Sunday, November 16, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Mukesh Ambani leads the pack of wealthiest Indians
Times are tough, and it`s showing the richest Indians are now poorer by 60% than a year ago thanks to the global financial meltdown, the falling stock markets and slow down in gross domestic product growth rate to 7.5%.
The total net worth of 40 richest Indians now stands at USD 139 billion from USD 351 billion as per the Forbes list of Richest Indians.
Leading the pack is Mukesh Ambani who is the largest shareholder in India`s largest private company Reliance Industries. The second spot was grabbed by UK based NRI steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal who lost over USD 30.5 billion due to plunging steel prices. The third place went to Anil Ambani, Chairman of ADAG group who owns Reliance Capital, Reliance Communication and Reliance Infrastructure as well as Reliance Natural resources after the split between the two Ambani brothers.
Telecom czar Sunil Mittal whose family owns Bharati Airtel and Bharati was at the fourth spot. Real estate fortunes were among those hit the hardest. KP Singh lost USD 27.2 billion managing to keep the fifth spot.
Tulsi Tanti and his brother lost 91% of their fortune, amid reports about the poor quality of Suzlon`s wind blades and property tycoon Ramesh Chandra`s net worth dropped 91% to USD 1 billion. Realty firm Unitech owned by him lost half its market capitalization in one day last month.
Thirty-three of the 34 tycoons who returned to ranking of India`s richest are at least 20% poorer than they were a year ago.
Source:In.com
Google Earth Rebuilds Ancient Rome
The glory that was Rome lives again in 3D splendor in Google Earth. The popular service has reconstructed the most famous city of the ancient world, giving visitors a chance to zoom around 6,700 buildings and more than 250 place marks. The 200 buildings already well known to scholars have been rendered as faithfully as possibly.
Google teamed with Virginia University and Past Perfect Productions on the venture, and the 3D models are based on a model of the city known as the Plastico di Roma Antica, which stands in Rome’s Museum of Roman Civilization, according to the BBC.
Bruce Polderman, Google Earth 3D production manager, said:
"Whether you are a student taking your first ancient history class, a historian who spends your life researching ancient civilizations, or just a history buff, access to this 3D model in Google Earth will help everyone learn more about ancient Rome."
New Quad-Core AMD Opteron Processor Available
With IT decision-makers looking to do more with less, the newest Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor can help drive data center efficiencies and reduce complexities with innovations that offer superior virtualization performance and increased performance-per-watt.
Global OEMs are expected to immediately offer enterprise and SMB customers more than 25 systems, available between launch today and the end of the year, based on the 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, codenamed "Shanghai."
"Flawless execution in bringing the 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor to market early results in new performance leadership on x86 servers," said Dasaradha Gude, Managing Director, Computing, AMD India.
"In concert with our OEM and solution provider partners, AMD is addressing the need for enterprises to focus on their bottom line while giving them the innovations they need to build for the future. This enhanced AMD Opteron processor represents the most dramatic performance and performance-per-watt increases for AMD products since the introduction of the world's first x86 dual-core processors by AMD nearly four years ago. Simply put, the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor is the right technology at the right time."
Source: In.com
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Google Earth reconstructs ancient Rome in 3D
LONDON: Google Earth has launched a 3D reconstruction of ancient Rome as it may have been in 320 AD.
The virtual traveller can now see every building as it stood in Rome at that time. In reality, just 300 buildings of classical Rome have survived, in most cases in ruins.
The 3D model is visible on the website as a layer. The layer floats a few metres above the satellite image of present-day Rome so that users can have a sense of locating where the ancient structures once stood.
According to the Google Earth blog, the 3D models are actually based on a physical model of the city called the "Plastico di Roma Antica" - created by archaeologists and model-makers from 1933 to 1974 and housed in a special gallery in the Museum of Roman Civilisation in Rome.
An extra feature in the 3D city is that 11 buildings have viewable interiors. These include: Basilica of Maxentius, Colosseum, Forum of Julius Caesar, Ludus Magnus, Temple of Venus and Rome, Temple of Vesta, Regia, Basilica Iulia, Basilica Aemelia, Curia Iulia, Tabularium.
The Guardian reports: "They (users) can float through the Forum, past the platform or "rostra" from which Cicero once declaimed, admire the statues, read the inscriptions, pry into palaces, and then slip round to the Colosseum or whisk over to the Circus Maximus where the ancient Romans held their chariot races."
Google Earth's chief technologist, Michael T. Jones, said: "It is the "Rome of [the emperor] Constantine in which everything is new. It's new. It's modern. It's beautiful."
Source: In.com
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Real-life African Mowgli cuddles elephants, leopards, ostriches
London, November 13 (ANI): A little girl who was born in the wilds of Namibia in 1990 may be called the real-life Mowgli, Rudyard Kipling's young hero in The Jungle Book, as she grew up running free with the beasts.
Tippi Degre appears to be treated by elephants, leopards and ostriches as one of their own, and let her cuddle them in a video.
The video was made by her own parents, French wildlife photographers Sylvie Robert and Alain Degre, when they lived in Africa.
"My daughter was a very lucky little girl. She was born and raised almost completely in the wild," the Sun quoted Sylvie, 52, as saying.
"It was magical to be this free in nature. It was just the three of us living wild with the animals and not too many humans.
"Tippi always said that this was her gift. She was in the mindset of these animals, believing they were her size and her friends," Sylvie added.
Tippi even befriended a leopard called J and B and an elephant she named Abu.
Sylvie, whose book she produced with Alain is called Tippi: My Book Of Africa, said: "She had no fear. She did not realise she was not the same size as Abu and would look into his eyes and speak to him.
Sylvie added: "Tippi was just 18 months old when they met and it was a special time. Their friendship was incredible."
Tippi would happily toddle by a herd of elephants, and she would sit for hours with lion cubs and dance with ostriches even when she was two.
Sylvie said that she always put her child's safety first.
"Wild animals will either run away or attack you if they are frightened. You must always be on the watch. Tippi was hurt only twice. First a meerkat bit her on the nose," she said.
"Then, in 1994, she was at a water hole with a baboon called Cindy. Cindy attacked Tippi's hair and pulled out a handful out of jealousy. That was terribly painful," she added.
The family left for France in 2000, but Sylvie said: "When we returned to Africa in 2006 Cindy ran up to Tippi and played with her hair, grooming her. It was quite beautiful."
Now 18, Tippi is presently studying for a degree in cinema at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Sylvie said: "My daughter will always be African. Hers is like Mowgli's story - but Tippi's is true." (ANI)
Source: Yahoo
Soon, fridges that will text or e-mail you when food is going off!
Fridges that will be able to send consumers email or text alerts when food is going off are being created by a group of researchers.
Ten scientists at Manchester University are working on an advanced device that will be able to send consumers email or text alerts.
Project head Dr Bruce Grieve said: "Food wastage costs in the UK are massive."
UK boffins have created a battery-free label which can pick up when food is on the turn, reports the Sun.
The disposable 5p gadget - like a security label on a CD - measures the temperature of food and the time it is stored.
It will be used by stores next year for bulk foods. (ANI)
Mukesh Ambani the Richest
Google tool to track flu outbreaks
The tool developed by Google.Org, the company's philanthropic department, uses search terms that are commonly entered into the internet to work out possible flu clusters.
"This is an example, where Google can use the incredible systems that we have to come up with an interesting, predictive result," said Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive.
"Flu trends" is based on the idea that people who feel sick will probably turn to the internet for information by searching for terms such as muscle aches, thermometer and chest congestion etc.
"One thing we found last year when we validated this model is it tended to predict surveillance data. The data are really, really timely," said Dr Lyn Finelli, chief of influenza surveillance at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US.
It tracks their ebb and flow, broken down by regions and states that can be notified to a central data control unit as the CDC in the US.
"They (model) were able to tell us on a day-to-day basis the relative direction of flu activity for a given area. They were about a week ahead of us. They could be used... As early warning signal for flu activity," Finelli, was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph newspaper today.
According to the British daily, early tests suggest that the service may be able to detect regional outbreaks of the flu a week to ten days before they are normally reported by the CDC. The company said it will keep user information confidential.
Source: Business Standard
Freescale, Samsung team up on LED displays
According to IMS Research, the market for semiconductors used in backlighting applications, including LED driver ICs, is expected to grow from Rs.5,504.00 crore ($1.1 billion) in 2008 to Rs.10,007.28 crore ($2.0 billion) in 2012.
"We expect the market for LED backlighting in notebooks, monitors and TVs to grow strongly," said Jamie Fox, a market research analyst for IMS Research. "In notebooks in particular, rapid growth is widely expected from 2008 to 2010."
Freescale plans to announce additional LED backlighting solutions for LCD TVs, monitors and notebooks in the first half of next year. Also in 2009, the company intends to pursue the automotive, commercial and residential LED lighting markets, which are expected to eventually dwarf the LCD TV market.
Source: EETimes
AMD back on track with new processor
AMD's four-core, 45nm Shanghai processor is shipping now, ahead of schedule. The chip, which AMD has not yet formally announced, will be priced aggressively and is getting performance measures as high as 35 per cent above its previous 65nm Barcelona while consuming as much as 30 per cent less power, said Burke Banda, a server marketing manager for AMD.
Source: EETimes
WiMAX
WiMAX stands for World Interoperability for Microwave Access. The first leg in the WiMAX race is to provide broadband wireless access to a range of computing devices by extending the reach of current Wi-Fi nodes. Wi-Fi typically operates over 300 feet, depending on how close the user is to a basestation, while WiMAX extends that range to some 30 miles. Of course, capacity and demand can be limiting factors.
Source: EEtimes
Doctors strike hits services in K'taka hospitals
Services in government hospitals all over Karnataka were affected today, with over 4,000 doctors working in the Health and Family Welfare Department intensifying their stir on the third day to press their charter of demands.
"Our strike is total today with doctors all over the state including those working in district and taluk hospitals abstaining from performing emergency, post mortem and even OPD (Out Patient Department) services," Dr Ravi Shankar, Secretary of Karnataka Medical Officers' Association told PTI.
"We are expecting the government to come forward and respond to our demands, which includes pay hike on par with our counterparts in Medical Education. However, so far we have not received any intimation," he said.
The Association's talks with Secretary of Health and Family Welfare Department, Madangopal yesterday on their three demands failed.
Besides the increase in salaries, the Association is also demanding regularisation of contractual doctors and passing of an ordinance on the lines of the one in Andhra Pradesh, which makes "any assault of the doctors, a non bailable offence", Ravishankar said.
Source: Business standard
GSM numbers rose by 8 million in October
According to the latest figures released by the Cellular Operators' Association of India (COAI), the GSM operators added 7.7 million subscribers (excluding Reliance Telecom) during the month. The data assume that Reliance Telecom added about 370,000 subscribers, the same as in the previous month. The GSM subscriber base in the country is now estimated at 242 million.
Commenting on the growth, TV Ramachandran, director-general, COAI, said with cumulative GSM subscribers at an estimated 242 million, it was clear that the GSM segment would cross the historic 250 million milestone by December 2008. Bharti Airtel [Get Quote] maintained its top rank by crossing the 80 million subscribers mark. It added 2.72 million subscribers, garnering a market share of 33.23 per cent. Its user base is now about 80.2 million.
This month too, state-owned operators continued to slip in comparison with the private operators.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL), which operates all over India, except in Delhi and Mumbai, and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), which operates in Delhi and Mumbai, witnessed a decline in total market share.
BSNL's share declined to 16.5 per cent as compared with 16.79 per cent in September. It added around 660,000 users in October, taking its total to around 39.84 million. The market share of MTNL declined to 1.5 per cent from 1.58 per cent last month.
AV Birla-promoted Idea Cellular added 1.2 million users and reported a total subscriber base of 31.58 million.
Source in.com
Caution: Headphones can interfere with heart devices
New York: Headphones from iPods or other digital music players may damage hearing, but music lovers who have a pacemaker or an implanted defibrillator are better off keeping them in their ears.
A small, new study revealed that placing the ubiquitous ear buds or other headphones too close to the chest could interfere with the proper functioning of the devices used to keep hearts beating at their proper rhythm.
Patients should not place the headphones, which contain magnets, in shirt pockets or drape them over their chest, lest they risk havoc with their heart-rhythm devices, researchers said on Sunday.
Pacemakers treat slow heart rhythms, while implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) jolt dangerously racing hearts back into a normal rhythm. "For patients with pacemakers, exposure to the headphones can force the device to deliver signals to the heart causing it to beat without regard to the patients' underlying heart rhythm," said Dr William Maisel of Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston and the study's lead investigator.
Exposure of ICDs to magnets in headphones may deactivate them, causing the device to stop looking for abnormal heart rhythms, Maisel explained. Results of the 60-patient study were presented at the American Heart Association scientific meeting in New Orleans.
Researchers tested eight different models of MP3 player headphone with iPods. They found a detectable interference with the heart devices in 14 patients - 30 per cent of ICD patients and 15 per cent of the pacemaker patients.
In most cases, removal of the headphones restored normal device function and there were no problems when the headphones were at least 1.2 inches (3 cm) from the skin's surface, Maisel said.
Earlier this year US health regulators reported that interactions between MP3 players and implanted heart devices are unlikely to occur. That may be the case - as long as you keep those ear buds where they belong.
YouTube enters in the MGM movie deal
A new deal signed between Google owned YouTube and MGM Studios will lead to uploading of entire television shows and feature films to YouTube.
The deal is quite similar to the partnership YouTube made with US broadcast giant CBS in October, under which CBS was to provide full-length television fare.
The users would be able to watch the episodes of the first season of the original “American Gladiators” through the MGM channel made available on YouTube. American Gladiators was a very well known serial from late '80s/early '90s.
The movies and episodes have several non-skippable commercial interruptions included within the showing, as per the deal with CBS.
MGM Worldwide Television co-president Jim Packer reported, “We're looking to mine the breadth and depth of the MGM library to build out and promote branded, multi-platform opportunities on demand, online and wherever viewers consumer their entertainment.”
Satyam absorbs 128 Motorola staff
Motorola and Satyam Computer Services Ltd announced that Satyam has acquired 128 Motorola employees. This acquisition will create synergies and boost their competitiveness in Malaysia and throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Motorola will divest from its software development center (SDC) in Cyberjaya. All 128 employees along with the unit’s assets will shift to Satyam.
The SDC is part of Motorola’s Home and Networks Mobility business and focuses on network management system development. “This strategic acquisition will integrate and strengthen Satyam’s product engineering services to network equipment providers and operators in the areas of element management, mobile solutions and access networks,” said Nishith Mathur, head of Satyam’s Technology Infrastructure business unit.
“This is a unique effort that will continue to drive Motorola’s strategy in Malaysia, will strengthen our competitive position, and improve cost structure and operational efficiencies,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, corporate vice-president, software operations and WiMAX and LTE engineering, home and networks mobility.
When the deal is closed, subject to regulatory and other customary conditions, and completed by December 31, 2008, Motorola will contract directly with Satyam for development services of its market-leading network management software.
“This partnership reinforces the promise of the Cyberjaya Multimedia Super Corridor to attract new and dynamic research and development ecosystems,” said Virender Aggarwal, head of Satyam’s rest of the world region. “In fact, Satyam is developing a 15-acre campus in the Super Corridor, which will create both operational efficiencies for related development projects and career opportunities for our new employees and many other people in area.”
Motorola employees who join Satyam will immediately have access to Satyam’s world-class training programmes and they will gain exceptional career development opportunities.
“These Motorola professionals are steeped in capabilities that are in high-demand all over the globe,” Aggarwal said. “As such, they represent a very valuable group for our organisation. We are always trying to increase our skills in strategic areas, and this agreement helps us in that regard significantly.”
For its part, Motorola is committed to delivering on customers’ expectations without disruption or distraction. “The software development centre provides significant efforts for both internal programmes important to customer deliverables and for external Motorola’s global customers. Our commitment to those programmes remains strong,” Ramakrishna said.
Motorola is a large investor and employer in Malaysia. Penang is a major site for Motorola’s operations, as it is home to Motorola’s largest manufacturing site for two-way radio...
Phoenix Mars lander is not working anymore
Phoenix Mars lander is not working anymore. According to NASA the the vehicle is no longer available for use.
The project manager Barry Goldstein, told “We’re actually ceasing operations, declaring an end to mission operations at this point.”
According to the reports, on Oct. 27, just after Phoenix finished its last major experiment analyzing Martian soil, an unexpected dust storm hit. The batteries, already low from running the experiment, ran out of energy.
Google, T-Mobile too mum over Android security?
When it comes to telling customers about security weaknesses, there's a fine line between alerting customers and inviting attacks. With T-Mobile G1, the first phone to run Google's Android operating system, I think the companies are erring on the side of inadequate disclosure.
I've been testing a review model of the G1, and an update arrived first on November 1 and then a second a week later. Only by dint of much pestering and more than a week of waiting did I find out from Google what was in those two Android patches.
And T-Mobile has been pretty quiet, too. (I'm waiting for comment from the company about its choices.)
I'm not the type to blithely ignore patches. Sure, I'm not convinced the security patches I download for Adobe Reader, Microsoft Windows, and Firefox are flawless, but I think the odds are good enough they'll be an improvement that I install them.
But with the Android phone, I couldn't even tell if the patches were security related, much less how important they are, much less what they actually do. The closest I could come was figuring out what operating system build I had installed, then using that nugget of information to snoop around the T-Mobile forums, the Android bug-reporting system, and assorted Web sites to see if I could piece together what was going on.
In short, even if companies are generally looking out for their customers' best interests, I think it behooves them to keep the customers better informed. It prevents us from feeling like disempowered pawns. It helps us make intelligent choices with our products. And it can even make us happy, when pesky bugs are stamped out or useful features are added.
Even Microsoft, which hardly has a reputation for coddling its users, does a better job of keeping people in the loop. It gives a heads up a few days in advance about what's coming on its next monthly "patch Tuesday" upgrades.
In a pickle
Google writes the patches but relies on T-Mobile to disseminate them to its customers and to communicate with its customers, said Rich Cannings of Google's Android security team.
"We won't disclose the issue until all our users have been at least asked to update their phone," Cannings said.
T-Mobile's site says delivering over-the-air updates to G1 customers takes several days, with users selected in random order. Given the philosophy of not disclosing details until everybody has a chance to update, it would be impractical to include update details along with the update itself. Early recipients could simply publish details online.
Microsoft takes a different approach, though, publicly releasing details even before all computers have been patched.
Those who dig around T-Mobile's forums can find posts from a T-Mobile administrator named Will. "The first rule of updates is: you do not talk about updates," he joked in one post confirming that T-Mobile had begun sending out the TC30 patch, then only offered a hint about what was in the patch. He was more forthcoming in an earlier post, though.
Cannings said Google will release all the gory details about Android vulnerabilities eventually; the security announcements are automatically sent to the Bugtraq and Full Disclosure security mailing lists, for example, he said.
But that process doesn't take place on the same schedule as the patches T-Mobile distributes. It's been 11 days since I received the RC29 patch, and there's still no word published on the Android Security Announcements group. The only note is an August 18 introductory note with this advice: "If you would like to receive security patch announcements for Android, please join the android-security-announce Google Group."
The security fixes also take place behind closed doors, despite Android's open-source nature. After the report of the root-console bug that would cause a G1 phone to reboot if a user simply typed "reboot", Google's Dan Morrill added a note, "Marking as security problem, which will hide this issue until the fix is public," though it wasn't actually hidden.
Google has taken the same approach of hiding security issues with its Chrome browser, and updates are installed automatically with no option for users to approve the process. Again, it takes the approach that Google knows best, and users are best to trust the company to do the right thing.
Gmail Launches Voice And Video Chat
Users only require a webcam and a small web browser plugin, to start video chatting.
Gmail voice and video chat lets users start a video chat without switching to another application or signing up for another account. Users who don't have a webcam, can simply chat by voice.
To get started, users have to open a Gmail chat window, click on the "Options" menu at the bottom, and choose "Add voice/video chat," which will take them through a one-time installation of a free plugin (a quick 2 MB download). When Gmail is re-opened users will notice that their "Options" link in their chat window has changed to "Video & more". Opening this menu and clicking "Start video chat" will start it off. Users can pop out the video and change its size and position, or switch to full screen.
Gmail voice and video chat is being rolled out on PCs and on Macs.
Google Apps customers get this service as well, at no extra charge, and can voice or video chat with any other Gmail or Apps users.
To use voice and video chat, a PC must have Windows XP or a more recent version, or an Intel-Based Mac with Mac OS X v10.4 or later. It works in browsers that support the latest version of Gmail (Google Chrome, Firefox 2.0+, Internet Explorer 7.0, and Safari 3.0).
Emotions communicated through text chat are ‘contagious’
Major fire in Indian Bank building, loss minimal
A major fire broke out on the fifth and sixth floors of the public sector Indian Bank at Rajaji Salai here last night. Police and fire service sources said some documents kept in the two floors and furnitures were damaged in the fire, which was caused due to an electrical short circuit.
The loss was only minimal as the details in the documents had already been computerised.
Traffic police personnel who were on duty on the busy stretch of Rajaji Salai, noticed smoke billowing out of the fifth and sixth floor building and alerted the fire service.
About eight fire tenders, using the skylifts, putout the fire after battling hard for nearly two hours. The fifth and sixth floors houses the Harbour Branch of the bank and offices of the bank's senior executives. The office of the Bank's Chairman and Managing Director M S Sundararajan was located on the sixth floor. Later, talking to reporters after inspecting the fire ravaged floors, Mr Sundararajan said the floor affected by the fire contained only office records. Meanwhile, Mr Sundararajan said this morning that the banking services were not affected due to the fire. As the bank had already adopted the Core Banking solution, functioning of none of the more than 550-odd branches in India, were affected.