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indianexpress: Giving in to sustained pressure from the workers’ union and political parties, Bajaj Auto Ltd has agreed to allow agitating employees to enter the company premises and ‘“attend the morning shift” at the company’s Akurdi plant from Wednesday.

However, the management has not committed to resumption of production. Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, who was the mediator at Monday’s meeting between the management and the Vishwa Kalyan Kamgar Sanghatana, said that it was the last time that he would be involved in the issue.

Bajaj Auto’s Akurdi plant has been shut from September 1. Last week, managing director Rajiv Bajaj had firmly stated that production would not be restarted at the plant. “A decision has been taken to allow workers to attend the first shift at the Akurdi plant from Wednesday. Earlier, the management had told the workers that they need not come to the company. The union had urged the management to change its stand and the management has agreed,” Pawar said. “A day after the workers start going to the company, both the management and the union will exchange proposals and the discussions between them will resume four to six days after Diwali,” he said.

Asked if production would be resumed at the plant, Pawar said the issue was not discussed. “This was not discussed. What the workers do inside is not our concern. The management and the workers have to decide this. But this is the first step towards creating an atmosphere of understanding,” Pawar said.

indianexpress: Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar on Monday asked the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (MSEDCL) to explore the possibility of replicating uninterrupted power supply — as done in Pune city — in talukas of the district through captive generation.

“The availability of power is limited. Despite this, MSEDCL seems to be favouring the city areas by allocating more than the quota,” Pawar said at the Pune District Electrification Coordination committee meeting held at the Council Hall here on Monday.

When pointed out that the urban areas were getting uninterrupted supply while the rural areas had almost 16-hour load-shedding, he said consumers in the city are paying additional charges for it and the same would not be easier to implement in rural areas.

MSEDCL Pune Circle chief engineer Rameshsinh Gautam said the captive power generation can be possible in Baramati, Chakan, Ranjangaon, Talegaon and Khed since there were many industrial units with capacity to generate power through generator. “But the domestic consumers should be prepared to pay additional charges for it,” he said.

“The Baramati Industrial Association have already sent a proposal for uninterrupted power supply for the town and we have forwarded it to the Maharashtra Electricty Regulatory Commission (MERC) for approval,” he said.

indianexpress:  FACED with a series of cable thefts in the past three months due to which over 3,000 BSNL lines are down in Chinchwad, Yerawada and Hadapsar, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), has alleged that rural women are responsible for these thefts. Principal general manager D K Maheshwari said despite presenting the police with ample proof, these women have not been apprehended.

“We have proof in the form of photographs and video shots of these women from rural background stealing exposed cable lines and have submitted it to Police Commissioner Jayant Umranikar, but no action has been taken,”said Maheshwari.

BSNL said they did not apprehend the women themselves for fear that it would turn into a “different” case. “We realised around September that women were responsible for these thefts, however it is difficult to catch them; they can say we are harassing them. But we have taken photographs of the women in action,” said general manager (East, Central and Marketing) Vineet Mathur.

“On Monday morning, there was a cable theft at Vishrantwadi, which would mean that about 800 lines are out as well,” said Maheshwari.

Maheshwari said the company is losing more money because of the dead lines and loss of credibility among subscribers than actual material loss over cable thefts. “Each dead line costs us Rs 600 in monthly revenue,” said Maheshwari.

indianexpress: THE city police are planning to take action against firearms-holders for misusing their licences for running private security agencies.

The issue was discussed at length in a meeting held by top police officials that was chaired by Rajendra Sonawane, joint commissioner of police (law and order), at the police commissionerate on Monday afternoon. Also present were three deputy commissioners — Anil Kumbhare (crime), Ravindra Sengaonkar (headquarters) and R S Khaire (special branch).

Sonawne said it had come to their notice that firearms-holders were misusing their licences and that some were even using them without having weapons in the first place. “Firearms’ licences are issued to individuals for self-protection and they cannot be used for running a security agency at any cost,” Sonawane said, adding the need to streamline the application procedure for licenses.

He also said the police had received only 26 applications from security agencies for obtaining the licence according to the Private Security Agencies (Regulation) Act, 2005. He issued orders to the department to keep a tab on the various activities of these agencies.

A recent State government notification said it was mandatory for ex-servicemen working at banks, financial institutes and industries to have to obtain firearms’ licences from the police.

indianexpress:  Here is a unique instance of a private school doing its bit to improve teaching in corporation schools. Thus, enabling them to compete with private schools.
Starting Monday, the Lexicon International School began a series of training sessions for 40 teachers in Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) schools. The programme will focus on innovative teaching methodologies that can be integrated into the regular school curriculum.

“Although PMC schools have all the necessary funding and are centrally located, most parents prefer to send their students to private schools because of the quality. If this is changed, it could benefit lakhs of students,” said Lexicon managing trustee, Pankaj Sharma.

The session includes methodologies like ‘Six Thinking Hats’, where children form six groups and make presentations on various perspectives on a particular subject.

Another method to be used is the Enquiry Based Learning (EBL), wherein students formulate various questions on a passage read out to them, find the answers through their own findings, and discuss these in class

indianexpress: An ICICI Bank customer has complained to the Deccan police alleging that the officials of the bank’s Bhandarkar Road branch harassed her over a petty complaint.

Preeti Chandrachud of Erandawane on her visit to the branch on October 31 had run into trouble with the security personnel over parking her two-wheeler. She filed a written complaint with the bank and received an acknowledgement.

On Saturday, some branch officials called her up to sort the issue. They told her the security man had been sacked and agreed to give a written apology but asked her to withdraw her complaint. The apology letter stated that she was being adamant despite knowing the branch did not have a private parking facility. When she questioned why the branch was apologising if she was at fault, the branch officials allegedly threatened her. Chandrachud filed a complaint with the Deccan police relating to criminal intimidation.

pcworld: Hewlett-Packard Co. began taking preorders Monday for its MediaSmart Server, the first system from a major manufacturer powered by Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Home Server (WHS) software.

MediaSmart, which won’t ship until later this month, is priced at US$599 with 500GB of storage, or $749 with a terabyte of disk space. Those prices were identical to the listings leaked by Amazon.com in late August.

Other servers running the new operating system will ship later this year and into early next, including units from Iomega Corp. and LaCie Ltd., Microsoft said as it announced the official launch of WHS today.

WHS, loosely based on Windows Server 2003, made its debut at last January’s Consumer Electronics Show and entered public beta about a month later. It provides automatic backup, data restore, file and printer sharing, and remote Web-based access for up to 10 Windows XP or Vista PCs on an Ethernet or wireless network.

Microsoft has hammered hardest on the automatic backup feature.

“More and more of consumers’ digital assets are in one basket,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch LLC and a Computerworld columnist. “But that basket is very, very fragile. Something like this is almost a necessity for multiple-computer homes.”

HP had delayed the expected mid-September rollout of MediaSmart Server after it decided that WHS needed more work, even though Microsoft had handed out release candidate editions back in June and certified the software as ready for duplication in July.

dailytech: Samsung cranks up the speeds of its solid-state drives

Solid-state disks (SSDs) are seen as the next plateau for mobile computing. Companies like Alienware and Dell offer the high-performance drives in their notebook computers and end-users can add SSDs to their own notebooks thanks to online retailers like Newegg.

Samsung first starting making waves in the SSD arena with its 32GB drive in March 2006 and followed up with a faster 64GB unit in June of 2007. Today, Samsung is once again stepping up its efforts in the SSD arena.

The company has announced a new generation of 64GB SSDs which use 8Gb, 50nm single-level-cell (SLC) flash memory chips. The drives, which will be available in 1.8″ and 2.5″ form-factors, also feature a new SATA II interface for faster performance.

The faster chips and SATA II interface gives the new SSDs sequential write speeds of 100MB/sec and sequential reads of 120MB/sec. These numbers completely obliterate the previous Samsung 64GB offering which is rated at 45MB/sec write and 65MB/sec read. Samsung’s first-generation 32GB SSD is rated for 30MB/sec writes and 53MB/sec reads.

cnet: Marvell has released chips for PC and notebook power bricks that can will substantially cut down the amount of electricity required to run these machines.

The chips, a type of power factor correction (PFC) controller based around a digital signal processor, effectively determine the amount of power an application will need and optimize accordingly. The chips also try to keep peak current at the lowest level.

The chips, which will be included in power supplies, are made to comply with new Energy Star requirements that require that 80 percent or more of the power pumped into PCs actually gets used by the computer. Right now, inefficient computers can lose around half of the power through heat or in the AC to DC conversion process. Pick up that power supply connected to your notebook. Feel the burn! These chips will reduce it.

Optimizing power cuts down on power consumption and, of course, global warming-causing greenhouse gasses. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that there are more than 10 billion AC-DC power supplies attached to computers out there. More efficient power supplies could save nearly $3 billion in electric bills annually.

Other companies out there working to revamp the oft-overlooked power supply include iWatt, which has received money from Vantage Point Venture Partners.

Marvell has chips out now but will crank into volume in the first quarter of 2008. That means the chips will likely be seen in PCs coming out for the fall of 2008.

computerworld: Physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, have built the world’s smallest radio out of single carbon nanotube one ten-thousandth the width of a human hair.

Researchers say the tiny radio needs only a battery and a pair of earphones to hook listeners up with their favorite radio stations. But that’s not all the new device could be good for.

The radio’s tiny size could make cell phones more efficient, or it even could be used in radio-controlled devices that flow through the human blood stream, according to a paper written in part by team leader Alex Zettl, a U.C. Berkeley professor of physics. Zettl also noted that he hopes to use the radio to replace cumbersome devices used today to identify atoms or even measure their mass, since the new radio can pick up on atoms jumping on and off the tip of the nanotube.

“We were just in ecstasy when this worked,” said Zettl, in a written statement. “It was fantastic.”

The device, which researchers are calling the nanoradio, is currently set up to act only as a receiver but could also work as a transmitter. U.C. Berkeley reported that the nanoradio is 100 billion times smaller than the first commercial radios.

Nanotubes are rolled-up sheets of interlocked carbon atoms that form a tube so strong that some scientists have suggested using a nanotube wire to tether satellites in a fixed position above Earth, according to Berkeley researchers.