IBM Seeks US Patents For Offshoring US Jobs

[OhioChick]

"IBM and other corporations are seeking patents for inventions covering the offshoring of US jobs. The USPTO is considering IBM's patent application for Outsourcing of Services, a 'method for identifying human-resource work content to outsource offshore of an organization' to 'countries where cheaper labor prices and/or cheaper materials are available.' Then there's Big Blue's Electronic Marketplace for Identifying, Assessing, Reserving and Engaging Knowledge-Workers for an Assignment Using Trade-Off Analysis, which provides a handy-dandy IBM calculator that drives home the point that you'll pay less for IGS India workers, whether onshore or offshore. And with its System and Method of Using Speech Recognition at Call Centers to Improve Their Efficiency and Customer Satisfaction, IBM describes how to operate in 'low cost foreign countries' with 'support people not having good English language skills, or having an accent that makes it difficult to understand them' by exploiting technology developed for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as other accent reduction techniques."

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/29/1734209&from=rss

[fenriswolf]

1. guess that will make the american worker

have to work for slave wages.....and what does that make the middle class?

[billyoc]

6. Insurgents. n/t

[Deja Q]

7. IBM supported the nazis; all of this is just business to them. Don't take it personally.

One day the Indians will have egg on their faces too.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/27/print/main504730.shtml

Plenty more out there...

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. translation. Pay us to show you how to profitably screw your workers

AND your customers.

[Deja Q]

3. Wow. Just wow.

:(


Mind you, with all the H1Bs coming here* and the rise of middle classes in these other countries, how bad is it all?


* Of their own accord; it's clear nobody's forcing them at gunpoint or whip...

[billyoc]

4. I thought this was a joke, like an Onion story. It's unbelievable.

Excuse me while I smash my thinkpad. :grr:

[Deja Q]

5. IBM sold their Thinkpad division to Lenovo a few years ago...

Lenovo is a Chinese company.

Good product, but one of the files they pre-install has a file with a name identical to that of a keylogger trojan. But as no spyware sees it as a trojan, it must be legit.

[billyoc]

8. Thanks for the heads up, my 2 tp's are oldies.

Pentium III 600 mhz's. I'm a GNU/Linux man, too. :hi:

[NYC]

9. I just got a ThinkPad T22 hand me down with

Pentium III and 900 mhz.

I'm thinking about paying $90 for a wireless N card. Do you think that it advisable? I'm just asking because of its age.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: The battery is dead. The store said $110 for a new one. (I haven't shopped around yet.)

[billyoc]

10. If you can use the N speed, get it. It will work in any other laptop you get.

I've never bothered with even a G card, because all the wifi I do is out in public spaces, so
I can't really take advantage of the speed. I don't bother with wifi at home.

[NYC]

11. I was told to get N speed for outdoor use.

That was at the repair store where I had taken the IBM for breaking through the password. (As I said, it's a hand me down.)

If I can use the very same card in my Hewlett Packard laptop, then it won't be a waste of money.

I will, however, need to buy a new battery if I want to use this in the park.

It has a few problems, but nothing insurmountable. The case won't close because the clasps are broken, but a rubber band will work. :)

The DVD and CD drive is READ ONLY, a nuisance, but I can email things out of the computer instead of writing them onto a disc. I won't waste money on that.

The DVD/CD drive is dented and/or bent. It still works; it's just a little difficult to open and close. The man in the repair store said not to worry about it.

So, altogether, I think $300 will make it entirely usable.

Since you said you have two old Think Pads, can I assume you think this one is worth spending $300 to make it functional?

Again, thanks in advance.

[billyoc]

13. Ooh, $300, that's a lot of money...

I'd look around ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-ThinkPad-T22-Laptop-Computer-no-reserve_W0QQitemZ160160720832QQihZ006QQcategoryZ140083QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

:hi:

[NYC]

14. I already paid a third of it.

The $300 included the price I already paid for breaking the password. Until I did that, I had no idea whether or not the computer would have any value.

Since the wireless N card can be used in another computer, I really shouldn't count that.

I guess my remaining question to you is should I spend $110 on a new battery. (That's assuming I don't find one cheaper, but I haven't shopped around yet.)

The battery in the computer now is absolutely dead. It won't recharge at all when the computer is plugged in. It just remains at 0%.

How old are yours? Do they last a really long time?

Sorry to ask you so many questions, but you're the only IBM Think Pad owner I know. :hi:

Mine is a T22, and was originally purchased in 2000 or 2001.

[billyoc]

16. Oh, ok, it's worth it, then. n/t

[NYC]

17. Thanks.

:hi:

[Bitwit1234]

12. Maybe we should buy anymore IBM products.

[whistle]

15. Patents have to be for actual products, now what they might be able to do is

...make a claim for intellectual property rights to the idea of a systematic way of organizing the steps and procedures of how they go about planning and executing the process of outsourcing. For example, the books and manuals IBM had developed and used for training they can claim are their unique property. So if Microsoft is caught using that material they could then claim infringement on intellectual property. That has been fairly common for corporations to protect their competitive advantage, but it violates the whole free trade thing which of course IBM used to steal tons of ideas especially intellectual property rights over their long history.