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SON: "Daddy, may I ask you a question?"
DAD: "Yeah sure, what is it?"
SON: "Daddy, how much do you make an hour?"
DAD: "That's none of your business. Why do you ask such a thing?"
SON: "I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an hour?"
DAD: "If you must know, I make $100 an hour."
SON: "Oh! (With his head down).
SON: "Daddy, may I please borrow $50?"
The father was furious.
DAD: "If the only reason you asked that is so you can borrow some money to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. Think about why you are being so selfish. I work hard everyday for such this childish behavior."

The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door.
The man sat down and started to get even angrier about the little boy's questions. How dare he ask such questions only to get some money?
After about an hour or so, the man had calmed down, and started to think:
Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that $ 50 and he really didn't ask for money very often. The man went to the door of the little boy's room and opened the door.

DAD: "Are you asleep, son?"

SON: "No daddy, I'm awake".
DAD: "I've been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier. It's been a long day and I took out my aggravation on you. Here's the $50 you asked for."

The little boy sat straight up, smiling.
SON: "Oh, thank you daddy!"
Then, reaching under his pillow he pulled out some crumpled up bills. The man saw that the boy already had money, started to get angry again. The little boy slowly counted out his money, and then looked up at his father.

DAD: "Why do you want more money if you already have some?"

SON: "Because I didn't have enough, but now I do.

"Daddy, I have $100 now. Can I buy an hour of your time? Please come home early tomorrow. I would like to have dinner with you."
The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little son, and he begged for his forgiveness. It's just a short reminder to all of you working so hard in life. We should not let time slip through our fingers without having spent some time with those who really matter to us, those close to our hearts. Do remember to share that $100 worth of your time with someone you love? If we die tomorrow, the company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of days. But the family and friends we leave behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives. And come to think of it, we pour ourselves more into work than to our family.

Some things are more important.

TAKEN FROM BLOG: http://kumbangjingga.blogspot.com/2013/02/sedikit-renungan-untuk-mereka-yg.html

Philips TLED lamp prototype combines efficiency, brightness and warmth

Philips creates the world's most energy-efficient warm white LED lamp
First LED lamp prototype delivering 200 lumen per watt high quality light, halving the energy use compared to current LED lamps

Eindhoven, the Netherlands – 11/04/13 Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) announces a new innovation in LED lighting, creating the world's most energy-efficient LED lamp suitable for general lighting applications. Philips researchers developed a tube lighting (TL) replacement TLED prototype that produces a record 200 lumens per watt of high-quality white light (compared with 100lm/W for fluorescent lighting and just 15lm/W for traditional light bulbs). This prototype TLED lamp is twice as efficient as predecessor lamps, basically halving the energy used.

With lighting accounting for more than 19% of the world's total electricity consumption, this innovation promises to drive massive energy and cost savings across the globe. The 200lm/W TLED lamp is expected to hit the market in 2015 for office and industry applications before ultimately being used in the home.

The new TLED prototype lamp from Philips marks the first time that lighting engineers have been able to reach 200lm/W efficiency without compromising on light quality[1], with all parameters required to meet the stringent requirements for office lighting. "This again is a major breakthrough in LED lighting and will further drive the transformation of the lighting industry," explains Rene van Schooten, CEO Light Sources & Electronics for Philips Lighting. "After being recognized for our quality of LED light (mimicking traditional light bulbs) to creating new experience with Philips Hue (the connected light system for the home), we now present the next innovative step in doubling lighting efficiency. It's exciting to imagine the massive energy and cost savings it will bring to our planet and customers."

Significant energy and cost savings
The TLED lamps are intended to replace fluorescent tube lighting used in office and industry, which currently account for more than half of the world's total lighting. Conversion to the twice-as-efficient 200lm/W TLED lamps will generate significant energy and cost savings.

In the US alone, for example, fluorescent lights consume around 200 terawatts of electricity annually. If these lights were all replaced with 200lm/W TLEDs, the US would use around 100 terawatts less energy (equivalent to 50 medium sized power plants) saving more than US$12 billion and preventing around 60 million metric tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.[2]

This new LED innovation from Philips underlines the value and power of its lighting business, bringing together its expertise in LED technology, lamps, applications and systems. Market leading innovations from Philips Lumileds, as in phosphor technology and blue LEDs, together contribute to the high quality of light and advances in efficiency.

[1] Comfortable, workable light requires a color temperature of 3000–4000 kelvins, a color rendering index of at least 80, and an R9 saturated red level of no less than 20.

2 U.S. Department of Energy report January 2012: Energy savings potential of solid-state lighting in general illumination applications

Microsoft Said to Adopt AMD Chips for Next Xbox Console

By Cliff Edwards, Dina Bass & Ian King - Apr 9, 2013

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) will use an Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) processor in its next Xbox game console as it seeks to cut the cost of building machines and get developers to create more titles, people with knowledge of the matter said. AMD surged the most in almost two years.

The Xbox will use an AMD system-on-a-chip that combines powerful “Jaguar” central processing units with graphics chips, said one of the people, who sought anonymity because the plans aren’t public. The shift to the so-called x86 format ubiquitous in modern personal computers means Microsoft will drop the Power PC technology designed by International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), and game discs made for the current Xbox 360 won’t be compatible.

The switch is a boon for AMD, which is also providing chips forSony Corp. (6758)’s coming PlayStation 4, as it seeks a larger slice of the $67 billion global video-game market to help lessen its reliance on the shrinking PC industry. Microsoft also stands to benefit because game developers, who have moved toward making games for PCs and mobile devices, will find it easier to deliver those titles for the next Xbox.

“We’ll probably see many more titles because the console makers are saying the publishers are back in the driver’s seat,” said Richard Doherty, president of technology consulting firm Envisioneering Group. Developers won’t have to reinvent various features, such as “smoke, shading and reflections for each machine and can essentially create once and port once, and be done.”

Game publishers have complained that current consoles, each with a different architecture, come with a steep learning curve that drives up development costs, according to Doherty. Those companies will save money with the new chips, he said.

Xbox Event

AMD, based in Sunnyvale, California, rose 13 percent to $2.59 at the close in New York, the most since July 2011. That left the shares up 7.9 percent this year, reversing what had been a year-to-date decline. Microsoft slipped 0.4 percent to $28.59 and has climbed 7 percent in 2013.

Microsoft, which had considered unveiling the Xbox 360’s successor this month, will do it later, three people said. The company is considering revealing plans for the new Xbox at the industry’s E3 expo in June or at a separate event in May or June, they said. Microsoft plans a May 21 event, The Verge reported today.

The company hasn’t released the next Xbox’s specifications, including whether it will have an optical drive or details of online-game features and entertainment services.

John Taylor, an AMD spokesman, declined to comment, as did David Dennis, a Microsoft spokesman.

Targeting Consoles

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, decided against an April event because it saw little competitive pressure from Sony, which plans to release the PlayStation 4 in time for the Christmas holidays, said two people.

At Sony’s February unveiling of the PlayStation 4, the Tokyo-based company demonstrated the controller and game play running on prototype hardware, without showing the machine. Critics including Amir Anvarzadeh, a Singapore-based manager for Asia equity sales at BGC Partners Inc., panned the lack of any “revolutionary” advances and the PS4’s emphasis on social- gaming features.

Nintendo Co. (7974)’s Wii U, another competitor, has been selling below the company’s initial forecasts since November. In January, the company said it expected to sell 4 million units in the year ending March 31, down from a previous outlook for 5.5 million.

For AMD, providing chips for game consoles is part of Chief Executive Officer Rory Read’s plan to lessen the company’s dependence on the declining personal computer market. Read is aiming to get more than 20 percent of the AMD’s revenue from areas other than PCs by the fourth quarter.

Sales Drop

Traditional console makers face competition from cheaper machines like Ouya Inc.’s, and changes in game play that favor inexpensive titles for mobile devices such as Apple Inc. (AAPL)iPads and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab

U.S. retail sales of packaged video games fell 21 percent last year to $8.9 billion, according to researcher NPD Group, while revenue from games downloaded to computers and mobile devices rose 16 percent to $5.9 billion. Globally, the market including hardware and accessories was $67 billion.

The decision to switch to mainstream PC processors also will make games developed on previous generation consoles incompatible with the new systems, Envisioneering’s Doherty said. Sony has said it hopes to deliver some older games over the Web, using its Gaikai cloud gaming service.

In addition to the main Power PC processor, the current Xbox 360 contains a graphics chip made by a unit of AMD. The PlayStation 3 uses a custom Cell processor and graphics chips from Nvidia Corp. (NVDA)

Cost Savings

The x86 technology licensed by Intel Corp. (INTC) -- the so-called instruction set fundamental to all modern personal computers -- gives the new Xbox access to existing design elements, making the machine’s chip system cheaper to develop. The new also chips offer more computing power than parts Microsoft is currently using. Apple Inc. dropped the Power PC design from its Mac computers in 2005.

In the PlayStation 4, Sony is adopting an AMD custom system-on-a-chip processor that includes eight 64-bit Jaguar cores with a Radeon graphics processor from AMD’s ATI unit. The PS4 will come with a secondary custom chip responsible for downloading and processing games in the background.

At February’s unveiling, Sony lead system architect Mark Cerny said the PlayStation 4 will be a “supercharged PC architecture” with advanced memory and other features that will reduce development times by making some decisions within the hardware.

According to Envisioneering’s Doherty, the switch will help Sony bring down the initial cost to make its machines. For big developers such as Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) and Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI), the savings will allow them to reduce their reliance on $60 titles as they compete with smaller publishers making games selling for $20 and less.

To contact the reporters on this story: Cliff Edwards in San Francisco atcedwards28@bloomberg.net; Dina Bass in Seattle at dbass2@bloomberg.net; Ian King in San Francisco at ianking@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net; Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net

Click and pay

THE past few years have brought little relief for pinched state finances. But on March 22nd 75 senators, including majorities of both parties, approved an amendment to a proposed federal budget which, if enacted, would allow states to collect taxes on sales by internet retailers based in other states.

It makes no economic sense to tax sales in shops and over the internet differently. The prohibition is constitutional. In 1992 the Supreme Court ruled that states could not force out-of-state retailers to collect tax on sales to residents unless Congress, which oversees interstate commerce, said so. Only retailers with a physical presence—a “nexus”, in the legal jargon—in the state could be taxed.

The economic consequences were relatively minor before Amazon and eBay appeared. Not any more. Since 1994, mail-order and internet sellers have grown from 2% of total retail sales to 7%. In the past five years, while retail sales have risen by 10% and total state and local taxes by 9%, sales-tax revenue is up just 2%. The National Conference of State Legislatures reckons that the court’s prohibition cost states $23 billion in lost taxes last year.

In theory, online customers are required to pay sales tax themselves. Unsurprisingly—since there are no means of enforcement, and no customs stations on state lines—few do. This galls traditional retailers like Best Buy and Target, who must charge tax not only in shops but also online in states where they have stores.

States have tried to find ways round the court’s ruling. Illinois redefined “nexus” to include local third-party affiliates who sell through larger web outfits, such as Amazon. Colorado ordered retailers to send customers a tax bill and report them to the tax collector. New York has defined “nexus’ to include any shop that can be reached by clicking through on a New York-based website. All have faced legal challenges: Illinois and Colorado have lost in court, although New York’s tactic has recently been upheld.

Retailers and state and local governments have long recognised that the ideal solution would be for Congress to allow states to tax the internet. But previous legislative efforts have stirred furious opposition from anti-tax activists and discomfort among many Republicans, who think this sounds like a new tax. Although the activists remain opposed, Republicans are increasingly sympathising with retailers and with local governments that are trying to build public works, such as sewers, while their tax base migrates into cyberspace. “You can’t flush your toilet over the internet,” says Mike Enzi, a Republican senator from Wyoming who spearheaded the amendment with Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois.

The Marketplace Fairness Act, as the proposal is called, allows states that simplify their sales-tax laws to compel online retailers to collect taxes. In preparation for passage, 24 states have joined a coalition that harmonises and simplifies sales-tax collection, for example by using common definitions of goods that are subject to tax. That would soothe e-tailers’ worries about collecting different taxes in thousands of state and local jurisdictions. Amazon, one of the fiercest opponents of state-level efforts to collect internet taxes, backs the federal law, while warning against too high a threshold for exempting small sellers, now set at $1m. EBay, on the other hand, opposes any bill without a “robust” exemption. The law would not overturn the federal prohibition on taxing purely digital goods, such as internet access and e-mail.

Although a similar bill has bipartisan support in the House of Representatives, House leaders have yet to get behind it. Even the Senate must find another way to pass the legislation, since the March budget resolution is non-binding. Advocates believe that the best hope may lie in comprehensive tax reform. Buried in a slew of more sweeping changes, a heavier touch on e-commerce might go unnoticed.

(Photo credit: AFP)

Article from www.economist.com

The world’s greatest bazaar

Alibaba, a trailblazing Chinese internet giant, will soon go public

IN 1999 Trudy Dai used to spend all night sending e-mails from her friend Jack Ma’s apartment, trying to answer queries from American customers without letting on that she was Chinese. Ms Dai was one of the first dozen employees of Alibaba, an online listings service Mr Ma, a teacher, had just started. It was already having some success connecting small Chinese manufacturers to potential customers, including the overseas ones Ms Dai was reassuring over e-mail. But the friends and students who made up the workforce were earning just 550 yuan (then $66) a month.

Mr Ma, though, already had big dreams. That year he said: “Americans are strong at hardware and systems, but on information and software, all of our brains are just as good…Yahoo’s stock will fall and eBay’s stock will rise. And maybe after eBay’s stock rises, Alibaba’s stock will rise.”

Since then, Alibaba has come to dominate internet retailing in China, which will soon be the biggest e-commerce market in the world. It has moved beyond its original remit of connecting businesses to each other to ventures that let companies sell directly to the public (Tmall) and enable members of the public to sell to each other (Taobao). Between them, Taobao and Tmall processed 1.1 trillion yuan ($170 billion) in transactions last year, more goods than passed through Amazon and eBay combined (see table 1).

The company that started in Mr Ma’s apartment now employs 24,000 workers at its headquarters in Hangzhou and elsewhere; Ms Dai is president of human resources. A few years ago Alibaba began to turn a profit; in the year to September 2012 it made $485m on revenues of $4.1 billion (see chart 2). Following a recent reorganisation it has 25 separate business units, and on May 10th it will have a new chief executive, Jonathan Lu; Mr Ma will stay on as executive chairman.

Read more at: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21573980-alibaba-trailblazing-chinese-internet-giant-will-soon-go-public-worlds-greatest-bazaar

Monolayer mastery: Graphene and molybdenite combined to create flexible flash memory

Researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have created flexible, energy-efficient, high-performance flash memory from graphene and molybdenite.

Molybdenite has received some attention in recent years as a possible replacement for silicon, as it has a structure, bandgap, and charge mobility that enable the creation of small, low-power transistors. Graphene, as you probably know by now, is the most conductive material in the world, making it ideal for use in high-performance electronics — but it isn’t a semiconductor, so it’s proving rather hard to include it in conventional CMOS designs. 

Curiously, molybdenite (MoS²) actually looks and feels a lot like graphite/graphene, too — and indeed, given its semiconducting properties, some have suggested that we should be focusing on molybdenite instead of graphene as a silicon replacement. Importantly, both graphene and molybdenite can be cleaved (using the famed sticky tape technique) into layers that are just a single atom thick.

EPFL created the first molybdenite microchip last year, and now it has gone one step further and created floating gate (flash memory) transistors out of molybdenite and graphene. In this setup, molybdenite is the transistor’s channel, assuming silicon’s usual role. Due to molybdenite’s direct bandgap, it can be switched more efficiently than silicon, allowing for lower-power program/erase cycles. The graphene both acts as an electrode/interface to the molybdenite, and as the floating gate, which stores the memory cell’s value (i.e. it retains charge). In this case, graphene’s excellent conductivity allows for faster switching and less power consumption. The most standout feature of the memory cell, though, is a program/erase current ratio that exceeds 10⁴ — basically, this makes it very easy to read and write data, and opens up the possibility of multi-level storage, where multiple bits of data are stored in different floating gates in the same cell.

Due to their nature of being monolayers, graphene and molybdenite are perfectly suited for the manufacture of thin, flexible electronics. They should also allow for more efficient computer chips, which could be a boon for wearable and mobile computing. Whether there will be any actual performance gains from using graphene and molybdenite remains to be seen: Pure graphene transistors are theoretically capable of switching at terahertz frequencies, but molybdenite’s properties are less well known. As far as we’re aware, EPFL seems to be the only major research institution that’s looking into molybdenite — but we’re sure, if EPFL continues its streak of molybdenite breakthroughs, other research groups will surely sit up and notice.

Read more at: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/151344-monolayer-mastery-graphene-and-molybdenite-combined-to-create-flexible-flash-memory

Kenya breaks ground on its 'Silicon Savannah' city project

Kenya has begun construction on the new city of Konza -- the so-called "Silicon Savannah" -- as it seeks to cement its position as one of the main centres of Africa's technology sector.

Located 64km south of Nairobi, the £9.1bn city will turn what is currently empty savannah into 20.1km2 mixed-use city that the Kenyan government claims will eventually generate as many as 200,000 jobs by the time its final construction phase is finished in 2030. Tax breaks are being offered to companies willing to invest in moving to the new city.

The site is currently occupied only by a highway, around which the city will grow in a triangular shape. There will be 35,000 homes, schools for all ages and a new university, all designed so that residents can easily get to the two business parks by public transport, walking or cycling. The plan is apparently heavily-influenced by similar "new cities", like Cyberjaya in Malaysia, Cyber Cityin Mauritius and Egypt's Smart Village. Wired.co.uk reported on Chengdu's similar " Great City" plan last year.

While Konza's development is being split into four phases to spread the cost (with the first phase set for completion by 2017), the overall plan is extremely ambitious -- it's not just seen as a way of attracting investment from international tech companies and inspiring domestic entrepreneurs, but also as a way of reducing the corruption that has been endemic in the nation for several decades.

Konza forms a key part of what the Kenyan governman has dubbed "Vision 2030", the long term economic plan that followed the introduction of a new constitution in 2010. Previously, government officials could take advantage of their power to secure public resources for their own ethnic blocks around the country, a situation which eventually fed into the political crisis of 2007. Konza -- economically and politically a completely new entity -- can, it is perhaps optimistically hoped, be something of a role model for the rest of the country, while the improvements in infrastructure will be felt by people around the country as high-speed rail links and highway iprovements are also included in the plan.

However, Kenya has already done quite well with developing its own technology sector, and in recent years has emerged as something of a regional leader. IBM chose Nairobi as the site of its first African research lab in 2012, and major companies like Google, Microsoft and Intel have their regional headquarters in the country.

Kenyan startups -- like the M-Farm, which keeps farmers up to date with the latest agriculture prices -- are often huge successes domestically, and tech incubators like iHub are springing up throughout Nairobi to help entrepreneurs get started. It also helps that the average internet speeds in eastern Africa arehigher than in South Africa, Kenya's main rival in the tech sector. And, of course, the revolution that mobile phones have brought to the entire continent are well-reported by now.

While the plan is for Konza to be the Kenyan answer to Silicon Valley, it will literally be on the savannah, so a large green belt-like buffer zone is being planned to ensure grazing animals like elephants and wildebeests continue to have enough land to roam and feed on.

read more at: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-01/25/kenya-silicon-savvanah