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migrant workers – who build the capital's offices and mansions, clean its streets and guard its security – have been shut down,

Tens of thousands of migrant children are left without schools

rural origin – a third of the city's 19 million population

day-to-day inju

stices

hukou (household registration), set up in 1958

control rural-to-urban migration

Peasants' role was to produce and feed the cities and support the modernisation process of their motherland.

as shown on their ID – no matter what they might choose to do. "Wo shi nongmin [I am a peasant],"

Deng Xiao Ping's gaige kaifang (economic reforms and opening up), in the late 1970s.

Agricultural production increased in the early stage of the reforms in "releasing the productive forces",

half of the 400 million rural working population have been pushed off the land, seeking a livelihood away from their villages.

As rural residents came to the cities, they immediately faced discrimination and exclusion.

They spoke their own dialects instead of "proper" Mandarin. Many faced verbal abuse as soon as they arrived.

the strict requirement for the unaffordable temporary residency permit, and the random street search by police.

The criteria for applying for a hukou remain harsh, and unreachable for most migrants, and many work for years without any status.

Without hukou,

healthcare, education and housing.

urban dwellers pay a minimal cost for medical care, many migrants have to return home for treatment.

"These children aren't treated as everyone else. They're called the mobile students, who can't go to state schools. Their parents have for years sent their children to privately run schools without proper facilities or curriculum."

hundreds such private schools were set up.

government-funded National Development and Reform Commission

admits it is an "institutional barrier"

government has shown no wish to listen to migrant workers' demands.

voice their discontent is by petitioning the local authorities

Little happens as a result.

Some suspect that migrant children's schools are being closed as a disincentive to future migration.

protests, road blockages, sit-ins and spontaneous strikes.

Hsiao-Hung Pai, Beijing

Migrants who toil in the cities still face a decades-old system of segregation and exploitation. But many are now demanding fairness

Beijing "a city of violence"

Beijing's migrant worker slums

are ruthlessly segregated from the urban dwellers, economically, socially and culturally

Suryatapa

at the age of six

Three months ago, I wandered into a salon in Kolkata with my mother and came

face-to-

face with a prejudice

my beloved aunts, and maddening when strangers suggest my dark skin is something to be “fixed.”

No one in India seems to think it unusual to try to slap some bleach, or a herbal equivalent, on my skin to reveal a whiter me.

Darkie, Blackie and Kaalia

My color defined me and it stuck.

self-conscious.

Kaalia, remember me? When I pointed out that it was insulting, I was called out for being “too sensitive.”

“We called you that with love,”

Well-meaning aunts and their neighbors worried about my marriage prospects.

Like that should justify the hurt.

Perhaps, they suggested, a little less sun exposure, or maybe a few extra layers of sandalwood paste or a homemade concoction that the neighborhood swore by?

I wouldn’t let anyone touch my face.

The aunts sighed but never really gave up.

Instead, in this country, it is everyone’s business to correct it or cover it up.

The personal is open to public opinion, whether it makes you squirm or not.

Few Indians seem to be comfortable in their dark skin.

So it is no surprise that a multi-billion rupee market in fairness products thrives in India.

whitened versions of themselves, urging you to pick up a tube or two of the latest product.

From lotions and soaps to whitening underarm deodorant; every body part it seems is could be a few shades lighter.

Urban legends abound of how turmeric and milk, with their blood cleansing properties, had turned someone’s friend’s sister into a fair maiden – so I gulped down this vile concoction, gagged and never touched it ever again.

adolescent weakness,

I too was convinced to go on a regimen of drinking milk with crushed turmeric.

As an adult I’ve become much more comfortable with the color of my skin.

Over a decade of living in North America – where tans are pursued and Halle Berry is a beauty icon – helped that.

So when I moved back to India, I was surprised and offended all over again, as I confronted people who still think porcelain skin is the epitome of beauty.

society that embraced a wider spectrum of skin tone.

Victorian ideas of beauty,

“Do you do tanning?” I was dumbstruck and could barely stammer out a surprised “no.”

In retrospect, her assumption says a lot about how Indians equate skin tone with beauty, confidence and social standing.

Suryatapa Bhattacharya is the India correspondent for “The National” newspaper.

Touch Bionics also agreed to fit the hand and train Matthew at their state of the art facilities for free, which would have otherwise cost £25,000.

Matthew said: ''It is just amazing.

even fitted with Bluetooth technology to allow Matthew to hook up to a computer wirelessly to track the strength and speed of his movements.

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Forty per cent of teens said they were exposed to such images, half of them before they were 13. This group were also more able to procure weed or prescription drugs and four times more likely to smoke up.

Parents were skeptical, according to the survey. Of a phone poll of 536 parents, a majority said they did not think social media made their child more likely to drink or use marijuana.

Hewlett-Packard

HP’s bombshell revelations

where it holds the global No. 1 spot

TouchPad

Apple (AAPL) has positioned its iPad very well for years to come against challengers in the tablet market.

Apple’s iPad was announced in January 2010

no tablet has caught up to what Apple offers.

happy with a Google (GOOG) Android Honeycomb tablet; fewer have purchased a BlackBerry (RIMM) Playbook.

third-party app support,

table the TouchPad?

For most people, the iPad is the most complete tablet available.

Apple holds the tablet crown.

phone apps,

a media store,

tens of millions were already used to.

earliest

tablet contenders appeared and they’re just now gaining certain key features: movie stores, for example, and stretch and zoom capabilities for phone apps. Consumers want a complete tablet experience, not one that’s “coming soon.”

HP’s $1.2 billion investment in webOS persuaded me that it was in the tablet race for the long haul. I defended the company’s move to sell the TouchPad at a discount and even bought one, only to find out days later that I was wrong: HP wasn’t selling the tablet at low prices to expand the user base quickly and help attract developers. HP apparently gave the TouchPad only a brief chance to gain an audience.

swiftly pulled.

ban the sale of three phones are "too similar" to the iPhone. The ban begins October 15.

Missing from the ban, however, are the Galaxy Tab tablets,

included in the original suit filed this month.

evidence that it may have doctored photos in that case, as well.

get the Tab banned in Germany,

A Dutch court found Samsung to be infringing on an Apple patent

technologies related to a “Portable Electronic Device for Photo Management.”

covers the various aspects of a photo gallery user interface

Samsung’s Galaxy S, SII, and Ace smartphones have thus been banned from sale.

use of touchscreen gestures

ban takes effect October 15

phones will be barred in Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the Netherlands.

ruling will not be enforceable in other EU member-states because Apple failed to pay the administrative costs necessary in order to make the patent valid, tech patent blog FOSS Patents reports.

Apple’s failure to keep its paperwork in order

ban could have disruptive effects on Samsung sales across Europe.

fact that a good portion of Samsung’s distribution system for the region runs through the Netherlands:

sell these devices, the company will now need to ship them into various countries directly.

Samsung is obviously not pleased with the ruling, and has vowed to take “all possible measures including legal action” to ensure there will be no disruption in sales of its devices.

That said, Samsung still has options: the injunction found that Android 2.3 infringed on the patent but Android 3.0 and above did not.

Korean electronics maker needs to do is update the banned phones and the injunction will be un-enforceable, something Judge E.F. Brinkman

Firefox 6 'Released' Two Days Early

official release for Firefox 6 is scheduled for this Tuesday

A lot of the changes coming in Firefox 6

A new permissions tool (accessed by typing "about:permissions" in the browser's address bar) will give users a chance to set site-specific permission levels for saved passwords, cookies, location-sharing, pop-ups, and images, to name a few options.

Steve Jobs announced to the world last week that “unfortunately, that day has come” for him to step down as chief executive officer of Apple,

impeccable.

14 years since Jobs regained control of his company in the summer of 1997 after a long, bitter exile

Apple shares have increased a stunning 110-fold

surpassed rival Microsoft a year ago, Apple’s $350 billion in market capitalization places it behind only ExxonMobil

most valuable company in the world.

Apple has made money so quickly and so prodigiously that it holds an outrageous $76 billion in cash and investments

graduate students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison: Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian immigrant

In his second time around at Apple, Jobs ultimately achieved what had eluded him in his early years there, from 1976 to 1985

visionary and a brilliant promoter but wasn’t respected as a businessman

Now Jobs, 56, retires,

awesome sum thought to be parked in an obscure subsidiary,

Jobs didn’t just create products that instilled lust in consumers and enriched his company.

Personal computing. The music business. Publishing. Hollywood. All have been radically transformed because of Steve Jobs.

It’s impossible to begin to understand the sources of Jobs’s success without looking to his unusual life story.

like the fictional Harry Potter, he was a misfit, raised by adoptive parents

Bill Gates as the most highly regarded business figure of our times

doctorate in political science

He was adopted at birth by Paul and Clara Jobs of San Francisco.

his constant risk taking, his rare deal-making ability

icrosoft’s Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

“dropout”

drop-in”:

leftist artsy intellectualism, even though he knew his parents couldn’t—and wouldn’t—pick up the tab.

That’s how strongly he wanted to be at an elite school and obtain its validation that he was indeed a wizard rather than a muggle. And that’s how good he was at persuasion and dealmaking—and how open to real risk.

fruitarian” diet that left him constantly hungry.

Samsung's

a date for the U.S. release

its hotly anticipated phone,

sold lavishly in foreign markets

r 5 million people worldwide

bought the flagship Android phone

85 days it has been on the market

one sold every 1.5 seconds,

Samsung

"a major product announcement"

an invitation to journalists early Friday

Galaxy S II

Aug. 29.

Galaxy S II by name,

The Galaxy is coming.

"It isn't rocket science to understand that it's the Galaxy S II announcement,"

It isn't an overstatement to say that the Samsung Galaxy S II is the strongest competition the iPhone faces.

sports a 4.3-inch, 800x480 screen, a 1.2-GHz processor, fast 4G network connectivity, and a sleek, simple design evocative of the iPhone. By contrast, the Apple iPhone 4  has a 3.5-inch, 960x640 screen, a 1-GHz processor, and a slower, 3G connection.

Bigger and faster?

Though it hasn’t gone on sale yet in the U.S.

Galaxy S II are copious

obscene.

24 days, the company sold 1 million units

The 2 million units sold in 42 days would fill two and a half soccer fields.

That's a lot of smartphones. But it's more than that: It's a lot of good smartphones,

"If the U.S. versions are anything like the international versions, these are going to be spectacular smartphones," he told FoxNews.com. Segan gave an international version of the phone an Editors' Choice award, calling it the finest Android smartphone available today.

Apple iPhone 5

he elephant in the room

he 3 million Galaxy S II phones sold in just over 50 days are as heavy as 100 elephants)

iPhone 5 is widely expected to be coming out in September, Segan noted.

And getting the right price could make all the difference for Samsung. "They don't want to be more expensive than the iPhone," Segan said.

But that 4G network connection may prove a major difference between the two. 

Unless Apple has made some sort of secret breakthrough, [the faster LTE network] might make a Verizon iPhone too thick and power-hungry for Apple's demands this year. Apple may skip it for now and wait for smaller and cooler chipsets," Segan noted.

That faster connection really pays off for anyone surfing a lot of complicated websites or viewing movies over Netflix, he said. 

But in the end, pricing, a final feature set and the design is all up to the carriers. "The mainstream price for a smartphone is $199 with contract," Segan noted. "We're all hoping for $199."

stairwells

2004 after a $20m security upgrade. The observation deck at the top of the crown was reopened on 4 July 2009.

240 people visit each day. About 3.5 million people visit the monument every year.

history

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ppression systems, elevators and bathrooms.

each of the gadgets cost HP at least £180 just to build, so selling the Touchpad for £89 would never have been considered until the firm decided to abandon it.

others hoping to loosen Apple’s stranglehold on the tablet computing market.

The main Google Android tablets, made by Samsung and Motorola, are pitched at around the same £400-ish price point as the iPad. But, put together with all the other Android tablets, it’s estimated they are outsold by Apple’s devices eight to one.

Amazon, which is rumoured to be preparing to release an Android tablet this autumn. Like Apple with the iPad, it has built and dominated a market for itself with the Kindle, its hugely successful e-reader.

Kindle’s success is its relatively low price of £111

prices.

Best Buy, the electronics retailer, cut the price of the TouchPad to $99 in an attempt to clear its stock. Best Buy was last week reported to have more than 200,000 of the tablets. The low price brought queues outside its stores and, according to one staff employee, a “stampede” from customers hoping to land a bargain.

HP's decision to discontinue its TouchPad product, Best Buy will now provide clearance pricing for all TouchPad 16GB and 32GB models regardless of previously advertised prices or promotions," Best Buy said. The company said that anyone who had bought a TouchPad after June 19 would be entitled to a refund.

Though Amazon.com has not discounted the TouchPad, the device still went to the top of Amazon’s bestselling electronics chart. The HP tablet took the top two places in the chart, ahead of Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader, which is usually a fixture at number one.

Mozilla is carefully circumventing the phrase of “waging war” against the creation of closed or “siloed” environments on the web.

competing, but not so by going directly against a rival, but by being “different”

That name would be Apple, which Mozilla’s chairman and chief lizard wrangler Mitchell Baker directly addressed in a series of sequential blog posts that outline Mozilla’s future direction. The attacks aren’t as crude and as we typically see between Mozilla and Microsoft. They are much more carefully worded, perhaps in an effort to remain polite and not to raise any unnecessary attention

“There’s no reason why “apps” can’t incorporate the characteristics that are important about the web. They don’t today because Apple didn’t build them that way. There’s no reason Apple should; Apple has a different view of the world. But we can. In fact, Mozilla is one of the very few organizations that can do this.”

Mozilla has yet to show what it plans to do and leaves us with its vision for now. Mozilla believes that its opportunity is a user’s desire to run anything he wants on any device he owns. Mozilla believes that a user wants to be in charge of his web experience, not Apple, Google or a device. Mozilla believes that a user would want to be in control of her/his identity and the information that is made available. Of course, Mozilla’s model is also based on Firefox and a web browser, which Apple could care less about at this time.

Only time will tell exactly how all of these apps will work. One thing is for sure having these types of apps will make the Vita an overall more appealing product.

The real app that we are waiting to hear confirmation about is NetFlix, with the Vita’s amazing screen it would be a great viewing experience