As the more powerful countries show less commitment to reducing their own arms substantially and continue to pursue their own “national interests”, they affect many others around the world.
This has led to an increase in resentment against them.
One option for nations that feel threatened has been to improve their defensive capabilities and increase arms purchases and spending.
Neighboring countries will often feel the pressure to keep up, “just in case.”
The military industrial complexes of the wealthier (and more powerful) nations will highlight how so many other countries have increasingly sophisticated weapons (often sold by the wealthier and more powerful nations!) and how that means that they should consider urgently increasing their own military spending and proliferation.
An increase in arms leads to an arms race and an increase in insecurity.
Many nations around the world today possess, or have the means to procure, weapons of mass destruction. They may be nuclear, chemical, biological or other types of weapons, which can be delivered through a variety of means. It is mainly the more powerful wealthy countries that have such weapons although some poorer nations are also acquiring them.
In recent years, there have been movements and treaties to help control the flow and deployment of arms, be they landmines, small arms, or weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons.
This part of the global issues web site starts by looking in to some of those arms control measures in the nuclear weapons arena and at some of the controversial decisions that have been made.
With support from the Pakistan Amateur Radio Society, SUPARCO started building a small amateur radio satellite in late 1986. It was called Badr, after the Urdu language word for "new moon." This first satellite, Badr-1 or Badr-A, was to have launched on the US Space Shuttle, but the plan changed after the 1986 Challenger explosion delayed American flights. SUPARCO's first satellite BADR-A was launched as a secondary payload into low orbit by a Chinese LM-2E booster on 16 July 1990. Originally designed for a nearly circular orbit of 400-500 km, Badr-1 was inserted into an orbit of 205 km by 990 km. Intended to provide technical experience in telemetry, control, transponder and digital communications in preparation for further launches, the 150-lb satellite provided valuable data for 5 weeks After contact with the vehicle ceased on 20 August, all efforts to restore contact with the missing satellite failed. However, during its short mission, the satellite successfully completed store/dump message tests. Badr-A carried a digital communications system patterened on the British amateur radio satellite UO-11 launched in 1984. Badr-1 offered one radio channel for digital store-and-forward communications. Uplink was near 435 MHz, downlink was near 145 MHz, and the telemetry beacon was near 145 MHz. Badr-1's orbit was so low it reentered the Earth's atmosphere after 146 days, on 09 December 1990.
Although Pakistan has expressed an interest to develop a GEO communications system, the country is still several years away from deploying the first satellite. The Pakistan GEO constellation is being designed with a capacity of 4,800 long distance telephone channels, 2,400 rural circuits, and two direct broadcast television channels in the 14/11 GHz band. PAKSAT GEO locations near 38 degrees E and 41 degrees E are planned
REFERENCES
221. S. Mehmud, "Pakistan's Space Programme", Space Policy, August 1989, p. 217-226.
222. P. Proctor, "Pakistan's Space Agency Building Second Experimental Satellite", Aviation Week and Space Technology, 10 August 1992, p. 46.
Reasons Why Adsense Is Essential For Content Sites
3 Reasons Why Adsense Is Essential For Content Sites
To know why Adsense is essential for your content sites is to know first how this works.
The concept is really simple, if you think about it. The publisher or the webmaster inserts a java script into a certain website. Each time the page is accessed, the java script will pull advertisements from the Adsense program. The ads that are targeted should therefore be related to the content that is contained on the web page serving the ad. If a visitor clicks on an advertisement, the webmaster serving the ad earns a portion of the money that the advertiser is paying the search engine for the click.
The search engine is the one handling all the tracking and payments, providing an easy way for webmasters to display content-sensitive and targeted ads without having the hassle to solicit advertisers, collect funds, monitor the clicks and statistics which could be a time-consuming task in itself. It seems that there is never a shortage of advertisers in the program from which the search engine pulls the Adsense ads. Also webmasters are less concerned by the lack of information search engines are providing and are more focused in making cash from these search engines.
The first reason why Adsense is essential for content sites is because it already has come a long way in understanding the needs of publishers and webmasters. Together with its continuous progression is the appearance of more advanced system that allows full ad customization. Webmasters are given the chance to choose from many different types of text ad formats to better complement their website and fit their webpage layout.
The different formatting enables the site owners the possibility of more click through from visitors who may or may not be aware of what they are clicking on. It can also appeal to the people visiting thus make them take that next step of looking up what it is all about. This way the people behind the Adsense will get their content read and making profit in the process.
The second reason is the ability of the Adsense publishers to track not only how their sites are progressing but also the earnings based on the webmaster-defined channels. The recent improvements in the search engines gives webmasters the capability to monitor how their ads are performing using customizable reports that has the capacity to detail page impressions, clicks and click-through rates. Webmasters and publishers can now track specific ad formats, colors and pages within a website. Trends are also easily spotted.
With the real-time reporting at hand, the effectiveness of the changes made will be assessed quickly. There would be time to sort out the contents that people are making the most clicks on. The ever-changing demands would be met while generating cash for the webmasters and publishers. The more flexible tools are also allowing webmasters to group web pages by URL, domain, ad type or category, which will provide them some accurate insight on which pages, ads and domains are performing best.
The last and final reason is that the advertisers have realized the benefits associated having their ads served on targeted websites. Thus increasing the possibility that a prospective web surfer will have an interest in their product and services. All because of the content and its constant maintenance. As opposed to those who are no using Adsense in their sites, they are given the option of having other people do their content for them, giving them the benefit of having successful and money-generating web sites.
Adsense is all about targeted content, the more targeted your content is, the more target the search engines’ ads will be. There are some web masters and publishers who are focused more on their site contents and how best to maintain them rather than the cash that the ads will generate for them. This is the part where the effectiveness is working its best.
There was a time when people were not yet aware of the money to be achieved from advertisements. The cash generated only came into existence when the webmasters and publishers realized how they can make Adsense be that generator. In those days, the content were the most important factors that is taken quite seriously. It still is. With the allure of money, of course.
Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies. Google has also developed an open source web browser and a mobile operating system. The Google headquarters, the Googleplex, is located in Mountain View, California. As of March 31, 2009 (2009 -03-31)[update], the company has 19,786 full-time employees. The company is running thousands of servers worldwide, which process millions of search requests each day and about 1 petabyte of user-generated data every hour.
Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. The initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004, raising $1.67 billion, implying a value for the entire corporation of $23 billion. Google has continued its growth through a series of new product developments, acquisitions, and partnerships. Environmentalism, philanthropy and positive employee relations have been important tenets during the growth of Google. The company has been identified multiple times as Fortune Magazine's #1 Best Place to Work,and as the most powerful brand in the world.Alexa ranks Google as the most visited website on the Internet.
Google's mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". The unofficial company slogan, coined by former employee and Gmail's first engineer Paul Buchheit, is "Don't be evil".[11][12][13] Criticism of Google includes concerns regarding the privacy of personal information, copyright, and censorship.
History
The first iteration of Google production servers was built with inexpensive hardware and was designed to be very fault-tolerant
Google began in January 1996, as a research project by Larry Page, who was soon joined by Sergey Brin, when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California. They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better ranking of results than existing techniques, which ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page. Their search engine was originally nicknamed "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. A small search engine called Rankdex was already exploring a similar strategy.
Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally, the search engine used the Stanford University website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on 15 September 1997,and the company was incorporated as Google Inc. on 4 September 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. The total initial investment raised for the new company amounted to almost $1.1 million, including a $100,000 check by Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems.
Both Brin and Page had been against using advertising pop-ups in a search engine, or an "advertising funded search engines" model, and they wrote a research paper in 1998 on the topic while still students. However, they soon changed their minds and early on allowed simple text ads.
In March 1999, the company moved into offices in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups.After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View, California at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 2003. The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since come to be known as the Googleplex (a play on the word googolplex). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million.
The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among a growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design and useful results.In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords. The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed.Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and clickthroughs, with bidding starting at 5 cents per click. This model of selling keyword advertising was pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture Services, before being acquired by Yahoo! and rebranded as Yahoo! Search Marketing). Goto.com was an Idealab spin off created by Bill Gross, and was the first company to successfully provide a pay-for-placement search service. Overture Services later sued Google over alleged infringements of Overture's pay-per-click and bidding patents by Google's AdWords service. The case was settled out of court, with Google agreeing to issue shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license. Thus, while many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.
A patent describing part of the Google ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted on 4 September 2001. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.
Name
The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of the word "googol", which refers to 10100, the number represented by a 1 followed by one hundred zeros. Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb "google" was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."
Financing and initial public offering
The first funding for Google as a company was secured in August 1998, in the form of a $100,000 contribution from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given to a corporation which did not yet exist.
On June 7, 1999 a round of funding of $25 million was announced, with the major investors being rival venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.
The Google IPO took place on 19 August 2004. 19,605,052 shares were offered at a price of $85 per share. Of that, 14,142,135 (another mathematical reference as √2 ≈ 1.4142135) were floated by Google, and the remaining 5,462,917 were offered by existing stockholders. The sale of $1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion.The vast majority of the 271 million shares remained under the control of Google. Many Google employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited from the IPO because it owned 8.4 million shares of Google as of 9 August 2004, ten days before the IPO.
The stock performance of Google after its first IPO launch has gone well, with shares hitting $700 for the first time on 31 October 2007, due to strong sales and earnings in the advertising market, as well as the release of new features such as the desktop search function and its iGoogle personalized home page.The surge in stock price is fueled primarily by individual investors, as opposed to large institutional investors and mutual funds.
The company is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG and under the London Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GGEA.
Growth
While the primary business interest is in the web content arena, Google has begun experimenting with other markets, such as radio and print publications. On 17 January 2006, Google announced the purchase of a radio advertising company "dMarc", which provides an automated system that allows companies to advertise on the radio.This will allow Google to combine two niche advertising media—the Internet and radio—with Google's ability to laser-focus on the tastes of consumers. Google has also begun an experiment in selling advertisements from its advertisers in offline newspapers and magazines, with select advertisements in the Chicago Sun-Times. They have been filling unsold space in the newspaper that would have normally been used for in-house advertisements.
Acquisitions
See also: List of acquisitions by Google
Since 2001, Google has acquired several companies, mainly focusing on small start-ups.
In 2004, Google acquired a company called Keyhole, Inc., which developed a product called Earth Viewer, renamed in 2005 to Google Earth.
In February 2006, software company Adaptive Path sold Measure Map, a weblog statistics application, to Google. Registration to the service has since been temporarily disabled. The last update regarding the future of Measure Map was made on 6 April 2006 and outlined many of the known issues of the service.
In late 2006, Google bought the online video site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. Shortly after, on 31 October 2006, Google announced that it had also acquired JotSpot, a developer of wiki technology for collaborative Web sites.
On 13 April 2007, Google reached an agreement to acquire DoubleClick. Google agreed to buy the company for $3.1 billion.
On 2 July 2007, Google purchased GrandCentral. Google agreed to buy the company for $50 million.
On 9 July 2007, Google announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire enterprise messaging security and compliance company Postini.
On August 5 2009, Google announced the purchase of video software maker On2 Technologies for $106.5 million - its first acquisition of a public company.
Partnerships
In 2005, Google entered into partnerships with other companies and government agencies to improve production and services. Google announced a partnership with NASA Ames Research Center to build up 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2) of offices and work on research projects involving large-scale data management, nanotechnology, distributed computing, and the entrepreneurial space industry.[53] Google also entered into a partnership with Sun Microsystems in October to help share and distribute each other's technologies.[54] The company entered into a partnership with AOL of Time Warner,[55] to enhance each other's video search services.
The same year, the company became a major financial investor of the new .mobi top-level domain for mobile devices, in conjunction with several other companies, including Microsoft, Nokia, and Ericsson among others.[56] In September 2007, Google launched, "Adsense for Mobile", a service for its publishing partners which provides the ability to monetize their mobile websites through the targeted placement of mobile text ads,[57] and acquired the mobile social networking site, Zingku.mobi, to "provide people worldwide with direct access to Google applications, and ultimately the information they want and need, right from their mobile devices."[58]
In 2006, Google and Fox Interactive Media of News Corp. entered into a $900 million agreement to provide search and advertising on the popular social networking site, MySpace.
Google has developed a partnership with GeoEye to launch a satellite providing Google with high-resolution (0.41 m monochrome, 1.65 m color) imagery for Google Earth. The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 6 September 2008.
In 2008, Google announced that it was hosting an archive of Life magazine's photographs, as part of a joint effort. Some of the images in the archive were never published in the magazine.
The photos are watermarked and originally had copyright notices posted on all photos, regardless of public domain status.
Products and services
Google has created services and tools for the general public and business environment alike, including Web applications, advertising networks and solutions for businesses.
Advertising
99% of Google's revenue is derived from its advertising programs.For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues.Google is able to precisely track users' interests across affiliated sites using DoubleClick technology and Google Analytics. Google's advertisements carry a lower price tag when their human ad-rating team working around the world believes the ads improve the company's user experience. Google AdWords allows Web advertisers to display advertisements in Google's search results and the Google Content Network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. Google AdSense website owners can also display adverts on their own site, and earn money every time ads are clicked. Google began in March 2009 to use behavioral targeting based on users' interests.
Google has also been criticized by advertisers regarding its inability to combat click fraud, when a person or automated script is used to generate a charge on an advertisement without really having an interest in the product. Industry reports in 2006 claim that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were in fact fraudulent or invalid.
In June 2008, Google reached an advertising agreement with Yahoo!, which would have allowed Yahoo! to feature Google advertisements on their web pages. The alliance between the two companies was never completely realized due to antitrust concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in November, 2008.[73][74]
Software
The Google web search engine is the company's most popular service. As of August 2007, Google is the most used search engine on the web with a 53.6% market share, ahead of Yahoo! (19.9%) and Live Search (12.9%).[75] Google indexes billions of Web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators, although at any given time it will only return a maximum of 1,000 results for any specific search query. Google has also employed the Web Search technology into other search services, including Image Search, Google News, the price comparison site Google Product Search, the interactive Usenet archive Google Groups, Google Maps, and more.
In early 2006, the company launched Google Video, which allowed users to both upload videos, and search and watch videos from the larger Internet.[76] In 2009 uploads to Google video were discontinued.[77]
Google has also developed several desktop applications, including Google Desktop, Picasa, SketchUp and Google Earth, an interactive mapping program powered by satellite and aerial imagery that covers the vast majority of the planet. Many major cities have such detailed images that one can zoom in close enough to see vehicles and pedestrians clearly. Consequently, there have been some concerns about national security implications; contention is that the software can be used to pinpoint with near-precision accuracy the physical location of critical infrastructure, commercial and residential buildings, bases, government agencies, and so on. However, the satellite images are not necessarily frequently updated, and all of them are available at no charge through other products and even government sources; the software simply makes accessing the information easier. A number of Indian state governments have raised concerns about the security risks posed by geographic details provided by Google Earth's satellite imaging.[78]
Google has promoted their products in various ways. In London, Google Space was set-up in Heathrow Airport, showcasing several products, including Gmail, Google Earth and Picasa.[79][80] Also, a similar page was launched for American college students, under the name College Life, Powered by Google.[81]
In 2007, some reports surfaced that Google was planning the release of its own mobile phone, possibly a competitor to Apple's iPhone.[82][83][84] The project, called Android, turned out not to be a phone, but an operating system. It provides a standard development kit that will allow any "Android" phone to run software developed for the Android SDK, no matter the phone manufacturer. In September 2008, T-Mobile released the first phone running the Android platform, the G1.
Google Translate aka Google Language Tools is a server-side machine translation service, which can translate 35 different languages to each other, forming 595 language pairs. Browser extension tools (such as Firefox extensions) allow for easy access to Google Translate from the browser. The software uses corpus linguistics techniques from translated documents, (such as United Nations documents,[citation needed] which are professionally translated) to extract translations accurate up to 88 percent. A "suggest a better translation" feature appears with the original language text in a pop-up text field, allowing users to indicate where the current translation is incorrect or else inferior to another translation.
On 1 September 2008, Google pre-announced the upcoming availability of Google Chrome, an open-source web browser,[85] which was released on 2 September 2008.
On 7 July 2009, Google announced the project to develop Google Chrome OS, an open-source Linux-based operating system in a "window of opportunity"[86][87].
Gmail
Main article: Gmail
Gmail is a free webmail, POP3 and IMAP service provided by Google. In the United Kingdom and Germany, it is officially called Google Mail.
Gmail was launched as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004 and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007. As of July 2009 it has 146 million users monthly. The service was upgraded from beta status on July 7, 2009, along with the rest of the Google Apps suite.
With an initial storage capacity offer of 1 GB per user, Gmail significantly increased the webmail standard for free storage from the 2 to 4MB its competitors offered at that time. The service currently offers over 7350 MB of free storage with additional storage ranging from 10 GB to 400 GB available for $20 to $500 (US) per year.
In February 2006, Google released Gmail Chat, using the same tools used in Google Talk.
Gmail has a search-oriented interface and a "conversation view" similar to an Internet forum. Software developers know Gmail for its pioneering use of the Ajax programming technique.
Gmail runs on Google Servlet Engine and Google GFE/1.3 which run on Linux.
Enterprise products
Google entered the enterprise market in February 2002 with the launch of its Google Search Appliance, targeted toward providing search technology to larger organizations.[88] Providing search for a smaller document repository, Google launched the Mini in 2005.
Late in 2006, Google began to sell Custom Search Business Edition, providing customers with an advertising-free window into Google.com's index.[89] In 2008, Google re-branded its next version of Custom Search Business Edition as Google Site Search.[89]
In 2007, Google launched Google Apps Premier Edition, a version of Google Apps targeted primarily at the business user. It includes such extras as more disk space for e-mail, API access, and premium support, for a price of $50 per user per year. A large implementation of Google Apps with 38,000 users is at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.[90]
Also in 2007, Google acquired Postini and continued to sell the acquired technology as Google Security Services.
Platform
Google runs its services on several server farms, each comprising thousands of low-cost commodity computers running stripped-down versions of Linux. While the company divulges no details of its hardware, a 2006 estimate cites 450,000 servers, "racked up in clusters at data centers around the world."[94] The company has about 24 server farms around the world of various configurations. The farm in The Dalles, Oregon is powered by hydroelectricity at about 50 megawatts.
Corporate affairs and culture
Google is known for its informal corporate culture, of which its playful variations on its own corporate logo are an indicator. In 2007 and 2008, Fortune Magazine placed Google at the top of its list of the hundred best places to work.[6] Google's corporate philosophy embodies such casual principles as "you can make money without doing evil," "you can be serious without a suit," and "work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun."[96]
Google has been criticized for having salaries below industry standards.[97] For example, some system administrators earn no more than $35,000 per year – considered to be quite low for the Bay Area job market.[98] However, Google's stock performance following its IPO has enabled many early employees to be competitively compensated by participation in the corporation's remarkable equity growth.[99]
After the company's IPO in August 2004, it was reported that founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and CEO Eric Schmidt, requested that their base salary be cut to $1.[100] Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries have been turned down, primarily because, "their primary compensation continues to come from returns on their ownership stakes in Google. As significant stockholders, their personal wealth is tied directly to sustained stock price appreciation and performance, which provides direct alignment with stockholder interests."[100] Prior to 2004, Schmidt was making $250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each earned a salary of $150,000.
They have all declined recent offers of bonuses and increases in compensation by Google's board of directors. In a 2007 report of the United States' richest people, Forbes reported that Sergey Brin and Larry Page were tied for #5 with a net worth of $18.5 billion each.[101]
In 2007 and through early 2008, Google has seen the departure of several top executives. Gideon Yu, former chief financial officer of YouTube, a Google unit, joined Facebook[102] along with Benjamin Ling, a high-ranking engineer, who left in October 2007.[103] In March 2008, two senior Google leaders announced their desire to pursue other opportunities. Sheryl Sandburg, ex-VP of global online sales and operations began her position as COO of Facebook[104] while Ash ElDifrawi, former head of brand advertising, left to become CMO of Netshops Inc.[105]
Google's persistent cookie and other information collection practices have led to concerns over user privacy. As of 11 December 2007, Google, like the Microsoft search engine, stores "personal information for 18 months" and by comparison, AOL (Time Warner) "retain[s] search requests for 13 months"[106], and Yahoo! 90 days.[107]
U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton, on July 1, 2008 ordered Google to give YouTube user data / log to Viacom to support its case in a billion-dollar copyright lawsuit against Google.[108][109] Google and Viacom, however, on July 14, 2008, agreed in compromise to protect YouTube users' personal data in the $1 billion copyright lawsuit. Google agreed it will make user information and Internet protocol addresses from its YouTube subsidiary anonymous before handing over the data to Viacom. The privacy deal also applied to other litigants including the FA Premier League, the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organisation and the Scottish Premier League.[110][111] The deal however did not extend the anonymity to employees, since Viacom would prove that Google staff are aware of uploading of illegal material to the site. The parties therefore will further meet on the matter lest the data be made available to the court.[112]
Googleplex
Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, is referred to as "the Googleplex" in a play of words; a googolplex being 1010100, or a one followed by a googol of zeros, and the HQ being a complex of buildings (cf. multiplex, cineplex, etc). The lobby is decorated with a piano, lava lamps, old server clusters, and a projection of search queries on the wall. The hallways are full of exercise balls and bicycles. Each employee has access to the corporate recreation center. Recreational amenities are scattered throughout the campus and include a workout room with weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room, assorted video games, foosball, a baby grand piano, a pool table, and ping pong. In addition to the rec room, there are snack rooms stocked with various foods and drinks.[113]
In 2006, Google moved into 311,000 square feet (28,900 m2) of office space in New York City, at 111 Eighth Ave. in Manhattan.[114] The office was specially designed and built for Google and houses its largest advertising sales team, which has been instrumental in securing large partnerships, most recently deals with MySpace and AOL.[114] In 2003, they added an engineering staff in New York City, which has been responsible for more than 100 engineering projects, including Google Maps, Google Spreadsheets, and others.[114] It is estimated that the building costs Google $10 million per year to rent and is similar in design and functionality to its Mountain View headquarters, including foosball, air hockey, and ping-pong tables, as well as a video game area.[114] In November 2006, Google opened offices on Carnegie Mellon's campus in Pittsburgh.[115] By late 2006, Google also established a new headquarters for its AdWords division in Ann Arbor, Michigan.[116]
Google is taking steps to ensure that their operations are environmentally sound. In October 2006, the company announced plans to install thousands of solar panels to provide up to 1.6 megawatts of electricity, enough to satisfy approximately 30% of the campus' energy needs.[117] The system will be the largest solar power system constructed on a U.S. corporate campus and one of the largest on any corporate site in the world.[117] Google has faced accusations in Harper's Magazine[118] of being extremely excessive with their energy usage, and were accused of employing their "Don't be evil" motto as well as their very public energy saving campaigns as means of trying to cover up or make up for the massive amounts of energy their servers actually require.
In 2009 Google announced it was deploying herds of goats to keep grassland around the Googleplex short, helping to prevent the threat from seasonal bush fires while also reducing the carbon footprint of mowing the extensive grounds.[119][120]
Innovation Time Off
As a motivation technique (usually called Innovation Time Off), all Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time (one day per week) on projects that interest them. Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors.[121] In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, stated that her analysis showed that 50% of the new product launches originated from the 20% time.[122]
Easter eggs and April Fool's Day jokes
Google has a tradition of creating April Fool's Day jokes—such as Google MentalPlex, which allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web.[123] In 2002, they claimed that pigeons were the secret behind their growing search engine.[124] In 2004, they featured Google Lunar (which claimed to feature jobs on the moon),[125] and in 2005, a fictitious brain-boosting drink, termed Google Gulp was announced.[126] In 2006, they came up with Google Romance, a hypothetical online dating service.[127] In 2007, Google announced two joke products. The first was a free wireless Internet service called TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider)[128] in which one obtained a connection by flushing one end of a fiber-optic cable down their toilet and waiting only an hour for a "Plumbing Hardware Dispatcher (PHD)" to connect it to the Internet.[128] Additionally, Google's Gmail page displayed an announcement for Gmail Paper, which allows users of their free email service to have email messages printed and shipped to a snail mail address.
Google's services contain a number of Easter eggs; for instance, the Language Tools page offers the search interface in the Swedish Chef's "Bork bork bork," Pig Latin, "Hacker" (actually leetspeak), Elmer Fudd, and Klingon.[130] In addition, the search engine calculator provides the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.[131] As Google’s search box can be used as a unit converter (as well as a calculator), some non-standard units are built in, such as the Smoot. A newly discovered easter egg is the spell-checker's result for the properly spelled word "recursion". The spell-checker built into Google search returns "Did you mean: recursion?" in a recursive link back to the same page.[132] Google also routinely modifies its logo in accordance with various holidays or special events throughout the year, such as Christmas, Mother's Day, or the birthdays of various notable individuals.[133] Other logo switches are based on search terms. For instance, if the term "ASCII art" is searched, an ASCII art version of the Google logo will appear next to the search box.[134]
IPO and culture
Many people speculated that Google's IPO would inevitably lead to changes in the company's culture,[135] because of shareholder pressure for employee benefit reductions and short-term advances, or because a large number of the company's employees would suddenly become millionaires on paper. In a report given to potential investors, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised that the IPO would not change the company's culture.[136] Later Mr. Page said, "We think a lot about how to maintain our culture and the fun elements. We spent a lot of time getting our offices right. We think it's important to have a high density of people. People are packed together everywhere. We all share offices. We like this set of buildings because it's more like a densely packed university campus than a typical suburban office park."[137]
However, many analysts[who?] are finding that as Google grows, the company is becoming more "corporate". In 2005, articles in The New York Times and other sources began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy.[138][139][140] In an effort to maintain the company's unique culture, Google has designated a Chief Culture Officer in 2006, who also serves as the Director of Human Resources. The purpose of the Chief Culture Officer is to develop and maintain the culture and work on ways to keep true to the core values that the company was founded on in the beginning—a flat organization with a collaborative environment.
Google has faced allegations of sexism and ageism from former employees.[142][143]
Philanthropy
In 2004, Google formed a not for-profit philanthropic wing, Google.org, with a start-up fund of $1 billion.[144] The express mission of the organization is to create awareness about climate change, global public health, and global poverty. One of its first projects is to develop a viable plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 mpg. The founder is Dr Larry Brilliant[145] and the current director is Megan Smith.[146]
In 2008 Google announced its "project 10^100" which accepted ideas for how to help the community and then will allow Google users to vote on their favorites.[147]
Network Neutrality
Google is a noted supporter of network neutrality. According to Google's Guide to Net Neutrality:
"Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet. The Internet has operated according to this neutrality principle since its earliest days... Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. In our view, the broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content. Just as telephone companies are not permitted to tell consumers who they can call or what they can say, broadband carriers should not be allowed to use their market power to control activity online."
On February 7, 2006, Vinton Cerf, a co-inventor of the Internet Protocol (IP), and current Vice President and "Chief Internet Evangelist" at Google, in testimony before Congress, said, "allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org
KARACHI, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves fell to $14.23 billion in the week that ended on Oct. 31 from $14.43 billion the previous week, the central bank said on Thursday.
Reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan were $10.64 billion, down from $10.86 billion a week earlier, while those held by commercial banks rose marginally to $3.59 billion from $3.57 billion the previous week, the central bank said in a statement.
Foreign reserves hit a record high of $16.5 billion in October 2007, but fell steadily to $6.6 billion by November last year -- largely because of a soaring import bill.
An International Monetary Fund (IMF) emergency loan package of $7.6 billion agreed in November helped avert a balance of payments crisis and shore up reserves.
The IMF, which increased the loan to $11.3 billion in July, has disbursed more than $5 billion.
Pakistan officials are meeting IMF officials in Dubai to Nov. 12 for a third review of Pakistan's economic performance. (Reporting by Faisal Aziz; Editing by Robert Birsel) (For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Punjab Emergency Service Punjab Emergency Service (Rescue 1122) is the first successfully tested model of trained Emergency Service in Pakistan. The Government of Punjab has established this Emergency Service through legislation to provide a system for Emergency Preparedness, Response and Prevention.
Human resource DevelopmentThis is the first trained Emergency Rescue Medical Service established in Pakistan according to international training standards. The service is providing efficient and effective Rescue and transportation to the helpless victims of Accidents, Emergencies and Disasters.........................
Emergency Legislation
Punjab Emergency Service Act 2006 was unanimously passed by the Punjab Assembly to establish the Punjab Emergency Service for professional management of emergencies by maintaining a state of preparedness to deal with emergencies, providing timely response, rescue and emergency medical treatment to the persons affected by emergencies. The Punjab Emergency Council and District Emergency Boards have also been constituted for prevention, effective management of emergencies and mitigation of hazards endangering public safety.
Success stories of pilot launch
The Service has been initially established in Lahore as Pilot Project with 6 strategically located rescue stations, 14 Emergency Ambulances and two hundred rigorously trained rescuers. Before launching the test run, following challenging tasks were accomplished within six months but without compromising quality.
The Service has been initially established in Lahore as Pilot Project with 6 strategically located rescue stations, 14 Emergency Ambulances and two hundred rigorously trained rescuers. Before launching the test run, following challenging tasks were accomplished within six months but without compromising quality.
• Most appropriate staff of two hundred rescuers was recruited in a record period of seven weeks after scrutiny of over 800 applications.
• The curriculum and training material on principles of first aid and emergency management was developed by Dr. Rizwan Naseer in Urdu.
• A Training of Trainers workshop was arranged with Civil Defence, so that they could train newly recruited rescuers. However looking at their competency level it was decided that training by Civil Defence would result in failure of this Emergency Service.
• Finally Elite Police Training School , Lahore was used for the training where physical fitness and discipline was ensured by the instructors.
• In order to ensure the quality of training, international monitoring was arranged. Trainers from Austria , Australia and U.S.A came to monitor the training on honorary basis.
• Specialized rescue training like rescue from height, management of mass causalities and hazardous material incidents was also imparted to rescuers. Specialized teams were formed and trained to respond to such emergencies.
• Emergency Rescue Stations were constructed after acquiring land at strategic locations to ensure swift and timely response to emergencies.
• Universal Emergency number 1122 (an easy to remember and easy to dial number) was obtained from Pakistan telecommunication Authority.
• Emergency Control & Command Room was established after setting up effective wireless Communication and Emergency logging System.
• Ambulances and Rescue Vehicles of international standards were designed and fabricated indigenously for the first time in Pakistan . This helped in significant financial saving and initiating establishment of a new industry of Ambulance and Rescue vehicle fabrication.
• A Software programme for call recording was developed to monitor quality of the Service and compile Emergency data for research and prevention purposes
• Satellite Tracking System has been established for the monitoring of Emergency Ambulances and Rescue Vehicles.
Evaluated as exemplary Service
The Service has been evaluated by third party before its expansion to other major cities of Punjab . Results of third party evaluation reveal the service to be an exemplary service in terms of training, quality care, response and professionalism.
Emergency Legislation
PROVINCIAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PUNJAB
N O T I F I C A T I O N
19 June 2006
No.PAP-Legis-2(30)/2005/826. The Punjab Emergency Service Bill 2005, having been passed by the Provincial Assembly of the Punjab on 9 June 2006, and assented to by the Governor of the Punjab on 15 June 2006, is hereby published as an Act of the Provincial Assembly of the Punjab.
THE PUNJAB EMERGENCY SERVICE ACT 2006 ACT IV OF 2006
ACT IV OF 2006
[First published, after having received the assent of the Governor of the Punjab, in the Gazette of the Punjab (Extraordinary) dated 19 June 2006.]
An
Act
for the establishment of the
Punjab Emergency Service to deal with emergencies.
Preamble.__ Whereas it is expedient to establish an emergency service for the purpose of maintaining a state of preparedness to deal with emergencies, to provide timely response, rescue and emergency medical treatment to the persons affected by emergencies and recommending measures to be taken by related organizations to avoid emergencies;
It is hereby enacted as follows:-
1. Short title, extent and commencement.__
(1) This Act may be called the Punjab Emergency Service Act 2006.
(2) It extends to the whole of the Province of the Punjab.
(3) It shall come into force at once.
2. Definitions.__ In this Act, unless there is anything repugnant to the subject or context __
(a) "Board" means the District Emergency Board constituted under section 8;
(b) "Council" means the Punjab Emergency Council established under section 6;
(c) "Director" means the person appointed under section 10;
(d) "Director General" means the person appointed under section 9;
(e) "District" means a district as defined in the Punjab Local Government Ordinance 2001 (XIII of 2001);
(f) "District emergency officer" means the emergency officer incharge of the Service in a district;
(g) "emergency" means a serious and potentially dangerous situation requiring immediate action such as an accident, hazardous material incident, fire, explosion, natural or manmade disaster;
(h) "Emergency Aarea" means the area affected by an emergency;
(i) "Emergency officer" means an officer appointed under section 12;
(j) "Government" means the Government of the Punjab;
(k) "Non-governmental organization" includes any private agency or body working voluntarily for the welfare of the persons affected by an emergency;
(I) "Premises" includes land, place, building, vehicle, vessel or aircraft or any part of premises;
(m) "Rescuer" means a member of the service appointed under section 13;
(n) "Rescue station" means a place where an office of the Service is established;
(o) "Service" means the Punjab Emergency Service or the Rescue established under section 4; and
(p) "Volunteer" means a person who is registered as such by the Service or engaged by a rescuer in emergency area to assist the Service in the exercise of its functions under this Act.
Source:http://www.rescue.gov.pk
Human resource Development
The training of newly recruited rescuers was a great challenge as there was no trained emergency staff even in emergency departments of teaching hospitals and pre-hospital emergency services like Fire, Rescue & Ambulance Services were virtually non-existent.
The new rescuers were recruited and trained to provide swift response and emergency medical treatment to the helpless victims of emergencies. The theoretical training and simulations were designed by Dr. Rizwan Naseer (Project Director), practiced again and again and internationally monitored by foreign trainers from Asian Disaster Preparedness Center , Austria , Australia and U.S.A on honorary basis for quality assurance. Rescuers were also imparted rescue and rigorous physical training to ensure physical fitness and discipline among the rescuers.
Specialized CPR training was practiced repeatedly on manikins and rescuers were finally sent to emergency departments of teaching hospitals for hands on experience in managing emergency patients and understanding the protocol for smooth delivery of these patients.
Emergency Services Academy
In order to ensure sustainable human resource development in the long neglected field of emergency management, Emergency Services Academy has been established in the vacant Government premises and the construction of a purpose built campus is underway. The best available trainers in Pakistan have been recruited for the Academy which is the first training institute of its kind in Pakistan for the training of Emergency Staff for emergency services and hospitals.
Punjab Emergency Service (Rescue 1122) is the first successfully tested model of trained Emergency Service in Pakistan. The Government of Punjab has established this Emergency Service through legislation to provide a system for Emergency Preparedness, Response and Prevention.
The Service has been established for proper management of emergencies such as road traffic accidents, buildings collapse, explosions, hazardous material incidents, fires and disasters.
The Government of Punjab has established an effective integrated emergency preparedness, response and prevention system through promulgation of unanimously passed Punjab Emergency Service Act, 2006. The Punjab Emergency Service (Rescue 1122) also established under this Act includes Emergency Ambulance, Rescue & Fire Services and Disaster Emergency Response Teams. Trained emergency paramedics, Ambulance, Rescue and Fire services were virtually non-existent. The ambulances available with the NGOs are only patient transport vehicles without essential equipment and trained staff. These are good for transportation of routine patients and dead bodies which is not the function of an emergency service.
Instead of making random interventions in a haphazard manner by reinforcing failures, the Government of Punjab launched the Punjab Emergency & Ambulance Services (Rescue 1122) Pilot Project from Lahore on 14th October, 2004. Then the Service accepted the challenge of establishing a modern Fire Service and Disaster Emergency Response Teams in Pakistan. After the successful evaluation of Lahore pilot project, the Service has been established in all the major cities of Punjab which include Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Multan, D.G Khan, Bahawalpur, Sahiwal, Rahim Yar Khan, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Sargodha and Murree.
Some of the major tasks involved in the establishment of the Service included acquisition of appropriate land for Rescue Stations at strategic locations from where swift response to emergencies could be provided with minimum number of stations; construction of Rescue Stations; recruitment of right staff and training of staff on modern lines; development of international standard Ambulances, Rescue and Fire vehicles in Pakistan resulting in significant cost saving; acquisition of toll free emergency number 1122 and wireless frequencies from Pakistan Telecommunication Authority; development & installation of vehicle and call monitoring systems for District Control Rooms.
After the establishment of Rescue 1122 in all Districts of Punjab by 2009, Punjab shall have effectively strengthened its limited capacity to deal with emergencies such as road traffic accidents, buildings collapse, hazardous material incidents, fires and disasters which has long been putting the lives and properties of citizens at risk in Pakistan.
The recent debate the whole country is engulfed in , is the very famous Kerry Lugar Bill. Kerry- Lugar Bill envisages the provision of 7.5 billion dollars in economic aid over five years to Pakistan. The following is the text of the Kerry-Lugar Bill passed by the Senate on Thursday, Sept 24, 2009. It will now go to the House of Representatives and if passed without amendments, will be sent to President Barack Obama for signing into law:
Some of the points of Carry Logger Bill are good but overall does it suits Pakistan in the light of following summary:
Can Quetta in Baluchistan and Muridke near Lahore in Punjab can be under attacks?
Do we have to do more and more in NWFP and other Northern Areas
Do we have to stop Atomic Program?
Do we have to allow Americans to do whatever they want to do?
Do it means to cuts the arms of Pak Army and ISI?
Can we support Kashmirs anymore?
Here are the some details ofCarry Logger Bill in urdu read them
The Foreign exchange reserve of the People's Republic of China is mainly composed of dollars in the forms of US government bonds and institutional bonds. Mainland China (with exception to Hong Kong SAR and Macau SAR) held foreign exchange reserves amounting to $2.273 trillion at the end of September 2009 making China the top foreign exchange reserve in the world. This amount far exceeded holdings of the next largest holder, Japan. As a whole, the country’s asset of foreign exchange reserve is governed by State Administration of Foreign Exchange and People's Bank of China all of which are under operation of the Bank of China.[citation needed] An estimated two-thirds of these reserves are held in dollar-denominated assets.
China also manages $200 billion to $300 billion in additional foreign exchange assets that are not counted as official reserves.
Composition
The composition of foreign exchange reserves is presently regarded as a state secret in the People's Republic of China. All financial records pertaining to the foreign exchange reserve have been poorly documented. The official sources elaborate that US dollar holdings make up 60% of the reserve, and that a fifth (up to 400 billion USD) of the reserve is held in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds. As of June 2008, the PRC held USD 447.5 billion of US agency bonds[1]. The reports from the Bank for International Settlements, released by Reuters, reported that the US currency represents most of the settlements of China’s international trade. An unofficial spokesperson considered that the US dollar asset accounts represent 70% of the reserve, as the Japanese yen takes up about a 10% portion, while the Euro and the British pound occupy the rest.
There are some historical and international finance reasons lying behind this composition:
First off, the bond issuer’s economy should be domestic primarily. Even though US transaction make up a large proportion in international trade, compared with its huge domestic GDP, it is still a small part of the global trade. Measured with other countries, US trade is not as low as that of Japan, Germany and Switzerland respectively. Those latter countries rely heavily on international trade, thus their currency value easily fluctuates in gross proportion along with the international flow of capital. This phenomenon poses a disadvantage to their values; moreover, unlike the US, the central banks of Japan, Germany and Switzerland reject the US currency and adopt their own currencies therefore taking a larger role in international financial markets.
Secondly, historically the US Dollar has been used as means of payment, an intermediary of transactions, and a means of valuation in treasury. Two thirds of international trade is settled by the US dollar. Moreover, wholesales in international financial markets, banks ,open markets and operations are mainly conducted in US dollars. The US dollar in assets are also the main foreign exchange reserve for big countries. Finally, international syndicated loan and international bonds trading are nearly wholly traded in US dollars or US bonds.
Concerns
Costs for Reserve
As US dollar asset accounts consist of a large portion in China’s foreign exchange reserves, China itself does not have diversified channels to preserve the value of these reserves. The book value of these assets has suffered greatly after the year 2000 when facing a big down fall of the US dollar. Analysts commented that the valuation lost about $20 billion of its book value in 2003, and in the first half of 2004, the amount was around $40 billion.
Risk of Liquidity
Finance officials in the management of China’s foreign exchange reserve pointed out, “It is of great importance to pay particular attention on the security and liquidity in the management of foreign exchange reserve. This concerns determines that reserves would mainly be invested into bonds with higher credit levels in international markets”, and also “instead of keeping these foreign currencies be kept until maturity, purchases will be made in high return, low risk foreign bonds.” However, about 60% of this reserve, amounting to hundreds of billions, exists taking the form of US government bonds and debentures. This leads to poor liquidity in government bonds and becomes an issue as this topic poses a threat in Sino-US relations.
Diversification
Concerns about the depreciation of the US dollar, and higher interest rates in the medium term, has made gradual diversification and restructuring an important policy initiative by holding a larger share of currencies and asset classes other than the dollar and US government debt; diversifying the group of holders and managers of China's overall foreign exchange assets, leaving more in the hands of the corporations, the banks and individuals; promotion and encouragement of outward direct investment and increased portfolio outflows, as well as more external lending by corporations and banks, to reduce the accumulation of official reserves; Stabilizing the exchange rate; Increasing its purchase of gold and other commodities. The pace and degree of diversification is limited by the current global trade and financial system, where the dollar still dominates in transactions, asset holdings and official reserves. Before an alternative is developed to change the central role of the dollar as the dominant reserve currency, it is not expected that China will hold less than 50 percent of its official reserves in dollar assets - even in the medium term.
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