Free Republic

<p>Facing a drop in funding and a tough job market for technology professionals, the Department of Labor is poised to kill a program that trains Americans to fill positions held by foreign guest workers.</p> <p>The department created the H-1B Training Program in the late 1990s as a way for Americans to learn skills in high demand by employers. The funding came from fees employers of foreign workers paid to get H-1B visas, which allowed the foreigners to take technical jobs that went unfilled during the dot-com boom. The Labor Department used those fees and other funding to pay $328 million in scholarships and grants to community groups to develop training programs for U.S. citizens and permanent residents.</p>

Knight, Smith in public spat BY PATRICK GONZALES A-J SPORTS EDITOR A popular Lubbock lunch spot was the scene Monday of a verbal dust up between Texas Tech Chancellor David Smith and head basketball coach Bob Knight. Knight and Tech athletic director Gerald Myers did not return repeated telephone calls Monday seeking comment. Smith would say only that the university will have a comment at the appropriate time. ``I can't comment on it. It's a personnel matter,'' Smith said. An eyewitness to the incident gave the following account to The Avalanche-Journal: Smith was having lunch with another Tech employee at...

A new Israeli invention called “Voice Analysis Eyeglasses” has created a new brand of lie detectors that make the need for wires and electrodes absolute. In fact, the new lie detector developed in Israel is so inconspicuous that one may not even know they are being monitored. The glasses provide lie detection analysis on the inside of their lenses about whoever is speaking at the time, claims Nemesysco, the Israeli company which developed the new technology. Mathematician Amir Lieberman at Nemesysco’s headquarters in the town of Zuran, developed the glasses for military, insurance claim, and law enforcement use. The technology...

A new e-mail worm that first appeared on the Internet this afternoon is spreading rapidly, according to leading security companies. The worm is being called several names by antivirus software vendors, including W32/Mydoom, Shimg, Novarg and Mimail.R. It is now being analyzed by the antivirus companies. Experts differed on the worm's payload, but said it is spreading faster than Sobig-F, the most widespread email worm of 2003. "It has been moving very quickly for the past three hours and has been generating a hell of a lot of e-mail," Vincent Gullotto, vice president of the Anti-Virus Emergency Response Team at...

ADA — Employees at Sykes were given news Tuesday they would be out of a job by early March. The Ada Evening News received several phonecalls from persons claiming to be Sykes employees who asked to remain anonymous. One caller said, “We were asked not to speak to the media.” Another employee of the computer support call center who asked not to be identified said she was afraid she would be fired and not be eligible for benefits if company officials knew she had talked to the media. Many of the callers blame the shut down on the opening of...

Israel's Amos-2 telecommunications satellite was to lift off just before midnight last night atop a Russian rocket in Kazakhstan, ensuring Israel's firm membership in the international space market. The 160-kilo satellite, built by Israel Aircraft Industries' MBT Division, is expected to eventually reach a geo-stationary orbit, where it will provide cellular phone and on-line data links, and television transmissions. Only seven other nations are capable of developing and producing communication satellites. As much as the design and construction of a communication satellite is a source of pride for this small country, the Zionist endeavor is almost totally a business venture...

<p>Ultra-wideband: Imagine a television that can wirelessly send three different programs to separate monitors. Low-power, low-cost, and with roughly 45 times the data transmission speed of run-of-the-mill Wi-Fi, this wireless technology is finally ready to debut in the living room.</p>

<p>The advertisement for the brand new Smith & Wesson handgun promised it all.</p> <p>"Safe for the expert," the ad stated. "Safe for the layman, his family and friends. Safe for the novice. Safe from the child and the careless. Safe from all possibility of discharge from a blow, fall, or any kind of accident.</p>

Associated PressIBM Claims Nanotech BreakthroughMonday December 8, 12:07 am ETBy Brian Bergstein, AP Technology Writer IBM Researchers Claim They Have a Nanotech Breakthrough That Works With Existing Chip Design NEW YORK (AP) -- Researchers at IBM Corp. claim they have made an important breakthrough in the race to design circuitry at the molecular level: a system that works with existing methods of electronics manufacturing. ADVERTISEMENT In a paper being released Monday at an industry conference in Washington, D.C., IBM researchers Chuck Black and Kathyrn Guarini say they used a naturally occurring pattern of molecules as a stencil to etch flash...

<p>The use of unmanned aerial vehicles and other technology could help curb smuggling on the U.S.-Mexico border, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Wednesday.</p> <p>Ridge said such technology could reduce illegal immigration and cut deaths among border-crossers. Many migrants die of heat exposure and in accidents while crossing the harsh Arizona desert.</p>

Whew! For a minute there I thought the growing trend of sending technology jobs overseas was another example of Silicon Valley companies caring more about profits than people. But no, no, no. Such thinking is wrong-headed. Ask the companies that are moving work to India, China and elsewhere. They're doing it to ``be close to our customers'' or to ``follow the sun'' or to ``free workers up to do more exciting jobs.'' They are definitely not -- and this is important -- they are not doing it to find cheap labor and bigger profits. In fact, such thinking is hurtful....

Cash machines infected with worm11:02 26 November 03 NewScientist.com news service Cash dispensing ATMs belonging to two US financial institutions were shut down when the computer worm Welchia invaded their embedded Windows XP operating systems in August. Diebold, the Ohio-based company that makes the machines, revealed the security breach on Tuesday. It is the first known case of a worm actually installing itself on individual ATM operating systems, says Peter Lind, a security expert at Spire Security in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Earlier in 2003, the Blaster worm shut down Bank of America ATMs, but only by causing a flood of traffic that clogged the...

<p>Tech-related job losses in the USA this year are expected to be less than half the 539,000 in 2002. That's because the industry has reached the bottom of its three-year slide, finds an annual economic study by the American Electronics Association released Wednesday.</p>

Why This Tech Bubble Is About to BlowA year after the market hit bottom, tech stocks are back to dangerously inflated levels. Sadly, there's only one way this can end.By Paul Sloan, Michael V. Copeland (November 2003 Issue) As is their normal state on a busy September trading day, Seth Tobias's phones were lit up like Times Square, and at the other end of the line was a broker with an investment "idea." "Have you looked at Vignette (VIGN) lately?" the salesman urged. "Or Verso Technologies?" Both were software companies that had raised millions of dollars in boom-era IPOs and...

On each weekday, some 600,000 vehicles use the Ayalon Highway, which serves as a fast metropolitan freeway for the millions of inhabitants of the Tel Aviv metropolitan region. The Ayalon Highway is one of the best roads in Israel. Built to the highest standards, it enjoys a high standard of maintenance and supervision. It was designed as a freeway, with 4 to 5 lanes in each direction, from the Herzlia interchange in the north, to the Holon and Kibbutz Galuyot interchanges in the south. The section of the freeway to the Holot interchange will be completed shortly. In January 2000,...

The U.S. Congress has approved an allocation of $57 million for the critical stage of the development of the Nautilus laser anti-rocket technology. Nautilus is a joint Israeli-U.S. project that turns fantasy into reality: Katyusha rockets detected by radar can be destroyed in mid-air by a Nautilus-system laser beam. Israel's Defense Ministry, together with American defense experts, began working on the project several years ago, and four years ago ran successful tests in the deserts of New Mexico. Israel, which is to pay "matching funds" for the project, is threatened by over 10,000 Hizbullah rockets on its northern border. AP...

I'm getting them ever few seconds, and from a variety of sources (it appears, at least according to my firewall log). Any techie info/advice would be appreciated.

<p>SAN FRANCISCO -- Tech job postings on two popular online employment sites have increased sharply, a sign that the long moribund job market may finally be turning around.</p> <p>Craigslist tech job postings in the San Francisco Bay Area have doubled from a year ago and are up 50 percent from six months ago, said CEO Jim Buckmaster. Activity has particularly picked up in the past four weeks, he said.</p>

Tech Layoffs Fading, But No Hiring Boom Monday October 20, 10:37 am ET By Jed Graham While IBM's earnings report Wednesday didn't thrill investors, its plan to add 10,000 jobs next year offered the best tangible hope yet that tech-sector job woes could be ending. IBM said it's confident about the prospects for technology spending and the economy and will add positions in "key skill areas," including high-value services, middleware and Linux. Still, IBM didn't say how many of those jobs will be in the U.S. Recent reports have said IBM plans to boost staff in India to 10,000 by...

Indian software industry buoyed by U.S. recovery By K.C. Krishnadas EE Times October 17, 2003 (12:33 p.m. ET) BANGALORE, India — The Indian software industry is smelling a turnaround in its main market, the United States. The long-anticipated rebound, coupled with a marked uptick in outsourcing, is sending stocks surging here and sparking a hiring boom. When Infosys Technologies Ltd., one of India's best-known software export firms, announced its quarterly results just over a week ago, the stock market bolted forward as it had not done in the last two years. Shares of Infosys and other tech firms rocketed, confirming...