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Is digital backup worth the
effort?
 You
can read centuries-old books, but not decades-old computer archives
by Dough
Alexander
IN
a dimly lit room in a monastery in Egypt's isolated Sinai Peninsula, a
Texan monk is fighting to save history. The dusty library of St.
Catherine's Monastery is the home to one of the world's most important
collections of ancient manuscripts — some dating back 1,500 years.
These include the Codex Syriacus, a 5th century Bible. Father Justin,
using hi-tech photographic equipment and a computer, has dedicated
years to reproducing these brittle tomes onto compact discs, to
preserve them for future scholars. His work is admirable - but is it
in vain? Chances are those CDs will be unreadable in a few decades,
unless the world can find a better way to preserve digital
information.
Confide
in the car
CAN'T
find a restaurant? Running out of gas? Down to your last dollar?
Tell it to the car. International
Business Machines Corp. said it signed a deal with Honda Motor Corp.
that will make it easier for drivers to find the closest gas station
or restaurant by asking the car's computer for help.
 Rescuing
Indian drugs
by Shiv
Kumar
Come
December and bio-pirates will find it almost impossible to re-engineer
traditional Indian medicine formulations and patent these as original
inventions. All patent offices will need to do is log on to the
Internet and enter details of the patent application to find out if
the applicant was beaten to the game a few centuries earlier. The
first phase of an initiative by the National Institute of Science
Communications (NISC) to compile a comprehensive database on Indian
traditional knowledge is nearing completion by December.
Piracy
worries India…
SOFTWARE
piracy is one of the biggest concerns of many global and local
software vendors in India. Piracy leads to users using the
intellectual property of the vendors without paying commensurating
price. According to IDC estimates, the money lost in 2001 from pirated
software is estimated to be close to $ 245 million in India, which is
almost half of the legal packaged software market.
User-hardware
interface
by Sarabjeet
Singh Kanwal
AN
operating system (OS) is the first software you see when you turn on
your computer and the last one when you turn the PC off. It is the
software that actually manages the raw hardware, hence acting as an
interface between the user and hardware. It directly operates on the
hardware and fabricates an environment for the execution of the other
programs.
Hi-tech
check on illegal immigrants
by Achmad
Sukarsono
MALAYSIA
and Indonesia signed a pact on immigration technology but that could
be as far as meetings among top officials go in formal agreements
about the sensitive subject of illegal workers.
Divinity
@ Goa
by Frederick
Noronha
FROM
sermons to software! That's the shift Silvan M. D'Sa wants to nudge
churches in Goa into as he polishes his code that seeks to give the
parish an IT thrust - and make it easy for priests to manage their
funds and the faithful.
Polaris
software for Singapore
POLARIS
Software Lab Ltd., one of India's IT services providers for banking
and insurance industries, announced the launch of its first back-up
software development facility in Singapore.
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IT
WIT
by
Sandeep Joshi |
Dear Clickey Mouse. I love learning computers when I am with you. |
Hyderabad
attracts ITES companies
THE
National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom)
revealed the findings of a study conducted in association with
Netscribes to assess the competitiveness of nine Indian cities as
destinations for IT Enabled Service (ITES) companies. The three-month
long study evaluated the top nine cities including Ahmedabad,
Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Kochi, Mumbai (including Navi
Mumbai), Pune and NCR (Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon).
India
ideal for BPO
by Nikita
Singh
BUSINESS
process outsourcing (BPO) forms an important part of the ITES
(IT-enabled service) industry and is all set to grow exponentially in
the years ahead. BPO means delegating back-end administrative
functions that are necessary to run a business but are not a part of
the core business. Companies are increasingly outsourcing key business
functions and their related IT operations. The BPO industry is built
around the raison d' etre of efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
by
Imran
Qureshi
INDIA'S
burgeoning call centres and business process outsourcing (BPO)
companies are facing a shortage of middle-level managers as the
industry doubles its scaling up operations to meet outsourcing
contractual requirements. Growing at nearly 40 per cent
annually, the industry has already hit the radar screens of
Fortune 500 companies for cost-effectiveness and quality.
But the big challenge
for the fledgling $1.5 million industry is to face up to the
mid-management shortage in the next couple of years. |
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Looks
like copier but isn't
by Sukhpreet
WITH
the advent of computers and the Internet a lot of interest is being
shown by one and all in gaining knowledge and work experience related
to the field of hardware of software. However we might not be familiar
with the functioning of various peripherals in use, one of them being
Desktop Scanner (DTS) that plays an important role in converting the
image, data from the hard copies on to the computer. At the first
glance, DTS looks much like a personal copier. It also shares much of
the technology.
Catching them young: A primary section student of a school in
Ludhiana takes his model to be displayed at Computer Awareness
Week. — Photo by Pradeep Tewari |
112
sites defaced this year
by Papri
Sri Raman
WITH
the Internet being used by millions and increasingly more work being
done on the Web, cyber crimes and netiquette are beginning to be of
concern in India. These concerns came under the scanner at two
conferences here, one on how to build a professional image through the
Net and the other on how to regulate content on the Web.
GRAPHIC: WORLD-WIDE
INTERNET USERS
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