The News Review:
- Merkel’s China Visit Marred by Hacking Allegations
- Quick Look at the New Yahoo Mail
- Indian companies are learning the Washington lobbying game
Merkel’s China Visit Marred by Hacking Allegations
Spiegel nline – Aug 27, 2007
But Prime Minister Wen Jiabao assured Merkel that measures would be taken to “rule out hacking attacks. ” During a news conference in Beijing on Monday Merkel didn’t comment on the specific allegation but said it was important that “common rules of the game” were observed in a globalised economy. The so-called “Trojan” espionage programs were concealed in Microsoft Word documents and PowerPoint files which infected IT installations when opened SPIEGEL reported. Information was taken from German computers in this way on a daily basis by hackers based in the north-western province of Lanzhou Canton province and Beijing. German officials believe the hackers were being directed by the People’s Liberation Army and that the programs were redirected via computers in South Korea to disguise their origin. German security officials managed to stop the theft of 160 gigabytes of data which were in the process of being siphoned off German government computers. “But no one knows how much has leaked out” a top official told SPIEGEL.
Quick Look at the New Yahoo Mail
pcworld.com – Aug 27, 2007
Yahoo better keep innovating and adding features. The steady march of innovation from competing Web-mail services is breathless. Microsoft just this month upped the storage ante for its free… That’s still less than Yahoo which says it has no limit for e-mail storage. Google has added support to view PowerPoint slide shows within GMail that are received as GMail e-mail attachments using its Docs & Spreadsheets suite of applications. The Beta is verBesides the interface new to Yahoo Mail are features such as one that allows you to send SMS text messages to mobile phone users from your Yahoo Mail account. This is part of Yahoo’s triple-play communications offering giving you the ability to either send traditional e-mail contact people online via instant messaging directly from the Yahoo Mail client or reach contacts by way of their cell phones via SMS text messages. However you won’t be able to send text messages today via Yahoo Mail. Yahoo says text messaging support and other select features will show up slowly over the next few weeks.
Indian companies are learning the Washington lobbying game
deccanherald.com – Aug 27, 2007
In a sign of their changing approach the Indian vendors are also imitating a tactic used against them in the last election: putting a human and preferably American face on the issue. In the heat of the 2004 US presidential race John Kerry likened outsourcing to treason Lou Dobbs harangued against it from his CNN anchor chair and the Indian outsourcing vendors were left scrambling. Engineers to the core their leaders fired back with data-packed PowerPoint presentations. utsourcing is good for the economy they said; it increases efficiency; it creates more jobs than it costs. But in the eyes of Americans those arguments proved no match for vivid tales of laid-off software engineers. “Telling someone who loses their job in North Carolina or Jacksonville that this is good for the economy doesn’t work” said Phiroz Vandrevala Executive VP Tata Consultancy Services… “We don’t want to be seen as very active there because it can seem that India is trying to poke its nose into the debate” said Kiran Karnik the President of Nasscom. “We would prefer that the active effort of working the Hill is done by US companies. ”A successful example of getting a heavyweight to help their case according to the Indian companies was recent congressional testimony by Bill Gates Microsoft’s Chairman in which he called vigorously for expanding the H-1B skilled-worker visa program. Indian-American political groups in the United States are also effective proxies. The US-India Political Action Committee has defended outsourcing vendors most of whose employees are in India. In a sign of their changing approach the Indian vendors are also imitating a tactic used against them in the last election: putting a human and preferably American face on the issue. In meetings in Washington with members of Congress and with the presidential campaigns the Indian companies are bringing in American employees they have hired locally.