Raw Talent: Robo-Mehran

I have watched this a lot on Myth Busters, but you it is rare to find a robo-Mehran there

AUTO RX-8 remotely controlled by IPhone: (Not Pakistani…) Dont know if its real .. but its cool

Innovation – Getting out of Tight Spaces

Raw Talent: Geniuses of Pakistan – Boltay Haath

After my last post, I remembered my friend telling me about a project was done by students of Sir Syed University. The project was termed as “Boltay Haath”

The aim of the project was to develop a sign language recognition device for computers. An innovative concept indeed.

I do not have a video for this but I believe that the text and algorithms developed by the students in the above link will provide a good insight.

Video

While economy crumbled, top financial watchdogs at SEC surfed for porn on Internet: memo

BY LEO STANDORA
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Originally Published:Friday, April 23rd 2010, 12:59 AM
Updated: Friday, April 23rd 2010, 7:31 AM

AP

Who watches the watchmen? SEC senior staffers used government computers to browse for booty, according to a memo.

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At the SEC, all they thought about was SEX.

The country’s top financial watchdogs turned out to be horndogs who spent hours gawking at porn Web sites as the economy teetered on the brink, according to a memo released Thursday night.

The shocking findings include Securities and Exchange Commission senior staffers using government computers to browse for booty and an accountant who tried to access the raunchy sites 16,000 times in one month.

Their titillating pastime was discovered during 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years, said the memo obtained by The Associated Press.

It says 31 of those probes occurred in the 2-1/2 years since the country’s financial system nearly crashed.

The report was written by SEC Inspector General David Kotz in response to a request from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).

Among the startling findings:

– A senior attorney at the SEC’s Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When his government computer ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs. He later agreed to resign.

– An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a single month from visiting “sex” or “pornography” sites, but still managed to amass a collection of “very graphic” material by using Google to bypass the SEC’s internal filter. He wound up with a 2-week suspension.

– Seventeen of the randy employees were “at a senior level” earning salaries of up to $222,418.

– The number of cases jumped from two in 2007 to 16 in 2008. The cracks in the financial system emerged in mid-2007 and spread into full-blown panic by the fall of 2008.

California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said it was “disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at porn than taking action to help stave off the events that put our nation’s economy on the brink of collapse.” An SEC spokesman declined to comment last night.

lstandora@nydailynews.com

With News Wire Services

Raw Talent: Geniuses of Pakistan

Waqar Qureshi: Inventor without MIT credentials

Dr. Israr and Jaswant Singh – Video

Dr. Israr Ahmed: 1932-2010

Dr. Israr Ahmed, a renowned muslim scholar of Pakistan, passed away. Dr. Israr dedicated his life to the study of Quran and to the propagation of The Message.

His supporters describe him as having spent the “last forty years” actively engaged in “reviving the Qur’an-centered Islamic perennial philosophy and world-view” with “the ultimate objective of establishing a true Islamic State, or the System of Khilafah.” [2] Ahmed is skeptical of the efficacy of “parliamentary politics of give-and-take” in establishing an “Islamic politico-socio-economic system” as implementing this system is a “revolutionary process”.[3] Wikipedia

Commercial Bankruptcies Rose 52 Percent in 2009 – AP

Just as I feared, although a month-wise breakup is not available, this provides a good picture that the recovery is fragile

Commercial Bankruptcies Rose 52 Percent in 2009

Commercial bankruptcy protection filings rose by more than 50 percent last year, according to data filed Thursday, showing how the recession continued to cull businesses even as the economy stabilized.

Toward the end of the year, however, the pace of filings abated, according to the data released Thursday by credit reporting agency Equifax Inc.

Commercial filings hit 117,659 last year, up 52 percent from the 77,638 filed in 2008, Equifax reported.

That’s nearly four times the number of filings in 2006, when such bankruptcy filings hit an all-time low near 3,000.

In the October to December period of 2009, filings were up only 12 percent and by December, filings were up only 3 percent compared with the corresponding period in 2008, according to Equifax.

The bankruptcies spread across the U.S., although California was one of the most hard hit.

In the fourth quarter alone, the Los Angeles, Sacramento and Riverside, Calif. metropolitan areas led the nation in filings, as they did in the second and third quarters. Other areas with a high number of filings in the fourth quarter included Portland, Ore., Denver, New York and Chicago.