Sony Ericsson to be Sony Soon!!

Ya! that's in news i.e. the Sony Ericsson is gonna be Sony in some days as Sony has planned to Ericsson's share in the company.

Sony today announced that it will buyout Ericsson’s 50 percent stakes for USD 1.47 billion in Sony Ericsson to completely hold the the control of mobile handset manufacturing unit.

Sony Ericsson will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony and company has plans integrate it’s handsets/smartphones into Sony’s broad range of consumer electronics products including PCs, Laptops, TVs and Tablets.

Based out of Tokyo and Stockholm respectively, Sony and Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson announced the deal in a press release to end a partnership that was tabled back in 2001.

“Ten years ago when we formed the joint venture, thereby combining Sony’s consumer products knowledge with Ericsson’s telecommunication technology expertise, it was a perfect match to drive the development of feature phones.Today we take an equally logical step as Sony acquires our stake in Sony Ericsson and makes it a part of its broad range of consumer devices. We will now enhance our focus on enabling connectivity for all devices, using our R&D and industry leading patent portfolio to realize a truly connected world.”

Ericsson President Hans Vestberg said in a release,

Sony Ericsson, the sixth largest mobile phone maker, has lately struggled to retain it’s market share in a competitive and innovative handset industry. Sony intended to take the lead in the partnership to compete with the rivals in getting back the user share.

Unlike Sony, Ericsson is more tending towards wireless network and infrastructure business and hence Sony made this a case to buy back all the shares in Sony Ericsson.

Sony Ericsson is headquartered in London and had 7,500 employees as of December 2010. Company has R&D sites in Beijing, Lund, Silicon Valley and Tokyo. Company has 11 percent market share in Android and 80 percent of it’s sales are Android based smartphones.

Mukesh Ambani plans to roll out 4G data services, low cost tablets in 2012

Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries plans to offer high-speed data services on attractively priced tablets by early next year and scale it up to a countrywide network by the middle of 2012.

The company, which made a comeback to telecom last year, plans to offer fourth-generation or 4G-enabled data cards that can be plugged into computers and laptops, apart from providing tablets at a game-changing price of 3,000 or even lower to hook customers, two executives familiar with the development said.

RIL has also initiated talks with media and entertainment companies, including Walt Disney's Indian venture UTV Software, to acquire content for its wireless broadband offerings. A deal with Walt Disney, which is close to being finalised, will enable the company to offer games, entertainment and applications for the younger customers.

It plans to provide data connectivity with speeds of 50-100 Mbps, much faster than 3G services currently on offer, at cheaper prices.

The strategy of enticing customers with low prices is similar to the move in 2003, when it took mobile telephony to the masses with its 'Monsoon Hungama' handsets at 501, helping it win 1 million customers in just 10 days.

Reliance Infocom, the telecom arm of the undivided Reliance Group, began its services on December 28, 2002, the birthday of the group's founder Dhirubhai Ambani. The company, now known as Reliance Communications, is owned Anil Ambani, the younger brother of Mukesh.

RIL has acquired Infotel, a company that won pan-India spectrum for broadband wireless access last year and plans full-scale commercial operations by mid-2012. By then, it expects to have its networks ready across 700 cities, one of the executives said. Neither wanted to be identified. The company will also gradually offer much higher speeds for data transfer on its network. It has considered a soft launch as early as December, one source said.

Reliance is working overtime to make a success out of its latest venture, which it hopes will boost investor confidence that has been battered by harsh criticism from the Comptroller and Auditor General. The company's other initiatives, such as retail, continue to be small blips in its balance sheet while its gas production has declined because of reservoir complexity.

The company's spokesman declined comment on specifics of its broadband plans saying Reliance would not comment on speculation. But in an update on its telecoms business, Reliance said on Friday that its telecom unit was "in the process of setting up a world-class broadband wireless network using state-of-the-art technologies and finalising the arrangement with leading global technology players, service providers, infrastructure providers, application developers, device manufacturers and others to help usher the 4G revolution into India".

The company is learnt to be in the final phase of talks with three vendors - Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson and China's Huawei - for its broadband gear after finishing trials with equipment provided by all the three. It is not clear if RIL will go with a single vendor or split the contracts between the three, said executives with gearmakers aware of the ongoing talks.

Right to Recall

The term right of recall can mean:

• The right of citizens to recall a representative or executive
• The right of an employee under a collective bargaining agreement to be recalled to employment within a specified period after being laid off.

About:-

According to General Clause Act, 1897, power to make the appointment shall also have power to suspend or dismiss any person appointed.Dictionary meaning of the Recall is the right or procedure by which a public official may be removed from a position by a vote of the people prior to the end of the term of office. Recall is the retiring of an elected officer by a vote of the electorate. Some state constitutions prescribe the procedure that must be followed in a recall—for example, requiring the filing of a petition containing the signatures of a specific number of qualified voters.­ ­The right or procedure by which a public official, commonly a legislative or executive official, may be removed from office, before the end of his term of office, by a vote of the people to be taken on the filing of a petition signed by a required number or percentage of qualified voters.
Specifically and in simple terminology it is a kind of mechanism designed to enable voter not satisfied with an elected representative to remove him/her before completion of fixed period of office initiated when sufficient voters sign a petition. Through an electoral procedure, this power of removal, constitutionally, is either granted to or reserved by the people, depending on the theory of government and sovereignty in the country in question.

Brief History:-
Recall has a history dating back to the ancient Athenian democracy and is a feature of several contemporary constitutions.The concept of recall originated in Switzerland but became operative in several American States. The recall device began in the United States in a municipality in Los Angeles in 1903. Michigan and Oregon, in 1908, were the first the States to adopt recall procedures for state officials.


Status In India:-

In India it was the late Jayaprakash Narayan who had first given a call for the right to recall the elected representatives on November 4, 1974 during his Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution) movement against the Congress government headed by Indira Gandhi at the Centre followed by the Janata Government in 1977 and again during the National Front Government in 1989. The right to recall the elected representative has remained notional. The process of formulation any legislation on the subject has been derailed by the political parties. It is well established fact that political leaders are reluctant to enact any legislation which depicts that they are hesitant to maturing into participatory democracy.
In State of Madhya Pradesh & Ors. v. Shri Ram Singh Hon’ble Supreme Court observed that, “Corruption in a civilized society is like cancer, which if not detected in time is sure to malignise the polity of the country leading to disastrous consequences. It is termed as a plague which is not only contagious but if not controlled spreads like a fire in a jungle. Its virus is compared with HIV leading to AIDS, being incurable. It has also been termed as royal thievery. The socio-political system exposed to such a dreaded communicable disease is likely to crumble under its own weight. Corruption is opposed to democracy and social order, being not only anti-people, but also aimed and targeted at them. It affects the economy and destroys the cultural heritage. Unless nipped in the bud at the earliest, it is likely to cause turbulence shaking of the socio-economic political system in an otherwise healthy, wealthy, effective and vibrating society”

There are several examples, Mr. Madhu Koda, the former Chief Minister of Jharkhand, is alleged to have looted Rs 4,000 crore from the state followed by The Reddy brothers, YSR’s family, which are just the latest additions. It has been observed that all of them get away with the loot, and continue to be in positions of influence. There is not a single politician who has been put behind bars for corruption.
It is in the interest of the nation to remove those incompetent, inefficient and dishonest legislators, who once elected by hook or by crook, continue to bleed the state exchequer for the fixed term. Current conditions in India where even the peasantry is articulating need for new mechanisms for empowerment demands to have laws enshrining the right to recall must be viewed as important ingredients of the fight for renewal of the polity.

Steps towards Right to Recall:-

The Nitish Kumar Government has decided to empower the voters of the urban civic body polls to call back their elected representatives if they are not satisfied with their performance.
The state cabinet has agreed to the ‘right to recall’ proposal in this regard by giving its nod to the amendment to the Bihar Municipal Act.
It will enable the government to remove the elected representatives of the municipal corporations – Nagar Parishad and Nagar Panchayat -if two-thirds of the voters of their constituencies submit a signed petition to the urban development department against them. The department will look into the merit of the petition and take steps for the ouster of the councillors if it is convinced that they have lost the confidence of two-thirds of the voters.
Earlier, the Act had a provision for the removal of a councilor only if two-thirds of fellow councilors filed a written petition against him. But now, the government has vested the power directly with the voters.
There is already a provision under the Panchayati Raj system in the state for the recall of elected mukhiyas (village headmen). It will now be applicable to the elected representatives of the urban civic bodies as well.

India now ranks third in Internet Users' Strength

With a user base of 100 million, the country now stands third in the world in terms of the number of people surfing the internet, an official of internet search engine Google said in Kolkata on Tuesday. "China has the highest number of internet users at 300 million followed by the US with 207 million.
India comes third with the number of internet users now soaring to 100 million," Vinay goel, head of products, Google India, told mediapersons.

Of the internet users in the country, 40 million access the net through mobile phones. However, the official from google has pointed out that there was a massive scope of increasing the user base in the mobile internet space as the figure of 40 million comprises only eight percent of those carrying mobile phones.
The number of mobile internet surfers in India is growing rapidly. In 2007, the country had only two million such users. Now the number has gone up 20 times," Goel said.

Steps to secure your WiFi

Here's the methodology, on how to do it...

Enable firewalls on each computer and router: Modern network routers contain built-in firewall capability, but the option also exists to disable them. Ensure that your router's firewall is turned on.

Position the router or access point safely: While installing WiFi, ensure that the position of the access point or router prevents its reach to the exterior as much as possible. Try to position the device as far away from the windows as possible.

Turn off network during extended periods of non-use: Avoid leaving your network available when you are not using it. Shutting down your network will most certainly prevent outside hackers from breaking in.

Avoid using default usernames and passwords: Use a login/password on your router that is different than the default settings. Most routers are made available with a default combination that can be hacked

Enable MAC Address filtering: Each wireless device has a unique identifier called the MAC address. Access points and routers keep track of the MACs for all devices that connect to them. It ensures that rogues cannot connect to it

Avoid auto-connect to open wireless networks: Your connection allows you to connect to an open wireless network such as a free wireless hotspot or your neighbour's router. This exposes your PC to security risks and attacks.

Limit the no of people who can see your network by disabling the SSID broadcast: The wireless access point or router typically broadcasts the SSID over the air at regular intervals. Home users can avoid this facility.

Planet of Diamonds

Planets studded with diamond mountains and filled with glass cores may be more than a psychedelic dream. A Jupiter-sized planet orbiting another star has a mostly carbon atmosphere, astronomers report online December 8 in Nature. The observation suggests that the rest of the planet may be mostly carbon, too.


The planet, WASP-12b, has an atmosphere containing at least twice as much carbon as scientists expected, an international team of researchers reports. This surprise invites new theories for how planets form, says astrophysicist Nikku Madhusudhan, a Princeton University astrophysicist who participated in the research while at MIT.

WASP-12b and its mother star, WASP-12, are 1,200 light-years from Earth. The planet is the size of Jupiter but at 2,500 kelvins, much hotter. Its orbit is only about one-fiftieth as far from its star as the Earth’s distance from the sun.

Using the Spitzer Space Telescope, Madhusudhan and colleagues recorded the infrared light from WASP-12b as the planet sneaks around its star. When the planet is in front of the star, the telescope records light from both the star and the planet’s atmosphere. When the planet is fully hidden behind the star, only the star’s light is recorded. Subtracting one measure from the other gives the light coming from just the planet.

Madhusudhan and colleagues compared their results to data simulated for millions of computer-generated planets with different molecules and temperatures in the atmosphere. The team found that a hot planet with at least as much carbon as oxygen fit the data best. In WASP-12b’s atmosphere, the carbon is found in the form of carbon monoxide, methane and carbon dioxide.

The existence of carbon planets has been proposed in the past, though how such a planet would form is still a mystery. Planets and their stars are thought to form from the same cloud of dust and gas at the same time, so astronomers have assumed in models that the atmospheres of giant planets would have compositions similar to the stars nearby. But WASP-12b has at least twice as much carbon in its atmosphere than the star it orbits—a mystery models can’t explain.

On lightweight planets like Earth, gases like hydrogen and helium escape the planet’s gravity, so the atmospheric chemistry doesn’t reflect the star’s composition. While such rocky planets are forming, if there is less available carbon than oxygen, the planet will be dominated by silicates, like the Earth.

But once carbon and oxygen are roughly equal, the rules of planet formation change.

“When the relative amount of carbon gets that high, it’s as though you flip a switch, and everything changes. Everything would be different — like imagine, one day you’re a Yankees fan, the next day, Red Sox,” says Marc J. Kuchner of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Though a giant carbon planet would be predominantly gas, a rocky, carbon-based body the size of Neptune—about 17 Earth masses—would probably have landscapes of diamond and graphite, says Kuchner.

Life on a carbon planet would look different too. Humans eat carbon and breathe oxygen on Earth, but that would be switched on a carbon planet, says Kuchner.

“You would probably eat rust and combine it with the air on this strange planet, which might be mostly carbon compounds,” says Kuchner.

More carbon planets probably exist, says Kuchner, and Jupiter may be one of them. Its carbon to oxygen ratio has been difficult to measure. When NASA’s Galileo probe visited Jupiter in the 1990s, it measured the atmosphere’s carbon-to-oxygen ratio as greater than one.

“Nobody believed it,” says Kuchner.

No model can yet explain how carbon planets form. They may be born in planetary disks with relatively high amounts of carbon, says Kuchner. The disk surrounding the star Beta Pictoris, 63 light-years away, for example, has 18 times as much carbon as the sun.

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Facebook to now land up with its "The different" Email service

After reigning the Social Networking, facebook set to launch "the differnt" email service.
Social networking site Facebook may soon offer e-mail services to its 500 million members to compete Google and Yahoo, making it the largest such service on the planet. More significantly, the offering could lead to a fundamental transformation of e-mail.

Facebook would have a tremendous advantage because it owns a vast collection of data about people's relationships and would find it easier to graft e-mail onto its existing social services such as photo-sharing. The news has come up after the strategic alliance with the software giant Microsoft to incorporate the functionality of Facebook in the Office applications.

If it is announced, a Facebook e-mail service would allow its more than 500 million members to communicate with anyone inside or outside the walls of the social network. If they use it, Facebook would leapfrog the 361 million global users of Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo Mail's 273 million users and Gmail's 193 million.

The launch of the new service will be made official on Monday.
Now the question arises that would it be easier to divert, for their current email accounts to new email service from facebook.
Lets see...