interesteching

22% Rougly one out of five users lost a mobile device in 2005
74% Three out of four corporate telephony lines will be IP-based by 2009
90% Nine out of ten major U.S. companies will test or use VoIP this year, up from 75% in 2005
$24.6B Global spending on IT security services in 2009
$81B Total server market in 2011, up from $49.8 billion in 2004
$329B Total annual online retail sales in 2010, up from $172 billion in 2005

Sources: Forrester Research
Gartner
IDC
Radicati Group

technology

News

gdp rise of 4.1 percent

The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that the gross domestic product, the nation's total output of goods and services, rose at an annual rate of 4.1 percent in the July-September quarter. It was the fastest pace of growth in 1 1/2 years. The new figure demonstrated that the economy kept expanding at a strong pace during the summer, led by solid increases in consumer demand, especially for autos, and business investment.

The third quarter performance was up substantially from a 3.3 percent GDP growth rate in the April-June quarter and was the best showing since the economy expanded at a 4.3 percent rate in the first three months of 2004. The economy had originally been estimated to have grown at a 3.8 percent rate in the third quarter, a figure that was revised up to 4.3 percent last month and now revised slightly lower to 4.1 percent.

Economics

USA

could this picture be any more stupid?

Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame should have known better than to have this picture taken let alone published.... and of all places Time Magazine.

He looks like a husband that's wanting someone to get him out of the mess he's in and she looks like she just woke up with a grand champion hangover or she is still drunk. Maybe she was drunk when this picture was taken. Maybe they just always use poor judgement.

time magazine

current events

Federal ID card rules will apply to contractors

Under a soon-to-be- issued rule in the Federal Acquisition Regulations, agencies will have to vet contractors through the same processes they put employees before issuing identification cards. The Federal Identity Credentials Committee the interim rule should be issued in the Federal Register soon. The idea is to plug a security hole. The CIO Council's IT Workforce Committee sponsored a forum in Washington, D.C. where the topic of due diligence for contractor personnel cam up for discussion.

Security

science.gov upgrades to verision 3.0

The science.gov search engine uses metadata to rank results, which should give users more accurate responses to queries. Version 3 makes searches for obscure terms easier bacause it incorporates bibliographic information into its searches. The data is ranked by using title, author, date, abstract, and other key identifiers. Users can now search in specific fields, such as date or author.

science

KING KONG: Not King for an Opening Day

King Kong wasn't the king on opening day, grabbing $9.8 million from around 7,500 screens at 3,567 playdates. Director Peter Jackson's $207 million remake of the 1933 monster movie notched the 21st biggest Wednesday opening on record, significantly less than the $18.2 million start of Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

Additionally, King Kong bowed in 36 foreign territories on Wednesday and racked up an estimated $8 million, bringing its worldwide opening day to about $17.8 million.

king kong

entertainment

TITAN RAIN

Reports are that Chinese Intelligence is making an effort to hack U.S. Military computer systems. The effort seems to be well organized and the attacks have been traced to the Chinese province of Guangdong. The techniques used make it appear unlikely to come from any other source than the military. Guangdong is the location of a military academy and is also believed to be the source of SARS. This operation has been code named TITAN RAIN by the U.S.

Pentagon officials confirmed earlier this year that US Defense Department websites are probed hundreds of times a day by hackers, but maintained that no classified site is known to have been penetrated by hackers. The TITAN RAIN hacking effort appears to be well organized.

News earlier this week has China overtaking the U.S. in supplying IT goods. Reports show that China's exports of information and communication technology--including laptop computers, mobile phones and digital cameras--increased by more than 46 percent to $180 billion in 2004 from a year earlier, easily outstripping for the first time United States exports of $149 billion, which grew 12 percent from 2003. China has come close to matching the United States in the overall value of its trade in information and communications technology products. China's efforts to impose its own technology standards across a range of consumer products, including mobile phones, digital photography and wireless networks, are widely interpreted as a strategy to dominate the global market for information technology goods.

This has me wondering. Are the Chinese putting devices into the equipment they are selling? Are they making their equipment "hackee friendly" and if so does the U.S. military/intelligence services have any information on what those devices could be?

china

World news

iraq war and victory strategy by bush

President Bush delivered a speech on Iraq strategy for victory today in Washington at the woodrow Wilson Center. Bush urged patience with the entire war effort. Bush has had to deliver several speeches on Iraq lately due to increased negativity from the media and Democrats on the Hill.

The media negativity has not waned since early autumn. Journalists are far more negative about the war than the American public. With elections being held and a new government in place the Iraqi situation is slowly getting stabilized. The progress factor is not what we had in mind. Afterall we wanted a swift end to Iraq, but that's not happening. The media feels unconsulted on the entire war and seems to take that out on Bush by throwing more and more negatives on their newscasts. Will this effort crack the American public shell? We shall see.

One item remains.... Bush needs good news to come from Iraq or the war on terror for his numbers to improve and allow the media to give us some positive news.

iraq

politics

Current events

like it or not the u.s must win in iraq

Personally I was not for the United States invading Iraq the way we did. Why? Because we weren't ready. But then is any army really ready to invade another country? D-Day we were... but look at all the preparation the Allies did before the invasion. Fast forward to Iraq and we didn't prepare that way. Some would probaly say we don't have to prepare that way anymore because the technology allows for more coordination and logistics corrections when things go wrong. Fine. But let's face the fact we weren't ready to invade Iraq. OK then what. Well we invaded and the resistance has been brutal. Car bombs, etc.

However through it all our troop's moral has been very high. Higher than the average American citizen. We have to ask ourselves: Do we have the patience, the courage and the will to win in Iraq. We better have because the price of failure is way too high.

How many Americans favored George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq? Many. But some of the vocal hawks are now vocal doves. There are several lists of those political leaders that once said Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and needs to be stopped and now pleading to get out of Iraq. Why is this? Could it be position labeling? If it is than the multi-million dollar media moguls are to blame. They have produces several little positon labelers whose job is to stir the pot, not report.

We are at war and we can't forget that. And we can't forget that the U.S. can't lose this war in Iraq. We can't lose the war on terror. There is too much too lose. Like peace and freedom.

iraq

current events

War

could buckyballs deform dna?

Researchers have found through computer models that buckyballs (spherical fullerenes) could bind with dna when in an aqueous environment. Buckyballs were known to be toxic.

read more | digg story

nanotechnology

first signs of human-to-human avian flu

The World Health Organization-sanctioned laboratory in Hong Kong has so far confirmed 13 bird flu cases in humans in Indonesia, with eight people dying from the virus. Meanwhile, in Indonesia, the disease is spreading so rapidly, particularly in the capital of Jakarta, some health officials strongly suspect the long-dreaded mutation has occurred. There are more signs the virus is spreading – outward from Asia and through Europe. Romania appears to be the hardest hit.

Three more villages in eastern Romania have been quarantined following the discovery of an H5 strain of avian influenza in poultry in one of the villages. The Romanian Ministry of Agriculture suspects the presence of bird flu in the other villages but is awaiting confirmation of test results from the United Kingdom.

avian flu

digg comments

3 species of fruit bats linked to ebola

Researchers working in Gabon and Congo have identified three species of fruit bat as the long-sought reservoirs of one of the deadliest known human pathogens, the Ebola virus. The team tested more than 1,000 bats and researchers found minute genetic traces of the virus in 22.6% of the bats tested. More important, they found that the virus produces no symptoms in infected bats, thus allowing it to spread without disabling its carrier.

health

Current events