Outsource? Nah just stick 500 Indian software coders on a ship just ouside US waters!

[astro]

I never even knew this existed.
Sea-code

public reaction was predictable when word first got out of SeaCode Inc.'s proposal to house 600 foreign software engineers on a cruise ship moored three miles off the California coast, thus undercutting U.S. wage rates and circumventing local labor rules.

The veteran technology columnist John Dvorak described the vessel as a “slave ship.” Other critics preferred the label “sweatshop.” The words “exploitative” and “inhumane” caromed around the Web. The image that first leaped to my own rather more literary mind was of the floating prison hulks that housed the convict Abel Magwitch in “Great Expectations.”

Roger Green tried to take the rhetoric philosophically. “We know we’ll be a lightning rod,” Green, 58, a co-founder and chief operating officer of the San Diego company, told me. “But my hope is we’ll get our story out.”

The story is SeaCode’s plan to help clients overcome the drawbacks of outsourcing sophisticated engineering work overseas. The chief benefit of offshoring — the low pay scales in India and elsewhere — often is offset by the cost of flying executives out to monitor progress, the time difference (you have to be awake at 10:30 p.m. in California to reach India at noon) and the doubtful security of intellectual property abroad.

[ShibbOleth]

Since they’re not in international waters at this distance, shouldn’t all US & California wage, visa and labor laws apply?

[Dewey_Finn]

I don’t think the company or the ship ever went anywhere; the website is three years old and a web search doesn’t come up with anything more recent.

[astro]

@ShibbOleth

Since they’re not in international waters at this distance, shouldn’t all US & California wage, visa and labor laws apply?

From here

Does U.S. labor law apply? Cook: U.S. labor law does not apply except on a U.S. flagship. The flag of the ship will provide the labor law – more than likely [the ship will be registered in] Vanuatu, the Bahamas or Marshall Islands. Their intellectual property laws, as well as the laws governing seamen, are very similar to the United States’.

[mhendo]

@Dewey Finn

I don’t think the company or the ship ever went anywhere; the website is three years old and a web search doesn’t come up with anything more recent.

A Lexis/Nexis search also reveals no stories more recent than September 2005.

[astro]

@mhendo

A Lexis/Nexis search also reveals no stories more recent than September 2005.

My God. They killed them all!! :eek:

[ASAKMOTSD]

There were probably survivors - The Sea-code Six.

[Tripler]

I can see it now: a mutiny after conditions become so harsh takes ‘software piracy’ to a whole new level.

“Yarrr, I’m ‘L33t’ the software pirate, and I sail the seven ‘C’s’. The Web is my playground! Batten down the firewall, let the DoS attack fly! Yahhrrrrrr!”

Tripler
The seven “C’s”, get it? [sub]I slay me. . .[/sub]

[Tristan]

@Tripler

I can see it now: a mutiny after conditions become so harsh takes ‘software piracy’ to a whole new level.

“Yarrr, I’m ‘L33t’ the software pirate, and I sail the seven ‘C’s’. The Web is my playground! Batten down the firewall, let the DoS attack fly! Yahhrrrrrr!”

Tripler
The seven “C’s”, get it? [sub]I slay me. . .[/sub]

Close, but not quite.

While many people forget, or pretend it doesn’t happen, it’s pretty clear the The Crimson Permanent Assurance has struck again.

[don_t_ask]

The Mary C[sup]++[/sup]eleste perhaps.

[ParentalAdvisory]

Almost reads like an Onion article.