Z A E E N T E C H

2011-05-25T15:44:00.001+06:00

2011-03-05T02:54:00.001+06:00

2010-11-07T23:52:00.001+06:00

Shafiqul Hafiz

Pilkhana Lake

2010-11-06T03:40:00.001+06:00

This shot taken from the roof of the Rifles Square

2010-10-05T16:25:00.001+06:00

2010-09-26T16:46:00.001+06:00

Road No. 8A, Dhanmondi

Just a street photo in the afternoon

2010-09-20T10:47:00.001+06:00

Prayer Time Sep 2010.

Today is the International Women's Day

2009-03-08T14:39:00.002+06:00

History of International Women's Day: International Women's Day has been observed since in the early 1900's, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.

1908
Great unrest and critical debate was occurring amongst women. Women's oppression and inequality was spurring women to become more vocal and active in campaigning for change. Then in 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.

1909
In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman's Day (NWD) was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate NWD on the last Sunday of February until 1913.

1910
n 1910 a second International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen. A woman named a Clara Zetkin (Leader of the 'Women's Office' for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) tabled the idea of an International Women's Day. She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day - a Women's Day - to press for their demands. The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women's clubs, and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, greeted Zetkin's suggestion with unanimous approval and thus International Women's Day was the result.

1911
Following the decision agreed at Copenhagen in 1911, International Women's Day (IWD) was honoured the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on 19 March. More than one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women's rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination. However less than a week later on 25 March, the tragic 'Triangle Fire' in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working women, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This disastrous event drew significant attention to working conditions and labour legislation in the United States that became a focus of subsequent International Women's Day events. 1911 also saw women's 'Bread and Roses' campaign.

1913-1914
On the eve of World War I campaigning for peace, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. In 1913 following discussions, International Women's Day was transferred to 8 March and this day has remained the global date for International Wommen's Day ever since. In 1914 further women across Europe held rallies to campaign against the war and to express women's solidarity.

1917
On the last Sunday of February, Russian women began a strike for "bread and peace" in response to the death over 2 million Russian soldiers in war. Opposed by political leaders the women continued to strike until four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. The date the women's strike commenced was Sunday 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia. This day on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere was 8 March.

1918 - 1999
Since its birth in the socialist movement, International Women's Day has grown to become a global day of recognition and celebration across developed and developing countries alike. For decades, IWD has grown from strength to strength annually. For many years the United Nations has held an annual IWD conference to coordinate international efforts for women's rights and participation in social, political and economic processes. 1975 was designated as 'International Women's Year' by the United Nations. Women's organisations and governments around the world have also observed IWD annually on 8 March by holding large-scale events that honour women's advancement and while diligently reminding of the continued vigilance and action required to ensure that women's equality is gained and maintained in all aspects of life.

2000 and beyond
IWD is now an official holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. The tradition sees men honouring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc with flowers and small gifts. In some countries IWD has the equivalent status of Mother's Day where children give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.

The new millennium has witnessed a significant change and attitudinal shift in both women's and society's thoughts about women's equality and emancipation. Many from a younger generation feel that 'all the battles have been won for women' while many feminists from the 1970's know only too well the longevity and ingrained complexity of patriarchy. With more women in the boardroom, greater equality in legislative rights, and an increased critical mass of women's visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life, one could think that women have gained true equality. The unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women's education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.

However, great improvements have been made. We do have female astronauts and prime ministers, school girls are welcomed into university, women can work and have a family, women have real choices. And so the tone and nature of IWD has, for the past few years, moved from being a reminder about the negatives to a celebration of the positives.

Annually on 8 March, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements. A global web of rich and diverse local activity connects women from all around the world ranging from political rallies, business conferences, government activities and networking events through to local women's craft markets, theatric performances, fashion parades and more.

Many global corporations have also started to more actively support IWD by running their own internal events and through supporting external ones. For example, on 8 March search engine and media giant Google some years even changes its logo on its global search pages. Year on year IWD is certainly increasing in status. The United States even designates the whole month of March as 'Women's History Month'.

So make a difference, think globally and act locally !! Make everyday International Women's Day. Do your bit to ensure that the future for girls is bright, equal, safe and rewarding.

YouTube site 'blocked' in Bangladesh

2009-03-08T13:47:00.008+06:00

Internet users in Bangladesh who have been unable to access YouTube have voiced concern that it is being deliberately blocked by the authorities.

Many Bangladeshis have been unable to see the popular video-sharing site since about 6:00pm Friday, 6th March 2009. YouTube users wondered, but nobody is sure. At the same time, people discovered that they can't access eSnips either.

Some people have linked the YouTube problem to an audio recording that would "damage" the reputation of our great Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

But state-controlled service provider BTCL and country's 1st private IIG Mango Telecom said the problem was the result of a technical glitch.

No spokesman for the Bangladesh government was available to comment on this specific telecommunications issues.

This is a classic irony since the present Govt. of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came to power with a promising election manifesto of creating a Digital Bangladesh.

2009 Academy Awards

2009-02-23T14:09:00.000+06:00

'Slumdog Millionaire' Cleans Up at the Oscars

Written by Jake on Feb-23-09 11:01am

Actors Dev Patel, Madhur Mittal, Freida Pinto, Irrfan Khan and Anil Kapoor arrive at the 81st Annual Academy Awards held at Kodak Theatre on February 22, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Dev Patel;Madhur Mittal;Freida Pinto;Irrfan Khan;Anil Kapoor (Getty Images)more pics »Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire took home 8 awards tonight, crushing its closest competitor, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which won 3. Winning both Best Director and Best Picture, Slumdog Millionaire took home 8 out of the 10 awards it was nominated for.

The other upset of the night? Sean Penn taking home a golden statue for his role in Milk, taking it away from Mickey Rourke, who seemed close to a lock for his turn in The Wrestler. The other major categories went down without many surprises. Kate Winslet won her first for The Reader, Heath Ledger was honored with a posthumous Oscar for his turn as The Joker in The Dark Knight, and Penelope Cruz nabbed a Best Supporting Actress for Vicky Christina Barcelona.

Meanwhile, the Academy's attempt to liven up the broadcast was met with mixed success. Hugh Jackman was an amiable but forgettable host, gamely making his way though some lame one-liners and one pretty terrible dance sequence.

The one innovation that seemed to work was the presentations for acting awards. Having five former winners of Best Supporting and Best Actor and Actresses managed to honor the history of the Oscars without feeling hackneyed or forced.

A full list of winners is below:

Best Picture - "Slumdog Millionaire"
Best Director - Danny Boyle ("Slumdog Millionaire")
Best Actor - Sean Penn ("Milk")
Best Actress - Kate Winslet ("The Reader")
Best Supporting Actor - Heath Ledger ("The Dark Knight")
Best Supporting Actress - Penelope Cruz ("Vicky Cristina Barcelona")
Best Original Screenplay - Dustin Lance Black ("Milk")
Best Adapted Screenplay - Simon Beaufoy ("Slumdog Millionaire")
Best Animated Feature - WALL-E
Best Animated Short - La Maison en Petit Cubes
Best Foreign Film - "Departures"
Best Documentary - "Man on Wire"
Best Short Documentary - "Smile Pinki"
Best Art Direction - Donald Graham Burt ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button")
Best Makeup - Greg Cannom ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button")
Best Costume Design - Michael O'Conner ("The Duchess")
Best Cinematographer - Anthony Dod Mantle ("Slumdog Millionaire")
Best Live Action Short - "Speilzeugland (Toyland)"
Best Visual Effects - "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
Best Sound Editing - Richard King ("The Dark Knight")
Best Sound Mixing - "Slumdog Millionaire"
Best Film Editing - Chris Dickens ("Slumdog Millionaire")
Best Score - A.R. Rahman ("Slumdog Millionaire")
Best Original Song - A.R. Rahman ("Jai Ho" from "Slumdog Millionaire")

IP Telephony Trend in Indian Subcontinent

2009-02-03T15:55:00.001+06:00

VoIP: On the runway

VoIP in India represents a great opportunity. If minor changes are made in regulations, and other issues like interoperability addressed, the market could take off in a big way.

Talking over the telephone, one does not bother how the call is being routed or over what kind of a network one’s voice traveling. What concerns the caller is the clarity of voice and the absence of delays and jitter. Once these issues are addressed, the underlying technology really does not matter to the common user, be it VoIP or standard PSTN. All he is concerned about is that the message should be conveyed.

In this context, VoIP as a technology has over the years managed to gain a certain level of acceptance, if not a ubiquitous presence. It all started with organizations establishing closed user group (CUG) voice links between their head office and branch offices. The concept has served companies well, particularly large enterprises and those organizations in industry verticals such as banking, logistics, and ITeS.

Earlier the technology was plagued by problems galore namely network latency, packet loss, jitters, and other issues that marred its image as a promising information communication technology. Gradually these have been taken care off, and stage has been set for widespread adoption of VoIP/ IP telephony in India.

According to Frost and Sullivan, the market for Internet telephony has experienced exceptional growth over the last two years, and the sales of IP PBX systems witnessed a growth of 65% in 2006-07. The technology is projected to account for 65% of the entire enterprise voice market by 2008. IP Telephony revenues touched $209 million in 2007.

According to Gartner, the acceptance and adoption of VoIP in India is increasing, and the market is showing signs of maturity. The growth in the Indian market though is relatively slow when compared to that in other APAC markets such as Australia; the overall outlook, however, is quite positive.

"The recent announcement further opening up IP telephony means that IP telephones and equipment will be able to freely interconnect with normal TDM lines, be it for calling within CUG or outside, irrespective of whether the called party is outside India or inside India"

- Biswajit Patnaik
Voice Business Development Manager, Polycom India

"VoIP is picking up in India and it is expected to be the second largest market in the APAC after China. Till a few years ago, IP PBX systems were deployed only at large enterprises. But today, SMEs are also adopting IP PBX systems"

- Minhaj Zia
National Sales Manager,
Cisco, India & SAARC

"Regulations should be restricted only to the extent of guidance and should not be used as a restrictive mechanism. The restriction through regulations limits the speed of growth in India"

- Desi Valli
COO,
Net4 India

"Since large enterprises have the buying potential, they are showing more interest in VoIP. SMBs in contrast are not that aggressive"

- Parminder Kaur Saini
Senior Research Analyst, ICT Practice,
Frost & Sullivan, South Asia & Middle East

From the vendors’ perspective

The market for VoIP in India, and the way in which it is evolving, represents a mixed bag of opportunities and challenges for vendors. There also emerge mixed reactions as far as the satisfaction with the growth of this market is concerned. While some are quite happy with the development of this market and are quite optimistic, others believe that corrective measures are required if this market segment is to flourish.

“The market is growing at a phenomenal rate globally and the Indian market will not be left far behind. VoIP is picking up in India and it is expected to be the second largest market in the APAC after China. Till a few years ago, IP PBX systems were deployed only at large enterprises. But today, more and more small & medium enterprises are also adopting IP PBX systems,” said Minhaj Zia, National Sales Manager, Cisco, India & SAARC.

“The Indian IP telephony enterprise equipment market is finally emerging from the shackles of government-enforced restrictions. The recent announcement further opening up IP telephony means that IP telephones and equipment will be able to freely interconnect with normal TDM lines, be it for calling within CUG or outside, irrespective of whether the called party is outside India or within the country,” said Biswajit Patnaik, Voice Business Development Manager, Polycom India.

V Praveen Kumar, Head – Enterprise Voice & Teleconferencing, Avaya GlobalConnect said, “India is embracing IP Telephony rapidly due to the inherent benefits of this technology. Almost all organizations are moving towards IP based intelligent communications—especially large multi-location organizations. It has a huge potential for growth in India.”

In contrast, Desi Valli, COO, Net4 India, presented a completely different point of view. He said, “We are not satisfied with the growth. It is unfortunately restricted to limited usage in India. Growth of a business of this kind should be controlled by the market acceptance and not by regulations. The regulations should be restricted only to the extent of guidance and should not be used as a restrictive mechanism. The restriction through regulations limits the speed of growth in India.”

“The Internet Telephony market in India is in its infancy, and we are not satisfied with the growth. The growth is directly linked with broadband. As broadband is not growing at the pace projected, all applications, which run on broadband including Internet Telephony, are suffering. Compared to over 60 million broadband subscribers in China, India has only 3 million,” said Rajiv Kumar, COO, World Phone Internet Services Pvt. Ltd.

Sources in BSNL said that this market has been growing in a haphazard manner and that growth is unsatisfactory. Due to initial hiccups with the service, people are skeptical about its adoption. They added that the telecom license regime has been dominated by the traditional voice service providers who are also the last mile owners, and that the license restrictions have not let the VoIP service grow freely as per its potential.

Opportunities and Challenges

Opportunities for VoIP in the Indian context are tremendous. For a country that simply loves talking (something that is evident from the growth in the mobile phone market), the adoption of VoIP could skyrocket and it may bring the same benefits, as did mobile communication, namely ease of use, cost benefits and flexibility. Besides, with the Internet being used for multiple purposes, this technology can also be used for sending voice and video. This could bring down the cost per service drastically.

Additionally, IP based solutions are likely to enable enterprises to deploy other services such as audio, Web and video conferencing. Some also believe that VoIP might stimulate network development and significantly expand universal service coverage. “VoIP presents a huge opportunity to Indian business. VoIP is not about cost considerations today. Rather it allows you to integrate advanced applications, which adds value to the business process,” said Sanish KB, Research Analyst, Gartner.

Finally, with businesses operating in a globalized environment, the need for establishing a communication link with each other assumes prime importance. It becomes all the more important to establish this link over the Internet, when the Internet has emerged as the lodestone of business today.

That said, despite all these advantages, VoIP faces certain challenges that impede its growth. A few of these are, costly IP phones, low levels of awareness, regulatory restrictions, low penetration of broadband in India, and quality of service etc. “Security is another obstacle. Viruses can affect VoIP servers since most of them run on common operating systems and operate on data networks. Hence, VoIP networks inherit all security problems encountered in data networks like hacking, spoofing etc.,” said Patnaik.

“Interoperability is another issue that needs to be resolved. Not all phones, soft phones, gateways and call managers are interoperable as they support some proprietary variant of a standard protocol. This limits enterprises from free mix and match of components,” said Zia.

In addition, added BSNL sources, VoIP as a service has a hidden cost, i.e., the cost of broadband/Internet service itself. It is not only the monthly rental, even the amount of download/upload during a VoIP call is also charged by the ISP.

Reasons for restricted growth

There are three different aspects to VoIP in India. Firstly, it has largely been evaded by SMBs and remained restricted to large enterprises, courtesy costly IP phones. Secondly, it has been restricted to closed user groups only. Thirdly, even though VoIP is considerably cheaper than the traditional telephone service, it has remained attractive only to those segments of market, which spend on ILD calls on a regular basis.

“Since large enterprises have the buying potential, they are showing more interest in VoIP. SMBs in contrast are not that aggressive. Presently, four verticals, ITeS, BFSI, Telecom and the government sector are employing VoIP and account for 70-80% of this market in India. The government sector is investing a lot in VoIP. Other verticals like education, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing are comparatively slow,” said Parminder Kaur Saini, Senior Research Analyst, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan, South Asia & Middle East.

In this context, it is important to look at the licensing policy. VoIP as a service is provided under the Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP). Under the ITSP license, calls can be made from one IP Phone to another and to PSTN / mobile phones outside India only. In contrast, a user can receive a call on his IP phone only from another IP phone but not from a PSTN / mobile phone. This means that a user cannot have an IP phone number similar to a PSTN / mobile number. The IP phones can make calls only within their own network in a closed loop.

Sources say that these license conditions are based on the protection of market segmentation of PSTN /mobile / Internet, and that the government is getting a huge revenue share out of voice services. If cheaper options like VoIP take over this market the revenues share will also drop.

According to Sanish another reason for restricted growth is, “It is the lifecycle for products in India which is longer when compared to other countries. For instance, a product that may be used for five years abroad may be used for eight years in India. This is not allowing us to accept new technology.”

“Due to its usage restriction that limits it to be used for PC to PC or PC to phone outside India, it is difficult for any user to use the same only for restrictive services as the TCO is high, if it is used only for restrictive services,” added Valli.

What the future holds

VoIP has indeed come a long way from just being a PC to PC calling phenomenon. The call rates have been coming down over the last few years to keep it as an attractive option in comparison to PSTN. The spread now depends on the availability of broadband, inexpensive end terminals, and international long distance carrier options. Now, with the approval of logical partitioning of PSTN and VoIP closed user group, VoIP would get some much-needed impetus.

“We see good growth for VoIP in 2-3 years time. Factors like increase adoption of unified communication applications, availability of required bandwidth and increased awareness levels will drive this market,” opined Saini.

According to BSNL sources, the success of VoIP now depends on the rollout by the last mile owners of telecom. These service providers considered VoIP, for a long time, as a service which would eat into their own voice market. Over a period of 3-4 years a sizable chunk of the customers have shifted to ILD calling through Internet. The situation has now forced the service providers to rollout VoIP services in a cautious manner. So, now the growth of VoIP depends on the growth of broadband.

It is important for large-scale penetration of VoIP in India that the tag of computer calling is removed from its name and it is marketed as a convenient way of making calls, contrary to the common perception that it is a cumbersome way of making calls through a computer.

Bill is a great guy..

2009-01-28T01:02:00.002+06:00

Opinion: Bill Gates' new mission: Saving lives
By Wolfgang Gruener
Monday, January 26, 2009 13:54
Opinion – Chicago (IL) - When you already have transformed the way the world works, what do you do with the second half of your life? Ask Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, the insanely rich guy we so often loved to hate, but who is being credited with bringing computing to the mainstream. Today, Gates released the first annual letter describing his new role at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. What we read is a passionate introduction to the challenges and goals of his charity. And I remember the old saying: There are those who say they are saving lives, and those who actually do. Bill Gates retiring from Microsoft was one of the big news items last year. Back then, we knew Gates would not be able to leave Microsoft entirely and given the economic times and the challenges that Microsoft is facing, it is probably a good idea that he will drop by occasionally. However, Gates also mentioned that he would like to focus more and more on his charity in the future. And for those who thought this work might just be a hobby and less intensive than leading Microsoft, they have been proven wrong today. Gates released what he describes as the first of an annually published letter detailing some of the focus areas of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates spends some time in the letter addressing doubts (download the 20-page PDF) that his charity may not be as fulfilling as Microsoft was and claims that his tasks are actually quite similar. "Many of my friends were concerned that I wouldn't find the foundation work as engaging or rewarding as my work at Microsoft. I loved my work at Microsoft and it had been my primary focus for over 30 years. I too would have worried if I had paused and thought about it enough." He mentions that his job at Microsoft had "three magical things" - an "opportunity for big breakthroughs", he felt he has "skills would let [him] help create a special company that would be part of a whole new industry" and the work would "let [him] engage with people who were smart and knew things [he] didn't." Gates says his Foundation also has "three magical elements" – "opportunities for big breakthroughs", he believes that his "experience in building teams of smart people with different skill sets focused on tough long-term problems can be a real contribution" and he noted that "the intelligence and dedication of the people involved in these issues [are] just as impressive as what [he has] seen before." Within his letter, which you can read in its entirety online here, Gates outlines the efforts in Global Health, Global Development, and a dedicated U.S. education Program. In health, he provides insight in a program that accounts for 50% of the spending of the Foundation and concentrates on 20 diseases, such as "diarrheal diseases (including rotavirus), pneumonia, and malaria—which mostly kill kids—and AIDS and TB, which mostly kill adults." "With a handful of new vaccines, we should be able to save a year of a person's life for well under $100. If we waste $500,000, we are wasting 5,000 years of life. This is the kind of trade-off I ask our employees to consider when they are deciding which areas to get involved in and which grants to make," Gates writes. There is also the Global Development program, trying to address rural development and starvation. "About 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day. More than 900 million suffer from chronic hunger, and most of them live in rural areas of developing countries," according to Gates. "This is why the foundation added our Global Development Program to complement the Global Health group two years ago. We are working in areas like financial services, including savings and insurance. Our biggest investment is in improving agricultural output, another area where innovations have made a huge difference for millions of people but have not reached the poorest, especially in Africa and South Asia." He hopes that "new seeds and other inputs like fertilizer allow a farmer to increase a farm's output significantly, instead of just growing enough food to subsist. This innovation is just as important as developing and delivering vaccinations." The U.S. Program is aimed at improving education to "help reduce inequity". Gates not only shares what is being done now, what is being funded, but also what has been achieved already, such as this: "Lee High School, Houston, Texas. But a few of the schools that we funded achieved something amazing. They replaced schools with low expectations and low results with ones that have high expectations and high results. These schools are not selective in whom they admit, and they are overwhelmingly serving kids in poor areas, most of whose parents did not go to college. Almost all of these schools are charter schools that have significantly longer school days than other schools." Reading through the activities of the world's best-financed charity is an amazing eye-opener of what can be done with enough resources and dedication. One can only hope that the effort pays off and the results of Gates' new journey will be as significant as the ones he achieved with Microsoft. Even if it is Gates' choice to spend his time with his charity and many would be willing to change roles with him, his work should not be taken for granted. There is no better way that Gates could allocate his time or spend his wealth. It makes me think about other sparkling executives and company founders in the IT industry. Especially those who continue mentioning how they will save the planet by driving a hybrid/electric car, but then spend their fortune on yachts and jets. So with that thought in mind: Thank you, Bill Gates.

CADILLAC ONE

2009-01-22T15:58:00.000+06:00

Inside the Rocket-Proof Obamamobile

I love this cutaway illustration of the new Cadillac One by John Lawson, Obama included. Specially things like "Doors: eight-inch thick and the weight of a 757 door". Other highlights:

• It can withstand rocket impacts and it's perfectly sealed against biochemical attacks.
• Petrol tank: Can withstand a direct hit thanks to a special foam and armor-plating.
• Bodywork: made of dual hardness steel, aluminum, titanium, and ceramics to "break up posible projectiles".
• Tyres: Kevlar-reinforced with steel rims underneath so it can run away no matter what.
• Accessories include: Night vision cameras, pump-action shotguns, tear gas cannons.
• Comes with bottles of blood compatible with the President's blood.

Obama takes office, saying choose 'hope over fear'

2009-01-21T00:52:00.004+06:00

Stepping into history, Barack Hussein Obama grasped the reins of power as America's first black president on Tuesday, saying the nation must choose "hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord" to overcome the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

President Barack Obama's inauguration speech

Tue Jan 20, 2009 1:07pm EST

Barack Obama takes the Oath of Office as the 44th President of the United States as he is sworn in by U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts with his wife Michelle by his side during the inauguration ceremony in Washington

The following is the full text of U.S. President Barack Obama's inauguration address on Tuesday. Obama, a Democrat, was sworn in on the steps of the Capitol as the 44th U.S. president around noon EST, taking over from President George W. Bush, a Republican.

"My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans.

Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."

UPDATE: On SEA-ME-WE4 Submarine Cable Repair

2008-12-24T14:35:00.002+06:00

France Telecom said it expected to repair SEA-ME-WE4 by 25 December and SEA-ME-WE3 by the end of the year.

Repairs begin on undersea cable A French ship has begun repairing two undersea cables in the
Mediterranean that were severed on Friday, disrupting internet and phone communications.

A robot submarine will locate the ends of the cables on the sea bed and bring them to the surface to be re-connected.

They were cut within 5 minutes of each other, possibly by a trawler net.

Egypt says it has been able to restore most of its communications by re-routing services, but other parts of the Middle East remain badly affected.

Experts have warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and that the knock-on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies. Lengthy process

Experts from France Telecom Marine arrived at the site of the damage to the SEA-ME-WE4 and SEA-ME-WE3 lines onboard the cable ship, Raymond Croze, at 1330 GMT on Sunday, spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard said.

They then sent a remotely-operated submarine robot called "Hector" to the sea bed to begin the search for the two ends of each line.

It is unclear how long repairs will take, as a ship could have dragged the cables several kilometres from their normal positions.

Once located, the cable ends will be brought to the surface by the robot and repairs will be carried out in a special facility on the ship - a process that could take days.

"We have to fix the cable fibre by fibre, and it's a very huge cable," Mr Aymard told the Associated Press.

France Telecom said it expected to repair SEA-ME-WE4 by 25 December and SEA-ME-WE3 by the end of the year.

A third line, operated by FLAG Telecom, was also cut and will be repaired by another ship.

In January the same line was damaged off Egypt's Mediterranean coast, severely disrupting internet and phone communications for many in the Middle East for days, although only two lines were snapped then.

A few hours before the three lines were cut, a suspected sub-sea earthquake damaged a local GO cable to Malta, severely disrupting communications to the island.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7795320.stm

Early Results from Largest Ever Cellphone Cancer Study Are Horribly Depressing

2008-12-24T14:24:00.002+06:00

Last Call?

The most definitive study yet could finally determine whether cellphone use causes cancer

By Melinda Wenner at Pop Sci

Head-Sick: Cancer-related brain tumors (yellow-ringed areas) can take up to a decade to develop. Living Art Enterprises/Photo Researchers

Nearly five decades ago, Americans learned that one of their most treasured habits—smoking—was lethal. This year, we could get more scary news, when scientists announce the results from Interphone, the largest-ever study to investigate whether cellphones cause cancer.

Interphone researchers are pooling and analyzing the results gathered from studies on 6,400 tumors sampled from patients in 13 countries. If the final results mirror the preliminary ones, the world’s three billion cellphone users might want to dial back their talk time. Israeli researchers participating in Interphone found that people who use cellphones regularly are 50 percent more likely than non-users to develop brain tumors. And a joint Interphone analysis from the U.K., Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland reported a 40 percent increase in tumor risk in people who use cellphones for more than a decade; the study found no discernable risk for people who have used cellphones for fewer than 10 years.

No one yet knows specifically how cellphones could cause cancer. The radiation they emit has too little energy to cause genetic damage, but some scientists believe that it may have indirect effects that cause cells to proliferate uncontrollably. But there’s no consensus on these theories.

Scientists like David Carpenter, the director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University of Albany, who spoke about cellphone risks at a Congressional subcommittee hearing in September, are looking to Interphone for a definitive ruling on cellphone safety but have expressed frustration over the two-years-delayed results.

An answer from Interphone is crucial for public health, Carpenter says. Although a handful of studies have been published on cellphones over the past few years, most have been statistically useless. For one thing, they surveyed too few people. Additionally, the majority of studies focused on the effects of cellphone use after several years, but in most cases brain cancer takes a decade to develop. Interphone looks at the influence of both short- and long-term use. That’s not to say that the study is perfect. Interphone defines “regular” use as one call, once a week. It’s possible that this definition underestimates the risk to people who use cellphones more frequently.

And what happens if Interphone reveals a definite link between cellphones and cancer? Will we find ourselves dependent on land lines again? Unlikely. The technology is probably here to stay, says Siegal Sadetzki, who ran the Israeli Interphone study: “We know that there are car accidents, and we still use vehicles, right? We’ve just learned how to do it wisely.”

New cable cut compounds net woes

2008-12-22T16:48:00.003+06:00

The first cut caused widespread disruption to net services

A submarine cable in the Middle East has been snapped, adding to global net problems caused by breaks in two lines under the Mediterranean on Wednesday.

The Falcon cable, owned by a firm which operates another damaged cable, led to a "critical" telecom breakdown, according to one local official.

The cause of the latest break has not been confirmed but a repair ship has been deployed, said owner Flag Telecom.

The earlier break disrupted service in Egypt, the Middle East and India.

"The situation is critical for us in terms of congestion," Omar Sultan, chief executive of Dubai's ISP DU, told The Associated Press, following the most recent break.

Wednesday's incident caused disruption to 70% of the nationwide internet network in Egypt on Wednesday, while India suffered up to 60% disruption.

Flag Telecom said a repair ship was expected to arrive at the site of the first break - 8.3km from Alexandria in Egypt - on 5 February, with repair work expected to take a week.

A repair ship deployed to the second break - 56km from Dubai - was expected to arrive at the site in the "next few days", the firm said.

Web returns

The first cable - the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) - was cut at 0800 on 30 January, the firm said.

INSIDE A SUBMARINE CABLE

1 Polyethylene cover
2,4 Stranded steel armour wires
3,5 Tar-soaked nylon yarn
6 Polycarbonate insulator
7 Copper sheath
8 Protective core
9 Optical fibres
Not to scale

A second cable thought to lie alongside it - SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable - was also split.

FLAG is a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine communications cable that links Australia and Japan with Europe via India and the Middle East.

SEA-ME-WE 4 is a submarine cable linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

The two cable cuts meant that the only cable in service connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt was the older Sea-M-We 3 system, according to research firm TeleGeography.

The firm said the cuts reduced the amount of available capacity on the stretch of network between India and Europe by 75% percent.

As a result, carriers in Egypt and the Middle East re-routed their European traffic around the globe, through South East Asia and across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The cause of the break has still not been confirmed. Initial reports suggested that it could have been snapped by a ship's anchor.

But Egypt's communications ministry said damage to the cables in the Mediterranean was not caused by ships.

The transport ministry said that footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables showed no maritime traffic in the area when the cables were damaged.

"The ministry's maritime transport committee reviewed footage covering the period of 12 hours before and 12 hours after the cables were cut and no ships sailed the area," a statement said.

Internet service providers said they expected India's to be back to about 80% of its usual speed by the end of Friday.

In Egypt Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tarek Kamil said he expected to be at the same capacity within two days.

"However, it's not before ten days until the internet service returns to its normal performance," Kamil told the state Al-Ahram newspaper.

Undersea Cables Cut; 14 Countries Lose Web -- Updated

By Kim ZetterDecember 19, 2008 | 2:39:13 PMPosted on: WIRED

Reports from the Mediterranean indicate that two of the undersea cables severed and repaired earlier this year have been cut again, disrupting internet access and phone service between the Middle East, Europe, and parts of Asia. An additional third cable is down in the same region.

The cuts are causing traffic to be re-routed through the United States and elsewhere.

Egypt's communications ministry tells the Associated Press that the outage has almost completely killed internet services throughout Egypt.

A second report indicates that the three cables that are out include the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable (also known as SMW4), which went out at 7:28 a.m. local time Friday morning; SEA-ME-WE 3, which went down at 7:33 a.m.; and the FLAG EA cable, which went out at 8:06 a.m. The cables were cut in the region where they run under the sea between Egypt and Italy. They carry an estimated 90 percent of all data traffic between Europe and the Middle East. SMW 3 and SMW 4 are owned by groups of phone companies; FLAG is owned by Reliance Globalcom.

The SMW 4 and FLAG cables were among five undersea cables damaged earlier this year in January and February in the Mediterranean, launching a flurry of conspiracy theories before investigations revealed that at least one of the cuts was caused by a ship's anchor. When those cables went down, SMW 3 was used to re-route traffic. But this time, SMW 3 is reportedly involved in the outage as well.

A France Telecom report listed 14 countries affected by the current problem. The Maldives are 100 percent down, followed by India, which has 82 percent disruption. Qatar, Djibouti and the United Arab Emirates were the next most widely affected areas with about 70 percent service interrupted. Disruptions for Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan range from 51 percent to 55 percent.

UPDATE: As reader Julian Borg Barthet notes in the comments section, a fourth undersea cable went out Thursday evening in the same region. The cable, the Seabone, is operated by GO and runs between Malta and Sicily. According to the Times of Malta, GO transferred traffic to a second cable operated by Vodafone. It was the second time in four months that the Seabone cable had failed.

Third undersea cable cut in Middle East

Sat Feb 2, 2008 3:10pm IST

By Hiral Vora

MUMBAI (Reuters) - A third undersea cable was cut on Friday, just two days after two breaks near Egypt disrupted Web access in parts of the Middle East and Asia, Indian-owned cable network operator FLAG Telecom said.

Egypt lost more than half its Internet capacity because of Wednesday's breaks and intends to seek compensation, its ministry of communications said in a news release.

India's booming outsourcing industry, which provides a range of back-office services, like insurance claims processing and customer support to overseas clients over the Internet, played down Wednesday's disruption, saying they had used back-up plans.

FLAG, a wholly-owned subsidiary of India's number two mobile operator Reliance Communications, said on its Web site on Friday its FALCON cable had been reported cut at 0559 GMT, 56 kms (35 miles) from Dubai, between the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

Egyptian telecom authorities said about 55 percent of the country's Internet capacity had been restored by Friday, thanks to rerouting of traffic.

Egypt is to ask FLAG and SEA-ME-WE to compensate its Internet and call centre companies.

The communications minister, Tarek Kamel, has also decided to make Egypt's Internet Service Providers and Telecom Egypt compensate all their Internet subscribers by providing them with a month's subscription free of charge.

The International Cable Protection Committee, an association of 86 submarine cable operators dedicated to safeguarding undersea cables, has declined to speculate on the cause of the breaches, saying investigations were underway.

It said more than 95 percent of transoceanic telecoms and data traffic are carried by undersea, the rest by satellite.

REPAIRS

"The repair ship has been notified and expected to arrive at the (Dubai) site in (the) next few days," FLAG said.

The Internet Service Providers' Association of India said cable repair ships had already been sent to fix the breaches off northern Egypt, which are in segments of two intercontinental cables known as SEA-ME-WE-4 and FLAG Europe-Asia.

FLAG said these repairs should start by Feb. 5 and be complete after one week.

Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association, said all of FLAG's traffic had now been shifted to the SEA-ME-WE-3 cable network.

FLAG's rival, Indian Internet service provider Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), said the majority of its Internet services to the Middle East and North Africa had been restored within 24 hours, as had services to India.

VSNL said in a statement it had used the SEA-ME-WE-3, SEA-WE-ME-4 eastbound and TIC cable to reroute customer traffic.

U.S. phone companies Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc both use the cables which were affected on Wednesday. AT&T said on Thursday its networks were already back to normal as it had rerouted traffic and Verizon expected service to be restored for all its customers within days.

One of the biggest disruptions of modern telecoms systems was in December 2006, when a magnitude 7.1 earthquake broke nine submarine cables between Taiwan and the Philippines, cutting connections between southeast Asia and the rest of the world.

Internet links were thrown out in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines, disrupting the activities of banks, airlines and all kinds of email users.

Traffic was rerouted through other cables, but it took 49 days to restore full capacity.

Mediterranean Submarine Cables Cut

From: dailywirless.org

Two separate oceanic cable systems in the far East were severed around 0800 hrs GMT on January 30 2008, greatly impacting both Internet and voice traffic to the region. A third cable was cut at 0559 hrs GMT on February 1 2008. Omar Sultan, chief executive of Dubai’s IPS DU, said the incident was “very unusual.” He said it wasn’t known how the underwater FLAG FALCON cable, stretching between the United Arab Emirates and Oman, had been damaged.

The broken submarine cables (global map) are operated by Flag Telecom, a subsidiary of Reliance Communications, and SEA-ME-WEA 4, run by a consortium of 16 telecommunications companies. Repair time may be measured in weeks, not days, says the Renesys Blog. VSNL restored Internet Services within 24 hours by going around the world — the long way — but it has snarled Internet and phone traffic from Egypt to India. Google News and Blog Runner have the latest news.

The countries highlighted in red (above) are those whose Internet connectivity is being disrupted the most by this event. As you can see, there are several cable systems that connect Europe, the Middle East and Asia, via the Suez Canal.

According to Bloomberg, six ships were diverted from Alexandria port because of bad weather, and one may have severed the cables with an anchor, said a spokesman for Flag Telecom Group.

The FLAG cut (pdf) is reported to have taken place 8.3 kilometers (5.2 miles) from Alexandria beach in northern Egypt. Flag (for Fiber-optic Link Around the Globe), runs from Britain to Japan.

FLAG, a wholly-owned subsidiary of India’s No. 2 mobile operator Reliance Communications, was cut (pdf) around 0800 hrs GMT on January 30, on a segment between Egypt and Italy.

Another submarine Internet cable owned by Flag Telecom — Falcon — was cut on February 1 at 6 a.m. GMT, at a location 56 kilometers from Dubai, on a segment between UAE and Oman. Falcon (wikipedia) has a maximum capacity of 2.56 Tbps, with initial launch at 90 Gbps. The four fibre pair links the Gulf to Egypt and India.

In Cairo, much of the capital city was without access to the Internet for the bulk of the day, frustrating businesses and the professions. “It’s a national disaster,” said Joseph Metry, network supervisor at Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, the biggest mobile- phone company in the Middle East and North Africa. New financial hubs like Dubai has increased traffic on many of these cables.

The South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) cable, has 17 landing points. The SEA-ME-WEA 4 cable was damaged in the waters off Marseille, France, reports C/Net shortly after the first cut on FLAG. The two cables, which are separately managed and operated, were damaged within hours of each other.

How is it that Flag Telecom, Falcon, and SEA-ME-WEA 4 cables (above and below) were severed within hours of each other, although Marseille, France and Alexandria, Egypt, are hundreds of miles apart? At this point, details are sketchy and the cause is still unclear.

VSNL has a terrific interactive global cable map (above), while the SEA-ME-WEA 4 map (below) shows the distance to France. VSNL, the Indian telecom giant, bought Tyco’s 6 Terabit transpacific cable for a relative song in 2004. Now they planning a new TGN-Intra Asia submarine cable linking Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan with an additional connection to the Philippines, and potentially Vietnam. At least five new submarine systems will run through the Middle East and provide additional connectivity to Europe and Asia says Light Reading.

The International Cable Protection Committee, an association of 86 submarine cable operators dedicated to safeguarding submarine cables, says more than 95 percent of transoceanic telecoms and data traffic are carried by submarine cables, and the rest by satellite. Communications satellites generally have something like 500MHz of spectrum dedicated for upstream and 500Mhz dedicated for downstream — not much more than a typical consumer cable television system. Fiber can carry thousands of times that capacity.

On 26th December, 2006, a powerful earthquake shook the seabed off southern Taiwan (pdf).

The magnitude 7.1 earthquake was followed by one of the largest disruptions of modern telecommunications history.

Nine submarine cables in the Strait of Luzon, between Taiwan and the Philippines, were broken thus disabling vital connections between SE Asia and the rest of the world. China Telecom reported that several international submarine communications cables had been broken, including:

CUCN and SMW3, which was damaged at December 26, 2006 20:25 UTC+8 approximately 9.7 km away from landing point in Fangshan, Pingtung County, Taiwan;
APCN 2 S3, which was damaged at December 27, 2006 02:00 UTC+8 approximately 2100 km away from landing point in Chongming, Shanghai, China;
APCN 2 S7, which was damaged at December 27, 2006 00:06 UTC+8 approximately 904 km away from landing point in Tanshui, Taipei County, Taiwan;
FLAG Europe Asia, the segment between Hong Kong and Shanghai was broken at December 27, 2006 04:56 UTC+8;
FLAG North Asia Loop, the segment between Hong Kong and Pusan was broken at December 26, 2006 20:43 UTC+8, severely damaging the communications within the Asia-Pacific region and with the United States and Europe.

By the end of 2007, 25 oceanic fiber contracts totaling 112,000 route-kilometers were awarded.

Cable ships can’t just drop everything in the middle of a job. Both of Portland’s cable ships, the Tyco Durable and Global Sentinel, are expected to have plenty of work throughout the Pacific as the telecom industry rebounds. Here are Research Ship Schedules. The nearest research vessel looks like the Poseidon. It carries the manned submersible JAGO, and the autonomous ROV Kiel 6000.

The International Space Station Celebrates Its 10th Birthday

2008-11-25T02:13:00.000+06:00

The International Space Station turns 10

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the first launched module of the International Space Station (ISS). The module Zarya was lifted into orbit on November 20th, 1998 by a Russian Proton rocket lifting off from Baikonur, Kazhakstan. In the decade since, 44 manned flights and 34 unmanned flights have carried further modules, solar arrays, support equipment, supplies and a total of 167 human beings from 15 countries to the ISS, and it still has a ways to go until it is done. Originally planned to be complete in 2003, the target date for completion is now 2011. Aside from time spent on construction, ISS crew members work on a good deal of research involving biology and physics in conditions of microgravity. If humans are ever to leave the Earth for extended periods, the ISS is designed to be the place where we will discover the best materials, procedures and safety measures to make it a reality. (32 photos total)

In December 1998, the crew of Space Shuttle Mission STS-88 began construction of the International Space Station - Astronaut James Newman is seen here making final connections the U.S.-built Unity node to the Russian-built Zarya module. The crew carried a large-format IMAX camera from which this picture was taken. (NASA)

Backdropped against a blanket of heavy cloud cover, the Russian-built FGB, also called Zarya, approaches the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the U.S.-built Node 1, also called Unity (foreground) on December 6th, 1998. Inside Endeavour's cabin, the STS-88 crew readied the remote manipulator system (RMS) for Zarya capture as they awaited the rendezvous. (NASA) #

Blanketing clouds form the backdrop for this 70mm scene of the connected Zarya and Unity modules after having been released from Endeavour's cargo bay a bit earlier on December 4th, 1998. Six crew members, who had earlier spent the majority of their on-duty mission time working on the tandem of space hardware, watched the joined modules from Endeavour in a survey and fly-around mode. (NASA) #

Astronaut Robert L. Curbeam, STS-98 mission specialist, was photographed by a member of the Expedition One crew in the newly installed Destiny laboratory during the second of three space walks on February 12th, 2001. Ahead of schedule, the astronauts connected several computer and electrical cables between the docking port and the lab; unveiled the lab's large, high-quality window (through which this photo was taken) and attached an exterior shutter; and repositioned a movable foot platform they had taken inside Atlantis on the first spacewalk for a slight adjustment. (NASA) #

Space shuttle Endeavour is shown after rollback of the rotating service structure. The rollback was in preparation for liftoff on the STS-126 mission with a crew of seven. Above Endeavour's external tank is the vent hood, known as the "beanie cap," at the end of the gaseous oxygen vent arm, extending from the fixed service structure. Below is the orbiter access arm with the White Room at the end, flush against the shuttle. The rotating structure provides protected access to the shuttle for changeout and servicing of payloads at the pad. Photo taken Nov. 14, 2008. (NASA/Kim Shiflett) #

This high-angle image of the Space Shuttle Atlantis backdropped over a mountainous coastline was photographed on February 16th, 2001 by the three-man Expedition One crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) shortly after the shuttle and the outpost unlinked following several days of joint operations of the two crews. The scene was recorded with a digital still camera. (NASA) #

Cosmonaut Sergei K. Krikalev, Expedition One flight engineer, prepares to photograph some geographic targets of opportunity through a viewing port on the International Space Station's Zvezda Service Module in December of 2000. (NASA) #

The Phantom Torso, seen here on May 13th, 2001 in the Destiny laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS), is designed to measure the effects of radiation on organs inside the body by using a torso that is similar to those used to train radiologists on Earth. The torso is equivalent in height and weight to an average adult male. It contains radiation detectors that will measure, in real-time, how much radiation the brain, thyroid, stomach, colon, and heart and lung area receive on a daily basis. The data will be used to determine how the body reacts to and shields its internal organs from radiation, which will be important for longer duration space flights. (NASA) #

Silhouetted over Earth, the International Space Station (ISS) is seen on October 11th, 2000 in a configuration soon to be changed, once the approaching STS-92 crew adds its important new changes. If oriented with Earth's horizon on the left, the ISS elements, from the left, are Node 1 or Unity, the functional cargo block or Zarya, the service module or Zvezda and the Progress supply ship. In a matter of days, the crew went on to add the Z1 Truss structure and a third pressurized mating adapter. (NASA) #

Astronaut Donald R. Pettit, Expedition 6 NASA ISS science officer, photographs his helmet visor during a session of extravehicular activity (EVA) on January 15th, 2003. Pettit's arms and camera are visible in the reflection of his helmet visor. Astronaut Kenneth D. Bowersox, mission commander, is also visible in visor reflection, upper right. (NASA) #

The Expedition Three (white shirts), STS-105 (striped shirts), and Expedition Two (red shirts) crews assemble for a group photo in the Destiny laboratory on the International Space Station on August 17th, 2001. (NASA) #

An overhead view of the exterior of the Space Shuttle Atlantis' crew cabin, part of its payload bay doors and docking system was provided by Expedition 16 crewmembers. Before docking with the International Space Station, astronaut Steve Frick, STS-122 commander, flew the shuttle through a roll pitch maneuver or basically a backflip to allow the space station crew a good view of Atlantis' heat shield. Using digital still cameras equipped with both 400 and 800 millimeter lenses, the ISS crewmembers took a number of photos of the shuttle's thermal protection system and sent them down to teams on the ground for analysis. Photo taken February 9th, 2008. (NASA) #

Astronaut Carl E. Walz, Expedition Four flight engineer, catalogs canisters of water in the Zvezda Service Module on the International Space Station on March 11th, 2002. (NASA) #

The Soyuz TMA-4 vehicle blasts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 19, 2004, carrying a crew of three to the ISS. (NASA/Bill Ingalls) #

The Soyuz 14 (TMA-10) spacecraft approaches the International Space Station. With cosmonaut Oleg Kotov at the controls, the Soyuz linked up to the Zarya module nadir port at 2:10 p.m. (CDT) on April 9, 2007. The docking followed Saturday's launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. (NASA) #

The ISS, seen following undocking at 1:13 p.m. (CST), December 9, 2000. This is one of the first images of the entire station with its new solar array panels deployed. Before separation, the shuttle and space station had been docked to one another for 7 days. Endeavour moved downward from the space station, then began a tail-first circle at a distance of about 500 feet. The maneuver, with pilot Michael J. Bloomfield at the controls, took about an hour. (NASA) #

Astronaut John L. Phillips, Expedition 11 NASA ISS science officer and flight engineer, is photographed among stowage bags in an airlock on the ISS on May 18th, 2005. (NASA) #

Astronaut Leroy Chiao, Expedition 10 commander and NASA ISS science officer, watches a water bubble float between him and the camera, showing his image refracted, on the IISS on January 15th, 2005. (NASA) #

This medium close-up view in the now densely-equipped Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station shows one floating ball-shaped item which is actually one of the Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) on January 27th, 2008. Cosmonaut Yuri I. Malenchenko, Expedition 16 flight engineer representing Russia's Federal Space Agency, is also visible in the background. (NASA) #

The Canadarm2 (center) and solar array panel wings on the International Space Station are featured in this image photographed by a crewmember during the mission's first planned session of extravehicular activity (EVA) while Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-118) was docked with the station on August 11th, 2007. To see a larger panorama (stitched together with another photo of the Endeavour), click here. (NASA) #

Astronaut C. Michael Foale, Expedition 8 commander and NASA ISS science officer, equipped with a bungee harness, exercises on the Treadmill Vibration Isolation System (TVIS) in the Zvezda Service Module on the ISS on April 12th, 2004. (NASA) #

Backdropped by a blanket of clouds, the ISS was photographed by a crewmember on board the Space Shuttle Atlantis following the undocking of the two spacecraft. Atlantis pulled away from the complex at 8:13 a.m. (CDT) on October 16, 2002. (NASA) #

This view features a reboost of the International Space Station (ISS) in action. Ground controllers at Mission Control Moscow ignited the thrusters of a Progress rocket docked to the station's Zvezda Service Module on April 4th, 2003. The 14-minute firing raised the average altitude of the station by about 3 km. One of the Expedition 6 crewmembers captured this picture of the yellow-glowing thrusters from a window in the Service Module. (NASA) #

A close up view of a water droplet on a leaf on the Russian BIO-5 Rasteniya-2/Lada-2 (Plants-2) plant growth experiment, which is located in the Zvezda Service Module on the ISS. Photo taken on March 9th, 2003. (NASA) #

The ISS is backdropped against a cloud-covered part of Earth as the orbital outpost moves away from the Space Shuttle Discovery on August 6th, 2005. Earlier, the crews of the two spacecraft concluded nine days of cooperative work. (NASA) #

Astronaut Karen Nyberg, STS-124 mission specialist, looks through a window in the newly installed Kibo laboratory of the International Space Station while Space Shuttle Discovery is docked with the station on June 10th, 2008. (NASA) #

Astronaut Stephen Robinson rides the 17-meter-long Canadarm2 during the STS-114 mission of the space shuttle Discovery to the ISS in August of 2005. The Canadarm2 aboard the ISS has multiple joints and is capable of maneuvering payloads as massive as 116,000 kilograms, equivalent to a fully loaded bus. (NASA) #

The ISS is seen moving away from the Space Shuttle Atlantis on June 19th, 2007. Earlier the STS-117 and Expedition 15 crews concluded about eight days of cooperative work onboard the shuttle and station. Astronaut Lee Archambault, STS-117 pilot, was at the controls for the departure and fly-around, which gave Atlantis' crew a look at the station's new expanded configuration. (NASA) #

A spacesuit-turned-satellite called SuitSat began its orbit around the Earth after it was released by the ISS Expedition 12 crewmembers during a session of extravehicular activity (EVA) on Feb. 3, 2006. SuitSat, an unneeded Russian Orlan spacesuit, was outfitted by the crew with three batteries, internal sensors and a radio transmitter, which faintly transmitted recorded voices of school children to amateur radio operators worldwide. The suit entered the atmosphere and burned a few weeks later. (NASA) #

High above New Zealand and Cook Strait, astronauts Robert L. Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang work to attach a new truss segment to the ISS and begin to upgrade the power grid on December 12th, 2006. (NASA) #

The ISS is seen from Space Shuttle Discovery as the two spacecraft begin their relative separation. Earlier the STS-124 and Expedition 17 crews concluded almost nine days of cooperative work onboard the shuttle and station. Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred at 6:42 a.m. (CDT) on June 11th, 2008. (NASA) #

Astronaut Steve Bowen, STS-126 mission specialist, participates in the mission's first session of extravehicular activity (EVA) on November 18th, 2008, as construction and maintenance continue on the ISS. During the six-hour, 52-minute spacewalk, Bowen and astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper (out of frame), mission specialist, worked to clean and lubricate part of the station's starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joints (SARJ) and to remove two of SARJ's 12 trundle bearing assemblies. The spacewalkers also removed a depleted nitrogen tank from a stowage platform on the outside of the complex and moved it into Endeavour's cargo bay. (NASA) #

How 10 Famous Technology Products Got Their Names

2008-11-12T13:36:00.003+06:00

From iPod and BlackBerry to Twitter and Wikipedia, we take a look at the processes and people who came up with the names for these iconic tech products.

By Thomas Wailgum of CIO

Coming up with a great technology product or service is only half the battle these days. Creating a name for said product that is at once cool but not too cool or exclusionary, marketable to both early adopters and a broader audience, and, of course, isn't already in use and protected by various trademarks and copyright laws is difficult—to say the least.

The makers of these 10 tech products—the iPod, BlackBerry, Firefox, Twitter, Windows 7, ThinkPad, Android, Wikipedia, Mac OS X and the "Big Cats," and Red Hat Linux—all have displayed certain amounts marketing savvy, common sense and fun-loving spirit in settling on their products' names. Here are the intriguing, surprising and sometimes predictable accounts of their creation.

iPod: "Open the pod bay door, Hal"

During Apple's MP3 player development, Steve Jobs spoke of Apple's strategy: the Mac as a hub to other gadgets. Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywriter Apple hired to help name the gadget before its debut in 2001, fixed on that idea, according to Wired. He brainstormed hubs of all kinds, eventually coming to the concept of a spaceship. You could leave it, but you'd have to return to refuel. The stark plastic front of the prototype inspired the final connection: pod, a la 2001. Add an "i" and the connection to the iMac was complete.

Image credit: IDG News Service

BlackBerry: Sweet Addictiveness

Canada's Research in Motion called on Lexicon Branding to help name its new wireless e-mail device in 2001. The consultancy pushed RIM founders away from the word "e-mail," which research shows can raise blood pressure. Instead, they looked for a name that would evoke joy and somehow give feelings of peace. After someone made the connection that the small buttons on the device resembled a bunch of seeds, Lexicon's team (see profile) explored names like strawberry, melon and various vegetables before settling on blackberry—a word both pleasing and which evoked the black color of the device.

Image credit: IDG News Service

Firefox: Second Time's a Charm

Choosing a name that evokes a product's essence and is available can be quite complicated, as the Mozilla folks found out. The early version of Mozilla's browser was called Firebird, but due to another open-source project with the same name, the Mozilla elders renamed their browser Firefox, which is another name for red panda. Why? "It's easy to remember. It sounds good. It's unique. We like it," they said. Best of all? Nobody else was using it.

Image credit: Copyright Mozilla

Twitter: Connecting the Digital Flock 140 Characters at a Time

When cofounder Biz Stone saw the application that Jack Dorsey created in 2006 he was reminded of the way birds communicate: "Short bursts of information...Everyone is chirping, having a good time." In response, Stone came up with "twttr," and the group eventually added some vowels. It's hard to think of a more evocative name in the tech world than twitter, but what began as what Stone described as "trivial" bursts of communication developed into a powerful means of networking, breaking news, and forum for the 44th U.S. president's campaign.

Image credit: Twitter

Windows 7: Counting on the Power of 7

While Microsoft's next OS is kind of a "Ho-hum" name, one has only to look at what happened with the most recent Windows release to understand why Microsoft might have gone back to a tried-and-true naming philosophy: Vista? Ouch. Windows 95 and XP? Those have done much better. Microsoft's Mike Nash announced the name this way: "Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore 'Windows 7' just makes sense." We're betting that Microsoft execs are hoping that number 7 will deliver on its promise of luck—they could sure use a win after Vista.

Image credit: Microsoft

ThinkPad: Simplicity Wins Out

The venerable line of PC notebooks rolled onto the scene in 1992. While the concept was spot on, there was turmoil at IBM as to what to call it. IBM's pen-computing group wanted to keep it simple; they liked ThinkPad. But IBM's corporate naming committee didn't—it didn't have a number, and every IBM product had to have a number, and how would ThinkPad translate into other languages? Due to the chutzpah of the IBMer who unveiled it, ThinkPad won out, and it was a huge hit for IBM, which eventually sold it to Lenovo in 2005.

Image credit: André Karwath / Wikipedia

Android: Secretive, But Still Not Exciting

You'd think the story behind the naming of the Open Handset Alliance's new open-source platform for mobile devices, which includes the brand-new G1 loaded with Google's goodies, would be cool. But, uh, not so much. Back in 2005, Google quietly acquired a mysterious startup named Android Inc., which had been operating under "a cloak of secrecy" on "making software for mobile phones," reported Businessweek. The result of all Google's secrecy and Internet hype was the debut of T-Mobile's G1 on Oct. 22, 2008.

Image credit: IDG News Service

Wikipedia: Just What It Sounds Like

According to Wikipedia, the name Wikipedia is a portmanteau of wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites) and encyclopedia (you remember, those large books that, as kids, we ruthlessly plagiarized for school book reports). FYI: a portmanteau is a fancy way of saying that we're going to take two words, jam them together and (hopefully) create a new concept that people will love. So far, so good. In an illustration of the axiom "the more things change the more they stay the same": Today, kids and adults now ruthlessly plagiarize Wikipedia instead of encyclopedias.

Image credit: Copyright Wikimedia Foundation

Mac OS X and "The Big Cats": Catlike Sleekness and Style

Apple's popular Mac operating system X actually denotes the Roman numeral 10, since it is the OS's tenth release, following Mac OS 9. To the ire of Apple fanboys, many people do refer to it as letter 'X.' More interesting have been the "big cat" code names assigned to each succeeding X release that have stuck with Apple's marketing: Cheetah (10.0), Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and current kitty Leopard. Snow Leopard has been assigned for the 10.6 release, with rumors that Lynx and Cougar are in the works.

Image credit: IDG News Service

Red Hat Linux: A Name Rich with Meaning

Cofounder Bob Young (pictured) has given multidimensional origins of the red fedora name:

1. It was named after red, which in Western history is "the symbol of liberation and challenge of authority." 2. Cofounder Marc Ewing wore his grandfather's red Cornell lacrosse hat in college and became known for this tech expertise—those with problems went to see the guy in the red hat. 3. Ewing named his software projects Red Hat 1, Red Hat 2 and so on. "So, when he started his Linux project, he just named it Red Hat Linux," Young said. All righty then!

Image credit: IDG News Service

ISS Astronauts Face Most Dangerous Challenge Ever: Home Remodeling

2008-11-10T23:51:00.002+06:00

Astronauts prepare to give International Space Station extreme home makeover

By Daily Mail Reporter

The International Space Station is about to get all the comforts of a modern, high-end, 'green' home: a recycling water filter, kitchen fridge, extra bedrooms and workout equipment.

Space shuttle Endeavour's seven astronauts are due to carry the extra mod cons up to the station over the weekend.

They will convert the living area from a three-bedroom, one-bath, one-kitchen home to a five-bedroom, two-bath and two-kitchen home.

Enlarge

Changes to the International Space Station will enable it to home six astronauts instead of just three

NASA is already environmentally friendly, generating power through solar panels and recycling most waste.

But a new water recovery system will take this one step further, turning urine and condensation into fresh drinking water.

The system is essential if NASA is to increase the size of the space station crew from three to six by the middle of next year.

Endeavour's commander, Christopher Ferguson, said the water system would make deep-space exploration easier once crews are freed of lugging water.

'I would challenge you to find any other system on the Earth that recycles urine into drinkable water. It's such a repulsive concept that nobody would even broach it,' he said.

'But that day will come on this planet, too, where we're going to need to have these technologies in place, and this is just a great way to get started.'

The state of the art gym equipment and brand new toilet will be delivered over the weekend

The astronauts are also excited about getting their first kitchen fridge on board keeping their drinks cold and fruit fresher for long. The current lone refrigerator on board is restricted to science experiments.

'It seems kind of trivial, but six months of lukewarm orange juice can kind of bum you out,' said astronaut Sandra Magnus, who will fly up on Endeavour and move in for 14 weeks.

An exercise machine capable of some 30 routines will also be delivered.

NASA does not expect to get the water generation system up and running before spring. That's how long it will take to check everything and make sure the recycled water is safe to drink. Until then, the space station crew will continue to use water delivered by the shuttle and unmanned Russian supply ships.

Enlarge

Greg Chamitoff looks out from the ISS as he awaits the new crew and home comforts from Earth

Before Endeavour leaves, urine already collected by space station residents will be flushed through the system and undergo distillation, so recycled water samples can be returned to Earth for analysis.

Additional samples will be brought back by another shuttle in February to make absolutely certain the system is working properly.

If everything goes well, the space station will open its doors to six full-time residents next May or June.

The jump in crew size is especially important for the Canadian, European and Japanese astronauts who have been waiting years to live aboard the space station.

The larger, more diverse crew will boost the amount time spent on scientific research from 10 hours a week - the average now - to 35 hours a week, Suffredini said.

Most of the crew's time is now devoted to upkeep, and the maintenance chores will grow as the 10-year-old space station ages, he noted.

While fixing up the inside of the space station, Endeavour's astronauts will tackle a greasy, grimy job on the outside.

Three of the crew will take turns cleaning and lubricating a jammed solar-wing rotating joint; it's clogged with metal shavings from grinding parts and hasn't worked correctly for more than a year.

Toxic Melamine in 8 brands of powdered milk found positive in Bangladesh

2008-11-10T13:48:00.002+06:00

BAEC find vindicates DU melamine results
Govt finally discloses to court 7 out of 8 milk powder brands tested positive; govt's role comes under criticism; court ruling today
By Ershad Kamol of “The Daily Star”

The government yesterday disclosed to the High Court (HC) that Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC) also had detected high concentration of toxic melamine in seven brands of powdered milk out of the eight tested so far.

The revelation raised questions among a cross-section of the people about the caretaker government's sincerity about ensuring public health as it had sat on the test results for a week instead of letting the worried consumers know about the findings.

The court is scheduled to pronounce a judgment on the melamine issue today.

On November 3 the government declared that melamine had been detected only in three Chinese powdered milk brands Yashili 1, Yashili 2, and Sweet Baby 2 in tests by a Thai and two local laboratories.

But at the time the government already had the BAEC test results in its hands which it decided to keep undisclosed.

The consumer confusion about melamine in powdered milk arose when about a month ago Health and Food Adviser Dr AMM Shawkat Ali opted to downplay a Dhaka University (DU) chemistry department test result that had detected melamine in eight brands of powdered milk including five popular ones.

Instead he and his government trusted the test results of the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI), and of a private laboratory Plasma Plus, both of which detected melamine in only Yashili 1 while failing to find trace of the substance in the remaining seven brands.

Later the samples of all eight brands were sent to the laboratories of Bangladesh Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR), BAEC, and a FAO recognised private laboratory in Thailand for testing.

This time around BAEC detected melamine in seven of the brands while the other two laboratories found contamination only in the Chinese brands.
The government adviser said on November 3 that BAEC and the DU chemistry department are not capable of conducting complicated tests like finding melamine in milk.

He told The Daily Star about the BAEC lab, "It's good for detecting pesticides and radiation levels, but not for detecting melamine in milk," adding that the DU chemistry department also has similar limitations.

Criticising the government's move to keep the BAEC test results hushed for a week, Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) Chairman Prof Muzaffer Ahmad told The Daily Star yesterday, "It's a violation of the Right to Information Act which the government recently enacted. The persons responsible for hiding the information from the public should be put on trial according to the law."

"The government's role in such a complicated public health issue infers its lack of care for it. In fact, the government was hiding the facts for the welfare of the corrupt business community," he said.

Programme Officer of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) Emdad Hossain said the way the government has been dealing with the melamine issue, is in violation of consumers' rights, because the consumers were kept in the dark about the confirmation of existence of a dangerously harmful substance in milk products they feed there children.

"People were in the dark and confused, as the government kept secret the test results. This is a blatant violation of consumers' rights, and very dangerous because of melamine's health implications," Hossain said.

The amounts of melamine detected by BAEC are 175.2 milligram per kilogram (mg/kg) in Yashili-1, 172 mg/kg in Yashili-2, 330.4 mg/kg in Sweet Baby-2, 171.3 mg/kg in Nido Fortified Instant, 478.3 mg/kg in Anlene, 287.4 mg/kg in Diploma, and 7.4 mg/kg in Dano Full Cream Milk.

However, BAEC did not detect any trace of melamine in Red Cow, which was found to be contaminated in the DU test.

Deputy Attorney General Rajik Al Jalil produced all test results to the HC yesterday, after the court had directed the government to do so.

Prof Nilufar Nahar, under whose leadership melamine was detected in the eight brands of powdered milk through a test in the DU chemistry department lab, said, "As a scientist I have a global reputation. The government should know my work before dismissing our department's abilities. I invite them to visit our laboratory and urge them to stop talking nonsense."

"The man who conducted the tests in Plasma Plus and the two others who tested the samples in BCSIR had been researchers under my supervision. I know the mistakes they made in their tests. The government should be ashamed of its blatant kowtowing to the interests of the unscrupulous industry, and for pitting novice chemists against the nation's top scientists."

She also questioned the authenticity of the test results from the Thai laboratory, saying, "It's a FAO recognised private laboratory, not FAO's own lab, moreover the report is incomplete." The report of the Thai lab did not elaborate on the methodology of its tests, she added.

"Local distributors of powdered milk brands should apologise to the public instead of trying to hide the facts, and at the same time they should ask the Chinese company Sanlu to compensate them for the loss of their business," she suggested.

Meanwhile, BSTI has been briefing the media on the 'safe level of melamine contamination', instead of warning the public about its disastrous impact on health, especially on children's health.

Four children died in China due to kidney stones that occurred from being fed melamine contaminated milk, while 53,000 others are currently suffering from kidney failures due to the same reason.

Black Shadows under the glitziest candle of Dubai

2008-10-17T18:21:00.005+06:00

'We need slaves to build monuments'
It is already home to the world's glitziest buildings, man-made islands and mega-malls - now Dubai plans to build the tallest tower. But behind the dizzying construction boom is an army of migrant labourers lured into a life of squalor and exploitation. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports

Workers sleep on the street in Dubai. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul Ahad

The sun is setting and its dying rays cast triangles of light on to the bodies of the Indian workers. Two are washing themselves, scooping water from tubs in a small yard next to the labour camp's toilets. Others queue for their turn. One man stands stamping his feet in a bucket, turned into a human washing machine. The heat is suffocating and the sandy wind whips our faces. The sprinkles of water from men drying their clothes fall like welcome summer rain.

All around, a city of labour camps stretches out in the middle of the Arabian desert, a jumble of low, concrete barracks, corrugated iron, chicken-mesh walls, barbed wire, scrap metal, empty paint cans, rusted machinery and thousands of men with tired and gloomy faces.

I have left Dubai's spiralling towers, man-made islands and mega-malls behind and driven through the desert to the outskirts of the neighbouring city of Abu Dhabi. Turn right before the Zaha Hadid bridge, and a few hundred metres takes you to the heart of Mousafah, a ghetto-like neighbourhood of camps hidden away from the eyes of tourists. It is just one of many areas around the Gulf set aside for an army of labourers building the icons of architecture that are mushrooming all over the region.

Behind the showers, in a yard paved with metal sheets, a line of men stands silently in front of grease-blackened pans, preparing their dinner. Sweat rolls down their heads and necks, their soaked shirts stuck to their backs. A heavy smell of spices and body odour fills the air.

Next to a heap of rubbish, a man holds a plate containing his meal: a few chillies, an onion and three tomatoes, to be fried with spices and eaten with a piece of bread.

In a neighbouring camp, a group of Pakistani workers from north and south Waziristan sit exhaustedly sipping tea while one of them cooks outside. In the middle of the cramped room in which 10 men sleep, one worker in a filthy robe sits on the floor grinding garlic and onions with a mortar and pestle while staring into the void.

Hamidullah, a thin Afghan from Maydan, a village on the outskirts of Kabul, tells me: "I spent five years in Iran and one year here, and one year here feels like 10 years. When I left Afghanistan I thought I would be back in a few months, but now I don't know when I will be back." Another worker on a bunk bed next to him adds: "He called his home yesterday and they told him that three people from his village were killed in fighting. This is why we are here."

Hamidullah earns around 450 dirhams (£70) a month as a construction worker.

How is life, I ask.

"What life? We have no life here. We are prisoners. We wake up at five, arrive to work at seven and are back at the camp at nine in the evening, day in and day out."

Outside in the yard, another man sits on a chair made of salvaged wood, in front of a broken mirror, a plastic sheet wrapped around his neck, while the camp barber trims his thick beard. Despite the air of misery, tonight is a night of celebration. One of the men is back from a two-week break in his home village in Pakistan, bringing with him a big sack of rice, and is cooking pilau rice with meat. Rice is affordable at weekends only: already wretched incomes have been eroded by the weak dollar and rising food prices. "Life is worse now," one worker told me. "Before, we could get by on 140 dirhams [£22] a month; now we need 320 to 350."

The dozen or so men sit on newspapers advertising luxury watches, mobile phones and high-rise towers. When three plastic trays arrive, filled with yellowish rice and tiny cubes of meat, each offers the rare shreds of meat to his neighbours.

All of these men are part of a huge scam that is helping the construction boom in the Gulf. Like hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, they each paid more than £1,000 to employment agents in India and Pakistan. They were promised double the wages they are actually getting, plus plane tickets to visit their families once a year, but none of the men in the room had actually read their contract. Only two of them knew how to read.

"They lied to us," a worker with a long beard says. "They told us lies to bring us here. Some of us sold their land; others took big loans to come and work here."

Once they arrive in the United Arab Emirates, migrant workers are treated little better than cattle, with no access to healthcare and many other basic rights. The company that sponsors them holds on to their passports - and often a month or two of their wages to make sure that they keep working. And for this some will earn just 400 dirhams (£62) a month.

A group of construction engineers told me, with no apparent shame, that if a worker becomes too ill to work he will be sent home after a few days. "They are the cheapest commodity here. Steel, concrete, everything is up, but workers are the same."

As they eat, the men talk more about their lives. "My shift is eight hours and two overtime, but in reality we work 18 hours," one says. "The supervisors treat us like animals. I don't know if the owners [of the company] know."

"There is no war, and the police treat us well," another chips in, "but the salary is not good."

"That man hasn't been home for four years," says Ahmad, the chef for the night, pointing at a well-built young man. "He has no money to pay for the flight."

A steel worker says he doesn't know who is supposed to pay for his ticket back home. At the recruiting agency they told him it would be the construction company - but he didn't get anything in writing.

One experienced worker with spectacles and a prayer cap on his head tells me that things are much better than they used to be. Five years ago, when he first came, the company gave him nothing. There was no air conditioning in the room and sometimes no electricity. "Now, they give AC to each room and a mattress for each worker."

Immigrant workers have no right to form unions, but that didn't stop strikes and riots spreading across the region recently - something unheard of few years ago. Elsewhere in Mousafah, I encounter one of the very few illegal unions, where workers have established a form of underground insurance scheme, based on the tribal structure back home. "When we come here," one member of the scheme tells me, "we register with our tribal elders, and when one of us is injured and is sent home, or dies, the elders collect 30 dirhams from each of us and send the money home to his family."

In a way, the men at Mousafah are the lucky ones. Down in the Diera quarter of old Dubai, where many of the city's illegal workers live, 20 men are often crammed into one small room.

UN agencies estimate that there are up to 300,000 illegal workers in the emirates.

On another hot evening, hundreds of men congregate in filthy alleyways at the end of a day's work, sipping tea and sitting on broken chairs. One man rests his back on the handles of his pushcart, silently eating his dinner next to a huge pile of garbage.

In one of the houses, a man is hanging his laundry over the kitchen sink, a reeking smell coming from a nearby toilet. Next door, men lie on the floor. They tell me they are all illegal and they are scared and that I have to leave.

Outside, a fistfight breaks out between Pakistani workers and Sri Lankans.

The alleyways are dotted with sweatshops, where Indian men stay until late at night, bending over small tables sewing on beads.

A couple of miles away, the slave market becomes more ugly. Outside a glitzy hotel, with a marble and glass facade, dozens of prostitutes congregate according to their ethnic groups: Asians to the right, next to them Africans, and, on the left, blondes from the former Soviet Union. There are some Arab women. Iranians, I am told, are in great demand. They charge much higher prices and are found only in luxury hotels.

Like the rest of the Gulf region, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are being built by expat workers. They are strictly segregated, and a hierarchy worthy of previous centuries prevails.

At the top, floating around in their black or white robes, are the locals with their oil money. Immaculate and pampered, they own everything. Outside the "free zones", where the rules are looser, no one can start a business in the UAE without a partner from the emirates, who often does nothing apart from lending his name. No one can get a work permit without a local sponsor.

Under the locals come the western foreigners, the experts and advisers, making double the salaries they make back home, all tax free. Beneath them are the Arabs - Lebanese and Palestinians, Egyptians and Syrians. What unites these groups is a mixture of pretension and racism.

"Unrealistic things happen to your mind when you come here," a Lebanese woman who frequently visits Dubai tells me as she drives her new black SUV. "Suddenly, you can make $5,000 [£2,800] a month. You can get credit so easy, you buy the car of your dreams, you shop and you think it's a great bargain; when you go to dinner, you go to a hotel ... nowhere else can you live like this."

Down at the base of the pyramid are the labourers, waiters, hotel employees and unskilled workers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, the Philippines and beyond. They move deferentially around the huge malls, cafes, bars and restaurants, bowing down and calling people sir and madam. In the middle of the day, during the hottest hours, you can see them sleeping in public gardens under trees, or on the marble floors of the Dubai Mosque, on benches or pieces of cardboard on side streets. These are the victims of the racism that is not only flourishing in the UAE but is increasingly being exported to the rest of the Middle East. Sometimes it reminds you of the American south in the 1930s.

One evening in Abu Dhabi, I have dinner with my friend Ali, a charming Iraqi engineer whom I have known for two decades. After the meal, as his wife serves saffron-flavoured tea, he pushes back his chair and lights a cigar. We talk about stock markets, investment and the Middle East, and then the issue of race comes up.

"We will never use the new metro if it's not segregated," he tells me, referring to the state-of-the-art underground system being built in neighbouring Dubai. "We will never sit next to Indians and Pakistanis with their smell," his wife explains.

Not for the first time, I am told that while the immigrant workers are living in appalling conditions, they would be even worse off back home - as if poverty in one place can justify exploitation in the other.

"We need slaves," my friend says. "We need slaves to build monuments. Look who built the pyramids - they were slaves."

Sharla Musabih, a human rights campaigner who runs the City of Hope shelter for abused women, is familiar with such sentiments. "Once you get rich on the back of the poor," she says, "it's not easy to let go of that lifestyle. They are devaluing human beings," she says. "The workers might eat once a day back home, but they have their family around them, they have respect. They are not asking for a room in a hotel - all they are asking for is respect for their humanity."

Towards the end of another day, on a fabulous sandy beach near the Dubai marina, the waves wash calmly over the beautiful sand. A couple are paragliding over the blue sea; on the new islands, gigantic concrete structures stand like spaceships. As tourists laze on the beach, Filipino, Indian and Pakistani workers, stand silently watching from a dune, cut off from the holidaymakers by an invisible wall.

Behind them rise more brand-new towers.

"It's a Green Zone mentality," a young Arab working in IT tells me. "People come to make money. They live in bubbles. They all want to make as much money as possible and leave."

Back at the Mousafah camps, a Pakistani worker walks me through his neighbourhood. On both sides of the dusty lane stand concrete barracks and the familiar detritus: raw sewage, garbage, scrap metal. A man washes his car, and in a cage chickens flutter up and down.

We enter one of the rooms, flip-flops piled by the door.

Inside, a steelworker gets a pile of papers from a plastic envelope and shoves them into my lap. He is suing the company that employed him for unpaid wages. "I've been going to court for three months, and every time I go they tell me to come in two weeks." His friends nod their heads. "Last time the [company] lawyer told me, 'I am in the law here - you will not get anything."

Economically, Dubai has progressed a lot in the past 10 years, but socially it has stayed behind," says Musabih. "Labour conditions are like America in the 19th century - but that's not acceptable in the 21st century."

Is Steve Jobs Preparing His Farewell?

2008-10-15T13:48:00.001+06:00

Steve Jobs is leaving Apple. Not tomorrow, but probably very soon. That's why he started to say good bye today, doing something more important than just presenting new MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and an updated MacBook Air. Today's event was a play in which he clearly told everyone that the company is more than himself. Since the very first minute, when he immediately sat down to let Tim Cook talk, he was saying: "Hey, look, Apple is more than Steve. These are The Guys, the Goodfellas, the A-Team. They share the same vision I have. And they are going to push the company forward when I leave this company to drink caipirinhas suntanning on my private beach in Hawaii". Head over at GIZMODO to read the whole article.

HiPER Laser Fusion Project "Starts" Tomorrow, Could Save Earth

2008-10-06T15:37:00.001+06:00

Nuclear fusion energy project could lead to limitless clean electricity

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 05/10/2008

The power of the sun is to be recreated in a new £1 billion science project which aims to provide a clean and almost limitless source of energy.

Here is how it works:

• HiPER is being designed to demonstrate the feasibility of laser driven fusion as a future energy source. It will also enable the investigation of the science of truly extreme conditions – accessing regimes which cannot be produced elsewhere on Earth (temperatures of hundreds of millions of degrees, billion atmosphere pressures, and enormous electric and magnetic fields).

• HiPER will require major developments in technology, building on the highly successful European capability in this area. In particular, the PETAL laser, located in the Aquitaine region of France, will be a fore-runner to the HiPER facility to address physics and technology issues of strategic relevance for HiPER

British scientists will this week begin work to create a nuclear fusion reactor, which will use the same powerful reactions that take place in the Sun to provide energy and, ultimately, electricity.

Scientists have previously only been able to replicate the reaction inside hydrogen bombs.

Now, however, they believe they are on the verge of achieving controlled fusion in a laboratory for the first time.

Laser beams with enough power to light up every home in Britain for a few microseconds will be used to heat up the nuclear fuel to millions of degrees centigrade in order to trigger the reaction.

If successful, the reactor will be a prototype for future commercial power stations, providing a cleaner and safer replacement for conventional nuclear power stations, which use nuclear fission to produce energy.

Unlike nuclear fission, which tears apart atoms to release energy and highly radioactive by-products, fusion involves squeezing two "heavy" hydrogen atoms, called deuterium and tritium together so they fuse, producing harmless helium and vast amounts of energy.

Previous attempts to harness fusion have failed due to the huge amount of power needed to start the reaction and keep it running, leading to more power being put into the system than is ever given out. But scientists at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Oxford, hope their approach will generate useful power for the first time.

Leading a consortium of physicists from across Europe they will tomorrow launch the three year process of planning and designing the High Powered Laser Research (HiPER) facility.

Professor Mike Dunne, director of the central laser facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and one of the scientists leading the fusion project, said that fusion could provide a safe source of energy with no carbon emissions and plentiful energy supplies.

He said: "HiPER is aiming to bridge the step between proving nuclear fusion is possible and a commercial power station.

"It should prove that a big enough laser can be built, with a high enough repetition rate and efficiency, which are the critical building blocks on the route towards fusion energy."

Fusion reactors are already under construction in the US and France using two separate approaches to creating the intense pressure and heat required to trigger the nuclear fusion reaction.

The National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, is aiming to use powerful lasers to create the intense pressures required to trigger the reaction when it is switched on next year, but the lasers are so powerful it is likely to use up more energy than it produces, meaning the technology would be useless for a commercial power station.

A separate approach at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in Cadarache, France, is aiming to use powerful magnetic fields to spark the reaction but this is again not thought to be terribly efficient. The HiPER project will adapt the American laser approach and improve its efficiency so that it can trigger the reaction at lower pressure.

"The National Ignition Facility will prove fusion can be achieved with lasers and we are then the next step," said Professor Dunne.

"If you think of the NIF as being like a diesel engine – the lasers compress the fuel pellet until the pressure causes the fusion reaction to start.

"HiPER is more like a petrol engine where the fuel is compressed a little by the lasers but then a second more powerful laser acts like a spark plug to trigger the fusion reaction."

The researchers have received £13 million for the first phase of the £1 billion project to build the HiPER facility. Most of the funding has come from the UK government funded Science and Technology Facilities Council, together with contributions from the European Commission.

It comes at a time when the Government is facing intense opposition to its plans to build new nuclear fission power stations in order to meet rising energy demands as fossil fuel supplies begin to run low.

Unlike nuclear fission, the fusion reaction produces only produces very small amounts of low-grade radioactive material and does not carry the risk of radioactive meltdown.

Fusion fuel, deuterium and tritium is also readily available in seawater. Just 2lbs of fusion fuel is capable of producing the same amount of energy as 10,000 tonnes of fossil fuel.

A spokesman for the STFC said: "The future location of HiPER is being explored over the next few years, with the UK being a prime candidate."

Martin O'Brien, fusion programme manager at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, added: "Fusion is increasingly recognised internationally as a possible long term clean energy supply. The UK is very much in the leading position on nuclear fusion."

US Congress bailout bill

2008-10-04T00:40:00.002+06:00

US Congress is set to sell out the country

Partially relevant rant Enslaving Main Street to gild Wall Street

By Benson N. Hedgefund: Friday, 03 October 2008, 4:48 PM

IN A FEW HOURS the US House of Representatives might tip that country into a decade long economic depression that will begin the fall of the American Empire and reverberate around the world. While the American Empire's fall won't be lamented, the depression will be painful.

It might do that by voting to grant US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson the authority to bail out and line the pockets of the wealthiest and most favoured of that reckless class of greed-blinded crooks and swindlers who have financially ruined much of the US populace.

In the process they've driven many large US banks, hedge funds and insurance companies straight off the cliff of financial insolvency and into undeclared bankruptcy.

The so-called representatives of the people might do that because they've been bought and paid-for long ago with incremental bribes of political campaign contributions doled out by that same elite and long entrenched class of financial players. Many US congress people have been paid about $1 million each over the years, give or take a few hundred thousand dollars.

What the House of Representatives is about to vote on and possibly approve is a daft bill already passed by the Senate that would give Secretary Paulson virtually unlimited carte blanche to loot the US Treasury of, and indebt the country for generations by borrowing from the Federal Reserve, and through it the rest of the world, literally trillions of dollars.

The initial authorisation is nominally for $350 billion, but that's automatically extendable to $700 billion under the bill, and that spending authorisation may be renewed, $700 billion at a whack, indefinitely and limitlessly.

Under the bill, Secretary Paulson's authority to pay out taxpayer money to whomever he pleases, for whatever assets or purposes he wishes, at whatever prices, is not constrained in any meaningful way. It is not subject to any binding guidance or close oversight and is not reviewable or reversible by any legislative body or any court of law.

The bill is simply a breathtakingly brazen prescription for total financial dictatorship over the US Treasury and future US tax liabilities, as far as the eye can see.

This incredible financial coup d'etat is being justified as somehow imperatively necessary by the supposedly impending collapse of world's financial system.

The promoters of this scheme -- US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, principally, plus US Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin Bernanke and US President George Bush -- claim that this unprecendented abrogation of US Congressional power over the national purse is needed because some large banks and insurance companies are in a severe financial bind.

The spot they're in has resulted from their wild abandon in devising, making, packaging, insuring, selling and trading home mortgage loans and equity loans, made in all too many cases to people who couldn't afford them.

Many people, who were induced to sign up for variable interest rate Subprime and Alt-A mortgage loans on overvalued houses -- often with no money down, verification of income, assets to back them up, or even paying jobs in many instances -- have been falling behind in their payments and losing their homes to foreclosures in droves for over a year now.

As borrowers, they're trapped by ongoing collapse of the US housing market bubble. The houses that they bought at inflated prices aren't worth nearly as much as they still owe on their mortgages, so they can't sell their homes. And their adjustable rate mortgages are starting to ratchet upwards, making them struggle to make their mortgage payments and forcing many of them into bankruptcy and foreclosure.

The US housing bubble at the root of the current US financial ills was caused by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's inflationary policy of low interest rates that he pursued for several years, which fueled rampant real estate speculation resulting in an unsustainable rise in US housing prices. In mid-2007, the music stopped and house prices started falling. They still have quite a ways to fall to get back down to the levels ordinary American wage-earners can historically afford, and the US housing market won't begin to recover until they do.

Those institutions are holding stacks of home mortgages and secondary mortgage market bonds and derivatives that are of dubious value. Recent imposition of a rule that they must mark these securities to market prices has made a number of those institutions technically insolvent, because those securities are of unknown value so therefore no banks are willing to buy them at any price, thus they are technically worthless.

Secretary Paulson is proposing to buy up swathes of mortgage bonds, derivatives based upon them, credit default swaps, and whatever else he feels like buying, from whatever financial institutions drag their tattered castoffs into his high-class pawnshop, and he will apparently be willing to pay whatever they ask for them.

Mortgages valued at a trillion dollars or so have already gone bad, that is, either they are non-performing because borrowers have stopped making payments or they've been placed into foreclosure. A Swiss bank estimates that as much as $5 trillion in US mortgages will eventually become worth little or nothing. That's the potential liability facing Mr Paulson.

That amount, $5 trillion, is approximately the value of all US mortgages that are held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two US secondary market mortgage holders taken into "conservatorship," that is, nationalised, by the US government just a couple of weeks ago, to put the number in perspective.

The bailout or "rescue" bill proposed, however, won't really place most of the beneficiary financial institutions on firm footing. It will only buy up their worst investments, providing their insiders and major stockholders with large windfalls of cash with which to make fast getaways to sunnier climes. It will merely reward the principal crooks for their larcenies.

That's because the US financial system is awash with arcane derivatives that are called credit default swaps, which Warren Buffet has astutely called " weapons of financial mass destruction." There are presently about $55 trillion in credit default swaps outstanding in the US financial system. There's not enough money in the entire world to buy all those up.

Therefore, some banks, hedge funds and insurance companies are going to fail, dragged down by their former greed in pursuit of ever higher quarterly profits without regard to downside risks. Some large financial institutions will be among those that eventually fail.

The bill won't stave off an economic depression either. In fact, it'll likely both hasten and worsen the depression that's coming, as well as delay the onset of US economic recovery.

That bright light in the American economy's tunnel isn't the sun but rather an onrushing train. Ignoring it will only make the inevitable crash more violent and the damage worse.

But handing the crew that got the US economy into this mess, along with their henchmen and cronies, a free hand to loot the national treasury, enslave taxpayers for generations, and shower the crooked, corrupt and swindling financial elite with cash is simply insane.

It should be interesting to see whether the US Congress actually pulls the trigger on America today. µ

Please let us know how many billionaires retire to do charity work as Bill Gates

2008-07-01T00:58:00.001+06:00

We wish Bill and Melinds Gates all the happiness in the world. Without Bill Gates and his great vision to make computers easy for idiots like us, life for us would have been –only God knows. A Harvard University dropout who ushered in the home computer age and made billions of dollars along the way will step down from Microsoft Corp, which he founded more than 30 years ago. Gates was born on October 28, 1955, the second of three children in a prominent Seattle family. His father, William Henry Gates Jr., was a partner at one of the city's most powerful law firms, while his late mother, Mary, was an active charity fund-raiser and University of Washington regent. He was introduced to computers at the exclusive Lakeside Preparatory School, where the teen prodigy began programming in BASIC computer language on a primitive ASR-33 Teletype unit. Gates first programmed a computer at 13, creating a class scheduling system for his Seattle high school. Gates realized at an early stage of the PC revolution that software would be more important than hardware. Working with boyhood friend Paul Allen, Gates founded Microsoft, naming the company for its mission of providing microcomputer software. Rest is history. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (B&MGF) is the largest transparently operated charitable foundation in the world, founded by Bill and Melinda Gates in 2000 and doubled in size by Warren Buffett in 2006. The primary aims of the foundation are, globally, to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty, and, in the United States, to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology. The foundation, based in Seattle, Washington, is controlled by its three trustees: Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett. On May 4, 2006, the foundation received the Prince of Asturias award for International Cooperation.

Bill Gates: the exit interview by engadget

2008-06-28T04:01:00.001+06:00

by Ryan Block, posted Jan 7th 2008 at 7:34PM

We've been fortunate enough to sit down with Sir Bill a number of times over the years -- and even been lucky enough to call him a fan. While we're certainly hoping this won't be our last run-in, we couldn't help but feel a little sentimental knowing that chances are the next time we see him, he'll no longer be in charge of Microsoft. This time around we talked a little about his historic 2007 sit-down with Steve Jobs, his plans for the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, and even a bit about what he'll be up to in his new part-time gig at Microsoft.

Thanks so much for meeting with us. I appreciate it. So I was at the keynote last night and I saw the video that you did. Being that you're looking for a job, I just wanted to let you know we're always hiring--

Excellent --

... looking for editors anytime. I know you've written some stuff for the Guardian recently--

Well I love your stuff.

You know where to find me.

Ok.

[Laughter]

So I was at D this year and obviously you and Jobs were at it as well. And you guys got up on stage together, I think that was -- besides being a really historic moment -- very emotional for a lot of people in the audience. I want to know what it was like for you personally. I think a lot of people were confused as to whether or it was truly bittersweet, or just bitter. I felt it was really bittersweet.

Oh, I like Steve. And I've always been extremely complimentary of the impact he's had on the industry. Part of it, in terms of that whole crowd though, is that the personal computer industry was started by people who were very young and there was a set of people who believed in it and all kind of grew up together. So Steve and I are virtually the same age -- he's a little bit older, he got into it about three years after we had done the original personal computer stuff -- and he was my sixteenth customer for the BASIC interpreter. I had done the Commodore six months before, if you remember that, I had done the TRS-80 eight months before, and then they needed the floating point basic. I came out and I actually worked more with Woz -- Steve wasn't a hands-on engineer involved in that thing -- because Woz had been trying to do his own BASIC but just couldn't get it done.

So we've always worked together on various things. When Steve did the Mac, that was our closest relationship. That was about thirty people at Microsoft, twenty people at Apple betting on moving the graphical interface into the mainstream. That was a phenomenal experience because we did the only 3rd party software that was on that machine the day that it shipped. And when they went 512 [kilobytes of memory], we did some stuff. They thought [Lotus] Jazz was going to the breakthrough product, but we showed them that Excel was the breakthrough product. So there's always been good back and forth. I am very sincere that Steve has unique skills that I just don't have at all and it's been phenomenal to see how he has been able to make a difference with what he's done.

So when you got up there, what was it like for you emotionally? I mean, Steve quoted the Beatles; it felt like there was just this bizarre camaraderie / rivalry that is almost inexplicable.

Oh absolutely. We had a chance -- I think Steve and I are the two luckiest people in the industry in terms of the center seat we've had, and the involvement we've have been able to have. And we know that it's been a special thing and where we work together it's helped the industry, and even when we've competed it has probably been good for the industry.

So I read this GQ article, the profile that I guess they did of you around the time the new Zunes launched, and it was funny because the one thing they really focused on was that when they spoke to you, you seemed really checked out. In your last few months of tenure at Microsoft -- what is that like? Are you really spending all of your time on the Foundation right now? Or, are you still really focused on the technology?

I am totally full time Microsoft. As hardcore as ever -- you can ask anybody at the company. But come July 1st that will change. Maybe even the month of June will be goofy, not because I'll be focused on other things, but because, it being the last month, they'll be some special things and people that I'll go around and talk to. But in terms of lots of meetings of making our search better, the next version of Office, the next version of Windows -- I'm working harder now than any time in the last decade.

Is there anything on the table that you feel like you never really got to see through or fully accomplish?

Well, the tablet is not mainstream. Reading off the screen is not mainstream. Getting your TV over the internet -- we talked here about how Mediaroom is up to a million users. But that's just on its way to mainstream, that's not mainstream yet. So when I think about all the different scenarios, there are some that we've have made a lot more progress than on than others. Productivity, for example, although there is still a lot to be done on that. Computing in the cloud is this whole new frontier of how you make software automatically manage the hardware resources, recover, and load balance -- there's some phenomenal things we are doing related to that, both for the consumer and business computing. So this is an amazing time. I believe that all these things will happen but it takes time. Just like the medical technology -- things I'll be working on in the future -- those will take more time than I'd like.

Speaking of productivity, I think that Microsoft has really, if anything, totally nailed productivity over the years and totally nailed business and the enterprise market -- and that's really been the backbone of Microsoft business. But do you ever feel like there has been any regrets about shortcomings in the consumer market? As in, not really focusing on the consumer front the way that Jobs and Apple does? Or do you feel like you have really covered all of those bases?

I think the key thing is the concept of the personal computer and the software industry. That's what we started in 1975 and the core of the company is that platform. There are third party applications that are on Windows to do consumer-like things -- I think as we get speech and touch and mainstream pen into them, you'll see a wave of those that are dramatically better. That's our key role. Yes, Microsoft itself will do photos and music and all that, but the thing that has always differentiated our platform is the breadth of third party solutions. The hardware variety and that software applications variety. And we need new frontiers, of which I think natural interface and service-connections (that I talked about last night) -- those are going to enable these new things. So we are proud of the games work that people are doing on Windows but these breakthroughs can take that to the new level. I think that emphasis on third parties is something we've always done better than anyone else and hopefully it will hold us in a good position.

On the Windows side. One hundred million licenses, obviously that's an enormous amount. But I think in the last few months, especially within from media and the blogosphere and all of these different places, Vista specifically is getting hit really hard with a lot of negative PR -- a pretty big backlash from users who are downgrading to XP. Or at least a lot of people talking about downgrading. Do you feel like right now you are leaving under a cloud? That the company's core product not meeting consumer expectations?

I wouldn't say that. Any version of Windows is going to have lots of great new things that people use and things that are tough. With Vista, a lot of it's the transition from XP to Vista. Did we get the device drivers ready in the right way and time? Did we make it easy to do the upgrades as well as we should? When people get up and running on Vista they are basically quite happy. Not perfect -- but quite happy. It is that transition where we definitely need to get a better job up on that piece.

Now, in time, more of those drivers are becoming available. It is definitely a product where we look back and say, okay, a lot of good things but we are going to change the things where it just didn't become trivial to step up to the new version. That's always been a hard with Windows and we're looking at some of those challenges and why we didn't think they'd be as hard as they were -- and making sure that we do better at it. The feedback is important to us, but it is a product that has lots of good features. I encourage people to use it! We are proud of the features in there!

Well, of course! But are you personally fully satisfied with it?

I'm never fully satisfied with any Microsoft product.

Like the saying, "Software is never complete, only abandoned"?

There are always the features that I wanted to get in, or the things that I wish were a little more polished. The people who are good in these companies are really sort of ridiculously demanding people. They have to sort of know when to back off so that thing can eventually ship. But I look at any product -- and I'm better at Microsoft products -- and say what I wished what was better about the product.

In terms of the Foundation [which focuses partly using technology to enhance health care in developing nations], is it your intention to run that as you would a software company, or as you would a technology company?

Of course not. The nature of the problem is very different. I do not think technology companies are not all of one ilk either. Here at the foundation you have researchers in academia, great scientists in drug companies, you've got rich-world governments, poor-world governments, non-profit organizations, you've got to activate the public. The biggest part of the Foundation is solving twenty diseases. Malaria, AIDS, TB -- some diseases, because they are only in the poorest countries, rich people have never even heard of, like visceral leishmaniasis. In the top ten, -- but not broad awareness.

So the way we are going to orchestrate more energy and more resources, where we'll get a lot more progress where there is some market failure -- there is no market incentive driving these things -- that is going to require invention. And I wouldn't enjoy it if it wasn't at very early stage. And I am going to have to learn lots of things going back. I've got a great library of science, biology type things. The second half of the year I will spend lots of the year boning up on them.

So, foundation is in place and you've got this amazing, gargantuan grant from Buffet. What's the first plan? What is your first year going to look like there, and what do you hope to get accomplished in this first twelve months?

Well I've been part time on the Foundation and there is great full-time people there including Patty Stonesifer (the CEO), and my wife spends time. So I wouldn't say it's a huge discontinuity. We are going from $1.5 billion in grants a year in 2006 to $3 billion in 2009. So we are on a ramp, which means we are more ambitious. As we make breakthroughs, like new vaccines, then you actually need more money to get the manufacturer to fund the delivery systems. But fortunately the public's awareness of these things have gone up somewhat. The Global Fund and the work that Bono has done together with us has started to get a little bit of consensus about what needs to be done.

So I'm going to be reaching out to business leaders who I think can get their companies more involved and using their expertise, and hopefully my voice will help with that. I'll be talking with other philanthrophists telling them about how much fun I'm having doing it and suggesting that I'd love to see if we can get them involved. So there are some things that I think I'd bring to it that my [full-time position at the Foundation] will let me do that haven't been done. But the goal of the Foundation in terms of making the health of the poorest two billion as good as the richest two billion -- that has been there from the beginning and I'm just really doing things to accelerate it.

One last question: what kinds of pet technology products do you think you'll be keeping at Microsoft? You've got to have your fingers in the pie a little bit!

I love natural user interface and particularly the research groups to do that. I want to stay involved with that and make sure that when it's time to really put these things in the mainstream that Microsoft is jumping on it and taking that big risk. Search is obviously a huge thing for us that we put about a brilliant people on. Right now -- people don't know -- can do something really differentiated that could be fun to help drive that piece forward? Steve [Ballmer] will pick; my non-Microsoft time I'll be thinking about software for health systems and education. So I will probably be over at Microsoft seeing where their breakthroughs can help in those areas. But the day of the week that I'll be at Microsoft will be probably three projects, I'd guess.

Thank you so much for meeting with us.

You bet! Good talking to you.

Good luck!

Bill Gates bids a teary farewell to Microsoft

2008-06-28T03:56:00.003+06:00

By Daisuke Wakabayashi

REDMOND, Washington (Reuters) - Bill Gates said a teary goodbye on Friday to Microsoft Corp, the software maker he built into the world's most valuable technology company based on the ambitious goal of placing a computer on every desk and in every home.

He leaves Microsoft, which he co-founded with childhood friend Paul Allen in 1975, to focus on his philanthropic organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest charity, funded in part by his vast fortune.

At an employee event at Microsoft's scenic headquarters campus here, Gates joined Chief Executive Steve Ballmer on stage to deliver a short speech and field questions from employees.

"There won't be a day in my life when I won't be thinking about Microsoft, the great things that we're doing and wanting to help," said Gates, who wiped away tears as the group of employees rose to give him a standing ovation.

Ballmer, a Harvard University classmate who joined Microsoft at Gates' behest, got choked up as he tried to describe Gates' impact on the company and society at large.

"There's no way to say thanks to Bill. Bill's the founder. Bill's the leader," said Ballmer. "This is Bill's baby."

Gates will leave behind a life's work developing software to devote energy to finding new vaccines or to microfinance projects in the developing world. He will remain chairman of Microsoft and work on special technology projects.

Ballmer spoke about how he contemplated quitting Microsoft a month after joining the company and return to Stanford University business school. Bill passionately implored him to stay and laid out the vision of the company.

"This is what Bill said to me. 'You don't get it. You don't get it. We are going to put a computer on every desk and in every home,'" said Ballmer.

There are currently more than one billion PCs worldwide, according to research firm IDC.

Once the world's richest man, Gates' personal fortune has been estimated at about $58 billion, according to Forbes Magazine. He has slipped to third place, behind investor and good friend Warren Buffett and Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim.

Bill Gates: top ten greatest hits (and misses) - the Microsoft years

2008-06-28T03:53:00.000+06:00

by Engadget staff, posted Jun 27th 2008 at 3:33PM

Damn, Bill, you have come a LONG way. Look at you there back in '82, you handsome devil. As part of our tribute, let's take a quick look back at the top ten greatest (and not so great) products created on Bill-time, shall we? Don't worry, it'll only sting a little.

Hits

Internet Explorer (IE)
Introduced 1995

It's really easy to simply remember "Internet Exploder" as the standards-breaking, web-forking, buggy, monopoly-causing app that helped shape Bill's old image as the evilest baron of all technology companies. But it's also the app that led to the creation Ajax-based web apps through the XMLHttpRequest spec, and the kludgey early popularization of CSS. Love it or hate it, IE's gotten more people on the web over the years than any browser, and that's definitely got to count for something.

Media Center
Introduced 2002

Despite TiVo's DVR dominance and competitors that came and went over the years, Media Center has always been an underrated standout product. Even Bill admits that the company's long struggled with usability, but Media Center is a beacon of hope not only for 10-foot UIs everywhere, but also for the company's ability to create powerful, advanced, user-friendy products. Between its online integration, extensible plugin architecture, ability to stream shows to nodes around the house, and now CableCARD support, the only real downside to Media Center is the fact that you still need a full-blown PC to run it.

MS-DOS
Introduced 1981, discontinued 2000

It was arcane and nigh-unusable to mere mortals -- but the early cash-cow was one of Bill's most strategic moves, and helped Microsoft define the concept of software licensing. It also helped launched Mossberg's career as crusader of user-friendly technology. But most importantly, MS-DOS was still the OS an entire generation grew up learning, so del crticsm.* for a second because our autoexec.bat and config.sys were so very well crafted, and extensively tweaking Memmaker for a few extra KB of usable RAM definitely ranks amongst our top most formative geek moments.

Office
Introduced 1989 (on Mac), 1990 (on PC)

Word, Excel and PowerPoint certainly did well enough on their own, but when Microsoft combined 'em into the tidy (and pricey) package that is Office -- first on the Mac in 1989, interestingly -- it had a selling point that would prove irresistible to many a productivity-obsessed middle manager even today. The addition of Outlook and its support for the (for some) nigh-indispensable Exchange only further solidified its foothold in the corporate computing world, and that's where Bill knew the real money was. That's certainly not to say that it hasn't been without its share of problems and annoyances, though -- we're looking at you, Clippy.

Peripherals
Introduced 1982

Microsoft has always been a software company first, but it's been cranking out high-quality peripherals for over 25 years -- long before the Xbox and Zune were even a twinkle in Bill's eye. Not only that, but it's been a reliable innovator in the field, with a string of devices that were first, early, or just simply popularized technologies like the wheel mouse, force-feedback joysticks and controllers, the modern optical mouse, and the ergo-keyboard. The division has gone through some bumpy times -- the SideWinder line was killed off for a while there, and there've been some questionable designs along the way -- but it's been riding high as of late, and it doesn't show any signs of slowing down soon.

Windows 3.1 / NT 3.5
Introduced 1992 and 1994

It took a few versions to come into its own, but by the time Windows hit 3.1, Microsoft finally had a product that was able to pull PC users away from the command line (for some of the time, at least) and give them a real taste of things to come. Windows NT may not have had quite the same appeal with the average consumer, but it did bring the operating system into the 32-bit world and pave the way for enterprise desktop computing as we know it today. (Plus, it had the NT file system (NTFS), which to this day continues to carry on the legacy in its own little way.) We really wish they'd made a sequel to the Pirates of Silicon Valley, because we'd love to have seen the dramatization of Bill overseeing the first popularized verions of Windows -- especially '95, which came out just a couple of years later.

Windows 2000 and XP
Introduced 2000

When thinking of Microsoft and the new millennium, few people are able to keep the crinkles out of their nose. Thankfully, Windows ME wasn't the only thing that arrived in late Y2K, as Windows 2000 rushed in to rock the socks off of suits everywhere. The whole Win2K thing went over so well that Gates and company decided to base its next consumer OS, XP, off of it. Some may argue that the resulting product still stands as the last great OS to ship out of Redmond.

Windows CE / Mobile
Introduced 1996

As two of the most ubiquitous projects to come out from under Bill's command, both Windows CE and Windows Mobile are almost impossible to avoid when it comes to handhelds or phones. What began as a mishmash of small components has grown into the adaptable -- though sometimes maddening -- mobile OS that resides on just about every kind of device you can think of. Really, we mean every kind of device, from PMPs to enterprise-level stock-keeping systems. The slimmed down and restructured micro-Windows is at the very least one of the more flexible offerings the company has ever produced. Say what you will about its usability, there's no denying the massive impact it's had on portability and convergence.

Xbox and Xbox 360
Introduced 2001 and 2005

Back in 1999, Bill was all about multimedia convergence, and he said that a new gaming / multimedia device would be Microsoft's trojan horse into the world's living rooms with something coined the "DirectX-box." In 2001, the original Xbox entered gaming territory dominated by Sony's PlayStation with Nintendo's N64. But the clunky machine brought with it the first easy to use multiplayer console service, Xbox Live, as well as a developer-centric model that helped turn the tables. Of course, things look quite a bit different today: the Xbox 360 leads the former market leader's PlayStation 3 in spend and attach rate, and with the relative success of media and content sales on Xbox Live, it seems Bill's dream of dominating the living room wasn't just a pipe-dream after all.

Visual Basic
Introduced 1991, discontinued 1998

It's hard to underestimate the impact of Visual Basic. While the average user might have never heard of the original VB that Microsoft released way back when, the simplicity of the language and its graphical toolset made just about any power user a potential app developer, powering the flood of third party application development Microsoft operating systems enjoyed throughout the 90's. Sadly, Visual Basic met its demise at the hands of more modern languages and toolsets, but with a legacy of making programming accessible to the masses, its place in the history books and in Bill's pocketbook is undoubtedly secure.

Runners-up: DirectX, Flight Sim, Portable Media Center, Solitaire and Minesweeper

Misses

Auto PC
Introduced 1998, discontinued 2001*

Riding high on its previously-introduced sister products -- the Handheld PC and Palm PC platforms, now dead and transformed into Windows Mobile, respectively -- Microsoft's Auto PC initiative was promised to herald a revolution for in-car entertainment and productivity. There's no question it was well ahead of its time; in fact, many of the features debuted in Auto PC have gone on to become standard fare in today's cars. Problem was, when it launched your ride was already pimped with a mere CD player. In-car navigation, voice recognition, and MP3 support were still the stuff of science fiction in those dark days (particularly at the four-digit asking price), and the whole thing was doomed to a geeky, spendy niche. Though products were initially expected from several manufacturers, Clarion ended up being the only one to actually produce a head unit.

*The Auto PC lived on in spirit as Clarion's Joyride, but Microsoft's heart was no longer in the project and Clarion had switched to a generic Windows CE-based core to build the product.

Microsoft Bob
Introduced 1995, discontinued 1996

Poor Bob. No one ever gave him a chance. Maybe it had to do with the fact that he was really annoying. And as it turns out, Bill was dating Melinda French, Bob's program manager. Which isn't to say there was any nepotism involved -- Bob suffered an early death in 1996 due to general hatred for the little bastard. Bill offered this to a column in January, 1997, "Unfortunately, [Bob] demanded more performance than typical computer hardware could deliver at the time and there wasn't an adequately large market. Bob died." Thankfully, Billinda's blossoming relationship lived on. Oh, did you hear? They're like the world's greatest philanthropists now.

Cairo
Introduced 1991 (but never released)

Ask folks to pick one word to describe Microsoft's technology roadmap in the 1990s and you'll commonly get "Cairo" in response. Announced before Windows NT 3.1 was even released, Cairo was occasionally an operating system, occasionally a collection of new technologies -- it depended entirely upon who and when you asked -- but at its core, it was intended to guide Microsoft on the path beyond the architecture introduced by NT. After throwing countless dollars and man-hours at the ambitious project, Cairo was ultimately canned (though mentions of the storied buzzword continued even into this decade). Although Windows 2000 eventually became NT's heir apparent, the fruits of Microsoft's labor weren't entirely for naught, as various Cairo features found themselves implanted into various versions of Windows throughout the years. Even the WinFS file system can trace its roots back to the project -- fitting, because it too has become such an albatross.

MSN Music and URGE
Introduced 2004 and 2006, both fully discontinued 2008

When MSN Music -- Microsoft's effort to build its own PlaysForSure-based subscription music based store -- imploded, headstrong Bill did what he usually does: rebrand, and launch again. When he got up at CES 2006 and announced MSN Music would become URGE with MTV, we were all a little skeptical -- after all, the problem wasn't really the service, it was the overbearing DRM and the fact that consumers simply weren't ready for subscription music. Of course, eventually URGE died as well, and MTV shunted customers to Rhapsody America; naturally, Microsoft had a third PlaysForSure-based store waiting in the wings with Zune, which doesn't appear to be going anywhere any time soon.

Origami / UMPC
Introduced 2006
Note: Intel, please join Microsoft on stage to accept this award

UMPCs... what can we say? Sure, Scoble liked them, but even from day one we never saw the market potential. Fueled by an early and too-successful hype-generating viral campaign of Microsoft's own making, there was no way that these first generation Origami devices would achieve their promise. Overpriced, underpowered, desk OS-laden (with Microsoft's Touch Pack add-on), and poor battery life would ensure that UMPCs would need quite some time to live up to the wave of "ultramobile lifestyle PC"-hysteria they rode to market. And as UMPCs begin to fade, the shrinking niche between smartphones and laptops now looks toward to the sweet release of MIDs -- though that's already been two years... and counting.

OS/2
Dates: introduced 1987, discontinued 2006

What began as a collaboration between Microsoft and then-partner IBM blossomed into what looked like -- for a time at least -- the logical successor to the DOS / Windows empire. The advanced OS showed early signs of greatness with it's incorporation of the HPFS file system, improved networking capabilities, and a sophisticated UI. But cracks in the relationship between the two powerhouse corporations would ultimately lead to its downfall. With Windows 3 a sudden success, IBM's reluctance to go hardware neutral, and Microsoft's increasing displeasure with code which it called "bloated" (ahem!), the project was eventually swept aside by Gates and the gang to make way for what would become the omnipresent operating system you know and love and/or hate today.

SPOT watches and MSN Direct
Introduced 2004, discontinued 2008

When the concept of an information-enabled watch that automagically received content over unused FM radio subcarriers was first conjured up by Microsoft in the early part of the decade, it seemed like a fabulous idea. So much so, in fact, Bill personally took the project under his wing. But by the time it had launched, it was already doomed by a perfect storm of problems: the devices were uglier than sin and comically oversized, the bizarre ad campaign featured frighteningly hairy cartoon arms, and -- as the mobile web was just starting to pick up steam at that time -- virtually anyone who would've been interested in that kind of product had already discovered ways to get the same information from their phone. The underlying data network Microsoft built out to support the watches, MSN Direct, lives on to this day and sees plenty of use in Garmin's nüvi line, but will it ever be used to beam weather, news, and MSFT stock reports to wrists other than Bill's? Not bloody likely.

Windows Activation
Introduced 2001

Depending on who you talk to, Windows Product Activation is a serious privacy violation, a headache, minimal protection against piracy, or all of the above. Lucky for us, Microsoft is finally seeing (some of) the folly of its overbearing ways, and has gone with a more permissive nagware method with Vista SP1. This as opposed to the regular method of routinely locking users out of their systems, which, wouldn't you know it, tended to hurt legitimate users more than pirates. Perhaps the best example of Windows Activation's legacy was the great WGA outage of 2007, which left 12,000 systems out in the cold due to a few downed servers at Microsoft. It didn't take long for the servers to bounce back, but any shred of reputation the service had at that point went out the window with the uptime.

Windows ME
Introduced September 2000

It's not exactly clear what the point of Windows Millennium Edition was -- our guess is that Microsoft needed to keep up with that year-based product naming scheme it had going at the time, and cranked out this half-baked update to '98 in order to capitalize on the turn-of-the-millenium frenzy. Unlike the NT-based Windows 2000 released at the same time, Windows ME retained its MS-DOS-based core, while managing to somehow get even more slow and unstable than its predecessors 95 and 98. And to add insult to injury, it restricted access to shell mode, rendering many MS-DOS apps incompatible. Thankfully, Windows ME was only inflicted upon consumers for little over a year; it was replaced by indomitable Windows XP in 2001.

Windows Vista
Introduced 2007

Vista doesn't suck. Let's just get that off our chests. In fact, it's a quite capable, secure and sexy OS when you get right down to it. Unfortunately, its problems just loomed too large for many folks to overlook. A multitude of delays and a rapidly diminishing feature list soured people right out of the gate, and once the dust settled people just weren't happy with the minor improvements they were getting in exchange for their hard-earned monies and fairly mandatory RAM upgrades. Mix that in with the standard driver incompatibilities of any Microsoft OS upgrade, and you've got a whole bunch of disgruntled downgraders on your hands -- and plenty of bad press to fill in any remaining gaps. Sadly, improvements to Media Center, aesthetics and even that quirky little sidebar got overlooked in the process. Microsoft's already scrambling to get Windows 7 together to capture the multitude of users that've decided to skip Vista altogether, let's just hope it's not too late.

Runners-up: Actimates, Pocket IE, Games for Windows - Live, Xenix (yeah, Microsoft actually did a Unix at one time!)

Global Warming: The Fate of Bangladesh

2008-06-23T12:50:00.002+06:00

Bangladesh is set to disappear under the waves by the end of the century - A special report by Johann Hari

Bangladesh, the most crowded nation on earth, is set to disappear under the waves by the end of this century – and we will be to blame. Johann Hari took a journey to see for himself how western profligacy and indifference have sealed the fate of 150 million people went to see for himself the spreading misery and destruction as the ocean reclaims the land on which so many millions depend

Friday, 20 June 2008

Alamy

Battling the waves: many Bangladeshis depend on the ocean

This spring, I took a month-long road trip across a country that we – you, me and everyone we know – are killing. One day, not long into my journey, I travelled over tiny ridges and groaning bridges on the back of a motorbike to reach the remote village of Munshigonj. The surviving villagers – gaunt, creased people – were sitting by a stagnant pond. They told me, slowly, what we have done to them.

Ten years ago, the village began to die. First, many of the trees turned a strange brownish-yellow colour and rotted. Then the rice paddies stopped growing and festered in the water. Then the fish floated to the surface of the rivers, gasping. Then many of the animals began to die. Then many of the children began to die.

The waters flowing through Munshigonj – which had once been sweet and clear and teeming with life – had turned salty and dead.

Arita Rani, a 25-year-old, sat looking at the salt water, swaddled in a blue sari and her grief. "We couldn't drink the water from the river, because it was suddenly full of salt and made us sick," she said. "So I had to give my children water from this pond. I knew it was a bad idea. People wash in this pond. It's dirty. So we all got dysentery." She keeps staring at its surface. "I have had it for 10 years now. You feel weak all the time, and you have terrible stomach pains. You need to run to the toilet 10 times a day. My boy Shupria was seven and he had this for his whole life. He was so weak, and kept getting coughs and fevers. And then one morning..."

Her mother interrupted the trailing silence. "He died," she said. Now Arita's surviving three-year-old, Ashik, is sick, too. He is sprawled on his back on the floor. He keeps collapsing; his eyes are watery and distant. His distended stomach feels like a balloon pumped full of water. "Why did this happen?" Arita asked.

It is happening because of us. Every flight, every hamburger, every coal power plant, ends here, with this. Bangladesh is a flat, low-lying land made of silt, squeezed in between the melting mountains of the Himalayas and the rising seas of the Bay of Bengal. As the world warms, the sea is swelling – and wiping Bangladesh off the map.

Deep below the ground of Munshigonj and thousands of villages like it, salt water is swelling up. It is this process – called "saline inundation" – that killed their trees and their fields and contaminated their drinking water. Some farmers have shifted from growing rice to farming shrimp – but that employs less than a quarter of the people, and it makes them dependent on a fickle export market. The scientific evidence shows that unless we change now, this salt water will keep rising and rising, until everything here is ocean.

I decided to embark on this trip when, sitting in my air-conditioned flat in London, I noticed a strange and seemingly impossible detail in a scientific report. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – whose predictions have consistently turned out to be underestimates – said that Bangladesh is on course to lose 17 per cent of its land and 30 per cent of its food production by 2050. For America, this would be equivalent to California and New York State drowning, and the entire mid-West turning salty and barren.

Surely this couldn't be right? How could more than 20 million Bangladeshis be turned into refugees so suddenly and so silently? I dug deeper, hoping it would be disproved – and found that many climatologists think the IPCC is way too optimistic about Bangladesh. I turned to Professor James Hansen, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whose climate calculations have proved to be more accurate than anybody else's. He believes the melting of the Greenland ice cap being picked up by his satellites today, now, suggests we are facing a 25-metre rise in sea levels this century – which would drown Bangladesh entirely. When I heard this, I knew I had to go, and see.

1. The edge of a cliff

The first thing that happens when you arrive in Dhaka is that you stop. And wait. And wait. And all you see around you are cars, and all you hear is screaming. Bangladesh's capital is in permanent shrieking gridlock, with miles of rickshaws and mobile heaps of rust. The traffic advances by inches and by howling. Each driver screams himself hoarse announc-ing – that was my lane! Stay there! Stop moving! Go back! Go forward! It is a good-natured shrieking: everybody knows that this is what you do in Dhaka. If you are lucky, you enter a slipstream of traffic that moves for a minute – until the jams back up and the screaming begins once more.

Around you, this megalopolis of 20 million people seems to be screaming itself conscious. People burn rubbish by the roadside, or loll in the rivers. Children with skin deformities that look like infected burns try to thrust maps or sweets into your hand. Rickshaw drivers with thighs of steel pedal furious-ly as whole families cling on and offer their own high-volume traffic commentary to the groaning driver, and the groaning city.

I wanted to wade through all this chaos to find Bangladesh's climate scientists, who are toiling in the crannies of the city to figure out what – if anything – can be saved.

Dr Atiq Rahman's office in downtown Dhaka is a nest of scientific reports and books that, at every question, he dives into to reel off figures. He is a tidy, grey-moustached man who speaks English very fast, as if he is running out of time.

"It is clear from all the data we are gathering here in Bangladesh that the IPCC predictions were much too conservative," he said. He should know: he is one of the IPCC's leading members, and the UN has given him an award for his unusually prescient predictions. His work is used as one of the standard textbooks across the world, including at Oxford and Harvard. "We are facing a catastrophe in this country. We are talking about an absolutely massive displacement of human beings."

He handed me shafts of scientific studies as he explained: "This is the ground zero of global warming." He listed the effects. The seas are rising, so land is being claimed from the outside. (The largest island in the country, Bhola, has lost half its land in the past decade.) The rivers are super-charged, becoming wider and wider, so land is being claimed from within. (Erosion is up by 40 per cent). Cyclones are becoming more intense and more violent (2007 was the worst year on record for intense hurricanes here). And salt water is rendering the land barren. (The rate of saline inundation has trebled in the past 20 years.) "There is no question," Dr Rahman said, "that this is being caused primarily by human action. This is way outside natural variation. If you really want people in the West to understand the effect they are having here, it's simple. From now on, we need to have a system where for every 10,000 tons of carbon you emit, you have to take a Bangladeshi family to live with you. It is your responsibility." In the past, he has called it "climatic genocide".

The worst-case scenario, Dr Rahman said, is if one of the world's land-based ice-sheets breaks up. "Then we lose 70 to 80 per cent of our land, including Dhaka. It's a different world, and we're not on it. The evidence from Jim Hansen shows this is becoming more likely – and it can happen quickly and irreversibly. My best understanding of the evidence is that this will probably happen towards the end of the lifetime of babies born today."

I walked out in the ceaseless churning noise of Dhaka. Everywhere I looked, people were building and making and living: my eyes skimmed up higher and higher and find more and more activity. A team of workers were building a house; behind and above them, children were sewing mattresses on a roof; behind and above them, more men were building taller buildings. This is the most cramped country on earth: 150 million people living in an area the size of Iowa. Could all this life really be continuing on the crumbling edge of a cliff?

2. 'It is like the Bay is angry'

I was hurtling through the darkness at 120mph with my new driver, Shambrat. He was red-eyed from chewing pan, a leaf-stimulant that makes you buzz, and I could see nothing except the tiny pools of light cast by the car. They showed we were on narrow roads, darting between rice paddies and emptied shack-towns, in the midnight silence. I kept trying to put on my seatbelt, but every time Shambrat would cry, "You no need seatbelt! I good driver!" and burst into hysterical giggles.

To see if the seas were really rising, I had circled a random low-lying island on the map called Moheshkhali and asked Shambrat to get me there. It turned out the only route was to go to Coxs Bazar – Bangladesh's Blackpool – and then take a small wooden rowing boat that has a huge chugging engine attached to the front. I clambered in alongside three old men, a small herd of goats, and some chickens. The boat was operated by a 10-year-old child, whose job is to point the boat in the right direction, start the engine, and then begin using a small jug to frantically scoop out the water that starts to leak in. After an hour of the deafening ack-ack of the engine, we arrived at the muddy coast of Moheshkhali.

There was a makeshift wooden pier, where men were waiting with large sacks of salt. As we climbed up on to the fragile boards, people helped the old men lift up the animals. There were men mooching around the pier, waiting for a delivery. They looked bemused by my arrival. I asked them if the sea levels were rising here. Rezaul Karim Chowdry, a 34-year-old who looked like he is in his fifties, said plainly: "Of course. In the past 30 years, two-thirds of this island has gone under the water. I had to abandon my house. The land has gone into the sea." Immediately all the other men start to recount their stories. They have lost their houses, their land, and family members to the advance.

They agreed to show me their vanishing island. We clambered into a tuc-tuc – a motorbike with a carriage on the back – and set off across the island, riding along narrow ridges between cordoned-off areas of sand and salt. The men explained that this is salt-farming: the salt left behind by the tide is gathered and sold. "It is one of the last forms of farming that we can still do here," Rezaul said. As we passed through the forest, he told me to be careful: "Since we started to lose all our land, gangs are fighting for the territory that is left. They are very violent. A woman was shot in the crossfire yesterday. They will not like an outsider appearing from nowhere."

We pulled up outside a vast concrete structure on stilts. This, the men explained, is the cyclone shelter built by the Japanese years ago. We climbed to the top, and looked out towards the ocean. "Do you see the top of a tree, sticking out there?" Rezaul said, pointing into the far distance. I couldn't see anything, but then, eventually, I spotted a tiny jutting brown-green tip. "That is where my house was." When did you leave it? "In 2002. The ocean is coming very fast now. We think all this" – he waved his hand back over the island – "will be gone in 15 years."

Outside the rusty house next door, an ancient-looking man with a long grey beard was sitting cross-legged. I approached him, and he rose slowly. His name was Abdul Zabar; he didn't know his age, but guessed he is 80. "I was born here," he said. "There" – and he points out to the sea. "The island began to be swallowed in the 1960s, and it started going really quickly in 1991. I have lost my land, so I can't grow anything... I only live because one of my sons got a job in Saudi Arabia and sends money back to us. I am very frightened, but what can I do? I can only trust in God." The sea stops just in front of his home. What will you do, I asked, if it comes closer? "We will have nowhere to go to."

I was taken to the island's dam. It is a long stretch of hardened clay and concrete and mud. "This used to be enough," a man called Abul Kashin said, "but then the sea got so high that it came over the dam." They have tried to pile lumps of concrete on top, but they are simply washed away. "My family have left the island," he continued, "They were so sad to go. This is my homeland. If we had to leave here to go to some other place, it would be the worst day of my life."

Twenty years ago, there were 30,000 people on this island. There are 18,000 now – and most think they will be the last inhabitants.

On the beach, there were large wooden fishing boats lying unused. Abu Bashir, a lined, thin 28-year-old, pointed to his boat and said, "Fishing is almost impossible now. The waves are much bigger than they used to be. It used to be fine to go out in a normal [hand-rowed] boat. That is how my father and my grandfather and my ancestors lived.

"Now that is impossible. You need a [motor-driven] boat, and even that is thrown about by the waves so much. It's like the bay is angry."

The other fishermen burst in. "When there is a cyclone warning, we cannot go out fishing for 10 days. That is a lot of business lost. There used to be two or three warnings a year. Last year, there were 12. The sea is so violent. We are going hungry."

Yet the islanders insisted on offering me a feast of rice and fish and eggs. I was ushered into the council leader's house – a rusty shack near the sea – and the men sat around, urging me to tell the world what is happening. "If people know what is happening to us, they will help," they said. The women remained in the back room; when I glimpsed them and tried to thank them for the food, they giggled and vanished. I asked if the men had heard of global warming, and they looked puzzled. "No," they said. We stared out at the ocean and ate, as the sun slowly set on the island.

3. No hiding place

Through the morning mist, I peered out of the car window at the cratered landscape. Trees jutted out at surreal angles from the ground. One lay upside down with its roots sticking upwards towards the sky, looking like a sketch for a Dali painting. Shambrat had spat out his pan and was driving slowly now. "There are holes in the ground," he said, squinting with concentration. "From the cyclone. You fall in..." He made a splattering sound.

It was here, in the south of Bangladesh, that on 15 November last year, Cyclone Sidr arrived. It formed in the warmed Bay of Bengal and ripped across the land, taking more than 3,000 people with it. Like Americans talking about 9/11, everybody in Bangladesh knows where they were when Sidr struck. For miles, the upturned and smashed-out houses are intermixed with tents made from blue plastic sheeting. These stretches of plastic were handed out by the charities in the weeks after Sidr, and many families are still living in them now.

There have always been cyclones in Bangladesh, and there always will be – but global warming is making them much more violent. Back in Dhaka, the climatologist Ahsan Uddin Ahmed explained that cyclones use heat as a fuel: "The sea surface temperatures in the Bay of Bengal have been rising steadily for the past 40 years – and so, exactly as you would expect, the intensity of cyclones has risen too. They're up by 39 per cent on average." Again I circled a cyclone-struck island at random and headed for the dot.

The hour-long journey on a wooden rowing boat from the mainland to Charkashem Island passed in a dense mist that made it feel like crossing the River Styx. The spectral outline of other boats could sometimes be glimpsed, before they disappeared suddenly. One moment an old woman and a goat appeared and stared at me, then they were gone.

The island was a tiny dot of mud and lush, upturned greenery. It had no pier, so when the rowing boat bumped up against the sand I had to wade through the water.

I looked out over the silent island, and saw some familiar blue sheeting in the distance. As I trudged towards it, I saw some gaunt teenagers half-heartedly kicking a deflated football. From the sheeting, a man and woman stared, astonished.

"I was in my fields over there," Hanif Mridha said. "I saw the wind start, it was about eight at night, and I saw everything being blown around. I went and hid under an iron sheet, but that was blown away by the wind. The water came swelling up all of a sudden and was crashing all around me. I grabbed one of my children and ran to the forest" – he pointed to the cluster of trees at the heart of the island – "and climbed the tallest one I could reach. I went as high as I could but still the water kept rising and I thought – this is it, I'm going to drown. I'm dying, my children are dying, my wife is dying. I could see everything was under water and people were screaming everywhere. I held there for four hours with my son."

When the water washed away and he came down, everything was gone: his house, his crops, his animals, his possessions. A few days later, an aid agency arrived with some rice and some plastic sheeting to sleep under. Nobody has come since.

His wife, Begum Mridha, took over the story. Their children are terrified of the sea now, and have nightmares every night. They eat once a day, if they're lucky. "We are so hungry," she said. The new home they have built is made from twigs and the plastic sheet. Underneath it, they sleep with their eight children and Begum Mridha's mother. The children lay lethargically there, staring blankly into space over their distended bellies.

Begum Mridha cooks on a lantern. They eat once a day – if that. "It's so cold at night we can't sleep," she said. "The children all have diarrhoea and they are losing weight. It will take us more than two years to save up and get back what we had."

If cyclones hit this area more often, what would happen to you? Hanif looked down. He opened his mouth, but no words came.

4. Bangladesh's Noah

In the middle of Bangladesh, in the middle of my road trip, I tracked down Abul Hasanat Mohammed Rezwan. He was sitting under a parasol by the banks of a river, scribbling frenetically into his notebook.

"The catastrophe in Bangladesh has begun," he said. "The warnings [by the IPCC] are unfolding much faster than anyone anticipated." Until a few years ago, Rezwan was an architect, designing buildings for rich people – "but I thought, is this what I want to do while my country drowns? Create buildings that will be under water soon anyway?"

He considered dedicating his life to building schools and hospitals, "but then I realised they would be under water soon as well. I was hopeless. But then I thought of boats!"

He has turned himself into Bangladesh's Noah, urging his people to move on to boats as the Great Flood comes. Rezwan built a charity – Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, which means self-reliance – that is building the only schools and hospitals and homes that can last now: ones that float.

We clambered on to his first school-boat, which is moored in Singra. In this area there is no electricity, no sewage system, and no state. The residents live the short lives of pre-modern people. But now, suddenly, they have a fleet of these boats, stocked with medicines and lined with books on everything from Shakespeare to accountancy to climatology. Nestling between them, there are six internet terminals with broadband access.

The boat began to float down the Curnai River, gathering scores of beaming kids as it went. Fatima Jahan, an unveiled 18-year-old girl dressed in bright red, arrived to go online. She was desperate to know the cricket scores. At every muddy village-stop, the boat inhaled more children, and I talked to the mothers who were beating their washing dry by the river. "I never went to school, and I never saw a doctor in my life. Now my children can do both!" a thin woman with a shimmering heart-shaped nose stud called Nurjahan Rupbhan told me. But when I asked about the changes in the climate, her forehead crumpled into long frown-lines.

I thought back to what the scientists told me in Dhaka. Bangladesh is a country with 230 rivers running through it like veins. They irrigate the land and give it its incredible fertility – but now the rivers are becoming supercharged. More water is coming down from the melting Himalayan glaciers, and more salt water is pushing up from the rising oceans. These two forces meet here in the heart of Bangladesh and make the rivers churn up – eroding the river banks with amazing speed. The water is getting wider, leaving the people to survive on ever-more narrow strips of land.

Nurjahan took me up to a crumbling river edge, where tree roots jutted out naked. "My house was here," she said. "It fell into the water. So now my house is here –" she motioned to a small clay hut behind us – "but now we realise this is going to fall in too. The river gets wider day by day."

But even this, Nurjahan said, is not the worst problem. The annual floods have become far more extreme, too. "Until about 10 years ago, the floods came every year and the water would stay for 15 days, and it helped to wet the land. Now the water stays for four months. Four months! It is too long. That doesn't wet the fields, it destroys them. We cannot plan for anything."

When the floods came last year, Nurjahan had no choice but to stay here. She lived with her children waist-deep in the cold brown water – for four months. "It was really hard to cook, or go to the toilet. We all got dysentery. It was miserable." Then she seemed to chastise herself. "But we survived! We are tough, don't you think?"

We sat by the river-bank, our feet dangling down towards the river. I asked if she agrees with Rezwan that her only option soon will be to move on to a boat. He is launching the first models this summer: floating homes with trays of earth where families can grow food. "Yes," she said, "We will be boat-people."

I clambered back on to one of the 42 school-boats in this area. Young children were in the front chanting the alphabet, and teenagers at the back were browsing through the books. I asked a 16-year-old boy called Mohammed Palosh Ali what he was reading about, and he said, "Global warming." I felt a small jolt. He was the first person to spontaneously raise global warming with me. Can you tell me what that is? "The climate is being changed by carbon dioxide," he said. "This is a gas that traps heat. So if there is more of it, then the ice in the north of the world melts and our seas rise here."

I asked if he had seen this warming in his own life. "Of course! The floods in 1998 and 2002 were worse than anything in my grandfather's life. We couldn't get any drinking water, so the dirty water I drank made me very sick. The shit from the toilet pits had risen up and was floating in the water, but we still had to drink it. We put tablets in it but it was still disgusting. What else could we do?"

Mohammed, do you know who is responsible for this global warming? He shakes his head. That answer lies a few pages further into the book. Soon he, and everybody else on this boat, will know it is me – and you.

5. The warming jihad

What happens to a country's mind as it drowns? Professor Philip Jenkins of Pennsylvania State University believes he can glimpse the answer: "The connection between climate change and religious violence is not tenuous," he says. "In fact, there's a historical indicator of how it could unfold: the Little Ice Age."

Between the ninth and 13th centuries, the northern hemisphere went through a natural phase of global warming. The harvests lasted longer – so there were more crops, and more leisure. Universities and the arts began to flower. But then in the late 13th century, the Little Ice Age struck. Crop production fell, and pack ice formed in the oceans, wrecking trade routes. People began to starve.

"In this climate of death and horror, people cast about for scapegoats, even before the Black Death struck," he says. Tolerance withered with the climate shocks: the Church declared witchcraft a heresy; the Jews began to be expelled from Britain. There was, he says, "a very close correlation between the cooling and a region-wide heightening of violent intolerance."

This time, there will be no need for imaginary scapegoats. The people responsible are on every TV screen, revving up their engines. Will jihadism swell with the rising seas? Bangladesh's religion seems to be low-key and local. In the countryside, Muslims – who make up 95 per cent of the nation – still worship Hindu saints and mix in a few Buddhist ideas, too. In the Arab world, people bring up God in almost every sentence. In Bangladesh, nobody does.

But then, as we returned to Dhaka, I was having a casual conversation with Shambrat. He had been driving all night – at his insistence – and by this point he was wired after chewing fistfuls of pan, and singing along at the top of his voice to the Eighties power ballads. I mentioned Osama bin Laden in passing, and he said, "Bin Laden – great man! He fight for Islam!" Then, without looking at me, he went back to singing: "It must have been love, but it's over now...."

I wondered how many Bangladeshis felt this way. The Chandni Chowk Bazaar – one of the city's main markets – was overcast the afternoon I decided to canvass opinions on Bin Laden. I approached a 24-year-old flower-seller called Mohammed Ashid, and as I inhaled the rich sweet scent of roses, he said: "I like him because he is a Muslim and I am a Muslim." Would you like Bin Laden to be in charge of Bangladesh? "Yes, of course," he said. And what would President Bin Laden do? "I have no idea," he shrugged. What would you want him to do? He furrowed his brow. "If Osama came to power he would make women cover up. Women are too free here." But what if women don't want to cover up? "They are Muslims. It's not up to them."

A very smartly dressed man called Shadul Ahmed was strolling down the street to his office, where he is in charge of advertising. "I like him," he said. "Bin Laden works for the Muslims." He conceded 9/11 "was bad because many innocents died," but added: "Osama didn't do it. The Americans did it. They are guilty."

As dozens of people paused from their shopping to talk, a pattern emerged: the men tend to like him, and the women don't. "I hate Bin Laden," one smartly dressed woman said, declining to give her name. "He is a fanatic. Bangladeshis do not like this." As the praise for Bin Laden was offered, I saw a boy go past on a rickshaw, stroking a girl's uncovered hair gently, sensuously. This is not the Arab world.

The only unpleasant moment came when I approached three women selling cigarettes by the side of the road. They were in their early thirties, wearing white hijabs and puffing away. Akli Mouna said, "I like him. He is a faithful Muslim." She said "it would be very nice" if he was president of Bangladesh. Really? Would you be happy if you were forced to wear a burqa, and only rarely allowed out of your house? She jabbed a finger at my chest. "Yes! It would be fine if Osama was president and told us to wear the burqa." But Akli – you aren't wearing a burqa now. "It's good to wear the burqa!" she yelled. Her teeth, I saw, were brown and rotting. "We are only here because we are poor! We should be kept in the house!"

I wanted to track down some Bangladeshi jihadis for myself, so I called the journalist Abu Sufian. He is a news reporter for BanglaVision, one of the main news channels, who made his name penetrating the thickets of the Islamist underground. He told me to meet him at the top of the BanglaVision skyscraper. As the city shrieked below us, he explained: "In the late 1980s, a group of mujahideen [holy warriors] who had been fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan came back to launch an Islamic revolution here in Bangladesh. They tried to mount an armed revolt in the north and kill the former Prime Minister. But it didn't come to much."

Islamic fundamentalism is hobbled in Bangladesh, because it is still associated for most people with Paki-stan – the country Bangladesh fought a bloody war of independence to escape from.

But Sufian says a new generation of Islamists is emerging with no memory of that war. "For example, I met a 21-year-old who had fought in Kashmir, whose father was a rickshaw driver. He said it was his holy duty to establish an Islamic state here through violence. Most were teenagers. All the jihadis I met hated democracy. They said it was the rule of man. According to them, only the rule of God is acceptable."

He said it would be almost impossible to track them down – they are in prison or hiding – but my best bet was to head for the Al-Amin Jami mosque in the north-west of Dhaka. "They are fundamentalist Wahhabis, and very dangerous," he said. Yet when I arrived, just before 6pm prayers, it was a bright building in one of the nicer parts of town. Men in white caps and white robes were streaming in. An ice-cream stall sat outside. I approached a fiftysomething man in flowing robes and designer shoes. He glared at me. I explained I was a journalist, and ask if it would it be possible to look inside the mosque? "No. Under no circumstances. At all."

OK. I asked a few polite questions about Islam, and then asked what he thought of Osama bin Laden. "Osama bin Laden?" he said. Yes. He scowled. "I have never heard of him." Never? "Never." I turned to the man standing, expectantly, next to him. "He has not heard of Osama bin Laden, either," he said. What about September 11 – you know, when the towers in New York fell? "I have never heard of this event, either." Some teenage boys were about to go in, so I approached them. Behind my back, I can sense the Gucci-man making gestures. "Uh... sorry... I don't think anything about Bin Laden," one of them said, awkwardly.

I lingered as prayers took place inside, until a flow of men poured out so thick and fast that they couldn't be instructed not to speak. "Yes, we would like Osama to run Bangladesh, he is a good man," the first person told me. There were nods. "He fights for Islam!" shouted another.

The crowd says this mosque – like most fundamentalist mosques on earth – is funded by Saudi Arabia, with the money you and I pay at the petrol pump. As I looked up at its green minaret jutting into the sky, it occurs to me that our oil purchases are simultaneously drowning Bangladesh, and paying for the victims to be fundamentalised.

After half-an-hour of watching this conversation and fuming, the initially recalcitrant man strode forward. "Why do you want to know about Bin Laden? We are Muslims. You are Christian. We all believe in the same God!" he announced.

Actually, I said, I am not a Christian. There was a hushed pause. "You are... a Jew?" he said. The crowd looked horrified; but then the man forced a rictus smile and announced: "We all believe in one God! We are all children of Abraham! We are cousins!" No, I said. I am an atheist. Everyone looked genuinely puzzled; they do not have a bromide for this occasion. "Well... then..." he paused, scrambling for a statement... "You must convert to Islam! Read the Koran! It is beautiful!" Ah – so can I come into the mosque after all? "No. Never."

6. The obituarist?

In a small café in Dhaka, a cool breeze was blowing in through the window along with the endless traffic-screams. The 32-year-old novelist Tahmima Anam was inhaling the aroma of coffee and close to despair.

She made her name by writing a tender novel – A Golden Age – about the birth of her country, Bangladesh. When the British finally withdrew from this subcontinent in 1948, the land they left behind was partitioned. Two chunks were carved out of India and declared to be a Muslim republic – East Pakistan and West Pakistan. But apart from their religion, they had very little in common. The gentle people of East Pakistan chafed under the dictatorial fundamentalism imposed from distant Islamabad. When they were ordered to start speaking Urdu, it was enough. Her novel tells how in 1971, they decided to declare independence and become Bangladesh. The Pakistanis fought back with staggering violence, but in the end Bangladesh was freed.

Now Anam is realising that unless we change, fast, this fight will have been for the freedom of a drowning land – and her next novel may have to be its obituary.

Anam came to Bangladesh late. Her Dhaka-born parents travelled the world, so she grew up in a slew of international schools, but she always dreamed of coming home. Her passion for this land, this place, this delta, aches through her work. About one of her characters, she wrote: "He had a love for all things Bengali: the swimming mud of the delta; the translucent, bony river fish; the shocking green palette of the paddy and the open, aching blue of the sky over flat land."

"You can see what has started to happen," she says. The vision of the country drowning is becoming more real every day. Where could all these 150 million people go? India is already building a border fence to keep them out; I can't imagine the country's other neighbour – Burma – will offer much refuge. "We are the first to be affected, not the last," Anam says. "Everyone should take a good look at Bangladesh. This story will become your story. We are your future."

It is, she says, our responsibility to stop this slow-mo drowning – and there is still time to save most of the country. "What could any Bangladeshi government do? We have virtually no carbon emissions to cut." They currently stand at 0.3 per cent of the world's – less than the island of Manhattan. "It's up to you."

Anam is defiantly optimistic that this change can happen if enough of us work for it – but, like every scientist I spoke to, she knows that dealing with it simply by adaptation by Bangladeshis is impossible. The country has a military-approved dictatorship incapable of taking long-term decisions, and Dutch-style dams won't work anyway. "Any large-scale construction is very hard in this country, because it's all made of shifting silt. There's nothing to build on."

So if we carry on as we are, Bangladesh will enter its endgame. "All the people who strain at this country's seams will drown with it," Anam says, "or be blown away to distant shores – casualties and refugees by the millions." The headstone would read, Bangladesh, 1971-2071: born in blood, died in water.

Corporate Scandal: GrameenPhone & Telenor

2008-06-23T12:17:00.010+06:00

Telenor officials, with chief executive Jon Fredrik Baksaas at center, admit they have failed to adequately monitor working conditions at GrameenPhone's suppliers.

PHOTO: SVEIN ERIK FURULUND

Telenor, Peace Prize winner caught in labour scandal

A Danish TV documentary has revealed miserable working conditions and environmental violations at companies in Bangladesh that act as suppliers to GrameenPhone, which is co-owned by Norwegian telecoms firm Telenor and firms founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.

The documentary shows miserable working conditions at several firms supplying Telenor-owned GrameenPhone. Hard-hats were donned when Telenor came to inspect.

PHOTO: TELENOR

Telenor's Baksaas with Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. Together, they own GrameenPhone, although Yunus has wanted Telenor to reduce its stake.

PHOTO: TELENOR

It's an embarrassing labour scandal for Telenor, which itself is majority-owned by the government of Norway, a country that prides itself on championing fair labour conditions and human rights.

It also reflects poorly on Grameen Telecom and Grameen Bank, which own 38 percent of GrameenPhone (Telenor has 62 percent) and which were founded by Peace Prize-winner Yunus not least to help lift people in Bangladesh out of abject poverty through the micro-credit system.

The documentary, made by Danish journalist Tom Heinemann and to be aired on Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) Thursday evening, reveals shocking working conditions at the firms supplying GrameenPhone. Employees were shown working with hazardous chemicals and heavy metals virtually without protection. Workers were as young as 13 years, a clear violation of child labour laws. The firms were caught allowing polluted wastewater to spill into nearby rice fields.

And in one case, a worker was killed when he fell into an unsecured pool of acid.

Telenor, clearly believing that the best defense is a good offense, opted to reveal some of the findings of the documentary even before it was aired. Telenor officials claim they were shaken by the documentary's findings, and admit they failed to adequately monitor the operations of GrameenPhone's suppliers.

"We are deeply moved by the case, and the human side of it," Telenor chief executive Jon Fredrik Baksaas told reporters. He called the labour violations "completely unacceptable," claiming Telenor had trained the firms in health and safety issues. "But we've clearly been bad about following up afterwards," Baksaas admitted.

He neglected to mention the worker fatality, but confirmed it when questioned by a reporter from Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende.

Telenor and the Norwegian state have generated huge profits on GrameenPhone, which has as many as 20 million customers, but Baksaas said he didn't feel badly that the operation earns a lot on the work of poor employees. "We haven't taken out substantial dividends on what we've earned in Bangladesh," Baksaas said. "The money has gone into investments that are building up the country."

Norway's government minister in charge of business and industry, Dag Terje Andersen, wrote in an e-mail to Aftenposten that the working conditions shown in the documental "assuming they are accurate, clearly are unacceptable."

Andersen claimed, however, that Telenor has worked actively for years to make its own ethical regulations part of all operations, also those at suppliers. "It looks like the follow-up on the part of Telenor was inadequate," he wrote. Telenor has since conducted inspections at five suppliers of mobile telephone masts, and has fired one of them.

Telenor and Yunus have been involved in a long-simmering conflict over ownership of GrameenPhone. Yunus has wanted Telenor to reduce its stake.

Aftenposten English Web Desk
Nina Berglund

Full Earth-Rise

2008-04-28T14:35:00.002+06:00

KAGUYA (SELENE)
Image Taking of “Full Earth-Rise” by HDTV

April 11, 2008 (JST)

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK)

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) successfully captured a movie of the "Full Earth-Rise"*1 using the onboard High Definition Television (HDTV) of the lunar explorer "KAGUYA " (SELENE) on April 6, 2008 (Japan Standard Time, JST, all the following dates and time are JST.) The KAGUYA is currently flying in a lunar orbit at an altitude of about 100 km.

An "Earth-rise," or the rising Earth over the Moon, was first captured by the Apollo project. The Earth rising image taken by the KAGUYA on November 7, 2007, was not a full Earth-rise (i.e. not all of the globe was seen in shining blue.) It missed some part. This time, a "full Earth-rise"*1 was taken by the onboard HDTV in faraway space, some 380,000 km away from the Earth. This is the world's first successful shooting of such a Full Earth-Rise. It was also very precious because it was one of only two chances in a year for the KAGUYA to capture a Full Earth-Rise when the orbits of the Moon, the Earth, the Sun and the KAGUYA are all lined up.

The shooting was performed by the KAGUYA's onboard HDTV for space use, which was developed by NHK. The movie data was received at JAXA, then processed by NHK.

*1 The phenomenon expressed as a "Full Earth-Rise" can be seen from a satellite that travels around the Moon such as the KAGUYA (SELENE) or the Apollo manned spacecraft. The Earth is almost stationary when it is observed from the Moon, thus a Full Earth-Rise coming out from the horizon cannot be seen from the Moon.

Full Earth-rise taken by HDTV
Full Earth-set taken by HDTV
(480X270px, no audio)

Full Earth-rise taken by HDTV (Tele camera)

The above still image is a cutout from the movie taken by the KAGUYA HDTV (tele camera) on April 6, 2008 (JST.)
The location on the Moon is around the South Pole on the back side at a south latitude of 83 degrees or higher. You can see the North American Continent on the image of the earth on the lower left and Pacific Ocean in the center. (The top of the image is the south of the Earth, thus the North American Continent is seen upside down.)
The image below shows the Earth rising from the Moon's horizon. It took about 40 seconds from the left image to the right.

Full Earth Rising taken by HDTV

Figure 1: Timing of taking the Full Earth-Rise image
The above figure shows the relative positions of the Sun, Earth, Moon and the KAGUYA by setting the Sun at the center viewing from the North. Black arrows indicate the KAGUYA's orbit around the Moon, and red arrows are the KAGUYA's moving direction. The green arrows show the Earth's revolving direction around the Sun. "Yaw around" is an attitude control maneuver to change the KAGUYA's moving direction by using its thruster for attitude control to face the solar array paddle toward the Sun. On April 3, we performed the yaw around, and the KAGUYA is now flying toward +X direction (forward direction,) which is 180 degrees around the original direction when the KAGUYA was launched (-X direction or backward direction.) Through the yaw around maneuver, the HDTV tele camera faces toward the moving direction.

Figure 2: Position of HDTV

Reference

Table 1: List of images taken by the HDTV since December 25, 2008

Location	Start of image shooting (JST)	Completion of image shooting	Starting location	Finishing location
Plateau	at 4:41 p.m. on Feb. 25	4:49 p.m.	N lat. 78 deg. E long. around 339 to 5 deg.	N lat. 54 deg. E long. around 347 to 355 deg.
Pythagoras	2: 56 p.m. on Feb. 29	3:04 p.m.	N lat. 81 deg. E long. around 279 to 315	N lat. 57 deg. E long. around 294 to 303 deg.
Mare Humboldtianum	7:33 p.m. on March 16	7:41 p.m.	N lat. 75 deg. E long. around 73 to 93 deg.	N lat. 51 deg. E long. around 88 to 89 deg.
Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity) South area	9:13 a.m. on March 22	9:21 a.m.	N lat. 19 deg. E long. around 10 to 16 deg.	S lat. 5 deg. E long. around 9 to 15 deg.
Full Earth-set	12:15 p.m. on April 5	12:19 p.m.	N lat. 86 to 87 deg. E long. around 118 to 259 deg.	N lat. 76 deg. E long. around 176 to 199 deg.
Full Earth-rise	6:44 a.m. on April 6	6:45 a.m.	S lat. 82 to 83 deg. E long. around 152 to 194 deg.	S lat. 85 to 86 deg. E long. around 134 to 209 deg.

* The above images are all publicized in the JAXA Digital Archives.

Table 2: Major Characteristics of the HDTV

	HDTV
Camera Charactor Sensor Number of chips Prism Lens Field of view (FOC)	CCD(1920×1080: valid pxcels) 3 chips Three primary colors spectrum by Dichroic Prism Fixed lenses (T: tele camera, W: wide camera) T: 51.23°(horizontal) 30.17°(vertical) W: 15.60°(horizontal) 8.80°(vertical)

The Kanzius Machine

2008-04-16T00:09:00.002+06:00

Guy Invents Potential Cancer Cure With Radio Machine Built Out of Pie Pans... and Hot Dogs

John Kanzius, a businessman and radio technician diagnosed with leukemia, came up with what some call "the most promising breakthroughs in cancer." His "radio wave machine" is discussed in the following segment from CBS' 60 Minutes:

You know, I really love it when (sorta) average guys out-innovate mega-corporate profit machines, like that homemade MRI machine. But this is more amazing: John Kanzius has no background in cancer research but might have invented a real cure. He was diagnosed with leukemia, and struck by the idea that radio waves could kill cancer cells. So he built a prototype machine using pie pans and conducted tests on hot dogs injected with copper sulfate—the radio waves only heat up metal spots, for tactical nuking without nasty side effects. It's now being tested at the University of Pittsburgh and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, where the lead doc says that it "may allow us to treat just about any kind of cancer you can imagine."

So how to get metal bits to cancer cells? This is where the big corporate research comes in: nanotechnology. Thousands of nano-particles composed of metal bits can fit in a cancer cell. So far, they've conducted successful cancer extermination trials using the Kanzius machine and metal nano-particles at both M.D. Anderson and Pittsburgh. The catch is that it's only been tested on solid tumors—hitting cancer that's spread around the body is what they're working toward, and if they can't hunt down the individual cancer cells with the nano-particles, this will only have limited applications.

Human trials are also still four years away, which unfortunately might not be in time for the machine's inventor to cure himself. [CBS via Medgadget]

Biman may not get its new Boeing 787 jets in scheduled time

2008-04-13T00:53:00.002+06:00

Boeing Dreamliner Turns Into Nightmareliner After New Delay

We have been following the Boeing's 787 Dreamliner for a long time. It's a beautiful aircraft, which allegedly provides with a much-better flying experience—less noise, bigger windows, more space, and better fuel efficiency—thanks to its new construction processes and technologies. However, a new delay in its LEGO-like manufacturing process shows that Boeing is having very serious difficulties with its mass production, which will put them a whooping 18 months behind their original schedule.

According to the always entertaining Richard Quest, the delays have been caused precisely by the new technologies and manufacturing strategies that Boeing is using for the 787. Mainly, the biggest problem seems to be with the carbon fiber modules being manufactured all through the world, which then have to be brought and put together at Boeing's Everett factory in Washington, using their gigantic cargo Dreamlifter.

But as Quest points out, there will have to be major changes to this process because, at the end of the day, "the reality is that they have discovered they can't do it" in this way. One of these immediate and most serious changes, will likely require a redesign of the 787's wingbox.

As a result of these troubles, Boeing has ended with "new revised schedules" and an "extraordinary embarrassment" comparable to the humiliation that EADS had as a result of the multiple delays on the Airbus A380.

The even-worse thing is that, while it's understandable that companies like Boeing and EADS may have setbacks in the construction of these giant next-generation machines, the problem doesn't end in the technological embarrassment: Boeing will have to pay compensation to the airlines who have already bought 850 Dreamliners—which is "far more than any other aircraft at this stage"—and were expecting them on time.

Nightmareliner indeed. [CNN]

Firefox logo spotted in deep space by the Hubble Telescope

2008-04-13T00:44:00.004+06:00

Even Gigantic Celestial Bodies Prefer Firefox to IE

Captured by the Hubble Space Telescope is an image of the variable star V838 Monocerotis which lies near the edge of our Milky Way Galaxy. The photo was taken way back in March 2004.

Space Exploration

2008-04-10T15:45:00.001+06:00

First South Korean sent into space

Yi So-Yeon said she hopes North Koreans will share her "triumph" in space [AFP]

Thousands of South Koreans have gathered across the country to celebrate the blast-off of the country's first astronaut into space.

Yi So-Yeon took off on Tuesday from the same launch pad at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhastan where Yury Gagarin, the first man in space, began his famous flight in 1961.

A biosystem engineer, Yi will conduct 14 scientific experiments while in space and has said that she hopes her flight would help further Korean science and bring peace with North Korea.

The launch made South Korea the 36th nation to send a person into orbit.

Lee Myung-Bak, the South Korean president said: "I have strong feelings today. Today will go down in history as the start date of our march towards space".

Space power

In an earlier TV interview, Lee said that South Korea is on track to become the world's seventh-largest space power in 2020, when the nation is to launch its own lunar orbiter.

"The birth of South Korea's first astronaut is celebrated by the entire nation. It will give big hope to young people, in particular."

The Soviet-made Soyuz rocket
took off from Kazakhstan [AFP]

The South Korean government paid Russia about $25 million for the right to send the first Korean into space.

Before blasting off, Yi said she was fully ready for adventure aboard the Soviet-made Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft.

"Right now, at the ISS, inside the Soyuz and right here, I am not a woman, I'm just a cosmonaut", she said.

She also told reporters that she wanted people in North Korea to be "happy" with her 12-day mission and share in her "triumph," while voicing hope that one day the North and South would be reunited.

Yi was selected last month to be the county's first astronaut after another South Korean candidate was taken off the mission for breaching rules by taking manuals out of Russia's high-security training base.

"It's amazing! It's fantastic!," Sim Eunsup, director of the Korean Aerospace Research Institute, said as he walked away from a viewing platform.

Sim said that he hoped that Yi's flight will form the basis of the country's manned space programme.

Yi has said she planned to take kimchi, a traditional spicy cabbage, into space and sing a song to mark the anniversary of Gagarin's launch on April 12.

Space Exploration

2008-04-10T14:53:00.002+06:00

The Future Of Space Exploration?

Black smoke belches out of a grinding old engine as it hauls Russia's latest Soyuz space capsule across a Kazakh wasteland, while armed guards keep watch. This mixture of high and low technology is probably the future of space exploration, as resources get scarcer and more small governments and independent operators get into the space game. More images of Soyuz in the wasteland, and its launch to the International Space Station, below:

A Russian police officer guards the Russian Soyuz TMA-12 space ship that will carry a new crew to the international space station as the rocket is transported to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Sunday, April 6, 2008. The rocket is scheduled to blast off on Tuesday, April 8. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

Russian police officers guard the Russian Soyuz TMA-12 space ship that will carry a new crew to the international space station as the rocket is transported to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Sunday, April 6, 2008. The mission is expected to ferry two Russian cosmonauts and a South Korean graduate student to the International Space Station. The rocket is scheduled to blast off on Tuesday, April 8. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

This day in history

2008-04-04T15:07:00.004+06:00

April 4, 1975: Bill Gates, Paul Allen Form a Little Partnership

Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1983 just after completing MS Dos for the Tandy laptop and signing a contract to write MS-DOS for IBM.
Photo: Doug Wilson/Corbis

1975: Bill Gates and Paul Allen create a partnership called Micro-soft. It will grow into one of the largest U.S. corporations and place them among the world's richest people.

Gates and Allen had been buddies and fellow Basic programmers at Lakeside School in Seattle. Allen graduated before Gates and enrolled at the University of Washington. They built a computer based on an Intel 8008 chip and used it to analyze traffic data for the Washington state highway department, doing business as Traf-O-Data.

Allen went to work for Honeywell in Boston, and Gates enrolled at Harvard University in nearby Cambridge. News in late 1974 of the first personal computer kit, the Altair 8800, excited them, but they knew they could improve its performance with Basic.

Allen spoke to Ed Roberts, president of Altair manufacturer MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), and sold him on the idea. Gates and Allen worked night and day to complete the first microcomputer Basic. Allen moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in January 1975 to become director of software for MITS. Gates dropped out of his sophomore year at Harvard and joined Allen in Albuquerque.

Allen was 22; Gates was 19. Altair Basic was functioning by March. The "Micro-soft" partnership was sealed in April, but wouldn't get its name for a few more months.

The fledgling company also created versions of Basic for the hot-selling Apple II and Radio Shack's TRS-80.

Microsoft moved from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington, in 1979. It incorporated in 1981, a few weeks before IBM introduced its personal computer with Microsoft's 16-bit operating system, MS-DOS 1.0.

The thriving young company moved again in 1986, this time to a new corporate campus in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft stock went public in March 1986. Adjusting for splits, a share of that stock is worth almost 280 times its original value today (or more than 140 times, even accounting for inflation).

ATV Jules Verne Docks with Station

2008-04-04T03:04:00.000+06:00

The Jules Verne, the first European Space Agency Automated Transfer Vehicle, docked to the aft port of the International Space Station's Zvezda Service Module at 10:45 a.m. EDT Thursday.

Image to right: The Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle approaches the aft port of the International Space Station's Zvezda Service Module for docking. Image credit: NASA TV

The unpiloted cargo spacecraft carries more than 7,500 pounds of equipment, supplies, water, fuel and gases for the station.

It also carries hopes and aspirations of the European Space Agency. The ATV and its advanced rendezvous system could play an important role in future space exploration.

The Jules Verne docked smoothly using its automated, laser guided rendezvous system. It was in many respects a repeat of the dry run on Monday. That practice approach brought the ATV to within 36 feet of the docking port.

The Jules Verne launched from Kourou, French Guiana, on an Ariane 5 rocket on March 9.

Solar arrays deployed as planned after two engine firings more than an hour and a half after launch. That placed the ATV in a parking orbit about 1,200 miles from the station.

Image to left: The Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle docks to aft port of the International Space Station's Zvezda Service Module. Image credit: NASA TV

It was, at almost 22 tons, the largest payload ever launched by the Ariane 5.

The Jules Verne is named after the acclaimed French science-fiction author. It is the first of perhaps seven such spacecraft to be built.

The ATV can carry about three times the cargo weight carried by the Progress, the reliable Russian unpiloted cargo carrier.

The Jules Verne initially was placed in an orbit a safe distance from the station, where a series of tests were performed. Among the last of the tests were two approaches to the station.

Those approaches ended in "escape" maneuvers, to verify a collision avoidance system. It would be used if the ATV automated docking system should fail.

The spacecraft is scheduled to remain at the station until August, for unloading and to reboost the orbiting laboratory. Subsequently it will be filled with station garbage and discards. Then it will be deorbited for destruction on re-entry over the Pacific.

Europe’s automated ship docks to the ISS

2008-04-04T03:00:00.002+06:00


Jules Verne ATV docking

3 April 2008

ESA PR 20-2008. ATV Jules Verne, the European Space Agency’s first resupply and reboost vehicle, has successfully performed a fully automated docking with the International Space Station (ISS). This docking marks the beginning of Jules Verne’s main servicing mission to deliver cargo, propellant, water, oxygen and propulsion capacity to the Station, as well as ESA’s entry into the restricted club of the partners able to access the orbital facility by their own means.

The 19-ton unmanned spaceship manoeuvred from a holding position 39 km behind the 275-ton space outpost and conducted a 4-hour staged approach with several stops at reference points for checks. It autonomously computed its own position through relative GPS (comparison between data collected by GPS receivers both on the ATV and the ISS) and in close range it used videometers pointed at laser retroreflectors on the ISS to determine its distance and orientation relative to its target. Final approach was at a relative velocity of 7 cm/s and with an accuracy of less than 10 cm, while both the ATV and the ISS were orbiting at about 28000 km/h, some 340 km above the Eastern Mediterranean. ATV Jules Verne’s docking probe was captured by the docking cone at the aft end of Russia’s Zvezda module at 16:45 CEST (14:45 GMT). Docking was completed with hooks closing at 16:52 CEST (14:52 GMT).

First automated docking

This is the very first time in Europe that an automated docking is performed in due respect of the very tight safety constraints imposed by manned spaceflight operations. All the approach and docking phase was piloted by the ATV’s onboard computers under close monitoring by the teams of ESA, CNES (the French Space agency) and Astrium (the prime contractor) at the ATV Control Centre at CNES Toulouse, France, as well as the ISS crew inside the Zvezda module. In case of anomaly, both ends could trigger pre-programmed manoeuvres to hold position, retreat to the previous reference point or escape to a safe distance.

The ATV’s behaviour was also under surveillance from its own independent Monitoring & Safing Unit (MSU), which uses a separate set of sensors and computers to check that the approach manoeuvre is conducted safely. In case of major anomaly, the MSU would have been able to take over the commands and order a Collision Avoidance Manoeuvre (CAM) through dedicated avionics chains and thrusters.

As all operations went smoothly, none of these safety manoeuvres was required during this afternoon’s approach and docking.


	Replay of Ariane 5 ES-ATV launch

The ATV Jules Verne was launched by an Ariane 5 from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 9 March. Three days later, it successfully demonstrated its autonomous CAM capability and was cleared for ISS proximity operations. The spaceship then moved to a parking orbit for the duration of space shuttle Endeavour’s visit to the ISS. On March 29 and 31 it conducted two rehearsals of today’s docking, approaching at 11 m from the Station.

New delivery service

Now that it is docked, the ATV Jules Verne will become an additional module of the ISS for about four months. The astronauts will enter its pressurized cargo module and retrieve 1,150 kg of dry cargo, including food, clothes and equipment as well as two original manuscripts handwritten by Jules Verne and a XIXth century illustrated edition of his novel “From the Earth to the Moon”. In addition, they will pump 856 kg of propellant, 270 kg of drinking water and 21 kg of oxygen into Zvezda’s tanks.

The ATV can carry about three times as much payload as Russia’s Progress freighters but on this mission, most of it is actually propellant to be used by the ATV’s own propulsion system for periodical manoeuvres to increase the altitude of the ISS in order to compensate its natural decay caused by atmospheric drag. If required, the ATV will also be able to provide redundant attitude control to the ISS or even perform evasive manoeuvres to move the Station out of the way of potentially dangerous space debris. The first of ATV Jules Verne’s reboost manoeuvres is currently scheduled on 21 April.


ESA DG and dignitaries at ATV-CC

“The ATV is so much more than a simple delivery truck, it is an intelligent and versatile spaceship which has just demonstrated its extraordinary skills,” said Daniel Sacotte, ESA’s Director for Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration. “It is the largest and most complex spacecraft ever developed in Europe and the second in size of all the vehicle’s visiting the Station, after NASA’s space shuttle. With Columbus and the ATV, we have entered the major league of the ISS.”

“The docking of the ATV is a new and spectacular step in the demonstration of European capabilities on the international scene of space exploration ”said Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA’s Director General. “This fantastic step is in first instance the result of collective work in Europe, including ESA Member States, industry under Astrium as prime contractor, CNES and ESA staff as well as among ISS partners, in particular the USA and Russia. We shall now reap the benefits of such investments after the launch of ESA’s Columbus laboratory, first in utilizing the unique capabilities of the ISS and secondly in preparing for the exploration of the Solar System. Now that the ATV is "up and running", I am happy to announce that in the next few weeks ESA will launch a recruitment campaign to hire new European astronauts"

For further information:

ESA Media Relations Office
Communication and Knowledge Department
Tel: + 33 1 5369 7299
Fax: + 33 1 5369 7690

Follow the Jules Verne ATV docking

2008-04-04T02:57:00.001+06:00


Jules Verne ATV approaches the ISS during Demonstration Day 2 manoeuvres

3 April 2008

Follow the first docking attempt of Jules Verne, ESA’s first Automated Transfer Vehicle, live on the ESA website. Web streaming of the docking starts at 16:00 CEST (14:00 UT). For realtime updates from inside the ATV Control Centre in Toulouse visit the ATV blog.

Contact of the vessel's docking probe is expected at 16:40 CEST (14:40 UT), with full capture scheduled at 17:14 CEST (15:14 UT).

The rendezvous and docking will be broadcast live by ESA TV, 16:00-17:15 CEST (14:00-15:15 UT); details are available on the ESA TV web page under http://television.esa.int/.

If the docking does not occur for any reason, the next possible window occurs 48 hours later on Saturday 5 April. The rendezvous and docking will be monitored from ESA's ATV Control Centre in Toulouse, France, in cooperation with the Russian control centre in Moscow and the NASA control centre in Houston.

Full schedule

Note: Times have changed slightly compared to previously published schedule. Times remain subject change.

Distance to ISS	Critical events
*S_-1/2(39 km behind and 5 km below)	- ATV in waiting mode for final go ahead
S₀(30 km behind and 5 km below)	Pre-homing
S₁ (15.5 km behind and 5 km below) S₁ planned GO 13:17 CEST	- Homing starts
S₂(3.5 km behind and 100 m above) S₂ arrival 14:04 CEST S₂ depart 14:36 CEST	- Station keeping point. External lights are activated. Russian Kurs radar-based system is activated and the ISS crew can begin using this data. Closing begins using relative GPS.
500 m	Video system of Zvezda turned on for ISS crew to view ATV on the Simvol screen.
S₃(249 m behind) S₃ arrival 15:16 CEST S₃ depart 15:52 CEST	- Station keeping point. The Videometer and Telegoniometer (laser-pulsed instruments that calculate the distance and orientation to the ISS) are activated. Videometer is used as the prime sensor for GNC navigation. Go for Final Approach 1. Speed of ATV slows down from about 40 cm per second to 7 cm per second
S₄(19 m behind) S₄ arrival 16:13 CEST S₄ depart 16:29 CEST	- Station keeping point. Close range videometer navigation is used. Pointing manoeuvre towards the Docking Port axis. Go for Final Approach 2.
S₄₁ (11 m behind) S₄₁ arrival 16:31 CEST S₄₁ depart 16:37 CEST	- Station keeping point. Go to continue the Final Approach 2.
Capture 16:40 CEST Hooks closed 17:14 CEST	ATV docks to Zvezda ATV permanently connected to Zvezda

Jules Verne ATV given ‘go’ for docking

2008-04-04T02:56:00.001+06:00


Jules Verne ATV as seen from the ISS during a rendezvous test on 29 March 2008

2 April 2008

Jules Verne was today formally cleared to proceed with the first ISS docking attempt, scheduled for 3 April 2008 at 16:41 CEST (14:41 UT). The official go-ahead came from the International Space Station Mission Management Team (IMMT) after two flawless demonstration days in which Jules Verne proved its operational capabilities.

"We have proven that Jules Verne's systems are safe, reliable and ready to dock to the Station. Everyone has worked very hard to get to this point, and we have also proven that the team on the ground is fully ready for tomorrow's first attempt," said John Ellwood, ESA's ATV Project Manager.

The formal permission came during today's IMMT meeting held at 13:00 CEST (11:00 UT), in which ESA together with its ISS partners reviewed the Automated Transfer Vehicle's (ATV) performance from Demonstration Day 2.

Demo Day 2, held on 31 March, saw Jules Verne conduct a series of challenging manoeuvres and confirm that the spacecraft could autonomously navigate itself using optical guidance and close to station keeping point S41, just 11 m from the ISS. Jules Verne also reacted perfectly to an 'Escape' command issued by astronauts on board the ISS, proving that the vessel can automatically withdraw to a safe location when so commanded.

Tomorrow's docking attempt will see Jules Verne move past station keeping point S41 to actually dock with the Russian ISS module's docking port. Contact of the vessel's docking probe is expected at 16:41 CEST (14:41 UT), with full capture scheduled at 17:15 CEST (15:15 UT). If the docking does not occur for any reason, the next possible window occurs 48 hours later on Saturday, 5 April.

The rendezvous and docking will be monitored from ESA's ATV Control Centre in Toulouse, France, in cooperation with the Russian control centre in Moscow and the NASA control centre in Houston.

The rendezvous and docking will be broadcast live by ESA TV, 16:00-17:15 CEST (14:00-15:15 UT); details are available on the ESA TV web page under http://television.esa.int/.

The event will also be streamed live via the ESA website starting at 16:00 CEST (14:00 UT); the link will be made available shortly before on http://www.esa.int/atv.

7 Pains You Shouldn't Ignore

2008-04-01T11:42:00.003+06:00

Experts describe the types of pain that require prompt medical attention.

By Leanna Skarnulis
WebMD Feature

Reviewed by Matthew Hoffman, MD

Whoever coined the term "necessary evil" might have been thinking of pain. No one wants it, yet it's the body's way of getting your attention when something is wrong. You're probably sufficiently in tune with your body to know when the pain is just a bother, perhaps the result of moving furniture a day or two before or eating that third enchilada. It's when pain might signal something more serious that the internal dialogue begins:

"OK, this isn't something to fool around with."
"But I can't miss my meeting."
"And how many meetings will you miss if you land in the hospital?"
"I'll give it one more day."
Etc.

You need a guide. WebMD consulted doctors in cardiology, internal medicine, geriatrics, and psychiatry so you'll understand which pains you must not ignore -- and why. And, of course, if in doubt, get medical attention.

No. 1: Worst Headache of Your Life

Get medical attention immediately. "If you have a cold, it could be a sinus headache," says Sandra Fryhofer, MD, MACP, spokeswoman for the American College of Physicians. "But you could have a brain hemorrhage or brain tumor. With any pain, unless you're sure of what caused it, get it checked out."

Sharon Brangman, MD, FACP, spokeswoman for the American Geriatrics Society, tells WebMD that when someone says they have the worst headache of their life, "what we learned in medical training was that was a classic sign of a brain aneurysm. Go immediately to the ER."

No. 2: Pain or Discomfort in the Chest, Throat, Jaw, Shoulder, Arm, or Abdomen

Chest pain could be pneumoniaor a heart attack. But be aware that heart conditions typically appear as discomfort, not pain. "Don't wait for pain," says cardiologist Jerome Cohen, MD. "Heart patients talk about pressure. They'll clench their fist and put it over their chest or say it's like an elephant sitting on their chest."

The discomfort associated with heart disease could also be in the upper chest, throat, jaw, left shoulder or arm, or abdomen and might be accompanied by nausea. "I'm not too much worried about the 18-year-old, but if a person has unexplained, persistent discomfort and knows they're high risk, they shouldn't wait," says Cohen. "Too often people delay because they misinterpret it as [heartburn] or GI distress. Call 911 or get to an emergency room or physician's office. If it turns out to be something else, that's great."

He tells WebMD that intermittent discomfort should be taken seriously as well. "There might be a pattern, such as discomfort related to excitement, emotional upset, or exertion. For example, if you experience it when you're gardening, but it goes away when you sit down, that's angina. It's usually worse in cold or hot weather."

"A woman's discomfort signs can be more subtle," says Cohen, who is director of preventive cardiology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. "Heart disease can masquerade as GI symptoms, such as bloating, GI distress, or discomfort in the abdomen. It's also associated with feeling tired. Risk for heart disease increases dramatically after menopause. It kills more women than men even though men are at higher risk at any age. Women and their physicians need to be on their toes."

No. 3: Pain in Lower Back or Between Shoulder Blades

"Most often it's arthritis," says Brangman, who is professor and chief of geriatrics at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, N.Y. Other possibilities include a heart attack or abdominal problems. "One danger is aortic dissection, which can appear as either a nagging or sudden pain. People who are at risk have conditions that can change the integrity of the vessel wall. These would include high blood pressure, a history of circulation problems, smoking, and diabetes."

No. 4: Severe Abdominal Pain

Still have your appendix? Don't flirt with the possibility of a rupture. Gallbladder and pancreas problems, stomach ulcers, and intestinal blockages are some other possible causes of abdominal pain that need attention.

No 5: Calf Pain

One of the lesser known dangers is deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a blood clot that can occur in the leg's deep veins. It affects 2 million Americans a year, and it can be life-threatening. "The danger is that a piece of the clot could break loose and cause pulmonary embolism [a clot in the lungs], which could be fatal," says Fryhofer. Cancer, obesity, immobility due to prolonged bed rest or long-distance travel, pregnancy, and advanced age are among the risk factors.

"Sometimes there's just swelling without pain," says Brangman. "If you have swelling and pain in your calf muscles, see a doctor immediately."

No. 6: Burning Feet or Legs

Nearly one-third of the 20 million Americans who have diabetes are undiagnosed, according to the American Diabetes Association. "In some people who don't know they have diabetes, peripheral neuropathy could be one of the first signs," says Brangman. "It's a burning or pins-and-needles sensation in the feet or legs that can indicate nerve damage."

No 7: Vague, Combined, or Medically Unexplained Pains

"Various painful, physical symptoms are common in depression," says psychiatrist Thomas Wise, MD. "Patients will have vague complaints of headaches, abdominal pain, or limb pain, sometimes in combination."

Because the pain might be chronic and not terribly debilitating, depressed people, their families, and health care professionals might dismiss the symptoms. "Furthermore, the more depressed you are, the more difficulty you have describing your feelings," says Wise, who is the psychiatry department chairman at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Fairfax, Va. "All of this can lead the clinician astray."

Other symptoms must be present before a diagnosis of depression can be made. "Get help when you've lost interest in activities, you're unable to work or think effectively, and you can't get along with people," he says. "And don't suffer silently when you're hurting."

He adds there's more to depression than deterioration of the quality of life. "It has to be treated aggressively before it causes structural changes in the brain."

Get your in-flight mobile calling on Emirates flights

2008-03-30T13:44:00.001+06:00

Emirates says that voice calls will be restricted during night flights

Dubai-based airline Emirates has become the first commercial airline to allow passengers to make mobile phone calls during flights.

Emirates said the first permitted mobile phone call was made on a flight between Dubai and Casablanca.

The aircraft, an Airbus A340, is fitted with a system which stops mobiles from interfering with a plane's electronics.

Emirates plans to extend the system to more aircraft and later this year add BlackBerry and other data services.

According to the airline, the mobile service will only be activated when the aircraft is at cruising altitude and the cabin crew will be able to monitor and control the use of the system.

Passengers will be able to receive and send text messages, but the crew will be able to prevent voice calls at certain times, such as during night flights.

Passengers will also be requested to keep their phones on "silent" mode, said the airline.

High demand

Emirates said it decided to introduce the use of mobile phones in its fleet after experiencing high demand for the phones already installed in aircraft seats.

The airline had to obtain approval from international air safety organisations before adopting the system, which was developed by the AeroMobile company.

"We have gone to considerable lengths to ensure that all safety and regulatory issues have been fully addressed", said AeroMobile Chief Executive Bjorn-Taale Sandberg.

Emirates flies to more than 60 countries and is owned by the government of Dubai.

Climate Migration

2008-03-24T23:35:00.002+06:00

March 23, 2008, 3:20 pm

By Nicki Bennett

Photos by Nicki Bennet

Nicki Bennett is an American aid worker who bounces around from one hot spot to the next, working for Oxfam. She has been deployed to Sudan, eastern Congo, Chad, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and Guatemala. She is currently in Bangladesh working on post-hurricane reconstruction.

This week I’m back in Dhaka, the world’s undisputed rickshaw capital. With more than 300,000 of these brightly colored bicycle contraptions plying the city’s streets for trade, I rarely walk for more than a block before a rickshaw driver (known as “rickshaw-wallah”) pulls up next to me and urges me to hop on board.

I’ve learned it’s almost impossible to refuse a ride. This is partly because the rickshaw-wallahs are very persistent, partly because I feel I should be supporting people struggling to make a living (one in five of the city’s inhabitants depends on the rickshaw business for their income) and partly because Dhaka is now starting to get unbearably hot and humid (and I’m starting to get horrendously lazy).

Coming back from a meeting near my office this afternoon, I start chatting (well, mainly hand-gesturing) with my rickshaw-wallah and ask him where he’s from. I’ve heard lots of stories about families in the cyclone-affected coastal areas sending sons or brothers to urban centers like Dhaka to make a little bit of cash driving rickshaws (many people have not been able to return to their regular jobs as the cyclone destroyed their fishing boats and nets or washed away their crops). I’m wondering if my rickshaw-wallah is one of them.

Instead, he names a district that I’ve never heard of. We manage to establish that it’s somewhere north of Dhaka, near a river. “Floods,” he tells me. “In my village. Village underwater.” Finally the penny drops – he’s not just an economic migrant, he’s also a “climate migrant.”

Few countries in the world are more acutely threatened by climate-related disasters and climate change than Bangladesh. The country (70 percent of which consists of flood plain) is already sinking – within the next two decades Bangladesh may lose as much as 20 percent of its land to rising
sea levels and melting Himalayan glaciers. This is not good news in a country of 150 million people - even a relatively moderate 10 or 20 centimeters rise in sea level could displace millions within the next 15 years. Population density is already high, with approximately 1045 Bangladeshis crammed into each square kilometer of land.

Following last year’s scientific breakthrough (and the publication of the IPCC climate change report), it’s no longer possible for anyone to deny that global warming is happening. It’s also pretty clear that the biggest polluters are not poor countries like Bangladesh, but wealthy nations like the United States, Saudi Arabia, Australia and Canada. The rich countries have committed themselves to doing two things - cutting their greenhouse gas emissions and setting up a fund that helps poor countries cope with the damage already being caused by climate change.

Back at the office, feeling curious, I decide to conduct a quick (and totally unscientific) experiment to check how much people in the United States actually care about the issue: I log onto the websites of the main U.S. presidential candidates to see if they have a position on climate change. Some of them talk about cutting greenhouse gas emissions. None talk about paying money into the climate change “adaptation” fund. And none are talking about the impact of climate change on poor people – or what they might do about the fact that places like Bangladesh and New Orleans are already being bashed by climate-related disasters and slowly losing land to rising sea levels.

I’m sure my rickshaw-wallah is not exactly thinking about climate change or politics as he reaches for a grimy piece of cloth to wipe his sweaty brow at the end of my journey. But as someone who spend his waking hours inhaling a potent mix of lead and carbon monoxide and has a life expectancy of only 45 years, he may be thinking about other ways of making a living. I have a feeling he would not be averse to discussing alternative job opportunities with those who have the power to provide the scale of finance Bangladesh needs to help it adapt to climate change. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if we are ready to listen to him just quite yet.

Sun brightens the future of chip fab labs

2008-03-24T23:26:00.002+06:00

Replacing Wire With Laser, Sun Tries to Speed Up Data

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems is gambling on using beams of light to connect processor chips, eliminating a bottleneck.

By JOHN MARKOFF

Published: March 24, 2008

Sun Microsystems is trying to do for computing what all the king’s horses and men failed to do for Humpty Dumpty. For decades, the semiconductor industry has broken silicon wafers into smaller chips to improve manufacturing yields.

Now Sun has found a way to reconnect the chips so they can communicate with each other at such high speeds that computer designers can build a new generation of computers that are faster, more energy-efficient and more compact.

The computer maker, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., plans to announce on Monday that it has received a $44 million contract from the Pentagon to explore the high-risk idea of replacing the wires between computer chips with laser beams.

The technology, part of a field of computer science known as silicon photonics, would eradicate the most daunting bottleneck facing today’s supercomputer designers: moving information rapidly to solve problems that require hundreds or thousands of processors.

Processor and memory chips are currently made by etching hundreds or thousands of identical circuits onto a single wafer of silicon and then slicing that wafer into fingernail-size chips. That manufacturing process ensures that if there is a defect at a single spot on the giant wafer it will not ruin the entire batch of chips.

The drawback in the approach is that wires have to connect the chips in a computer. This causes a fundamental limit in processing power because data moves between chips at lower speeds, creating significant bottlenecks.

The wires that connect chips are analogous to the on and off ramps that cars use to move between freeways — just as cars slow down as they move onto city streets from multilane highways, electrical signals run more slowly between chips. The bottlenecks also generate additional electrical current and heat.

“All of a sudden it’s better to have an optical superhighway,” said Greg Papadopoulos, chief technology officer and executive vice president of research and development for Sun.

Computer scientists have long sought a way to make faster and cheaper computers by making larger chips on a single wafer of silicon, a manufacturing process called “wafer scale integration.” If the Sun researchers’ idea can be proved technically feasible and manufactured commercially, it would be possible to create more-compact machines that are a thousand times faster than today’s computers, the company said. Each chip would be able to communicate directly with every other chip in the array via a beam of laser light that could carry tens billions of bits of data a second.

The Sun researchers acknowledge that their project is a significant gamble.

“This is a high-risk program,” said Ron Ho, a researcher at Sun Laboratories who is one of the leaders of the effort. “We expect a 50 percent chance of failure, but if we win we can have as much as a thousand times increase in performance.”

Silicon photonics has become hot recently with major semiconductor and computer companies as well as start-ups investing heavily in efforts to build optical networking directly into processors to replace electrical wires.

Last week, the NEC Corporation, the Japanese supercomputer maker, announced that it had made an advance in optical connections between chips that will pave the way for a supercomputer able to reach speeds up to 10 petaflops, or 10 million trillion instructions a second. That is about 20 times faster than the world’s fastest computer.

Sun’s partners on the project are Stanford and the University of California, San Diego, and two silicon photonics firms, Luxtera and Kotura. The Sun bid was chosen over three competing teams from Intel and Hewlett-Packard; I.B.M.; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The five-year program is being financed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and it builds on a Sun research project that was intended to interconnect chips electrically by stacking them edge to edge.

In 2003, a group of Sun researchers led by Ivan Sutherland, a computer industry pioneer, reported that they were able to transmit data inside a computer much more quickly than current techniques allowed. In an interview at Sun’s research laboratory last month, Jim Mitchell, a Sun vice president, said that the original technology was now moving closer to commercialization.

However, the new approach, which is based on the company’s ability to accurately align chips with high precision making it possible to transmit beams of light across the surface of the chips in ultranarrow channels called wave guides, could have a much bigger impact.

The Sun researchers refer to their new system as a “macrochip.” They said that the technology would make it possible for computer architects to completely rethink the organization of circuitry on a computer.

“It’s like the difference between having someone next door and having to get on an airplane to fly across the country,” said Alan Huang, an optical networking designer at the Terabit Corporation in Menlo Park, Calif. “This would be a way of breaking Moore’s Law.”

Moore’s Law is an observation by Intel founder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles roughly every two years.

The Sun researchers said they believe that their alignment technique, which they plan to describe in a scientific paper, will make their systems more compact and easier to manufacture than their competitors’.

Airbus A380's first commercial flight to Europe

2008-03-24T00:05:00.002+06:00

World's largest passenger plane touches down at Heathrow airport

World’s biggest passenger plane touched down at Heathrow yesterday at the end of its first commercial flight to Europe. Carrying 471 passengers paying up to £7,000 each, the Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 – built in France but kept in the air by British-built wings and engines – was greeted when it touched down after a 13-hour, 44-minute flight from Singapore by a water cannon salute from Heathrow's own firecrews. Heathrow, which had spent more than £100 million to accommodate the A380 that will now operate on a daily basis between Singapore and London

Emirates will start A380 services to Heathrow in December and Australian carrier Qantas is also expected to use the superjumbo to fly to London. In the future, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic will be flying the A380 at Heathrow, where both terminal three and the new £4.3 billion Terminal 5 can take the new aircraft.

Singapore Airlines' A380 lands at Heathrow

History was made today with the arrival of the first commercial flight of the world's largest passenger aircraft, the A380, into London's Heathrow Airport. Singapore Airlines' flight SQ308 landed at 2:50 pm local time with a full load of 471 passengers plus crew.

This first A380 commercial service to Europe follows the delivery of the third A380 to Singapore Airlines on 11 March. Fitted with luxurious suites, award-winning four-abreast business class and a new, more spacious economy class, the A380 allows the airline's customers to travel to London in unprecedented comfort and
space.

Passengers travelling on Singapore Airlines from London to Singapore and on to Sydney will now be able to fly the whole route aboard A380 aircraft.

Marvin Tan, Singapore Airlines general manager for the UK and Ireland, said the partnership between SIA and Airbus was making a significant impact on aviation history with the inaugural flight from Singapore to London. "This flight is trailblazing a new era in passenger comfort between Singapore and Europe and the A380 is an aircraft of which both of our companies can be proud. Entry into service has been fantastic and that's down to our close partnership with Airbus," Tan explained

Mike Forster, group strategy director for BAA, which operates Heathrow, said the inaugural flight marked a great day for Heathrow, Singapore Airlines and aviation. BAA had invested £450million in readiness for this first flight into Europe's busiest airport. "The A380 is an important aircraft as it allows us to increase capacity without increasing the number of flights," he commented. "Heathrow airlines have placed orders for 168 A380s. This means 10 per cent of our passengers will be flying on A380s, allowing us to increase capacity without increasing the number of flights."

The U.K.'s Minister of State for Business, Pat McFadden, added: "This flight represents a significant milestone. The Airbus A380 is a remarkable aircraft - quieter, cleaner, smarter and greener than existing commercial planes. I wish the aircraft, the airport and the airline - all renowned for their world-leading capabilities - a long and successful future working together."

Singapore Airlines is the first to fly the A380 and has firm orders for a further 16 aircraft and options on six more.

Airbus A380 lands in Sydney on world's first commercial flight:

The world's biggest jumbo jet landed safely in Sydney on Thursday, completing its long-delayed first commercial flight from Singapore.

The double-decker A380 emerged from low-lying cloud to fly over Sydney's famous harbor before touching down on time, a contrast to two years of delays which pushed its European manufacturer Airbus into a loss.

Watched by hundreds of airport staff and aviation enthusiasts lining fences outside the airport, passengers on the inaugural Singapore Airlines (SIA) flight disembarked without a hitch.

The wet Sydney afternoon did nothing to dampen passengers' enthusiasm.

"It was great being a part of history," Michael Sim, who said he had paid about 30 percent more for his ticket than he would have on other flights, told Reuters television.

Passengers paid between $560 and $100,380 for seats on the inaugural flight, after bidding for the tickets as part of a charity auction to drum up publicity.

"It was a very smooth rise, and much quieter than the 747," Rainer Silhavy told Reuters.

During the flight, first-class passengers reclined in suites modeled on luxury yacht interiors and slumbered in proper beds which the airline said can be converted into doubles.

French design house Givenchy designed the bedding, while passengers ate off fine bone chinaware and drank from crystal glasses bought in by the same designer.

"Of course it was the first flight, so you get most of the first class treatment, I hope they keep that up," said Sim.

The A380 can seat more than 800 passengers although Singapore Airlines, the first airline to take delivery of the plane, has configured the aircraft to seat 470 over two decks, hoping to attract more top-paying passengers.

TRUMPS THE JUMBO

The superjumbo replaces the Boeing 747 as the world's largest airliner in service.

Hundreds of airport staff and passengers armed with camera phones earlier watched the take-off from Singapore.

"I'm a big airplane freak and I love everything about planes," said Ernest Graaff, an A380 passenger as he waited to board the jet among beaming SIA flight attendants.

Graaff paid $40,000 for two business-class tickets on the jet. "I'm excited about being a part of history."

The aircraft will return to Singapore on Friday.

"Flying the aircraft itself is like flying any other big jet," said pilot Robert Ting, who was one of four pilots and a crew of 30 aboard the flight.

"This aircraft comes with the latest technology ... for example this is an aircraft where we come with an electronic flight plan whereby we will have electronic manuals on board, we no longer carry paper copies," he told local television.

Airbus handed the superjumbo to SIA earlier this month after wiring glitches caused two years of delays, pushed the planemaker into a loss and leading to the loss of 10,000 jobs.

SIA is to take delivery of another five A380s in 2008. The airline plans to introduce the A380 on long-haul flights to London, Tokyo and San Francisco from early 2008.

The Worst Foods in America

2008-03-23T14:41:00.000+06:00

Avoid These 8 Worst Foods in America

The New York Times reviews a book called Eat This, Not That!, a nutrition guide full of images of foods you shouldn't eat and their healthier substitutes. The book also has a section highlighting 20 of the country's worst foods, and the article republishes eight of them, categorized with names like "worst fast food meal" and "worst drink". The "winners"?

Worst Fast Food Meal: McDonald's Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips with creamy ranch sauce. Chicken sounds healthy, but not at 870 calories.
Worst Drink: Jamba Juice Chocolate Moo'd Power Smoothie. With 166 grams of sugar, you could have had eight servings of Ben & Jerry's.
Worst Supermarket Meal: Pepperidge Farm Roasted Chicken Pot Pie. One pie packs 64 grams of fat.
Worst "Healthy" Burger: Ruby Tuesday Bella Turkey Burger. With 1,145 calories, not a very healthy choice.
Worst Airport Snack: Cinnabon Classic Cinnamon Roll. Packed with 813 hot gooey calories and 5 grams of trans fats.
Worst Kids' Meal: Macaroni Grill Double Macaroni 'n Cheese. With 62 fat grams, it's the equivalent of 1.5 full boxes of Kraft Mac 'n Cheese.
Worst Salad: On the Border Grande Taco Salad with Taco Beef. A salad with 102 grams of fat and 2,410 mg of sodium.
Worst Dessert: Chili's Chocolate Chip Paradise Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream. At 1,600 calories, it's like eating the caloric equivalent of three Big Macs.

The UT-1 Ultra Trencher

2008-03-23T14:20:00.001+06:00

The world's biggest subsea robot

According to a newspaper of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, companies installing subsea cables for telecommunications companies and pipelines for the oil industry have now a new tool, the UT-1 Ultra Trencher which is the world's biggest subsea robot. This beauty weighs 60 tons (in the air) and has a length of 7.8 meters, a width of 7.8 meters and a height of 5.6 meters. In fact, it has the dimensions of a small house but is more expensive, carrying a price tag of about £10 millions. It can move at a speed of 2 to 3 knots under the sea. And it can trench pipelines with a 1-meter diameter in deep waters of up to 1,500 meters. But read more...

Here is what the UT-1 Ultra Trencher looks like. This huge subsea robot has been built by Soil Machine Dynamics (SMD), a Newcastle upon Tyne company which develops specialized remote controlled submersible robots (ROVs).

The first UT-1 Ultra Trencher has been delivered to CTC Marine Projects, a subsea contractor, based in North East of England, UK, and a subsidiary of DeepOcean, a norwegian company focused on subsea services. This submarine robot will be permanently installed on one of their new vessels, the Volantis (PDF format, 6 pages, 764 KB).

Here is a short excerpt from the Henderson article. "Weighing 50 tonnes and the size of small house, it is designed to bury largediameter oil and gas pipelines laid on the ocean floor. It does this by 'flying' down up to a mile deep below the surface using powerful propellers. It then lands over the pipeline and deploys a pair of 'jet swords' either side of the pipe which inject high pressure water to 'fluidise' the surface. Burying the pipelines protects them from fishing, shipwrecks and natural currents. This enables oil and gas to be safely transported from the offshore fields to land to provide secure energy supplies."

For more information, you'll find the complete specifications of the UT-1 Ultra Trencher in this PDF datasheet (2 pages, 917 KB), from which the above illustration has been extracted.

Here is a short excerpt. "The UT-1 Ultra Trencher�is the world's most powerful jetting trencher, offering unparalleled flexibility in severe weather deployment and operation. With more than 2 megawatts of total power, the trencher delivers 1.5 megawatts of actual jetting energy to the cutting surface."

Sources: Tony Henderson, The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, via redOrbit, March 20, 2008; and various websites

You'll find related stories by following the links below.

Sci-fi guru Arthur C Clarke dies

2008-03-19T18:00:00.001+06:00

Arthur C. Clarke, inventor of satellite, visionary in technology, dead at 90

March 18th, 2008

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.“

Today is a very sad day in our little world. It’s been reported that Arthur C. Clarke, among the most influential visionaries in technology and a personal hero of Engadget readers and editors both, has died in hospital care at the age of 90. Along with his many written works (such as the infamous and immeasurably influential 2001: A Space Odyssey), Clarke was possibly best known for conceptualizing the geostationary communications satellite — clearly one of the most important technological innovations in history.

Arthur, you’ll be dearly missed.

Dextre robot now fully assembled

2008-03-18T23:11:00.001+06:00

Dextre is put together on its travel pallet

'Big daddy' of space robots

The space station's new robot, Dextre, is fitted out and ready for duty.

In the third spacewalk of the latest shuttle mission, Endeavour astronauts Rick Linnehan and Robert Behnken fixed tools and cameras to the machine.

The robot, which is properly called the Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator, will in future do much of the external work on the space station.

Dextre will now undergo a series of tests and trials before it is asked to do major tasks.

Ultimately, it will be commanded to install and remove small payloads such as electronics boxes, computers and batteries.

Linnehan and Behnken worked for six hours and 53 minutes in what was the third Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) of the Endeavour visit.

The astronauts had difficulty fixing a science payload to Columbus

They were unable to attach a materials science experiment to the Columbus module, but may have another opportunity later in the mission.

A fourth spacewalk will take place on Thursday. This will see astronauts test a shuttle tile repair kit and change a circuit breaker on the station.

Endeavour has already fitted the new Japanese Logistics Module brought up on this flight.

This is a storage facility for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (Jaxa) Kibo laboratory, the main section of which will travel to the station on the next shuttle mission.

The US space agency has 10 more flights planned after Endeavour to complete the space station and deliver supplies before the orbiters are retired in 2010.

Endeavour is due back on the ground on 26 March.

SPECIAL PURPOSE DEXTEROUS MANIPULATOR (DEXTRE)

Dextre is remotely operated from inside the ISS or from the ground
The robot has seven joints in its arms for maximum movement
During operations, one arm holds onto the ISS while the other works
This maintains stability and ensures the arms do not hit each other
Dextre will install and remove small payloads such as batteries

Mobile Eurovision

2008-03-18T16:36:00.001+06:00

EU nations to push DVB-H over other mobile TV standards

The Associated Press

Monday, March 17, 2008

BRUSSELS, Belgium: The European Union on Monday chose the mobile TV standard DVB-H over other versions of the technology, saying governments are now required to promote it as operators start to offer broadcasts to mobile phones.

DVB-H, or Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds, is the most widely used mobile TV format in Europe and is supported by handset makers Nokia, Motorola, Philips, Sagem, Sony, Ericsson, Samsung and operators Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile.

The European Commission said its decision ordering EU nations to privilege DVB-H over rival standards such as Qualcomm Inc.'s MediaFLO and DMB which is favored by Chinese and South Korean manufacturers was necessary to create economies of scale and get the technology off the ground.

"They can do that by labeling, they can do that by promoting it in attributing licenses and so on, radio frequencies decisions could be at issue," said EU spokesman Martin Selmayr.

The EU's executive is entitled to make decisions on some technical standards on behalf of national governments.

Selmayr said the European Commission believed it important to throw its weight behind DVB-H to end a possible war on standards that could hold back mobile broadcasting, claiming the market had already picked the format.

The EU also called on other countries to follow the EU in favoring DVB-H.

But the EU's endorsement of one technology over another is limited: EU nations can choose to avoid making decisions favoring the format and are under no obligation to eliminate other standards.

Ovum analyst Matthew Howett said the development and use of other technologies is still possible although EU backing for one standard creates "some certainty" for operators planning mobile broadcasting services and manufacturers making phones and chips.

He said some regulators were anxious to keep the field open, saying Germany last year cleared T-Mobile, O2 and Vodafone to create a joint platform for DVB-H mobile TV that could also use other standards "since the operators agreed that the devices must be able to receive transmissions from other mobile TV standards such as DMB."

Some EU nations including Britain were more skeptical about picking a format last December, refusing to back an EU-wide mandate for the new technology because it would be too early to intervene in the market by eliminating rivals and giving DVB-H a clear run.

The EU has taken the same tack before on new technology, pushing GSM (the Global System for Mobile communications) for mobile phones, which led Europeans to switch to cells much faster than people in the United States.

Mobile TV is still at an early stage in Europe and is up and running only in Italy, with launches planned for Finland, Austria, France, Switzerland and Spain. EU officials claim Europe will be left behind if regulators don't push one standard to help the technology take off.

The EU cited research forecasts of a steep increase in demand in 2009, with the worldwide market reaching 20 billion (US$31 billion) in sales by 2011.

In the U.S., Qualcomm's technology has signed up the two biggest players Verizon Wireless and AT&T with a combined customer base of roughly 120 million.