Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Financial Times.  New Gartner study on outsourcing. The growth of global IT outsourcing will continue despite a growing political backlash, particularly in the US, and up to 25 per cent of traditional IT jobs will be relocated from developed to developing countries by 2010, according to Gartner, the IT consultancy. Wow, that is much higher than other estimates.  At that rate of growth, it is hard to believe projections that the US IT job base will grow over the rest of the decade.  Also, remember that IT jobs are just a part of the offshoring trend. 1:49:58 PM    Comment_ Trackback []

WSJ.  Using cellphones to detonate bombs remotely.  This isn't a new technique but it has now gone mainstream. The simplicity and power of the technique promise extensive use in the future. Terrorists in last week's attacks in Spain apparently hooked up bombs to cellphones, which theoretically could have allowed them to detonate the explosives from the other side of the world. Hooking up a phone to a bomb also provides the option of using an alarm clock in the phone to detonate the explosive, which is how it appears one unexploded device was set up. Cellphones can allow a large operation to be run by just a few people, since the bombers aren't being blown up along with their bombs. "All the bombs went off within four minutes, so it would have been possible to detonate the blasts from just one or two phones," Dr. Ranstorp said in a telephone interview about the Madrid bombings. Authorities investigating the bombings in Saudi Arabia "seized cellphones which appeared to have been modified to trigger improvised explosive devices," according to a U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation bulletin released to American law-enforcement authorities last June. This method enables global power projection, multi-point attacks, and simultaneity.  It is also very difficult to guard against.  Smart. 11:39:17 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

Excellent.  Reuters: The Pentagon has granted $240,000 to a Swedish team for embryonic stem-cell research linked to Parkinson's disease, the researchers said on Wednesday, despite U.S. government limits on stem-cell research. In a statement, Lund University in southern Sweden said the U.S. Department of Defense was supporting the Swedish Parkinson's study because the findings could be used to treat similar neurological illnesses caused by battlefield toxins. 11:25:38 AM    Comment_ Trackback []