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Welcome aboard for practicals

BangaloreMirror | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2011 4

WEEK’S TOP
Chennai college has MiG-23, Boeing 737 and other aircraft to give hands-on training to students
MANU PRASAD 5
TECH WRAP FROM THE WORLD WIDE WEB

A
Sameer Ranjan Bakshi liked/hated this column? write to
bmfeedback@indiatimes.com
Air Force at Prof Ashok said, “This exhibi-
sameerranjan.bakshi@timesgroup.com our request. tion offers an opportunity to inter-

erospace companies and
their amazing aircraft
were supposed to be the
top draw at the eight
Aero India show. They are, but
nobody thought an innocuous
engineering college from Chennai
would steal the show from right
under their high-end noses.
Hindustan Institute of
Technology and Science (HITS)
has a stall at the event where it is
exhibiting a Russian-made MiG23
fighter aircraft and a helicopter.
The stall is being manned by the
college’s students.
Prof R Ashok, HoD of the engi-
The institute has a Cessna 152, Cess
172 R and a Turboprob Beechjet 400
ing to students. We will be able to
fly them once we get the neces-
Every engi-
neering col-
lege trains stu-
dents in theory, but at HITS they
learn through practicals. The
other aircraft we have are a Cessna
152, Cessna 172 R and a
Turboprop Beechjet 400, which
are used for pilot flight training.
We also have a Alsim simulator
for pilot training. In addition to
these, we have a 737 cargo aircraft
donated by Boeing.”
Its students are working in
companies like Airbus, Infosys
Aero design division, HAL, Ramco
Systems. D Vinod, one of the stu-
dents manning the stall, said “We
act with members of the aerospace
industry. We can tailor our syl-
labus to suit its requirements. One
of our plans is to train employees
of HAL and other defence organi-
sations who are now being sent to
European universities. We have
already signed an intent of agree-
ment with Cranfield University of
the UK to train the staff of Defence
Research and Development
Organisation and HAL.”
HITS has shelled out Rs 2.5
lakh for the stall in Hall G of the
exhibition centre, but the money
could be considered well spent as
about 1,000 students from across
the country are expected to visit
SEVEN-YEAR ITCH
Facebook celebrated seven years of existence last
Friday and with more than 2000 employees, it is
getting itself a new office. That
incidentally happens to be Sun
Microsystems’ old headquarters.
Even as (the US) Congress is
demanding details as to the
exact nature of Facebook’s pri-
vacy policy and its plans to
share user data with third parties
in future, a dating site called ‘Lovely Faces’ was
launched with 2,50,000 ‘profiles’ of publicly avail-
able information swiped from Facebook. And while
on privacy, Mark Zuckerberg has apparently
obtained a restraining order against a Californian
man, Pradeep Manukonda, for stalking him!

neering department of HITS, said,
“We do not fly these aircraft. We
use them to impart practical train-
sary licence from the Directorate
General of Civil Aviation. The
MiG-23 was a gift from the Indian
felt proud on seeing our alumni
representing various companies at
the same event.”
FOUNDER UNFOLLOWS?
the show. Who wouldn’t like to
enrol in a college where practicals
would be a romp in the sky! Last year, Twitter had elevated its COO, Dick
Costolo, to CEO, ostensibly to
let then CEO and co-founder Ev

MLCs want Williams focus on product strat-

I naaptol
egy. But now, Williams only sits
on the board and does occa-
sional PR appearances. Twitter

CoD to probe though, seems to be more

focused on business. Its official data reseller, Gnip,
has announced a product called PowerTrack, a key-
word-based filter accessible at 10 cents/thousand

tech varsity tweets. Twitter already has deals with Microsoft and
Google, and late last year, had allowed Gnip to sell
more precise sampler products like Decahose.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

marks scam Software heavyweight Microsoft, announced
the resignation of Ravi
Bangalore Mirror Bureau

G
bmfeedback@indiatimes.com
anesh Karnik and Y A
Narayanaswamy, both MLCs, on
Thursday demanded a CoD
(Corps of Detectives) inquiry into the
alleged marks scandal in the
Visvesvaraya Technological
University (VTU).
The results of 800 engineering stu-
dents were allegedly manipulated to help
them pass. Of the 3,311 students who
applied for challenge valuation, 750
passed.
Venkatesan, chairman
and corporate vice-presi-
dent of its India opera-
tions. Microsoft said
Venkatesh, who served
the company for seven years, had decided to pur-
sue opportunities outside Microsoft. Venkatesan is
believed to be working on a book. A successor will
be named in the near future and Venkatesan will
partner with Microsoft International president
Jean-Philippe Courtois to ensure a smooth transi-
tion. Venkatesan is the third senior executive to
quit the company since the start of the year after
Rajan Anandan, MS’s country manager and Srinivas
Koppolu, head of the development centre in India.

FORK IN THE ROAD?

The members of the legislative coun-
cil said, “We all very much disturbed by
the fact that VTU is making headlines for
all the wrong reasons. This may adverse-
ly affect the students’ careers as private
companies may refuse to recruit students
from VTU’s affiliated colleges.”
Reacting to VTU vice-chancellor H
Maheshappa’s statement that he would
take legal action against Karnik for his
outbursts against him, Karnik said he
would refer the issue to the privileges
committee and the Speaker’s office.
“We have not made any personal
comments against the VC. We are only
concerned about the university’s wellbe-
Google is apparently plan-
ning a release of Android 2.4 in
April. Like Android 2.3, this one
will also be called Gingerbread
and this 'early' release date is
only so that dual-core apps,
designed for large screen tablet-
sized devices running Honeycomb (Android v3.0),
will be able to work with single-core mobile devices
running v2.4. Meanwhile, Google has begun build-
ing a new branch of code called GRI17 (a.k.a "Ice
Cream"), which aims at bringing the tablet and
smartphone operating systems closer together, by
adding Honeycomb elements to Gingerbread.

ing,” he said. Karnik also asked why the
VC stopped the probe team headed by
collegiate commissioner Tushar Girinath
• Supports SD!MMCI SDHC Card Upto 8GB 5 Megapixel
• Interpolated Upto when it visited the VTU headquarters in
Belgaum.
• Video & Audio Recording • Works on 3 x AAA Batteries Meanwhile, Narayana Swamy
• Internal memory.32MB,USB Support • NTSC & PAL Optional requested Governor Hans Raj Bharadwaj
to look into the issue of fake documents
1 Year Manulacturer Warranty Shipping 199!- Extra allegedly produced by Maheshappa
Package Contents: DV 72lCamcorder ,USB Cable, AV Cable,Wrist Strap, Camera Pouch,Software CD & Manual while applying for the post of VC. “The
results of challenge valuation have raised
doubts about the VTU officials. Instead
of criticising the MLCs, let the vice-chan-
cellor order an inquiry and punish the
guilty,” he said.
ALIAS@HOTMAIL.COM
Hotmail has announced an ‘aliases’ feature,
which will allow users to create
and manage multiple email
aliases from a single account.
Though many mail service
providers have a ‘+’ function
with filters and labels, it had lim-
itations. Now, instead of multi-
ple accounts, with different user names and pass-
words, you can setup a Hotmail inbox to seamlessly
handle all correspondence in your primary account
without anyone knowing what your primary email
address is. It even uses ‘Send As’ intelligently.