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Development of Information Technology (IT) is facilitating the regeneration of terrorists and thus compounding the fight against terrorism, a sociologist here said. New terrorist cells have become difficult to detect or identify because they were formed with the aid of information technology, said Najib Azca, a professor of sociology with Gadjah Mada University here on Wednesday. "Just by uploading a provocative video on the slaughter of Muslims into a web, radicals can persuade other people to join their jihad." Najib said at a national seminar themed "Violence, Radicalism and Peace Building Efforts in Indonesia." It was now becoming easier and...

Walter Isaacsson has, recently, completed a great work on Steve Jobs. My relatives will probably force me to read it (even though Isaacson was the former head of CNN, they're Conservatives and I'm a 42 year old with a will of my own) but prefer his magnificent study of Einstein as far books go. Anyhow, what do people actually understand about how and in what ways the IT sector of the economy has transformed all of our lives? Being Swedish, I wish to draw attention to what a marvelous revolution a certain poor peasant boy from the region of Värmland...

FR is usually full of smart guys unlike liberals. Had to ask this question, anyone who owns a website probably heard on Filezilla or just heading to your host cpanel to change or update info on your site. Our IT guy is on vacation and we wanted to add some stuff (specifically images) to sub sections say, departments section A or go SECTION B. Like ESPN with basketball as 1 section to NFL to section 2. We opened up Filezilla and all we could find is folder DOCS, CGI BIN, DISTRIBUTOR and IMAGES. The actual sections are missing so we...

Is information technology destroying more jobs than it creates? That’s long been the conventional wisdom, of course. Proponents of IT, on the other hand, point to the new types of opportunities created as a result of the march of technology — from programming to analytics to technicians. However, two longtime proponents of IT as an opportunity creator — Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, both with MIT — have taken a darker view of IT’s impact on the economy. In the latest edition of MIT Technology Review, David Talbot reviewed Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s new book: Race Against The Machine: How the...

An “Occupy Cleveland” protester tells police she was raped in her tent over the weekend.

Xerox, whose CEO, Ursula Burns, is advising President Obama on exports, last week told its product engineering employees that it is in outsourcing talks with India-based IT services firm HCL Technologies... Burns was appointed last year as vice chairwoman of the President's Export Council, a panel of CEOs advising the Obama administration on how to increase exports, which would lead to an increase in domestic jobs... Burns is outspoken on the need to improve the pool of math and science graduates in U.S. schools. In a recent video interview on CNN, she warned that if graduation rates in these areas...

When Jennifer Barassa started her business, she did not even have a computer. She thought she saw a gap in the market, set up in her sitting room and spent her first 30 shillings (35 US cents) paying someone to type a letter for her. Fifteen years later, her marketing promotion agency, Top Image, turns over more than $3m a year and employs more than 300 people in three countries, hired to promote everything from mobile phones to bank accounts to the continent’s growing consumer class. Nor does she intend to stop there: next she wants to take on multinational...

The buzz at Pivot25, a conference for mobile-phone software developers and investors held this June, is all about the future of money. Ben Lyon, the 24-year-old business-development VP of Kopo Kopo, wants $250,000 to produce his app for shops to process payments made by text message. Paul Okwalinga, 28, describes his money app — called M-Shop, it allows you to buy travel tickets and takeout via mobile phone — as "not reinventing the wheel but pimping it." Kamal Budhabhatti, 35, claims Elma, the latest product from his company Craft Silicon, lets a phone do and be almost anything financial —...

Skype, the IP telephony company founded and part-owned by Swedish entrepreneur Niklas Zennström, has been bought bought by US software giant Microsoft, the firms confirmed on Tuesday afternoon. The statement confirmed speculation over the deal to buy the firm, whose product allows users to conduct video and telephone calls over the internet. Microsoft confirmed that the deal is worth some $8.5 billion, dwarfing the $6 billion the US firm paid for online advertising firm aQuantive in 2007 and its largest acquisition since its founding in 1975. The news of the pending deal has shocked analysts who consider the price to...

Why is Scandinavia rich? "- Because of oil", some would reply. It's true Norway has oil. Libiya too has. Libiya, in fact, has even more of it than Norway does. More gas too. But Libiya isn't rich like Norway is. A tour in the average Norwegian family's leisure boat and a vacation spent in their "hytte" - summer house - could probably make them Libiyans reflect upon this issue. In fact, Norway has more dollar millionaires than any other country has. Perhaps it's a matter of playing your cards well.. I personally love Germany (and Norge/Norway as well). Germans are...

If you’re an IT manager or senior IT executive in the evaluation phase for turning over some of your infrastructure to the cloud, you’re not alone. Cloud adoption can vary by industry and organization, but cloud computing is rapidly making inroads into most organizations. According to a recent survey of 600 senior IT and business executives by Savvis, 70 percent of IT decision makers are using or plan to use cloud computing in their own enterprises within 24 months. While concerns about security, identity, SLAs, and other topics are still on the minds of many IT pros, those concerns are...

WASHINGTON – An eHealth agreement, promoting a common approach on the interoperability of EHRs and on training the health IT workforce, was signed between Europe and the United States on Friday. Vice-President of the European Commission Neelie Kroes and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius signed the Memorandum of Understanding in Washington. The agreement aims to boost the potential of the eHealth market for EU companies wishing to do business in the U.S. and vice-versa. "Nothing makes more of a difference to people's lives than good health," said Kroes. "I warmly welcome today's agreement. It is an excellent basis for the Commission...

An (I/T) H1B who works at my company is returning to India because his visa expired. When one of my peers asked him if he has a job in India yet, the H1B just waved his hand and said, “there are plenty of jobs in India; I am not worried about that.”. It is amazing how far America has fallen.

News Desk: Breaking News! In a condemnable incident, an unidentified low-profile man ripped pages out of a Quran and burnt them outside the proposed Community Center and Mosque near Ground Zero. Even though Pastor of the Florida Church Terry Jones cancelled his plan to burn the Quran due to international pressure and criticism, the unidentified zealot did not bother and set the Quran pages on fire. "If they can burn American flags, I can burn the Quran. Americans should never be afraid to give their opinion", he said. The news was first reported by the New York Daily News. Even...

The July 2010 Dice Report shows that software development skills in general and C# skills in particular are more in demand this year, making Dice's top 10 list of in-demand skills. In addition, Dice reports that there are more open full-time IT positions this year than last year at this time. But the numbers are still a far cry from the number of open positions in July 2008. The July 2010 Dice Report shows that software development skills in general and C# skills in particular are more in demand this year, making Dice's top 10 list of in-demand skills. In...

U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers $22 million, federally-backed program aims to help outsourcers in South Asia become more fluent in areas like Java programming—and the English language. By Paul McDougall, InformationWeek Aug. 3, 2010 URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226500202 Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $22 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia. Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business...

Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $22 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.

It gets crazier with each passing day. Today we learned that Obama has proclaimed NASA’s new foremost task is to reach out to the Muslim world and make the Muslim people feel good about their historic contribution to science. As far as actual space flight goes, it seems NASA won’t go into space anymore beyond low Earth orbit, although it may form partnerships with other nations for this purpose.

Sweden has the world's most hooked-up economy, according to a new report from the World Economic Ranking (WEF). Nordic countries all performed well on the list in the WEF Global Information Technology report released on Thursday. Sweden displaced Denmark to rank first on the chart, with the Danes sliding to third place. Other Nordic countries were also in the top 10, with Finland in sixth place and Norway in tenth. Singapore crept closer to the top, moving up from fourth place last year to second place now. Fellow Asian economy Hong Kong was in eighth place, also gaining from 12th...

Intimidation of Foreign Workers Now Aimed at Americans: Facebook, Yahoo, Comcast Drawn In Donna Conroy, Director of Bright Future Jobs and John Doe, the administrator of Endh1b.com named in the suit comment on the New Jersey order, Apex Technology Group vs. John Does. Nuisance lawsuits and threats of legal entanglement, long used by Indian H-1b labor contractors to silence Indian tech workers, have now been aimed at an American tech worker website, endh1b.com, for reposting an Indian H-1B worker's testimony of mistreatment by Apex Technology Group, including a link to an employment contract binding the worker to Apex. Bond agreements...

The US government appears to be loosening its grip on the governance of the Internet, a move welcomed by many. But critics see the government shirking its obligations to support free expression and free trade. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the private corporation that coordinates the technical oversight of the Internet's Domain Name System through a longstanding agreement with the U.S. government, on Wednesday announced a new agreement with US Department of Commerce designed to make Internet governance less unilateral and more open to international input. Questioning NTIA's statutory authority, Auerbach suggests that if NTIA can...

US Government recommends weighing laptop before and after each visit. Senior executives in US IT companies have been advised by the US Government to follow extremely strict policies for visits to China which extend far beyond standard software protection. The policies encourage them to leave their standard IT equipment at home and to buy separate gear only for use in China. Mark Bregman, chief technology officer at security firm Symantec said he left his MacBook Pro behind in the US and took his MacBook Air whenever he flew to China. Bregman said he only ever used the Air in...

This is Congressman Eugene Green (HT to an e-mailer), Democrat from Texas, telling the world that if you're not from his District, you're not welcome at his future town hall meetings -- oh, and how he'll enforce his new rule (bold is his):

U.S. IT providers continue to push jobs offshore, while Indian firms work to refine the amount of work they complete overseas. Although Congress may force the Indian firms to hire more Americans -- and Indian companies have been telling investors that they may have to indeed do that -- the change won't likely affect the overall trend and the shift in jobs outside the U.S. Okay, so where are U.S. jobs going? What's the data show? Data prepared by Everest Group Inc., a research and outsourcing consulting firm, shows in broad brush fashion the shift of jobs overseas by some...

WASHINGTON -- Federal agencies are facing a severe shortage of computer specialists, even as a growing wave of coordinated cyberattacks against the government poses potential national security risks, a private study found.

One of the challenges of working in the IT field is staying on top of emerging technologies - while letting go of those that are becoming obsolete. This Global Knowledge article lists 10 areas that are fading into obscurity. There are some things in life, like good manners, that never go out of style. And there are other things, like clothing styles, that fall in and out of fashion. But when an IT skill falls out of favor, it rarely ever comes back. Here’s our list of 10 dying IT skills. If any of these skills is your main expertise,...

U.S. citizens have a brand-new tool to gauge how well their government is performing -- at least, when it comes to IT. Cringely says it's about time. Want to know exactly where all those ducats you reluctantly turned over to our Uncle in Washington are going? Things just got a little clearer today, at least in terms of our tech taxes. Today at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City, federal tech czar Vivek Kundra unveiled the new IT Dashboard at USAspending.gov, which shows you exactly where all those sawbucks are flowing, in dollar amounts that could make you...

A powerful new film, The Stoning of Soraya M., is calling public attention to the Islamic practice of stoning adulterers in a way that only Hollywood can; while at least eight women await death by stoning in Iran today, none of their cases have drawn any significant protests from human rights organizations, and Western governments have remained largely indifferent. With a genocidally inclined nuclear Iran looming on the international stage, the victimization of women by Islamic laws prescribing stoning for adultery and other sexual crimes may seem to be the least of our worries. The Stoning of Soraya M., however,...

Tech layoffs will continue through year-end, survey says. The real impact of the nearly $800 billion stimulus package on shrinking IT employment remains in the future, despite President Obama's plan, announced today, to expedite hiring of some 600,000 people over the next 100 days. Many of the jobs in this summer boost will be aimed at the construction and education fields and at young people. Meanwhile, the forecast for the next six months is for more tech sector layoffs, according to a new survey. Of the 1,900 technology recruiters and hiring managers queried about the tech labor market by jobs...

CurtMonash writes "The Indianapolis Star reports that Tuesday Morning, Methodist Hospital turned away patients in ambulances, for the first time in its 100-plus history. Why? Because the electronic health records (EHR) system had gone down the prior afternoon — due to a power surge — and the backlog of paperwork was no longer tolerable. If you think about that story, it has a couple of disturbing aspects. Clearly the investment in or design of high availability, surge protection, etc. were sadly lacking. But even leaving that aside — why do problems with paperwork make it necessary to turn away patients?...

The last five years have taught me that I bring only three skills to the anti-jihad movement. The first is a knack for writing propaganda. By “propaganda” I do not mean the 20th-century version as practiced by the Nazis, the Soviets, the New Deal, and other huge and repressive state enterprises. I use the word in its original sense, which was derived via the Romance languages from the Latin verb propagare, “to cause to increase or spread, as of a plant”. In the 18th century it referred to the work of a committee of cardinals (congregatio de propaganda fide, “the...

May 13th, 2009 China's 'secure' OS Kylin - a threat to U.S offensive cyber capabilities? Posted by Dancho Danchev @ 6:23 am Categories: Browsers, Complex Attacks, Governments, Hackers, Kernel-level Exploits... Tags: China, Operating System, Operating Systems, Linux, Software... Picture a cyber warfare arms race where the participating countries have spent years of building offensive cyber warfare capabilities by exploiting the monoculture on one another’s IT infrastructure. Suddenly, one of the countries starts migrating to a hardened operating system of its own, and by integrating it on systems managing the critical infrastructure it successfully undermines the offensive cyber warfare capabilities developed...

Staff unwittingly give usernames to someone posing as IT support: Have you ever wondered whether that unfamiliar face in the office is actually an intruder about to steal your data? Probably not, but maybe it is time to think again. At one FTSE-listed financial institution the managing director himself opened the door to a stranger who, within 20 minutes of gaining entry to the building, had found a highly sensitive document outlining a half a billion pound merger lying on a desk. Luckily, on this occasion, the data was not used for nefarious purposes because the intruder was Colin Greenlees,...

China to put squeeze on foreign firms / IT companies must reveal product secrets The Yomiuri Shimbun The Chinese government has decided to launch a system next month to force foreign manufacturers of digital household appliances and other items equipped with computing devices to disclose key information, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Thursday. The move is aimed at controlling the makers' products when their goods are made or sold in China. Beijing likely has informed Tokyo and Washington that detailed provisions to enforce the system will be announced by the end of this month. The Chinese government likely will give manufacturers...

These two videos staring Blendtec founder, Tom Dickson, tackle the Bailout and Global warming, while showing off the Blendtec Total Blender: Will It Blend? - BailoutWill It Blend? - Skis & Global Warming For those who don't know what Blendtec is, they are a Blender and Food Preparation Appliance company. This is from their "about" section: See what the Total Blender can do in the Blendtec test lab, as we ask the question, Will It Blend? Enjoy!

The Obama administration has picked Boston physician David Blumenthal as national coordinator for health information technology at the Department of Health and Human Services, making him a critical part of the effort to overhaul the U.S. health-care system. In the short term, Blumenthal will oversee distribution of about $19 billion of stimulus act funds for getting doctors and hospitals to computerize their records.

Unknown before 2008, the Indian Mujahedeen (IM) has emerged as a well-organized jihadi terrorist group in India, claiming responsibility for a number of terror attacks perpetrated in various urban centers of India during 2007-2008. Even though the exact moment of IM’s formation is not known, the recent arrest of a number of IM operatives has revealed its possible existence and involvement in terror strikes in India as far back as late October 2005. The name “Indian Mujahideen” was reportedly conceived at a terrorist conclave attended by top leaders of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami (HuJI) in Pakistani-administered Kashmir in...

Remember the favorite dodge of politicians asked how they plan to pay for their latest pie-in-the-sky program? “We’ll eliminate fraud, waste and abuse,” they’d promise. Right. Well, move over, FW&A, there’s a new dodge in town–improved information technology. And it will apparently save enough to go a long way toward paying for the health care insurance of 46 million Americans! At today’s White House press corps briefing, CBS’ Chip Reid asked this surprisingly good question: “For people not terribly sophisticated about all this like me and average viewers out there, it just seems counter-intuitive that you would insure 46-some million...

French fighter planes grounded by computer virus French fighter planes were unable to take off after military computers were infected by a computer virus, an intelligence magazine claims. by Kim Willsher in Paris Last Updated: 11:43AM GMT 07 Feb 2009 The aircraft were unable to download their flight plans after databases were infected by a Microsoft virus they had already been warned about several months beforehand. At one point French naval staff were also instructed not to even open their computers. Microsoft had warned that the "Conficker" virus, transmitted through Windows, was attacking computer systems in October last year, but...

Terry Childs, the man whom prosecutors allege hijacked San Francisco's municipal computer network, will get another chance to meet with mayor Gavin Newsom. And this time the tête-à-tête will be in court instead of jail. Childs, a network engineer, was hired by the city to work on the municipal network, which is used for city employee payroll and other services. When a dispute arose with his boss, Childs was jailed and refused to turn over critical system information such as passwords to anyone but Newsom. Defense Attorney Richard Shikman has as the court to have the criminal charges of felony...

Mobile broadband users in Stockholm will soon be able to surf the internet on a new high speed 4G network, following the signing of a deal between Ericsson and TeliaSonera. The order from Finnish-Swedish telecom provider TeliaSonera marks the first commercial deployment of Ericsson’s Long Term Evolution (LTE) network technology and will provide mobile internet users with data speeds up to ten times faster than those offered on current networks. "LTE brings the highest possible performance and network capacity, which is needed to meet the needs of the fast growing group of mobile broadband users around the world,” said Ericsson’s...

Satyam Computer Services, a leading Indian outsourcing company that serves more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies, significantly inflated its earnings and assets for years, the chairman and co-founder said Wednesday, roiling Indian stock markets and throwing the industry into turmoil. The chairman, Ramalinga Raju, resigned after revealing that he had systematically falsified accounts as the company expanded from a handful of employees into a back-office giant with a work force of 53,000 and operations in 66 countries. Mr. Raju said Wednesday that 50.4 billion rupees, or $1.04 billion, of the 53.6 billion rupees in cash and bank...

Kevin Roddy, vice president of information technology for 3rd Federal Bank in Newtown, Pa., didn't specifically set out to create a socially responsible IT department, but common sense technology and business practices led him in that direction anyway. "The IT decisions we make are designed to help us better serve our customers, and they usually turn out to be beneficial to a wider community as well," he says.

No job cuts in India's IT industry: Infosys co-chair 22 Oct, 2008, 1304 hrs IST, IANS Print EMail Discuss Share Save Comment Text: TOKYO: There will be no pink slips in the Indian information technology industry as it has countered the impact of the current global financial tsuna mi well, according to Nandan Nilekani, co-chairman of Infosys Technologies. "The fundamentals in the information technology sector are strong. I do not see any job cuts," Nilekani, who is a member of a business delegation accompanying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here, said on the margins of a meeting here. "At Infosys, we...

I was just watching Fox News and they have looks at the latest Fed Data and it turns out that 92% of Banks are fine and issuing credit to safe and moderately safe credit applicants. This is a bailout for business and consumers with Bad credit! This is a bailout to encourage the issuing of more loans and credit to HIGH RISK individuals and businesses. Isn't that what got us into this mess in the first place?

The Gangs all here. Who was sleeping with the enemy? Of the eight appearances Frank made on the three broadcasts networks between Jan. 1, 2008, and Sept. 21, 2008, none of his comments dealt with the potential conflicts of interest… The Washington Post reported Frank, who is openly gay, had a relationship with Herb Moses, an executive for the now-government controlled Fannie Mae. The column revealed the two had split up at the time but also said Frank was referring to Moses as his “spouse.” Another Washington Post report said Frank called Moses his “lover” and that the two were...

FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. - Minnesota's No. 1 politician received plenty of encouragement Friday from his constituents about the possibility of being Republican John McCain's No. 2, but Gov. Tim Pawlenty offered few clues about his prospects in return. Pawlenty maneuvered through the Minnesota State Fair, chowing down on fried food and getting an upclose look at some giant snakes. Like the python, rattlesnake and bull snake that appeared as guests on his weekly radio show, the governor squirmed his way around the question that seemed to be on a lot of minds: Will he uproot for a chance to be...

In a stunning admission, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Ensign (Nev.) on Friday morning blasted his GOP colleagues for not doing enough to help the committee financially, and he said he would have to scale back the NRSC’s independent expenditure budget as a result.

For India's Tech Titans, Growth Is Waning By NIRAJ SHETH August 20, 2008; Page A1 NEW DELHI -- India's information-technology industry, the engine of the nation's economic resurgence, is losing steam. A decade ago, a host of Indian companies -- led by Infosys Technologies Ltd., Wipro Ltd. and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. -- shot to global prominence by helping fix the "millennium bug" that threatened to crash many of the world's computers at the end of 1999. Often growing at 40% a year or more since, they quickly helped build a global tech-outsourcing industry that has changed how the world...

The mayor of San Francisco has obtained the password to the city's multimillion-dollar computer network password from a disgruntled employee during a secret jailhouse visit, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. On Monday night, Mayor Gavin Newsom met Terry Childs, a Department of Telecommunications and Information Services employee charged with computer tampering, in a secret meeting and walked away with the password to the city's new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network), the Chronicle said. The system stores such records as officials' e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail bookings. Childs has been held since July 13 and had reportedly...