Oct 25, 2011 China ‘not doing enough on software piracy’

The world’s leading software industry body warned on Monday of a jump in revenues lost to software piracy in China as the country’s government is failing to rein in rampant copyright infringement.

Robert Holleyman, president and chief executive of the Business Software Alliance, said pledges by the Chinese government to help foreign companies gain more revenues from software sales in China and high-profile anti-piracy campaigns had failed to deliver.

“All that activity led us to believe that we’d see some fairly rapid reduction of software piracy in China,” Mr Holleyman said. “But none of what I’ve picked up with our companies indicates that they’re seeing the kind of economic growth associated with the sales of software.”

The remarks indicate that software market opportunities for companies such as Microsoft are unlikely to keep up with the pace of China’s PC market growth, and that intellectual property rights infringement will remain an irritant in relations with the US and China’s other leading trading partners.

In late 2010, the Chinese government, responding to growing criticism of its intellectual property rights protection record, promised in talks with the US that it would help increase foreign companies’ software sales in the country.

Since last year, Beijing has also been running a high-profile crackdown on the production and sales of pirated goods. The duration and scale of the campaign initially gave rise to cautious optimism among foreign industry executives that real change could be on the cards.

The US government even expressed cautious optimism in its annual report on intellectual property rights protection, saying Beijing’s special campaign against piracy might lead to “lasting improvements”.

But Mr Holleyman said: “While [piracy as a] percentage of total software sales is coming down somewhat, the US$ losses are exploding.” He added that he expected multinational software companies to launch more legal action against Chinese counterfeiters as a result.

In China, 78 per cent of all software sold in 2010 was pirated, according to BSA’s 2011 Global Piracy Report, compared with a global average piracy rate of 42 per cent. While this is not among the world’s highest piracy rates, China created the second-highest economic damage through piracy as the industry lost $7.8bn in revenues to pirates last year. In the US, the damage was $9.5bn.

But China is expected to overtake the US in that ranking soon as it is set to surpass the US as the world’s largest PC market by unit shipments next year.

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Oct 24, 2011 11-yr-old Rajkot boy scores full marks in Microsoft exam

RAJKOT: A city boy has become the youngest student to equal the world record of obtaining full 1,000 marks in an online computer exam conducted by US-based multinational Microsoft Corp.

Akshit Jayesh Dhruv, a Class V student, appeared in the exam on March 16 and obtained full marks, said Chirag Kothari, Centre Head of Inside Tomorrow Computer Academy, where the 11-year-old studied.

Nearly 17,000 candidates, from as many as 119 countries and studying from Standard III to post graduates, appeared in the exam in which Akshit was ranked first, Kothari said.

Earlier, a 21-year-old electronic communication student, Shruti Doshi - also from Rajkot - had set the world record by getting 1,000 marks, he said.

Doshi, who was also a student of Inside Tomorrow Academy, had surpassed the record of 999 marks obtained by Peter Phill of New Zealand in 2004.

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Oct 22, 2011 Apple stores close as employees celebrate life of Steve Jobs

CUPERTINO, Calif.
–
Apple leaders, employees and pop culture stars celebrated the life of Steve Jobs in a tribute Wednesday to a computer visionary who changed the world when he incorporated music, media and lifestyle into a sleek line of products

The service at company headquarters here drew hundreds of employees. They crowded into an outdoor amphitheater to reflect on the legacy of the company co-founder, who died Oct. 5 at age 56 after battling pancreatic cancer.

Across the U.S., Apple stores shut their doors for several hours so retail employees could watch a live webcast. The ceremony was closed to the public, and media handlers shooed reporters away from the famously private company.

Despite the best efforts at keeping the 90-minute ceremony private, music drifted across the campus when Norah Jones and British rock band Coldplay performed. And employees took to Twitter to relay some of the scene. Helicopter footage showed banners splayed on the building walls surrounding the amphitheater with pictures of Jobs. One banner showed Jobs sitting cross-legged cradling the first Macintosh computer. Employees crowded balconies overlooking the stage.

The mood at the service was festive, not somber, employees said. Speakers reportedly included CEO Tim Cook, Apple's chief designer Jony Ive and former U.S. vice president Al Gore.

Elsewhere, Apple customers found shuttered stores but rarely an explanation for the closure. Most who visited didn't mind the inconvenience.

"Jobs is a visionary. He is basically the core of Apple. So it makes a lot of sense," said Stephanie Desanges, 25, who works in finance and lives in New York. She had gone to the store to get her laptop fixed.

Carol Badger only had one complaint after she showed up at a store in San Francisco to find it closed. "I was just a little bit disappointed that it was not simulcast around the world so people could gather in cities and take part."

Analyst Stephen Baker, who tracks consumer electronics sales for research group NPD, said Apple doesn't stand to lose a lot of sales by closing its stores for a few hours.

Wednesday's service follows a memorial at Stanford University last Sunday for friends and family. That service at Memorial Church reportedly brought out Oracle chief Larry Ellison and Microsoft's Bill Gates, as well as politicians including Bill Clinton. U2 frontman Bono and Joan Baez reportedly performed.

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'Revenge of the Electric Car' goes corporate

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, here with his electric Leaf, is one fo the stars of

Five years ago, the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car took the auto industry by storm. Now comes the sequel, Revenge of the Electric Car, and it is being embraced by the industry. The new film follows four companies' executives and their the development of their electric cars. They include General Motors' Bob Lutz and the Chevrolet Volt; Nissan's Carlos Ghosn and the electric Leaf; Tesla's Elon Musk and the creation of the electric roadster; and a startup firm headed by Greg Abbott in Culver City, Calif.
Who Killed and Revenge, the original and sequel, are polar opposites, yet done by the same true believer, director Chris Paine. The contrast:

• The first movie had a fresh, brash, anti-corporate theme, with protesters being dragged away and automakers who clammed up about what came across as a conspiracy to bury a promising technology. The new movie opening today is actually a salute to the efforts by automakers to create electric cars. Several of them sponsored screenings leading up to today's release. It takes viewers into the boardrooms and humanizes the executives who came across as greedy robber-barons in the first time.
• The first movie seemed brazen and unpolished, guerrilla filmmaking at its best. This new effort is slick and beautifully photographed, the product of what seems like a much-larger budget.
• The first film was a personal crusade, rich with rebels who are true believers in the electric-car cause. The second is dispassionate with an unemotional narration and style that will remind you of the journalism practiced on PBS' Frontline.

Still, Revenge is a must-see movie for anyone interested in cars. With automakers now quaking in fear now that they know how badly Paine could make them look, they grant him full access. Yet given the Occupy Wall Street protests and backlash against corporations, the new film seems out of touch with the anger of the times.

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Oct 20, 2011 iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II Drop Test

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In this video, we test the iPhone 4S vs. the Samsung Galaxy S II to see which of these devices survives a waist high and shoulder high drop.

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Oct 19, 2011 The World's Most Shocking X-rays Photos

The X-ray picture shows a 5-centimeter nail stuck in an unidentified South Korean patient's skull Thursday, Dec. 2, 2004. According to a Seoul hospital, doctors found the nail after the man came to the hospital, complaining about a severe headache. They speculate that the nail stuck in the man's head four years ago in an accident but the man didn't know about it. The nail was removed in a surgery last Saturday. 
This X-ray released by New York's Montefiore Medical Center, Monday, July 16, 2007, shows a screw that was inserted in the broken neck of Paul Robinson, of Kirkland, Wash. Robinson, 53, was in the steep upper deck of Yankee Stadium with his wife and son July 8, 2007, when an unidentified man above him fell down several rows of seats, breaking Robinson's vertebra. (AP Photo/Montefiore Medical Center)

          

     

     

     

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Record breaking Royal wedding dress

The dress worn by Kate Middleton for her wedding to Prince William is set to make £8million after a record number of people visit Buckingham Palace to see it, where it has been on display since July 23rd.

So far over 354,000 people have visited the palace since the gown designed by the Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen has been on view. Experts guess that final ticket sales will total around £8million.  The extra visitors this year has meant that visitor numbers are up 20 per cent and some of the proceeds from the display will be going to William and Kate’s wedding charity fund which is currently around £1million.

A lot of the profits will go to help maintain and restore the Royal Collection which includes the palaces, residences and extensive art collections. Thanks to the Royal Wedding there has been a general increase in the Royal family and this has seen ticket sales across its venues and sales of commemorative souvenirs increase meaning income has risen from £7.3million to £41.7million in the year to April.

A spokesperson for the Royal Collection said: ‘This year has been our highest to date. The wedding dress has proved very popular.’

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Rescue mission for new cruise ship

The new 122,000-tonne Celebrity Eclipse left Southampton yesterday before its inaugural celebrations to rescue stranded British holiday makers in Spain, the £500-million liner is en route to Bilbao where it will pick up more than 2,500 tourists affected by the volcanic ash disruption to bring them back to the UK in what is thought to be one of the largest peacetime repatriations.


For those who have been stranded in Spain for nearly a week now this will be a welcome relief, especially travelling back in the 5* luxury of the Celebrity Eclipse cruise liner which can carry 2,850 passengers. The President and Chief Executive of Celebrity Cruises Dan Hanrahan, contacted tour operators Thomas Cook, TUI and Co-Op Travel Group to look at bringing back their stranded customers.
He said. “They responded favourably to our idea of bringing these passengers back and they knew where their guests were in Spain and they could give us a manifest of people. It seemed a better idea than having a two-day party and it’s all worked out and we’re happy to help.”
The Eclipse is due to arrive in Bilbao in the early hours of Thursday 22nd and pick up the stranded holiday makers before returning to Southampton.

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Oct 15, 2011 iWorld's founder Steve Jobs last words iDead made his fans to say iSad

Legendary Steve Jobs fans have to accept this news with heavy heart that founder of iworld is no more among us. The trend setter left everyone shocked! You can easily find "Steve Jobs" written almost everywhere on Google, Apple website's main page, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's, CNN and Bill Gates(Former CEO of Microsoft) showed their condolences. May his soul rest in peace

iReport: Pay him tribute by sharing this video.

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