Intellectual property piracy is a common problem throughout the third world countries and China has been one of the major offenders.  Rates of pirated software are dropping but more needs to be done.
In 2006, shortly before Chinese President Hu Jintao made a visit to Microsoft headquarters in Seattle, the Chinese government had issued a decree requiring all personal computers manufactured in China to come with a licensed operating system before leaving the factory gates.

Now, nearly two years later, Microsoft is seeing the benefits of more stringent intellectual property policies in China, with a decline in piracy rates and improved results at its "flagship" Windows division.

India and China are losing their competitive advantage on wages, and employers will increasingly look to even lower-cost countries for their operations, according to a study by the Towers Perrin consultancy.

In India and China, wages are expected to rise at a faster clip in 2008 than in 2007, even as inflation is expected to go up at a slower pace.

"The labor markets in those countries are incredibly tight," said Ravin Jesuthasan, managing principal and practice leader at Towers Perrin in Chicago. "It's reflective of the amount of work being poured into those markets, either from booming domestic economies or work being moved from developed economies to India and China."

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Will capitalism be the way to drag the African Continent into the 21st centuryA new breed of entrepreneurs are forging a path in away not seen before by native Africans

With conditions reminiscent of the Wild West, Indiana Jones would be very much at home in this environment. The investment bankers need to swap the business suits for the safari suits as they tackle the investing worlds final frontier. Privative conditions on the ground make China and other typical third world countries look positively prosperous by comparison. The roads are usually unpaved and clogged. Fuel is scarce, and rolling blackouts common. The medical precautions are even more challenging with Mosquito-infested interiors which require multiple injections and constant antimalarial pills. Then there are the local dialects and other language differences to conquer ?

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Despite the recent world business woes and the potential for futher economic downside,  the fourth ranked Indian software services exporter Satyam Computer Services Ltd is seeing no downturn in activity. 
On the contrary,  there is strong evidence to suggest that companies will be putting more effort into cutting costs by further outsourcing as they strive to maintain the bottom line. 
The strong rupee verses the weak dollar adds to an interesting combination, but sources within the company are confident that they can manage this situation.
Investors have been a bit nervous,  but Satyam where able to beat market forecasts in the September quarter with a 28% lift in profit.

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Microsoft Office has dominated the landscape for Office suites for quite a while now.  It looks like this could change however.  OpenOffice is maturing into a competitive alternative,  as is Apple's iWork but at the same time we are also seeing a new trend.  As wider access becomes available to hi speed internet,  and as browsers evolve into more capable applications,  we are seeing the emergence of onine office suites that offer an array of advantages.  Collaboration is one of them which many Engineers would find useful.  Google Docs has been around for a while now and works quite nicely,  especially in how they tie it in with their other products such as GMail but there are also others such as Zoho and Thinkfree. 

Now a new contender has entered the market with a product called Live Documents. The product has been developed by Sabeer Bhatia,  who was also the man responsible for Hotmail back in 1996.  It is said to be very close in interface to Microsoft Office and also to have just about all the functionality.

Forget inflation and the manufacturing figures. Stop looking at the latest existing home sales figures or the data on non-farm payrolls. One of the most accurate indicators of an imminent recession is in and Americans should start tightening their belts.
Winnebago , the makers of the famous recreational vehicles so prominent on the highways of the US, is expected to post a decline in sales this year for the first time in six years. Buying a motor home is seen as the ultimate discretionary item, and over the past three decades, declines have always heralded a rapid slowdown in the US economy.

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In the United States, the “R” word is back. As people in the world’s biggest economy pick at Thanksgiving leftovers, the ghost looming over the remains of the feast is the spectre of recession.

With Christmas not far off, Americans are feeling anything but festive. Consumer confidence is at its lowest for a decade and a half, apart from in the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Polls show that two fifths of US households expect a recession in the next year – up from fewer than a third only a month ago. Glowering at their home computers, the anxious spend ever more time typing the “R” word into search engines.

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Last week, Petrobras , Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, along with its partners BG and Galp, announced that the Tupi field, located in the sub-salt layer off the coast of Sao Paulo, held recoverable hydrocarbon reserves of up to 8bn barrels of oil equivalent. The field is the largest discovery in Brazilian oil history and will increase reserves by over 50%.

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Smaller companies are grabbing a bigger share of U.S. exports, making up for some of the jobs lost as multinational firms move operations overseas.

American businesses without international subsidiaries accounted for 46 percent of sales abroad in 2005, up from 38 percent in 1999, according to a Commerce Department analysis published last week. The trend is likely to continue, helping cushion the economy from the worst housing recession in 16 years, economists said.

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The Indian Economy grew by 9.4 per cent in FY07, driven by the buoyant manufacturing sector, which grew by 12.3 per cent - the highest growth rate in the last six years, a Dun and Bradstreet report here said.

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