Pakistan has been the (alleged and many a times proven) source of funding for most terrorist attacks. Blackberry has been the alleged/potential medium for communication for terrorists that can not be traced. I see nothing draconian about Indian government requesting Blackberry asking for tracking their data, specially when ever other telecom provider does.

Btw. even today there is a news headline about how Indian police cracked a murder victim by tracking his cellphone calls:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/Infosys-manager-confesses-to-killing-wife-held/articleshow/6308212.cms

May be Indian police men are not able to track such communications in Blackberries.

Countries like India would love to have more Americans :) Bangalore has only about 30 thousand US citizens. More Americans in India would only increase the competitiveness of Indian companies.

Btw. as far as proportions go, Bangalore at any time has more outsiders than locals. The local Kannadigas are 5th when it comes to the population ratio. And perhaps that makes Bangalore more competitive than any other city in India when it comes to Information Technology.

Yes, this is crazy. There are more than "11 million" illegal* Hispanic immigrants to US. The logic is, that by raising the fees for H1B, more money can be raised to control the immigration at the borders. There is nothing wrong with that, as every country has the right to determine the cost of its visa applications. But then is it logical?

The "total" number of H1B's has been 65,000. Out of this, only 20,000 applications got filled last year. And most of these applications are by people who are educated, English-speaking graduates. It does need some qualifications to get into companies like Intel, Microsoft or Infosys, be it any part of the world.

I am wondering what is more harmful to US? Is it those 60,000 underpaid IT-coolies who almost always have a bachelors or masters degree in their hand, or the millions of almost illiterate immigrants who cannot speak English, and out of which "many of them" rely on not-so-legal means of livelihood in US.

I visited a friend in Westchester, NewYork and found it funny that many people there could/would not speak English. It was even more idiotic that many of them had 5 kids, as US government provides child-support for each of them. This poor friend of mine is a Chinese national with a PhD degree who works as a researcher on an H1B, but it was ironic that his wife cannot legally work here even though she has a bachelors from a top university in China.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa

>> For the headlines to be true, you need to first assume the entire world is at war.

War against/for XYZ, where XYZ = Superset of {terrorism, religion, ethnicity, resources, poverty, ego ...}

Do you know a country that is not involved in any of these :)

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/hardware/BlackBerry-to-open-code-for-security-check/articleshow/6249666.cms

Btw, India is indeed in the right company. Things are no different for US.

> That is true, I don't realize the amount of money and effort US agencies spend on this stuff. Do you have numbers, or are you just making stuff up?

- DARPA grants from their tactical and strategic technology offices alone exceeded $40 million for network analysis related projects involving 8 universities. Data for these varies from emails to social network nodes.
- US military projects to IBM are worth above $100 million this year. A big fraction of these deals with data analysis.
- ONR sanctioned more than $10 million for analyzing networks
- US airport names screening heavily relies on mining information, and is a huge project.
- DOD, FBI and CIA all have initiated large projects dealing with network analysis.

Further, if you have to gauge the funding levels for network analysis check out the new faculty recruits in most big universities.

Boo-fucking-hoo to your post.

I want my Government to save me from terrorist threats. Tracing calls from Terrorists has been one of the important tool. And in the past they have. If these telecom providers can cooperate with US agencies, why the heck Indian Govt not expect the same.

Ans seriously, who needs blackberry. Google, Apple, Nokia all provide decent alternatives...

You are ignorant my dear friend...

Your emails, messages and communications are regularly analyzed by DOD for keywords. You won't even realize the amount of money and effort US agencies spend on network analysis, and the amount of funding available for such projects.

What disses me off is so much hypocrisy by American companies. They would co-operate with US federal agencies and provide the required data discretely, but would keep cribbing when other agencies ask for the same.

Cellphone services are cheap in India. (Blackberry services start from Rs 249 per month == $5).

I am not sure which country you are from. But if you are from US, there is a high probability the government already has access to all your emails, cellphone communications and messages. It is not that government cares about who you are, or people whom you talk to. Your communications are merely data nodes where these data elements are part of large networks that go through regular network analysis for keywords. If you happen to be some one from Sudan or Pakistan, with close association defined by your name or some other similarity measure, the chances of such analysis are high.

Now, you may call it a privacy breach. But if this analysis saves lives, why the heck should government not do that?

And if US is allowed to do that, its duplicity to cry foul when India asks for the same?

May be it has nothing to do with rivalry for India. India's problems with terrorism are quite genuine and there have been so many recent cases where the Indian Police have tracked calls to foil terrorist plans or trace them.

Given that Blackberry co-operates so much with US agencies, agrees to set up a server in China that would only be used for political purposes rather than defense or security, it makes sense for India to get dissed. And with almost explosive growth of cellphone users in India, with around 40 million* new users added per year, why should India care about Blackberry? Google, Apple and others have all entered this smart phone segment, and they can all be viable alternatives.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use

Well in general I believe your point of view. But not 100%.

Capitalism is good, but it does require a catalyst in form of benevolent funding for a head-start (from a Government agency). Indian IT companies are (almost) 100% privately owned, but almost all of them started with Govt support in the form of free land and tax breaks. Ditto with IT industry in Texas.

It is not the Government's job to run companies. But Government's help in setting up agencies like NSF, DARPA etc and funding such projects goes a long way in helping research that no other company would ever invest on.

Btw, you talk about NASA constellation project and others. The very reason US can bomb a terrorist hiding along Pakistan and Afghan border without significantly exposing human lives is because it has technologies, many of which originated from federal projects. This culture of innovation in US is what keeps it as the only super power, even when it almost produces Zilch, but still manages to control the top end of the innovation pyramid. If you want an example of capitalism gone wrong, just have a look at US health care. 3.8 trillion dollar of spending on health-care spending in 2008 alone, but its still the shabbiest thing I have even seen ever.

Actually, I am not sure if this the same. Sorry, if it is not.

The news reports mentions about it being produced by academic institutions. It is common for them to have a partner company. But I am not 100% sure.

Here is a link to one of its demonstration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGYHH16XTks

It appears reasonable at a level of a prototype. This dude says that it's available for $30 with $5 overheads. I kind of tend to believe him. It's way far from something like I-Pad. But at this price, if it works, I would call it cute.

Well you are right. It's not magic after all :)

I am assuming assembling cost in India would be extremely low owing to the difference in labor cost. If Government is involved, the project can get breaks from import/export duties for parts. And since Indian Govt is involved, suppliers would also give deep discounts sniffing large orders.

I would be actually happy if these are not high ends. Their goal is not to replace Ipads but to be present as a cheap alternative for Montessori kids who would like to know more about computers and basically learn from it.

There was a similar drive in around 2000, when IISC (a university in India) produced "Simputer" a very early stage handheld device. It was supposed to be a cheap Linux-based device, and at that time it was way better than most palms. Unfortunately, Simputers shifted its focus to more and more advanced features. They are still way better than many Palms I have used. But they are almost dead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simputer