ITT9904: News

Pentafour Software and Exports Ltd. will soon start work on a $10 million CDROM plant at the Dubai Airport Free Zone.

The Project is to be owned 100 percent by Pentafour and it will have a capacity of producing 12 million CDROMs each year. It will perform three main activities, i.e., premastering, mastering, and replication.

Pentafour, a $125 million company, has a plant in India with a manufacturing capacity of 12 million CDs. The CDROMs produced in Dubai will be marketed globally.

China has developed its first multimedia visual telephone. The product, FS2000-LCD, has been developed by the Huangzhou Yuanjian Digital Devices Co. Ltd. The telephone combines the function of a digital camera, a monitor, a fax machine and some other electric appliances. It can connect to an ordinary telephone line and enable interactive audio and visual communication.

According to the company sources, the product has received an official license from the Ministry of Information Industry to be used in China's telecom network.

— S & T for China, August 1999, p.5
First Secretary (E&C), Embassy of India, Beijing, PRC

The Dutch consumer electronics firm Philips is about to launch the first consumer CD player with a built-in CD recorder. The Philips CD 2765, which costs about $ 600, has two decks; one for playing a CD and another for recording sound from any source onto a blank disc that can be played on any ordinary CD player. Both decks can spin at double speed; so copying a 60 minute disc would take only half an hour. Like all digital recorders, the system uses the serial copy management system to stop once copied discs being copied again - but any number of copies can be made from an original CD. (Netherlands - New Scientist, 160 (2159) 1998, 15)

South Korea's Samsung Electronics has unveiled what is calls the world's smallest Internet cellular phone, able to access and display information from the Internet. The smart phone has weight of 158 g, a 30 mm x 70 mm touch-screen panel that offers touch-mail capability to send text messages and pictures.

Using wireless data service, the smart phone is a product that allows people to get information where ever and when ever they want. This is the world's smallest and lightest phone using CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technology.

A Standard Internet protocol is built in so the phone can access the Internet without having to be first connected with a notebook PC. It can handle 2000 stored addresses, schedules for up to one year and up to 100 memos at a time.

There are English-Korean and Korean-English dictionaries and an engineering calculator that does trigonometry, exponential functions and statistics.

The company expects 18.5 million Koreans - more than a third of the population - own cellular pones by the end of this year - young people in their 20s and 30s. (Korea - The Australian Computers, April 6, 1999)

A company in Queensland has developed the technology which could revolutionise database systems and make telephone books obsolete.

Zentroniz Private Ltd. has developed a database miniaturization and encoding system which would enable large volume of information to be packed on to electronic platforms as small as credit cards.

The implication of the technology on business will be far reaching due to the functionality of the data in its miniaturized format. The miniaturized data could be stored and accessed in any electronic platform.

These could include the standard small credit card-sized PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card Industry Association) cards that use solid "flash" memory. Unlike the CDROM system, the PCMCIA card is cost-effective, portable, updatable; has a life span of 10 years and is environmental friendly.

A small compact disc (CD) that can store data 800 times more efficiently than current CDs has been developed by an electrical engineer in the US. By drastically shrinking the already tiny data-coding pits on CD's surface, the new penny-sized CD, developed by Stephen Chou of Princeton University, can store five hours worth of movies.

To overcome the obstacles presently being faced in the fabrication of current CDs, Chou turned to a process called electron beam lithography to make the mould. Instead of light, electrons were used to create the pattern. Electrons have a much shorter wavelength than light, so they can make smaller bumps. Chou also pushed the mould into softened but still-solid polymer, eliminating the surface tension problems of a liquid. The process, termed nanoimprint lithography, acts the way a cookie cutter, when pressed into dough, forms its shape to the desired form.

The pits on Chou's CDs are smaller than a single wavelength of the laser light, so they cannot be 'read' by a laser, as are normal CDs. Instead, the enhanced CDs are played like phonograph records, using a tiny high-tech needle. The tip of an atomic force microscope, tapped along the surface of the disc reads the location of the pits. These microscopes are more commonly used by researchers for fine tasks such as moving individual atoms. Only a few atoms wide, the microscope's tip does not need to touch the CD's surface to read it. At very small distances, the atoms in the tip and the surface exert an electrostatic force on each other. The tip is vibrated as it approaches the surface of the CD and the force builds up between the atoms. This new CDs can easily be mass-produced.

The voluminous reports of the technology forecasting of assessment studies and techno-market surveys that have been conducted by the Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) over the years would soon be accessible at the touch of a button. The Council has embarked on a project to make available the wealth of information that has been generated in the form a package of 10 CDROMs. The CDROMs would cover a wide range of sectors:

* food	* agriculture
* health	* rural technology
* biotechnology	* energy
* materials and chemicals	* environment and habitat
* manufacturing	* transportation
* storage and packaging	* electronics
* instrumentation control	* automation
* communication, and	* information.

The exercise is basically aimed at three key players in the business of technology development and its commercialization, strategic planners, R&D institutions and the industry.

INTERNATIONAL Business Machines Corp has managed to cram a record amount of data on a computer hard disk, potentially tripling the amount of available storage space, the computer maker said on Monday. Using a new metallic alloy for the material on which the data is stored, IBM said it was able to squeeze 35.3 billion data bits (gigabits) per square inch onto the hard drive, a 75 per cent increase over the 20 billion bits the company achieved less than five months ago.

At 35-gigabit density, every square inch of disk space could hold 4.375 gigabytes, as much as two full-length feature movies, 77 hours of music or over 2 million sheets of double-spaced typewritten paper. The new data storage technique overtakes recent records set by Seagate Technology Inc and Toshiba Corp. IBM said the outer limits of data storage density have doubled annually in the past two years. This marks an acceleration over prior years, when it increased at a little over half that rate and provoked concern that exponential gains in data storage capacity might soon reach physical limits.

To date, however, the advance has been demonstrated only in research conditions. "If this trend continues, 35-gigabit-density products would be available within a few years," IBM said in a statement. (Reuters)

ADVANCED Micro Devices Inc plans to unveil a new microprocessor that would compete with a new chip Intel Corp named on Monday as 'ITANIUM', the Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday. The 64-bit `SledgeHammer', designed to compete with Intel's new `Itanium', represents a change in strategy for Advanced Micro' the Journal said.

Rather than copying Intel, with the new chip Advanced Micro is introducing a chip that isn't compatible with software written for chips made by its larger rival. Intel's `Itanium' is expected to make its debut in the second half of 2000, while Advanced Micro won't launch its chip until 2001, the Journal reported.

Meanwhile, AMD on Monday introduced a 700-megahertz processor, the fastest available and the latest in its Athlon line. The new processor's speed outstrips the most recent 600 MHz Pentium III, produced by its archrival Intel Corp. Intel has plans to introduce faster processors. Compaq Computer Corp and IBM will make systems based on the Athlon processor, AMD said in a release. (Reuters)

COMPUTER chip giant Intel Corp said that it has selected "Itanium" as the brand name for the first product in its next generation of microprocessors, previously code-named Merced.

Intel's Itanium chip is expected to be in volume production by mid-2000. In late August, Intel announced a major milestone in the development of the new architecture — it achieved first silicon of the chip, meaning that it had manufactured the first actual chip based on the design. Itanium is the company's first chip to use its new IA-64 architecture, which will process data in chunks of 64 bits, rather than the 32-bits that chips like the Pentium III process today. Intel has been working with Hewlett-Packard since 1994 in developing the new architecture.

"When we went through the naming process, the intent was to come up with a name that would connote the strength of the IA-64 technology," said Jami Dover, vice-president of Intel's world-wide sales and marketing group. She said Intel also wanted to have a suffix that would connect with its Pentium brand.

The Itanium will be targeted at the high performance workstation and server market and will not initially be marketed as a desktop processor. Ms Dover said that when people hear the name Itanium, they will likely associate it with the metallic element titanium, which is a strong, low-density, corrosive-resistant element.

"We wanted to make it clear that this is a very high-end computing platform, designed for very robust computing," Ms Dover said. Intel plans to reveal more technical details about the chip and how it works at the Microprocessor Forum on Tuesday in San Jose, California, a technical conference for systems designers and semiconductor engineers. Among the many technical details Intel plans to disclose about the Itanium are the floating point operations of the processor, which is the method for calculating numbers where integers don't provide the level of detail needed.

Whereas an Intel's Pentium III chip has one floating point unit, the Itanium will have multiple floating point units. Floating point units are used for highly advanced computing, usually in scientific computing, where very precise numeric calculations are necessary. (Reuters)

Development of IDAMS for Windows 9x/NT is in progress and the beta version of the first release scheduled to be available near the end of 1999. WinIDAMS will include, with extended and enhanced features, all components known from the DOS version as well as a series of new services.

When entering WinIDAMS, the main IDAMS frame and the menus allow to select, create, modify or delete an IDAMS application. Once an application is opened, you can work with IDAMS documents (dictionary, data, setup, output, free text, HTML documents, etc.), which can be displayed in separate windows for further operations. Several documents, even of the same type, may be opened simultaneously.

The dictionary editing facility allows to create a new dictionary or to edit an existing one, in a window with two panes. The top pane displays a tabular list of variables, and the bottom one displays the related code labels. The data editing facility allows to create and manipulate data files. In the data editor window only the data pane can be edited, two other ones just display the relevant dictionary part and the associated code labels. New features like sorting and importing, as well as data export are also provided.

Further to the inclusion of an advanced Rich Text Format word processor facility, another new component for structured printout management has also been elaborated. Printouts will be presented with a table of contents, which helps navigation throughout results and allows the selection of parts to be displayed in full text. Errors, warnings and messages are shown in a separate pane. Full-featured reports can be presented and edited within WinIDAMS.

A clearly guided dialogue will assist the user in preparing and executing data management and analysis operations, offering defaults wherever applicable. This assistance will help the selection of input/output datasets, operations to be executed, options and variables to be used. Interactive syntax checking will facilitate writing filters and recode statements. All parameters specified in a dialogue can be passed to the IDAMS engine for execution and/or can be saved in a setup object for future use, eventually after modification. Traditional setup editing, like in the DOS version will also be possible.

The graphical component for data and result presentation contains all usual basic and advanced graphical objects. User interface scenarios will include facilities for displaying interlinked diagrams, regression lines, dynamic rotations, highlighting selected points in interlinked windows, identification of objects, masking, jittering and directed mode. The time-series analysis facility provides features like analysis of trends, analysis of auto- and cross-correlations, statistical and graphical analysis of time series values, tests of randomness and trends, short and long term forecasting. Time-series data can be transformed by calculating differences, smoothing, trend suppression, functional transformation, etc.

It was a busy summer in 1969: Men had walked on the moon and young people rocked at a farm named Woodstock. Protests of the war in Vietnam raged as Los Angles police searched for Charles Manson's murderous gang. Hardly anybody was paying attention to Len Kleinrock's laboratory at the University of California, Los Angles. Only about 20 people watched on September 2 as two bulky computers were connected by a 5-meter grey cable and bits of meaningless test data silently flowed between them.

To many people, that day marked the birth of the computer network that would become the backbone of the Internet. "We didn't think of this as a key event in any historical sense," said Leinrock, a UCLA professor since 1963, "We didn't even have a camera. The connection was the culmination of years of research by Kleinrock and others in the field of sharing information over a web of connected computers. Twenty-five years would pass before the Internet became a household word.

The UCLA team of graduate students in 1969 included future Internet leaders like Vinton Cerf, who later helped create the Internet's common language, and the late Jonathan Postel, who pioneered its address system. "If it didn't work, then we couldn't have built the Internet," said Cerf, now a vice president at MCI WorldCom. The idea grew from the needs of the defence department's advance research project agency, or ARPA, which was formed after the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth.

The agency provided the money and computers so that US scientists could complete with their Cold War adversaries. By the mid 1960s, they needed to share data and computing power across the country. Mailing computer punch cards and magnetic tapes was too slow. Telephone lines could transfer data, but that was too expensive, and different computers with conflicting operating systems didn't easily talk to each other.

Theorists suggested the new network should be decentralised so that the failure of one point would not bring down the works. It also should speak in a common language of data, chopped into digital pockets, each labelled with instructions on where to go and how to be re-assembled once they reach their destinations. Each research centre connected to the network would have a separate computer, called an interface message processor or IMP, acting as a translator between the local computers and the network. The first paper describing the technology, later called packet-switching, wasn't even written until 1961. The author was Len Kleinrock, then a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

By 1968, ARPA had issued specifications for the new network and within a year contracts were awarded. Kleinrock and a team of graduate students at UCLA would be the first to test drive the new technology because of his pioneering work.

As Kleinrock and his students worked day and night to prepare their Sigma-7 host computer, they learned to their relief that delivery of the first IMP might be delayed until mid-September, giving them some more time. "We were thrilled," Kleinrock recalled. "Then they sent it out air freight and it arrived on labour day weekend," the first weekend of September.

The refrigerator-size unit in a battleship grey cabinet didn't fit in the elevator, so it had to be hoisted through a third-floor windows. Then, representatives of the defence department, telephone companies and computer makers watched as a 7.5 cm flat cable was plugged into the machines.

"Everybody was ready to point the finger at somebody else if it didn't work," Kleinrock said.

China's first Internet company, China.com, has created a big bang with its US trading debut, paving the way for China's other Internet companies to seek fortunes abroad. The company's stock exchange on the NASDAQ electronic stock exchange closed on Tuesday at US$ 67.12, upto 236 percent from its US$ 20 each original price. China.com has sold 4,247 million shares at US$ 20 each, earning US$ 85 million. The price of the initial public offering for the issue was originally estimated at US$ 14-16 a share.

The number of Chinese Internet users witnessed a robust expansion in the first half of this year, as more people enjoy receiving information and doing electronic-commerce through Internet. The number of Internet users hit 40 million in the first six months this year, according to the latest statistics conducted by China Internet Network Information Centre (CINIC). Reportedly, four other China Internet service providers will follow suit and go public abroad in the near future, including Sina, Sohu, Netease and Zhaodaola.

— S & T for China, July 1999, p.7
First Secretary (E&C), Embassy of India, Beijing, PRC

Sightsound.com, a tiny company which owns two patents for methods of selling music on the Internet through online downloads, is demanding that other music companies pay licensing fees or face patent infringement law suits. The company has already sent formal warnings to some music sites, including MP3.com, one of the main sites for downloadable music, ordering them to pay one percent royalty on all revenue or cease and desist. Sightsound.com claims its patents cover the idea of selling audio and video files through downloads, a claim which is upheld, could extract a fee from the entire online music industry. (Copyright World, Issue 90, May 1999)

Government and private initiatives are not only helping increase the reach and use of the Internet in the country but also trying to make the numerous Indian Languages more popular on the Net.

Tamil has become the first Indian language to have a universally accepted keyboard and encoding scheme for use in information technology. The government of Tamil Nadu will make them available to the users through various forums, including the Internet.

Lack of standardization has hit the growth of computing in Indian languages expert feel. The Tamil nadu experiment is bound to be taken up by other state governments as well.

In Karnataka, efforts are on to counter fears that computerization of government activity without creating regional language database will drive Kannada as the language of administration.

The Chennai-based private firm Lastech Systems has launched its email software 'IndoMail', which facilitates sending email in 12 Indian languages including Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu. IndoMail, priced at Rs. 400, could mean that the Internet would in the future be less of an English-dominated medium, as people across India would get top read their mail in Indian languages.

There is another website called Bharatbhasha at http://www.bharatbhasha.org, which aims to promote the use of Indian and South Asian languages in computers.

Maharashtra plans to link 40,000 villages with a specially developed software package for farmers. The unique package 'AgroNet', aims at providing the farmers with the latest information on agriculture, including cropping pattern.

Doctors in Gujarat are experimenting with tele-medicine. Recently, staff at the Rajkot Civil Hospital "referred" an emergency case to a hospital in Ahmedabad. But the patient did not have to go to Ahmedabad since the two hospitals are linked with an online tele-medicine system.

Recently, the MP Bhoj Open University (MPBOU) signed an MoU with IBM, the global leaders in Information technology, to set up a virtual university, the first in the country. Groups like the Delhi-based OneWorld have come forward to offer training to non-profit groups on how to set up their own websites. (IANS)

The South African domain name registration body awards domain names on a "first come, first served" basis without screening domain names before registration. The result of this registration process is that third parties have been able to register domain names belonging to various trademark owners.

If a third party has registered a domain name and thereby infringed the rights of trademark owner, the trademark owner has certain options:

China and Japan have signed several agreements on a five-year term of cooperation in projects concerning information technology. The agreements cover six pilot projects to be implemented before March 2003 - a comprehensive study of the movement of goods, long-distance education and medical diagnosis, agricultural production and distribution, flood monitoring and prevention, forest fire prevention.

China's State Development Planning Commission, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry and Companies from the two countries will cooperate in using advanced multimedia systems for the planned projects.

— S & T for China, August 1999, p.8
First Secretary (E&C), Embassy of India, Beijing, PRC

IBM is planning to equip new models of its consumer line of personal computers (PCs) with speech recognition technology that allows users to control PCs using voice commands. It unveiled four new Aptiva consumer PC models, three of which include the Via Voice speech technology that takes dictation from a user and automatically translates into computer text. With this, IBM is redoubling efforts to set itself apart in a field where there is often little difference between products from rivals. The three speech enabled computers are priced between $ 1,099 and $ 1,799. IBM Aptiva has long been recognized for delivering outstanding multimedia technology to consumers. (Global - Technology Exports, January-March 1999)

Siemens Public Communications Network Ltd (SPCNL) recently launched a technology to help corporates in India make most out of convergence in voice, data, graphic and text. Convergence, the latest in the world of communication, refers to transmission of audio, video and text data in an integrated manner within a single telecommunication environment. The technology makes faster web browsing, e-commerce, tele-learning, tele-working and entertainment soundless esoteric for corporates. Convergence as a solution facilitates increase of real time application usage, video telephony and video conferencing. Major public and private operators have shown keen interest in acquiring the technology. (Technology Exports, April-June 1999)

Holograms offer a powerful alternative to conventional image storage systems. A physicist at the Technical University of Darmstadt has developed a holographic data storage that allows to save terabytes of data on the space of a dice. The parallel storage system of the photo-refractive LiNbO₃ crystal, which exploits the Bragg condition, also allows for data transfer rates in the order of a gigabyte per second and an access time of less than a millisecond. Because the procedure works with a constant wave angle, it does not contain moving parts. The work on the holographic storage has entered its last development stage, and the storage is supposed to reach maturity in two to three years' time.

More than 120 computer & linguistic experts are working on a computer language to let people who speak different languages communicate over the Internet in UN. The Universal Networking Language (UNL) is being perfected at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the Tokyo-based United Nations University. The aim is for the languages used by all 185 US member countries to be supported by UNL by the year 2005. Unlike machine translations, which translate one language into another, a text in one language would go through a software application, called an editor, that would convert it into UNL. It could then be deconverted into other languages.

When a person wrote something, the UNL version would first be played back to them in their own language, enabling them to make changes to ensure it reflected the precise meaning. I would be useful for a logical text, such as that used in science and commerce. One intended benefit of UNL is that people who speak relatively little-used languages could understand texts originally written in other languages. Conversion software for each language is being developed in partnership with Government research institutes, universities and participating companies. (The Australian Computers, December 1, 98)

A unique programme of reducing stress level has been launched by British creators of IETF. It is a combination of advanced technology with established medical techniques programme known as "de-stress"

Various relaxation techniques are taught, monitoring stress levels via sensors attached to the skin which are then displayed in an animated graph on screen. The users can very well control their stress levels through an interactive programme using breathing and other cognitive techniques, while watching their stress levels decrease on the graph.

By setting training, the users can apply the relaxation technique in daily life without the aid of this system and can lead a happy life free from the stresses. This is a practical interactive system by which people can actually see their stress responses and learn how to change them.

Recently two deadly viruses — Chernobyl and WIN-CHI — stuck thousands of PCs in the cities of New Delhi and Bangalore. The Chernobyl virus erases the computer's hard drive and feeds the thrash into the computer system settings, preventing the machines from restarting. The WIN-CHI virus also resulted in huge data losses and in many cases, the hard disk became inaccessible. Unfortunately, even the latest software cannot guarantee that they will remain virus free. Over the years, thousands of different viruses have been created and maliciously planted in computer systems around the world and many of them have shown their ability to spread themselves. Some common symptoms of computer infection include:

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved a proposal on 4th May, 1999 to set up a Rs. 100 Crore venture capital fund to promote software industry. Department of Electronics (DoE) will contribute 30%, SIDBI 40% and rest will come from IDBI, IFCI and NASSCOM.

The main aim is to facilitate software professionals to set up information technology units in small sector by providing venture capital. Software industry has welcomed the decision. As per the recent survey by NASSCOM, the software driven IT industry required $ 500 million of venture capital fund in the next five years. IT venture capital fund of the government would greatly help start-up small and medium-sized companies. (The Economic Times, 5 May, 1999)

The Small Industrial Development Bank of India (SIDBI) is setting up a US dollar denominated venture capital fund to finance small IT firms looking for marketing and technological tie-ups in the Silicon Valley.

The fund is expected to be around $ 10 million. This is in addition to Rs. 100 Crore venture capital fund for IT industry cleared by Government of India in early May, 1999. SIDBI would be asking NRIs in the Silicon Valley to put in seed money with matching finance by SIDBI. Fund will help many small companies which were cash-trapped and unable to have a technological and marketing tie-ups with some big US companies.

Industry has been wanting to improve its export performance in this sector. Over 600 software companies in India export just about Rs. 1 Crore worth or less. It is felt that these figures can be increased if the small companies end up tying up with companies in the Silicon Valley. (The Economic Times, May 21, 1999)

20 millions pages of images were added to the searchable text of 2 million patents that date back to 1976. This electronic library of late 20th century science and technology is available free on PTO's web page. All pending and registered trademarks are also available online. This is one of the important initiative taken by new commissioner of USPTO. The target is of making all 6 million plus patents and one million trademarks available free on the Internet by 2001. In the past two years alone, patent applicants increased upto 25% and trademarks filings were upto 16%. Large-scale hiring increased reliance on automation and guiding the move to consolidated modern facilities are three ways on which the agency may grow explosively. Hence, 1,300 new patent examinees will be hired this year and next bringing the total number to 3,000. The number of trademark examining attorney's will increase to 375.

Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) has realised an online patent application and screening system for second tome. Korea is essentially the first in the world because unlike Japan, it allows online applications through lines. To prevent KIPO net from possible hacking, it consists of two separate systems, one for only applications and the other for screening which will be completely interoperable with WIPO net as WIPO plans to establish a global information network for intellectual property offices to foster the exchange and transmission of IPR related data among member countries in the first half of 2000. KIPO also plans to spend 97.8 million won ($80.5 million) over the next three years to expand its patent related service, currently being offered through the website. (Korea - Kim Jung & Co. August 1999)

The Federal Circuit Court of US reserved and remanded with instructions of a judgement of California District Court, holding that federal trademark and unfair competition law applied to prohibit a video rental store chain from using entertainment industry information provider's trademark in the domain name of its 'web site and web sites' metatags.

Brookfield Communications, which markets several products, including software, under the name "Movie Buff" obtained federal registration of "Movie Buff" as a mark to design both goods and service, whereas West Coast, a large video rental store chain, had already been using the term "Movie Buff" for its services and products for years. When West Coast launched its web site at "Moviebuff.com", the Brookfield filed a suit alleging trademark infringement and unfair competition and sought injunctive relief to prevent West Coast from using "Movie Buff" in conjunction with its web site, including the domain name in the sites' metatags. The trial court rejected Brookfields request finding, it had failed to establish to the senior user of the "Movie Buff" mark or West Coast's use of the "Moviebuff.com" domain name created a likelihood confusion. Brookfield appealed.

The court of appeals held that the trial court erred in concluding that Brookfield failed to establish a likelihood of confusion between its mark and West Coast domain name. The court found that although West Coast registered the domain name "Moviebuff.com" before Brookfield began using "Moviebuff.com" on its Internet based products and services.. West Coast did not use it with reference to goods or service in commerce until it actually set up its own web site. The court also found that West Coast's use of "moviebuff.com" in email correspondence with lawyers and customs was insufficient to establish that the public identified the mark with West Coast whereas Brookfield made a strong showing of likelihood and similarity of the two marks that would confuse customers about the source of two parties products and services as they are pronounced same and offered similar and competing services and products related to the entertainment industry where both parties utilized the webs as marketing and advertising medium, which was likely to exacerbate the likelihood of confusion. (Copyright World, May 1999)

This series presents work carried out in the information engineering sector of the Telematics Application programme, focussing on electronic publishing, information dissemination and information retrieval.

This summarises selected ACTS projects in the area of electronic commerce and information brokerage. Each summary includes both business and computational perspectives, and a description of trial results. Interviews with project managers and experts focus on future development paths.

The Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) is jointly funded by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada. It is being implemented by the Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India.

On the eve of the World Environment Day, i.e., 5th June 1999, the Minister for Environment & Forests, Shri Suresh Prabhu inaugurated the Central Hub of the SDNP. With this, India has also joined the SDNs prestigious network operational in more than 80 countries. SDNP is available at http://sdnp.delhi.nic.in.

Shri Prabhu highlighted the importance of information in sustainable development & information technology as a useful and powerful tool. The Minister pointed out that the Ministry of Environment & Forests has a number of projects promoting sustainable development in the country and by hosting the SDNP, its commitment to sustainable developed is further reiterated.

In India, a National Steering Committee consisting of representatives of various organizations will provide policy guidance, while the National Project Director will oversee functioning of the Secretariat. The Director of NCST, Mumbai provides inputs as the National Project Advisor. The SDNP Secretariat will provide the information over telephone, by post, fax, email and website.

The Union Cabinet approved the proposal to introduce the `Information Technology Bill, 1999' in the winter session of Parliament to deal with the issues relating to electronic commerce, trade, business and computer crimes. Not more than ten countries in the world have laws of this nature. By the turn of the century e-commerce transactions in the world may exceed 20 percent of the total. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has made a declaration that its member countries should create possible tools for e-commerce by enacting cyber laws.

The Cabinet also cleared the detailed definition and penalties for computer crime. This will include the unauthorized access to computer networks, computer databases, computer viruses, damage to computer systems, disruption of computer services, copying of software and offences such as tampering with computer source documents and electronic forgery.

a) Proposes to primarily create a secure regulatory environment for e-commerce by providing legal validity to Internet & other electronic transactions, including computer data as permissible evidence in court. Most regulations allow only paper records and documents signed records, original records, physical cash, cheques etc.

b) Proposes legal sanction to electronic records, as well as acceptance of contract by electronic means of communication including digital signatures. Government departments will accept the filing/creation/retention of documents in the form of electronic records; issue permits, licences or approvals in electronic form; and also issue payments in this form. The government departments will be free to decide the manner/formats in which electronic records are filed, created, retained or issued. Thus electronic records will replace tonnes of papers.

c) Proposes to establish a Cyber Regulations Appellate Tribunal with the same powers as allocated to the Appellate Tribunal of the Securities and Exchange Board of India.

d) Proposes to empower specified government officials/appoint a controller to enable the government to monitor and regulate activities like creating web pages, advertisements, bulletin board and most importantly, e-commerce originating from the country and disrupt any message transmitted in electronic/encrypted form to avoid situations which endanger the country's security.

e) Allows facilitation of electronic interaction in trade and commerce and promotion of the development of legal and business infrastructure necessary to implement e-commerce.

f) Allows elimination of barriers to e-commerce rising from uncertainties over writing and Signature writing.

g) Provides for appointment of certification authorities for licensing, certifying and monitoring as well as the appointment of a controller to oversee/regulate these certifying authorities.

h) Provides for liability to pay compensation for unauthorised access to computer, its network and database.

i) Seeks to punish a person who makes misrepresentation or suppresses any material fact to the controller of the IT activities.

There will be series of consequential activities including amendments in existing acts like the Indian Evidence Act 1872, the Indian Penal Code 1860, the Telegraph Act, the company law, amendments to section 2 of the Banker's Book Evidence Act and amendment of the RBI Act, 1934. (The Times of India, November 5, 1999)

Nicholas Negroponte, Founder director of the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is author of seminal studies on what the digital future will mean for individuals / corporates / governments and nations. He is known by the names like digital guru, Internet oracle, cutting edge ideas man , venture capitalist, messiah of the wired world and in short the ultimate technology guru. He shared his apocalyptic vision of the future during his visit to India in November ,99. Some of his future visions are:

a. Intelligent computers: In the past five years computers have become hard to use because interface with them has gone astray. In ten years, computers must become intelligent enough to do simple, common sensical things.

b. Computer price: Computer penetration is being affected by its cost. Price of computers must be reduced (say $25) , such that even children can use/play with it.

c. Efficient softwares: Computer capacities have grown but the machines have become slower, because software has become too big. There is need for efficient and fast software.

d. New Business models: With the introduction of electronic_commerce on the net, there is need for creation of new business models. The manufacturers & consumers are directly interacting with each other for business and there is no need for intermediaries/middle/dealer etc.

Disintermediation means cutting down the middle stages and delivering the goods to the customers at cheaper prices. If intermediaries have to stay in the business then they will have to learn to re-intermediate by offering value added, personalized services otherwise they will be squeezed out. The net is making everybody rethink how to do business.

e. Future of Print: What is the future of print, be it books, newspapers, magazines? Instead of this we should ask what is the future of words? Words have an enormous future.

f. In US, Internet user community comprises of mostly children and 65+ age group. But there are very few people in the driver's seat i.e. digital homeless (between children & old age) who are in control but their number is shrinking.

g. Education is the field where methodology was not improved for a long, long time due to indifference on part of policy makers. Primary education is one of the most neglected area globally. The digital future provide an opportunity to every child to explore and develop his or her natural inclinations and learn through play _ the most natural way.

h. Internet like an underground economy: India has all the cultural traits to become a huge user of the Internet. It has a society that is willing to debate, to be entrepreneurial like Italy which has a great respect for the small guy , a healthy disrespect for authority, a strong underground economy. The Internet will be more like an underground economy.

i. E-commerce: E-commerce will exceed $1 trillion by December 2000. Of this business-to-business will account for three fourths, consumer-to-consumer transactions will be the biggest.

j. Problem with the net: The problem with the net is not the content, but the noise. How you get a signal out of the noise ?.

k. Decipher human emotions: The microchips through an array of input devices will be able to decipher human emotions and act accordingly e.g. your computer would play you a soothing tune when you are depressed.

However, Negroponte regrets that the day is still far off when microchips will be able to directly feed information to the brain, though vision and hearing devices that would add visionary and audible inputs to the respective centres of the brain are more possible. (The Economic Times, November 4, 1999)