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In Mumbai, India, there are atleast two firms which own both a newpaper http://www.timesofindia.com/ http://www.mid-day.com/ as well as a radio station http://www.radiomirchi.com/ http://www.go925fm.com/ (one of them owns a TV channel http://www.zoomtelevision.com/ and web portal http://www.indiatimes.com/ too).

There are radio shows where the RJ practically reads out the newspaper article. Not to mention the radio station's "teaser" comments about the next day's newspaper headline, or a dedicated column in the newspaper providing a prelude to a TV show at night.

A personal peeve is when one of the radio stations decided to promote a movie, with the RJs giving it fantastic reviews, completely omitting the fact that the movie was produced by the company owning the radio station.

Same facts, but from a different view, ...interesting.

From
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/ms id-1093499,curpg-2.cms

Gates may find opening the H1-B gates toughAdd to
URMI A GOSWAMI

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2005

NEW DELHI: Bill Gates has opened the proverbial Pandora's box on the contentious H1-B visas issue - giving hope where there seems to be little.

So will the average Indian skilled worker be living their American Dream soon? While Gates has a track record of getting his own way most of the time, this time round it may be somewhat difficult. The Bush administration isn't taking the bait, instead claiming that there isn't a shortage of technical skilled workers in the US.

While Gates may have articulated the desire of many an Indian skilled worker, what are the chances that the system of annual quota for H1-Bs will be thrown out of the window? The most likely scenario is an increase in the annual cap. The current annual cap stands at 65,000 with an additional 20,000 cap exempt visas, taking the total to 85,000. The highest number of H1-Bs allowed in a year has been 195,000, at the height of the IT boom.

Compete America, a coalition of over 200 corporations, universities, research institutions and trade associations - of which Microsoft is a member - has been lobbying the US Congress to raise the annual cap. The introduction of a provision for 20,000 cap exempt visas for foreign nationals, with master's and PhD degrees from US universities in the 2005 Appropiations Act was largely a result of their lobbying.

Technology companies have consistently maintained the need for larger number of skilled workers, and in the absence of qualified Americans, the need to throw open doors to foreign workers. The administration seems to hold a view that is divergent.
Commerce Department undersecretary for technology Phil Bond cautions that unemployment among US computer engineers regularly exceeds unemployment in other industries. US government figures showed 5.7 per cent of information technology employees were out of work last year as against 5.5% of all workers.

Bond may well be right, but the H1-B visa covers sectors beyond IT. America is facing shortage of nurses, medical doctors, and teachers. But traditionally, both in India, which has been the biggest user of the H1-B, and in the US, the issue of the H1-B visa has been seen as one that affects the technology sector.

Areas that are feeling the pinch of a lower cap are education (teaching) and healthcare. Teaching, both at the higher education and school level, and healthcare were areas where the demand increased appreciably between 2001 and 2002 fiscal years.

According to a report of the US Department of Homeland Security, the only three industries in the top 10 which increased between 2001 and 2002 were: colleges, universities, and professional schools (20 per cent); elementary and secondary schools (20 per cent); and general medical and surgical hospitals (22 per cent).

According to experts, these are the areas where problems will be faced because of a lower cap. This too is primarily because the US is facing a shortage in both areas. As a matter of fact, shortage in the healthcare sector has been termed as "severe".

Experts feel that unlike the tech companies, players in these fields don't really know much about lobbying for immigrants or highly skilled workers.

So, while the US administration is not taking the bait, the US Congress is willing to give Gates a second thought. The feeling being, if their is a demand, then raising the cap could well be an option. In the meantime, the 20,000 cap exempt visas mandated by the Appropiations Act are yet to be issued.

Pretty much any Indian with the education to program spoke english before they programmed.

Many (i.e. millions) of Indians speak Egnlish natively. English is a global language and just because Indian English does not always soudn the same as American does not mean they cannot speak English.

I have to admit that often times my Indian peers at school know the language better than I do.

I submitted this article - although a bit too late I guess :)
Anyway, it says there that "Microsoft plans to license, royalty-free, its Virtual Hard Disk (.vhd) file format" - That should be interesting! I wonder how open it will be!

Indian Call Center Employees Hack US Bank Accounts Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday April 08, @05:49PM
from the easy-money dept.>
The Ascended One writes "Call center employees working for an Indian software company, MSource, supposedly used confidential client information to transfer client funds to themselves. The alleged perpetrators used the personal information of four NY-based clients to transfer ~$350,000 (Rs. 1.5 crores) in their names, a large sum in Indian currency. They were caught after the victims alerted the bank officials in the US, who then traced the crime to the Indian city of Pune. While the name of the bank has not been revealed, the article indicates that the bank in question is Citibank."

Recently the Supreme Court of India asked the Union government, the telcos and the lamers who are responsible for the calls to cut it out or face the music. Some guy had made a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court and has also cited the laws that are prelavent in US, including the concept of DNC Registry. More information can be had from here. As expcted ppl are quite happy. The cellphone operators have also started to do the needful and block such calls, which also includes allowing subscribers to block phone numbers on demand.

... in Japan, China, and possibly openings soon in the European Union and India...

Well there is no need to bother about this claim.In india everything can be done.Like story of this guy who topped NASA's examination.(which NASA does not conduct) (This story appeared sometime back in the entire Indian media) http://www.indiadaily.com/breaking_news/25602.asp then this http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/102 3507.cms (Times of India is considered to be the most reputable from India) Now appears the real story on BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4283733.stm so wait for BBC :p cheers

The sex ratio at birth in New Delhi is about 1.20 (1000 / 807) males to females. The CIA fact book is out of date.

Look at those male Indian animals in your engineering classes. You tell me whether they are hypocritical bigots when they talk about how "great" Indian society is. Isn't "it" amazing that these Indian supremacists mouth their supremacy in the comfort of their Western apartment or residential home?

How about putting the big bucks to help your own people?

From tsunami to Kyoto not impacting the environment at all to dropping emissions, to overblown disaster movies, scientists resigning various environmental organizations, and other speeches. People are even connecting the environment to the tsunamis, which have nothing to do with the environment, and everything to do with Earthquakes that are going to happen anyway. Lets get some perspective here.

From the article :
NEW DELHI: Double digit salary increases are back with a bang in corporate India. On average employees in private corporate sector in India got 10.38% salary increments during 2003 compared to just 9.7% during 2002. The increment is projected to further go up to 11.02% during 2004. Moreover India has topped the Asia Pacific region with highest salary increases among 11 countries followed by Korea, Philippines and China.

I'm sure he was partially joking, but the idea the tsunami may have affected the Earth's rotation has been circulating.

If you do not want to help, just shut the f**k up. Btw, the link my parent AC gave has Ambanis as the richest Indians. Now read this http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/97 1874.cms Anil Ambani has provided 1 crore Rupees for the relief fund.

Actually, it's largely the first world countries that are responsible for unfair trade, not the third world countries.

Where's your proof? The US is known worldwide for it's free market economy. It is at the forefront of promoting and encouraging free trade. The US set up free trade agreements with several countries. They started with Canada and Mexico in NAFTA back in the early 90's. The US was also a founding member of the World Trade Organization.

China and India have some of the most protectionist policies in the world. Despite all it's talk promoting free trade in software circles, India dislikes free trade policies that don't benefit them. India also dislikes the idea free trade in their airlines. This results in an unfair playing field that hurts US businesses.

"Ladies and gentlemen this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense! Why would a Wookiee--an eight foot tall Wookiee--want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!

"But more important, you have to ask yourself, what does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!

"Look at me, I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense!

And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room . . . does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense. If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests."

Some time later, Ravi Raj Singh, a college student from IIT Delhi, offered his VCD of the 157-second clip for sale on Baazee.
Ravi Raj is a student of IIT Kharagpur. Check out here and here

In this case, it's India's IT Act which has allowed this crap of holding the service provider responsible for all acts of it's users. This story from the same newspaper shows the aptitude & intelligence of Indian cops and lawmakers when it comes to technology.

in related news... DJB lays deathrap, leaves manholes open

It's interesting to me that you mention CitiCorp. I am currently a contractor with Citibank. The Citi Cards division recently got a new CIO, Mitchell Habib, formerly of GE Medical.

His new plan is to outsource all contractors to India. At GE, he reduced 70% of the staff through outsourcing and it looks like he'll do it at Citi too after he's done with removing the regular contractors.

I'm just glad I already found a new job.

Here are some links about the GE outsourcing.
http://www.prdomain.com/companies/t/tcs/news_relea ses/200204apr/pr_20020411.htm
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/42 301385.cms
http://www.tcs-america.com/news/011404.html

I assume you're a member of the current US Congress:

US Congress passes H1-B Visa Hike

This while I know half a dozen educated, experienced technical professionals who've suffered through the recent poor job market being told they're overqualified...

I agree. And in the hands of immature people it could turn out to be nuisance too. Check out this link http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/937 032.cms a shocking use of the cell phone.

Every single poll I've seen has more than 95% of iraqis wanting this.

Cite, please. This might pass the Slashdot majority who agrees with your overall point, but some of us have standards.

Why should we be there fighting the desires of the Iraqi people?

Are we? 85% of them are planning to vote in the elections in January. The Bush administration and the military is working hard to make sure it happens.

If our goal was to get rid of Sadam, we've already done that, so why stick around?

Our goal is to bring democracy to the Middle East. It's the only long-term solution to terrorism.

It's not hospitals and food banks that rid the world of terrorism. It's deposing dictators and tyrants that does it.

Oh, the real reason is so we can steal their oil. And I do mean steal.

How much oil have we "stolen" so far? Got numbers?

Plus, most iraqis I've heard interviewed prefer Sadaam to the US. They say things like "at least Sadaam was an Iraqi."

Antecdotal evidence based on "news" reporting from Reuters, no doubt, or possibly Al Jazeera. Every poll I've seen has a large majority of Iraqis glad Saddam is gone, with mixed responses about the future of the country and American occupation. Terrorists (some still insist on calling them "insurgents" even after the discovery of torture chambers in Fallujah) are giving Iraq a very hard time right now, trying to change the minds of the people. And this is the fault of the US?

You know what reporters do? They like to provide "balance" and "conflict" so they go hunt down crusty old former Ba'athists to make statements like, "at least Saddam was an Iraqi." Despite what opinion polls show on that subject, they still think they need 50/50 in the news. (Or worse, given the anti-war attitude amongst the majority of them.)

You really need to get out more. Find out who doesn't like what Kos is saying and read them as well.

I don't think you want to go there...
Isn't Aquafina the Coke (tm) company that poisoned a major english water supply? No wait... that's Daisani, ain't it? grrr...time to google...
"Analysts said there was a similar reaction in February when CSE said it had found unacceptable levels of pesticide in several bottled water brands, including Coke's Kinley and Pepsi's Aquafina."
in New Delhi...From (newspage)
or...HA- here's what i was thinking of... Dasani...
From the rest of the google results, it looks like we're pretty screwed with most water stuff... Try a comparison with something more benign...like Pizza maybe...?

Aw crap... Poison Pizza on google...

Now the office is warm and I also have excuses :) http://info.indiatimes.com/it/slide/1.html

I agree with you... Although this is even more shameful

They actually cited a dumb slashdot joke as the source :)

The reason paper ballots are still used in most democratic countries is that the technology there has not advanced sufficiently, not because it is the easiest and the safest. The exception that proves the rule is that India recently completed its general elections which resulted in a transfer of power. India used a fully electronic voting system,- no paper ballots for a voting population of over 1 billion people. Not even the United States has dared to attempt this. Not only that, the e-voting system used in India is much more secure than the system being proposed in the USA.

This was covered on New Scientist and IndiaTimes a few days ago. Their articles:

-New Scientist
-IndiaTimes

As per the India Times, there is no real differnce between Kerry and Bush on outsourcing.

The A9 toolbar only works in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

A9 bowls a Googly


Karma: Coma, mostly due to Massive Attack

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/83 7354.cms

The Economic Times has a different take

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/83 7354.cms/

Oh, no. It's deja vu, all over again:- Outsource your job to earn more!.

Those Morons probably read an earlier post and did not realise that it was a sarcastic rant. This Times of India (the largest Indian Newspaper) has become a blemish on Indian journalism. Not all Indian papers are this bad. This is just another instance of the TOI web edition http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ trying to create sensational news and attract viewers. They usually resort to more straight forward means such as putting up photos of fine looking women ;-)

http://messenger.indiatimes.com/
the indiatimes messenger (though bloated and malware in itself) somehow manages to successfully log you on to the indiatimes network, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and AOL.

It's a nice workaround though the client is quite ugly. The developers are geodesic software... I don't know Trillian's capabilities but this software bridges all IM networks quite successfully.

Did somebody say plagiarism? Hmmmmmmmm... 1 2

The best part is, the indiatimes article is obviously a direct ripoff of this one (link-ified for convenience). They have the same structure and flow, and several complete paragraphs were simply ripped verbatim. What is this, second grade?

Note that the Economic Times and the Times of India, while part of the same group (Bennett and Coleman Ltd.), are two different newspapers. The former, which carries the article, is a respected (if slightly sensational) business daily, while the latter, which you cite, is just toilet paper.

Note that the Economic Times and the Times of India, while part of the same group (Bennett and Coleman Ltd.), are two different newspapers. The former, which carries the article, is a respected (if slightly sensational) business daily, while the latter, which you cite, is just toilet paper.

Beware of the source. I came across another article from their site earlier this morning and I'm perplexed as to how they can be considered a credible news source. Check out their article on programmers outsourcing their own jobs if you need a good laugh. They took a comment that was posted on Slashdot awhile back from some guy who was joking about how he had outsourced his own job to India and not only did they treat this guy's post as a reliable news source, but they also extrapolated it into claims of this practice being the hot new trend. It's quite bizarre. I wish I could find the original comment because I remember reading it and laughing at the time, but Google isn't turning it up for some reason.

Perhaps the warning bells for proprietary solutions/OS began to ring for MS at least, when the Indian government made public its affection for OSS.

#1The Department of Information Technology has already devised a strategy to introduce Linux and open source software as a de-facto standard in academic institutions, especially in engineering colleges through course work that encourages use of such systems.
#2: Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, met on Thursday with Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to discuss "the ethical issues related to the use of proprietary software," according to the Free Software Foundation of India. Stallman also met officials in the state of Kerala to discuss the use of nonproprietary software in government initiatives. Last year, Kalam spoke out in favor of open-source software following a meeting with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.

So, there is ample reason to worry. Now wonder why they'd have a strangulated version of OS as a low-cost option?

A indian newspaper covers how this is a booming business at least in India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msi d-654822,curpg-1.cms

They are no doubt taking advantage of wage advantages described in the article.

Yes, and they are planning to add 20,000 employees in India by the end of this year.

It's a simple download like the other services.

Its really heartening to see the social ties the two countries still have inspite of the tussle at the top.I hope the recent talks between the two countries gets more bonds between the two countries.

Indian astrologers here are wondering if it is a welcome incursion into that "evil-eyed" planet. Saturn - or Shani in Indian astrological parlance - is considered a powerful influence by Hindu astrologers, who draw up horoscopes on the basis of planetary configurations. Soothsayers, palmists and pundits are busy poring over their theories to gauge what the consequences could be, with some predicting a catastrophe. Referring to the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft ring its engine into Saturn's atmosphere, astrologer Ajay Gautom says "He(man) should not even attempt to build such enmity with nature and, least of all, with such powerful planets." . He said many recent disasters around the world, for instance a devastating earthquake in Iran, were linked to such efforts by man.

Here's the proof:
Article from the Times of India. A blurb
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, MAY 29, 2003 12:06:03 AM ]
PUNE: President A P J Abdul Kalam on Wednesday urged Indian IT professionals to develop and specialise in open source code software rather than use proprietary solutions based on systems such as Microsoft Windows.

Stallman's visit reported in The Hindu and elsewhere:
Kalam, Stallman discuss open source software NEW DELHI, JAN. 31. The President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, last Thursday played host to two radically divergent poles of the global software industry.

Though the second link does not say 2004, I'm sure it was earlier this year, and a Google search should help you confirm that. Also the URL is dated 20040201.

The above information renders your argument incorrect and w/o H20.

I have also noticed this among these /. threads. What they think internally and what they speak about others is entirely different. Check this out Let's do a Bangalore: John Kerry from one of your president hope full. Can talk without verifying the facts.

(BTW, doesn't this "Economic Times" look like a pretty shameless rip of the Financial Times? I wonder if their print edition is salmon-colored.)

As anyone who has looked into this issue can tell you, there is not in most cases a one-to-one correlation between an American losing their job, and the job going offshore.

For instance, Microsoft is shutting down a major facility in the US. They are also hiring in India. Will the Microsoft jobs lost in the US be counted as jobs lost to outsourcing? Probably not. That is why the new buzz words are "global sourcing" and "insourcing".

Also, how many jobs are being lost to "American" companys like Cognizant, who do not hire permanant US residents or citizens to work for them, only people on H-1B visas? 30% of Cognizant's 9K headcount work in the US (per the June 7th issue of Newsweek), and according to the Dept of Labor's LCA database the company has 2719 immigrants here on H1-B visas (you do the math).

This issue is not simply them bad us good. American IT workers are getting shut out of the IT labor market, even in our own country. This is not good for anyone. We are wasting our own intellectual capital, which we should be sharing with other countries so IT can be used to bridge cultural and economic divides. People should not have to pretend to be from another country as part of their job requirement. People should not be brought here on temporary visas and be paid less and worked harder than the Americans that work in the next cubicle.

This black and white thinking about this issue is pitting the workers on both sides against each other. The only people who win in that situation are the big guys making millions and millions of dollars to come up with these schemes. We (all IT workers worldwide) created these technologies, and historically we have openly shared and taught everyone so that the technology would thrive. That cooperative spirit needs to come through when thinking about this issue.

www.displacedtechies.com