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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...

- A network administrator has locked up a multimillion dollar computer system for San Francisco that handles sensitive data and is refusing to give police the password, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday. The employee, 43-year-old Terry Childs, was arrested Sunday. He gave some passwords to police, which did not work, and refused to reveal the real code, the paper reported. The new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network) handles city payroll files, jail bookings, law enforcement documents and official e-mail for San Francisco. The network is functioning but administrators have little or no access.

A disgruntled city computer engineer has virtually commandeered San Francisco's new multimillion-dollar computer network, altering it to deny access to top administrators even as he sits in jail on $5 million bail, authorities said Monday. Terry Childs, a 43-year-old computer network administrator who lives in Pittsburg, has been charged with four counts of computer tampering and is scheduled to be arraigned today. Prosecutors say Childs, who works in the Department of Technology at a base salary of just over $126,000, tampered with the city's new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network), where records such as officials' e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law...

India's tech companies, interested in capitalizing on their success in drawing IT outsourcing business from U.S. and other Western countries, are examining what they need to do to capture a broader range of the engineering services business. The National Association of Software and Service Companies in Delhi, India's leading IT trade group, commissioned a study by Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., a McLean, Va.-based consulting firm, to examine the country's potential to gain a larger share of the offshore engineering services business, going beyond software engineering to a swath of industries, including automotive, aerospace, utilities, construction and industrial. The Booz Allen...

Live training and full-scale war games are ideal ways to test physical reflexes and give military trainees hands-on experience with equipment in the real world. However, increasingly various forms of computer-based training, including desktop software applications and full-room simulated environments, provide alternative learning opportunities. "We really believe there are certain skills you can train at each level of fidelity," said Denise Nicholson, director of the Applied Cognition and Training in Immersive Virtual Environments lab at the University of Central Florida. UCF is conducting research on the next version of the Marine Corps' Deployable Virtual Training Environment (DVTE). The corps has...

US slump to prop up India as next offshoring hotspot 14 May, 2008, 0750 hrs IST,Chiranjoy Sen, TNN BANGALORE: Belt-tightening by global technology giants—a fallout of US economic slowdown—is likely to reinforce India as the most preferred offshoring destination. Top technology firms are actively moving part of their workforce from the US, UK and European markets to lower-cost destinations. They cite availability of local talent, better delivery and conducive enviroment as key offshoring reasons. While they may not admit it, firms would be looking at stepping the gas on offshoring to curb bloating costs and to lift margins. Networking and...

Edgar Masri was removed as chief executive of data network equipment maker 3Com Inc. and immediately replaced by Robert Mao, a fluent Mandarin speaker who will be based in China, which the Massachusetts-based firm sees as its biggest market. The management shuffle — which comes a month after a proposed $2.2 billion (€1.4 billion) buyout of 3Com was scuttled because of concern over a Chinese company's role — also brings in Ronald Sege to the new position of chief operating officer and as president of the company, effective Wednesday. Eric Benhamou will remain chairman of 3Com's board, company spokesman Kevin...

The technological and economical development of Scandinavia (including Finland) is today more groundbreking than anywhere else in the world. The investments being made in relation to population size is mind-boggling. Despite a mere population of 25 million inhabitants, the combined GDP of the Scandinavian countries today ridicules that of a Russia often viewed to be a "reborn" super power "on the go" (combined Scandinavian GDP is actually 125% that of of Russia - and the gap is widening!!) But, let's focus on telecommunications here; Five bidders have paid €226 million ($346 million) for fourth generation (4G), super-fast mobile telephony licences,...

The new economics of outsourcing  April 23, 2008  Softtek, a Monterrey (Mexico) provider of IT services, added 30 new clients last year. Most of them had been using Indian firms for at least part of their outsourced IT. But they came to Softtek because they "were looking for something else," says Beni Lopez, CEO of nearshore services for the company, which has operations around the world. Companies that traditionally rely on India for offshore IT services have been looking for that something beyond India for years, citing such reasons as high employee turnover and unreliable communications. But the search has...

I have learned over a long-time here that there are many incredibly gifted folks who occasionally pass time here at FR; now I am in need of some help on a technology question.

BOSTON - Researchers have created a set of computer programs that use electronic medical records to detect contagious illnesses and automatically report them to public health departments. The new system, called Electronic Medical Record Support for Public Health, or ESP, was described in the April 11 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Offshoring of America's Top Jobs Many of America's top jobs are moving offshore. Which jobs are most likely to be hit by "offshoring" and what can you do to protect and safeguard your career?Jobs that are most likely to be moved offshore have these Characteristics: Work is highly repetitive (accounting) Work is predictable and well defined (customer service) Can be broken down into small manageable projects (software development) Can be turned into a routine (Tele-marketing) Proximity to the end customer is not important (phone based tech support of consumer products) End customer has already moved offshore (semiconductor sales) Jobs...

Countering the rancour in the West against outsourcing of jobs, the chairman of IT major Wipro [Get Quote] has said India was not stealing their jobs and its businesses were moving into developed countries, which did not have enough skilled graduates to compete in the global economy. "What is of concern is how serious a shortage of technical talent is building up in the western world. Global companies are going to where not enough young boys and girls are getting into math, science and engineering. That trend is not being reversed," Azim Premji said. Premji said that as Wipro expands...

New Swedish companies are bursting with ideas in IT and biotech. It's time for international investors to sit up and take notice, says leading entrepreneur Johan Staël von Holstein.

Ricardo Franco Levi, Prodi’s right hand man , undersecretary to the President of the Council, has written the text to put a stopper in the mouth of the Internet. The draft law was approved by the Council of Ministers on 12 October. No Minister dissociated themselves from it. On gagging information, very quietly, these are all in agreement. The Levi-Prodi law lays out that anyone with a blog or a website has to register it with the ROC, a register of the Communications Authority, produce certificates, pay a tax, even if they provide information without any intention to make money....

Is there really a labor shortage, or are tech companies lobbying Congress for more visas and green cards simply to avoid paying Americans better wages? With a B.S. in computer science, an M.A. in information systems management, and 20 years of experience, Rennie Sawade would appear to be a strong candidate for a job as a software development engineer. But all the 44-year-old can find these days are short-term, temporary jobs—like the 15-month contract he's currently on at a Seattle-based medical device company. At Microsoft, the most prominent employer in town, he's had contract jobs and even interviews for permanent...

In an interview in yesterday's Washington Post, Hillary Clinton said she had contributed to the country's mood of bitter partisanship and wants to "put an end to it." The senator hedged her words for future revision by referring to the problem throughout the interview only as "it." Thus, she spoke of "having gone through it, having been on the receiving end of it and in campaigns that were hard fought maybe on the giving end of it . . ." When the reporters pressed her to explain her views on polarization, she said: "I've talked about it a lot, and...

Microsoft is weighing up taking a stake in Facebook in a move that could value the social networking site at $10 billion (£5 billion) and trigger a bidding war. It is understood that the world’s largest software developer is considering paying between $300 million (£149 million) and $500 million for a 5 per cent stake in Facebook. A move by Microsoft would almost certainly trigger counter interest from a clutch of rivals including Google, the leader in search advertising, and Viacom, the media giant. Talks between Microsoft and Facebook are thought to be at an early stage and Facebook is...

Jason Atkins is going to court to fight for the right to webcast cockfights. By KEVIN SITES, FRI SEP 7, 4:38 PM PDT MIAMI - Ask Jason Atkins about the Michael Vick dogfighting scandal, and his reaction is anger and disgust. "I just thought, you know, [he's] gotta be the worst criminal I've ever seen," he says. 'Girls and Guns' is among the features on Jason Atkins' ToughSportsLive Web site. Animal rights advocates might find that response surprising, because Atkins's Web network, ToughSportsLive.com, features live cockfighting from Puerto Rico — which, while legal there, is banned now in all 50...

Thousands of people in northern Norway were left without telephone and internet connections earlier this week after a clumsy moose destroyed a switching station.

A church in southern Sweden has refused to allow a wireless broadband antenna to be installed on its tower, after fears were raised that parishoners would stay home surfing for porn instead of attending services. The proposal to install broadband equipment at the church in Hylletofta, 200 kilometres east of Gothenburg, would have brought high speed internet access to the community, where residents currently have to struggle with dial-up connections. But the Church of Sweden decided that the ability to download high quality images and videos could harm the morals of the local population. "The diocese has formally taken the...

Ten Things Your IT Department Won't Tell You By VAUHINI VARA July 30, 2007; Page R1 Admit it: For many of us, our work computer is a home away from home. It seems only fair, since our home computer is typically an office away from the office. So in between typing up reports and poring over spreadsheets, we use our office PCs to keep up with our lives. We do birthday shopping, check out funny clips on YouTube and catch up with friends by email or instant message. And often it's just easier to accomplish certain tasks using consumer technology...

A 75 year old woman from Karlstad in central Sweden has been thrust into the IT history books - with the world's fastest internet connection. Sigbritt Löthberg's home has been supplied with a blistering 40 Gigabits per second connection, many thousands of times faster than the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user has experienced such a high speed. But Sigbritt, who had never had a computer until now, is no ordinary 75 year old. She is the mother of Swedish internet legend Peter Löthberg who, along with Karlstad Stadsnät, the local council's network arm,...

Rising wages prompt firm to pull out of India Image search firm Riya will consolidate operations in the U.S. By Tash Shifrin, Computerworld UK July 02, 2007 Image search firm Riya is to pull its research and engineering operations out of India to consolidate in the U.S. due to rising wages in Bangalore. The company, which is behind visual shopping Web site Like.com and specializes in image recognition software, had maintained offices in both Bangalore and the U.S. despite the difficulties of being based in locations 12 time zones apart because low wages and a strong pool of talent in...

People who have anxiety problems or depression can get just as good help on the Internet as face-to-face with a psychiatrist, according to a Swedish investigation, Now a new Internet service is being expanded. This means Sweden will become the first country in the world to offer cognitive behavior therapy via the Internet as a routine method for treating patients who have problems such as social phobias or panic attacks. Psychiatrists say the online service will compliment traditional care and it means more people can be treated, more cheaply. But critics say sitting at a computer simply can’t be as...

YouTube bites again. A law firm's attempt to get positive exposure for an immigration law conference by posting it on You Tube backfired when an organization that's been tough on H-1B visas and offshore outsourcing copied it and made a controversial video of its own. In the original video, posted by the firm Cohen & Grigsby from a May 15 conference, an attorney is shown advising attendees on how to meet the minimum requirements of advertising a job to U.S. candidates so that a foreign worker can more easily be hired. The firm's conference dealt with the U.S. government's labor...

In the report, some Web researchers say that even if they find a bug accidentally on a site, they are hesitant to disclose it to the Website's owner for fear of prosecution. "This opinion grew stronger the more they learned during dialogue with working group members from the Department of Justice," the report says. Hoffman says in his research, he occasionally won't fill out a required Web form field to see how the application reacts. "At one point [in the working group discussions], one of the federal people said as soon as you knowingly start using a site the way...

Search engine giant Google has slammed Sweden's proposed wiretapping legislation as illiberal and incompatible with Western democracy. Speaking on a visit to Sweden on Tuesday, the company's global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, warned that Google would rule out making any major investments in Sweden should the controversial bill become law. "We have contacted Swedish authorities to give our view of the proposal and we have made it clear that we will never place any servers inside Sweden's borders if the proposal goes through," Fleischer told Internet World. The proposal, which would allow the National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets Radioanstalt -...

Stockholm is investing yet another EUR 70.5 million in Internet services for its citizens. Everything will be accessible on the Internet – the city’s complete public services within schools, childcare and housing for the elderly. The investment will also help make Stockholm the world’s most accessible city for people with functional disabilities.

A potential collaboration between Telenor and Telia could result in extremely high speed broadband for 1.8 million Swedish households. Computer Sweden magazine reports that Telenor has invited Telia for talks about the new vdsl2 technology. The cost of developing a vdsl2 network in Sweden is estimated at 10 billion kronor ($1.5 billion). "The best thing would be for Telia, Telenor and Tele 2 to reach an agreement on how best to finance the investment," Telenor's Swedish CEO Johan Lindgren told Computer Sweden. If implemented, the system is expected to grant almost two million Swedish households access to a broadband capacity...

Sweden will open the first 'diplomatic representation' in the virtual reality of web-based Second Life, a fantasy world inhabited by computer-generated residents, on May 30, the Swedish Institute said Friday. "The Second House of Sweden, the world's first virtual embassy in Second Life will be inaugurated on May 30," the institute said in a statement. Related Articles Swedish taxman sets sights on Second Life 31st January 2007 Sweden to set up embassy in Second Life 26th January 2007 Article Options Send to a friend Printable version Submit to Digg.com Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and Director General of the Swedish...

California continues to employ far more technology workers, pay higher wages and attract more venture capital than any other state. But the overall U.S. tech sector is also growing at a surprisingly brisk clip - for now. That's the conclusion of a highly anticipated annual report by AeA, formerly the American Electronics Association, the country's largest technology trade association. Researchers relied on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, mostly from 2006. According to the 2007 "Cyberstates" report, to be published Tuesday, the U.S. tech industry employed 5.8 million people last year - up 2.6 percent from 2005. The...

US Work Visa Battles   Aired: Monday, April 09, 2007 10-11AM ET By host Tom Ashbrook: America's hard conversation on immigration tends to focus on illegal desert border crossings and low-paid, low-skilled workers. But there's another end of the immigration debate. Highly-educated, high-skilled largely high-tech workers from abroad that the American industry says it desperately needs to compete. Tens of thousands already come every year. Business says it needs more of the planet's best and brightest. Opponents say the program is abused, and the US should educate its own high-tech talent. This hour On Point: the high end of the...

The Internal Revenue Service has not corrected numerous information security weaknesses that impair its ability to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of financial and sensitive information, the Government A. These problems constitute a major weakness in the IRS’ internal controls over its financial and tax processing systems, the Government Accountability Office said. The tax agency experiences gaps in access controls related to user identification and authentication, authorization, encryption, monitoring, and physical security. Data is at risk from weaknesses in configuration management, segregation of duties, media destruction and disposal, and personnel security controls. The IRS has not resolved these vulnerabilities...

"Good morning, you're fired and getting replaced by a software engineer from India with an H-1B visa… April Fools!" This is a bad joke to play on an engineer these days because it is just too close to actually being true. The root of "April Fools Day" goes back to the 1500s when the New Year date was moved from April 1st to Jan 1st. Those who were unaware of the change were open to pranks and jokes. They were the "April Fools". April 1st, 2007, is still however, the beginning of the New Year for H-1B applications and it...

For decades, self satisfied PC politicians from Stockholm have refused to listen to local politicians from Malmö (third biggest city in Sweden and part of the Malmö-Lund-Helsingborg-Copenhagen conurbation of appr 4 million inhabitants) who've said the city just can't handle more immigration. Now it seems to backfire, although the Stockholm IT consultant featured in the article below probably is rather innocent in this context. Inner city/downtown Malmö is still a very nice place, I recently visited it. But it would be foolish to think the city can continue to absorb huge numbers of immigrants lacking the qualifications for a decent...

Why Google put a research lab in Poland Western technology firms are increasingly seeking talent in Eastern Europe. By Colin Woodard | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor KRAKOW, POLAND - When Artur Hibner graduates from college this year, he won't have to worry about getting well-paid work in his field right here in Krakow, Poland's thriving former royal seat. For years, Western technology firms have come to Eastern Europe to lure away talented computer-science graduates like Mr. Hibner, who attends AGH University of Science and Technology. But now, the region's universities are producing so many top programmers that many...

A flashing exit sign is boosting the valuations of venture-backed companies, according to a study released Wednesday. The median valuation of U.S. venture-backed companies—before the capital infusion—climbed to $18.5 million in 2006, the highest level since the boom year of 2000, Dow Jones VentureOne reported. Startups are fetching higher values because the opportunities for a handsome return via an initial public offering or an acquisition have improved, an analyst said. “In 2006, the U.S. had the strongest exit climate in several years with the median pre-money valuation of IPO companies reaching $201.6 million and a median $52 million being paid...

Twenty years before most scientists expected it, a commercial company has announceda quantum computer that promises to massively speed up searches and optimisation calculations. D-Wave of British Columbia has promised to demonstrate a quantum computer next Tuesday, that can carry out 64,000 calculations simultaneously (in parallel "universes"), thanks to a new technique which rethinks the already-uncanny world of quantum computing. But the academic world is taking a wait-and-see approach. D-Wave is the world's only "commercial" quantum computing company, backed by more than $20 million of venture capital (there are more commercial ventures in the related field of quantum cryptography). Its...

Some people claim the iPod index tells you more about the economic situation of different countries than the Burger Index or GDP/capita statistics, in fact, some will even tell you it says more about this issue than any other stats available. Anyhow, In this case, what could one possibly make out of the compilation featured in the article below? What does the economies of Brazil, India and Sweden (my home country) have in common? I've heard of research reporting that Sweden is poorer than Mississippi (at least an internet profile like Instapundit - perhaps not the most frequent visitor to...

How Infinera packs dozens of optical components onto photonic integrated circuits for ultrafast optical networks. Shown here are fourteen 100-gigabit photonic integrated circuits sitting in a plastic carrier for performance testing. Credit: Emily Nathan In his lab in Sunnyvale, CA, ­David Welch, cofounder of telecom startup Infinera, holds up a rigid two-­centimeter-wide strip featuring four patterned, gold-colored rectangles. It's made of indium phosphide, a semiconductor prized for its optical properties. The chip's simple appearance belies its complex engineering and gives little hint that it could be the key to cheaply supplying the bandwidth demanded by a YouTube-addicted world. The gadget...

new data center site selection study echoes findings from a similar one last year: the Midwest is best. Princeton, N.J.-based site selection specialists, The Boyd Company Inc., has published its list of the best places to build a data center, taking into account 50 cities in the U.S. and focused on the healthcare industry. The list compares the annual operating costs of building a 150,000-square-foot facility with 150 employees. Sioux Falls, S.D........$16,131,793 Ft. Walton/Destin, Fla..$16,386,387 Pensacola, Fla..........$16,562,083 Jacksonville, Fla.......$16,879,315 Lee County, Fla.........$17,022,961 San Antonio, Texas......$17,054,703 Ft. Wayne, Ind. ........$17,062,231 Orlando.................$17,076,394 Sarasota/Bradenton, Fla.$17,136,032 Birmingham, Ala.........$17,185,474 ...."This is the outsourcing of the...

Lisa Perry wanted to leave Washington D.C. and come home to Maine after living there during the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, anthrax scares and the Beltway sniper shootings. She quit her job designing databases for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and moved back to the Portland area to live with her parents, returning to Maine after 13 years away. She worked on personal projects and took care of her parents' home for about a year, then started looking for an information technology job in the fall of 2004. She put out a number of resumes, and one ad in...

Apple is purportedly talking to small development company Eneco, which has developed a chip that converts heat into electricity. If it works, it could have a big impact on how IT equipment, and in particular laptops and other mobile devices, are designed and powered. However, there are still several technological issues to be resolved. According to articles at Green Business News and Macworld UK, Dr Lew Brown, president and CEO of Eneco, told investors that its new chip technology “will revolutionize the way we generate electricity.” Eneco is a development stage company that claims to have invented and patented a...

How not to get outsourced IT leaders and analysts point out that business orientation is key. Joanne Cummings October 24, 2006 (Network World) -- When Karl Kaiser took over as CIO for the city of Minneapolis, he found a dysfunctional IT organization. The employees were caught up in technology for its own sake, and very few brains or dollars were focused on the business of running the city. "The city was looking for business value, but we in IT were perceived as the techies who run around with screwdrivers and fix machines," he says. "Over 60% of my management energy...