If 2005 is disappearing too fast for you, just hold on for a second, because this year you have an extra second to pause and reflect on the year before the ball drops and the calendar flips New Year's Eve.

Yep, it's a leap second moment, one of those rare occasions when clocks around the world take a stutter step in order to conform with the Earth's wobbly, gradually slowing spin.

But don't count on having many extra moments in the future, because there's a movement in the telecommunications field to do away with leap seconds as early as 2007.

In a 24/7 world, leap seconds that adjust the timekeeping of atomic clocks to the time based on the rising and setting of the sun are viewed by many technocrats as a nuisance.

Atomic time, based on the radiation frequency of the cesium-133 atom, has been around since the 1950s. Timekeeping based on the Earth's rotation goes back thousands of years.

The trouble is, atomic clocks are so accurate that they can go for 3 million years without losing a second. Earth's rotation, it turns out, is somewhat less reliable.

When international agreement was reached on Co-coordinated Universal Time in 1972, scientists figured that regular leap seconds would need to be added every 18 months to keep the two systems in sync.

Instead, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service in Frankfurt, Germany, has had to request only 22 leap seconds, coming on either June 30 or Dec. 31, since 1972. Scientists expect the slowing of the rotation will increase over thousands of years, requiring even more frequent corrections to atomic time.

This is all too random for software programmers and others in electronics industries where a 61-second minute doesn't compute.

The U.S. government two years ago proposed that leap seconds be abolished.

Labels: News

Pope Benedict XVI in Rome has made a plea for peace in the Middle East, as he celebrated his first Christmas Eve mass since becoming pontiff.

He spoke to thousands of people packed into St Peter's Basilica and watching on screens in the square outside. The mass was broadcast live to 46 nations.

Calling on Roman Catholics to think of those in Bethlehem, he said: "We wish to pray for peace in the Holy Land."

At noon on Sunday he will deliver his Christmas message to the world.

The BBC's David Willey says the Pope made an impassioned plea for peace in his homily on Christmas Eve.

The Pope appears very conscious that this glittering ceremony is viewed by millions of people all over the world, our correspondent says.

'Let it know peace'

In his homily, the pontiff stressed the traditional meaning of Christmas.

He went on: "On this night, when we look towards Bethlehem, let us pray in a special way for the birthplace of our redeemer and for the men and women who live and suffer there.

"We wish to pray for peace in the Holy Land. Look O Lord, upon this corner of the earth, your homeland, which is so very dear to you. Let your light shine upon it! Let it know peace!"

St Peter's Square was dominated by a 30m (100ft) decorated fir tree and a larger than normal Nativity scene - the latter designed to show people more clearly the lowliness of Jesus' birth, a cardinal said.

Earlier the Pope appeared at the study window of his Vatican apartment, overlooking the square, and lit a candle for world peace.

He will return to give the traditional Christmas message, Urbi et Orbi, to the pilgrims, tourists and the world's estimated 1.1 billion Catholics on Sunday.

The pontiff is scheduled to lead an evening service on New Year's Eve and celebrate mass the next day in St Peter's Basilica to mark the Catholic Church's World Peace Day.

Labels: News

It's Christmas time and Bill and Joe decided to go look for a Christmas Tree. They gathered their axe, a sled, and a broom to brush the trees off so they can get a good look at them. When they finally reach a fine stand of trees, Joe brushes off the first tree, and stands back with Bill to look at it.

"Well, Bill, What do you think?"

"Sorry, Joe, this tree won't do. Let's try another one."

They come upon another nice tree, Joe brushes it off, and they both look at it.

"How about this one, Bill?"

"Not quite, Joe. Let's keep looking". This goes on until nightfall. Both Bill and Joe are cold, tired, and hungry. "Well, Bill, what do we do now?"

"Joe, I think we should take home the next tree we find, whether it has lights on it or not..."

Labels: News

SAN FRANCISCO: US holiday shoppers spent $25 billion online through the week ending December 16, with electronics and apparel representing the biggest categories, according to a survey of 1,000 adults released on Thursday.

The Goldman, Sachs & Co., Nielsen/NetRatings and Harris Interactive's Holiday eSpending Report found that computers and consumer electronics accounted for $3.75 billion and $3.67 billion, respectively, or a combined 28 percent of online spending.

Online spenders shied away from toys and video games, however, with only $1.91 billion, or 7 percent of spending, going toward the category.

Sales of video games, in particular, have been sluggish as customers held off buying game titles until new video game consoles become available.

"The lines are really blurring between toys and gadgets," Nielsen/NetRatings retail analyst Heather Dougherty said in a phone interview.

"There wasn't really a hot toy this year," Dougherty said. "A lot of kids are asking for gadgets. If there is a hot toy this year, it is something like an iPod or a Sidekick."

Apple Computer Inc. makes the iPod music and video player. Closely held Danger Inc. makes the Sidekick e-mail and phone device that is a hit with teenagers.

These estimates are based on a national weekly survey of 1,013 adults through Dec. 16, the seventh and biggest sales week for the holiday shopping season starting Nov. 1. A final survey of online shopping in the week ahead of Christmas will be released next week.

CLOTHING SALES PICK UP

U.S. consumers also appear to have overcome their previous aversion to buying clothing online and had spent $4.68 billion by mid-December.

"Apparel sales are mirroring the spending habits of consumers in the offline world more and more," Dougherty said.

"Most consumers know what sizes they wear. They no longer need to have the tactile experience that once made consumers cautious about buying apparel online," she said.

Name-brand sites such as Gap and Eddie Bauer and online department stores like Macy's appear to be benefiting from rising demand.

ELECTRONICS ON THE CHEAP

While the electronics category was hot, it also weathered steep price discounting, which could crimp profitability.

"Electronics demand was driven by a lot of aggressive pricing," Dougherty said. "There's a lot of low-cost laptops and PCs available, which are attracting consumers who want to upgrade their computers in order to better use digital cameras," she said.

The survey asked consumers which search or shopping site they used to locate online stores over the week ending Dec. 16.

Almost half of holiday shoppers, or 45.2 percent, said they went directly to an online retailer by typing its Web address.

Other popular means of finding online stores were using search sites such as Google, which drew 40.5 percent, or twice the number of Yahoo, with 20.9 percent. Users seeking multiple stores mentioned Amazon 25.1 percent of the time and eBay was the shopping path for 23.4 percent of Web users surveyed.

Labels: News

Unilever has turned to IBM for a seven-year outsourcing contract aimed at transforming its financial transaction services in Europe.

The move will affect around 750 Unilever employees across 20 countries. A Unilever representative said that employees were told about upcoming changes a week ago and that over the next two years of implementation, steps will be taken to try to prevent layoffs.

The value of the contract has not been disclosed but was referred to as a "multimillion-euro" deal in one e-mail from the companies.

IBM Business Consulting Services will use sites in India, Poland and Portugal to handle Unilever's purchase-to-pay, general accounting and bill-to-cash functions.

IBM is one of Unilever's key technology partners. Others include BT Group, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.

"We looked at the market and the obvious alternatives, but selected IBM as the single provider," a representative of the consumer goods giant told Silicon.com.

Labels: Technology

BANGALORE: Pratibha's murder raises personal safety issues
Many BPO companies do not have safety checks in place for employees on night shift, despite Factories (Amendment) Act stipulation.

The brutal murder of 24-year-old Pratibha Srikanth Murthy, who worked at the HP GlobalSoft call center here, has exposed the vulnerability and lack of personal safety of BPO employees who work night shifts.

Ironically, Pratibha was murdered in the same year in which the central government amended the Factories Act to enable women work night shifts in special economic zones, textiles and IT sector (especially call centers).

Additionally, the BPO industry, fearing a backlash from its customers abroad, has been beefing up security this year following instances of data theft by its employees.

The Amendment to the Factories Act, which allows women to work between 10 pm and 6 am, in IT among other sectors, clearly states that the employer should ensure the safety of women at workplace and while commuting.

“These timings shall be allowed only if the employer ensures safety of women at the workplace and while commuting,” it said.

Shiv Kumar, the taxi driver, had duped Pratibha into boarding his car. He then took her to an isolated place and murdered her after sexually assaulting her around 2am on December 13.

HP later clarified in a statement that the accused was not one of its authorized drivers. The company has since spruced up the security.

Police Blames HP

However, according to Alok Kumar, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Bangalore - South, HP had lapsed in providing adequate security to the victim. The company did not provide escort services. The DCP added that the company failed to act even after its regular driver informed it that another driver had picked up Pratibha from her home.

The boom in the IT and BPO industry in Bangalore and other cities has led to a spike in the crime rate in the last couple of years. Instances of robbery and assault on IT and BPO employees returning home late at night have been reported.

The lack of a good public transport system, albeit the fact that many work late, make IT workers to depend on their own transport, taxis or autos to ferry them across various destinations in the city. According to IT industry estimates, Bangalore has over one lakh BPO workers. A prominent English daily today reported quoting police sources that around 2000 vehicles were hired by various BPO firms to ferry its employees.

BPO and call center workers who work night shifts to cater to customers in North America and Europe were often said to be working in adverse conditions.

Earlier, responding to a report, which likened to their conditions to those in “Roman slave ships” and “19th century prisons”, NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik said, “Stress and night shifts are a part of the job. Moreover, IT workers are not prone to dangers like other night workers such as engine drivers.”

Reality Bites

However, his optimism is far from reality. When CyberMedia News spoke to some call center employees of top companies, what emerged was the shocking lack of concern for women employees working on the night shift.

An ex-employee of Accenture who spoke on condition of anonymity said that there were no proper checks in place to ensure the smooth transport of women employees.

“We are at the mercy of the cab drivers who sometimes pick us up late,” she said.

She also added that women who did not opt to work night shifts did not stand much of a chance for promotion in spite of their efficient performance.

There were even cases of drivers misbehaving with women employees. Another girl, who works with a prominent call center pointed towards instances of rash and drunken driving.

Incidentally, the Bangalore police have booked 277 cases of rash and negligent driving against cabbies on Friday night alone. Police have beefed up vigil following Pratibha's murder.

Security Measures

Meanwhile, police authorities said that BPO companies have not acknowledged some of the suggestions on safety of women working on the night shift.

Susant Mahapatra, Inspector General of Police-Economic Offences, Government of Karnataka, said, “ In fact, we had requested the BPO companies to avoid women working on the night shift.

If it is inevitable, we said that they should provide a separate lounge in the office for women, who can spend the night there and then go to their homes in the morning.”

Other suggestions made by the police include the presence of a night guard in the vehicle, remixing the groups, and ensuring that at least seven to eight people travel together in a vehicle.

Mahapatra also opined that safety measures were not mentioned in the IT Act. “We urge the industry forums like NASSCOM to give a proposal to the government to amend the IT Act to include security.”

MK Shankarlinge Gowda, IT secretary of Karnataka, said that he had advised BPO companies to get police help in verifying the backgrounds of its direct and indirect (canteen workers, drivers) employees and also hire BMTC buses to ferry employees on the night shift.

“Some companies in ITPL are already doing this. We are advising the BPO companies to make use of BMTC's Volvo buses for the night shift,” he stated.

NASSCOM chief Karnik, who expressed shock over the crime, said that measures would be taken to ensure the safety of women employees.

"We would like to create further such best practices or anything else we can do to make sure our people are safe and secure in general, " he told reporters.


HP beefs up security for employees

The company has set up a hotline and will now verify the credentials of all drivers

HP today put in place new safety measures for its staff following the gruesome murder of one of its employees by a taxi driver.

The company currently provides a monthly roster to each employee on his or her car numbers and driver's mobile numbers. “The procedure followed is for the car driver to give the employees a missed call. Only then do the employees board the car. The cars have HP stickers and the cab driver has an identity card,” informed HP in a press statement.

Now, the company has adopted some more measures such as ensuring that the first pick up and the last drop will be a male HP employee. Should there be no male HP employee in the car, there will be a security guard from the security company accompanying the woman employee.

The company has also enlisted the help of Bangalore Traffic Commissioner, MN Reddy to arrange for the background checks of all drivers and supervisors. From now on, drivers would be hired only after checking their backgrounds.

In addition, a special hotline number has been set up for replacement cabs, which will be manned by HP employees 24x7. Women employees will now only board a replacement cab once they receive a call from this hotline number.

According to HP, “Any deviation to this can be reported by an employee to an anonymous website and their identity shall be protected. Phone numbers of three senior HP managers have been provided to all employees.”


NEW DELHI: Last Monday, the Nasscom-McKinsey report proudly announced that the Indian ITES sector had ballooned from $4 billion in 2000 to about $17 billion in 2005. Happy figures, but the rape and murder of Pratibha Srikanth Murthy by a cab driver in Bangalore has sent shivers down spines across the nation.

The gruesome episode has conclusively highlighted the risks that young employees face across the country, and triggered loud protests about the lack of security in Bangalore.

On any given night, thousands of cars are careening on the streets of Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chandigarh, ferrying men and women, some barely out of college, to and from these temples of modern India. Of course, the women, who comprise some 40% of all BPO employees, are at greater risk, as Pratibha’s gruesome murder showed.

Trade unions have been concerned about women doing night shifts in BPOs. As CITU president M K Pandhe wrote recently, "Despite having a large number of women workers, ITES companies haven’t paid much attention to their safety."

And safety is an issue with many women BPO employees. Neha Mehta, a Gurgaon-based BPO employee, says: "Although the office ensures the same driver picks me up every day, there have been instances when he’s drunk. Sometimes, the other three travellers were men. After the Pratibha incident, I feel unsafe."

Shruti Khanna of another Delhi-based BPO says, "Occasionally, there are three girls and only one man in the cab. This can be unnerving late in the night."

The situation is much the same in other cities. Bina Irani of Pune says, ‘‘Every day, a different driver drops me home. Often I’m alone and I have to remain alert. In fact, once, I was very uncomfortable because the driver kept looking in the rear-view mirror.’’

BANGALORE NOT YET RECOVERED : 'Hang the Rapist', 'He deserves the most severe punishment' were the cries that rent the air as employees of various call centres organised a protest to condemn the gruesome rape and murder of 24-year-old Hewlett Packard BPO employee Prathibha Srikanth Murthy on Saturday.

Waking up to a shock after reading about the incident, some call centre employees took out a protest march demanding safety for women
colleagues.

Not many BPO executives turned up for the protest, though most of them did not know about it till 2 pm on Saturday as they return home late in the night and sleep through till 1 or 2 pm.

''But it's just a beginning. Soon we will come out in thousands and protest till the rapist and murderer is hanged,” said Santosh K J, an employee who works with Siemens BPO.

ISEVA employee Shridhar felt the police and BPOs were equally responsible for the security of employees. ''The police should be patrolling lonely stretches during night. Besides, cab drivers should be scanned by the security department of the organisation to check identity," he said.

Ocwein Financial employee Nawaz Moinuddin, who is a colleague of the victim's husband Pavan, said, ''In the past seven months of my service, I have had four cab drivers. Since we do not know Kannada, we have a tough time communicating with them."

There are some who feel it is the employees themselves who have to be responsible for female colleagues. Vanguard Securities employee Pradeep Kumar, whose shift gets over at 1 am, said since it is impossible for the police to be everywhere, employees should cooperate among themselves. "There are five female colleagues with us in the night shift. We make sure the cab drops them home first. Though we get late by 20 minutes, this is the least we can do for our colleagues."

SECURITY GUARDS IN : Working the graveyard shift is second nature for the nearly 3.5 lakh BPO employees in India. In the comfort of numbers, none can ever imagine what happened to Pratibha could happen to them. ''It's best to be alert while travelling at night with strangers. Often, people sleep on the way back home. That's dangerous,” says Vrushali Gangal, a Wipro employee from Mumbai.

BPO companies naturally insist their security is fool-proof. They say they ensure single women are not the first and last to be picked up or dropped. "We have 50 cabs ferrying 300 employees everyday. But the antecedents of vendors are verified,” says Rajesh Magow, CEO, Technovate.

Some insist if only one woman employee has to be picked up, a security guard is sent. "We also choose only those vendors who have a proven track record in the business,” says Deepak Malik, senior VP, Infovision, a Delhi-based BPO.



But the reality is that just as these companies handle outsourced business, they outsource much of their logistics, including transport. ''We don't have control on screening drivers because we outsource transport,” says Sri Myneni, president, Knoah Solutions, a Hyderabad-based BPO. In February 2005, a Pune-based BPO employee had acid flung on her face because she ticked off her love-lorn cab driver. The accused, Kailash Adagale, had been professing his love to her for a long time.

Fresh attempts are again being made to rouse authorities. The Call Centre Association of India had an emergency on Saturday. ''We have decided to come out with a set of guidelines on security aspects for the industry. It will clearly state the do's and don'ts and help them make the system more stringent,” said Sam Chopra, its President.

Companies in places like Bangalore and Pune are gearing up too. "We'll call our female employees next week and ask them to immediately inform the administration if they have the slightest suspicion about any driver or male colleague," said Pradeep Phadke, senior VP, GTL.

Male employees will also be asked to help. Some are also thinking of keeping security guards in the cab.

Labels: News

The masterminds behind the Kazaa file-sharing software could face time behind bars after the record industry initiated contempt of court proceedings, claiming an earlier ruling wasn't adhered to.

Record companies allege that Sharman Networks, the owner of Kazaa, didn't comply with a Federal Court order--described by the court as order No. 4--to modify the software to ensure 3,000 keywords would be filtered by Dec. 5.

However, Sharman disagreed since it managed to block Australian users from downloading Kazaa by identifying their Internet Protocol address.

"Contempt proceedings are fairly rare in this court and I've never yet sent anyone to jail," Justice Murray Wilcox said Thursday in the Federal Court in Sydney. "I've threatened to a few times, but there's always a first I suppose."

The motion includes Sharman Networks Chief Executive Nikki Hemming, Altnet Chief Executive Kevin Bermeister, and associated companies Sharman Networks, LEF Interactive, Altnet and Brilliant Digital Entertainment.

Wilcox will hear the record industry's motion for contempt of court on Jan. 30.

"If there has been a breach (of the court order), that's contempt of court," Wilcox said. "On the other hand, if (order) four has been complied with, that's the end of the contempt charge. This motion is going to raise the matter of whether there is compliance or not."

Counsel for the record industry, Tony Bannon, said his side "didn't want" an imprisonment outcome, but argued that Sharman had failed to comply with the order.


"What they have done or attempted to do was to prevent downloads of the Kazaa software to Australian IP (internet protocol) users," Bannon said, claiming this had been "ineffective."

"They've continued to supply unfiltering versions of the software to many users, the copyright infringements continue ... they continue to supply advertising ... we say that's a clear breach of order four" on authorization," Bannon said.

The order "involved the continued making available of the software in Australia to anyone that wanted it," Ireland said. "That has ended."

Although he scheduled the motion for hearing, Wilcox again showed signs of frustration with the prolonged nature of the case, and blamed participants on both sides.

"I would cheerfully have nothing more to do with this case. I don't wake up in the morning and think 'I'd like a bit more Kazaa today," he said, citing learning about the technology as "quite time consuming."

In September, after an 18-month battle, the Court ruled that Sharman and associated parties had authorized users of Kazaa to breach copyright.

Labels: Technology

World Network Speed Record Shattered for Third Consecutive Year
Peak throughput of 151 Gbps and recorded an official mark of 131.6 Gbps

An international team of scientists and engineers for the third consecutive year has smashed the network speed record, moving data along at an average rate of 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) for several hours at a time. A rate of 100 Gbps is sufficient for transmitting five feature-length DVD movies on the Internet from one location to another in a single second.

The winning "High-Energy Physics" team is made up of physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers led by the California Institute of Technology, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Fermilab, CERN, and the University of Michigan and partners at the University of Florida, Vanderbilt, and the Brookhaven National Lab, as well as international participants from the UK (University of Manchester and UKLight), Brazil (Rio de Janeiro State University, UERJ, and the State Universities of São Paulo, USP and UNESP), Korea (Kyungpook National University, KISTI) and Japan (the KEK Laboratory in Tsukuba), who joined forces to set a new world record for data transfer, capturing first prize at the Supercomputing 2005 (SC|05) Bandwidth Challenge (BWC).

The HEP team's demonstration of "Distributed TeraByte Particle Physics Data Sample Analysis" achieved a peak throughput of 151 Gbps and an official mark of 131.6 Gbps measured by the BWC judges on 17 of the 22 optical fiber links used by the team, beating their previous mark for peak throughput of 101 Gbps by 50 percent. In addition to the impressive transfer rate for DVD movies, the new record data transfer speed is also equivalent to serving 10,000 MPEG2 HDTV movies simultaneously in real time, or transmitting all of the printed content of the Library of Congress in 10 minutes.

The team sustained average data rates above the 100 Gbps level for several hours for the first time, and transferred a total of 475 terabytes of physics data among the team's sites throughout the U.S. and overseas within 24 hours. The extraordinary data transport rates were made possible in part through the use of the FAST TCP protocol developed by Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Steven Low and his Caltech Netlab team, as well as new data transport applications developed at SLAC and Fermilab and an optimized Linux kernel developed at Michigan.

Professor of Physics Harvey Newman of Caltech, head of the HEP team and US CMS Collaboration Board Chair, who originated the LHC Data Grid Hierarchy concept, said, "This demonstration allowed us to preview the globally distributed Grid system of more than 100 laboratory and university-based computing facilities that is now being developed in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe in preparation for the next generation of high-energy physics experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that will begin operation in 2007.

"We used a realistic mixture of streams, including the organized transfer of multiterabyte datasets among the laboratory centers at CERN, Fermilab, SLAC, and KEK, plus numerous other flows of physics data to and from university-based centers represented by Caltech, Michigan, Florida, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in Brazil, and Korea, to effectively use the remainder of the network capacity.

"The analysis of this data will allow physicists at CERN to search for the Higgs particles thought to be responsible for mass in the universe, supersymmetry, and other fundamentally new phenomena bearing on the nature of matter and space-time, in an energy range made accessible by the LHC for the first time."

The largest physics collaborations at the LHC, CMS and ATLAS each encompass more than 2,000 physicists and engineers from 160 universities and laboratories. In order to fully exploit the potential for scientific discoveries, the many petabytes of data produced by the experiments will be processed, distributed, and analyzed using a global Grid. The key to discovery is the analysis phase, where individual physicists and small groups repeatedly access, and sometimes extract and transport terabyte-scale data samples on demand, in order to optimally select the rare "signals" of new physics from potentially overwhelming "backgrounds" of already-understood particle interactions. This data will amount to many tens of petabytes in the early years of LHC operation, rising to the exabyte range within the coming decade.

Matt Crawford, head of the Fermilab network team at SC|05 said, "The realism of this year's demonstration represents a major step in our ability to show that the unprecedented systems required to support the next round of high-energy physics discoveries are indeed practical. Our data sources in the bandwidth challenge were some of our mainstream production storage systems and file servers, which are now helping to drive the searches for new physics at the high-energy frontier at Fermilab's Tevatron, as well the explorations of the far reaches of the universe by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey."

Les Cottrell, leader of the SLAC team and assistant director of scientific computing and computing services, said, "Some of the pleasant surprises at this year's challenge were the advances in throughput we achieved using real applications to transport physics data, including bbcp and xrootd developed at SLAC. The performance of bbcp used together with Caltech's FAST protocol and an optimized Linux kernel developed at Michigan, as well as our xrootd system, were particularly striking. We were able to match the performance of the artificial data transfer tools we used to reach the peak rates in past years."

Future optical networks incorporating multiple 10 Gbps links are the foundation of the Grid system that will drive the scientific discoveries. A "hybrid" network integrating both traditional switching and routing of packets and dynamically constructed optical paths to support the largest data flows is a central part of the near-term future vision that the scientific community has adopted to meet the challenges of data-intensive science in many fields. By demonstrating that many 10 Gbps wavelengths can be used efficiently over continental and transoceanic distances (often in both directions simultaneously), the high-energy physics team showed that this vision of a worldwide dynamic Grid supporting many terabyte and larger data transactions is practical.

Shawn McKee, associate research scientist in the University of Michigan Department of Physics and leader of the UltraLight Network technical group, said, "This achievement is an impressive example of what a focused network effort can accomplish. It is an important step towards the goal of delivering a highly capable end-to-end network-aware system and architecture that meet the needs of next-generation e-science."

The team hopes this new demonstration will encourage scientists and engineers in many sectors of society to develop and plan to deploy a new generation of revolutionary Internet applications. Multigigabit end-to-end network performance will empower scientists to form "virtual organizations" on a planetary scale, sharing their collective computing and data resources in a flexible way. In particular, this is vital for projects on the frontiers of science and engineering in "data intensive" fields such as particle physics, astronomy, bioinformatics, global climate modeling, geosciences, fusion, and neutron science.

The new bandwidth record was achieved through extensive use of the SCInet network infrastructure at SC|05. The team used 15 10 Gbps links to Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Series Switches at the Caltech Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR) booth, and seven 10 Gbps links to a Catalyst 6500 Series Switch at the SLAC/Fermilab booth, together with computing clusters provided by Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, and IBM, and a large number of 10 gigabit Ethernet server interfaces-more than 80 provided by Neterion, and 14 by Chelsio.

The external network connections to Los Angeles, Sunnyvale, the Starlight facility in Chicago, and Florida included the Cisco Research, Internet2/HOPI, UltraScience Net and ESnet wavelengths carried by National Lambda Rail (NLR); Internet2's Abilene backbone; the three wavelengths of TeraGrid; an ESnet link provided by Qwest; the Pacific Wave link; and Canada's CANARIE network. International connections included the US LHCNet links (provisioned by Global Crossing and Colt) between Chicago, New York, and CERN, the CHEPREO/WHREN link (provisioned by LANautilus) between Miami and Sao Paulo, the UKLight link, the Gloriad link to Korea, and the JGN2 link to Japan.

Regional connections included six 10 Gbps wavelengths provided with the help of CIENA to Fermilab; two 10 Gbps wavelengths to the Caltech campus provided by Cisco Systems' research waves across NLR and California's CENIC network; two 10 Gbps wavelengths to SLAC provided by ESnet and UltraScienceNet; three wavelengths between Starlight and the University of Michigan over Michigan Lambda Rail (MiLR); and wavelengths to Jacksonville and Miami across Florida Lambda Rail (FLR). During the test, several of the network links were shown to operate at full capacity for sustained periods.

While the SC|05 demonstration required a major effort by the teams involved and their sponsors, in partnership with major research and education network organizations in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Pacific Asia, it is expected that networking on this scale in support of the largest science projects (such as the LHC) will be commonplace within the next three to five years. The demonstration also appeared to stress the network and server systems used, so the team is continuing its test program to put the technologies and methods used at SC|05 into production use, with the goal of attaining the necessary level of reliability in time for the start of the LHC research program.

As part of the SC|05 demonstrations, a distributed analysis of simulated LHC physics data was done using the Grid-enabled Analysis Environment (GAE) developed at Caltech for the LHC and many other major particle physics experiments, as part of the Particle Physics Data Grid (PPDG), GriPhyN/iVDGL, Open Science Grid, and DISUN projects. This involved transferring data to CERN, Florida, Fermilab, Caltech, and Brazil for processing by clusters of computers, and finally aggregating the results back to the show floor to create a dynamic visual display of quantities of interest to the physicists. In another part of the demonstration, file servers at the SLAC/FNAL booth and in Manchester also were used for disk-to-disk transfers between Seattle and the UK.

The team used Caltech's MonALISA (MONitoring Agents using a Large Integrated Services Architecture) system to monitor and display the real-time data for all the network links used in the demonstration. It simultaneously monitored more than 14,000 grid nodes in 200 computing clusters. MonALISA (http://monalisa.caltech.edu) is a highly scalable set of autonomous self-describing agent-based subsystems that are able to collaborate and cooperate in performing a wide range of monitoring tasks for networks and Grid systems, as well as the scientific applications themselves.

The network has been deployed through exceptional support by Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard, Neterion, Chelsio, Sun Microsystems, IBM, and Boston Ltd., as well as the network engineering staffs of National LambdaRail, Internet2's Abilene Network, ESnet, TeraGrid, CENIC, MiLR, FLR, Pacific Wave, AMPATH, RNP and ANSP/FAPESP in Brazil, KISTI in Korea, UKLight in the UK, JGN2 in Japan, and the Starlight international peering point in Chicago.

The demonstration and the developments leading up to it were made possible through the strong support of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Science Foundation, in cooperation with the funding agencies of the international partners.

Labels: Technology

TOKYO -- Toshiba Corporation today announced a breakthrough in lithium-ion batteries that makes long recharge times a thing of the past. The company's new battery can recharge 80% of a battery's energy capacity in only one minute, approximately 60 times faster than the typical lithium-ion batteries in wide use today, and combines this fast recharge time with performance-boosting improvements in energy density.

The new battery fuses Toshiba's latest advances in nano-material technology for the electric devices sector with cumulative know-how in manufacturing lithium-ion battery cells. A breakthrough technology applied to the negative electrode uses new nano-particles to prevent organic liquid electrolytes from reducing during battery recharging. The nano-particles quickly absorb and store vast amount of lithium ions, without causing any deterioration in the electrode.

The excellent recharging characteristics of new battery are not its only performance advantages. The battery has a long life cycle, losing only 1% of capacity after 1,000 cycles of discharging and recharging, and can operate at very low temperatures. At minus 40 degrees centigrade, the battery can discharge 80% of its capacity, against 100% in an ambient temperature of 25 degree centigrade).

Toshiba will bring the new rechargeable battery to commercial products in 2006. Initial applications will be in the automotive and industrial sectors, where the slim, small-sized battery will deliver large amounts of energy while requiring only a minute to recharge. For example, the battery's advantages in size, weight and safety highly suit it for a role as an alternative power source for hybrid electric vehicles.

Toshiba expects that the high energy density and excellent recharge performance of the new battery will assure its successful application as a new energy solution in many areas of society.

Labels: Mobile, Technology

A UK developer has come up with a "self-destruct" text messaging service it hopes will prove a hit with both businessmen dealing with sensitive information and celebrity love cheats. StealthText from Staellium UK is positioned as a means to give a sender control over text messages they send instead of relying on a recipient to delete it, something Rebecca Loos conspicuously failed to do with messages from David Beckham, resulting in much embarrassment for the metrosexual football icon last year.

StealthText deletes SMS messages 40 seconds after they are read, a technology Staellium compares to the destruction of instructions played by agents in the Mission Impossible TV series and movies. Users of the service need to have a WAP-enabled mobile phone though only those sending texts need to download a StealthText applet. Message bundles cost £5 for 10 secure messages and the service is only available to users of UK SIM cards. Users can sign-up by texting STEALTH to 80880.

Once a message has been sent, the recipient receives a text notification showing the sender’s name and providing a link to the message. Once opened, the message will disappear after around 40 seconds.

To comply with legal requirements, even after a message is deleted from the recipient's phone, the 'paper trail' and log stays on a secure server. To prevent abuse, the recipient has no access to the server. Recipients can reply with StealthTexts (after signing up to the service themselves), creating a private channel of two-way communication.

Carole Barnum, chief exec and co-founder of Staellium UK comments, "The ability to send a self-destruct message has massive benefits for people from all walks of life, from everyday mobile users, through to celebrities and business people, but this is just the start. In spring 2006 we will be launching new services such as self-destruct email, voice and picture messages, so ultimately no one will ever have to worry about their messages or pictures ending up in the wrong hands ever again."

Staellium UK plans to make its StealthText service available across Europe, in the US and Asia early next year.

Labels: Mobile, Technology

Adobe Systems has announced the completion of its acquisition of Macromedia.

The combination of Adobe and Macromedia creates a large and diversified software company and brings together some of the industry's strongest software brands and most ubiquitous technologies for creating, managing and delivering compelling content and experiences across multiple operating systems, devices and media.


The move also accelerates Adobe's strategic initiative to advance a powerful software platform, based on PDF and Macromedia Flash technologies, that scales from mobile devices to high-end servers.

"The explosion of digital content, combined with the accelerating proliferation of mobile phones, wireless devices and the growth of broadband are transforming the way the world engages with information," said Bruce Chizen, chief executive officer of Adobe. "Adobe and Macromedia are at the center of this trend, and together we will build on our combined heritage to redefine the way people and businesses communicate."

This week the company will begin executing the planned integration of the two companies' operations, networks and customer care organizations to ensure a smooth transition and value for customers. As part of the initial integration of product portfolios, Adobe today announced three new product bundles that combine the design and publishing power of Adobe Creative Suite 2 and Adobe video tools with the interactive strength of just-released Macromedia Flash Professional 8 and Macromedia Studio 8 software.

Management of the combined company includes executives and board members from both organizations. Bruce Chizen continues as chief executive officer and Shantanu Narayen remains as president and chief operating officer and Macromedia's Stephen Elop has joined Adobe as president of worldwide field operations.

Labels: Technology

NEW DELHI: India's offshore IT and BPO industries are on track to achieve $60 billion in export revenue by 2010, according to the NASSCOM-McKinsey Report 2005.

NASSCOM-McKinsey report says India's offshore IT, BPO industry are on track for a significant growth, but it requires more graduates Export growth can further be accelerated through innovation and such extensive innovation could generate an additional $15-20 billion in revenues over the next five-ten years.

The offshore IT and BPO industries are expected to grow at a CAGR of 28 percent over the next five years, with IT growing at 25 percent CAGR and BPO at 37 percent.

The report states that India's offshore IT and BPO industries have tapped only 10 percent of the total addressable market for global offshoring, which is above $300 billion. Hence, a lot of potential for growth still exists.

The report also said that significant growth will come from emerging service lines and sectors.

Offshore IT and BPO industries can spur India's economic future and according to McKinsey & Company partner Noshir Kaka, it can contribute to seven percent of India's GDP by 2010.

He added, “The offshore IT and BPO industries can account for over 44 percent of export growth over the next five years and the growth in the industries is expected to create 2.3 million direct jobs and over 6.5 million indirect jobs by 2010.”

McKinsey & Company partner Jayant Sinha said, “India has 28 percent of the world's labor pool of knowledge workers. To achieve the goal of $60 billion revenue by 2010, an additional 5,00,000 suitable graduates beyond projected supply are needed in the next five years.”

To achieve this end, the report suggested the government to set up focused-education-zones to improve quality of higher education, pilot “industry-owned” and government facilitated integrated skill development and certification program for BPO and decentralize higher education in stages and shift to a largely demand-based funding system.

For India's offshore IT and BPO industries to grow at the projected rate, massive urban infrastructure build-outs are imperative. The report suggests that 10-12 integrated towns should be developed with associated urban infrastructure including international airports, roads and land development.

For the trade development, government should accelerate efforts to ensure free trade in services through Mode 4 negotiations at the WTO and through trade agreements with select countries.

The report also suggests four winning approaches that are likely to emerge for companies. The first is global champions, whose revenues are likely to exceed $10 billion and would offer multiple service lines and integrated solutions. These would focus on global 500 companies and would employ around 100,000 people.

The IT Specialist, with global revenues likely to exceed $2 billion and would focus on three-four industry specific application or horizontal application. Delivery centers may span in India and one or two other low-cost locations.

The third winning approach likely to emerge would be ADM (Applications Development & Maintenance) factory, which will probably employ over 50,000 developers in India and China and generate revenue in excess of $2-3 billion. This would be one of the top three global low-cost providers of ADM services through a 'lean' operating environment.

The fourth approach is that of a Specialist BPO. Three types of specialized BPO providers appear possible under this. These include platform-based service providers, process automation and process reengineering companies and vertical contractors.

According to the report, these four winning approaches will emerge over the next three to five years requiring companies to make deliberate choice about their business approach.

Labels: News

NEW YORK: Sun Microsystems, Inc. today made several game changing announcements, including the early arrival of its revolutionary new 9.6 GHz-based systems, led by the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers with CoolThreads technology.

The company also announced its intent to open source the company's massively threaded processor technology to further lower the barriers to innovation and application development.

As part of this global product roll-out, taking place over the next two weeks in more than 25 countries, Sun will showcase support for its new server line and UltraSPARC T1 microprocessor from a wide range of global technology leaders including Oracle, Symantec and BEA.

Labels: Technology

In relaxed yet sporty clothes, shy grin plastered across his face, under the glare of numerous television-camera spotlights, Sachin Tendulkar was calm and collected, but you could sense the excitement and sheer joy as he answered a volley of questions after reaching his 35th Test hundred. "Landmarks happen. You just go and bat because you want to bat well and get runs for your team. If you chase landmarks then it becomes a problem," said Tendulkar. "The wait was more for the people than for me. After the Bangladesh hundred we have played only four Test matches. It was not that it was 25 Tests and everyone had run out of patience."

More emotional than most people have ever seen him on a cricket field, Tendulkar reacted with a long look up to the heavens when he reached the hundred, and admitted it was different from what he had felt before. "That was for my father. I miss my father very much. I'm sure he would have enjoyed every moment of this if he were here. There have been very few moments in my life when I have got emotional. But this time I felt very different."

Soon after, though, Tendulkar raised his bat a second time. "It was for the team. This was a special occasion for me. They appreciated it so I acknowledged them. Everyone came downstairs [from the dressing-room] to congratulate me. I didn't say anything, I was finding it difficult to talk. I was feeling shy."

From his first Test century in Manchester, way back in 1990, it has been a long journey. "The first century I made when we had to save a Test match. This one was played in a very different situation," said Tendulkar. "It was a very emotional one for me. It is difficult to say whether the first one is important or the last one is important but if I didn't get the ones in the middle I wouldn't have got to this stage." Some batsmen insist that picking a favourite out of centuries is like choosing between your children, but Tendulkar was able to put his finger on his best. "Every century is important. But the hundred against Australia at Perth in 1992 was probably my best.

"This was a very important hundred for me, four-and-a-half months after elbow surgery. Mentally it [the break because of injury] was very tough on me but physically I could cope. I got frustrated and impatient, so getting out of it was not a singular effort - my family, physio, trainer ... they all helped."

There was a time in the day when it seemed unlikely that Tendulkar would reach his century before stumps were drawn. But a sudden spurt of runs, spurred on by three consecutive boundaries off Muttiah Muralitharan, ensured that he got the monkey off his back. But getting it over with was never on his mind. "No I did not think of that. But when they changed the ball, the new one was harder," he said. "I could hit it easier because it came onto the bat well." Yet he did admit that he had, in his mind's eye, lived out this moment already. "One visualises before every Test the moment of getting a hundred. Similarly I did last night. It is part of my pre-match preparation."

On the eve of the match there was plenty of advice for Tendulkar. What did the coach have to say to him? "All we were discussing was not thinking about No. 35 - that it was just another innings, just another century. Coincidentally I got the same advice from my wife. It's to listen to words like these. It helps."

And even though he was the man of the moment, Tendulkar still had time to remember an approaching milestone for another giant in Indian cricket. "It [This ground] was always remembered for Anil Kumble's ten wickets, now there are two reasons to remember it. We hope there will be similar reason to remember the Ahmedabad Test, where Anil is playing his 100th match."

With No. 35 out of the way, the question of where to next popped up, and Tendulkar's reply was spontaneous. "Back to the hotel!" On a more serious note, when asked what could be expected of him, Tendulkar said, "I can't say what heights I am going to achieve. But what you can expect from me, what is in my hands, is 100% commitment and sincerity and playing for the cause of the team."

In all the adulation, Tendulkar has somehow managed to remain remarkably humble. On the day when he broke Gavaskar's 22-year-old record, he said, referring to the little man with the title Mr, "Heroes will always be heroes. Mr. Gavaskar will always be a hero of mine. I would say to him, `Thank you for the support you have given us. Not only me but other batsmen as well. It really helps to have senior cricketers who can speak to you about your game.' I have often gone to him for advice and he has set such benchmarks and standards for us that you needed to have a disciplined and dedicated life to get to a landmark like this."

And in that moment there was a hint of how Tendulkar had managed to stay on the straight an narrow path through 20,000-plus international runs, virtually every batting record in the book, the adulation of millions, multi-crore sponsorship deals ... Because at the end of it all, when he goes out to bat, Tendulkar is still just that curly-haired little boy who loves to bat.

Labels: Sports

In 1939, David Packard and William Hewlett launched Hewlett-Packard out of a 12-by-18-foot garage on a leafy street in Palo Alto, Calif. The spot is considered by some as the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

In 2000, HP bought the Palo Alto lot, house, garage and shed for a reported $1.7 million. On Dec. 6, the tech company celebrated the completion of its effort to restore the buildings to their appearance in 1939.

This photo shows how deconstruction of the house stood on Feb. 22.

Labels: Technology

Symantec by year's end plans to ship Symantec Critical System Protection 5.0, a new version of its enterprise intrusion prevention software for servers and clients. The updated product adds Symantec's current Host IDS product to the Critical System Protection software, Chirantan Desai, director of product management at Symantec, said Friday.

Symantec introduced Critical System Protection in June as version 4.5. The product stems from the company's acquisition of IDS vendor Platform Logic a year ago. Critical System Protection competes with products including Cisco Systems' Cisco Security Agent and McAfee's Entercept. The updated Symantec product will cost $995 per agent on a server and $69 per desktop, volume discounts are offered, Symantec said.

Labels: Technology

Bill Gates showcases SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006

Friday, December 09, 2005

BANGALORE: Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates today launched 'Code 4 Bill', a nationwide talent hunt to identify India's best student technologists.

The contest will provide 20 students with an opportunity to intern with the software major at its India office. The best among the participants would get to join Gates' Technical Assistants' team for a year.

The contest is for pre-final and final year students pursuing various technical streams across India. The registration for the contest will commence next month.

According to Microsoft, India is the first country where students "get this opportunity to learn cutting edge product development and innovations that are powering the world by working directly with Microsoft's Product Development and Research teams".

Referring to India's technical prowess, Gates said: "Talent is what powers the success of the global IT economy today. Indian students are setting high standards in the industry. Its very important for India to maintain this edge, and continue to nurture and develop students so they can drive India's progress as an IT leader".

The company said that the contest will comprise various stages and spread over the next eight months. It will test technical and analytical skills through different challenges, including in-depth face-to-face interviews with technical teams.

At the event, "Bill Gates Live in Bangalore - Ready 2005" at the Palace grounds, Gates showcased the company's new generation of application platform SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006; the first two were launched worldwide last month.

"Businesses today rely on Information Technology to make them more competitive. Our goal is to empower our customers with products that help connect people to processes and information on a trusted platform -- faster than ever before", he said.

Labels: Technology

MUMBAI: The best-selling book that management guru C K Prahalad authored was about the 'Bottom of the Pyramid', but he himself is in a much more exalted position.

As far as leading global management thinkers go, CKP, as he is popularly known, is in the top league-and so are three other leading India-born, US-based management experts.

Apart from Prahalad, Vijay Govindarajan, Ram Charan and Rakesh Khurana have made it to the 'Thinkers 50' rankings released in London on Thursday by Suntop Media in association with the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD).

The Thinkers 50 ranking is a prestigious biannual online survey, based on the votes of 1,200 businesspersons, consultants, academics, MBA students and visitors to the project's website.

The candidates are judged on parameters such as originality of ideas, their practical application, rigour of research, the impact of their ideas, global outlook and loyalty of followers.

In this year's ranking, Prahalad is up nine places from no. 12 to no. 3, after strategy guru Michael Porter and Microsoft founder Bill Gates (no. 20 last year).

"Once regarded as the business equivalent of a James Bond villain, Gates' elevation to the number 2 slot suggests that he has successfully reinvented himself through a judicious combination of vacating the Microsoft hot seat and philanthropic giving," noted Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer, the management writers who have been compiling the rankings since 2001.


They added, "Also benefiting from a generosity of spirit is another strategy guru, Professor C K Prahalad of the University of Michigan who challenges conventional thinking about the world's poor, rising an impressive nine places to number 3."

While the previous ranking in 2003 had only two Indians-Sumantra Ghoshal (no. 11) and Prahalad (no. 12)-this year's ranking has four.

Besides Prahalad, the other three have made it to the list for the first time (Ghoshal died in 2004). These include CEO coach and business advisor Ram Charan (no. 24), Tuck Business School professor Vijay Govindarajan (no. 30) and Harvard Business School professor Rakesh Khurana (no. 33), who Dearlove and Crainer describe as a "rising star".

While acknowledging the presence of so many Indians in the list, the duo said, "(The rankings) would also have included London Business School's Sumantra Ghoshal, who tragically died in 2004." They go on to add, "As yet, no Chinese guru has emerged."


Peter F Drucker, the father of modern management, who died a few weeks ago, had topped the bi-annual rankings since 2001. Despite the fact that Porter's "progress is no flash in the pan", Drucker's influence hasn't waned at all.

"Had we published the results just two weeks ago, the answer would have been different. Peter Drucker would almost certainly have topped the ranking for the third time in a row," said Dearlove and Crainer. As for Porter, "in the new economy meltdown, Porter on strategy is suddenly fashionable again".

There are only four women on the list. INSEAD's Renee Mauborgne (co-author of the bestseller 'Blue Ocean Strategy') is the highest placed at No 15, a position she shares with her colleague and co-author W Chan Kim.

Labels: News