Ask yourself this: if GPRS is so easy to roll out, why has not one GSM provider in India provided GPRS so far? They've been talking [commsdesign.com] about [blonnet.com] it since August 2001, it is in danger of turning into vaporware!
I asked myself this, and I answered myself:-). BPL Mobile in Mumbai has had GPRS live for a year (December 2001 - so your references may need to be updated), with over 5000 customers. That number may not be significant by your standards, but in India it is. BPL Mobile also has MMS now, and it's driving signups for GPRS.
For that matter, BPL Mobile is rolling out GPRS in its other circles by February. (not vapourware - I work with the BPL Group) Airtel is rumoured to have it ready for rollout next month all India.
However, your point about incremental costs is valid, as far as 2.5G and 3G go. However, I was referring to voice penetration, which I think is more critical for India, rather than high-speed data.
This is part of the hype that Reliance has been selling in India.
Both CDMA and GSM/GPRS cost about the same to roll out. In addition, as you point out, there are no royalties for GSM. There is some debate about efficient use of spectrum, but I haven't seen anything that seriously tilts in favour of one technology over the other.
However, in India, CDMA is cheaper because the CDMA operators have got better licensing terms than the GSM operators. This is purely political, aided by Reliance's clout. The GSM operators are suing to get equivalent terms, and if they do, they will offer similar pricing.
Get off this idealistic high horse. Think a little before posting. Are you suggesting that Reliance, a corporate that has been very successful in the sectors that it operates in (synthetic textile bases, petrochemicals) and is now moving into telecom, starts providing "clean drinking water, sewer, and civil support systems"?
Reliance is doing what a business should do. If more companies like Reliance do business, profitably, then the Government of India will have money to spend on social welfare.
And, before generalising, think again. India has a middle class larger than the population of the United States. There are probably more television sets in India than in the US. They _need_ access to cheap telephony, and they can afford to pay for it. Not what you suckers in the US pay, but reasonable rates.
The TRAI (telecom regulator) in India does not approve predatory pricing, which is what it calls pricing call tariffs below cost. The fact that these low tariffs have been approved, indicate that they are above cost for the operator.
Thank you. I am Indian, reside in India, work in software, and have no desire to work in the US or on outsourced projects for US companies.
Now that we have got that out of the way, why do you associate this attitude with America? Given that I am not too fond of the USA, and worried that it's heading for a dictatorship, anything "typically American" in something I say worries me:-)
A quote from the article, "Dr. Peter Jakab, a curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., doesn't deny that Pearse got off the ground. "But what he flew was essentially a powered glider flying into a ravine. So it wasn't a true powered flight. He's just one of many pre-Wright claimants."
Newspapers need to have stories like this occassionally. Therefore, Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare, and this guy flew first.
If he actually did, well, tough. Inventions and discoveries often happen contemporaneously. One of them gets the credit, and the others peddle paranoid theories.
Make it yourself - it's more fun that way
on
Low Tech Toys?
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
Why don't you and your three-year-old sit down and make one yourself? It'll be an useful educational project.
If you're concerned about safety, I'm sure you can get plastic mirrors. Stick three mirrors into a triangular (cross-section) tube, close both ends with transparent plastic after putting bits of colorful translucent stuff, like spangles or something inside.
Not only do you have a fairly cheap toy, but loads of fun and some insight into how multiple reflections work.
And you get the immense satisfaction of screwing the toys cartel.
How on earth would anyone decide if a telco was "over-booking" or not? If a telco had to provide everyone the ability to make a call when they chose, it would be the equivalent of providing every subscriber a leased line.
How carriers generally plan networks is that they take a Grade of Service of 2% or so. This means that 2% of the times someone attempts a call, the call won't be completed. Unless AT&T has drastically reduced the grade of service, there shouldn't be a perceptible difference between them and any other carrier.
Dimensioning a network is fairly complex. Carriers first assume an average Call Holding Time (90 seconds or thereabouts) and the average number of calls per day per subscriber (say 3). From this, they derive the total Erlang (one erlang is one channel used for one hour) required over an average 10 hour day, and dimension that as the peak loading on the network.
Of course, the actual dimensioning is considerably more complex. However, I doubt very much if any carrier would commit to a grade of service that they cannot meet.
Well, you could start creating a buzz by talking about your software here. And when it comes to launch time, you could crash test your servers by submitting an announcement to slashdot:-)
And when you do launch it, get all the software download sites to mirror it (tucows, cnet, etc), and submit it to special interest magazines and sites for review.
GSM uses an encryption algorithm called A5 which is fairly weak, with an effective key length of at most 5 bytes.
As this page says, "A5 is a stream cipher, and the keystream is the xor of three clock controlled registers. The clock control of each register is that register's own middle bit, xor'ed with a threshold function of the middle bits of all three registers (ie if two or more of the middle bits are 1, then invert each of these bits; otherwise just use them as they are). The register lengths are 19, 22 and 23, and all the feedback polynomials are sparse. ... there is a trivial 2^40 attack (guess the contents of registers 1 and 2, work out register 3 from the keystream, and then step on to check whether the guess was right). 2^40 trial encryptions could take weeks on a workstation, but the low gate count of the algorithm means that a Xilinx chip can easily be programmed to do keysearch, and an A5 cracker might have a few dozen of these running at maybe 2 keys per microsecond each." There is some code as well for the crack itself.
I manage a team of developers in India. The average starting salary for developers is $400 a _month_. The highest paid guys on my team (~8 years experience) get paid $30,000 a year.
Sure, salaries in India are low, but they aren't _that_ low. And you need to keep in mind that cost of living in India is very low too. A friend of mine works for a couple of months a year in the UK, and then bums around India for the rest of the year.
OS, Web Server and Hosting History for www.businessworldindia.com OS Server Last changed IP address Netblock Owner Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 11-Nov-2002 64.239.18.189 Dialtone Internet FreeBSD Apache/1.3.23 8-Apr-2002 216.92.41.183 pair Networks FreeBSD Apache/1.3.14 1-Feb-2002 216.92.41.183 pair Networks FreeBSD Apache/1.3.3 2-Nov-2000 216.92.41.183 pair Networks
And additionally, US companies offloading projects to Indian companies is no different from you comparison shopping on the net. The money that they save from this process, is money earned by shareholders (mostly) in the US. It still goes back into the US economy.
It is economically illiterate to suggest that companies operate uneconomically out of patriotism. That is what screwed the USSR.
Cheap Labor? Gimme a break. Software Developers are among the best paid people IN India. In fact, highly paid software developers in Bangalore have had a major effect on boosting the local economy, because they can afford to spend more.
Sweat shops? Software companies have the best facilities among any industry in India. Amazing perks, free cafeteria/gym/club facilities, free transport by office buses, soft loans...they just don't end. Infosys has a huge campus that all world politicians visiting Bangalore go to see, to see how things should be in their country.
Shabby software? Indian programmers are among the best in the world. Microsoft US hires Indian programmers at US salaries, not Indian salaries. You'll find that most Indian programmers in the US work at salaries that equal or better equivalent American developers'. American companies hire Indian programmers because they can't get enough American programmers. As for the currently large number of unemployed American programmers, no economy is so efficient that when a crash occurs, employment patterns are quickly readjusted. You'll see less foreign programmers coming into the US from now on till the American economy gets back to normal.
Salaries IN India are low COMPARED to salaries in the US, because the US Dollar is much more stronger than the Indian Rupee. That's not a conspiracy - that's just the relative strengths of the two countries economies at work. But in India, software developers are well paid compared to equivalent people in other professions.
Don't let vague notions of 'stealing jobs' let you degenerate into racist rhetoric or xenophobia. Historically, such emotions arise during economic depressions (Germany, pre-WWII, anyone?) and retarded politicians use them to boost their own popularity. No one usually benefits from the results, though a lot of (innocents) suffer.
Idiot. I can't think of a single Indian coder I know who wears a dhoti as a rule. You have either the corporate types who insist on formal western wear daily, or the casual, western, jeans & tee shops.
I manage a team of about 80 coders. The entire team works on Linux. All our products, carrier-grade critical systems for telcos, run Linux. What's more, Indian telcos (and our customers in APAC and the Indian Ocean Rim) like Linux.
Linux penetration in India is growing dramatically.
I've been looking for a book like this for a long time... All the security books that you see in bookshops are so superficial that any slashdot reader is (usually) better informed.
Sure, for a technology that's supposed to revolutionise public transport, and cost billions to implement, some individual somewhere files a patent. That's supposed to reassure all those guys who're doing the investing?
And what's the "invention" in thinking up this stuff? I've seen and read about stuff like this for ages. Truly, the USPTO never ceases to amaze.
Not true. In GSM networks, SMS travels on the signalling channel, not the voice channels. Therefore, it is usually billed as a "flagfall" or per SMS. And since SMS is restricted to 160 chars per message, it is not really possible to bill by volume.
Slashdot Mirror
Ask yourself this: if GPRS is so easy to roll out, why has not one GSM provider in India provided GPRS so far? They've been talking [commsdesign.com] about [blonnet.com] it since August 2001, it is in danger of turning into vaporware!
:-). BPL Mobile in Mumbai has had GPRS live for a year (December 2001 - so your references may need to be updated), with over 5000 customers. That number may not be significant by your standards, but in India it is. BPL Mobile also has MMS now, and it's driving signups for GPRS.
I asked myself this, and I answered myself
For that matter, BPL Mobile is rolling out GPRS in its other circles by February. (not vapourware - I work with the BPL Group) Airtel is rumoured to have it ready for rollout next month all India.
However, your point about incremental costs is valid, as far as 2.5G and 3G go. However, I was referring to voice penetration, which I think is more critical for India, rather than high-speed data.
This is part of the hype that Reliance has been selling in India.
Both CDMA and GSM/GPRS cost about the same to roll out. In addition, as you point out, there are no royalties for GSM. There is some debate about efficient use of spectrum, but I haven't seen anything that seriously tilts in favour of one technology over the other.
However, in India, CDMA is cheaper because the CDMA operators have got better licensing terms than the GSM operators. This is purely political, aided by Reliance's clout. The GSM operators are suing to get equivalent terms, and if they do, they will offer similar pricing.
Get off this idealistic high horse. Think a little before posting. Are you suggesting that Reliance, a corporate that has been very successful in the sectors that it operates in (synthetic textile bases, petrochemicals) and is now moving into telecom, starts providing "clean drinking water, sewer, and civil support systems"?
Reliance is doing what a business should do. If more companies like Reliance do business, profitably, then the Government of India will have money to spend on social welfare.
And, before generalising, think again. India has a middle class larger than the population of the United States. There are probably more television sets in India than in the US. They _need_ access to cheap telephony, and they can afford to pay for it. Not what you suckers in the US pay, but reasonable rates.
The TRAI (telecom regulator) in India does not approve predatory pricing, which is what it calls pricing call tariffs below cost. The fact that these low tariffs have been approved, indicate that they are above cost for the operator.
Thank you. I am Indian, reside in India, work in software, and have no desire to work in the US or on outsourced projects for US companies.
:-)
Now that we have got that out of the way, why do you associate this attitude with America? Given that I am not too fond of the USA, and worried that it's heading for a dictatorship, anything "typically American" in something I say worries me
Could we have some discussion instead of labels?
A quote from the article, "Dr. Peter Jakab, a curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., doesn't deny that Pearse got off the ground. "But what he flew was essentially a powered glider flying into a ravine. So it wasn't a true powered flight. He's just one of many pre-Wright claimants."
Newspapers need to have stories like this occassionally. Therefore, Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare, and this guy flew first.
If he actually did, well, tough. Inventions and discoveries often happen contemporaneously. One of them gets the credit, and the others peddle paranoid theories.
Why don't you and your three-year-old sit down and make one yourself? It'll be an useful educational project.
If you're concerned about safety, I'm sure you can get plastic mirrors. Stick three mirrors into a triangular (cross-section) tube, close both ends with transparent plastic after putting bits of colorful translucent stuff, like spangles or something inside.
Not only do you have a fairly cheap toy, but loads of fun and some insight into how multiple reflections work.
And you get the immense satisfaction of screwing the toys cartel.
How on earth would anyone decide if a telco was "over-booking" or not? If a telco had to provide everyone the ability to make a call when they chose, it would be the equivalent of providing every subscriber a leased line.
How carriers generally plan networks is that they take a Grade of Service of 2% or so. This means that 2% of the times someone attempts a call, the call won't be completed. Unless AT&T has drastically reduced the grade of service, there shouldn't be a perceptible difference between them and any other carrier.
Dimensioning a network is fairly complex. Carriers first assume an average Call Holding Time (90 seconds or thereabouts) and the average number of calls per day per subscriber (say 3). From this, they derive the total Erlang (one erlang is one channel used for one hour) required over an average 10 hour day, and dimension that as the peak loading on the network.
Of course, the actual dimensioning is considerably more complex. However, I doubt very much if any carrier would commit to a grade of service that they cannot meet.
Well, you could start creating a buzz by talking about your software here. And when it comes to launch time, you could crash test your servers by submitting an announcement to slashdot :-)
And when you do launch it, get all the software download sites to mirror it (tucows, cnet, etc), and submit it to special interest magazines and sites for review.
How soon do you give this before some MNC patents this, and then charges Indians to use it?
India is already fighting several such cases where Indian rice, traditional herb extracts and so on, have been patented.
GSM uses an encryption algorithm called A5 which is fairly weak, with an effective key length of at most 5 bytes.
... there is a trivial 2^40 attack (guess the contents of
As this page says, "A5 is a stream cipher, and the keystream is the xor of three clock
controlled registers. The clock control of each register is that register's
own middle bit, xor'ed with a threshold function of the middle bits of all
three registers (ie if two or more of the middle bits are 1, then invert
each of these bits; otherwise just use them as they are). The register
lengths are 19, 22 and 23, and all the feedback polynomials are sparse.
registers 1 and 2, work out register 3 from the keystream, and then step on
to check whether the guess was right). 2^40 trial encryptions could take
weeks on a workstation, but the low gate count of the algorithm means that
a Xilinx chip can easily be programmed to do keysearch, and an A5 cracker
might have a few dozen of these running at maybe 2 keys per microsecond
each." There is some code as well for the crack itself.
Enjoy!
Where do you guys get figures like this?
I manage a team of developers in India. The average starting salary for developers is $400 a _month_. The highest paid guys on my team (~8 years experience) get paid $30,000 a year.
Sure, salaries in India are low, but they aren't _that_ low. And you need to keep in mind that cost of living in India is very low too. A friend of mine works for a couple of months a year in the UK, and then bums around India for the rest of the year.
Hey, mod this one down, it's obviously a troll.
Or would the AC prefer to give details on what this all-important life-saving piece of Microsoft software was?
Well, actually, if yours is, better go see a doctor. He may have some surgery to do.
Your semen should normally be in your seminal vesicles, and only, _briefly_, in transit through your penis.
But considering your post, and the fact that you read slashdot...
FWIW, Business World runs on Windows
OS, Web Server and Hosting History for www.businessworldindia.com
OS Server Last changed IP address Netblock Owner
Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 11-Nov-2002 64.239.18.189 Dialtone Internet
FreeBSD Apache/1.3.23 8-Apr-2002 216.92.41.183 pair Networks
FreeBSD Apache/1.3.14 1-Feb-2002 216.92.41.183 pair Networks
FreeBSD Apache/1.3.3 2-Nov-2000 216.92.41.183 pair Networks
And additionally, US companies offloading projects to Indian companies is no different from you comparison shopping on the net. The money that they save from this process, is money earned by shareholders (mostly) in the US. It still goes back into the US economy.
It is economically illiterate to suggest that companies operate uneconomically out of patriotism. That is what screwed the USSR.
Cheap Labor? Gimme a break. Software Developers are among the best paid people IN India. In fact, highly paid software developers in Bangalore have had a major effect on boosting the local economy, because they can afford to spend more.
Sweat shops? Software companies have the best facilities among any industry in India. Amazing perks, free cafeteria/gym/club facilities, free transport by office buses, soft loans...they just don't end. Infosys has a huge campus that all world politicians visiting Bangalore go to see, to see how things should be in their country.
Shabby software? Indian programmers are among the best in the world. Microsoft US hires Indian programmers at US salaries, not Indian salaries. You'll find that most Indian programmers in the US work at salaries that equal or better equivalent American developers'. American companies hire Indian programmers because they can't get enough American programmers. As for the currently large number of unemployed American programmers, no economy is so efficient that when a crash occurs, employment patterns are quickly readjusted. You'll see less foreign programmers coming into the US from now on till the American economy gets back to normal.
Salaries IN India are low COMPARED to salaries in the US, because the US Dollar is much more stronger than the Indian Rupee. That's not a conspiracy - that's just the relative strengths of the two countries economies at work. But in India, software developers are well paid compared to equivalent people in other professions.
Don't let vague notions of 'stealing jobs' let you degenerate into racist rhetoric or xenophobia. Historically, such emotions arise during economic depressions (Germany, pre-WWII, anyone?) and retarded politicians use them to boost their own popularity. No one usually benefits from the results, though a lot of (innocents) suffer.
Idiot. I can't think of a single Indian coder I know who wears a dhoti as a rule. You have either the corporate types who insist on formal western wear daily, or the casual, western, jeans & tee shops.
Most coders wouldn't know how to wear a dhoti.
I manage a team of about 80 coders. The entire team works on Linux. All our products, carrier-grade critical systems for telcos, run Linux. What's more, Indian telcos (and our customers in APAC and the Indian Ocean Rim) like Linux.
Linux penetration in India is growing dramatically.
I've been looking for a book like this for a long time... All the security books that you see in bookshops are so superficial that any slashdot reader is (usually) better informed.
Sure, for a technology that's supposed to revolutionise public transport, and cost billions to implement, some individual somewhere files a patent. That's supposed to reassure all those guys who're doing the investing?
And what's the "invention" in thinking up this stuff? I've seen and read about stuff like this for ages. Truly, the USPTO never ceases to amaze.
Not true. In GSM networks, SMS travels on the signalling channel, not the voice channels. Therefore, it is usually billed as a "flagfall" or per SMS. And since SMS is restricted to 160 chars per message, it is not really possible to bill by volume.