NEWS

The buzz is...

A new trojan horse virus has emerged on the internet with the name PKZIP300.ZIP, so named as to give the impression that this file is a new version of the PKZIP software used to ZIP (compress) files. Do not download this file under any circumstances! if you install or expand this file, the virus will wipe your hard disk and affect modems at 14.4 kbps and higher. This is an extreemly destructive virus and there is not yet a way of cleaning up this one.

Repeat: Do not download any file with the name PKZIP300—regardless of the extension.

Contact: Lance Cason at E-mail: lanceac@ix.netcom.com

Info-Highway to Generate 35.5 Million Jobs

The information superhighway can provide village-based jobs to nearly 35.5 million educated unemployed and help the country earn US$ 60 billion.

With ever increasing competition and saturation of domestic markets, the multinational corporations and other small and big enterprises have set their sights on the hitherto unexploited global markets as a survival strategy and are, therefore, on the lookout for specific market information. Such information not only helps the companies in locating their potential customers in a global village but also to foresee the needs of their customers accurately. Moreover, it helps companies to go for result-oriented strategic alliances and to reach customers with the "right menu" on their doorstep. According to an estimate, more than 1,00,000 US companies are trying to reach the booming markets of Pacific rim countries and Asia. Anyone with a personal computer, a modem and a telephone can now drive on the information superhighway and can tap computer data banks and communicate via E-mail to anyone else on the Internet anywhere in the world. More and more homegrown home pages are being added to the highway every day. Internet access and E-mail are being introduced to colleges, universities and schools.

Infopreneurs have realised Internet's potential to provide employment to millions of their jobless fellow countrymen. India is very well on its way to become the silicon valley of information labs. The world's very small information village' (VSIV) is being set up at Vazhapally village in Kottayam district of Kerala by Atlantic-Pacific Market Research Inc (APMRI), a think-tank on the information superhighway. The proposed VSIV will have in-built software to assess the intellectual capital of the info-worker, the capability to access information from anywhere in the world besides sending value-added information to anywhere in the world. The basic pre requisites for establishing viable VSIV are that it should have about 1000 educated, preferably unemployed, persons possessing good reading habits and able to understand international business language. The job aspirants would be initially trained to comercialise information collected from whatever they are reading, seeing and experiencing. Thereafter, they will be given a business address consisting of a post box number, a telephone number, a voice mail number and fax mail and E-mail address, besides acccessibility to a modern computerised networke. Each VSIV system would have 100 network computers which would be programmed for ten hours a day. Each info-worker would be given a time slot of one hour to feed the information they have collected, in the process enabling 1,000 workers to work everyday. The information thus collected are customised to the information seeking client's specific needs and would be stored in a super computer with parallel lines across the globe through satellite networks and strategic alliances.

Further, APMRI is preparing a list of one VSIV, estimated at Rs three crore, in every State. As a first step towards realising the ultimate objective of a "library on information highway for every kitchen' (life kit), the APMRI has compiled an index using the resources and facilities of the American Centre Library in New Delhi to help students, researchers and the common reader to find articles and stories about the information superhighway. The indexed articles come from a variety of sources including newspapers, magazines, scholarly periodicals and books drawn from the literature of many disciplines and library members can obtain photocopies of the articles for a modest fee from any of the American Centre Libraries in India

— Excerpted from Deccan Herald, Bangalore 7 Aug., 1996

Wipro CD-Serv

Wipro CD-Serv is a plug and play modular CD-ROM server that can be connected across a network (both LAN and WAN). It provides multiple clients simultaneous access to a maximum of 14 SCSI CD-ROM drives. It is conveniently packaged with standard 5" BC drive towers to meet the requirement of various customers.

A Windows network can have a heterogeneous mix of systems with Windows 95, Windows for Workgroup (WFWG) and Windows NT (clients/servers).

In a Windows environment, the Wipro CD-Serv is a plug-and- play network device and can be connected to the network with a RJ45 or BNC connector. The clients access the WIPRO CD-Serv directly without the intervention of any server. The CD-Serv will be seen as another node on the network and the CD-ROM drives attached to the CD-Serv can be accessed by all the users on the network.

Contact: Saumil Majumdar at: E-mail : Saumil@wipinfo.soft.net

Connecting Schools to the Internet

Amidst the depressing scams galore comes the good news that a crore of rupees made available to each Member of Parliament will be put to a really worthwhile cause. Under the Member of Parliament Local Area Development scheme, the money will be utilised to get schools connected to the Internet. This is a laudable effort in bringing the information superhighway closer to the future citizens of the country. According to official sources, the Central Government has chalked out a blueprint in association with the Education and Research Network [ERNET]. Of course, the programme will begin in a modest way only a cluster of 8-10 schools will be picked up initially, It will involve setting up a VSAT in one school and connecting the other schools to it through modems. The VSAT will, in turn, be connected to a hub in the nearest town through the INSAT 2-C satellite using C-Band. The hubs will then tie into ERNET and then on to the Internet. No doubt, all right minded people will bless this programme.

— MALA Newsletter 9(4), Oct 1996.

UMI'S Unique Offer

UMI is offering public and academic libraries full text electronic access via CD-ROM to 200 mainly US-originating periodicals through its ProQuest Periodical Abstracts Plus Text. Periodicals include Byte, The Economist, Forbes, Lancet, Nations' Business, Science News and Time. UMI is also enhancing its ProQuest Searchware. Improvements include enabling users to display networked images on their computer screens; customize by date how much information is available over time; select which parts of a text they wish to print or download; and select the default search method that is easiest for them.

Contact Address: UMI, White Swan House, Godstone Surrey, RH9 8LW. Email: umi@ipiumi.demon.co.uk.

— CD-Focus July -Aug 1996

Internet's Successor—Very High Speed Backbone Network System

The vast computer network is so technologically outdated and clogged with regular folks sending E-mail, playing games and downlodaing video clips that the scientists can't get anything done.

McBryan, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and other researchers have gone online with an entirely new, scientists-only computer network called VBNS, which exchanges data at speeds that blow away the Internet to moving from the Internet to VBNS is like moving from a packet calculator to a personal desktop computer. Top speed of the VBNS, or "Very High Speed Backbone Network System" is being bumped up this month to more than 21,000 times that of the average modem. The network will be able to transmit the entire contents of the Library of Congress twice a day a task that would take an entire month on the Internet.

While the general public may never have access to the VBNS, telecommunications companies already are taking lessons learned from the VBNS and using them to help ease congestion on the Internet.

McBryan and other experts say the Internet could be upgraded to run as fast as the VBNS in five to 10 years, creating consumer opportunities such as downloading a digital-quality, two-hour movie in a matter of seconds.

The VBNS started in 1995 connecting the five super computing centres in San Diego Boulder, Colorado Urbana Pittsburgh and Ithaca, New York. Researchers needed the VBNS to transfer more easily the huge amounts of data used on supercomputers because the Internet was not up to the task. The National Centre for Supercomputing Applications in Urbana is developing ways to bring people at separate sites into the same virtual reality environment. The most innovative uses of such a high-speed network could be hard to predict.

— The Times of India 12 Feb 1997

ISI Alerting Service

The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), USA has started a service called Topic Select. It is an alerting service for delivering information to the user's E-mail address on a daily or weekly basis. The first service covers the fields of Gene Research & Biotechnology. ISI plans to broden to include a number of areas in biomedical, physical and social sciences, engineering and technology.

Rewritable Optical Disk Drive

A rewritable optical disc drive has been launched in India by Vision Infotech for use in applications like document and medical imaging, multimedia, graphic designing, DTP, digital audio and video, CD-R mastering, networking, mass stroage, etc., which require high capacity random access storage and retrieval. The rewritable mangeto-optical (MO) disk technology permits retrieval of large volumes of data; it can be rewritten there million times, and is rugged.

The archival life of the MO media is more than 100 years. MO media is unaffected by stray magnetic fields, dust praticles, humidity, scratches, etc. The same drive can be used for MACs and IBM PC compatibles. MO drives can be used for online, backup as well as archiving capacities 26-670 GB are also available for near-line storage applications.

UB Networks to Introduce Desktop Video Conferencing

The UB Networks—a leader in networking technology—is introducting video-in-demand and video-conferencing capabilities to the desktop computer in India through its high-speed networking. The company, a pioneer in ATM technology feels that with their expertise on ATM technology, multi-media applications and non-stop networking at works. India will become the largest market for high-speed networking products in the next two years. The new system provides a non-stop networking with built-in fault tolerance and automatic corrective capability. When one part of the network fails, its repair is automatically and electronically addressed and it does not affect the whole network.

— AIS Technical News Apr-June 1996.

NEW SUPER COMPACT DISC

The Digipress, a French company had developed a new compact disc that can withstand extreme conditions. Even in the toughest conditions the disc does not get damaged. The new glass disc called Eon can withstand any attack without damaging the data inscribed. This glass disc is coated with a film of photosensitive resin and the initial signals are recorded using a laser beam. Then over the coated resin micropits are created which corrosponds to the signal

to be reproduced. Eon discs gives an error rate nearly ten times less before digital correction. In view of the low reflectivity of the glass, there is the problem of compatibility with existing players. To cope with such problems Digipress has come out with special CD known as Ark-a CD made of glass, but metalised, which can be played on any player.

— AIS Technical News Apr-June, 1996

Contrywide Yellow Pages on CD-ROM

The Supper Media Company has now made it possible to have the entire nations yellow pages directory on a CD-ROM. The information included is a boon to the business class having more than 10,00,000 entries of commercial and industrial establishments spread throughout the nation. The demand for the number of copies is estimated at around 2,00,000 copies. This pioneering concept is based on designing and development through multimedia software.

UNEP Environmentally Sound Technology Networking Programme

In April 1996 UNEP IE, IETC and INFOTERRA jointly presented to the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) the final results of a 14 month long survey of Information Systems Related to Environmentally Sound Technology (EST)

The report presents a catalogue of 84 information systems that have been identified and categorized according to the type of information which they make available on environmentally sound technologies (ESTs).

For each system, the catalogue presents: technologies covered, dissemination media, geographic location, languages used, means of system access, and cost information systems by indices of cost, technology, accessibility, etc. The report should be of considerable value to people seeking information on ESTs.

— Environment Technology Assessment No 4, Summer 1996

The CSD Supports UNEP Work

The CSD in its fourth session in April 1996, suported UNEP's effort. Furthermore, it encouraged UNEP to develop an EST information network to increase compatibility and cooperation among information systems and sources related to ESTs and asked that UNEP keep the Commission informed of further progress in this area. The CSD also invited UNEP to consider eventually making the cataloque and through global networks (i.e.internet.)

UNEP through a collaborative efforts of IE. IETC and INFOTERRA has undertaken to design a programme which supports the task of networking EST information systems by providing a structured medium for progress in this sphere.

— Environment Technology Assessment No 4, 1996

IDAMS Release 4.0

IDAMS version 4.0 has been released in April 1996. Now it is available with NISSAT for distribution. Licensed user of this package will get it free of cost. The aim of launching the new release was to react to demands of IDAMS user in about 140 countries to provide them with extended processing facilities that can be accessed in a convenient way.

IDAMS provides for:

For more details

Contact:

B.N. Sarkar
Senior Scientific Officer-1
NISSAT/DSIR
Technology Bhavan
New Mehrauli Road
New Delhi-110016

SDI Program for use with Micro CDS/ISIS Databases. NEWSDI.PCD Version 2.0

Dr. L.J. Haravu, ICRISAT, Hyderabad developed a CDS/ISIS Pascal application for the production of SDI outputs using stored user profiles for use with CDS/ISIS database in 1991 . A new version of this software (NEWSDI version 2.0) with improved features based on version 3.07 of CDS/ISIS is now available and interested professionals may get a copy of this application and documentation by writing to:

Shri B.N. Sarkar
Senior Scientific Officer-1
NISSAT/DSIR
Technology Bhavan
New Mehrauli Road
New Delhi-110016.

Access to INFlIBNET Databases

INFLIBNET'S host computer is connected to I-NET through X.25 pad on a leased line. One can access INFLIBNET database online using I-NET as follows:

I-NET Access :

e.g. N50AB32.419596-32720203402

Access through STD:

Off-line access:

Queries can be sent on following E-mail address:

root@infand.ernet.in
inflibha@shakti.ncst.ernet.in
inflibnt@qiasbm01.vsnl.net.in

Replies will be prompted by E-Mail.

— Inflibnet Newsletter Vol.2. no.3-4. July -Oct 1996