Books2Byte – 2004

Books2Byte – 2004 (From BL archives)
Resources
Books 2 Byte
Columns
 Traffic on broadband (December 27, 2004)
 Patterns hiding in mountains of data (December 20, 2004)
 The proof of the pudding... (December 13, 2004)
 Put IT plan in corporate strategy (December 06, 2004)
 Know thy customer (November29, 2004)
 A case for the digitally disenfranchised (November 22, 2004)
 `Networks are like snowflakes, no two are alike' (November 15, 2004)
 Ten rules of technology entrepreneurship (November 08, 2004)
 End of history, geography and politics? (November 01, 2004)
 It's time for `knowledgement' (October 11, 2004)
 Owner's pride (October04, 2004)
 Talk about business value of security (September 27, 2004)
 Software - study in complexity (September 20, 2004)
 `IT is just one more factor of production' (September 13, 2004)
 Make your network a digital fortress (September 06, 2004)
 Finance with the `e' edge (August 30,2004)
 System attack starts with a ping sweep (August 23,2004)
 Let's start at the very beginning (August 16, 2004)
 Hard work, but rewarding too (August 09, 2004)
 Lights, camera, CG! (August 02, 2004)
 Across the post, in a jiffy (July 26, 2004)
 Seven Ps that apply in call centres (July 19, 2004)
 Top-down, start-to-finish (July 12, 2004)
 5 MAs and a CAMEL (July 05, 2004)
 From India to America (June 28,2004)
 Network to bond (June 21, 2004)
 From bytes to business (June 14, 2004)
 To lead and to succeed (June 07, 2004)
 This century belongs to India (May 31, 2004)
 Excel in modelling skills (May 24, 2004)
 XP-erience for the clueless (May 17, 2004)
 Bandwidth at great length (May 10, 2004)
 Some inspiration from space (May 03, 2004)
 Make hard work pay (April 26, 2004)
 Breathe life into great ideas (April 21, 2004)
 Bridging digital divides (April 14, 2004)
 Business lies between the lines (April 07, 2004)
 No Eclipse of Sun's product (March 31, 2004)
 Making hacking challenging (March 24, 2004)
 Check if `struts' are in place (March 17, 2004)
 Some help with your project (March 10, 2004)
 Seven million dollars to win (March 03, 2004)
 Never too old for `toys' (February 25, 2004)

 Information security is no black art (February 18, 2004)
 Let's talk tech (February 11, 2004)
 Networking in a metro (February 04, 2004)
 IT is India's tomorrow (January 28, 2004)
 For netizens and designers... (January 21,2004)
 Saying it right (January 14,2004)
 Artificial to the core... (January 07,2004)
Year : 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2003 | 2002
http://www.thehindubusinessline.in/cgi-bin/bl2004.pl?subclass=794
**
Books2Byte - January 2004
 Artificial to the core... (January 07,2004)
 Saying it right (January 14,2004)
 For netizens and designers... (January 21,2004)
 IT is India's tomorrow (January 28, 2004)
**
Artificial to the core...
D. Murali
In a world where technology rules the roost, it's only natural that all things artificial
— men or intelligence — gain significance.

FOR a long time, they were in the labs and we saw them talked about in sci-fi
stories. Then, moviemakers put them to good use to challenge the heroes and
frighten the dames. Slowly, they are getting into our lives in the form of toys that
work as if they have a mind of their own, rather than being dumb as the furry,
cuddly bear or a proxy, plastic beauty most kids share much time with. You can play
Brahma with automatons, creating the `21st-century science-fiction robots', grants
Grant Imahara, in his book, Robo Toys: An Illustrated Step-by-Step Guide to
Building Robots, from Wiley Dreamtech (www.wileydreamtech.com) . His
contributions have been in the field of animatronics for movies such as Star Trek,
Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Star Wars, Terminator 3 and Matrix Reloaded, and
now he is talking to the common man who might want his own pet-robo. The book
has inputs on robot design, power tools, handling screws, top drive motors, roller
chains, traction, speed controls, wiring, rammers, crushers and so on. A companion
Web site is www.kickinbot.com offering templates and complete plans described in
the book. But be warned, we are entering the realm of robot combat.
The normal flow of building is research, design, prototype, test, build, test again,
revise, and practice, writes Imahara in the intro, but he breaks that cycle "to jump
directly into fabrication to get the beginning robot builder dirty as soon as possible."
His focus is on the drivetrain instead of weapons, because "the essence of every
robot combat event is that if you can't move anymore, you're disabled, and you
automatically lose. Often, it's a war of attrition, and some robots are as destructive
to themselves as they are to other robots." Pretty much true for software too,
because a system that hangs gets you nowhere, compared to something that keeps
working robustly, pulls on with the job, without letting you down.

The robot has to have a name, and it should be catchy. "You can
use www.nameprotect.com to see if your choice has already been taken." How about
the design? "You don't have to create a dimensional drawing or a fully rendered CAD
model," comforts the author. "Cocktail napkins and the backs of envelopes will do."
You may be a top notch coder, but don't forget Newton when putting your machine
together. Despite your best programming, what is crucial for robot would be physics.
"Every particle of the robot is subject to earth's gravity, and contributes to the total
weight," is a simple lesson that Imahara offers. "A low, flat object will have a lower
centre of gravity than a tall skinny object. The higher in the air the centre of gravity
is, the more likely you are to tip over."
To reduce weight, you might think of a smaller robot, but "it's a lot harder to fit all
the things to do the job." Seek the help of computer-aided design programs, advises
the book. "It can help out dramatically in figuring out the best placement for all of
the motors, batteries, and electronics inside your robot's frame." A flip side is that
this process can become time-consuming "because you've got to create all the
models on the computer yourself from available measurements before you can use
them." Imahara advocates making a cardboard mock-up of the robot full size, so
that you can get a feel of how big it's going to be. "It's one thing to design on paper
or on the computer, but it's often hard to judge exact size from a computer screen."
How one wished that future wars didn't involve B2 bombers and high-tech missiles,
but combat robots that play it out in an arena.
Invincible intelligence

From the world of machine men, we move on to AI. Artificial Intelligence and the
Study of Agentive Behaviour is by R. Narasimhan, who was the first chairman of the
CMC and also the first president of the CSI. The central argument of the book, from
Tata McGraw-Hill (www.tatamcgrawhill.com) , is that AI studied as science, as
opposed to AI as engineering or technology, is the most appropriate basis for
studying behaviour. The preface talks of two approaches - one that observes animal
behaviour at the sensorimotor level and the other that studies human behaviour to
simulate cognition. "Can these two preoccupations be brought together using AI as a
common scientific framework?"
To show how computational aspects of behaviour would have to be very detailed,
the author takes up the example of nest-weaving done by the long-tailed tit bird. "A
computationally adequate description of weaving would have to be specified in some
such fashion as this: grasp (with the beak) the loose end (or one end) of the blade
of grass, insert it in hole and push till the end comes out on the other side, and pull
the end towards oneself." Remember that weaving requires further "the ability to
recognise (identify) parts of objects, e.g. the loose end of the grass, and to verify
relational constraints, e.g. end of blade out of hole."
Also, "one must start with a set of primitive actions that relate to the effector
mechanisms of the animal (beak, wing, leg, neck, and so on), and a set of attributes
and relationships that the animal can compute." With all this in place, you might be
able to explicitly work out an algorithm for each behaviour unit, though such an

exercise "is bound to be quite complex even for the most ordinary behaviour of
simple organisms."
That should be enough for most people to appreciate the worth of their own natural
intelligence. But what is the foundation of intelligence? "Dealing with primary raw
data is not a prerequisite to demanding intelligent behaviour. Reasoning is the
foundation of intelligence," writes Narasimhan. "Even with conventional database
management systems by endowing them with a reasoning capability we would be
converting them into intelligent systems." Thus an integration of database and AI is
one of the aspects of `rich future' that the book talks about.
To serious researchers, the author advises: Begin to ask how inter-modality transfer
of information takes place, and how, at the global level, behavioural integration is
achieved. "In the case of human beings language behaviour would seem to play a
crucial role in this context." However, the underlying information-processing issues
are still a black box to a great extent.
Wednesday,Jan 07, 2004
http://www.thehindubusinessline.in/ew/2004/01/07/stories/2004010700090200.htm
**
Saying it right
D. Murali
If you are sending e-mails to the boss, mind those uncrossed `t's and undotted `i's.
He might remember missed punctuation more than your ideas. Here's more on e-
mail etiquette, wireless communication and data recovery.

WIRELESS communications are increasingly binding us, like the invisible strands of a
giant spider. S. Ruseyev puts together the technique in action in WAP Technology
and Applications, a book from Eswar Press (www.eswarbooks.com) .
A myth about wireless application protocol (WAP) is that it provides delivery of the
entire content of the Internet to wireless terminals. Also, all the media hype about
these wireless wonders glosses over the limitations of wireless networks. "The
wireless channels' capacities are less, their inactive period is longer, their connection
is less stable, and service accessibility is not as predictable." Plus, wireless terminals
have a host of problems such as smaller screens, processing power, RAM, battery
power, and keyboards. "Hence, there will always be a wide gap between the best PC
and the best wireless pocket device." Yet, one should understand that the
requirements of a wireless terminal owner are different from those of PC user.
"Wireless terminals are useful companions when you need prompt information or
want to get access to corporate data while on the move."
For language buffs, WML — the markup lingo for wireless applications — can be
interesting. It has the same syntax as XML, and is very similar to HTML. "Therefore,
all Web developers who studied these languages over the last 10 years may
promptly apply their knowledge to using WML."
If wireless became the standard, as it threatens to evolve into, all that is
wired may seem too weird to accommodate.

Etiquette for the e-men
An anecdote: "A young married woman sent her husband an e-mail, recounting the
pleasures of their preceding night in some detail. It was an innocent and romantic
gesture.
Unfortunately for her, he wasn't the only one to read it.
The e-mail went public somehow — the `how' doesn't matter — and before she
knew it, 15 million around the world knew the full story of her romp with her
husband, all because she broke the cardinal rule of e-correspondence: e-mails are
public documents."
This is from Peter Post's Essential Manners for Men, a book from HarperCollins
(www.harpercollins.com) . This is no IT book, one might say, but, like it or not, tech
stuff has gone into lingo and communication.
Speed kills is a traffic warning that could apply to electronic missives. The speed we
love about e-mail is also an insidious danger, Post warns. "The problem with any
immediate response is that it invariably will be much more about your anger than
about solving the problem at hand. When penning any sort of message, take your
time." Remember, you are what you write, warts and all. "Typos, misspellings,
malaproprisms, grammatical errors — they all stand out. These mistakes reflect on

you, so make a point of carefully reviewing everything you write, even informal
notes." How about quick despatches to the boss? Won't he look at the ideas you
present rather than frown at the undotted i's and uncrossed t's? Wishful thinking,
according to the author. "If you send your boss an e-mail containing misspelled
words, your boss is likely to focus on and remember those misspellings — and the
content you worked so hard on will be compromised as a result."
Elsewhere in the book, Post lays down e-mail rules that include the suggestion to
use the `draft' or `send later' facility so that you can proof-read and reread your
cyber-communication before sending. Use fonts that have serifs, is another advice.
"They help the reader to scan the line. Also, avoid using all capitals in your e-mails.
They indicate yelling and are also difficult to read."
Another child of technology, the cell-phone can do with a good measure of lessons in
etiquette. "Commuters are starting to rebel against cell-phone users who insist on
talking on a railway car or bus," states the book. "If someone's cell-phone use on a
public conveyance is disturbing you, make your complaint to management. Never
try to approach the offender directly."
Good read for women too, if only to see what they can expect of well-
mannered men.
Route to recovery

Whether there is life after death is not so important a question for computer users.
They would be keener to know if there is recovery after a crash. Data loss and disk
crash are accidents to live with if you dabble with bytes and files, PCs and other
comps. To reduce the trauma, here is Do-it-yourself Data Recovery in easy steps by
Saurabh Gupta, and brought out by Ranee Publications
(raneepublications@vsnl.com). It is "intended to help you recognise, react
appropriately to and resolve a data emergency," and has inputs on data storage
technology, types of file systems, data loss situations, and loss prevention
techniques.
Two don'ts that the book begins with are: "Do not write anything onto the drive
containing the important data that you just deleted accidentally. Do not try to write
data that you found and are trying to recover back onto the same drive." More tips
are sprinkled all through the book, such as: "Do not power up a device that has
obvious physical damage. Activate the write-protect switch or tab on any problem
removable media such as tape cartridges and floppies; many good backups are
overwritten during a crisis."
There are also dos: "When facing data loss, stop and review the situation. The
process of reviewing and writing down a synopsis of the situation has the dual
purpose of preparing for a recovery and inducing a calm." Also, "Do no harm." A
lesson from the medical profession.

Contrary to popular belief, CD audio is "remarkably resilient to data loss," informs
the author. "Bits of dust or dirt on the surface of the disk, or even small scratches,
will often not impede the performance of the CD player or the CD-ROM."
One of the techniques that makes this possible is ECC (error-correcting code), "a
special data encoding protocol that uses a combination of redundant information and
special data positioning, to make it possible to detect and recover from missing bits
of data."
Useful reference material to be equipped with just in case...
**
For netizens and designers...
D. Murali
... who are forever on the lookout for the latest. Now throw your Net wide open with
some `technology transfer' in a `flash'.
Ask the nerds and geeks around you what they think is next to fast food and fun.
Internet could be a ready candidate in their hierarchy, with all the advantages it
offers, be it mail or site-surfing. Their lives are so intertwined with the Net that
network is taken for granted. Internetworking Technologies Handbookfrom Cisco
Systems (www.ciscopress.com) is `an essential reference for every network
professional'. So, if you belong to that tribe of people whose job is to ensure the
ticking of `one of the most influential forces in our lives today', something that
continues `to change the way we work, live, play and learn', here is the book for
you. If, as a user, you are still interested in learning the basics, there are ample
inputs on the fundamental concepts, covering a vast array of `technologies,
protocols and paradigms'.

What is an Internetwork? Don't be surprised if Word redlines the word, but it means
"a collection of individual networks, connected by intermediate networking devices,
that functions as a single large network." Are there challenges in implementing a
functional network? Yes, there are many - "in the areas of connectivity, reliability,
network management, and flexibility." The nightmare of the networking professional
is to link systems that use disparate technologies. "Different sites, for example, may
use different types of media operating at varying speeds." World is `unpredictable'
and you never know when Murphy's Law would operate. So, there is the need to
"include redundancy to allow for communication even when problems occur".
The book has been laid out such that even a casual browser can quickly grasp a few
knowledge-bytes. Such as: Routing involves two basic activities - determining
optimal routing paths and transporting information groups (called packets) through
an Internetwork; the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) originally emerged as an
encapsulation protocol for transporting IP traffic over point-to-point links; there are
two basic types of antennas - omnidirectional and unidirectional; Passive Optical
Networks (PONs) are built for networks looking for cost advantages with
asymmetrical bandwidth requirements; Line of Sight (LOS) refers to the fact that
there must be a clear, unobstructed path between transmitters and receivers; and
more.
In the chapter on security, the book observes that many systems have strong
authentication mechanisms, though "they often are not implemented". A subsequent
chapter is on DEN, that is, Directory-Enabled Network: "Directory-enabled
networking is not a product or even a technology. Rather, it is a philosophy that
uses the DEN specification to bind services available in the network to clients using
the network."
Useful reference for those who believe in the philosophy of connections.
Knowledge, special and shared

As with god and freedom, truth and fairness, that often suffer the ill-treatment of
limited comprehension, so with `technology'. Goel Cohen writes in the preface
to Technology Transfer about the limited comprehension of the concept of
technology among both engineers and scientists at large. The book, from Sage
Publications (www.indiasage.com) , deals with what could be "the single most
important contributory factor in competence conceptualisation."
What is technology? A set of specialised knowledge, writes Cohen. "As the world
becomes increasingly interdependent technologically, the transfer of technology
from one country to another plays a key role in global development." In a
subsequent chapter, again, the author adds: "Technology is the magic word in
today's ideological lexicon. Not only developed nations but even developing
countries may be seen as societies permeated by technology: new technology, key
technology, high technology, up-to-date technology, leading-edge technology, state-
of-the-art technology." Also, add information technology. All these phrases "have
become part of the everyday language of people who have little knowledge of
science and technology."
Technology involves four main elements: General theoretical and practical
understanding of how to do things (social knowledge); objects (goods); installed
techniques of production (processes); and the personal know-how and abilities of
workers (skills). Perrow classifies technology into four quadrants: Routine,
engineering, craft and non-routine on two axes, viz. problem analysability and task
variability. For Thompson, however, there are three types of technology, viz. long-
linked, mediating and intensive.
A book for intensive study in case you are somehow linked to technology, either as a
receiver or giver, or simply as a mediator.
All in a Flash
Eager to create fast-loading interactive movies that feature buttons, navigation
menus and animations? Want to use basic drawing tools and understand each
element of the interface and toolbar? Do you wish to modify the colour,

transparency, rotation, scale, and skew of any object? Bonnie Blake and Doug Sahlin
answer these questions in How to Do Everything with Macromedia Flash MX 2004: A
Beginner's Guide from Wiley Dreamtech (www.wileydreamtech.com) . "Flash is such
a diverse application, it appeals to both designers and developers," states the intro.
"Designers love the application because of the ease with which they can create
compelling animations. Developers enjoy the sophisticated applications they can
create, such as shopping carts, which marry animation and ActionScript to create an
application that's not only functional but also fun for the end user." A caution is also
added: "Once you learn the application, you'll start thinking of new and cool ways to
dazzle your viewing audience. The only problem is that these creative sparks often
wake you from a sound sleep. Keep a pen and pencil by your bedside so you can jot
your new idea down and get back to sleep."
You can do everything, but not overnight, because "Flash MX 2004 has multiple
layers of complexity." Also, "ActionScript is complex and can take years for non-
programmers to master." There is good news, however: That even a beginner can
"jump right into Flash and start making movies right away." The book has `tips' and
`notes' all along the way, to help understanding. A few `tips': To practise using the
Pen tool, try tracing over freeform images you have created with the Pencil tool; if
you are using WAV or AIFF sound files, it is recommended that you save them at a
bit rate of 16 bits, 22 kHz mono before importing them into Flash, and Mono sound
is half the size of stereo; you can create an interesting animation by entering
negative values in the Height and Width fields.
A sampler of `notes': The Distort tool only becomes available if you have selected
an editable shape; gradients can't be applied to strokes or text unless the text is
broken apart; locked layers do not display Onion Skins.
Lastly, don't forget that these days, Flash-driven sites are synonymous with "good
design practice".
**
IT is India's tomorrow
D. Murali
Get the full picture on the great digital transformation being wrought by information
and communication technology (ICT). It's food for thought... and admiration.

THE Grameen phone scheme in Bangladesh provided one cellular phone each to
10,000 villages for community use. Kerala's fishermen bargain rates for their catch
using mobiles they carry out to sea. An Internet bus goes about with 20 computers
in Malaysia, "bringing a new world of information and learning opportunities to
school children in rural communities". And Dr Devi Shetty, a cardio-surgeon in
Bangalore, is connected to 27 districts in the state and also to West Bengal and
Assam for consultation. Is there a correlation between information and
communication technology (ICT) usage and economic growth? Yes, says Vinod Vaish
in his foreword to The Great Digital Transformation by D.K. Ghosh, from Sunrise
Publications (sunrisepublications@front.ru). "The intensive application of ICTs has
enabled emergence of a new company characterised by high productivity, efficient
markets, innovations in products and services, technologies, business models and
organisational structures." The book, subtitled `a saga of sustainable development',
notes that the South Asian countries are a fertile group to cooperate on ICT
implementation because of their geographic continuity, common historic experience,
close cultural and linguistic environment and so forth.
Peter Drucker's book Management Challenges for the 21st Century is cited in a
chapter that begins with a new definition of IT by the Prime Minister, Atalji - as

`India's tomorrow'. But Drucker had a different explanation: That for almost four
decades people thought IT meant merely T - that is, data processing using a
computer; the significance of I in IT came much later. The enquiry is "leading rapidly
to redefining the tasks to be done with the help of information and, with it, to
redefining the institutions that do these tasks."
The Malaysian Model, dealt with in a separate chapter, discusses the `Multimedia
Super Corridor' (MSC) - a forum for "new roles of government, new cyber laws and
guarantees, collaborations between government and firms, companies and
companies, new broadcasting, new types of entertainment, education and delivery
of healthcare." Ghosh delves into something philosophical when laying down what
are desirable as features in an international telecom order: "open, flexible, and
competitive; user, rather than operator-oriented; containing an element of universal
service both at the domestic and the international level; and economically efficient."
But there is a telecommunications gap; it has three main dimensions. "The
international gap, qualitative and technological gap, and the domestic gap."
Towards the end of the book, the author writes: "India, Malaysia and the Philippines,
the three South Asian countries benefiting from outsourcing phenomenon would
themselves be outsourcing their work once they too grow to be of world class." What
a pipedream, you may think. But he adds: "This is happening already; an Indian
company has set up a BPO unit in Malaysia. And Indian IT companies are buying up
many small US companies and turning them around." Is that making you sit up
already?
Blessed are the Perl-iterates

BIOLOGY is a life science, while computing is a machine world. But computers have
become commonplace in biology, writes D. Curtis Jamison in "Perl Programming for
Bioinformatics & Biologists", from Wiley Dreamtech (www.wileydreamtech.com) .
"Almost every biology lab has some type of computer, and the uses of the computer
range from manuscript preparation to Internet access, from data collection to data
crunching." The field of bioinformatics can be split into two broad areas, states the
intro: "Computational biology and analytical bioinformatics." The former is about
"formal algorithms and testable hypotheses of biology, encoded into various
programs"; computationists "spend their time thinking about the mathematics of
biology" and develop bioinformatic tools such as BLAST or FASTA. Analytical
bioinformatics puts those tools to use for tasks such as sequencing or regression.
Why Perl? Because it is the most widely used scripting language in bioinformatics,
notes the author. What is Perl? Its author Larry Wall christened it so for `practical
extraction and reporting language', because it was originally created "for parsing
files and creating formatted reports". The name could just as easily stand for
`pathologically eclectic rubbish lister' Wall had jested because the language is
"perfect for rummaging through files looking for a particular pattern or characters,
or for reformatting data tables."
How do these scientists put the language to use? For quick and dirty creation of
small analysis programs, such as "to parse a nucleotide sequence into the reverse
complement sequence". Such a program is called `glutility' - because it takes the
output of one program and changes it into a form suitable for import into another
program.
The book is replete with bio examples, such as storing DNA segment into a string,
and using Perl's power "to find motifs, translate DNA sequences to RNA, or
transcribe RNA sequences to protein"; deploying Bioperl that ships with Tools
distribution; applying splice to truncate an array, e.g. splice(@genes, 1). What a
blessing to have Perl help in bio work! But `blessing' a referent is the actual trick to
creating object-oriented Perl code, writes the author. "The bless command marks
the referent as belonging to a particular class or package." Okay, how to bless?
bless($reference, "package_name"). Count yourself blessed if you are Perl-iterate!
Coding is the `easy' part

THE Mars expedition has Java running far, far away. For the earthlings, Paul Hatcher
and John Gosney write JavaScript Professional Projects, a book from Easwar Press
(www.eswarbooks.com) . "This book is not beginner-level basic tutorial, but a more
advanced exploration of a real-world project that will show you how to implement
JavaScript in actual applications," warns the intro. Center Park School is the fictitious
project for which you play Web designer. "Rather than just throwing a bunch of
sample code at you and asking you to make sense of it on your own, the project is
divided into chapters that deal with a specific aspect of the final Web site." If you
thought all design is about coding, you could be wrong. "Actual coding of a project is
often the `easy' part, and developing a design plan and project template the real
challenge," say the authors. "Working with clients can be a daunting task, especially
if those customers are not technically minded."
All right, what is JavaScript? Designed by Netscape Communications and Sun, it is a
"lightweight programming language that you can use to add dynamic effects to your
Web pages." HTML has limitations, because it can only describe the way a page's
elements such as text, forms, hyperlinks and tables look like; it cannot dictate how
they behave which is where JavaScript steps in. "The ability to embed JavaScript
scripts in a Web page gives you, the programmer, much more control over how your
Web page behaves." When you use it in combination with the browser's Document
Object Model (DOM), JavaScript can produce intricate, dynamic HTML effects as well
as animation and sound.
If your job is in IS security, you must remember that JavaScript has a history of
security problems. Most of these security holes have been caught and fixed, "but

new ones are being discovered all the time." So, a developer has to "keep up-to-
date on the current status" of patches and bugs.
The book's lingo is simple. Try this: "The most important thing to know about using
functions is how to make them work. Only three conditions need to be met for a
function call to succeed. First, the function must have been previously defined in the
program. Second, the correct number of parameters must be passed to it. Lastly,
the correct object must be present - you cannot call the string object's split function
without a string object." A book to invoke before you launch upon your own project.
**
Books2Byte - February 2004
 Networking in a metro (February 04, 2004)
 Let's talk tech (February 11, 2004)
 Information security is no black art (February 18, 2004)
 Never too old for `toys' (February 25, 2004)
**
Networking in a metro
D. Murali
What would you call a portion of the metro that touches the customer? Find the
answer to that plus the relationship between IT and social organisation, and a whole
lot more...

CHENNAI is getting all the negative publicity it cannot afford as being severely
water-starved and politically surcharged, among others. But not far from the city is
Bangalore that James Heitzman paints as the "Network City".
It is the fifth-largest metropolis in the country with "a transnational reputation as a
centre for science and technology," states the book, from Oxford University
Press(www.oup.com) . Subtitled `planning the information society in Bangalore', the
book traces the relationship between IT and social organisation, and analyses the
evolution of "an inter-organisational model that accompanied the rapid expansion of
computer and telecommunication technologies, alongside developments in the
educational system, the research community, and the non-profit sector."
It is not as if the city to envy "the hub of a dynamic software industry, India's Silicon
Valley" had financial and infrastructure crises, even as it shifted towards a globalised
economy. Yet, "There was a radical transformation of the social landscape of the
city," writes the author, "as private sector companies, transnational corporations,
and non-government organisations began to interact with the state at more model
decision-making forums."
The man who would make a difference to the city was born in 1860, in a village near
Chik Ballapur. Yes, we're talking about Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya who founded
the Engineering College in Bangalore. "He became a nationwide expert in industrial
organisation and the management of technology," notes the author about a man
whose motto was, `Industrialise or perish.' He was a man with a never-say-die
attitude who chaired a board that designed the Farakka bridge over the Ganges

when he was 92. Gandhi was "totally opposed to Visvesvaraya in his ambition for
Americanising India," but Nehru held different views.
"Something happened in the last two decades of the 20th century that transformed
this slow-paced industrial city into a global presence in the information society,"
observes the author in a chapter titled `Becoming Silicon Valley'. The Indian
Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, played no mean part in `the informatisation
of the city'. The book gives due credit to the research bodies: "The availability of
expert consultants from the variety of research establishments as a whole seems to
have played a very important role in the clustering of high-technology firms."
Heitzman concludes with an appreciation of the `beauty of the informational model'
that makes it `difficult to hide incompetence or corruption,' and compels "those
interested in restricted aggrandisement to devise novel styles of occlusion and
obfuscation." Perhaps, you can't spell Bangalore without `i' or `t'.
Last mile, or first?
The networking industry is a divided world, in spite of all connections. Pools of
expertise are varied: LAN switching, IP routing, and transport. "The `metro' blends
all these areas of expertise," writes Sam Halabi in his intro to Metro Ethernet, from
Cisco Systems (www.ciscopress.com) . The book is "the definitive guide to
enterprise and carrier metro Ethernet applications." One may argue that Ethernet
was not designed for metro applications; or that it "lacks the scalability and
reliability required for mass deployments." Now, how to marry "Ethernet's simplicity
and cost effectiveness with the scale of Internet protocol (IP) and Multiprotocol Label

Switching (MPLS) networks"? Here is where GMPLS, that is generalised MPLS, enters
the scene, presenting "a major shift in the operation and configuration of transport
networks".
Okay, what do you call the portion of the metro that touches the customer? Last
mile, some say, because it is the last span of the carrier's network. However, "in a
world where the paying customer is at the centre of the universe, the industry also
calls this span the first mile to acknowledge that the customer comes first."
In a chapter titled "L2 Switching Basics" you would know about Ethernet Layer 2
concepts such as `flooding' which allows the fast delivery of packets to their
destinations, and `broadcast' that is used for enabling clients to discover resources
that are advertised by servers. CIR is not `sir' spelt amiss, but committed
information rate; and PIR is peak information rate.
Traffic Engineering is not about vehicle control, but "an important MPLS function that
gives the network operator more control over how traffic traverses the network." An
indispensable function emphasises the author, "because of the high cost of network
assets and the commercial an competitive nature of the Internet." That is something
for accountants to bear in mind.
Wednesday,Feb 04, 2004
**
Let's talk tech
D. Murali
What do computers and politics have in common? Everybody talks about both but
there's seldom any understanding of either term. Well, here's a book that does more
than just talk. Plus a look at what net coding will be like in the future.

WITH marauding hordes, Genghis Khan terrorised whole populations. His motto:
"It's not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail." But he is long dead. Yet
his philosophy lives on in the software world, writes Karen Southwick in Everyone
Else Must Fail, from Crown Business (www.crownbusiness.com) . She provides "the
unvarnished truth about Oracle and Larry Ellison". The blurb speaks of how, inside
Oracle, "Ellison has time and again systematically purged key operating, sales, and
marketing people who got too powerful for his comfort." What is his style?
"Freewheeling version of capitalism, the kind practised by the nineteenth century
robber barons who ran their companies as private fiefdoms." The book raises a
question: "Whether Oracle's products and the reliance placed in them by so many
are too important to be subject to the whims of one man." Is there a warning "about
an ingenious man's tendency to be his own company's worst enemy"?
The introduction notes how he has "come a long way from the college dropout who
started at the bottom rung financially and socially." He is "by turns brilliant and
intolerant, inspiring and chilling, energetic and disinterested." Ellison is "one of the
most intriguing, dominant, and misguided leaders of a major twenty-first-century
corporation." Don't forget that more than half of the Fortune 100 cited Oracle as the
preferred database vendor, or that Ellison owns nearly one-fourth of Oracle's stock.
He is "the ultimate narcissist," as one business psychologist said. "Ellison may be the
last of his kind, but he is unforgettable." He complains "about the way the press
tears down heroes, comparing the media to lions at the ancient Roman Colosseum."
Yet he takes gleeful joy "in creating controversies." The author analyses: "Because

of his childhood, Ellison feels vulnerable whenever he feels himself growing
dependent on someone else. He can't stand the thought of abandonment, so he
abandons other people before they can do it to him."
Ellison has gone over to the dark side of the Silicon Valley infatuation with power
and wealth, notes the concluding chapter, titled On the Edge. His world is solipsistic.
But don't count him out too soon. "He has been a wildly entertaining performer,"
finishes the author, but sighs: "How much more he could have been."
Let's talk IT out
What's common between politics and computers? Everybody talks about both and
yet unfortunately few understand. So, Mohammed Azam has taken `a dialogue
oriented approach' to IT. His book Computer Literacy Kit, from Eswar Press
(www.eswar.com) , is aimed at "providing a wholesome learning experience for the
entire family." Being conversational in style, there are many questions throughout
the book, and these find answers from the author's many characters. For instance,
"Who were the first buyers of personal computers?" Hobbyists, who knew electronics
and software, bought the first lot of PCs. "Apple Computers realised that users did
not like the idea of messing around with a lot of wires specially with electricity
running in them and unveiled a model that was fully built. The users had to merely
take it home and connect it to their TV and start work."
Questions often come in torrents: Such as, what is a platter, what is a cylinder, why
is the hard disk sealed, how does the read/ write assembly work, how is data
recorded on magnetic tape, how is the storage of a tape measured, and so forth.

Also, there are short poems. "The computer will tell you with a beep or chime/ That
you pressed the wrong key this time." Or, "The Operating System plays the
host/Taking over after the POST." Yet another, "Command and syntax you need not
cram/But to run Windows you need plenty of RAM." Try this one on virus: "A virus is
actually an intelligent string of bytes/ But it is malignant and it sometimes bites/
Some rename and some even corrupt a file/ Some are a nuisance, harmless and not
vile."
The book provides an elaborate glossary with entries such as "a.out: The default
name of the executable file produced by the Unix assembler, link editor, and C
compiler" and "Daisy chain: The linking of items one after another. In word
processing, daisy chain printing means to print documents one after another." To
keep the conversation alive, there are illustrations throughout the book. Good read
for starters.
Net coding
In the near future, we will be dealing with distributed applications, fragments of
which run on different systems, in heterogeneous networks, under different
operating systems; and the computer itself would lose its traditional look, and take
any shape, from cubic units built into the walls to small devices such as
wristwatches. This is the scenario that Sergei Dunaev paints in Advanced Internet
Programming Technologies and Applications, from Eswar PressThe book is a guide
for developing Net applications and e-com solutions. "Readers learn how to create
and use objects such as applets, scriplets, servlets, XML-constructions, JSP, ASP
pages and so on," states the back cover. "JavaBeans/ CORBA and ActiveX/DCOM are
described in detail."

What software developers encounter every day are "two basic technologies," notes
the author in the first chapter. One of these is ActiveX/ DCOM, used on Intel
platforms using Windows OS, while the parallel technology is called JavaBeans/
CORBA, which does not depend on either the platform or the OS. DCOM, which is no
diploma in commerce, but distributed component object model, also called COM
`with a longer wire' because it allows `registration of remote objects'. ActiveX
serves a unique purpose — that of providing operations for program components
inside composite program containers that include Web browsers and other document
viewers. JavaBeans components are "obliged to advertise their characteristics", and
the "clearing of these characteristics by other components is called introspection."
Now what is CORBA? "When we say CORBA, we actually mean CORBA/ IIOP," that is
Common Object Request Broker Architecture/ Internet Inter-ORB. This is a
technology "meant for distributed information objects that can closely interact with
each other within a managing program, which essentially consists of these objects
itself." There is lot more in this `advanced' book for the eager beaver.
**
Information security is no black art
D. Murali
It's a myth that big issues in security can be solved with technology. That's as good
as thinking one's protected with a pile of ammunition under the pillow. This book
breaks that myth, saying that at the very bottom, security is a people issue.

THERE is no patch for ignorance. This is the motto of theInformation Security
Series from Dreamtech Press (www.wileydreamtech.com) of which a recent offering
is Eric Maiwald's Fundamentals of Network Security.
There is a myth that big issues in security can be solved with technology, as much
as one might be fooled into thinking that one is protected with a pile of ammunition
under the pillow. "At the very bottom, security is a people issue," points out the
author.
Thus, chapter one begins with a negative message: "Information security does not
guarantee the safety of your organisation, your information, or your computer
systems. Information security cannot provide protection for your information."
If that puts you off, Maiwald adds that information security is no black art. "There is
no sorcery to implementing proper information security, and the concepts that are
included in information security are not rocket science." Info security is a mindset of
examining threats and vulnerabilities, is what Maiwald says.
Among civil issues that the administrator has to consider is `downstream liability.'
This arises when an organisation that does not perform appropriate security

measures unwittingly becomes the conduit for an attacker who after penetrating the
organisation's systems goes on to attack another organisation.
Now that there is peace at the border, we can try to understand what `demilitarised
zone' means. For network professionals, it means the portion of the network that is
not truly trusted. Abbreviated as DMZ, it provides a place in the network to segment
off systems that are accessed by people on the Internet from those that are only
accessed by employees. "DMZs can also be used when dealing with business
partners and other outside entities."
Every chapter has a multiple-choice quiz. Here's a sampler: Which is the most
common motivation for hackers to break into computers? Tick one of the following:
The challenge, greed, malicious intent or being dared. The most powerful weapon
used by an attacker that involves having a kind voice and the ability to lie is: a murf
attack, a virus attack, social engineering or brute-force? Of the following, which is
classified as malicious code: vendor updates for commercial packages, scripts used
to update signature files, worms sent over the Internet, or logon scripts to map
drives? When a user leaves the organisation, as the network administrator, you
should have procedures in place to: disable the user's account, change the name on
the account, immediately delete the account to increase security, or leave the
account on the system for historical reasons? What can you do to identify rogue
apps: perform wired assessments, perform physical inspections of all areas, use
tools like NetStumbler, or use tools like WEPCrack?
Essential read for those on the frontlines of network.
Weave a Web dream

You have a vision for your Web site and you need a tool that can transform it into
reality. Michael Meadhra provides an answer in How to do Everything with
Dreamweaver MX 2004: A Beginner's Guide, published by Dreamtech Press.
What is Dreamweaver? It is a Macromedia product that belongs to the species of
Web page editing programs; it enables a Web author to work with text, images and
other Web page elementsAmong the panels that show on the product's screen is the
`Assets panel.' It is a "convenient central access point for the various page
elements," explains the author. "The problem with the Assets panel is that it lists
every single asset in the entire site." That is something akin to a cluttered fixed
asset register, one may think. On the Web, however, it is graphics that clutter, but
the origins of hypertext markup language (HTML) and the World Wide Web (WWW)
lay in what scientists and academics used for sharing technical documents. "When
you look past the flashy introduction pages on many Web sites, you see that, even
today, the vast majority of Web documents are composed primarily of text."
It is elementary knowledge that the time required to download and display images
can dramatically increase the time it takes for a browser to display your page. "Make
sure that every image on your page contributes significantly to your message and
justifies the time visitors must wait to see the image," says the author.
"Add alt text for images," is another tip. "Alternate text is one of the key factors in
making your site accessible to visitors whose Web browsing experience doesn't
include images."

Also, remember that editing an image in Dreamweaver is permanent. "The original
image is replaced with the modified one." Sooner or later, you may end up requiring
access to databases. "Most of the objects and behaviours that Dreamweaver
provides for server-side use are designed to work with database connections and
recordsets." Meadhra assures that the kinds of dynamic Web pages you can build
with Dreamweaver are limited only by your imagination.
So, go on weave a dream on the Web.
Closed vs open
IF you are not one of those miserable techies who are too easily satisfied with
coding and keying, here is a book to vet your appetite: Innovation Policy and the
Economy, volume 3 from the National Bureau of Economic Research (www.nber.org)
, edited by Adam B. Jaffe and his team.
The book appreciates the importance of innovation to the economy; and discusses
policies appropriate for research, innovation and the commercialisation of new
technology. A question that the editors address is the effect of venture capital on
innovation. "The effect is far from uniform," notes the book. "During boom periods,
the prevalence of overfunding of particular sectors can lead to a sharp decline in the

effectiveness of venture funds in stimulating new discoveries. And prolonged
downturns may eventually lead to good companies going unfunded."
The chapter titled `The Global Innovation Divide' by Jeffrey Sachs observes how the
difference between the haves and have-nots with respect to the rate of innovative
activity is even greater than the differences in wealth or income. "The world can be
divided roughly into three parts: About one-sixth of the world's population lives in
areas where innovation occurs endogenously. In a middle group of countries, there
is relatively little endogenous innovation, but innovation does diffuse and is adopted
from other places. But perhaps one-quarter of the world's population lives in a
bottom group that is relatively untouched by technology."
A topical issue discussed in a chapter on intellectual property is the competition
between open and closed systems. "There is a tendency for systems to close even
though an open system is socially more desirable," notes the book. "Rather than
trying to use the antitrust laws to attack the maintenance of closed systems, an
alternative approach would be to use IP laws and regulations to promote open
systems and the standard setting organisations that they require." Is there a case
for heading towards being open to closed systems too?
**
Never too old for `toys'
D. Murali
Want to make the transformation from ordinary PC user to Internet Service
Provider? Here's how you can do it.

YOU are an ordinary PC user. Want to become an Internet service provider? If yes,
Christopher Negus and Chuck Wolber have the answer in Linux Toys: Cool Projects
for Home, Office and Entertainment. All the basic software you need to be an ISP is
right in Red Hat Linux, they inform. "You can set up Linux to allow dial-in modems
and routing to the Internet, as well as offer Web publishing, e-mail, and file
transfer." The book is an attempt to "bring together software and hardware to make
some whole working projects," states the preface. "Because we're building them in
Linux, the sky is the limit on where you can go with them." Chapter 1 elaborates:
"While the spirit of the book is one of fun and community, the technology we
describe is quite serious and becoming more powerful each day. Some of the same
software we describe here is running the server computers for companies around
the world."
What are the `toys'? Apart from the mini ISP, you have music jukebox, home video
archive, TV recorder/player, arcade game player, home network server, home
broadcast centre, temperature monitor, telephone answering centre, Web-hosting
service, DogHouse Linux with BSD games, toy car controller and digital picture
frame, each with "complete material list and detailed illustrated instructions."
What's this doggie thing? Chapter 13 explains: "Because the latest Red Hat Linux
won't install on pre-Pentium-class computers," the authors have created a little
distribution of Linux that they call DogHouse Linux. "You can copy it to a floppy and
run it on most computers that have a floppy disk drive. Yes, it should work on your
old 486 machine." What would it do? "You will get enough to feel what it was like to
use old Unix systems, try a few classic Linux commands that will work on almost any

Linux system, and play a few classic pre-Linux character-based games." You are
never too grownup for these `toys'.
Varray, Lob and Acid
AT the heart of RDBMS is SQL, the structured query language. It is the language
used for all operations in the relational database management systems. "It is a
standardised language like C, that is, the syntax of SQL changes very little from one
RDBMS to another," states P.S. Deshpande in "SQL/ PLSQL for Oracle 9i". SQL for
Oracle is similar, therefore, to SQL for Ingres or Sybase. "An important feature of
SQL is that it is a non-procedural language." That means you don't have to describe
how to do; just describe what you want.
Unit II of the book discusses PL/SQL - the language used in all Oracle products.
"PL/SQL language is used in stored programs, procedures, packages, forms and
reports. It's different from other languages, as it does not have conventional input
and output statements. The input is mainly from the table and output is put in the
table."
What are the basic elements of PL/SQL? The author lists: "Lexical units, datatypes,
user-defined subtypes, datatype conversion, declaration, naming conversion, scope
and visibility, assignments, and expressions and comparisons."

You are familiar with array, but what is `varray'? It is "like an array in programming
languages like C, Pascal but it has only single dimension." Okay, is LOB the top
portion of lobster? No, it stands for `large objects' - a datatype to overcome the
limitations of LONG datatype. "LOB has facilitated storage of unstructured data like
text document, graphic images, video clips and sound." Maximum size of LOB is 4
GB and it supports random access.
ACID is not what hooligans throw on people, but the essential properties of
transaction: atomicity, consistency, isolation and durability. "Atomicity means the
effect of the transaction is either full or null. Consistency means the transaction
should generate consistent data defined by application logic. Isolation indicates level
of interference in one transaction by the other transaction. Durability means that the
effect of transaction is durable irrespective of nature of storage." Now, answer a
simple question: "Select a querying book."
Wear your Red Hat
INSTALL, tune and configure Fedora and Red Hat Linux Enterprise 3. Navigate
GNOME and KDE desktops to run the latest applications. Learn to use the Linux
shell, file system, and text editors. Try out the latest security techniques for
detecting and dealing with attacks and setting up encryption keys. Discover how to
install extra software packages to play games, enhance security, and administer
Linux. Install Linux on a laptop and manage power events with acpid. And more.

All these are what Christopher Negus discusses in "Red Hat Linux ver. (10) Bible:
Fedora and Enterprise Edition," a book that comes with 3 bonus CD-ROMs with full
installation of the software including all binary packages.
Who are you? Asking this question in the preface, the author continues: "You don't
need to be a programmer to use this book. You may simply want to know how to
administer a Linux system in a workgroup or on a network. You may be migrating
from Microsoft OS to Red Hat Linux because of its networking and multiuser
features."
As with accounting, where you can't learn unless you do, so with computer system.
"Get your hands on it." So, the book adopts "a task-oriented approach." Well, you've
been holding your question thus far: What is Linux? "A phenomenon waiting to
happen," writes Negus in chapter 1. "The computer industry suffered from a rift. In
the 1980s and 1990s, people had to choose between inexpensive, market-driven PC
operating systems from Microsoft and expensive, technology-driven operating
systems such as Unix. Free software was being created all over the world, but lacked
a common platform to rally around. Linux became that common platform." Linux is a
free OS that was created by Linus Torvalds when he was a student in 1991.
"Torvalds then released the system to his friends and to a community of `hackers'
on the Internet and asked them to work with it, fix it, and enhance it. It took off."
The focus of Linux was "on keeping communications open among software
developers." Their common goal was to get the code to work, "without much
concern about who owned the code."
What is Red Hat Linux? "Several companies and organisations began gathering and
packaging Linux software together into usable forms called distributions. The main
goal of a Linux distribution is to make the hundreds of unrelated software packages
that make up Linux work together as a cohesive whole. For the past few years, the
most popular commercial distribution has been Red Hat Linux."
And if you are working on a Linux project, you perhaps know what book to keep by
your side.
Books courtesy: Wiley Dreamtech (www.wileydreamtech.com)
**
Books2Byte - March 2004
 Seven million dollars to win (March 03, 2004)
 Some help with your project (March 10, 2004)
 Check if `struts' are in place (March 17, 2004)
 Making hacking challenging (March 24, 2004)
 No Eclipse of Sun's product (March 31, 2004)
**
Seven million dollars to win
D. Murali

There are at least seven ways of making megabucks, if you have a computer and
want money. Get cracking on the seven greatest unsolved mathematical puzzles of
our time.
HAVE a computer? Want money? And you yell, "Yes, yes!" Okay, here are at least
seven ways of making mega bucks. Keith Devlin gives the clues in The Millennium
Problems - a book from Granta Books (www.granta.com) that discusses "the seven
greatest unsolved mathematical puzzles of our time".
The back-cover teases: "Still unclimbed, they are probably more difficult to conquer
than any real mountains on this earth." Devlin, the Executive Director of the Center
for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University, makes the
discussion so easy that it may seem that the $1-million prize offered by the Clay
Foundation in 2000 for each of the seven problems is within easy reach.
The problems range from topology to cryptography, computing to aircraft design,
from number theory to particle physics. "The P versus NP problem" is about
computers. "Is not all math done on computers?" one may wonder, but the author
clarifies: "Not actually.
True, most numerical calculations are done on computers, but numerical calculation
is only a very small part of mathematics, and not a typical part at that."
Here are some more surprises: "Although the electronic computer came out of
mathematics - the final pieces of the math were worked out in the 1930s, a few
years before the first computers were built - the world of computing has hitherto
generated only two mathematical problems that would merit inclusion among the
world's most important."
And, both problems were about computing as a conceptual process rather than any
specific computing devices.

One of the two problems asked for proof that certain equations cannot be solved by
a computer. Hilbert had included this as number 10 on his 1900 list of tough
problems. But this was solved in 1970, and so, that leaves only one. "This is a
question about how efficiently computers can solve problems.
Computer scientists divide computational tasks into two main categories: Tasks of
type P can be tackled effectively on a computer; tasks of type E could take millions
of years to complete. Unfortunately, most of the big computational tasks that arise
in industry and commerce fall into a third category, NP, which seems to be
intermediate between P and E." So, what are P, E and NP? Ah, I'm not going to spoil
the suspense.
Corporate train wreck
SUCCESS plus success is not necessarily double triumph. Two titans coming
together may not end in a happy story always. AOL and Time Warner's marriage
was billed as the ultimate that could happen between the new and the old media,
but it turned out to be a major debacle.
For those who wonder what happened after "a company without assets acquired a
company without a clue," Kara Swisher has the clues in There Must be a Pony in
Here Somewhere. The book, published by Crown Business (www. Crown Business.
com), is about `the messiest merger in history' with `rollicking narrative' from the
technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal. It begins with her note thus: "Of
the myriad problems plaguing the AOL Time Warner merger, perhaps one of the
biggest problems was the lack of disclosure among the many players about the
motives, business prospects, and simple emotions."

The tale, in short, was about "a wheezing and increasingly desperate traditional
media company, scared of inevitable death (or, worse still, irrelevance) in the hot
swirl of digital revolution" marrying "the young, sexy, and possibly sleazy starlet of
the new media society." But disaster ensued in "belly flop proportions by any
measure you might care to use", leading to "one of the greatest train wrecks in
corporate history."
The carnage had many dimensions: "The stock's 75 per cent drop within two years
of the deal's completion, the vicious purge of the top executives responsible for the
merger, the investigations into dicey accounting practices," to name a few.
Swisher writes: "It felt a bit like I was watching someone fall down a flight of stairs
in slow motion, and every bump and thump made me wince." And in the epilogue
she adds: "I'm not sure there is enough perspective in the world to assuage those
who had suffered under the disastrous marriage."
The author, however, is bullish that the Net "will be an even bigger deal in the future
than it was when it first burst onto the scene."
Logic? "The history of technological evolution is proof of that: Innovations first cause
a frenzy, and then flame out and are sometimes widely discounted before they
ultimately reveal their true power."
Clean memory
HI-TECH corporations hire a brilliant computer engineer for specialised top-secret
projects. His name is Michael Jennings. "Once a job is complete, his short-term
memory is routinely erased so as not to divulge any sensitive company information
to future clients." This is from the blurb of Paycheck, a sci-fi work by Philip K.Dick -
"now a major motion picture starring Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman".

There are artificial brains, robot claws, time ship, parallel time, non-time and so on.
The chapter titled `Autofac' has a discussion on a driverless truck that keeps
communicating.
"There has to be some way to get to it," says a human. "Specific semantic signals
are meaningful to it; all we have to do is find those signals. Rediscover, actually.
Maybe half a dozen out of a billion possibilities."
Then the humans play a trick with the truck by messing up with the cargo it brings,
but fail. "We humans lose every time," says one, dejected.
"The truck regarded them calmly, its receptors blank and impassive. It was doing its
job. The planetwide network of automatic factories was smoothly performing the
task imposed on it five years before, in the days of the Total Global Conflict."
Well, at last, the humans succeed in getting the truck to depart from its routine, and
switch to situation handling.
It pops a message that reads, "State the nature of defect." The instruction sheets
listed rows of possible defects with neat boxes by each. They don't use any of the
given boxes, but use the open space given for further data to write: "The product is
thoroughly pizzled." What's that?
"It's a semantic garble - the factory won't be able to understand it. Maybe we can
jam the works."
A factory representative appeared on the scene and began: "This is a data-collecting
machine capable of communicating."
And it asks for the meaning of `pizzled' because "it does not exist in the taped
vocabulary."
The human plays a dangerous game: "Pizzled means the condition of a product that
is manufactured when no need exists. It indicates the rejection of objects on the
grounds that they are no longer wanted."
Books courtesy: Landmark (www.landmarkonthenet.com)
Wednesday,Mar 03, 2004
**
Some help with your project
D. Murali
There are simple tasks to life, and then there are projects. If you want help with
project management, here's the way.

THERE are simple tasks, and there are projects. Making arrangements for a wedding
is a project, and ditto for divorce. Likewise, getting admission in pre-KG, building a
house, launching a satellite are all projects. "If you are responsible for project
management, you need Project 2003 and the complete information in this
comprehensive guide," states the back cover of Microsoft Office Project 2003
Bible by Elaine Marmel. The book helps one to set up a project, assign tasks,
resources, and costs; use Gantt charts and tables at each phase of project
development; track project progress with baselines; record actual durations and
costs; analyse cost information with PivotTables; and so forth. If you are among
those who manage projects "with stacks of outdated to-do lists and colourful hand-
drawn wall charts", and "scribble notes on calendars in pencil", remember that dates
and tasks will change over time. "To manage a project, you need a set of
procedures," states the author. "Project management software automates many of
these procedures."
You have heard of print server, mail server and so forth. What is Project Server? It
enables one to manage projects on the intranet or the Internet. "Only the manager
must install and use Microsoft Project. Everyone else on the project uses Project
Web Access, the Web-based product that connects to the Project Server database."
Project 2003 is the last version of Project that will allow users to collaborate using e-
mail, please note. Thereafter, it is onward march to Web-based ambience. Okay,
what to do if the problem is complex? The tip is to create sub-projects and then use
the consolidation feature of the software that allows you to insert one project into
another. That is why sub-projects are also called inserted projects.

At nearly a thousand pages, reading the book could be your next project.
Web programming
JAY Greenspan and his team have written the second edition ofMySQL/PHP Database
Applications. If you're wondering whether this is at all relevant, the intro has the
answer: "No matter what your background, whether you have a history with Visual
Basic or COBOL, or maybe just some HTML and JavaScript, your resume is only
going to improve with some Web application development experience." In the
authors' opinion, there is no better combination of tools to have under your belt than
PHP and MySQL. For the curious, "HP stands for PHP: Hypertext Pre-processor,"
explains http://www.psike.com. "The funny abbreviation follows the style set by
Richard Stallmann when he founded GNU (GNU's not Unix!) As the name says, it's a
pre-processor for hypertext, which is just another word for what most people call
Web pages." Also, "since it is a pre-processor, it runs on the remote web server and
processes the Web pages before they arrive to the browser. This makes it a so-
called server-side scripting language."
PHP and MySQL are open source, so the source code for the heart of the applications
is available to anyone who wants to see it. "PHP belongs to a class of languages
known as middleware. These languages work closely with the Web server to
interpret the requests from the Web." And middleware is where you'll be doing the
bulk of your work, point out the authors. Why PHP? "When it comes to Web
programming, all languages do pretty much the same things. They all interact with

relational databases, they all work with file systems, and they all interact with Web
servers. The question of which language is best is rarely a matter of a language's
ability or inability to perform certain actions. It's usually a matter of how quickly and
easily you can do what you need to do."
This is a book for the serious learner. You can check if you're one by reading this:
"BerkeleyDB tables come from Sleepycat software. This table type provides
transaction support but offers only page-level locking. While these tables are
reasonably good, there's very little reason to use Berkeley tables when InnoDB
tables are available... InnoDB tables provide full ACID transaction support and row-
level locking." And if you've strayed into the book and finding yourself to be no
different from Alice in Wonderland, remember that "the easiest way to get yourself
into trouble when coming at an application is not to know exactly what you are
trying to achieve." Don't forget the aim: to improve the CV.
D-I-Y software
COMMERCIAL applications cost a lot of money. Not always. Satya Sai Kolachina's
"Linux Application Development for the Enterprise" provides a bunch of enterprise
Java applications that are commercial-grade. The applications range from desktop to
database, TCP to UDP-socket based, Java to CORBA, JSP to J2EE, and so forth. More
than half the book is devoted to Java-based work, but it also "serves as a ready
reference for most common Linux/UNIX tools" such as vi, grep, awk, sed and so
forth.

To make work easier, there are features such as VisualCLX - a component set that is
"a wealth of productivity tools and lets the developer tap into the Windows-like
development features on the Linux platform." Examples of components are basic
widgets such as edit box, label, list box, combo box, list view, tree view, and such.
What is a Data Module? Looks simple enough a question to elicit a guess answer.
The author defines: "It is a non-visual component that serves as a container to host
other non-visual components." MDI is not a management development institute, but
multiple document interface. "An MDI application contains a main window frame that
acts as a container for one or more child windows." Getting lost? Okay, `sockets'
must be what we see at electrical points. No, "sockets provide the basic
communication layer required for two applications running in different address
spaces to communicate with each other, thus forming the foundation necessary for
distributed application development."
What about `Remote Method Invocation'?
You may almost want to do that, to pray for Linux development that is as easy as
just pressing a button, but "RMI forms the basis of the robust architecture behind
the Enterprise JavaBeans." Kolachina achieves one goal in this handy book: To make
you feel confident about launching into commercial space.
Books courtesy: Wiley Dreamtech (www.wileydreamtech.com)
**
Check if `struts' are in place
D. Murali
When raising physical structures, construction engineers use struts to provide
support for each floor of a building. Likewise, software engineers use struts to
support each layer of a business application.

SOMEBODY wanted to name the invisible underpinnings of Web applications. The
analogy that struck him or her was supports for houses, buildings, and so the name
got stuck: Struts. "When raising physical structures, construction engineers use
struts to provide support for each floor of a building. Likewise, software engineers
use Struts to support each layer of a business application." This friendly explanation
is found in the intro to Struts in Action by Ted Husted and his team. A publication of
Dreamtech Press (www.wileydreamtech.com) , the book has inputs for beginners to
professionals, and covers all aspects of Struts framework, demonstrating key Struts
features with Artimus (Greek goddess of hunt) and illustrating through case studies.
How much does it cost? It's free, Struts, I mean, because it's open source that you
can look up inwww.apache.org. "Struts relies on standard technologies - such as
JavaBeans, Java servlets, and JavaServer Pages (JSP) - that most developers
already know how to use."
Now, what is a framework? It is a reusable, semi-complete application that can be
specialised to produce custom applications, explain the authors, citing Johnson. One
good reason why developers use frameworks like Struts is "to hide the nasty details
behind acronyms like HTTP, CGI, and JSP." So, the book assures, you don't need to
be an alphabet soup guru, but a working knowledge of these base technologies can
help you devise creative solutions to tricky problems.

All of a sudden, the intro whirs to show "Struts from 30,000 feet" to give the big
picture. That it uses a Model 2 architecture, ActionServlet controls the navigational
flow, Struts Action does not render the response itself but forwards the request on
to another resource, and so on. And you wonder when rubber would meet the road.
So, the authors launch the first Struts application straightaway: "A simple user
registration application." The recipe requires: An ActionForm, an Action, struts-
config.xml file and three pages. "That's it!" And the Greek goddess Artimus is a
Web-based news poster that can also publish its articles as RSS (not the Sangh, but
Rich Site Summary). Good fun.
Lingo of models
UNIFIED Modelling Language is not the irritating commentary or blaring music that
plays when catwalks are on, but is "an evolutionary general-purpose, tool-
supported, and industry-standardised modelling language for specifying, visualising,
constructing, and documenting the artefacts of a system-intensive process." That is
a mouthful of definition you would find on the back cover of Guide to Applying the
UML by Sinan Si Alhir, a Springer book from Eswar Press (www.eswarbooks.com) .
Chapter 1 explains that UML's scope "encompasses fusing the concepts of three of
the most prominent methodologies - Grady Booch's '93 method, James Rumbaugh's
Object Modelling Technique (OMT), and Ivar Jacobson's Object-Oriented Software
Engineering (OOSE) method."

That must be a complicated blend of all coding stuff, you fear, but UML isn't
frightening, because it is a modelling language. So, a UML Sentence would have no
indented lines but a stick man (the actor), and boxes for container, node and
component, plus arrows. Something that resembles cave art. "The UML sentence
unites the various model views via their elements... Traceability between model
elements enables us to manage change and the resulting complexity due to
change."
A few interesting terms: What is a swimlane? "A region of responsibility for action
and subactivity states, but not call states." And submachine? Not a fast gun, but a
normal state with an `include' declaration within its internal transitions compartment
that invokes a state machine defined elsewhere. There is also the lifeline - not only
on your palm but also in UML. It represents the existence of an element over time.
You read on to stay in the race, lest you become an artefact, but know this much
that an artifact is depicted as a stereotyped classifier. Okay, some basic doubt. What
is a model? "A description of a system and context from a specific viewpoint and at a
specific level of abstraction." And, abstraction or abstracting involves formulating
metaconcepts from a set of non-metaconcepts. Manifestation involves exemplifying
or instantiating non-metaconcepts from metaconepts. Instantiation has three variant
forms, including classifying, stereotyping, and extending. A book for the meta guys
and gals. Are you one such?
Know-how,show-how

AS we slog at call centres and data entry stations, we hitch our sights to the star
that promises a better tomorrow when we would be ascending the value chain and
doing higher techie things. To help such effort, there would be a transfer of
technology, which makes Rajiv Jain's Guide on Foreign Collaboration: Transfer of
Technology a relevant read. Published by India Investment Publication
(www.vidhiindia.com) , the book discusses the concept of technology, tech transfer,
licensing, franchise, know-how, patent, trade mark, and so on. What is high-
technology, and what is low, is not something uniform across countries. So, a
precise definition is hazardous, observes the author. That also explains why courts
have difficulty when dealing with cases that hinge on tech issues. Licensing is one of
the ways of technology transfer. "Licensing is the genus and franchising is a
species," writes Jain. "In a licensing agreement, the licensor plays a less dominant
role. He is happy as long as royalty flows in as per the agreement. He does not
breathe down the neck of the licensee, so to speak, which is often the case in a
franchising arrangement." So, if you are tying up with a hardware or software
manufacturer from abroad, think of the pros and cons of licensing versus
franchising. Remember however "licensing arrangement of a patent has to be
registered with the Controller of Patents to prevent abuse." What about patenting
know-how? No, you can't, says Jain; so know-how does not yet enjoy any special
legal protection, national or international. "Know-how should pass three tests: It
should have industrial utility; its secrecy should confer some competitive advantage
on the licensee; and it should be proprietary technical information." While know-how

can be reduced to data, drawings and graphs, there is also an intangible part of a
composite knowledge, called `show-how'. This justifies the use of non-disclosure
clauses in software development teams. Now a tricky problem: Who owns inventions
made by employees? It is not unusual that your staff strikes upon a smart algorithm
or work around a programming bottleneck innovatively. "Whether the invention
made by the employee should belong to the employer depends upon the contractual
relationship express or implied, between the employer and the employee," notes
Jain. "In the absence of a special contract, the invention of a servant even though
made in the employer's time, and with the employer's materials, and at the expense
of the employer, does not become the property of the employer." As a saving,
however, "inventions made by employees specifically employed for R&D may in
general belong to the employer." So, read the terms of the contract once again,
before laying claim to inventions.
**
Making hacking challenging
D. Murali
If you think hacking happens with much drama, you could be mistaken. Hackers are
now going about their `business' as if it were a science. But don't get intimidated,
instead get into their mindset to read them better.
THIS world is not a safe one, however much our netas assure us, so you need to
lock your door and take out an insurance policy. Ditto with computer software? "Plug

the holes in your Windows infrastructure by seeing it through the eyes of the
attacker," says the back cover of Hacking Windows Server 2003 Exposed by Joel
Scambray and Stuart McClure. It has `secrets and solutions' where "you'll learn
`step-by-step' how intruders locate targets, gain super-user access, and ransack
compromised networks." Greg Wood writes in his foreword: "Working with the
precision of a neurosurgeon, the computational capability of a nuclear physicist and
the tenacity of a rookie detective on his first stakeout, hackers dissect complex
technologies in their quest to discover and exploit a microscopic network of
computer gaffe." Don't be intimidated, he instructs; get into their mindset, because
that's what Sun Tzu too taught us. One could, however, be fooled by the popular
image of hacking with much drama. "Hacking today is a science. It is a series of
tool-enhanced processes methodically executed by criminals. In many cases,
hacking has regressed to a state of cut and paste plagiarism." The least you can do
is to make hacking more challenging, says Wood.
For baiters of Bill Gates, the authors have this to say: "Microsoft's products are
designed for maximum ease-of-use, which drives their rampant popularity. What
many fail to grasp is that security is a zero-sum game: The easier it is to use
something, the more time and effort must go into securing it. Think of security as a
continuum between the polar extremes of 100 per cent security on one side and 100
per cent usability on the other, where 100 per cent security equals 0 per cent
usability, and 100 per cent usability equates to 0 per cent security."
The book has `bomb' icons planted all through, to indicate àttack'; likewise there is
an icon for `countermeasure'. Beginning with `foundations' where the authors
discuss the basics of info security and architecture, the book moves on to `profiling'
— that is, footprinting, scanning and enumeration. Then comes the strategy, `divide
and conquer' that includes privilege escalation, cleanup and so on. Èxploiting
vulnerable services and clients' is the next part containing chapters to discuss
hacking of IIS and SQL Server, denial of service, physical attacks and so forth. Last
comes `playing defense' to talk about NT Family security features and tools.
The authors wrap up with `the future of Windows security' that has inputs on the
next wave of OS, `code named Longhorn'. Such as: NAT-T, Network Address
Translator Traversal; GPMC, Group Policy Management Console; ADAM, Active
Directory in Application Mode; MOM, Microsoft Operations Manger; and SMS,
Systems Management Server.
This could be your insurance cover for a safer server.
Cross-platform communications
SACHIN becomes the first Indian to score a booming century in Pakistan and Pervez
watches the battle in the arena. It seems as if only the other day on both sides of
the border a different booming had echoed from the hills, but now we know we can
work with each other, daggers sheathed and guns holstered. A similar détente is
happening in the software world: They are talking about how Sun and Microsoft can
work together! Motivation has come from users who use one proprietary system or
the other and feel stuck when they find that the thing is not reusable in another.
Dwight Peltzer's .NET & J2EE Interoperability is òne-of-a-kind resource' providing
solutions to "cross-platform communications between business partners and the
transmission of mission-critical enterprise data."

There are different levels of interoperability, explains chapter 1. You need that
within a platform and across platforms, and the book has numerous examples to
demonstrate how the two giants can provide application integration. What comes
helpful is that "the .NET web services architecture is similar to J2EE 1.4." However,
"Porting the complete .NET platform to Java and reimplementing the entire
framework as a set of Java packages is less than satisfactory," points out the
author. A solution may, therefore, lie in "a cross-compiler" translating all .NET
source code or binary code. "This translation allows all .NET classes and Java classes
to interact seamlessly with each other."
Perhaps already you are in a reflective mood wondering if there could be seamless
integration of the two countries, but you need to know what `reflection' is. It is "the
process of runtime discovery of data types." Reflection allows you to load an
assembly, examine the manifest, and discover all types residing within the
assembly, explains Peltzer. With all that work to do, `reflection' doesn't seem to be
a passive activity.
A major advantage with the author's style is that he writes quite understandably
even for lay readers. A sampler, where he talks about SOA: "What is a service-
oriented architecture? Web services reside somewhere on the Internet in a registry.
Registries contain numerous web services, and each individual service exposes its
own services to requestors (clients). The services represent publishable and
discoverable interfaces. An interface is an abstract class containing a function or
method declaration, which includes a list of parameters." Don't be baffled by the
unending J signature, starting from JAAS to JVM, through a maze of more Js such
as, JAX, JCA, JCP, JMS, JNDI, JRE, Ja-NET and J-Integra.

A whole chapter is devoted to `best practices, design patterns, security and
business solutions'. If you see CAS, don't be frightened, because it stands for Code
Access Security, which is "Microsoft's answer to preventing untrusted code from
performing undesirable actions on systems, resulting in compromise of mission-
critical data."
A book that would enjoy readership in both the camps.
Vote for the mouse
WITH election countdown on, a contest has started for participating in governance.
And this is something would-be-rulers should read: Government Online:
Opportunities and Challenges by M.P. Gupta, Prabhat Kumar and Jaijit Bhattacharya.
"Governments at the Centre, at the State and even at the level of local bodies like
Municipalities, and Panchyati Raj Institutions, are not only waking up to the power of
leveraging IT for good governance, but are also embracing it," announces the book.
"Distance is no longer variable," writes F.C. Kohli in his foreword. "IT has increased
productivity, effectiveness and transparency." The preface has poetic lines: "E-
governance offers an opportunity to change the mast of a ship for changing its
direction." So, there could be justification in changing governments if they didn't
resort to e-governance. But one wonders if calling India "an IT superpower" would
be all right, unless such hype could be bunched with a host of other `shining' stuff.
The authors have spiced their chapters with numerous case studies such as how
Bangladesh put the bytes in birth registration, Germany experimented with
kindergartens, and Karnataka's Bhoomi delivered land titles online. Also dealt with

are Beijing's E-Park, Uganda's failed electronic voter registration, and Seoul's anti-
corruption project.
A book that is useful not only for e-administrators but also for e-citizens.
Books courtesy: Tata McGraw-Hill, www.tatamcgrawhill.com
**
No Eclipse of Sun's product
D. Murali
Sun Microsystems and IBM look at Eclipse as a chance to meet the challenge of
Microsoft's .NET initiative and get Java back to the desktop.
GIFT-WRAPPED as a $40-million bounty from IBM to the Open Source community
was Eclipse, a platform for "everything and nothing in particular". Sun was not too
happy when Eclipse came around, and we are not talking about solar eclipse.
However, after those initial hiccups, Sun Microsystems and IBM now look at Eclipse
as "an important chance to meet the challenge of Microsoft's .NET initiative, and -
most important - to get Java back to the desktop."

All that input from the intro of Eclipse 2 for Java Developers by Berthold Daum can
be sufficiently gripping to get started.
"Because of its plug-in architecture, Eclipse is as adaptable as a chameleon and can
find a habitat in quite different environments," says the author, and I can already
see some politicians trying to take a peek at Eclipse.
Those who know about IBM's WebSphere Application Developer (WSAD) would
appreciate that Eclipse, with about 70 plug-ins compared to WSAD's 500-700, is
more like "the community edition". Be warned, however, that the book assumes
readers to have a "good knowledge of Java and object-oriented programming
concepts" and examples are "from multimedia area." If you want to download
Eclipse, it is 62 MB plus.
One of the first things you need to get is `perspective'. "We must first open an
Eclipse perspective," guides the author. "Perspectives consist of a combination of
windows and tools that is best suited for particular tasks." And the Java
development environment takes over.
Screenshots in the pages do more than explain the sequences; they are enticing, so
you would start itching to plunge into Java even if you aren't Java-literate, because
much of the code is pre-generated. There is also a `scrapbook' where you can try
out Java expressions or just jot down a new idea. And `code assistant' will pop-up a
list of expressions to save you from tedious typing.
Chapter 3 implements an èxample project' based on FreeTTS speech synthesizer -
to create a GUI that "includes an animated face that moves its lips synchronously
with the speech output." First, "to achieve good lip synchronisation it is necessary to
have event notification for single phonemes."
The author explains in à short excursion into speech synthesis' the various steps
starting from tokenizer and ending in audio player.
Developers can gain valuable inputs from the chapter on project development that
discusses debugging and documentation, plus `JUnit' that makes it possible to
`code a little, test a little'. Among the àdvanced topics in project development' are
issues such as teamwork, version management and so on.
Part two of the book is about SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit) and JFace that are
Eclipse's alternatives to Java's AWT and Swing. And in part three, the author shows
how Eclipse can be deployed as a tool platform.
Essential knowledge to be equipped with to avert getting eclipsed.
Java made easy

WITH a character that seems to be stepping straight out of some Shakespearean
play, the cover page of JSTL in Action by Shawn Bayern sets the mood before the
book goes on to show you "how to produce flexible, powerful Web pages even
without knowing any more than HTML." JSTL stands for JSP Standard Tag Library,
and JSP is JavaServer Pages. While JSP hid some of the hard details of writing full-
fledged programs, JSTL goes one step further on the ease of use scale.
Chapter 1 begins with `the boring life of a web browser'. To make pages
`interesting or interactive', designers make the `same mistake' of sending a
program code like JavaScript to the web browsers. "In fact, most of the interesting
software code on the Web runs on servers."
Also, it is important to realise that "web browsers and web servers don't work like
chat rooms, where multiple parties might stay connected for hours and transmit
data whenever they want to."
A chapter is devoted to using databases. However, for smaller applications, a useful
crutch is sql:setDataSource{gt}, notes the book. "In case your organisation doesn't
have a database for you to use, you can set up a small, free database system call
hsqldb."
Chapter 13 presents a `case study in building a Web site' that is about constructing
a portal. "We'll essentially use JSTL to create a primitive content-management

system that lets us plug in new channels to our master web site." JSTL for
programmers, part 4 of the book, comforts non-programmers: "Be ambitious. Java
isn't that hard to learn, and JSTL is designed to make things easier." It has many
tips, such as: When a page mixes HTML and Java code, the page often becomes
difficult to read, edit or test; and, XML files are simple text files, but when programs
work with them, they do so using an amazingly large array of strategies.
Recommended action: JSTL ASAP.
Homing in on home page
SO, you're still hanging on in the outer fringes wondering if you would ever be able
to produce your own home page. James Pence knows your problem and comes with
an answer: How to do Everything with HTML & XHTML: A Beginner's Guide. The
cover exhorts: "Get your feet wet with all the basics; build and keep your website
running smoothly; add style and substance to your site." And the back cover
clarifies: "This book is designed for anybody who has ever wanted to do a Web site,
but just hasn't got any idea where to start." You're not a techie, nor one who claims
to be an expert, but you are comfortable with your PC, with ability to navigate, copy
files, change directories, install software and so on. "You're past the stage of being
afraid that your system might self-destruct if you do something wrong. You're also
willing to learn and not afraid of trying something new. Most important, you really
want to be able to design and build your own Web pages." You nod vigorously, "Yes,
yes," and you know where to start.

The author is a `full-time freelance writer', a novelist, gospel chalk artist, who uses
his talents to reach out to inmates in the Texas prison system. "This is the very best
book in the world" is among the Amazon.com reviews.
Where does the X in XHTML come from, you wonder? That is `extensible'. "Because
of the explosive growth of the Internet, HTML is being stretched far beyond its
capacity. For example, if musicians want to create a Web page with markup for
musical notation, they are out of luck - HTML does not have the ability to
accommodate this kind of specialisation." There comes X to help.
With a book like this, there would be little motivation to stay on the fringes.
Books courtesy: Wiley Dreamtech India P Ltd (www.wileydreamtech.com)
**
Books2Byte - April 2004
 Business lies between the lines (April 07, 2004)
 Bridging digital divides (April 14, 2004)
 Breathe life into great ideas (April 21, 2004)
 Make hard work pay (April 26, 2004)
**
Business lies between the lines
D. Murali
What makes one tick in the business of software? You might be tempted to say
technology, but read on to see if you're right.

WHAT determines success or failure in the $600-billion software industry?
"Technology," you might answer. But no, "It is the business," says Michael A.
Cusumano in The Business of Software published by Free Press
(www.simonsays.com) . The preface makes the aim of the book clear: "To provide
an overview of the software business for managers who are already in the business,
programmers who would like to be managers, and anyone who would like to be a
software entrepreneur."
If it is just a matter of business, why a separate book, one might ask. "But software
is not like other businesses." Chapter 1 goes on to explain the differences, starting
from the very first, that the goods in this business are `soft' and `digital'.
At the `heart of the book' there are seven questions that Cusumano poses. Also,
there are three options to choose from: "Become a products company at one end of
the strategic spectrum, a services company at the other end, or a hybrid solutions
company in between." What about open source? The author concedes that it is not
yet clear what implications the open source movement will have for the software
business.
`Best practices in software development' are discussed elaborately in the book.
Cusumano is not surprised that Indian software companies are on top of best

practices and doing well in process of software development. "For a decade or more,
organisations in India have been studying Japanese factory approaches and
aggressively adopting SEI concepts and some synch-and-stabilise techniques. The
India story could be the subject of an entire book."
A chapter is on tips for software entrepreneurs. "Convincing any one venture capital
firm to fund a particular idea appears to be an extraordinarily difficult task — far
more difficult than creating a successful company, which is difficult enough." Among
the tough problems for start-ups is the `credibility gap' — "the fear among
customers that the start-up, like 90 per cent of all start-ups, will fail".
To wrap up, the author paints "the next chasm to cross" with thoughts such as
these: Good times for technology-based companies must return. Software
applications today seem to have relatively few hardware limits. With five billion or so
people in the world who do not own a computer, we are still in the early stages of
the business of software.
A book that will show how business lies between lines of code.
Linux in baby steps
WHEN two singers meet they don't talk but sing, it is said. When Sufi masters cross
each other's path, they laugh. So, it is not reasonable to expect `programmer-to-
programmer' interaction to be anything beyond a babble of codes and logic. But the
new Wrox book by Neil Matthew and Richard Stones, titled Beginning Linux
Programming, 2004 edition, published by Wiley Dreamtech

Books2Byte – 2004

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