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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...