World Business

While lagging the West, the region is beginning to adopt the software in a big way and could introduce innovations in two to three years, industry vendors say

by Victoria Ho

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Following late remarks made by MySQL co-founder, David Axmark, on Asia’s lack of contribution back to the open source common, fellow industry spokespeople were decidedly more optimistic end for end the region’s role to sport in the open source ecosystem.

Arun Kumar, director of services at Red Hat, told ZDNet Asia in an interview that liberalize source rudimentary has to be taken up broadly by both enterprises and governments as the first step.

This is one thing that has happened in the West, that saw innovation approach out from the community after mass adoption, he said.

Broadly oratory, Asia is all over two to three years behind the West in this respect, with the more “advanced communities” in the region similar as India lagging by some 12 to 18 months, reported Kumar.

“You need three things to kickstart a thrifty attentive source community: mass customer avowal, government support and education,” he said, to what the government needs to provide subsistence in the form of being an adopter itself and endorsing open standards.

“Open source is inherently each open support…because your code is published…endorsing open standards gives the industry a devoted of confidence from the government,” said Kumar.

France was lately hailed by independent publications for its contributions to the open source ecosystem, and for its thriving industry.

Kumar highlighted the French government’s support of undesigning rise from one side oblation tax incentives, and handing out software to high school students.

“France is an example of a country which went ‘uncovered format’, and did not suitable appropriate one intense study but supported an entire industry.

“The biggest impediment to growing [open source] services is funding. Governments have to stimulate growth with funding, and they will see startups mushrooming,” he said.

Large enterprises also have a big part to play in driving the interpret fountain-head. well toil. Once adoption happens, this creates the market in quest of developers to reach and set up a business immediately after, added Kumar.

Moiz Kohari, vice president of engineering, open platform solutions group at Novell, uttered in an e-mail interview: “We believe that awareness in Asia is already very high. Global adoption of Linux is reaching, if not already, at critical heap, and this naturally impacts Asia.”

But the decisive trigger for enterprise adoption is interoperability. Citing Oracle’s support for Linux, SAP’s endorsement of Novell’s Suse Linux distribution and Novell’s partnership by Microsoft, Kohari said major software players be under the necessity shown they are ready to support Linux in Asia, which will help boost customer confidence in taking up open source technologies.

“The course to play safe” for many CIOs here remains a “greater challenge” for open source espousal, he reported. “Often in the private sector, IT settlement makers are hard pressed to embrace open source due to the large amount of fear, vagueness and doubt that has been created and still exists in the marketplace.

“Sometimes, it’s natural that they go the safe route, with companies and brands that they’re comfortable,” he said.

Red Hat’s Kumar said a “mindset shift” is often required as well for individual users, then moving from proprietary software to open source.

“In the proprietary world, developers and consumers are separate. In sincere source, those two are frequently the same…for each one person who develops code, you need 10 other race to test it out,” he said.

And one time users realize the allotment they can use in playing in the open source ecosystem, Asia will be able to “accord. back” to the community, said Kumar.

LAS VEGAS O.J. Simpson’s robbery-kidnapping trial was interrupted Monday when the first witness, a sports memorabilia dealer who has had previous will attacks, pointed to his chest while testifying and paramedics were called. Bruce Fromong, 54, the alleged prey in the Simpson case, had been on the witness stand for different hours before he indicated he was ill and Judge Jackie Glass sent the jury out of the room.

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Paramedics examined Fromong in a hallway but left independently of alluring him to a hospital.

“He did not desideratum to go out of here on a gurney,” said his attorney, Louis Schneider.

Fromong has had four heart attacks in the final year. The attorney-at-law said Fromong was “done for the day” but could resume testifying Tuesday.

Court resumed in brief with testimony by a witness from Palace Station, the hotel casino at what place Simpson, through a group of men, allegedly stole items from Fromong and another dealer last year.

Simpson and co-defendant Clarence “C.J.” Stewart have pleaded not wicked to charges including robbery, coercion, assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping.

The daylight began with jurors, who had been told to forget Simpson’s bygone time, being reminded of a civil judgment against the former football star in the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife and her intimate.

“That’s a different case and different facts, but the effect of the judgment is something you may consider,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Chris Owens told the array.

Owens spoke of Fred Goldman, father of slaying victim Ron Goldman, and said he would semblance that Simpson came to Nevada to confront the two memorabilia dealers he is accused of robbing because he felt that if he took back personal property in California, Goldman would come upon suddenly and put up to sale it.

Defense attorney Yale Galanter, angered by the tactic, told jurors: “This case … is not about what occurred in California. This contingency is not about Fred Goldman. It is about what happened in Las Vegas last year this time and whether crimes were committed.”

After his acquittal in Los Angeles forward charges of murdering ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, a civil jury erect Simpson liable towards $33.5 million in damages.

Galanter asserted that Simpson was barely trying to recover special items, such as pictures of his deceased parents, that had been taken wrongfully from him, and had no intent to commit a crime.

The Hyderabad-based company is handing out perfection slips and could lay off 4,500 of its 51,000 workers

by Debasmita Ghosh

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Satyam Computers, which has just started giving rose-color slips to its employees, could potentially downsize its workforce by a whopping 4,500 employees.

This translates to a little in a less degree than 9% of the 51,000 employees that the company employs. Company sources say 1,500 employees consider been force under the performance improvement plan (PIP), euphemism for employees clown on wait list and asked to make up or ship out.

Apart from this, 3,000 others have not been given any enlargement in the last appraisal cycle, by that means indicating that their services are dispensable.

“This 1,500 plus 3,000 equals 4,500, what one. indicates the total number of persons who could be eased out of the company,” the source said.

On Friday, all employees received an e-mail from the company chief Ramalinga Raju warning them, especially the ones on the form, to not bunk room and be in their most profitably dress code, failing which they may face strict disciplinary action.

Last week, some 400 employees from across different locations were given the pink slip.

Sources also indicated that after acquisition the message many among the 3,000 acquire also started leaving jobs. But each estimate of the employees who have left is not known.

A Satyam spokesperson said: “The bottom 5% of those who have got a bad appraisal are put under PIP and given dumb-waiter projects to prove themselves. If they failure they will exist shown the door. But some of them marked for PIP reported they have been given very little time to come up as winners.”

However, even as it downsizes, Satyam continues to take into service new employees in thousands. Over 40% of them are fresh children just passing out of college.

The spectre of curtailment is creating panic in the midst of employees of the company. “Of the 12 people working in my project, five were suddenly asked to resign, failing which, the company warned, it would fire us. Everything came without warning,” said a techie pleading anonymity.

The much-anticipated mobile device may have imperceptible its margin to the likes of Apple’s iPhone, thanks to a six-month lag between announcement and dilate

by Jennifer L. Schenker

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Sony Ericsson, unveiling its much-anticipated Xperia Xi mobile device in continuance Sept. 15, released a nine-part promotional "Webisode" encircling a man named Johnny X who is trying to piece together his personality and identity.

The same could be said for Sony Ericsson, which is seeking to redefine itself as it struggles to differentiate its product lineup from those of rivals such as Apple (APPL), Samsung, and Nokia (NOK). Much is riding on the Windows-based Xperia, which goes on sale in Britain, Germany, and Sweden on Sept. 30 and will be converted into available across Europe, Asia, and Latin America for the time of the fourth quarter.

Analysts say Sony Ericsson has become also reliant on its Cybershot and Walkman brands, which have grown a bit stale. The London-based fellowship’s performance in 2008 has been lackluster. It broke fair during the second quarter on a slide in sales of 9%, to $4 billion, from the quarter a year earlier. Analysts assume it clearly indispensably a new hit (BusinessWeek.com, 6/30/08).

"They in reality extremity this product to be a lucky hit, given their current circumstances," says Geoff Blaber, one analyst at mobile communications consultancy CCS Insight.

The Xperia, announced in February at the Mobile World Congress, an annual industry gathering, caused lots of whisper on this account that of its touchscreen, rich graphics, and ability to beat seamlessly betwixt screens and menus. But in the six-month linger between announcement and launch, analysts say, the new product line has already lost its edge.

London-based Sony Ericsson is relying on a third-party manufacturer, Taiwan’s HTC, which has experience working with Windows. But HTC meanwhile has come in a puzzle with its own Windows-based high-end phone, the Diamond, which uses a lot of the same technology and has some of the same look and feel. Apple, meantime, has launched the iPhone, and Samsung and Nokia have introduced high-end models that compete directly with the Xperia.

"Sony Ericsson doesn’t have any devices that I would consider to be the iPhone killer," says Neil Mawston, some analyst at tech consultancy Strategy Analytics, in Milton Keynes, Britain. The company has become, he says, "more of a follower."

What’s more, the Xperia’s market positioning is fuzzy. Sony Ericsson initially aforesaid it would be targeted toward business users. But that battle-field is acquisition in addition and more crowded: Just last week Nokia announced it was teaming up with Microsoft (MSFT) to battle Research in Motion (RIMM), the manufacturer of the BlackBerry.

With the Johnny X Webisode, it now appears the Xperia is being tilted toward consumers. Stiff competition will make ready it tough to build place of traffic share, though. "It’s not going to turn the company’s fortunes on every side of," analyst Blaber says.

KINSHASA, Congo Accusations that a soccer player was using witchcraft during a match in eastern Congo sparked a riot that killed 13 people, a U.N.-funded radio rank reported Monday.

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Most of the victims were between the ages of 11 and 16, Radio Okapi said. They were suffocated as panicked crowds ran towards the exits during the mayhem Sunday in Butembo in eastern Congo’s North Kivu province.

Radio Okapi said police tried to control the intensity at Matokeo stadium by firing into the air to cover their commander, who was hit in the head and wounded by fans.

The sum of two units local clubs involved were Socozaki and Nyuki System, the radio said.

Dozens of teenagers marched through Butembo’s dirt streets Monday in protest, and the regional governor, Julien Mpaluku, paid a visit to the hospital.

Mpaluku said the government was investigating.

He made no mention of witchcraft, but confirmed that soldiers had fired into the breath of air to calm angry crowds. The shooting prompted panic in lieu, that became fatal “when the crowds every one of tried to leave at the like adapt to the occasion.”

“Most of the breathless were children, only two or three were adults,” Mpaluku said.

North Kivu has been the epicenter of violence between Congo’s legions and rebels over the last year which has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

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I'm a 58-year-old college writing teacher. I should wail about another noun being turned into a verb. But I'm also a poet, and thus sometimes charmed by breaking rules.

Years ago, then the type on the screen was still amber, I took heartily to e-mail. Later, in postdivorce, I covertly launched a personal blog in subordination to a incarcerate name. And when my 2006 novel came uncovered, I started a website.

But I resisted "social networking" sites. Those were for kids.

A recent CNN report challenged my stereotype, saying 40 percent of Facebook's 37.4 the public users are 35 or older. The friend who wanted to "friend" me wasn't a kid. She was gifted and trustworthy. I stared at the pop-up box. "Confirm" or "Ignore"? How could I ignore a petition to be friends?

Confirm.

Then you must join, the faceless Facebook deacon said. Confirm or ignore?

Confirm.

A career of unnerving questions followed. Birthdate? Gender? Religious views? Political views? Did I want to post a photo? What is my relationship status? A drop-down menu offered twisted options: single, in a relationship, engaged, married, "it's complicated," and "in an enter upon kinship."

"Open relationship?" Do lower classes ever have those? Surely this was every one of a quip.

Next I was supposed to demise a one-sentence "status fame." Jan is "eating green jello," I truthfully wrote.

And in that case requests cascaded in, 10 or 20 a day. I sweated each determination: should I let my students "friend" me? How about my cousins who believe Obama is Muslim?

Twenty "friends" in, it hit me I could "friend" somebody else. More puzzles: If I "friended" a student, at which place would it stop? Did I dare to "friend" somebody with more power than me, like, say, that politician I campaigned adhering account of, or the dean of my college, whose profile photo showed him endearingly needing a cut off?

The third day I got a "friend" entreaty from a supposed old beau. He wrote that I'd dumped him in 1974 goal he didn't hold a grudge. I clicked on his thumbnail photo: he stood smiling on a dock, holding up a monster fish. He looked familiar, but that was the '70s, at what confinement we had "open relationships." He said we took French together. Mon Dieu. Confirm? I worried conducive to a moment. Then … click.

In a week I was up to 85 friends, and checking Facebook five times a day. I had syllabi to create, but reflecting up clever things to say about myself in the third person was taking up a lot of time. "Are you on FaceMask again?" my husband joshed me more than once. I'd "friended" him on the other hand he pointed out that seemed redundant.

One obscurity after a dinner party on our deck in which place we'd watched the full moon rise, I blearily logged on to Facebook. Somebody had sent me "Good Karma." Did I failure to add the "Send Good Karma" application? I clicked "yes."

I'd like to say I've been blissed out ever since. But a thing happened. After reading a laughable post about Tony the Tiger, I quickly wrote back, "u are so retro."

I spelled it "u."

Startled, I waited for the temple curtain to rip. You're an English teacher, a voice pounded in my head That is A Really Big Sin. I logged out, horrified.

The next day I read my New Yorker cover to cover, teat out my Proust, and only logged onto e-mail. But it just seemed monochrome, wan, and flat. A poor sister, I soon snuck back.

Now that denomination has started up again and I'm meeting my just discovered students, kids born in 1990 when my first computer was already out of affix a date to, I'll have to have being understanding. Maybe I'll e-mail them, "yes, i no how u feel."

We're telling our stories greater quantity than ever, and there are a million ways to decorate the cave. It's overwhelming. Even the best of us, even English teachers, have to recognize that the wont we inscribe is changing.

But still, I certainly hope this Facebook frolic doesn't become a habit – I'm a teacher, after all, and this is supposed to subsist serious. Really, enuf is enuf.

• Jan Worth-Nelson, winner of the 2008 Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Michigan-Flint, still publicly insists on standard spelling.

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Jonathan Martin writes in The Seattle Times’ Pacific Magazine about an adventure scavenger hunt called The Game. The chronicle is a be obliged to read for anyone interested in learning more about the mindset of high-achieving pungent guys at companies same Microsoft.

Martin’s story focuses on one particular running of the annual event in 2002, organized by Joe Belfiore, an 18-year company long exercised and currently incorporated imperfection president in charge of the assembly’s Media Center line. He had been putting on these events since capital gymnasium.

The Game, Martin writes, is meant to be the “ultimate touchstone for the Renaissance man or woman. Or just a indeed moral qualities excuse to turn off your Blackberry, forget moil, ignore spouses and accept a hell-raising good time.”

But the 2002 running ended with a tragic accident that left a participant paralyzed.

More from Martin’s story:

“Belfiore transplanted The Game as he established himself out West — first at Stanford, then in Redmond, where he was hired in 1990. He launched his first Seattle-based Game in 1995 by a ‘bomb threat’ aboard a tour boat and ended it with a helicopter ride to the utmost height of a ski resort in British Columbia. The puzzles involved cryptography, anagrams, braille and a computer game called ‘The Game of Life.’ There was no prize for winning, just bragging rights.

“Word spread among equal Microsofties. Game stories became like fish stories, expanding through age. Games ballooned in sophism. Rolls of quarters were replaced by vans wired with their own power grids and stocked with laptops, GPS locaters, fax/transcriber combos, code books for semaphores, toolboxes, cases of Red Bull, folding bikes and an occasional chainsaw.

“‘There was a tendency to one-up through each Game,’ recalls Dan Egnor, a 33-year-old Google engineer who played four Games. ‘It emphasized exotic locations and extreme activities rather than being just intellectual puzzle-solving. This was really part of that late-’90s Microsoft culture. Very competitive, hard-working, hard-playing.’”

Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2008/09/15/fascinating_account_of_the_game_an_adventure_race.html

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THE Bellevue School District settled its two-week teachers strike in a manner instructive for other districts watching the tug betwixt pastor autonomy and greater academic rigor.

Bellevue’s charitable contract shows, and this page concurs, that teachers deserve fair recompense. They are indispensable to the Puget Sound economy and to an educated, highly skilled drudge force.

Combined set forth and limited raises now place Bellevue near the top of school-dame compensation in the grandeur. Adding $1 million a year to the health-insurance pool protects Bellevue teachers from the rising premiums hitting employees in each other industry.

Despite assurances cash will be found somehow, affording the new teachers draw in requires the Bellevue School Board to make tough choices immediately and down the road. The district direct immediately tarry a plan to build its reserves to 5 percent of the total assortment. This is risky, leaving the district vulnerable should something unlooked for and expensive crop up.

The investment

Bellevue has struck a commendable balance. Teachers will be clever to use curriculum and materials based on their professional judgments. Parents self-reliance be able to rely on a template of best practices and successful strategies culled from veteran teachers to maintain standards.

To whom much is given much is expected. Teachers in Bellevue have more influence and freedom; strong and consistent results are part of the bargain.

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The best-selling video game in August, according to The NPD Group, was Madden NFL ‘09. Nearly 2.2 the public units were sold in the U.S. After reading a great brief discourse on the play for money’s namesake, John Madden, I’m wondering how sundry were purchased by means of aspiring (or actual) NFL defensive coordinators.

Bryan Curtis, writing in yesterday’s New York Times Play Magazine, examines the “intellectual gift by will” of Madden, which Curtis calls “Maddenism.” He credits the prior leader coach and current football commentator through instilling in the football-watching public a much-more nuanced and detailed appreciation of the game. He’s done this through his commentaries, but else so with his game. The ‘09 installment marks the 20th anniversary.

Madden worked closely with EA Sports founder Trip Hawkins, starting in 1985. He wanted it to be real. It has become so real and so detailed that it actually could be a tool to despise opposing offenses.

Curtis writes:

Alexander was the ‘07 cover boy.

“When, in 2005, EA Sports secured the exclusive rights to use the names and likenesses of N.F.L. players, the league began sending EA programmers its ‘all-22′ film: the eagle-eye inspect that shows the whole field rather than the restricted network-TV box. EA’s programmers use the film to laboriously reverse-engineer each team’s playbook, making Madden NFL one of the best ways to study actual football plays. Shaun Alexander, the running back who was adhering the cover of Madden NFL ‘07, told me with some astonishment that the programmers had sussed out about 75 percent of the plays run by means of the Seattle Seahawks.” (Emphasis added.)

For the record, in the present life’s how Madden NFL ‘09 did on each console in August:

Microsoft Xbox 360, 1 a thousand thousand units;

Sony PlayStation 3, 643,000; Sony PlayStation 2, 424,500; Nintendo Wii, 115,800.

Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2008/09/15/how_many_wouldbe_nfl_defensive_coordinators_bought.html

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A special delivery to the gates of Hades

Editor, The Times:

When he goes to the “gates of unassuaged remorse inward-torment” to find Bin Laden [”A forceful call to modify America,” Times, page one, Aug. 29] Sen. Jon McCain will be carrying the U.S. in a handbasket.

Creating new jobs,

somewhere out there

Both the Democrats and the Republicans are promising to appoint new jobs. Heck, they already regard. Those jobs are in Mexico, China, India, Japan and Central America.

Energizing an angry base

The conventions are upward of, we’re energized, so let’s campaign!

Here’s how to gain: Stay irritated. Afraid of being wrong? Conquer your fear with anger, because anger gives you inability to doubt. Worried about backing up your opinions? Stick to simplicity: Complexity might calm you into disgrace.

Who can you trust? Listen to people who are angry and certain. Cling to that anger! We can do it!

Are we ready on account of this?

There have been to such a degree multiplied articles written about whether or not this country is “ready” with respect to an African-American president. If elected, John McCain be pleased be the shortest president in 120 years. Are we “ready” for a short guy?

Northern exposure

The nomination of Sarah Palin to be vice president on the John McCain ticket is worthy of an episode of “Northern Exposure,” in which place Dr. Joel Fleischman wakes up to expose to view it was only a incubus. Is this each exemplification of McCain’s intelligence? Sarah Palin seems be pleased with George Bush in drag.

I surprise if she will procure her grizzly pelt to Washington.

Cosmetic controversy

Regarding lipstick, as far as I’m concerned, John McCain and Sarah Palin are really good at throwing it out, boundary really can’t catch it very origin!

Comforting the lonely

We’re pro-McCain/Palin, and we are in the nonage in this severely liberal part of the country.

By now we’re probably outnumbered by illegal immigrants. I’m bothering to write because I’m a mean obsessive-compulsive when it comes to reassuring those minority folks that they aren’t alone.

Look at the electoral map from the remain presidential election: all that red. The papers there are printing pro-McCain/Palin culture by the bushel.

Local absurdity

Reusing our Dumpsters

What? The mayor is proposing substituting downtown Dumpsters with plastic bags. Why not reusable canvas bags?

Substitution hopes

When I read the headline “[Seahawks guard Rob] Sims may be out for the season” [Sports, Sept. 10], I was elated. I thought it was King County Executive Ron Sims. When will the taxpayers catch a break?

Closely-captioned facts

I was watching the news the other night. When the commercials began, I put the sound on mute.

The endless political ads had begun.

First, I saw an ad from Gov. Christine Gregoire; it was close-captioned for the hard of hearing. Next came Dino Rossi’s ad; it was not close-captioned.

What is it that Rossi doesn’t want the understood with difficulty of hearing to read?