44 deemed universities derecognized by GOVT

New Delhi, Jan 19: The center on Monday, Jan 18, informed the Supreme Court of its decision to derecognise 44 deemed university across the country.

In the affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, the Human Resource Development

ministry cited irregualties in giving the 'deemed' tags to these institutions during the time of HRD minister Arjun Singh under the first UPA government.

Human Resource and Development ministry added that the government has approved the recommendations made by the high-powered P N Tandon committee and the Special Task Force, which set up to suggest measures to tackle the problem.

"The Review Committee came across several aberrations in the functioning of some of the institutions deemed to be universities. It found undesirable management architecture where families rather than professional academics controlled the functioning of institutions," the affidavit said.

The Center's study which includes 126 deemed universities across the country found 44 universities completely unfit to be conferred with the deemed tag.

44 other universities will given time to improve themesleves, while the remaining 38 was found to be doing well.

6 universities in Karnataka is on the unfit list. Tamil Nadu has 16 universities out of the 44 derecognize list. Uttar Pradesh has four, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Maharashtra has three each and one each in Gujarat, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Bihar.

In a recent statement, HRD minister Kapil Sibal, questioned the functioning of these universities.

Sibal said that some of these universities do not fulfill the eligibility criteria and were found to be lacking in basic infrastructure like university campus and teaching staff.

The affidavit by the center,  came after the Supreme Court's directives to act on a PIL, seeking action against deemed universities which flout academic standards and norms and function solely on commercial purpose.

The list of universities which will be derecognized are as follows:

1. Christ College, Bangalore

2. Vignan's Foundation for Science, Technology and Research, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh

3. Lingaya's University, Faridabad

4. St Peter's Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai

5. Noorul Islam Centre for Higher Education, Kanyakumari

6. Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida

7.Shobhit Institute of Engineering and Technology, Meerut

8. Sumandeep Vidyapeet, Vadodara, Gujarat

9. Sri Devraj Urs Academy of Higher Education and Reserch, Kolar, Karnataka

10. Yenepoya University, Mangalore

11. BLDE University, Bijapur, Karnataka

12.Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences, Satara, Maharashtra

13.D Y Patil Medical College, Kolhapur, Maharashtra

14. Meenakshi Academy of Higher Education and Research, Chennai

15. Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Kanchipuram

16. HIHT University, Dehradun

17. Santosh University, Ghaziabad

18. Maharshi Markandeshwar University, Ambala, Haryana

19. Manav Rachna International University, Faridabad

20. Sri Siddhartha Academy of Higher Education, Tumkur, Karnataka

21. Jain University, Bangalore

22. Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Pune

23. Siksha "O" Anusandha, Bhubaneswar

24. Janardan Rai Nagar, Udaipur, Rajasthan

25. Institute of Advanced Studies in Education of Gandhi Vidya Mandir, Sardarshahr, Rajasthan

26. Mody Institute of Technology, Sikar, Rajasthan

27. Dr MGR Educational and Research Institute, Chennai

28. Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Chennai

29. Kalasalingam Academy of Research and Education, Virdhunagar, Tamil Nadu

30. Periryar Maniammai Institute of Science and Technology, Thanjavur

31. Academy of Maritime Education and Training, Chennai

32. Vel's Institute of Science, Technology and Advanced Studies, Chennai

33. Karpagam Academy of Higher Education, Coimbatore

34. Vel Tech Rangaraja Dr Sagunthal R&D Institute of Science, Chennai

35. Gurukul Kangri, Haridwar

36. Grapich Era University, Dehradun

37. Nehru Gram Bharati Vishwavidyalaya, Allahabad

38. Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth, Puducherry

39. Vinayaka Mission's Research Foundation, Salem, Tamil Nadu

40.Bharath Institute of Higher Education And Research, Chennai

41. Ponnaiya Ramajayam Institute of Science and Technology, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu

42. Nava Nalanda Mahavira, Nalanda, Bihar

43. Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development, Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu

44. National Museum, Institute of the History of Art Conservation and Musicology, Janpath, New     Delhi.

Some highlights of the Cyber Criminal's 2009

Cyber criminals too can hold you to ransom, by encrypting important files or locking you out of your own computer

BANGALORE, INDIA: The past few months have witnessed wave after wave of online pandemics. Never-seen-before strains of existing malicious codes and completely new Trojans spread across millions of computers worldwide. Your computer, your identity, your money… nothing was spared in the cyber mafia's attempt to take over the internet.
Among the millions of attacks that Symantec has observed, a few stood out – in terms of reach, damage and sheer ingenuity. Read on for a lowdown on 5 highlights of the cyber criminal's 2009.
 
Locking you out of your own homepage
RANSOMWARE: Like in the physical world, cyber criminals too can hold you to ransom, by encrypting important files or locking you out of your own computer.
This threat uses scare or nuisance tactics—similar to rogue antivirus programs—in an attempt to demand ransom from its victims. Once infected with Trojan.Ransompage, an example of a Trojan that achieves this, your browser will display a persistent inline ad on every page you visits. The ad will cover part of the original Web page, as shown below. The ad will stay on the screen even if the page is scrolled. This ad is written in Russian and states that in order to remove the ad (and to gain access a porn site) the victim must send a premium rate text message to the number provided, and the user will receive a code to remove the ad.
You may think you can avoid this by simply switching browsers. However, the malware author is a step ahead and targeted three very popular browser with this piece of malware.
The other face of social networking
KOOBFACE: The Koobface worm infects users by using social engineering attacks. It spreads by abusing social networking websites or by employing search engine optimization techniques to lure potential victims to malicious sites.

MODE OF TRANSMISSION: The infrastructure used by the Koobface gang is relatively simple: a central server redirects victims to one of the infected bots where the social engineering attack takes place. While the central redirection point has been actively targeted by take-down requests, the Koobface gang has so far been quick to replace suspended domain names and blacklisted IPs with new ones.

A year has passed since Koobface was first detected; yet, this worm and the people behind it are still very active in keeping their infrastructure up to date, finding new means of propagating the infection, and taking advantage of their victims.
In just three weeks, Symantec observed 17,170 distinct infected IP addresses. This gave us a basis to gauge the extent of the infection. The figure below shows the geographic location of these Koobface bots. As indicated, several Indian cities are home to Koobface bots.
Flying into the cyber mafia's trap
AIRLINE TICKET SPAM: All of us want to travel the world, if only we could afford the astronomical airfares! Cyber criminals know that, which is why they've made it easy to grab cheap – or free – airline tickets to popular destinations. You don't even have to look for it online, because these offers land straight in your mailbox!
Symantec researchers are observing an increase in spam that is offering cheap airline tickets or gift vouchers to use towards a purchase of airline tickets. Spam messages are originating with email addresses, such as "AirlineTickets@spam-domain" and "Free.Airline.Tickets@spam-domain." A link redirects the user to an online form where the user's personal information and credit card details are requested. In many cases, it's the victim's money that will travel the world, and not the victim himself.
The top 10 headlines used in airline ticket spam are as follows:
Subject: RE: 2 [airline name removed] Airline Tickets
Subject: Fly the skies with cheap airfares.
Subject: Fly Anywhere in the U.S.
Subject: 2 Round Trip Airline tickets. Fly anywhere in the US
Subject: Airfare on us - with this [airline name removed] Airlines Reward Card
Subject: Airline ticket bookings made easier.
Subject: Airline tickets. The quickest way to anywhere.
Subject: Airline tickets to any place in the world.
Subject: Amazing deals across all airlines.
Subject: Book cheap airline tickets now!
Even death can't stop them
TRAGEDY SPAM: Three global celebrities passed away last year, and while the world mourned, cyber criminals got busy. The deaths of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson were prime targets for spammers and malicious code authors alike.
Internet users saw a flurry of threats seeking to play upon the emotions and curiosity of the public around these events. If you looked for news, videos, pictures, or any information regarding these individuals and their lives, you're likely to have had a close encounter with the cyber mafia.

In just one of several examples, Symantec observed spam that appears to be a spoof on CNN but actually contains a link to a malicious Web page. Users who clicked on the link were redirected to a page that prompted them to download and run a file on a fake Flash Player, which actually installed malicious code.
Here are some of the additional spam and online tactics Symantec saw:
Spam with subject lines related to these deaths with malware attached Search engine poisoning campaigns injecting malicious sites into the top search engine results related to any of these deaths Sites and links claiming to host videos of the last moments of these individuals lives, but actually peddling fake goods or malware Social networking messages on these deaths that linked to malware Dial T for trouble The increasing use of smartphones has given cyber criminals a vast, lucrative new avenue to create trouble. Recently, we've seen a series of threats that target mobile phones. With India's mobile additions exceeding 12 million every month, the payoff for the online mafia is quite obvious. Described below two unique attacks.
PHONESNOOP: A Blackberry application called PhoneSnoop was released recently, which allowed remote users to listen in on a Blackberry user's surroundings.
 
The application is actually quite straightforward and uses standard Blackberry APIs that allow the interception of incoming phone calls. When a call is received from a preconfigured phone number, the call is automatically answered and the speakerphone is engaged. Someone who has had this application installed may not notice the incoming phone call and not realize someone can now listen in on the immediate surroundings.
THE IPHONE WORM: The number of attacks designed to exploit a certain operating system or platform is directly related to that platform's market share, as malware authors want the biggest bang for their buck. In 2009, we saw Macs and smartphones targeted more by malware authors, for example the Sexy Space botnet aimed at the Symbian mobile device operating system and the OSX.Iservice Trojan targeting Mac users.
An Australian hacker wrote the first worm for jailbroken iPhones. The worm has been dubbed "Ikee" and uses the default SSH password of jailbroken iPhones to log in and spread.

Many users who have jailbroken their iPhones in order to customize them have not changed their SSH password, allowing others to log in to their phone. Once a vulnerable iPhone is found, the worm changes the wallpaper to a picture of Rick Astley (a prank known as Rickrolling), deletes the SSH daemon, and begins scanning the network for other vulnerable phones.

Bharti to roll-out WiFi hotspots in India

Airtel plans to launch more than 1000 hotspots across the nation by end of 2010

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Toeing the lines of Tata Communications and state-owned telecom operator BSNL, Bharti Airtel is all set get into the WiFi market by launching hotspots across the nation.  Google Yahoo Microsoft: The WiFI war is on In a report in The Economic Times, Vikas Singh, CMO for Telemedia Services at Bharti Airtel had been quoted as saying, "Airtel WiFi hotspots will be strategically located at leading premium hotels, hospitals, chains of restaurants, coffee shops and corporate buildings that are the hub of corporate, community and social activities. For us, this is an initiative to increase customer stickiness and enhance average revenue per user (ARPU) of our broadband customer base." Airtel plans to launch more than 1000 hotspots across the nation by end of 2010, however, the service will only be accessible by current Airtel Broadband subscribers initially. Currently, Tata Communications are the market leaders in this segment with over 500 hotspots and BSNL is also in the process of setting up WiFi hotspots across the country.

How to secure network from hackers?

Every four minutes a network is hacked costing organizations millions of dollars. Using penetration testing tools, ethical hackers can save them from this pain




BANGALORE, INDIA: The history of crime prevention is similar to the history of warfare. First an offense takes place and to counter it a defense is developed. Modern age bandits are malicious hackers who strategically infringe into a network and get away with sensitive data. The worst that they can do with your data is, selling the data to competitors or can even blackmail you over your personal stuff.

The hacking business has surpassed illegal drug trafficking as a criminal money maker. Every 4 minutes a network is hacked and this costs the organization millions to cover for the losses. So instead of spending millions on covering losses the organizations prefer to protect their network by hiring people who penetrate the company network under a signed contract. These people are called ethical hackers or pen-testers who try to gain access into the network without knowing usernames and passwords. These people run various rigorous tests on the network and test its security infrastructure.

The techniques and software used to carry out pen-tests are called pen-tools or penetration tools. These tools are also used by hackers to hack into the systems and networks, so the basic difference between a pen-tester and hacker is permission. The pen-tester is permitted to actually hack into the network (up to a certain extent only), while the hacker hacks the network without permission and steals information. Pen-testing is a precautionary exercise that lets the organization know if there is any vulnerability in its security infrastructure so that they can correct them as instructed by the pen-tester.

Pen-testing can be categorized as Black Box testing; where the pen-tester has no knowledge of the system he will penetrate (simulation of the real time situation where the hacker works on an alien system), another type is White Box penetration testing, where a pen-tester is provided significant knowledge about the network and in many cases these tests are done in conjunction with the IT team of the company. After the tests are conducted a well documented report is written and presented.

Benefits of pen-testing
What is the need for us to pen test our network? Who will hack our network and what would he get in return? These obvious questions pop up in the mind of many business owners when probed  about security. Small enterprises lack a dedicated force for security of their information and if it exists it is more or less business driven, experts if any are not well experienced. The goal of the organization is liquidity and security is not given much concern.

Some businesses just get fine with automatic software updates, strong passwords, and a firewall, whereas others need some more control. For intruders it's about getting access to resources the easiest way possible and if we go by records there has been a sharp increase in security breaches within small enterprises. The big money is now in stealing personal identification number (PIN) information together with associated credit and debit accounts. PIN based frauds are directly related to withdrawing cash from a person's account. Small enterprises may be attacked as an opportunity or they may be randomly selected from large population of vulnerable organizations.

Unlike small and medium enterprises which are quite ignorant about their security, large enterprises spend significant amounts of capital on their security and privacy. Since the security of the large enterprises is directly related to their reputation, they take a lot of pain in ensuring that their networks are safe and secure. Another reason for large enterprises to protect their network is growing competition, as recently we have seen a lot of large emerging companies that are ready to meet any end to capture the market.

As organizations become more and more aware they have started budgeting over IT security practices and lot of small and medium business are also becoming savvier in making decisions over IT security concerns. The organizations are constantly thriving to gain the customer confidence, and so are spending huge amounts on their security practices and this is where penetration testing comes into picture.

We launched a Brute Force attack using a tool called Cain & Abel to decrypt the encrypted passwords added to the network.

Cain & Abel was used to launch an ARP Poisoning and Sniffing attack on the target network to fetch passwords.

Cain & Abel used for retrieving passwords of duped users on the network. You can see all the passwords and names of users who were duped on the network. Pen-test vs vulnerability assessment The vulnerability test gets into system till it isn't compromised while the penetration tests can compromise a system as per the contract with the company. Most organizations carry out vulnerability tests instead of penetration tests. Vulnerability test is only about identifying and quantifying the security flaws, while penetration testing is active analysis of the system for any weaknesses or flaws and can involve active exploitation of security vulnerabilities. Security issues are reported to the owner and often a technical solution is suggested. Penetration tools Many penetration tools are existent today and most are freeware, however our focus is on two important tools, VoIP and firewall testing tools. To test VoIP we selected Cain & Abel since this tool is developed for Microsoft operating systems. It is basically a password recovery tool with many useful utilities like dictionary attack, cryptanalysis, brute forcing attack, and ARP poisoning, recovering local security asserts secrets. An important feature of Cain and Abel is that it works within in an established LAN as soon as we move out from LAN this test is of little use. We performed some interesting tests with this tool, namely brute forcing attack, ARP poisioning and recovered LSA secrets for a local machine. Some useful and tested features of this test are: Protected password recovery:  Reveals locally stored passwords of Outlook, Outlook Express, Outlook Express Identities, Outlook 2002, Internet Explorer and MSN Explorer. Brute force attack: The most effective technique to generate password based on various combinations. It is applied to hash files generated through PwDump  utility. LSA Secrets Dumper: Dumps the contents of the Local Security Authority Secrets. Sniffer: Captures passwords, hashes and authentication information while they are transmitted on the network. Includes several filters for application specific authentications and routing protocols. The VoIP filter enables the capture of voice conversations transmitted with the SIP/RTP protocol saved later as WAV files. ARP Poisoning Attack: This attack is based on poisoning of the ARP cache of the switch, as it is known that all the traffic in a LAN is passed through a switch which maintains ARP (Address Resolution protocol) cache. The attack basically poisons the ARP cache of the switch so that all traffic will move through the attacker's machine without the knowledge of the user. Cain and Abel is user friendly and its results are 99% accurate. The newest version, v49.35, has added support for Windows 2008 Server in APR-RDP sniffing filter. For more references you can log on to www.oxid.it. A limitation with Cain and Abel is that you have to get into the network to use it. Another limitation is that since it is free and created for use in educational and security purposes, it can also be used by hackers to hack into your network. There are many network tools which are used for mapping networks, however the most popular of them is Firewalk which is used to gather information about the remote network. The principle of firewalk is based on traceroute. However, the limitation of traceroute is that with this we can only trace the response of the gateways but the knowledge about its internal network is not known. If we want to trace the network behind the firewall, we have to run a slightly different kind of probe. This probe lets us know the kind of traffic a firewall can pass through. To extract information with the traceroute probe it is necessary that we know the IP address of the gateway. Once we get the gateway IP we can now run a scan which will let us know the kind of protocol packets that are accepted by the firewall. This is simple. Run a scan and if you don't get a response then the protocol used by you is blocked by the firewall. Try sending packets for different protocols and monitor the response. By sending packets to every host behind the firewall an accurate map about network topology can be generated. Firewalk It is one of the popular reconnaissance and an open source tool used for determining what four layers will a given IP forwarding device will pass. The working includes sending TCP/UDP packets with TTL (Time to Live) one greater than the targeted gateway. The gateway will forward the packets to the next hop where they will expire and an error message stating ICMP_TIME_ EXCEEDED is displayed, however if the gateway blocks the packet it will give no response. To get the correct IP TTL that will expire one hop beyond the gateway, we need to ramp up hop counts. After ramping we can start scanning the network. Firewalk can be used as an hacking tool by hackers and can also be used by pen-testers to examine that ACLs (Access control lists are used on  routers to limit the protocols allowed to pass through the host system behind the router) are doing what they are intended to do. When we opened two ports SMTP (25) and HTTP (80) by port forwarding in the firewall and tried to scan them using NETCAT, these results were obtained. We tried a similar test to determine the network behind the firewall by creating a dummy network and running test over it. The network included a firewall (Endian), a mail server and a client computer. The three interfaces of firewall ? WAN , internal and DMZ were connected as a network. The WAN interface was connected to the Internet terminal while an internal network behind the firewall was made to which a mail pop3 server was connected and this was connected to the DMZ interface. A test machine running backtrack was used as an Attacking machine. A firewall probe was then run on the machine and results were recorded. As the setup was very simple and didn't have any misconfiguration in our case, Firewalk was not able to detect any configuration error in the setup. NETCAT NETCAT is a  computer networking service  for reading and writing network  connections using TCP and UDP  protocols. At the same time, it is a feature-rich network debugging and investigation tool, since it can produce almost any kind of correlation you would need. It is basically a UNIX based utility but its Windows compatible versions are also available. NETCAT can also be used as a port scanner which detects the open ports on the target machine. We used NETCAT for scanning the open ports on the target machine and to get the information of the network behind the firewall. One may think, it is even possible to connect to an arbitarary ports using even a simple tool like Telnet so what is the USP of this tool. The explanation lies in the fact that Telnet has standard input EOF problem so one must introduce calculated delays in driving scripts to allow network output to finish. Telnet also will not transfer arbitrary binary data, because certain characters are interpreted as Telnet options and are thus removed from the data stream.

Major tech innovation of 09

From products like smartphones to services such as twitter, 2009 went through amazing technology developments




SAN FRANCISCO, US: Any review of the major technology developments of 2009 would inevitably include copious copy on the Googles, Microsofts and other giants of the tech world.
But it was also a year in which the tiny company called Twitter became a major communications force, and when political, economic, social and technological trends combined to put green technology at the forefront of innovation.
2009 was the year when the microblogging site Twitter became the de-rigueur mode of communication for any artist, politician or celebrity who wished to display a cutting edge sense of connectivity. But it also became an essential mode of communication for everyone from grandmas to schoolgirls, from company spokesman to revolutionary ideologues.
The uprising against the election results in Iran in June gave the most concrete indication to date of the power of Twitter to influence world events. As the Iranian government clamped down on other media and internet channels, Iranians kept taking to the streets and transmitting their experiences via the microblogging site, helping their leaders organise demonstrations, and sympathisers around the world keep track of their struggle.
The technology allows users to post instant and frequent updates via their mobile phones, and grew exponentially this year to an estimated 18 million users a month - a 200 percent increase over the year before.
With the continued proliferation of the iPhone and its would-be competitors, Twitterers and others certainly had a huge variety of devices to choose from.
Though Apple's iconic device remains the undisputed king of the sector, 2009 saw the emergence of its first credible challengers. This was largely due to the emergence of Google's Android operating system, which was adopted as a mobile platform by a growing band of device manufacturers, notably Taiwanese maker HTC, and Motorola, a once-dominant handset maker which is banking its future on Android.
Though the global recession cut into Google's amazing growth spurt and even prompted it to announce its first firings and cost-cutting initiatives, Google still dominated the internet search market throughout the year. It still registers some 60 percent of all US searches, but now, when the company executives look in their rear view mirror, they might notice the tiny image of a distant giant approaching.
After years in which Microsoft botched every attempt to build on the dominance of its Internet Explorer browser, the Seattle software giant has finally got something right with its Bing search engine. The company's heavily-promoted new technology has been warmly reviewed and has grabbed a 10 percent market share since its launch. Microsoft's agreement to provide Yahoo with its search technology and its discussions with news providers for exclusive contracts could yet make it a formidable Google competitor.
Microsoft also finally got it right with the release of its Windows 7 operating system less than four years after it launched the widely-derided Vista. According to Microsoft, the new software has sold more than twice as many copies as Vista did during its initial launch period. The October release also helped pump up computer sales for the crucial holiday season.
But perhaps the biggest technology story of the year revolves not around the latest computing innovations but on the ever-increasing focus placed on the development of clean green technology. According to tracking firm CleanTech Ventures, US clean technology venture investments totalled $1.59 billion in the 3rd quarter of 2009 for the second consecutive quarterly rise after steep declines prompted by the global recession.
Green industry got an added boost from the US government this year under US President Barack Obama's stimulus programme, which set aside nearly 10 percent or $70 billion for energy efficiency and new methods.
Huge investments have been made from outside the venture and government scene. ExxonMobil for instance has pumped $600 million into a San Diego-based scheme to develop fuel from algae, while two California-based companies have received almost $1 billion in government awards to develop electric cars.
Private investors were also eager to open their wallets as they sought to take advantage of low share prices for emerging technology firms. But while 2009 was a year of recovery for green technology, 2010 is likely to see a return to significant growth as high oil prices and the focus on a low-carbon economy continue to fuel interest in alternative energy.
"Bring me your business plans," venture capitalist Steve Westly told a tech industry conference in November. "We are ready to start funding again."

Bright days are ahead..........Good bye recession.

As the worst of economic recession is over, the India Inc hopes that 2010 will bring cheers once again

Sudhakaran BANGALORE, INDIA: If recession and pink slips were the buzzwords of 2009, there is a glimmer of hope as we are set to welcome the new year. Whoever we talked to in the recent times expressed the hope that the worst is over and recovery is round the corner. As the hope of recovery gets brighter, we must continue to invest in universal education so that we can make sure that access to growth is available to all, said Kris Gopalakrishnan, Infosys Technologies chief executive officer and managing director. "Global economy is recovering after a terrible 2009 for the world. India is recovering faster and looking forward to a GDP growth of 8-10," he observed. Kris also suggested that we must invest in vocational and higher education so that people are prepared for the jobs of the future. "We must invest in research so that tomorrow's innovations and tomorrow's enterprises are created. We need to address governance so that we get full benefit of the money we spend and programs and projects are implemented and benefits reach everyone," he added. It is this potential of education sector that Ninad Karpe, CEO and MD Aptech Ltd would bank upon. "IT education will see a big surge for all courses. However, there will be a greater demand for specialized offerings like cloud computing," he said. He also said that in 2010, all Indian IT companies will re-start large hiring, which will augur well for the entire industry. Microsoft India also expressed confidence about 2010, as the recovery from the economic downturn has already started in India. "We are witnessing a sustained growth in several sectors of the economy. As far as the IT industry is concerned, the Indian market continues to present a plethora of opportunities and the key to unlocking these opportunities is investment in innovation," Microsoft said in a statement. Despite the challenges posed by the year gone by, Wipro said 2009 was also a satisfying year by many counts. "Given the overall economic climate in the background of the global financial crisis, we revisited our business model fundamentals and fine-tuned it to the changing customer needs," said Suresh Senapaty, chief financial officer of Wipro. Advantage India The global economic recovery will be a boost for India, feels Alok Bardiya, vice president - marketing and managed services strategy – Tata Communications. He observed that the center of gravity for growth has clearly started moving to China, India and other emerging markets. "While companies improved their profitability in 2009 focusing on cost, expect revenue growth to start kicking in as well in 2010. But the focus on cost optimization will continue. This, combined with innovation, will define what the world now calls the 'new normal'," he said. However, according to Rajesh Janey, president, India and SAARC, NetApp IT spending would increase significantly in 2010 as the economy recovers. "Customer priorities have been fundamentally altered, and they would continue to focus on reducing costs and increasing efficiencies," he said. Janey also said government IT spending is expected to be a big driver of growth in 2010. "Government projects led by UID will offer a huge opportunity in data storage and management," he added. On the other hand, Deepak Patel, CEO, Aditya Birla Minacs, thinks 2010 would see companies willing to outsource more and more of their 'core business'. "At Minacs, we plan to increase our high-end business and our capabilities in delivering judgment based work. We also aim at acquiring the right assets that we can leverage to increase our offerings base. This is primarily to add new capabilities and not just buy scale," he said. According to Yogesh Bijlani, vice president, SAARC, Telenity, "With the increased competition amongst operators we see existing entertainment VAS services like CRBT, subscription services becoming a commodity and subscribers demanding utility VAS services like Location Based Applications & Social Community Services." Safe and secure Dewang Neralla, director, Atom Technologies said, with the renewed confidence in the economy and rapid positive changes, 2010 should ideally be called the re-launch of safe and secure electronic payments. "With the spending power growing up, we would see customers adopting alternative channels like tele-commerce including mobile as well as IVR for the payments," he said. Puneet Datta, Senior Marketing Manager, Canon BIS, said the company is aiming to strengthen the relationship with channel partners. "In order to take its relationship with the channel partner to the next level and to further strengthen it, Canon BIS has regrouped its existing and the new partner programs under one umbrella titled "ROCKS,"he said. "The program is part of Canon's national channel strategy to showcase commitment in building competencies with channel partners to enable them climb the value chain." Ring in the new Bikram Dasgupta, chairman, Globsyn Group said 2010 by all indications promises to be a heartening year. Agreeing that 2009 was a challenging year for the industry, he said the coming year would usher in new trends that would lead to improved and much more aggressive growth prospects." Deepak Sharma, general manager - South Asia, Eaton Power Quality Pvt. Ltd, said the economy will see a healthy growth in base business as the GDP resumes high growth. He also said solar business would grow significantly this year, as government policies become clearer. Dr. Vinod Vasudevan, Group CEO, Flytxt, also agreed that the economy is now showing signs of recovery. In 2010, we should see more stability and possibly, an upward trend. "Telecom and technology would be two sectors to watch out, driven by broad based growth - newer geographies and newer customer segments. In telecom, we are already seeing this with the huge growth in emerging markets and rural subscriber base." He said that 2010 will see increased adoption and wide spread use of telecom services and applications that were hitherto seen as high-end and technology services penetration would lead to decreasing the digital divide in India. Said Sandeep Nair, managing director, Emerson Network Power (India) Pvt. Ltd, the few sectors that performed well in 2009 were IT/ITES, telecom, healthcare and government. "These sectors also fueled the growth of data center and cooling solution market in India. 2009 was one of the best years for the Indian telecom industry," he added. "This year, India represented the second largest mobile subscriber base in the world with tele-density crossing the 50 per cent mark. According to Shelly Choudhary, MD, Unisys Infosolutions Pvt Ltd, 2010 is for mobile Ads, local content; 3G based content, utility based applications, LBS, mobile emails. "Mobile commerce will be the opportunity and VAS is the best choice for operator in an era of decreasing ARPUs and per second fight. Consolidation will happen this year between VAS companies and aggregators," he said.

Scientists writing foolproof computer security code

A project led by Danny Cohen-Or, computer science professor at the Tel Aviv University (TAU), shows how a new kind of video captcha code may be harder to outsmart.


WASHINGTON, USA: We often see websites asking us to key in wavy letters into a box to prevent computer robots from hacking into servers and databases. But these codes, which are becoming increasingly complex for an average person, are not immune to security breaches.

A project led by Danny Cohen-Or, computer science professor at the Tel Aviv University (TAU), shows how a new kind of video captcha code may be harder to outsmart. Captcha technology is intended to block spam e-mail and automated systems.

"Humans have a very special skill that computer bots have not yet been able to master," says Cohen-Or. "We can see what's called an 'emergence image' - an object on a computer screen that becomes recognizable only when it's moving - and identify this image in a matter of seconds."

"While a person can't 'see' the image as a stationary object on a mottled background, it becomes part of our gestalt as it moves, allowing us to recognize and process it."

The study was co-authored with colleagues in Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and India. Cohen-Or describes a synthesis technique that generates pictures of 3-D objects, like a running man or a flying airplane.

This technique, he says, will allow security developers to generate an infinite number of moving "emergence" images that will be virtually impossible for any computer algorithm to decode.

'Emergence,' as defined by researchers, is a unique human ability to collect fragments of seemingly useless information, then synthesize and perceive it as an identifiable whole.

So far, computers don't have this skill. "Computer vision algorithms are completely incapable of effectively processing emergence images," says Cohen-Or's colleague and study co-author Lior Wolf.

The scientists warn that it will take some time before this research can be applied in the real world."We're not claiming in our research paper that we've developed a whole new captcha technology," says Cohen-Or.

"But we are taking a step towards that - something that could lead to a much better captcha, to highlight the big difference between men and bots," concludes Cohen-Or.

"If it were to be turned into a solution, however, we wouldn't be able to give humans a multiple choice answer or common word answer for what they see, so we'll need to develop a way to use it. We have a few ideas in the works."

The researchers are also developing methods of automatically generating "hidden" images in a natural background, like a pastoral mountain setting - a digital "Where's Waldo?" game.

"We're trying to hide images like eagles or a lion in mountainscape," says Cohen-Or. Because the moving image blends into a static background, it's hard for bots to understand what the human eye perceives with only minimal training.

U.S. hacker pleads guilty, faces 17-25 years

BOSTON, USA: A 28-year-old college dropout pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges that he stole tens of millions of payment card numbers by breaking into corporate computer systems.
Albert Gonzalez told a federal judge in Boston that he engineered electronic heists at companies including payment card processor Heartland Payment Systems, 7-Eleven Inc and the Hannaford chain of New England grocery stores.
Gonzalez has previously pleaded guilty to computer break-ins at retailers TJX Cos Inc, BJ's Wholesale Club Inc and Barnes & Noble.
He faces 17 to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced in March in the largest case of identity theft in U.S. history. The two judges responsible for doling out the punishment have considerable leeway in sentencing.
"You face a considerable amount of time in jail as a result of your plea," U.S. district Judge Douglas Woodlock told Gonzalez. "All aspects of your life are to be affected."
Gonzalez's attorney, Martin Weinberg, has asked for the judges to be lenient, saying his client suffers from Internet addiction, drug abuse and symptoms of a mild form of autism known as Asperger syndrome.
Gonzalez, who appeared in court wearing a beige prison uniform, told the judge that he had abused alcohol and illegal drugs for years. He mentioned marijuana, cocaine, LSD, ketamine and hallucinogenic mushrooms.
"It's one of the reasons to explain why a young man in his 20s did these things," Weinberg said.
A psychiatrist hired by Gonzalez has told the court that the hacker's criminal behavior "was consistent with the description of the Asperger's disorder." Prosecutors have petitioned the court to perform their own psychiatric evaluation of Gonzalez.
Weinberg has sought to block that request, saying it is unprecedented to conduct a psychiatric evaluation prior to sentencing. "He's admitted responsibility. He is remorseful," Weinberg said.
A U.S. federal court in Boston last week sentenced one of Gonzalez's conspirators, Stephen Watt of New York, to two years in prison for developing the software used to capture payment card data. It also ordered him to pay $171.5 million in restitution.

Knighthood for UK's first Sikh judge

Mota Singh, who is the UK's first Sikh and Asian judge, has been knighted by the British Queen. London-based Singh, who is also a Queen's Counsel, has been knighted in the Queen's New Year Honors List for "services to the Administration of Justice, Community Relations and to the Voluntary Sector". A Ramgarhia Sikh, Mota Singh was raised and educated in Nairobi, Kenya. In 1954, he shifted to England to complete the remaining part of his studies of Law. He joined the English bar in 1967. Within months, he developed a successful practice in civil law. His decision to wear a white turban in court, instead of a wig, came to be seen as a sign of a multicultural Britain. Among several Indian-origin people honored in the New Year List is Achhar Paul Dharni, who has been awarded the MBE (Member of the British Empire) for services to business and to the community in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Dharni, 68, who is also the chairman of Bradford's Hindu Cultural Society, emigrated to the city from India in 1963. He worked as a bus driver, ran and sold his own insurancebroker and travel companies. Dharni was a key figure behind the three million pounds project to build the Laxmi Narayan Hindu temple, in Leeds Road, which was opened by the Queen in May 2007.

US security at foreign airports

After the failed Detroit plane bombing in which a young Nigerian managed to enter a US jet with explosive, the Obama Administration has decided to dispatch its officials to countries across the world to review the security procedures and the technologies being used at international airports. "As part of the ongoing review to determine exactly what went wrong leading up to thwarted plane attack on Christmas Day, we are looking not only at our own processes, but also beyond our borders to ensure effective aviation security measures are in place for US-bound flights that originate at international airports," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said. The announcement from Napolitano in this regard came after her conference call with US President Barack Obama wherein she briefed him about the preliminary reports of the review of the security procedures being done by the Department of Homeland Security. Obama had asked for a preliminary report by Thursday. Napolitano said she is dispatching Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute, Assistant Secretary for Policy David Heyman and other senior Department officials on a broad international outreach effort to meet with leaders from major international airports in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and South America to review security procedures and technology being used to screen passengers on flights bound for America. The Department of Homeland Security, however, did not confirm if any of these visits would include India in particular. "Because I am fully committed to making whatever changes are necessary to protect the safety of the travelling public, I am sending Deputy Secretary Lute and Assistant Secretary Heyman to work with our international partners on ways to collectively bolster our tactics for defeating terrorists wherever they may seek to launch an attack, and I will follow up on these efforts with ministerial-level meetings within the next few weeks," Napolitano said. Deputy Secretary Lute and Assistant Secretary Heyman will first travel to Europe, departing on January 4. They will brief European authorities on the findings of President Obama's aviation security review and then report back to Napolitano on their discussions on enhancing international security measures. "They are going to talk about the need to enhance international cooperation on this thing, given that international travel is inherently international and requiring that kind of cooperation," a senior Administration official said.

Embers 10,000 times hotter than our Sun

Huge balls of fire, 10,000 times hotter than the sun, that were unleashed by a supernova in one of the most powerful explosions in the universe have been discovered. The Japanese Suzaku space observatory has captured the unusual features that were detected in the Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443), 5,000 light years away, The Astrophysical Journal reported. "This is the first evidence of a new type of supernova remnant - one that was heated right after the explosion," said team leader Hiroya Yamaguchi at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Japan. The remnant of a supernova usually cools quickly due to rapid expansion following the explosion. It gradually heats up again as it sweeps up tenuous interstellar gas over thousands of years. The astronomers found evidence in the Suzaku spectrum that indicated large amounts of silicon and sulphur atoms from which all electrons had been stripped away. This requires temperatures higher than 17 million degree Celsius and so could only have been created immediately after the supernova explosion. "Suzaku sees the Jellyfish's hot heart," team member Midori Ozawa said. Remnants from giant fireballs unleashed by a supernova are still glowing at temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the Sun thousands of years after the event, they added. The phenomenon was picked up in the x-ray spectrum.

Economic recovery is proportional to divorce rate

The end of a marriage is never a pleasant affair. But the shaky economic recovery could take a toll on many hard-pressed families, predict divorce lawyers. 'QualitySolicitors.com', a national group of 200 law firms, expects double the usual volume of monthly divorce- related enquiries -- in fact, it follows 26 per cent increase in enquiries from July to November as the downturn started to slow, the 'Daily Mail'reported. "The volume of divorce cases dropped right across the country this year due to the credit crunch. That wasn't a sign that less families were separating, but that many couples have been biding their time conscious that to divide assets worth considerably less than they once were might not be in either of their interests. "However, as confidence has crept back into the market in recent months we have seen that trend begin to change significantly. We now expect unparalleled levels in January as a number of people who have been holding fire now take the hard decision to seek legal advice to pursue a divorce," the Chief Executive of 'QualitySolicitors.com' said. Member law firms report current inquiry levels are now on average 11 per cent above those in November 2008 when the economy was at its lowest ebb. Marriage counsellors said this was no surprise as while stagnant salaries, plummeting home values and rising unemployment created extra stress on marriages, they also made couples more financially dependent on each other. Many who wanted to divorce could not afford the legal fees. The significant extra cost of supporting a second household if they split up also stopped many couples with children from separating.

India score fourth position in largest illegal downloads survey

 (IANS) India is the fourth largest illegal downloader of online content, according to two reports released Tuesday by the Motion Picture Distributors Association (MPDA).

The reports were prepared on behalf of MPDA by Envisional and DtecNet, two global firms engaged in providing software solutions to track and prevent piracy of digital content and online business.

According to their findings, India trails only the US, Britain and Canada in online copyright infringement.

Envisional's report said online piracy of film and television content in India is mainly through file-sharing networks like BitTorrent and cyberlockers, or web-based file hosts such as RapidShare or HotFile.

"The numbers that the surveys have come up with underpin our constant refrain that the economic and social impact of online piracy is enormous and will have even greater long-term implications if not addressed," said Michael Ellis, president and managing director of Motion Pictures Association (Asia-Pacific), in a statement.

"We are aware that more needs to be done to help people understand that when they take unauthorised content off the Internet, or pay next to nothing from a pirate street vendor, they are indulging in online theft and therefore damage the very movie-making community that has been bringing them entertainment," he added.

The report by DtecNet that is based on tracking illegal downloading IP addresses on P2P (Peer to Peer) networks, showed that from April to September 2009, India was among the top 10 countries in the world with the largest number of illegal P2P activities.

The research also claimed that India had the highest level of film piracy in any English-speaking country in that period.

It also said Hindi films are the most widely available domestic Indian content with most downloaders in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai.

Vishal Bhardwaj's "Kaminey" is estimated to have been downloaded over 350,000 times on BitTorrent with around two-third of downloaders located in India.

Tamil films are mostly downloaded in Chennai and Bangalore, while Telugu films are targeted in Hyderabad and Bangalore.

Rajiv Dalal, managing director, MPDA (India) said strict laws were needed to end unauthorised downloading.

"We need strong laws to support copyright, strong enforcement of those laws, stiff sentences for people who violate those laws, and most important, an understanding by ordinary citizen that buying pirated movies hurts the industry and makes it difficult for movie-makers to make new films," said Dalal.

According to an Ernst and Young 2008 report on "The Effects of Counterfeiting and Piracy on India's Entertainment Industry", the Indian film industry lost $959 million and 571,896 jobs due to piracy.

Microsoft It Apex Program-Fresh College Graduates @ Microsoft India

Are you a recent college graduate? Do you constantly seek out new and challenging projects? Are you passionate about working in IT. If you answered yes to the questions about then the Microsoft IT APEX Program may be the program for you.
The Microsoft IT APEX Program is a two year rotational program for new college hires with 0-3 years of experience. Each candidate will participate in four, six month APEX rotation assignments. In addition to the APEX assignments, all candidates will participate in a series of educational courses geared towards enhancing both their leadership and business skills. APEX candidates will have the opportunity to have rotated into the following positions: program manger/analyst, developer, and software test engineer.

Required:
Soft / Behavioral Skills
Good analytical and problem solving skills
Good verbal and written communication skills
Ability to work independently and within a team environment
Project experience
Problem Solving skills
Customer focus

Technical Skills:
May require specialized knowledge in multiple technical areas.
Must have a strong understanding of MS products, software lifecycle methodology and information systems development.
Strong analysis and customer service skills required.
Sound problem resolution, judgment and decision-making skills required.
Technical drive and passion and managing systems and processes.

Experience: 0-3 years

Responsibilities 

Program Manager Rotation:
Write documentation necessary to facilitate the design process and communicate the solution for new business requirements, including Functional Specifications. Work with the business or Pdm or PM in Redmond to understand the requirement.
Work with dev and test lead to carry out project schedule with balanced resource assignment. Report on progress of project deliverables
Identify proactively any issues related to understanding of the application and get the resolved. Act as a conduit for communication with PM, Pdm.

Developer Rotation:
Design and develop the solution based on the gathered analysis. Release beta versions or prototypes as necessary for user acceptance testing (UAT).
Analyzes moderately complex customer requirements & current technologies in use to propose solution designs. Provide proof of concept to validate proposed designs if necessary. Provide rough order of magnitude (ROM) estimates related to application development tasks.

Software Test Engineer Rotation:
Participates and provides input during requirements and specification walkthroughs; contributes to the development of the test plans; to the development of project and release Master Test Strategy documents; and assists in the preparation of test estimates and project schedules
Involved in Functionality, Integration, System, Regression, Performance, and Stress Testing
Defines, develops, and maintains test scripts. Independently executes test plans and test scripts based on planned project schedules
Records and tracks defects uncovered during the execution of tests and actively participate in resolution; proposes and designs retest cases/scripts/data to retest defects.

Source: Microsoft Careers India

Historic Indo-U.S. University Network Launched by President of India

The Government of India and universities from the United States and India have inaugurated an ambitious E-learning collaboration to enhance science and engineering education at Indian universities and to boost the supply of world-class engineers available for corporate and academic research in both countries.

The President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, participated in the network's launch this month, giving the inaugural lecture via satellite from New Delhi to students at a dozen far-flung Indian college campuses. The interactive seminar - on India's research challenges - came one day after nearly two dozen U.S. universities joined with several Indian institutions in the Indo-U.S. Inter-University Collaborative Network in Higher Education and Research.

"If we start today it takes ten years to train a good quality teacher, but we need to improve Indian education now," said VS Ramamurthy, Secretary of India's Department of Science and Technology, which is co-sponsoring the initiative with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). "We are very happy that leading institutions from the United States see the benefit in this collaboration, because if you bring in a certain uniformity of training across the globe, it helps everyone."

"Many of us in higher education depend critically for research and innovation on bright young minds," said Ramesh Rao, director of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). "It behooves us to reach out proactively and nurture this talent pool."

Boosting engineering education in India - especially at second- and third-tier universities - would groom a more tech-savvy workforce for American R&D operations in India and around the world, so three U.S.-based companies have already committed funding to the program. QUALCOMM, Microsoft and Cadence Design Systems will pay for U.S. professors who volunteer to spend part of their sabbaticals teaching at the e-learning facility in Coimbatore of Mata Amritanandamayi Center's Amrita University, the founding Indian university in the network.

Their lectures will initially be beamed to Amrita's three other campuses (in Amritapuri, Bangalore, and Kochi) and other universities over Edusat, the country's first satellite devoted exclusively to educational programming. Organizers hope the lectures will eventually reach classrooms on 100 campuses across India, but the initial rollout involves 15 universities, including the three Indian Institutes of Technology (in Kanpur, Chennai and Mumbai) and most of the second-tier National Institutes of Technology located in each Indian state.

Many of those universities have been unable to attract or retain world-class faculty, and therefore are limited in their ability to turn out candidates for top jobs in engineering, computer science, biotechnology and other fields.

"One of the biggest drawbacks of information technology [IT] has been that it has taken away some of the best people from the teaching profession in Indian universities," explained Amrita vice chancellor Venkat Rangan, chief architect of the Indo-U.S. initiative. "So the thought came to us: how can we use IT in the form of high-speed connectivity, multimedia and interactivity to overcome the drawbacks of IT?"

The original memorandum of understanding was signed last July in Washington, D.C. during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's state visit to the United States. Initial signatories included the University of California Office of the President, UCSD, UC Berkeley, Calit2 and its sister institute CITRIS, as well as Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western, and the State University of New York at Buffalo.

In December, 15 more American universities joined the initiative, including Harvard, Princeton and Yale, most of which were represented at the formal launch in New Delhi. Other U.S. university partners include Purdue, Georgia Tech, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, University of Washington, University of Texas-Austin, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of North Dakota, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as UCLA and UC Santa Cruz.

Indian and U.S. educators agreed to broaden the scope of cooperation to include research, and they held a roundtable discussion in New Delhi - chaired by Rajagopala Chidambaram, principal scientific advisor to the Government of India - to discuss potential areas of research collaboration. "Today most of the low-hanging fruit in research is gone, and many problems are global problems that require interdisciplinary and international teams," said Amrita's Rangan. "These are global challenges for scientists and engineers from all over the world."

"Since we are a research engineering school, I cannot imagine teaching without research," said Frieder Seible, dean of UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering. "It's too early to announce specific research projects, but there are certainly areas where it is natural to work with India." Seible cited his own field of structure engineering, including infrastructure sensors and sensor networks to mitigate man-made and natural disasters, as well as the entire IT-driven area.

"There was a strong sentiment that we cannot do teaching without having a concurrent research component, so this was a refinement of the earlier engagement," added UCSD computer science and engineering professor Rajesh Gupta, who will chair one of four standing committees of Indo-U.S. scientists. "We boiled it down to four separate groups, including the one I'm leading on embedded systems, where we identified focus areas, including automotive software, automotive embedded systems and nanotechnology." The other standing committees will explore research collaboration on disaster warning and management technologies, IT services, among other areas.

UC officials, led by Calit2's Rao and UC Director of International Strategy Development Gretchen Kalonji, also held discussions on possible funding of joint research projects by India's Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), whose charter is to promote industry-university collaborative research. "India is a strategic partner for the future of the 10-campus UC system," said Kalonji, who toured all four Amrita campuses in southern India, "and the distance-learning platform is a powerful one." TIFAC may also fund top Indian graduate students on 18-month research fellowships on UC campuses.

U.S. universities clearly believe that helping to improve engineering education in India could result in more Indian candidates choosing U.S. campuses to do their Ph.D. "Many of our best students are from India, and we look forward to inviting more students from India to our College of Engineering," said Rosalyn Pertzborn, director of University of Wisconsin-Madison's Office of Space Education.

American educators hope the initiative will also lead to opportunities for American students to study in India. Joseph Mook of the State University of New York at Buffalo is also chairman of the Global Engineering Education Exchange. "As chairman my job is to encourage U.S. students to go abroad," he said. "This is a great cultural opportunity."

"I feel it is a rediscovery of the past, to some extent," observed Arabinda Mitra, executive director of the Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum. "In the 1970s there was a major program called the Satellite Instruction Television Experiment between NASA and ISRO, which brought distance education to the nooks and corners of this country at a time when the term IT was not yet even coined. I'm glad that almost forty years later, this is being rediscovered."

The launch of the Indo-U.S. network coincided with a visit by Microsoft chairman and founder Bill Gates to India, where he announced plans to invest $1.7 billion in R&D. As one of the three U.S. companies funding the university initiative, Microsoft sees improved engineering education as essential to its plan to increase its Indian workforce from 4,000 to 7,000 - including many engineers for its R&D facility in Bangalore.

"Part of India's great success in the IT sector comes from the fantastic investment that the government has made over decades in institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology," Gates told a meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry attended by the U.S. university representatives. "India only has six or seven million seats at its universities, and it will need 20 to 25 million, so I think this is a great opportunity to rethink the idea of a university."

"Today the university combines many elements - great lectures, study groups, students in the lab - and the lecture piece should be broken off," added Gates, who was making his fourth visit to India in the past few years. "The very best lectures from India or the U.S. or Britain will be available in streaming video, so students can consume that wherever they want and don't have to go do that all together in one place."

"Teaching and research may be very different ten years from now," agreed Stella Pang, associate dean of graduate education at the University of Michigan. "It's important to consider that the campus where we educate will not be limited to the physical campus where we are located."

University officials hope to raise further private funding for the initiative from corporations in the U.S. and India. On May 31, 2006, Calit2 and UCSD's Jacobs School will host a one-day "Indo-U.S. Summit on Education, Science and Technology for Society" in San Diego.

"We expect CEOs from major Indian and American technology companies as well as officials from governmental and non-governmental organizations," said Calit2 division director Ramesh Rao. "Our goal is to explore new avenues for Indo-U.S. collaboration on education and research programs designed to improve science and engineering talent for corporations and universities in both countries."