Stanford computer scientists find Internet security flaw

Stanford researchers have found an audible security weakness on the Internet.

If you've ever registered for online access to a website, it's likely you were required as part of the process to correctly read a group of distorted letters and numbers on the screen.

That's a simple test to prove you're a human, not a computer program with malicious intent.

Though computers are good at filling out forms, they struggle to decipher these wavy images crisscrossed with lines, known as captchas (short for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart).

Eight cloud computing risks, and how to quash them

A series of 'what-if' scenarios for what could go wrong with cloud, developed by The Open Group.

What could go wrong with cloud?  Let’s count the ways….

In their latest book, Cloud Computing for Business, Dr. Chris Harding and his team of co-authors affiliated with The Open Group — a key standards body for enterprise architecture — detail some of the key risk areas that need to be looked at with any cloud project:

Risk #1: The solution may not meet its financial objectives: Do your short-term and long-term ROI work. The key factors to consider when assessing cloud ROI risk probability include utilization, speed, scale, and quality. “These factors are built into most ROI models, and affect the headline figures for investment,
revenue, cost, and time to return.”

Risk # 2: The solution may not work in the context of the user enterprise’s organization and culture: Always a biggie. The best way to address is having “a clear executive vision and direction for business transformation,” which includes top-level executive support. (Easier said than done, right?) This should include the establishment of “a clear roadmap for procurement or implementation of cloud services and applications that use them, and coordination of stakeholders and competing strategies to get consensus for storage, computing, network and applications to avoid islands of demand usage.” Always start with pilots to create confidence and “build buy-in and usage in the user  community for cloud services.”

Launch of world's cheapest tablet 'Aakash' today, likely to be sold for $60 in retail

You may soon be able to lay your hands on the $35 tablet, in retail stores albeit at almost double the price. 

The $35 tablet nicknamed Aakash, will be available at retail stores at a maximum retail price of Rs 2999 ($60), shortly after its launch on Wednesday, said its maker Datawind.
"The Rs 3,000 figure is the 'maximum suggested retail price' of the commercial version of the product which we will offer with an embedded cellular modem and SIM," said Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of Datawind, maker of the world's cheapest tablet.
The $60 tablet for retail sales will have an inbuilt cellular modem and SIM to access internet, which will be absent in the $35 device, supplied to the government.
As a business, we need to make a profit, and our distribution channel needs to make a profit, which is all covered in the MRP of Rs 2,999," Mr Tuli told * ET*.
 The commercial version of the tablet would have no duty waivers or subsidy, as in the government's version. An inbuilt cellular modem and SIM card will add to the price of the commercial tablet.
Both versions of the tablet, will run on Google's Android platform, with WiFi connectivity for internet access and cloud storage. The tablets will have 256 MB of RAM, a 32 GB expandable memory slot and two USB ports.
The commercial version of the tablet, is expected be out within 60 days, of its launch on October 5.
Datawind adds that it is supplying to the government at a price of Rs 2200, which includes sales tax and replacement warranty. "The $35 price is achievable at higher volume levels. When we supply the product to the government at $35, then too it will allow us a margin, albeit at higher volumes," Datawind CEO added.

India debuts world's cheapest tablet computer at Rs.1750 tomorrow

The world's cheapest tablet computer, which will be unwrapped on Wednesday, will go on sale in India starting December, the maker of the device has said. 

Created for use by students, the tablet will first be made available to colleges at Rs 1,750 apiece ($35) although it costs Rs 3,000 to produce. The difference will be subsidised by the government as part of an ambitious plan to make information and communication technologies an integral part of education.
The tablet, will run on Google's Android platform, withWiFi connectivity for internet access and cloud storage. It will have 256 MB of RAM, a 2GB SD memory card, a 32 GB expandable memory slot and two USB ports.
A Canadian of Indian descent, Suneet Singh Tuli, the chief executive of the company making the device, declined to disclose its retail price, but said it will cost as much as "a vegetarian meal for two at a five-star hotel in Delhi".
Tuli is the founder of Datawind, a UK-based company which also makes the PocketSurfer, a handheld device to surf the web.
"We wanted to show the world when China can break price points, India can do it better," Tuli said.
The cheapest tablets available globally are at about $99 for an HP TouchPad and $199 for Amazon's Kindle Fire. In India, tablets currently start from $99 for Pepper, a tablet launched last month by Devraj group of companies. The Wespro ePad is available at Rs 7,000.
From Laptop to Tablet
HCL Pad based on Android sells for about 10,000. Bharti Airtel and Reliance have also launched tablets priced about 10,000 and 13,000, respectively.
The so-called $35 tablet being made by Datawind is a brainchild of human resources minister Kapil Sibal and a team of technologists from IIT Rajasthan.
The device is being launched two years after it showed off a $10 computer, which turned out to be little more than a storage device.
The $35 device was earlier slated to be a laptop, but it changed its form over the three years it was being created.
The tablet will be assembled in India and the government will waive duties to help minimise the cost of production. One lakh tablets have been ordered initially and about a million pieces will be produced in the next stage if the pilot works well.
The low internal memory, at 256MB, may make the tablet slow in accessing the already slow speeds of internet in Indian colleges. Only about half the 25,000 colleges have been linked to the internet under the government's National Mission of Education. Out of these, less than 15% of the colleges have broadband with speeds of at least 512 kbps.
Earlier, the government had invited an expression of interest from Indian companies, but the tender was issued afresh as earlier vendors were not being able to deliver at the price point which the government wanted.
Gartner analyst Vishal Tripathi said it will be difficult for others to meet the price of $35 for retail sales. "The tablet is largely subsidised. We will wait till launch to give a verdict," he said.
HCL Infosystems first won the tender to make the tablets, but the deal fell through after the company realised that it could not meet the price expectations of the government.

Google opens world's first 'pop-up' store in London

Google, the world's most popular search engine, has opened its first small 'pop-up' store in London.
The 'Chromezone' is a shop within a branch of Currys and PC World on London's Tottenham Court Road, and is being used by Google to trial a new way of selling its own 'Chromebook' laptops, The Telegraph reports.
Earlier these laptops were only available online, but Google now believes its consumers will benefit from being shown the product in real life.
"Specially trained Chromebook experts will be on hand to offer guidance and advice to shoppers", the company said in a statement.
According to the paper, the launch was low key compared to Apple's massively hyped opening of its first London shop in 2004, but the search giant has claimed that it will experiment with the format and could open more retail outlets in the future.

Forget 3G , 5G is round the corner

The days of waiting for smartphones to upload video may be numbered thanks to Rice University researchers who have invented a new "full-duplex" technology allows wireless devices like phones and tablets to both "talk" and "listen" to wireless cell towers on the same frequency something that requires two frequencies today.

"Our solution requires minimal hardware, both for mobile devices and networks, which is why we've attracted the attention of every wireless company in the world," said Ashutosh Sabharwal, a professor at Rice. "I expect people may see this when carriers upgrade to 4.5G or5G in just a few years."

Sabharwal along with Achaleshwar Sahai and Gaurav Patel have set records with a signal quality at least 10 times better than any other. "We've shown that we can add full duplex as an additional mode on existing hardware. Device makers love this because real estate inside a phone is at a premium, and it means they don't have to add new hardware that only supports full duplex," Sabharwal said.

How is full-duplex possible?
To explain why full-duplex was long thought impossible for wireless networks, Sabharwal uses the analogy of two people standing far apart inside an otherwise empty arena. If each shouts to the other at the same time, neither can hear what the other is saying.

The easy solution is to have only one person speak at a time, and that's what happens on two-way radios where only one person may speak at a given time. Phones achieve two-way speech by using two different frequencies to send and listen.

Rice's team overcame the full-duplex hurdle by employing an extra antenna and some computing tricks. In the shouting analogy, the result is that the shouter cannot hear himself, and therefore hears the only other sound in the arena - the person shouting from far away.

"We use antenna tech called MIMO, which are common in today's devices," Sabharwal said. "MIMO stands for 'multiple-input multiple-output' and it uses several antennas to improve overall performance. We took advantage of the multiple antennas for our scheme, which is the main reason why all wireless carriers are very comfortable with our tech."