Patrick Thibodeau

You gotta love Silicon Valley. The Facebook IPO is creating dozens and dozens of new millionaires. Apple, thanks to the iPhone and iPad, has seen its employment nearly double in two years.

And then there is valley icon Hewlett-Packard.

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials said this week that offshoring will hurt the growth of programming jobs in in this decade, though expansion of health care IT and mobile networks will in turn increase demand for software developers, technical support and system analysts.

By 2020, employment in all computer occupations is expected to increase by 22 percent, but some IT fields will fare better than others, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) biennial update of employment projections.

I'm surprised that the Internet security aspects of the Heartland Institute document leak haven't gotten more attention. There's a good lesson here.

The person who received the documents, Peter Gleick, an environmental scientist and MacArthur genius grant winner, used social engineering to get them. His technique was Kevin Mitnick 101.

The U.S. Air Force is planning to buy as many as 18,000 tablet computers to serve as "electronic flight bags" that will replace the paper manuals and documents that air crews use today.

www.airforce.comThe Air Force solicitation for the devices seems to give Apple's iPad an edge in the battle for the contract. The document specifically calls for "iPad 2 brand name or equal devices."

Calling a thin client a device for power users may seem like an oxymoron, but Hewlett-Packard is giving it a try.

HP Monday released two thin client devices, including one it says is a potential replacement for desktops used by knowledge workers. The update is the first to HP thin clients in two years.

The White House is following up on an offer made by President Barack Obama this week to help find a job for an unemployed semiconductor engineer in Texas. The offer was made during a live online town hall after the engineer's wife questioned the government's policy concerning H-1B visa workers.

Jennifer Wedel of Fort Worth asked why the government continues "to issue and extend H-1B visas when there are tons of Americans just like my husband with no job?"

The ability of the U.S. to compete globally is eroding, according to a federal report released Friday that described itself as a "call to arms."

The report, which has a strong emphasis on technology, warns in stark terms that "some elements of the U.S. economy are losing their competitive edge."

Some 150,000 people are expected to attend the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next week, and most of them kick netbooks to the curb as they rush to fawn over the pricey ultrabookand lower-cost full-sized laptops.

For sure, there will still be netbook announcements at CES, but this category of hardware is on its last legs -- at least in Western markets.

The IT job market in 2012 shows some signs of improvement when it comes to hiring , but most companies still aren't expanding.

Robert Half Technologies, a national recruiting firm that has been conducting quarterly hiring surveys of CIOs since 1995, said a net 10% of those companies surveyed plan to expand their IT departments next quarter.

Four U.S. lawmakers -- three Democrats and one Republican -- have teamed up to attack call center outsourcing by introducing a bill that would penalize any company that moves a call center overseas.

The bill would make any company that moves a call center offshore ineligible for any federal grants or loans. It would require the U.S. Labor Department to maintain a list of employers who relocate a call center overseas and force companies to provide at least 120 days' notice before doing so.

The U.S. government's report today that the unemployment rate is down and hiring is up showed some good news for tech workers as well.

The tech industry added 7,100 jobs last month, an increase of .17% from the previous month, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data analyzed by the TechServe Alliance, an industry group that tracks labor data month to month.

The failure of the Congressional Super Committee to reach a deficit reduction agreement triggers automatic federal spending cuts beginning the next fiscal year, which will likely make a lot of government IT contractors nervous.

Beginning in fiscal 2013, the government will have to cut $1.2 trillion over 10 years under a process called "sequestration."