Google News Science & Technology

The federal government has sent a clear message on media classification: it wants a big rethink.

As a row over access to violent video games continues, the government on Tuesday made two major announcements on the appointment of a new deputy director of classification and senior classifier.

Lesley O'Brien has been appointed deputy director and Greg Scott will be the senior classifier, Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor said.

Mr O'Connor also announced five new appointments to general positions on the board, describing the changes as a process of renewal.

"From early next year, the classification board will undergo a period of renewal," Mr O'Connor said in a statement.

"Refreshing the board is a healthy thing for classification decision-making in this country."

The other major news on the classification front came from Attorney-General Robert McClelland.

Mr McClelland has ordered a year-long review of the classification system to be run by the law reform commission.

The draft terms of reference for the review suggest the classification categories themselves may be changed.

The review is set to look at a host of issues including the impact of classifications on the community and the government's desire for a strong content and distribution industry.

Mr O'Connor said that when the classification scheme began, content and the way it was delivered to consumers were relatively static.

"Today, films can be watched in a cinema, on DVD, on TV or downloaded," he said.

"Many video games include significant film segments to tell stories, and some films have interactive content."

Comments on the terms of reference will be taken until January 28, with a full report from the commission due on December 9 next year.

The announcements come amidst a long and, at times, loud debate about the introduction of an R18+ classification for video games that are banned from Australian stores but are widely available elsewhere.

This month, the nation's attorneys-general decided to draw up guidelines for the possible creation of an R18+ classification, a decision which angered many family and Christian groups.

Source http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/r18-just-one-piece-of-puzzle-20101221-193pc.html

Apple has overtaken Nokia for the first time to become the number one smartphone vendor in Australia.

The iPhone-maker now accounts for 36.5 per cent of the smartphone market, eclipsing Nokia's 30.5 per cent share, according to analyst firm IDC's Q3 Mobile Device Tracker, released today.

But Google's Android platform is growing even faster than Appe's iOS with a 21 per cent share, up from 7.1 per cent in Q2 and only 2.1 per cent in Q1.

IDC Australia telecommunications analyst Mark Novosel predicted in May that Apple would knock Nokia off its perch as the number one smartphone maker this year. Today, he said Apple would enjoy a solid run into next year but could soon be overtaken by Android.

"It's looking like next year it's going to be close between Android and Apple but I would be inclined to say that Apple will keep its lead, although we have been under pretty much every quarter with our Android forecast so anything really is possible at this stage," he said in a phone interview.

"Given the way that it is growing, this time next year Android could be number one. It really depends how next year will pan out."

The figures represent a significant fall from grace for Nokia, which is still the top mobile maker overall with a 37.6 per cent share but has struggled to compete in the high-end smartphone space. Its latest offering, the N8, has been panned by reviewers due to the lacklustre Symbian operating system.

"Nokia remained at the top of the smartphone market since 2002, when it unseated Palm to become the highest selling smartphone vendor in Australia," Novosel said.

"Nokia's dominance was seemingly unstoppable. However, three years after launching, Apple has done what once seemed impossible."

IDC's figures cover sales up until the end of September. Novosel compiled them based on primary research and interviews with vendors, carriers, retailers and distributors.

Australian smartphone shipments rose 67 per cent year-on-year and more than 60 per cent of new mobiles sold are smartphones.

Novosel said Android's solid growth could be attributed largely to high-end smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S and HTC Desire.

Other, newer, Android phones such as the HTC Desire HD were not covered by the Q3 figures but Novosel expected it to continue to drive Android's growth. He said Android was also entering the mid-range and low-end prepaid market, which would lift its numbers significantly.

"2011 will be a critical year in the Australian market, Android will continue its strong upward trend, with Apple's iOS leading the charge," Novosel said.

"Nokia must fast-track the development of its high-end Meego-powered smartphones, in order to regain market share and avoid being overtaken by Android."

Nokia Australia spokeswoman Tracy Postill said she would not comment on "third-party numbers" due to differences in methodologies and the quality of the analysis and data collection tools used. She said there were also discrepancies in how "smartphone" is defined.

Source http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/apple-pips-nokia-to-become-no1-smartphone-maker-in-australia-20101207-18nci.html

Former Prime Minister John Howard, the man who oversaw the privatisation of Telstra in the late 1990s, has claimed that the passing of legislation ensuring the company's structural separation isn't big reform.

After almost 12 months of debate, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 passed its final hurdle yesterday. The legislation will allow for the structural separation of Telstra and pave the way for the roll-out of the National Broadband Network (NBN).

When Telstra was privatised by the Howard Government in the 1990s and early 2000s, the government at the time did not opt to separate the company's retail from wholesale, meaning Telstra owned the networks providing access to itself and its competitors. Seeking equitable access to the copper network, Telstra's competitors have spent the past decade locked in regulatory battles with the telco giant.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has hailed the retail and wholesale separation as the "holy grail of micro-economic reform in the telecommunications sector" and as a move that corrects the "mistakes of the past". However, Howard disagrees with that assessment.

"It's been trumpeted as a huge reform. It's nothing of the kind. I mean, that's what they said about the mining tax. [Treasurer] Wayne Swan, with his 40 per cent super tax on the mining industry, said this was the greatest tax reform for decades. I mean, the thing was a disaster," Howard told Lateline last night.

The former Prime Minister disagreed with the assessment that Prime Minister Julia Gillard's ability to pass the legislation in a minority government showed her strong negotiation skills.

"Let's face it, [Greens MP] Adam Bandt and [Independent MP Andrew] Wilkie were always going to support the Labor Party," he said. "So, I don't think that was a vindication of her negotiating skills. I think it was an inevitable consequence of the personal chemistry and political beliefs of the people involved."

Howard also expressed his support for the Coalition's criticisms of the NBN project.

"I think the Coalition position on broadband is absolutely right. I mean, it's an enormous waste of money, it's an unnecessary regulation, because in many parts of Australia they're contemplating forcing people to take it unless they definitely say no, they won't have it. And I think that's a very authoritarian regulatory way of approaching something like this."

Despite the Coalition's calls for further scrutiny on the NBN, yesterday's Essential polling release revealed that 54 per cent of Coalition voters believe it is important for Australia to build the NBN. A total of 69 per cent of Australians are in favour of the project.

Source http://www.zdnet.com.au/telstra-split-no-big-deal-howard-339307613.htm

A type of West Australian parrot has been found to be a distinct species from its eastern counterpart and needs special protection as one of the world's rarest birds, scientists say.

Only about 110 of the western ground parrots are known to survive in the wild.

An Australian research team used DNA from museum specimens up to 160 years old to reveal that populations of the parrots in eastern and western Australia were distinct from each other.

The team, led by Australian Wildlife Conservancy's Stephen Murphy, has concluded that the western populations should be recognised as a new species, Pezoporus flaviventris.

Dr Murphy said the western ground parrot had declined rapidly in the last 20 years and there were only about 110 birds surviving in the wild, most of them in one national park.

It was now critically endangered and one of the world's rarest birds, he said.

Allan Burbidge of WA's Department of Environment and Conservation said a single wildfire through the national park or an influx of introduced predators, such as cats, could rapidly push the species to extinction.

"There is now an urgent need to prevent further population declines and to establish insurance populations into parts of the former range," he said in a statement.

Director of CSIRO's Australian National Wildlife Collection, Leo Joseph, said that even after 200 years of study, scientists were still recognising new species of birds in Australia.

The team's findings have been published this month in the international conservation research journal Conservation Genetics.

Source http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/scientists-identify-new-wa-parrot-species-20101123-185ht.html

An Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist said he gained access to the Number Five People's Hospital in Suzhou where he spoke to a group of women who said they were left unable to walk after being exposed to n-hexane.

"At first the symptoms were pretty obvious," one woman said of her reaction to breathing in the chemical, which was used to clean and stick logos on products. "My hands were numb. I could hardly walk or run," she added.

The report said the women had been in hospital for more than six months after working in a cramped and airless factory producing what they believed to be genuine Apple laptops and iPhones.

The ABC did not name the small factory or say when the women had been working there, but said they had retained components of the devices they had been working on which they showed to the reporter.

Apple, which did not confirm that it had sourced products from factories in Suzhou, said it had strict requirements on workplace safety for all suppliers.

An Australian spokeswoman for the US company told AFP that Apple took workers' health very seriously and conducted audits to check conditions, as well as requiring training in on-site health and safety.

In 2009, dozens of workers at a Suzhou factory managed by a subsidiary of Taiwanese company Wintek became ill from exposure to n-hexane. Wintek subsequently stopped all use of the chemical on its production line.

Labour activists have previously raised concerns about conditions in Chinese factories producing iPhones, arguing that millions of employees endure long hours, low pay and high pressure as they make the smartphones.

Taiwanese firm Foxconn, which makes electronic goods for Apple and other Western technology firms, has seen a spate of suicides at its Chinese plants this year.

Source http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iXoIhaTKPXIe4zpmtIEvRn63fkUg?docId=CNG.4b2893977d9c7251af4049ff83abe349.411

Google sites are visited by more Australians than any other online brand including Facebook, with an average of 12.7 million unique users visiting its sites each month.

The report found that an average of 11.4 million unique online users visited Microsoft-owned sites, making it the second most visited online brand, according to a third-quarter Nielsen report.

In descending order, the top ten parent companies were Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Telstra, Yahoo!, News Corp Online, eBay, Australian Federal Government, Wikimedia Foundation and Fairfax Digital Australia and New Zealand.

In comparison to the second quarter of 2010, the biggest movement comes from Yahoo!, which moved ahead of eBay and News Corp Online to become the fifth most visited online parent company.

The top ten individual online brands were Google, NineMSN/MSN, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!7, YouTube, News Digital Media, Wikipedia, Fairfax Digital Media Network and Apple.

Apple was a new entrant to the top ten brands, moving up from twelfth position in the second quarter to the number ten spot. The report measured Australia's top ten online parent companies and web brands for the third quarter of 2010.

Source http://www.adnews.com.au/news/google-named-most-visited-site-by-aussies

Brisbane is set to become the nation's first city to have super-fast fibre optic broadband running through its sewage pipes.

Work on the fibre optic network would start in early 2011 at no cost to ratepayers, Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman announced on Thursday.

Mr Newman said the infrastructure would not double up on the federal government's National Broadband Network (NBN).

"We wish to have no disagreement with NBN (but) as the mayor of Brisbane and as a person serving one million people in this city I want them to get this infrastructure now," Mr Newman told Brisbane reporters.

Mr Newman said he had approached NBN officials about adopting this technology, whereby fibre optic cables are fed to homes through sewerage pipes.

The NBN officials told him that they already had a deal with Telstra but that he was welcome to go ahead with his plan, he said.

"NBN has said consistently that as long as you have an open access fibre infrastructure, they won't come in on the top of you and I hope that would be the case," Mr Newman said.

Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the federal government welcomed the Liberal lord mayor's recognition that fibre-to-the-home was the future technology for Australians, despite opposition to the NBN from federal coalition MPs.

Multinational company i3 Asia-Pacific has promised to provide the technology within four years, with plans to roll it out to 15,000 homes a month.

The i3 group's CEO, Elfed Thomas, announced it would cost the company about $600 million to roll out the network compared with the $43 billion NBN project.

Mr Newman said every residential and commercial street had a sewage pipe.

"The little cable will snake its way up the 9500km of sewers in Brisbane just outside people's front doors, and they have the technology to get it out of the sewer without impacting on the operation of the sewer and run it into the premises," he said.

"So it cuts down this huge cost of digging up streets and laying down conduits."

The scheme is expected to provide broadband speeds of up to 100 megabits per second, which would allow large files like movies or video conferences to be downloaded or streamed in seconds.

Source http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/brisbane-set-to-have-superfast-broadband-20101014-16ln1.html

Optus, Australia's second-largest telco, said it was in "ongoing discussions" about the 43 billion dollar (42 billion US) NBN, which aims to provide 93 percent of the country with high-speed Internet by 2017.

But a spokeswoman for Optus played down a report in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) that it was in "advanced talks" to shift its cable customers to the fibre-optic network.

"The article in today's AFR is purely speculative," she told AFP.

"Like all retail service providers, Optus is engaged in ongoing discussions with NBN Co., the department (of broadband and communications) and the industry more broadly around next steps for the NBN."

The network, described as Australia's biggest ever infrastructure venture, received a significant boost in June with major telco Telstra signing over access to its copper wire and cable networks in an 11-billion-dollar deal.

Bringing Optus on board is seen as critical to the success of the project, with the SingTel-owned firm already capable of providing comparable Internet speeds on another network servicing 1.4 million city homes.

Analysts see a deal as beneficial to both Optus and the government's NBN Co., which is overseeing the project, by neutralising the telco as a competitor.

Source http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gT70bCLTxxUzuP0XZh-MNjiZZ4lA?docId=CNG.2dea5217c87a1a8e49b92aebb2e8ef5f.3c1

The Census of Marine Life today estimated there are more than one million species in the world's oceans, of which three-quarters are yet to be discovered.

The $US650 million ($669 million) study, released in London, involved 2700 scientists from 80 nations exploring over 10 years.

The census aimed to establish a baseline of marine life in order to measure changes caused by climate change or events like oil spills.

It found 80 per cent of Australia's marine life has not yet been described by scientists.

Australian Conservation Foundation campaigner Chee Chee Leung said earlier work from the census revealed Australia's oceans were the most biodiverse on the planet, with almost 33,000 known species.

But the fact there was still so much unknown life underscored the need for stronger protection for marine areas, she said.

ACF says less than five per cent of Australia's oceans are protected in marine sanctuaries, and this could be improved.

"We urge the government to give strong protection to Australia's unique marine environments to help them recover from overfishing, habitat damage and water pollution," Ms Leung said.

Scientists spent more than 9000 days at sea on more than 540 expeditions for the census, which found more than 6000 potential new species.

Among them were an octopus found on a coral reef near Lizard Island in far-north Queensland, and also discovered in Australia was a shrimp thought to have been extinct for 50 million years.

Source http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/marine-mysteries-should-be-protected/story-e6frf7kf-1225933983978

Rediscovered: the bridled nailtail wallaby was feared extinct until it was found in 1973

Australian biologists say animals that have been feared extinct are often rediscovered, and conservation efforts too often focus on creatures that will never be found again.

A study by the University of Queensland's Dr Diana Fisher and Dr Simon Blomberg appears today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

They examined 187 species of mammal that have been thought to have become extinct since 1500, and found 67 have since been rediscovered.

Dr Fisher says the study found mammals whose habitats have been partly destroyed are the most likely to be found again.

Mammals thought to have been killed off by introduced predators, disease, or human hunting are least likely to be rediscovered.

Dr Fisher says knowing the factors that cause extinction are important in assessing the likelihood of success in saving threatened species.

"It's fruitless putting a lot of effort into big charismatic animals that are very unlikely to be found," she says.

"You could get a better conservation outcome by focusing more effort on the sort of things that will be found."

She says it makes more sense to focus on species whose habitats have been cleared.

"It's not too late to find a lot of these species somewhere else where they might be persisting," she said.

"They might not hang on forever if they don't get found and protected."

Lost cause

Dr Fisher says the thylacine or tasmanian tiger is one example of a species which there is little hope of finding again.

"For mammals, [the thylacine] is the only one that most people have ever heard of, and it's something that attracts a lot of attention," she said.

"Since the year that the last one died ... there's been at least 25 really major searches and a whole lot of amateurs looking for it since.

"They haven't found it, and it's pretty obvious that it's extinct ... but if you don't find something you can keep looking forever."

Public profile

Dr Fisher says Australia has one of the highest rates of mammal extinction in the world, but many Australians are unaware of which animals are close to extinction.

The success stories are often mammals which are less familiar to the public, like the bridled nailtail wallaby.

Dr Fisher says this small wallaby used to be widespread from Victoria up to Charters Towers in Queensland, but by 1930 was thought to be extinct.

"In 1973 in central Queensland at a cattle property, a local guy was fencing the place in preparation for clearing it," she said.

"He saw this animal; it's got a distinctive marking, so luckily he recognised it.

"At that stage they had just been showing Elizabeth Gould's prints of extinct animals in the Women's Day magazine that his wife had at home. He told the Parks Service and they bought the place."

She says the bridled nailtail wallaby has since been reintroduced to new sites and is thriving.

"It's pretty unlikely it would have survived had that place been cleared," she said.

Source http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/29/3024873.htm

One day after the Great Twitter Meltdown, details of how pranksters gleefully redirected users and spewed out retweets full of gibberish continue to emerge. What's surprising is that instead of criminals and attackers intent on taking over computers or stealing information, most of the perpetrators were just curious users trying to see what they could do with the security hole.

According to various reports, the programming XSS flaw on Twitter's home page was initially discovered by Masato Kinugawa, a Japanese developer, who used the code to create rainbow-colored tweets. Another was a Norwegian Ruby programmer named Magnus Holm, who has the dubious distinction of having The New York Times claim he created the first worm to use the XSS exploit. Holm reportedly saw Kinugawa's code and played with the idea. Holm extended the code to retweet itself by tweeting, "meh, this worm doesn't really scale. the users can just delete the tweet," and including a link with an "onmouseover" command.

The XSS bug caused the tweet to be retweeted the instant someone's mouse cursor touched the link.

Holm said he just wanted to "experiment" with the flaw and was surprised his worm spread to at least 200,000 users.

Another curious user was Pearce Delphin, a 17-year-old boy from Australia, who modified Kinugawa's code and created his own tweet "uh oh" with the onMouseOver JavaScript command embedded.

"I did it merely to see if it could be done … that JavaScript really could be executed within a tweet," Delphin told AFP.

Others quickly picked up and modified the code to create their own versions, performing auto-retweets and redirecting to pornographic sites. Some were funny. Most were not.

Despite the havoc and huge amounts of spam, most of the created worms turned out to be harmless pranks intended to sow confusion. Kaspersky Lab estimated up to 500,000 people may have been affected.

"We are not aware of any issues related to it that would cause harm to computers or their accounts," Twitter said.

Visitors on the Twitter page belonging to Sarah Brown, the wife of the U.K. prime minister, were redirected to a Japanese porn site. Another worm sent gibberish spam messages to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibb's 100,000 followers. One worm even "rickrolled" users, a widespread Web prank in which unwitting users are instantly sent to a Website playing 1980s singer Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video.

Despite the company's claims that no harm was done, The New York Times claimed one instance of a worm downloading malicious code from a Russian server onto the user's computer.

Kinugawa discovered the bug and notified Twitter on Aug. 14. Twitter said in the blog post that developers had fixed the security hole last month, but a site update, unrelated to the new site redesign unveiled earlier this month, reintroduced the bug on the old design. Users who already switched to the new design or are using third-party apps to read their tweets were unaffected. Users with JavaScript blockers such as the NoScript add-on for Mozilla Firefox browsers were also spared.

Twitter acted quickly to close the hole. Reports indicate the company first became aware of the problem at 5:24 a.m. EDT and had the flaw patched by 10:23 a.m. EDT. According to the company, there was no need to change passwords because user account information was not compromised through this exploit.

The XSS bug that brought Twitter down to its knees is a fairly elementary mistake. In fact, cross-site scripting flaws exist in seven out of 10 of all Websites, according to WhiteHat Security. Considered relatively benign by Website operators and developers, what happened to Twitter indicates that it can be a real problem. The bug was easy to exploit and spread amazingly fast, and it was done by a handful of hobbyists, not malicious hackers.

Source http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Twitter-Meltdown-the-Work-of-Hobbyists-Not-Malicious-Hackers-316813/

1,000 members of BPL (Below Poverty Line) families from Rajasthan were given a free mobile phone (with a SIM card) each yesterday by BSNL, as part of their corporate social responsibility program.

The event took place in Phagi, a part of Ajmer District and BSNL claims that Rs. 12.85 lakh was spent on the scheme. While the government obviously claims that the entire event was a success, some media outlets have a different point of view. A story on IBN Live opines that instead of gifting mobile phones to villagers, they would have gained more from distribution of free grain (which had been otherwise lying unused and rotting in state warehouses).

While, we at PC World India try to keep our stories clean of sermonizing especially in matters political, we can’t help but feel that the journalist has a point. This comes to light especially when the story quotes a villager as saying that they didn’t understand what they could do with the mobiles and would have rather preferred the food grains.

Looking at the issue from the government’s point-of-view, it does seem like a no-lose situation to hand out mobile phones especially taking into consideration the way technology (especially the Internet) has permeated in some manner to rural India.

Maybe if the government does follow up with free grain distribution soon, this story may get a completely unapologetic happy ending.

Source http://www.pcworld.in/news/bsnl-gifts-free-cellphones-rural-poor-rajasthan-35082010

MTS, the mobile telephony services brand of Sistema Shyam TeleServices (SSTL), has launched new Internet enabled smartphones - the Buzz, Alive & Ivory.

MTS said that the new smartphones features CDMA2000 technology platform, supports voice and net enabled data services, and offers Internet connectivity with speeds up to 3.1 Mbps.

The new phones also provides direct access to around 15 social networking sites including facebook, twitter, windows live messenger, yahoo and Google search to its subscribers.

The Buzz is a dual mode (CDMA/GSM) messaging and social networking handset, with QWERTY keypad and offers stereo FM Radio with MP3 player, a 1.3MP camera and expandable memory up to 4GB.

Alive is a 3G-CDMA touch screen phone which offers an in-built Opera mini browser, expandable memory up to 8GB, multi-format music player, 1.3 MP camera with video recording and Bluetooth with A2DP.

The new Ivory features a 3.2" WQVGA full touch screen, mobile TV, Microsoft exchange push mail, Wi-FI, 2 MP camera, Bluetooth and expandable memory up to 4GB.

SSTL president and CEO Vsevolod Rozanov said that MTS smart phones are among the fully loaded devices with the 3G capabilities, and will take smart phone services in India to a new level ensuring further expansion of subscribers in India.

Source http://mobility.cbronline.com/news/mts-launches-three-new-smart-phones-in-india_080910

Maruti Suzuki India Ltd., the country's largest car maker by sales, Tuesday introduced an automatic transmission variant of its small car, the A-star, priced at 435,000 rupees ($9335) at showrooms in New Delhi.

The new variant will be powered by a 998 cubic centimeter K-Series gasoline engine, which is also used in the manual transmission variant of the A-star.

"We see a growing market for automatic transmission cars in India as traffic congestion is increasing," said Shashank Srivastava, chief general manager of marketing at Maruti.

Source http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704554104575434844027734772.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

More like shades of grey. With the E-Class taking on a sporty demeanour and the 5 Series pulling off an admirably comfortable ride, where to park your 50 lakh rupees has become a rather difficult question

Time was when this would have been a foregone conclusion: BMW would win on dynamic ability, Mercedes on comfort. But in the three years since BMW set up shop in India, it has passed a snoozing Mercedes-Benz.

The model that did the business was the 5 Series, which sold 3500 units in just under three years. On the other side: Though the new E had been launched in Europe nearly a year before, India was saddled with the old one. Everybody who could afford one either waited or bought BMWs. That should have been reversed this year, since there is usually a long gap before new models hit India. But, just two months after we drove the sixth-generation 5 Series (F10) at its world launch it’s here, ready to do battle.

DESIGN
If there’s an instant criticism of the new 5 Series, it’s that it has lost the design mojo that made BMW, well, BMW. The softening and toning down started with the 7 Series and the 5 opts drops all the in-your-face details for sophistication and light and shadows effects. You need an hour walking around it to absorb all the subtleties: tightly-pinched shoulder line running from front wheel arch to tail lamps stretching out the passenger cell, ever-so-slightly concave sides, pumped out wheel arches, deep creases in the bonnet, the short front overhang, the pert bum that stretches over the rear wheels. From the 7 Series come details like the wider, more upright grille (in profile seeming to be leaning forward) and the L-shaped tail lamps with three rows of LEDs. The 7’s heavily detailed head lamps with the iced eyebrows and LED corona-ring daytime running lamps are re-interpreted here. That sets the tone for a car that grows on you, that looks much calmer than its predecessor, more compact, despite having grown.

Which is in marked contrast to the E-Class, where Mercedes has ditched conservatism for a more prominent three-box profile, squared off lines, angular, sharp creases, prominent shoulder lines, interesting wheel arch treatment from the ’53 Ponton Benz and lots of bright-work. It is also the slipperiest four-door saloon in the world, with a drag coefficient of just 0.26 Cd. It is both stylish and elegant and has the potential to look sporty too. This a big luxury saloon that makes no bones about it. Except for rear tail lamps (that could have come from Japan or Korea), Merc has elegant opulence.

INTERIORS
If you’ve sat in a 7 Series, you will be instantly familiar with the 5’s cabin. The trickle-down has really helped; quality (never a complaint) is even better, the materials plusher, the plastics softer, the wood trim very posh and, ah, the aroma of leather. It’s not as driver-focused as before but it doesn’t snub the front passenger either and is probably a better balance. Sporty details abound: Speedo and tacho dials get equal prominence, unencumbered by integrated displays; the steering has thicker hand-holds and a sporty diameter; the gear lever is a handful of metal, not the size-zero lever of the earlier 5.

Other premium touches include the black panel display in the instrument binnacle, 8.2-inch DVD screens integrated into the back rest (Rs. 4.5 lakh option on the 535i) and the second generation iDrive (more intuitive, more functionality, 10.2-inch display, pre-loaded owner’s manual, integrated hard drive that stores music with full iPod and Bluetooth integration).

Upholstery options are black, beige, brown/black, oyster/oyster dark, or oyster/black. Whatever you choose, you get fabulous seats that support and pamper you in the right places. The cabin is isolated from wind and tyre noise, unlike the E which has significant tyre noise intrusion.

Heightened focus on safety is the norm in this segment; there are front, side and head air bags for driver and passengers, rear curtain air bags, and a pop-up bonnet that cushions the blow to pedestrians on impact. Though it is too new to be crash-tested, there’s little doubt it will get five stars in the EuroNCAP ratings.

The E-Class has a full five-star crash safety rating, with all this plus knee air bags, and Attention Assist (which monitors your driving; when it senses you’re falling asleep it flashes a warning).

Inside, the E-Class gets more brightwork, and quality is up there with the best. But while the 5 Series feels like a scaled down 7 Series, the over-riding impression of the E is of being a scaled up C-Class.

Source http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/features/bmw-or-mercedes-which-one-should-you-buy_475657.html