Slashdot Mirror

I was an IT worker in India. I am Indian. Indian IT companies recrit all sorts of engineer i.e civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical etc apart from comp sci. Since most engineering students have atleast a common denominator of traits like analysis, rigourous coursework, maths etc. the IT companies know that they can train them in sofwtware with relative ease. Of course the CS grads get the more better technlogy to start with (says database. java etc) while the non - CS ones may have more maintenance, mainframe, testing kind of job to begin with. Most IT companies take grads and subject them to 1-3 months intensive introductory software training courses just like a mini college course. Check for example the infosys global education centre Also large Indian companies are in turn opening offices in China , Hungary etc to outsource the outsourcing.

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

Afraid I do know at least some of what's going on (know a guy from HP's Board), but I think your summary was well worded and quite appropriate so I won't contradict anything you said. And no, I don't really think HP would buy Sun.

The mere thought of a HP/Sun merger invokes visions of two drunk bums staggering down the street leaning on each other for support and direction. Make that 4 drunk bums - you still have a passed out DEC and a puking Compaq being dragged on HP's ankles.

I was just making fun of HP's silly Wall Street Journal PR games when they were fighting for the company with Hewlett Jr. - bragging that they'd be #1 if only they merged w/ compaq; only to lose the #1 spot thanks to Carly's cutbacks a quarter or two later. Personally I think Walter had it right the whole time and it's sad to see what's become of HP. The only comment I'd make on your posting is that the ego isn't only Carly's. 100% agreed she has a big one, and I very much like your Hollywood theory. But the ego problems are evident one step above as well.

StabiliTrak works surprisingly well in aggressive maneuvers. GM put quite a bit of effort into that, determined to avoid being blamed for any accidents. Car magazine writeups by drivers invited to try it on GM's big skid pad were amusing.

Unlike ABS, this doesn't seem to encourage drivers to drive more aggressively.

You probably haven't heard about it, but there's a fat pipe running down the coast of Africa with 20Gbps (yes, that's GIGA) of capacity. I've been following this story, and it's being wasted.

Home Page

Map

The max capacity of the cable is 120Gbps. It cost 0.65 billion to build and was a monumental sign of pan-african development 6 years ago when they bought it. Now it's finally in place.

technical

It's being wasted! It's a fat pipe, it's got something like 20x the bandwidth previously available in Africa (seriously...) but despite the obvious -- to me -- benefits to start using it Right Now, instead nothing seems to be happening.

Analysis: "...the benefits of this new capacity will not be unleashed on the national business environment"

The state telcoms in all these countries that control the access ... they are just going to sit on their hands because they have no vested interest. It's not on their radar screen to do anything with this cable, or to start selling access to regular people, like Guido. Instead, they are all slowly or quickly going out of business and dragging the market down with them. Installing the cable was only half of it. The other half is freeing the bandwidth.

simon

::: Check out rural wireless 802.11 on the wireless-longhaul@openict.net mailing list. subscribe or check out the project page :::

Cars definitely have recurring revenue. Lots of car owners (myself included) take their ever-more-complex cars to the dealer to be serviced even when they're out of warranty. Auto manufacturers are also notorious for making it hard for third parties to make replacement parts for mechanical failure and especially for accident repair.

Also, VW's US sales figures are not a very good example. GM sold more cars than that - 465,843, according to this press release - in July 2002! (I bet VW sold a hell of a lot more cars in the EU than in the USA.) And remember, any little turd that GM feels like making is going to sell to the "buy American" dorks, corporate fleets, and rental car companies. Of course, they could sell even more if they would sell electric cars instead of crushing them despite their owner's desire to buy them but that's even further OT...