Pray for who prayed for Peace

سـلام على من يحب الســلام

Condi's Challenge (Friedman)

March 31, 2005

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Rice's Poker Hand

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I've been to this play before. It always starts out like the coming-out season for debutantes in Palm Beach, and it always ends around a smoky poker table at Binions casino in Las Vegas.

That is, every new secretary of state gets his or her moment on the world stage, where everyone "oohs" and "ahs" about how smart they are and what a "dream team" staff they have put together. As the first secretary of state to ever wear stiletto heels while reviewing troops, Condoleezza Rice has had a coming-out season second to none.

The savvy secretaries don't take any of this seriously. They know that eventually every secretary gets dealt a poker hand - and you never know when it'll come or what sort of cards it'll contain: the 1973 Middle East war (Henry Kissinger), the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev (George Shultz), the fall of the Berlin Wall (James Baker), Kosovo (Madeleine Albright), Iraq (Colin Powell). And this poker hand is seven-card stud, no-limit Texas Hold 'Em. How well you play this high-stakes hand usually determines your legacy as secretary of state.

Secretary Rice may get dealt other big hands, but there is one already waiting for her on the table. It is the four fragile democratizations unfolding in the Middle East: Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine-Israel. Whether any of these come to fruition will certainly form a crucial part of the Rice legacy.

For the last month or so, the Bush team has been doing a victory lap, taking credit for the outbreak of democracy in the Arab world. While I disagree with many Bush policies, I think the president does deserve credit for unleashing something very important in the politically moribund Arab East. Many of the necessary elements for democratization are now in place in Iraq (free and fair elections), in Lebanon (a Syrian withdrawal from Beirut), in Egypt (President Mubarak's commitment to multicandidate presidential elections) and in Gaza (an Israeli commitment to withdraw and Palestinian elections).

But while the necessary conditions may now be in place, the sufficient conditions for democratization are still not present in any of these arenas. The Iraqi election was Jan. 30 and the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis have still not agreed on a government, and the insurgency is still going strong. In Lebanon, the Cedar Revolution is now bogged down in a standoff between pro-Syrian and anti-Syrian Lebanese. In Egypt, it's not clear whether the upcoming presidential elections will be free - with anyone who wants to run able to - or fair - with international observers. And in Israel-Palestine, Ariel Sharon's new settlement binge near Jerusalem underscores how difficult it will be to maintain momentum there.

The common theme in all four areas is that the key parties are doing the right things for the wrong reasons. Democratization is everyone's second choice. First, the Kurds and Shiites want to consolidate their own power inside Iraq; the Lebanese opposition wants to get rid of the Syrians; the Egyptians want to get U.S. pressure off their backs; and the Israelis want to get rid of Gaza's huge Palestinian population.

In history, a lot of good has started with people doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. But you will only have self-sustaining democratization in the Middle East if people start to do the right thing for the right reasons - if the different sects in Iraq and Lebanon really do hammer out a shared vision and set of rules for their two countries. If Egypt recognizes it can't thrive without liberalizing its economy and political institutions. If Israelis and Palestinians really do come to terms with each other's nationalism. Otherwise, you'll have constant backsliding.

Trying to make any one of these democracy projects self-sustaining - and that is the test - would be a career. Secretary Rice's challenge is to do all four at once. The burden is not hers alone. The parties themselves must carry the lion's share. But her responsibility is undeniable. Does she have the toughness to deal with Ariel Sharon? She has not shown it up to now. If the Bush team lets Mr. Sharon trade Gaza for the West Bank, the whole U.S. democratization agenda in the region will be set back. Does she have the moxie to restrain the Kurds and Shiites from overreaching in Iraq? The steel to deal with the Syrians? The will to move the Egyptians? Too soon to say. But this is the early poker hand she has been dealt, and how she plays it will determine, in part, whether the Bush team has uncorked democratization in the Middle East (I hope so) or set loose a new deadlock. (I hope not.)

القرآن بالعبري (ArabYnet)

www.arabynet.com

القرآن الكريم يترجم للعبرية للمرة الرابعة

بعد صدور القرآن مترجمًا للعبرية ثلاث مرات، كان أولها في العام 1857 وآخرها في 1971، وجميعها تشوبها النواقص بشهادة الباحثين، تطرح في الأسواق قريبًا ترجمة جديدة بقلم البروفيسور أوري روبين...

ميراف يوديلوفيتش

يطرح في الأسواق اعتبارًا من الأسبوع القادم ترجمة جديدة للقرآن الكريم باللغة العبرية. وقام بترجمة القرآن الكريم نقلاً عن العربية البروفيسور أوري روبين، وهو من أكبر الباحثين في إسرائيل للقرآن وتفسيراته الإسلامية. ويصدر القرآن مترجمًا للعبرية كجزء من سلسلة كتب جديدة في موضوع الأديان أعدها المؤرخ والباحث في شؤون الأديان البروفيسور أفيعاد كلينبيرغ.

وترجم القرآن للعبرية ثلاث مرات قبل ذلك كان أولها في العام 1857 وترجمه تسفي حاييم هرمان ركندورف. وفي العام 1937 صدر القرآن مترجمًا للعبرية عن دار النشر "دفير" وترجم على يد يوسيف يوئيل ريفلين (والد رئيس الكنيست رؤوفين ريفلين). وتعتبر ترجمة ريفلين الأكثر رواجًا حتى الآن وتمت طباعتها عدة مرات على مر السنوات. وصدر القرآن الكريم مترجمًا للعبرية في العام 1971 وترجمه هذه المرة أهاران بن شيمش.

ويقول المترجم البروفسور أوري روبين إن هناك حاجة منذ سنوات عديدة لإصدار ترجمة عبرية جديدة للقرآن الكريم، ويضيف: "ترجمة ريفلين تتسم بالدقة لكنها تحتوي على استخدامات لغوية تصعِّب على عملية الفهم لمن ليس لديه النص الأصلي بالعربية مما يجعل مهمة قراءته من قبل قارئ لا يتحدث العربية أمرًا عسيرًا".

أما ترجمة بن شيمش فيقول البروفيسور روبين "إنها واضحة ومنسابة لكنها حرة وغير دقيقة مقارنة بالأصل. لقد حافظت في ترجمتي بقدر الإمكان على المبنى النصي للأصل وأضفت بشكل رئيسي تفسيرات وملاحظات جانبية".

ويؤكد البروفيسور ساسون سوميخ الحاصل على جائزة إسرائيل في الاستشراق أقوال المترجم ويضيف أن هناك حاجة ملحة بالفعل لإصدار ترجمة جديدة للقرآن: "هناك عيوب خطيرة في التراجم الأولى. ترجمة ريفلين ليست سيئة لكنها مكتوبة بلغة قديمة تلمودية ورفيعة وهو ما يجعل مهمة القراءة صعبة. الترجمة الثانية ناقصة إلى حد بعيد وتتناول النص القرآني وكأنه قضائي وهذا ربما لأن المترجم بن شيمش خبيرًا في القانون والقضاء. من هنا تولدت ضرورة ترجمة القرآن للعبرية مجددًا. لقد بحث أوري روبين في تاريخ نص القرآن وحياة محمد ويعتبر من أفضل الباحثين في هذا المجال في العالم. ترجمته بسيطة جدًا منسابة وسلسة وبدون تعقيدات لغوية. النص مرفق بملاحظات جانبية مريحة للقارئ وتحتوي على إيضاحات وتفسيرات بسيطة كي يفهم القارئ المعنى بشكل صحيح".

ويتابع البروفيسور سوميخ قائلاً: "روبين يؤمن بأن ما نعرفه عن النبي محمد هو فرضي وهناك من يعتقدون غير ذلك. على أية حال لا يوجد دمج أو صهر لوجهة نظره في النص. إنها ترجمة مع تفسير. لقد انكب روبين على عملية الترجمة طيلة 5 سنوات قام خلالها بانتقاء التفاسير التي كتبت حول نص القرآن طيلة الـ1500 سنة الأخيرة وبحثها بعمق

Political texting in the Gulf (Washington Post)

A very interesting article I red in www.washingtonpost.com
It has reference to Kuwait, Bahrain & Saudi Arabia

In the Gulf, Dissidence Goes Digital
Text Messaging Is New Tool Of Political Underground

By Steve Coll
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 29, 2005; Page A01

KUWAIT CITY -- Rola Dashti's cell phone buzzed on the heady evening of March 7, hours after she had helped lead the largest demonstration for women's voting rights in Kuwait's history, a clamorous protest that ended when hundreds of activists were expelled from parliament for shouting from the gallery.

Rola Dashti campaigning for women's political rights in Kuwait (Photo by: AFP)

She pressed her phone's text message button and read an anonymous insult circulating on hundreds of Kuwaiti phones, digital graffiti that attacked her family's Persian ancestry and disparaged her Lebanese-born mother. "Here's what voters will gain if they vote for Rola Dashti," the text message read, as she recalled it. "They will learn the Iranian accent. They will learn a Lebanese accent. And they will learn how to work with the American Embassy to get money."

In this roiling political spring of protest and debate about democracy in repressive Arab countries, cell phone text messaging has become a powerful underground channel of free and often impolite speech, especially in the oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchies, where mobile phones are common but candid public talk about politics is not.

Demonstrators use text messaging to mobilize followers, dodge authorities and swarm quickly to protest sites. Candidates organizing for the region's limited elections use text services to call supporters to the polls or slyly circulate candidate slates in countries that supposedly ban political groupings. And through it all, anonymous activists blast their adversaries with thousands of jokes, insults and political limericks.

"It means I'm making them nervous," Dashti said of the lambasting she received. "I'm on their list," she said, referring to Kuwait's conservative Islamic activists, "and I'd better get used to it so I'm not shocked when it happens during the election." Dashti hopes to run for office if the long campaign for women's suffrage in Kuwait succeeds, as many participants expect it will when the elected National Assembly formally considers the issue, perhaps as soon as April.

At about 40 cents per missive, text messaging can be an expensive way to mobilize the masses, but the Gulf countries are lightly populated and afloat on record oil revenue. With political debate at a fever pitch this year, many of the region's well-heeled activists find it hard to resist the chance to compose their own uncensored statements and deliver their political wisdom to targeted audiences.

"My bill is going sky high," said Abduljalil Singace, foreign affairs director of Bahrain's Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, the island emirate's largest opposition grouping, a Shiite Muslim movement that is noisily boycotting the country's three-year-old, limited parliament.

Singace was fired as an associate professor and department chair at Bahrain University in mid-March after he traveled twice to Washington to lobby against his country's royal government, a close U.S. ally. He said Bahrain's security services also told him to stop sending dissident text messages. The Bahrain government says Singace was discharged for neglecting his duties at the university.

"They warned me against text messaging on demonstrations," Singace said. Before the warning, he said, "I was not sure they were reading my text messages. Now I'm telling everyone."

Still, he remains proud of some of his compositions. When American management consultants issued a report recently about how Bahrain's government could accelerate reform of its free-trading economy, Singace whipped off a reply and paid a commercial service to distribute his message throughout the island.

"Economic reform without political reform is like a bird with only one wing," he wrote. "How can it fly?"

Text messaging is only the latest in a wave of border-hopping communication technologies to rewire patterns of Arab dissent during the past 15 years. Saudi exiles and Islamic activists waged an underground war of faxed pamphlets during the early and mid-1990s. Satellite television channels transformed the images and ideas available to Arab viewers during the same period. More recently, CDs, DVDs and the World Wide Web have dominated underground political publishing in the Gulf.

As each new technology has spread, the region's authoritarian governments have tried to fight back. They have sent censors to license fax machines and block dissident Web sites, and they have pushed government-friendly investors to buy and manage satellite channels. But the Gulf's monarchies have not yet figured out whether or how to control text message channels.

If they do, they will sorely disappoint the region's profit-engorged cell phone companies, whose stock prices have soared as phone and messaging use has exploded. About 55 percent of Kuwaitis and a third of Saudis now own cell phones, according to mobile service providers, and growth rates show no sign of slacking.

The Gulf's huge youth population stands at the center of the boom. As young people come of age in societies that discourage unsupervised contact with the opposite sex, text messaging offers a way to duck parents and defy gender segregation. In one of Riyadh's gleaming shopping malls on a recent Thursday night, veiled teenage girls in black-robed flocks giggled as they messaged boys across the food court. Teenagers send messages to flirt, plan social events and even set up clandestine dates, Saudi parents and teenagers said.

Less innocent slander and pornography also flow through text channels. When a Saudi mobile phone provider announced new photo and video messaging services this month, it issued an unusual press release to encourage socially responsible use of mobile phones and to argue that innovative technology should not be blamed because a few people abuse it.

In Gulf politics, too, text messaging "allows people to send messages that they would not say in public," said Fawzi A. Guleid, program officer with the National Democratic Institute in Bahrain. "It is alarming to me the messages that come."

Activists have learned how to blast thousands of attack messages while hiding their own identities. "People who use those messages are denouncing, insulting opposition figures, members of parliament and the government," Guleid said, suggesting that the new technology encourages unrestrained personal invective as new democratic cultures are formed.

Many of the insults and comments would sound tame to an American politician.

The technology also helps democratic organizers who are often badly overmatched by the Gulf's authoritarian governments. In a region where formal political parties are banned but loose political societies are often tolerated, text messaging allows organizers to build unofficial membership lists, spread news about detained activists, encourage voter turnout, schedule meetings and rallies, and develop new issue campaigns -- all while avoiding government-censored newspapers, television stations and Web sites.

The Gulf's network of Muslim Brotherhood chapters has been especially aggressive in adopting such tactics, several of its leaders and campaign managers said in interviews. The Brotherhood is a global network of conservative Islamic political activists, often drawn from elite professions, who seek to establish religious governments and societies, usually by peaceful means. Its members control student and professional unions across the region and have won seats in several of the Gulf's limited parliaments.

Before text messaging went commercial, black marketers sold CDs containing lists of cell phone numbers smuggled out of government ministries or phone companies, said Mohammed Dallal, a lawyer and Brotherhood campaign manager in Kuwait City. Now "the mobile companies are giving the services," he said. "You give them the message, they'll send it to 40,000 people" for a fee.

Before this year's municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, the first in the kingdom in decades, Dallal spoke to prospective candidates and campaign managers in three Saudi cities. "I try to convince them to use the technology," he said.

In Bahrain, Shiite opposition organizers who frequently stage unauthorized or illegal demonstrations said they used services originally meant for commercial advertisements to keep protests on track even as the government tries to shut them down.

Kuwaiti women organizing protests for voting rights said they had been more effective during their 2005 campaign than during their last serious effort five years ago because text messaging had allowed them to call younger protesters out of schools and into the streets.

For all of these appealing practical benefits, text messaging also appears to be popular because it has captured Arab pop literary imaginations. In Gulf societies, where rhetorical speech is celebrated and poetry is prominent, the short, quipping format of a text message offers a new twist on tradition. Activists deliberate over their compositions and memorize their favorite zingers, passing them from phone to phone.

For Dashti, the women's suffrage activist insulted for being of less than pure Kuwaiti ancestry, the sting was salved by the message her own group blasted out that same night of the historic demonstration about the speaker of the Kuwaiti parliament, Jassem Kharafi, who had shut down their rally. The activists accused him of being more interested in making money from business contracts than in helping Kuwait advance democratic reforms.

"If you want Kharafi to vote for women's political rights," an anonymous member of the suffrage movement wrote, "just issue the right as a tender contract."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Bin Laden Toast !!

I think it's highly mentally poisonous

صالون اسلامي

الفحيحيل

Geo-Greening by Example (Friedman)

March 27, 2005

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Geo-Greening by Example

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

How will future historians explain it? How will they possibly explain why President George W. Bush decided to ignore the energy crisis staring us in the face and chose instead to spend all his electoral capital on a futile effort to undo the New Deal, by partially privatizing Social Security? We are, quite simply, witnessing one of the greatest examples of misplaced priorities in the history of the U.S. presidency.

"Ah, Friedman, but you overstate the case." No, I understate it. Look at the opportunities our country is missing - and the risks we are assuming - by having a president and vice president who refuse to lift a finger to put together a "geo-green" strategy that would marry geopolitics, energy policy and environmentalism.

By doing nothing to lower U.S. oil consumption, we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism and strengthening the worst governments in the world. That is, we are financing the U.S. military with our tax dollars and we are financing the jihadists - and the Saudi, Sudanese and Iranian mosques and charities that support them - through our gasoline purchases. The oil boom is also entrenching the autocrats in Russia and Venezuela, which is becoming Castro's Cuba with oil. By doing nothing to reduce U.S. oil consumption we are also setting up a global competition with China for energy resources, including right on our doorstep in Canada and Venezuela. Don't kid yourself: China's foreign policy today is very simple - holding on to Taiwan and looking for oil.

Finally, by doing nothing to reduce U.S. oil consumption we are only hastening the climate change crisis, and the Bush officials who scoff at the science around this should hang their heads in shame. And it is only going to get worse the longer we do nothing. Wired magazine did an excellent piece in its April issue about hybrid cars, which get 40 to 50 miles to the gallon with very low emissions. One paragraph jumped out at me: "Right now, there are about 800 million cars in active use. By 2050, as cars become ubiquitous in China and India, it'll be 3.25 billion. That increase represents ... an almost unimaginable threat to our environment. Quadruple the cars means quadruple the carbon dioxide emissions - unless cleaner, less gas-hungry vehicles become the norm."

All the elements of what I like to call a geo-green strategy are known:

We need a gasoline tax that would keep pump prices fixed at $4 a gallon, even if crude oil prices go down. At $4 a gallon (premium gasoline averages about $6 a gallon in Europe), we could change the car-buying habits of a large segment of the U.S. public, which would make it profitable for the car companies to convert more of their fleets to hybrid or ethanol engines, which over time could sharply reduce our oil consumption.

We need to start building nuclear power plants again. The new nuclear technology is safer and cleaner than ever. "The risks of climate change by continuing to rely on hydrocarbons are much greater than the risks of nuclear power," said Peter Schwartz, chairman of Global Business Network, a leading energy and strategy consulting firm. "Climate change is real and it poses a civilizational threat that [could] transform the carrying capacity of the entire planet."

And we need some kind of carbon tax that would move more industries from coal to wind, hydro and solar power, or other, cleaner fuels. The revenue from these taxes would go to pay down the deficit and the reduction in oil imports would help to strengthen the dollar and defuse competition for energy with China.

It's smart geopolitics. It's smart fiscal policy. It is smart climate policy. Most of all - it's smart politics! Even evangelicals are speaking out about our need to protect God's green earth. "The Republican Party is much greener than George Bush or Dick Cheney," remarked Mr. Schwartz. "There is now a near convergence of support on the environmental issue. Look at how popular [Arnold] Schwarzenegger, a green Republican, is becoming because of what he has done on the environment in California."

Imagine if George Bush declared that he was getting rid of his limousine for an armor-plated Ford Escape hybrid, adopting a geo-green strategy and building an alliance of neocons, evangelicals and greens to sustain it. His popularity at home - and abroad - would soar. The country is dying to be led on this. Instead, he prefers to squander his personal energy trying to take apart the New Deal and throwing red meat to right-to-life fanatics. What a waste of a presidency. How will future historians explain it?

Why Ajax Fans are so Jewish ?! (NYT)

March 28, 2005

AMSTERDAM JOURNAL

A Dutch Soccer Riddle: Jewish Regalia without Jews

By CRAIG S. SMITH

AMSTERDAM - Just minutes before a high-stakes soccer game not long ago between this city's home team, Ajax, and their rivals from the southern city of Eindhoven, a chant built to a roar in the hall packed with supporters where they were serving plastic pint cups of Dutch beer.

"Jews, Jews, Jews!" thousands of voices cried.

Outside, souvenir stalls sold Israeli flags or flags with the Ajax logo, the head of the fabled Greek warrior, emblazoned inside the Star of David. Fans arrived with hats, jackets and scarves embroidered with Hebrew writing. Until recently, the team's official Web site even featured the ringing tones of Hava Nagila and other Jewish songs that could be downloaded into fans' mobile phones.

Few, if any, of these people are Jewish.

"About thirty years ago, the other teams' supporters started calling us Jews because there was a history of Jews in Ajax," explained Fred Harris, a stocky man with brush-cut hair and a thick gold chain around his neck, "so we took it up as a point of pride and now it has become our identity."

For years, the team's management supported that unique identity. But over time what seemed to many people like a harmless - if peculiar - custom has taken on a more sinister tone. Fans of Ajax's biggest rivals began giving the Nazis' signature straight-arm salute or chanting "Hamas, Hamas!" to provoke Ajax supporters. Ajax games have been marred by shouts of "Jews to the gas!" or simply hissing to simulate the sound of gas escaping.

The most disturbing displays have come during games against teams from The Hague or Amsterdam's greatest rival, Rotterdam. But even Eindhoven fans get into the act: not long after the game started, a chant arose from the corner section of the city's stadium reserved for fans of the opposing team.

"Everyone who's not jumping is a Jew!" the crowd cried over and over again as thousands of people in the section jumped up and down.

Ajax games have become so charged with such anti-Semitic displays that many of the team's Jewish fans now avoid the games altogether. The offensive behavior is not one-sided: during a game against a German team late last year, a group of Ajax supporters displayed a banner that read "Jews take revenge for '40-'45," a reference to the Holocaust.

"We were probably too tolerant," said Uri Coronel, a Jew who was a member of Ajax's board in the 1990's, speaking about the management's past attitude.

Since then, the atmosphere at the games has become "unbearable," he said, adding that the fans' adoption of a Jewish identity is widely misunderstood as something positive.

"A lot of Jews all over the world believe that Ajax fans are proud to call themselves Jews, but it's a kind of hooliganism," he said.

There is no clear reason why Ajax, founded in 1900, became known as a Jewish club. Amsterdam has always had the largest Jewish population in the Netherlands and the club had two Jewish presidents in the 1960's and 1970's. It has had Jewish players at various times. The club, which owns 73 percent of the listed company that owns the team, also has some Jews among its 400 members, but no greater a percentage than their representation in the city's general population. There are no Jews on the club's current board.

"The club has no real Jewish origins," said John C. Jaakke, the club's dapper president, speaking before the Eindhoven game.

Nonetheless, the club became identified in the public mind with Jews in the 1950's, and by the 1970's, opposing fans began to call Ajax supporters Jews. The supporters adopted the identity in a spirit of defiance.

Mr. Jaakke said the trend had bothered the club's management for the past 10 years, and many Jewish supporters have complained that it makes them uncomfortable. Finally, last year, during a period of national debate about the language being used in soccer stadiums, the board decided to take the opportunity to address the issue. One of the main catalysts for that debate was not anti-Semitic chants, but chants calling the well-known girlfriend of an Ajax player a prostitute.

Mr. Jaakke called a meeting with representatives of the club's two main supporters' associations last year to communicate the management's concerns. Mr. Coronel, the son of Holocaust survivors, spoke to them about how hurtful the language was to Jews. Finally, in his New Year's speech, Mr. Jaakke expressed the management's desire that fans drop their pretended Jewish identity.

"Not only Jews are bothered by this," said Mr. Jaakke, "I'm not Jewish and I hate it, too."

The club has asked an independent committee, headed by the Dutch foreign minister, to discuss the issue and try to come up with a strategy for ending the practice. Mr. Jaakke said there had been some suggestion that fans substitute the word "Goden," or gods, for "Joden," or Jews, and call themselves "sons of gods," on the logic that Ajax was a sort of god.

Mr. Jaakke conceded that forcing the fans to change their behavior was a daunting task. "It's difficult for the supporters because it has become part of their identity," he said. "Many people are walking around with Jewish stars tattooed on their bodies and they're not Jewish at all."

Standing in a section behind the goal reserved for hard-core Ajax fans, the leader of the more fanatical of the teams' two supporter associations said he understood that it hurt Jews who lost family members during the war, but complained that it was the fault of other teams' fans.

"We don't say anything that hurts anyone," said the tall, sharp-featured man who would give only his first name, Henk. "Even if we stopped, they'd still call us Jews."

A cheer of "Let's go, Jews, let's go!" started up among the fans around him.

"It'll never change," he said. "It's been our identity for almost 30 years - you can't erase it." He tugged down the neck of his shirt to reveal a large light-blue star of David tattooed on his chest with the word AJAX emblazoned above it in black gothic letters.

Laptops to live longer (BBC)

Long life promised for laptop PCs

Scientists are working on ways to ensure laptops can stay powered for an entire working day.

Building batteries from new chemical mixes could boost power significantly, say industry experts.

The changes include everything from the way chips for laptops are made, to tricks that reduce the power consumption of displays.

Ever since laptops appeared the amount of time they last between recharges has been a frustration for users.

Short change

A survey carried out in 2000 by Forrester Research found that the shortness of battery life was the most complained about feature of laptops.

"The focus back then was more on performance and features," said Mike Trainor, chief mobile technology evangelist for chip giant Intel.

If we can get close to eight hours that's a place that people see as extraordinarily valuable Mike Trainor, Intel

"For most of the 90s battery life was stuck on two to 2.5 hours."

But now, he said, laptops can last much longer.

It was not just a case of improving battery life by squeezing more out of the lithium ion power packs, he explained.

Other changes are needed to get to the holy grail of a laptop running for about eight hours before needing a recharge.

"Lithium ion is never going to get there by itself," he said. "The industry has done a great job of wringing all possible energy storage out of that technology that they can."

Some new battery chemistries promise to cram more power into the same space, said Mr Trainor, though work still needed to be done to get them successfully from the lab to manufacturing.

He was sceptical that fuel cells would develop quick enough to take over from solid batteries even though they have the potential to produce several times more energy than lithium ion power packs.

"In fuel cells you need to have pumps and separators and evaporation chambers," he said.

"It's a mini energy plant that needs to be shrunk and shrunk and shrunk."

Parts and labour

Intel has been working with component makers to test energy consumption on all the parts inside a laptop and find ways to make them less power hungry.

This work has led to the creation of the Mobile PC Extended Battery Life (EBL) Working Group that shares information about building notebooks that are more parsimonious with power.

Some of the improvements in power use come simply because components on chips are shrinking, said Mr Trainor.

Intel has also changed the way it creates transistors on silicon to reduce the power they need.

On a larger scale, said Mr Trainor, improvements in the way that voltage regulators are made can reduce the amount of power lost as heat and make a notebook more energy efficient.

Also, said Mr Trainor, research is being done on ways to cut energy consumption on displays - currently the biggest power guzzler on a laptop.

Many laptop makers have committed to creating 14 and 15 inch screens that draw only three watts of power. This is far below the power consumption levels of screens in current notebooks.

"If we can get close to eight hours that's a place that people see as extraordinarily valuable that's what the industry has to deliver," Mr Trainor said.

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See also: Mobile PC EBL WG Home Page

سوبر مسلم ... انطلق

القبس، الصفحة الاولى
28 March 2005