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Friday, November 30, 2012
Technicolor research and development centre
Nokia litigates against Blackberry-maker over patents
More than 150 participants, mostly IT experts and university students have already registered to participate in the two-day Sanitation Hackathon from November 30, 2012 at the Ruposhi Bangla hotel in Dhaka.
The event is being organised by Water and Sanitation Program of the World Bank.
This intensive coding marathon is aimed at finding innovative IT solutions to address the lack of access to basic sanitation by 2.6 billion people in the world. The Sanitation Hackathon follows last year's Water Hackathon which was organised by the World Bank.
The overall goal of the Sanitation Hackathon is to form a community of IT professionals and sanitation experts that will collaborate in future to address challenges in the sanitation sector.
Lack of access to basic sanitation causes the death of approximately 4,000 children a day and billions of dollars in economic losses. Using new technology like data maps, mobile games, SMS services, crowd sourcing and opening up data can also help to solve various other development problems.
Registration form and details are available at its website www.hackathonbd.com.
The Sanitation Hackathon will take place simultaneously on the same
weekend in Lahore, Jakarta, Cape
Town, Dakar, Lima, Manila, Dar es Salaam, Pune, various locations in
North America, Hartford, Helsinki and London.
Samsung Galaxy products infringe Apple patent: Dutch court
The court ordered Samsung Electronics to pay Apple damages, determined by how much profit it has made from the sales.
The patent dispute concerns the Android operating system versions 2.2.1 to 3.0 used on Samsung's Galaxy tablets and smartphones, the court said.
Samsung and Apple, the world's top two smartphone makers, are locked in patent disputes in at least ten countries as they vie to dominate the lucrative mobile market and win over customers with their latest gadgets.
Samsung, the world's top maker of smartphones, infringed Apple patents to make its smartphones and tablets, a US trade panel judge said in a preliminary decision issued last month.
Samsung won a court case last month in the Netherlands, when a Dutch court ruled the company did not infringe an Apple patent by using certain multi-touch techniques on some of the Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablet computers.
Microsoft CEO defends its innovation record, financial results
Bill Gates, co-founder and now chairman of the world's largest software company, was one of the first to champion tablet-sized devices more than 10 years ago, but Microsoft failed to come up with a product that worked as well as the iPad. Gates was silent throughout the meeting, attended by about 450 shareholders.
"We're innovating on the seam between software and hardware," said Ballmer, asked why his company had fallen behind rival Apple. "Maybe we should have done that earlier."
A month ago, Microsoft launched the Surface tablet - its first own-brand computer - but has not revealed sales figures.
In the tablet market, "we see nothing but a sea of upside," Ballmer said, an acknowledgement that until now Microsoft has effectively had zero presence in the tablet market.
"I feel pretty good about our level of innovation," he added.
Ballmer said smartphones running Microsoft's new Windows software were selling four times as much as they did at this time last year. Microsoft has never given sales numbers of Windows phones, primarily made by Nokia, Samsung and HTC.
Windows currently has 2 to 4 percent of the global smartphone market, according to various independent data providers. Its overall market share will not likely grow in proportion to its own sales, given that sales of other smartphones - mostly running Google's Android system - are also growing quickly.
Ballmer, flanked by Gates and Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein, was asked by several shareholders to explain Microsoft's lackluster share price, which has been stuck for a decade, and has been outperformed by Apple and Google Inc stock in recent years."I understand your comment," he told one shareholder. He went on to explain that Microsoft had "done a phenomenal job of driving product volumes" and was focusing on profiting from that growth.
He suggested that whether investors recognized that value at any given time was out of his hands.
"The stock market's kind of a funny thing," he said, adding that Microsoft had handed back $10 billion in dividends and share buybacks to investors in the last fiscal year.
Several shareholders at the meeting in Bellevue, an upscale suburb of Seattle, complimented the executives on how they had grown and managed the company.
Microsoft's shares rose almost 18 percent during fiscal 2012, which ended in June of this year, compared with a 3 percent rise in the Standard & Poor's 500.
Despite such fluctuations, Microsoft's shares stand around the same level they did 10 years ago.
Facebook nixes rumours on copyright shift
"There is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users' information or the content they post to the site," Facebook said in a "fact check" notice on its website Monday.
"This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been."
The notice came after the copyright notice went viral -- suggesting that a posted statement was needed to protect copyrights on Facebook. The hoax had been around in the past but resurfaced after Facebook announced changes to its privacy policies last week.
Users began repeating these posts, which stated, "In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my
copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, comics, paintings,
professional photos and videos, etc...
This will place them under protection of copyright laws."
Warnings about the so-called "chain letter hoax" were issued as far back as June from the security firm Sophos and others.
And noted technology blogger Robert Scoble poured scorn Monday on those falling for the trick, saying on his Facebook page: "If you are posting about copyright on Facebook and you haven't done your research you are an idiot."
Neutrino - gate keeper of the Universe
The number of neutrinos moving freely throughout the Universe since the Big Bang is staggering, about 300 million in every cubic meter. The Sun and supernovae (exploding stars that have reached the end of their life) are the primary sources of neutrinos reaching us. Every second over 500 trillion solar neutrinos enter every square meter of the Earth's surface exposed to the Sun. By the time you finish reading this paragraph, about trillion neutrinos will pass through your body. But don't panic, they are inert and harmless; just “little bits of spin-energy that have got detached,” according to astrophysicist Arthur Eddington.
Why should we care about these furtive particles? Strange as it may seem, the intrinsic properties of neutrinos make them an influential player in the field of cosmology. They carry a wealth of information of great cosmic significance, about the high-energy events that produced them, deep secrets of the cosmos from distant galaxies and the remote past. They are essential in understanding what happened in the briefest moments after the Big Bang. They can tell us why the Universe contains more matter than antimatter. If they have mass, even if it is miniscule, it will be the dominant form of matter in the Universe.
Neutrinos act as telescopes and allow us to take a peek into the interior of the Sun. They are critical in understanding stellar evolution and dynamics of supernovae where heavy elements are produced. They are living witnesses of star birth and their violent death. Just like red shift and cosmic microwave background radiation, neutrinos have a tale to tell about the Universe of which they are part. Detection of neutrinos, therefore, is crucial if we want to have a handle on all of these and other aspects of cosmology.
It is notoriously difficult to detect these snippets; it is like looking for a needle in a giant haystack. Absence of charge makes them unresponsive to electromagnetic interaction. Lack of internal structure (no quarks) prohibits them from taking part in strong interaction. They cut through the Earth unhindered and move off to outer space. Only a slab of lead several light years thick will be able to stop these ephemeral particles. They announce their presence only through weak interaction associated with the radioactive break-up of a nucleus.
Occasionally neutrinos do interact with matter making it possible to capture a few of them if the detectors are large enough. Also known as “neutrino telescope,” the detector is a huge tank filled with large amount of liquid such as chlorine-rich cleaning fluid or heavy water. The liquid increases the chances for particle interaction. The detectors must be placed deep underground, beneath a mountain or inside a mine, so that only neutrinos can reach them. All other particles coming from outer space that could befuddle the detectors are blocked by the thick layers of overlying rocks.
The earliest detector built in 1967 is buried nearly a mile deep in a gold mine at Homestake, South Dakota. It was expected that out of the trillions of neutrinos that will reach the detector, the capture rate would be at least one per day. After more than two decades, it was found that on the average it trapped only one neutrino every three days. A more recent detector buried in a nickel mine in Sudbury, Canada revealed that the neutrinos on their way to the Earth can change flavor. The Homestake detector was tuned for only one flavor, the electron neutrino; hence the low count rate.
Clearly, the problem of detecting neutrinos is of immense proportions. We still have “miles to go” before we can say we are on the verge of solving the neutrino puzzle. However, the detection in 1987 of more than the expected number of neutrinos from a supernova explosion 168,000 light years away by underground telescopes in Japan and Ohio has infused new life into neutrino physics. Physicists are now more than ever inspired to build some of the most sophisticated detectors to find and unmask the guise of this gate keeper of the Universe.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
The mobile computer boom
According to both IDC and Gartner, Q3 FY2010-11 saw notebook volumes rise, and for the first time a million-plus notebooks were sold in India in a single quarter. The research agencies put the notebook numbers at around 1.11 million. As per Gartner, desktops grew by 5 percent in Q3 FY2010-11 whereas notebooks grew by 41 percent as compared to the same quarter last year.
“The last quarter has been historic in many ways,” states Gopal Swaminathan, Director, Sales and Marketing, Intel India. “I remember in 2006 we were striving hard to do a million mobile processors in India for the entire year. The market has grown nearly four times for notebooks. The demand is driven by all sectors and a very buoyant consumer market, which is preferring mobile computers.”
Enterprises in India, both small and big, are in the midst of a technology refresh cycle. “Notebook numbers are helped by the fact that many SMB and enterprise entities are replacing their desktops with notebooks,” says Rajeev Mehta, MD, Zest Systems, Delhi.
Entry-level notebook prices have dropped below the Rs. 25,000 mark; this has helped break the ice with new customers. Acer, which has driven new price-points in notebooks for nearly a decade, created a new price bracket of Rs. 20,000 with its e-machines brand. Explains S Rajendran, CMO, Acer India, “For every thousand-rupee bracket in the sub-Rs. 25,000 market, you are creating a new set of aspirants who want to buy a computer, or who are willing to buy a notebook instead of a desktop.”
The drop in notebook prices has been helped by the drop in the prices of the building blocks that make a notebook. According to Display Research, which tracks key components such as LCD screens, the average price difference between mobile and desktop TFT screens was down to 2 percent in Q2 FY2010-11 from around 16 percent in 2008. Even in hard disk drives and memory, the price difference is less than 20 percent now—three years ago it used to be nearly double. “It’s simple. With notebook volumes growing, the prices of the components are also bound to come down,” points out Rajesh Khurana, Country Manager, India and Saarc, Seagate.
All this has resulted in a noticeable change in a number of large government tenders; these were traditionally for desktops, or notebooks plus desktops, but now they are mostly for notebooks. For example, the Kerala IT Schools tender, which was originally drafted for 20,000 notebooks and 50,000 desktops, was changed to an all-notebook order. The first tender for 15,000 netbooks and 12,000 notebooks was opened in early November. The next round is for 50,000 notebooks, and is expected to be completed around early February 2011.
Similarly, 17 states have earmarked purchases that will end up in the sale of almost 6,00,000 notebooks to the government and education sectors over the next nine months.
Credit needs to be given to the PC vendors who tried to grow the market by introducing niche products and models targeting specific user communities. In addition, vendors have been positioning notebooks as a fashion accessory, and investing in promotional campaigns with fashion brands and events. HP was a sponsor of Miss India 2010, and Dell launched a series of notebooks with shades matching the colors of nail-polish maker OPI.
“The launch of multi-color models complemented by aggressive promotions and discounted bundling schemes augmented consumer PC spend, especially in the portables segment,” comments Sumanta Mukherjee, Lead PC Analyst, IDC India. “Vendors have been quick to introduce new models that appeal to a young generation of PC buyers who are purchasing notebooks.”
Despite the home desktop market getting a new lease of life with the introduction of all-in-one PCs a year back, the volumes are said to be far from inspiring. Vendors have noted that notebooks are being purchased in place of the traditional multimedia home desktop. “Many first-time buyers are comfortable buying notebooks, especially young urban couples who are sharing a notebook at home,” says Amar Babu, Managing Director, Lenovo India.
Vishal Tripathi, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner India, predicts that in the second half of 2011 the Indian PC market will witness more notebooks being shipped than desktops. “In 2010, the ratio between notebooks and desktops for the first two quarters was 34:66; by Q3 FY2010-11 it had become 40:60. In India many first-time buyers are buying a notebook as their first PC. With value products and competitive prices, vendors are able to meet the expectations of price-sensitive buyers, and this is accelerating the growth of notebooks.”
Arafat's remains exhumed
Swiss, French and Russian experts will take samples to establish whether his death, at a military hospital in Paris in 2004, was the result of poisoning.
France began a murder inquiry in August after Swiss experts found radioactive polonium-210 on his personal effects.
Arafat's medical records say he had a stroke resulting from a blood disorder.
His widow, Suha, objected to a post-mortem at the time, but asked the Palestinian Authority to permit the exhumation "to reveal the truth".
Sealed tomb
Arafat's body lay in a stone-clad mausoleum inside the Muqataa presidential compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The mausoleum was sealed off earlier this month.
Palestinian officials told the Associated Press that the remains were taken from the mausoleum to a nearby mosque, so that Palestinian doctors could take samples from the bones.
With the body removed from the tomb, the scientists will each take samples and then go to their respective countries to carry out tests for polonium-210 and possibly other lethal substances.
It is believed that the investigation could take several months.
Before the exhumation, the head of the Palestinian committee investigating Arafat's death, Tawfik al-Tirawi, said no journalists would be allowed to observe the exhumation.
"Because [of the] sanctity of the symbol and the sanctity of this event, [the exhumation] should not be permitted to be in front of the media," the former Palestinian intelligence chief said.
A reburial ceremony, with full military honours, is expected to take place later on Tuesday.
Many Palestinians continue to believe Arafat was poisoned by Israel, which saw Arafat as an obstacle to peace and had put him under house arrest. Israel has strongly denied any involvement.
TV documentary
Arafat, who led the Palestine Liberation Organisation for 35 years and became the first president of the Palestinian Authority in 1996, fell violently ill in October 2004 inside the Muqataa.
Two weeks later he was flown to a French military hospital in Paris, where he died on 11 November 2004, aged 75.
In 2005, the New York Times obtained a copy of Arafat's medical records, which it said showed he died of a massive haemorrhagic stroke that resulted from a bleeding disorder caused by an unknown infection.
Independent experts who reviewed the records told the paper that it was highly unlikely that he had been poisoned.
A murder inquiry was launched by French prosecutors in August after an investigation by al-Jazeera TV, working with scientists at the Institute of Radiation Physics (IRA) at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, found "significant" traces of polonium-210 present in samples taken from Arafat's personal effects, including his trademark keffiyeh headdress.
In some cases, the elevated levels were 10 times higher than those on control subjects, and most of the polonium could not have come from natural sources, the scientists said.
But the institute also said that Arafat's symptoms - as described in his medical records - were not consistent with polonium poisoning.
The former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko died of exposure to polonium-210 in London in 2006. The UK authorities have accused Andrei Lugovoi, an ex-KGB officer, of poisoning his tea.
Zia Trust Graft Case: Lawyer warned over time petition
Judge Md Zahirul Haque of Senior Special Judge's Court warned lawyer Masud Ahmed Talukder as he came up with time petition for eighth time.
Earlier, Khaleda also the opposition leader in Parliament, skipped the court for seventh times showing different reasons.
The court also fixed January 1 for the next hearing of the case as the lawyer told the court that they would not file any more time petition in future.
Today the court was scheduled to decide whether the charges against Khaleda and three others will be taken into congnisance in the case.
The other accused are Harris Chowdhury, former political secretary of Khaleda; Ziaul Islam Munna, assistant private secretary (APS) of Harris; and Monirul Islam Khan, APS of former Dhaka city mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka.
Earlier on October 1, another court fixed the date for passing an order on whether it will accept charges against Khaleda Zia and three others in the case.
On August 8, 2011, the Anti-Corruption Commission filed the case with Tejgaon Police Station, accusing four people including Khaleda, for abusing power in raising funds from unknown sources for the trust.
Among the accused, Harris is on the run.
Aggrieved workers block highway for 30 minutes
The workers have been demanding the punishment of the owners of Tazreen Fashion Ltd, the garment factory, where the tragedy occurred Saturday evening.
Over 1,000 workers carrying black flags under the banner of 'Ghoshbag Garment Workers' sat on the highway around 11:00am when police barred them from going towards the fire-devastated building.
Police resisted the agitating workers at Nishchintapur as Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir was visiting Tazreen Fashion Ltd, the scene of the occurrence, where 111 workers died during Saturday's fire.
A heavy traffic jam was instantly created as the demonstration halted traffic movement on the highway, witnesses said.
Traffic movement resumed around 11:30am when police opened the road for the workers after the home minister left the place.
Earlier around 9:45am, the aggrieved workers staged demonstration and brought out processions on Ashulia-Jamgarah road.
At least 57 bodies were charred beyond recognition as the fire raged through the eight-storey factory on Saturday evening.
The 18 units of fire service toiled more than 11 hours to put out the blaze.
The charred bodies were kept at Dhaka Medical College morgue and samples were collected from the bodies for DNA test on Monday.
The unidentified bodies will be buried today at the Jurain graveyard in the capital.
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