IEEE says L-1 visa not intended for outsourcers
The U.S. this week began accepting applications for H-1B visas for the next fiscal year, but that's not the big news it was in previous years.
The H-1B has been a powder keg among IT workers for a long time, but the real battle this year is over the L-1 visa. The L-1 visa is used for intra-company transfers of employees from foreign offices to U.S. offices.
The L-1 battle got even bigger this week. Read more...
China and India to power global enterprise software market
China and India are set to lead worldwide enterprise software growth over the next four years as Asia Pacific cements itself as the powerhouse of the global IT industry, according to Gartner.
The analyst’s Q1 2012 update to its Enterprise Software Markets, Worldwide, 2009-2016 report revealed that China will have the fastest growing software market to 2016 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.91 per cent while India is ranked third at 13.6 per cent. Read more...
Microsoft makes Top 20 list of Linux kernel contributors
The Linux Foundation has released its annual report on the state of the software, and reports that Microsoft has made it into the Top 20 of companies that sponsor development of the Linux kernel – quite a change for the operating system Steve Ballmer used to dismiss as a cancer.
For contributions made to the kernel since version 2.6.36, Microsoft ranks 17th, with Redmond's contribution estimated at 1 per cent of the whole. The top contributing companies were Red Hat, Intel, and Novell. Samsung and Texas Instruments were also named as fast-growing contributors, reflecting an increase in interest in Linux for mobile and embedded systems. Read more...
Facebook fires back at Yahoo, says it infringed 10 patents
Facebook has denied Yahoo's claims of patent infringement and shot back with counterclaims that Yahoo infringed 10 Facebook patents.
In its response to Yahoo's patent infringement suit filed on Tuesday, Facebook accuses Yahoo of infringing 10 of its patents in several of Yahoo's most popular services including the Yahoo homepage, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, and the Flickr photo sharing service. Read more...
Apple releases Java security updates
Just a day after reports spread about a Java-based Trojan horse that could install itself on your Mac without requiring that you enter a password, Apple has released Java for OS X Lion 2012-001 and Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 7.
The updates, which are available for Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard and 10.7.3 Lion (including both OSes' Server editions), patch multiple vulnerabilities in Java 1.6.0_29--including some that could allow malicious code to run on your Mac outside of the Java sandbox, triggered merely by your visiting a webpage containing the right nefarious code. Read more...
Spanish ‘SOPA’: 79 Site Takedown Requests in First Month
Spain’s Ministry of Culture has just reported on the first month’s activities following the introduction of the country’s ‘Sinde’ anti-piracy law. The controversial legislation, described by some as a Spanish version of SOPA, took effect March 1st and since that time rightsholders have been busy filing notices. Almost 300 complaints have been filed in total including 79 site takedown requests.
After being threatened with a place on a United States trade blacklist, the Spanish government passed the so-called Sinde Law, legislation that allows for the blocking of allegedly infringing sites based on reports from copyright holders. Read more...
Get a White House tour from Google’s Street View cams
If you can't get to the White House for a tour, Google has arranged that for you, bringing its Street View cameras inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. so everyone can get a better look at some of the most famous rooms in America.
Google's cameras, positioned on specially built trolleys — careful, don't break the china! — took 360-degree photos of the public rooms of the White House for the Art Project, an online program that provides virtual tours of well-known museums around the world. Read more...
Canon releases new camera that can capture the beauty of space
Many expensive DSLR cameras aren't optimized to shoot great photos of the heavens, especially of the night sky, right out of the box. Astrophotographers, photographers who mainly take pictures of astronomical objects, usually have to learn how to tweak their camera settings to best capture the wonders of space. Now, Canon has released a new product that makes astrophotography easy even for beginners. Read more...
The Interesting Part About Amazon’s In-App Payments Beta Is That Developers Have Pricing Control
The most interesting part of Amazon’s move to provide an in-app payments flow is that they’re ceding pricing control to mobile developers.
Amazon has been testing a new in-app payments system with several top-tier mobile developers for several months. It’s a big deal because there has been a huge shift over the last 18 months toward giving away apps for free instead of selling them for a dollar or more. This move would bring Amazon’s Android appstore closer to parity with Google and Apple’s stores for developers. Read more...
Facebook focus guides Google CEO’s 1st year on job
Google co-founder Larry Page has a Facebook fixation.
When he replaced his mentor Eric Schmidt as Google's CEO last April, Page insisted that the company had to be more aggressive about countering the threat posed by Facebook's ever-growing popularity.
Page responded with a social networking crusade that is still reshaping Google Inc. as he marks his one-year anniversary as chief executive on Wednesday. Read more...