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Archive for January 22, 2007

Ford looking for govt support for clean automobiles

January 22, 2007 at 8:22 am

· City

Indianexpress: With clean-fuel systems being the need of the hour, companies like Ford have called for the right infrastructure and fuel to be provided by the government, in order to introduce clean-automotive technologies in the country. “We have the technology, we now want to be given the right governmental support to introduce clean and efficient automobiles in the country,” said Dr Haren Gandhi, Henry Ford Technical Fellow at the Ford Motor Company.

Speaking to reporters recently, Gandhi said that technologies like biodiesel-powered cars and micro-hybrids could be effective ways to curb pollution and increase efficiency. “India needs to adopt technologies that are suitable to its needs, ranging from fuels like ethanol, CNG, LPG, hydrogen, biodiesels and hybrids. The aim should be to introduce technologies that have potential in the market and have the right kind of policies to support it,” said he.

Citing the case of Brazil, he said that the country had used fuels like ethanol to completely cut back their oil dependency on other countries. “While ethanol could be suitable in Brazil, in India, clean fuels like CNG which are plentiful can be a viable alternative. With a number of old, polluting vehicles ploughing on the roads, the possible solution could be a co-operation between the government, oil companies and car manufacturers to replace old models and provide new fuels,” said Gandhi, adding that Ford had been rendering its assistance to centres like the Pune-based Automobile Research Association of India (ARAI) on projects like ‘An emmisions measurement facility’, since the 1980s.

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Young minds in a fix over caste, seek answers

January 22, 2007 at 8:21 am

· City

Indianexpress: Students from city-based Rewachand Bhojwani Academy (RBA), ignited by the November riots in neighbouring Pimpri-Chinchwad in the aftermath of the desecration of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s statue in Kanpur, explored the reasons for the violence and arrived at the conclusion that it was caste-based.

A group of 30 standard VIII students, guided by principal Madhavi Kapur who is also their history teacher, decided to get deeper into the subject and began seeking answers to what is caste and why it has assumed such proportions in a secular country.

“I didn’t want the students to live in a protective environment,” said Kapur. Together, they began a journey that included a series of lectures on ancient India and the genesis of the caste system. However, Kapur realised that the students knew almost nothing. “When I asked them about castes, all that they knew was that they were either Maharashtrians or Gujarathis or from some other state,” she said.

Incidentally, the entire project and the way the students went about it has been filmed by the BBC crew that is making a film on the Indian education system.

“We knew nothing about the caste system,” admits student Aboli Mahajan. “You could either call their ignorance a positive sign or tell the truth and make them more responsible. I chose the latter,” she added. So the class gathered for some brainstorming sessions.

“I didn’t want the students to live in this protective environment,” said Kapur. Together, they began a journey that included a series of lectures on ancient India and the genesis of the caste system.

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Autonomy: Varsities’ no to engg colleges

January 22, 2007 at 8:19 am

· City · Education

Indianexpress:  Engineering colleges seeking autonomy to attain excellence in education are finding the State Universities’ big brother act coming as a hindrance in its move. For, these universities are unwilling to give autonomy to 17 affiliated institutes that are part of the World Bank-funded Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP).

“The Maharashtra government had signed an agreement with the World Bank, which involved giving greater autonomy to the selected institutions. However, the state universities and their vice-chancellors are not relenting and are unwilling to give this autonomy to the institutions,” Director of Technical Education N B Pashalkar said.

This has repercussions with even delay in publishing results. “If institutes are not given sufficient autonomy and there are many legal restrictions, it is not possible to issue results within the stipulated 45 days,” Pashalkar said.

The World Bank has provided Rs 168 crore for the TEQIP project. Among the selected institutes that have received funding are the College of Engineering Pune (COEP) and the University Institute of Chemical Technology (UDCT), Mumbai — both have received Rs 22 crore. Other institutes like the VJTI, Mumbai came into the Rs 8-10 crore funding category.

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Father absolved of killing son, two held for kidnap & murder

January 22, 2007 at 8:18 am

· Technology

IndianExpress:  In a new twist to the tragic murder of six-and-a-half-year boy Adesh Deshmukh, the Pune rural police said he was kidnapped and murdered by two teenagers for Rs 50,000. The police have also cleared the boy’s father, Bhanudas Deshmukh, whom they had earlier suspected of murdering his son.

Superintendent of police (Pune rural) Vishwas Nangre Patil said on Sunday they had earlier suspected Bhanudas because his wife, Jayashree, had complained about marital discord and his threats to settle scores with her. However, he said further investigations into the case showed that two teenagers were involved in the brutality.

“They confessed to kidnapping and committing the murder, inspired by a crime serial in a popular Marathi channel,” Nangare Patil said.

“Jayshree had mentioned in her complaint that her son was forcibly taken away on a black motorcycle with red stripes by an unidentified duo and she suspected that her estranged husband had hired the duo. The search for the motorcycle led the police to a teenager at Yavat, 50 km from Pune on Pune-Solapur Road, who said he had lent it to his friends, both seventeen-year-olds,” Nangre Patil said.

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iChat latest on ‘Apple Bugs’ list

January 22, 2007 at 8:15 am

· Technology

itwire: A flaw in Apple’s iChat text, audio and video chat application is the subject of the latest disclosure in the Month of Apple Bugs.

A malformed aim URL can be delivered via JavaScript or Flash in order to crash the program. A code execution exploit “is certainly more difficult” but “We are investigating some possibilities”, wrote LMH.

The suggested workaround is to disable the aim URL handler.

Meanwhile, the MoAB Fixes team have been busy. The weekend saw the release of their latest patches, which prompt for user confirmation before a disk image file is mounted (as a partial measure against MoAB 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13), control the length of strings passed to a vulnerable routine in Transmit (MoAB 19), and sanity-check GIF image blocks before they are sent to Java’s GIF image decoder (recently disclosed by the Zero Day Initiative).

Team member William Carrel has also released a script that sets more secure permissions on certain folders (MoAB 5, 8 and 15). The script also modifies the corresponding receipt files so that repairing permissions does not undo the changes.

Work is underway on a patch for the iChat flaw described above.

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Herman Miller desk to feature wireless charger

January 22, 2007 at 8:12 am

· Technology

itwire: Wireless charging of devices made a splash at the recent CES Expo, with Fulton Innovations demonstrating ‘eCoupled’ technology at work. Now famed designer Herman Miller has licensed the technology to create the ultimate desk that can wirelessly charger mobile devices!

Nikola Tesla is claimed to have discovered that wireless electricity exists. Now, in the 21st century, his discoveries are coming back into fashion, with wireless charging of devices soon to be a standard feature of all our mobile gadgets.

At the recent CES Expo in Las Vegas, Fulton Innovations demonstrated their eCoupled technology that uses magnetic resonance – and a special power receiving adapter that will eventually be built into gadgets – to wirelessly receive power, meaning no more cables to deal with!

Other companies such as Philips are already using similar technology in their Sonicare line of toothbrushes, while Fulton demonstrated special adapters for iPods and mobile phones that allowed them to be wirelessly charged.

Now Herman Miller, the famed designer of chairs, desks and other furniture, has licensed the technology which they intend building into a forthcoming desk

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A new ‘iBook’ from Google?: be afraid, be very afraid

January 22, 2007 at 8:10 am

· Technology

itwire: Google is plotting to do for books what the iPod has done for music: make them purchasable by download to a portable access device. Could civilisation as we know it be under threat?

The UK’s Times newspaper reported that “Google is working on a system that would allow readers to download entire books to their computers in a format that they could read on screen or on mobile devices such as a Blackberry.”

It quoted Jens Redmer, director of Google Book Search in Europe, speaking at ‘Unbound’, an invitation-only conference at the New York Public Library, saying: “We are working on a platform that will let publishers give readers full access to a book online.” Redmer said that the project was likely to come to fruition “sooner rather than later”.

The Times said the initiative would be part of Google’s Book Search service and its partnership with publishers, which makes books searchable online. Readers are then linked to sites such as Amazon where they can buy a physical copy of the book.

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Linksys Demos “Connected Home”

January 22, 2007 at 8:09 am

· Technology

TechTree: Recently, Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems, demonstrated products built around its “Connected Home Concept”.

Amongst the home networking products; the WVC200 is a Wireless PTZ Internet Camera with Audio.

The WVC200 sends high-quality live video to the user’s network wirelessly, whereas Pan/Tilt/Zoom gives flexible control remotely from a Web Browser. Other features include: ability to view images in low light environments, ability to send email alerts with video clips upon motion detection, and support for up to 10 simultaneous remote users.

The WCC200 comes with a three year warranty at a recommended retail price of Rs 19,900.

The Wireless-G Router, WRT54G features: all-in-one Internet-sharing Router, 4-port Switch, and Wireless-G Access Point; Wireless data rates up to 54Mbps; ability to share a single Internet connection and other resources with Ethernet wired and Wireless-G clients; and advanced wireless security with 128-bit WEP encryption, MAC, or IP address filtering.

This is available for around Rs 3,634 along with a 3 year warranty.

The WRT300N is a Wireless-N Broadband Router.

The WRT300N features: Internet-sharing Router and 4-port Switch, with a built in speed and range enhanced Wireless Access Point; MIMO technology that uses multiple radios to create a robust signal that travels up to 4 times farther and reduces dead spots; plus protection of Wireless signals by WPA2 encryption, and protection of network by a powerful SPI firewall.

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LG “Me Too” after Apple iPhone

January 22, 2007 at 8:08 am

· Technology

TechTree: Apple Computer made headlines with its recent release of iPhone. Now LG intends to take some of the attention away…

Yesterday, LG Electronics (Korea), along with world-renowned fashion label, Prada, announced a new mobile phone, which sports a buttonless, touch-screen interface very much like that of Apple’s iPhone.

The LG Prada Phone, alias the KE850, features a no-button interface with the entire phone face covered by a touch-sensitive screen.

Like the iPhone, this phone too, is super-thin; it’s just 12 millimetres thick, which is only about 0.4 millimetres thicker than the iPhone.

Also like the iPhone, the LG Prada Phone can play most popular digital music/video formats, and has a two mega pixels camera.

However, unlike the iPhone, the LG phone’s memory can be expanded with the help of cards.

Other features of this new phone include: MP3 player, video player, document viewer, music/messaging multitasking capability, Bluetooth, and USB 2.0 port.

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