Best Of Indian : Agni-V Missile Test

India's most-ambitious nuclear missile, Agni-V, which classifies as an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) with a strike range of over 5,000-km, will be tested in mid-April, he said.

The three-stage Agni-V, with its advanced ring-laser gyros, composite rocket motors and highly accurate micro-navigation systems, comes close to the top American missiles in terms of technology, said Saraswat.

India will break into the exclusive ICBM club that counts just US, Russia, China, France and UK as its members, once the 50-tonne Agni-V is ready for induction by 2014-2015. The solid-fuelled missile, with a canister-launch system to impart greater operational flexibility, is crucial for India's nuclear deterrence posture since its strike envelope will be able to cover the whole of China.

Concurrently, said Saraswat, "The K-15 SLBM is now getting ready for the final phase of induction after its two recent tests (from submersible pontoons) were successful...We have done over 10 flights of it so far."

The 750-km-range K-15, followed by the 3,500-km K-4, will arm India's homegrown nuclear submarines. INS Arihant, which is undergoing trials now, for instance, has four silos on its hump to carry either 12 K-15s or four K-4s to complete India's long quest for "an operational nuclear weapon triad".

As for the two-tier ballistic missile defence (BMD) system, designed to track and destroy incoming hostile missiles both inside (endo) and outside (exo) the earth's atmosphere, Saraswat said its Phase-I would be completed by 2013 and Phase-II by 2016. "We will test the exo-atmospheric interceptor at 150-km altitude this year, which will be followed by an endo-atmospheric test at 30-km altitude," he said.

With the Capital identified as the first city to get its protection, DRDO has also begun work to add a third tier to the BMD system to intercept cruise missiles, artillery projectiles and the like at lower altitudes, in the line with the overall aim to achieve "near 100% kill or interception probability".

DRDO is now also focusing on "space security", with special emphasis on protecting the country's space assets from electronic, or physical destruction by "direct-ascent" missiles, in the backdrop of China developing advanced ASAT (anti-satellite) capabilities.

Work is also in progress to develop several directed energy weapons (DEWs), including a 25-kilowatt laser system to destroy incoming missiles in their terminal stage and a 100-kilowatt solid-state laser system to take out missiles in their boost phase itself.

"We also need to build the capability to provide launch-on-demand mini or micro satellites to our armed forces for communication and navigation facilities (in the event the country's satellites being destroyed by an enemy)," said the DRDO chief.

New Firefox interface to speed up Firefox on Android

 

Mozilla has decided that when it comes to Android devices, performance is more important than the wealth of add-ons that can be used to customize Firefox. 

Yesterday, Mozilla's Director of Firefox Engineering Johnathan Nightingale announced on a mailing list that Firefox will move to Android's native user interface, ditching the XUL technology that has been in use by Mozilla since before there even was a Firefox. 

"Firefox on Android is a critical part of supporting the open Web, and this decision puts us in a position to build the best Firefox possible," Nightingale said. 

Firefox is widely used on personal computers but a rarity on mobile phones, where--unlike Apple's Safari or the unbranded browser Google builds for Android--it's not installed on any phones by default. Firefox is the chief way Mozilla tries to implement its vision of empowering users of the Web and keeping that Web an open technology. 

Firefox with a native Android interface should mean faster start-up, less memory usage, and smoother zooming and panning, Nightingale said. The native UI project page for mobile Firefox, aka Fennec, also listed better battery life as a benefit. 

It's not clear when the rebuilt version will arrive, but it won't be for either the beta or Aurora versions currently in testing, Nightingale said. 

Start-up time is a big deal when comparing Firefox to the built-in browser on Android, especially since Firefox often gets kicked out of memory when not in use, forcing another sluggish load when a person taps a link and needs the browser again. 

"After substantial discussion, we have decided to build future versions of Firefox on Android with a native UI [user interface] instead of the current XUL implementation," Nightingale said. 

Only the user interface will change; the browser will still use the underlying Gecko engine for processing Web page elements. But leaving XUL behind will be a big deal for anyone who built Firefox add-ons using the technology, and it complicates the process of translating Firefox into different languages, too. 

"It's still early days, so we have a lot of questions to answer," Nightingale said. "We're talking with the Add-on SDK team about the best way to support extensions. We're talking with l10n [localization] about how to ensure we support Firefox users wherever they live around the world." 

One possibility, according to Some meeting notes on native-UI Firefox is blunter: "Extensions are gone." The notes raise the possibility of using Mozilla's Add-On Software Developer Kit (SDK), an online tool for creating add-ons, but at present that works only for new-style "Jetpack" add-ons that aren't available on mobile right now

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For now, there's a lot of planning to do about the transition.

"By the end of next week, we will have a clearer outline of the work ahead," Nightingale said.

Why Windows 8 isn't an iOS copycat

Windows 8 running on a desktop, just as it can run on a tablet, or notebook computer.

This week saw the latest step towards the release of Windows 8, the next major version of Microsoft's operating system that represents one of the biggest changes in the history of the platform.

At its Build conference on Tuesday, Microsoft spent more than two hours on stage detailing its next OS. While the software isn't expected to make it into consumer hands until sometime next year, we now have a clearer picture of how Microsoft is positioning it to an industry that's shifted its purchases (and affections) from desktops to notebooks, and now portable devices like tablets and smartphones.

In short, Windows 8 is Microsoft's big answer to that broadening landscape: a product that can power nearly all machines, with an interface that can adapt along the way. That right there is one of the biggest differences between Microsoft's vision of computing and Apple's, which created a separate OS to power its portables, while keeping the desktop OS for its Intel-based machines.

 

However that separation has led to a massive difference in the way consumers look at operating systems, particularly with how often that software is updated, bringing new features to hardware months and years after a purchase. By splitting up the two OSes, Apple was able to iterate quickly, rolling out major releases on an annual basis, while continuing to offer Mac OS X updates at their usual rate. Now the big question is how that will work with Windows 8 with regards to Metro, Microsoft's touch-friendly UI that's been designed for tablets running Windows 8.

Microsoft has traditionally released a new version of Windows every few years, but tablet users are now accustomed to more frequent feature updates. For proof of that, you can look at the iPad, which launched without multitasking and a number of other features the iPhone had, only to get it later with a software update. Android users face a similar future, with the promise of additional software updates.

Comparatively, Microsoft has saved those big feature updates for major releases, and charged for them too. This has created a cycle where developers in the Apple camp can depend software updates to build on top of: Mac OS X developers have come to expect a major update every few years, with iOS getting updates every year.

What does that mean for Windows 8 though? Will the lucrative tradition of releasing a major update every few years continue, while the Metro interface is left untouched, or does Microsoft intend to update it more often to keep up with the Joneses? Therein lies one of the potential drawback of trying to provide everything in one package. It's also something to watch considering how closely connected Windows 8's Metro interface is tied to Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 software, which so far has followed the speedier update trend.

The major thing Microsoft has going for it with Windows 8 is how much more open it is to letting third-parties make adjustments to the operating system itself. On the non-Metro side of Windows this is unchanged, with backwards compatibility for apps, a bevy of third-party plug-ins, and software that can run behind the scenes to custom-tailor your computing experience. What's unclear is how that will shape up on the Metro side of Windows 8.

During the Build keynote, we saw that users could extend what can be done from within an app based on other applications you had installed. In that case, it was a sharing app letting a user share the Web page they were on in IE10. But how much deeper Microsoft will let third-parties go with that customization? That wasn't shown off at Build.

The software store in Microsoft's Windows 8.

One other big question that remains is whether Microsoft can woo developers to its platform with the promise of scale. Windows president Steven Sinofsky pitched the 5,000 developers who were at the Build keynote on the merits of building on Windows 8, based on the fact that there "could be 400 million people when this product launches."

Yet, even at 400 million, that could be a splintered group for developers to target. For instance, an application built for touchscreen tablets will only be aimed at those with the newer portables, which represents a smaller group (read: less revenue potential) and one with potentially different buying habits than desktop users (read: they might not pay as much per app). Then there are high-end games, which would be unplayable on the newer tablets for lack of a beefy CPU and graphics card. Yet those two things can sit side by side on Windows 8, Microsoft says.

So what are developers to do? If they want the money, they go with the bigger platform, which is traditional desktop users, or a competitor like Apple or Google. That, or they can bet on the future and hope it takes off, with them being on the ground floor.

To sweeten the deal, Microsoft's tried to remove any barriers to entry. That includes letting apps with different requirements sit side by side in its store, as well as offering developers a way to offer free trials of their software--both things Apple does not. It's also shown off more of its vision about where it wants to be, well ahead of when the actual software is ready for end users.

These bets could very well pay off for both users and developers in the long run, with applications that can tailor themselves to run on just about any hardware, and change the very deepest parts of Windows to a user's exact liking. If Microsoft can deliver that with Windows 8, it will be treading ground that Apple hasn't.

Intel next-gen chip to support key Apple tech

Intel's next-generation processor is expected to add support for a key OS X technology that accelerates gaming and financial applications. That potentially means a more powerful MacBook Air in the future.

The MacBook Air could get a boost from the upcoming Intel processor that supports improved graphics performance.

Listed as a "core" OS X technology, OpenCL "dramatically accelerates" applications by tapping into the special processing power of the graphics processing unit (GPU), according to Apple. It taps into what an Apple developer page states as the "the amazing parallel computing power of the GPU."

GPU-centric acceleration can be used for financial modeling, accounting applications, analysis on large media files, games, and media applications. In general, the GPU is much better than the CPU (central processing unit) at certain types of computations--thus the necessity of GPUs in games.

In fact, much of the performance boost in Intel's next-generation Ivy Bridge processor (up to 60 percent faster than Intel's current Sandy Bridge chip) is due to more graphics circuits. Of the several hundred million additional transistors in Ivy Bridge (compared to Sandy Bridge), many are dedicated to boosting graphics performance.

To be fair, Nvidia's and Advanced Micro Devices' GPUs already support OpenCL but since neither of those GPUs are in the third-generation MacBook Air, the popular Apple MacBook would likely need an updated Intel processor to get that support.

That's where Ivy Bridge comes in. That Intel chip is due for volume production in the first quarter of next year potentially putting it in a refreshed MacBook Air sometime after that.

Indeed, that's a question that may dog the MacBook faithful in the coming months. When, in fact, will MacBooks get the Ivy Bridge processor?

Which leads to another intriguing question. Ivy Bridge also supports USB 3.0--a faster version of aging USB 2.0. Will Apple also equip MacBooks with USB 3.0 ports next to the existing Thunderbolt port?