched Petrobras drilling techniques yet, or that our army use locally invented radars, anti-air equipment and so on. Or that the air force has. a locally invented portable air traffic controller station ( for those curious: it runs Debian ), or that CNPQ is investing heavily in research about how to cure heart problems with stem cells, or that the state universities in Sao Paulo are so good with image recognition that French universities send their students here to learn.

Brazil has one of the best academia in the planet, heritage of the emperor Pedro II that had the vision and.created the current system, and created stuff like the agronomical research institute.

Also we have lots of brilliant people, here ( Carlos lattes for example, that died some time ago ) or elsewhere (I forgot the name of the guy that researches uniting brain with machines, now he works for Duke.University), also we obviously have money

Don't insult researchers, we clearly have political problems that end killing cool stuff like the OSORIO battle tank, but don't claim our academia is incompetent, if it was, other countries would not hire people trained.ed here.

Yeah, I agree that Brazil has a ton of brilliant minds and a very inventive people. But unfortunately, here in Brazil, ignorance is a bliss and a very profitable business.

Also, Brazil is the only country that treat treats his researchers like a fast food workers. Poor salaries (when gov. pay something) which obligates them in working on two or three part-time jobs, no gratitude (the phone card, the BINA system, which government didn't helped the inventor on recognizing the patent) and so on. That's why a researcher/cientist stays no more than 2 or 3 years in Brazil after graduation or research publishing.

That part, is unfortunately true.

My father met the telecom guys (phone card and BINA), and the government not only did not helped, but did things that made their situation worse, in the end no inventor got any money for his invention.

It is just that the guy saying that the other poster was wrong, and that we don't know how to do stuff, is not only wrong, but insults people that (maybe in a stupid manner) insists in doing stuff here.

There is a reason why one of the biggest Free Software conferences is here in Brazil, and why Maddog (from Linux Foundation) comes here so much (I personally bumped into him in conferences I got invited as speaker about 6 or 7 times, even one totally failed conference where I had like 20 people watching, Maddog was there!), the government invests heavily into IT research. (there is Serpro, Cobra, military, and several other cool stuff! The military in particular has several very insteresting non-weapon projects, the brazillian military seemly loves to make stuff that is good for civilian use)

Can you cite examples of non-weapon projects of Brazilian military? (seriously, I'm curious here)

ITA (a university that belongs to Air Force) famously let students to opt out of military, and many went around doing cool stuff.

I once saw a presentation of their students once, there are even people that went on to make games and stuff like that.

Also the military here likes to help Linux in general, even submitting patches, the air force in particular loves Debian and Ubuntu (last I checked, they moved 100% of their servers to Debian and 100% of workstations to Ubuntu)

Then we have some air traffic control software being developed, firewalls, anti-virus, whatnot... This is what I learned on tech conferences (thus obviously it is related to tech)

Also I've heard of the military helping people make vehicle engines.

And then we have Taurus (a weapon manufacturer) that had some business with my family, and seemly the military asked them to do some civilian stuff too (like use their armour technology to make clothes for perilous jobs, for example Motorcycle helmets, also they use their gun steel technology for other things, like construction, building factory machines, car parts...)

I think this has to do with that fact that the military here has some... funding issues. And thus need to cooperate a lot with civilian sector to get anything done.

Oh, and famously, the army built some stuff for the federal government that ended being on schedule, and used less money than budgeted (that they returned), although this was supposed to be normal, it was so exceptional that people think it is totally amazing and awesome (here federal government projects IF they don't fail outright, tend to blow both the budget and deadlines, and have shitty quality, result of hiring contractors and not checking ever if they are doing a good job or not, plus corruption).

I am a brazilian and I didn't know ANYTHING about those things. Thanks!

Oh, c'mon. The Lua language is the only relevant software contribution from Brazil that I'm aware of.

The guys behind Lua had to invent a language because the country was commercially closed at the time. The program forbidding technology imports was called "reserva de mercado" (market reservation) and was supposed to incentive local manufacture of semiconductors.

It was a colossal failure and today Brazil is not only irrelevant in electronics but has possibly the most expensive appliances in the world. Anything here costs 3 to 4 times the USA retail price.

Unfortunately we have a long tradition in such idiotic regulations.

Yeah, we did all of that. But not much more than that.

While we can enumerate Brazil's academic contributions, we can't do the same for, say, they US. And that's the whole point.

There are lots of smart people here. They are not producing much of value, for whatever reason.

> As someone that is friend of people of Serpro.and know some of Air Force research I feel offended.

Don't be. There are pockets of excellence surrounded by fluff. The fact remains that we, as a country, do not produce a lot. We can be proud of a little thing here, a little something else there, but not much more. And it's very sad.

We also have a cronic underdog syndrome perpetuated by countless broad opinions such as this. That only helps to undermine any kind of effort to change the culture of low self-esteem into a culture of excellence.

Feel free to demand more, but please do not undervalue every thing.

> We also have a cronic underdog syndrome perpetuated by countless broad opinions such as this.

You not noticing my acknowledgement of the pockets of excellence further demonstrates this point. I am not perpetuating this underdog syndrome, but I am pointing out several failures brought by a systemic attitude of politeness over correctness. Academic research thrives on correctness alone.

Thanks for telling the truth :)

As a UK resident, we're knee deep in this sort of crap as well.

Such as?

As UK resident what worries me about H2 is that it isn't just hot air.

HS2?

Second high speed rail link from London to various parts of Northern England. Instigated by previous (Labour) government, who later admitted that they had basically pulled the thing from their bum as a Keynsian reflationary boondoggle with zero economic justification for the investment.

Inexplicably, the current government, rather than using the fiasco as an excuse to jump up and down and laugh at Labour's contemptible attitude towards the public purse, have decided to treat the whole affair as if it were a deadly serious well-thought-through major public works investment, and are defending it with rottweiler-like tenacity as if it were their very own dearly beloved pet project.

Baffling.

Anyway, I guess it will get built successfully in the end, as these things tend to ... although it's main use will probably be to hasten the journey of refugees from the economic wastelands of the North to the only place in the UK with actual jobs on offer. I.e. London. (Where they will all sleep at night is beyond me, however -- as the usual NIMBYs are doing a great job of preventing the development of what we actually need -- large volumes of high density housing for London-based workers).

A fine summary although I'd argue that what the Government needs to do is encourage growth outside of London (it's really not that bad up here and I was born and raised in London). This is a small country we should be able to distribute ourselves a little better.

It's not that I'm against H2 because I don't think we need good infrastructure links between the North and South, it's just that I don't see that reducing an already 2 hour Manchester to London commute by 30 minutes is worth the money (already estimated at around £20 billion). I'd like to see a counter proposal describing what you could with that kind of money invested in the current network. My concern is that if H2 goes ahead, we will see each Government that comes to power pointing to it as the solution to all rail problems and taking little interest in the rest of the network.

You are embarassed? as a Brazillian citizen im proud! Brazil was the only country until now that took the correct mesures and stood against this

the time to be embarassed now its for them, not for us.. they do it wrong, we are doing right! whats wrong about what we are doing now?

what are you saying about the astronaut, etc,etc.. has nothing to do to what is happening and the news right now.. and whatever its wrong with my country has to do with pessimistic and living in the past joes like you.. dont like something? try to make it better.. the time to expect for the other to do it for you its over.. we are grown ups now! grow up with it!

Oh I know your type... My countrymen never fail to embarrass me.

Brazil the world leader in creating the nag-a-lot-people. </irony>

I am just coming to a conclusion based on past facts, call that whatever you like.

They could make this one work if they use laws that force Google, Microsoft, etc. to build their datacenters in Brazil.

I think it's would be good idea in general. If you provide significant infrastructure services from distant countries, you must move servers close.

How's that going to work in practice?

When new a startup (eg, Instagram) comes along now it isn't allowed to serve the Brazilian market? I suspect that Brazil will suffer more than it gains.

I'm not sure about that. Let's assume that the startup offers a service the Brazilian populace are keen for.

In that case it may be worth it for the startup to invest in Brazilian data centers.

If they can't afford it, or simply don't see an opportunity in that market, then it may instead be an opportunity for a local company to do something similar employing locals to get it done. This happens all the time, but usually because of internationalization woes instead of the location of data hosting.

You could even argue that there's hidden value here in helping to maintain cultural diversity by not using U.S. services for everything you do online and increasing the demand for local educated talent.

> Let's assume that the startup offers a service the Brazilian populace are keen for. In that case it may be worth it for the startup to invest in Brazilian data centers.

I don't think that scales very well.

I'm Brazilian. This is one of the least entrepreneurship friendly places in the world.

Everything we don't need is more crazy taxes and regulations...

Just like their insane duties has got amazon to warehouse there.

+1