Thursday April 28, 2005 
Thursday April 28, 2005
Airbus A380 completes first flight
The Airbus A380, the biggest airliner ever built, completed a momentous maiden flight last night, winning praise from one of the pilots as a "magnificent machine" and opening a new era in aviation history. The mammoth long-haul airliner, which can carry between 550 and 840 passengers, is due to enter commercial service in mid-2006, debuting with Singapore Airlines.
Tens of thousands of spectators cheered as the A380 double-decker touched down at 2.23pm (11.23pm AEST) at Toulouse-Blagnac airport in southwestern France after a successful flight of three hours and 54 minutes.
Toulouse is the home of Airbus Industrie.
The Airbus prototype took off and landed on runway 32, dubbed the Concorde, from where the world's only supersonic jetliner made its maiden flight in 1969. The applause rippled across Europe, as political leaders hailed the achievement as a milestone that proves the might of European unity.
Airbus, owned 80 per cent by EADS 20 per cent by BAE Systems of Britain, is banking on the A380 to be the world's most profitable plane, with a 15-20 per cent lower operating cost per seat.
At takeoff, the prototype plane weighed 421 tonnes, the heaviest civil airliner to date, the company said. Its maximum takeoff weight is 560 tonnes.
The company baptised its 21st flagship the A380 for two reasons: the number "eight" suggests the double-decker feature and also is considered a lucky number in Asia, where Airbus sees its fortunes growing the most.
(2005-04-28 07:34:08 SGT)
[Tech]
Permalink
Monday April 25, 2005
The indiadaily.com site has an entire section on India outsourcing news. Yup, I've been reading Indian news (again).
From a quick glance through the list of recent articles, the Indians seem to be concerned that their IT outsourcing industry, while still going strong by the numbers, may be facing imminent peak and decline.
Some selected snippets :
1. How long can price advantage drive India's outsourcing boom?
There is little doubt in any ones mind that the currency differential i.e. 1 US Dollar equals 44 Indian Rupees is the main driving force behind outsourcing boom in India ... so if finally the Indian Rupees starts gaining ground against the US Dollar, what will be the net impact on the outsourcing contracts? ...
... for call centers though the impact will be much severe [than IT sector]. The higher wages in US Dollar terms and negative effects of Indian accents will drive call center business away from India at a much faster rate as Rupee gains ground.
2. Outsourcing becoming unprofitable business - a major new trend
In recent days the escalating cost of employment in India, lack of qualified work force and deflation service prices have made outsourcing a tough business ... the escalating cost of living and shortage of qualified workforce is putting a solid pressure on wage increase ... on top of those countries like Poland, Philippines, South Africa and so on are competing heavily lowering the prices and providing additional incentive to the clients.
While employee salaries have gone up by an average of 20 per cent every year, the average revenue per hour (for a single terminal) has declined by about 15 per cent over the past three years, from $14 to $12.
What is then the future? Some Indian companies have tried to branch out into premium pricing environments - the vertical markets in IT. That is where India is failing. It was a easy honey moon for Indian companies to offer cheap services with less than par salary in the country and Indian rupees trading at a lower value than then the fair market values. But when these factors are taken out, Indian companies find they are nowhere.
3. Outsourcing's Next Phase Has Begun
Outsourcing in India has reached a near-term peak, and meaningful expansion from this point forward will result in higher costs and lower-quality delivery. Business leaders in Asia have been saying such things to one another for months now. Today, we are seeing deliberate action to move capacity from India to next-step destinations like the Philippines, China and Vietnam.
... India's recent hiring growth has been roughly double that of the crazy dot-com boom times in North America ... besides, while rising costs may be a big deal to business leaders who have to somehow budget for them, they probably don't warrant the same degree of concern for individual workers, who see their paychecks rise by 30% from a well-timed job change ...
4. Need for reengineering IT outsourcing
In Europe and America, Oracle (Paeoplesoft) and SAP faces a strange newborn competition from smaller companies that they never thought about. Large back office processing systems based on large traditional databases are being challenged by smaller Web based tools from companies one hundredth the size. India's outsourcing will be now slowly replaced by US and European companies that have mastered the techniques of software engineering productivity in the last few years. Three or four very talented software engineers who also understand business and systems analysis can replace fifty Indian coders. The software engineering field is finally going through the maturity process where coding and traditional testing is replaced with business and systems analysis driven system generation through "configurations". The new technology is astounding and will employ far less people but those who will work as software engineers will make four times what they make today.
- So, let's see. 20% annual wage inflation (and I thought China's 10% wasn't too shabby), competition from Philippines, Vietnam and even Africa (?!), and, I think I might have a bit of insight as to why I heard an advertisement from SAP on local radio this morning.
(2005-04-25 12:06:15 SGT)
[Biz]
Permalink
Looks like xbitlabs.com got hacked (/cracked) and defaced.
(2005-04-25 11:00:45 SGT)
[Tech]
Permalink
Sunday April 24, 2005
Star Wars Revelations @ 202 KBps!!
Today I learned from the Hardwarezone forums that my ISP (which I will always refer to as SCV but is now owned by StarHub) has upgraded our upstream bandwidth from 128 kbps to 256 kbps (kilobits per second). Which in KB terms, is from 16 KBps to 32 KBps (KiloBytes per second). Which is a doubling in speed. That'll be real helpful for, umm, "power users" (see the tanker on the top right of the picture above? lol). And it was only just about a few weeks back that they upgraded the downstream bandwidth from 1500 kbps to 2000 kbps, and, also for free, i.e. no changes to our bills.
Cool. I power-cycled the cable modem, a fancy term for saying that I turned off the power, sat on my butt and waited for a minute or so before turning it on again so that it will update itself with the latest set of operating parameters. To be sure, I did a DHCP release/renew for my trusty LinkSys router as well. FTP'ed over to my post1.org domain account, and sure enough, the test file was being sent out at 29 KBps. Not 100% but close enough - have to allow for some overhead losses, eh. Far better than the 14-15 KBps max last time.
And then I just received word, via news.com, of this fan-made movie called Star Wars: Revelations. I suspected that the fastest way to get it would be via BitTorrent, and sure enough, there's a BT mirror.
Here's what I got, the free, not-for-profit, homegrown, fan-made movie downloading at up to 202 KBps :
The entire download completed in 37 minutes. Can I say wow? Wow!! I'm off to watch the movie now!!
(2005-04-24 00:25:19 SGT)
[Tech]
Permalink
Comments [4]
Saturday April 23, 2005
Saudi Tosses Oil Production Cap
peakoil.com news, forum -> nasdaq.com :
Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia's oil minister, also said the kingdom had tossed aside its production cap set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and is willing to sell its customers every barrel of oil they want, up to its current capacity of 11 million barrels a day.
In the United States in 1971, the TRC (the equivalent of OPEC for the U.S.) put aside their quota. That was the year that the U.S. peaked :
... Deffeyes said he knew that Hubbert had been right and that the peak for domestic production had been reached when he saw this sentence in 1971 in the San Francisco Chronicle: "The Texas Railroad Commission announced a 100% allowable for next month."
To demystify that sentence, the Texas Railroad Commission was the quaintly named cartel that controlled the U.S. oil industry by making strategic use of the excess capacity for pumping in Texas. When the commission said, "100% allowable for next month," it meant that there was no longer any excess capacity. They were pumping flat-out, and therefore Hubbert's Peak had been reached.
http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/CaltechNews/articles/v38/oil.html
- Therefore, the implication in this announcement from the Saudi's is staggering. Peak Oil is either here, very, very close, or ... has already passed by. We will not know for sure until a couple of years later and examine the historical production figures (i.e. Matt Simmons' "rear-view mirror").
See also :
1. White House : "Saudi Near Capacity"
2. Peak Oil May Be Now : Matt Simmons
(2005-04-23 12:28:12 SGT)
[Energy]
Permalink
Peak Oil on Singapore Newspaper
Peak Oil turned up on a Singapore newspaper today. The newspaper, incidentally, is called "Today" and has a circulation of 300,000 copies daily.
It's a re-print of the Guardian article that I blogged on just a couple of days back.
The article takes up a full page on Page 6 (see PDF).
(2005-04-23 08:06:32 SGT)
[Energy]
Permalink
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