Monday, 4 November 2013
Tuesday, 24 September 2013
link list in c with insert dispose delete modify show find functions
#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
#include<alloc.h>
#include<process.h>
void enter_record();
void show_list();
void dispose();
void delete_record();
void find();
void modify();
struct student
{
int value;
*next;
};
struct student *header,*current,*temp;
void main()
{
int ch;
clrscr();
while(1)
{
printf("======================");
printf("\n\n 1.enter record.\n 2.show list.\n 3.dispose.\n 4.delete record.\n 5.find.\n 6.modify.\n 7.exit\n");
printf("======================\n");
ch=getch();
switch(ch)
{
case '1':
enter_record();
break;
case '2':
show_list();
break;
case '3':
dispose();
break;
case '4':
delete_record();
break;
case '5':
find();
case '6':
modify();
case '7':
exit(1);
default:
printf("you have enter wrong choice");
}
}
// getch();
}
void enter_record()
{
printf("\nEnter id: \n");
current=(struct student *)malloc(sizeof(struct student));
scanf("%d",¤t->value);
current->next=NULL;
if(header==NULL)
header=current;
else
temp=header;
while(temp->next!=NULL)
{
temp=temp->next;
}
temp->next=current;
}
void show_list()
{
if(header==NULL)
printf("\nlist is empty\n");
temp=header;
while(temp!=NULL)
{
printf("\n\n id is :%d\n",temp->value);
temp=
temp->next;
}
}
void dispose()
{
struct student *temp;
while(header!=NULL)
{
temp=header->next;
free(header);
header=temp;
}
printf("\nlist is destroy\n");
}
void delete_record()
{
struct student *prev;
int mc;
printf("\nenter id to b deleted: \n");
scanf("%d",&mc);
if(header==NULL)
printf("\nlist is empty\n");
else if(header->value==mc)
{
temp=header->next;
free(header);
header=temp;
}
else
{
temp=header;
while(temp->next!=NULL&&temp->value!=mc)
{
prev=temp;
temp=temp->next;
prev->next=temp->next;
free(temp);
}
prev->next=NULL;
free(temp);
}
}
void find()
{
int m;
temp=header;
printf("\nenter id to find: \n");
scanf("%d",&m);
while(temp->next!=NULL&&temp->value!=m)
{
temp=temp->next;
}
printf("\nthe required id is present in list: %d \n",temp->value);
show_list();
}
void modify()
{
int id,u;
//printf("enter id");
//scanf("%d",id);
temp=header;
printf("\n enter id to find whether is is present or not\n");
scanf("%d",&id);
while(temp->next!=NULL&&temp->value!=id)
{
temp= temp->next;
}
printf("the required result is present in list: %d ",temp->value);
printf("\nnew id\n");
scanf("%d",&u);
temp->value=u;
printf("\nid modified\n");
show_list();
getch();
}
#include<conio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
#include<alloc.h>
#include<process.h>
void enter_record();
void show_list();
void dispose();
void delete_record();
void find();
void modify();
struct student
{
int value;
*next;
};
struct student *header,*current,*temp;
void main()
{
int ch;
clrscr();
while(1)
{
printf("======================");
printf("\n\n 1.enter record.\n 2.show list.\n 3.dispose.\n 4.delete record.\n 5.find.\n 6.modify.\n 7.exit\n");
printf("======================\n");
ch=getch();
switch(ch)
{
case '1':
enter_record();
break;
case '2':
show_list();
break;
case '3':
dispose();
break;
case '4':
delete_record();
break;
case '5':
find();
case '6':
modify();
case '7':
exit(1);
default:
printf("you have enter wrong choice");
}
}
// getch();
}
void enter_record()
{
printf("\nEnter id: \n");
current=(struct student *)malloc(sizeof(struct student));
scanf("%d",¤t->value);
current->next=NULL;
if(header==NULL)
header=current;
else
temp=header;
while(temp->next!=NULL)
{
temp=temp->next;
}
temp->next=current;
}
void show_list()
{
if(header==NULL)
printf("\nlist is empty\n");
temp=header;
while(temp!=NULL)
{
printf("\n\n id is :%d\n",temp->value);
temp=
temp->next;
}
}
void dispose()
{
struct student *temp;
while(header!=NULL)
{
temp=header->next;
free(header);
header=temp;
}
printf("\nlist is destroy\n");
}
void delete_record()
{
struct student *prev;
int mc;
printf("\nenter id to b deleted: \n");
scanf("%d",&mc);
if(header==NULL)
printf("\nlist is empty\n");
else if(header->value==mc)
{
temp=header->next;
free(header);
header=temp;
}
else
{
temp=header;
while(temp->next!=NULL&&temp->value!=mc)
{
prev=temp;
temp=temp->next;
prev->next=temp->next;
free(temp);
}
prev->next=NULL;
free(temp);
}
}
void find()
{
int m;
temp=header;
printf("\nenter id to find: \n");
scanf("%d",&m);
while(temp->next!=NULL&&temp->value!=m)
{
temp=temp->next;
}
printf("\nthe required id is present in list: %d \n",temp->value);
show_list();
}
void modify()
{
int id,u;
//printf("enter id");
//scanf("%d",id);
temp=header;
printf("\n enter id to find whether is is present or not\n");
scanf("%d",&id);
while(temp->next!=NULL&&temp->value!=id)
{
temp= temp->next;
}
printf("the required result is present in list: %d ",temp->value);
printf("\nnew id\n");
scanf("%d",&u);
temp->value=u;
printf("\nid modified\n");
show_list();
getch();
}
Saturday, 24 August 2013
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Thursday, 21 February 2013
Virtual headphone and speaker system
A new multiple speaker system redefines the headphones without the cord and without the cord!!! What??? Do you think thats a logical error? No its not! Its true, without a headphone system.
The speakers of these systems focus directly onto a small area around the user, and the sound is audible only within a small circumference of the user. This system could be really effective for home users and more effective for office users, as they can easily do their work without having that peice of metal over head or anything and also without interrupting your colleagues. Microft's Software Architect "Ivan Tashev" in Redmond also added, that the sound zone can be arranged electronically and no mechanical movement is needed. What could be nicer???
Virtual headphone and speaker system
Virtual headphone and speaker system
A new multiple speaker system redefines the headphones without the cord and without the cord!!! What??? Do you think thats a logical error? No its not! Its true, without a headphone system.
The speakers of these systems focus directly onto a small area around the user, and the sound is audible only within a small circumference of the user. This system could be really effective for home users and more effective for office users, as they can easily do their work without having that peice of metal over head or anything and also without interrupting your colleagues. Microft's Software Architect "Ivan Tashev" in Redmond also added, that the sound zone can be arranged electronically and no mechanical movement is needed. What could be nicer???
Wednesday, 20 February 2013
New Linux-powered smart pen will correct your spelling, plus more
Aside from much slower speed at writing on paper, another significant drawback to traditional pens when compared to typing on a computer is the lack of correction utilities.
A paper notebook that you write on with a pen or pencil doesn’t feature software that let you know when you have spelled something wrong, or when your grammar doesn't sound right. It also won't tell you when your writing becomes almost impossible to read to most humans.
But now, European startup firm Lernstift is looking to bring those correction utilities to pen-and-paper-- literally.
The company’s new pen of the same name will actually vibrate to alert you when your handwriting has become illegible or when you’ve made a grammatical error.
To be sure, the new pen doesn’t sport a fancy display, but instead uses different combinations of modes and vibrations in order to provide you with specific corrections.
When the pen is switched to Calligraphy Mode, it will vibrate once whenever it detects an illegible letter. In Orthography Mode, the pen will vibrate once when you make a spelling error, and vibrate twice when it detects a grammatical error.
The detection mechanisms work in the air as well, so you don’t have to actually put pen to paper for the correction features to function.
The Lernstift pen runs on the Linux operating system and employs the use of motion sensors in order to detect what you’re writing. It uses the data obtained from the motion sensors to look for possible errors.
Currently, two models of the pen are in production. The first model can be considered the standard version, providing the correction capabilities, but not much else.
A more complex model with more features works with your WiFi connection, as well as a pressure sensor to let you know when you’re pressing too hard on the paper.
If you think you’ll be emotionally stable after a pen tells you that it can write better than you, the standard model is slated for an August 2013 release, while the more complex model is planned for a release in 2014. Pricing isn't available yet.
In other Linux news
According to various rumors seen on the blogosphere earlier this morning, Microsoft looks like it could be taking a meaningful look at releasing a full Linux port of its Office Suite sometime next year.
The sudden change of mind is apparently due to Linux showing commercial viability, and because Microsoft is reportedly already working on Office for Android.
Android, as you probably already are aware of, is a Linux-based operating system, meaning a lot of the porting work will have already been done.
It shouldn’t take too much effort to take the next step and bring Office to Red Hat, CentOs, Ubuntu or any other Linux flavor for that matter.
Until today, Microsoft has never released a part of desktop software for Linux, with the exception of Skype, but that was an acquisition, so it changes everything.
But Microsoft does have a Linux department which has mainly been tasked with maintaining Hyper-V (virtualization) compatibility with Linux operating systems under Windows, and Windows Server 2008 and especially Windows Server 2012 are prime examples.
Presumably, and with the development of Office for Android, Microsoft has beefed up its number of Linux developers, and those developers will then also work on Office for Linux.
The big question is whether there’s actually significant demand for Office for Linux. On any typical day, Linux has perhaps 1 or 2 percent of the desktop market, and about 53 percent of it is with Ubuntu.
However, it’s still important to remember that almost every Linux distribution comes with Libre Office for free. It’s only an educated guess, but some open-source developers suspect that there are scant few Linux users who would proactively go out and pay for Microsoft Office
After all, many desktop Linux users chose their operating system because it’s free, both in the money sense, and free from Microsoft's deadly grip and mad control of Windows and its desktop software.
The other possibility is that Microsoft could be reacting to increased uptake of Linux and cloud-based productivity suites by large institutions, such as universities, cities, municipalities and governments from all over the globe.
In other open source and Linux news
Since the internet became public at the end of 1993, Apache has ruled the world when it comes to Web servers, and still does, but some say this could soon change. Now, a lesser-known web server, Nginx (pronounced "Engine-X") has quietly taken some market share away from Apache.
And this has been happening to the point that it now owns almost 12.7 percent of the global web server market, and almost 12.8 per cent of the world's most heavily trafficked websites, according to new data from Netcraft.
Of course, and as it often does, it wasn't supposed to be that way. Once an open-source project gains traction, it has tended to continue to gain market share, just like the Linux operating system.
But Apache has been on the wane, losing 100 million hostnames since June 2012, and not because of any resurgence from Microsoft's IIS web server. Apache still claims close to 55.5 percent of all active websites, but Nginx is on the rise, make no mistake.
Started in 2001 by Igor Sysoev, Nginx now powers websites with serious scale requirements like 163.com, Wordpress.com, Yandex.ru, and, last but not least, CNN.com.
Nginx and Lighttpd are probably the two best-known asynchronous servers, and Apache is undoubtedly the best known process-based Web server. The main advantage of the asynchronous approach is scalability. In a process-based server, each simultaneous connection requires a thread which incurs significant overhead.
On the other hand, an asynchronous server is event-driven and handles requests in a single thread. While a process-based server can often perform on par with an asynchronous server under light loads, under heavier loads they usually consume far too much RAM which significantly degrades performance and speed.
Today, Nginx offers fewer features than Apache, but its performance is significantly higher. In that manner, it's not unlike MySQL in the database market, or Tomcat in the application server market, where the open-source alternative is initially feature-constrained but significantly better for a particular purpose.
Over time, it adds functionality and continues to improve performance until, like Linux in the server and mobile operating systems, it simply dominates the rest of the segment.
This used to be the story of Apache which displaced all proprietary players in the web server market. But now its market share is being eaten away, and unless it fundamentally re-architects for better scaling features, Apache may ultimately give way to Nginx or other open-source web servers.
The people at Apache already know this and haven't been sitting idle. Not at all in fact. In early 2012 the Apache Software Foundation released version 2.4, of which ASF president Jim Jagielski declared-- "As far as true performance is based - real-world performance as seen by the end-user- Apache version 2.4 is as fast, and even faster than some of the servers who may be 'better' known as being 'fast', like Nginx."
Despite nearly a year in the market, Apache 2.4 hasn't stemmed its slide. What's so interesting and healthy here is that two open-source projects are fighting for market supremacy in the only way open source really knows how-- technical merit. Pure and simple.
It will be interesting to see what kind of progress Nginx makes in 2013 and if it continues to eat away at Apache's strong market share. We will also be on the lookout to see if other big-name websites adopt it in the near future.
In other Linux and open source news
James Bottomley has restructured Linux's mini bootloader to allow any version to be launched on PCs with UEFI Secure Boot.
The boot loader's development has been sponsored by the Linux Foundation. The revised version uses a different method to boot the more complex secondary bootloader.
This enables it to co-operate with Gummiboot, which was introduced in mid-2012. Gummiboot doesn't load or start Linux itself like GRUB does, instead it accesses EFI mechanisms. This keeps its structure significantly less complex than that of GRUB.
But when Secure Boot is active, the approach requires other firmware-related mechanisms to verify the kernel before it is launched.
In a recent blog post, Bottomley says that as a consequence of this, Gummiboot doesn't work with Shim or the original version of the Linux Foundation's bootloader when Secure Boot is active. Further details can be found in the slides for a presentation given by Bottomley, a member of the Linux Foundation's Technical Advisory Board.
In the presentation, he explains that the Linux kernel and the Gummiboot versions should not be verified via keys, and that user-authorised hash values should be used instead.
To provide the functionality, the new version uses some modification that is also part of an extension which was introduced by SUSE Linux developers and has since been integrated into Shim 0.2.
That extension allows Shim to store trusted code information in a MOKs (Machine Owner Keys) database.
According to Bottomley's presentation slides, it takes a week or two for Microsoft to respond to bootloader submissions and provide a signature that is considered trustworthy by Secure Boot PCs.
This means that the difficulties Bottomley encountered when he tried to get an earlier version of his mini bootloader signed last autumn appear to have been eliminated.
Bottomley says that he submitted the revised version to be signed by Microsoft on January 21st, and that he hopes to receive a signed version shortly. The Linux Foundation plans to offer this signed version for download free of charge.
Shim contributor Matthew Garrett has recently also written a blog post on UEFI and Secure Boot. In that post, the developer provides some details about the issues that have caused Samsung notebooks to refuse to start at all after Linux was booted.
He also mentions a few flaws in the UEFI firmware of various Toshiba notebooks that result in the signatures of the Secure Boot-compatible Fedora 18 being considered invalid, which prevents the distribution from starting when Secure Boot is active.
In other Linux and open source news
For the past week or so, there's been lots of rumors flying in the open source community that Microsoft might potentially invest in Dell, but a big question has since emerged-- if such an investment would occur, will Dell still maintain its very close relationships with Red Hat, other Linux vendors and the open source community?
And there's also another rumor-- Dell could go private soon... In fact, it's that rumor that triggered the other, as it often happens with rumors.
Other potential investors could include the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, Michael Dell himself and a few others. If Microsoft injects a lot of its cash into Dell, the software company could strain relationships with Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Acer and other PC makers.
Acer has already been very critical of Microsoft’s Windows Surface RT and Surface Pro tablet launches. not to mention other reservations is already has against the company co-founded by Bill Gates.
But while all of this is happening, a Microsoft-Dell financial relationship could also have a ripple effect in the open source and Linux world. Dell is one of the top suppliers of servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux. The company also has a close, ongoing relationship with Canonical, promoting Ubuntu Linux on PCs in emerging regions and also working with Canonical on cloud computing.
But Dell’s own public cloud could leverage OpenStack soon, the open source platform for launching infrastructure services. However, if Microsoft does invest privately in Dell, will the company founded by Michael Dell himself deemphasize or abandon its Linux and open source relationships?
We doubt it, especially when it comes to servers and cloud computing, one area that has always interested Microsoft and one that the software giant continues to invest in agressively.
But with or without Microsoft’s cash, Dell must still answer to its many customers. And enterprise customers will revolt if Dell somehow abandons or weakens its engagements with Red Hat and the other major Linux vendors. Even Microsoft has opened up to the cross-platform reality, allowing customers to run Linux in its Windows Azure cloud.
Still, other major server makers such as HP and IBM could wind up being the big open source winners if customers perceive that Microsoft has somehow undermined, however slightly, Dell’s Linux strategy.
On the PC and in the notebook markets, where Windows still rules over Linux in most regions, you could imagine Microsoft trying to inspire Dell to go all Windows, all the time. The question is, will it happen?
Even as Dell focuses more intensely on enterprise computing, the company still can’t overlook opportunities with Android, Google's Chrome OS, Linux and other software used today in the rapidly growing mobile market.
Source: Lernstift Gmb.
SIM-less cell phones aimed at machines rather than people
Wireless infrastructure provider and mobile network equipment maker Ericsson and Gemalto have partnered to create SIM-less mobile smartphones aimed at machines rather than people, and the technology will most be likely well-received by iPhone and iPad maker Apple.
The newly proposed partnership will create a provisioning system to allow elements such as cars, medical devices and electricity meters (among other things) to be fitted with an embedded mobile phone, without knowing the network on which it's going to operate, or even in which country it will be used. All new European cars will need a mobile network within two years, to conform with eCall legislation.
M2M (machine-to-machine) works very well in the Cloud, and Gemalto will kick in the secure provisioning system which will make the removable SIM redundant.
To be sure, European mobile phones are required to conform to the GSM standard, which mandates a removable SIM card so that subscribers can easily switch networks. However, Apple has been successfully leading a project to extend the standard to encompass embedded SIMs.
Technically, the eUICC (embedded Universal Integrated Circuit Card) does perform the functions of a SIM, but through a chip soldered on the handset's motherboard rather than a detachable, removable unit.
Such SIMs could dramatically change how network operators work, and could allow Apple to sell connectivity in the iTunes store and car buyers to select a mobile network on the first turn of the key, something that could take away billions of dollars in annual revenue from the wireless carriers and mobile service providers.
Of course, doing that in a secure way is difficult, and replicating the long-term success of the removable SIM will be very tough in deed. But time will tell.
Each GSM SIM stores a different secret key, which is replicated in the Authentication Server at the network operator. The key is never transmitted and can't be extracted from the SIM without an enormous amount of effort, and physical access.
That shared secret is used to create matching "session" keys with which GSM communication is secured, and those session keys have been broken from time to time, but the shared-secret authentication made possible by the SIM still remains secure, at least for now anyway.
Shared secret is always the best cryptography, assuming the secret can't be intercepted. Dual-key systems (such as RSA or ECC) only exist because of the difficulties in distributing a shared-secret, and such systems are only used in order to safely create a shared secret.
The removable SIM solves this issue by sending the secret in a secure package (the SIM) over a separate communications medium (the post), removing the need for more complicated solutions.
So an operator-independent SIM will have two options-- one, store a shared secret for each network operator, and two, select which one based on user choice, or store a shared secret from a third party such as Gemalto, or Apple, then use that secret to encrypt the selected operator's secret on request.
The latter solution is more efficient as it offers more flexibility and wider application, but it requires the network operators to share some secrets with that third party, and that is an enormous favor to ask for most of them. It's difficult to imagine the operators agreeing to share secrets with anyone, but Gemalto is already providing the SIMs to many of them (and thus responsible for programming the secrets into those SIMs anyway) so if they'd trust anyone then it would be Gemalto...
In other mobile news
Just a couple of days after its initial release, one of the most high-profile iOS jailbreaks in the history of Apple turns out to be the fastest to be adopted as well.
Evasion, which gives iPhone, iPod, and iPad owners deeper access to its software on their devices that Apple allows, has been downloaded and used by almost 7 million people since its release on Monday, Forbes reports.
To put that number into perspective, in January Apple said that it had sold more than 500 million iOS devices cumulatively, and that about 300 million of those were running iOS 6, its latest major release before iOS 6.1 on Monday.
The seven million tally comes from the maker of Cydia, the mobile application that quickly became the unofficial third-party software repository for jailbroken devices.
Like Apple's own App Store, the app, which is typically installed in the process of jailbreaking, lets people search and discover new software.
It also allows users to search other system tweaks that can be installed on top of Apple's own software.
But unlike Apple's system, Cydia does not need to adhere to a strict set of guidelines for what can be offered. Evasion's arrival earlier this week was noteworthy for being able to jailbreak the most recent version of Apple's iOS 6 software.
And that's something that had already been accomplished, but came with numerous caveats. Evasion also worked with newer iOS devices, including the iPhone 5, which up until then proved to be a tough little fellow to break.
Apple is, of course, expected to eventually fix some of the exploits Evasion is using to jailbreak the company's devices. But an initial beta version of its updated iOS 6.1.1 software, which was released after the jailbreaking tool, reportedly does not contain such a remedy.
In the meantime, Apple has put up an updated warning, recommending that users not jailbreak their device at the risk of lowering the device's battery life and causing both app and system instabilities.
In other mobile news
Although fourth-quarter wireless service revenue was up 12 percent to a record $7 billion, Sprint still managed to deliver a quarterly loss of $1.3 billion in its latest earnings report. Sprint said the loss was primarily attributed to network improvements related to its 'Network Vision' initiative, including the shutdown of its Nextel subsidiary.
The wireless carrier also noted a loss of $45 million from Hurricane Sandy. During an earnings call Thursday morning, Steve Elfman, president of network operations and wholesale described the shutdown of the Nextel platform as a monkey off the carrier's back, saying it was an "important turning point" that would enable the company to remove incremental expense and operating costs of running two separate networks.
Sprint plans to refarm the 800 MHz wireless spectrum from its network to CDMA voice and LTE, which the company hopes will enhance in-building coverage, without having to resort to femtocells.
Sprint's net postpaid additions were up 18 percent annually, the highest since 2007. Annual smartphone sales were 20 million, and the company said it sold 6.6 million iPhones during the year, 40 percent of which were new subscribers.
For the quarter, iPhone sales hit a best-ever 2.2 million, 38 percent of which were new customers. For some perspective, those 2.2 million iPhone sold during the quarter compare to Verizon's 6.2 million and AT&T's 8.6 million.
Still Sprint's sale of iOS smartphones were up from 1.5 million in the previous quarter. The wireless carrier announced its fourth quarter 2012 earnings, as it aggressively pursues its LTE rollout in an attempt to remain competitive with competitors AT&T and Verizon Wireless, both of which are well-along on their 4G rollouts.
As part of its Network Vision initiative, Sprint said on air sites have nearly doubled in the last 90 days, with LTE live in 58 cities total and nearly 170 more expected in the coming months.
Sprint said construction has started in more than 450 cities, with more than 19,500 sites now ready for construction.
Investors looking for more information on the impending $20.1 billion acquisition of Sprint by Japanese carrier Softbank were left hanging. Sprint also refrained from diving too deep into the details of Sprint's latest bid to acquire the remaining share of Clearwire that it doesn't already own for $2.97 per share.
Sprint did say that it expects the process to be completed in the second quarter, however. It will be interesting to see what the immediate future holds for the company, now that it dropped Nextel's outdated network.
In other mobile news
Cablevision Systems, the 5th largest cable company in the United States, is near an agreement to sell regional cable provider Optimum West to Charter Communications. The deal could be announced as early as later today, said one of the persons in the know.
The agreement hasn’t been signed yet, and talks could still fall apart, said the same person. If successful, Charter will win out over peers such as Time Warner Cable and Suddenlink Communications, which also made offers for the business, people close to the situation said in December.
Charter CEO Tom Rutledge is also familiar with the Optimum West unit-- he actually pushed Cablevision to acquire the business in 2010 when he was Cablevision’s chief operating officer.
“Overall, Charter is an educated acquirer, simply because the CEO purchased the property for Cablevision, but in the near term, this is more positive for Cablevision,” said Frank Louthan, an analyst at Raymond James & Co. “This is a transaction where there aren’t a lot of synergies because Charter is acquiring what became a well-run property.”
With Optimum West in its back pocket, Charter would gain about 300,000 new customers in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. Cablevision acquired the unit, previously known as Bresnan Broadband Holdings, more than two years ago from Providence Equity Partners for $1.37 billion.
Selling the company now allows Cablevision to better concentrate on the New York area, where most of its customers reside. Cablevision serves about 3 million subscribers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and parts of Pennsylvania.
The Bethpage, New York-based company began exploring a sale of the Bresnan business after several acquisitions of cable systems were announced last year at favorable prices, compared to the value of publicly traded cable companies’ shares.
While Cablevision is trying to narrow its focus, Charter already has video, Internet and phone networks in 25 states. Rutledge took over as Charter’s CEO last year, replacing Mike Lovett.
He says that Optimum West’s assets are great and “in nice shape as a result of the things we did to them.”
Comcast Corp. is the nation’s largest cable carrier, followed by Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications Inc. Charlie Schueler, a Cablevision spokesman, declined to comment. Anita Lamont, a spokeswoman for Charter, didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.
Intel says it will introduce an internet-based TV this year
Over the past eighteen months, there's been a lot of rumors that Intel is about to grind out its own TV set, and they were just rumors at the time. Erik Huggers, the head of Intel Media, joined Walt Mossberg onstage at AllThingsD's media conference today to confirm that the chip giant will be introducing its first internet-based TV before the year is over.
The company will be providing the hardware and services directly to consumers, and the device will come with a camera that can detect who is in front of the TV.
Huggers declined to provide many details -- including the service's name and programming partners -- but he said the service will let users watch live TV, on demand, and other offerings. So it's more like a service than a TV set in and by itself.
"For the first time, we will deliver a new consumer-electronics product that people will buy from Intel through a new brand," Huggers said.
He added that the set-top box will be be powered by an Intel chip and noted that the company is working with the entire television industry to figure out how to distribute live television, "catch-up TV," on-demand, and other services via the internet.
Though Intel hopes to revolutionize the TV industry, the new service will resemble current cable offerings. For one, don't count on saving money with Intel's new offering. Huggers noted that Intel's push isn't a value play and won't cut a user's television bill in half.
Additionally, users won't be able to pick and choose certain channels but will likely subscribe to bundles dictated by Intel's team.
"What consumers want is choice, control, and convenience," Huggers said. "If bundles are done right, there's real value in that. I don't believe the industry is ready for pure a la carte."
However, Intel's history in the TV industry has been choppy, to say the least. It was early to push Google TVs and other smart TVs, with its processors powering a Sony Google TV and a Logitech Google TV set-top box.
But those products were a failure, and Intel shut down its TV business in late 2011 after failing to gain much traction.
Huggers joined Intel that same year following stints at the BBC and Microsoft. During his time at the BBC, he was on the executive board and served as director of BBC future media and technology, overseeing the company's online push and other initiatives.
And during his time at Microsoft, Huggers worked in various digital media areas. While Intel stopped pushing its processors for use in smart TVs, the company clearly didn't give up on the market entirely.
Huggers noted that Intel has been building its media business for about a year. It will be interesting to see how all of this pans out, and the kind of success this new initiative will offer Intel.
In other tech news
According to a report from the U.K.’s chief scientific advisor, Britons' compelling habits to post every little detail of their personal and professional lives online is changing the way their identities are viewed.
Professor Sir John Beddington added that the internet is having a profound effect on how Brits see themselves and how they relate that identity to the world around them.
One obvious change which is a result of the proliferation of connected devices is the blurring between work and social identities, so that people check their work emails, Twitter and other social networks when they’re off the clock and employers start to look at social online presence as well as professional qualifications for prospective employees.
“Hyper-connectivity, even of the mobile sort, is driving social change and expectations, while bringing people together in new ways,” the report suggests.
“As early as 2011, there were more than seven billion devices connected to the internet, and numbers are predicted to reach 15 billion by 2015. About 60 percent of all web users in the United Kingdom are now members of a social network site, increasing from only 17 percent in 2007, the report says.”
With every aspect of people’s lives documented online, both the government and private sector companies have tons of personal information they can potentially use.
Hyper-connectivity can also bring mobs together “where their interests temporarily coincide” - either in a good way, like “solidarity” during the Olympics in London, or more destructively as during the 2011 riots.
The web is identified as the "technological driver" of changes in the population's identities, but the report also details major "social drivers" over the next ten years, which include an impending stampede of older people.
“People’s identities are likely to be under greater pressure in their family and caring roles, as the number of people providing care to older parents is projected to increase from nearly 400,000 in 2005, to about 500,000 in 2041, with most of this increase occurring by 2022.
“Traditional life stages, for example between adolescence and adulthood, or middle-age and old-age, are being delayed or blurred together,” the report said.
"Shifting intergenerational dynamics will also see a relatively smaller working population. Younger people are likely to find achieving the experiences of adulthood more challenging than previous generations," the report suggests.
The U.K. government also needs to consider those without internet access in its policy-making, the report recommends, so it can strengthen social integration and “make effective use of identities as a resource”.
In other technology news
In a bold statement, photo-sharing site Instagram said today that it has the permanent right to sell all users' photographs without payment or notification, a dramatic policy shift that quickly sparked a public outcry on privacy issues and other rights violations.
The new intellectual property policy, which takes effect on January 16, 2013, comes just three months after Facebook completed its acquisition of the company.
And it gets worse: unless Instagram users delete their accounts before the January deadline, they cannot opt out either!
Under the new policy, Facebook claims that the perpetual right to license all public Instagram photos to companies or any other organization, including for advertising purposes, which would effectively transform the Web site into the world's largest stock photo agency.
One irked Twitter user complained that "Instagram is now the new iStockPhoto, except they won't have to pay you anything to use your images."
"Instagram is actually asking people to agree to unspecified future commercial use of their photos," says Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "That makes it challenging for someone to give informed consent to that deal."
That means that a hotel in Hawaii, for instance, could write a check to Facebook to license photos taken at its resort and use them on its Web site, in TV ads, in glossy brochures, and so on-- all without paying any money to the Instagram user who took the photo. The language would include not only photos of picturesque sunsets on Waikiki Beach, but also images of young children frolicking on the beach, a result that parents might not expect, and which could trigger state privacy laws.
Another policy pitfall: If Instagram users continue to upload photos after January 16, 2013, and subsequently delete their account after the deadline, they may have granted Facebook an irrevocable right to sell those images in perpetuity. There's no obvious language that says deleting an account terminates Facebook's rights, EFF's Opsahl said.
Facebook's new rights to sell Instagram users' photos come from two additions to its terms of use policy. One section deletes the current phrase "limited license" and, by inserting the words "transferable" and "sub-licensable," allows Facebook to license users' photos to any other organization.
A second section allows Facebook to charge money. It says that "a business or other entity may pay us to display your photos in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you." That language does not exist in the current terms of use.
Google's policy, by contrast, is far narrower and does not permit the company to sell photographs uploaded through Picasa or Google+. Its policy generally tracks the soon-to-be-replaced Instagram policy by saying "The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our services."
And Yahoo's policies service for Flickr are similar, saying the company can use the images "solely for the purpose for which such content was submitted or made available."
Reginald Braithwaite, an author and software developer, posted a tongue-in-cheek "translation" of the new Instagram policy today "You are not our customers, you are the cattle we drive to market and auction off to the highest bidder. Enjoy your feed and keep producing the milk."
One Instagram user dubbed the policy change "Instagram's suicide note." The PopPhoto.com photography site summarized the situation by saying "The service itself is still a fun one, but that's a lot of red marks that have shown up over the past couple weeks. Many shooters -- even the casual ones -- probably aren't that excited to have a giant corporation out there selling their photos without being paid or even notified about it."
Another unusual addition to Instagram's new policy appears to immunize it from liability, such as class action lawsuits, if it makes supposedly private photos public. The language stresses, twice in the same paragraph, that "we will not be liable for any use or disclosure of content" and "Instagram will not be liable for any use or disclosure of any content you provide."
Yet another addition says "you acknowledge that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such." That appears to conflict with the Federal Trade Commission's guidelines that say advertisements should be listed as advertisements.
Such sweeping intellectual property language has been invoked before: In 1999, Yahoo claimed all rights to Geocities using language strikingly similar to Facebook's wording today, including the "non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right" to do what it wanted with its users' text and photos. But in the face of widespread protest -- and competitors advertising that their own products were free from such Draconian terms -- Yahoo backed down about a week later.
Facebook may not intend to monetize the photos taken by Instagram users, but if lawyers often draft overly broad language to permit future business opportunities that may never arise, than that could be a deal breaker. But on the other hand, there's no obvious language that would prohibit Facebook from taking those steps, and the company's silence in the face of questions today hasn't helped at all.
EFF's Opsahl says that the new policy runs afoul of his group's so-called 'best practices' for social networks. He added "Hopefully at some point in time, we'll get greater clarity from Facebook and Instagram."
In other tech news
Ministers and delegates from almost 90 nations yesterday have signed the first new United Nations telecommunications treaty since the birth of the public internet. However, Canada and other Western nations refused to join after claiming it endorses greater government control over the Web.
The head of the United Nations' telecommunications group pushed back against the Western assertions, defending the accord as necessary to help expand online services to poorer nations and add more voices to shape the direction of modern communications and internet technology. Hamadoun Toure's remarks highlighted the wide gaps and hard-fought positions during the past ten days of global talks in Dubai, where the UN is holding all its sessions.
The negotiations essentially pitted the West's desire to preserve the unregulated nature of the internet against developing countries yearning for better public access and strong-arm states such as Iran and China that closely filter the information available on the Web.
The final break late Thursday wasn't over specific regulations in the UN group's first telecoms review since before the internet was a global force, however. Instead, it came down to an ideological split over the nature of the internet and who is responsible for its growth and overall governance.
More than twenty countries joined the U.S. on Friday -- including Canada -- in refusing to sign the protocols by the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) claiming that it opens the door to greater government controls of the infrastructure and could be used by authoritarian states to justify further crackdowns on cyberspace.
Rival countries -- including Iran, China and African states -- insist that the governments should have a greater sway over internet affairs and seek to break a perceived Western grip on information technology. They also favour greater international help in bringing reliable online links to the world's least developed regions.
The ITU -- which dates to the age of the telegraph in the mid-19th century -- has no technical powers to change how the internet operates or force countries to follow its nonbinding accords, which also dealt with issues such as mobile phone roaming rates and international emergency numbers.
But the United States and its backers worry that the new treaty could alter the tone of debates on the internet. Instead of viewing it as a freeform network, they claim, it could increasingly been seen as a commodity that needs clear lines of oversight.
Source: The BBC.
Scientists trying to solve internet buffering problems
Feb. 14, 2013
Scientists and information technology researchers from all over the world have been hired to finally put a stop to that most annoying of internet issue-- the endless buffering that happens right in the middle of so many videos viewed across the Web.
To make this happen, the European Commission will spend €3,569,000 until 2016 in an effort to reduce internet latency without a requirement for newer or stronger connections.
Instead, the team will have to come up with a new method to rewrite how computers and servers send data to each other in order to speed up the network of all networks.
Taken from the University of Aberdeen, Simula Research Labs in Norway, the University of Oslo and Karlstad University in Sweden, the team will work with people from British Telecom, Alcatel-Lucent, Bell in Belgium and Institut Mines-Telecom in France.
The scientists will try to determine new mechanisms in the network and the end-hosts to reduce or get rid of the effects of delay on gamers, video-oIP (video over IP) users and internet people that need higher speeds at downloading large files or streaming video.
“It’s a real issue that we all face, especially when using a program like Skype. If anyone else in the house is watching a video at the same time, your video connection suddenly becomes spotty and often simply disconnects," said professor Gorry Fairhurst, and internet engineer at Aberdeen University in the U.K.
“To be sure, this affects gamers who want to play online in real time and individuals that need to download large files of data – both end up buying special and expensive internet connections to make these work, but often it’s not more bandwidth that’s needed to go faster but less delay in getting it in the first place. We think we can reduce this delay by making a set of small but important changes to the way computers, servers and the network process the internet data,” he added.
The team and its backers say that if they manage to come up with a workable solution to get rid of buffering, it will help users all over the globe with slow internet speeds.
"We’re focussed on one defined issue and we think there are solutions for this, but we have to change the current internet standards for the Web," he added.
"This isn’t something that companies like Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and Apple will undertake lightly, but we expect they’ll take up what we’re doing because this has benefits for everyone in the long term. If we can’t do something that the rest of the world stands up and says – ‘ok I get it, we’ll standardise it’, then we’ve failed," added Fairhurst.
In other tech news
Over the past eighteen months, there's been a lot of rumors that Intel is about to grind out its own TV set, and they were just rumors at the time. Erik Huggers, the head of Intel Media, joined Walt Mossberg onstage at AllThingsD's media conference today to confirm that the chip giant will be introducing its first internet-based TV before the year is over.
The company will be providing the hardware and services directly to consumers, and the device will come with a camera that can detect who is in front of the TV.
Huggers declined to provide many details -- including the service's name and programming partners -- but he said the service will let users watch live TV, on demand, and other offerings. So it's more like a service than a TV set in and by itself.
"For the first time, we will deliver a new consumer-electronics product that people will buy from Intel through a new brand," Huggers said.
He added that the set-top box will be be powered by an Intel chip and noted that the company is working with the entire television industry to figure out how to distribute live television, "catch-up TV," on-demand, and other services via the internet.
Though Intel hopes to revolutionize the TV industry, the new service will resemble current cable offerings. For one, don't count on saving money with Intel's new offering. Huggers noted that Intel's push isn't a value play and won't cut a user's television bill in half.
Additionally, users won't be able to pick and choose certain channels but will likely subscribe to bundles dictated by Intel's team.
"What consumers want is choice, control, and convenience," Huggers said. "If bundles are done right, there's real value in that. I don't believe the industry is ready for pure a la carte."
However, Intel's history in the TV industry has been choppy, to say the least. It was early to push Google TVs and other smart TVs, with its processors powering a Sony Google TV and a Logitech Google TV set-top box.
But those products were a failure, and Intel shut down its TV business in late 2011 after failing to gain much traction.
Huggers joined Intel that same year following stints at the BBC and Microsoft. During his time at the BBC, he was on the executive board and served as director of BBC future media and technology, overseeing the company's online push and other initiatives.
And during his time at Microsoft, Huggers worked in various digital media areas. While Intel stopped pushing its processors for use in smart TVs, the company clearly didn't give up on the market entirely.
Huggers noted that Intel has been building its media business for about a year. It will be interesting to see how all of this pans out, and the kind of success this new initiative will offer Intel.
In other tech news
According to a report from the U.K.’s chief scientific advisor, Britons' compelling habits to post every little detail of their personal and professional lives online is changing the way their identities are viewed.
Professor Sir John Beddington added that the internet is having a profound effect on how Brits see themselves and how they relate that identity to the world around them.
One obvious change which is a result of the proliferation of connected devices is the blurring between work and social identities, so that people check their work emails, Twitter and other social networks when they’re off the clock and employers start to look at social online presence as well as professional qualifications for prospective employees.
“Hyper-connectivity, even of the mobile sort, is driving social change and expectations, while bringing people together in new ways,” the report suggests.
“As early as 2011, there were more than seven billion devices connected to the internet, and numbers are predicted to reach 15 billion by 2015. About 60 percent of all web users in the United Kingdom are now members of a social network site, increasing from only 17 percent in 2007, the report says.”
With every aspect of people’s lives documented online, both the government and private sector companies have tons of personal information they can potentially use.
Hyper-connectivity can also bring mobs together “where their interests temporarily coincide” - either in a good way, like “solidarity” during the Olympics in London, or more destructively as during the 2011 riots.
The web is identified as the "technological driver" of changes in the population's identities, but the report also details major "social drivers" over the next ten years, which include an impending stampede of older people.
“People’s identities are likely to be under greater pressure in their family and caring roles, as the number of people providing care to older parents is projected to increase from nearly 400,000 in 2005, to about 500,000 in 2041, with most of this increase occurring by 2022.
“Traditional life stages, for example between adolescence and adulthood, or middle-age and old-age, are being delayed or blurred together,” the report said.
"Shifting intergenerational dynamics will also see a relatively smaller working population. Younger people are likely to find achieving the experiences of adulthood more challenging than previous generations," the report suggests.
The U.K. government also needs to consider those without internet access in its policy-making, the report recommends, so it can strengthen social integration and “make effective use of identities as a resource”.
In other technology news
In a bold statement, photo-sharing site Instagram said today that it has the permanent right to sell all users' photographs without payment or notification, a dramatic policy shift that quickly sparked a public outcry on privacy issues and other rights violations.
The new intellectual property policy, which takes effect on January 16, 2013, comes just three months after Facebook completed its acquisition of the company.
And it gets worse: unless Instagram users delete their accounts before the January deadline, they cannot opt out either!
Under the new policy, Facebook claims that the perpetual right to license all public Instagram photos to companies or any other organization, including for advertising purposes, which would effectively transform the Web site into the world's largest stock photo agency.
One irked Twitter user complained that "Instagram is now the new iStockPhoto, except they won't have to pay you anything to use your images."
"Instagram is actually asking people to agree to unspecified future commercial use of their photos," says Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "That makes it challenging for someone to give informed consent to that deal."
That means that a hotel in Hawaii, for instance, could write a check to Facebook to license photos taken at its resort and use them on its Web site, in TV ads, in glossy brochures, and so on-- all without paying any money to the Instagram user who took the photo. The language would include not only photos of picturesque sunsets on Waikiki Beach, but also images of young children frolicking on the beach, a result that parents might not expect, and which could trigger state privacy laws.
Another policy pitfall: If Instagram users continue to upload photos after January 16, 2013, and subsequently delete their account after the deadline, they may have granted Facebook an irrevocable right to sell those images in perpetuity. There's no obvious language that says deleting an account terminates Facebook's rights, EFF's Opsahl said.
Facebook's new rights to sell Instagram users' photos come from two additions to its terms of use policy. One section deletes the current phrase "limited license" and, by inserting the words "transferable" and "sub-licensable," allows Facebook to license users' photos to any other organization.
A second section allows Facebook to charge money. It says that "a business or other entity may pay us to display your photos in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you." That language does not exist in the current terms of use.
Google's policy, by contrast, is far narrower and does not permit the company to sell photographs uploaded through Picasa or Google+. Its policy generally tracks the soon-to-be-replaced Instagram policy by saying "The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our services."
And Yahoo's policies service for Flickr are similar, saying the company can use the images "solely for the purpose for which such content was submitted or made available."
Reginald Braithwaite, an author and software developer, posted a tongue-in-cheek "translation" of the new Instagram policy today "You are not our customers, you are the cattle we drive to market and auction off to the highest bidder. Enjoy your feed and keep producing the milk."
One Instagram user dubbed the policy change "Instagram's suicide note." The PopPhoto.com photography site summarized the situation by saying "The service itself is still a fun one, but that's a lot of red marks that have shown up over the past couple weeks. Many shooters -- even the casual ones -- probably aren't that excited to have a giant corporation out there selling their photos without being paid or even notified about it."
Another unusual addition to Instagram's new policy appears to immunize it from liability, such as class action lawsuits, if it makes supposedly private photos public. The language stresses, twice in the same paragraph, that "we will not be liable for any use or disclosure of content" and "Instagram will not be liable for any use or disclosure of any content you provide."
Yet another addition says "you acknowledge that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such." That appears to conflict with the Federal Trade Commission's guidelines that say advertisements should be listed as advertisements.
Such sweeping intellectual property language has been invoked before: In 1999, Yahoo claimed all rights to Geocities using language strikingly similar to Facebook's wording today, including the "non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right" to do what it wanted with its users' text and photos. But in the face of widespread protest -- and competitors advertising that their own products were free from such Draconian terms -- Yahoo backed down about a week later.
Facebook may not intend to monetize the photos taken by Instagram users, but if lawyers often draft overly broad language to permit future business opportunities that may never arise, than that could be a deal breaker. But on the other hand, there's no obvious language that would prohibit Facebook from taking those steps, and the company's silence in the face of questions today hasn't helped at all.
EFF's Opsahl says that the new policy runs afoul of his group's so-called 'best practices' for social networks. He added "Hopefully at some point in time, we'll get greater clarity from Facebook and Instagram.
Apple CEO Tim Cook: OLED displays are awfu
Apple CEO Tim Cook doesn't like OLED (organic light emitting diode) displays and he's pretty vocal about it to anyone that asks his opinion.
Speaking at an investor conference hosted by Goldman Sachs in San Francisco Tuesday, Cook said that the color saturation of OLED displays are simply awful.
"If you ever buy anything online and really want to know what the color is, you should really think twice before you depend on the color from an OLED display," Cook said.
However, Cook called the iPhone 5's retina display a much superior experience, noting that it is twice as bright as your average OLED.
That's a shot at mobile devices that tend to use OLED displays, including Samsung's flagship Galaxy S3 smartphone and a few others from similar device makers.
Cook brought up the brightness, contrast and general experience of the display when addressing a question about whether Apple would create an iPhone with a larger display.
He wouldn't comment on the company's plans, but criticized the focus on size and specifications as something companies do when they can't "create an amazing experience," according to Cook.
For example, in the PC industry, companies tend to compete largely on specifications, speed and price he said, suggesting that Apple doesn't want to get into that kind of battle.
Cook noted that most consumers don't know or don't even care how fast the processor is on their mobile device or PC, and said it doesn't matter as long as the experience is great. With Cook, everything is about experience, in a very similar manner that was a hallmark of the late Steve Jobs, Cook's predecessor and one of Apple's founders back in the early 80s.
"What Apple does is sweat every little and most minute detail," Cook said. "We want the best display, and I think we got it, and we're certainly not planning on changing any of that."
In other mobile news
Dish Networks and Sprint are still fighting hard for control of Clearwire, but the WiMax services provider yesterday delivered disappointing fourth quarter results, proving once more that its wireless spectrum is still its most valuable asset. Clearwire ended last year's fourth quarter with about 9.6 million wireless subscribers, down 8.1 percent from 10.4 million subscribers at the end of the fourth quarter in 2011.
Clearwire's overall subscriber base consists mainly of wholesale customers, which accounted for 8.2 million. On average, only 1.4 million were retail Clearwire subscribers and 8.2 million wholesale subscribers.
Clearwire's subscriber numbers reflect 9,000 retail net subscriber additions and 915,000 wholesale net subscriber losses during the fourth quarter of 2012.
The company said that the decline in wholesale subscribers, which consist primarily of Sprint 3G/4G smartphone customers, is primarily due to the cancellation of postpaid WiMAX offerings by Sprint.
Net losses for the quarter attributable to Clearwire were $195 million, or $0.28 per share compared to $236.0 million, or $0.81 per share, respectively in the same period in 2012.
Overall 4th quarter total revenue declined 14 percent year over year to $311.2 million, primarily due to the expected year over year decline in wholesale revenue. Fourth quarter wholesale revenue of $116.6 million, was relatively flat compared to third quarter 2012 wholesale revenue of $116.5 million, and down 29 percent year over year.
The wireless operator is currently looking at two offers. Sprint has offered to buy out the remaining share of Clearwire that it doesn't currently own for $2.97.
At the same time, Dish Network has offered $3.30 per share for Clearwire but has stipulated a number of conditions, among them a commitment by Clearwire to help Dish rollout a wireless network.
But that offer is further complicated by Sprint's current majority stake in Clearwire, something that's been hanging over the company's head for many years.
At the end of the fourth quarter 2012, Clearwire operated networks in the U.S. covering areas where approximately 137 million users reside, including approximately 135 million people in markets where it provides 4G services.
Shares of Clearwire were flat following yesterday's report, trading at $3.17 in morning trading on Wednesday. It will be interesting to see if the company accepts one or the other offer, or if it refuses them both.
In other mobile news
Wireless infrastructure provider and mobile network equipment maker Ericsson and Gemalto have partnered to create SIM-less mobile smartphones aimed at machines rather than people, and the technology will most be likely well-received by iPhone and iPad maker Apple.
The newly proposed partnership will create a provisioning system to allow elements such as cars, medical devices and electricity meters (among other things) to be fitted with an embedded mobile phone, without knowing the network on which it's going to operate, or even in which country it will be used. All new European cars will need a mobile network within two years, to conform with eCall legislation.
M2M (machine-to-machine) works very well in the Cloud, and Gemalto will kick in the secure provisioning system which will make the removable SIM redundant.
To be sure, European mobile phones are required to conform to the GSM standard, which mandates a removable SIM card so that subscribers can easily switch networks. However, Apple has been successfully leading a project to extend the standard to encompass embedded SIMs.
Technically, the eUICC (embedded Universal Integrated Circuit Card) does perform the functions of a SIM, but through a chip soldered on the handset's motherboard rather than a detachable, removable unit.
Such SIMs could dramatically change how network operators work, and could allow Apple to sell connectivity in the iTunes store and car buyers to select a mobile network on the first turn of the key, something that could take away billions of dollars in annual revenue from the wireless carriers and mobile service providers.
Of course, doing that in a secure way is difficult, and replicating the long-term success of the removable SIM will be very tough in deed. But time will tell.
Each GSM SIM stores a different secret key, which is replicated in the Authentication Server at the network operator. The key is never transmitted and can't be extracted from the SIM without an enormous amount of effort, and physical access.
That shared secret is used to create matching "session" keys with which GSM communication is secured, and those session keys have been broken from time to time, but the shared-secret authentication made possible by the SIM still remains secure, at least for now anyway.
Shared secret is always the best cryptography, assuming the secret can't be intercepted. Dual-key systems (such as RSA or ECC) only exist because of the difficulties in distributing a shared-secret, and such systems are only used in order to safely create a shared secret.
The removable SIM solves this issue by sending the secret in a secure package (the SIM) over a separate communications medium (the post), removing the need for more complicated solutions.
So an operator-independent SIM will have two options-- one, store a shared secret for each network operator, and two, select which one based on user choice, or store a shared secret from a third party such as Gemalto, or Apple, then use that secret to encrypt the selected operator's secret on request.
The latter solution is more efficient as it offers more flexibility and wider application, but it requires the network operators to share some secrets with that third party, and that is an enormous favor to ask for most of them. It's difficult to imagine the operators agreeing to share secrets with anyone, but Gemalto is already providing the SIMs to many of them (and thus responsible for programming the secrets into those SIMs anyway) so if they'd trust anyone then it would be Gemalto...
In other mobile news
Just a couple of days after its initial release, one of the most high-profile iOS jailbreaks in the history of Apple turns out to be the fastest to be adopted as well.
Evasion, which gives iPhone, iPod, and iPad owners deeper access to its software on their devices that Apple allows, has been downloaded and used by almost 7 million people since its release on Monday, Forbes reports.
To put that number into perspective, in January Apple said that it had sold more than 500 million iOS devices cumulatively, and that about 300 million of those were running iOS 6, its latest major release before iOS 6.1 on Monday.
The seven million tally comes from the maker of Cydia, the mobile application that quickly became the unofficial third-party software repository for jailbroken devices.
Like Apple's own App Store, the app, which is typically installed in the process of jailbreaking, lets people search and discover new software.
It also allows users to search other system tweaks that can be installed on top of Apple's own software.
But unlike Apple's system, Cydia does not need to adhere to a strict set of guidelines for what can be offered. Evasion's arrival earlier this week was noteworthy for being able to jailbreak the most recent version of Apple's iOS 6 software.
And that's something that had already been accomplished, but came with numerous caveats. Evasion also worked with newer iOS devices, including the iPhone 5, which up until then proved to be a tough little fellow to break.
Apple is, of course, expected to eventually fix some of the exploits Evasion is using to jailbreak the company's devices. But an initial beta version of its updated iOS 6.1.1 software, which was released after the jailbreaking tool, reportedly does not contain such a remedy.
In the meantime, Apple has put up an updated warning, recommending that users not jailbreak their device at the risk of lowering the device's battery life and causing both app and system instabilities.
In other mobile news
Although fourth-quarter wireless service revenue was up 12 percent to a record $7 billion, Sprint still managed to deliver a quarterly loss of $1.3 billion in its latest earnings report. Sprint said the loss was primarily attributed to network improvements related to its 'Network Vision' initiative, including the shutdown of its Nextel subsidiary.
The wireless carrier also noted a loss of $45 million from Hurricane Sandy. During an earnings call Thursday morning, Steve Elfman, president of network operations and wholesale described the shutdown of the Nextel platform as a monkey off the carrier's back, saying it was an "important turning point" that would enable the company to remove incremental expense and operating costs of running two separate networks.
Sprint did say that it expects the process to be completed in the second quarter, however. It will be interesting to see what the immediate future holds for the company, now that it dropped Nextel's outdated network.
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