I'm surprised nobody so far has mentioned the Nokia 1100 (http://www.nokia.co.in/nokia/0,,53439,00.html) phone. It's really marvelously designed. This single phone model is driving telecom penetration in India. It costs about USD40, uses the same battery of other phones, but is dust proof and has a torchlight!
When i wanted a second phone other than my blackberry, I chose this one. Great design!
Utah Woman Deletes the Internet!
By Tom 7 (Dissociated Press)
REDMOND: Millions of frustrated calls rushed into internet service providers this past thursday as "The Information Superhighway" was reported Missing In Action for several days.
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) traced the problem to a home in Utah where Doris Packuko resides. She was allegedly found "hysterical and crying", police say.
"That much information flowing through the phone lines all at once generates a lot of heat," Doug Wernicke of the IETF told us, "We just followed the smell of burning fiber optics."
"Apparently, she just deleted The Internet right off her desktop. Even after being warned, 'are you sure you want to delete The Internet?', she persisted."
Experts claim that this is a major problem with The Information Superhighway, perhaps even worse than animal pornography. "The Internet is a great cooperative work, built by millions of people. It is so unfortunate that it can be ruined by just one person. Thank God we were able to save it," commented Packuko's neighbor.
The IETF was able to recover most of The Internet by opening up Packuko's Recycle Bin and dragging The Internet back onto the desktop. The rest was restored from the master backup copy kept on Zip Disk in the pentagon. Puckuko claims ignorance was the cause of her act. "I just didn't know. I was trying to clean up my desktop and I deleted it. I... I just didn't realize."
Microsoft Corporation reports that they are currently working on a bug fix.
The big breakthrough for Samsung will come when they are able to mass manufacture displays thin and flexible enough to be used as electronic paper (or digital ink). This will pose a great challenge to the conventional print publishing industry.
There may be argument and historic evidence in science and technology to show that projects that are succesful and then scaled up dont have good returns, and innovation and breakthrough come from small, tightly controlled projects. There could be innumerable examples to support this, notable of them being the Mars Explorer project, which forced NASA to be innovative given its relatively small budget.
For company security make sure that *all* sensitive date is centrally located which can only be accessed outside office premises using a VPN. Make use of web-apps rather than on client-side apps (like colalborative document management, central project management etc)
For malware, make sure that there are firm groupwide subscriptions to antivirus and spyware programs. Many of the good packages allow for mandatory updates, and they should be insisted upon in a corporate set up.
This is a great development. I hope we all realise that rollable paper has an enormous market today, perhaps even larger than the desktop/notebook market. For the first time, here's a medium in a form factor that is direct competetition to print newspapers, magazines and books.
People said the same thing when the internet came, but they underestimated the importance that we give to the flexibilty of paper - it can be rolled, folded, tucked in your suitcase, offer a large view etc. Now finally, we have a chance to get intelligent content that can be read in a true state of leisure...
Technology is a great way to shift learning towards problem solving, creativity and less on rote.
I'd say that the days of closed book tests are gone. It's open book tests, and part of the skill of the student is to learn to distill what is relevant from a dizzyinr choice of information sources
My mistake: "the cost of the handset in proportion to her montly cellular oullay is small..." should read "the cost of the handset in proportion to her montly cellular outlay is large.
If this pans out well, it's good news for India. For a simple reason: India's market size is very price sensitive and highly underleveraged. The Nokia 1110 - the 'MAde in India model' (http://www.nokia.co.in/nokia/0,,45346,00.html) sells for around USD 60 and has around 25% of the GSM market. Also, since Indian call rates are one of the lowest in the world, ARPUs (avg rev per user) is low, so to the average consumer, the cost of the handset in proportion to her montly cellular oullay is small...
It's being sold in India. I've met "vendors" who do the round of direct marketing agencies peddling CDs for information. The last I checked, about a year ago, a data CD came for 10c/record...
It's just a different way of grouping of decimal places. In India it's common to have them group two decimal places instead of three. Get a better description here: http://www.answers.com/topic/indian-numbering-syst em
Globalisation is however making indians, albeit reluctantly, shift to the million/billion system, but it'll take time...
I wonder if this can be called hacking, looks more like a combination of poor process and security management on the part of Citi (if it is indeed Citi).
Companies in the US should be wary of the extent of employee churn that happens in BPO firms in India. I'm in India, and I often get to hear of ex-employees stealing databases when they leave...
Cones, Curves, Shells, Towers: He Made Paper Jump to Life
By MARGARET WERTHEIM
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - On the mantel of a quiet suburban home here stands a curious object resembling a small set of organ pipes nestled into a neat, white case. At first glance it does not seem possible that such a complex, curving form could have been folded from a single sheet of paper, and yet it was.
The construction is one of an astonishing collection of paper objects folded by Dr. David Huffman, a former professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a pioneer in computational origami, an emerging field with an improbable name but surprisingly practical applications.
Dr. Huffman died in 1999, but on a recent afternoon his daughter Elise Huffman showed a visitor a sampling of her father's enigmatic models. In contrast to traditional origami, where all folds are straight, Dr. Huffman developed structures based around curved folds, many calling to mind seedpods and seashells. It is as if paper has been imbued with life.
In another innovative approach, Dr. Huffman explored structures composed of repeating three-dimensional units - chains of cubes and rhomboids, and complex tesselations of triangular, pentagonal and star-shaped blocks. From the outside, one model appears to be just a rolled-up sheet of paper, but looking down the tube reveals a miniature spiral staircase. All this has been achieved with no cuts or glue, the one classic origami rule that Dr. Huffman seemed inclined to obey.
Derived from the Japanese ori, to fold, and gami, paper, origami has come a long way from cute little birds and decorative boxes. Mathematicians and scientists like Dr. Huffman have begun mapping the laws that underlie folding, converting words and concepts into algebraic rules. Computational origami, also known as technical folding, or origami sekkei, draws on fields that include computational geometry, number theory, coding theory and linear algebra. This weekend, paper folders from around the nation will gather at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York for the annual convention of Origami USA. At an adjacent conference on origami and education, Dr. Robert Lang, a leading computational origamist, will give a talk on mathematics and its application to origami design, including such real-world problems as folding airbags and space-based telescopes.
Dr. Lang, a laser physicist in Alamo, Calif., who trained at the California Institute of Technology, gave up that career 18 months ago to become a full-time folder. "Some people are peculiarly susceptible to the charms of origami," he said, "and somewhere along the way the ranks of the infected were joined by mathematicians." Dr. Lang is the author of a recent book on technical folding, "Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical Methods for an Ancient Art."
Most computational origamists are driven by sheer curiosity and the aesthetic pleasure of these structures, but their work is also finding application in fields like astronomy and protein folding, and even automobile safety. These days when Dr. Lang is not inventing new models using a specialized origami software package he has developed, he acts as an origami consultant. He has helped a German manufacturer design folding patterns for airbags and advised astronomers on how to fold up a huge flat-screen lens for a telescope based in space.
Dr. Lang has been studying Dr. Huffman's models and research notes, and is amazed at what he has found. Although Dr. Huffman is a legend in the tiny world of origami sekkei, few people have seen his work. During his life he published only one paper on the subject. Dr. Huffman worked on his foldings from the early 1970's, and over the years, said Dr. Lang, "he anticipated a great deal of what other people have since rediscovered or are only now discovering. At least half of what he did is unlike anything I've seen."
One of Dr. Huffman's main interests was to calculate precisely what struct
As a PhD, I'd bet that every researcher is tempted to fake data. Or at least, has considered falsifying some data to get noticed, "What if i just chaged those data points.. etc"
The reason why it's foolish to do so is:
1. The premise of experimental oberved science is that it should be reproducible. At some point of time - and especially if your work gets noticed - someone, somewhere will duplicate your experimental coniditions and figure out that the results aren't there.
2. This is more of a personal thing, but the fun of research is really the process not the results. If you're in it for the fame alone, buddy, you're in the wrong job!
Slashdot Mirror
When i wanted a second phone other than my blackberry, I chose this one. Great design!
It's the same reason why mobile data services are so popular in Japan. i-mode hit japan a lot before the rest of the world understood 2G or 3G...
Utah Woman Deletes the Internet! By Tom 7 (Dissociated Press) REDMOND: Millions of frustrated calls rushed into internet service providers this past thursday as "The Information Superhighway" was reported Missing In Action for several days. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) traced the problem to a home in Utah where Doris Packuko resides. She was allegedly found "hysterical and crying", police say. "That much information flowing through the phone lines all at once generates a lot of heat," Doug Wernicke of the IETF told us, "We just followed the smell of burning fiber optics." "Apparently, she just deleted The Internet right off her desktop. Even after being warned, 'are you sure you want to delete The Internet?', she persisted." Experts claim that this is a major problem with The Information Superhighway, perhaps even worse than animal pornography. "The Internet is a great cooperative work, built by millions of people. It is so unfortunate that it can be ruined by just one person. Thank God we were able to save it," commented Packuko's neighbor. The IETF was able to recover most of The Internet by opening up Packuko's Recycle Bin and dragging The Internet back onto the desktop. The rest was restored from the master backup copy kept on Zip Disk in the pentagon. Puckuko claims ignorance was the cause of her act. "I just didn't know. I was trying to clean up my desktop and I deleted it. I ... I just didn't realize."
Microsoft Corporation reports that they are currently working on a bug fix.
More like the 2007 "capex corporate planning season" than the The 2006 "christmas shopping season"
This advancement looks more cosmetic though...
Cute, but i can't help thinking that if risk uses google just to get access to a world map, then it's such a waste of resource to use google maps...
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/
For malware, make sure that there are firm groupwide subscriptions to antivirus and spyware programs. Many of the good packages allow for mandatory updates, and they should be insisted upon in a corporate set up.
sorry, couldnt resist that one... ;)
People said the same thing when the internet came, but they underestimated the importance that we give to the flexibilty of paper - it can be rolled, folded, tucked in your suitcase, offer a large view etc. Now finally, we have a chance to get intelligent content that can be read in a true state of leisure...
I'm sorry to say this, but for world leaders, Americans might just have the poorest gastonimical sense on this planet...
Everything's not about science...
I'd say that the days of closed book tests are gone. It's open book tests, and part of the skill of the student is to learn to distill what is relevant from a dizzyinr choice of information sources
My mistake: "the cost of the handset in proportion to her montly cellular oullay is small..." should read "the cost of the handset in proportion to her montly cellular outlay is large.
If this pans out well, it's good news for India. For a simple reason: India's market size is very price sensitive and highly underleveraged. The Nokia 1110 - the 'MAde in India model' (http://www.nokia.co.in/nokia/0,,45346,00.html) sells for around USD 60 and has around 25% of the GSM market. Also, since Indian call rates are one of the lowest in the world, ARPUs (avg rev per user) is low, so to the average consumer, the cost of the handset in proportion to her montly cellular oullay is small...
It's being sold in India. I've met "vendors" who do the round of direct marketing agencies peddling CDs for information. The last I checked, about a year ago, a data CD came for 10c/record...
It's New York City, it's location based, and it's more than GPS...
It's just a different way of grouping of decimal places. In India it's common to have them group two decimal places instead of three. Get a better description here: http://www.answers.com/topic/indian-numbering-syst em
Globalisation is however making indians, albeit reluctantly, shift to the million/billion system, but it'll take time...
I completely agree. The news article is sensationalising a common theft into a hacking incident!
I wonder if this can be called hacking, looks more like a combination of poor process and security management on the part of Citi (if it is indeed Citi). Companies in the US should be wary of the extent of employee churn that happens in BPO firms in India. I'm in India, and I often get to hear of ex-employees stealing databases when they leave...
Don't think Prince would know about Unix time, right?
And that man is Richard Branson, the space cowboy...
Didnt anyone tell them, it's dangerous snitching on your neighbourhood drug dealer!
Am i just twisted, or does this also remind someone else of the Little Shop of Horrors?! http://www.littleshopofhorrors.com/
By MARGARET WERTHEIM
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - On the mantel of a quiet suburban home here stands a curious object resembling a small set of organ pipes nestled into a neat, white case. At first glance it does not seem possible that such a complex, curving form could have been folded from a single sheet of paper, and yet it was.
The construction is one of an astonishing collection of paper objects folded by Dr. David Huffman, a former professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a pioneer in computational origami, an emerging field with an improbable name but surprisingly practical applications.
Dr. Huffman died in 1999, but on a recent afternoon his daughter Elise Huffman showed a visitor a sampling of her father's enigmatic models. In contrast to traditional origami, where all folds are straight, Dr. Huffman developed structures based around curved folds, many calling to mind seedpods and seashells. It is as if paper has been imbued with life.
In another innovative approach, Dr. Huffman explored structures composed of repeating three-dimensional units - chains of cubes and rhomboids, and complex tesselations of triangular, pentagonal and star-shaped blocks. From the outside, one model appears to be just a rolled-up sheet of paper, but looking down the tube reveals a miniature spiral staircase. All this has been achieved with no cuts or glue, the one classic origami rule that Dr. Huffman seemed inclined to obey.
Derived from the Japanese ori, to fold, and gami, paper, origami has come a long way from cute little birds and decorative boxes. Mathematicians and scientists like Dr. Huffman have begun mapping the laws that underlie folding, converting words and concepts into algebraic rules. Computational origami, also known as technical folding, or origami sekkei, draws on fields that include computational geometry, number theory, coding theory and linear algebra. This weekend, paper folders from around the nation will gather at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York for the annual convention of Origami USA. At an adjacent conference on origami and education, Dr. Robert Lang, a leading computational origamist, will give a talk on mathematics and its application to origami design, including such real-world problems as folding airbags and space-based telescopes.
Dr. Lang, a laser physicist in Alamo, Calif., who trained at the California Institute of Technology, gave up that career 18 months ago to become a full-time folder. "Some people are peculiarly susceptible to the charms of origami," he said, "and somewhere along the way the ranks of the infected were joined by mathematicians." Dr. Lang is the author of a recent book on technical folding, "Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical Methods for an Ancient Art."
Most computational origamists are driven by sheer curiosity and the aesthetic pleasure of these structures, but their work is also finding application in fields like astronomy and protein folding, and even automobile safety. These days when Dr. Lang is not inventing new models using a specialized origami software package he has developed, he acts as an origami consultant. He has helped a German manufacturer design folding patterns for airbags and advised astronomers on how to fold up a huge flat-screen lens for a telescope based in space.
Dr. Lang has been studying Dr. Huffman's models and research notes, and is amazed at what he has found. Although Dr. Huffman is a legend in the tiny world of origami sekkei, few people have seen his work. During his life he published only one paper on the subject. Dr. Huffman worked on his foldings from the early 1970's, and over the years, said Dr. Lang, "he anticipated a great deal of what other people have since rediscovered or are only now discovering. At least half of what he did is unlike anything I've seen."
One of Dr. Huffman's main interests was to calculate precisely what struct
The reason why it's foolish to do so is:
1. The premise of experimental oberved science is that it should be reproducible. At some point of time - and especially if your work gets noticed - someone, somewhere will duplicate your experimental coniditions and figure out that the results aren't there.
2. This is more of a personal thing, but the fun of research is really the process not the results. If you're in it for the fame alone, buddy, you're in the wrong job!