Film – Home-grown flicks treat kids like adults, and adults like…
The News Review:
- Film – Home-grown flicks treat kids like adults, and adults like…
- Extending ERP
- Insurgency, Terrorism or Civil War? Violence in Iraq Continues to…
- China hails legacy of great adventurer
Film – Home-grown flicks treat kids like adults, and adults like…
New Statesman – May 30, 2005
After the bleak chill of Boyle’s latter-day zombie romp 28 Days Later, maybe some adults will see Millions as another apocalyptic horror movie after all. As for the kids, they can rejoice that, in these days of infantile Star Wars drivel, some film-makers still see the value of treating 12-year-olds like adults. While Millions may be far from flawless, it looks like Citizen Kane in comparison with this week’s other home-grown offering. It’s All Gone Pete Tong is a spoof mocku-mentary about an Ibiza club DJ, Frankie Wilde, who realises his inner vision after battering his eardrums into deafness. The writer-director Michael Dowse admits that the funding, title and location were all in place while “the concept and script were still up in the air”, and breezily concedes that hearing loss didn’t become an issue until the screenplay was in its third draft. This arse-about-face production history surely explains the catastrophic incoherence of these post-Human Traffic japes, which veer wildly between rankly outdated pop opportunism (rave culture was sooo 20th century) and clunkily ill-fitting serio-comic satire. One-note performer Paul Kaye resorts to his default setting of rolling eyeballs, gurning expressions and unconvincing cod geezer drawl; presumably he’s beginning to regret calling Hugh Grant “wooden” in his previous incarnation as the TV twat Dennis Pennis.
Extending ERP
Express Computers – May 30, 2005
Says Ravi Kathuria, Director, Marketing and Solutions, SSA Global India, “We find a good percentage (over 50 percent) of our business coming from repeat orders from these large enterprises in the form of additional user-licences and functionality modules including HR and payroll. This is because their transactions have grown along with capacities and sales. ” Rail Coach Factory, for example, uses a home-grown ERP system. It has added modules such as Supply Chain Scheduling to optimise scheduling on the shop floor. Ashok Leyland has also gone in for a supply chain module. Some more examples are NTPC, Alstom Power Services, Spice Telecom, Aramex, Sundaram Industries. Says Nagaraj Bhargava, Director, Marketing, Alliances and Sales Operations, SAP India, “ERP penetration in large business is still low.
Insurgency, Terrorism or Civil War? Violence in Iraq Continues to…
Spiegel Online – May 30, 2005
How many deaths does it take to make a civil war? Can the conflict in Iraq, pitting suicide bombers against both home-grown and foreign militaries be described as an internal struggle for control? At what point does the claim that violence in Iraq is “merely” the work of a bunch of terrorists lose its tenability? In Iraq, it’s a set of questions being asked more and more often as the death toll this May continues to rocket upwards. On Monday, the violence continued, with two suicide bombers blowing themselves up amid a crowd of policemen in the town of Hillah south of Baghdad. Twenty were killed and just short of 100 were wounded. Sadly, however, such violence — world news had it occurred in Berlin, Britain or Boston — is little more than a footnote coming out of Baghdad. After all, 34 people were killed on Sunday in a variety of attacks and roughly 700 have lost their lives at the hands of insurgents in the month of May.
China hails legacy of great adventurer
BBC News – May 30, 2005
But around the time of his death, a new Chinese ruler, suspicious of the outside world, banned all further expeditions, ushering in 500 years of isolation and leaving the way open for countries such as Spain and Portugal, and later Britain and America, to rule the waves instead. While he remains little-known to most people even in his own country, Zheng He is now being turned into a communist hero and held up as the pioneer of the open-door policies that have brought China once again to the brink of being a world power. CastratedZheng He was born in the poor, mountainous Chinese province of Yunnan in 1372, just as Genghis Khan’s Mongols were being overthrown by a new, home-grown dynasty, the Ming. His family were Muslims from Central Asia who had fought for the Mongols. When Ming armies came looking for rebels, they captured the 10-year-old boy and, as was the custom with young male prisoners, castrated him. “He was ashamed of being a eunuch,” said Professor Liu Ying Sheng of Nanjing University, adding there was little information about this aspect of Zheng He’s life. "Asia’s role in maritime history has not been recognised" Chung Chee-kit, Friends of Admiral Zheng He…
He also wanted to develop trade – something previously despised. The chief court eunuch was promoted to admiral and told to produce a fleet to sail to the Western Seas. Ming dynasty records show that each treasure ship was 400 feet (122 metres) long and 160 feet (50 metres) wide. Bigger, in other words, than a football pitch. Some say no ship that size could be seaworthy. We do know that they were larger than any ships before them, and many times the size of those sailed later by Columbus.