$70-75 Computer from Indian company

September 29, 2005 By Desh Kapoor

URL Link: http://beta.news.com.com/Indias+renaissance+The+100+computer/2009-1041_3-5752054.html?tag=st.prev Highlights: In about three months, a little-known company called Novatium plans to offer a stripped-down home computer for about $70 or $75. That is about half the price of the standard "thin clients" of this kind now sold in India, made possible in part by some novel engineering choices. Adding a monitor doubles the price to $150, but the company will offer used displays to keep the cost down. "If you want to reach the $100 to $120 price point, you need to use old monitors," said Novatium founder and board member Rajesh Jain, a local entrepreneur who sold the IndiaWorld portal for $115 million in cash in 2000 and has started a host of companies since. "Monitors have a lifetime of seven to eight years." Source: news.com Read more

$100 laptop from MIT Labs

September 29, 2005 By Desh Kapoor

URL Link: http://beta.news.com.com/The+100+laptop+moves+closer+to+reality/2100-1044_3-5884683.html Highlights: Nicholas Negroponte, the co-founder of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, detailed specifications for a $100 windup-powered laptop targeted at children in developing nations. Negroponte, who laid out his original proposal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, said MIT and his nonprofit group, called One Laptop Per Child, is in discussions with five countries--Brazil, China, Thailand, Egypt and South Africa--to distribute up to 15 million test systems to children. In addition, Massachusetts is working with MIT on a plan to distribute the laptops to schoolchildren, Negroponte said. Source: News.com Read more

NASA, Google reaching for stars

September 29, 2005 By Desh Kapoor

URL Link: http://news.com.com/2061-11204_3-5885502.html?part=rss&tag=5885502&subj=news Highlights: NASA Ames Research Center issued a press release Wednesday shedding more light on the R&D collaboration between the space agency and search behemoth Google, which includes a vast new campus at Ames' Moffett Field in Mountain View, Calif. The two entities plan to cooperate on areas including large-scale data management and data-mining, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence and promoting the entrepreneurial space industry, according to NASA's statement. "Imagine having a wide selection of images from the Apollo space mission at your fingertips whenever you want it. That's just one small example of how this collaboration could help broaden technology's role in making the world a better place," Eric Schmidt, Google chief executive officer, said in the statement. Source: News.com Read more

Nation-wide Strike in India by Clueless Commies!!

September 29, 2005 By Desh Kapoor

News Source: The Hindu News Highlight: Industrial and commercial activities as also air services were affected in large parts of the country today as the day-long strike by Left trade unions crippled work in public sector banks and insurance companies and government undertakings to protest the UPA government's economic policies. The impact of the strike was the maximum in the Left-ruled West Bengal where life almost came to a standstill with public transport, including train services, remaining paralysed. Only two flights--one each from Delhi and Mumbai-- landed at Netaji Subhaschandra Bose international airport which was the worst-hit by the Airport Authority of India employees' protest against privatisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports. URL of the news item: http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/000200509292001.htm?headline=Left~strike~affects~air~services,~industrial~&~commercial~acti Read more

– Two towns wiped out by Rita

September 29, 2005 By Desh Kapoor

Two towns - Port Sulphur and Buras were wiped out by Rita completely!! Read more

Siemens India SAP courses

September 28, 2005 By Desh Kapoor

The link can be viewed here Siemen's SAP courses Read more

SAP Professionals Network

September 28, 2005 By Desh Kapoor

All about SAP in one site. . Read more

US Economy: An accident waiting to happen

September 27, 2005 By Desh Kapoor

URL Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5294981-103676,00.html Highlights: Two hurricanes in a month, petrol prices at $3 a gallon, a current account deficit of enormous proportions, a housing market that defies gravity: little wonder that the mood in the United States is a little edgy. The International Monetary Fund made it clear last week that it saw the world's largest economy as an accident waiting to happen. The US could not continue to live beyond its means indefinitely, and there were only two ways to deal with the unsustainable imbalances in the global economy: the nice way or the nasty way. The nice way, according to simulations by IMF staff, would involve a gradual slowdown in the pace of consumption in the US, accompanied by slightly higher real interest rates and a modest 15% devaluation in the dollar over a few years. Source: The Guardian Read more

Spiritual Quotient

September 27, 2005 By Desh Kapoor

My own mathematical equation for any individual's overall "Spiritual Quotient" is Deeds/Ego – (Ego is also synonymous to "self" or "I"). [SQ = D/E] Generally Good deeds increase the SQ and so does the reduction of Ego. The catch however is how Good Deeds also affect the direction of change in Ego. If the relationship is inversely proportional, then the SQ increases manifold. Of course, an individual becomes "Infinity" (or Universal Consciousness or "God", if you prefer) when Ego (or self) becomes ZERO.. and duality of self and Self vanishes. All those who we have known as Great Men or Women doing good for all – I doubt anyone of those had a Deed to Ego relationship that was Inverse - otherwise they would not have been so popular! The same holds true for those in the NGO sector. I have seen it in my many interactions. Read more

Chinese Economy will be twice that of US!

September 27, 2005 By Desh Kapoor

URL Link: http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/article/futureinvest/986 Highlights: What is the future for investors? This prediction should grab your attention: By the middle of this century, the economy of China will be nearly twice as large as that of the United States and as big as the economies of North America, Europe, and Japan -- combined. The developed world, which today provides more than half of world output, will shrink to less than one-quarter by 2050. How do I know China will be so large? By looking at the population of China and then making a conservative projection about how fast the Chinese economy will grow. For China's economy to be as large as the entire developed world's, the typical Chinese worker's income must only rise to one-half the level of the average American's income. This feat is easily attainable, even though the average Chinese now earns only about one-eighth the income of the average worker in the U.S. Source: Yahoo Finance Read more