India has earned a position at the top five of the prestigious “Top 500 Supercomputer Sites List” for the first time ever, with Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), and this has been made possible by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons in Pune, which has installed an Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c system which can perform 117.9 TFlop/s (‘teraflops’ or trillions of calculations per second) performance.

In (Supercomputer 07) SC07 Conference held in the US last night, supercomputer developed by the Tata Group has been adjudged the fastest in Asia and fourth fastest in the world, till now the the list was usually dominated by the United States.

The fourth-ranking Tata supercomputer Called ‘Eka’ is derived from Sanskrit term for ‘one’, the project entailed an investment of $30 million, which was entirely borne by Tata Sons, and was put together in a record six weeks. CRL was originally set up in February 2006, but the task of putting together the supercomputer started in June this year. ‘

World’s Top 5 Supercomputers

1. BlueGene/L System (IBM) US

2. BlueGene/P system, (IBM) Germany

3. Silicon Graphics (SGI), New Mexico

4. Eka, CRL (arm of Tata Sons) India.

5. HP Cluster Platform (Sweden)

On Monday two major companies USA`s Microsoft and India's Reliance Communications signed a 500-million-dollar deal to launch India's first high-definition Internet TV service.

The Internet protocol Television (IPTV) will start early next year in 30 cities including the financial hub of Mumbai and the capital New Delhi, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and Reliance Communications Chairman Anil Ambani told reporters Monday, an eight-year exclusive alliance for IPTV services, which the former plans to launch in India by March 2008.

RCom will pay up to $500 million to Microsoft in licence fees for the US company’s Media room IPTV software platform. The service will offer both high and standard-definition TV, personal media sharing, VOD and PVR capabilities.

The service will be delivered through RCom’s fibre optic network, which covers 13,000 towns and five lakh villages in India.

However, officials from neither company would comment on the pricing strategy for the initiative. The platform will enable Reliance’s IPTV service to deliver video-on-demand, digital video recording, instant channel changing and personal media sharing. Subscribers will be able to watch popular standard definition as well as high definition content.

The companies have been working on the IPTV platform since 2003 and will roll out the service by the end of this financial year. RCom has tested IPTV at over 20,000 households in Mumbai and Delhi.

On the positive note Ballmer stated “IPTV is in its early stage in India, but would catch up in 12-24 months. Most of it will happen in two countries, India and the US, and in India we are expecting tens of millions of customers,”.

Reliance is also planning to go ahead with its DTH service in collaboration with Bluemagic DTH platform which was scheduled to launch by the end of 2007, but has slipped to first quarter of 2008. The service will Measat-3 satellite to beam MPEG4-compressed programming into the sub-Continent. RCom holds 20% of Bluemagic at the moment, with the rest held by subsidiaries, but is moving towards making the DTH service a 100% subsidiary. However, Reliance is coming to the DTH party late, with TataSky, DishTV and Sun Direct already operating pay-DTH services.

Source: (ZDnet INDIA, AFP, Rapid TV News, Business Standard)

This is the moment when every Indian should feel proud off, as for the first time the indigenously build light combat aircraft Tejas was used on Thursday (October 25) at a naval weapons range off the coast of Goa, at an altitude of 7 kilometers and at 0.6 times the speed of sound, the 'Tejas' did something that took the fighter program a leap further, it fired an air to air missile, something described as a textbook launch.

The launch validated many features of the fighter -- like the ability of the missile to jump clear of the aircraft on launch, the effect of the missile on the structure and handling on the aircraft itself and the important sub-systems of the aircraft that allow it to fire missiles safely and to lethal effect. Tejas is also controlled by advanced computers and fly by wire controls that keep it stable in flight for India's fledgeling indigenous fighter industry. The missile launch has more than one facet - our homegrown fighter aircraft is now a lethal bird of prey.

With advance war fighter like Sukhoi 30 MKI, already in India's arsenal, India is still going forward with the Tejas, the indigenously developed Light combat aircraft and achiving milestones one after another and why it shouldn't as IAF is planning to fully develop Tejas and replace the notorious and ageing MiG 21s.

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Source: (Times Now)

No matter what you have hear about India being the world economic power in some 20 years down the line. However,recent survey carried out by international consultancy and research firm AT Kearney has ranked India at the 71st position in its annual ranking of the world's most globalised nations, AT Kearney and Foreign Policy Globalisation Index 2007.

The list of 72 countries is topped by Singapore for the third consecutive year followed by Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Ireland.

India fell 10 places from its 61st position in 2006. The country was placed at the second bottom position last year as well in a list of 62 nations just ahead of Iran. This year, 10 countries have debuted on the index, and all of them have come at ranks higher than India.

AT Kearney said that India's low position is despite the country's services export and the total trade rising by more than a third. "India's standing as a premier off-shoring destination with a booming economy often masks the fact that 70% of its population lives in rural areas," the report said.

Despite a doubling of Internet users in 2005, only 5% of India's population had access to the Internet and less than half of its population was attached to the power grid, it said.

The Globalisation Index is an annual study which assesses the extent to which nations are becoming more or less globally connected taking into account 12 variables grouped into four categories, economic integration, personal contact, technological connectivity and political engagement.

Mr A. Raja, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, today informed that the telecom sector has reached 250 million subscribers three months ahead of the target date as it has been adding more than seven million subscribers every month.

The target set by the department of 15% tele-density by 2010 was achieved in September 2006 itself, four years in advance. The gross number of telephones by the end September 2007 was 248.66 million as compared to 241.02 million in August 2007. The overall tele-density reached 21.85% in September 2007 as against 21.20% in August 2007.

As for the wireless segment there was a fall in subscription and it accounted for 7.80 million subscription in September 2007 as against 8.31 million subscription in August 2007. In the wire-line segment, the subscriber base decreased to 39.58 million in September 2007 as against 39.73 million subscribers in August 2007. The total wireless subscribers (GSM, CDMA & WLL(F)) base reached 209.08 million at September end.

During April-September of 2007, 42.80 million total phone subscribers have been added as compared to 29.70 million during the corresponding period in the previous year.

Noticing this incredible rise in figures Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said that with the addition of 7.64 million phone connections in September, the 500 million target by 2010 appear modest.

Following our story of India plans to put the nuclear deal with US down the drains to save the coalition government which is between UPA and Left. Now Australia has decided to review its plans to sell uranium to India after the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has told the US President, George Bush, that "certain difficulties" would prevent India from moving forward on the pact for the foreseeable future.

Efforts for a US-India nuclear pact, which would open India to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, paved the way for Australia's uranium deal with India.

Medcalf said the US decision to work with India on nuclear issues triggered the Howard Government's policy change to also engage with India. "It was really only when the US turned around to accepting India's nuclear status, that most of the rest of the world could contemplate having a civilian nuclear relationship with India," he said.

Medcalf said that if Labour won the federal election, the impasse in talks regarding the Indo-US nuclear pact could "forestall any possible rift in Australian-India relationship" over Labour's pledge to abandon uranium sales. Times Reported on Wednesday.

However, The non-proliferation lobby in the United States has gone ballistic over Australia's readiness to sell uranium to India and has begun a concerted campaign to protest such a move.

Its plans include calling on the Australian public to oppose any such transfer by its government to New Delhi, which has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of ACA and Leonard Spector, deputy director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said official documents from the Australian Parliament show that the 1985 South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty bans Australian uranium exports to countries like India that have not signed the NPT.

"This move flagrantly contradicts Australia's long standing international nuclear nonproliferation commitments and should be reconsidered and reversed," Australian decision to sell uranium to India, "which is not a member of the NPT, has not signed the CTBT [Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty], and has refused to halt its production of plutonium for weapons, would violate Australia's past political and treaty commitments to the principle of full-scope international safeguards as a condition for supply of nuclear technology and material." Kimball said.

The bottom line of the entire drama is The sales of Uranium is worth billions in export dollars because India plans to use nuclear energy to meet its burgeoning power needs.

Source: (Times, Rediff and SMH)

Defence Minister A K Antony's four-day visit to Moscow, beginning today, is expected to reinvigorate defence cooperation between both countries, India has apparently succumbed to the Russian demand for jacking up the annual cost escalation charge of contracted weapon systems to 5% from the present 2.55%.

While the defence ministry was tight-lipped, sources said this would lead to India paying millions of dollars extra for the 230 Sukhoi-30MKI fighters at an overall cost of over $8.5 billion. Of the 230, IAF has already inducted around 60 of these fighters, which will be the mainstay of India’s combat fleet in the coming years. While the deals for 190 Sukhois were signed earlier, another one for 40 of these fighters was finalised recently at a cost of around $1.6 billion.

Apart from Sukhois, India is also on course to acquire 347 more T-90S main-battle tanks and 80 more Mi-17 medium-lift utility and assault helicopters from Russia.

Source : (Times)

The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) has collaborated with One Laptop per Child (OLPC) foundation to bring the latter's much-hyped $100 laptop to India to promote e-learning among poor children.

Under this initiative, Reliance Communications (RCom) will provide Internet connectivity, network backbone, logistics, and support to the OLPC initiative.

The initiative aims at covering over 25,000 towns, and 6,00,000 villages in the country by 2008. The larger OLPC project has already provided laptops to 5 million school children across the world, and aims to cover 150 million by 2008.

Based on the Linux OS, the OLPC (XO) laptop has replaceable keyboards, which can be changed for use with 35 global languages.

While announcing the collaboration, Tina Anil Ambani, said, "Children are the future of the nation, and shaping the future of millions of school children through new age learning systems is of prime importance in today's digital era."

OLPC has launched its first pilot in the country at a school in a tribal village at Khairat, near Karjat in Maharashtra, where school children have been provided with laptops, and training for teachers to incorporate new ways of imparting education.

Carla Gomez Monroy, learning consultant of OLPC, and a part of the pilot, said, "Children lack opportunity, and not capability. Children at Khairat school, who have never even seen a laptop before, are showing easiness and receptiveness while learning on laptops. It has also resulted in reduction in the number of children absentees."

Sumit Chowdhury, chief information officer of RCom, said, "School children will be able to access their educational modules in local languages, collaborate with each other, connect to the Internet, and play games as well."

The laptops are connected via network to the school server. All laptops are on the network, so school children can interact with each other, and share the learning experience. However, once out of the school network, these laptops are rendered absolutely useless. They would work only till such a time the battery lasts.

"Keeping in mind that the laptops will be handled by school children, they have been built drop-proof, 45-degrees shock-proof, water proof, and have a longer battery life as compared to regular laptops," added Chowdhury.

RCom and OLPC are in talks with government agencies, NGOs, content developers, translators, teachers, and project managers to create successful ecosystems to further the OLPC program in India.

With Indian Railways planning to install ATMs in selected trains, you may be able to withdraw money while travelling.

"We already have ATMs in many stations. Now, as a further step, we are planning to install ATMs in some trains as a pilot project," said a senior railway ministry official.

"We are in discussion with some banks to finalise the ATM project", said the official adding a feasibility study is also being commissioned to study the proposed ATM plan.

In the first phase, ATMs would be installed in popular trains and later on depending upon the success of the facility it would be extended to other trains.

However, trains passing through Naxal-affected areas are not being considered for ATM facility for security reasons, the railway official said.

"We have strengthened security measures at railway stations and trains by deploying explosive detection devices, door-frame metal detectors, CCTV and smart video cameras at sensitive stations. Beside acquiring modern security gadgets our dog squads have also been strengthened as there is a need for deploying sniffer dogs at stations", he said.

Steps have been initiated to operate Global Positioning System (GPS) in trains to improve our trains tracking system. A GPS-based system for rail navigation has been planned in coordination with IIT Kanpur. The system provides real time tracking system using GPS.

Beside ATMs and ATVMs, Railway Ministry is planning a major up-gradation of entertainment in some inter-city super-fast trains.

As per the plan, the seats of the coaches will be equipped with flat-panel television touch screens with head phones offering passengers options of live and pre-recorded entertainment and movie channels.