Thane: A 33-year-old man, who allegedly mentored the young kingpin of the over Rs 500-crore Mira Road call center scam, was arrested on Sunday.

Police questioned Jagdish Kanani, a partner in a BPO business in Hari Om Plaza at Mira Road, about the functioning of the telephone scamming cartel. A top police officer confirmed the arrest and said it was a breakthrough in the case as Kanani is the “creator” of phone frauds and mentor of 23-year-old Sagar Thakkar, alias Shaggy.

“We have information that Kanani is the one who cracked the code of making easy money by misusing technology and playing on the fears of people. He had worked on US processes as a call center employee and was familiar with the operations that involve calling up US citizens and exerting pressure on them to repay their credit card dues,” a police source told TOI. He added that Kanani had made investments in call centers and played a vital role in setting up fake ones across the country with different names.

Police claimed Kanani had coached Thakkar on how to con US citizens from India and misuse magicJack devices—they plug into a USB port on the user’s computer and have a standard RJ-11phone jack any standard phone can be plugged. “Kanani and Thakkar would pose as tech support callers from legitimate IT software firms and ‘alert’ a victim of a computer virus. They would ‘fix’ the computer and also charge for a maintenance contract,” said the source.

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Meanwhile, the crackdown on Mira Road call centers has broken Thakkar’s back as he was planning to set up five eight offices in Mumbai and Ahmedabad as part of his ‘business expansion plan.’ “The cartel had interviewed over 400 job aspirants in Mumbai and Ahmedabad and selected over 100 for the setups Thakkar was to launch in Ahmedabad,” a police officer said. “Thakkar was interested in newly constructed commercial buildings as till the other blocks would be rented or sold, the call center operations would be smooth, and no one would know what was going on.”

Police chief Param Bir Singh said, “Such call centers have brought shame to the country…fly-by-night call centers are mushrooming everywhere, and there is no governing body to keep a watch on them.”

Investigators believe Thakkar’s sister Reema played a vital role in the scam—she not only aided him and handled the finances through hawala channels. “We are yet to find trace his sister after which her role in the case would be ascertained,” said a police officer. Police are also making inquiries of the involvement of hawala operatives from Mumbai and Ahmedabad. Police said last year, Thakkar had invited his friend Tapash Gupta to help set up call centers along with Mansuri. Thakkar would also often travel to South Asian countries for pleasure trips.

India is looking at a change of trend as far as the engineering discipline is concerned. The traditional practice of more students opting for computer engineering is slowly fading out and is being replaced by mechanical engineering.

An analysis of the data available with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the government body responsible for technical education in the country, shows that the number of enrolments in Computer Science as a subject has been on a constant decline since the year 2012. The data also shows that enrolment for Mechanical is going upward. In the last four years, enrolment in Mechanical has been the highest in the academic year 2013-14 at 534199. The same year number of students enrolled in Computer science was 323697, and the number has shown a decline in the consecutive years.

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Several student intakes in these two disciplines have also shown a variation with the increase in several enrolments. The number of mechanical courses in various colleges across the country increased by two lakh from 2012-13 to 2015-16.

Officials in the government attribute it to the global trends of reducing demand for computer science engineering graduates.

“The IT industry was booming sometime back, and more and more students were pursuing computer science, but now the industry is saturated. There is more supply than demand for IT professionals in the industry, which is the reason that students are moving towards other fields of engineering,” said a senior HRD Ministry official associated with technical education.

“Also, one does not need to study computer science engineering to pursue IT. Everyone is studying computers. If 100 people develop software, only three people must maintain it, which reduces the demand for workforce. On the contrary, Mechanical is a field where one needs subject expertise to be able to work in the field,” he added.

In terms of placement also, Mechanical has shown an increase in numbers over the last four years. In 2015-16, 139162 students were placed compared to around 95000 in 2012-13.

The least popular choices among students are Chemical and Textile engineering, even as engineering as a subject continues to be the top choice for students among professional courses like Management and Pharmacy.

COMPUTERWORLD.INNEWSGoogle, IBM, and others team up to hasten data transfers in computers HARDWARE Google, IBM, and others team up to hasten data transfers in computers Agam Shah October 17, 2016

Google, IBM, and others team up to hasten data transfers in computers Two newly formed consortiums propose specifications to bring unprecedented boosts to data transfers inside and outside of computers.

Computational workloads are growing, and processors, memory, and storage are getting faster at a blazing pace. Emerging technologies could leave computers choking for bandwidth.

The potential chokepoint worries companies like Google, IBM, Samsung, and Dell, which are moving to remedy the problem. New specifications from two new consortia will bring unprecedented data boosts in data transfer speeds to computers as early as next year.

OpenCAPI Consortium’s connector specification will bring significant bandwidth improvements inside computers. OpenCAPI, announced Friday, will link storage, memory, GPUs, and CPUs, much like PCI-Express 3.0, but will be 10 times faster with data speeds of 150GBps (gigabytes per second).

Memory, storage, and GPUs will keep getting faster, and OpenCAPI will keep computers ready for those technologies, Brad McCredie, an IBM fellow, said in an interview.

Graphics processors are now handling demanding applications like virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and complex scientific calculations. Also in the wings are superfast technologies like 3D Xpoint, a new type of storage and memory technology that can be 10 times faster than SSDs and 10 times denser than DRAM.

Servers and supercomputers will be the first to get OpenCAPI slots. The technology could trickle down to PCs in the coming years. The first OpenCAPI ports will be on IBM’s Power9 servers, which are due next year. Google and Rackspace are also putting the OpenCAPI port on their Zaius Power9 server.

AMD, a member of OpenCAPI Consortium, is making its Radeon GPUs compatible with OpenCAPI ports on Power9 servers. But don’t expect OpenCAPI immediately in mainstream PCs or servers, most of which run on x86 chips from Intel and AMD. AMD, for now, isn’t targeting OpenCAPI at desktops and won’t be putting the ports in x86 servers, a spokesman said.

Top chipmaker Intel isn’t a member of OpenCAPI, which a big disadvantage for the group. There are no major issues that should stop Intel from becoming a member, though it would have to make changes to its I/O technologies. OpenCAPI is promising, but computers will need many changes to take advantage. Motherboards will need to implement specific OpenCAPI slots on motherboards, and components will need to fit in the slot. That could add to the cost of making components, most of which are made for PCI-Express.

OpenCAPI is an offshoot of the CAPI port developed by IBM, which is already used in its Power servers. In the future, there may be bridge products to ensure components made for the PCI-Express plug into the OpenCAPI slot, McCredie said.

A second consortium, called Gen-Z, announced a new protocol focused on increasing data transfer speeds, mostly between computers and inside of them when needed. The protocol, announced earlier this week, will initially be targeted at servers but could bring fundamental changes to the way computers are built. The consortium boasts big names, including Samsung, Dell, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, AMD, ARM, and Micron.

Right now, computers come with memory, storage, and processors in one box. But the specification from Gen-Z — which is focused heavily on memory and storage — could potentially decouple all of those units into separate boxes, establishing a peer-to-peer connection between all of them.

Gen-Z is also focused on making it easier to add new types of nonvolatile memory like 3D Point, which can be used as memory, storage, or both. Many new types of memory technologies under research are also seen as DRAM and SSD replacements.

Larger pools of storage, memory, and processing technologies can be crammed in the dedicated boxes, and Gen-Z could be particularly useful for server installations. Gen-Z is designed to link large pools of memory and storage with processors like CPUs and GPUs in a data center, said Robert Hormuth, vice president and server chief technology officer at Dell EMC.

Having memory, storage, and processing in discrete boxes will benefit applications like the SAP HANA relational database dedicated to in-memory processing. Most servers max out at 48TB of DRAM, but a decoupled memory unit will give SAP HANA more RAM to operate.

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But there are challenges. The decoupled units need to handshake in real time and work together on protocol support and load balancing. Those functions have been perfected in today’s servers with integrated memory and storage.

To achieve that real-time goal, Gen-Z has developed a high-performance fabric that “provides a peer to peer interconnect that easily accesses large volumes of data while lowering costs and avoiding today’s bottlenecks,” according to the consortium. The data transfer rate can scale to 112GT/s (Giga transfers per second) between servers. For comparison, the upcoming PCI-Express 4.0 will have a transfer rate of 16 GT/s per lane inside computers, and data transfers in computers are usually faster.

Gen-Z is generally a point-to-point connector for storage and memory at the rack level, but it can be used inside server racks. Gen-Z is not intended to replace existing memory or storage buses in servers, Hormuth said. OpenCAPI and Gen-Z claim their protocols are open for every hardware maker to adopt. However, there will be challenges in pushing these interconnects to servers.

For one, the server market is dominated by x86 chips from Intel, which isn’t a member of either of the new consortia. Without support from Intel, the new protocols and interconnects could struggle. Intel sells its own networking and fabric technology called OmniPath and sells silicon photonics modules, which use light and lasers to speed up data transfers and connect servers at the rack level.

Given India’s cybersecurity imperatives, the National Democratic Alliance government has stepped up efforts to protect the critical networks from any such attacks, with international cooperation one of its focus areas.

As part of this strategy, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-In, is looking at security cooperation arrangements with its counterpart agencies in other countries to share information to prevent cyber attacks and crimes promptly. India has already inked such agreements with the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

CERT-In, the national nodal agency responsible for cybersecurity and works under the ministry of electronics and information technology, is in touch with global service and product providers for advanced information regarding cyber threats and attacks.

The development assumes importance in the backdrop of sensitive data leaks of the Scorpene submarines being constructed. Following the incident, the government fast-tracked setting up a National Cyber Coordination Centre and a Botnet and Malware Detection Centre with spending of Rs.900 crore and Rs.100 crore, respectively, as reported by InfraCircle on 7 September.

“We are looking at security cooperation arrangements in the form of the memorandum of understandings (MoUs) between CERT-In and its overseas counterpart agencies that will share information,” said a senior government official requesting anonymity. The government has also articulated a crisis management plan for countering cyber attacks and cyber terrorism for implementation by all ministries and departments of the central government, state governments, and their units in critical sectors.

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A National Cyber Security Policy, 2013, was unveiled by the previous United Progressive Alliance government to safeguard physical and business assets of the country such as air defense systems, power infrastructure, nuclear plants, and telecommunications networks. Queries emailed to the electronics and information technology ministry spokesperson on 8 September weren’t immediately answered.

The issue also assumes importance as there are 1.4 million users across central and state governments who use government email addresses—nic, in and gov. and other services such as the Internet, intranet, and video conferencing. The government departments are dependent on data centers of the National Informatics Centre.
Experts are aware of the clear and present danger.

“While earlier, developed nations were prime targets, Indian organizations have been barraged by attacks and are now on a par with other global companies at the receiving end of cyberattacks,” PwC India, a consultancy, wrote in a report. In June, the Reserve Bank of India mandated all banks to immediately put a cybersecurity policy elucidating the strategy containing an appropriate approach to combat cyber threats, given the complexity of business and acceptable levels of risk.

With the rapid increase in several Internet users in India, there is a need for secure cyberspace. The number of Internet users in the country stood at 371 million at the end of June this year. In March 2015, the prime minister’s office created the first cybersecurity chief, and Gulshan Rai, the national cybersecurity coordinator at the National Security Council Secretariat, was appointed. Rai used to head eSecurity and the cyber law division under the earlier ministry of communications and IT.

India’s GDP is a function of its export of Information Technology to the Western world. Let us acknowledge it far and loud, for once. There are brilliant codes written, genius software developed, in large numbers, literally every day. Tonnes of money is spent on the research and development of each of this software, and hence, there is a major need to safeguard these intellectual properties – yes, they are that! – which drives India’s growth in more ways than one.

In this article, we look at protecting the intellectual rights of the software, a much-underrated entity, although it makes for some of the highest copyright infringements. Computer-related inventions can be really tricky. Firstly, you have to describe the invention very cleanly. It makes sense and that, let me say, is not an easy job, especially when it relates to computers and software – areas not easily comprehensible to laypersons.

It is still easy to define the functionality that the customer requires. If you have the required coding skills, you can even build a program that fulfills the desired functionality, but – and there is a big but here – the area that has to be protected by a patent lies somewhere in between. It lies midway between the functionality that is desired and the code that is written to achieve it. This makes defining it all very difficult, especially for those new to the area of patents.

Software Patenting

“How to patent software” is a hot question amongst many tech entrepreneurs in India. In this day and age, when our country is undergoing a major entrepreneurial boom, we need a convincing answer to that question.

To put it in simple words, the software can be patented in India, but it might not always be permitted.

Where Does India Stand On Patenting Software

In India, a clause was proposed to include software patents way back in 2005, but the honorable Parliament of India rejected it. A common argument given in this regard is that software patenting forms for minor inventions. So, as the argument goes, an invention that many others can easily and individually replicate should not be granted since it will only work to decelerate the progress of the field concerned.

If you think hard, there is a point there, but less so when the country is India, a software giant in its own regard. This is in contrast to countries such as the US, Australia, and even Singapore, which allow the patenting of software innovations within their political boundaries Cloud Light.

Why Does The Indian Patent Office Reject Most Applications?

Section 3(K) of the Indian Patents Act, 1970 reads that “mathematical or business method or a computer program per se or algorithms” do not fall under the category of items patented in India.

Therefore, keeping the law of our land in mind, the Patent Office duly rejects most of the applications even though they may be high on innovation, fortunately or unfortunately.

Is There A Way Around It?

Yes! There is a workaround. If you go through the Manual of Patent Office Practice and Procedure pedantically, it states that not all computer programs fall under the category which cannot be patented in India. Hence, some kinds of software can indeed be patented in India.

How To Safeguard Your Software In India Then?

The trick is not to patent the software program. Instead, try to patent the product in which the software plays an integral part, a very integral part, so much so that the software stands out more than the product itself.

That way, when you are patenting the product, you invariably provide patent protection to the accompanying software program, too, and you do that in the subtlest of ways, playing according to the rules made by the government.

Since we have discussed patenting in detail, it is only fair that we look at other means of safeguarding intellectual property, namely copyright and trademark registration. Do not underestimate them by any means in India.

Copyright For Software

To protect software in India, this model of protecting intellectual property is all the more common. What needs to be done then? Simple: register computer software and programs as works of literature according to Section 2(O) of the Copyright Act, 1957. So, copyright protection makes more sense for safeguarding software in India.

When you are applying for copyright registration at the copyright office, you need to submit the source code along with the duly filled-in application form.

Trademark Registration

In addition to patenting and copyright registration, trademark registration can also be used to safeguard the brand name of the software. One software product may have any number of brand names. For example, if a software offers only one of its kind functionality, say it allows you to “bulk send” pictures, you can trademark the term “bulk send” so that your competitorscannoto use it.

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Even if your competitors do come up with a similar feature, they will have to devise their own term, which may not be instantly popular and will definitely not be able to feed off the popularity your term has pre-created. So, there is a small win for you.

Trademark registration is often underrated when it comes to protecting software, be it in India or in lands where a provision for filing patents for software programs exists. If the software or the product name is not trademark registered, the competition can use the catchy terms built by you and exploit the lack of patent laws concerning software in India.

So, it is necessary to be careful when it comes to software safeguarding. You need to protect the business from legal tangles or get in touch with firms who can help you out. These throw completely different challenges when it comes to safeguarding, in comparison to, say, protecting a piece of art. The latter is much simpler.

New Delhi October 15 (ENA) The computer technology and information technology sectors in India have witnessed significant growth in research and development activities. This is evident from the increase in computer technology share in India’s total patent applications over the years.

Distribution of patent applications across top fields of technology

As the above table shows, computer technology had increased from 5.9% in 2010 to 14.3% in 2014. This shows that the country’s boom in information technology has also boosted research and development activities.

India is already a leading player in the international computer software market due to its competent workforce. This has also created incentives for research and development activities.

However, the above table also shows that the shares of pharmaceuticals and organic fine chemistry in the total patent applications have declined. In fact, the increase in the share of computer technology has been at the cost of pharmaceuticals and organic fine chemistry. Despite this, pharmaceuticals and organic fine chemistry are the top two fields concerning the share in patent applications.

India is a leading producer of generic medicines in the world. In addition to this, India is also a source of cheap generic medicines for different diseases to low-income developing countries. Over the years, India has come under intense pressure by lobbying multinational pharmaceutical manufacturing companies that see generic medicines as a threat to their profit margins.

So, the country must boost its research and development activities in general and pharmaceuticals. Apart from the above discussed three fields, there has not been any significant change in the share of other fields in the total patent applications Darbi.

One thing that should be of concern for the policymakers is that the share of biotechnology has declined. Given that biotechnology will be an important field for academic research and industrial application, policymakers need to give special attention to this field. (ENA Bureau)

New Delhi October 15 (ENA) The computer technology and information technology sectors in India have witnessed significant growth in research and development activities. This is evident from the increase in computer technology share in India’s total patent applications over the years.

Distribution of patent applications across top fields of technology As the above table shows, computer technology had increased from 5.9% in 2010 to 14.3% in 2014. This shows that the country’s boom in information technology has also boosted research and development activities.

India is already a leading player in the international computer software market due to its competent workforce. This has also created incentives for research and development activities.

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However, the above table also shows that the shares of pharmaceuticals and organic fine chemistry in the total patent applications have declined. In fact, the increase in the share of computer technology has been at the cost of pharmaceuticals and organic fine chemistry. Despite this, pharmaceuticals and organic fine chemistry are the top two share in patent applications.

India is a leading producer of generic medicines in the world. In addition to this, India is also a source of cheap generic medicines for different diseases to low-income developing countries. Over the years, India has come under intense pressure by lobbying antinational pharmaceutical manufacturing companies that see generic medicines as a threat to their profit margins.

So, the country must boost its research and development activities in general and in pharmaceuticals in particular. Apart from the above discussed three fields, there has not been any significant change in the share of other fields in the total patent applications.

One thing that should be of concern for the policymakers is that the share of biotechnology has declined. Given that biotechnology will be an important field for academic research and industrial applications, policymakers need special attention to this field. (ENA Bureau)

NAGPUR: When computers were a relatively new concept in Nagpur during the 1990s, Pramod Bhalerao, a physically challenged professor from the Government Institute of Science, was in much demand, on account of his mastery over the machine. He decided to dedicate his expertise and vast knowledge of computers to the welfare of disabled and handicapped youths from the city.

A senior life member of the Computer Society of India (CSI) and Fellow of the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineers (IETE), Bhalerao has trained nearly 500 disabled youths that helped them secure jobs. After being nominated as an expert member of the Department of Electronics and Accreditation of Computer Courses (DOEACC), an autonomous scientific society under the Indian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Bhalerao helped open 15 training centers in the 1990s. The retired lecturer in physics spoke to TOI about his life, struggle, and success. Excerpts from the interview:

Q. How did it all start?

A. Since I had a problem in one leg, I was well aware of the problems faced by those with disabilities and always wanted to do something for them. The opportunity came when computers were introduced in the city. I got a rare chance to learn computers and use my knowledge for the benefit of needy persons. I suggested opening a computer lab for disabled students at our college. The then director and support staff well supported my idea. However, funds were a major crunch. At that time, I got a chance to participate in an international conference in Vancouver in Canada as a resource person. I put forward my concept of providing computer training to the disabled. All liked it, and I received USD 20,000 aid from the United Nations to open a computer guidance center for the disabled.

Q. Was it difficult to convince disabled persons?

A. After receiving the aid, I started the computer communication and guidance center at the Institute of Science. It was perhaps the first such center in the city in the 1990s. Obviously, there were many difficulties initially, as computers had to be kept in air-conditioned rooms. When the machines came in 1994, there was a huge rush to catch their glimpse. I still remember curious people who used to ask me whether they could touch the computers. We relentlessly pursued our objective and succeeded in attracting the disabled. Slowly, the center gained popularity, and many students started approaching it.

Q. How many students have you trained so far?

A. Roughly 480 until my retirement. They comprise physically challenged, visually impaired, and hearing-impaired. The technical training they got proved to be a boon for them that changed their lives and society’s outlook. A few years after the training lab opened, about 60 of our students were placed in government and private sectors. Other students established their own desktop publishing and computer typing agencies in the city.

Q. You also spoke about training a blind student at Dba Press.

A. One visually challenged student was trained in draft preparation with the help of a speech synthesizer wherein the computer used to speak out the sentences she typed, enabling her to make corrections. She is now practicing at the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court. A speech dialogue was demonstrated between a hearing-impaired and a normal person with the help of a speech synthesizer, which received a good response from blind students. Visibility testing workshops were also conducted from time to time in which impaired students participated, and their vision was tested with the help of software. Students with 10%-20% of visibility could see the images on screen and were thrilled by the experience. Subsequently, that software was recommended to blind schools.

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Q. But why were only handicaps trained?

A. We granted them an opportunity, as they’re heavily dependent on others’ help. But I also conducted training programs for high court judges of the Nagpur bench at Judicial Officers Training Academy (JOTI) in Civil Lines. Moreover, training was imparted to staff deputed by Mantralaya from Mumbai. I also conducted the training session for various bank staffers. As an expert DOEACC member, I encouraged the opening of more computer training centers in the city.

Q. What are your other activities now?

A. I have retired and can’t walk without somebody’s help. Even my age is fast catching up. But I still give guidance to youngsters who come to me with difficulties. I am fond of reading and impart knowledge to youths. When my old students like those from the Adani family come to me, it makes me happy.