E@zyVG’s Vichar::World Connected

All we hear round the clock is how motion picture industry keeps on complaining about the piracy hurting their revenues. Now look at the latest figures from Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA):

The confusing part is the link in the “Latest News” section of MPAA that claims an all-time high in domestic and global box office sales. The global market grew 4.9% to $26.6 billion, claims the MPAA, and the U.S. domestic market grew roughly 5.4%, passing the $9.6 billion mark.

It is surprising to see the MPAA claim that the motion picture industry is taking a beating from piracy when their own data shows that the market is producing better than before. This is not to say, however, that piracy doesn’t have an effect on the film industry.

So please stop complaining as you yourself just proved that even though the film industry is taking some large hits from piracy, the industry is still raking in quite a sum of cash. And btw, with getting rid of DRM agenda I am quite sure that there is even more money to be made.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that India’s largest automaker Tata cannot be stopped. On the verge of finalizing a deal to acquire Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford, Tata is now rumored to be interested in buying a stake in one of the most beloved performance marques of all time: Ferrari. Tata said Luca di Montezemolo, chairman of Fiat and Ferrari, has invited Tata to Italy, to explore the design and luxury sector opportunities.

Tata is no stranger to diversifying his portfolio, already in talks with Ford to buy its Jaguar and Ford divisions, due for an official announcement any time now. He also sits on Fiat’s board and has an alliance with Fiat in India, according to Italy’s Finanza e Mercati daily.

Is this a rumour or not, time will tell. BTW, TATA’s IT company known as TCS is already an IT supplier to Ferrati Formula 1 team. Could it be that in next 50 years the Ferrari F1 will be an Indian team?

Intel Corp. unveiled its first central processing units designed for Internet-oriented small form-factor mobile computers. The new Intel Atom processors are likely to show Intel a way into handheld devices, a market that has been relatively untapped by the world’s largest maker of chips.

“This is our smallest processor built with the world’s smallest transistors. This small wonder is a fundamental new shift in design, small yet powerful enough to enable a big Internet experience on these new devices. We believe it will unleash new innovation across the industry,” said Intel executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer Sean Maloney.

Intel Atom processors, which were previously code-named Diamondville and Silverthorne, are based on Intel Core 2 micro-architecture, but are tailored for mobile operation and manufacturing cost-efficiency: e.g., they do not feature large caches and do not sport certain peculiarities.

These new chips will be manufactured on Intel’s 45nm process technology and will contain about 47 million of transistors. The chips have a thermal design power (TDP) specification in 0.6-2.5W range and scale to 1.8GHz speeds depending on customer need. By comparison, today’ mainstream mobile Core 2 Duo processors have a TDP in the 35W range and run at speeds of about 3.30GHz.

Typical Atom based computers will be ultra-portable notebooks or tabled PCs with small 7-10 inch displays. Devices will ship with either hard disks or solid-state drives that use flash memory and offer battery life ranging from three to five hours. The majority of models are most likely to come equipped with wired network controller or WiFi, and then later with WiMAX. Some will be really sleek and thin, some will be a bit more ruggedized. The manufacturers will provide their solutions with Linux or Windows XP operating system and the Atom based devices will be primarily positioned for internet-surfing and typical office work. The cost of  Atom notebooks will range from $250 to $300, which should appeal not only to small to midsize businesses with small IT staffs and more limited budgets, but also to emerging markets and consumers.

With personal computing increasingly going mobile and the computer industry rapidly developing new classes of products to connect the next billion people to the Internet, the Intel Atom processor offers customers the unique ability to innovate around the new low-power design. In addition to the mobile Internet device (MID) opportunity, Intel believes the demand for a new category of low-cost, Internet-centric mobile computing devices dubbed “netbooks” and basic Internet-centric desktop PCs dubbed “nettops”, will grow substantially over the next several years. The Intel Atom processor is perfectly suited to meet these new market segments.

By 2015 Intel expects to have CPUs with many smaller IA cores, each with very low power characteristics but with the entire chip being very high performance. Intel commissioned its Austin design team to work on one of the cores for this type of many-core CPU.

Anand Chandrasekher, Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group Senior Vice President presents the ATOM processor

Intel is effectively promising that in the coming years its Atom processor will enable you to, without sacrificing battery life, have significantly faster mobile devices and phones. We can’t help but be excited about that.

The team has made good progress compared to last year and both of the team’s drivers are happy with the current pace of the FW30.

Less than 3 weeks left for 2008 Championship to begin and with all the latest test results from past months, I am very happy to notice that Williams FW30 is making steady progress, with over-all excellent reliability and performance from the latest car … after all it is my favourite team, even though we have an Indian team in F1 now.

My guess, with this pace of development, and staying on par with the competition in the future, I’d love to see Williams Team back again in Top 3 for 2008 championship, though Williams remains cautious about making predictions for the upcoming season in light of some consistently impressive performances in winter testing. I like the attitude of Head: “We are never happy… it was okay. It is never acceptable, but it is the right direction. It is a faster car, but not fast enough yet.” Of course I understand that despite the apparent improvement in speed compared to last year’s car, there is still some way to go before the gap between themselves and F1’s front-runners is negated.

Williams F1 2008 FW30 Technical specifications:

Chassis construction: Monocoque construction fabricated from carbon aramid epoxy and honeycomb composite structure, surpassing FIA impact and strength requirements
Front suspension: Carbon fibre double wishbone arrangement, with composite toelink and pushrod activated torsion springs
Rear suspension: Double wishbone and pushrod activated torsion springs and rockers
Transmission: WilliamsF1 seven speed seamless sequential semi-automatic shift plus reverse gear in a aluminium maincase, gear selection electro-hydraulically actuated
Clutch: AP Carbon plate
Dampers: WilliamsF1
Wheels: RAYS forged magnesium
Tyres: Bridgestone Potenza, F 350mm wide, R 375mm wide
Brake system: 6 piston AP calipers all round, Carbon Industrie carbon discs and pads
Steering: WilliamsF1 power assisted rack and pinion
Fuel system: ATL Kevlar-reinforced rubber bladder
Electronic systems:MES
Fuel: Fuel by Petrobras
Cooling system: Marston oil, water, and gearbox radiators
Cockpit: Driver six point safety harness with 75mm shoulder straps & HANS system, removable anatomically formed carbon fibre seat covered in Alcantara. Safety Devices extinguisher systems

Motive Power: Toyota 2.4L V8, 900 V angle, pneumatic valve train. Fuel management and ignition systems by Toyota spark plugs by ND. Engine materials include block and pistons in aluminium, crankshaft in steel billet, connecting rods in titanium

Dimensions & weight
Weight: 605kg with driver, camera and ballast
Wheelbase: 3100mm
Overall length: 4500mm
Overall height: 950mm

With Nico Rosberg and the promising new boy Kazuki Nakajima I am quite sure that Williams will do this year much better than it did in last 2 years and will pave even stronger future for years to come … Williams is more about Sports.

UPDATE: Here is a pic of latest and final livery for FW30

The Indian rupee (Hindi: रुपया) is the currency of India. The issuance of the currency is controlled by the Reserve Bank of India. The most commonly used symbols for the rupee are Rs, ₨ and रू. The ISO 4217 code for the Indian rupee is INR. The modern rupee is subdivided into 100 paise (singular paisa). India has been one of the earliest issuers of coins in the world (circa 6th Century BC). Among the earliest issues of paper rupees were those by the Bank of Hindustan (1770-1832), the General Bank of Bengal and Bihar (1773-75, established by Warren Hastings), the Bengal Bank (1784-91), amongst others.

The current series, which began in 1996, is called the Mahatma Gandhi series. Currency notes are printed at the Currency Note Press, Nashik, Bank Note Press, Dewas, Bharatiya Note Mudra Nigam (P) Limited presses at Salboni and Mysore and at the Watermark Paper Manufacturing Mill, Hoshangabad.

These notes are truly work of art:

Modern Indian Rupee Notes

Each banknote has its amount written in 17 languages (English & Hindi on the front, and 15 others on the back) illustrating the diversity of the country

Secutiry Features of INR:

• Watermark — White side panel of notes has Mahatma Gandhi watermark.
• Security thread — All notes have a silver security band with inscriptions visible when held against light.
• Latent image — Higher denominational notes display note’s denominational value in numerals when held horizontally at eye level.
• Microlettering — Numeral denominational value is visible under magnifying glass between security thread and watermark.
• Fluorescence — Number panels glow under ultra-violet light.
• Optically variable ink — Notes of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 have their numerals printed in optically variable ink. Number appears green when note is held flat but changes to blue when viewed at angle.
• Back-to-back registration — Floral design printed on front and back of note coincides when viewed against light.

Here are pictures of older Rupee issued by respective colonial rulers:

British Indian Rupee (1917)

Portuguese Indian Rupee (1924)

French Indian Rupee (1938)

BTW, did you know that the Indian rupee is also accepted in towns of Nepalese side of Nepal-India border and some Indian shops in the United Kingdom.

As of today, the economy of India, when measured in USD exchange-rate terms, is the twelfth largest in the world, with a GDP of US $1.25 trillion (2008). It is the third largest in terms of purchasing power parity. India is the second fastest growing major economy in the world, with a GDP growth rate of 9.4% for the fiscal year 2006–2007. However, India’s huge population results in a per capita income of $4,542 at PPP and $1,089 at nominal (revised 2007 estimate).

In the period 2000-2007, the Rupee stopped declining and stabilized ranging between 1 USD = INR 44-48. However in the mid-2007, the rupee has started gaining strength and for the first time in more than a decade broke the 1 USD = INR 40 barrier. As of today for 1USD you get around INR 38.5.

Tip, especailly for those who will in future deal with INR (business or travel): As is standard in Indian English, large values of Indian rupees are counted in terms of thousands, lakh (100 thousand = 10⁵ rupees, in digits 1,00,000), crore (100 lakhs = 10⁷ rupees, in digits 1,00,00,000) and arawb (100 crore = 10⁹ rupees, in digits 1,00,00,00,000). The use of million or billion, as is standard in American or British English, is far less common.

For a Indian audience/readership, the correct grouping would be:
INR 2,31,51,423.10 ( Two Crore Thirty-One Lakh Fifty-One Thousand Four Hundred Twenty-Three rupees and ten paisa).
For US/Europe and most of the world audience/readership, the correct grouping would be:
INR 23,151,423.10 ( Twenty-Three Million, One-Hundred-Fifty-One Thousand, Four Hundred Fifty-Three rupees and ten paisa).

In 2007, a Currency bill tracking project (TrackGandhi) was started to track the spread and usage of Rupee banknotes. There you go with a small introduction to Indian Rupee. Also, it is my B’Day today ….

Related posts on my blog:

• India’s GDP Touches $1 Trillion Mark
• India and its Role in Future World Economy

As I am an avid user of Windows Mobile Pro version, having the HTC Artemis “P3300″, I keep my eyes on what is going on with this mobile platform. Though Windows Mobile 6.1 will be unveiled officially in about 2 weeks at Mobile World Congress 2008 but already people are running it, including myself.

Here are the highlights of WM 6.1:

• Office Mobile now includes also One Note Mobile application - apart from Word Mobile, Excel Mobile and PowerPoint Mobile, one new application is available - it can record voice notes and drawings and textual notes
• Internet Explorer now has function “Zoom Out” what enables page-overview mode and better overall navigation through web pages
• Windows Mobile 6.1 still is based on Windows CE 5.2 so no upgrade to Windows CE 6.0
• SMS chat view mode is available so SMS messages can appear in threaded-way - more comfortable to follow SMS conversations
• instead of “Settings / Memory / Running Programs” now a Task Manager is available with possibility to set settings of executed threads/processes like CPU (indication of dual-core Windows Mobile devices?) and memory
• new menu item “Managed Programs”

As anticipated, the much expected improvements in usage for finger based navigation are nowhere to be found, meaning users will need to wait till 2009 for Windows Mobile 7 to get them. Small improvements are definitely there. I’d recommend to flash your device to latest 6.1. If you are one of the owners of HTC Artemis and want to run Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro version check out the following forum thread. Check out xda-developers site to see if there is one available for your HTC device.

Are we going to see another Indian Formual 1 team soon … that is the question. With the ambitious Indian company offering to underwrite Aguri’s $66 million dollar debt, much to the delight of Honda, it’s now just a matter of time before a second F1 team comes home. Quite amusingly, if the deal works out Spice would end up shelling out $66 million plus one full dollar as token amount.

“Telecommunications giant the Spice Group is behind an Indian bid to take a stake in troubled Super Aguri, SPEEDtv.com can reveal. The company, whose name is derived from the phrase “Synchronized Performance Through Innovation in Communications and Entertainment,” is already involved in India’s A1GP entry. It is anxious to bring Narain Karthikeyan back to F1, in place of Anthony Davidson.”

“ However, matters are complicated further by the fact that Force India is believed to have a legal agreement with Super Aguri which relates to any changes in the shareholding of the latter.“

The Hindu Newspaper has the following to say:

With the Spice Group eyeing a stake in Super Aguri F1 team, drivers Karun Chandhok and Armaan Ebrahim are enthused by the prospect of having a second Indian outfit on the ‘Formula One’ grid.

The country already made its presence felt on the F1 circuit after Vijay Mallya, along with the Mol family, bought Spyker and re-named it ‘Force India’.

Now if Spice Group’s negotiation with the cash-strapped Super Aguri falls in place, it would be a double delight for motor sport enthusiasts in the country.

Karun, a test-driver with Red Bull F1 team, is excited by the prospect, especially with the Spice Group insisting on having Narain Karthikeyan as their driver.

“It would be fantastic for motor sports in India. Though it’s little premature to talk anything before the deal is actually inked, it’s thrilling to imagine that out of the 11 F1 teams, two would be Indian,” he told PTI here Thursday.

Karun himself is in Force India’s radar and the Chennai driver is optimistic about his transition to F1 after a consistent GP2 series this year.

“With they (Spice) insisting on Narain, it would be great to see at least one Indian driver, if not two, on the F1 grid next year,” said the driver.

Fellow driver, Armaan, too could not hide his glee with another Indian team likely to join Force India on the F1 circuit.

“It would definitely be a huge boost for all of us. The more Indian teams, the better,” he said.

During the course of the day, however, it looked like the deal might run into rough waters as Honda’s F1 chief executive suddenly didn’t sound too enthused about getting Narain Karthikyean as part of the package. I’d really not like to see Anthony Davidson kicked off from the team, even if it will be Indian. In my opinion, Anthony has much more experience and has to offer much more to the team than Karthikeyan. Second, if not being 100% Indian owned team, a joint Indian-Japanese team also sounds very interesting.

In 2010 Indian motor sports fans will be in for a treat closer to home. That is when the country with the second largest population in the world will host its first Formula One Grand Prix. India has a great fan following for this sport and F1 is set to provide yet another boost to the economy. As an example, the small country of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf region made a small investment of $150 million in the sport three years ago. Today, it is reaping huge returns.

You have a blog. You compose a new post. You click Publish and lean back to admire your work.

The current edition of Wired has an article which Frank Rose and Mtathew Hurst wrote describing what happens to a blog post once you hit the ‘publish’ button. The article has now made it to the web in the form of a snappy flash graphic which allows you to move around the diagram to focus on the details.

If you don’t want to flash scroll from the original article, here is a full-size 2748 x 1300 image of the same.

This has got to be the absolute best of “tech” videos I have ever seen. It was not only amazing but enough to get the juices flowing to want to get one ASAP!!

What is it all about? It is a video of a 3D head tracking system that Johnny Lee put together using a Wii system and trust me, it is SO amazingly cool!

Using the infrared camera in the Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs), you can accurately track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. This effectively transforms your display into a portal to a virtual environment. The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space.

Check out his site for more information and software, as well as several other Wii based projects he is on: johnnylee.net