My fortnightly column A Dose of IT that discusses about Medical education reform in India Kapil Khandelwal QuoteUnquote with KK www.kapilkhandelwal.com

1. c m y k c m y k
11New Delhi ●● Monday ●● 25 July 2011
Department of Tele-
com bans popular
filesharing sites
like RapidShare and
Megaupload. Technomics
Simmtronics
Semiconductors
launches the first
solar-powered
desktop.
Facebook wins a
dismissal of a sec-
ond lawsuit by
twins Cameron and
Tyler Winklevoss.
San Francisco, July 24:Sil-
icon Valley’s old guard is
waking up to the fact that
the era of consumer PC may
be in its twilight, accelerat-
ing the need to invest and
adapt to rapidly changing
tastes.
This week’s earnings from
the giants of technology had
one thing in common: they
underscored yet again how
consumers are increasingly
shunning desktop PCs and
going mobile. Intel, which
had argued that pessimistic
expectations about the mar-
ket were out of whack,
reduced its 2011 PC fore-
cast. Microsoft Windows
sales, that reliable indicator
of PC market strength, fell
short of expectations for the
third straight quarter.
And Apple Inc, which sin-
gle-handedly showed with
its iPad that many con-
sumers are more than happy
with an unladen, light and
mobile computer, obliterat-
ed all estimates by selling a
whopping nine million
tablets. “The desktop, at
least for consumers, proba-
bly doesn’t have a great
future, and the iPad and sim-
ilar tablets can deliver a lot
of the functionality of a lap-
top,” said Tim Ghriskey,
chief investment officer of
Solaris Asset Management.
Worldwide shipments of
smartphones are already
overtaking PCs, and by
2015, more than 300 million
tablets will ship — not far
behind 479 million PCs
expected to be made,
according to IHS iSuppli.
To be sure, there’s time left
for PCs. Adoption and sale
continue to grow rapidly in
emerging markets and
among corporate users. But
even there, increasingly
powerful smartphones are
entrenched and tablets are
creeping in.
Research in Motion’s
Playbook — despite poor
reviews as the minnow of
the tablet market — became
the first to win US govern-
ment certification.
In January, the board of
Advanced Micro Devices,
frustrated about the compa-
ny’s lack of progress in
mobile computing, forced
out then-Chief executive
Dirk Meyer. It is still search-
ing for a candidate to spear-
head a major push into
mobile. “It’s important for
us to keep our eyes and ears
wide open. This compute
space is evolving and our
technology is evolving so
that we can take it beyond
the traditional segments we
serve today,” AMD Chief
Financial Officer Thomas
Seifert, standing in as CEO,
said.
Graphic showing tech
product global shipment
forecasts
Amid economic uncertain-
ty and boding poorly for the
rest of the year, PC sales
edged up just 2.3 percent in
the second quarter, accord-
ing to tech research firm
Gartner, well below earlier
projections.
Top executives argued that
personal computers still
shine. But they also say
they’re hurrying to adapt to
changing consumer prefer-
ences, with Microsoft step-
ping up its mobile strategy
by creating future versions
of Windows just for tablets.
ARM Holdings’ energy-
efficient technology now all
but dominates mobile com-
puting, but Intel and AMD
are increasing their focus on
processors suited for smaller
devices. They’re pushing
manufacturers to use their
chips to build laptops that
are in many ways touch-
screen tablets. The market
for processors used in
smartphones and tablets is
about $6.7 billion this year,
MKM Partners analyst
Daniel Berenbaum esti-
mates. That’s just 12 percent
of Intel’s expected 2011 rev-
enue, but that proportion is
growing.
Intel is speeding up plans
to use its most cutting-edge
technology to manufacture
chips aimed a mobile
devices, and Chief Execu-
tive Paul Otellini said this
week the company would be
“hyper-competitive” in get-
ting its silicon into tablets
running Microsoft’s upcom-
ing version of Windows.
“In the next generation it’s
going be hard to tell the dif-
ference between a tablet and
a netbook,” said Stifel Nico-
laus analyst Kevin Cassidy.
“To me a tablet is just a net-
book that has a solid-state
drive and a touchscreen.”
For now, PC-reliant com-
panies can take comfort in
under-saturated markets like
oft-mentioned China — the
world’s second-largest PC
market and one where mil-
lions remain unfamiliar with
computing in general.
In the second quarter, PC
shipments in the United
States fell 5.6 percent, year
over year, while China’s PC
market grew 10.9 percent,
according to research firm
Gartner.
Despite reducing its 2011
PC sales outlook, Intel’s
revenue forecast for the Sep-
tember quarter came in
higher than expected. For a
second quarter, analysts
underestimated the demand
for PCs in China and other
emerging markets. Con-
sumers in the US and
Europe often have at least
one PC at home and increas-
ingly choose to buy gadgets
like tablets over a new lap-
top. But millions of families
in developing countries are
increasing their incomes and
are reaching the point of
being able to buy a comput-
er. And despite falling Win-
dows sales, Microsoft’s
Office sold well in the sec-
ond quarter, underscoring
the importance of PCs to
corporations, something
unlikely to change radically
soon. For now, investors
should heed Intel’s consis-
tently estimate-beating
quarterly results and not sell
the company’s stock based
on worries about what the
PC market and mobile mar-
kets will look like in a
decade, Berenbaum argued.
“What’s going to happen
in 10 years? I have no idea,
but the market doesn’t know
either and the market isn’t
going to be able to discount
what’s going to happen in
10 years. This market can
barely discount 10 minutes,”
Berenbaum said. — Reuters
Open-access advocate is arrested for huge download
San Francisco, July 10: A
respected Harvard researcher
who also is an Internet folk
hero has been arrested in
Boston on charges related to
computer hacking, which are
based on allegations that he
downloaded articles that he
was entitled to get free.
A federal indictment
unsealed in Boston on
charges that the researcher,
Aaron Swartz, broke into the
computer networks at the
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology to gain access to
JSTOR, a nonprofit online
service for distributing schol-
arly articles online, and
downloaded 4.8 million arti-
cles and other documents —
nearly the entire library.
Mr Swartz, 24, made his
name as a member of the
Internet elite as a teenager
when he helped create RSS,
a bit of computer code that
allows people to receive
automatic feeds of online
notices and news. Since then,
he has emerged as a civil lib-
erties activist who crusades
for open access to data.
In 2008, Mr Swartz
released a “Guerrilla Open
Access Manifesto,” calling
for activists to “fight back”
against the sequestering of
scholarly papers and infor-
mation behind pay walls.
“It’s time to come into the
light and, in the grand tradi-
tion of civil disobedience,
declare our opposition to this
private theft of public cul-
ture,” he wrote. One goal:
“We need to download scien-
tific journals and upload
them to file-sharing net-
works.”
He also earned renown for
downloading nearly 20 mil-
lion pages of court docu-
ments for a project that put
them free online. That
brought Mr Swartz under
federal investigation. He was
not indicted but later pub-
lished the resulting FBI file
online.
He faces up to 35 years in
prison and $1 million in fines
for charges related to wire
fraud, computer fraud and
unlawfully obtaining infor-
mation from a protected
computer. He surrendered to
the authorities last week and
was arraigned in Federal Dis-
trict Court and pleaded not
guilty to all counts. He was
released on $100,000 unse-
cured bond. Institutions like
colleges and libraries pay for
access to JSTOR, which is
then available free to their
users. Supporters were quick
to defend Mr Swartz. David
Segal, executive director of
Demand Progress, an activist
group that Mr Swartz found-
ed, said in a statement that
the arrest “makes no sense,”
comparing the indictment to
“trying to put someone in jail
for allegedly checking too
many books out of the
library.” An online petition
gathered 15,000 signatures in
just a few hours.
In an interview, Mr Segal
said that his comments went
to the principle, not to any-
thing Mr Swartz might have
done in obtaining the docu-
ments. “I know him as a per-
son who cares deeply about
matters of ethics and govern-
ment,” Mr Segal said. “I
don’t know about the matter
of what has been alleged.”
Beginning in September of
last year, according to the
indictment, Mr Swartz used
several methods to grab arti-
cles, even breaking into a
computer-wiring closet on
the MIT campus and setting
up a laptop with a false iden-
tity on the school network for
free JSTOR access under the
name Gary Host — or when
shortened for the e-mail
address, “ghost.” When
retrieving the computer, he
hid his face behind a bicycle
helmet, peeking out through
the ventilation holes.
The flood of downloads
was so great that it crashed
some JSTOR servers, the
indictment stated, and
JSTOR blocked access to the
network from MIT and its
users for several days. Ulti-
mately Mr Swartz returned
the hard drives containing the
articles to JSTOR and prom-
ised that the material would
not be disseminated. “We are
not pursuing further action,”
the organisation’s general
counsel, Nancy Kopans,
said; the organization said in
a statement that the criminal
case “has been directed by
the United States Attorney’s
Office.” As for the comments
from Mr Swartz’s supporters
that he had done nothing
wrong, however, Ms Kopans
said, “It’s an unfortunate sit-
uation, but I think the facts
speak for themselves.”
Mr Swartz recently com-
pleted a 10-month fellowship
at the Edmond J Safra Center
for Ethics at Harvard. “Aaron
has never done anything in
this context for personal gain
— this isn’t a hacking case,
in the sense of someone try-
ing to steal credit cards,” said
Lawrence Lessig, the cen-
ter’s director. “That’s some-
thing JSTOR saw, and the
government obviously did-
n’t.” In a statement announc-
ing the charges, US attorney,
Carmen M Ortiz, said:
“Stealing is stealing, whether
you use a computer com-
mand or a crowbar, and
whether you take documents,
data or dollars. It is equally
harmful to the victim
whether you sell what you
have stolen or give it away.”
Carl Malamud, an online
activist who worked with Mr.
Swartz on the court-docu-
ments project, called Mr
Swartz “one of the Internet’s
most talented programmers,”
but said that “the JSTOR sit-
uation is very disturbing.”
In an e-mail exchange with
a reporter, Mr Malamud, who
is engaged in a project intend-
ed to put all laws and govern-
ment documents online, said:
“My style, when I see a gate
barring entry and that gate is
sanctioned by the law, is to go
up to that gate and pound on it
hard and force them to open
up. Others sometimes look
for a back door.” He added,
“I’m not convinced that style
is always effective, and it is
certainly often dangerous.”
— NYT
TECH CRIME
Hulu, billed as tomorrow’s TV, looks boxed inBRIAN STELTER
THE NEW YORK TIMES
PICTURE THIS: TV any-
way, anywhere.
Every sitcom. Every
drama, documentary, reality
show.
All of it — everything —
Right Here Now.
This is the radical potential
of the Internet. And this is
the implicit promise of
Hulu, the innovative website
that drew the original bor-
ders of online television —
the TV of tomorrow.
Hulu’s stated mission:
“Help people find and enjoy
the world’s premium video
content when, where and
how they want it.”
In the space of just four
years, Hulu has done just
that — to a point. Only now,
with its industry in flux and
the company up for sale, the
divide between what is and
what might be seems as
daunting as ever.
This is the future of TV?
Really? Today you can
watch some shows on Hulu
in their entirety. But others
you can’t watch at all. Most
fall somewhere in between
— bound by contractual
handcuffs that hamper
prospective viewers. Mak-
ing it even more baffling,
some episodes are free
while others require an $8-
a-month subscription.
“It makes catching up on a
show or starting a new show
very difficult,” complains
Marta Garczarczyk, a fund-
raiser for a science museum
in Minnesota who tried to
watch the ABC’s Cougar
Town and Fox’s Glee
through the site last season.
Hulu executives largely
have their hands tied. View-
ers want more shows on
more screens. But Hulu’s
partners — the big networks
— want steady profits. And,
for the moment, the networks
seem to have the upper hand.
Hulu is a joint venture of
NBC Universal, part of
Comcast; Fox Entertain-
ment, part of the News Cor-
poration; and ABC, part of
Disney. An investment firm,
Providence Equity Partners,
owns about 10 per cent.
Partnerships of rivals
rarely last. And so Hulu
finds itself on the block this
summer. Representatives of
Google,Yahoo, Amazon and
others have kicked the tires,
although no clear buyer has
yet emerged and Hulu has
steadfastly declined to com-
ment. But no matter who
ends up spending billions to
buy Hulu, the trick will be
satisfying viewers. As Jason
Kilar, Hulu’s visionary chief
executive, put it in a blog
post last February, “History
has shown that incumbents
tend to fight trends that chal-
lenge established ways and,
in the process, lose focus on
what matters most: cus-
tomers.”
But — through no fault of
Mr Kilar — further limita-
tions on the site’s bounty of
free video may be on the
horizon. For all the innova-
tion that Hulu represents, the
site also lays bare the gulf
between what online viewers
want and what TV compa-
nies are willing to give them.
“Customers always win,”
Mr Kilar has been known to
tell his staff. Maybe. But not
always without a fight.
Even critics of Hulu con-
cede that this company has
accomplished something
astonishing. It has helped to
free television from the
tyranny of the TV set.
For decades, people
watched television one way:
through a boxy contraption,
tied to a schedule set by
broadcasters. It was all sup-
ported by advertisers and
beamed free over the air-
waves. As cable and satellite
choices proliferated in the
1980s and 1990s, the busi-
ness model changed: shows
and channels were financed
both by advertisers and sub-
scribers. But the TV set and
its TV Guide-era schedules
still reigned.
bITs
Mysore, July 24: IT bell-
wether Infosys said it
expected this year to be a
normal year for the IT
industry but was concerned
about when the IT budgets
would be spent.
On the macro environ-
ment, Infosys CEO and
Managing Director S
Gopalakrishnan said, “We
have given our guidance
18-20 per cent for the full
year which we have not
revised. From a calibration
perpsective, the budget are
same, no reduction in
budgets.”
From a spending perspec-
tive, there may be some
volatility or delays based
on the environment which
means they needed to be
cautious. “If you look at
this quarter 4.3 per cent
revenue growth, 4 per cent
volume growth and onsite
growth of 6.8 per cent. It’s
better than what we guided.
We continue to believe that
this is a normal year”, he
said. They are not seeing a
reduction in IT budgets of
clients. “The concern or
issue that we have is when
IT budgets will be spent,
that’s where uncertainity is
having an impact. So there
may be delays in decision
making,” he added. — PTI
Ageing PC giants near end of era Infosys
expects a
normal year
Microsoft
4Q profit
climbs
San Francisco, July 24:
Microsoft Corp. reported
record fourth-quarter rev-
enue Thursday, helped by
strong sales of its Office
software suite. Investors
still seem concerned about
the world’s largest software
maker’s growth prospects,
however, as consumers buy
fewer computers that run its
Windows software.
While all of the company’s
other business units posted
growth in the April-June
period, revenue from the
division that includes
Microsoft’s Windows oper-
ating system fell 1 percent
from the same time last
year — its third-straight
quarter of decline.
Besides indicating that
consumers are buying
fewer computers that use
Windows, it may signify
that more consumers are
moving to tablet computers
instead of upgrading their
existing laptop and desktop
computers. Microsoft’s
stock slipped in extended
trading.
Total revenue for the fiscal
fourth quarter rose 8 per-
cent from last year to $17.4
billion, higher than the
$17.2 billion that analysts
polled by FactSet expected.
Growing Office sales
helped revenue from the
company’s largest division
climb nearly 8 percent to
$5.78 billion. —Reuters
Aaron Swartz, who downloaded 4.8 millions files from
JSTOR, has fought against keeping scholarly material
behind pay walls.
KAPIL KHANDELWAL
T
he recently conclud-
ed World Education
Summit 2011, dis-
cussed at length the
urgency of reforms in med-
ical education in India.
India needs over 250,000
trained and qualified med-
ical professionals per year
and we do not produce half
of it. There are only 30,000
doctors passing out every
year. While several educa-
tional institutions such as
IGNOU, Gulbarga and
other Open Universities
have initiated distance and
outreach post graduate
program formats in health
sciences, the reforms in
medical education needs to
be ICT systems based to
improve the overall per-
formance of health sys-
tems by adapting core pro-
fessional competencies to
specific contexts, while
drawing on global knowl-
edge into a sustainable
learner centric environ-
ment across all segments
of medical education.
Some of the voices and
speakers echoed key
reform agenda for medical
education in India that it
will have to deal with 12
key issues.
First, adoption of compe-
tency-based open medical
education curriculum that
caters to rapidly changing
needs rather than being
dominated by static
coursework at medical
schools and colleges across
the country using ICT. Sec-
ond, promotion of new age
medical education courses
that breaks down tradition-
al silos of courses. Third,
leverage ICT to create
capacity, data collection
and analysis, simulation
and testing, distance learn-
ing, collaborative connec-
tivity, and management of
medical education. Fourth,
act local/rural to draw
resources in a way to create
capacity to flexibly address
local challenges while
using global knowledge,
experience, including fac-
ulty, curriculum, study
materials, and students
linked internationally
through exchange pro-
grammes. Fifth, develop-
ment of faculty with spe-
cial attention through
increased investments in
ICT for educators and con-
structive assessment linked
to incentives for good per-
formance. Sixth, promote a
new breed of doctors, nurs-
es, paramedics and trans-
forming present conven-
tional silos based educa-
tion.
Seventh, establishment of
joint planning from the
Planning Commission to
engage key stakeholders,
to overcome fragmentation
by assessing various coun-
cils, setting priorities,
shaping policies, tracking
change, and harmonising
the supply of and demand
for medical professionals
to meet the health needs of
Indian population. Eighth,
expanding India’s academ-
ic centres network to aca-
demic systems to leverage
ICT based medical educa-
tion, by extending the tra-
ditional research and
healthcare education con-
tinuum to schools and hos-
pitals across India. Nineth,
creating academia-indus-
try partnerships by linking
together ICT networks,
alliances, and consortia
between educational insti-
tutions worldwide. Tenth,
critical inquiry of a central
function of universities and
other institutions of higher
learning, which is crucial
to mobilise scientific
knowledge, ethical deliber-
ation, and public reasoning
to generate medical educa-
tion reform in India.
Eleventh, leverage the
value of public private
partnerships in medical
education.
Lastly, generate sustain-
able funding to meet both
the short-term and long-
term needs of India.
Leaving aside the issues
and restructuring that have
been proposed to various
Medical Councils operat-
ing in India by proposing
various regulatory authori-
ties for higher education,
commissions, committees
and panels, let me focus on
what is possible in the
short run leveraging ICT
and financing this.
I believe that the National
Knowledge Commission
(NKC) should be broad-
ened to include a National
Medical Education plat-
form, connecting all the
medical colleges. This will
ensure that there is 24-hour
access to global informa-
tion to teachers and stu-
dents, so that they are no
longer tied to a physical
space. Infrastructure for
library, reading rooms, etc
may no longer be neces-
sary.As regards to funding,
we would need to increase
the spend from present,
less than one percent of
GDP, to over three percent
of GDP to account for the
capacity creation leverag-
ing ICT in medical educa-
tion.
A Dose of IT
Medical study
needs reform
Kapil Khandelwal is Director, EquNev Capital, a niche invest-
ments banking and advisory services firm and an independent
advisory board member with leading healthcare and information
communication technology (ICT) companies.
Hans-Henrik Duessel from Svendborg, Denmark, displays his old Apple Macin-
tosh Classic computer from 1990 beside his newly purchased Apple iPad in
Hamburg May 28, 2010.
Hulu’s mission is to help people find great video
“when, where and how they want it”. But that goal is
now more complicated, and Hulu is up for sale.
AGE
THE