News

Indianexpress: Pune Municipal Transport became the first public transport body in the country to embrace the eco-friendly fuel when it began running 100 of its buses on bio-diesel in June. The next step in the action plan was to convert its entire fleet of 832 buses but the reduction of diesel prices by Rs 4 a litre in November has put the utility in a fix as bio-diesel has become costlier by Rs 5 a litre in the last six months.

The national level tenders floated by PMT in November and opened a week ago indicate that the lowest quotation for supply of bio-diesel reflect this reality. The PMT, which has a daily requirement of 42,000 litres of diesel, gets its staple fuel at the rate of Rs 35.36 a litre as against the market rate of Rs 37 a litre.
 
Against this, the ruling market rate of bio-diesel is in excess of Rs 40 a litre. The producers have to pay a 25 per cent VAT to the state government — 12.5 per cent each on purchase of the raw material and on sale of the finished product.

With the diesel prices dropping from Rs 40 a litre in June by Rs 4 a litre, the monetary advantage of taking the bio-diesel route has as good as vanished for PMT. As per earlier projection, by mixing 20 litres of bio-diesel with 80 litres of regular diesel, the PMT was looking to save Rs 1 crore every month, an unlikely scenario now.

Indianexpress:  The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has come up with a plan of action, following the Bombay High Court order on illegal structures in private premises and on public roads. The highlight of the plan is demolition of illegal structures under construction within 24 hours and existing ones in 30 days.

The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by Municipal Commissioner Nitin Kareer on Tuesday and a circular in this regard will be finalised next week.
Henceforth, those structures which are under construction without PMC’s building control department’s permission will be given a 24-hour notice. A panchnama along with photographs of the structure will be made. At the end of the notice period, the building control department, along with the police and ward office, will demolish the structure.

Decentralising the work of inspecting new constructions, the civic administration has directed officers under the ward officer - sanitary inspector, encroachment inspector, supervisor, junior engineer and housing officer - to submit a weekly report to the ward officer and city engineer. The ward officer is to divide the area under his jurisdiction and appoint the other officers for daily inspection of illegal constructions, new slums and encroachments on roads. While, the main encroachment office will be responsible for taking action on encroachment on roads, the respective ward office will take action against new slums.

The building control department has been told to take immediate action on the permanent forecourts and shades constructed in the front setback limits. Similarly, hotels constructed without permission in the front setback will also be demolished and visitors’ parking will be created in that space. A board will be displayed at that place and if the board is removed, then strict action will be taken on that account too. Action will also be taken on illegal constructions in parking.

Indianexpress: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC)’s school board on Friday presented the budget for the year 2007-08 to the civic Standing Committee. However, the code of conduct being in force, decision on the budget will be made only after the State Election Commission grants permission. The Standing Committee has already sought the Commission’s consent on the school board budget. Decision on the budget has to be taken before December 31.

Municipal Commissioner Nitin Kareer has suggested heavy slashes in the 2007-08 budget. While the school board has presented the budget for 2007-08 as over Rs 144.5 crore, the administration has suggested reduction of around Rs 37 crore and brought down the budget to Rs 107 crore.
 
Barring a Rs 40 lakh cut in the provision of uniforms, the administration has scrapped the allocation of uniforms for Balwadi children, nutritious food, shoes and socks, educational equipment and school bags. In the proposal submitted to the Standing Committee, Kareer has said the school board’s budget for 2007-08 is around Rs 33 crore more than last year’s.

Indianexpress: It’s been almost a year since 2.5 lakh students wrote their preliminary examination for the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) on December 18, 2005 for the 350 posts in State government departments and another 1,170 post for police sub-inspectors (PSI) and sales tax inspectors (STI).

However, the results that will allow students to appear for the main examination and subsequently the interview, have not been announced as yet.

This has come to light even as efforts to increase representation of Maharashtrians in the civil services has gained momentum, with the State government asking Pune-based Yeshwantrao Chavan Academy for Development Administration to conduct sessions for people who train youngsters for the UPSC.

The exams have been mired in controversies like question paper leaks and have not been held every year— after 1999, they were conducted in 2003.

The delay in announcing the results is not a first. Results for the examination held in 2003 were declared only in 2006 while students who wrote the police sub inspectors’ examinations in 2004 had to wait for eleven months for the results. The main examination for PSIs/ STIs will now be held on December 24.

TechTree: Today, Adobe Systems will introduce a beta version of Adobe Photoshop CS3 software, the next release of the world standard in digital imaging.

Adobe is delivering a widely available Photoshop CS3 beta to enable customers to more easily transition to the latest hardware platforms, particularly Apple’s new Intel-based systems.

The beta version of the software, which can be downloaded at http://labs.adobe.com, is available as a Universal Binary for the Macintosh platform, as well as for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista computers.

Packed with new features, Photoshop CS3 beta also includes a pre-release version of a major upgrade to Adobe Bridge, as well as a preview release of the all-new Adobe Device Central. Photoshop customers can use Adobe Device Central to design, preview, and test compelling mobile content, created specifically for smaller screens. This new tool, integrated in the Photoshop CS3 beta, simplifies and accelerates the creation of mobile content through a preview environment and built-in device profiles.

TechNews: Google this week unveiled a fully open source version of its Google Web Toolkit, GWT 1.3 Release Candidate, available for free under the Apache 2.0 open source license. The complete, open source code for GWT is really the only change in version 1.3, according to Google Tech Lead Bruce Johnson.

The toolkit, built around Google’s code for Asynchronous Javascript and XML (Ajax) development, comes as both GWT and Ajax are being used increasingly to create rich Internet applications.

“Now that GWT has some serious adoption and a lively user community, open sourcing is the obvious next step to help GWT evolve more quickly,” said Google Tech Lead Bruce Johnson on the project blog.

BetaNews: The merger between Nokia and Siemens’ networking divisions has been postponed due to an ongoing investigation at Siemens over charges of bribery. Several former Siemens executives have already been arrested as a result of the investigation, which includes the division that would become part of the new company. Nokia expressed its concern with the issues, and said it would participate a review to ensure there are no remaining issues.

“Nokia and Siemens intend to adjust their agreements in order to have Siemens conduct an appropriate compliance review prior to closing of the transaction,” the company said in a statement. The results of such a review would be used to prevent the issues from occurring within the new company, it said.

BetaNews: Microsoft is fighting back against those attempting to distribute a cracked version of Windows Vista. It has issued an update that detects whether a copy is attempting to bypass the activation system by mixing files from the test and final versions, it said Thursday.

Such a version is currently available on DVD, Microsoft says. When the copy is detected, Microsoft will alert the user, and then give them 30 days to activate the software, or it will be placed in reduced functionality mode.

A Microsoft representative said the update will affect a select number of systems that are running this specific tampered version of the next-generation operating system, nicknamed ‘Frankenbuild’ by members of Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage team.

“Windows Vista will use the new Windows Update client to require only the “frankenbuild” systems to go through a genuine validation check. These systems will fail that check because we have blocked the release candidate keys for systems not authorized to use them,” a member of the WGA posted to the team’s web log Thursday.
 

BetaNews: Security firm eEye Digital Security said Friday it had discovered a new non-Microsoft based malware that has both the characteristics of a worm and a botnet spreading the wild. However, it uses a flaw in a program meant to protect users from such issues to propagate itself.

The flaw is within Symantec’s popular anti-virus software. Calling it “Big Yellow,” the exploit takes advantage of an issue within the remote management interfaces of both Symantec AntiVirus and Symantec Client Security.

The worm was first discovered late Thursday by researchers on the firm’s “Honey Pot” network, a system specifically designed to identify new attacks. More information on the issue can be found at the eEye website.

The problem could be exploited by an anonymous attacker, which, by executing arbitrary code could take complete control of an affected system.

A patch for the issue has been available since May of this year. However, eEye claims that many IT departments and home users have not applied this important patch, putting them at risk for attack.

BBCNews: Microsoft boss Bill Gates has told a group of influential bloggers that copy protection for digital music and video is too complex for consumers.
Mr Gates was speaking to an invited party of bloggers and web developers at Microsoft’s Seattle headquarters.

Digital Rights Management (DRM), which is used to stop copying, is a big issue for some people who feel it limits what they can do with legally bought files.

“DRM is not where it should be,” said Mr Gates, reported blogger Steve Rubel.

“In the end of the day incentive systems (for artists) make a difference,” said Mr Gates.

“But we don’t have the right thing here in terms of simplicity or interoperability,” he added.