Arun's Blog

UK broadband sales soaring

2006-03-20T15:26:00.000-08:00

Sales of DSL broadband in the UK soared by 73 per cent to nearly 7.2 million subscribers during 2005.

The UK added just over 3 million new subscribers last year, making it the second fastest growing established DSL market. The UK is the sixth largest DSL subscriber in the world. China leads the way with over 26 million subscribers. The figures, just released by the DSL Forum, show that around the world 122,000 people signed up to DSL broadband every day last year. In all, 41 million new subscribers abandoned their creaky old dial up modems for some serious bandwidth.

Overall, the EU market more than doubled in 2005 to 48.2 million DSL subscribers, where the UK sits third, behind Germand and France.

At 35 per cent of the world total, this makes the EU is the largest subscriber by region.

PCs and iPods can damage your sight

2006-03-20T15:15:00.000-08:00

The increasing use of smaller work and recreational gadgets, such as PDAs, laptops and mobile phones, may be contributing to the visual fatigue and discomfort experienced by millions, it was claimed today.

"The unique characteristics and high visual demands of computer work and play make many individuals susceptible to the development of vision-related problems, " said Dr Jeffrey Anshel, a practicing optometrist and author of Visual Ergonomics in the Workplace.

"With the proliferation of portable electronic devices it is no surprise that eye care professionals are seeing more patients who complain of ocular discomfort."

A recent US survey of doctors of optometry found that more than 14 per cent of patients reported eye or vision-related symptoms resulting from computer work.

Staring at a computer monitor or the small screens on most devices can lead to a variety of ailments, including headaches, eyestrain, blurred vision, dry and irritated eyes, neck and/or backache, and sensitivity to light, Dr Anshel warned.

"Eye stress and strain may be caused by a combination of individual visual problems, improper viewing habits, and poor environmental conditions, such as glare, improper workstation set up, dirty screens, poor lighting and viewing angles," he said.

Dr Anshel has helped companies and government agencies, including Mitsubishi, American Airlines, 3M, and the US Department of Labour to address the high stress area of vision demands in relation to working with computer monitors.

"Uncorrected or under-corrected vision problems can be major contributing factors to computer-related eye stress, affecting visual performance and comf ort," he explained.

"The good news is that many potential eye and/or vision problems can be reduced or eliminated by the appropriate adjustment and placement of computer monitors, lighting control, good preventive vision care habits, and regular professional eye care."

Now Hiring In India: Dell To Add 10,000 Workers, Capgemini To More Than Double

2006-03-20T15:13:00.000-08:00

With heavy demand for its workers, will India be able to maintain its sizeable cost advantage over the U.S. in coming years?

Dell Computer and consulting firm Capgemini have become the latest tech powerhouses to publicly acknowledge plans to significantly increase headcount in India in order to tap the country's highly skilled, but relatively lowly paid, IT and business services workforce. Dell could double its current Indian workforce of 10,000 over the next three years, a company spokesman confirmed on Monday. The Times of India and other Indian newspapers reported that company chairman Michael Dell announced the plan during a weekend roundtable with business reporters in Bangalore. Dell Computer will add the new positions "if the Indian market grows the way we believe it will," the spokesman said.

Dell currently has 1.7 million square feet of office space in use in the Indian cities of Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, and Mohali. The build-to-order computer maker also plans to open a new, 1,000-seat contact center in the northern city of Gurgaon by year's end. Dell isn't just looking to offshore jobs from the United States to India. The company wants to increase headcount across Asia in order to support efforts to increase sales in the fast-growing region, the spokesman said. Dell's sales in India increased more than 21% in 2005, compared to the previous year. The company is also hiring domestically. "We expect to continue adding to headcount in the U.S.," the spokesman said. Dell employs 26,000 workers in the United States, about 40% of its total workforce.

Also Monday, Paris-based consulting and IT services firm Capgemini said it has opened a new, 500-seat service center in the Indian city of Kolkata. The facility will act as a center for business-process outsourcing services, packaged software implementation, and custom application development. Capgemini also operates development centers in Bangalore and Mumbai. The firm currently employs about 4,000 workers in India and is looking to add an additional 2,000 by the end of 2006 and another 4,000 by the end of 2007, bringing the total to 10,000. Earlier this month, IBM said it was moving all development of consulting solutions based on service-oriented architectures to a new center in Bangalore. IBM officials said the company would likely raise its Indian headcount to beyond 55,000 over the next year--a 40% increase over current levels.

The spate of hiring by Western IT companies in India has prompted some observers to question whether the country will be able to maintain its sizeable cost advantage over the United States in coming years, given the rapidly growing demand for its workers. At present, wages for programmers in India range anywhere from 60% to 80% less than prevailing rates in the United States. And offshoring isn't without its risks. In 2003, Dell returned technical support for large business users of its Optiplex PCs and Latitude notebook computers to U.S. call centers from company-owned facilities in India. The move, a Dell spokesman said at the time, came after some customers complained about poor service.

NASA and Google bring Mars to PCs everywhere

2006-03-20T14:54:00.000-08:00

With Google's help, web surfers can now navigate from the plains of Meridiani to the Proctor Crater Dunes on Mars as though they were two local destinations. Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility and Google teamed up to produce Google Mars (www.google.com/mars/), a mapping tool released Monday, which allows users to view and scroll across the surface of the Red Planet, visiting its many landmarks.

"The goal here is to bring Mars to the general public, to give them access to a tool that lets them explore Mars in the same way that Google Earth lets you explore the Earth," says Robert Burnham, spokesperson for the Mars Space Flight Facility in Tempe, Arizona, US. More than 17,000 images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey orbiters fed the planet-spanning mosaic, which can be viewed as a colour-coded relief map showing surface elevation, a collage of optical images or as a product of infrared measurements. The software that allowed the individual images to be pieced together was written by Noel Gorelick from Arizona State University (ASU).

Users can see tagged features such as mountains, canyons, dunes, plains, ridges and craters on the Martian surface. Each tag comes with additional information such as coordinates, size, and date of discovery. And if a particular feature is named after a person or a place, there is information about its namesake.
Landing sites. The infrared map is pieced together from images taken by Mars Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) and includes details as small as 230 metres across. Cool spots on the surface appear in dark tones while warmer areas appear bright.

"Mars scientists the world over use THEMIS photos," says ASU planetary geologist Phil Christensen, principal investigator for the camera. "It's great that everyone everywhere can now explore this neighbour world using their own computer browser."
The infrared map also highlights four Martian areas that show even greater detail - the volcano Olympus Mons, the "Grand Canyon" of Mars Valles Marineris, and the landing sites of NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Digital Image Animation Laboratory used the Valles Marineris data, showing details just 100 metres across, to produce a new simulation, which was also released on Monday. Entitled "Flight Into Mariner Valley", it takes viewers on a virtual flight through the great chasm, revealing its impact craters, rocky spurs and carved out gullies.

Bill Gates slams 100-dollar charity laptop

2006-03-19T16:32:00.000-08:00

The world's richest man, Bill Gates has poured scorn on a revolutionary new 100-dollar laptop designed for the world's poorest children, sparking off a storm of condemnation in cyberspace. Gates' comments came in a speech in Washington on Wednesday in which he touted a much more expensive mobile laptop recently unveiled his own company, Microsoft, reports said Thursday.

Gates predicted a bright future for mobile computers and phones but scoffed at the 100-dollar machine being developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) media guru Nick Negroponte for use by children in the developing world. The devices, backed by Microsoft rival Google, were unveiled at a UN conference last year. They include a hand crank to power the units off the electricity grid and a mesh networking device to allow people to share information and Internet connections.

'The last thing you want for a shared-use computer is for it to be something without a disk, and with a tiny little screen,' said Gates. 'If you are going to have people sharing the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can support the user.' Gates also blasted the crank system that can provide some of the laptop's power. 'Geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type,' he said.

Gates, who was named as the world's richest man this month with a 50-billion-dollar fortune, also told the Government Leaders Forum that phones would soon become 'digital wallets' that store and coordinate personal information for everyday use.
He showed off an ultra-mobile computer Microsoft developed together with Samsung that will cost between 600 to 1,000 dollars.

His comments sparked protests on technology news sites, with Cnet.com saying the remarks showed that Gates lacked basic understanding of public relations. 'Does this not underline how out of touch Gates is with the real world?' asked one respondent on its message boards. 'Gates needs a reality check,' said a reader on VNU.net. 'Mr. Gates should go to the towns where these laptops are headed to see what conditions are really like. Hand cranked power is essential in places with limited or no electricity.'

Computer researchers warn of powerful new Internet attacks

2006-03-18T17:38:00.000-08:00

A new variety of unusually powerful Internet attacks can overwhelm popular Web sites and disrupt e-mails by exploiting the computers that help manage global Internet traffic, according to security researchers. First detected late last year, the new attacks direct such massive amounts of spurious data against victim computers that even flagship technology companies could not cope. In one of the early cases examined, the unknown assailant apparently seized control of an Internet name server in South Africa and deliberately corrupted its contents.

Name servers are specialized computers that help direct Internet traffic to its destinations. The attacker then sent falsified requests to the compromised directory computer, which unleashed overwhelming floods of amplified data aimed wherever the attacker wanted. Experts traced at least 1,500 attacks that briefly shut down commercial Web sites, large Internet providers and leading Internet infrastructure companies during a period of weeks. The attacks were so targeted that most Internet users did not notice widespread effects.

Ken Silva, the chief security officer for VeriSign Inc., compared the scale of attacks to the damage caused in October 2002 when nine of the 13 computer "root" servers that manage global Internet traffic were crippled by a powerful electronic attack. VeriSign operates two of the 13 root server computers, but its machines were unaffected.

"This is significantly larger than what we saw in 2002, by an order of magnitude," Silva said. Silva said the attacks earlier this year used only about 6 percent of the more than 1 million name servers across the Internet to flood victim networks. Still, the attacks in some cases exceeded 8 gigabits per second, indicating a remarkably powerful electronic assault.

"This would be the Katrina of Internet storms," Silva said. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a partnership with the Homeland Security Department, warned network engineers in December to properly configure their name servers to prevent hackers from using them in attacks. It called the attacks "troublesome" because name servers must operate to help direct Internet traffic.

Experts call the attack technique a "distributed reflector denial of service."

Solution found to run Windows XP on Intel Mac

2006-03-18T17:18:00.000-08:00

A pair of Californians have won a competition to find a solution to allow users to boot Windows XP on the new Intel Macs from Apple, gaining them more than 13,000 US dollars in prize money. Previously, Mac users wishing to run Windows on their machines were forced to do so using emulation—essentially an extra layer of software—that would enable Microsoft's OS to work with Apple hardware. But such solutions were slow and imperfect. The current fix eliminates the need for this extra layer, allowing Windows to run “natively” at about the same speed it would clock on a PC. The victory of the two anonymous winners gives hope to those seeking to abandon their dual-computing lifestyle. At the same time, it may force companies like Apple, which has allowed only its own operating system on its machines, to rethink this longtime strategy.

In January, Colin Nederkoorn of Houston began taking donations for a prize to be awarded to the first developer who came up with a way to boot an Intel Mac into either Mac OS X or Windows XP. Within days, he had raised thousands. Nederkoorn had set a March 23 deadline -- later extended to March 30 -- for a dual-boot solution, and had promised that if no one came up with an answer, he would donate the money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Two men collaborated to come up with the solution, said Nederkoorn. Although he said they lived in California, he wouldn't disclose their names, saying that they wanted to remain anonymous for now.

To produce a dual-boot Mac, users must customize a Windows XP installation CD by burning a new disc that includes the custom bootloader files. The Mac must also be partitioned -- a disk partitioning utility is included with the machine -- so that Mac OS X and Windows XP can co-exist on the same drive.

Radio chip barcodes can carry a virus

2006-03-16T09:18:00.000-08:00

Researchers at the Amsterdam's Free University created a radio frequency identity (RFID) chip infected with a virus to prove that RFID systems are vulnerable despite the extremely low memory capacity on the cheap chips. The problem is that an infected RFID tag, which is read wirelessly when it passes through a scanning gate, can upset the database that processes the information on the chip, says the study by Melanie Rieback, Bruno Crispo and Andrew Tanenbaum.

"Everyone working on RFID technology has tacitly assumed that the mere act of scanning an RFID tag cannot modify back-end software and certainly not in a malicious way. Unfortunately, they are wrong," the scientists said in a paper.
"An RFID tag can be infected with a virus and this virus can infect the back-end database used by the RFID software. From there it can be easily spread to other RFID tags," they said.

As a result, it is possible that criminals or militants could use an infected RFID tag to upset airline baggage handling systems with potentially devastating consequences, they said. The same technology could also be used to wreak havoc with the databases used by supermarkets. "This is intended as a wake-up call. We ask the RFID industry to design systems that are secure," Tanenbaum said in a telephone interview.

RFID has been touted as "The Internet of Things", in which anything from shampoo bottles to marathon runners can be tracked using radio tags. Civil liberty groups say RFID could lead to an unacceptable invasion of privacy and argue that airline ticket information could be used by law enforcement agencies and divorce lawyers.

Metro, Germany's biggest retailer, said at the CeBIT technology trade show it plans to save 8.5 million euros ($10.1 million) annually by using RFID to track stock from suppliers and at its flagship Future Store in Rheinberg town. Industries in which tracking goods is crucial such as pharmaceuticals, governments, logistics, airlines and manufacturing already use RFID technology. A recent study by ABI Research found that 10 drug products are expected to have RFID tags on a large scale this year.

The cost of making an RFID tag is about 14 euro cents today and needs to fall, Metro's head of technology Gerd Wolfram said. But Ian Furlong, manager of Intel's Solution Services division for Central Europe, said at CeBIT that the price of RFID tags was "rapidly falling toward the 5 euro cent mark". Andrea Huber, managing director of Informationsforum RFID, a German group raising public awareness about the technology, said most companies were waiting for the price of tags to fall to 1 euro cent before they start widespread use.