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indianexpress: Joseph George made Pune his home in 1977 when he came from Kerala in search of a job. He’s been here since then and now stays at Magarpatta in Hadapsar. Joseph’s eighteen-year-old son Sijo completed his HSC in science stream from Poona College of Arts, Commerce and Science recently and is now planning to take up a degree course in engineering.

There is one hitch though. Citizen Facilitation Centre (CFC) at district collectorate is denying young Sijo the mandatory domicile certificate. The CFC has rejected his application three times already. Now, the collectorate authorities have asked Sijo to prove his relationship with Saramma, his mother.
 
It was on Thursday that Sijo got a third rejection letter from CFC asking his relationship with his mother Saramma. He’s now been asked to submit a consent letter of Saramma before the tehsildar.

George is at his wit’s end as Sijo has missed his computer classes for one entire week doing the rounds of the Pune collectorate till late night in pursuit of the elusive domicile certificate that should not have taken more than a day to procure.

“I am tense as I am not sure whether I will get my domicile certificate in time for me to apply in engineering colleges,” said Sijo.

His father said it was nothing short of harassment. “There are no grounds for the officials to reject the application as all mandatory documents have been submitted,” said George. According to him, rejection letters were issued citing new reasons each time.

“We are doing our best to provide domicile certificates in time. The problem of domiciles certificates is especially related to people from outside Maharashtra as they have been found to submit incomplete documents,” said Resident Deputy Collector Chintamani Joshi.

The family’s ordeal started on Monday when a tout who accosted Sijo and took Rs 250 but no domicile certificate was forthcoming. The next day, his father went with him and submitted the form again attached with the requisite proofs - electricity bill, property tax bill, birth certificate, ration card, school leaving certificate and George’s school leaving certificate.

indianexpress: Notwithstanding its promise to provide a smooth ride to commuters this monsoon, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has admitted that it is ‘too late’ for asphalting of some of the major city roads including Kumthekar and Shastri roads.

Development engineer and in charge of roads department Vivek Kharwadkar said the municipal administration was making all efforts to complete the storm water drain and ducts on Kumthekar and Shastri roads, but there was no way asphalting could be completed in time.
 
“It is too late for asphalting. But we will ensure that people are put to minimum hardship. All the debris will be lifted and precaution will be taken that riding is not dangerous on these roads,” Kharwadkar said. Enough efforts have been taken to ensure that water-logging does not occur on these roads, he added.

The work on Kumthekar Road was started on May 17, 2005 and since then the work is lingering despite changing contractors. The asphalting work was allotted to P P Patil on February 20,2007 and the work completion deadline was April 20. However, the contractor failed to complete the work within the specified period.

Meanwhile, work on B T Kawade Road has been lingering for the last two years with no reprieve for commuters. Half of the road is dug and PMC officials admit that roadwork here will remain incomplete. Many stretches of the Nehru Road remains rough in absence of tarring while the mess up on Karve Road continues with work moving at a snail’s pace.

indianexpress:  The Bhurelal Committee’s directives to provide pick-up points to private buses in the city have gained momentum. Five months after receiving the directives, the bus association has been shown two locations by the civic administration.

Pune Luxury Bus Association president Balasaheb Khedkar said the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has shown them spots at Sukhsagarnagar near Bibvewadi and Rajiv Gandhi Udyan near Katraj. “If we are given amenities at these two spots we do not have any problem in shifting,” Khedkar said.
 
In a letter to municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi, the association has requested handing over of the land instead of releasing tenders for installing amenities and maintaining it. “We are ready to maintain the amenities and pay the civic body for it,” the letter said.

Both locations will help decongest the Swargate chowk since buses that leave for Bangalore and Goa will use the alternative site, the letter also says.

The Bhurelal Committee in its recommendations to clear Pune’s air had asked the civic body to shift pick-up points outside city limits. The civic body had selected six spots — Gunjan Theatre at Yerawada, Bajaj Udyan at Wakadewadi, Aundh old octroi naka, Rajiv Gandhi Zoological Park at Katraj, Vanaz Company at Paud Road and Bhairoba Nala at Race Course.

The association has been opposing the spots because there are no amenities here. Moreover, they wanted the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) bus stands to move out of the city. “If we move out, passengers are unlikely to avail our services. They will prefer the MSRTC buses which will have services in city,” Khedkar said.

indianexpress: The Maharatta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture has decided to form a five-member committee which will hold talks with the state government for setting up of industrial townships across the state. The decision was taken at a meeting of representatives of various industrial bodies here on Saturday. The MCCIA has for long been demanding that there should separate industrial townships to cater to the needs of the industrial sector.

Representatives from various industrial organisations across the state were unanimous in their view that municipal corporations, councils and gram panchayats were collecting taxes from industrial units but were apathetic towards development of industrial infrastructure.
 
With de-notification, the industrial townships will fall outside the purview of local municipal bodies with MIDC providing infrastructure as well as amenities and the industries paying a service charge for it. Industrialists in Hadapsar and Pimpri-Chinchwad had been complaining for long about lack of proper industrial infrastructure. “The PCMC collects crores of rupees in the form of octroi from industries in Pimpri-Chinchwad, but spends hardly any amount on providing basic amenities,” K M Patwardhan, president, Forum of Plot and Premises Holders, said.

indianexpress: A Jan Sunvai (public hearing) will be held at the Maval tehsildar’s office on June 27 to probe into complaints against celebrity Bollywood farmers, District Collector Prabhakar Deshmukh announced here on Saturday. “Any farmer from the area can come up with a complaint against misuse of land and our officials will conduct an inquiry after hearing the issues,” he told Newsline.

The Maharashtra Rajya Dharan Prakalp Grahasta Shetkari Parishad had appealed for a thorough inquiry after Bollywood personalities staked their claim to the land they had acquired by declaring they were farmers by birth. Parishad general secretary Baba Adhav said there was a need for a judicial inquiry into the issue.

“How much of farming do they do? What kind of papers have they produced to acquire the land, he asked? According to the Bombay Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948, a farmer has to use the land for agricultural purposes. An act under the agrarian reform stands violated blatantly,” said Adhav.

The parishad plans to spread the word in the area so as to get farmers to speak up on June 27. “When we spoke to the farmers, many felt they had been cheated into land deals by estate agents who worked for the Mumbai parties. They were given a small sum for large areas of land,” he said.

The farmers have pointed out that there is hardly any farm land left with them after Mumbai parties acquired hundreds of acres. There was a need to pose a check farm houses being erected on forest land without obtaining permission from authorities in accordance with the provisions of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, Adhav said.

indianexpress: To provide students of all academic streams with an insight into career opportunities in their chosen field, Fergusson College has organised a career guidance lecture series ‘Mission Career 2007’ from June 9 to 17, which will see lectures by prominent individuals in varied fields.

The event kicked off on Saturday with a session by biotechnology expert Deepti Deobagkar from the Department of Zoology, University of Pune. On June 10 there will be three lectures beginning with UoP Electronic Multimedia Research Centre director Sameeran Walvekar at 10.30 am. Walvekar will speak on careers in Media and Mass Communications. Sandeep Nulkar, MD of translation firm BITS will speak about foreign languages at 11.15 am.

itwire: The COSMO-SkyMed 1 satellite, launched Thursday, June 8, 2007, is the first of four Earth observation satellites that will take images of the Earth for military and civilian purposes at an altitude of 619 kilometers.

Weather forecasting while you fly

The COSMO-SkyMed 1 satellite was launched from a Boeing Delta II 7420-10 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the coast of California. It lifted off at 7:34 p.m. PDT (22:34 GMT). The Italian satellite will be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit. Once operational the first satellite is expected to send scientists about 1,800 images each day.

A sun-synchronous orbit is a type of geocentric orbit (about the Earth) that combines altitude and inclination so that the orbiting craft passes above any given point on the Earth’s surface at the same time with respect to the Sun.

All four satellites will carry a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensor (a radar imager) that will allow the orbiting probes to collectively gather information on the world’s weather and climate including earthquakes and seismic analysis, landslides, droughts, agricultural mapping, environmental disaster monitoring, and floods.

The images downloaded from the satellite system will also be used for the defense and security of Italy and other neighboring countries.

COSMO-SkyMed 2 is scheduled to be launched in the first three months of 2008. Each satellite will be launched into a sun-synchronous orbit and each positioned 90 degrees apart at an altitude of 619 kilometers (385 miles).

itwire: Yahoo has issued fixes for a critical bug in its Yahoo Messenger IM client which if exploited could hand control of a user’s computer to a remote attacker.

ITU launches one-stop-shop for cybersecurity standards info
The bug in the ActiveX controls of the webcam feature of Yahoo Messenger 8.x enabled buffer overflows to occur when using a webcam to view or stream images. This in turn created conditions for a remote attack to occur if a user visited a maicious website that exploited the flaw.

Yahoo Messenger has an estimated user base of about 100 million and is interoperable with Microsoft Live Messenger.

Security firm, eEye Digital Security, which reported the bug to Yahoo on June 5, stated in an advisory:

“eEye Digital Security has discovered two critical vulnerabilities in ywcupl.dll (version 2.0.1.4) and ywcvwr.dll (version 2.0.1.4) included by default in all releases of Yahoo! Messenger 8.x. Ywcupl.dll is Yahoo’s Webcam Upload ActiveX Control used by Yahoo! Messenger to stream content from a user’s webcam to other users. Ywcvwr.dll is Yahoo! Messenger’s Webcam Viewer ActiveX Control used to view any streamed content. These files are normally used only when viewing or streaming webcam content to and from Yahoo Messenger, but they are incorrectly marked safe for scripting and can be instantiated by any website. Furthermore they both fail to perform bounds checking on variables resulting in 2 stack-based buffer overflow conditions that could allow arbitrary code to execute in the context of the logged-in user.”

itwire: Popular travel information website, Lonely Planet is moving to better exploit user generated travel content with a new search engine from Endeca that enables users to simultaneously across both Lonely Planet and traveller-contributed information on its site.

It claims that the new search facility “helps travellers effortlessly explore and discover related travel and destination information created by both independent travellers and Lonely Planet’s expert authors and staff. The new search facility brings together content from Lonely Planet’s user forums (Thorn Tree), destination guides, traveller tips, blogs, features, reviews, books, classifieds and video content..

Lonely Planet claims the new facility is far superior to a traditional keyword search engine “[For example] searching for  ‘Barcelona’…returns 1515 results, including information from all of Lonely Planet’s diverse content sources. The results are ‘topped’ by a Barcelona destination guide, offering quick links to dining, sight seeing, hotels, night life and shopping in Barcelona, as well as a link to Lonely Planet’s Barcelona Guidebook available through its online store and a promotion for accommodation in Barcelona.”

Lonely Planet is positioning itself as being “on the cutting edge of the Web 2.0, user-generated content phenomenon” by combining user-contributed and its own content. It claims that “providing an experience that effectively harnesses community participation while maintaining intuitive search and browse functionality has led to increased user satisfaction and customer loyalty for Lonely Planet.”

According to Lonely Planet’s global ecommerce manager, Cameron Holland, “Endeca presented a unique option that addressed much more than just our previous search problems – a guided approach to integrated information presentation and discovery. It’s been an instant success with our travellers enabling easier access to an enormous amount of travel content.”

itwire: Support for OpenGL and DirectX on the Mac’s graphics hardware is a key feature of Parallels Desktop for Mac 3.0.

Parallels Desktop for Mac creates a virtualised environment allowing other operating systems such as Windows and Linux to run within Mac OS X. One of the biggest shortcomings of previous versions was the lack of 3D hardware acceleration, making it less than ideal for gaming and other graphically demanding software. The alternative was to reboot the computer directly into Windows, having installed that operating system with the aid of Apple’s Boot Camp software.

Productivity features in Parallels 3.0 include SmartSelect and Parallels Explorer.

SmartSelect lets users nominate the application to be used to open particular file types on either platform. For example, .xls files in both environments could be associated with Excel for Windows, while .pdf files might be set to open in Mac OS X’s Preview. By default, Parallels opens .dmg files in Mac OS X, and .exe files in Windows.

Parallels Explorer allows the use of a Windows virtual hard drive from Mac OS X, without starting Windows itself. This simplifies the transfer of files between environments, and allows Windows file management to be done from Mac OS X.

Also new is the ability to boot Vista or XP partitions created by Boot Camp  in Parallels virtual machines, and the ability to take snapshots of a virtual machine and its virtual hard drive allowing any changes to be undone with a mouseclick. This would be especially useful for software testing purposes.