Filter looks at the day's top technology news through snapshots and analysis of what the world's media outlets are covering. Washingtonpost.com's new Mon.-Fri. feature is penned by technology reporter Cynthia L. Webb. If a technology story breaks, a company falters or triumphs, or there's a new trend in technology, Filter wants you to know about it.
The same News.com article explained more on how the tech sector has focused on the outsourcing debate: "Among the concerns surrounding the offshore trend is that the flow of programming and other technology work overseas, combined with problems in the U.S. educational system and decreasing investment in research and development, puts the country's technical prowess in jeopardy. But technology leaders have countered that sending work to lower-wage nations is good for the U.S. economy and that protectionist measures would result in lower economic growth and higher unemployment."
• CNET's News.com: Lost Your Job? Don't Look Overseas
Among those tech leaders is Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape Communications and now chairman of Silicon Valley-based software company Opsware. Andreessen answered a question about his company's use of outsourcing during a Live Online chat I moderated yesterday. Here's what he had to say:
"I think offshoring is a good thing for the American economy and the American worker because it helps markets grow and helps our economy adapt to new opportunities," Andreessen replied. "Opsware itself does a little offshoring (we are setting up a small development operation in India), although most of our developers are in the US today and will remain in the US (which is still the best place for a US company to do real R&D, and always will be). More significantly than that, though, our customers are doing a lot of offshoring. Not to name specific names, but it's a pretty common thing that they are moving some tech operations jobs offshore (to India, or South America, or Eastern Europe), to cut costs on the operations side, and then they are taking many of the dollars that frees up and spending them on new development projects, including hiring new developers, often in the US. Our software helps them do that, since our software makes it a lot easier to put servers one place and the people who run them somewhere else. I'd certainly expect a lot of that over the next 5-10 years."
Politics of Outsourcing
President Bush and his Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry, have addressed the outsourcing debate, albeit fleetingly, in the 2004 campaign. The issue has taken the back-seat to the Iraq war, health care and even corporate reform. Bush is generally supportive of outsourcing, while Kerry has put out a lot of rhetoric about punishing "Benedict Arnold CEOs" who send American jobs overseas.
More from The Wall Street Journal on how the outsourcing debate has played in the political arena: "The improving economy has turned down the volume on the election-year outsourcing debate. The Bush administration has endorsed the view that sending U.S. service jobs abroad probably is a plus for the economy in the long run, because foreign workers can do the jobs more cheaply, reducing costs for U.S. consumers and companies. Dozens of U.S. state legislatures, responding to the furor over white-collar jobs being sent overseas, have considered antioutsourcing bills. The business lobby has killed or weakened every proposal to prohibit government work from being sent abroad."
The Washington Post aptly noted that the Labor Dept. "report comes at a time when the offshoring issue has become less heated, in large part because of an upturn in the economy that has added nearly 1 million jobs over the past three months. It may thus provide further solace to the Bush administration, which came under criticism earlier this year when the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, N. Gregory Mankiw, described the movement of some jobs overseas as 'probably a plus for the economy in the long run.' Although many economists rushed to Mankiw's defense, he was quickly forced to clarify his comments by stating that 'any loss of jobs is regrettable.'"
The Labor Department of course stands by its data. The agency hopes the study will "'lend some credence to this whole outsourcing debate because there's really no hard data out there,' said Lewis Siegel, a senior economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics who oversaw the report." Siegel's quote was carried by Knight Ridder. BLS economist Ken Levasseur, according to The Chicago Tribune's article, "acknowledges the report's limitations. The numbers 'are a piece of the puzzle' that should be useful to policy-makers and economic analysts, Levasseur said."
• The Chicago Tribune: Report Finds Few Jobs Moving Abroad
Outsourcing, Coming To A Theater Near You?
The Seattle Times has a feature article today on Santa Monica, Calif., filmmaker Greg Spotts, who is making a documentary on outsourcing and its impact on American workers: "With a $3,500 digital camera -- a gift from his mother and wife -- and borrowed lighting and sound equipment, Spotts visited 15 cities from January to April, usually crashing on a friend's couch. He interviewed those at the center of the trend, both in manufacturing and technology: laid-off Boeing workers in Seattle, computer programmers in Florida, garment workers in Los Angeles. These were folks whose jobs had moved to India, Turkey or China. Their social fabric, often intertwined with work, was torn. Their unemployment benefits were running out. Their health coverage was gone," The Seattle Times wrote. "Although he touts 'American Jobs' as a nonpartisan film, Spotts plans to sell it on labor-union Web sites and activists' organizations as well as on his own site, americanjobsfilm.com. He plans to keep the price below $20."
• The Seattle Times: Outsourcing -- The Movie
Update From the Spam Wars
Microsoft has fired off another round of lawsuits against suspected spammers. "These spammers sent millions of emails individually -- some hundreds of millions -- soliciting a variety of products including body enlargement pills, prescription drugs, dating services, university degree programs and work-at-home and get-rich-quick scheme offers," Microsoft said in a statement, picked up by Reuters. The wire service said Microsoft, "which filed its first major lawsuit against spammers last July, says it is pursuing more than 80 lawsuits around the world against senders of unsolicited e-mail. Of those, 51 lawsuits were brought in the United States."
• Reuters via washingtonpost.com: Microsoft Files Eight New Lawsuits Against Spammers (Registration required)
In other spam news, cable Internet service provider Comcast is playing hard ball with some suspected spammers. The company "said it will block what's known as 'port 25' for accounts suspected of sending mass amounts of unsolicited e-mail. The company will implement blocks based on subscriber accounts with the most outbound activity," CNET's News.com reported. "Port 25 is a gateway that most computers use to send e-mail. That's because a technical specification called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), which lets people send and receive e-mail, operates on the port. 'We are singling out spammers on our network and blocking port 25,' said Mitch Bowling, Comcast's vice president of operations. 'We don't think it's the right approach to blanket port 25. The right approach is to seek out people who are spamming our network and others.'"
• CNET's News.com: Comcast Takes Hard Line Against Spam
Digital Merrymaking
Business Week's cover package on its annual ranking of the top 100 "InfoTech" companies focuses this year on digital convergence in the tech sector. An excerpt: "What's this, A digital role-playing game? There's Dell Inc. selling flat-screen TVs. Microsoft Corp. execs are unveiling a system to compete with the iPod that plays movies as well as music. And Cisco Systems Inc. is hawking a Wi-Fi boombox you can carry out by the pool. Nearly everyone, it seems, is venturing far from their specialties. And it's not just tech companies. TV manufacturers in Japan and cell-phone makers in Korea are jerry-rigging their products with microprocessors and software, racing to turn them into a new generation of digit-gobbling, network-ready contraptions."
• Business Week: Big Bang!
Half-Life Caper Solved?
Who would have thought that video gaming would become such a lucrative industry that the feds would get involved in solving the theft of one game's software code? "Arrests have been made in the theft of computer code behind Half-Life 2, which is expected to be one of this year's best-selling titles, the game's manufacturer announced yesterday," The Washington Post reported. "The theft last year had a role in the delayed delivery of the game, originally scheduled for release in September 2003, as Valve Corp., based in Bellevue, Wash., rewrote parts of its programming and assisted in an FBI-led investigation. Valve chief executive Gabe Newell said at the time that he believed the code was stolen by hackers from a company computer. Half-Life, the game's predecessor, has sold more than 8 million copies since being released in 1998; the game marked Valve's debut, and it remains a cornerstone of the company's business. The sequel is now scheduled for release this summer."
• The Washington Post: FBI-Led Task Force Makes Arrests In Theft of Game Code (Registration required)
"The hackers stole the source code and distributed portions online in one of the worst data thefts to hit the video game industry, prompting fans to pledge their help," Reuters said. "It was extraordinary to watch how quickly and how cleverly gamers were able to unravel what are traditionally unsolvable problems for law enforcement related to this kind of cyber crime," Valve's Newell said.
• Reuters: FBI: Arrests Made In 'Half-Life' Game Hacking Case
CNET covered the news as well, though there were little specifics to report. "Valve did not offer any information on the identity, nationality or legal status of the suspects and referred all questions to the FBI's regional Cyber Crime Task Force in Seattle. An FBI representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNET News.com. The agency told GameSpot, a News.com sister site, only that it had made some arrests in the case."
• CNET's News.com: Suspected 'Half-Life' Code Thieves Arrested
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