I am a Software Engineer residing in India. I have never worked for Outsourcing shops, however most of my friends work there.
I have worked for Product based companies, and I can contrast the two.
Comment on Point 1: Quality: Software applications created by CS students generally are never meant to run for years and have new features added to them. So CS students never focus much on Scalable design, modularity and engineering discipline in general. The discipline in Design, Implementation, Source control and execution was taught to me when I was an intern. Every aspect was reviewed by peers until it met the standards. However, I observed that outsourced project based companies are more focused on delivery/schedule than on quality. I feel that the quality control must be done from outsourcer's end and that too when the code is being developed. This might help them avoid unpleasant surprises.
Point 2: Passion: There is a huge imbalance between number of graduates we produce and number of jobs available in India. This works in favor of students who take up CS studies not because they like it but because they thing they will be employable.
Point 3: People look down at design?? They equally consider System Administration, Document Writing, Escalation handling as inferior.
People are already toying with many ideas to solve this issue. One such idea, was to construct self-contained satellite townships. In Pune, India, a township called "Magarpatta City", has been built. It houses, commerical spaces, Residentials spaces, schools, shopping Complexes, hospitals(http://www.magarpattacity.com/_new/unique.asp , http://www.magarpattacity.com/_new/amenities.asp). All the needs are generally satisfied within the township. This concept really helps in containing the traffic within a township. I believe, in near future, these ideas will be replicated across urban India.
My friends used to come over my place. We used to sit together, discuss what/how to do it, have drinks and complete it. So we essentially converted "Boring task completion time" into "Socializing and fun time".
SUN has variety of technologies especially in Storage(via StorageTek acquisition). Oracle can integrate backup and recovery strategy with StorageTek tapes, ZFS, for example. Also, db failover, High Availability can be achieved leveraging Solaris platform..
Fate of entire civilization is dependent on monsoon rains. In my opinion, there is hardly any way to provision supplies in vast amount. Ground water tables, dams are all dependent on monsoon. Only way is to keep in check the transmission leakages.
In Pune/Hyderabad/Bangalore,
1.Rent (a descent house in good neighbourhood) : $2400/per year
2. If you cook your food and avoid restaurants, food expenses will be around $720/per person
3. Electricity bills: $240/per annum
4. Unlimited broadband(3G - usb): $240/per annum
5. Petrol (Gas)- Assuming you travel 13-km per day : $360/per annum
Total expenses: $3960/per annum
As the matter of fact, entry level salary for software engineer in an ordinary company is $5000 per annum.
Moreover, if you share your apartment, you can still reduce your expenses, and in fact save lot of money.
If the government had not bailed out AIG, it would have declared bankruptcy. In such a case, he would have been effectively jobless. Also, a bankrupt company cannot award bonus. So even as he keeps his job, he dares to complain about bonus. Hypocrisy at its best!!
"Nano" is not meant to compete with Toyota/Honda/GM. Tata Nano offers an alternative to 2-wheeler owners to own a car. Also, Nano is good candidate to replace India's 3-wheeler auto-rickshaws. India's emission norms are based on euro-emission norms. So they are no as lenient as perceived. Moreover, This car is meant to be used for intra-city transport. The speed here is around 30-50km/hr. At such a speed, it is less likely to have fatal accidents. What must be appreciated is Ratan Tata's ambitious vision and excellent execution by Tata Motors to achieve their goal.
Moreover, there is an important lesson to learn. Open source is not the solution for poor revenues. Sun has OpenSPARC, OpenSolaris, Java, OpenOffice, MySql and what not...But in terms of revenue, it hardly made a difference.
This article quotes the acquisition at around $6.5 billion(http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE52H1GS20090318). StorageTek acquisition was $4.1 billion(http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/09/01/HNsunstortekcomple...) and MySql AB acquisition was around $1 billion. That makes $5 billion. So is rest of the Sun worth $1.5 billion? Clearly, it seems that these acquisitions have decreased Sun's valuation, rather than increasing it. Also, I didn't see any point in buying MySql AB for $1 billion.
These guys are not entrepreneur. They are executives(read PHB's). They might not even be good leaders. Henry Ford would have done things differently....