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Friday, October 29, 2010

India, China to carry forward ties


ON A POSITIVE NOTE:Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, exchange pleasantries prior to a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the 17th summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Hanoi on Friday. 
 
HANOI: India and China on Friday expressed their determination to carry their relations forward through dialogue, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao instructing their officials to “work their way through” all difficult issues.

The two leaders met for 45 minutes on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit here.
Mr. Wen said he would visit India before year-end. He suggested that both sides reach consensus on some major aspects to lay the foundation for the visit.

The leaders instructed their Special Representatives to address the border issue with a “sense of urgency,” with Dr. Singh highlighting the need for both sides to be sensitive to each other's core issues. The Special Representatives were asked to meet in Beijing before next month-end and given clear directions on how the two leaders wanted them to resolve all difficult issues, National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon told journalists.

Both leaders covered the entire gamut of relations, including the issue of China issuing stapled visas to people domiciled in Jammu and Kashmir and the consequent pause in high-level defence exchanges. “In their 10th meeting in six years, they took a broad view of the strategic significance of India-China ties and expressed satisfaction at the development of relations,” Mr. Menon said.

Mr. Wen agreed with Dr. Singh's oft-repeated statement that there was enough space in the world to accommodate the growth of both countries. There was enough space for India and China to have a cooperative relationship in “all areas.”

Mr. Menon said that prior to Mr. Wen's arrival in December, India was looking forward to the opportunity provided by the visit on Sunday of Zhou Yong Kan, Member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, to “have a much freer and broader exchange of views.”

Trade imbalance
Mr. Wen said China was “very conscious” of the trade imbalance with India and listed some of the steps taken by Beijing to address this issue. Mr. Menon pointed to regular high-level meetings on the issue and the resultant diminishing of the imbalance. “We will continue to work on it.” Bilateral trade in the first nine months of the year touched $45 billion and was on course to meet the target of $60 billion for the year.
Asked to spell out the core issues that Dr. Singh wanted both countries to be sensitive to, Mr. Menon declined to “put a gloss” on what the Prime Minister specifically said. The Prime Ministers resolved to continue working together on a range of issues, including climate change, counter-terrorism, disaster management, energy and food security on which both had “similar or identical views.”

Monday, October 25, 2010

Reddy brothers on Income Tax radar-India-Karnataka

In one of the largest single-day operations in recent times in Karnataka, the officials of the Income Tax Department have raided the residential premises belonging to Health Minister B. Sriramulu in Bangalore, and offices and residences of two BJP legislators, who are involved in mining business. 

The premises belonging to BJP MLA from Koodligi B. Nagendra and BJP MLA from Kampli T.H. Suresh Babu, both considered close to the Reddy ministers, were raided in Bangalore as well as in their home towns early on Monday morning. 

Searches were also conducted in the rooms allotted to Mr. Suresh Babu and Mr. B. Nagendra in the Legislators Home in Bangalore. According to the sources in the IT Department, a large number of documents have been seized, and their bank accounts have been frozen. The raids were said to be conducted at over 50 premises. 

The raids assume importance in the background of allegations from opposition parties that the ruling BJP is paying off MLAs from other parties to resign from their post. 

An important aspect of the operation is that it appears to be targetted against close confidants of the Reddy brothers. A large number houses, offices, business establishments, mining and construction firms have been raided by the IT Department. 

Sources in the Income Tax Department have also indicated that the residences and offices of one of Mr. Reddy’s personal assistants, Ali Khan, and a legal advisor, Raghavacharlu, were also searched by the officials at Bellary, Hospet and Bangalore. 

The raids were launched simultaneously at many cities including Bangalore, Hospet, Bellary, Hubli, Belgaum by officials of the Karnataka and Goa region.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Lego 3D printer itching to make Lego robots

 
We've seen Lego robots that do Sudoku puzzles, solve Rubik's Cube, and mimic the human hand. Well, this Lego robot builds Lego models--so far. How long until it starts building other robots out of Lego? The horror!

Hobbyist Will Gorman built his Lego Mindstorms NXT MakerLegoBot for the ongoing Lego World 2010 expo in Zwolle, the Netherlands.

Inspired by the open-source 3D printer MakerBot, the machine is made of more than 2,400 bricks and runs on three NXT Intelligent Bricks and nine NXT motors.

A PC running the MLCad Lego design system sends instructions to the printer via USB, and it then starts selecting bricks from its large-capacity feeder system. It can build objects up to 12 bricks tall with 1x2, 2x2, 3x2, 4x2, and 8x2 bricks.

The models are made on a base that rotates to handle nonsquare bricks. See detailed pics here.
So far, the MakerLegoBot has made quaint objects like little houses. But its ultimate purpose can be nothing other than to make other Lego robots. Once they can replicate, it's game over for us.





Saturday, October 23, 2010

I'm far more comfortable in Tamil now: Aishwarya Rai








After doing her fourth Tamil film, Endhiran, Aishwarya Rai claims to be far more comfortable working in the southern language. She also feels it is the kind of entertainer most leading actresses do though she hasn't done too many of them.

"I am definitely far more comfortable and more confident working in the language. I won't risk breaking into a conversation because I don't do that on a daily basis," said Aishwarya in an interview.

"Probably because I have travelled so much, I am familiar with the language. It falls easy on the ear. I understand it, but I respect the language; so I don't want to break into a conversation in it, unless it's a group which is very forgiving on grammatical errors!"

"You learn dialogues, they are constructed sentences already, but I am far more confident today than I was during Iruvar or Jeans. Today I am far more at ease working in Tamil," said Aishwarya. She has also done the bilingual Raavan.

Filmmaker S Shankar made his latest, a sci-fi flick, in two languages - Endhiran in Tamil and Robot in Hindi - and released them simultaneously Oct 1. Made at a whopping budget of Rs 175 crore ($38 million), it's the costliest Indian film ever.

Aishwarya maintains that her character was easy to essay and she has rarely done films in the typical entertainment genre, unlike many leading heroines.

"The character was not difficult to get into the skin of. It's a kind of role that any leading heroine would do. Probably the kind of roles that a lot of leading heroines do in their career, in my case it has been rare.

"I have not done this kind of character very often in a typical entertaining genre, the kind of character a leading heroine would get.

"He (Shankar) has a made an entertaining film. He has taken entertainment to the next level and has introduced something technically much ahead of what we have seen in recent times. So for me to go on set, it was more exciting to see the film come together. In terms of my contribution, I was just happy to work in this film," said Aishwarya.

This was her second film with Shankar after Jeans in 1998.

Asked what changes she noticed in Shankar as a director, she said: "I think now I know him better. Jeans so early in my career, unlike any newcomers, I was associated with multiple projects at the very first year of my career.

"I was constantly experiencing a different set ambience and a different film I was working in. So, that time we were discovering each other. For me films were new, the technical aspect of films was new and I was working in Tamil. From then till today, we know each other much better."

Friday, October 22, 2010

Windows Phone 7 limits camera access for apps

Microsoft's tight design rules require all Windows Phone 7 devices to have a pretty nice camera on them; they must tout at least 5 megapixels and video capture to boot. Unfortunately, Redmond's new phone operating system has limitations that mean developers can't fully take advantage of the lenses.

Although Windows Phone 7 devices can record and upload video and pictures, application developers can't fully take advantage of those image sensors to do other fun things like video chat and augmented reality.
That means that not only will Windows Phone 7 not have as many apps as Android-based phones or the iPhone when the first devices go on sale in the U.S. next month, but there will also be whole classes of programs that we just won't see--at least for this version of Windows Phone.

Microsoft has gotten generally high marks for Windows Phone 7, particularly for its design and interface--and deservedly so. The company also deserves credit for having hundreds of programs ready for launch with more being added every day. However, as critics point out, there are still some key things missing--and full access to the image sensor is just the latest limitation to draw attention.

Other drawbacks include the lack of copy and paste (though that is being remedied with an update due early next year), no CDMA version until the first half of next year, as well as the lack of true multitasking. That last issue means that while one can listen to the built-in Zune player while running another app, the same is not true when listening to Slacker or Iheartradio.

This may be part of the reason that Microsoft's marketing appears to go after people eyeing their first smartphone rather than attempting to lure existing owners away from their Android device or iPhone.



The Good Bad Boy-Salman Khan

The biggest paycheck in Bollywood this year has landed. It reached a star who's 5-foot 9-3/4 inches and weighs 78 kg. He dresses in clothes chosen by his two sisters and lives a floor below his parents. He sleeps for three hours a day and eats five meals daily. He's Salman Khan. And he's made Rs 170 crore and still counting from Dabangg, Rs 24 crore from Bigg Boss 4, and Rs 15 crore from three endorsements signed earlier this year. He is at the top of the entertainment game, measured in the only language Mumbai understands: money.

For someone who started work at 14 and whose first pay was Rs 75 as a background dancer, becoming the star of Bollywood's second biggest hit ever has not been easy. The pinnacle has come 22 years after he began as a doe-eyed, silken-haired 45-kg son of a famous father, a second lead in the tepid Biwi Ho To Aisi. Salman has reason to be pleased though he cannot look you in the eye, mind you. A little accident with a surgery to fix the unflattering pouches under his eyes has ensured that he cannot take off his dark glasses for another week. But as the star sits on his black leather couch, the centrepiece of his one-bedroom flat in Mumbai, with the steaming cup of coffee to be replaced by successive glasses of Bacardi and Coke as the evening wears on, he knows his fans have seen worse. They have seen him wearing a bikini in Baaghi, dancing with a towel between his legs in Mujhse Shaadi Karoge, being a "manly" Marilyn Monroe in Jaan-e-Mann and in Dabangg, romancing a girl who was a year old when he began his career.
And they are not surprised that he now commands Rs 5 crore for each of his five endorsements; that he's taken the ratings of the opening episode of Bigg Boss 4 to a high of 4.83, bettered only by Amitabh Bachchan's Kaun Banega Crorepati 4 TRP of 6.21; and that his next yet-to-be-shot film is being sold at Rs 75 crore. The bhai who never grew up seems to have finally become the boy who can do no wrong. Or even if he does, it is quickly forgiven. Perhaps because he is seen as someone with his heart in the right place and his tongue in the wrong place. As an equal opportunity offender, who, if he is unprofessional, is so with everyone big or small. As a loveable lout who may be feudal and flawed but is still very funny. As a star who is less about the brand and more about the body. Which may explain why while everybody is busy wearing branded clothes, he's happy taking them off.

Perhaps it's because the audience watching him suspects that behind the bluster is a boy who can still get slapped by his father, scriptwriter Salim Khan, and still stands to attention when he's on the phone. In many ways, Salman is the retrosexual man every boy would like to be. His brothers are his best friends and despite having dated four stunningly beautiful professional actors, he still believes that women should not "expose" onscreen. Unlike middle class darlings Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan, film scholar Shohini Ghosh believes Salman's films echo our more complicated "good and bad times". Movies like Tere Naam and Garv portray him as a brooding hero while even in his most raucous comedies he often loses the girl or gets trumped by another star. Like the young Amitabh Bachchan, despite his elite upbringing, he has a common touch. He can play the folk hero of the masses as much as he can embody the rock star swagger.

Salman hasn't worked with too many star directors and he still cannot remember the dialogue of Pyaasa that he and director Sajid Khan had to learn in acting classes with Daisy Irani, but he seems to have found a new commitment to work. Always known more for his body than his brains, he is not only completing movies in one schedule to maintain continuity of physicality and character, but he has also reserved the right of final edit. "When I see a film now, I see it from the point of view of the audience, not myself. Yuvraaj was 25 minutes too long, London Dreams would have been super 35 minutes less, and for Veer, I just needed more shooting dates. It's my fault that I didn't put my foot down. But I didn't whether out of respect or not wanting a misunderstanding. Perhaps they would have been worse if I had put my foot down," he says.

It is rare to find a star so unaccustomed to asserting his veto. Perhaps because Salman regards himself as a worker bee, who's broken every bone in his body, save his head, at least three times. He's always worked, whether it was as an assistant to Shashilal Nair for Rs 30 a day or as a model trying to maintain a Rs 300 bank balance. Which is why, among the Khans, he's made the most films-71 compared to 57 for Shah Rukh and 36 for Aamir. Now the madness has a method. Still, don't expect him to come to work before 11 a.m., kiss onscreen ("why mix business with pleasure," he murmurs), or play a villain ("people need to see heroes"). Also make allowances for the days when he won't want to shoot, or will do so only with dark glasses on, because his eyes are puffy. But then once he's on the set, surrounded by his toys (an all-terrain bike, a bicycle, perhaps his Yamahas R6 and R1, and his four dogs, the oddly named Veer, My Love, Saint and Handsum) expect him to do anything the director demands, from one arm push-ups in his breakout film, Maine Pyaar Kiya, which established him as an all-India star a year after Aamir, to arguing with an invisible sky in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.

He sees a reason for the phenomenal success of Wanted last year, which was like Ghajini before it, a southern import, and re-established the action genre in Bollywood which involves heroes walking through doors and fighting battles with bare hands. "We've had the angry young man, the action hero who would fight for his family or neighbourhood, the romantic hero, the rom-com loser hero. There had to be a reaction," he says. Enter Dabangg, which put the bhaiya in the bhai, and so was born Chulbul Pandey, to join the iconic character Salman has most often played onscreen, loverboy Prem. He's playing him again in Ready, directed by Anees Bazmee. So it's no surprise that Titanic and Braveheart are his kind of films-it may also explain his strange accent. "I believe the entertainment industry is for children or for the child in everyone. Somebody wants to grow up like you, somebody wants to be you, somebody wants to remember their youth by you," he says.

He's not a great fan of change. "I get attached to things. It took me 35 years to go from the floor above to my house here. And that happened only because Sohail (his younger brother) took over my room when I went on a world tour," he says. Rather than being seen as a provider at large for his family, he believes they have been a great support to him. "I have no responsibilities. My family takes care of me more than I take care of them. They've always supported me," he says. Especially when he's in trouble, which can vary from being in Jodhpur Central Jail for six days in 2007 as Prisoner No. 343 in the blackbuck case to 17 days in Thane Central Jail in the hit-and-run case in 2002. His family bristles at the thought of being seen as parasites: "People behave as if he's been parking money in our accounts. No. The greatest thing about him is that he hasn't alienated us from his success. He wants us to enjoy it with him," says brother, actor Arbaaz who is also the producer of Dabangg.

Film critic Nasreen Munni Kabir says Salman doesn't show himself in real life as the perfect, intelligent man but as a feckless fellow who bumbles through life learning from his mistakes as he continuously makes them. "He becomes human to us in a more meaningful way than the high achievers," she points out. As Salman himself says, "Some people think I'm a total jerk. And some people love me to death." He also has a habit of loving to death, as all accounts of him stalking Aishwarya Rai at the height of their romance indicate. Salman seems to have become philosophical about his love life. "You get somebody better for you. That person gets somebody better for them," he says in his famously cryptic way. He has finally learnt to move on romantically, though there is the odd fixation he has with casting lookalikes of his one-time girlfriends. His father puts it more poetically: "Salman suffers from divine dissatisfaction."

For someone who grew up idolising Sanjay Dutt for his "gaadis and girls", he's quite impressed by his own fitness. "My body is better than it ever was," he says, looking at himself in a mirrored wall conveniently next to the sofa on which he receives guests like a mini-head of state. "The only fat I have is under my eyes," he says, denying he ever went in for hair grafting but quietly writing the number of the Dubai doctor who did the honours in case you need it. He keeps himself fit, whether by swimming, playing cricket or football, or simply trekking or cycling to work. He sleeps three hours a day, usually by 5 in the morning. "Either my mind wakes up and my body is tired. Or my body wakes up and my mind says 'go to sleep'. Sometimes both are sleepy and I'm wide awake." And sometimes he wakes up weeping, his pillow wet, dreaming of his days at The Scindia School, Gwalior.

He's had a chequered academic career, weaving in and out of St. Anne's High School, Mumbai; The Scindia School; St. Stanislaus High School, Mumbai; and St. Xavier's, Mumbai, from where he was thrown out. Why? "Attendance. I always had that problem," he mumbles. He dropped out of third year at Elphinstone College, deciding not to take an exam one day because a cricket match seemed more interesting. He also gave up the idea of admission to the JJ School of Art because he thought the crowd was too "arty" for someone who was the proud possessor of a single pair of Wranglers bought by his mother's brother, Tiger Uncle, from Germany. "I wore them until they tore," he says, recalling a time when the family was short of cash. His father agrees. "Remember I struggled for 10 years as an actor before I began writing. And then too, my first paycheck was Rs 10,000 for Haathi Mere Saathi."

A Bandra boy who would often attend midnight mass with his gang after a drinking session, Salman has grown up with a Hindu mother, a Muslim father, and a Catholic stepmother. In many ways, he is Everyman. "What you see is what you get," says director Farah Khan, who's known him since her mother, Menaka Irani, acted with his father in a film, Bachpan, that ran for just one day. "He's never stopped a movie or not completed it even if he knew it was a turkey in the making. When he's good, there's no one like him."
As he contemplates marriage ("I'd like to have children"), a post-retirement career involving painting and working with his charity, the Being Human Foundation, the coolest thing about the always underrated Khan is that he's happy even with his lack of inches. "It's just a bit taller than the heroines and shorter than the villain." Because, of course, it's fun to beat up the bigger guy. Isn't that what heroes do?

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Network Blocking-Google TV

Google TV has the network television industry's attention.

Certain television shows on the Web sites of broadcast networks CBS and ABC are currently being blocked when Google TV users try to access those sites. The Wall Street Journal also reported that NBC confirmed it was blocking streams to Google TV users, although CNET was able to view shows on NBC.com using Google TV. (CBS.com is published by CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET.)

The decision to block the programs only seems to affect full-length episodes available on the Web sites of those companies, and it began in earnest this week, according to a source familiar with the situation. It does not affect the viewing of those shows through the broadcast TV part of Google TV, just the streaming of those shows to Google TV.

Google declined to comment on the matter beyond a prepared statement.
"We're in the early phases of Google TV and already have strong partnerships with Best Buy, Logitech, and Sony, among others. We are excited about the opportunities our new platform creates for both established media companies like Turner and HBO, and tens of thousands of content creators large and small. Google TV enables access to all the Web content you already get today on your phone and PC, but it is ultimately the content owner's choice to restrict their fans from accessing their content on the platform."

Google TV is one of the more high-profile attempts in recent history by the tech industry to marry the PC-based Internet and the traditional television world. Logitech and Sony released devices running the software earlier this month, which allows users to watch regular old broadcast television while pulling up a series of Internet-based applications and Web sites.

The idea is to give people something they're familiar with--regular television--while introducing them to something new, video over the Internet. Several companies, such as TBS, have agreed to optimize their streaming-video Web sites for Google TV while others, such as NBC Universal, agreed to build applications for the software. NBC Universal's CNBC division actually built one of the default applications that ships with the software.

However, the major networks appear skeptical. The WSJ reported that some networks, such as ABC, had expressed concern that Google wasn't blocking access to search results that contain sites with pirated versions of their shows.

Also, Hulu, a Web video joint venture owned by Disney (ABC), NBC, and News Corp. (Fox) is still blocking access from Google TV devices. Google and Hulu are said to be in talks for access to the Hulu Plus service, but clearly no deal has been reached.