Aside from the accents there are also other cultural issues at play*. Last week I had an Indian guy leave both an email and a voice mail saying "I've got great news for you." And didn't tell me what the effin "great news" actually was. I had to call him back in order to find out what he was actually talking about. And when I did get on to him he then had to lead me along this extremely verbose description of events leading up to why he called me (a series of events that I was well aware of as it had been developing over the last 2 weeks and I had been involved in them.)

In his case I felt he was suffering from a major dose of 3rd world bureaucratic empire building, and couldn't come straight to the point even if it he had to do it to save his own life.

* EG The classic Asian personality of not being able to say "no" to something.

How does that compare to non-clearance people of the same level? DC is not exactly a cheap place to live, so I expect salaries to be higher there.

Sigh, when is the belief in magical things going to end?

A data center is a bastion of clean, easily accessed, regular layout, and computers are good at handling consistent and repeating patterns.

On the other hand any manufacturing industry location is the complete opposite - non-regular layout, abundant dirt and grime and all manner of inconstancies built on layer and layer of previous versions. If you wanted your typical manufacturing plant to be able to be serviced by a remote unit, you would have to tear it down and build it back up from scratch. And that is not economically feasible - unless you simply just scrap manufacturing in the US and build shiny those new plants from scratch in the $CheapLocationDeJour (did anyone say Africa????)

While that probably is inevitable, it isn't going to make inroads into the tech field until you can have a remote unit that is as supple, dextrous and reliable as a person at a price point that makes it cheaper than having local guy (plus who services the remote units?) - that would require an Asimov level of technology.

The surgery works because it is a highly specialized, high cost environment that is extremely regulated and controlled - you currently don't just wheel any old patient into a telepresence surgery. Getting a single machine to change the radiator hose on your car (as an opposite extreme example), and then notice that your timing belt is looking iffy is a whole different ball game.

Which is why GE has research centers in Bangalore and Shanghai and IBM has research centers in New Delhi and Beijing (to name just a few companies and locations)

Don't make assumptions about where the smart people in the world are.

Note that a clearance doesn't imply a high paying job either. Recently I have seen ads for IT monkeys with a security clearance to go around various locations and perform some sort installation/maintenance/upgrade. The quoted rate was about $18/hr. And that surprised me as I thought a clearance would have garnered more of a premium. But I suppose an IT monkey is an IT monkey no matter who the customer is.

Even if you are your own boss, if you work in a sector that is susceptible to offshoring,(and you don't offshore yourself), your potential pool of income will be diminishing in a race to the bottom.

Given the quality of "editing" I thought it had already been done years ago.

Any job that requires a physical presence can't be off-shored. And many tech jobs do require a physical presence.

Either:

1. Do something someone else can't do
2. Do something that someone else won't do

Example of #1: Be the best darn $LanguageDeJour expert. But this requires lots of functioning brain cells

Example of #2: Work in places that others would turn down. This only requires lots of guts.

Although in the case of #2 last year I didn't even think twice about not considering a $200k/yr job because it was situated close to a lot of drug cartel violence in Mexico - but the work was available. On the other hand, years ago I made good money on a 6 month engineering project in Siberia and had a great time.

Currently there is a lot of money to be made in large scale engineering projects the middle east. Or recently there was a lot of money to be made in Fly-in/Fly-out work in Western Australia in the mining industry (it seems to have peaked), and possibly the fracking industry in the US. Both of these required people onsite, but the work and living conditions are sub-optimal compared to cubical land anywhere.

I now see that I should have made the /sarcasm tag explicit.

That's not true. E911 compliance does not require a GPS chip. See E911 technology and look at what it says about GSM systems.

You do realize that GSM is the default global standard for cell phones?

You're forgetting that scientists are left wing liberal hippies working in academia who hate capitalism - because if the liked capitalism then they would be working in private industry.

You're also forgetting that logic seems to have gone out the window in this debate.

The key to herding cats is to simply move their food-bowl.

And unfortunately that is also pretty well the basic counter as to why all the science agrees - it's because the scientist's food-bowl ($$$) was moved.