aamra technologies limited
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Opening date: April 01, 2012
Closing date: April 05, 2012
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Opening date: April 01, 2012
Closing date: April 14, 2012
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Software developer Adobe Systems is halting development of its Flash Player plug-in for mobile devices.
The multimedia software is used to run movies, games and other applications.
Adobe says it now believes the alternative HTML 5 technology offers the “best solution” because it is “universally supported”.
The Flash plug-in works on Android devices and Blackberry’s Playbook tablet, but Apple barred it from iPhones and iPads.
“We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and Blackberry Playbook,” a statement published on Adobe’s blog says.
“We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations.”
Adobe adds that it will still support third party Flash developers who use its Air product to package their software for various app stores.
Criticised
In April 2010 Apple’s late former chief executive, Steve Jobs, attacked Flash’s mobile plug-in for being unreliable, a security threat and a drain on battery life.
Adobe responded shortly after saying the plug-in would “continue to be the dominant tool” for media on the internet.
However, reviewers criticised its performance on other devices, and in September Microsoft also announced it would not support the product on the tablet interface of its upcoming Windows 8 browser.
“It was a battery hog and cumbersome – those are two negative things to have on a mobile device,” said Colin Gillis, senior tech analyst at BGC Partners.
“Steve Jobs helped shift the whole industry to HTML 5, and 40 million iPads later it turned out that Flash wasn’t a selling point as many supposed.”
Job cuts
The news comes a day after Adobe revealed plans to axe 750 posts as part of an effort to place more focus on digital media and digital marketing.
The cuts are being made in Europe and North America and represent more than 7% of the company’s workforce.
The news was timed to coincide with its annual analysts’ meeting.
“It will affect their revenues, but not by a huge amount. The Flash player for mobile is a product that is either given away for free or given away to device makers for a small royalty,” said Chris Green, technology analyst at Davies Murphy Group Europe.
“The real money is for the server technology. Adobe charges thousands of dollars per licence. However, since so much of our internet use is now on mobile devices, it does questions the long-term viability of Flash full stop.”
Shares in Adobe fell close to 12% on Wall Street in morning trade.
10. Even Pilots Have to Pee
“Anyone who has sat near the front of the plane since 9/11 has surely noticed when the pilots are ready to take a bathroom break, or ‘physiological needs’ break, as the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) calls it. When nature calls we alert the flight attendants on the intercom. The attendants set up a barrier to the cockpit and give us an all-clear signal to open the door, as we don’t have a separate bathroom and have to use the same one as everyone else. A few months back my fellow pilot picked up the wrong handset and accidentally asked the entire aircraft if we could ‘come out and pee?’”
9. There Is Such Thing as the “Good Seats”
“If you are susceptible to motion sickness, your best bet is to sit over the wing. An airplane is like a teeter-totter. When the pilot moves the nose of the plane up or down, the seats in the extreme front and back are going to move a greater distance. And as a rule, the tail tends to move more than the front, so stay away from the rear if motion is a problem for you.”
8. The Fasten Seatbelt Sign Is No Joke
“Turbulence isn’t dangerous to a jet aircraft, but it is to the people in it. Past incidents of severe turbulence have slammed people into the ceiling and then dropped them to the floor, causing very serious injuries. If your flight crew tells you to be seated because of turbulence, I highly recommend you heed their warning.”
7. There Are No Free Lunches
“Thanks to the airline bankruptcies starting in 2000, few U.S. domestic airlines still provide food to its crews. As pilots we are allowed to eat in the cockpit once we’re at cruising altitude, but we’re usually eating something from the food courts in the airport terminal: pre-prepared wrapped sandwiches, slices of pizza. Not quite the glamorous lifestyle it used to be.”
6. And You Thought Filling Your Car Was Expensive
“The number-one expense for an airline is fuel, which isn’t going to get any cheaper. And because the cost of gas fluctuates so much, so does the price of the flight. Your average two-engine, narrow-body aircraft burns about 15 gallons of gas per minute at cruising altitude. So you can imagine what the gas bill would be on a transcontinental flight.”
5. The FAA Has a Sense of Humor, Sort of
“Airplanes follow an invisible map of highways and avenues in the sky in order to make it to their destinations. There are thousands of virtual points in the sky that pilots follow on their route, each with unique names so the air-traffic controllers can tell us where to go and how to get there. The FAA has gotten creative when naming some of these points (which must be five characters), like these over southern Florida—UFIRD, DONLD, and TRUMP over Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, or FINNS, PYRUT, and BUFIT for Florida native Jimmy Buffett. My favorites are at the Kansas City Airport, honoring its local cuisine on the arrival procedure with SPICY and BARBQ.”
4. The Deal With Electronics
“Nothing has ever been proven, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that electronics really interfere with an aircraft’s flight instruments. The most likely culprits are things that transmit a signal, like a cell phone or a computer operating in Wi-Fi mode, which emits an electronic pulse or wave. But new aircrafts are being engineered for the wireless age so you should see more and more allowance of electronic devices in the future.”
3. Your Co-Pilot Could be More Experienced Than You Think
“The turmoil of the airline industry over the last 20 years or so has caused many airlines to go out of business or shrink in size, thus laying off massive numbers of employees. If an airline captain loses his job at one airline and goes to another, he or she will start over as a co-pilot at entry-level pay and will be given no credit for their experience.”
2. The Air Isn’t Immune to Office Romances
“All the crew stays at the same hotel, but I remember a couple years ago the pilots’ wives pushed for flight attendants to be at a different hotel than the pilots because they didn’t want to make it easy for their husbands to cheat.”
1. Crews Are Trained in More Than Just Emergency Exits
“Terrorism is a big deal nowadays. Most flight attendants and pilots are trained for those instances and taught self-defense as well as how to detect certain behaviors. Pilots are also able to sign up for a voluntary intensive program that is held at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. For one week they learn things like how to shoot a gun and disable someone carrying one. When they finish the program they’re licensed to carry a gun into the cockpit with them.”
Chinese telecoms giant Huawei has confirmed it is in talks with Microsoft about its use of Android software.
Microsoft claims that Google’s Android operating system infringes its intellectual property rights. It has already convinced Samsung, HTC and others to pay it patent royalty fees.
Huawei Device’s chief marketing officer, Victor Xu, said the discussions are “in progress”.
He also revealed that the firm plans to open a new design centre in London.
Former world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier has died after a brief battle with liver cancer, his family said.
Frazier – also known as Smokin’ Joe – had been receiving hospice care in Philadelphia after being diagnosed with cancer several weeks ago.
The 67-year-old was the first man to beat Muhammad Ali in 1971, but lost his next two bouts with Ali.
He held the world title between 1970 and 1973.
On Saturday, Frazier’s manager Leslie Wolf said the boxer’s condition was very serious but that doctors and Frazier’s team were “doing everything we can”.
Frazier won an Olympic gold medal in 1964 after going to the Games as a replacement for Buster Mathis, who had beaten him in the trials but could not attend the Games due to an injury.
He won the heavyweight title in 1970 by defeating Jimmy Ellis in New York. Three years later he lost the title to George Foreman.
But the boxer is perhaps most widely-known for three great fights with Ali, including the epic “Thrilla in Manila” in 1975.
After hearing about Frazier’s illness, Ali, 69, said: “The news about Joe is hard to believe and even harder to accept.”
“My family and I are keeping Joe and his family in our daily prayers. Joe has a lot of friends pulling for him – and I’m one of them,” he said on Sunday.
Frazier retired in 1976 after being beaten again by Foreman. He then made an unsuccessful comeback in 1981, fighting only once before ending his career for good.
MICHAEL E. SPECTER holds a Henry R. Luce Fellowship and is a correspondent for The Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong.
There comes a day in the life of most foreign residents of Hong Kong when a well-meaning Chinese friend invites them out for a hearty lunch of snake soup. The foreigner’s eyes fill with fear, previous appointments are suddenly remembered – and the Chinese friend goes off chuckling, having confirmed his conviction that Westerners have a curious attitude toward food.
The Cantonese tell a joke about the strange culinary habits of foreigners: ”How can one be certain that Adam and Eve were not Chinese? It’s obvious, they ate the apple instead of the snake.” Adam and Eve might have been mistaken. Apples are fine, but snake soup is regarded as a delicacy and many residents of Hong Kong believe it is blessed with spiritual powers no fruit could ever possess.
According to Chinese myth, the proper consumption of snake soup can help ward off maladies ranging from delirium to devil possession. Correctly prepared, it’s said, a bowl of the soup strengthens the ankles, cures malaria and prevents all sorts of diseases that come from exposure to cold winds. It also tastes good.
With the arrival of Hong Kong’s cooler months, many of its restaurants start simmering snakes by the thousands as eager customers flock to the most popular snake establishments. What was once something of a cult, attended mostly by elderly men, has now attained the status of a health-food necessity. Hong Kong has plenty of exotic food, but since it’s now possible to find good beggar’s chicken or Mongolian hot pot, among other specialties, in New York, snake soup may be one of the last traditional foods in the colony that has not been exported in any significant way.
¶ Snake is not a particularly popular dish throughout China, only in the south, and Hong Kong imports most of its snakes from the southern city of Canton, which is a center of the snake-production industry. But while Canton remains the spiritual center of the snake feast, Hong Kong has eclipsed its neighbor in demand.
The soup is served at most of Hong Kong’s Cantonese restaurants from December through March. Its quality ranges from wonderful to unacceptable, and the best way to steer clear of bad snake soup is to eat at one of the many restaurants where snake is a specialty of the house.
For the best snake soup, as well as a rare glimpse of traditional Chinese urban society, go to the western district of Hong Kong island. It won’t take long to find shops that sell snakes – just look for a bad painting of a cobra – but don’t dream of eating snake until you reach Jervois Street, a small block of old buildings with several snake restaurants.
¶ The best of these may well be Snake King (90 Jervois Street), where for $2 you can drink snake soup among people who have been enjoying it for decades. During the height of the snake-soup season, which hits its stride when the Chinese New Year begins (on Feb. 2 this year), Snake King will ladle out about a thousand bowls a day. But even outside the season, the restaurant imports several thousand snakes, mostly cobras and tree snakes, from Canton and Thailand every week.
The soup itself is a rich mixture, with the exact ingredients usually remaining a closely held family secret. Often, however, the slightly spicy broth is filled with chicken, snake, abalone, mushrooms, pork and liberal amounts of ginger. The other spices and their quantities vary, depending on which illness you’re trying to shake off. According to the soup’s adherents, the longer the broth and bones (later removed) are simmered, the richer and spiritually more potent the result.
The soup is often sprinkled with chrysanthemum leaves, which are believed to aid the vision, and they add a certain sweetness to the dish. Crackers are also supplied. While the soup makes a light meal on its own, people often order with it a dish of spicy sausage.
¶ It takes a while to appreciate the subtle flavoring of most Cantonese food, and snake soup is no exception. Much like that other panacea – chicken soup – it can seem a little bland at times. To most people snake tastes like chicken, and heavy spices are normaly resisted in favor of light herbal seasoning. The broth should not be too thick, and the trick to making it properly lies in finding the correct balance of ingredients.
”Chinese Materia Medica,” an ancient tract on dragon and snake drugs, says that ”snake meat is very warming, a wild pig can survive the coldest winter if he eats three snakes.” Two, apparently, are not enough. There may be no truth to it, but many Chinese people, when asked why they rush off to a snake shop at the first hint of cold weather, will tell you it’s because they don’t want to get sick this winter.
¶ For about $10 (United States) snake fans can buy their own snakes and make soup to suit themselves. (The shop will kill a snake while the customer waits.) But the casual visitor to Hong Kong is advised to skip this adventure. Whatever their charms, snakes can also be poisonous; and you can never really know exactly what you’re getting.
It’s best to stick to the snake restaurants. The people who frequent them are always worth meeting, even if you don’t speak a word of Cantonese. And, of course, the magic of the soup will light a little fire inside that may keep you warm all winter.
Hong Kong’s snake restaurants
The easiest way to get to most snake restaurants in Hong Kong is by taxi. Cabs are readily available and a five-minute ride costs about $1. Of the dozens of Cantonese restaurants that will have snake soup on the menu until the beginning of April, two of the best are: Forum Restaurant (479 Lockhart Road in Causeway Bay on Hong Kong island; telephone 5-778386), and Fung Lum (23 Granville Road in Kowloon (3-678919). Both are open daily from noon to midnight. Fung Lum also has two excellent branches, one in Happy Valley on the island and the other in the New Territories. Soup at these restaurants will cost about $4 a bowl.
The snake soup establishments (which all have roughly the same name: Snake King) are better for the purist who wants to ingest the ethos of snake as well as the soup. Two of the most popular are: King of Snakes (12 Percival Street; 5-764123), and Snake King (90 Jervois Street; 5-411015), both on Hong Kong island. They, too, are open daily from noon to midnight. Reservations are useful at Cantonese restaurants but of no value in the snake shops. M. E. S.
photo of waiter stiring wok of broth.
A US doctor is trying to pioneer a laser treatment that changes patients’ eye colour.
Dr Gregg Homer claims 20 seconds of laser light can remove pigment in brown eyes so they gradually turn blue.
He is now seeking up to $750,000 (£468,000) of investment to continue clinical trials.
However, other eye experts urge caution because destroying eye pigment can cause sight problems if too much light is allowed to enter the pupil.
Delhi: Noted musician, singer and lyricists Bhupen Hazarika, 85, who was admitted in the ICU at Mumbai’s Kokilaben Dhirubai Ambani Hospital, breathed his last at 04: 37 pm today.
Hazarika was hospitalized four months ago in June owing to a chest infection and was later on transferred to the ICU.
Hazarika was on ventilator support and was undergoing dialysis. Over the last couple of days, his kidneys were not functioning properly. Hazarika’s health deteriorated after a bout of pneumonia on October 23.
Remembering Hazarika, filmmaker Kalpana Lajmi, his partner of 39-years said, “He was not just a singer but a great social reformer. He brought eastern India and Bangladesh on the world map. There will be never another Bhupen Hazarika again.”
A Dadasaheb Phalke award and Padma Bhushan winner, Hazarika, who hailed from Assam was known for his rich baritone and sang in many Indian languages, including Hindi, Bangla and Assamese. The legendary singer had last lent his voice for the film ‘Gandhi to Hitler’.
On 8th September, Bhupen Hazarika celebrated his 85th birthday.
People have begun placing bets on Aishwarya Rai Bachchan delivering her baby on November 11, 2011. A close second, say punters, is Children’s Day November 14, 2011.
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