Slashdot Mirror

Here is some cud to chew on!
India to be 3rd biggest economy by 2050: Report

Cencorship and monitoring are standard fare in India and the only reason it isn't much more widespread is that the population is huge and the government isn't tech savvy enough to do anything 1984-ish.

here.

Seems as if most Americans aren't sure of their views about outsourcing.. But I guess Greenspan isn't personally affected by it and so isn't the best judge ;)

Have you tried? Many people are trying, and I personally have met several foreigners working in India, some for decades and in fields far removed from software. Anyway, it's not that easy to get a work visa in the US and it's getting harder.

and even if we could, it would be for 1/6th of what a programmer would make here!

But you can live on 1/10th what you can here in the US. So it looks like a good deal to me.

... or they'll have to send in the daisy-cutters to trim them back when they get too long.

Not surprisingly, the top four economies of the next 50 years (Brazil, Russia, India, China) do not have the anti-competitive intellectual property laws of the US (and the EU).

The new databaes law joins software patents (i.e. patents on ideas) on the list of top business killers. Software patents, of course, are a guarantee to make sure no individuals or small businesses can compete with the big corporations. As small tech businesses are an important part of the foundation of the US economy, one can expect the US economy to continue its decline.

This new law is a leading indicator that America is killing its own economy faster than anyone could have anticipated. The so-called "land of opportunity" will soon be no more real than a Hollywood movie.

"We have a programme for making our source code available to governments around the world so that they can ensure the technology supports the national security interests of the country and we are in open discussions with the Indian government as well," Peter Moore, chief technology officer, Microsoft Asia Pacific told reporters on the sidelines of an e-governance function orgainsed by Manufacturing Association of Information Technology.

He, however, added that the Indian government's response is still awaited.

You really have to bite your tongue, be polite, keep your opinions to yourself, and be a gracious guest. Saudi justice is not american justice (in court, if it's a muslim's word against a christian's word, the christian can lose automatically) You're NOT a citizen there, and if you forget that detail, you can get yourself in serious trouble.

I don't want to deny the seriousness of your comment at all, and I think overall America is much better than average about how we treat foreigners. But I have a number of Sikh and Muslim friends, and they have similar concerns about the US, even the ones who are citizens, even the ones who grew up here.

They feel the threat not just from ignorant yutzes, but also from the government. Just last night a dear Indian-American friend who grew up in the Detroit area was telling me about her Sikh aunt and uncle's recent visit. Pulled aside for questioning, presumably because of his turban, the uncle did his best to answer their questions in English, a lanugage he's not so familiar with. Long story short, they decided he was being sneaky rather than puzzled and confiscated his passport. A two week visit turned into two months of lawsuit to get his passport back.

Again, I say this not to undermine your point about Saudi Arabia, but just to remind everybody else that it's easy to forget that although we may feel safe in our country and generally trust in the government to behave responsibly, it's easy for foreigners to have a pretty different view of things.

>Money != peace,

2 years ago the US bought peace through the world bank. 2.5-3 billion a year buys alot of peace. The world bank is mainly funded by the US.

>India is a non-aligned nation.

Aligned to what?!?!? Soviet-US? East-West? NATO? I never said that they were aligned.

> Remember- India has been an independent nation for a little over 50 years unlike US, which has been independent for more than 200 yrs.

India has been only colonial rule for ~50 years. Before that they were existed before 2500 BC. They are over 2000 years old vs. 200 (US). Hong Kong was under colonial rule, so has Austria and Canada. Those places don't use it as an "excuse" for not innovating.

>This is a perfect example of how people at slashdot distort facts.

You are missing my obvious point, look at the map again. It is geographically WRONG! eg Windsor is NOT near Hudson Bay. They can't even get grade 12 level facts correct that would take all of 10 minutes to figure out the correct location. Not very professional.

Basically, you'll find Indian English movies to be less of a culture shock than hardcore Bollywood masala stuff. Be warned though that most Indian English movies aren't completely 'English'; they feature a fair amount of dialogue in Indian langauges as well, mostly with subtitles, but often without.

Astitva (Existence)
Teen Deewarein (3 Doors)
Bhavandar (The Sandstorm)
Kanathil Muthamittal (This one is not a Bollywood movie, but an Indian movie nevertheless).

Astitva (Existence)
Teen Deewarein (3 Doors)
Bhavandar (The Sandstorm)
Kanathil Muthamittal (This one is not a Bollywood movie, but an Indian movie nevertheless).

Astitva (Existence)
Teen Deewarein (3 Doors)
Bhavandar (The Sandstorm)
Kanathil Muthamittal (This one is not a Bollywood movie, but an Indian movie nevertheless).

Astitva (Existence)
Teen Deewarein (3 Doors)
Bhavandar (The Sandstorm)
Kanathil Muthamittal (This one is not a Bollywood movie, but an Indian movie nevertheless).

Mohd Atta trained in Baghdad: Report

No evidence to date has been submitted by ANY organisation which shows any involvement whatsoever by Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. According to all intelligence sources (except North America) that I have heard speaking about 9/11, they all insist no terrorist organisation is capable of carrying out a sophisticated attack of this nature, and it could ONLY have been done by high level officials within the US government itself! So the question is, why is nobody investigating the probability that elements within the US government did these acts?

Dell is denying this rumor.

Dell India on Tuesday dismissed reports that it was shifting its technical support service for its business customers from Bangalore to the United States.

"No, we are not shifting the work. Dell is committed to India and are growing," a spokesperson for the Bangalore-headquartered Dell India told PTI on Tuesday.

She said Dell had over 2,000 people working at its customer support centres in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

The spokesperson declined comment on reported complaints by its business customers in understanding Indian executives because of differing accents.

Dell, the world's largest PC maker, opened its Bangalore centre in April 2001 and rapidly expanded its workforce to over 3,000 employees.

A spokesman of the Texas-based company earlier said there were complaints from clients, but declined to discuss their nature.

However, media reports said these were about differing accents.

"Corporate customers were telling us they didn't like the level of support they were getting and in the normal course of business, we made some adjustments," the spokesman was quoted by InfoWorld, which specialises in IT news, as saying.

"What (customers) said was, 'You guys have been changing some things and we don't like it as much'," Steve Felice, vice president, corporate division, Dell, told Mercury News.

Dell India on Tuesday dismissed reports that it was shifting its technical support service for its business customers from Bangalore to the United States.

"No, we are not shifting the work. Dell is committed to India and are growing," a spokesperson for the Bangalore-headquartered Dell India told PTI on Tuesday.

She said Dell had over 2,000 people working at its customer support centres in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

The spokesperson declined comment on reported complaints by its business customers in understanding Indian executives because of differing accents.

Dell, the world's largest PC maker, opened its Bangalore centre in April 2001 and rapidly expanded its workforce to over 3,000 employees.

A spokesman of the Texas-based company earlier said there were complaints from clients, but declined to discuss their nature.

However, media reports said these were about differing accents.

"Corporate customers were telling us they didn't like the level of support they were getting and in the normal course of business, we made some adjustments," the spokesman was quoted by InfoWorld, which specialises in IT news, as saying.

"What (customers) said was, 'You guys have been changing some things and we don't like it as much'," Steve Felice, vice president, corporate division, Dell, told Mercury News.

Dell India on Tuesday dismissed reports that it was shifting its technical support service for its business customers from Bangalore to the United States.

"No, we are not shifting the work. Dell is committed to India and are growing," a spokesperson for the Bangalore-headquartered Dell India told PTI on Tuesday.

She said Dell had over 2,000 people working at its customer support centres in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

The spokesperson declined comment on reported complaints by its business customers in understanding Indian executives because of differing accents.

Dell, the world's largest PC maker, opened its Bangalore centre in April 2001 and rapidly expanded its workforce to over 3,000 employees.

A spokesman of the Texas-based company earlier said there were complaints from clients, but declined to discuss their nature.

However, media reports said these were about differing accents.

"Corporate customers were telling us they didn't like the level of support they were getting and in the normal course of business, we made some adjustments," the spokesman was quoted by InfoWorld, which specialises in IT news, as saying.

"What (customers) said was, 'You guys have been changing some things and we don't like it as much'," Steve Felice, vice president, corporate division, Dell, told Mercury News.

I guess Sun is taking their definition of innovation beyond the realms of technology. This is a good thing, certainly for Sun. I believe the focus is strongly shifting towards the markets in India and China with their increasing buying powers. The outsourced jobs, after all are creating business opportunities in those areas. Might be too early to call it good a move, but a little pointer to that. Here is another article with comments from Australia's Reserve Bank Governor on the Indian and Chinese economies

He also brilliantly lost game 2 by not noticing he had a pinned pawn. Gary has a history of making mistakes against computer opponents. Vladimir Kramnik didn't exactly do that well either. Vishwanathan Anand does better against machines.

-FL

I'm not an expert but it seems reasonable. These machines are standalone units, not networked; they have hardcoded (machine-language) software on their chips, with no facility for modifying it or running an external program. To tamper with them you'd have to replace the motherboard with your own, on which you've embedded your own program, and even then it probably won't work since the machine has various safeguards for tampering. And these machines are extremely rugged and sturdy, and easy to use (I've handled them) and inexpensive (around $100 each).

Sometimes antique push-button technology is better than the latest cutting-edge stuff (anyway, who needs touchscreens, what's wrong with buttons?)

Check out this article in rediff.com

Interestingly, rediff is reporting that the India govt. has not shown any interest in the offer made to it

Atleast so far:)...

the median salary for a US Systems Administrator was $64,271. As of 2002, the average salary was $67,675 ($67,920 for males, and $64,946 for females).

That's nice, but according to the US Bureau Of Labor Statistics' CPI Inflation Calculator, in order for your $64,271 salary to be keep pace with inflation, you'd have to be making $69,401. Since you made less than that, you've effectively gotten a paycut.

(Note, the calculator doesn't accept values greater than $9999.99. I assume this is because, to the current Adminstration, you're considered "rich" if you make more than that amount. However, no matter, just divide your salary by ten first, then multiply the output by 10. Or if you're Richard Grasso, divide and multiply by 100,000. HTH, Dick. )

I've been a hardcore netizen since 1998, when I used to dial up from my uncle's home to a text-only shell account with a 1,500 bps modem :-) I remember waiting minutes to download a single JPEG file, then transferring it to my local machine using Kermit, and opening it up in Internet Explorer 3.0 on Windows 95, only to realise that it's the wrong one! Those were the days when I learnt to use Pine and Lynx, my favourite mail/www combo.

Those were the days of Internet success stories: ICQ, Napster, Winamp. Remember ShellSock?

In a perfect geek encounter, I met bluesmoon on comp.lang.java. Google didn't even exist back then.

Now, when I look around, I see "techies" with 5-10 years of experience in the software industry and no clue what All Your Base... means :-) Clearly, these guys have been here for the money. I, however, am here because I love it. The Internet is changing lives, and I want to be responsible for some of it. Somebody give me that perfect job! :-D

And yet they haven't made a robot that can walk up walls like a gecko.

No, MIT haven't made a wall-walking gecko-robot yet, but Berkeley have, and so have DARPA.

Just a few examples of the stupid US patents on other countries' products:

Bio-Piracy Campaign Exposes Holes in U.S Patent Laws
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/tur-cn.htm
http://www.rediff.com/news/1996/3011am.htm
The US Patent System Legalizes Theft and Biopiracy
Absurd patent laws

The Religous Zealots who run India are dangerous thugs. They stand for nothing good and are, in fact, building ICBMs to threaten the United States . The sooner we re-impose sanctions on the, the better. Think this is a troll? Read
this story from the Christian Science Monitor. No, America was better off with a poorer India. Your comparison with Japan is off base, Japan is not arming to threaten us.

From an article on rediff.com: "According to a study by a team of stargazers based at the Australian National University, there are 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (70,000 million million million, or 70 sextillion) stars in the known universe."

That's 2^76. Leaving only 2^52 addresses per system...and that's assuming perfect routing. :-)

You are very wrong, the quality of IIT applicants is on par or even better than MIT applicants. Obviously in your world since they aren't American they automatically disqualify from being any good.
If I was you, I wouldn't bother applying at IIT either.


Speech by US ambassador to India at a IIT alumni meet



Bill Gates inaugurates IIT golden jubilee celebrations

Its IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) that is equivalent of MIT, notIIIT which is International Institute of Infomation Technology formally know as Indian Institute of Information Technology. IIIT is a new Institution started in 1998, that still has a long way to go get any recognition and standard of IIT (The MIT equivalent). Check this article Bill Gates inaugurated IIT meetIIT

Better still, you might even get a role as a US-returned software engineer who's "separated by destiny and united by fate" with his dacoit brother in a Bollywood movie![1]

Seriously though, Bollywood isn't all about mindless Hindi flicks; if you are really interested, there is a small, but growing, segment of low-budget, but intelligently-made, Indian English films who's appeal is more universal than the Hindi movies. Google for "Monsoon Wedding", "Bombay Boys", "Snip" (good stuff this!), "Bend it like Beckham" and others.

The best part is, they are (possibly) not a part of the Indian version of the RIAA/MPAA as well!

[1]- I didn't link to the IMDB entry primarily becaus there was less information there than in this review. Also, hate explaining jokes, but my pun will not be immediately apparent unless you've seen the movie; that Pat Cusick guy plays just the character I've described in the movie-in-the-movie.

And even if it were possible, there's no longer any point. The traditional "personal" computer market is saturated.

And even if the market for desktop PCs was 'saturated', there would still be a market for operating systems!

Personally I wasn't sure of the difference between CDMA and GSM, in the UK and the entire EU I think GSM is the de facto standard and always has been.

I found this to be of interest, you may too

Snippet:

When Reliance India Mobile released its first ads, the deal looked like a steal. STD at 40 paise a minute, free handset, just Rs 500 a month, et al. Now that other mobile services companies are into price-cutting themselves, it's time for a rethink.

If you are among those who still cannot decide whether to go in for Reliance's Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)-based 'limited mobility' phones or the 'full-fledged' cellular phone services provided by GSM (Global System for Mobile) operators, welcome to the club.

Which one is cheaper, which one better? While a number of issues still need clarity from the regulatory angle, let us take a close look at what Reliance is offering compared to a GSM phone.

First, the service: one of the limitations of a WLL (limited mobility) phone is that the user cannot go beyond a short distance charging area (SDCA) - which is roughly a radius of 25 km.

While Reliance has attempted to overcome the problem by offering multiple registrations, this still is not the equivalent of the roaming services offered by cellular operators.

For instance, if a subscriber in Delhi travels frequently to Mumbai, Reliance will register the subscriber in both the cities at an additional cost of Rs 20 to Rs 30.

So when the subscriber is in Mumbai, all calls landing on the user's Delhi phone number will be forwarded to a pre-allocated number in Mumbai. The user does not have to change the handset or put in a new SIM card for availing this facility.

However, when the user is in transit between the two cities, the phone does not work, unlike a GSM phone which offers roaming anywhere in the world.

Reliance is also offering text messaging services to cash in on the popularity of SMS. However, for the moment, any text message sent by a Reliance phone user can only be received by another Reliance user as GSM operators do not recognise this as a legal service. Even Tata Teleservices, another WLL operator, is awaiting clarity on this issue.

When it comes to data services, there is not much difference between GSM cellular operators and Reliance in terms of offerings.

Subscribers on either network will be able to send and receive e-mail, surf the Net, watch video clippings, send multimedia messages, and download games and ringtones.

The difference here is that while Reliance offers these services to all its subscribers, cellular operators offer such services only to those subscribers who have taken a General Packet Radio System (GPRS) connection - which requires a GPRS-enabled handset. The difference is also in the way the services are priced.

Full article available here.

India hasn't been very supportive the war, but they haven't been as vehemently against it as France, Germany, or the Muslim world, so you might want to try checking out an Indian newspaper, such as The Times Of India , The Hindu, The Indian Express, The Statesman, or Rediff Online. These are amongst the world's most circulated English dailies (The Times of India is #1, the Hindu and the Statesman are in the top 10.), and with the exception of Rediff, have been around in print form for decades.

While it's possible that she holds an American passport, I think it's unfair to say if Dr Chawla was exclusively Indian or American. It must be said that she never quite forgot her Indian identity; as this article says, she did maintain contacts with her school and carried what was essentially an Indian momento along with her.

The point I'm trying to make, really, is that there are many of us who'd like to lay claim to a dual nationalist identity (as opposed to a political identity, which is what passports, in the end, give). We grew up in one land and live/work in another. In the end, we'd like to think we're part of both, our affection equally shared, our gratitude forever split.

Frankly, I have been expecting this for about a year or two: if you can/could telecommute, what prevented your employer to outsource your job?

The developed countries have been outsourcing blue-collar jobs to developing (really low-wage) countries, thanks to the development of international transportation for moving the goods all over the world. Those jobs go now wherever the workforce is the cheapest

Every single part of computer hardware you have in front of you, has been made in Anywhere But US/Europe/Japan(TM). I hope you enjoyed playing/working with your computer, because karma is a b*tch.

Today, the internet allows the transportation of knowledge, voice and data all around the world. Of course, your job will go elsewhere.

Heck, if you think about it, you can see that no one is really safe from this:

• lawyers (you just need some meat in the court house, everything else, including C&D :), is outsourcable paperwork)
• doctors (the remote chirurgy we dreamed about with Internet2)
• teachers (online schooling anyone?)
• people in the movie/entertainment industry: Bollywood could cripple Hollywood (Selling low-priced non-crippled CD and non-DRM DVD should be straigthforward for the Indian majors)

• On my desk, there is a book borrowed to a co-worker. Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows 2000 by Powell (ISBN: 0761529373)
• This book is currently sold at Amazon for the low-low price of $49.99
• The indian version, really a reprint for sale only in India, sold at prakashbooks.com is offered at Rs. 276.50 (about $5.78)

My predictions are:

• Salaries won't increase much in the developed countries in the near future
• Due to rising unemployement and stagnation of buying power, the price of most goods will most likely be decreasing.
• in short, US and Europe will experience what has been plaguing Japan for years: Deflation.
• yet, the outsourced jobs will allow the developing countries to develop more and possibly enable them to buy us goods we have yet to invent.
• furthermore, I guess there is a limit to the number of jobs they can import: those jobs require education AND generate other paying jobs. Sooner or later, the sucking noise will peter off.

So, what does it mean for me?

• I am not going to deny anyone the opportunity to get a better job, even if it is mine: his race, his/her gender, his religion, his nationality or his living place are not important.
• I believe this is a Good-Thing for the humankind, as a whole. So, I will have to cope with this, to the best of my abilities
• I am currently evaluating my options. They include:
  • Making myself more productive by working smarter (not harder!)
  • Moving to a place with a low-cost of life. I can telecommute globally as well as anyone :)
  • Steer my career path towards high value-added jobs (which one, I don't know yet :)
  • Or a combination of the above
  • Or recycle myself in other fields (maybe a doctor? There is a growing shortage of surgeons in Europe and remote chirurgy won't allievate this. I am pretty positive that middle-aged people will be allowed to go to med schools within the next 5 years)

a while back i read that Vladimir Kramnik beat Kasparov.. so why not let him take up the challenge as well and see how he will do

They have done their groundwork beautifully well. They have been laying fiber optic all over the country, for quite a while, and have enormous clout. As an example, where other providers have so far been unsuccessful in getting govt. clearance for certain services in India, it looks like Reliance will not be having that problem.

Reliance is using existing technology customised for India, at the Indian Inst. of Technology Madras. Details here.

You have NO idea the way the demand for bandwidth for both voice and data is growing in India. Want figures? Find them here.

Do you know the proposed cost of deployment of RIL's telecom plan? You pay Rs.3000 initially ($60) and Rs.600 monthly ($12) you get the instrument and the service, but will have to service for a period of 3 years, as part of the Rs.600 will go towards your instrument. Just look at their pricing schemes.

In fact, pricing is one of the reasons why Reliance will succeed. Reason? They chose NOT to use GSM as the initial cost is high, but wanted to help atleast the middle class.

If you still are not convinced, goto Chaoszone, run by cygnusx. He has been keeping track of this for a long time, and has very interesting links on the current scenario and WHY this WILL work.

You are forgetting one very basic point. Yes, India has poverty to handle, but you do not solve it by denying all other technology, atleast that's what your attitude sounds like. There is a significant chunk of the middle class for whom the rates that reliance offers is EASILY affordable, and that comes to a significant portion of the population of a billion.

Read this interview with Mukesh Ambani. Forget quality, they'll see gold through quantity. And that is exactly what Reliance is banking on.

And as a geek, I sure as hell hope they do, am looking forward to getting one of their J2ME enabled thingys ;-)

Perhaps the fact that Gates announces $100-million support to fight AIDS in India has something to do with the change of tune. That and $12.5 million to improve immunisation services.
At least all the money people sink into M$ is going somewhere good. Too bad we have less of our own money to give away ourselves.

Perhaps the fact that Gates announces $100-million support to fight AIDS in India has something to do with the change of tune. That and $12.5 million to improve immunisation services.
At least all the money people sink into M$ is going somewhere good. Too bad we have less of our own money to give away ourselves.

I will bite. And I am posting anonymous as I am including some links.

Troubled by the lack of Linux penetration amongst the next generation of Indian Engineers, I wrote an article on Rediff (a big Indian portal) on how to start with Linux. The response was incredible...people really wanted to start on Linux but had a lot of difficulties and FUD. Some of the issues were...1: availablity of Windows flavors in black market (microsoft willingly supports this, they will raid markets in Taiwan, but will not do anything with India as they want Indian techies to learn MS OS), 2: lack of availability of Linux flavors as there are no good broadband internet access in any Indian city (very important so that you can download ISOs), 3: lack of OSS projects with an Indian flavor or perspective. Also MS supports most of Indian languages at least in a primitive way, for example if I can easily see Malayalam web pages in IE, but quite difficult in Redhat 8 and Mozilla.

Bill G knows without the developer pool from India it is quite difficult to keep ahead of the competition. But I am not sure how much of the OSS community knows this fundamental fact.

Also the xenophobic attitude of slashdotters towards H1B workers or programmers from India doesnt help the cause. There are good programmers and bad programmers and it cuts across ethnicities. Remember if you care about OSS and Linux, you need to keep them on your side.

I will bite. And I am posting anonymous as I am including some links.

Troubled by the lack of Linux penetration amongst the next generation of Indian Engineers, I wrote an article on Rediff (a big Indian portal) on how to start with Linux. The response was incredible...people really wanted to start on Linux but had a lot of difficulties and FUD. Some of the issues were...1: availablity of Windows flavors in black market (microsoft willingly supports this, they will raid markets in Taiwan, but will not do anything with India as they want Indian techies to learn MS OS), 2: lack of availability of Linux flavors as there are no good broadband internet access in any Indian city (very important so that you can download ISOs), 3: lack of OSS projects with an Indian flavor or perspective. Also MS supports most of Indian languages at least in a primitive way, for example if I can easily see Malayalam web pages in IE, but quite difficult in Redhat 8 and Mozilla.

Bill G knows without the developer pool from India it is quite difficult to keep ahead of the competition. But I am not sure how much of the OSS community knows this fundamental fact.

Also the xenophobic attitude of slashdotters towards H1B workers or programmers from India doesnt help the cause. There are good programmers and bad programmers and it cuts across ethnicities. Remember if you care about OSS and Linux, you need to keep them on your side.

I guess this will attract all India-bashing trolls out there, but electronic voting has been a common feature in the last few Indian (both federal and state) elections. (All elections in India are conducted through a disinterested regulatory body called the Election Commission of India). Most people widely welcome the use of Electronic Voting Machines; there have been lesser instances of rigging and booth-capturing after their deployment. Besides, there's been a cost-effectiveness as well; suddenly general elections have become cheaper.

Oh yes, EVM's are being used in the ongoing Kashmir elections as well; since the Kashmir issue is highly emotive (and consequently, irrevocably factionalised) for most people, I'll refrain from commenting on the EVMs' effectiveness there. But yes, the response in most other places in India has been positive.

(disclaimer: I'm an Indian)

About 10 years back while I was still in Engineering college we had a great "scandal" about Russia being arm twisted by the USA to not provide India with cryogenic rocket engine technology to launch remote sensing satellites. It was feared that India would develop missile technology and perhaps ICBMs.

So the problem is this. No engine. No rocket. No satelite aka no space program. And on top of that no Crays to model simulations etc. The man who said "screw this" was Dr. Kalam. The man that threw caution to wind and aligned the bureaucratic/lazy govt agencies to do this.

- Develop an indigenous super computer

- Develop a liquid fuel rocket

- Put a satelite in orbit

Some years later CDAC developed PARAM supercomputer followed by ANUPAM. These inexpensive machines were put to task to solve whole bunch of vibration related problems that used to send test rockets crashing into Bay of Bengal. Quote from a news item "Likewise, the PSLV too failed on its first ever launch on September 20, 1993. The then ISRO chairman, Dr U R Rao, said this was because of a software error in the pitch control loop of the on-board guidance and control processor." There were still more problems with the re-entry stage etc.

The supercomputers enabled some new materials research and first success was almost 10 years later
PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle). India then proceeded to deploy remote sensing satellites in orbit without depending on the French Ariane program at 1/7th the cost.

Out of this came the four Indian missiles long-range Agni (fire), medium range Akash (sky), surface-to-surface Prithvi (earth) and anti-tank Nag (cobra) and the now infamous nukes.

The satellite deployment capability bothers EU and Australia because it is clearly the loss of some "easy money". India has not yet offered satellite launching services, but for those prices even Jamaica can put a bird in the sky. At the moment ISRO toils at the GSLV (Geo Synchronous Launch Vehicle). So far they have not had any success.

This new announcement of moon shot is exciting and a cause of concern. While India has put enough weather satellites it still is ransomed by abnormal weather patterns drought, floods et al Nonetheless it's a matter of pride or rather amazement for me to witness any govt dept doing anything straight over there. Dr. Kalam is now the president of India. President of India is as we call a ceremonious office quite like the Queen of England. So I am sure the Hindu fanatic party leading the govt now is not any progressive but I am optimistic that a secular govt will be elected soon and our rocket man is in the right place trying to crack a tougher cookie. Maybe it's time for the land of zero, decimal and exponent to earn some Karma.

Most of the people fail to understand that the small portion of 'literate' people in countries like India alone outnumber the population of several countries combined. That number by itself is very tempting to introduce a product of this kind.

And I'm really surprised everytime I read people saying "oh why would a third world country bring a [product/service] etc when they can't even feed their citizens". Sometimes it is best to help the people indirectly like bringing in a tool to help them learn and bringing new computer technology is the best way to do it.

India is the fourth largest economy in the world. This product is geared towards the the middle to upper class of the populace whose spending power is growing. And they are obviously educated. So this would make a good idea to bring a linux powered pda to the market.