what soemone said today: Of corporations outsourcing engineers US and European corporations think that technology workers, engineers and IT, are a fungible commodity that can be farmed out to India and China et al while the head office of corporate lawyers, accountants, and lobbyists remains at home forming the backbone of the corporation. But the real irony is that for the smart engineers and technologists in India and China it is the corporate office that is the commodity. Why would the people who can create the new technologies of tomorrow (robotics, (real) biotechnology) continue working in a subservient role as outsourced brains. It is as easy for them to slough off upper management and hire the head office as it is for IBM, SAP, Motorola to hire the engineers. It is knowledge innovation that is still the one and only driver of material prosperity in our economy and that innovation comes from engineers, scientists and software engineers. By transferring the brains of their own companies overseas corporations are merely hastening their own demise and ultimately their country?s too. These companies are safe for the time being since they own the patents for the current technologies. But if there is a paradigm shift leading to radically new technologies, the entrepreneurship that capitilizes on the new technologies, and in turn wipes out the old technology leaders, will be found in those countries with the next generation of engineers ? India and China. The ?empty? corporate head offices in the US will attempt to get a foothold in the new technologies but by this time they will have less leverage with engineers in India. Why would engineers who can now own the wealth of their innovations be content to let foreigners in the US receive the lion?s share? Just as the Hewlett?s, Packard?s, Moore?s of an earlier generations did, these engineers will do the same. The US is being denuded of engineers (what smart person would choose technology as a career). It will miss the next wave of technology innovation. The rest will be history. not to mention... getitnow ...who will be left to "fuel the economy" on $12/hour. in a few decades ...the US will be left behind as fewer and fewer of its residents pursue tech careers. corporations are incredibly shortsighted and/or don't care. they're digging their own grave!
Yeah, I'm worried too about that, I read the other day that some indians guys got some improved primality test that could lead to a solution to the factorization problem. If these guys were more greedy and entrepreneurial, they could own the internet in a few years.
Sure, this is about cryptography. Without cryptography, the internet doesn't have any commercial value. Current cryptographic algorithms/methods rely on prime numbers: they are based on the premise that the factorization of big numbers is an impossible task given current technology, so what they do is find two big prime numbers (with the primality test method) multiply them and obtain a really big number which (hopefully) nobody can factorize. But guess what since you have the original prime factors you are the only one who has the keys. So these indian guys with their technology could own everything that uses cryptography, sort of bill gateses of the internet. They could charge you everytime you send a password, pay your credit card, buy books on amazon or send an e-mini trade over the internet.