So excited to meet people and get roleplaying! (:
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/B65U-_QrMYQ/viewtopic.php
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The industry is at a saturation point and most of the established IT vendors come with required capabilities for the market. Hence, during a contract negotiation the focus often relies on price. While trying for competitive price advantage the focus shifts away from aspects of differentiated services, innovation and building long-term relationships. In such engagements what a client receives is only the service that they pay for.?
This in turn is leading to a growing trend of various business organizations wanting to retain niche expertise, high-end R&D and thought leadership in-house and rely on IT vendors for ?keep-the-light-on? type services. These, they say, give organizations more control over their strategic initiatives and reduce their time to market. Such outlook has triggered various business organizations to build their own capabilities within, or do in-sourcing.
However, a strategy like the above can only throw up multiple challenges for a client:
Organizations are compelled to attend to areas outside of their core competence It is difficult to find the right-skilled resources from the market and retain them There is an increased cost on CAPEX? The ability to adopt new technologies and stay current is constrained
Such a strategy may not be sustainable in the long run. Every organization needs to create an equilibrium in their business operations when they outsource their work to IT vendors.? To bring in such transformation and innovation in client-vendor relationships in the IT services business, the following will be mutually beneficial.
Vendor Assessment ?Assess differentiated experiences that you have received from your vendors and do a vendor rating. Raise assessment standards annually.
Vendor Credentials - While awarding a contract to a vendor check whether they have executed differentiated approaches, innovation, and thought leadership in the area of the specific work they are asked to do. Comprehensive or cross checkable references will be the key.
Consolidate Vendors - Optimize vendors based on your assessment and organization strategy.
KPI?s for innovation - Always keep KPI expectation for innovation with your vendor, build your contract to clearly articulate this expectation.
Engage with resources - Talk to key vendor resources who worked with you during the engagement phase. Understand if they have an innovative mindset; this can give a good perspective of the culture that an organization had built in.
Long Term Contract - Award long term contracts, so that you can reap the benefit of optimization and knowledge base developed within
Benefit sharing - Vendorinnovation should be met with client incentives. This will enhance vendor motivation.
Community & Collaboration - Create a community to collaborate with your vendor and teams, this will enable you to drive your thoughts and generate ideas within your contract purview. More ideas and thoughts for innovation will come from the team who are working on the ground.
Initial buffer on budget - Expect that there will be cost overrun in some cases for complex engagements, but will get the rewards later in the engagement.
If an organization tries to build a lasting relationship with a vendor, the impact will be much better from the perspective of innovation, cost and benefits.? Yes, there will hiccups and challenges during that lifecycle but living through that as a collaborative unit will create a win-win situation for all.
?
Source: http://www.cxotoday.com/story/getting-your-it-vendor-to-innovate-for-you/
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May 16, 2013 ? What is the long-range weather forecast for the giant planets Uranus and Neptune? These planets are home to extreme winds blowing at speeds of over 1000 km/hour, hurricane-like storms as large around as Earth, immense weather systems that last for years and fast-flowing jet streams. Both planets feature similar climates, despite the fact that Uranus is tipped on its side with the pole facing the sun during winter. The winds on these planets have been observed on their outer surfaces; but to get a grasp of their weather systems, we need to have an idea of what is going on underneath. For instance, do the atmospheric patterns arise from deep down in the planet, or are they confined to shallower processes nearer the surface?
New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, the University of Arizona and Tel Aviv University, which was published online today in Nature, shows that the wind patterns seen on the surface can extend only so far down on these two worlds.
Understanding the atmospheric circulation is not simple for a planet without a solid surface, where Earth-style boundaries between solid, liquid and gas layers do not exist. Since the discovery of these strong atmospheric winds in the 1980s by the Voyager II spacecraft, the vertical extent of these winds has been a major puzzle -- one that influences our understanding of the physics governing the atmospheric dynamics and internal structure of these planets. But a team led by Dr. Yohai Kaspi of the Weizmann Institute's Environmental Sciences and Energy Research Department realized they had a way, based on a novel method for analyzing the gravitational field of the planets, to determine an upper limit for the thickness of the atmospheric layer.
Deviations in the distribution of mass in planets cause measurable fluctuations in the gravitational field. On Earth, for example, an airplane flying near a large mountain feels the slight extra gravitational pull of that mountain. Like Earth, the giant planets of the solar system are rapidly rotating bodies. In fact all of them rotate faster than Earth; the rotation periods of Uranus and Neptune are about 17 and 16 hours, respectively. Because of this rapid rotation, the winds swirl around regions of high and low pressure. (In a non-rotating body, flow would be from high to low pressure.) This enables researchers to deduce the relations between the distribution of pressure and density, and the planets' wind field. These physical principles enabled Kaspi and his co-authors to calculate, for the first time, the gravity signature of the wind patterns and thus create a wind-induced gravity map of these planets.
By computing the gravitational fields of a large range of ideal planet models -- ones with no wind, a task conducted by team member Dr. Ravit Helled of Tel Aviv University -- and comparing them with the observed gravitational fields, upper limits to the meteorological contribution to the gravitational fields were obtained. This enabled Kaspi's team, which included Profs. Adam Showman and Bill Hubbard of the University of Arizona, and Prof. Oded Aharonson of the Weizmann Institute, to show that the streams of gas observed in the atmosphere are limited to a "weather-layer" of no more than about 1000 km in depth, which makes up only a fraction of a percent of the mass of these planets.
Although no spacecraft missions to Uranus and Neptune are planned for the near future, Kaspi anticipates that the team's findings will be useful in the analysis of another set of atmospheric circulation patterns that will be closely observed soon: those of Jupiter. Kaspi, Helled and Hubbard are part of the science team of NASA's Juno spacecraft to Jupiter. Juno was launched in 2011; upon reaching Jupiter in 2016 it will provide very accurate measurements of the gravity field of this giant gaseous planet. Using the same methods as the present study, Kaspi anticipates that they will be able to obtain the same type of information they acquired for Uranus and Neptune: namely, placing constraints on the depth of the atmospheric dynamics of this planet.
Uranus and Neptune are the farthest planets in the solar system, and there are still many open questions regarding their formation and composition. This study has implications for revealing the mysteries of their deep, dark interiors, and may even provide information about how these planets were formed. Moreover, many of the extrasolar planets detected around other stars have been found to have similar masses to those of Uranus and Neptune, so this research will be important for understanding like-sized extrasolar planets, as well.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/uPQQaKR2ORg/130516105621.htm
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Barbara Walters' announcement that she'll retire in 2014 isn't surprising (she's 83!), but it's still momentous. This indisputable icon of TV journalism is so legendary, she's more famous than many of her subjects. She's racked up a resume of firsts -- first woman to co-anchor a network morning show (NBC's Today), the first woman to co-anchor an evening network newscast (ABC Evening News) -- and she's interviewed dozens of world leaders along the way (including every U.S. president since Richard Nixon). She launched one of the most popular daytime talk shows, The View, which is still going strong 16 years later. It's tough to imagine anyone who has accomplished more in TV news!
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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) ? A top literary journal founded in 1925 has hired a Library of Congress director to be its new editor.
The Virginia Quarterly Review announced Wednesday that W. Ralph Eubanks will take over as editor, effective June 3.
Eubanks is director of publishing at the library and becomes the Review's first black editor. There has been no permanent editor at the Review since last year, when Ted Genoways (JEHN'-uh-wayz) resigned.
The Review is published by the University of Virginia and has had a brilliant and tragic history. It has received numerous awards and published many top writers. But in 2010 managing editor Kevin Morrissey committed suicide. Allegations quickly emerged that Genoways had been harassing Morrissey. The university concluded it could find no proof of wrongdoing, and Genoways denied the allegations and remained as editor.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/va-journal-hires-library-congress-director-200315306.html
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By Adrian Croft and Justyna Pawlak
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is expected to lift all sanctions on Myanmar next week, except for an arms embargo, in recognition of the "remarkable process of reform" in the country, a document seen by Reuters showed on Wednesday.
The EU agreed a year ago to suspend most of its sanctions against Myanmar for a year in response to a dramatic series of reforms, but it is now expected to go further by agreeing "to lift all sanctions with the exception of the embargo on arms", the document said.
The step, which was agreed by EU ambassadors on Wednesday, paving the way for ministerial approval on Monday, will allow European companies to invest in Myanmar, which has significant natural resources and borders economic giants China and India.
"The EU is willing to open a new chapter in its relations with Myanmar, building a lasting partnership," said the document which contains the draft conclusions of Monday's EU foreign ministers' meeting.
The move could put pressure on the United States, which suspended sanctions in May last year and allowed U.S. companies to invest through a general license. Some American executives have urged Washington to go further and lift sanctions entirely to remove an element of uncertainty over their investments.
"The U.S. will no doubt carefully consider the lifting of sanctions by the EU and the rationale for that step in determining the next steps that the U.S. takes in relation to its Myanmar sanctions," said Marae Ciantar, a Singapore-based lawyer at Allens, an international law firm.
Ciantar, who advises a multinational telecoms company seeking to invest in Myanmar, said he expects the lifting of sanctions to give EU companies an edge over U.S. companies. "Their risk profile for investing in Myanmar will be lower than that of U.S. companies," he said.
The EU had frozen the assets of nearly 1,000 companies and institutions in Myanmar and banned almost 500 people from entering the EU. It also prohibited military-related technical help and banned investment in the mining, timber and precious metals sectors.
"LOSS OF LEVERAGE"
The United States and other Western countries have been easing sanctions on Myanmar to reward a wave of political and economic reforms put in place since Myanmar's military stepped aside and a quasi-civilian government was installed in 2011.
Under President Thein Sein's reforms, opposition leader and Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent 15 years under house arrest, has been allowed back into politics and has made a number of visits abroad.
Myint Soe, a vice-chairman of Myanmar's Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry and head of the Myanmar Garment Manufacturers Association, welcomed the EU move.
"An important market will be restored for us."
A succession of foreign leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, have travelled to Myanmar, also known as Burma, and the country is attracting a surge of interest from overseas businesses keen to enter one of Asia's last untapped markets.
In February, Danish brewer Carlsberg said it was returning to Myanmar following the easing of international sanctions which forced it out of the country in the mid-1990s.
While praising moves towards democracy and government efforts against corruption, the EU document called on Myanmar to release unconditionally remaining political prisoners.
It also called on the government to deal with inter-communal violence and take urgent action to deal with humanitarian risks facing displaced people in Rakhine State, which was swept by sectarian violence last year that killed at least 110 people and left 120,000 homeless.
But with the lifting of sanctions the EU could lose some of its influence over human rights in Myanmar.
"There will be some loss of leverage of the EU over the Myanmar government," said Sean Turnell, an expert on Myanmar's economy at Australia's Macquarie University. "To be honest, though, I am not sure they had much of this commodity anyway."
Sectarian violence erupted in Myanmar again last month and 43 people were killed. Thousands, mostly Muslims, were driven from their homes and businesses as bloodshed spread across the central region of the Buddhist-majority country.
(Additional reporting by Jared Ferrie and Aung Hla Tun in Yangon. Editing by Jon Hemming and Michael Perry)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/eu-set-lift-myanmar-sanctions-except-arms-071259446.html
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Windows: Reboot Restore RX is a free utility that makes restore points and session saves every time you reboot your computer, so if you run into problems, you can restore your system settings to the last time you rebooted and get up and running again quickly.
There's nothing worse than rebooting your computer thinking everything is fine only to find out something's busted and you need to troubleshoot it. It's especially bad if you start having problems after a driver update or a series of Windows updates, and you're stuck trying to figure out which thing caused the problem in the first place. Reboot Restore RX takes the hassle out of it. The app can even restore when Windows won't boot at all.
Our friends at Tekzilla took the app for a spin in the video above, so you can see how it works. The app was originally designed for people who need to manage computers and have to restore to previous sessions every time the machine is rebooted, but it works just as well for personal users who want to keep track of their system changes.
Reboot Restore RX (Free) | Horizon DataSys via Tekzilla Daily
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