News

IndianExpress: Contemporary media has been unable to make effective use of its freedom due to excessive importance given to economic forces, said former Minister for Justice and Law Affairs Ram Jethmalani. He was speaking at a national seminar on ‘The socio-legal responsibilities of media and the Indian democracy’ at the Symbiosis Society’s Law College on Saturday.

“News today has become a commodity. The press enjoys considerable freedom in India, but it has failed in making use of this freedom,’’ said Jethmalani. He asserted that while right to free expression was an essential part of self-governance, it was the responsibility of the media to highlight flaws in matters related to national security. “The lawyers as well as the common citizens are with the press on this issue,’’ he said.

Supreme Court advocate PP Rao said that the credibility of the media while reporting criminal cases was brought into question due to lack of consistency. “While the arrest of an individual is hyped up, if the same individual is acquitted, the press coverage is not as much,’’ said Rao.

Indianexpress: State government’s decision on Thursday to make Marathi compulsory in all CBSE and ICSE-affiliated schools from standard I has evoked mixed reaction in the city.

While education department officials welcome the decision, students and parents are not too happy. Principals of CBSE and ICSE schools feel many practical aspects need to be considered before the decision is implemented.

As per the announcement made by education minister Hasan Mushrif at the Nagpur legislative assembly on December 14, all schools wishing to switch over to the CBSE or ICSE board will have to make Marathi compulsory to obtain a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the government.

“The existing CBSE and ICSE schools will have to be persuaded to adopt the system, or some legislation will have to be brought in,’’ said director of education Dilip Gogate. Pune has a total of 48 such affiliated schools.

Indianexpress: Two persons were killed on the spot in a head-on collision between their motorcycle and a speeding car ferrying employees of Wipro call centre in Hinjewadi on Saturday morning. The mishap took place at Rahatne, Kalewadi.

The deceased are Kalpesh Ashok Modi (26), and Nayab Ali Abdul Sayyad (23) of Chinchwad. Modi was pronounced dead at Yeshwantrao Chavan Memorial Hospital, Chinchwad, while Nayab Ali succumbed to injuries at Supertech Hospital in Chinchwad. The driver, Rahul Shivaji Kamble (24) of Thergaon, has been arrested.

IndianExpress: To commemorate Vijay Diwas — India’s victory over Pakistan, the surrender of Pakistani Army and creation of Bangladesh in the 1971 War, — a Triservices wreath-laying ceremony was organised at Morwada Junction, Ghorpadi on Saturday.

AFMC Commandant Lt Gen Saibal Mukherjee laid the wreath on behalf of all ranks at the National War Memorial, paying homage to all those who lay down their lives while fighting for the nation. A 24-minute documentary film Shura Me Vandile (O Brave, I salute you) prepared by the department of Sainik Welfare, State government was also telecast at 10.30 pm by Doordarshan Sahyadri channel. The film, written and directed by Col (retd) V N Tambekar, outlines various welfare schemes for the ex-servicemen.

The ceremony was open to the public. Wreaths were also laid by Lt Gen (Retd) HM Khanna on behalf of all ex-servicemen, NDA Commandant Air Marshal T S Randhawa on the behalf of all ranks of Air Force and NDA Deputy Commandant Rear Admiral C S Patham on behalf of all ranks of the Navy.

BBCNews: Two crew members of the space shuttle Discovery have completed the delicate rewiring of the International Space Station (ISS) during a third spacewalk.
Nasa has approved a fourth spacewalk, which would push back the return of the space shuttle by a day.

Nasa made the decision as astronauts Robert Curbeam and Sunita Williams were halfway through their outing.

Mission Control said that the rewired electrical system was powered back up and now operating without problems.

Jammed panel

The rewiring, delayed after the 2003 Columbia disaster, will provide a power upgrade to support extra equipment.

“It’s great to have some good on-orbit electricians working for us,” said Stephen Robinson from Nasa Mission Control in Houston, Texas.

Mr Curbeam, an experienced spacewalker, left the ISS ahead of Sunita Williams, who was beginning her first mission.

BBCNews: The ePassport is one of the many measures pursued by the United States and governments internationally after the horror of 11 September.

It will, we are promised, keep the unwanted and dangerous outside our borders, while streamlining entry for those welcome to come and visit.

But as the implementation of the scheme gets underway it is becoming clear that there could be serious problems with it.

With the old passport, we knew where we stood. If you lost it you knew you had lost it, but with the new, machine readable passports the story is very different.

When you take a digital photo the image is, in effect, a code, which means that however many prints you make they are all exactly the same.

Five-minute replica

So when Lukas Grunwald and Christian Bottger realised they could clone the new ePassport they were pretty sure it would be identical to the original, and undetectable. So how did they do it?

The chip inside the ePassport is a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip of the type poised to replace the barcode in supermarkets.

The ‘enhanced’ security features of ePassports are being questioned

The good thing about RFID chips is that they emit radio signals that can be read at a short distance by an electronic reader.

BetaNews: Epic Games’ Gears of War is the fastest selling next-generation game of the year, and the fastest selling exclusive for the Xbox platform ever, Microsoft said Friday. In addition, the game was the best selling title during the month of November, according to NPG Group.

The first-person shooting game beat out Sony’s highly-anticipated PlayStation 2 title Final Fantasy XII, released October 31, and the Wii’s Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the top spot in November. No game for the PlayStation 3 was in the top ten.

According to NPD, the game sold one million copies during the month, raking in sales of $61.5 million. Sources within Microsoft told BetaNews previously that there is some anecdotal evidence of the title actually helping to boost console sales.

Some 80 publications worldwide have already tapped GoW as “Game of the Year.” At the Spike TV Video Game Awards, the title won four awards, , for Best Multiplayer Game, Best Shooter, Studio of the Year (for Epic Games) and Best Graphics.

It lost out to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion for Game of the Year bragging rights, however.

BBCNews: Mobile TV viewers in Norway will be served personalised adverts as part of a two-month trial.
Banner adverts will be sent to mobile phones and tailored to the individual user under the trial by broadcaster NRK, a mobile TV pioneer.

“Advertisers see value in people being interested in certain products in a given context,” said Gunnar Garfors, director of development at NRK.

Two TV channels and four radio stations are taking part in the trial.

“Most people who watch mobile TV in Norway do so because they are bored somewhere, on transport, or waiting,” said Mr Garfors.

“You can assume they are near a shop or service which may be relevant.”

The TV and radio stations are streamed to the phones over a 3G phone network and are “near-live with a few seconds’ delay.

Mobile TV is a growing market that is yet to hit the mainstream partly because of cost and partly because of competing mobile TV standards.

TechNews: Microsoft is giving away 70,000 coupons for SLES to customers who want to run Windows and Linux together. These are “stay out of court free” cards that hope to derail customers’ existing relationships with other commercial Linux vendors. It’s a quick rise to prominence for Novell while its competitors run for cover.

The message is this: If you’re running Linux but you’re not running Microsoft-blessed SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server), Microsoft won’t promise not to sue the maker of your Linux distribution, one or more of the open source projects that are part of it, or you. BSD and OS X — and their users — don’t get a pass, either.

SCO Scheme
The shape of this agreement suggests that Microsoft and Novell have learned from the best — the corporate strategic masterminds at the SCO Group . The scheme there, which you may recall Microsoft championed early and loudly, was to declare that Linux incorporated source code protected by SCO copyrights.