Satyam Demands Apology From World Bank

Indian outsourcer Satyam Computer Services has demanded an apology from the World Bank for statements made after it barred Satyam from the bank's direct contracts for a period of eight years.

Describing statements by World Bank representatives to the media as inappropriate, Satyam demanded on Thursday that the bank withdraw the statements, issue an apology for the harm done to the company due to the bank's actions, and provide Satyam with a full explanation of the circumstances related to the statements.

"Satyam was declared ineligible for contracts for providing improper benefits to Bank staff and for failing to maintain documentation to support fees charged for its subcontractors," the World Bank said in a statement on Tuesday.

The statement from Satyam on Thursday does not question the company being barred from contracts, or ask for the revocation of the bar, but instead objects to statements made by bank representatives. It does not also address the charges under which the World Bank said it was making Satyam ineligible for future contracts.

A spokeswoman for Satyam declined to discuss the matter further.

Satyam usually does not comment publicly on matters involving customer relationships, the company said. However, the inaccuracy and inappropriateness of the World Bank's public statements regarding Satyam has forced it to issue a brief statement in order to set the record straight, it added.

The company, which is India's fourth largest outsourcer, has already come under criticism from investors and analysts, for its moves on Tuesday last week to diversify into the construction business. It rolled back the decision less than a day later after investors knocked down the price of the company's shares by about 55 percent in trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Satyam's share price was also down on Wednesday on Indian stock markets by about 15 percent after the World Bank statement.

While the World Bank's decision is a blow to Satyam it will not affect the credibility of other Indian outsourcers, as each outsourcing company is evaluated on its own merits, said an outsourcing analyst who requested anonymity.

From : PCWorld

Top Searches in 2008

What do Sarah Palin, Facebook and Euro 2008 have in common?

They are all on the list of the top ten fastest rising queries on Google during 2008.

The search engine has published its year-end Zeitgeist, the tool which reveals what internet users are searching for.

The most searched term for Google users in the UK was Facebook while the BBC came second and its iPlayer service was the fastest rising query.

The list also reveals what global preoccupations are and this year the US election candidates and the Beijing Olympics figure high.

The things people around the globe have in common are a strong interest in socialising and politics, according to Marissa Mayer, vice president of search at Google.

"Social networks compromised four out of the top ten global fastest-rising queries while the US election held everyone's interest around the globe," she wrote on Google's official blog.

FASTEST RISING GLOBAL QUERIES

Sarah Palin
Beijing 2008
Facebook login
Tuenti
Heath Ledger
Obama
Nasza Klasa
Wer Kennt Wen
Euro 2008
Jonas Brothers

Read the full article at : BBC News

Symbian to Open Source Track

The Symbian Foundation is on track to take over Symbian as an open-source operating system in 2010 and will put out its first distribution of software for developers in the first half of next year, its executive director said Thursday.

The foundation is the successor to the Symbian consortium that has administered the OS since 1998. It is being formed after Nokia agreed to buy the remaining part of Symbian, a deal that closed on Tuesday. The world's largest handset maker, which has been perceived as dominating Symbian since its creation, is releasing the platform as competition for developers grows among Google's Android, Apple's iPhone and other systems.

Nokia, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, LG Electronics, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, AT&T and other companies agreed in June to form the foundation. Six new members, including AOL, Fujitsu's Cell Telecom division, and Intrinsyc, were announced Thursday at the Symbian Partner Event in San Francisco. That brings total membership to 64, the group said.

The distribution of code coming in the first half of 2009 won't be entirely open source. It will be released to members of the foundation, under a new partner organization that eventually will supplant Symbian's current partner program, said Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation. It will include elements of Symbian and of Nokia's Symbian-based S60 platform. The group is already working on code for that distribution.

The open-source OS coming in 2010, will unite Symbian with S60 as well as two other platforms built on it: UIQ and NTT DoCoMo's MOAP (Mobile Oriented Applications Platform).

The foundation is now defining roles within its organization and starting to work on recruiting for those jobs, Williams said. By the end of April, there will be staffers answering calls and e-mail for developer support and other needs, he said.

Extratcted from : Yahoo Tech!

Parallel Lives...

The idea of having a virtual you following the real you around may seem rather strange - for those of us used to having our feet firmly on the ground.

But the creation of a virtual Berlin lets people be in two places at the same time - as 20km of the city has been faithfully replicated into an online world.

By the end of 2008, 50,000 buildings in the German capital are expected to have been copied into the virtual world.

"While Second Life and others worlds offer some stylised versions of cities - Twinity uses the 3D mapping data currently used for things like satnav and Google Earth," said Jochen Hummel, the chief executive of Metaversum - owner of Twinity.

"One by one each building is then made to look as it would in the real world," he said.

Twinity hopes to offer a space for "virtual tourism"

Twinity's Berlin, which it calls a "metaverse" has been created by taking pictures of the city and using them to build 3D facades.

Volunteer developers may soon be encouraged to add their own or adapt existing ones, like users updating and adding entries in Wikipedia.

Emphasis on realism

While many online worlds are put to frivolous uses, Metaversum sees Twinity as a step beyond gaming.

"It's a space for virtual tourism," said Mr von Hardenberg. "The realism of this platform could help you plan a trip here, or just help you get your bearings before you arrive."

So far the closest many come to wandering around the globe is through 3D-mapping applications such as Google Earth that provide a snapshot of places.

Twinity emphasises realism, but the mantra for the virtual world is "be nice".

Mr Hardenberg hopes the platform will gain an audience beyond the core male gamers and attract more women.

"It's a social environment for meeting people, visiting galleries, or online shopping. Users are encouraged to create avatars that look just like them so they'll be recognised and to use their real names," he said.

Twinity has one advantage over reality when it comes to transport because there are no cars and visitors simply teleport to key locations.

Extracted from the full article at : BBC News

Linux : Powering the Fastest Supercomputers

There are fast computers, and then there are Linux fast computers. Every six months, the Top 500 organization announces "its ranked list of general purpose systems that are in common use for high end applications." In other words, supercomputers. And, as has been the case for years now, the fastest of the fast are Linux computers.

As Jay Lyman, an analyst at The 451 Group points out, Linux is only growing stronger in supercomputing. "When considered as the primary OS or part of a mixed-OS supersystem, Linux is now present in 469 of the supercomputer sites, 93.8% of the Top500 list. This represents about 10 more sites than in November 2007, when Linux had presence in 91.8% of the systems. In fact, Linux is the only operating system that managed gains in the November 2008 list. A year ago, Linux was the OS for 84.6% of the top supercomputers. In November 2008, the open source OS was used in 87.8% of the systems. Compare this to Unix, which dropped from 6% to 4.6%, mixed-OS use which dropped from 7.2% to 6.2% and other operating systems, including BSD, Mac OS X and Windows, which were all down this year from the November 2007 list."

Microsoft is proud that a system running Windows HPC Server 2008 took 10th place... behind nine supercomputers running Linux. Even then, this was really more of a stunt than a demonstration that the HPC Server system is ready to compete with the big boys.

Read full article at : PCWorld

Fedora 10 Released !

The Red Hat-sponsored Fedora Project on Tuesday released Fedora 10, the latest version of the free Linux-based operating system, with a wide range of improvements in areas such as virtualization management, networking, boot time and security.

The release also bundles in OpenOffice 3.0, the most recent edition of the open-source productivity suite.

The new virtualization features include the ability to manage virtual hosts and storage remotely, which should appeal to network administrators with fragmented teams. "These features combine to make administration of remote hosts much easier, even in cases where direct physical access is limited or non-existent," the Fedora Team said in a recent blog post on Red Hat's Web site.

Users can now also share their Internet connection with others, and Fedora 10 can also start up faster, thanks to a new graphical boot system dubbed Plymouth.

Security improvements include the addition of SecTool, an auditing and detection kit.

Red Hat has also enhanced PackageKit, a software installation and updating system that debuted in Fedora 9.

"In Fedora 10, PackageKit now detects when the user opens an audio or video media file, and offers to search for codecs used to play that file," the Fedora Team said in a blog post. "With the user's authorization, it searches all the software repositories configured on the Fedora 10 system, installs what is needed, and the media begins to play." Down the road, this capability will be extended to areas like fonts and applications.

In addition, Fedora 10 has a revamped audio system that uses less power; support for "a vast array" of Webcams; improved printing capabilities; and "support for more hardware than any other operating system."

From : Yahoo! Tech News

Brain-like Computers

IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains.

Part of a field called "cognitive computing", the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists.

As a first step in its research the project has been granted $4.9m (£3.27m) from US defence agency Darpa.

The resulting technology could be used for large-scale data analysis, decision making or even image recognition.

"The mind has an amazing ability to integrate ambiguous information across the senses, and it can effortlessly create the categories of time, space, object, and interrelationship from the sensory data," says Dharmendra Modha, the IBM scientist who is heading the collaboration.

"There are no computers that can even remotely approach the remarkable feats the mind performs," he said.

"The key idea of cognitive computing is to engineer mind-like intelligent machines by reverse engineering the structure, dynamics, function and behaviour of the brain."

From : BBC News

Microsoft to Offer Free Anti-Virus Solutions

In a surprise move, Microsoft has announced it will offer a free anti-virus and security solution from the second half of next year.

It will stop selling OneCare, its all-in-one security and PC management service, from the end of June 2009.

The new software, code-named Morro, will be a no-frills program suited to smaller and less powerful computers.

The software will be free to download and will support Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

From : BBC News

Ubuntu on Mobiles

Mobile phone chip designer ARM has announced an
alliance with the makers of the Ubuntu open source software.

The deal will produce a version of the operating system for small net-browsing computers known as netbooks.

It marks a departure for ARM, which before now has been best known for designing the chips inside smartphones and feature phones.

The new operating system for ARM-powered machines looks set to be available in April 2009.

Extracted from: BBC News

Exclusive on TroopTube

TroopTube is the new online video site designed to help military families connect and keep in touch while miles apart. The site is designed for easy use, so you can quickly upload videos and share the simple joys of each day with each other, either privately or with the whole world.

Visit TroopTube at : http://www.trooptube.tv/

Obama and Social Networks

Like a lot of Web innovators, the Obama campaign did not invent anything completely new. Instead, by bolting together social networking applications under the banner of a movement, they created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then John McCain and the Republicans. ...

Source : The New York Times

Do you know Reflection?

Find a good article at developer.com with Java examples. Enjoy reflection!

Hiring in IT industry slows down 40-50 percent

Indian IT Industry is witnessing a fall down in the rate of recruitment, a key indicator of the industry's growth. It is estimated that hiring on an overall basis is down by 40 to 50 percent compared to last year. Hiring across companies, especially the small and mid-sized, has entered into a lull with momentum certainly being downcast, reported The Economic Times.

Recruitment has taken a nasty blow during the last three months. Given the high dependence of the Indian IT industry on the U.S. economy, companies are increasingly taking a cautious route towards hiring. ........

Source : http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/40256

Adobe Flex - Create engaging, cross-platform rich Internet applications

Flex is a highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems.

Source : http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/