Rank: 8/10 - Excellent
Price range: $849.95 - $1,321.99
The good: Hard disk holds about four hours of best-quality HD video; sharp, saturated, low-noise video; excellent build quality; fast, smooth focus with effective image stabilization.
The bad: Mediocre still photos; frequent motion artifacts in video; lame but necessary bundled software; no windscreen filter for microphone.
The bottom line: The Sony Handycam HDR-SR1's combination of hard disk capacity, easy adapatability, great design, and a broad feature set make it the consumer HD model to beat for 2006.
Specs: Video input type: Camcorder; Optical zoom: 10 x; Media type: Hard disk drive
Fortunately, an alternative exists: refurbishing companies. These companies can step in and restore machines to working order or at least ensure any unusable parts and materials are recycled rather than shipped to landfills.
Reader Comments:
I completely agree with Ms. Siddiqui's comments. Eloquent and well thought out. We, the consumers, need to think about the effect our favorite toys have on the world, and funds should be directed toward research on the topic.
Very sloppy journalism, unfortunately. Apple has committed to eliminate toxic substances by the end of the 2008, not 2010 as stated. This puts Apple at the front of the industry in taking the toxic elimination topic seriously.
Courtesy: www.businessweek.com
Today, the technology, innovation, & Introspection are leading the human mind into the high salary figures. When I was in my childhood, my Mom & Dad used to force me to read and spit in the exams to get marks, dreaming that Marks will give high ranks, high ranks will give good jobs. Probably they doesn't that, People are there earning high salaries with or without degrees.
In a telephone survey of nearly 1,000 adults conducted by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, more than one-third of workers said they felt pressured to go to work when sick. About the same number reported that they had picked up the flu from a colleague in the workplace.
In a recent survey of 326 human resources executives by the research firm Wolters Kluwer, 56 percent said presenteeism had become a problem in their companies, up from 39 percent two years ago.
“We work in a Dilbert environment these days,” said Brett Gorovsky, an analyst at Wolters Kluwer. “We’re in closed office spaces, where germs are a bigger concern. And there’s downsizing. There are fewer people to backfill now, so workers more often feel they have to show up.”
Because of lost productivity, ill workers on the job account for as much as 60 percent of corporate health costs, according to researchers at Cornell University — more than absentee workers, and far more than companies pay in direct medical and disability costs.
It's the epic, age-old battle that just keeps being resurrected. Chip-giant Intel and the underdog Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) go head-to-head for desktop dominance. So what will 2008 hold for desktop processors? We've uncovered both company's plans for 2008 to allow you to decide just which purchase will suit your home or small business. The harsh reality for AMD is that over the past two years, Intel has absolutely dominated the market in terms of performance. But that's just one half of the price-performance ratio, and AMD's willingness to slash prices and aggressively pursue the low- and midrange tiers of the desktop-computing market cannot be overrated, despite the company's technological lag.
India’s stock market is coming down to earth and, along with it, the dreams of companies that planned big market flotations to raise funds for projects that are yet to happen. Emaar MGF Land, a real estate joint venture 42% owned by Emaar of Dubai, decided on February 8 to pull its float, which had originally been expected to raise nearly $2 billion, because of “adverse” market conditions. A day earlier, Wockhardt Hospitals, a leading healthcare company, pulled a smaller float.
The trend was underlined this morning when Reliance Power, which raised $3 billion last month in the country’s biggest ever initial public offering (IPO), listed on the markets. During the day, it dropped as low as 21% below the Rs450 issue price and closed 17.2% down at Rs372.50. That was a marked reversal of analysts’ talk a short time ago of it hitting Rs900 or at least Rs550-600.
Reliance’s debut helped to pull shares overall down by 4.78% to the lowest level in nearly three weeks. The Bombay Stock Exchange’s key 30-share Sensex fell to 16,630.91, its lowest close since January 22, and 21.6% below its record 21,206.77 on January 10.
Reliance - which is part of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) and is controlled by Anil Ambani, one of India’s richest businessmen - mobilized bids totaling an astronomic $180 billion last month for its IPO, even though it has yet to produce a revenue stream. The future of the company – and the stock - depends on Ambani’s ability to turn plans for 13 power projects totalling 28,200MW into reality.
The company drained so much money out of the stock market last month that it helped to trigger the slide at a time when the market was being buffeted by downward trends internationally. So the irony is that Reliance’s own poor performance today was triggered by its almost unreal success last month.
The link between the Reliance and Emaar flotations is that both are built on dreams for the future. Just as Reliance had to admit in its prospectus that “we cannot assure you that our power projects will commence operations as expected”, so Emaar’s prospectus admitted that “most of our projects are in the preliminary stages of planning and require approvals or permits.” The prospectus added that 83% of the land required was still zoned as agricultural – a problem that will also hit Reliance’s projects.
Anyone who knows anything about industrial and infrastructure development in India knows that substantial resistance is building up against rezoning agricultural land, and the country has an appalling history on planned power projects. So it is scarcely surprising that both companies have been hit now in the current international market gloom.
India’s fundamentals are still strong, even though economic growth forecasts are down below 9%. Investors are looking for comfort to the Budget that Palaniappan Chidambaram, the finance minister, will deliver on February 28. When Reliance hit its high spot last month, he said that “investors are investing in the future of India.” He was right of course, though they are now more choosy than they were a month ago.
And, as I wrote in my last post on this subject, many market professionals seem almost relieved the Sensex has fallen from the “absurd overvaluations” of its peak and that dreams are now being questioned.
Courtesy: money.cnn.com
“Hey,” says the consultant charged with the responsibility of molding the candidate. “It seems that the voters aren’t as interested in our positions on the issues like health care, the war in Iraq or even the economy.”
“No?” says the candidate. “What are they interested in?”
“Character.”
“What does that mean?” the candidate says, shifting nervously in their seat.
“Well, it means you have to have some.”
“What kind are they looking for?”
“It doesn’t matter,” says the consultant, growing somewhat impatient. “Character isn’t something you can triangulate based on polls. It’s something you have independent of other people’s demands. It’s inside you.”
There is a thoughtful silence. ”I’m sure I have some in there someplace,” the candidate says at last. “But you might want to check where I can get a little bit more, just in case.”
The good news for the candidates is that Character, having been absent from much of the business universe in 2007, is at this moment wafting around looking for anybody interested in anyone who wants to spend time with it.
There are many things that make up Character, but its most attractive features are well known:
There are other qualities voters are ostensibly looking for today: experience, new ideas, a renunciation of the decades-long pattern of partisan stupidity. But none of them are as important, it appears, as the demonstration of this very precious and elusive entity.
My sense is that right now we can tell very clearly who’s got it and who ain’t.
I like Character and I think you do too. Let’s just hope it doesn’t blow it all today, and sticks around long enough to determine what happens in November.
A few years ago, Vishal Goel had high hopes of moving from his native India to the U.S. to work as a computer programmer. He approached Patni Computer Systems, a Mumbai company that provides tech services to many American businesses, and Patni agreed to apply for a U.S. work visa on his behalf. By 2004, Goel was in Bloomington, Ill., working for Patni at State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance, the largest car insurer in the country. But this was no dream job come true. Goel's base salary was $23,310, about half the $44,000 that Patni had said it would pay on the visa application, according to a lawsuit he has filed against the company. When Goel complained, one official said that Patni would brand him a "troublemaker" and that his parents in India would be harassed unless he stopped, the suit alleges. Goel, who left Patni in 2005, filed suit in November, 2007, in federal court in Illinois. He's suing along with a former colleague, Peeush Goyal, who alleges he was subjected to similar treatment. Patni declined to comment, though in court documents it denies the charges.
Goel's is not an isolated case. A number of the most active users of the work-visa program, for what are known as H-1B visas, have been accused of underpaying or otherwise mistreating workers. Last year, Patni paid $2.4 million to 607 H-1B visa workers after a Labor Dept. investigation uncovered systematic underpayment of wages. "I highly suspect that these employment practices are widespread among the tech-outsourcing firms," says Ron Hira, assistant professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology, who will testify as an expert witness in the Goel case.
The Goel lawsuit is one of the first filed in U.S. courts by a visa worker against his employer, perhaps because of the murky legal status of such workers. The estimated 500,000 people in the U.S. on H-1Bs are by definition citizens of other nations, and they're usually beholden to employers that can transfer them home at will. The Goel case provides rare insight into how one outfit allegedly has treated workers it brings into the U.S.
SIMPLE GREEDIn their case, Goel and Goyal say that Patni regularly underpays employees in the U.S. "This forces the same financially strapped individuals ... to incur the expense of retaining an attorney to try and obtain the money to which they are entitled," the suit charges. If workers complain, the plaintiffs say, Patni threatens to sue them. They charge that Patni's motivation is simple greed. "The more H-1B employees that Patni is underpaying, the more total profit that is made by Patni," the suit alleges.
Goel, Goyal, and their lawyer, Thomas J. Arkell, declined to comment for this article because the litigation is ongoing. Patni says in court papers it didn't promise Goel $44,000 and says he has no "right to action" because he has no claim under the laws cited in the case.
The Goel lawsuit raises questions for U.S. workers, too. The H-1B program requires companies that bring employees into the U.S. to pay the prevailing wage in that job, so as not to depress the salaries of Americans in similar occupations. Documents filed in the suit appear to show that Patni told the Labor Dept. it would pay Goel a base salary of $44,000, which it said was more than the $43,867 prevailing wage it determined for a midlevel programmer and analyst. Yet even after working the equivalent of 23 days of overtime at $11.72 an hour, Goel earned a total of $35,305 in 2004. "Patni's underpayment of wages not only harms its H-1B employees but also harms the wages of U.S. employees," the lawsuit charges.
Many prominent U.S. companies use outsourcers, especially for tech services and support. Patni's largest client is General Electric (GE). Others include MetLife (MET) and St. Jude Medical. GE and MetLife declined to comment on Patni and whether they monitor how it manages its workers. St. Jude says it advocates for contract workers who file complaints, although no Patni workers have done so.
State Farm has turned increasingly to Patni and is now its No. 2 client. Dick Luedke, a State Farm spokesman, says that visa workers receive fair treatment. "Working conditions at all our State Farm locations are monitored and maintained without distinction of State Farm or vendor employee," he says. "We of course negotiate how much we pay the vendor; what the vendor does to get the work done is up to the vendor." According to the Goel suit, State Farm paid Patni "in excess of" $100,000 per worker.
State Farm has had layoffs as it has brought in Patni workers. Outplacement specialist Challenger, Gray & Christmas says the insurer has let go 10,000 workers nationwide since 1995, though Luedke says only one quarter of those were "involuntary severances." He says Patni employees have not replaced staffers and the insurer's own IT staff has risen from 5,500 in 1995 to 5,900 in 2007. Luedke says State Farm doesn't track how many outsourced workers it uses.
George Moraetes is a U.S. worker who believes he was affected by the H1-B program. A specialist in info tech security, he worked at State Farm from 2002 to 2004, when the company declined to extend his contract. Now in Chicago, he's unable to find a staff position in his specialty. "The whole industry is being outsourced and contracted," he says. "The American IT worker is a dying breed."
Moraetes has empathy, not anger, for employees such as Goel who come to the U.S. on H-1Bs. "The workers are living in squalor," he says. "I feel sorry for them."
The H-1B program could get an overhaul later this year. Senators Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) have proposed reforms because of what they consider widespread abuse. "There are simply too many loopholes that companies can use to get around the original intent of the H-1B visa," says Grassley in an e-mail.
As for Goel, he hasn't given up on his dream of living in the U.S. He's in California with another employer serving as his visa sponsor. His case is expected to go to trial later this year.
Courtesy: Businessweek.com
Choose the right diet.
Not every plan is right for every person—though some are wrong for everyone. Steer clear of fad diets that are too low in calories (below 1200 calories a day), that eliminate whole food groups or are too expensive or too strict to maintain.
Aim for balance.
Your diet should be composed of 40% healthy carbohydrates (whole grains, fruits and vegetables), 30% lean protein (chicken, fish) and 30% healthy fat (olive oil, nuts).
Don’t skip breakfast.
Studies show that people who miss breakfast often consume more calories later in the day. Try having unsweetened cereal with skim milk or an egg-white omelet with a slice of whole-wheat toast.
Fill up on fiber.
Eating fiber-rich foods such as apples, almonds and spinach helps you feel full. It also may prevent certain cancers, lower your cholesterol and reduce your risk of heart disease.
Don’t be afraid of fat.
A little fat provides satiety. Foods with omega-3 fatty acids—found in walnuts, salmon and soybeans, among others—are healthy sources of unsaturated fat.
Cut down on processed foods.
Sugar contains empty calories and can cause spikes in blood sugar that leave you feeling hungrier. Most processed foods also contain excessive amounts of sodium, which can lead to high blood pressure.
Like its rival format HD DVD, Blu-ray uses a "blue" (technically violet) laser operating at a wavelength of 405 nm to read and write data. Conventional DVDs and CDs use red and near infrared lasers at 650 nm and 780 nm respectively.
The blue-violet laser's shorter wavelength makes it possible to store more information on a 12 cm CD/DVD sized disc. The minimum "spot size" on which a laser can be focused is limited by diffraction, and depends on the wavelength of the light and the numerical aperture of the lens used to focus it. By decreasing the wavelength, increasing the numerical aperture from 0.60 to 0.85 and making the cover layer thinner to avoid unwanted optical effects, the laser beam can be focused to a smaller spot. This allows more information to be stored in the same area. In addition to the optical improvements, Blu-ray Discs feature improvements in data encoding that further increase the capacity.
Since the Blu-ray data layer is closer to the surface of the disk, compared to the DVD standard, it was at first more vulnerable to scratches. The first discs were housed in cartridges for protection. Advances in polymer technology eventually made the cartridges unnecessary.
