Coimbatore in top 70 preferred destination for Outsourcing

Six Indian cities - Bangalore, Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune - are among the eight top global destinations for outsourcing of services, according to a new survey released Tuesday.

The other two are the Philippines’ Manila NCR and Ireland’s Dublin city, according to the 4th Global Services-Tholons Top 50 emerging outsourcing destinations survey, jointly done by Global Services from CyberMedia and Tholons, a services globalisation advisory firm.

The Next 10 Outsourcing Destinations considered to be ‘Top 10 Aspirants’ from a total of 68 destinations is dominated by China’s Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen, Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, Poland’s Krakow, Argentina’s Buenos Aires, Egypt’s Cairo and Brazil’s Sao Paulo.

Avinash Vashistha, CEO of Tholons says: “For a CIO today, finding a Centre of Excellence is more than just lower cost. It must consider location, risk mitigation for business, cultural affinity and scalability of the skilled workforce.”

“The service providers need to think through their offerings so as to differentiate as the competitive advantage is rapidly vanishing due to cut throat competition and market saturation,” adds Vashishtha.

India continues to top the list with revenues of US$40 billion in IT-BPO export services in 2008. Indian IT-BPO export services posted 35 percent year on year growth rates in the last five years.

Interestingly, India’s FDI inflows posted the largest increase globally at 46 percent in 2008 - from $25 billion to $46 billion even as global FDI flows decreased from $1.9 trillion to $1.7 trillion and several developing economies struggled to acquire investments from client nations.

Compared to the previous year’s rankings, this year’s study reveals minimal shifts in rankings because of the overall slowdown in the pace of outsourcing activity in the face of global recession.

Seven Chinese cities - Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Dalian, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Tianjin - and six Indian cities - Chandigarh, Kolkata, Coimbatore, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Thiruvananthapuram - make it to the list of next 60 outsourcing destinations.

The study lists India, Philippines, Ireland, China and Brazil among Top 5 Offshore Nations “with a high degree of maturity and record of successful delivery capabilities.”

Canada, Russia, Mexico, Vietnam, Poland are listed as Top 5 Emerging Nations. The difference between the Top 5 and the Next 5 offshore nations is most pronounced in the service level maturity, the study said.

Courtesy : The Hindu

Tamil Nadu Tourism Board

A new effort taken by the Tamil Nadu Tourism Board to promote "Enchanting Tamil Nadu".

The link gives a 360 degree view of several monuments in the state.

Take a Virtual Tour of the monuments.

The views are really beautiful and breathtaking.


P.S. : Zoom in and take a close look.. you might see a few inscriptions in some of the monuments...

COBOL turns 50!!!

COBOL celebrated its 50^th birthday on September 18, 2009. Many developers see COBOL as a relic, a dying dinosaur, or a stodgy language that has been superseded by more powerful systems. I believe that viewpoint as being uninformed. In honor of COBOL’s 50^th birthday, here’s an overview of COBOL’s history and place in the current development landscape.

COBOL’s origins

COBOL was designed by the late, great Grace Hopper. Ms. Hopper had an extraordinary influence on the computing industry, including writing the first compiler, the “A compiler.” In addition, she served in the U.S. Navy, eventually attaining the impressive rank of rear admiral; there is even a U.S. Navy destroyer named after her in honor of her service.

COBOL was designed by committee, including representatives from the three government agencies and six major companies. The initial seed was planted in April 1959. On September 18, 1959, the committee picked “COBOL” for the name, and by the end of 1960, COBOL compilers had been completed and working programs had been made. (Thanks to Wikipedia for information about COBOL’s history.)

COBOL is an interesting language. Originally, it did not have many of the features that we have come to rely upon. For instance, you would not expect to find object oriented capabilities in 1959, but there were not even local variables then. The structure of a COBOL program is also different from what you would expect, being divided into different “divisions,” each of which serving a particular purpose. COBOL is best known for batch processing, in which large amounts of data are fed in and acted upon on a regular basis. In recent years, COBOL has undergone many changes and adapted to the needs of modern programmers, including adding object-oriented programming capabilities.

COBOL applications run the world

The average person deals with a COBOL-powered system 13 times a day. ATMs, inventory systems, airline ticketing, and health insurance all run on COBOL.

COBOL has been ported to numerous platforms, and currently runs on everything from traditional mainframes to Windows PCs on the .NET Framework. Forrester Research analyst Mike Gilpin says, “32% of enterprises say they still use COBOL for development or maintenance.” That is remarkable penetration for a language that has been around so long and that has been supposedly “superseded.”

In fact, I recommend COBOL as a job skill for developers looking for a long-term, stable career. The simple truth is the COBOL applications out there cannot be replaced. It is an impossible task in reality. In and of itself, this would not necessarily mean a strong job market. But for a variety of reasons, fewer and fewer colleges are giving their students exposure to COBOL, and new programmers have a negative perception of it and avoid it, meaning that the pool of new programmers is quite small. To make matters worse, the COBOL workforce is aging rapidly, and these developers are transitioning to management, retiring, and dying faster than they can be replaced. Meanwhile, new developers on these projects can take years to become fully acquainted with what it takes to maintain a million line application. This all adds up to a great environment for someone looking for a steady job over the years to come.

Courtesy : TechRepublic

Swine Flu

Don't panic, be careful. That's the advice from health experts who point out that the H1N1 influenza is milder than the seasonal flu and that 55 percent of the more than 1,000 cases in the country have already been cured and discharged from hospitals.

India has so far has reported 1,079 swine flu cases and 12 deaths. While 589 have been discharged, the others are still undergoing treatment in various government hospitals in the country. "The swine flu virus is a mild strain and, in fact, is less virulent than the seasonal flu, which causes more deaths... We have treatment for it, which is Tamiflu. It is a curable disease, not an incurable one," said Health Secretary Naresh Dayal. According to Randeep Guleria, head of medicine at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, worldwide about 95 percent of those hospitalised have been discharged. "Global data shows that less than six percent of those affected needed hospitalisation, while one third (of those in hospital) needed ICU care. However, those who have recovered from the flu are not immune to the infection and have to take care as others. But the next time they get the virus, it would be a mild one," Guleria said. Officials also reassure those panicking at the rapid spread of the disease that an indigenous vaccine to tackle the viral disease is on its way. "The work to develop an indigenous vaccine and testing kit is also going on at a fast pace and we will have a vaccine by year-end when we are expecting a more virulent strain of flu to be active," said M. Katoch, secretary in the department of health research. A total of 4.6 million people have been screened for swine flu across the country in the past three-and-a-half months; of these 5,000 people were tested for the flu. The central government has spent over Rs.30 million (Rs.3 crore) for testing - 1,079 positive cases and 3,921 negative. The swine flu testing kits are imported from a US company and each positive test costs Rs.10,000 while a negative test costs Rs.5,000, the government says. Courtesy : in.com

Space station toilet breaks down :P

The main toilet has broken down on the International Space Station (ISS), currently home to a record 13 astronauts, Nasa said.

Mission Control told the crew to hang an "out of service" sign until the toilet can be fixed.

The crew of the shuttle Endeavour is confined to using the craft's loo. ISS residents are using a back-up toilet in the Russian part of the station.

If repairs fail, Apollo-era urine collection bags are on hand, Nasa said.

"We don't yet know the extent of the problem," flight director Brian Smith told reporters, adding that the toilet troubles were "not going to be an issue" for now.

Bad plumbing?

The main toilet, a multi-million-dollar Russian-built unit, was flown up and installed on the US side of the space station last year.

It had broken down once before, requiring a rush delivery of a replacement pump by the shuttle Discovery in 2008.

And another toilet-related row broke out earlier this year, when a Russian cosmonaut complained that he was no longer allowed to use the US toilet because of billing and cost issues.

Despite the latest housekeeping setback, astronauts managed to transfer spare par

ts from the shuttle Endeavour to the ISS on Sunday, the second day of

a planned 11-day mission.

Nasa was also investigating why Endeavour's tank shed an unusually large amount of insulating foam during its launch.

Courtesy : BBC News

The King of Bugs

One bug to rule them all - IE5,IE6,IE7,IE8,Netscape,Firefox,Safari,Opera,Konqueror,
Seamonkey,Wii,PS3,iPhone,iPod,Nokia,Siemens.... and more.

Reference : [GSEC-TZO-26-2009] - One bug to rule them all
CVE : CVE-2009-1692 (created by Apple, this bug has same root cause)
Credit: Thierry Zoller

Affected products :

• Internet Explorer 5, 6, 7, 8 (all versions)
  
• Chrome (limited)
  
• Opera
  
• Seamonkey
  
• Midbrowser
  
• Netscape 6 & 8 (9 years ago)
  
• Konqueror (all versions)
  
• Apple iPhone + iPod
  
• Apple Safari
  
• Thunderbird
  
• Nokia Phones : Nokia N95 (Symbian OS v.9.2),Nokia N82, Nokia N810 Internet Tablet
  
• Aigo P8860 (Browser hangs and cannot be restarted)
  
• Siemens phones
  
• Google T-Mobile G1 TC4-RC30
  
• Ubuntu (Operating system sometimes reboots, memory management failure)
  
• possibly more devices and products that support Javascript,
  

Patch status :

• Mozilla : Fixed in Firefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19
  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=460713
  
• Thunderbird (unknown)
  
• IE : No fix for IE5,IE6,IE7,IE8 until IE9
  
• Konqueror : unknown (did not respond)
  
• Apple iPhone&iPod : patched
  
• Nokia : unknown, opened a case but never came back
  
• Aigo P8860 : unknown
  
• Siemens : unknown
  
• Chrome : Patched, version unknown (only tab was affected anyways)
  
• Webkit : fixed in r41741 - https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23319
  
• Opera : Patched after version 9.64
  
• Sony PS3 - still affected
• Nintendo Wii Opera - still affected, Opera sent a "notice" to Nintendo, never heard back from Opera
• Others ? Find out by visiting the POC at http://crashthisthing.com/select.html
  

I. Background

Quoting Wikipedia "ECMAScript is a scripting language, standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification and ISO/IEC 16262. The language is widely used on the web, especially in the form of its three best-known dialects, JavaScript, ActionScript, and JScript."

II. Description

Calling the select() method with a large integer, results in continuous allocation of x+n bytes of memory exhausting memory after a while.

The impact varies from null pointer dereference (no more memory,hence crashing the browser) to the reboot of the complete Operation System (Konqueror&Ubuntu).

There had never been a limit specified as to how many html elements the select call should handle, after the report of this Bug, vendors apparently agreed to a limit of 10.000 elements : "Talked to some Apple and Opera guys at the WHATWG social, and we decided this was a good number"

III. Impact

The impact varies from browser to browser and sometimes from OS to OS

• Konqueror (Ubuntu)- allocates 2GB of memory then either crashes the Browser or (most often) the OS reboots. Ubuntu's memory management system is configured as to NOT stop the process that consumes too much memory, but a random process. This sometimes leads to processes that are vital for the OS to be killed, hence the reboot. I am not kidding. Thanks to 'FX' for the memory management hint.
• Chrome : allocates 2GB of memory then crashes tab with a null pointer
  
  
• Firefox : allocates 2GB of memory then the Browser crashes
  
  
• IE5,6,7,8 : allocates 2GB of memory then the Browser crashes
  
  
• Opera : Allocated and commits as much memory as available, will not crash but other applications will become unstable
  
  
• Nintento WII (Opera) : Console hangs, needs hard reset
  Video: http://vimeo.com/2937101 (Thanks to David Raison)
  
  
• Sony PS3 - Console hangs, needs hard reset
  Video: http://vimeo.com/2937101 (Thanks to Chris Gates)
  
  
• iPhone - iPhone hangs and needs hard reset
  Video: http://vimeo.com/2873339 (Thanks to g0tcha)
  
  
• Aigo P8860 (Browser hangs and cannot be restarted)
  

IV. Proof of concept

URL: http://www.crashthisthing.com/select.html

Some have not understood what this code does, it does NOT loop as some vendors claimed, it just calls select.lenght() ONCE with a huge integer. One might wonder if over the 9 last years that this bug existed, nobody ever entered a large number in a select.lenght() call.

V. Disclosure timeline

Nothing particular to note.

V. Thanks
Chris Gates, David Raison, Fahem Adam,a team of engineers that recognise themselves, oCert
for not helping coordinate this bug.

Note: All trademarks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

Courtesy : G-SEC

Funniest Thread!!!

Hey this is one of the funiest post i ve ever read in a technical forum...

Go ahead read it and have a good laugh....

Future of C++

Are you a C ++ Programmer? Wanna know more about the future of C++... Go ahead... Read More

The King Of Pop!!!!

How can i not post about The King of Pop - Michael Jackson. Its been four days since the news of Michael Jackson's death broke out and i still am in a state of shock.


Some of my favourites are : Black or white, Thriller, Dangerous, Jam, They don't care about us, Smooth Criminal, Bad, Beat it, You are not alone, We are the world, Just cant stop loving you, Billie Jean....... the list goes on.....


We will miss you MJ.... May your soul Rest In Peace!!!

Google vs Microsoft

It’s easy to argue that the primary reason Microsoft has become the world’s largest software maker is that the company has repeatedly shown the ability to ship products. Even though the products may not be perfect and they may not meet the original ship date, Microsoft has proven that it almost always knows when the products are good enough to release to the market.

Google is emerging as one of Microsoft’s key competitors in the software business - perhaps even its biggest competitor within a few years - but Google has not mastered the “good enough” principle. Google software engineers have arguably created only two highly-profitable hit products: the ubiquitous Google.com search engine and the Web-based email client Gmail.

However, Google’s “continuous beta” approach that it used to build those two products will not satisfy the customers of two new market segments that Google wants to win: smartphone software and enterprise software ( Why ? ).

Google’s approach to innovation works well for building widgets and tools for the Internet and Google will continue its dominance in those areas.

However, if Google wants to succeed in smartphones and business applications then it’s going to have to create dedicated teams/departments within Google that are much more process-oriented and focused on product quality from end-to-end. The never-ending beta is not going to cut it in the smartphone world or the enterprise IT world.

Courtesy : TechRepublic

Nature at its best....

Amazing striped icebergs

Icebergs in the Antarctic area sometimes have stripes, formed by layers of snow that react to different conditions.

Blue stripes are often created when a crevice in the ice sheet fills up with meltwater and freezes so quickly that no bubbles form.

When an iceberg falls into the sea, a layer of salty seawater can freeze to the underside. If this is rich in algae, it can form a green stripe.

Brown, black and yellow lines are caused by sediment, picked up when the ice sheet grinds downhill towards the sea.

Disappearing Gangotri Glacier!!!!

I was just randomly scanning through channels and happened to bump into "The Melting Point", a world environment day special on CNN IBN. I was in fact shocked after seeing the program.

The Melting Point throws light on how the glaciers around the world are affected by global warming citing the example of the Gangotri in the Himalayas.

For all you people sitting and thinking that we have not been hit by global warming this is a must watch video.




We as individuals should strive and work towards a eco-friendly life style else the day will not be far when the perils of global warming will knock your door.


GO GREEN!!!
Save Planet Earth!!!

Batteries fuelled by air !!!!

Sounds like fiction huh?

The revolutionary STAIR (St Andrews Air) battery can recharge itself as it is being discharged. These batteries draw oxygen from the surrounding air onto an open mesh section of the battery. The oxygen reacts with a porous carbon component inside the battery which recharges this battery.

Unlike traditional batteries these batteries do not have any chemical constituent. It has only a porous carbon layer and makes use of atmospheric oxygen, so these cells are lighter. And since these cells are recharged as they are discharged they last longer and have greater storage.

These light and small sized batteries are expected to find their place in electric cars, laptops, mobile phones etc.

History of Packet Switching

It has often been said that change is the only constant in the 21st Century.

And there is little doubt that the restless tone of these times is something that the web has helped to accelerate.

But the only reason that the net and the web can cope with that punishing pace is thanks to work done four decades ago by British mathematician Donald Davies at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL).

On 5 August 1968 Dr Davies gave the first public presentation of work he had been doing on a method of moving data around computer networks called "packet switching".

The idea may sound mundane but, said John Pethica, chief science advisor at the NPL, the modern world would be a lot slower without it.

The internet, mobile phone networks and fixed line phones now all use the principles Davies and his team established to cram as much data as they can down the cables and wires making up the world's telecommunication networks.


Dr Pethica said the urge to find a better way to handle data emerged when computer networks were almost unheard of.
Donald Davies, NPL


At that time making a phone call involved creating a dedicated circuit between the handset of a caller and the person they wanted to chat to.

"A lot of people realised that point-to-point was going to be a big problem, even for telephones even before they thought about computers," said Dr Pethica. "The problem was how you turn it away from that."

The problem with human speech is that most of it is made up of silence - be that the pauses between words, time taken to breathe or gaps when one person waits for another to speak.

Using most of a telephone network to transmit silence is not a very efficient use of that resource. Far better would be to find a way to fill the blank spots with the moments from others calls when those folk were speaking.

Dr Pethica said many in the computer world in the late 60s were thinking about how to solve this problem.

"There were other ideas around, like Paul Baran at Rand, but they were nowhere near as useful as what Donald Davies did in terms of size of packets and nodes," said Dr Pethica.

"It was Donald who had the idea of making a set of nodes that you send packets of data to that find their own way through," said Dr Pethica.

The insight of Dr Davies and his team was to slice data, be that a chat on the phone, an e-mail or a picture, into separate pieces or packets. These are then put on the network and rely on the intelligence of nodes in the network to help them wend their way to their destination. Once there they are re-assembled into the right order.

Future proof

Dr Pethica said Davies' team worked out the mathematics that optimised such an approach - an idea that has proved its usefulness by still being in use today.
Computer research at NPL, NPL

Error correction schemes included in the technology helped it cope with the poor quality of phone lines in use in the late 1960s, said Dr Pethica. In more modern times those schemes help ensure data makes it across the busy lanes of the internet.

Davies and his colleagues went further than just establishing the concept for packet switching - they also build the first computer networks and proved their ideas could work.

"They had a whole series of early computers at NPL that they turned in to a local area network (Lan)," said Dr Pethica. He pointed out that the NPL scientists built such a network far in advance of the day when such things would become the common way to link up machines in an office.

"The important breakthrough that he and his team made was to build the Lan and make it work," he said.

Even before Dr Davies presented his work publicly, news of it had spread through the international computer science community.

As a result he was invited to talk about it to a team from the US Advanced Research Project Agency (Arpa) working on the fledgling internet. The principles he established were rolled in to the technology to make that network function.

Dr Pethica said packet switching idea was developed with an eye on the future and how a computer network might grow. Forty years on the scalability in the Dr Davies insight is still proving its worth, he said.


Courtesy : BBC News

If you ve never failed you ve never lived

Are you in the midst of failures....

Watch it... Get inspired....

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish

Steve Jobs giving a speech at Stanford University graduation.

The text of the speech is here.

One of the best speeches i ve ever listened to....

Google - Go Green... Leading by example...

Recently (not exactly, in January ;) ) there was a lot of speculation about Google and its stature as a green company. There were a lot of reports about its contribution to global warming and Google has come back hard at those reports

It all started with an article which estimated that 5-15 g of CO2 are released into the atmosphere every time you hit search in Google. The research was made using data that is available in open. The reason that it stated was that any google search was sent to several servers stationed across the globe and the result of the fastest server was sent back to the user.

Google hit back at these reports by saying that these reports where hyped up and were not true. Google has come out with its own set of statistics which suggest that the company has the greenest data centres and the figures given by the reports are way too high. Google claims to have conducted its own research in this regard and states that on the average a google search causes the release of only o.2 g of CO2. Google also claims to have invested $45 million in developing clean energy technologies.

Google further quotes that Wissner-Gross (who did a research on carbon footprint by the web in Harvard, based on which all these stories were developed) in the InternetNews saying that Google was by far the leader in the green and clean energy usage. Google also uses bio-diesel powered cars for its shuttles from its headquarters. It depends on recyclable material through out its buildings.

Its the responsiblity of every individual to take care of mother earth. We should, by all means possible try to reduce our carbon footprint.

Go Green!!!
Save Mother Earth!!!

Have faith in what you do!!!

Most of you must have heard of this story. Just thought its worthy enough to be read again. The girl in the story has a lesson for every one of us.

As a drought continued for what seemed an eternity, a small community of farmers was in a quandary as to what to do. Rain was important to keep their crops healthy and sustain the townspeople's way of life.

As the problem became more acute, a local pastor called a prayer meeting to ask for rain.

Many people arrived. The pastor greeted most of them as they filed in. As he walked to the front of the church to officially begin the meeting he noticed most people were chatting across the aisles and socializing with friends. When he reached the front his thoughts were on quieting the attendees and starting the meeting.

His eyes scanned the crowd as he asked for quiet. He noticed an eleven year-old girl sitting quietly in the front row. Her face was beaming with excitement. Next to her, poised and ready for use, was a bright red umbrella. The little girl's beauty and innocence made the pastor smile as he realized how much faith she possessed. No one else in the congregation had brought an umbrella.

All came to pray for rain, but the little girl had come expecting God to answer. It is important to believe in our actions to succeed in life.

Believe in what you do!!!

நம்பிக்கை தான் வாழ்க்கை!!!

SAHAYAM '09 - Moments to be treasured!!!

SAHAYAM '09 is a cultural fest organised by the Rotaract Club of Saibaba Colony, Coimbatore for the differently abled children from various schools around the city. Its a one day event which happened on February 14 this year. I was invited for the event by the Convener of Sahayam'09, Vishnu Vardhana. And I owe so much to him for having invited me. I spent only about 3 hours at the venue. And that very little time that i spent there taught me a lot of lessons - lessons that no classroom will teach you, no teacher will teach. It taught me the lesson of LIFE.

I missed a lot of action in the event. By the time i reached there the group dance event was going on. I was only gifted to see a few dances. The sight of the children dancing to the peppy numbers from Tamil movies brough tears to my eyes. Their performance was amazing . I was later told by Vishnu that i missed out on an awesome dance by a few mins. The dance (song "Mukundha Mukundha" from "Dasavatharam") was performed by a group of deaf children who danced in synchrony to the tune with only visual instructions from their teacher.

We, normal people are no match to these children and we never will match them.

February 14 th could have been no better. Everyone there realised what the true meaning of love was.

To all those people who missed to attend this event, I must tell you seriously missed out something in your life.

Hats off to the club for organising such an event. The event was a great success. And am sure Vishnu you acheived your objective - "To keep the children happy for one full day". You guys rock!!! Keep up the good work!!!

( The post is incomplete... waiting for some inputs from Vishnu to complete)