Redington to distribute Oracle's software in India

                                       

Redington India said on Thursday it tied up with Oracle India Pvt Ltd, a unit of world's No. 3 software maker Oracle Corp, to distribute the latter's fusion middleware software products in India.

The 'mouse' turns 40!

One computer device could be called as being most 'in touch' with humans -the mouse, which celebrates it's 40th birth anniversary December 1st.

The first computer mouse, developed 4 decades ago, was a little wooden box with a single red button on top and a wire hanging from the back, because of which it was likened to a rodent.

And while computers have transformed from big white boxes to cool flat screens and laptops, the mouse has, more or less, stayed the same.

But, its designer, Douglas Engelbart, is not a rich man giving orders in a huge IT firm.

The 83-year-old American, who worked on the mouse at California's Stanford Research Institute, never got any royalties because the patent expired before it became a must-have.

It was in 1981 that Xerox included a mouse with their Star computer system, followed by Apple, which offered one with their Macintosh system, a few years later.

And then Microsoft made it the standard device for navigating their Windows system.

With more and more innovations- like a second, third and fifth button- the mouse today has bid adieu to the rubber trackball to be replaced by more accurate infra-red technology.

Now many of the devices are cordless too, doing away with the reason they were called a mouse in the first place.

However, Apple's innovative touchscreen technology on its iPhone and iPod Touch gadgets might just send the mouse into oblivion.

"I very much doubt that we'll be using the mouse in 40 years' time," the Sun quoted Steve Prentice, an analyst at Gartner Research, as saying. (ANI)

(6 Months+) "ADECCO INDIA" recruits Information Security Professional, Mumbai / Maharashtra

Adecco India 

Recruitment for Information Security Professional 

Job Description :

- Part of 24x7x365 security operations center, hence the candidate must be willing to work in shifts by rotation.

- Responsible for analyzing, alerting and reporting network security events and threats in a timely manner.

- Will be coordinating with technical incident response team and providing recommendations for remediation for customer environment.

Desired Profile :

- Good in spoken and written English.

- Minimum 6 months to 1 or more year(s) experience in the IT industry; preferably in the Network security domains

- Must have good analytical skills.

- Must have a basic understanding of networking & security technologies like TCP/IP, LAN/WAN, Firewalls, IDS, Antiviruses, etc..

- Experience of working with monitoring & reporting tools, trouble ticketing systems would be a definite advantage (preferred skill).

Location : Mumbai

APPLY HERE

Today News

India pulls out of Pak tour

 

New Delhi Dec. 18: It’s official: The Indian cricket team will not tour Pakistan in January. “The final decision has been taken. We have got the letter from the sports ministry and the ministry of External Affairs not to proceed with the tour,” Board of Control for Cricket in India official Rajeev Shukla told this newspaper.

“The government has declined permission to go ahead with the tour taking into account the recent developments in Mumbai as well as the overall circumstances prevailing at present,” he added. Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee and Union minister of sports M.S. Gill personally conveyed the decision to BCCI, Shukla added.

India were scheduled to play three Tests, five one-dayers and a Twenty20 match during their tour of Pakistan from January 6 to February 28. There was intense speculation that the tour will be called off in the aftermath of the November 26 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. A few days ago Gill had bluntly said the Indian team’s tour of Pakistan should not go ahead. It was not the right time to play cricket with Pakistan when “people from their soil were indulging in mass murder in India”, he said. Former cricketers Kapil Dev, Anil Kumble and Ajit Wadekar welcomed the decision to call off the Pakistan tour. Source : Deccan

City-born scientist AIDS work

 

Chennai Dec. 18: A Chennai-born scientist, along with his research team at the Emory University in Atlanta, is believed to have reached a breakthrough in HIV research, after around 18 months of research on monkeys.   Dr Vijayakumar Velu (31), who hails from Adambakkam in the city and is mentored by Dr Rama Rao Amara from Nellore, now an assistant professor at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Emory vaccine Center,  has published the study, considered as one of the most promising discoveries in AIDS research.

“SIV, or Simian Immunodeficiency Virus in monkeys, is a germ similar to the Human Immunodeficiency Virus that causes AIDS in humans. By inducing AIDS in monkeys, that are genetically closest to humans, we were able to understand the impact of the virus on the body’s defence mechanism,” explained Dr Rama Rao Amara. A student of reputed scientist Dr S. P. Thyagarajan, Dr Vijaykumar Velu said, “We wondered why our T-cells (immune cells) are ineffective against HIV cells, when the immune system of the body is able to fight other viruses, like the chicken pox viruses, for instance.”

The team found that the killer virus cells, which live inside the healthy cells of the human body, confuse the T-cells into inactivity, by releasing a ‘receptor’ molecule called PD-1.

In their experiments on monkeys, they found that, by introducing an ‘anti-PD-1’ antibody, they could revive the dysfunctional immune cells, so that they could do their ‘job’ of fighting the virus.

“SIV kills monkeys much faster than humans; they only live for around six months after the disease is induced. The lives of the monkeys that were treated with these antibodies, however, have been prolonged by nearly seven months, without any Anti-Retroviral Therapy,” Dr Rama Rao explained. Source : Deccan

BPOs to be set up in 5 districts

 

Villupuram Dec. 18: The outsourcing sector in the country will spread from the metros into small towns and villages shortly with the Ministry of Panchayat Raj planning to establish rural business process outsourcing (BPO) units in five districts in Tamil Nadu — Villupuram, Krishnagiri, Nagapattinam, Thanjavur and Tiruvarur.   The objective is to train the rural youth, whose minimum qualification is a pass in plus two, in information technology-enabled services.  The Centre for Rural Development, Periyar Man-iammai University, Thanjavur, will provide end-to-end training and FOSTeRA (Fostering technologies in rural areas), Hosur, will provide consultancy and soft skill training. 

Each rural BPO would provide training for 50 students for three months. The students would be provided with a monthly stipend of Rs.1500.  While the forenoon session would be dedicated for training the afternoon and night sessions would be dedicated for commercial activities aimed at income generation.   The selected youth would be trained in basic computer operations and imparted ‘On the Job Training’ which will focus on the needs of the IT industry based in Bangalore. Based on their communication skills the youth would be segregated into BPO for both voice and non-voice modules. 

This project would bring employment to the educated in these districts and light up their lives, M. Sivanantham, Director, Centre for Rural Development told Deccan Chronicle.  

M.R. Ashok Kumar, CEO, FOSTeRA, said talks were on with top-notch companies to get them to outsource their back office work. The youth would have to work really hard for three months to get absorbed in the rural BPO. 

The infrastructure was in ‘plug and play’ condition in Krishnagiri district and in the other districts it was being readied, he said. The ambience had been carefully designed to match that of any IT major.  FOSTeRA would facilitate interaction between IT industries and the rural BPOs. The project would be extended to other districts in a phased manner he said. Source : Deccan

Cyber crime goes up by 50%

 

New Delhi, Dec. 18: With India being home to the fourth highest number of Internet users in the world, cyber crimes under the  Information Technology (IT) Act recorded a whopping 50 per cent jump in 2007 over the previous year.  What’s more, the majority of offenders were under 30 years of age.  Cyber crimes have emerged as a new class of crimes, rapidly increasing due to extensive use of the Internet and IT-enabled services.  The maximum cyber crime cases, about 46 per cent, were related to incidents of cyber pornography, followed by hacking.

In over 60 per cent of these cases, offenders were between 18 and 30, according to the Crime in 2007 report of the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB). yber crimes are punishable under two categories — the IT Act 2000 and the Indian Penal Code (IPC). he report says 217 cases of cyber crime were registered under the IT Act in 2007 compared to 142 in 2006 — an increase of 50 per cent.  Under the IPC too, 339 cases were recorded in 2007 compared to 311 cases in 2006. The report also indicates that cyber crimes are no longer limited to metro cities.  Source : Deccan

US finalises changes to H2-B visa

 

Washington, Dec. 18: The US government will make permanent changes to a visa programme that brings foreign workers to the United States for temporary non-agricultural work. The aim is to streamline and simplify the application process and increase worker protections, Labour secretary Elaine Chao said in an interview on Wednesday.  The H2-B visa programme allows foreign workers into the United States for specific seasonal jobs, provided the employer cannot find Americans for the work, and the foreigners return home within 10 months.

Workers in the programme must pass background checks, and the visas have provisions to ensure they return home. The visa programme is capped at 66,000 workers per year, who are placed mostly in landscaping, hospitality and other industries. Changes include eliminating duplicative applications at the state and federal levels, requiring employer to attest, under threat of fines and disbarment, that they follow all rules and let the government decide what workers should earn.  Employers will be prohibited from passing along the cost of the new proposals to their workers, and the Labour Department, for the first time, will be able to enforce terms and conditions of temporary foreigner employment and impose fines on violators.

The homeland security department currently is responsible for enforcing the regulations, but the Labour department has more expertise in the area, Chao said. The Labour department also will become the final word on labour certification applications. The final changes will be in the Federal Register on Friday and go into effect in mid-January. The labour department made public its plans to change the H2-B visa rules in May.  Also to be published on Friday are the department’s changes to H2-A visas, which are used by the agriculture industry to hire temporary farm workers.  Regulatory changes in the waning days of the Bush administration will make it harder for US president-elect Barack Obama  to change course on some policies favoured by Republicans and businesses. Source : Deccan

2008 is 10th warmest year

 

London Dec. 18: The global mean temperature for 2008 has been calculated to be 14.3º Celsius, making it the 10th warmest year since 1850, when records started being kept.

Global temperatures for 2000-2008, the first eight years of this millennium, are almost 0.2º Celsius warmer than the average for the decade 1990-1999. The 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997, revealed climate scientists at met office’s Hadley Centre and University of East Anglia. The scientists at UK’s national weather service and University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit maintain the global climate record for the World Meteorological Organisation.

Globally temperature was 0.31º Celsius above the 1961-90 average. In the northern hemisphere, the mean temperature was 0.51º Celsius above average (eighth warmest on record) and in the southern hemisphere it was 0.11º Celsius above average (20th warmest). The global mean temperature has slightly reduced compared to earlier years in this century partly because of the La Nina that developed in the Pacific Ocean during 2007, the scientists explained.

La Nina events typically coincide with cooler global temperatures and 2008 is slightly cooler than the norm under current climate conditions. “The most important component of year-to-year variability in global average temperatures is the phase and amplitude of equatorial sea surface temperatures in the Pacific that lead to La Nina and El Nino events,” Prof. Phil Jones of East Anglia University said. Source : Deccan