Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Skyfall - New James Bond Trailer


Hollywood Mythmaker Buys a Real-Life Pandora


Hollywood Mythmaker Buys a Real-Life Pandora

‘Avatar’ Director James Cameron Builds in New Zealand


Pete Nikolaison
James Cameron has bought a house on land around Lake Pounui on New Zealand’s North Island.


THERE is no Pandora. But Pounui Ridge, roughly 20 miles from this Wairarapa Valley wine town, comes close.
There is the 3-D Imax-scale view for instance. Toward the south is the open Pacific, stretching 2,000 miles, straight to Antarctica. The choppy waters of Cook Strait lie to the west, with the jagged mountains of New Zealand’s South Island rising in snowcapped splendor in the distance.
Pandora, James Cameron’s mythical “Avatar” planet, overflows with odd wildlife, and so does Pounui. Consider the eels. After living in a freshwater lake here, they slither to the sea and spawn near the faraway island of Tonga. In a life cycle rooted in Miocene times, their elvers — leaf-shaped offspring — ride the currents back to Lake Pounui.
And when the next eels arrive, oddly enough, they may spot Mr. Cameron. “I’m anxious to throw on a scuba tank and get down there,” he said by phone the other day.
This year, shortly before his solo trip to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, Mr. Cameron, the filmmaker-adventurer, spent an estimated $16 million to buy 2,500 acres of farmland around Lake Pounui (pronounced po-NEW-ee). Now he expects to absorb its magic while creating some of his own in a pair of sequels that will build on the story of Pandora and on an ecological mythos that helped make “Avatar,” released by 20th Century Fox in 2009, the biggest-selling film of all time.
Mr. Cameron’s purchase of the Lake Pounui property has also coincided with escalating fears here about a land grab by wealthy foreigners. Recently, for instance, New Zealanders had a conniption over the sale of 16 dairy farms to a Chinese company. (A court fight over the deal continues.) Mr. Cameron’s arrival added fuel to the media fire. “Hordes are bound to follow from Hollywood,” Stephen Oliver wrote in The Waikato Times on April 2, poking fun at the outcry by envisioning pristine hillsides “festooned with trophy homes” in an “obscene showcase of bad taste.”
Some of Mr. Cameron’s new neighbors seem to have an open mind. But most worry about his ability to inhabit this paradise without becoming the kind of disrupter he pilloried in “Avatar.” Will the millions he plunked down for the property increase everyone’s taxes? What about continued access to Lake Pounui for the eel researchers at Victoria University of Wellington? Mr. Cameron has already closed a little hall on his land that had been used for wedding receptions, thus severing the public from what locals now refer to as “his lake.”
There is also the question of what Mr. Cameron farms. To obtain governmental approval to buy the land, he had to agree to keep at least part of it as a working farm. But the current operation — built mostly around cows — poses a problem for Mr. Cameron, who said his wife, Suzy Amis, had pushed him and their children toward a plant-based diet. “So we’re looking for something more crop based,” Mr. Cameron explained. “I don’t want to be a hypocrite.”

Power Outages Hit 600 Million in India

Power Outages Hit 600 Million in India


Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated Press

Vehicles clogged streets in New Delhi after a power outage disrupted traffic lights and the city's rail services.


NEW DELHI — About 600 million people lost power in India on Tuesday when the country’s northern and eastern electricity grids failed, crippling the country for a second consecutive day.
The outage stopped hundreds of trains in their tracks, darkened traffic lights, shuttered the Delhi Metro and left nearly everyone — the police, water utilities, private businesses and citizens — without electricity. About half of India’s population of 1.2 billion people was without power. India’s unofficial power grid, a huge number of backup diesel generators and other private power sources, kept hospitals electrified and major airports running.
Manoranjan Kumar, an economic adviser with the Ministry of Power, said in a telephone interview that the grids had failed and that the ministry was working to figure out the source of the problem. The northern and eastern grids cover 11 states and the capital city of Delhi, stretching from India’s northern tip in Kashmir to Rajasthan to West Bengal’s capital of Kolkata.
The failure happened without warning just after 1 p.m., electric company officials said.
“We seem to have plunged into another power failure, and the reasons why are not at all clear,” said Gopal K. Saxena, the chief executive of BSES, an electric company that services South Delhi, in a telephone interview. It may take a long time to restore power to north India, he said, because the eastern grid has also failed, and alternate power sources in Bhutan and the Indian state of Sikkim flow into the east first.
About two hours after the grid failure, power ministry authorities said some alternate arrangements had been made. “We are taking hydro power from Bhakhra Nangal Dam,” in northern India, said Sushil Kumar Shinde, the power minister, in a televised interview.
India has struggled to generate enough power of its own to fuel businesses and light homes, and the country relies on huge imports of coal and oil to power its own plants. But supply and demand may not explain away this week’s grid failures, power executives said.
The failure on Tuesday affected roughly twice as many people as the massive power outage the previous day, when the northern power grid failed and left more than 300 million people without power for several hours. No official reason for the Monday’s failure has been given, although some local news reports pointed fingers at state governments which were overdrawing power.
That assessment is too simplistic, Mr. Saxena, of BSES, said. There are controls in place on India’s electricity grids that override an outsized power demand. “We have one of the most robust, smart grids operating” in the world, he said. It would “not be wise” to give an assessment of what happened at this time, he added.
Institutions without a private backup system were shuttered. All trains stopped in the Delhi Metro, which carries nearly 2 million passengers a day. Trains were pulled to the closest stations using battery back up, and then evacuated, a spokeswoman for the Delhi Metro said, and the stations have been locked. “We had never anticipated such a thing,” the spokeswoman said.
A trade body, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, or Assocham, said that Monday’s power problem “totally disturbed the normal life and has severely impacted the economic activities."
“While on the one hand it is pity that over 26,000 megawatts of power stations are idle due to the nonavailability of coal, on the other one grid failure has brought the system collapsed,” said the group’s secretary general D.S. Rawat, noting that “the entire power situation at present is headed for disaster.”
Source : NYTIMES

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Download entire films instantly: Google unveils world's fastest internet connection in Kansas - 1 GIGABIT per second


  • Service uses fibre-optics to deliver one gigabit per second. 
  • Installation could start as early as September
  • Google to roll out service to other cities shortly
  • Google has unveiled its own ultra-high-speed internet service – offering lightning-fast speeds of one gigabit per second in Kansas, Missouri. 
    The service uses optical fibre to deliver speeds far in excess of traditional web services – offering speeds faster than almost anywhere else on Earth. 
    The Web search leader unveiled its ultra-high speed Google Fiber service in Kansas City, Missouri, and could start installations in September, executives said. Google hopes to roll out the service to other cities later.
    ‘Access is the next frontier that needs to be opened,’ Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette said. ‘We're going to do it profitably. That is our plan.’
    ‘We are at a crossroad,’ he added, noting that Internet speeds had leveled out for broadband since around 2000. ‘We at Google we believe there is no need to wait.’
    Google Fiber's ultra high-speed connections and television offerings are aimed at surpassing those of current providers, allowing users to search live channels, Netflix, YouTube, recorded shows and tens of thousands of hours of on-demand programming. However, no phone service is available.
    ‘The phone is really a 1940s thing. Why have a landline? It's sitting there, you use it once every two weeks,’ Pichette said.
    Google said it also intends to roll out product packages for businesses, but would not provide details.
    Google Fiber includes more than 100 networks and costs $120 a month for a package of TV, 1 gigabit per second Internet speeds and 1 terabyte of cloud storage.
    The package includes popular networks owned by major media companies such as Comcast Corp's NBC Universal, Discovery Communications and Viacom Inc. Premium movie networks are available from Liberty Media's Starz for an extra fee.

  • NOT JUST FAST: GOOGLE OFFERS SWEETENERS TO EARLY BUYERS

    Google Fiber includes such features as the ability to record eight TV shows at a time and store up to 500 hours of high definition programming. Users can choose to use a tablet or smartphone as a voice-activated remote control.
    Google is offering its Nexus 7 tablet with the Google TV app to early users of the service.
    Google said it is setting up a 6-week ‘rally’ for consumers to vote on where the first fiber communities, or ‘fiberhoods,’ should be installed in the Kansas City area.
    Consumers must pay $10 to register their household online for service. About 50 ‘neighbors’ will need to register in order for their area to be eligible for installation services, according to Google executives.
    Whether or not consumers will embrace the new offerings remains to be seen. But officials said they are confident Kansas City will be a showcase of success for a larger rollout.
    ‘Google is a very different company,’ said Kevin Lo, general manager of Google Access. ‘And this is not a short-term project.’

    The $103billion photo call: 116 Hollywood stars - from Leonardo DiCaprio to Tom Cruise - pose for the ultimate A-list picture

    How do you get 116 of the biggest names in Hollywood – with 124 Oscars between them – together for one epic photograph? And to say ‘cheese’?




    There’s nothing like a family get-together to celebrate your birthday, and 116* movers and shakers all turned up to help Paramount Studios celebrate its 100th. 
    According to photographer Art Streiber, even the biggest names were humbled.
    ‘This is epic,’ gasped Leonardo DiCaprio as he entered Studio 18 on the Paramount lot and gaped at the line-up, whose box-office takings have totalled a staggering $103 billion.


    *SADLY, ONE OF THE STARS, ERNEST BORGNINE, HAS DIED SINCE THE PHOTO WAS TAKEN

    Source : Dailymail


    World's biggest traffic fine?

    Chinese driver whose truck was so heavy the bridge he drove on collapsed has been sent the nearly £16m bill for the repair work.
    The driver, named by Chinese media only as Mr Zhang, was driving a truck filled with sand which was so overloaded that the concrete bridge collapsed when he took his lorry across it.
    The local government near Beijing has put the blame solely on Mr Zhang and have sent him the bill to pay for the repairs.
    The heavy bridge will cost £15.74million to repair and the local government is expecting the driver to pay it all.
    They say it was his fault that he had put too much sand in his truck last summer and that he must now pay the price for his actions.
    The China Car Times wrote: ‘On July 19th of last year, a 34-year-old trucker who has only been named Mr  Zhang by Chinese media sources was trucking sand across the outskirts of Beijing,
    ‘His 110 ton truck caused a bridge to collapse.
    ‘After a yearlong police investigation the courts have come to the decision that the blame is solely on Mr Zhang's shoulders due to his overloading ways, Mr Zhang's defence so far seems to be that he was just doing what he was told by the trucking company.
    ‘It's unclear how, or even if, Mr Zhang is able to pay his 156 million RMB but we suspect that the bailiffs will have a hard time collecting.'

    Friday, July 27, 2012

    Saudi Drivers Crazy and dangerous !





    Have to admit though, they have very good control over the vehicles ..

    The Batmobile Documentary


    Planting half million trees along Kuwait borders

     
    Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) came out with a new campaign called “Green Fence of Kuwait” launched by the Company in which they will plant half million trees at the frontiers of Kuwait borders, they started at Nuwaiseeb check-point and they will use advanced irrigation system for watering the trees, awesome.
    The campaign will extend for 8 years and the result will be a 400 KM’s long tree line around Kuwait borders.

    High time we started planting trees, it will at least block some of the dust and make it little bit cooler.

    via Bananaq8

    Kuwaiti Olympic Athletes Profiles



    check out the profiles of all the Kuwaiti Olympic athletes as well as follow their event schedules and other bits of information on the official London 2012 Olympics website [Here]
    For easy to remember access, just use teamkuwait.com

    via 248am
     

    Thursday, July 26, 2012

    HSBC bank helped terrorists and drug cartel


    A Senate report released ahead of the embargo time revealed that HSBC’s lax anti-money laundering policies allowed Mexican drug money, terrorist money, and even suspicious Russian money to enter the U.S. and gain access to U.S. dollar liquidity over the last couple of years.
    The report, released late on Monday despite a 10 PM embargo time, was prepared by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and counted with the support of Senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn. In a year-long investigation, the Subcommittee found that HSBC violated several rules, exposing the U.S. financial system to “a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing.” According to the report, HSBC’s Mexican affiliate channeled $7 billion into the U.S. between 2007 and 2008 which possibly included “proceeds from illegal drug sales in the United States.” The big British bank's problems have been known for nearly a decade,
    They committed to fixing what is wrong, taking the opportunity to learn from previous mistakes. HSBC actively circumvented rules designed to “block transactions involving terrorists, drug lords, and rogue regimes.” In one case, “two HSBC affiliates sent nearly 25,000 transactions involving $19.4 billion through their HBUS [HSBC’s U.S. affiliate] accounts over seven years without disclosing the transactions’ links to Iran.” HSBC sets up a U.S. bank affiliate as its gateway into the U.S. financial system and lets its global network of affiliates abuse that gateway,” Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the subcommittee, told reporters. “The failure of accountability here is dramatic.”
    They provided U.S. dollar financing and services to banks in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh that were tied to terrorist organizations, while also clearing $290 million in “obviously suspicious travelers cheques” that benefitted Russians “who claimed to be in the used car business.” Investigation showed how the bank’s regulator, failed to take a single enforcement action against HSBC despite numerous violations by the international bank. Among them, failing to monitor $60 trillion in wire transfer and account activity, a backlog of 17,000 unreviewed account alerts regarding potentially suspicious activity, and a failure to conduct anti-money laundering due diligence before opening accounts for HSBC affiliates.


    Arab world jobless rate high



    Unemployment among native citizens in the six-nation GCC, the richest in the Arab world, has remained far higher than the rate among the expatriates, Saudi Arabia’s largest bank, National Commercial Bank said in a study.
    The study said the joblessness problem among the young generations is “more acute” than the rate among other groups.“Even though the headline rates of unemployment in the GCC countries may not be exceptional by global standards, unemployment is a persistent problem in parts of the region, especially among nationals,” it said. “Of course resident expatriates usually come to the region on work visas and their unemployment tends to be largely transitional.”
    Youth unemployment is one of the major challenges facing GCC economies. The ranks of the unemployed include many in some countries disproportionately many - with secondary and higher education. One problem is that young graduates still believe that a diploma means a guaranteed government job. “Quite contrary to media headlines about unemployment rates, the problem of joblessness is particularly acute among certain sub-segments of the population. In particular, it tends to disproportionately afflict the region’s rapidly growing young population.”
    Citing Saudi Arabia, NCB said unemployment among the 15-19 age group according to the latest government data 2012 is 27.3 percent. In the UAE, youth unemployment is three times the overall unemployment rate, standing at around 12.1 percent vs. 4.0 percent, the report showed. In Kuwait, 36.3 percent of all the unemployed were 20-24 years old in April 2011. The report showed that among UAE nationals, female unemployment of 28.1 percent compares to male unemployment of 7.8 percent.

    London Bus Does Push-ups

    Coke and Pepsi change recipe to avoid cancer warning

    Cans of Coca Cola

    Coca-Cola and Pepsi are changing the way they make the caramel coloring used in their drinks as a result of a California law that mandates drinks containing a certain level of carcinogens bear a cancer warning label.
    The companies said the changes will be expanded nationally to streamline their manufacturing processes. The changes have already been made for drinks sold in California.
    Coca-Cola and Pepsi account for almost 90% of the soda market, according to industry tracker Beverage Digest.
    The American Beverage Association, which represents the broader industry, said its member companies will continue to use caramel colouring in certain products but that adjustments were made to meet California's new standard.
    "Consumers will notice no difference in our products and have no reason at all for any health concerns," the association said in a statement.
    A representative for Coca-Cola, Diana Garza-Ciarlante, said the company directed its caramel suppliers to modify their manufacturing processes to reduce the levels of the chemical 4-methylimidazole, which can be formed during the cooking process and as a result may be found in trace amounts in many foods.
    "While we believe that there is no public health risk that justifies any such change, we did ask our caramel suppliers to take this step so that our products would not be subject to the requirement of a scientifically unfounded warning," Garza-Ciarlante said in an email.
    The Centre for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group, in February filed a petition with the US Food and Drug Administration to ban the use of ammonia-sulfite caramel colouring.
    A spokesman for the Food and Drug Administration said the petition is being reviewed.
    But he noted that a consumer would have to drink more than 1,000 cans a day to reach the doses administered that have shown links to cancer in rodents.
    The American Beverage Association noted that California added the colouring to its list of carcinogens with no studies showing that it causes cancer in humans. It noted that the listing was based on a single study in lab mice and rats.

    iPhone 5 release date finally


    According to a trusted source of apple, the iPhone 5 will be launched on the 5th of October to coincide with the first anniversary of the death in honor of Steve jobs.
    It is like paying a tribute to Steve Jobs who spent the last few days of his life working on the iPhone 5. Sources close to Steve Jobs and Apple have consistently said that Steve Jobs was never really that involved with the iPhone 4S. Instead, he focused the last period of his life on the iPhone 5 that is rumored to be very different from the four generation of iPhones that have already been released.
    The iPhone 5 is rumored to have a revolutionary tear drop design that is somewhat similar to the Macbook Air. Reports said that Jobs used to draw up redesigned versions of hospital diagnostic equipment when he was hospitalized in his last stages, as he thought that the diagnostic equipment had very little or very poor design elements in their construction.
    That is how passionate he was about the design element of Apple’s products. Considering that Jobs put so much effort into the iPhone 5, it will only be befitting for Apple to release the iPhone 5 on the first anniversary of Jobs’ death, October 5, 2012. Steve Jobs died in his California home on October 5, 2011, after a prolonged struggle with Pancreatic cancer, at the age of just 56.


    Tuesday, July 24, 2012

    SMS Service for Ministry of Interior (MOI)


    The MOI SMS service when signed up to it will notify you when you commit traffic violations. The sign up fee is KD1 and then it’s 40fils per SMS notification. Here are the sign up instructions:
    To subscribe, send the following SMS:
    E(space)Civil ID
    Example:
    E 234567890012
    Send the SMS to one of the following numbers:
    Zain Subscribers 992
    Viva Subscribers 55250
    Wataniya Subscribers 1750

    Monday, July 23, 2012

    Racing in Slow Motion - Series 16

    Yes, it's finally here - Racing In Slow Motion IV
    The 4th edition of the original "Racing In Slow Motion" Series, 16 Minutes of pure racing footage, beautifully edited. Additional sound effects by "SoundEffectsFactory"
    Soundtrack:
    Director's Cuts - Liberty Quest (Lorne Balfe/Oswin Mackintosh)
    Giles Lamb- Dead Island Trailer Theme
    Steve Jablonsky - There Is No Plan
    Steve Jablonsky - No Prisoners, Only Trophies
    Thomas Bergersen - Dreammaker
    Thomas Bergersen - Remember Me

    Song in the credits: Daiki Kasho - Day To Live

    Fire near Marina Mall today (24th July 2012)

    Palm trees next to a building near Marina Mall caught fire in the morning, Some of the cars were burnt as a result. Kuwait fire department were quick to douse the fire.

    Sunday, July 22, 2012

    Microsoft fixes 'big boobs' coding gaffe

    Microsoft has swiftly fixed an embarrassing gaffe which saw a chunk of code labelled "big boobs". The hexadecimal string 0xB16B00B5 was discovered lurking in code that helps a Microsoft program work with Linux open source software.
    The controversial string came to light on a mailing list for developers who oversee the core, or kernel, of Linux. The string was used every time the Microsoft program ran a virtual version of Linux.
    Kernel hacker Paolo Bonzini posted a message about the string on the Linux Kernel mailing list saying "Somone (sic) was trying to be funny, I guess". Microsoft was alerted to the mistake and swiftly issued a statement."We thank the community for reporting this issue and apologise for the offensive string," it said to Network World.It added that it had prepared a patch that would change the spelling of the string in an update.

    Commenting on the gaffe, developer Dr Matthew Garrett noted that the first version of the Microsoft code used a similar string of 0x0B00B135 - a form of letters that roughly translates to "boobies".
    "Puerile sniggering at breasts contributes to the continuing impression that software development is a boys' club where girls aren't welcome," Dr Garrett wrote.
    His comments, and those on the Linux mailing list, have started a huge debate about whether use of the string was sexist and how male developers should conduct themselves.
    On his blog, Dr Garrett also wondered how easy it would prove to change the string. Other services, such as access to Microsoft's Azure cloud service, are believed to make extensive use of it.
    In early June, Microsoft suffered another embarrassment over '"vulgar" language used during a song and dance routine at a company conference.

    Thursday, July 19, 2012

    Ramadan Starts July 21

    KUWAIT CITY, July 16: Undersecretary of the Religious Terms of Reference Mohammed Baqer Al-Mehri has announced the first day of Ramadan in Kuwait will be Saturday, corresponding to July 21, 2012, reports Al-Nahar daily.
    In a statement, Al-Mehri said the committee agrees with Sunni clerics who declared that this Ramadan will begin on Saturday, refuting Kuwaiti Astronomer Dr Saleh Al-Ojairi who predicted the first day of Ramadan would be Friday corresponding to July 20.

    Microsoft Office 365 (Office 2013) has arrived

    Microsoft Office


    Office 365 Preview

    A new Office has arrived. It’s a powerful service that helps you unleash your best ideas, get things done and stay connected on the go. Simply sign in for a personalized experience and all the most up-to-date Office applications, with new and enhanced features continually being added. Be one of the first to try it today.

    Experience Office at its best on Windows 8 devices

    • Access what matters from the start with a fast and fluid interface that puts your most-important documents, applications and people right up front
    • Discover new and better ways to create, edit, and browse—using a keyboard, pen, or touchscreen.

    Your documents and settings roam with you with Office in the cloud

    • Sign in to your account and your Office applications, documents, and personal settings are right there, just the way you left them.
    • Save your work online in SkyDrive or SharePoint where it’s easy to access, edit, and share on the go.

    Keep your social networks and contacts well connected in Office

    • View multiple email accounts, Facebook updates, and LinkedIn feeds all in one place with Outlook.
    • Get ongoing updates on specific documents, sites and people delivered to your activity feed and stay connected in real-time by chatting with co-workers right within Office.

    Discover better ways to create, read and share documents

    • Capture and organize all kinds of information in OneNote—notes, pictures, web pages, voice memos, and other media—and easily share them with others.
    • View Word documents in the new Read mode for a clear, focused, and easy-to-navigate reading experience on large and small screens.
    • With your documents saved online in SkyDrive or SharePoint, you can review and edit simultaneously with others, with the latest changes and comments accessible to the group*.

    Talk with family, co-workers, and friends virtually anywhere

    • Coming soon, with the full release, talk to anyone using Skype, including 60 minutes of free international calls every month to landlines in over 40 countries and to cell phones in 7 countries. (Skype account required. Excludes special, premium and non-geographic numbers.)
    • Transform meetings with presenter view and high definition video conferencing. (HD video camera required)


    Tuesday, July 17, 2012

    NYTIMES CONFIRMS IPAD MINI



    According to reports in the New York Times, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, Apple is set to release a smaller iPad in the fall. The 7″ iPad Mini will battle the Nexus 7 tablet and the Kindle Fire. Last year, the late Steve Job’s quashed rumors of a “mini iPad,” but as iPad competitors continue to launch smaller tablets, Apple decided to follow suit. Here’s NYTimes with more:


    " Apple is hardly about to cede ground. The company is developing a new tablet with a 7.85-inch screen that is likely to sell for significantly less than the latest $499 iPad, with its 9.7-inch display, according to several people with knowledge of the project who declined to be named discussing confidential plans. The product is expected to be announced this year. Apple’s plan for a tablet with a smaller screen is part of a textbook business strategy: to lure customers who want different sizes of tablets into the iPad product family, say analysts and technology industry executives. – via NYTimes

    Monday, July 16, 2012

    Blackberry Maker Loses Patent Suit Over Software

    A federal jury in San Francisco has found beleaguered Blackberry maker Research in Motion Ltd. liable for $147.2 million in damages for infringing on patents held by Mformation Technologies Inc.
    Amar Thakur, a lawyer for Mformation, said Saturday that the verdict late Friday followed a three-week trial and a week of deliberations by an eight-person jury.
    Mformation, of Edison, New Jersey, sued Research in Motion in October 2008, alleging that Canada-based RIM infringed on its 1999 invention for remotely managing wireless devices. Mformation's software allows companies to remotely access employee cell phones to do software upgrades, change passwords or to wipe data from phones that have been stolen.
    Officials at RIM, which has been struggling with plummeting sales, a declining stock and other problems, did not provide a comment Saturday.
    Thakur said the jury ruled that Research in Motion should pay his client $8 for each of the 18.4 million Blackberrys that were connected to the Blackberry Enterprise Server, from the day the lawsuit was filed until the time of the trial. That's a total of $147.2 million.
    He said the software at issue is the heart of the business of Mformation, a privately held company with several hundred employees.
    "We believe it's been fundamental to the success of Research in Motion," Thakur told The Associated Press.
    The patent at issue was filed in 2001 and issued in 2005, he said.
    RIM, of Waterloo, Ontario, has previously denied it did anything wrong.
    RIM has seen its business crumble as it increasingly loses market share. Today's consumers want smartphones that go far beyond handling e-mail and phone calls, with built-in cameras and other cool functions.
    Particularly telling is the plunge in the Blackberry's U.S. market share. It has dropped from 41 percent in 2007, the year the first iPhone came out, to below 4 percent in the first three months of this year, according to research firm IDC.
    Meanwhile, RIM will miss a chance to bounce back because of repeated delays on its BlackBerry 10 operating software, which is intended to help Blackberrys catch up to rivals such as the iPhone and smartphones running Google's Android software. Not only will devices with the new Blackberry software miss the crucial holiday shopping season, they'll have even more competition when they do go on sale, including a new iPhone expected from Apple this fall.
    Last month, RIM reported weaker than expected results. For the quarter that ended on June 2, it lost $518 million, or 99 cents a share. Even after excluding impairment charges, the loss was 37 cents per share. Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting a 3-cent per share loss. Revenue fell 43 percent to $2.8 billion, and RIM said it will be cutting 5,000 jobs, or 30 percent of its workforce.
    The company's stock, which traded for more than $30 less than a year ago, has recently dropped below $8, near a nine-year low. On Friday, the stock dropped another 2.4 percent to close at $7.24.

    Sunday, July 15, 2012

    THE ORIGIN OF THE BMW LOGO



    Inside white and blue. Bordered in black. On it the letters BMW. For more than 90 years this is the icon symbol for sheer driving pleasure. But how was this logo developed? The team at BMW set out on a search for clues in the video below




    The true meaning of the ‘sky blue and white quartered’ BMW logo is the most controversial issue of the company. According to Dr. Florian Triebel, Executive Board Member of BMW AG, “There are two traditions concerning the significance of the BMW logo and trademark, offering two different interpretations of its sky blue and white fields. One interpretation points to a rotating propeller. The other relates the BMW logo to Bavaria as the place where the products are manufactured”.
    The current BMW logo is said to be inspired from the circular design of a rotating aircraft propeller. The white and blue checker boxes are supposed to be a stylized representation of a white/silver propeller blade spinning against a clear blue sky.
    For BMW, it was ‘a happy coincidence’ that the BMW logo symbolized the Bavarian flag colors and represented the company’s origin. When the BMW logo was first created, it was prohibited by the Trademark Act to feature ‘national coats of arms or other symbols of national sovereignty’ in a trademark. This led the BMW marketers to come up with a solution of ‘incorrectly configuring the color elements in the BMW logo from a heraldic perspective’, while also keeping its relationship with Bavaria evident.
    This had been confirmed by BMW, courtesy of the NY Times: “In last Sunday’s Automobiles section, I wrote about visiting a quartet of German car museums. At the BMW Museum in Munich, my affable tour guide, Anne Schmidt-Possiwal, explained that the blue-and-white company logo did not represent a spinning propeller, but was meant to show the colors of the Free State of Bavaria.”