Features

LONDON — It may be no coincidence that Agent 007’s latest love interest, played by French actress Lea Seydoux in the new James Bond movie “Spectre”, is called Madeleine Swann, because the film seems like a swan song for some of the participants.

Both Daniel Craig, playing Bond for the fourth time in the film screened for the press in London on Wednesday, and director Sam Mendes, in his second outing for the now 24-film franchise, have been widely reported as saying they want out.

Craig has even gone so far as to say he would rather slit his wrists than play Bond again.

In the ways of the movie world and successful franchises — the last Bond film, “Skyfall”, raked in some $1.1 billion at the box office worldwide — all that could change come Bond 25.

But this slick but overlong, at well over two hours, outing that takes viewers on an armchair journey from Mexico City to London to Rome to Austria to Tunisia and then back to London, has a somewhat tired feel about it, as if it had overgorged on a diet of Aston Martin cars, Omega watches and Belvedere vodka — among the main product placements.

Michael Wilson, a co-producer of the film, said onstage at a central London screening in advance of the British premiere next week that he hoped the press would tweet opinions, but not spoilers.

The film, though, trumpets roughly within the first half hour — so no spoiler here — that the high-rise, high-tech offices of a new uber intelligence agency being created in London, which will make double-0 agents like Bond superfluous, has been paid for with private funds — a heavy hint of what is up.

In other scenes, Mendes and the scriptwriters have had fun, referencing scenes from gangster and crime-steeped films like “The Untouchables” — for an underworld boardroom ghastliness — to “The Italian Job” where Bond’s latest Aston Martin supercar and an Audi replace Minis careening down steps in Rome.

There is a ring which will unite them all, as in “The Lord of the Rings”, but saying what it will unite and why — that would be a spoiler.

That leaves Bond and his villains — in this case the Austrian Christoph Waltz, reprising a Bond villain of the past — but there are 23 previous films, so that is no spoiler — and his Bond girls.

There are three, but the only one who makes an impression is Seydoux, who gets a great catwalk moment in the dining car of an “Orient Express”-style train, wearing a mostly not-there dress.

Which brings us back to the Seydoux character’s name — Madeleine Swann.

This film, with its villain from the past, and Bond rummaging back in time for answers to the film’s mysteries, is riffing on the French author Marcel Proust, one of whose main characters was Swann and whose memories of childhood were triggered by eating a sweet madeleine cake.

That is no spoiler, but unfortunately it also may be one of the film’s best takeaways, and surely literary allusions are not what audiences want from a Bond film.

Your business needs a server computer but you cannot afford to buy one, and even less to pay an expensive qualified IT team of technicians and engineers to run it and service it. Here comes — one more time — the cloud to the rescue. Would that be a perfect alternative?

In a general manner cloud usage is steadily increasing. The increase is not only quantitative but also qualitative. Countless services now offer cloud-based server computers to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SoftLayer and GoDaddy are two typical examples of companies providing such advanced online services.

Renting and using an online server means that your enterprise can save itself the burden and the cost of having to buy, install, and much more importantly to maintain a physical server machine in its premises. Instead it can rent one in the cloud, one that would provide it with the same kind of services and functionality as a locally installed machine would.

Using cloud-based servers’ services, understandably, is not work that the casual home user can handle, but then again if you need such services chances you are that a business entity and not a home user. An IT specialist, one would usually do and be enough, is still a must to make use of the product, be it physically in your premises or in the cloud.

Without going into technical details that wouldn’t be pertinent in this space, one can assert that the concept is great and relieves SMEs from a significant, heavy load of expenses and worries, technical and managerial. As far as features and functions are concerned the online service will provide everything that a local physical machine would.

So should your SME go for it?

As it is often the case one would start with a cost comparison. The average rent is in the range of $200 to $400 per month for a medium-size server. At first this may not seem cheap for an SME. However, when you consider what this actually saves you, the online formula becomes a winner. If the initial purchase of a small server machine today is more or less affordable ($2000 to $4000), companies know that it is the running cost that usually hurts. Indeed, the cost of the base hardware is almost nothing compared to the cost of software licences, the engineers’ salaries and social charges, the room, the power protection devices, the air conditioning that must be running 24/7, the backups, the routine maintenance, etc.

If cost, efficiency, functionality and convenience are not issues, it boils down to one thing in the end — as always: it’s all about how good your Internet connection is. For it is truly the main artery of the system; the Internet connection is for your network what the aorta is to your heart and this is where you should start. Without a fast and very reliable connectivity to the Web an online server would be futile.

Fortunately it is becoming more and more common, and less and less expensive, for SMEs to opt for Internet subscriptions that are based on fibre optics, the kind that ensures significant bandwidth, unlimited monthly quota (i.e. the quantity of upload and download) and virtually 99.99 per cent uptime. The cost of such professional subscriptions is to take into consideration as well.

Last but not least, there will always be businesses, however small or big, that will be reluctant to trust the Web and put all their information and software applications on a cloud-based server. It’s the sempiternal question of data safety and confidentiality, and there is not going to be a perfect answer or solution to that any time soon.

Contrary to the image we like to portray, I belong to a very racist country. Racism comes so naturally to us Indians that at times we do not even realise we are being racist. 

Grandmothers casually talk about the colour of the newborn baby’s skin while notifying everyone of its arrival. If the baby is fair, it is called good-looking but if the poor sod is of a slightly darker shade, they say the baby is healthy and stop at that. They then, immediately take the newborn into their own hands — literally and figuratively — and massage it with all kinds of whitening agents like milk and cream and chickpea flour and sour yoghurt and the rest of it, and wait for its colour to turn.

In the matrimonial section of any newspaper, and we have thousands of them, everyone is seeking a fair complexioned bride. The grooms use extensive poetic licence while describing themselves. Dark brown and black skin tone is passed off as being “wheatish” in colour, and the light brown ones simply call themselves “fair and handsome”.

Believe me, it’s true. I’m not making it up. In fact we also have a face-cream for men that is manufactured in India, called “fair and handsome”. It was to counter the “fair and lovely” cream for women, which I’m told is the biggest selling product that a particular company ever made. Shahrukh Khan, one of our highest paid Bollywood actors, endorses this invention. 

In the advertisement there is a young man who watches the superstar shoot for a film and wishes that he can be like him. Khan turns to the dark skinned youngster and says even if you cannot be a film star, you can at least be handsome by applying this whitening cream and then hands him a tube of “fair and handsome”. After a few days, the guy emerges in his whitened avatar and has a bevvy of young girls swooning over him crooning, “hi handsome, hi handsome!”

When one drives past small villages in India and stops for tea at a tiny shack by the roadside, it is pathetically funny to observe that in such remote areas too, they sell tiny tubes of this whitening cream. The phobia runs so deep that in some places, the poorest of the poor, substitute it with turmeric powder. They make a paste of it with water and smear it lavishly on their faces. To them even looking yellow is better than being seen in their naturally dark skin tone. 

My own grandmother was so colour conscious that if I tanned a bit in the sun she would call me “kali”, which means “blackie”. For the next several days she would not let me step outdoors in the afternoon and also make me drink milk instead of the usual tea. According to her, “you are what you eat”, and she preferred my skin to be milky-hued rather than tea stained. 

I met an Indian family recently where the brand-0new daughter-in-law was sulking and not talking to the groom’s parents. They seemed pretty bewildered. 

“We only tried to help,” the aged lady told me in confidence. 

“How”, I asked. 

“The bride has a wheatish complexion,” the elderly gentleman whispered. 

“So? She is beautiful,” I insisted. 

“We thought she will appreciate what we did,” the lady said. 

“What did you do?’ I was curious. 

“We gifted her 12 tubes of ‘fair and lovely’ cream,” they said in unison.

LAGUNA BEACH, California — Apple chief executive Tim Cook said Monday the technology giant’s new music service has some 6.5 million subscribers.

“It is going really well,” Cook during an on-stage chat on the opening evening of a Wall Street Journal technology forum on the Southern California coast.

“Lots of people are liking it.”

People have begun ending free trials of the music service, which launched at the end of June in more than 100 countries.

More than eight million people are still in the free trial of Apple Music, pushing the total number of users above 15 million, according to Cook.

He credited a human curation element — actual people who fashion playlists — for creating listening experiences superior to that delivered by “zeroes and ones” of computer algorithms.

“We have music experts just like the DJs when we were growing up,” Cook said, setting the service apart from entrenched rivals such as Spotify and Pandora which use software to tailor tunes to people’s tastes.

Apple Music, the tech giant’s new streaming service, went live at the end of June as the company behind iTunes looks to dominate the fast-growing sector.

Apple Service began with the launch of Beats 1, an international radio station that will feature shows by high-profile artists, and offered streaming — for the first time — of Taylor Swift’s blockbuster “1989” album.

To edge its way into the streaming music market, Apple has offered a three-month trial period to new subscribers, after which subscriptions cost $9.99 per month.

Apple TV turned on

On another entertainment front, Apple will begin taking orders for new Apple TV hardware beginning on October 26 and shipments will start by the end of that week, according to Cook.

“I think it will be disruptive of the TV watching experience,” Cook said.

“This is the foundation of the future of TV.”

The new Apple TV unveiled last month has the potential to do for television what iPhone did to mobile phones, while claiming a starring role in home entertainment.

Updated Apple TV hardware was not expected to revolutionise the television industry, but it could strike a blow to cable companies that have been in a power seat when it comes to delivering shows and other content.

The new Apple TV will have a version of the App Store that has been a hit on iPhones.

Siri virtual assistant software built in Apple TV allowed for natural language searches for shows, such as asking for something funny or a certain actor by name.

People should also be able to see what they want on-demand instead of being at the mercy of cable broadcast schedules.

These options can spur a trend of “cord cutting” or ending the subscription “bundles” offered by cable and satellite TV firms.

By letting media companies keep control of their content in apps, Apple could find new money-making models while sidestepping worries studios might have about distribution rights.

“What has to happen in the TV land is it has to be brought up and modernised,” Cook said.

“It is almost as though you step into a time capsule when you step into your living room.”

The new Apple TV will launch with a starting price of $149.

Apple TV has lagged behind rivals such as Roku and Google Chromecast.

Cook declined to provide figures regarding Apple Watch sales, but said the California company shipped “a lot” in the first quarter they were released and that number has ramped each subsequent quarter.

He dodged questions regarding what kind of plans, if any, Apple had for making a car.

Rumors have abounded in recent months of Apple working on a self-driving car, in its own spin on work being done by Google and Tesla.

SEATTLE — Google is offering new incentives in a bid to chip away at Microsoft’s hold on corporate America’s desktop.

The Mountain View, California, company is offering businesses free use of Google’s suite of word processing, e-mail and other productivity applications for the life of the business’ existing contract with another provider. Google is also offering to pay US companies that switch to Google a portion of the cost of migrating their applications and data.

It’s the latest salvo in a yearslong battle between Google and Microsoft in the highly profitable business of building software tools for office workers.

Microsoft, with the Office suite it cobbled together over three decades, dominated the business of selling office-worker software when Google began making inroads in the late 2000s with its own Web-based e-mail and document tools.

When Google first started offering its then-consumer-focused programmes to business software buyers, “a lot of times we were kind of laughed out of the room”, said Rich Rao, who leads the team that sells Google’s Apps for Work. “Fast-forward to the present day, we’re a serious contender in the market.”

Rao said about 60 per cent of Fortune 500 companies were paying for at least one of Google’s pieces of workplace software.

Microsoft, based outside Seattle, of course, claims similar data, saying 75 per cent of Fortune 500 companies have purchased Office 365, its Web-based Office variant.

Microsoft’s corporate customers typically buy Office through one- or multiyear “enterprise agreements”. Such agreements can make technology buyers reluctant to switch providers mid-contract.

In the offer announced Monday, Google will give US businesses with time left on licensing agreements with another provider free use of Google’s workplace applications as long as they agree to buy one year of Google services at the agreement’s conclusion. Google will also pay $25 per user to help defray the cost of switching software providers.

Rao said that the $25-a-head payment probably won’t offset all of the cost of switching, but “it will typically be a good chunk of it”.

“We’ve been working on being enterprise-ready for the last decade,” Rao said. “We’re at the point where we’re not only ready, but better for companies. We want to raise awareness in the market of our position.”

With Google gaining fans among governments and businesses, Microsoft in 2011 responded with its own Web-based versions of Word, Excel and its other Office programmes, packaged as Office 365.

There are signs Microsoft’s push may be paying off.

Data from Okta, a San Francisco company that manages office workers’ logins to Internet services, showed Google’s Apps leading among its corporate customers until a surge late last year made Office 365 the most popular productivity tool among its customers.

However, it’s unclear what portion of that gain came as businesses switched from Google to Microsoft, rather than desktop Office customers signing up for the Web variant for the first time.

Rightfully badged back as a Dodge after a two-year hiatus under the short-lived standalone SRT brand, the Viper is back where it belongs and better than ever. A bold and brutal machine when first introduced in 1992 during Bob “Maximum” Lutz’ stint as Chrysler group president, the latest Viper goes far beyond the iconic original’s remit. 

Distinctly American in character and construction, the latest Viper is much more than a muscle machine, but is instead a world-class supercar beater. Entering service in 2013 — two years after its predecessor’s demise — the Viper retains its recipe of voluptuously swooping lines and immense engine displacement, but is a more technologically advanced and finely tuned.

Seductively slinky

Bearing an accessibly sporty badge with blue-collar heritage yet holding its own against the most exotic European brands, the Dodge Viper’s appeal is visceral, timeless and amplified by salaciously seductive curves. With extravagantly long bonnet, broad low-slung crosshair grille, sharp air splitter, side-mid exhausts, hunkered down cabin and short rear deck hatch, the Viper has an evocatively urgent yet indulgent demeanour.

A pure and uncompromising supercar from the ground up, the Viper is built on unique front-mid-engine platform, with rigid tubular steel space-frame and magnesium cowl structure allows for easy repair. An aluminium and carbon-fibre body keeps weight low, while working intake vents, centre bonnet air scoop, bonnet extractors, side gills and rear fascia brake heat extraction vents clearly indicate its high performance abilities.

With its reverse-swinging full clamshell bonnet lifted, the Viper’s gloriously powerful and huge 8.4-litre V10 engine sits exposed, positioned low and far behind the front axle for almost perfect within wheelbase 50:50 weight distribution and low centre of gravity. Mounted beneath a huge X-shaped cross brace for added body rigidity, the Viper’s lightweight aluminium engine features a compact 20-valve overhead valve design.

Potent venom

Abundant, linear and progressive, the Viper’s colossal naturally aspirated 8.4-litre V10 engine develops gut-wrenching from low-end, with its full 600lb/ft wallop available by 5000rpm. Eager to climb to its high 6400rpm rev limit, the Viper’s 640BHP arrives by 6200rpm, and with a modest 1541kg mass, can rocket through the 0-100km/h benchmark in just over 3 seconds and onto 332km/h.

A linear and consistent beast with responsive and precise throttle control the Viper GTS — as driven — rides on broad sticky 295/30ZR18 front and 355/30ZR19 rear tyres. In conjunction with a limited-slip differential allocating power along the rear axle for the most effective traction and forward motion, one can confidently get back on throttle hard and early when exiting corners.

Unleashing its copiously deep reservoir of torque and power in a muscularly and swiftly progressive torrent from tick-over to redline, the Viper has plenty grunt for slithering tail-slides — for those so inclined. But driven intuitively, it is highly committed to cornering lines, and with immense rear-wheel traction and lateral grip reserves, the Viper doesn’t hinder progress with unintentionally rear grip loss.

Snaking agility

With bass-heavy off-beat gurgles and deep medium-range bellows hardening to an intense top-end wail, the Viper’s charismatic and high-revving engine and tall gearing provide long-legged versatility, allowing for a clean, consistent and confidently fluent torrent of power when pulling through sweeping corner in a single gear. Featuring heavy and deliberate lever movements and firmly intuitive clutch, the Viper’s short-throw 6-speed manual gearbox is precise, engaging and satisfying.

Riding on two-mode double wishbone suspension, the Viper GTS proved masterful as it snakes through sweeping high-speed corners, tight bends and chicanes at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Formula One circuit, where driven. A devastatingly effective track instrument with quick, meaty and direct steering and grippy tyres turns in with immediate scalpel-like precision and returns ample road feel.

A honed and intuitive corner carver with balanced and neutral handling, the Viper is eager and crisp into corners, where body control remains flat and poised as it digs hard into tarmac by apex to rocket out onto a straight. Seemingly riding on rails through snaking circuit switchbacks, the Viper is a model of clarity, commitment and composure, with taut, buttoned-down and agile handling.

Ergonomically ensconced

An ever-responsive and thunderous brute with plenty of effortlessly available low- and mid-range flexibility, the Viper however remains firmly planted and reassuringly stable as revs and speed rise urgently and swiftly to well north of 200km/h, as driven on track. Meanwhile, ergonomic high bolstered body hugging sports seats keep one ensconced firmly in place and highly effective and tyreless brakes provide linear pedal feel.

Riding firm but smooth, the Viper is comfortable and ergonomic, and proved unexpectedly accommodating once one slides past wide and hot sills housing its dual side exhausts. A double bubble roof and deep lowering seats provide good headroom for tall and large drivers. Steering tilt and pedal adjustability — in lieu of steering reach adjustability — provide versatility, while front visibility past its long bonnet is good.

Driven in luxuriously equipped GTS guise, the Viper featured rich brown leather upholstery, improved noise insulation, climate control, 12-speaker Harmon Kardon stereo and an intuitive Uconnect infotainment system with 8.4-inch screen, Bluetooth streaming and reversing camera. Dials are clear and complemented with a 7-inch instrumentation screen. Other standard and optional equipment including remote keyless access and childseat latches.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 8.4-litre, all-aluminium, front-mid, in-line V10 cylinders

Bore x Stroke: 103 x 100.6mm

Compression ratio: 10.2:1

Valve-train: 20-valve, OHV, variable valve timing

Gearbox: 6-speed manual, rear-wheel drive, limited-slip differential

Gear ratios: 1st 2.26 2nd 1.58 3rd 1.19 4th 1.0 5th 0.77 6th 0.63

Axle ratio: 3.55

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 640 (649) [477] @6200rpm

Specific power: 76.4BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 415.3BHP/tonne

Torque lb/ft (Nm): 600 (814) @5000rpm

Specific torque: 97.11Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 528.2Nm/tonne

Rev limit: 6400rpm

0-100 km/h: under 3.5 seconds

0-400-metres: approximately11.5 seconds

Top speed: 332km/h

Fuel consumption, city/highway: 19.6/12.37/100km* *US EPA

Fuel capacity: 70 litres

Fuel requirement: 95RON

Wheelbase: 2510mm

Track, F/R: 1598/1550mm

Kerb weight: 1541kg

Weight distribution, F/R: 49.6 per cent/50.4 per cent

Aerodynamic drag co-efficiency: 0.369

Approach/departure angles: 10.73°/16.15°

Seating capacity: 2

Cargo volume: 415 litres

Steering: Hydraulic rack & pinion

Turning circle: 12.34 metres

Lock-to-lock: 2.4 turns

Frame: Tubular steel spaceframe

Body: Magnesium, aluminium & carbon fibre body

Suspension: Unequal double wishbones, two-mode dampers, stabiliser bars

Brakes: Ventilated discs 356.6 x 32mm

Tyres, F/R: 295/30ZR18/355/30ZR19

Economics After Capitalism: A Guide to the Ruins and a Road to the Future

Derek Wall

London: Pluto Books, 2015

Pp. 174

It is a basic premise of this book that capitalism doesn’t work, as dramatically illustrated by the 2008 financial crisis caused by neo-liberal policies that deregulated banking. Other persistent signs of malfunction include growing income inequality, rising poverty and mounting environmental degradation. Yet, in many quarters, it is still business as usual, enforcing the “Washington Consensus” of deregulation, privatisation, tax cuts for corporations, and reduced welfare and trade union rights.

But what is the alternative? This is the question addressed by Derek Wall who teaches political economy at Goldsmiths, University of London and is international coordinator of the Green Party of England and Wales. “Providing an alternative based on the common good, rather than the needs of the 1 per cent, is challenging. However, anti-capitalism has deep roots, has never been removed and has the potential to flower.” (p. 5)

To prove his point, Wall reviews the whole range of anti-capitalist critique. At one end of the spectrum are reformers like Joseph Stiglitz and George Soros who think the system can be fixed by replacing the “Washington Consensus” package with updated Keynesian policies. Others disagree, calling for a total overhaul. Naomi Klein is perhaps the best known among those who target the monopoly practices, exploitation, crimes and overblown political clout of multinational corporations that continue the legacy of colonial conquest in their search for markets, raw materials and cheap labour. Among this group, some advocate “popular action to localise production” whereby “the free market can be restored and mighty corporations made low”. (p. 48) 

The “small is beautiful” contingent of green economists are almost alone in categorically opposing growth and globalisation which wreck the environment, waste resources and force workers to work more for less.  According to them, “All needs in a capitalist society are transformed into the need for commodities… Economic growth does not even remove poverty: the richest generally see the greatest gains, and the poorest are usually separated from resources…” (p. 54)

Others fault the finance industry and monetary policy. 

Very interesting chapters cover Marxist, autonomist and anarchist critiques, showing more overlap among them than one might expect, and providing fascinating insights into the ideas, actions and persons who motivate these movements. Walls examines crucial questions such as whether Marx had environmental concerns and the validity of his argument that capitalism’s development tends to create communism.

He also covers different views on imperialism and globalisation, and how Third World leaders, such as Castro, built on Marx, but added their own insights. In addition to countries that have opted for socialism, like Cuba and Venezuela, the most practical approach comes from this camp, where autonomous or anarchist groups carve out free zones through direct action, not waiting for guidance from political parties or states.

Wall cites examples from this area, naming the Arab Spring among signs of discontent with the existing order, and describing the work of the YPC (Community Defence Force) in the Kurdish zone Rojava in Syria, as “a practical example of anti-capitalist, ecological and feminist alternatives.” (p. 103)

For the more radical thinkers, a key concept is “the commons”, communal land or resources, which have been enclosed as private property under capitalism. (Some current land disputes in Jordan echo this conflict.) “Throughout history, the commons has been the dominant form of regulation, providing an alternative almost universally ignored by economists, who are reluctant to admit that substitutes to the market and the state even exist. Within the commons, scarcity, if it exists, is usually managed and resources conserved through allocation systems arranged by users.” (p. 145)

Today, many anti-capitalists advocate a return to the commons in the form of collective action projects. Examples range from community-owned football teams and collective three-dimensional printing labs to communally regulated forests in Finland, grassroots movements in South America and South Africa resisting the privatisation of water, open source designers seeking to maintain free access in cyberspace, and greens and ecofeminists preserving communal land from private corporations. Walls suggest that the commons could be extended to the right of workers to buy up the firms they work for.

“Economics After Capitalism” is like a crash course in critical economy. It disproves the notion that economics is boring or dense, partly because it approaches the subject in terms of human needs instead of dry statistics, and partly because of Wall’s accessible writing style. Without over-simplification of ideas, he writes in a manner that laypersons can understand, throwing in a lot of examples from the real world and even touches of humour, to give hope that humans could organise their common life differently and better.

“Economics After Capitalism” is available at the University Bookshop.

SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo on Thursday set out to make its free e-mail service hip again with upgrades that included getting rid of the need for passwords on mobile devices.

Yahoo new e-mail application allows users to sign-in without passwords, which have long been lambasted as paltry defence mechanisms by security specialists.

The Yahoo Mail sign-in process called Account Key allows the option of having a message sent to a user’s smartphone asking for confirmation that access should be granted online.

“Passwords are difficult to remember and secondary sign-in verification is inconvenient and confusing,” Yahoo vice president of product management Dylan Casey said in a release.

“We’re now taking a major leap towards a password-free future with the launch of Yahoo Account Key, which uses push notifications to give users simple and secure access using their mobile device.”

The feature comes nearly two years after hackers slipped into Yahoo Mail accounts to loot information using stolen passwords.

A malicious computer programme armed with Yahoo Mail passwords and usernames apparently slipped into accounts aiming to glean names and addresses from messages that had been sent.

“Security attacks are unfortunately becoming a more regular occurrence,” Yahoo senior vice president for platforms and personalisation products Jay Rossiter said at the time that cyber attacks were “becoming a more regular occurence”.

Rival Web-based e-mail service providers such as Google have encouraged people to use “two-factor authentication” that calls for passwords to be backed up by something else, such as codes sent to smartphones in text messages, in order to get into accounts.

Yahoo has said it hopes to phase out passwords to make e-mail more secure, while adding improved encryption.

Moving on mobile

New Yahoo Mail software, which the California-based Internet-pioneer said marked the 18th anniversary of the free service, also let users manage Outlook, Hotmail, or AOL e-mail from inside Yahoo accounts.

Yahoo Mail apps tailored for mobile devices powered by Apple or Android software boasted smarter search and contact management capabilities as well.

“Mobile use requires a faster and smarter inbox,” said Jeff Bonforte, senior vice president of communication products at Yahoo.

“Both of these needs are at the centre of our new app.”

Versions of the new Yahoo Mail app began rolling out on Thursday as capabilities were added to the service accessed from desktop computers.

Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer has made a priority of keeping the company in tune with mobile Internet lifestyles. Making Yahoo Mail a preferred option could help put the company at the centre of people’s daily routines.

PARIS — A new method to chemically analyse dinosaur egg shells has allowed scientists to gauge the extinct lizards’ body temperature, researchers said on Tuesday.

The findings support recent work by other teams that dinosaurs were neither warm- nor cold-blooded, but somewhere in between, researchers wrote in the journal Nature Communications. 

But it also indicated that body temperature differed between dinosaur species.

“The temperatures we measured suggest that at least some dinosaurs were not fully endotherms [warm-blooded] like modern birds,” said the study’s lead author Robert Eagle of the University of California Los Angeles. 

“They may have been intermediate — somewhere between modern alligators and crocodiles and modern birds.”

This meant they could produce heat internally and raise their body temperature, but not maintain it at a consistently high level.

Warm-blooded animals, or endotherms, typically maintain a constant body temperature while cold-blooded ones, called ectotherms, rely on external heat sources to warm up — like lizards lazing in the Sun.

Scientists have been debating for 150 years whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded hunters, like mammals, or cold-blooded and sluggish like many reptiles.

“If dinosaurs were at least endothermic [warm-blooded] to a degree, they had more capacity to run around searching for food than an alligator would,” Eagle said.

Warm-blooded animals typically need to eat a great deal to stay warm, forcing them into frequent hunts or to eat large quantities of plants.

The team said it used a pioneering procedure to measure the internal temperature of dinosaur mothers that lived some 71-80 million years ago.

They examined the chemical makeup of the shells of 19 fossilised eggs from two types of dinosaur, unearthed in Argentina and Mongolia’s Gobi Desert.

‘Not truly cold-blooded’

One was a large, long-necked titanosaur sauropod, a member of the largest animal group to ever to walk the Earth, and the other a smaller oviraptorid — closely related to Tyrannosaurus rex and modern birds.

The team analysed the behaviour of two rare isotopes in calcium carbonate, a key ingredient in egg shells. The isotopes — carbon-13 and oxygen-18 — tend to cluster together more closely at colder temperatures.

“This technique tells you about the internal body temperature of the female dinosaur when she was ovulating,” said Eagle’s colleague, Aradhna Tripati.

The titanosaur mother’s temperature had been about 38OC, the team found. A healthy human temperature is 37OC.

The smaller dinosaur was substantially cooler, probably below 32OC — but was probably able raise its temperature above that of its environment, said the team. Fossilised soil from around the nest area in Mongolia had been about 26OC. 

“The oviraptorid dinosaur body temperatures were higher than the environmental temperatures — suggesting they were not truly cold-blooded but intermediate,” said Tripati.

With the power of the Internet today and all that it allows you to find, explore, discover and learn, do technology shows still mean anything? Are they relevant, or worth the trouble and the expense?

After all these shows are made, essentially, to provide information, and we know how much of it we can get just by browsing the Web, without spending a dinar, without wasting precious time travelling, just by sitting comfortably in a cosy armchair at home.

Without a doubt, the Internet has stolen a huge part of what we would usually physically gather at a technology show. Raw information, descriptions, prices, technical characteristics, experts’ reviews and the like, the Web is just the perfect means to obtain them, certainly the fastest.

Tech shows still retain two aspects that the Internet cannot handle. The first is the physical contact with the exhibitors, the vital, invaluable human communication, and the second is the products demos that you can watch live, that you can “touch”, question and inquire about in an irreplaceable manner. Not to mention that you can buy some of the products at the show without waiting for delivery.

Perhaps these two aspects, even when combined, do not represent the major part of what a tech show brings, but they are still critical. In a way it’s also about quality and not quantity.

At tech shows you can also discuss business deals and sign contracts. Despite widely available online functionalities like videoconferencing, where you can see and hear the other party, engage into interactive, live discussions, wherever in the world you or the other party may be, it will never be exactly the same as being there in the flesh.

Organisers of technology shows have understood the change and, therefore, have transformed the events into gatherings that chiefly target a professional crowd whereas in the past anyone, including children, families, would walk in to have some fun and collect colourful brochures.

On October 18, one of the major shows, Dubai’s Gitex, will open. With topics such as robotics, 3D printing, autonomous vehicles, drones, the Internet of Everything (IoT) and last but not least the Cloud, there is hardly one hot technology subject that won’t be tackled or presented.

Dubai’s Gitex is one of the world’s most prestigious large-scale tech shows, along with Las Vegas’ CES that takes place early January and Hannover’s (Germany) CeBIT that takes place mid-March. None of these shows has been discontinued or has lost an iota of its importance. The shows have just re-adapted to the global context and to the partial competition that the Web constitutes.

The number of visitors at Gitex has only very slightly declined. It was 150,000 in 2012, 140,000 in 2013 and 135,000 in 2014 (sources: gitex.com, Wikipedia and dubaicalendar.ae). It remains impressive by any measure. As for CeBIT in Germany, the number of visitors fell gradually from 490,000 in 2004 to 220,000 this year (source: statista.com).

Technology shows are like most analogue, “traditional” events or communication means, including the media of course. New, digital methods have come not to kill them or replace them completely but to transform them and in most cases to complement them.