shifting trends in outsourcing ...??

to quote from a news report on cognizant technologies' dominant second quarter performance:

Reflecting shifting global trends, Cognizant said that it had closed its European facility in Limerick, Ireland, due to higher costs of doing business in Europe tied to the strength of the euro. Europe produced 12 percent of Cognizant revenue.

Cognizant said it would perform the work in North America and India instead. It also said it had opened a facility in Shanghai, China, and had begun recruiting software engineers.

does this suggest a trend ? infy has already setup base in china, while tcs has been there for a bit now - infact china seems to be reducing the gap on india in regard to english speaking deficiencies. are indian companies starting to use china to maintain their margins in the wake of burgeoning costs in india? trying to be a middle man - how long before the clients directly move to shanghai before taking a stopover in bangalore? or i am misinterpreting it - perhaps its only to cater to chinese and far east clients that indian companies are setting up shop in china?

perhaps, i am just jumping the gun ... over-exaggerating ... over-reacting - but i am not a part of the outsourcing industry myself - and rely on the web,press and other media to provide me information that eventually builds my views - and this one says the gap is closing.

vijay diwas ...

its been 5 years since the kargil conflict .... today is vijay diwas - to commemorate those who fought and died in the war ... somehow the slimes of india was one of the very few who carried this news - either that or google news aint as good

i came across a study by the center for contemporary conflict in california - titled Asymmetric Conflict in South Asia --The Cause and Consequences of the 1999 Limited War in Kargil. in addition to a post-facto post mortem of the kargil conflict - this bunch seems to have a particular interest in conflict laden hotspots of the world - one of them being the indo-pak situation .... they do research projects, analyze, have conferences ... reading their website is almost like watching c-span. there is even a thesis from the naval postgraduate school on high altitude warfare in the kargil conflict - a 102 page document ... should make for some interesting reading tonight. the bottom line - after reading these references, there seems to be no question about pakistan's complicity in the whole "intruder" business - unfortunately, there didnt seem to be anything more done about it ....

let us not forget those who fought and died ... to protect our freedom ... here is a link to a special feature on rediff remembering them ...

return of the sox?

the weekend saw a 3 game series between old rivals the NY yankees and the Boston redsox. friday night was an all too familar sight, with the red sox blowing a 4-1 lead half way with the yankees scoring 5 in the 6th, only to tie it again in the 8th. but we know the story - same old stuff ... a-rod hitting the game winning run in the ninth for a 8-7 win. saturday seemed like the same with the sox down 10-8 when rivera walked in to close it out for the yankees ... but an unbelievable finish - the red sox actually pulled back to win it 11-10 on a 3 run charge on the bottom of the ninth. it was an incredulous game - lots of fists thrown, benches emptying, players ejected ... and ofcourse a 10 run sixth inning - yeah no kidding ... 6 for the yankees and 4 for the sox!!

so it came to the decider on sunday - lots of well known personalities showing up at fenway - including john kerry (local senator, and ofcourse - soon to be nominated presidential candidate at the democratic convention later in boston this week), john glenn, ben affleck (an ardent red sox fan) ... the opening pitch by kerry - quite ugly, someone should have given him more practice!!

but either way ... the red sox powered their way to a 9-2 lead - but you could always sense the comeback - it seemed unavoidable - and when hideki matsui hit a grand slam in the 7th, it seemed like the curse was back ..... the red sox managed to hold on to the lead ... and won 9-6 in the end ... come october lets see if its deja vu :) we all know the curse of the bambino.

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other sporting news:
lance armstrong won a record sixth consecutive tour de france ... this fella is just amazing ... his victory was amazing this year - come the mountain stages - you knew what would happen ... was just a matter of time before he showed his alpine superiority.

ricky williams retired! the already sidey dolphins sink further!

india lost to pakistan in the asia cup cricket tournament ...

this blog is probably a better option that cnnsi.com or espn.com - a vain boast ofcourse :) would love to hear what folks have to sya about that ....

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and on this day in 1978 was born Louise Brown - the first test tube baby, while in 1997, K.R. Narayanan was sworn in as the 10th president - the first dalit, a fact unncessarily hyped up so much by the media (esp the western press) - that narayanan's name has simply become synonymous with that fact! a travesty ...

documentary

saw a documentary on man eating leopards of india on the discovery channel. this airs again on july 24. reminds a lot of jim corbett's superb documentation of man-eaters - specifically the man eating leopard of rudraprayag. the documentary also shows the efforts that are underway to identify and rectify the problems - set in the bori national park. some very simple but cool infrared detectors coupled with cameras to identify and photograph the nocturnal cats in the natural setting at night, in order to track the leopards responsible. the problem starts with habitat encroachment, and conflicts with humans living on the park vicinity - putting intense pressure on the ecosystem. i would like to bring up an earlier post about conflict of leopards in the sanjay gandhi national park in mumbai - leopards are instinctively creatures who leave people alone - but the constant conflict with humans lead the leopards to cattle preying - easy prey - later on extending to small kids, generally less than 10 years old - again easy prey. they do become sworn enemies of the people affected who do not spare efforts to kill the culprits - cannot blame them either. hopefully there will be a solution forthcoming ... before its too late ...

π = 22/7

today is pi approximation day - an approximate value for pi being 22/7 - thats the way the date is written in the british format ... of course the actual pi day is march 14 = 3/14 in the US format = 3.14 (widely used value for pi).

as a fine point of interest, the first 64 digits of pi are 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510 58209 74944 592 .. .. ..

[i have tried to use < f o n t face="Symbol"> < / f o n t> - tag for writing p in the symbol font - why doesnt it show up that way? still shows up as p .... any suggestions?]

[the "symbol" font works fine on IE - does not with mozilla, netscape, firefox. i have used prashant's suggestion, although it looks quite ugly (again. only on non-IE browsers!)... ]