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Technical English HW3 Winter 2010 Babol U of T Prof. Nassiri
1) Motorola Outlines Plan to Split Into Two Companies
Motorola confirmed on Thursday that it planned to reorganize into two independent companies by the first quarter of 2011, with its mobile handset unit and its television set-top box division being combined and spun off as a separate publicly traded company.
The announced split is meant to finally divide Motorola into smaller, more focused operations, pulling apart the collection of often disparate businesses assembled over the years by the company, which is based in Schaumburg, Ill.
Sanjay Jha, one of Motorola’s two co-chief executives, will oversee mobile handsets and set-top boxes, effective immediately. The remaining operations — Motorola’s wireless networking business and its enterprise radio systems operations — will be headed by the company’s other co-chief executive, Greg Brown. As envisioned by company executives, the split would create two independent companies, each of which accounted for roughly half of Motorola’s $22 billion in sales in 2009. The companies will be split through a tax-free stock distribution to shareholders. The mobile handset and set-top box business will own the Motorola brand and will license it royalty-free to the enterprise and networking company.
In an interview, Mr. Brown said the enterprise and networks business would assume Motorola’s debt, projected to be a little more than $3 billion at the time of the split. He said he expected the company would retain an investment-grade credit rating. “Through 2009, we have improved our balance sheet so that both entities will have solid capitalization to have operational and strategic flexibility,” Mr. Jha said in an interview, adding that both companies would also have the ability to obtain additional financing from the capital markets if needed.
While Motorola had previously considered divesting itself of the handset division, which has struggled to find a hit to match its Razr cellphone, the unit’s performance has improved rapidly in the last year, Mr. Jha said. He conceded that in recent years, the business had been a net consumer, rather than a generator, of the company’s cash.
Now Motorola is betting the future of the handset business on producing smartphones built largely on Google’s Android platform. That effort has already borne fruit, according to Mr. Jha. He said the company became one of the largest shippers of smartphones last quarter, thanks to offerings like the Droid phone for Verizon Wireless. He said the company expected to ship 20 smartphone models this year. Combining the handset unit with the set-top box operations, which deliver digital video services, fits into a “seamless mobility” lifestyle envisioned by carriers like AT&T and Verizon. The idea is that customers would watch content interchangeably on their televisions, computers and mobile phones.
People briefed on the matter have said that Motorola also planned to sell its wireless networking division after the spinoff. Last year, Motorola had begun seeking a buyer for its set-top box and wireless networking units.
A sale of the wireless networking unit could fetch more than $1 billion, according to the people briefed on the matter.
Mr. Brown declined to comment on efforts to sell the wireless networking unit beyond saying that it remained profitable despite declines in revenue.
2) As the drive for further integration of analog, digital, RF and MEMS on to a single die has intensified, behavioral modeling and simulation with Mixed-Signal Hardware Description Languages(HDLs) has become critical to address the challenge of designing today’s increasingly complicated electronic and electronic-based system. The recent emergence of a new generation of mixed analog digital simulators capable of simulating the standard languages (VHDL-AMS and Verilog-A/MS) exemplifies this trend. Research efforts to include RF extensions to these standards and couple EM algorithms to mixed analog-digital methods continue to promulgate this field. The purpose of this special issue is to provide a means of rapid publication of the latest research advances in behavioral modeling and simulation. The special issue will deal with aspects of behavioral modeling simulation and applications including algorithms, tools, and methods that exploit modeling and simulation across various abstraction levels and various disciplines.
This special issue ………
1) will deal with aspects of behavioral modeling, and simulation alone.
2) will deal with aspects of behavioral modeling, simulations and applications.
3) will provide means of rapid publication of the latest research advances in non-behavioral modeling and simulation.
4) Neither of the above.
3) Central to an autonomous entity are the rules of behavior governing how it must act or react to the information collected by the detector from the environment and its neighbors. These rules determine into what state the entity should change and also what local knowledge should be released via the effector to the environment.
In order to adapt itself to a problem without being explicitly told what to do in advance, an autonomous entity must modify the rules of its behavior over time. This ability, responding to local changing conditions, is known as the individual’s learning capability. Worth noting is that randomness plays a part in the decision making process of an autonomous entity despite the presence of a rule set. It allows an autonomous entity to explore uncharted territory despite evidence that it should exploit only a certain path. On the other hand, randomness helps the entity resolve conflict in the presence of equal support for suggestions to act in different ways in its own best interests and avoid being stuck by randomly choosing an action in local optima.
The environment acts as the domain in which autonomous entities are free to roam. This is a static view of the environment. The environment of a NIC (nature- inspired computing) system can also act as the "noticeboard" where the autonomous entities post and read local information. In this dynamic view, the environment is constantly changing.
Randomness being a part of decision making process ……….
1)leads to confusion because of the presence of a rule set.
2) cannot work in the presence of a rule set.
3) allows the autonomous entity to explore unknown areas but helps it resolve possible conflicts.
4) helps the autonomous entity to follow a pre-arranged path.
4) Running Windows on Macs
One of the advantages of the Apple Macintosh is that it’s the only computer consumers can buy that is able to run both Apple’s own Mac operating system and Microsoft Windows on the same machine. That means that, if you prefer the Mac environment, but need to run a program only available in Windows, you can do so on the same Mac, and even at the same time.
For instance, while I am writing this column on a Mac laptop in the Mac OS, using the Mac version of Microsoft Word, I am also simultaneously running the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Outlook—which aren’t available for the Mac—in Windows, on the same machine. I can switch back and forth among these programs with ease.
I’ve been comparing these latest versions, called Parallels Desktop 5 and VMware Fusion 3, using each to run Windows 7 on the same Mac laptop powered by Snow Leopard. My verdict is that, after falling behind Fusion for awhile, Parallels is now the best choice again. In my tests, it proved to be both faster, and more capable of handling the heavy-duty visual effects in Windows 7.
Both programs work by creating a so-called virtual machine—a software version of a physical computer—on the Mac. Inside these faux PCs, you can install any of dozens of operating systems and the applications that run on them. That includes numerous versions of Windows, including Windows XP and Vista, and, now, Windows 7. In order to do this, you will have to buy separately a new, full (not an upgrade) version of Windows, which costs about $200.
Both programs can run either the full Windows desktop, or individual Windows programs with the desktop hidden. Parallels now comes with a new mode, called Crystal, which integrates the Windows system even more, by placing the Windows Start menu and system tray icons in the Mac’s own top menu bar.
These virtual-machine programs shouldn’t be confused with Apple’s own built-in solution for running Windows on a Mac, called Boot Camp, which also has recently been updated to handle Windows 7. Boot Camp can’t run the two operating systems simultaneously; you must reboot the computer to switch between them. That gives Windows sole control of the hardware when it’s running, but many people find Boot Camp inconvenient. I didn’t test Boot Camp for this review.
Fusion 3, from Silicon Valley company VMware (VMW), is a relatively minor revision. The latest version is mainly designed to add speed, simplify the interface, make it compatible with Snow Leopard and Windows 7, and to improve graphics performance. It achieves most of these goals, but I still found it ran more slowly with Windows 7 than it did with Windows XP. It also was significantly pokier than Parallels 5.
In addition, I found that Fusion had occasional trouble with the transparency effects in Windows 7, such as its ability to turn transparent Windows that are open so you can see your desktop. It also occasionally switched off Windows’ new Aero feature, which offers live previews of task-bar icons. It sometimes turned all my Windows desktop icons white momentarily.
The bigger story is the comeback of Parallels, which is made by a Swiss-based firm of the same name. It was the first virtual-machine program for Intel-based Macs, but got eclipsed by Fusion. Now, the fifth version of Parallels is much faster and much better at the sophisticated graphics upon which Windows 7 relies.
In my tests, on a 2008-vintage MacBook Pro with 4 gigabytes of memory, Parallels 5 started up and had Windows 7 ready to roll nearly two minutes faster than Fusion 3. Windows 7 Home Premium launched from a cold start within Parallels about a minute faster than it did inside Fusion. And, when I restarted Windows 7 with several common programs running, it took two minutes and 23 seconds in Parallels 5, versus over four minutes in Fusion 3.
Beyond that, I found Parallels 5 handled the graphical previews and transparent effects in Windows 7 more quickly and smoothly than Fusion did. The Aero previews of running programs in the task bar appeared more quickly.
Also, I found Parallels 5 played high-definition video in Windows more smoothly than Fusion did. It also seemed to slow down the Mac side of the computer less.
Parallels isn’t perfect. In particular, it displays a black screen for a bit during start-up, something the company says it hopes to fix. And, while it shares the Mac’s printer, it confusingly mislabels it.
Neither of these programs is the answer for Mac owners who want to run the latest heavy-duty games or other graphics-intensive programs in Windows 7. For them, I recommend either Boot Camp or a separate Windows PC.
But, if you’re looking to run typical, everyday Windows programs on a Mac without rebooting, Parallels 5 is now the best solution.
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