U.S. high-tech employment increased 1 percent in 2005, bringing the nationwide total to 5.6 million, with the greatest gains in the electronic manufacturing, software, and engineering and tech services segments, according to the Cyberstates 2006 report released April 18 by the American Electronics Association, a nationwide trade association representing the technology industry.

High-tech employment boasted 61,000 new jobs in 2005, which is promising news after losing 44,700 jobs in 2004 and 333,000 in 2003.

Source: eWeek

Adult entertainment giant Vivid Entertainment Group said on Wednesday it will start next month selling downloadable movies that viewers can burn to DVD and watch on their TVs.

Vivid said it will start selling burnable movies May 8 through online movie service CinemaNow, an Internet provider of on-demand movies, which had previously agreed to distribute Vivid films.

Source: Reuters

Oracle Corp. on Tuesday released its quarterly patch batch, plugging 36 vulnerabilities in several of its products, including the flagship Oracle Database.

Oracle’s Critical Patch Update (CPU) for April contains 14 patches that fix the three-dozen flaws, several of which the company said could be easily and broadly exploited. Most of the bugs could be attacked remotely.

Symantec rated the urgency of patching as “10,” its highest ranking. Danish vulnerability tracker Secunia, meanwhile, tagged the CPU as “Highly critical,” its second-from-the-top rating.

Source: InformationWeek

Dutch company Philips Electronics on Wednesday said it sued Eastman Kodak Co. claiming several of Kodak’s cameras infringe on a patent related to the compression of digital images.

A Kodak spokesman said the Rochester, New York-based company would defend itself “vigorously” in the suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware.

Source: Reuters

Microsoft is working on a new Windows Live service that will provide users with a virtual hard drive for storing data such as moviea, music, pictures and other personal data. The new vistual drive will be named Live Drive.

Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Ray Ozzie told CNNMoney “Microsoft is planning to use its server farms to offer anyone huge amounts of online storage of digital data. It even has a name for that future service: Live Drive. With Live Drive, all your information - movies, music, tax information, a high-definition video conference you had with your grandmother, whatever - could be accessible from anywhere, on any device.”

Microsoft is not the only one that is working on this kind of service. Recently is was discovered that Google also plans to release a virtual drive called GDrive.

Intel annnounced two new low-power processors Wednesday, weeks after Gateway launched a new notebook with the Ultra Low Voltage Core Solo chip.

Two versions will be available at first, the U1300 Core Solo processor running at 1.06GHz, and the U1400 Core Solo running at 1.2GHz.

Source: News.com

he world should unite against online criminals because they could cause as much harm as deadly weapons, Russia’s interior minister said on Wednesday.

Russian hackers are notorious, and the country is often identified as a centre for extortion from Internet bookmakers, banks and other businesses. Several damaging viruses are believed to have originated in Russia.

Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said the frequency of such attacks was increasing, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Source: InformationWeek

In an article by Mark Aubin, founder of Keyhole, the company that became Google Earth, Aubin said that Google Earth uses more than one source for our imagery.

“We collect it via airplane and satellite, but also just about any way you can imagine getting a camera above the Earth’s surface: hot air balloons, model airplanes – even kites.”

After the raw data arrives the next step is processing the imagery. “We scan the film using scanners capable of over 1800 DPI (dots per inch) or 14 microns. Then we take the digital imagery through a series of stages such as color balancing and warping to produce the final mosaic for the entire area.”

The next step in the process is to add layers of information – things like country and state borders and the names of roads, schools, and parks — to make it more useful. This information comes from multiple sources: commercial providers, local government agencies, public domain collections, private individuals, national and even international governments. Right now, Google Earth has hundreds of terabytes of geographic data, and it’s growing larger every day.

Skype, the fast-growing internet communications company that belongs to Ebay, has admitted that its partner in China has filtered text messages, defending this compliance with censorship laws as the only way to do business in the country.

In a Financial Times interview, Niklas Zennström, Skype’s chief executive, responded to accusations that the company had censored text messages containing words like “Falun Gong�? – a banned movement – and “Dalai Lama�?. He said that Tom Online, its joint venture partner in China, was complying with local law.

“Tom had implemented a text filter, which is what everyone else in that market is doing,�? said Mr Zennström. “Those are the regulations.�?

He claimed that compliance with Chinese censorship was no different from obeying rules governing business in western countries. China, along with the US and Germany, is one of Skype’s three biggest markets in terms of active users of its free telephony service, which routes encrypted calls between computers via the internet.

Source: ft.com

A US man has been fined almost £48,000 for marketing a bogus anti-spyware program.

Zhijian Chen of Oregon made thousands of dollars by sending spam messages that fooled people into believing that their computers were infected by spyware, and claiming that a product called Spyware Cleaner was the cure.

A lawsuit filed by Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna stated that Spyware Cleaner falsely claimed that computers were infected in an attempt to encourage PC users to pay $49.95 for a ‘fully working’ version.

Source: vnunet

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) today announced the availability of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1), the product’s first major milestone since the launch of SQL Server 2005 only a few months ago.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP1 includes production-ready Database Mirroring functionality and the new SQL Server Management Studio Express, along with additional updates to SQL Server 2005 Express Edition targeted at users such as independent software vendors (ISVs) wanting to take advantage of greater functionality.

Philips is attempting to patent a technique that would prevent viewers from skipping through ads embedded within recorded programmes or even channel surfing during broadcast ad breaks - or force viewers to cough up cash if they want to avoid the ads.

“A viewer may either watch the advertisements or pay a fee in order to be able to change channels or fast forward when the advertisements are being displayed,” Philips’ potential patent states.

The filing outlines how digital flags would be transmitted with the adverts - a TV, PVR, DVD recorder or other receiver would detect the flag and ensure the ads are shown no matter what.

The system uses the Multimedia Home Platform standard for embedding interactivity into digital video broadcasts.

Source: The Register