Books2Byte – 2003

Books2Byte – 2003 (From BL archives)
Resources
Books 2 Byte
Columns
 Of dots, dollars and dolls (December 31, 2003)
 Will broadband come the Sony way? (December 24, 2003)
 A dash of Zen for more profits (December 17, 2003)
 Clinching a smart bargain (December 10, 2003)
 Less of a free lunch on the Internet (December 03, 2003)
 Security - nothing absolute about it (November 26, 2003)
 What's wrong with your network? (November 19, 2003)
 All about animation (November 12, 2003)
 A tale from the Oracle's mouth (November 05, 2003)
 Of security, and change (October 29, 2003)
 Can't live with `em, or without `em (October 22, 2003)
 Are you baring all? (October 15, 2003)
 Make something out of nothing (October 08, 2003)
 Some secrets are to be said in bits (October 01, 2003)
 Of what moves mind, and matter (September 24, 2003)
 Make e-biz click, with essentials (September 17, 2003)
 Standing the test of a test (September10, 2003)
 Why waste voice in the wilderness! (September 03, 2003)
 The fuzzy world of intelligence imitation (August 27, 2003)
 Are your people ready for mature content? (August 20, 2003)
 Model-watching before mine-digging (August 13, 2003)
 Art of invisibility, between the lines (August 06,2003)

 Want your company to be around next year? (July 30, 2003)
 Almost in the maker's shoes (July 23, 2003)
 Ready for the `sunrise'? (July 16, 2003)
 Are you part of the `thumb generation'? (July 09, 2003)
 Of jugglers, the corrupt and the greats... (July 02, 2003)
 Talking in the .NET realm (June 25, 2003)
 From three meals a day to day-long grazing (June 18, 2003)
 It's enough to be perfect enough (June 11,2003)
 From reams of rubbish to gigabytes of garbage (June 04, 2003)
 This is "One Microsoft Way","D. Murali (May 28, 2003)
 Get the better of tough times (May 21, 2003)
 All about `X' in the markup language (May 14, 2003)
 Build, not bury, your career (May 07, 2003)
 KM milestone: Walk that extra mile (April 30, 2003)
 Digital distance is either zero or infinity (April 23, 2003)
 A `killer' map of the current terrain (April 16, 2003)
 The inside story (April 09, 2003)
 The other option is to meet your maker (April 02, 2003)
 The great mouse chase (March 26, 2003)
 No man is an island (March 19, 2003)
 Sniffing money on the info trail (March 12, 2003)
 When the oracle speaks (March 05, 2003)
 Where there's E, there's V (February 19, 2003)

 Tom and Jerry, all over again (February 12, 2003)
 Pot of gold at the wireless tap (February 05, 2003)
 Release career-lock with shift key (January 29, 2003)
 All about bricks and clicks (January 22,2003)
 They ate companies for breakfast and lunch (January 15, 2003)
 Sow è' and ye shall reap dividends (January 08, 2003)
 Surfing with safety net (January 01,2003)
Year : 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2002
**
Books2Byte - January 2003
 Surfing with safety net (January 01,2003)
 Sow è' and ye shall reap dividends (January 08, 2003)
 They ate companies for breakfast and lunch (January 15, 2003)
 All about bricks and clicks (January 22,2003)
 Release career-lock with shift key (January 29, 2003)
**
Surfing with safety net
D. Murali
Ìt's better to leave one's PC switched on rather than subject it to the `shock' of
frequent turning on and off." Right? Check it out with what the experts say.
COMPUTER security is now everybody's business, not just of the big players. But
there is one thing that stands between people taking charge of their own machine's
safety - as also of the data and software that reside in it - it should be the techno-
jargon. Users of the Net are more at risk. Here comes, therefore, "a plain-English
guide to protecting yourself and your company online" from Douglas Schweitzer, a
book titled "Internet Security Made Easy". A few tips:
 Many people are under the impression that they should leave their PC on all the time to
prolong its useful life. The premise is that the `shock' of turning the computer on and off will
cause premature failure of sensitive electrical components. This is simply not true. Frequently
powering a system on and off does not cause deterioration or damage to components.
 Digital subscriber line (DSL) technology comes in about eight varieties. Often, consumers
are unsure which `flavour' of DSL is right for them. DSL is not accessible everywhere, and
availability depends upon how close the consumer is located to a telephone switching station.
DSL commonly uses the "three-mile rule" to determine availability.

If you are located more than three miles from your telephone switching station, the digital
signal rapidly degrades, and DSL no longer becomes feasible.
 Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) is a more secure means of user
authentication.
Instead of sending passwords over the line, CHAP uses a three-way challenge/response
procedure.
 Your system cannot be hacked if it is not on. A shutdown buys you time to diagnose the
attack more specifically. Sometimes the shutdown itself causes irretrievable loss of data. This
includes data related to the attacker.
 As the science of Internet security develops, the new protocol known as Ipv6 will be one of
the most important influences. Ipv6 ensures with a high margin of certainty that data packets
have originated with the host declared in the source address of the Internet Protocol (IP)
packet and have not been tampered with or altered in transit.
 The Internet Fraud Complaint Center is a partnership between the FBI and the National
White Collar Crime Center (NW3C). Their Web site provides a mechanism for victims of
Internet fraud to report online fraud to the appropriate law enforcement and regulatory
authorities.
Handy and readable.
Robot clouds
Michael Crichton's new novel "Prey" is about a mechanical plague, a cloud of nanoparticles
that has escaped from the lab. Programmed as a predator, the micro-robots that form the
cloud are the stuff of nanotechnology and artificial distributed intelligence. "Sometime in the
twenty-first century, our self-deluded recklessness will collide with our growing
technological power," warns Crichton in the intro. "One area where this will occur is the
meeting point of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and computer technology. What all three
have in common is the ability to release self-replicating entities into the environment." Read
on:
 It was obvious that a single molecular camera was inadequate to register any sort of image.
Therefore, the image must be a composite of millions of cameras, operating simultaneously.
But the cameras would also have to be arranged in space in some orderly structure, probably
a sphere. That was where the programming came in.
 There is an old question in artificial intelligence about whether a program can be aware of
itself. Most programmers will say it was impossible. People have tried to do it, and failed.
But there's a more fundamental version of the question, a philosophical question about
whether any machine can understand its own workings... The machine can't know itself for
the same reason you can't bite your own teeth.
 Individual birds were not genetically programmed for flocking behaviour. Flocking was
not hard-wired. It emerged within the group as a result of much simpler, low-level rules.
Rules like, "Stay close to the birds nearest you, but don't bump into them." From those rules,
the entire group flocked in smooth coordination. This is called emergent behaviour - that is a
behaviour that occurred in a group but was not programmed into any member of the group.
This could occur in any population, including a computer population. Or a robot population.
Or a nanoswarm.

 Ordinarily, genetic algorithms - which modelled reproduction to arrive at solutions - ran
between 500 and 5,000 generations to arrive at an optimisation. If these swarms were
reproducing every three hours, it meant they had turned over something like 100 generations
in the last two weeks. And with 100 generations, the behaviour would be much sharper.
 Distributed agent systems ran by themselves. You set them up and let them go. Typical
corporate thinking when you are under the gun, but with technologies like these it was
dangerous as hell.
Watch out for swarms!
Books courtesy: Landmark. www.landmarkonthenet.com
Wednesday,Jan 01, 2003
http://www.thehindubusinessline.in/ew/2003/01/01/stories/2003010100140200.htm
**
Sow `e' and ye shall reap dividends
D. Murali
DIVIDENDS are old stuff, digital dividends are what businesses want. And important
things are happening in the Asia-Pacific region in spite of the hype about dotcom
bust, argue David C.Michael and Greg Sutherland in "Asia's Digital Dividends" - on
`how Asia-Pacific's corporations can create value from E-business'. The region will
add over 150 million Net users in the next four years; overseas buyers are insisting
that the exporters use electronic channels; online sales actually doubled in 2001,
and in the travel and financial services sectors, consumers are moving online at an

`unexpected pace'; over 80 per cent of online sales in the region belong to Asia's
large companies; and so on. That's from the blurb, but there is more:
 In computer manufacturing, cost savings of 5-10 per cent are forecast, as supply chains are
optimised. Historically, global companies attempting to enter Asian markets have faced
major barriers in reaching customers and distributing products. Asian companies now face
renewed interest from global competitors who see e-business tools as a way to break into
Asian markets.
 Hong Kong and Singapore have 57 fixed phone lines per 100 inhabitants, while India has
three. Singapore and Australia have 57 and 54 PCs, respectively, per 100 inhabitants, while
Indonesia and The Philippines have less than one. Mobile phone penetration varies just as
greatly, with 68 and 67 mobile phones per 100 inhabitants in Hong Kong and Taiwan,
respectively, and fewer than one per 100 in India. By 2004, Taiwan would expand its mobile
phone penetration from 68 per cent to 84 per cent, while in India it would increase from 0.3
per cent to 0.6 per cent.
 Approximately half of Asian marketplaces are vertically organised, devoted to single-
country markets. These are in a particularly precarious position. Since only 22 per cent of
Asian marketplaces are industry-sponsored, most single-country verticals have little real
power to drive adoption in their markets. Top incumbent competitors generally hold most of
the market share and all the power that goes with it.
 All companies with significant mobile work forces - such as car and truck fleets, sales
forces, repair and maintenance teams, workers in large factories, and so forth - should benefit
from the emerging mobile B2B and B2E (business-to-employee) applications.
 In the past, airline engineers have spent much of their time searching for information in
maintenance manuals and identifying the correct spare parts from catalogues. In one airline,
the portal now delivers an online manual and catalogue system that has cut search time by 50
per cent. Employees now work faster, with much less frustration.
Frustrating, if you didn't know the benefits of e-business.
Free fall if you ain't wire-free

The author of "Nokia Revolution", Dan Steinbock has written another book, titled "Wireless
Horizon", to chronicle the strategy and competition for leadership in the global wireless
economy.Catch a few glimpses of the race in the `worldwide mobile marketplace'.
 By 1999, GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) was the dominant cellular
standard. The GSM-driven expansion provided the foundation for the explosive growth of
Nokia and the Finnish mobile cluster, which soon became known as "Finland's Wireless
Valley."
 The first milestone in the changing global chessboard was on August 14, 2001, when
China overtook the US as the largest cellular phone market.
 Driven by 3G horizontalisation, future vertical applications and services are expected to
draw together a multitude of wireless technologies in an ad hoc manner. Those elements
surround the user through a number of concentric circles, from the personal area network
(PAN), which represents the user's closest interaction with the wireless world, to the outmost
sphere of the cyberworld furthest from the immediate real world.
 CDMA was not the first success of Qualcomm. In 1988, the company introduced
OmniTRACS, a satellite-based system that tracked the location of long-haul truckers.
Qualcomm's initial expansion built on success in the road transit industry.
 In the past, vendors and operators competed through gradual globalisation. Today, players
are forced to globalise in order to compete, except for the downstream end of the value chain.
New "born global" strategies promise great opportunities; but the dynamics of innovation,
and the increasingly high entry barriers virtually ensure that most new start-ups and
challengers will be absorbed by the industry leaders.
In the new market wars, what you need is not just agility that counts, but mobility.

**
They ate companies for breakfast and lunch
D.Murali
eWorld invites readers to share their views on the latest IT books they have read.
Please e-mail us at Books2Byte@ hotmail.com.
D.Murali
WHEN big boys gather round a dinner table, they don't talk trivia, especially if they
are the CEOs of tech companies. And, even if they did indulge in gossip, it is
something that the rest of the world could hang on to for an insight into the
workings of business. That's how Shannon Henry enters the all-male club to gather
the crumbs and put them together in "The Dinner Club", which is about `how the
masters of the Internet universe rode the rise and fall of the greatest boom in
history'. There are several things most of the club members have in common, writes
Henry. "They are not trust-fund wealthy, and many of them grew up poor and are
self-made. Many of them were told at some point that they couldn't accomplish a
particular goal, and they have a passion to prove that naysayer wrong." Here's
more:
 Many of the group serve as a shadow cabinet to the US and world leaders, especially in
areas of technology and finance. Jeong Kim is a member of an eight-person presidential task
force on US intelligence issues. And Kim and Alex Mandl serve on the board of In-Q-Tel, a
venture capital fund run by the CIA.
 Mario Morino, called the "godfather" by Washington entrepreneurs, says: "If you are
serious about starting a company, you should tape two words to your bathroom mirrors and
look at them every day - Ego and Greed."
 According to former AOL executives, one suggestion that never moved much beyond the
memo stage was for AOL to buy the five major papers in the country: The New York Times,
The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times,
thereby giving it control over newspaper readers nationwide.
 Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy is furious at PricewaterhouseCoopers. "If you retain an
auditor you have the right to expect them to take responsibility for accounting technicalities.
If you started a company and you trusted your auditors to help you manage this stuff and then
the books blew up, and you found yourself being attacked left and right by every single
person in the world, while your auditor basically backed into a corner and scampered off to a
vacation in Tahiti and took no responsibility, wouldn't you feel a bit mistreated?"
 Raj Singh and his wife, Neera, mention in separate conversations that their current priority
is "wealth preservation".
Neera Singh says they're not making any new investments in the stock market these days, but
trying to keep as much as they can of the telecom fortune she and her husband built. She asks
Andrew Sachs and his wife, Heather, what their current investment strategy entails.
This is one of those moments - like when everyone compares their private airplanes.

Want to join for dinner, if not the club?
How to do businEss?
Contrary to the hype that existed a few years ago, e-commerce transactions are still small
compared to the size of the global economy. What is significant, however, is the capability of
e-commerce to generate new business models, say M.P. Jaiswal and V. Ganesh Kumar in
their new book "e-Business Models". What does e-business involve? Basically, an Internet
platform that links vendors, suppliers, banks, and customers. And what take place online are
info exchange, price negotiation, order placement, delivery confirmation, billing and
payments. Read on:
 The supplier who commits and meets the target dates of supply wins his grade well above
the competitors. Even an e-mail, replied within the specified time period, helps attracting and
retaining consumers.
 Amul.com has innovatively adopted a payment collection system after delivery by cash.
This reduces the risk of credit card/ other payment modes that the consumer does not feel
comfortable with.
 Gomez.com is an Internet quality measurement firm, providing e-commerce consumer
experience measurement, benchmarking and customer acquisition services to help firms build
successful e-businesses.
 If digital signatures are formed in the same way as handwritten signatures, by simply
appending a fixed string to each message, then it would be very easy to forge the signature
just by keeping the previous soft copy of someone's signature.
 Many e-business models are simply real world business models transplanted to the
Internet. Only some native-born Internet models such as search engines which are
infomediaries, comparison-shopping sites and the e-chain integrators are new and most others
are hybrids.
Read this before going in for a transplant.
(Books courtesy: Fountainhead, Chennai.
E-mail: fhbooks@satyam.net.in)
**
All about bricks and clicks
D.Murali
BAM + CAO = BAC. That's the new equation through which companies are gobbling
up market share. Read on for the full picture.

THE new equation: BAM + CAO = BAC
If that's tough, read: Bricks-and-mortar plus click-and-order equals bricks-and-
clicks. How? Because, companies that never stopped focussing on the customer are
now gobbling up market share by combining the best of both physical and virtual
worlds, as Robert Spector says in "Anytime, Anywhere". "Call it Web resurrection, or
reinvention. The book describes how experienced merchants are using the Web as
the glue to give customers unparalleled access to their products and services," reads
a review. More:
 Ironically, the Internet has made customer service more important than ever. In the old
days - not that long ago, actually - shoppers stayed loyal to favourite stores for many years.
No more. Today's consumer is apt to be more loyal to the deal than the dealer.
 Tesco claims 80 to 90 per cent of the UK's online grocery trade, and further claims that 30
per cent of its million-plus customers shop nowhere else online. Tesco.com's weekly sales is
about $8 million. At $145, the average online basket size is four times the in-store average.
Tesco, which levies an $8 delivery charge, says the profit margin on each delivery is 7 to 8
per cent.
 Many banks have been discontented with the Internet because it has failed to deliver on the
promise of significantly lowering costs. Although the estimated cost of online transactions
such as checking account balances or transferring money is about a penny, while in-person
transactions cost about $1 each, most online customers prefer visiting their money at their
bank branch or ATM. That's why Internet bank operations are not profitable on their own.
 On the security page of landsend.com, it is spelled out that customers' names and other
information are not shared with, sold to, given to, or traded to any outside company agency.
Land's End guarantees the security of its transaction system and assumes total liability in the
case of fraud. As a safety precaution, all credit transactions occur in a secure area of the Web
site to protect the customers from any loss, misuse, or alteration of the data collected.
 Communication - whether internal or external - is the Achilles' heel of most companies.
Because internal and external communication often intersect, it is essential that all divisions

of a company talk with each other all the time. If you can't communicate among yourselves,
how can you possibly hope to communicate with your customers?
Read it sometime, somewhere.
Data sniffing off cables on seabed
As fibre-optic cable is laid down around the African continent, two entities fight to control it.
One is UpLink Communications, headed by Roger Gordian. The pan-African cable ring is his
most ambitious and expensive endeavour. His nemesis, Harlan DeVane, is penetrating the
network. Trading in black market commodities with terrorists and rogue states, the cable
offers him unlimited access to a most valuable product: information. Thus reads the
backcover of Tom Clancy's "Cutting Edge". A few excerpts:
 In genetic science, a chimera is defined as an organism spawned of two or more genetically
distinct species. Chimeral plants are propagated by horticulturists and fancied by collectors.
Laboratories have created mixed-species test rodents in vitro. Fuelled by calls for artificially
grown transplant organs and tissues, recombinant-DNA technologies have produced the
means to spawn human-animal chimeras through manipulation of embryonic stem cells.
Some have been given European patent approvals.
 In Italy, the personals ran in l'Unita. In German, Die Zeit. TheLondon Times carried them
in Great Britain, Liberation in France, El Mundo in Spain, and De Standaard in Belgium.
Because Cyrillic script had to be avoided out of practicality, the ads were placed in English
versions of Hungarian, Czech and Russian papers - the Budapest Sun, Prague Post, and
Moscow Times, respectively. Also, for practical reasons, the Greek daily chosen to print them
was the German language Athener Zeitung. As in eastern European nations, the character set
unique to Greece's alphabet would interfere with a consistent application of the simple code
embedded within the messages. And a code without fixed rules amounted to no code at all.
 At each parasitic siphoning off of the cable, its flood of raw high-speed data was
transmitted from the submersible's array of receiving/buffering computer terminals to Cray

superprocessors aboard the Chimera using a direct, narrow-targeted underwater-to-surface
Intranet link maintained via an extremely high frequency (EHF) acoustic telemetry modem
and on-hull antenna about the size and shape of a carrot.
 The coded e-mail message displayed in front of Kuhl said: "If the cuckoo calls when the
hedge is brown, sell thy horse and buy thy corn." In European folklore, the song of the
cuckoo heard in September or October - when the hedge is brown - is an ill portent to
farmers. An omen that the autumn food harvest is imperilled, warning them to be ready to
take counteractive measures, and fill their stores with that which is most precious for survival
throughout the long, cold months to come.
 If you had taken the extra time on your computer, you would have found the Schutzhund
USA registry's online genetic database. It lists DNA-based evaluations of each and every
certified dog's pedigree, physical conformation, and susceptibility to hip dysplasia and other
health problems going back five or more generations. It also would have shown you that pure
black longhairs are quite scarce.
Edgy, pace-y stuff.
How to face megabytes of muggers?
Looking for expert advice on how to make your computer system secure? Peter Lilley has the
answers in "Hacked, Attacked & Abused" where he exposes digital crime. The back cover
teases prospective readers with facts such as: The Love Bug virus cost $8.7 billion globally in
lost productivity and clean-up costs; a Texas professor began to receive death threats because
someone had `stolen' his e-mail address and sent 20,000 racist messages from it; in 1986,
there was only one recorded computer virus, but now there are over 50,000 and that number
is still growing. Read on:
 While `Russian Mafia attack Western firms through cyber crime' is always good media
copy, a far better story is `Foreign government hacks national confidential information'. It

appears to be entirely logical and totally probable that the greatest threat of all might not
come from teenage males, terrorists or Russian crooks but from governments themselves.
 Five years ago - or even two years ago - to open a `secret account' you would either have
had to travel to a bank that still offered that facility or hunt out a company that provided the
service through numerous telephone calls or hunting through the ads in a newspaper. Now all
you have to do is click on the button that says `Order my secret account now'.
 The wonderful world of viruses is further complicated by hoax viruses together with
various e-mail security bulletins which purport to alert the user to new viruses but in fact
contain a virus themselves.
One such e-mail tells users that their PC contains a virus called sulfnbk.exe, which should be
deleted - the drawback being that this is a perfectly legitimate file in Windows, which is a
utility that restores long filenames. The Web site www.vmyths.comcontains many more
examples of similar incidents.
 The two words that send shivers down the spine of digital privacy advocates are Echelon
and Carnivore. The latter is a piece of online detection software used by the FBI.
A `surgical' that intercepts and collects digital communications that are the subject of a lawful
order, comparable to commercial sniffers used by ISPs.
The Echelon system - the subject of conjecture, fantasy, paranoia, controversy, and hundreds
of Web sites - is a global system for the interception of private and commercial
communications, run by the intelligence bodies of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and
New Zealand.
 In non-technical terms, authentication establishes who system users are; authorisation
establishes what each user can do; administration is the physical processes needed to ensure
that users have access to the appropriate resources, and audit is the process of establishing
what happened (or didn't).
A book to read before you are hacked, attacked and abused.
**
Release career-lock with shift key
D. Murali
There are two types of people. Some are always jumping. Some never jump — they
settle down too easily and get stuck. Self-renewal takes a bit of both. Don't you
agree?

CAREER change is usually top on the minds of tech workers, thank their brothers in
the old-economy jobs. Herminia Ibarra's book "Working Identity" from Harvard
Business School Press is about unconventional strategies for `reinventing' your
career. Why reinvent? Because "feeling unfulfilled, burned out, or just plain unhappy
with what we're doing, we long to make that leap into the unknown." Things that
seem to gel with most IT staff, but there is more:
 Most people experience the transition to a new working life as a time of confusion, loss,
insecurity, and uncertainty. And this uncertain period lasts much longer than anyone imagines
at the outset. Ample financial reserves and great family support do not make the emotions
any easier to bear.
 Research on how adults learn shows that the logical sequence - reflect, then act; plan, then
implement - is reversed in transformation processes like making a career change.
Why? Because the kind of knowledge we need to make change in our lives is tacit, not
textbook-clear; it is implicit, not explicit; it consists of knowing-in-doing, not just knowing.
 In the reinventing process, we make two kinds of changes: small adjustments in course and
deep shifts in perspective. Often the first changes we make are superficial... Small choices
accumulate within a harder-to-change framework of ingrained habits, assumptions, and
priorities. But after a while, the old frames start to collapse under the weight of new data.
 Many professionals work on pet projects or outside professional activities that, over time,
take on a life of their own.
Intriguing possibilities often materialise from new clients, pro bono projects, and board
memberships. By the time the actual break occurs, the "new" is well defined and the decision
is informed by the fact that the new career is already launched.
 "There are two types of people. Some are always jumping. Some never jump - they settle
down too easily and get stuck." Self-renewal requires some jumping and some settling back
in.
Full of ideas that can make you jump.
A new god called DoCoMo
Within three years after launch, a telecom company could command 30 million users. Which
one? John Beck and Mitchell Wade give the answer in their book titled "DoCoMo" which is
about Japan's i-mode, the wireless revolution. There were six factors behind DoCoMo's
success, says the blurb - love and strength, impatience and inequality, fun and even luck.
Read on:
 An April 2001 study by Japan's Ministry of Public Management reported that 34.5 million
subscribers access the Internet through their cellular service - almost matching the 37.2
million people accessing it through fixed-line connections.
 The i-mode story teaches that to get attention in a hyper-crowded environment, to vault
over the many barriers to adoption, your product has to grab customers beneath the sensible
surface level of value propositions. Don't depend on what customers say, especially in
answering structured questions; watch what they are doing, and understand why.

 Alexander Bell started hawking his new invention, the telephone, immediately after its
invention, but it was two years before the first switchboard was installed - with eight
subscribers. Bell's recommendation that the phone should be answered with the word "Ahoy"
never caught on.
 By the beginning of 2002, there were more than 400 financial institutions delivering
services on i-mode, each one providing DoCoMo with not only revenue, but also a
compelling reason for consumers to begin using the service.
 Fun drives innovation. Making sure that you have innovation, of course, is Very Serious
Business.
In an era of rapid change, innovation becomes a required core capability... In times like these,
if you're not part of the innovation steamroller, you absolutely will become part of the road.
Read it before the road-roller drives in.
Cut off the wires with a carving knife
If you want to be completely in the know about wireless, this is the book to buy, screams the
back cover of "Going Wireless", a book by Jaclyn Easton, who is "one of the world's only
business technology futurists."
The blurb announces that the book "delivers the unexpected" by showing how wireless is
transforming every type of enterprise. And the `acknowledgements' wrap with `profound
gratitude to the Siddha Yoga Meditation lineage'. More:
 The biggest producers of adult entertainment are also turning in to the wireless
wavelength. Penthouse magazine, for example, offers centrefold photos for downloading to
hand-held devices because people are saying that now they can takePenthouse to the beach
discreetly.
 While v-commerce is about transactions through voice-automated systems, usually
accessed by wireless phone, it is also about buying time directly, which are referred to as
services - such as appointment scheduling.
 RFID stands for radio frequency identification - a technique that can be used to read as far
as 100 feet away and doesn't require line of sight, one of the biggest challenges of bar codes.
Up to 50 tags can be read per second, which beats bar codes by a swiftness of 40 times.
 Despite the miraculous way wireless LANs work, the technology is extremely simple.
The information is passed back and forth through radio signals. The signals transmit on
average 300 feet, and as far as 1,000 feet with certain antennas; and they can pass seamlessly
through non-metal barriers like walls and ceilings.
 You have two choices for wireless asset tracking: chips and tags. Cellular-enabled chipsets
are far more robust and equally more expensive. You can send a message to the chip asking
where it is, and in a second it will respond. With tags, you don't necessarily know exactly
where the item is, but you know where it was last seen.
For instance, you might learn that your package has been loaded onto the delivery truck, but
you have no idea where the truck is.

Recommended for those who are clueless about wireless.
**
Books2Byte - February 2003
 Pot of gold at the wireless tap (February 05, 2003)
 Tom and Jerry, all over again (February 12, 2003)
**
Pot of gold at the wireless tap
D. Murali
eWorld offers a peek into `the savvy investor's guide to profiting from the wireless
wave.'
FOR more than a century, since the pioneering work of Marconi, wireless
technologies have teased investors with their potential for runaway profits. A line
like that in the blurb of a book sounds as the right medicine now, when profits are
running away from businesses. Tom Taulli and Dave Mock join to provide "the savvy
investor's guide to profiting from the wireless wave" in "Tapping into Wireless" - with
`inside details' on a `fledgling but well-entrenched industry' that can offer `virtually
limitless investment growth'. That should be enough of a teaser for those raring to
go. A few snatches:

 Many forecasts in the 1980s said that there would be 100 million worldwide cellular
subscribers by 2005. This mark was passed way back in 1997. The US alone passed this mark
5 years early.
 Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is the most prominent metric for service providers
because it generally measures the quality of customers the provider attracts. This number is
usually stated in monthly terms. A low ARPU relative to the competition shows that a
company's services are more appealing to cheapstakes.
 One of several key factors in placing a large colour display into a cellular phone is the
amount of battery power it consumes. Since phones are already draining the battery to
provide basic voice functions, adding a bright, colour LCD makes it tough to still provide talk
and standby times. Therefore, one of the large technical hurdles in the area of displays is to
make them consume as little power as possible while still giving a good visual experience.
 Currently, wireless security is somewhat lax. In early 2001, researchers from the
University of California found security holes in the so-called Wired Equivalent Privacy
(WEP) algorithm in the IEEE 802.11b standard. Basically, WEP is supposed to protect
wireless communications. In fact, some hackers were able to break into corporate networks
remotely, say, from a laptop in a car across the street from the company.
 Mobile communications are becoming a way of life, and people everywhere are learning
the unique benefits that a small hand-held device can bring. These are exactly the types of
markets that investors dream about: worldwide appeal, plenty of growth potential, and
unlimited niche possibilities developing over time.
Do you hear the ring tone?

Going, going, go online
There are three reasons why your business needs to take advantage of online auctions: (a)
Online auctions provide instant, low-cost exposure to new markets and opportunities; (b)
auctions help you enhance brand loyalty; and (c) it is virtually certain that your sharpest
competitors are already there. But how can companies tap the power of online auctions to
maximise revenue growth? Leland Harden and Bob Heyman have the answers in "Auction -
App" - `the first book to explore the exciting new world of B2B and B2C online auctions
from a marketing point of view'. As the back cover states, the book details how companies -
from hometown mom-and-pop stores to multinational corporations - are using Internet
auctions to find the best deals on goods and services while, at the same time, locating cost-
effective markets for their frontline products and excess inventory. More:
 In reverse auction, a buyer comes to the marketplace and says, "This is what I want. Who's
going to give me the best deal?" Then, of course, sellers lower their prices in an open market,
competing with one another to provide the buyer with the best possible deal for the requested
item.
 Having captured most of the Internet auction market, eBay has a new goal: to become the
"operating system" for all related e-commerce over the Internet... It would become possible
for eBay to manage literally billions of transactions per day.
 Auction buyers come in two flavours: those who are using this venue because they need to
search for the lowest prices, and those who enjoy the game of trying to "win" against other
bidders who want the same item. Promotional auctions are aimed at the people with money in
their pockets, so it behoves you to give them the best entertainment value for their trading
bucks.
 Internet shoppers have proved to be attracted to contests and promotions. Everyone likes to
get something for nothing. A properly designed contest or sweepstakes can result in
substantial traffic. If you don't have the creativity to design and run a contest yourself, the
whole project can be outsourced to specialty marketing firms.

 Auctions are the ultimate engines for establishing a product's or service's true market value.
Consumers are no longer constrained in their ability to research, negotiate, or find the best
price for virtually anything for which they are looking. They hold the cards now, not you.
So, you better hold the book.
Miles to go before KM is reached
When business slows down, companies find they have real people and virtual profits. The
solution lies in having virtual business and real profits. Which means capitalising on the
universe of knowledge within the company - that is information traversing seemingly infinite
pathways - and leveraging intellectual capital. Pioneering thinkers have shared their thoughts
in "Knowledge Management and Networked Environments", a book edited by Alfred Beerli.
A few excerpts:
 Most companies are still using a traditional accounting framework to report performance
and this does not adequately account for intellectual capital and intellectual assets. This is
particularly true of companies in knowledge-intensive industries. The lack of standards for
performance management of intellectual capital and assets poses a problem for management,
since return on investment for knowledge facilitation initiatives may be rather challenging to
calculate.
 For buyers to feel that it is worthwhile for them to disclose information, they must be
provided with incentives. Customers are assumed to place economic value on the information
that is generated through transacting, communicating, and collaborating with them and are
willing to release this information if they can profit by doing so (e.g., compensation, gifts,
coupons, rebates, special offers). Airlines' frequent flyer programs are a prime example of
customers' economic calculus at play.
 Explicit knowledge can often be easily transferred through electronic media or other forms
of documents such as manuals and handbooks. But knowledge can also exist in stories,
actions, metaphors, analogies, behaviours, or visions. Sharing this implicit knowledge is more
difficult, since the direct interaction of the people inside the organisation is crucial.
 Even in turbulent times, companies need a system to capture the innovative and very often
intuitive ideas of talented people both in and outside their organisation.
Relying only on the `gut feeling' of the CEO, trial and error, or just simply pure luck may
lead to a successful strategy once, but it is most unlikely that a second superior strategy will
be crafted once the current one is outdated.
 New times call for new forms of learning, or creating and exploiting knowledge, and for a
new approach to training.
Pressures such as "just in time" or "on demand" increase the need to modify the way we
learn. And the biggest conundrum of all is the fact that 60 per cent of the careers that are
going to exist in ten years' time don't exist today.
A more frightening corollary would be: 60 per cent of careers that exist today will cease to
be around in about a decade.

Wednesday,Feb 05, 2003
**
Tom and Jerry, all over again
D. Murali
It's a cat-and-mouse game all over again, on the lines of Tom and Jerry. Security
experts and hackers are seeking ways to outwit each other. Here's fresh hope on the
fortification.
IF you are familiar with Tom and Jerry, hacking and security measures are no
different. When breaches are found, fortification is carried out, and soon there are
new security breaches, and so John Chirillo comes with a second edition of his book
"Hack Attacks Denied" in the area of network security for Windows, Unix and Linux
networks, packed with about 400 pages of `fresh material'. And as the back cover
announces, there are over 170 new countermeasures, patches for top 75 hack
attacks, `TigerSurf 2.0 Intrusion Defense', cleanup and prevention of malicious code
including Myparty, Goner and so on. A few excerpts follow:
 To prevent unauthorised or malicious SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) usage, it is
important to configure the service to act as a mail routing gateway, but from within the local
mail domain. The daemon should never accept outside routing requests. It is also advisable to
configure extensive logging with some form of archival processing, to facilitate conflict
troubleshooting, and in some cases, to be used as evidence for potential hack attack
prosecution.

 Tauscan is a powerful Trojan detection and removal daemon, capable of detecting most
known backdoors that are used for remote hack attacks. The program operates in the
background, and surprisingly, uses very little system resources.
 By design, many Web sites divulge critical discovery information on their "pages". Content
such as contact names, e-mail addresses, phone extensions, network infrastructure diagrams,
network IP address ranges, even community names are published over the WWW. So, avoid
including on Web pages contact names and e-mail addresses. In their place, you can use Web
site guestbook/feedback scrips or generic mail accounts.
 Not all cookies are bad, but many are. In fact, originally, a primary purpose of cookies was
to be helpful to users; they were intended to identify user preferences before generating
dynamic, custom Web pages. The downside of the process, which has been exploited by
hackers, is that some sites and intranets have been designed to distinguish IP addresses and
hostnames; moreover the lifespan of cookies varies, and some, called "persistent cookies",
hang around for a very long time available to hackers. Java and JavaScript work along the
same line as cookies when it comes to discovery techniques. So, as with cookies, a lot of Java
code on the Internet can be used against you...
 Audit trails maintain a record of system activity by system or application processes and by
user activity. In conjunction with appropriate tools and procedures, audit trails can provide a
means to help accomplish several security-related objectives, including individual
accountability, reconstruction of events, intrusion detection, and problem identification.
Don't deny yourself this book.
Nuts-n-bolts ofsecurity
IN a world full of `malice and error' how to design systems that can be resilient? Ross
Anderson provides a `guide to building dependable distributed systems' in his book "Security
Engineering" - something that is `dense with anecdotes and war stories' plus `pointers to
recent research'.

A `nuts and bolts' discussion is promised - of protocols, cryptography and access controls - as
also a `lowdown' on biometrics tamper resistance, security seals, copyright marketing and so
on. Read on:
 A competent opponent who can get a single account on a shared computer system can
usually become the system administrator fairly quickly; and from there he can do whatever he
likes. The typical exploitation path is thus outsider to normal user to administrator, with the
first of these steps being the hard one.
 When designing protocols that update the state of a distributed system, the conventional
wisdom is ACID - transactions should be atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable. A
transaction is atomic if you "do it all or not at all" - which makes it easier to recover the
system after a failure. It is consistent if some invariant is preserved (e.g. debit to equal credit).
 Transactions are isolated if they look the same to each other, that is, are `serialisable'. And
they are durable if once done they can't be undone.
 If any biometric becomes very widely used, there is increased risk of forgery in unattended
operation: voice synthesisers, photographs of irises, fingerprint moulds, and even good old-
fashioned forged signatures must all be thought of in system design. Biometrics is usually
more powerful in attended operation. Also, many biometric systems achieve most or all of
their result by deterring criminals rather than being effective at identifying them.
 Whether GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) security was a success or a
failure depends on whom you ask. From the point of view of cryptography, it was a failure.
Both the Comp128 hash function and the A5 encryption algorithm were broken once they
became public. In fact, GSM is often cited as an object lesson in Kerckhoff's Principle - that
cryptographic security should reside in the choice of the key, rather than in the obscurity of

the mechanism. The mechanism will leak sooner than later, and it's better to subject it to
public review before, rather than after, a hundred million units have been manufactured.
From the phone companies' point of view, GSM was a success. From the criminals' point of
view, GSM was also fine. It did not stop them stealing phone service.
 Be sure to learn of vulnerabilities as soon as you can - and preferably no later than the
press (or the bad guys) do. Listening to customers is important; provide an efficient way for
them to report bugs. Consider offering an incentive. And have a plan to deal with the press.
The last thing you need is for dozens of journalists to call and be stonewalled by your
switchboard operator as you struggle madly to fix the bug. Ship your press release as soon as
the first (or perhaps the second) journalist calls.
Buy this `engineering' book even if you're an accountant.
Tick your choice
A presentable qualification in the vitae of IT security professionals is the Certified
Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) tag offered by ISC2. The exam experts,
Ronald Krutz and Russell Dean Vines, provide `an arsenal of inside information on CISSP
and how to master the certification test' in "The CISSP Prep Guide Gold Edition 2003". The
book packs about 700 Q&A, covering the ten domains in the syllabus. Take on a few
questions from the book:
 According to NIST, which choice of the following is not an accepted security self-testing
technique? (a) War Dialling; (b) Virus Distribution; (c) Password Cracking; (d) Virus
Detection.
 A "back door" into a network refers to what? (a) Socially engineering passwords from a
subject; (b) Mechanisms created by hackers to gain network access at a later time; (c)
Undocumented instructions used by programmers to debug applications; (d) Monitoring
programs implemented on dummy applications to lure intruders.
 A form of digital signature where the signer is not privy to the content of the message is
called a: (a) Zero knowledge proof; (b) Blind signature; (c) Masked signature; (d) Encrypted
signature.
 The definition "A relatively small amount (when compared to primary memory) of very
high speed RAM, which holds the instructions and data from primary memory, that has a
high probability of being accessed during the currently executing portion of a program" refers
to what category of computer memory? (a) Secondary; (b) Real; (c) Cache; (d) Virtual.
 In software engineering, the term verification is defined as: (a) To establish the truth of
correspondence between a software product and its specification; (b) A complete, validated
specification of the required functions, interfaces, and performance for the software product;
(c) To establish the fitness or worth of a software product for its operational mission; (d) A
complete, verified specification of the overall hardware-software architecture, control
structure, and data structure for the product.
Go for the `Gold'.
Books courtesy: Wiley Dreamtech India P Ltd.www.wileydreamtech.com
**

Where there's E, there's V
D. Murali
Get the latest picture on the virtual cousins.
WHEN we are talking about electronic developments, the virtual cousins are not far
off. That is why "E-Commerce and V-Business" - as the title of a book by Stuart
Barnes and Brian Hunt - sounds so natural as saying Bombay Sisters or Asia
Brothers in a concert schedule. The book examines the impact of the Internet and
associated technologies on two related aspects of business: electronic commerce
and virtual organisation. The authors show "how forward-thinking companies are
reaping considerable strategic advantage from exciting new business models in
these areas". There is more:
 Classical economic theory does not usually address the issue of information, content, or
knowledge as a tradable good. The value of information is traditionally seen as derived
exclusively from reducing uncertainty. In the Internet economy, however, information/
content is simultaneously a production asset and a good.
 For any community to thrive it needs to achieve a critical mass. If the chat rooms and
discussion rooms are empty or do not have new content, membership dwindles quickly.
Industry.Net was never able to attain the critical mass in time for the community to thrive.
Since many businesses adopted a `wait-and-see' approach, the community never took off.

 Currently most travel agencies focus resources on providing their customers with a
transaction and reservation service. Instead they could try shifting the emphasis to providing
an information service. Providing a wealth of information via a Web site with relevant links
to other sites could do this.
 Interorganisational systems (IOS) refer to the computer and telecommunications
infrastructure developed, operated and/or used by two or more firms for the purpose of
exchanging information that supports a business application or process.
 There needs to be a high degree of trust amongst virtual organisation members and an
acceptance and understanding that risk is to be somehow shared amongst those standing to
benefit.
 The assets of the virtual organisation are not traditional `bricks and mortar', but the ability
of human networks to leverage relationships and to reinvent themselves by drawing on rich
memory banks and flexible workspace identifications.
Rich with academic inputs plus case studies.
Gates in the box
WELL, this is no ordinary gates, nor the box some `x' box. We're talking about Microsoft and
its video game console, the Xbox. They say the video game industry is expected to double in
sales over the next five years and that it has `already eclipsed motion pictures to become one
of the largest and fastest growing markets in history'. The big gamble that Billy thought of
was to enter the gaming industry with megabucks on line, chasing the idea of `the fastest,
most mature, most advanced video game console ever'. How did the plan unfold? Dean
Takahashi tells the story in "Opening the Xbox". A few snatches:

 Because computer images consist of simple polygons that are strung together in complex
meshes, the quality of computer graphics is often measured in how many polygons the
machine can draw in a second. The PlayStation 2 could process a theoretical maximum of 66
million polygons per second, about 183 times faster than the 360,000 polygons per second for
the original PlayStation launched in 1994.
 WebTV had been launched with much fanfare about how it might spell the end of the PC
era. But the box used a slow modem and had quirks that made PC veterans scoff.
 It was hard to judge a game just from a sheet of paper. But Blackley made sure that the
process offered some clues; he asked, for instance, that every proposal include a description
of everything that happens in 60 seconds of the game. Overall, it was refreshing for Blackley
to see how much creativity existed across the entire video game industry.
 Since Microsoft was generating $1.5 billion in cash a month from its Windows and PC
applications monopolies, it could afford to make big gambles. Sega had been bled dry as it
had to borrow more and more money to finance its hardware sales. Sony had $5 billion and
Nintendo had $7 billion in cash. And Microsoft was approaching $30 billion.
 Most Microsoft teams didn't have real identities of their own in Microsoft's sprawling
headquarters. But the Xbox team was able to commandeer a three-storey office building in
the Millennium office park. Luke designed the lobby and the main meeting room. He later
shifted out of the project to redesign one of the crown jewels of Microsoft, the Windows
logo.
 Games as they exist now are extremely popular in countries like South Korea and Japan,
but in the US they still have some way to go. To capture more consumers, games will have to
follow them wherever they go.

So, follow the game.
The story of naughty Netty
INSIDE the Cult of Kibu and other tales of the Millennial Gold Rush" is not a children's book
about an African tribe. The book by Lori Gottlieb and Jesse Jacobs is `an intoxicating
collective memoir of the American Dream gone wild', taking one through a `tour of the New
Economy's most eventful years'. A few excerpts:
 There were so many ideas floating around, in fact, that to break through the clutter, each
had to be shortened into a recognisable phrase, often cannibalising other successful brand-
name startups. The telephone service auction site called Keen.com, for instance, was billed as
the "eBay of 900-number calls". A startup that sold only balls, called JustBalls.com, was
dubbed the "Amazon.com of Balls". A funeral planning site, HeavenlyDoor.com, became
known as the "Geocities of Funerals".
 With journalism's cardinal five W's and one H, the digital funding tale can, in its broadest
terms, be summed up as six questions: Who's going to fund us? What valuation should we
ask for? Where's Paul Allen when you need him? When will this round run out? Why isn't
anyone returning our calls? How did we think that?
 Meaningless phrases and words gave way to meaningless titles. Jerry "chief Yahoo!" Yang
may have started the trend, but by the late nineties, Orwellian-sounding monikers like "media
evangelist," "minister of reason," "master of logistics," "chief executive officer, reality," and

"manager of first impressions" (adding new meaning to the phrase "glorified receptionist")
had become the norm in Net culture.
 Getting the word out helps, but not until there's something tangible to promote. Yet many
startups with little more than a newly registered URL cried "Web site!" prematurely. Worried
that their competitors might be "first to market," they went ahead and pitched their products
without - oops - product.
 Young or old, hip or wonk - the result was often corporate boneheadedness. It was as if
each company chose from a menu called "How to Destroy a Company," when they received
their funding. Panic only exacerbated the descent.
Enjoy it as a tragicomedy.
**
Books2Byte - March 2003
 When the oracle speaks (March 05, 2003)
 Sniffing money on the info trail (March 12, 2003)
 No man is an island (March 19, 2003)
 The great mouse chase (March 26, 2003)
**
When the oracle speaks
D. Murali
He may be nearly 100 but when the management guru talks of technology, you'd
better take note.

IN about five years, Peter F. Drucker would be 100 years old. Yet, when he has
something to say, corporate chiefs stop to listen. A collection of Drucker's articles is
out in the form of a book titled "Managing in the Next Society", from Viva Books. It
offers `searching analysis' of the information revolution and the knowledge society it
has created. Management of an institution, whether a business, a university, a
hospital, has to be grounded in basic and predictable trends that persist regardless
of today's headlines. What are these `basic trends'? According to the guru, these
are: "The global shrinking of the young population and the emergence of the new
workforce; the steady decline of manufacturing as a producer of wealth and jobs;
and the changes in the form, the structure, and the function of the corporation and
of its top management." The book has interesting one-liners such as - "A change is
something people do, and a fad is something people talk about". Here's more:
 What we call the Information Revolution is actually a Knowledge Revolution. Software is
the reorganisation of traditional work, based on centuries of experience, through the
application of knowledge and especially of systematic, logical analysis. The key is not
electronics; it is cognitive science.
 The first management conference we know of was called in 1882 by the German Post
Office. The topic - and only chief executive officers were invited - was how not to be afraid
of the telephone. Nobody showed up. The invitees were insulted. The idea that they should
use the telephones was unthinkable. The telephone was for underlings.
 Traditional multinationals will, in time, be killed by e-commerce. The e-commerce
delivery of goods, of services, of repairs, spare parts, and maintenance will require a different

organisation from that of any multinational today. It will also require a different mind-set, a
different top management, and in the end, different definitions of performance.
 There are few unique technologies anymore.
Increasingly, the knowledge needed in a given industry comes out of some totally different
technology with which, very often, the people in the industry are unfamiliar. No one in the
telephone industry knew anything about fibreglass cables.
They were developed by a glass company, Corning. Conversely, more than half the important
inventions developed since World War II by the most productive of the great research labs,
the Bell Laboratories, have been applied mainly outside the telephone industry.
 In businesses across the board, information technology has had an obvious impact. But
until now that impact has been only on concrete elements - not intangibles like strategy and
innovation. Thus, for the CEO, new information has had little impact on how he or she makes
decisions. That is going to have to change.
A must read.
Moving with a baggage of legacy
HOW to migrate your legacy software to Microsoft .NET framework? A book by 5 software
specialists of Patni Computer Systems provides the answer in "Migrating to .NET", from VB,
Visual C++, and ASP applications. The preface identifies the target audience as people in
different levels of the IT industry who are involved in strategising and performing migration

activities. More specifically, it is meant for "audiences who have a knowledge of OOP
concepts, understanding of Visual Basic, Visual C++, ASP application architecture and the
Microsoft .NET platform and who have over 3 years of working experience." A few excerpts:
 In Visual Basic 6.0, error handling is done with the help of On Error statements. Visual
Basic .NET has vastly improved the error-handling techniques. In this, conditions in which
code fails are known as exceptions.
A block, which can throw an exception, is enclosed within a try/catch block. If the block
throws an exception, it is caught by the code in the catch block.
 ASP relies largely on scripting languages such as VBScript and Jscript. One disadvantage
with using scripting languages is that the page is interpreted each time it is accessed. Also,
scripting languages are not strongly typed.
This invariably leads to performance and scalability issues.
Visual C++ .NET has introduced a new programming model for C++ developers, managed
extensions.
Now, using managed extensions, you can write C++ code with the classical approach using
Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), Active Template Library (ATL), COM, and WIN32
APIs, generally referred as unmanaged code.
Generally the unmanaged code is faster than the managed code because it does not have the
overhead of .NET runtime execution engine.
 Component-based development is widely recognised as one of the best ways to develop
reusable software.
.COM provides specification about the layout of interfaces and their methods at the binary
level that makes COM compatible across languages.
 A Web service is a collection of functions that are packed together as a single entity and
exposed to the network for use by other programs over the Internet.
It is a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) - addressable resource that programmatically returns
information to clients.
Web services can be considered as building blocks for creating distributed systems over the
Internet.
Useful for the migratory who don't want to fall between two stools.
It's no dumb switch

SWITCHES are for flicking on or off. But a whole book on switches? Yes, "The Switch
Book" by Rich Seifert is subtitled "The complete guide to LAN Switching Technology", a
publication of Wiley Dreamtech. The back cover lists what you can expect: How switches
and bridges operate; how to deploy switches in homogeneous and heterogeneous LAN
environments; explanation of the Spanning Tree Protocol; source routing, available on Token
ring and FDDI networks; full duplex; SNMP and so on. And the preface promises readers
that the book would give them "enormous insight into the reasons why things are done the
way they are, rather than just cold facts". A few picks:
 Traditionally, LANs provided a means for multiple devices to share a common high-speed
communications channel. The key word was share; in addition to providing connectivity,
LAN technology offered a way to take an expensive resource (the high-speed channel) and
spread its cost and capacity among multiple stations.
 Ethernet, Token Ring, and FDDI comprise the vast majority of installed LANs. However,
there are numerous other technologies. From a LAN switching perspective, most of these
other technologies can be treated as variants of one of the more popular LANs.
 In traditional computer memories (e.g. RAM and ROM) you need to know the address
where information is stored in order to retrieve it. In a content addressable memory (CAM),
you use the storage contents as a key for retrieving data associated with those contents. CAM
functions as a virtually-instantaneous hardware search-and-update function element.
 Network designers are always balancing a three-way tradeoff among capacity, distance,
and cost. It is always possible to get higher capacity at lower cost within a LAN than across a

WAN, because the distances are so much shorter. To achieve the longer distances of a WAN,
the user is forced either to accept a lower data rate or to pay more money.
 Rarely can we perform fault diagnosis or gain any real insight into the operation of a
network by inspecting the management information from just a single device. Often, we need
to compare counters and error statistics from a number of devices in order to determine if and
where a problem may exist.
Highly readable stuff though the subject may be complex for many. Don't miss Seifert's laws
of networking, sprinkled throughout the book - such as: "If everyone uses high priority, no
one actually gets it; if the hardware doesn't understand it, give it to the software; architectural
purity goes out the window when purchase orders come in the door; and so on."
Books courtesy: Publishers.
Wednesday,Mar 05, 2003
**
Sniffing money on the info trail
D. Murali
Information processing sets detectives and investors in the same club. It pays to
uncover investment techniques from the legendary sleuths. Happy treasure hunting!

IT is information that distinguishes the smart from the dumb, the tech savvy from
the rest. Similarly, it is information processing that sets detectives and investors in
the same club, claims Robert G.Hagstrom in his book "The Detective and the
Investor", which aims to uncover investment techniques from the legendary sleuths.
Borrow insight from Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Father Brown to navigate
towards safe and profitable investments, says the author, because detectives and
investors need to gather information, analyse facts logically, sort through conflicting
and often unreliable data and factor in human psychology to come to the right
conclusion about the perpetrator of a crime or the value of a company's stock. And
the blurb makes the right pitch: The book "is especially relevant for today's market,
when investors need clear heads and cool calculations to cut through marketing
hype, suspect accounting, and corporate malfeasance." More:
 Great detectives outwit the criminal not because they work harder, not because they are
luckier, not because they can run faster, hit harder, or shoot straighter, but because they think
better.
 Modern investors can take two lessons from Dupin: First, look in all directions, observe
carefully and thoughtfully everything you see, and do not make assumptions from inadequate
information. On the other hand, do not blindly accept what you find. Whatever you read,
hear, or overhear about a certain stock or company may not necessarily be true. Keep on with
your research; give yourself time to dig beneath the surface.
 How to dig out obscure information on all sorts of issues and from all kinds of sources in
both private and public sectors? Read "The Reporter's Handbook" written by Steve

Weinberg. Gathering information, the handbook explains, involves looking into two large
categories - people and documents. Paper trails and people trails. Weinberg asks readers to
imagine three concentric circles. The outermost one is "secondary sources", the middle one
"primary sources." Both are composed primarily of documents. The inner circle, "human
sources", is made up of people.
 At a certain point in their research, the eager investors have collected enough information
that a pattern becomes clear, and they assume they have found the answer. If subsequent
information then contradicts that pattern, they cannot bring themselves to abandon the theory
they worked so hard to develop, so they reject the new facts.
 We know that wide swings in market returns do occur, and they do not reflect the physics
of an equilibrium system. In an equilibrium system, five-sigma events are so statistically
unlikely they are thought mathematically to occur only once in 10,000 years.
 The simplest tool is your computer. Web sites will load you up with more than you need,
but with practice you can quickly skip over the more esoteric reports and zero in on material
relevant to a company's financial picture.
Get cracking.
Kya com-bat hai
NOT much has changed, it is still a game of survival of the fittest. And you need to be ready
for combat. The dotcom-bat, to be more exact. Shawn P.McCarthy's "The Art of .COMbat"

adapts the ancient wisdom for the competitive economy. A book to help you use the Net as a
weapon to wage business war; develop offensive and defensive strategies; maximise your
organisation's competitive punch; and so on.
It "reveals proven tactics used by today's most successful e-warriors and shows you how to
use Internet logistics to squeeze out inefficiencies and create frictionless commerce, and
appraise the five factors of a market battle, viz. politics, climate, terrain, commander and
vision." A few snatches from the war theatre:
 No matter what market space you want to carve out, how well-honed your supply chain is,
or how perfectly positioned you are in the brick-and-mortar universe, a tremendous amount
of competition challenges your move into the online business world. You're competing with
hungry, low-budget operations maintained by stock-option-holding staffers willing to work
far into the night.
 Just as you may wait for others to look fatigued, others most certainly will look for signs of
fatigue in your organisation. Other companies will take advantage of any real or perceived
crises of confidence. When they sense you are in disarray, they will seize market
opportunities or lure away employees.
 In the military, keeping the war machine moving is actually a matter of establishing the
proper logistics. It takes at least 10 soldiers to properly supply every soldier on the front line.
In a fast-paced .com economy, this aspect is often overlooked. It's understandable. There is
an urgency to get it out the door and then worry about other parts of the business later.
 Information is a commodity, too, but the highest-quality and timeliest data carry a
premium. Whoever controls the downstream flow controls the pricing of the most valuable
data. Like anything else, news and information can be turned into a product. That's what your
local newspaper is, and it's very difficult for anyone to displace a major metropolitan paper
because of the huge investment required to build such an infrastructure.
 The secret to being a first mover seems to be this: First movers are gamblers. If they bet
early and bet right, they arrive to set up shop before anyone else. Good timing and a
gambler's hear are often what it takes to get there first.
Are you ready to wage the war?

Investor in form
YOU don't need an advanced degree, inside information, or friends on the trading floor to
control risk, get better returns and design investment plans with a high profitability. Thus
assures the blurb of "The Informed Investor", a hype-free guide to constructing a sound
financial portfolio by Frank Armstrong III. The author offers help to those who feel drowned
in a sea of data on the TV screen and on the Net. A few excerpts:
 The information deluge is symptomatic of a larger problem. Investors are poorly educated
about the financial system. Their chances of obtaining meaningful insight from the traditional
sources are remote. Schools rarely teach financial economics, thereby overlooking a critical
survival skill for modern man.
 The markets are far too efficient to allow higher rates of return without increased levels of
risk. An investment proposal in violation of the free lunch rule is an early warning indication
of a con job. Investment results far from the risk-reward line are just not going to happen. If
investors kept that rule in mind, most of the boiler room operations would be out of business
overnight.
 It is vitally important to have clean data. No one wants to do a study only to find out that
the data used was corrupt. Fortunately, we have a great deal of clean data available from
reliable third-party sources such as SEI, which maintains the largest database on investment
performance of institutional managers.

 The US Census Department estimates that more than one million baby boomers will live to
be more than one hundred years old. Yet few of the boomers have begun to save for
retirement or even know how much it will cost. Savings rates have fallen, and life expectancy
is increasing. Like two trains hurtling down a track toward one another, there is bound to be a
crash between the two factors.
 Investing is a different kind of cat. It is a very passive activity, somewhat Zen-like.
Markets don't respond to our can-do attitude. We can't just whip them into shape. They have
their own flow. We must attach ourselves to the world's markets and allow them to carry us
to our goals.
That lets the cat out of the bag.
Books courtesy: Landmark. www.land markonthenet.com
**
No man is an island
D. Murali
Networking has always been the need of the hour, more so in a society invaded by
computers. Here's more on effective communication.
IF humans are gregarious animals, information technology has made them more
such, with the help of networked machines. In a society that has been invaded by

computers, those who rely on a freestanding PC should be the odd recluses. The
elementary networking happens on a local scale and is the LAN, the local area
network. LAN is what one may find in most workplaces to achieve effective
communication among the employees and customers. And to understand the
underlying technology and also the business issues related to LANs, here is a book
by Arne B.Mikalsen and Per Borgesen - "Local Area Networks: Management, Design
and Security". A few picks:
 Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a more recent routing protocol that operates on a
different principle from RIP (Routing Information Protocol). Instead of using only the
number of router hops as a basis, OSPF calculates the connection in terms of cost. This
calculation brings in not only the number of router hops but also speed/capacity, reliability
and so on. It is also possible to differentiate the choice of route on the basis of the TOS (type
of service) field in the IP datagrams.
 The most important task performed by servers is file applications. Very many of the
server's tasks involve passing files back and forth on the network. Many tasks that do not
appear at first sight to be file applications are in fact just that. Printouts are one example of
this.
 How can a network card tell the host computer that it has a message? Like most other
hardware devices, network cards use interrupts or interrupt requests (IRQs). When a network
card receives a communication for the computer where it is installed, it sends an interrupt
signal. When the CPU detects this interrupt, it stops and looks at the interrupt line. It uses this
line to consult a table, specifically an interrupt vector table.
 Often the LAN environment is compared to a society of users. The LAN society is a
hierarchical society. The principle underpinning the society is that some of its members must
have privileges that others do not have. We could almost say that they have special powers.
Regular society members or the citizens in the society are called users. The users are
normally organised in groups to achieve a better overview of the system.
 Adding users to the network is an important issue in terms of capacity planning. If the
network was previously used for printing, communication, document sharing, and other
standard tasks, an Internet connection will have dramatic consequences when it comes to
stress on the Net. The Internet is a "killer" for network traffic with all its images and huge
amount of data.
 Often, when disaster strikes, the data on the backup tape cannot be read even though you
have a safe strategy for backup. Magnetic tapes get worn out very quickly, and may be the
wrong data was saved on the medium. Therefore it is important to check regularly whether
backup really works as assumed. Any backup strategy is practically worthless if it is not
taken seriously.
A book that can make you more knowledgeable than your systems administrator.
The wily maulers

YOU know hardware, software, brainware, tableware, and so on. What is malware? Viruses,
the malicious software that make your working harder. By learning exactly how viruses do
what they do, you can understand better how anti-malware technology works, say the authors
of "Viruses Revealed", a definitive guide to the world of viruses by David Harley, Robert
Slade and Urs E.Gattiker. "Remember the Aztecs?" asks Eugene H.Spafford in his
`foreword'. "They ruled a mighty empire until exposure to a few hundred Spaniards with
smallpox and measles incapacitated or killed 90 per cent of their population and left them too
weak to resist conquest." More:
 By virus, we mean a program meeting the much-used definition included by Dr.Frederick
Cohen in A Short Course on Computer Viruses - "A program that can `infect' other programs
by modifying them to include a possibly evolved copy of itself." By infect, we mean that a
virus inserts itself into the chain of command, so that attempting to execute a legitimate
program results in the execution of the virus as well as (or instead of) the program.
 If you want guaranteed protection, you can follow Jeff Richards' Laws of Data Security:
"1. Don't buy a computer. 2. If you do buy a computer, don't turn it on." On the other hand, as
is often said, "A ship in a harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for." A
completely protected computer is safe, but it is not useful. A computer in operation is a useful
device, but it is vulnerable.
 Microsoft is trying to tighten the links between its operating system and its applications.
This interrelation between platform and programs is behind a number of recent e-mail
viruses. Outlook and Internet Explorer cannot be easily secured, since they use programming
that is also foundational to the operating system. Where Microsoft offers a major fix, it may
be either a fix to the wrong problem or so extreme as to reduce drastically the functionality of
the product.
 Dealing with a virus outbreak is not just a question of cleaning the infected disk with the
current flavour-of-the-month scanner. At the very least, your reaction should involve, as far

as is practicable, stopping the loophole by which the malicious software entered the
enterprise, and limiting damage caused by any secondary infection that might possibly have
spread before the virus was detected.
 Naïve and uninformed curiosity has been causing problems since Alice swallowed the
contents of a bottled labelled "Drink Me". Nowadays, we have hostile applets with a nice big
button labelled "Click Me", and Trojan horse programs that promise interesting cultural
experiences. There's an element of social engineering in every Trojan horse.
Read this.
Formula chase
WHAT makes a spreadsheet a spreadsheet? "Formulas," is the answer that John Walkenbach
provides in the preface to the book "Excel 2002 Formulas". Excel is the spreadsheet market
leader, he states. "One area in which Excel's superiority is most apparent is formulas. Excel
has some special tricks up its sleeve in the formulas department. And only about 10 per cent
of Excel users really understand how to get the most out of worksheet formulas." A sampler:
 Goal seeking serves as a useful feature that works in conjunction with your formulas. If
you know what a formula result should be, Excel can tell you which values of one or more
input cells you need to produce that result. You can ask, "What sales increase is needed to
produce a profit of $ 1.2 million." Single-cell goal seeking is also known as backsolving.
 Sometimes, you may want to work with time values that don't represent an actual time of
day. For example, you might want to create a list of the finish times for a race, or record the
time you spend jogging each day. The value represents the time for an event, in hours,
minutes and seconds.

 It is important to understand the difference between rounding a value and formatting a
value. When you format a number to display a specific number of decimal places, formulas
that refer to that number use the actual value, which may differ from the displayed value.
When you round a number, formulas that refer to that value use the rounded number.
 A financial schedule is a detailed listing of cash flows. Typically, each row represents a
time period (such as a month), and the information for that time period is displayed in the
columns. The most useful type of financial schedule is a dynamic schedule, which uses input
cells (that represent variables) to adjust itself.
 A pivot table is essentially a dynamic summary report generated from a database. The
database can reside in a worksheet or in an external file. A pivot table can help transform
endless rows and columns of numbers into a meaningful presentation of the data. For
example, a pivot table can create frequency distributions and cross tabulations of several
different data dimensions.
Join the 10 per cent club of elite Excel-ites.
**
The great mouse chase
D. Murali
How does it feel to see people lined up at a cash register, ready to spend their hard-
earned dollars on a product that didn't exist before it became an idea in your own
head?

HERE is a book `dedicated to all those who have sacrificed the need to follow in
order to pursue their dreams and passions'. The Mouse Driver Chronicles by John
Lusk and Kyle Harrison is `an entrepreneurial adventure' of bringing a simple idea to
the marketplace. "There's only one thing that we did that most entrepreneurs don't
do," write the authors in the prologue. "We kept an ongoing record of what was
happening with our company. We started a diary... making entries roughly every
other day, just as an exercise in collecting our thoughts and blowing off steam." So,
they wrote about the realities of everyday life as entrepreneurs - `the screwups and
masterstrokes, the boredom, excitement, dumb luck, humour, and mood swings
that come from creating a product and a business'. A few picks:
 Marketing and entrepreneurship classes are valuable, but it's hard to tell what it means to
get good or bad grades in them. Every business school student knows the story of Fred Smith,
who took his C-grade Yale paper home to Memphis, Tennessee, and turned it into a start-up
called Federal Express.
 We needed industry-specific contacts as soon as we could find them. And we needed a
mentor. Someone who could tell us about distribution, supply chains, pricing, margins,
product life cycles, revenue seasons - the dos and don'ts of moving a product like ours
through the marketplace. Otherwise, we would waste a lot of valuable time and money
learning for ourselves what more experienced people could tell us in a few minutes' time. We
would have to reinvent the wheel just to move our mice.
 Kyle and I spent the better part of the day test-dropping mice, then taking them apart to
review the damage. It was a weird sight to behold, even for the two of us in the middle of it -
young entrepreneurs repeatedly dropping their first creations on the floor, then examining the
damage from the crashes. Many broken samples later, we had our answer: MouseDriver was
way too fragile.
 High finance was all about reputation and potential; a well-respected team of engineers and
MBAs could talk their way into VC money and investment bank money, if their ideas held
the promise of a huge upside. Low finance had more to do with anonymity and repeatedly
reaching modest goals; the less the issuers of our credit cards and our lines of credit
understood what we were doing, the more access to capital we could get, provided we paid on
time.
 For the broader PC market, the obvious move was to have come up with other clever
themes for computer mice - a mouse that looked like something other than a golf club head.
An egg. A turtle in a shell. A bar of soap. A hunk of cheese. A Chinese dictator.
Anything whimsical, anything that brought life to a computer in a cubicle.
 We went into this adventure with the idea that we would make millions, but we've come
out with something worth even more - the knowledge of how to turn ideas into reality. It's
impossible to assign a value to the experience of seeing people lined up at a cash register,
ready to spend their hard-earned dollars on a product that didn't exist before it became an idea
in your own head.
There are lessons to learn from those who rode the mouse.
From inbox to cashbox
Direct marketing `guru' Herschell Gordon's book "Effective E-mail Marketing" is about how
to craft messages that build the magical combination of rapport and sales, and adapting mass-

market messages to the one-to-one medium. An over-used medium, though, plagued by
poorly constructed messages and widespread phobia among computer users. A sampler:
 E-mail has a problem. Everybody is an expert. And do you know what happens when
everybody is an expert? Mistakes compound themselves because we so-called experts don't
recognise mistakes as mistakes.
 Nothing is leisurely about the Web. The mouse is merciless, and boredom is always a
threat. An ancient principle of force-communication is: Get to the point. This principle must
prevail if you want your message to be read and to generate a response.
 No clear definition of spam can exist, because spam is in the eye of the beholder: One
person's spam is another person's salvation.
 Text tends to outpull HTML when your message suggests urgency. HTML tends to outpull
text when your message suggests artistry.
The more technically oriented your targets are, the more likely it is that they will prefer text
to HTML. That seems wrong at face value, but many who have tested both types seem to feel
HTML works best with those who aren't technically adept.
 Advertising is adjectival. Advertising writers look for adjectives and often subordinate the
other parts of speech.
Unless you want your message to reflect an advertising intent, play down the adjective. And
the most valuable e-mail noun is a proper noun - the individual's name.
 A report by eMarketer highlighted the difference in response time between e-mail offers
and conventional direct mail offers. The report said that 85 per cent of e-mail message
response comes within forty-eight hours after the message is sent.
Compare that to the ancient direct-mail formula of a 55 per cent response by the second
Monday after the first response came in, with a total of four to six weeks to reach 85 per cent.

A book that can put your faith back into a ubiquitous tool.
You slog, they blog
Roughly half a million people a day go online to do what? They "update their self-published
weblogs, jotting down the latest news" and that can be about world events or an apple recipe.
That is an interesting statistic from "We've got blog", a book featuring articles from Derek
M.Powazek, Rebecca Blood, Jon Katz and so on. Weblogs have become some of the hottest
places on the Web, says the blurb. So, catch a glimpse of weblogs:
 The original weblogs were link-driven sites. Each was a mixture in unique proportions of
links, commentary, and personal thoughts and essays.
Weblogs could only be created by people who already knew how to make a Web site. Many
current weblogs follow this original style. Their editors present links both to little-known
corners of the Web and to current news articles they feel are worthy of note.
 Blogging is the art of turning one's own filter on news and the world into something others
might want to read, link to, and write about themselves.
Weblogs are time-bound and date-stamped, with older entries scrolling off the bottom into
chronological archives. Some blogs are closer to public diaries; others, the idiosyncratic or
authoritative musings of experts and cranks.

 Blogorrhea: A tendency for creativity-strapped bloggers to write meaningless prose in an
attempt to keep their blogs active.
 The most popular weblogs started as junkyards of weblog intelligentsia. What is amusing
is the litterboxes are being held up by others as masterpieces despite the rancid smell.
Indeed, a whole industry is forming around the fetid heaps of trash that others have left
behind.
There are now publishers, monitors, and even goddamn awards for the newest form of web
waste.
 Weblogs are the anti-newspaper in some ways. Where the editorial process can filter out
errors and polish a piece of copy to a fine sheen, too often the machinery turns even the best
prose limp, lifeless, sterile, and homogenised.
A huge part of blogs' appeal lies in their unmediated quality. Blogs tend to be impressionistic,
telegraphic, raw, honest, individualistic, highly opinionated and passionate, often striking an
emotional chord.
Get over the blog-block.
**
Books2Byte - April 2003
 The other option is to meet your maker (April 02, 2003)
 The inside story (April 09, 2003)
 A `killer' map of the current terrain (April 16, 2003)
 Digital distance is either zero or infinity (April 23, 2003)
 KM milestone: Walk that extra mile (April 30, 2003)
**
The other option is to meet your maker
D. Murali
Businesses cannot exist without a network, but if this network isn't an adaptive one,
it's the beginning of the end. It's adapt or die, quite simply.

BUSINESSES can't exist without a network, but in the rapidly changing market
conditions, the networks need to be adaptive if costs have to be lowered and
revenues increased. This is the message in "Adapt or Die", a book by SAP experts
Claus Heinrich and Bob Betts. SAP is a leading provider of inter-enterprise software
solutions and the book promises a "road map to a new business world in which
companies are linked together by uniform business processes and standardised
software." What will an adaptive business network do? According to the blurb, it will
streamline your supply chain and improve your customer service by creating a fast
and efficient web of communication among all the participants in the supply chain
and the customer. More:
 Consumer expectations are higher than ever across a broad spectrum of industries. For
example, 20 years ago travel by airplanes was expensive, time-consuming to arrange and
restricted mostly to well-dressed business travellers. Today, nearly everyone can afford to fly,
and customers instead have turned to complaining about the food, how long it takes to reach
their destination, and how crowded the planes are.
 Within a linear supply chain, information is communicated from supplier to supplier all the
way back down the line from the customer who purchases the final product to the supplier of
raw materials. Each supplier along the way makes decisions about production and supply that
affect the decisions of its suppliers. By the time an order reaches the raw materials supplier, it
has become increasingly inaccurate, leading the supplier to hold much more inventory than is
needed. This phenomenon is known as the "bullwhip effect".
 Companies set on buying software as the first step toward revolutionalising their internal
structures and external relationships will be disappointed. Step One begins with people at the
most basic and fundamental levels of a company - the people who work in customer service,

warehousing, purchasing, distribution, and transport. The change must begin here because it's
at this basic level that the most fundamental process and communication problems occur.
 Most vendor-managed inventory (VMI) programs require that the supplier maintain
inventory at the consumption company's site to guarantee that the company always has
adequate supply on hand. This inventory is placed on consignment or is kept in a locked area
or `cage' in a warehouse or storage area. The supplier still owns and manages the inventory
even though it is stored on the consumption company's premises.
 Like the cell-phone and PDA (personal digital assistant), the car will be a place where
networks overlap. One day, you will be driving down the freeway and notice that your gas
tank is low. Your in-vehicle computer service will alert you that the best price for gasoline is
at the Shell station, or that the next Exxon Mobil station is another five miles away. Perhaps
McDonald's and Texaco are offering a combined special coupon that involves a free car wash
with every Big Mac.
Read this book or...
Get M-boldened or end M-bittered

IF you are in search of `a strategic roadmap to position yourself for the mobile economy',
here is "M Business" by Ravi Kalakota and Marcia Robinson. This is not the `M' whom you
can dial for murder, but about the race to mobility. "Knowing a change is coming is one
thing; predicting its shape and form is something else entirely," reads the blurb. The book
`succeeds at both' because it "explores today's wireless revolution from a business perspective
as it introduces practical strategies your business can use to adapt from tethered, PC-centric
models to mobile, person-centric techniques and strategies." If that is making you mobile
already, try a few snippets, because the preface warns: "The e-commerce hype has barely
subsided, and the media, venture capitalists, and stock markets have already moved on to the
mobile Internet."
 In the world of wireless, smaller is better in four areas - handsets, screen displays, data
storage, and power supply technologies. The key to this miniaturisation has been the
development of extremely compact, power-efficient devices and components - the building
blocks of mobile hardware of all kinds.
 M-commerce has been defined as providing the mobile consumer and businesses with an
ability to purchase, track, and receive goods and services securely via mobile technology. As
companies move from informational to transactional services, specialised m-commerce
applications with unique mobile channel capabilities are being developed.
 A plethora of disparate mobile devices, closed networks, language disconnects, differing
protocols, and point solutions characterise today's wireless landscape. Mobile application
servers, mobility platforms, and mobile application gateways are comprehensive platforms
that mask the complexity of the underlying technology and speed development of innovative
solutions.
 NTT DoCoMo retains 9 per cent of collected subscriber fees. It distributes the remaining
91 per cent to the content aggregators. The aggregators also retain a percentage of the fees
and distribute the balance to the content owners.
 M-business is following a trajectory very similar to that of biotechnology. Lots of
opportunity - if you can survive the journey through the uncharted terrain. Like biotech, the
mobile market is maturing rapidly, with new infrastructure, devices, and applications.
However, for the next three to five years, the reality of implementing m-business and
extracting business value will be far removed from the marketing messages that are the focus
of the media, Wall Street, and start-ups.
When Ravi says `M', don't say `N-O'.
Book Courtesy: Landmark
Broadband billion

THE high-flying CEO of Black Jet Securities, Jett Gavallan, is banking on the riskiest gamble
of his career. In exactly six days, he will take Mercury Broadband, Russia's leading media
company, public on the NYSE. And suddenly, Jett is trapped in a conspiracy that could
shatter the delicate balance between nations and plunge the global economy into chaos. That's
a teaser for "The First Billion" by Christopher Reich. Read on:
 He saw the cool marble floors, the legions of busy workers glued to their workstations, the
aisles of servers, routers, and switches housed in trim glass cabinetry. Red fairy lamps
showed network operations centres, white lines denoted the cable or satellite connects, blue
lights indicated cities with over 20,000 subscribers, and green lights depicted areas where
service was to be offered within 24 months.
 Continuing down the hall to Finance and Administration, he found a dozen secretaries and
accountants at their desks, diligently stuffing page after page of bank statements, revenue
records, and payroll stubs into their shredders with a military efficiency, while on the wall a
red strobe light flashed in two-second bursts.

 The process of winning the mandate for an IPO was called a `bakeoff' or a `beauty contest',
and like all mating rituals it had its own strict rules. Bankers strolled down the runway in
their scantiest togs, planted themselves suggestively in the prospective client's lap, and
immodestly drew attention to their most lubricious assets - namely, where they ranked in the
league tables, the number of IPOs their firm had done in a similar space.
 Ten inches from his all-seeing brown eyes, the wall of colour super-VGA displays
broadcast a blinking, stuttering, ever-changing array of graphs, bar charts, and streaming
price quotations advertising real-time fluctuations of the 27 stocks he was currently
following. The set-up was called a Level II quotation system.
 Brokers' booths ringed the floor's perimeter. Ninety per cent of orders to buy and sell
shares travelled electronically through the `superdot' computer system directly to the
specialists' booths, where they were automatically mated, buyer with seller, at an agreed upon
price. This ninety per cent, however, accounted for only half the share volume that traded
each day.
Make your own million, if not a billion.
Book courtesy: Fountainhead
Wednesday,Apr 02, 2003
**
The inside story
D. Murali
If c's for computer, it's for chips too, the tiny workhorses that are trotting
ceaselessly in the innards of the system and helping it perform. It's truly the inside
story that counts here.

Books2Byte – 2003

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