New Legislation: Disclosure of American Firms Offshore Hiring
Author: John Duckgeischel
on February 2, 2012 - 12:03 AM
Newly introduced legislation
in the U.S. House of representatives would require that American public
companies share information on the number of workers they employee both overseas
and in the United States. U.S. Rep Gary
Peters (D-Mich.) sponsored the bill as a way to discourage offshore hiring. "We need to do
everything in our power to fight the outsourcing of American jobs and this bill
gives consumers and investors the information they need to make an informed
choice," wrote Peters in a statement.
The bill has bi-partisan support and in addition to Peters, it is
co-sponsored by Rep. Jerry McNerney (R-Calif.) and Tim Bishop (D-NY). Up
until last year IBM, reported breakouts on U.S. and overseas employment
numbers, however it now only reports total worldwide numbers. In the Microsoft’s last annual report filed
on June 30, 2011, it stated that it had 54,000 employees in the U.S. and 36,000
overseas. For the year covered in the
report, Microsoft domestic employment was flat, while overseas employment grew
by about 1000 workers.
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Email and Financial Companies Take on Phishing Threat
Author: John Duckgeischel
on January 31, 2012 - 8:19 AM
The threat of phishing emails,
designed to trick recipients into disclosing their ID and passwords, is being
tackled by some of the industry’s
largest email service providers along with leading financial companies. Yahoo, AOL, Google and Microsoft have joined
together to put new levels of protection against phishing emails. The phishing scheme typically involves
counterfeit emails which impersonate legitimate well known companies such as a
banks or email providers to entice users to provide sensitive information or to
click on malicious links. After a two
year testing period, DMARC ((Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting
& Conformance) initiative is being put forth to set arbitrary policy guidelines
that helps companies distinguish between real and counterfeit emails. Joining the effort are eBay’s PayPal,
Fidelity Investments and Bank of America to help provide a more secure email
environment for their companies.
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Twitter To Censor Content in Select Countries
Author: John Duckgeischel
on January 26, 2012 - 8:03 PM
On Thursday Twitter announced
plans to begin putting restrictions on Tweets in certain countries. Previously if the company removed a Tweet, it
had to be removed on a global basis unlike today where it can block a tweet in
one country and allow it to be seen elsewhere. The company mentioned “pro-Nazi content” in
Germany and France as an example of restrictions it may conform with. "As we continue to grow internationally,
we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom
of expression," Twitter wrote in a statement. "Starting today, we give ourselves the
ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country while
keeping it available in the rest of the world," the company blogged.
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Google Explores Ways to a Faster Internet
Author: John Duckgeischel
on January 24, 2012 - 10:19 PM
Google’s
engineers and technicians believe that by transforming the Web TCP
(Transmission Control Protocol) transport layer as well trying new ways to
minimize latency there can be real gains in improving the speed of the
Internet. In fact Google has
established a “Make the Web Faster” team which following through on
recommendations to maximize TCP speed through various means including
optimizing the initial congestion window.
In a team blog, Yuchung Cheng called TCP "the workhorse of the
Internet," because it delivers Web
content and is designed to work of a wide range of network types. Currently Web browsers often open parallel
TCP connections prior to making their requests, which solves the TCP connection
limitation problem, but creates challenges because of high latency and its lack
of scalability. "Our research
shows that the key to reducing latency is saving round trips. We're
experimenting with several improvements to TCP", Cheng said.
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SOASTA Offers Smart Mobile App Testing Via the Cloud
Author: Leanne Westphal
on January 23, 2012 - 7:37 AM
SOASTA, a six year old company
based in Mountain View, California, is announcing its plans this week to update
it CloudTest Platform to make it possible for developers to automated testing of
their iOS and Android apps. In an interview with Information Week, Tom Lounibos, SOASTA CEO indicated that the
human-technology interfaces has moved well beyond traditional keyboard
keystrokes, to inputs based on touch and gesture interactions. SOASTA’s TouchTest technology captures interactions
on both iOS and Android devices in record and playback mode to allow developers
and publishers to have automated feedback on mobile app performance. The CloudTest Platform is well suited to
testing mobile devices says Lounibos which require testing "new forms of
interaction and movement that have been impossible to test with traditional
tools."
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