1 Egypt’s
Tiananmen Square (Jonathan Power in Khaleej Times) Is it going to be the massacre of China’s
Tiananmen Square all over again? The new civilian/military regime has promised
to break up the large Muslim Brotherhood-led demonstrations now being held in
favour of the deposed, democratically elected president, Mohamed Mursi. The
demonstrators look immoveable unless massive amounts of force are used. Television
pictures show us that there are significant numbers of families among the
demonstrators with their (often small) children.
We
have learnt throughout history that the toppling of a long-standing
authoritarian regime is not the end of the process of democratisation but the
beginning of it. Egypt looks as if it will be no exception. The Arab Spring is
losing its way. Freedom House estimates that today 72 per cent of the countries
of the Middle East and North Africa and 85 per cent of the people there still
lack basic political rights and civil liberties. But “every surge of
democratisation over the last century”, wrote Sheri Berman in February’s
Foreign Affairs, “after World War-I, after World War-II, has been followed by
an undertow, accompanied by widespread questioning of the viability and even
desirability of democratic governance.”
Italy
democratised just before World War-1. The war made for a difficult aftermath.
The country’s two largest political parties, the Socialists and Catholics (the
latter were analogous to the Muslim Brotherhood) were at loggerheads. In 1922
the King turned the country over to a fascist dictatorship run by Benito
Mussolini, a partner of Hitler in World War-II. At war’s end, after Mussolini
was strung up from a lamppost, democracy was restored. Italy was able to
benefit from its earlier trial run and pick up where the democratic experiment
had left off.
This
was the hard way of learning to value democracy. One hopes the participants of
the Arab Spring won’t have to go through so much horror and turmoil. The
Egyptian government must realise just what is at stake if they shoot up the
massed supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. Do they want to follow in the
footsteps of Europe’s miserable history?
2 Death of the smartphone (Steve Kovach in San
Francisco Chronicle) This year has been a big bummer
for gadget nerds hoping the next big thing would arrive soon. It hasn't. That's
not to say there haven't been some great new devices. There have been plenty:
The HTC One. The BlackBerry Z10. The Samsung Galaxy S4. The Moto X. They're all
really good phones, and you'd probably be happy buying any of them.
But despite all the marketing hype
surrounding each phone, none of the devices launched this year have been the
revolution they claimed to be. They're all on parity with each other. Apple may
have leapfrogged the competition with the introduction of the first iPhone in
2007, but since then, everyone else has caught up. For most people, all of
these devices do pretty much the same things. It doesn't matter how much you
paid or what kind of special features your phone's manufacturer touts. It's all
the same these days. The concept of a "smartphone" is dead.
As someone who watches the mobile
industry so closely, it's frustrating to see companies still try to do for
phones what Apple did six years ago. It's almost gotten absurd. Last week,
LG introduced its new flagship phone called the G2. Its distinguishing feature?
The volume controls are on the back of the device, right below the camera.
I'm not saying people are going to stop
buying phones. (They won't.) I'm not saying the phones companies release are
bad. (They're not.) I'm saying we've reached the point where all devices are
pretty much the same, and it's silly for them to try and differentiate
themselves with useless gimmicks. Mobile devices aren't going away, but
the concept of a "smartphone" is dead.
3 BlackBerry is up for sale (Dominic Rushe in The
Guardian) BlackBerry, once the global leader in
smartphone technology, has put itself up for sale after years of falling sales
and failed revamps. Once seen as so habit-forming its users dubbed it the
"CrackBerry", Blackberry has suffered a calamitous decline as rivals
revolutionised the business it did so much to start. On Monday the company
previously known as Research in Motion (RIM) announced it had decided to
"explore strategic alternatives". Buyers are being sought, though the
company could also go private or be broken up. Few analysts expect a
turnaround.
Unable
to match Apple’s iPhone for cool or the sheer range of devices from Samsung and
others using Google's Android mobile system, its market share has collapsed
from close to 50% in the US in 2009 to less than 3%, according to figures
released last week by the analyst IDC. On the day the news broke, the Z10,
BlackBerry's latest, much-hyped device was being offered for $19.99 by US
mobile retailer Wirefly. It was selling for $199 when it was launched earlier
this year.
Stuart Jeffrey, analyst at Nomura Securities, predicts
BlackBerry is likely to re-emerge as a software company, perhaps with some
contracts for super-secure government devices, but "without the handicap
of all those uncompetitive handsets".
4
India’s own aircraft carrier (BBC) India has unveiled its first home-built aircraft carrier from a shipyard
in southern Kerala state. The 37,500 tonne
INS Vikrant is expected to go for extensive trials in 2016 before being
inducted into the navy by 2018, reports say. With this, India joins a select
group of countries capable of building such a vessel. Other countries capable
of building a similar ship are the US, the UK, Russia and France.
The ship, which will have a length of 260m (850ft) and a
breadth of 60m, has been built at the shipyard in Cochin. It was designed and
manufactured locally, using high grade steel made by a state-owned steel
company. Vice-Admiral RK Dhowan of India's navy has described the launch as the
"crowning glory" of the navy's programme to produce vessels on home
soil.
5 Hyperloop, futuristic transport (Straits Times) United States billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has unveiled
plans for a futuristic "Hyperloop" transportation system to whisk
passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under half an hour. The
highly anticipated announcement put to rest some of the questions surrounding
the ambitious project, which the Tesla Motors Inc founder and chief executive
has hinted at for months but declined to discuss in detail.
The
Hyperloop, which Mr Musk previously described as a cross between a Concorde,
rail gun and air-hockey table, will be solar powered and move passengers and
even automobiles at speeds of up to 1,287km per hour, according to the 57-page
design plan. The system's aluminum capsules would run above ground and along
low pressure steel tubes.
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