G MAIL EVEN ANDROID IN UNSAFE NOW

flaw in Android's GUI framework let university researchers hack into applications with up to 92 percent success rate.

They tested apps from Gmail, H&R Block, Newegg, WebMD, Chase Bank,Hotels.com and Amazon.

"Changes in the shared memory side channel allow an attacker to infer if there is an activity transition going on in the foreground," researcher Zhiyun Qian, an assistant professor at the University of California at Riverside, told LinuxInsider.

"This is a design choice by modern OSes ... . The same attack may work as well [on other mobile OSes]," he added.

Details of the Flaw

When a new screen or window is shown, the GUI framework allocates a fixed amount of memory in the shared memory register that's proportional to the size of the screen, Qian said. This memory is allocated inside the app process and shared with a separate window compositor process.

Shared memory is commonly adopted by window managers to receive window changes or updates from running applications. This gives rise to the side channel.

When a user downloads a malicious app, the shared memory lets attackers steal information such as login credentials, and obtain sensitive camera images such as photos of personal checks sent through banking apps

linux news

 was just a few short weeks ago that we here in the Linux blogosphere were rehashing the open source world's documentation dilemma -- one of those perennial topics bloggers love to resurrect whenever there appears to be a lull in the conversation.

At the time, alert readers may recall, Linux Girl compared the topic to the ongoing "Year of Linux on the Desktop" debate -- another favorite that just keeps coming back for more.

Well guess what? That one's now back too, courtesy of none other than Linux creator Linus Torvalds himself.

"I still want the desktop," Torvalds reportedly said at LinuxCon in Chicago last week. "The challenge on the desktop is not a kernel problem. It's a whole infrastructure problem. I think we'll get there one day."

Thunderous applause ensued -- at the conference and beyond -- but it was quickly drowned out by the din down at the blogosphere's Broken Windows Lounge.

want best budget phone for 5999 rs check this

The Redmi 1S features a 1.6Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad core processor, 1GB RAM, 8GB storage (expandable via micro SD), 4.7-inch 720p IPS LCD, dual cameras (1.6MP front and 8MP rear with 1080p video recording) and dual SIM card slots (one 3G and one 2G). Note that both SIM slots use the older mini SIM standard and not the more common micro SIM - helpfully, the company is including two micro to mini SIM adapters in the box. 

it would be available through flip kart 

Intel poised to launch luxury smart bracelet at Barneys

Intel, moving beyond just making the processors inside tech gadgets, is expected to announce its first luxury smart bracelet in the next few weeks, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Barneys New York will sell Intel's new smart bracelet.Credit: Getty Images

The bracelet is being engineered by the tech company, designed by fashion house Opening Ceremony, and sold at luxury retailer Barneys New York. Intel in January announced plans to move into the wearables market with Internet-connected or smart devices at the Consumer Electronics Show, unveiling plans to make the bracelet in partnership with Barneys and Opening Ceremony as part of the effort.

"One of the greatest opportunities for wearable technology as a concept to be successful is fairly simple -- to design a beautiful accessory that our customers would desire," Daniella Vitale, COO of Barneys New York, said Jan. 6. "It is exciting to be part of an elite group of brands to bring the reality of smart fashion to life."

Mozilla Firefox launches 1999 rs phone in india

he Intex Cloud Fx will have a price tag of Rs 1,999 and will be the best bet for a lot of people to access the Internet. The phone has a 3.5-inch HVGA touchscreen which should keep people in this product catergory happy along with the 2G/3G dual SIM support.

The phone will initially be available only on Snapdeal.com, which you might think will prevent a lot of people in the target audience from getting to the phone. But Keshav Bansal, director marketing at Intex Technologies, says the etailer will take the product to 400 towns in India, especially the Tier 2 and 3 cities. He said the company is confident of selling half a million units of the phone this year with their “massive marketing plan”. Intex has presence in 50,000 outlet, 10,000 of which sell their smartphones.

AMD announces Radeon R7 SSD

AMD said Tuesday that it will sell three 2.5-inch SSDs manufactured by enthusiast house OCZ, allowing AMD to offer high-speed storage alongside microprocessors and graphics chips.

AMD will sell the three SSDs—sized at 120, 240, and 480 gigabytes, respectively—as Radeon R7 SSDs, tying them to its Radeon family of GPUs. OCZ, which was recently acquired by Toshiba, will actually make the drives, together with its own flash chips and controllers. 

Right now, AMD’s new drives sit among the cream of the enthusiast SSD crop, with sequential read speeds of 545MB/sec and write speeds of 530 MB/sec. The number of random read I/O's per second (IOPS) clocks in at 100,000 IOPS, with 90,000 write IOPS. Perhaps more importantly, AMD is offering a four-year warranty that assumes users will write 30GB daily to the drive for each of those four years—far more than most users will likely do.

The prices of the Radeon R7 SSDs will begin at $100 for the 120GB model, AMD said. That’s not a great price, as at press time you could buy the slightly slower Crucial M500 120GB SSD at Amazon for $74.99. Given AMD’s branding, however, we’d say that an SSD/graphics card bundle might not be too far-fetched. 

iPhone 6 at top most best selling phones

                                                                THREE REASONS:-

The rumor mills are at it. The Internet trolls are coming out from under their cyber-bridges. The social media sites are abuzz with opinion, positive and not. September 9 is fast approaching. That’s the date, as rumor has it, that theApple iPhone 6 will be released. Everyone wants to know whether this next generation Apple AAPL +1.38% iPhone will prove that Apple still has what it takes to be the standard bearer in the category.

I vote yes. It’s a preemptive vote, but I have my reasons. I’ve always been an Apple guy, but my reasons for voting that this iPhone will be a winner are based more on my instincts as a branding professional.

Of course, you don’t have to be a branding professional to understand that smartphones have become mission critical to everyone’s lives. They’re no longer nice-to-have conveniences, a way to tell someone you’re stuck in traffic and will be late for dinner. Rather, they’re life lines. We shop with them. Pay bills with them. Document our kid’s first day of school with them. Check into airline flights with them. Jog to music with them. Find out alternate routes around traffic jams with them. There are no excuses or empty rationalizations required for wanting the best smartphone money can buy.

So, my reason one is as follows. Even though the iPhone 6 may be among the most expensive on the market, rumor has it (strongly supported rumor) that it will be made from materials that are scratch-resistant and far more rugged and durable than any other smartphone on the market. More than this, even though it will be more rugged and durable, it will also be lighter in weight than iPhones past. Plus, in addition to the standard 4.7 inch model, speculation has it that Apple will offer a model with a 5.5 inch screen. Much like Apple’s last new release with the iPhone 5, the iPhone 6 won’t be a total reinvention. But, like the iPhone 5, it will offer a few, very simple, very smart features meant to make life easier. People like very simple, very smart things that make life easier. And, I believe they’ll be willing to make the investment, especially the Apple loyalists.

best deal from Microsoft offers custom Windows OS to all first generation Intel Galileo owners

Microsoft is encouraging more hardware hackers to develop Windows-based smart devices and appliances with expanded availability of a preview OS to all owners of Intel’s Galileo board.

The software company has provided a pared-down, proof-of-concept version of Windows designed to work with the Galileo board, which is targeted do-it-yourself enthusiasts who experiment with electronics. The OS previously worked only on a few Galileo boards sent by Microsoft to select developers.

Now users who bought Galileo from Intel or other distributors will be able to run Windows, a Microsoft spokeswoman said in an email statement. Microsoft previously said the OS is a “non-commercial version of Windows based on Windows 8.1,” and part of a pilot project to put Windows in small electronics and Internet of things devices.

“The preview Windows image is another opportunity for makers and developers to create, generate new ideas and provide feedback to help Microsoft continue making Windows even better on this class of device,” the spokeswoman said.

The Galileo board is just a little larger than a credit card and has limited power with a 400MHz Quark X1000 processor, a 32-bit processor based on the Pentium instruction set architecture. Windows has been customized to work within the constraints of the board, which has been used in the development of robots, sensor devices and health monitors

long term threat to intel oops |||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Chromebooks: You either love them or hate them, but you have to admit they are making inroads into the mobile computing space. Schools are snapping them up and consumers are becoming aware of the cheap laptops running Chrome OS.

Microsoft realized early on that Chromebooks were a threat to the dominance it enjoyed with Windows in the computing world. Some of the first ads for Windows and its Surface tablets were aimed squarely at the Chromebook.

Speaking of Intel inside, that brings to mind the wildly successful marketing campaign from the chip maker. Most likely if you sat down in front of a computer, you were confronted with that little sticker that made it clear that Intel was powering it.

This had the effect on computer users to subconsciously equate the PC with Intel. Everybody knew that Intel was running the show, dancing techs in clean room suits and all. If it was a computer, Intel was inside it somewhere doing its magic.

The tide began to turn when Microsoft introduced Windows RT to run on systems with ARM processors instead of Intel. The chip giant couldn't have been happy about that, and there were probably some back room meetings between Microsoft and Intel discussing the change.

munich may stop using linux

The German city of Munich, which famously adopted Linux and open source across its operations, may be about to reverse that decision.

German newspaper Süddeutsche reports deputy mayor Josef Schmid as saying the city is considering the move because users often complain about the functionality available in open-source applications.

The lack of an integrated contact, calendar and email application is cited as staff's chief gripe. The Süddeutsche story also mentions a need to set up an external email server to allow the City's mobile devices to send and receive messages.

So vociferous are the complaints that the city council will create an expert panel to assess the performance of its chosen software. Schmid is quoted as saying that if the panel recommends a return to Microsoft, he won't oppose that change.

There are no German speakers in Vulture South or Vulture West, the Reg offices working on this story, so we're reliant on machine translation and its nuance-stripping machinations. But even after we stuffed the story through three – Bing, Google and Babel Fish – the meaning came across as reported above.

If Munich decides to revert to commercial software, the open-source movement will lose one of its most visible champions.

Of course, since Munich decided to go with Linux back in 2004 and spend about 10 years installing it, open-source software has had innumerable wins – not least its widespread use in mobile devices, web servers, cloud infrastructure and many other fields.

nokia andriod phones rocks in china

hina's second-largest e-commerce company JD.com sold 574,000 smartphones in a five-day promotion offered exclusively on Tencent Holdings Ltd's Mobile QQ, the two companies said on Monday, to show their partnership has paid off.

Investors have scrutinized JD and Tencent, China's biggest mobile gaming and social media company, for signs of benefits from a $215 million partnership deal, in which Tencent took a 15 percent stake in JD.

JD aimed to gain a potent ally in its battle against Chinese e-commerce leaderAlibaba Group Holding Ltd.

So far the deal has proved costly for JD. The company said last week that its quarterly losses widened due to costs related to its Tencent partnership, sending shares lower.

(Also See: Chinese Employees at Microsoft's Nokia Arm Protest Mass Layoffs)

But the two companies have touted the potential for selling JD's inventory, including big-ticket electronic devices, via Tencent's popular mobile apps such as QQ and WeChat.

During the Aug. 8 to 12 promotion, the Nokia XL 4G smartphone was sold only through a link within the Mobile QQ app. More than 210,000 people ordered the smartphone on the first day, JD said.

The smartphone, offered by the Finnish handset maker following its acquisition by Microsoft Corp, is now widely available in China including on Alibaba's Taobao market.

budgets will soon available by LG

he flat UX interface of the LG G3 has been receive praise since the handset’s debut. Its features have earned the device three “Best of the Best” award from the 2014 Red Dot Communication Design Award judges.

This is not the first time LG brings a feature from its flagships to models down its product range. Late last year, the company made a similar announcement about bringing the Knock feature that debuted in the LG G2 to the L Series of smartphones.

LG G Watch 2 to appear on IFA with OLED screen news by:- gsmarena

It's unclear whether LG will show the G Watch 2 to users or have a media and business clients-only affair.

The source point that the LG G Watch 2 could have an OLED panel made by LG Display and make use of a Qualcomm chipset. LG was reportedly eyeing its in-house Odin chips for the task but they aren't yet ready to make it to commercial products.

LG is obviously looking to build a strong presence in the growing smartwatch market now that Motorola's 360 and Apple's iWatch are set to make a big splash. Samsung is also on the move with its Gear Live and Tizen-powered Gear series smartwatches.

now turn for open stack -changing the mind set

OpenStack, which turned 4 years old this summer, began as a twinkle in Scott Sanchez's eyes. He was determined to turn the fledgling Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform he helped create into a thriving resource for public and private clouds.

OpenStack is an open source project. Its technology consists of a series of interrelated projects that provide users with the ability to create and manage both public and private cloud operations.

OpenStack Guru Scott Sanchez is
vice president of strategy at MetaCloud.

Partnering with NASA, Rackspace Hosting launched the project in 2010. Since then, OpenStack has grown into a global software community of developers collaborating on a standard and scalable open source cloud operating system.

Sanchez joined Rackspace in early 2011 and was part of the team that developed OpenStack. He was intimately involved with building out the OpenStack ecosystem.

"My mission was simple. It was to make OpenStack win. My goal was always to make OpenStack a viable commercial alternative, even though it was open source," Sanchez told LinuxInsider.

He recently brought his passion for growing the OpenStack ecosystem to MetaCloud, where as vice president of strategy, he continues to promote its adoption. OpenStack's growth strategy relies on differentiating it from the competition and helping the market to understand what OpenStack is all about.

In this exclusive interview, LinuxInsider discusses with Sanchez his vision for OpenStack technology and the impact he sees OpenStack making in the market.

LinuxInsider: What strategy did you implement to push adoption of OpenStack?

Scott Sanchez: I always took the view, whenever I talked to hosting company providers and network providers and others, to help them understand what the value of this was. Once that started going well, I moved my focus to the users. The question was the same for me. How do we get across to the big companies and the small companies the value of OpenStack? How do I convince them that the shift of open source and the community brings value to them and their business. That is where my focus has been for the last number of years.

LI: Why is OpenStack so important?

Sanchez: From day one, the idea behind OpenStack was to give people an alternative that was truly open. When you look back to 2010 and 2011, your choices for what people thought was cloud were AWS and VMware. The idea that there could be a truly open alternative -- the way Linux back in the 1990s was starting to become mainstream -- was powerful. The idea of cloud is not infrastructure. It is really about how you use those resources. It is about how you can build and adapt applications to take advantage of resources and automation and APIs and all of these things that are so core to what people want to be doing.

LI: How close to making that idea a reality have you come?

Sanchez: The idea back then was to provide all of the infrastructure code necessary in an open way so that people can move their mindsets from the infrastructure that we have all been in for so long to the application mindset where the future is heading. Now, four years later, we have ... something like 17,000 members of the OpenStack community and something like over 400 companies in 140 countries. I think that people have more than shown that the idea back in 2010-2011

some best linux reviews from people around the world..................

u never forget your first love, as the old saying goes, and that appears to apply just as well to Linux as to relationships in real life.

To wit: "What was your first Linux distro?" is the title of a recent "Voice of the Masses" poll over at Linux Voice, and throughout the blogosphere the nostalgic reminiscences have been pouring forth ever since.

Some 100 bloggers used Linux Voice's comments section to proclaim their first Linuxy loves for all the world to hear. Others got teary-eyed recounting their first tender distro moments down at the Punchy Penguin Cafe.

Luckily, Linux Girl was there to record it all for posterity.

'It Did a Lot of Things Well'

"Back in the day there was the distro aimed at getting people going for the first time called Mandrake, and that was my first one," began Google+ blogger Kevin O'Brien, for example.

"It did a lot of things well, but ultimately was underfunded," O'Brien explained.

Nevertheless, "from it I took two lessons: 1) I really likeKDE more than any other desktop; and 2) I really don't like RPMs.

"Fortunately, Kubuntu came along and gave me a good combination of those factors," he added. "It has other problems, of course, but I have stuck with it as my main distro for years now."

'Better Than Win XP'

Similarly, "I actually encountered FreeBSD first, and might have gone that way exclusively had I been able to download it -- I was still on dial-up -- or if I had been willing to buy the discs," Google+ blogger Brett Legree recounted.

"However, I happened across a Linux magazine at a local shop that included a TON of distros," Legree told Linux Girl. "The first one that worked on my hardware of the day was Mandrake. Those were the days..."

SoylentNews blogger hairyfeet also started out on Mandrake, but "the best distro I ever used, the ONLY distro I had ever seen that could do in-place upgrades without trashing its own drivers, was Xandros," he said.

"Xandros Business was frankly better than Win XP in a lot of ways," hairyfeet opined. "It hooked to AD domains quicker than XP, had great Exchange support, could even switch between Windows, KDE and OSX layouts with a simple switch flip -- truly a great OS.

"It's sad that nothing today can match up to a decade-old OS, but none of the so-called 'user-friendly' distros come even close to the quality of 

nokia x2 may or not maybe launched

The words "Coming Soon" flashing on Nokia X2's page is the only thing official at the moment when it comes to the release date of the new budget device.

Nokia X2 is a low-end smartphone that will sell for 99 Euro (approximately $132.58).

The dual sim model will sport a 4.3-inch ClearBlack display with 480 x 800 resolution, 5 MP camera, 1 GB of RAM and will run on 1.2 GHz dual-core Snapdragon 200 processor.

Microsoft's experimental Android program has recently come to an end, and there is no confirmation whether an Android-powered Nokia X2 has also been ditched.

"We will be particularly focused on making the market for Windows Phone. In the near term, we plan to drive Windows Phone volume by targeting the more affordable smartphone segments, which are the fastest growing segments of the market, with Lumia." Executive Vice President of Microsoft's Devices & Services Stephen Elop said in his memo to Microsoft employees.

The memo continued, "In addition to the portfolio already planned, we plan to deliver additional lower-cost Lumia devices by shifting select future Nokia X designs and products to Windows Phone devices. We expect to make this shift immediately while continuing to sell and support existing Nokia X products."

great relief for whatsapp users in india

Users of WhatsApp, Viber, Skype and other apps won't have to shell out any extra charges as the telecom regulator has decided against a proposal of carriers to make companies that offer these popular services share part of their revenue with them or the government. 

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has also shelved plans to initiate a consultation process as it feels that operators are able to offset their losses through growth in data revenue, people familiar with the matter told ET. The industry had estimated a minimum annual loss of Rs 5,000 crore due to subscribers opting for free messenger services and voice over internet calls. "One-third of the incremental revenue of the telecom industry is coming from data services itself. As far as the voice services are concerned, there is an upswing in the realisation rates," one of the Trai officials told ET, explaining the rationale for not intervening for now. 

"There is no proposal for a consultation paper (on regulating companies offering free messaging and calling services)," he added. 

Indian mobile phone service providers, that have invested billions of dollars in creating networks, want over-the-top-players (OTTPs) to be regulated so that both parties operate on a level playing field. OTTPs are all apps that users download onto their mobile devices. Telcos have a problem with those that provide free messaging and voice calls over the internet such as WhatsApp, Viber and Skype. Many subscribers use these apps rather than their telecom operator's normal voice call and SMS services, eating into a carrier's revenue. 

Operators want the OTTPs — which use their telecom networks — to pay all the fees that carriers pay to the government, which in turn will force the app makers to charge for what is currently free, bringing them on par with telcos. 

OTT players, however, say that any move to regulate and seek payment — either to the government or to the carriers — is against the concept of free internet or "net neutrality". 

A top executive at an app maker said that if OTTPs "were forced to pay, in all probability the cost would be passed on to the users." Trai recently held a seminar, bringing several OTT players faceto-face with operators, setting off speculation that this was a precursor to regulating the app space in India. 

"We do understand that there is some (revenue) erosion there. For instance, our data confirms that the number of SMSes per person per month have fallen from 27 two years ago to about 17," a second senior official said. 

However, he said that SMS continues to be a minuscule part of an operator's overall revenue. For example, SMS and value-added services contributed 5.5% of Bharti Airtel's mobile revenue, down from 8.3% a year earlier. Data revenue, on the other hand, grew to 12.4% from 8.2%. "Riding for free on our network puts a certain amount of strain on our network. That has to be admitted," said Rajat Mukerjee, chief corporate Affairs Officer at Idea Cellular, India's No. 3 carrier. 

"With that background, this particular discussion needs to be fair and frank, from the fair and frank, from the standpoint of providing equal competition." 

In a recent presentation to Trai, an Indian telecom major estimated that the industry loses close to Rs 5,000 crore in revenue annually due to the free voice and SMS services offered by OTT players. Over the past four quarters, the industry has lost close to 42% of SMS revenue and 19% of voice revenue to OTTPs. Rajan Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India, the GSM industry body, told ET that the loss for telcos could "balloon five times, or to some Rs 24,000 crore, in the next three years if OTTPs aren't brought under regulation." 

Viber's founder and chief executive officer Talmon Marco said that any demand for payment on OTTPs would amount to censorship. 

apple ipad keyboard ????????????????

IBM wants to create better touchscreen apps so it can sell more Big Data analytics software, and it turned to Apple to get some iPad tablet love. Nice. I get that -- but plenty of business users need to type, too, in more than 140-character blips. If Microsoft can make a decent keyboard cover, you would think Apple could, right? Is Apple willing to address the most obvious weakness of the iPad?

 keep wondering when Apple is going to hear the alarm and respond to the real iPad keyboard wakeup call. Apple can point to touch-based apps all it wants -- even going so far as to partner with IBM to help the company deliver better enterprise mobile apps -- but the fact remains: Some people just want to type on their damn iPad, and Apple's touchscreen solutions suck.

I also keep hoping that Apple will turn its design acumen and considerable tech and manufacturing resources toward building a real, physical keyboard specifically for use with iPads. It could be a case or it could be a cover like the one that Microsoft manufactures for its Surface Pro 3.

It needs to be thin, light, and integrated. The current Bluetooth keyboard that you can pair with an iPad? The keys are fantastic, of course, but it's clunky and doesn't really connect seamlessly to the iPad in any physical way, much less make sense for travel.

A real physical keyboard is the design challenge that Apple needs to throw a bit of time and effort at -- and just complete the job.

Why Not 3rd-Party Keyboards?

The world is littered with dozens of keyboard/case/cover solutions for the iPad, manufactured by third-parties. Some of these are good, many have flaws, and most don't have a particularly great balance of quality and cost. Which one should a consumer buy?

There are so many different choices, some with cramped and mushy keys, some that force your iPad into a clunky laptop form factor, and some that just cost too much. A consumer in this space has choices -- but really, I think a good many consumers end up getting that deer-in-the-headlights look of frozen confusion. So they don't act at all.

Enter Schools

I'm wondering if Apple is paying attention to what's going on in schools these days. While it has sold 13 million iPads to education customers globally -- and while the iPad is the tablet of choice in 85 percent of school districts in the United States, at least a handful of schools seem to be rethinking their iPad investments.

In fact, some schools are selling their iPads and ditching their tablet programs in favor of Chromebooks, according to a reasonably researched piece in The Atlantic.

Chromebooks are essentially very low-cost laptops that run only when connected to the Internet, with access to files and apps from the cloud.

Why the switch? Mostly, it seems, because sometimes students have to work -- to write, to type. You can build all the pretty Keynote presentations you want, and swipe through narrated content about lemurs in Madagascar, but kids ultimately are going to need to write essays and reports -- and yes, blog. Even for super adaptable kids, typing on a real physical keyboard is easier and more efficient.

IBM's latest neurosynaptic processor

BM has announced the latest version of its neurosynaptic processor -- that is, a processor whose workings are inspired by the human brain.

Built on Samsung's 28nm process technology, it has 5.4 billion transistors and an on-chip network of 4,096 neurosynaptic cores.

IBM claims it is the first neurosynaptic chip to achieve 1 million programmable neurons, 256 million programmable synapses, and 46 billion synaptic operations per second.

The size of a postage stamp, the processor consumes just 70mW of power during real-time operations -- about as much as required by a hearing-aid battery, according to IBM.

ntel's Broadwell: What Happens When the MacBook Air Is Thinner Than the iPad Air?

Apple will resist putting touch on a MacBook Air because it wants customers to buy both a laptop and an iPad, but Microsoft doesn't have those concerns. The Broadwell version of Surface running Windows 9 could become both a MacBook Air and an iPad killer. I don't think customers will buy both a light laptop and a tablet if presented with an alternative that does an excellent job replacing both.he prototype tablet Intel is showcasing with the launch -- which runs full OSes like Windows and OS X -- is actually both thinner and lighter than an iPad Air, which creates an interesting problem for the slowing tablet market. What if you could get full Windows and OS X in a form factor thinner and lighter than an iPad Air?

Nokia 130 lasts more than a month, costs 19 euros

Nineteen euros won't buy you much in this day and age, but it will buy you a no-frills Nokia phone. The Nokia 130 is an old-school mobile phone at an old-school price for developing markets, with basic smartphone features like music and video in a phone that will last over a month before it needs juicing up.

This new phone is one of the first to be announced since Microsoft bought the phone-manufacturing part of Finnish company Nokia -- and, per Microsoft's plans to ditch the brand, perhaps one of the last phones to have Nokia written on it. Before the brand disappears, however, Microsoft will use the Nokia name as a trojan horse to build up Windows Phone in regions where the smartphone market is still in its relative infancy. Although the 130 isn't a Windows Phone, it is an opportunity for Microsoft to build on Nokia's popularity to corner more of the budget end of the market in these regions.

Microsoft says the Nokia 130 will go on sale in selected countries, including China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Vietnam. Exact release dates are yet to be confirmed, but it will be "this quarter" -- so between now and September. Both the single and dual-SIM models will cost the equivalent of 19 euros (about £15, $25, or AU$28) when bought unlocked and SIM-free. Nokia traditionally gives its prices in euros, and it looks like Microsoft is continuing that policy for the moment.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) apparently wants to try wringing money out of messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Viber, Skype and WeChat on behalf of itself and mobile service providers who feel that they have the right to be compensated for revenues lost when people use such apps instead of making phone calls and sending SMS messages.

This is the same sort of logic that leads certain countries and municipalities to impose taxes on home solar panels because local coal-fired power plants are losing business.

One issue here is that service providers are banding together to try to extract more money than they already get because they sense an easy target. Another is that they're trying to use a neutral government agency to "regulate" their own competition. More importantly, the ideal of network neutrality is now under threat, because certain services might be burdened with some sort of tax or fee just for the privilege of being able to conduct business as usual.

Trai's plans are similar to recent moves by Internet service providers in the USA to lobby for the ability to set up Internet "fast lanes" and charge those companies able (if not willing) to pay more for priority (read: non-degraded) consumer experiences. Web startups and smaller companies would have a tough time surviving if they had to pay ISPs in order for consumers to be able to use them - regardless of the fact that ISPs are already being paid fees by users who should be able to use their bandwidth quotas in any way they like.

There's no question that handing service providers the ability to throttle certain services is bad for everyone involved - Internet users, entrepreneurs, and the tech economy as a whole. We need to be even more concerned that these service providers are trying to put themselves in a position of power over their competitors. Yes, long-distance telephony revenue has fallen thanks to VoIP, and people send fewer SMS messages because free Web messengers are available. So what? Business landscapes change all the time.

Everyone needs to adapt, not cling to the past. Cellular operators are not expected to compensate landline phone companies for the reduced usage of public pay-phones. Besides, the operators don't provide 2G/ 3G connectivity for free; there are monthly charges as well as data usage charges, and they aren't particularly fast, reliable or cheap.

Russian Cybergang Stockpiles 1.2B Unique Stolen Credentials

A Russian cybercriminal gang so far has stolen 4.5 billion credentials, of which 1.2 billion appear to be unique, Hold Security announced Tuesday.

The credentials belong to more than 500 million email addresses.

Two reports, also released Tuesday, may help explain why the cybergang was so successful.

About 92 percent of the 800 top consumer websites evaluated, and 96 percent of the top 50 United States federal government agencies checked, failed the Online Trust Alliance's (OTA) 2014 Email Integrity Audit.

Also, Trustwave cracked about 92 percent of 637,000 stored passwords collected during penetration tests in 2013 and 2014, according to its Global Security Report 2014.