JLM: LA Times reports the ITAA says that good tech jobs are still widely available. They attribute the continued push for H1B visas to the fact that the people out of work are web designers, marketers, and dot-com consultants, when what industry needs are technically proficient business people.

Tom: Its amazing how ignorant this is. Biotech companies are looking for biologists. RSA is hiring sales people. Cisco is looking for electrical engineers with an RF background. The fact is that people who work in COMPUTING are not being hired, and I've seen very little recognition of this in the press.

Los Angeles Times: Industry Downturn Hasn't Killed Tech's Big Appetite for Top Talent

Antivirus software vendors said Monday they don't want to create a loophole in their security products to let the FBI or other government agencies use a virus to eavesdrop on the computer communications of suspected criminals.

News: Antivirus firms: FBI loophole is out of line

15 year old girl sticks it to Bill Gates.

The Register

Visit the page and click on the "Vote" button (you don't have to fill out the form) to see the current top vote-getters. George P. Burdell has nearly 37% of the votes right now ...

If you went to Georgia Tech, then you certainly know about George P. Burdell. If not, check out the URL below for more details.

http://www.tbook.org/traditions/burdell.html

TIME 2001 Person of the Year

"Do most of your customers disclose to their employees that they're being monitored, and what are the legal issues surrounding that?
Everybody is moving to full disclosure. We encourage it.
Every company has a right to monitor an employee while they're at work, whether it be phone or e-mail.
Do your clients usually monitor everyone at the company?
We've had executives that say, "I don't want myself to be monitored." CEOs are never going to be monitored. "

Big Brother's watching - Tech News - CNET.com

Women and minority automobile buyers generally pay more than white men for the same cars, but they can erase that difference by buying over the Internet rather than through car dealerships, according to a study released Tuesday.

Study: Minorities get better auto deals online - Tech News - CNET.com

Viruses like HIV and Ebola are enabling researchers at the University of Pennsylvania to construct effective tools for gene therapy. Carefully combined and modified, these dangerous viruses could one day become an integral part of live-saving treatments for serious genetic disorders.

Attaching Good Genes to Bad Viruses

Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass...

Kovar/Hall

"One aspect of our culture that is no longer open to question is that the most significant developments in the sciences today (i.e. those that affect the lives of everybody on the planet) are about, informed by, or implemented through advances in software and computation."

Table of contents for this issue:

Marc D. Hauser: How Does The Brain Generate Computation?
Jaron Lanier: The Central Metaphor Of Everything?
Alan Guth: A Golden Age Of Cosmology
David Gelernter: Streams
Jordan Pollack: Software, Property & Human Civilization

Edge 95

From a Stanford symposium on the Web, a brief report on that rare, (lucky?) Valley dweller with an upbeat outlook. Choice excerpts:

"We need to work to ensure that the original values of the Web endure." ... Paul Saffo (here he is again!) says: "There's never been a better time to think about where the Web is going, and everybody has a lot of time to think about it. ... Most ideas in Silicon Valley take 20 years to become an overnight success."

Nathaniel Borenstein (remember him, c'punks?) says, "from the burned fields left behind by the Web's wildfire, will the pre-Web Internet reemerge? ... Once, the Net was a genuine commons. ... we have to acknowledge that the commons has been destroyed. That doesn't mean that we can't rebuild it."

The net, a commons? Borenstein's been reading some Lessig lately, maybe?

Salon.com Technology | Internet optimism lives!