Saturday, October 31, 2009
NAZARE
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena
Foundation
The party was founded by Raj Thackeray, nephew of Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray. Raj Thackeray resigned from his uncle's party in January 2006 and announced his intention to start a new political party. The reason given by him for breaking away from the Shiv Sena was that the latter was "run by petty clerks" because of which it had "fallen from its former glory". Also Mr. Thackeray had a clear motive of building a political awareness for the development related issues of the state and giving them a center stage in national politics. The agenda is getting an immense support and sympathies of the state youth.
At the time of the party's foundation, Raj Thackeray stated that he does not want to have hostilities with his uncle who "was, is and always will be (his) mentor".
Although the MNS is a break-away group from the Shiv Sena, the party is still based on Hindutva and Bhumiputra ideologies. When unveiling the party in an assembly at Shivaji Park he said, that everyone is anxious to see what will happen to Hindutva. When unveiling, he also said, "I shall elaborate on the party's stance on issues like Hindutva, its agenda for development of Maharashtra and the significance of the party flag colours at the March 19 public meeting."
Raj Thackeray considers himself an Indian nationalist (not just a regionalist) and claims that the Congress is two-faced.
Controversies
2008 violence against North Indians in Maharashtra
In February 2008, some MNS activists clashed with Samajwadi Party (SP) party workers in Mumbai when Samajwadi Party supporters attended a rally at Shivaji Park, Dadar, Mumbai, a stronghold of MNS, where Samajwadi Party leader, Abu Asim Azmi made a fiery speech. After the clashes, 73 MNS activists and 19 SP workers were arrested by Mumbai Police for indulging in violence.
On February 6, 2008, reportedly, about 200 Maharashtra Navnirman Sena party workers quit the party and joined Shiv Sena to protest against MNS's so-called anti-North Indian agenda.
A petition was filed in the Patna civil court on February 8 against Thackeray for his alleged remarks over Chhath, Bihar's most popular festival. Mr. Thackeray maintains he is not against Chhath Puja, but against the "show of arrogance" displayed by some people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar on this occasion.
On February 10, 2008, MNS workers attacked vendors and shopkeeper
s from North India in various parts of Maharashtra, and destroyed government property to vent their anger against the reported move to arrest Raj Thackeray. Nashik police detained 26 MNS workers for the violence.
In February 2008, Raj Thackarey's speech on the issue of uncontrolled migration into Mumbai from other parts of India created a well publicized controversy. Maharashtra's economy leads other states in India and its capital Mumbai has become a magnet to migrant population from states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. MNS supporters clashed with activists of the Samajwadi Party, a regional party from Uttar Pradesh leading to street violence. Thackeray also criticized noted film actor turned politician Amitabh Bachchan, a native of Uttar Pradesh, for taking sides in the migrant issue. Bachchan came into fame and fortune in Mumbai's film industry – Bollywood.
On September 8, 2008, Infosys Technologies announced that 3,000 employee positions had been shifted from Pune due to construction delays caused earlier that year by MNS attacks on North Indian construction workers in Maharashtra.
On 15 October 2008, Thackeray threatened to shut down Jet Airways operations in Maharashtra if they did not rehire probationary employees that had been shed in a cost cutting move forced by the economic downturn.
In October 2008, MNS activists beat up North Indian candidates appearing for the all-India Railway Recruitment Board entrance exam for the Western region in Mumbai. One Bihari died in the ensuing rioting. In retaliation for the MNS' attack on Biharis and North Indians in general, the Bharatiya Bhojpuri Sangh attacked the residence of a Marathi official of Tata Motors in Jamshedpur. Following the uproar in the Indian parliament, and calls that there was no pressure to arrest the MNS chief, Raj Thackeray was arrested in the early hours of October 21. He was produced before a court on the day itself and would return the next day after spending the night in jail. Following the arrest, however, MNS party activists took out their anger on parts of Mumbai city and the region at large. The arrest resulted in applause, fear and calls for a ban on the MNS. The Shiv Sena, however, maintained a cool response, although senior party leader Manohar Joshi said they were close to supporting the MNS in their agitation against the non-Marathi candidates for the railway board exam.
Clash with Shiv Sena
On October 10, 2006 clashes erupted between supporters of Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena headed by Raj Thackery. It was alleged that workers of MNS had tore the posters bearing the photographs of Shiv Sena Supremo Bal Thackrey near the SIES college in Mumbai. Later as retaliation it was alleged that Shiv Sena workers brought down the hoardings with Raj Thackrey's photo near the Sena Bhavan at Dadar. As the news spread about the incident groups gathered near the Sena Bhavan and started pelting stones at each other. In this incident a policeman was injured and many supporters of both parties were injured. To restore normalcy in the situation the police fired tear gas shells at the mob. Normalcy was eventually restored following police action and the appearance of Uddhav Thackeray and his cousin Raj Thackeray on the spot. Uddhav appealed to Sena workers to go back home. He said:
"The police will take necessary action. This is happening because many people are joining us from MNS. The defections have started and that is why they are resorting to such actions".
The division chief of the Shiv Sena Milind Vaidya said that they had lodged a complaint with the local police against an MNS worker who was involved in the incident. MNS general secretary Pravin Darekar, however, pinned the cause down to local elections in the SIES college. He alleges that the Sena is concerned about losing their hold over the colleges and that is why they are trying to color the issue, adding that the Sena's allegatio
ns had no merit. Raj Thackeray asserts that MNS could not have vandalized the pictures, seeing as how he and his members revere Bal Thackeray. BHENCHOD notice from some MP's for remarks made by the Bal Thackeray against Uttar Bharatiyas, MNS chief Raj Thackeray had said he would not allow any politician from UP and Bihar to enter Mumbai if the parliamentary panel insisted on summoning Bal Thackeray. Bal countered this by terming his nephew Raj a "backstabber" and reacted to the MNS chief with a "big no thank you."
Shiv Sena (SS) and MNS workers also clashed at Anand Nagar in Oshiwara over the issuance of Navratri posters during the holiday season. SS corporator Rajul Patel said "The MNS activists had put up huge hoardings and were demanding money from people to remove them. People complained to us and we objected. This led to a scuffle." MNS Vibhag Pramukh (Division Leader) Manish Dhuri retorted that "the Sainiks are jealous of our popularity. On Sunday afternoon, a mob of Shiv Sainiks came to the area and started pulling down posters that were put up by us. We objected to this. Unfortunately, one MNS activist sustained severe injuries."
growth in potency
In October 2008, Jet Airways laid off almost 1,000 employees. In the frenzy for reinstatement that followed numerous political parties took the stand for the probationers’ cause. First the MNS and the SS came in, then the established national parties, the Congress and the BJP. Even the CPI M, rallied in support of the laid off calcutta employees.
One day after the lay off, the retrenched former staff flocked to the MNS office, even though the SS labour arm, the Bharatiya Kamgar Sena generally rules the aviation unions. The MNS then led more than 300 former employees to Jet’s office in Marol. MNS general secretary Nitin Sardesai said, "We met Jet officials today while a lot of (cabin) crew and MNS workers were protesting outside. While we were talking, Jet chairman Naresh Goyal telephoned Raj Thackeray…. He requested us to end the protest and offered to meet Rajsaheb in a couple of days. We had a one-point agenda that those laid off should be taken back."
In two days the MNS march and support got the staff re-hired. The media widely appeared to pronounce Raj as having won the game of one upmanship with the SS, whose mantle of aggressive street politics was seen as havving been usurped. This was a big boost for the MNS' newly formed trade union, the Maharashtra Navnirman Kamgar Sena, which has been trying to cut into the SS' influence in the aviation, hotel and entertainment sectors. The MNS General Secretary Sardesai said "Jet has been forced to take this decision due to the agitation launched by MNS. This is a victory of party chief Raj Thackeray's tactics."
Elected representatives
Since the party's foundation in 2006, 4 Municipal Corporations have seen elected representatives of MNS.
| Municipal Corporation | Elected |
|---|---|
| Pune Municipal Corporation | 8 |
| Nashik Municipal Corporation | 12 |
| BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) | 7 |
| Thane Municipal Corporation | 3 |
MNS won 13 assembly seats in the 2009 assembly elections Maharashtra. These include 6 in Mumbai,3 in Nashik,1 in Pune and 1 in Kannad(Aurangabad).
Political criticism
Following an attack on North Indians who had turned up to the RRB (Railway Recruitment Board) railway exam in Mumbai numerous politicians, mainly from the ruling UPA central government, harshly criticised Raj Thackeray and the MNS.
Three UPA ministers demanded tough action, including a call for a ban against the party. Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav demanded a ban on the MNS and its chief was a "mental case," Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan added that he would raise the issue in the next cabinet meeting and wondered why no action was being, or had been, taken against the MNS despite a repetition of such violent incidents. He said: "I strongly condemn the incident. There should be strong action against that party...MNS should be banned. [The] Thackeray family has become a chronic problem for Maharashtra and Raj Thackeray, in particular, has become a mental case." The Minister for Food Processing Industries, as well as a Congress leader, Subodh Kant Sahay demanded the Congress-NCP coalition government in Maharashtra treat those responsible for the attacks as criminals. He said, "I have spoken to Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and asked him on the goondaism that is going on in the state." As far the government's action till date is concerned, it has been soft on them. It should take action as too much has already happened there." They are not workers. They are looters. Organisations like MNS, Bajrang Dal, VHP and RSS should be banned."
On the first working day following the incident uproarous scene were seen in the national parliament. Numerous members of Parliament condemned the attacks. They also indirectly criticised railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav while noting that even in their regions, the maximum recruitments being made were those of people from Bihar and not from the state where the recruitment drives were held, adding come credence to the MNS' drive. Speaking first on the issue, RJD leader Devendra Prasad Yadav demanded that the Centre take action in the state under Article 355. He noted that despite the attacks, the Maharashtra chief minister has maintained a silence on the issue. Adding that such actions threaten the unity and integrity of the country. Other MP's also demanded the invokation of Article 355 in the light of the attacks. Shahnawaz Hussain of the BJP made such demands in asking if people from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh needed a permit to travel to other parts of the country. The CPI M's Mohammed Salim said that such incidents threaten the country's integrity and send a wrong signal to the rest of the country. Anant Geete of the Shiv Sena, however, tried to give the other side of the story by noting the 42 lakh educated and unemployed youth in Maharashtra. The CPI (M) strongly condemned the attack, terming them a "blatant" assault on the Constitution and demanded the immediate arrest of party chief Raj Thackeray, adding that any leniency shown to "divisive forces" will have far-reaching consequences. The CPI(M) Politbureau said the attack on the Constitution was a poor showing on the Maharashtra government which is duty bound to protect and take stringent action against the perpetrators of such crimes. "That it has failed to do so and in fact showing leniency to the leader of the outfit shows the utter bankruptcy of the politics of Congress and its coalition partner." The CPI also said such attacks should not be tolerated and Thackeray and his supporters must be "immediately arrested and prosecuted". Maharasthra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said his government is responsible for failure in preventing attacks and ordered a probe into the incident, which will also inquire into why the job advertisements where not given in Marathi newspapers. He said: "What has happened is not good. Such incidents take place because of loopholes in the law. One can't hold only the Home Ministry responsible for it, it is (entire) Government's responsibility. Such incidents are affecting the image of the state and I have instructed the DGP to take stern action." On Raj Thackeray's accusation that job advertisements were not published in local newspapers to keep out Maharashtrian candidates, he said, "An inquiry would also be conducted about why advertisements about the examination were not given in Marathi newspapers and the number of Marathi candidates invited for the exam." He also assured that such incidents of vandalism would not take place in future. In January 2009, artist Pranava Prakash exhibited his painting series “Chal Hat Be Bihari” in Delhi. It showed in pop style the 2008 attacks on North Indians in Maharashtra in the context of xenophobia.
Political support
MNS has received support from local Marathi speaking Muslim community of Umarkhadi and Dongri areas of Mumbai. Also many actors from Marathi Cinema, like Nana Patekar, Ashok Saraf, Prashant Damle, Kuldeep Pawar and Mohan Joshi have come out in support of "son of soil" theory put-forth by MNS. Jharkhand Disom Party has let support to Maharashtra Navnirman Sena's agitations against North Indians in Maharashtra.
Other activities
MNS organizes functions to promote Marathi literature. MNS also holds training workshops for youths to work in retail industry under its child organization Navnirman Academy of Retail Industries. The Student wing named as the Maharashtra Navnirman Vidyarthi Sena is an upcoming organisation with a large number of college going youth . its the only students wing to have a separate Girls, Cultural and Sports cell. It is headed by Additya Shirodkar, Son of Lawyer Rajan Shirodkar . MNS also organizes blood donation camps.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Openlaszlo Programming Language
OpenLaszlo 4.6.1 Released
September 18th, 2009We are pleased to announce the release of OpenLaslzo 4.6.1. It is available for download here. OpenLaszlo 4.6.1 is a bug fix release, containing more than 50 fixes primarily in the area of mouse events, context menus, and text. These fixes resulted from an architectural simplification of the underlying event and text mechanisms, which has the dual effect of both simplifying and stabilizing the DHTML code base. In addition, there were significant data and replication fixes thanks to André Bargull.
OpenLaszlo 4.6.1 also contains two significant improvements from community contributors. Sebastian Wagner extended the output of RPC with Gson as the marshaller for JSON. More details are provided in Bug LPP-8437, including how to write your own marshaller and how to get the Gson Factory to set your custom marshalling options. Raju Bitter added support for rotation in DHTML using FireFox 3.5, and fixed the default rotation origin to be top left or 0% for DHTML. See BUG LPP-8362 for more details. A complete list of bugs fixed in this release can be viewed here.
For those of you who have already upgraded your applications to OpenLaszlo 4.2 or higher, no further work is needed. You should just start using OpenLaszlo 4.6.1.
We would like to thank the entire OpenLaszlo community for submitting bug fixes and participating in discussions to help make OpenLaszlo a better platform. Special thanks to André Bargull and Raju Bitter for their continued and amazing support of the project. We'd also like to thank the incredible engineering team at G.ho.st, who have worked with us as a sponsor to bring SWF9 and many other improvements to the community. Special recognition is also due to community contributors: Chad Lancour, Rami Ojares, Philip Romanik, and Jason Gratt.
For more details, please see the Release Notes.
Best Open Source Client-side Framework for Cloud Computing
August 24th, 2009Developing cloud-based Software as a Service applications
Dan Orlando, Enterprise RIA Consultant, Consultant
Summary: Discover the pros and cons of using Adobe® Flex and OpenLaszlo — two leading client-side rich Internet application (RIA) development languages that are particularly useful for building Software as a Service applications for the cloud. Read More...
OpenLaszlo 4.5 Released
August 7th, 2009We are pleased to announce the release of OpenLaszlo 4.5, which is a bug fix release with more than 35 bugs addressed since the OpenLaszlo 4.4.1 release. Bug fixes were primarily in the area of inputtext selection and focus in the DHTML runtime, and in some cases, in the SWF8 and SWF9 runtimes as well. OpenLaszlo 4.5 is the recommended platform for all application development in the SWF8, SWF9, and DHTML runtimes.
You can download the OpenLaszlo 4.5 release here: http://www.openlaszlo.org/download. You can review the bug fixes using our JIRA bug tracking system here: http://www.openlaszlo.org/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=11011. For more information, we suggest you read the Release Notes, found here: http://download.openlaszlo.org/4.5/release-notes.html
For every release, we rely on the OpenLaszlo community to help ensure the quality of the platform release and to determine its future direction. To propose or participate in discussion of new features, see the Wiki (http://wiki.openlaszlo.org). We encourage you to report any problems, and to make suggestions for enhancements, through our JIRA bug tracking system (http://www.openlaszlo.org/jira/browse/lpp). We'd also like to hear from you on the mailing lists and in the forums.
OpenLaszlo Credits
We would like to thank the entire OpenLaszlo community for submitting bug fixes and participating in discussions to help make OpenLaszlo a better platform. Special thanks to André Bargull and Raju Bitter for their continued and amazing support of the project. We'd also like to thank the incredible engineering team at G.ho.st, who have worked with us as a sponsor to bring SWF9 and many other improvements to the community. Special recognition is due to community contributors: Philip Romanik, Sarah Allen, and Jason Gratt.
OpenLaszlo 4.4.1 Released
July 18th, 2009We are pleased to announce the release of OpenLaszlo 4.4.1. This is a minor bug fix release, containing 9 bug fixes, that follows OpenLaszlo 4.4. We wanted to get these fixes out to the community, as they have been specifically requested. OpenLaszlo 4.4.1 is the recommended platform for all application development in the SWF8, SWF9, and DHTML runtimes. You can download the OpenLaszlo 4.4.1 release here: http://www.openlaszlo.org/download.
You can see the list of bug fixes by viewing them in our JIRA bug tracking system here: http://www.openlaszlo.org/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=11002 .
For more information, we suggest you read the Release Notes, found here: http://download.openlaszlo.org/4.4.1/release-notes.html
For every release, we rely on the OpenLaszlo community to help ensure the quality of the platform release and to determine its future direction. To propose or participate in discussion of new features, see the Wiki (http://wiki.openlaszlo.org). We encourage you to report any problems, and to make suggestions for enhancements, through our JIRA bug tracking system (http://www.openlaszlo.org/jira/browse/lpp). We'd also like to hear from you on the mailing lists and in the forums.
We would like to thank the entire OpenLaszlo community for submitting bug fixes and participating in discussions to help make OpenLaszlo a better platform. We'd also like to thank the incredible engineering team at G.ho.st, who have worked with us as a sponsor to bring SWF9 and many other improvements to the community. Special thanks to André Bargull and Raju Bitter for their continued and amazing support of the project. Special recognition goes to community contributor, Sarah Allen, for this release.
OpenLaszlo 4.4 Released
June 30th, 2009We are pleased to announce that OpenLaszlo 4.4 is available now. You can download it from the OpenLaszlo Download page. It is the recommended platform for all application development for the SWF8, SWF9, and DHTML runtimes. OpenLaszlo 4.4 is another major release, with almost 180 bugs fixed since OpenLaszlo 4.3. The majority of bug fixes in this release are specific to the DHTML runtime; however, general improvements to all runtimes have also been added and we strongly recommend that you take advantage of them by upgrading.
For those of you who have already upgraded your applications to OpenLaszlo 4.2.X, no further work is needed. You should just start using OpenLaszlo 4.4.
To migrate your 4.0.X or 4.1.1 applications, we strongly suggest that you refer to this wiki page: Runtime_Differences. This page discusses the changes required by SWF9 and also provides a methodology for upgrading your application. It is very important that you run the automated conversion scripts in the recommended order, should you choose to take advantage of them.
This release also has a number of improvements, and significant advances such as:
- Internet Explorer oddities have been resolved, such that it works similarly to FireFox and Safari.
- Context menus have been updated to work with DHTML.
- You can now use non-latin characters (such as Chinese and German) in CSS styles by using utf8 file encoding.
- DHTML now includes the "standard" debugger console, just as swf8 and swf9 do.
There is also an important change to the this behavior. In 4.2 and later, only declared attributes, i.e.: attribute name="myattr" … can be referenced lexically (without saying this.). The swf9 runtime will generate an error at compile time if you make a lexical reference to an undeclared attribute. For the swf8 and DHTML runtimes, the old behavior is supported but deprecated and may cause a compiler warning or error in future releases.
We would like to thank the entire OpenLaszlo community for submitting bug fixes and participating in discussions to help make OpenLaszlo a better platform. We'd also like to thank the incredible engineering team at G.ho.st, who have worked with us as a sponsor to bring SWF9 and many other improvements to the community. Special heartfelt thanks to André Bargull and Raju Bitter for their continued and amazing support of the project. Special recognition goes to community contributors: Sarah Allen, Andy Lubbers, Sarah Allen, Tim Dauer, and Mark Doeswijk.
Laszlo Systems Announces Support for Flash 9
April 6th, 2009SAN MATEO, Calif. (March 31, 2009): Laszlo Systems, a global leader in Rich Internet Application (RIA) software and the original developer of OpenLaszlo, today announced that its award winning open-source platform OpenLaszlo is fully qualified for Flash® Player 8, DHTML, and Flash® Player 9. Release 4.3 of OpenLaszlo is available for download at http://www.openlaszlo.org/download .
“With this new version of OpenLaszlo users of our G.ho.st ("ghost") Virtual Computer service are experiencing a 4 to 5x improvement in performance." said Zvi Schreiber, Founder and CEO of G.ho.st.
OpenLaszlo 4.3 Released
April 2nd, 2009We are pleased to announce that OpenLaszlo 4.3 is available now. You can download it from the OpenLaszlo Download page. It is the recommended platform for all application development for the SWF8, SWF9, and DHTML runtimes. OpenLaszlo 4.3 is a major release, with almost 300 bugs fixed since OpenLaszlo 4.2 introduced the SWF9 runtime.
For those of you who have already upgraded your applications to OpenLaszlo 4.2.X, no further work is needed. You should just start using OpenLaszlo 4.3.
To migrate your 4.0.X or 4.1.1 applications, we strongly suggest that you refer to this wiki page: Runtime_Differences. This page discusses the changes required by SWF9 and also provides a methodology for upgrading your application. It is very important that you run the automated conversion scripts in the recommended order, should you choose to take advantage of them.
This release also has a number of improvements, and significant advances in these areas:
- Audio/Video APIs are working well in this release. Videoplayer and videoview now show the first frame of the video by default when they appear, if a URL has been set. (You can control this behavior with new starttime API.) Live broadcast and recording APIs are working in both swf8 and swf9. We have also added a new Audio & Video Programming forum
- Incubator components have been updated to work with the 4.3 code base.
- A new documentation comments feature has been added, so that you can add an example or comment that expands upon the existing documentation or shows a non-obvious usage of a feature (or work-around for a bug that you have already filed) in OpenLaszlo. Documentation bugs or feature requests should be filed in our JIRA bug tracking system as in previous releases.
- An improved debugger to deal with deep and circular objects when printing. The 4.3 release adds two new properties of Debug:
printDepth:Number, default 8, limits how deep the debug printer will go into an object when printing it;inspectPrintDepth:Number, default 1, limits how deep the debug printer will go into an object that is a property of an object when inspecting. The debug printer will also detect circular objects (rather than causing a stack overflow), at small cost in overhead. When an object refers to itself (however indirectly), it will be printed just as its type and ID.
There is also an important change to the this behavior. In 4.2 and later, only declared attributes, i.e.: attribute name="myattr" … can be referenced lexically (without saying this.). The swf9 runtime will generate an error at compile time if you make a lexical reference to an undeclared attribute. For the swf8 and DHTML runtimes, the old behavior is supported but deprecated and may cause a compiler warning or error in future releases.
We would like to thank the entire OpenLaszlo community for submitting bug fixes and participating in discussions to help make OpenLaszlo a better platform. We'd also like to thank the incredible engineering team at G.ho.st, who have worked with us as a sponsor to bring SWF9 and many other improvements to the community. Special thanks to André Bargull and Raju Bitter for their continued and amazing support of the project. Special recognition goes to community contributors: Sebastian Wagner, Justin Clift, Ryan Maslar, Sarah Allen, and Wolfgang Stöcher. And heartfelt thanks to Phil Romanik, Don Anderson, Josh Crowley, and Lou Iorio for their tireless efforts and significant contributions.
OpenLaszlo 4.2.0.2 Released
March 11th, 2009We are pleased to announce that OpenLaszlo 4.2.0.2 is available now. You can download it from the OpenLaszlo Download page.
OpenLaszlo 4.2.0.2 is the next fully-qualified release since OpenLaszlo 4.2.0.1, and is the recommended platform for all application development in the SWF8, SWF9, and DHTML runtimes. For those of you who have already upgraded your applications to OpenLaszlo 4.2, no further work is needed. You should just start using OpenLaszlo 4.2.0.2.
The 4.2.0.2 release includes more than 30 major bug fixes since 4.2.0.1; we have provided a link to the OpenLaszlo JIRA bug tracking system where you can view the details.
In addition to bug fixes, OpenLaszlo 4.2.0.2 contains two areas of improvement: documentation comments feature and compiler performance improvements:
- The documentation comments feature adds a section at the end of every documentation page where you can add an example or comment that expands upon the existing documentation or shows a non-obvious usage of a feature (or work-around for a bug that you have already filed) in OpenLaszlo. Documentation bugs or feature requests should be filed in our bug tracking system as in previous releases.
- The compiler should be faster with 4.2.0.2 as compared to 4.2.0.1. The script cache is now disabled by default. Please note that setting the server logging level to DEBUG will slow down the compilation, due to the large amount of debugging information that is logged on the server. The DEBUG level logging is off by default.
For those of you who have 4.0.x or 4.1.1 applications, we strongly suggest that you refer to this wiki page: Runtime_Differences. This page discusses the changes required by SWF9 and also provides a methodology for upgrading your application. It is very important that you run the automated conversion scripts in the recommended order, should you choose to take advantage of them.
As always, we appreciate your involvement and OpenLaszlo reaps the benefit of your expertise and commitment. We'd like to especially thank the following folks out there in the community who helped make this release by suggesting improvements, filing bugs, creating test cases, and contributing fixes: the team at IBM, Andre Bargull, Sebastian Wagner, Raju Bitter, Gilad Parann-Nissany, Ammar Sh. Tazami, Justin Clift, Mohammad ZeinEddin, Michael Jessup, and Nasser Najjar.
OpenLaszlo 4.2.0.1 Released
February 20th, 2009We are pleased to announce that OpenLaszlo 4.2.0.1 is available now.
OpenLaszlo 4.2.0.1 is the next fully-qualified release since OpenLaszlo 4.2, and is the recommended platform for all application development in the SWF8, SWF9, and DHTML runtimes. This release addresses critical user-reported bugs primarily in the swf9 runtime, but also in DHTML.
For those of you who have already upgraded your applications to OpenLaszlo 4.2, no further work is needed. You should just start using OpenLaszlo 4.2.0.1.
For those of you who have 4.0.x or 4.1.1 applications, we strongly suggest that you refer to this wiki page: Runtime_Differences. This page discusses the changes required by SWF9 and also provides a methodology for upgrading your application. It is very important that you run the automated conversion scripts in the recommended order, should you choose to take advantage of them.
The 4.2.0.1 release includes almost 30 major bug fixes since 4.2; we have provided a link to the OpenLaszlo JIRA bug tracking system where you can view the details.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
'CUIL' The search engine
Cuil(pronounced /ˈkuːl/ "cool" according to the creators) is a search engine that organizes web pages by content and displays relatively long entries along with thumbnail pictures for many results. It claims to have a larger index than any other search engine, with about 120 billion web pages. It went live on July 28, 2008.
Cuil's privacy policy, unlike that of other search engines, says it does not store users’ search activity or IP addresses.
Cuil is managed and developed largely by former employees of Google, Anna Patterson and Russell Power. The CEO and co-founder, Tom Costello, has worked for IBM and others.The company has raised $33 million from venture capital firms including Greylock.
The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.
Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.
Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private.
Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil.
Name
The Irish ancestry of Anna Patterson's husband Tom Costello sparked the name Cuil, which the company states is taken from a series of Celtic folklore stories involving a character, Fion mac Cumhaill, they erroneously refer to as Finn MacCuil . The company says that Cuil is Irish for knowledge and hazel.
Some linguists are unsure of this derivation and pronunciation,and note that the modern Irish word for hazel is spelled coll[9] (coill or cuill in genitive form, the former spelling having superseded the latter as a result of the Caighdeán Oifigiúil reforms of the mid-twentieth century). Foras na Gaeilge, the official governing body of the Irish language, doubted the assertion that 'cuil' means 'knowledge'. "I am unaware myself of the meaning 'knowledge' being with the word 'cuil' in Irish," Stiofán Ó Deoráin, an official on Foras na Gaeilge's terminology committee, said. Even pre-Caighdeán dictionaries such as Dineen do not associate the cuil spelling with knowledge or hazel. Dineen only lists two nouns and one adjective with the spelling cuil: "f., a fly, a horse-fly...", "f., a venemous aspect; great eagerness..." and "gs. of col, as a., wicked."
The company name had previously been spelled Cuill.
Criticism
Cuil has received widely critical press coverage. Concerns were expressed about the website's slow response times, irrelevant or wrong search results[21][22][23] and in at least one case, inappropriately pornographic images displayed alongside search results. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch questioned the validity of Cuil's claim that it had the world's largest search engine index and criticized it for focusing on size rather than relevance. Despite reported problems with search results, Net Applications reported that for the last three days of July 2008, Cuil beat Google and Yahoo in the amount of time spent on a site after referral from a search engine, a key metric for relevancy of search results.
According to an interview with a Cuil representative, while other Web 2.0 launches using massively parallel processing might fail with a slow down or crash, Cuil's architecture was responding with incomplete, "less-than-relevant results that then appear at the top of users' pages."[21][23] Cuil's VP of communications Vince Sollitto said the search engine was experiencing heavy first-day overloads and they were "busy putting out fires." Sollitto said Cuil "will only improve with time. It's day one. Traffic is massive. We're new. There are bugs to fix, results to improve."
After the initial critical press coverage Cuil was alleged to have caused issues for some websites, owing to how the Cuil indexing robot polled certain sites. Website owners were reportedly saying the method was not "scientific in any way" and "actually quite 'amateurish.'" Others reported irrelevant images associated with their listing in Cuil's search results.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
BHUVAN EARTH by ISRO
A review of ISRO Bhuvan Features and Performance
Here is a frank review of the features and performance of ISRO Bhuvan (the much anticipated satellite-based 3D mapping application from ISRO) BETA Release and comparing it to supposed arch rival Google Earth. Bhuvan from the begining is claiming that it is not competing with Google Earth in any way, but there was much hype and propaganda in the media saying that ISRO Bhuvan will be a Google Earth killer atleast in India. But it looks like that can nit be the case anytime soon. Here is why..
- While Google Earth works on a downloadable client, Bhuvan works within the browser (only supports Windows and IE 6 and above).
- The ISRO Bhuvan currently has serious performance issues. The site currently very unstable. It gives up or hangs the browser every once in a while. When a layer (state, district, taluk, etc.) is turned on, it renders unevenly and sometimes fails to render at all. The navigation panel failed to load routinely and it felt like a rare sighting when we could actually use the panel.
- The promise of high resolution images has not been kept. While the service promises zoom up to 10 metres from the ground level as a gainst 200 metres for Google Earth, we didn’t encounter a single image with nearly as much detailing. In fact, comparative results for a marquee location such as New Delhi’s Connaught Place or Red Fort make its clear as to the inferior performance of ISRO Earth as of now.
- The navigation tools are similar to Google Earth (GE).
- The search doesn’t work if a query returns multiple results. A pop up window is supposed to give the multiple results from which the user is supposed to be able to choose. During two days of sporadic testing, we found the result only once. The rest of the t ime, the window would pop up, but nothing would be displayed. When the search is accurate, the software ‘flies in’ to the exact location, the same way as GE.
- Users need to create an account and download a plug-in.
- Bhuvan packs a lot of data on weather, waterbodies and population details of various administrative units. We were unable to access weather data. Clicking on icons of admin istrative units show basic information such as the population. For specialist users, Bhuvan might hold some attraction. For instance, there is a drought map which cab be used to compare drought situation across years and there is a flood map that shows Bihar during the Kosi flood and after. With Isro backing, Bhuvan would be able to provide such relevant data from time to time, but the application needs major improvements in terms of usability before it will be of interest to the ordinary user.
- Users can also not edit any data or tag locations.
- We hope Bhuvan is able to fix the bugs soon. But even then, to be a credible alternative to existing mapping services, and even to get new users to try it, it much provide much higher resolution images. User interest will be piqued only when they can see their house or school or local street in high resolution. With Isro data, this is easily doable .
Having said all this, ISRO Bhuvan is still a very good step forward for ISRO in the right direction we feel. We wish all the best for ISRO and hopefully Bhuvan will mature very fast to become a good service and can really compete with Google Earth.
ISRO Bhuvan Vs Google Earth – A Comparision
Google Earth Vs ISRO Bhuvan
Google Earth
* Zoom levels up to 200 mt
* Single layer information
* Images
upgraded every 4 years
* No alternate viewing options
* Uses international satellites
ISRO Bhuvan
* Zoom levels up to 10 mt
* Multi-layer information
* Images upgraded every year
* Options of viewing on different dates
* Uses Indian satellites
Minimum System Requirements:
- Operating System: Windows XP/Vista;CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+ ;System Memory (RAM): 512MB ; Hard Disk: 2GB free space ;Network Speed: 768 Kbits/sec; Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 32MB of VRAM; Screen: 1280×1024,32-bit True Color
- To browse Bhuvan, you require the Bhuvan Plug-in which can be downloaded
from this website, after registration and you will also need DirectX 9.0 or higher version (www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/) and MS .NET framework 2.0 or above for installing the plug-in. Please note that the Bhuvan Plug-in can be installed with administrative privileges only.
How to Download & Install ISRO Bhuvan?
>> BHUVAN QUICK DOWNLOAD LINK (Click to download Bhuvan Plugin) <<
In order to download Bhuvan Software you have to forst register with Bhuvan Website. Click Here to go to Bhuvan’s Official Web site abd register there.
Then you will directed to a page from where you can download the Bhuvan plugin from here (its actually Skyline’s terraexplorer plugin) and Microsoft’s DirectX.
In order to install the plugin, you need to have the administrator privilege in your machine. The product works only in IE and is quite buggy to start with. Hopefully we will get much better versions in the future.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament 2004, also known as UT2K4 and UT2004, is a futuristic first-person shooter computer game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. It is part of the Unreal series of games and is the sequel to 2002's Unreal Tournament 2003 and the original Unreal Tournament.
Among significant changes to gameplay mechanics and visual presentation, one of the major additions introduced by Unreal Tournament 2004 is the inclusion of vehicles and the Onslaught game type, allowing for large-scale battles.
The game features all or most of the content of its predecessor, replacing it on the shop shelves. Unreal Tournament 2004 boxes sold in the United States include a $10 mail-in rebate requiring that a short form be completed and sent to the publisher along with a copy of the manual cover for Unreal Tournament 2003. Versions sold in the United Kingdom had a similar offer, but required sending in the play CD for Unreal Tournament 2003 instead.
Development
UT2004 was built upon the "Ion Storm" engine and content of its predecessor, UT2003, addressing most its shortcomings, and overall features more than twice the combined content of the previous game.[5]
Unreal Tournament 2004 was developed by multiple studios, with Epic games leading the project. Lead programmer Steve Polge described the role of each company involved:[6][unreliable source?]
Epic Games: Enhancements to the Unreal Tournament 2003 game types, the new 
UI, Voice over IP and bot voice command support, engine enhancements and optimizations. They also made an improved single player game, and improved community and demo recording support, in addition to thirty-one new playable characters. A Sniper Rifle similar to the one included in the original Unreal Tournament was added. They created one Onslaught map, and developed AI support for Onslaught. 16 new DM maps, 5 new CTF Maps, 2 new Double Domination maps and 1 new Bombing Run map were added. The Assault gametype design and implementation were also reintroduced from the original Unreal Tournament.
Psyonix: The Onslaught gametype design and implementation, with 6 new vehicles, 4 new weapons (Grenade Launcher, Spider Mine Layer, Anti-Vehicular Rocket Launcher (AVRiL), and the Phoenix target painter), and the Energy Turret.
They also created seven Onslaught maps, and collaborated with Streamline Studios on the popular map ONS-Torlan. Finally, they made the new model for the Translocator.
Digital Extremes: 3 new DM maps, 6 new CTF maps, 2 new Bombing Run maps, and 3 new Double Domination maps, 2 new playable characters, the new HUD design; new weapon models for the Assault Rifle, Shock Rifle, and Link Gun.
Streamline Studios: The single player introduction movie and ONS-Torlan in collaboration with Psyonix. Later made an Assault map called AS-Confexia, downloadable from the Internet.
Unreal Tournament 2004 would be the first closed source game to support the new x86-64-bit extension, utilizing Linux, as Windows for x86-64 had not been released at the time.
Android Operating System
Android is a mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel. It was initially developed by Google and later the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries.
The unveiling of the Android platform on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 48 hardware, software, and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices.[5][6] Google released most of the Android code under the Apache License, a free-software and open source license.
In July 2005, Google acquired Android, Inc., a small startup company based in Palo Alto, California, USA.Android's co-founders who went to work at Google included Andy Rubin (co-founder of Danger), Rich Miner (co-founder of
Wildfire Communications, Inc.), Nick Sears (once VP at T-Mobile), and Chris White (headed design and interface development at WebTV). At the time, little was known about the functions of Android, Inc. other than that they made software for mobile phones. This began rumors that Google was planning to enter the mobile phone market, although it was unclear what function it might perform in that market.[citation needed]
At Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel which they marketed to handset makers and carriers on the premise of providing a flexible, upgradeable system.[citation needed] It
was reported that Google had already lined up a series of hardware component and software partners and signaled to carriers that it was open to various degrees of cooperation on their part.[13][14][15]
More speculation that Google would be entering the mobile-phone market came in December 2006. Reports from the BBC and The Wall Street Journal noted that Google wanted its search and applications on mobile phones and it was working hard to deliver that. Print and online media outlets soon reported rumors that Google was developing a Google-branded handset. More speculation followed reporting that as Google was defining technical specifications, it was showing prototypes to cell phone manufacturers and network operators. As many as 30 prototype phones were reported to be operating "in the wild."
Open Handset Alliance
On 5 November 2007, the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of several companies which include Texas Instruments, Broadcom Corporation, Google, HTC, Intel, LG, Marvell Technology Group, Motorola, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile was unveiled with the goal to develop open standards for mobile devices.Along with the formation of the Open Handset Alliance, the OHA also unveiled their first product, Android, a mobile device platform built on the Linux kernel version 2.6.
On 9 December 2008, it was announced that 14 new members would be joining the Android project including: ARM Holdings Plc, Atheros Communications, Asustek Computer Inc, Garmin Ltd, Softbank, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba Corp, and Vodafone Group Plc.