Ark Hotel – World’s New Most Unique Hotel

The Ark project was designed by Russian firm Remistudio with the assistance of the International Union of Architects’ program Architecture for Disasters Relief. The dome-shaped hotel is constructed with wooden arches, steel cables and a “self-cleaning” plastic layer instead of glass. The slinky-like Ark hotel can be adapted to suit both land and water. It is built to stay afloat in the event of floods or rising seas. The 14,000 square metre shell-like construction of arches and cables distributes the weight evenly, meaning it can withstand earthquakes. Daylight is filtered through to internal rooms due to the hotel’s see-through structure, reducing the need for lighting. 09 More images after the break...

Designed as: “an integrated energy system with an uninterruptible power supply using alternative energy sources”, the hotel uses solar panels and a rainwater collection system to provide inhabitants with power and water. It would be built around a central pillar connecting to roof-top wind generators and heat pumps, as well as to energy storage and thermal conversion units below.There will also be a “tornado” energy generating spiral at the top of the pillar.

Via — Link

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Fri-25-May-2012 Banking & Financial News

 

View Previous Issues/ Printer friendly	Date : 25/05/2012
Advisior : Mr. Anil Sikri
Deferred Payment Protocols dated April 30, 1981 and December 23, 1985 between Government of India and erstwhile USSR the Rupee value of the Special Currency Basket was indicated as Rs. 73.305676 effective from April 26, 2012. AD Category-I banks are advised that a further revision has taken place on May 4, 2012 and accordingly, the Rupee value of the Special Currency Basket has been fixed at Rs.75.594562 with effect from May 9, 2012. AD Category-I banks may bring the contents of this Circular to the notice of their constituents concerned. The Directions contained in this circular have been issued under sections 10(4) and 11(1) of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), 1999 (42 of 1999) and are without prejudice to permissions / approvals, if any, required under any other law.   Reserve Bank of India revises banks' commission for govt biz The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has revised the agency commission it pays to banks for running government businesses with effect from July 1, 2012. The central bank has sharply cut the commission rate for receipt transactions conducted via electronic mode to Rs 12 from Rs 45 per transaction, while it has hiked the rate of receipts through physical mode to Rs 50 from Rs 45, the RBI said in a notification. Further, the RBI has revised the rate for pension payments to Rs 65 per transaction from Rs 60 earlier. However, the central bank has lowered the payment rate for payments other than pension to 5.5 paise per Rs 100 turnover from 9 paise earlier, it said. The central bank undertakes the government's general banking businesses via its offices, branches of state-run banks and few private sector banks like ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank. “In a dynamic banking scenario, several factors/ developments influence the cost / mechanism of agency business arrangement. Taking all these factors into consideration, RBI had held detailed consultations with major public and private sector agency banks in the recent months,” the notification said. India's Federal Bank inks pact with UAE's National Bank of Abu Dhabi for mobile money transfer Indian private sector lender Federal Bank Ltd has partnered with UAE's National Bank of Abu Dhabi to offer real-time international account-to-account money transfer services through mobiles from across the globe to any bank in India. Under the agreement, Federal Bank will use the arrow mobile service of National Bank of Abu Dhabi, powered by mobile payment provider Luup for the purpose, the foreign lender said in a statement. This will help customers reduce the time taken to transfer money to just seconds against the 2-3 days with standard mobile banking applications, thereby giving users security, convenience and control, it said. "Through this new tie-up with NBAD, one of the largest banks in UAE offering state of the art remittance services, families of Indian expatriates can receive money real time within seconds through Federal Bank,” Federal Bank Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Shyam Srinivasan said. Notably, Federal Bank has remittance arrangement with 66 exchange houses or banks from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the highest for any bank in India. Reserve Bank of India to ease norms to encourage banking in hilly areas of Uttarakhand The Reserve Bank of India will relax policy norms to encourage opening of more bank branches in the remote and hilly regions of Uttarakhand state, the central bank's Governor D Subbarao said. "The Reserve Bank and the government, as the case may be, will relax the policy guidelines to see that there is greater penetration of banking system in the hilly areas," Subbarao said at a conference after the central bank's board meeting with the Uttarakhand government. Major state-run banks like State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and Bank of Baroda have already agreed to increase the credit-deposit (CD) ratio in five districts of Uttarakhand, he added. "In order to raise CD ratio, not only the banks will work, but the state government will also generate proposals for SME (small and medium enterprises) sector loans," Subbarao said. The RBI has told banks and the state government to prepare an operational plan for taking banks to hilly areas and uncovered districts, he said. SBI RFP for Maharashtra off to a poor start Over the last two weeks, ET has been reporting on a new plan by the Finance Ministry'sDepartment of Financial Services (DFS) to divide India into 20 clusters, and to appoint a common Banking Correspondent company for all public sector banks operating in that geography. Such a move, feels the DFS, will vastly improve the economics of the Bank-BC model. The suggestion, however, as ET has reported earlier, has banks worried that any BC company which wins a tender might develop monopolistic tendencies. A new development took place on this front yesterday. For yesterday was the day when the first auction to appoint a BC, as per this new arrangement, took place. This was conducted by theState Bank of India, for Maharashtra. Companies had to bid for cash management costs. And they had to, upon winning the tender, establish about 4,000 banking correspondents, complete with PoS machines and all. Any company which won would need to have the cap ex and op ex required for setting up such a network and managing it. However, the bids had attracted a motley set of companies. Including several which bid were very small in size. RBI, finance ministry differ over rural bank branches The Reserve Bank of India, RBI, and the finance ministry seem to have differences on the way banks should go about ensuring financial inclusion. While both the regulator and the ministry are passionate about providing banking services at low cost to the disadvantaged, a difference of opinion between the two has confused bankers. Recently, the finance ministry told banks that every business correspondent outlet should be converted into an ultra-small branch. So far, business correspondents - agents appointed by banks to provide banking services to the financially excluded in rural India - reached out to individuals on their own and operated from home. On the other hand, the RBI, in a recent circular, told banks to set up an ultra-small branch for 8-10 business correspondents operating in an area.   India's forex reserves dip $1.8 bln from week ago to $290 bln as on May 18: RBI India's foreign exchange reserves fell by $1.8 billion to $290 billion as on May 18 from the previous week, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said Friday. The foreign currency assets decreased by $1.74 billion from the week ago to $256.11 billion as on May 18, the central bank said in its weekly statistical supplement. The value of gold reserves remained unchanged at $26.61 billion, while Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) reserves fell by $35.5 million to $4.39 billion, the RBI said. India’s reserve position in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) declined by $23.6 million to $2.86 billion as on May 18.    SKS Microfinance plans to reintroduce endowment life insurance policy India's only listed micro lender SKS Microfinance Ltd plans to reintroduce its endowment life insurance policy to its customers, after having exited this area of business in 2009, the Business Standard reported Friday citing an unidentified senior company executive. “We (SKS Microfinance) started this business in July 2008. There was huge demand and we facilitated sale of around 2.8 million insurance policies in 14 months. But our internal systems were not capable of handling these volumes and we discontinued the business,” the paper quoted the official as saying. Endowment policy is a life insurance plan where the policyholder is guaranteed some amount of money at the end of the policy term or on death. The micro lender is presently “strengthening” its “back-end processes” and will relaunch the endowment life insurance business after it has upgraded its “systems”, the executive said. However, the executive did not give any time-frame for the relaunch of the policy, but said it will be “sooner than later”. SKS Microfinance is expected to enable sale of endowment insurance policies of India's largest life insurer Life Insurance Corp of India (LIC), private sector life insurers SBI Life Insurance and ICICI Prudential Life. Recently, the Business Line citing Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) Chairman J Hari Narayan reported that the regulator has found “massive problems” in the insurance operations of SKS Microfinance. The irregularities include illegally accepting the cheques of death claims from its insurers on its name, and collecting higher commissions than that allowed by IRDA while selling insurance products. The finding comes as another blow to SKS Microfinance, which is struggling to emerge from the financial turmoil that the entire microfinance industry slipped into following the passage of a strict state law in October 2010. SKS Microfinance is associated with around 10 insurance companies in both life and non-life segments. The company earns a large portion of its other income from the distribution of its insurance policies. It earned Rs 3.66 billion in fiscal year 2011-12 from the insurance business. The micro lender posted a net loss of Rs 3.3 billion during the fourth quarter (Jan-Mar) of the last financial year 2011-12 as compared to a net loss of Rs 697.6 million in the same quarter a year ago, as provisions for bad loans more than doubled RBI notifies Housing Development Finance Corp's move to raise FII limit to 100% from 74% The Reserve Bank of India has notified that India's major mortgage lender Housing Development Finance Corp Ltd's (HDFC's) board has approved resolutions to raise the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) limit to 100% from 74% earlier. The hike in the FIIs' investment limit is for the purchase of HDFC's equity shares and convertible debentures under the portfolio investment scheme, the RBI said in a statement earlier Thursday. HDFC's decision is a precursor to the company's forthcoming conversion of its warrants into equity by foreign investors that will take the total FII holding in the mortgage lender beyond 74%, HDFC had said in a regulatory filing earlier. The company's warrants are due for conversion by August 24, 2012. As of now, the FII holding in HDFC is at 66.7%, while the promoter holding in the company is zero. Notably, global indices owner and manager Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) reversed HDFC's weightage in its MSCI India index after the company's move to up the FII limit. Earlier this month, MSCI had reduced weightage of HDFC. Canada’s Intact, HDI-Gerling lead Reliance General stake race Anada’s largest home, auto and business insurer, and Germany’s third largest insurance group, HDI-Gerling International Holding AG, have emerged as top contenders to buy a 26% stake in Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Capital Ltd’s non-life insurance arm, Reliance General Insurance Co. Ltd, according to two people with direct knowledge of the development. The two, neither of whom wanted to be identified, also said the deal value could be around Rs.1,500 crore, which would make it among the largest foreign investments in the insurance business in India. One of the two said it was only a matter of time before “a term sheet” is signed by “Reliance Capital, Reliance General and the foreign partner”. To be sure, deals of this nature are never final till they are signed and, even then, are subject to approvals from concerned regulators. A Reliance Capital spokesperson termed the news of the potential deal speculative and said the company wouldn’t comment. Gilles Gratton, vice-president (corporate communications) at Intact Financial Corp. (which owns Intact Insurance) also declined to comment. Replying to an email, Martin Schrader, press officer at Talanx AG that controls HDI-Gerling, said, “It is our policy not to comment on market rumours and speculations.” Bank Policy Rate: Bank Rate 09.00% Repo Rate 08.00% Reverse Repo Rate 07.00% CRR 04.75% SLR 24.00% LATEST LENDING RATES (BASE RATES) Public Sector Banks : Allahabad Bank  10.50% Andhra Bank 10.50% Bank of Baroda 10.50% Bank of India 10.50% Bank of Maharashtra 10.70% Canara Bank 10.50% Central Bank of India 10.50% Corporation Bank 10.50% Dena Bank 10.70% Federal Bank 10.45% IDBI Bank 10.50% Indian Bank 10.50% Indian Overseas Bank 10.50% Oriental Bank of Commerce 10.50% Punjab National Bank 10.50% State Bank of Hyderabad 10.50% State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur 10.50% State Bank of India 10.00% State Bank of Mysore 10.25% State Bank of Travancore 10.50% Syndicate Bank 10.50% Uco Bank 10.50% Union Bank 10.50% United Bank 10.45% Vijaya Bank 10.45% Private Sector Banks : Axis Bank 10.00% Bank of Rajasthan 08.00% DCB 09.50% Dhanlaxmi Bank 11.25% HDFC 10.00% HSBC 09.75% ICICI Bank 09.75% ING Vysya Bank 10.45% Karnataka Bank  11.00% Kotak Mahindra Bank 09.75% Yes Bank 10.25% SAHYOG TOURS & TRAVELS Make your trip memorablele * Honeymoon Packages * Domestic LTC Packages * International LTC Packages * Official Travels Sahyog Tours & Travels S.C.O. 46, Sector-13 Hisar, Haryana(125005) Contact us : 01662-250251 Global Currency Update: Currency Rate Change USD 55.410 -0.25% EUR 69.384 -0.35% GBP 86.795 -0.31% PENSION *  *  Pension Ledger Maintainin * Arrear Calulation of all types revision in pension for Defence/State Govt./Railway/Center Govt. etc. * All solutions for any problem relates to pensioners * Txt file preparation for Eps pension / LIC Comm./ Salary/ Employment Allowance etc. Sahyog S.C.O. 46, Sector-13 Hisar, Haryana(125005) Contact us :- 09896856853 Stock Market : Index Change Sensex 16217.82 -4.48 Nifty 4920.40 -1.00 Term of the Day : Dividend yield Annual rate of return on common stock (ordinary shares) or preferred stock (preference shares), computed by dividing the annual dividend by the shares' market price. Dividend yield reflects the return on the current'opportunity value,' and not on the historical cost of the investment. As the price of the shares declines, the dividend yield goes up indicating that the shares are priced cheaply and are a 'good buy.' Such shares usually attract risk averse investors. Quote of the Day : Things would have been simple for human, if we were born with brain only. The addition of heart bringa all the complexities in life. Joke of the Day : A general noticed one of his soldiers behaving oddly. The soldier would pick up any piece of paper he found, frown and say: “That's not it” and put it down again. This went on for some time, until the general arranged to have the soldier psychologically tested. The psychologist concluded that the soldier was deranged, and wrote out his discharge from the army. The soldier picked it up, smiled and said: “That's it.”

Mario Vs Pacman

THE BHAGAWAD GITA

Web.config And Forms Authentication

Authentication is necessary to almost every application. ASP.NET brings different Authentication Providers to make the authentication process easier. Among them, Forms-based authentication is the most often used one. With Forms Authentication, we create a login form with the logic to validate a user and .NET will create a Cookie on successful validation which the application will check for on each client request.

Forms Authentication is configured in web.config,

' web.config file   

<configuration>

    <system.web>    

        <authentication mode="Forms"/>

    </system.web>

</configuration>

If we want to deny access to anonymous users, configure the Authorization section in the following manner,

' web.config file    

<configuration>

    <system.web>

        <authentication mode="Forms"/>

        <authorization>

            <deny users="?" />

        </authorization>

    </system.web>

</configuration>

With Forms Authentication, we can configure the name of the cookie to use, the protection type, the URL to use for the loginUrl, the length of time(minutes) the cookie is in effect, and the path to use for the issued cookie. If no cookie name is specified, the default is .ASPXAUTH. The loginUrl is the location of the Login form and to which any unauthenticated requests for protected resources will be automatically redirected.

' web.config file

<configuration>

    <system.web>    

        <authentication mode= "Forms">

            <forms name="MyLoginCookie" loginUrl="MyLoginForm.aspx" protection="[All/None/Encryption/Validation]" timeout="30" path="/” />

        </authentication>

    </system.web>

</configuration>

 ASP.NET also allows us to define login credentials in the Web.config file and Authenticate against them using the Authenticate() method of the FormsAuthentication provider. Of course, we only consider this way if there is a relatively small number of users; or else we’d better authenticate a user against a database of user credentials.

' web.config file   

<configuration>

    <system.web>

    <authentication mode="Forms">

    <forms loginUrl="MyLoginPage.aspx">

        <credentials passwordFormat="[Clear/SHA1/MD5]">

            <user name="mary" password="msdyaredd" />

        </credentials>

    </forms>

    </authentication>

    </system.web>

</configuration>

How to Install Windows Server 2008 Step by Step

Installing Windows Server 2008 is pretty straightforward and is very much like installing Windows Vista, but I thought I'd list the necessary steps here for additional information. For those of you who have never installed Vista before, the entire installation process is different than it used to be in previous Microsoft operating systems, and notably much easier to perform.

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Using Vista's installation routine is a major benefit, especially for a server OS. Administrators can partition the system's hard drives during setup. More importantly, they can install the necessary AHCI or RAID storage drivers from a CD/DVD or even a USB thumb drive. Thus, error-prone floppies can finally be sent to the garbage bin.

Also see » Intro to the Windows Azure Platform

Note: Windows Server 2008 can also be installed as a Server Core installation, which is a cut-down version of Windows without the Windows Explorer GUI. Because you don’t have the Windows Explorer to provide the GUI interface that you are used to, you configure everything through the command line interface or remotely using a Microsoft Management Console (MMC). The Server Core can be used for dedicated machines with basic roles such as Domain controller/Active Directory Domain Services, DNS Server, DHCP Server, file server, print server, Windows Media Server, IIS 7 web server and Windows Server Virtualization virtual server. For Server Core installations please see my "Installing Windows Server 2008 Core" article.

To use Windows Server 2008 you need to meet the following hardware requirements:

Component	Requirement
Processor	• Minimum: 1GHz (x86 processor) or 1.4GHz (x64 processor) • Recommended: 2GHz or faster Note: An Intel Itanium 2 processor is required for Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems
Memory	• Minimum: 512MB RAM • Recommended: 2GB RAM or greater • Maximum (32-bit systems): 4GB (Standard) or 64GB (Enterprise and Datacenter) • Maximum (64-bit systems): 32GB (Standard) or 2TB (Enterprise, Datacenter and Itanium-based Systems)
Available Disk Space	• Minimum: 10GB • Recommended: 40GB or greater Note: Computers with more than 16GB of RAM will require more disk space for paging, hibernation, and dump files
Drive	DVD-ROM drive
Display and Peripherals	• Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor • Keyboard • Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device

Upgrade notes:

I will not discuss the upgrade process in this article, but for your general knowledge, the upgrade paths available for Windows Server 2008 shown in the table below:

If you are currently running:	You can upgrade to:
Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition (R2, Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2)	Full Installation of Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition Full Installation of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (R2, Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2)	Full Installation of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition (R2, Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2)	Full Installation of Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition

Follow this procedure to install Windows Server 2008:

1. Insert the appropriate Windows Server 2008 installation media into your DVD drive. If you don't have an installation DVD for Windows Server 2008, you can download one for free from Microsoft's Windows 2008 Server Trial website.

2. Reboot the computer.

3. When prompted for an installation language and other regional options, make your selection and press Next.

4. Next, press Install Now to begin the installation process.

5. Product activation is now also identical with that found in Windows Vista. Enter yourProduct ID in the next window, and if you want to automatically activate Windows the moment the installation finishes, click Next.

If you do not have the Product ID available right now, you can leave the box empty, and click Next. You will need to provide the Product ID later, after the server installation is over. Press No.

6. Because you did not provide the correct ID, the installation process cannot determine what kind of Windows Server 2008 license you own, and therefore you will be prompted to select your correct version in the next screen, assuming you are telling the truth and will provide the correct ID to prove your selection later on.

7. If you did provide the right Product ID, select the Full version of the right Windows version you're prompted, and click Next.

8. Read and accept the license terms by clicking to select the checkbox and pressing Next.

9. In the "Which type of installation do you want?" window, click the only available option –Custom (Advanced).

10. In the "Where do you want to install Windows?", if you're installing the server on a regular IDE hard disk, click to select the first disk, usually Disk 0, and click Next.

If you're installing on a hard disk that's connected to a SCSI controller, click Load Driver and insert the media provided by the controller's manufacturer.

If you're installing in a Virtual Machine environment, make sure you read the "Installing the Virtual SCSI Controller Driver for Virtual Server 2005 on Windows Server 2008"

If you must, you can also click Drive Options and manually create a partition on the destination hard disk.

11. The installation now begins, and you can go and have lunch. Copying the setup files from the DVD to the hard drive only takes about one minute. However, extracting and uncompressing the files takes a good deal longer. After 20 minutes, the operating system is installed. The exact time it takes to install server core depends upon your hardware specifications. Faster disks will perform much faster installs… Windows Server 2008 takes up approximately 10 GB of hard drive space.

The installation process will reboot your computer, so, if in step #10 you inserted a floppy disk (either real or virtual), make sure you remove it before going to lunch, as you'll find the server hanged without the ability to boot (you can bypass this by configuring the server to boot from a CD/DVD and then from the hard disk in the booting order on the server's BIOS)

12. Then the server reboots you'll be prompted with the new Windows Server 2008 type of login screen. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to log in.

13. Click on Other User.

14. The default Administrator is blank, so just type Administrator and press Enter.

15. You will be prompted to change the user's password. You have no choice but to press Ok.

16. In the password changing dialog box, leave the default password blank (duh, read step #15…), and enter a new, complex, at-least-7-characters-long new password twice. A password like "topsecret" is not valid (it's not complex), but one like "T0pSecreT!" sure is. Make sure you remember it.

17. Someone thought it would be cool to nag you once more, so now you'll be prompted to accept the fact that the password had been changed. Press Ok.

18. Finally, the desktop appears and that's it, you're logged on and can begin working. You will be greeted by an assistant for the initial server configuration, and after performing some initial configuration tasks, you will be able to start working.

Next, for the initial configuration tasks please follow my other Windows Server 2008 articles found on the Related Windows Server 2008 Articles section below.

For Official Microsoft information on Windows Server 2008, see the Windows Server 2008 homepage.