Tuesday, June 15, 2004

A Skyline View of Phoebe As it rockets toward its July 1 entry into Saturn's orbit, NASA's Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is capturing some stunning views of one of the gas giant's moons, Phoebe. Images like this one, showing bright wispy streaks thought to be ice revealed by slumping crater walls, are leading to the view that Phoebe is an ice-rich body covered with a thin layer of dark material. Obvious down slope motion of material along the walls of the major craters in this image is the cause for the bright streaks, which are over-exposed here. Significant slumping has occurred along the crater wall at top left. The slumping of material might have been caused by a small projectile punching into the steep slope of the wall of a pre-existing larger crater. Another possibility is that the material collapsed when triggered by another impact elsewhere on Phoebe. Note that the bright, exposed areas of ice are not very uniform along the wall. Small craters are exposing bright material on the floor of the larger crater. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute 8:06:17 PM    comment []

High-End Technology Work Not Immune to Outsourcing By STEVE LOHR Published: June 16, 2004 ARTICLE TOOLS E-Mail This Article Printer-Friendly Format Most E-Mailed Articles Reprints & Permissions TIMES NEWS TRACKER   Topics Alerts Computer Software Labor Wages and Salaries Microsoft Corporation n the debate over high-technology work migrating abroad, there has been widespread agreement on at least one thing: the jobs requiring higher levels of skill are the least at risk. Routine software programming and testing jobs, analysts agree, are the ones most susceptible to being grabbed by fast-growing Indian outsourcing companies. By contrast, the people who devise the early blueprints for projects - the software architects - have been regarded as far less likely to see their jobs farmed out. But Microsoft contract documents show that as far back as 2001 the big company had agreed to pay two Indian outsourcing companies, Infosys and Satyam, to provide skilled "software architects" for Microsoft projects. The documents were obtained this month by WashTech, an organization of technology workers based in Seattle, which gave copies to The New York Times. "The policy prescription you hear from people again and again as the response to the global competition of outsourcing is for Americans to move to high-end work," said Ronil Hira, an assistant professor for public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "It's important to dispel the myth that high-end work is immune to offshore outsourcing." "What is not clear," Mr. Hira added, "is how much of that high-end work will go abroad." A Microsoft spokeswoman, Stacy Drake, said that as a matter of policy the company did not comment on individual contracts with suppliers. But, she said, "we often use outside companies for projects." The outside contractors, Ms. Drake said, are used to bring in specialized expertise Microsoft may not have internally or to bring additional technical support to a project. Still, Ms. Drake said, building the "core intellectual property" in Microsoft products is left to full-time company employees. Though definitions vary, software architects are highly skilled workers who often earn six-figure salaries in the United States. The Microsoft contracts with Infosys and Satyam show that the work of software architects, senior software developers and software developers was being done by employees of the Indian companies working at Microsoft facilities in the United States. Their work did not come cheap for Microsoft, which was billed $90 a hour for software architects, or at a yearly rate of more than $180,000. Senior software developers were billed at $72 an hour and software developers $60 an hour. The on-site work, said Mr. Hira, an expert on offshore outsourcing, is usually done by Indian software engineers who come to the United States on H-1B visas, which allow foreign workers to be employed in the United States for up to six years. The Indian workers themselves are paid a fraction of what their employers collect. The top annual salaries paid by Indian outsourcing companies to Indian software experts working in the United States range up to $40,000 or so, Mr. Hira said. The contracts also say that for short stints of work, less than 90 days, Microsoft will pay for round-trip economy airfare for travel between India and the United States. The contracts also include work done in India, by project managers and by software development and testing engineers. The billing rate for this work ranges from $36 an hour to $23 an hour. A spokeswoman for Infosys said the company did not comment on its contracts, and a Satyam spokesman could not be reached. Critics of the outsourcing trend regard such agreements with Indian contractors, with work done both in the United States and in India, as a step toward shifting more and more skilled technology jobs overseas. "Microsoft has hired vendors whose whole reason for being is to transfer work offshore," said Marcus Courtney, president of WashTech, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America. The foreign competition for work at Microsoft, Mr. Courtney said, will help the company's management put more pressure on wages for its American workers and reduce employee benefits. Last month, Microsoft announced that it planned to cut costs by an estimated $80 million a year by trimming prescription drug benefits, tightening parental leave policies and making it more expensive to buy Microsoft shares through the employee stock purchase plan. Despite its use of foreign contract workers, Microsoft expects to add 3,000 to 3,500 full-time employees to its United States payroll of 37,000 in the fiscal year that ends in July. 8:01:34 PM    comment []

In a First, Virus Worms Its Way Into Cellphones By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter June 16, 2004 Computer-security experts have identified what appears to be the first computer "worm" program targeted at mobile phones. The malicious code poses little immediate danger, but could be a preview of future threats as mobile devices become more powerful -- and vulnerable to hackers. For the moment, the worm, dubbed "Cabir," hasn't been widely released. A virus-writing group known as 29A, based in Spain, claimed credit for writing the malicious code, which does little more than display the message "Caribe" or "Caribe-VZ/29A" on the screen of infected phones. Kaspersky Labs, a computer-security firm based in Moscow, identified and named the worm late Monday. MALICIOUS CODES See more coverage on computer viruses at wsj.com/virus Cabir targets mobile phones running an operating system from Symbian, a consortium of mobile-phone manufacturers led by Nokia Corp. Phones that use the Symbian software from other manufacturers, including Siemens AG, Samsung Electronics Co., and Panasonic Mobile Communications Co., a unit of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., may also be vulnerable. The worm attempts to send itself to other phones using the Bluetooth wireless transmitter that is standard on many phones. Vincent Gullotto, vice president of the emergency response center at the antivirus protection company Network Associates Inc.'s McAfee unit, said Cabir remains a laboratory experiment but could encourage hackers to target mobile phones, which have increasingly sophisticated software and networking capabilities. "It is a significant step compared to what others have brought to the table," Mr. Gullotto said. "Now that somebody has shown it can be done, somebody else could pick up on it." The Web site of 29A gives credit for the worm to "Vallez," boasting that the new member of the group "coded the very first virus infector for mobiles!" The Web site lists members from the Czech Republic, Spain, Brazil and Russia. "In general, we're against destructive payloads and the spreading of viruses, but we do not forbid our members ... to include destructive payloads in their viruses," the group says in a statement on its site. "We code viruses for the fun of it, because it's our hobby, not because we want to harm other people or to get ourselves into trouble." 7:51:27 PM    comment []

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China tech commentary by Martin Kaminski mkaminski@lehmanlaw.com <mailto:mkaminski@lehmanlaw.com> In today's global IT marketplace, China seems to be going to great lengths to secure a position for itself. As a developing nation, China must make its presence known to the world and become a recognized leader. The IT industry is a good example. China has attempted to develop its own technologies hoping that the world would adopt its standards. Lately, China has created TD-SCDMA for cell phones, EVD for DVDs, and WAPI for wireless networking, flying in the face of well-established global standards for such products. In addition to global competition issues, China is tired of paying royalties for using overseas technology. China is one of the largest contributors of royalty income to foreign technology firms. There are those that argue that China's attempt to establish homegrown standards would scare firms into lowering their fees because of the sheer power of numbers in the Chinese market. With millions and possibly billions of consumers in a position to purchase this technology, China potentially has the ability to provide a powerhouse market to which the world must kowtow. One may not agree with China's methods of obtaining a piece of the IT pie, but the reasons behind it are clear. China is a developing nation that does have the power to flex its muscles in the international marketplace to a degree that cannot be ignored by the rest of the world. For now, China does not seem to impact global standards in its attempt to impose it standards in the IT industry, but it is clear that one day soon they will be in a position to greatly influence such a market. Much remains to be seen from this sleeping giant, and the world is watching hoping that it will not wake up. Update: After much controversy, China has agreed to indefinitely postpone its implementation of its homegrown Wi-Fi standard. This new standard called the Wireless Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) is incompatible with current Wi-Fi global standards. It could have potentially forced overseas Wi-Fi manufacturers to reveal their designs, potentially opening the door to infringement of intellectual property rights. Did You Know? Patent application cases concerning nanotechnology have grown rapidly in China over recent years, with the number following the United States <http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/usa.html>  and Japan <http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/japan.html>  to take the world's third place. According to the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) <http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/organs/st> , during the decade before 2001, China's total applications for nanotechnology patents numbered less than 1,000. The figure soared in the past two years and amounted to 12 percent of the world's total. China now has more than 2,400 such patents. Feature: China Stands Firm On Chip Tax The Chinese government has yielded no ground on a value-added tax (VAT) rebate given to some domestic producers of semiconductors. Currently, the Chinese government waives, for local producers, a large chunk of the 17% value-added tax charged on chips sold in the country. As a result of the refund policy, Chinese chip companies may pay as little as 3 percent in taxes. China also allows for a partial refund of VAT paid on integrated circuits designed in China but manufactured abroad. The Chinese government passed a law called "The Circular on Questions Concerning Tax Policy to Encourage Development of Software Industry and Computer Chips Industry." This law provides that "a tax rebate of the portion exceeding 3% shall be granted to general VAT taxpayers selling software products designed/developed and produced locally." In other words, such producers/sellers shall have a VAT rebate of 14%, which shall be refunded to the taxpayers. The Office of the United States Trade Representative is challenging this VAT rebate. Its primary argument is based on GATT Article III (on "National Treatment"), which says that a WTO member cannot impose taxes on imported products that are greater than those imposed on domestic products. Article III of GATT 1994 sets out a National Treatment rule. This forbids states from adopting any measures, which treat foreign industry less favorably than domestic industry, so far as goods are concerned. The US is thought to have a strong case, although China has argued that the rebate applies equally to foreign and Chinese companies with production in the country and is therefore not discriminatory. If the US complaint succeeds, China could be ordered by the WTO to remove the tax rebate or to apply it universally, to both domestically produced and imported chips. If China refuses, the US could be allowed to impose punitive measures. However, before this can happen, both countries are first obliged under WTO rules to attempt to resolve the issue through talks lasting 60 days. If the talks fail, obtaining a final ruling may still take as long as two years. Since China imports around 80% of its semiconductors, a ruling in the US's favor would have positive implications for semiconductor makers exporting to China. According to US trade officials, US chipmakers paid around US$344 million in VAT in 2003 on exports to China worth around US$2 billion. Clearly, if this tax were reduced or abolished it would improve the competitiveness of foreign exporters attempting to penetrate China's US$19 billion semiconductor market. --Martin Kaminski and Fleur Chen LEHMAN, LEE & XU - Beijing Need to File a Patent or Trademark in China? Contact LLX at mail@lehmanlaw.com and click below to download a Power of Attorney: General Patent <http://www.lehmanlaw.com/download/Patent%20POA.zip> PCT Patent <http://www.lehmanlaw.com/download/POA-PCT.zip> Trademark <http://www.lehmanlaw.com/download/POA-TR_.zip> Newsbytes Government Halts Registration of New Internet Bars The General Administration for Industry and Commerce recently issued a circular to suspend registration of new Internet bars and profit-seeking song and dance halls, with the goal of creating a better environment for minors. The circular called for a crackdown on unregistered Internet bars, forbidding the establishment of Internet bars and song and dance halls within 200 meters around primary and middle schools. China has seen some dramatic events take place in Internet bars recently, which has led to the central government's imposing of a rigid watch on such establishments. Meanwhile, China has shut down nearly 16,000 unlicensed Internet cafes across the country since March this year. Nankai Star Supercomputers A supercomputer cluster, named "Nankai Star", jointly developed by the Institute of Scientific Computation, a part of the Nankai University, and IBM, recently demonstrated an astonishing calculation speed as fast as 3.231 trillion times a second. Researchers told reporters that equipped with 800 CPUs and 400 nodes, the supercomputer's configuration presents a computation capacity exceeding the 18th of the top 500 supercomputers rated last year. The development of the new supercomputers, and associated algorithms and software, will provide a low cost but highly efficient technical platform for varieties of fields, including information industry, bioengineering, life science, material chemistry, energy, chemistry, mathematics, etc. Beijing Provides Web Access for The Poor Beijing is increasing efforts to help low-income and laid-off citizens gain access to the Internet as a means of spreading Internet use beyond young groups and IT professionals. In addition to connecting the broadband network to 1 million households, 100,000 residents will be trained with basic computer knowledge and the ability to search the Internet. As many as 100 "digital homelands," or small computer labs for residential communities, will be built and thousands of volunteers with professional knowledge will be encouraged to impart their skills to common residents. At the moment, only 1.9 million computers in Beijing are connected to the Internet, or 6.4 per cent of the total number of computers linked with the net in the whole country. Youths between 18 and 24 years old currently make up the largest proportion among Beijing netizens. They mainly consist of college students, company technicians and IT professionals. Meanwhile, many disadvantaged people, including retired employees, laid-off workers and citizens living on minimum allowances, do not have access to Internet, said the office's website. UPCOMING EVENTS Internet World Summit in Beijing The 4th Internet and Multimedia World Summit will be held on October 18-20, 2004 at the Grand Passage of International Media, Xuanwu District, Beijing. Under a theme of "multimedia and digital futures, linking China and the world", the summit will attract the presence of thousands of IT companies. Developers of technology and multimedia standards makers, at the summit, will discuss several high tech topics including an international classification system for intellectual property. 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It should not be taken as comprehensive legal advice, and Lehman, Lee & Xu will not be held responsible for any such reliance on its contents.    <http://www.lehmanlaw.com/images/1x1.gif>      7:32:09 PM    comment []