CYBER QUIZ: i4d Quiz-10: Open Source by Dr D.C.Misra
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Proprietary versus Open Source continues to be a raging debate for last more than a decade. Both sides have passionate advocates and they have their advantages and disadvantages. As a result both sides continue to exist though fiercely challenging each other. Nevertheless, the open source movement has made impressive gains in the recent past. Let us check.
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1.Who may be regarded as the (a) grand father, (b) father, and (c) favourite uncle of the open source movement?
2.(i) What is common between the following: (a) Linus Torvalds, (b) Alan Cox, and (c) Ted Ts'o, and (ii) What is Open Source and who coined the term and when?
3.What is GNU Project?
4.Who founded the Free Software Foundation and when?
5.What are the following: (a) GNU Emacs, (b) GCC, (c) Bash, (d) Copyleft, (e) GNU GPL, and (f) GNU Hurd?
6.(a) What is Minix, who wrote it, and for what, and (b) What is TEX, who created it, and when?
7.Claimed to be the largest open source project ever and the first `killer app' from the open source, what are OO and OOO?
8.Who launched world's first open source geographical information system (GIS) software, Gram Chitra, and when?
9.This was an interesting year in retrospect– a major operating system with free source code, a legendary figure of open source movement, and a major network, the precursor to Internet – were all born this year. Which was this year?
10. If this is stated to become the foundation for a complete, stand-alone open source operating system (OS) distribution, similar to FreeBSD or Linux, what is Darwin and who has launched Open Darwin?
11.Companies such as Amazon.com and Deja.com use this language to run their sites. It claims to have more than a million users and it is an open source language. What is its name?
12.If it enriches the open source community, what is SourceForge.net?
13.Which are the top ten most active projects of all time?
14.Which are top ten downloads?
15.(a) Which are top ten projects by popularity, and (b) Which are top ten projects by user ratings?
16.(a) Which Web site has the slogan "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters", and (b) What is Freshmeat.net?
17.What are the following: (a) Mplayer, (b) cdrecord, (c) xine, (d) gaim, (e) gcc, (f) Galeon, (g) Nmap, (h) GTK, and (i) GIMP?
18.What is the breakdown for the following: (a) GNU General Public License (GPL), (b) GNU Lesser General Public License, (c) BSD License (original), (d) Freely Distributable, and (e) Shareware?
19.This provincial German town of crooked medieval streets, whose biggest employer is a savings bank, claims to be the first city in the world by replacing Microsoft software on all city computers with open-source applications based on the free, unproprietary Linux operating system (OS). Name it.
20.If the Headstart programme has been claimed to be the biggest
implementation of open source technologies in schools in India till date, what is the Headstart programme and in which state is it being implemented?
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ANSWERS TO CYBER QUIZ: i4d Quiz-10: Open Source by Dr D.C.Misra
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1.(a) Donald Knuth, the well–known author of programming classics–The Art of Computer Programming (3 volumes), (b) Richard Stallman, the founder of Free Software Foundation (FSF), and (c) Larry Wall, the inventor of Perl rogramming language (Source: Based on Glyn Moody (2001): Rebel Code).
2.(i) They are just three developers of Linux kernel. (Source: Hall, Michael and Brian Profitt (2001): The Joy of Linux: A Gourmet Guide to Open Source), and (ii) Bruce Perens (http://www.perens.com/Bio.html) who first announced "Open
Source" to the world in an article carried on Slashdot and elsewhere in 1998. He is the primary author of the Open Source Definition, the formative document of the Open Source movement. A computer scientist (programmer), he is the founder of Software in the Public Interest and is Senior Strategist, Linux and Open Source.
3.It is one of the earliest attempts to build a free operating system. It was started by Richard Matthew Stallman (born in 1959 in New York), formerly of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and others in 1983 who formed Free Software Foundation. It became a complete operating
system in August, 1996. GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix." Stallman is recognized by his initials "rms" in the hackers community. For details about GNU, visit its website http://www.gnu.org/.
4.A tax–free charity based in Boston, MA, it was founded by Richard Matthew Stallman in 1985 to "promote computer users' right to use,copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs." FSF also protects, preserves, and promotes free software, promotes the development and use of GNU operating system, and concentrates on development of new software.(Source: http://www.gnu.org/fsf/fsf.htm).
5.(a) GNU Editing macros, a GNU editing program for creating and manipulating text initially created by Richard M. Stallman in 1975 and made available publicly. It was the editor of hackers, (b) GNU C Compiler written by Richard M. Stallman, (c) Bourne again shell (a play on Unix shell called the Bourne shell), (d) Introduced with GNU Emacs General Public License in 1985, it allows users, as opposed to copyright, to copy, modify and sell the original and/or modified
version(s) of a program but the modified version(s) is/are also required to be available free. Similarly, if a free software is combined with a proprietary (that is, nonfree code), it is also required to be free, (e) GNU General Public License, a standard single license developed by Richard M. Stallman for various programs
under the GNU project, and (f) The kernel being developed for the GNU
operating system. (Source: Moody, Glyn (2001): Rebel Code).
6.(a) Minix stands for Mini-Unix, and is a Unix-compatible operating system (OS), a free Unix clone. Andrew Tannenbaum, Professor at the Free University, Amsterdam wrote it for teaching students how an operating system works by examining its source code. Development of Minix was a reaction to release of Unix Version 7 in 1979 by AT & T which stopped making the source code available free to students. The source code was available free since release of Unix in 1969 under a license from AT&T. Tannenbaum began Minix in 1984 and released it in
1987 in his book Operating Systems: Design and Implementation (1987, Second edition with Albert S. Hull in 1997). Minix Information Sheet is available at the website http://www.cs.vu.nl/`est/minix.htm. Last change made was, however, on November 15, 1996) (Website checked on March 30, 2002), and (b) A typesetting program for creation of beautiful books created in 1978 by Donald Knuth. He created the program as a response to deterioration in typography and layout of
later editions of his Art of Computer Programming. The name TEX is derived from the Greek word ôå÷íç (techne) which means "art" and is also the root of words "technology" and "technique." (Source: Moody,Glyn (2001): Rebel Code).
7.Open Office (OO) and OpenOffice.Org (OOO) (http://www.openoffice.org/) respectively. Open Office is free, open source, MS Office-compatible, cross-platform (Windows, Linux (including PPC), and Solaris; FreeBSD, IRIX and Mac OS X versions under development), and international (available in 27 languages with more being added) office productivity suite. Written in C++, with XML file format and open component-based APIs, it has been issued under dual licensing– GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL).OpenOfffice.org is an open source initiative of Sun Microsystems, Inc. it is both an open source product – the multi-platform office productivity suite by the same name – and a project – the overall project comprising some 24 public projects. It has been sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Inc., which acquired StarDivision, the original German author of of the StarOffice suite, in 1999. The Web site is hosted by CollabNet (http://www.collab.net/), a leading provider of collaborative software development services based on open source principles. Sun placed all 9 million lines of StarOffice 6 alpha code on October 13, 2000. A result of 18 months of collaboration among 10,000 volunteers (and Sun engineers), and claimed to the largest open source project ever with more than 7.5 million lines of code, OpenOffice.Org 1.0, according to John Lettice (http://www.theregister.co.uk/) was released on May 1, 2002. At the same time, Sun continues to sell its StarOffice 5.2 commercially and its new version StarOffice 6.0 will use OpenOffice.org.
8.Media Lab Asia (MLA) in New Delhi on April 29, 2002 during Elitex exhibition organized by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India. The software enables creation, storage, editing and accessing of map-related databases for visually intuitive and effective decision making. Typically GIS software costs anything between Rs. 65,000 to Rs. 300,000-400,000. MLA has released it free of cost for its use for development purposes. The software has been developed by Centre for Spatial Database Management and Solutions (CSDMS), Noida, a non-profit organization founded by professionals in New Delhi in 1997 (http://www.csdms.org/), on the Linux operating system. Gram Chitra can be downloaded from http://www.csdms.org/gramchitra.
9.1969. The operating system was Unix, the legendary figure Linus Torvalds, and the network ARPANET.
10.Originally released in March 1999, Darwin is an open source initiative of Apple Computer, Inc. It is an open source version of Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) UNIX operating system (OS) that offers advanced networking, services such as the Apache Web server, and support to both Macintosh and UNIX file systems. Darwin currently runs on PowerPC-based Macintosh computers and is being ported to Intel processor-based computers. (For details, visit the Web site
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/darwin/faq.html). Darwin is the core of Mac OS X (pronounced `ten' and not `ex') v / 0.1.4. The Darwin kernel is based FreeBSD (originally developed at University of Calfornia at Berkeley) and Mach 3.0 (originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University)tecnhnologies and provides protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking. It features new
graphical user interface (GUI) called Aqua which is based on cutting-edge graphics technologies –Quartz (for 2-D objects), OpenGL (for 3-D objects), and Apple's QuickTime (for multimedia support). Applications environment is provided by a Java virtual machine (JVM), Cocoa (application programming interfaces (APIs) for OS X software), Carbon (APIs based on Apple's earlier OSs),
and Classic (Apple's 9.1 OS under OS X). Code-named Jaguar, this "super-modern" desktop operating system (OS)was released in summer of 2002 by Apple. For further details, visit the Web site
http://www.apple.com/macosx/newversion/. In 1998, Apple became the first major computer company to make open source development a fundamental part of its software strategy. To broaden the collaboration between Apple and development community,Open Darwin organization has been jointly launched in April 2002 by Internet Software Consortium , Inc. (ISC) and Apple Computer, Inc. For details, visit the website http://www.opendarwin.org/. Hexley, the platypus (http://www.hexley.com/) is the official community mascot of Darwin project.
11. Perl. It is developed by perl5porters, p5p for short. Online since October 26, 1995,the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) has 2641 MB 259 mirrors,3,998 authors and 7,203 module (http://cpan.perl.org/). For details, visit the website http://www.perl.org/.(November 12, 2004).
12.It is the world's largest open source software development Web site which aims to enrich the open source community by providing a central place for open source developers to control and manage open source software development. It provides free hosting to tens of thousands of projects. It is owned by Open Source Development Network Inc. (OSDN) which is a wholly owned subsidiary of VA Software Corporation. The OSDN family also includes Slashdot and Freshmeat.
Each month more than 5 million information technology (IT) professionals visit OSDN destinations delivering more than 110 million page views per month. For details, visit the Web site http://sourceforgenet.net/.
13.1. SourceForge.net, 2. Crystal Space 3D SDK, 3. phpGroupWare, 4. Python, 5. Direct Rendering Infrastructure, 6. Gaim, 7. CoreLinux++, 8. Common C++ Libraries, 9. SquirrelMail, and 10. The Freenet Project. (Source: http://sourceforge.net/top/mostactive.php) (November 12,2004).
14. 1. eMule, 2. BitTorrent, 3. Azureus – BitTorrent Client, 4. CDex, 5. DC++, 6. VirtualDub, 7. ZSNES, 8. phpMyAdmin, 9. Dev-C++, and 10. eMule Plus (Source: http://sourceforge.net/top/toplist.php?type=downloads (November 12, 2004).
15.(a) 1. MPlayer (100.00%), 2. Linux (76.24%), 3. cdrtools (63.95%), 4. Gaim (47.85%), 5. gcc (44.90%), 6. MySQL (44.68%), 7. xine (43.39%), 8. PHP (42.06%), 9. TightVNC (41.45%) and 10. Apache (38.71%) (Source: http://freshmeat.net/stats), and (b) 1. Linux (score: 9.49 - 554 votes), 2. Fluxbox (score: 9.37 - 325 votes), 3. Apache (score: 9.36 - 232 votes), 4. Slackware (score: 9.30 - 203 votes), 5. bash programmable completion (score: 9.17 - 308 votes), 6.
MPlayer (score: 9.12 - 570 votes), 7. Mutt (score: 9.06 - 187 votes), 8. The Gallery (score: 9.03 - 390 votes), 9. Debian GNU/Linux (score: 8.95 - 138 votes), and 10. Mozilla (score: 8.78 - 162 votes) (Source: http://freshmeat.net/stats/ (November 12, 2004).
16.(a) Slahdot (http://slashdot.org/), and (b) The Web's largest index of Unix and cross-platform software, themes, and Palm OS
(http://freshmeat.net/about/).
17.(a) A movie player for Linux, (b) A tool to create disk-at-once and track-at-once, (c) A Unix video player, (d) A GTK+-based messaging client, (e) The GNU compiler collection, (f) A GNOM Web browser, and (g) A network exploration tool and security / port scanner (Source: http://freshmeat.net/), (h) GIMP Tool Kit , and (i) GNU Image Manipulation Program (originally General Image Manipulation Program). GIMP and GTK were designed by two students at Berkeley, Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis.
18.(a) 25,491 (b) 2,174 (c) 1,359 (d) 946, and (e) 306. (Source:
http://freshmeat.net/stats/#license).(November 12, 2004).
19.Schwaebisch Hall. (Source: AP, Schwaebisch Hall, Hindustan Times,
New Delhi, March 26, 2003, Wednesday, p-15).
20.It is a computer-enabled programme for universalisation of upper primary (middle) school education under the Rajiv Gandhi Shiksha Mission (RGSM) in Madhya Pradesh. Under Headstart, a unit of three computers is provided in the nodal school of a school cluster called Jan Shiksha Kendra (JSK). 648 JSKs have been covered, and 4,000 teachers trained. Headstart is being extended in its second phase to 2,070 JSKs in 2002-03 while the remaining JSKs are proposed to be covered in the third phase in 2003-04.The distinctive feature of Headstart is development of customized culturally familiar educational software in Hindi, Mathematics, Environmental Studies and English designed to be used for the children. For details, visit the Web site http://www.mp.nic.in/rgm/shiksha.htm. Red Hat India (http://www.in.redhat.com), a subsidiary of Red Hat Inc., has
partnered with RGSM for implementation of the programme.
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© D.C.Misra 2004. Beta version. Posted November 11, 2004.
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Disclaimer: While every care is taken to compile the quiz, readers are requested to check the authentic sources before acting upon any information contained here. The use of the material, which is generally documented, is encouraged for self-education and non-commercial purposes provided the copyright is acknowledged and due credit is given to the author for the authorship. Use of material for commercial purposes is, however, strictly prohibited without the
written consent of the concerned author in whom the copyright vests.
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CYBER QUIZ: i4d Quiz Series by Dr D.C.Misra
Quizzes published so far in this series
1. i4d Quiz – 1: ICT and Women
2. i4d Quiz – 2: eGovernance: States
3. i4d Quiz – 3: ICT and Health: A Quiz,
4. i4d Quiz – 4: Wireless Communication : A Quiz
5. i4d Quiz – 5: ICT For the Poor: A Quiz
6. i4d Quiz – 6: ICT and Local Language Content: A Quiz
7. i4d Quiz – 7: ICT and Agriculture: A Quiz
8. i4d Quiz – 8: Community Radio: A Quiz
9. i4d Quiz – 9: Telecentres: A Quiz
10.i4d Quiz– 10: Open Source: A Quiz
(Last Quiz: Posted on November 12, 2004).
Next Quiz in the i4d Quiz Series
11.i4d Quiz–11: ICT and Disaster Management:A Quiz (Forthcoming)
(December 2004).
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Today is Diwali,the festival of lights in India. Wish you a Happy Diwali.Enjoy yourself.
Dr D.C.Misra
November 12,2004.
Friday, November 12, 2004
Thursday, November 11, 2004
CYBER QUIZ - 3: CHECK THE EMAIL by Dr D.C.Misra
CYBER QUIZ-3: CHECK THE EMAIL
Wish you all a Happy and Prosperous Diwali.
On the eve of the festival of lights in northern India, called Diwali
or Deepawali, when Delhi, the capital of India, is all lit up, here
is the third quiz in our main series of quizzes called CYBER QUIZ on
EMAIL (the first two quizzes in this series were on the INTERNET and
the WORLD WIDE WEB).
Enjoy the quiz and remember comments are always welcome.
Dr D.C.MISRA
November 11,2004
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CYBER QUIZ–3: CHECK THE EMAIL
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Rightly described as the killer app of new technology, people took to
the email as fish takes to water. Individuals now communicate across
nations in a jiffy. And it is still free. No wonder billions of
messages are exchanged over the internet every day, making checking
email a daily habit. But is ours still a small or big world? Let us
check.
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1.(a) What is email, who invented it, and when, (b) If Gmail is email
introduced by search leader, Google, how does it differ from the
conventional email, say Microsoft's Hotmail and (c) With which
company is the decade-old project Remail or Reinventing Email
associated?
2.Which are the top ten countries,in order of rank, in the use of
email and what are the rankings for India and China?
3.Which are the top five email service providers?
4.In 2003,how many(a)daily emails were sent,(b) daily emails sent
per email address,(c)daily emails sent per person,(d)daily emails
sent per corporate user,(e) daily emails received per person,(f)
email addresses per person existed and (g)how much did it cost to
all email users?
5.(a)What is spam, (b) The percentage of total internet email
identified as spam was 45 in March 2003.To what figure did it shoot
up to in February 2004 and (c) What is email harvester?
6.(a) How much amount per year is unwittingly paid by internet users
in receiving spam or junk email, and (b) Americans received 38.6
billion unsolicited email messages in 1999. To what figures was it
expected to rise by end-2000 and 2003?
7.(a) How many emails will be sent to and fro over the web in just
one year– six times the traffic of the snail mail, and (b) How
many email addresses change annually?
8.What was the percentage of spam in the following categories in
February 2004: (a) products, (b) financial, (c) adult (that is, for
persons above 18 years of age), (d) scams, (e) health, (f) Internet
(that is, Internet service and computer-related), (g) leisure, (h)
fraud, (i) political, (j) spiritual, and (k) other?
9.(a) What is the number of registered Indian email users in the
following email service: (i) Yahoo! Mail, (ii) Rediffmail, and (iii)
Hotmail, and (b) What is the number of email users and free storage
capacity allowed in (i) Yahoo!, (iii) Microsoft, (iii) AOL and (iv)
Gmail?
10.What percentage of Internet users say that (a) they cannot do
without email, (b) email makes them more efficient, (c) they waste an
hour every day responding to or deleting irrelevant email, and (d)
check their email at least daily?
11.(a) The number of email messages in the United States was 394.2
billion messages in 1999 as compared to postal mail packets of 201.6
billion. What were the corresponding figures for 2000, and (b) How
many email boxes existed worldwide by end of 1999?
12.(a) Internet Access Takes Flight, screams a news headline. Three
separate projects are under way to bring email and internet access to
commercial airline passengers. Which are these projects and (b) When
and where was the world premiere of airborne Internet allowing a
passenger on board to have Internet connectivity and enable to him to
send and receive emails held?
13.(a) Who invented one of the icons of the wired world– the
symbol "@," (b) Who invented and when the smiley face ":-) "
meaning "hey, I'm only joking" (c) Which was the first commercial
email service, (d) On May 24, 2004 the character "@" was added to
the Morse code. What was the special occasion? and (e) What was
the reason for not allowing a Chinese father to name his son "@"?
14.What are the following: (a) POP3, (b) SMTP, (c) IMAP, (d) MIME,
and (e)S / MIME?
15.(a) It is neither pure email nor pure snail mail (traditional
mail) but a mixture of two. What then is ePost in India and (b) If it
is a commercial software program, what then is EchoMail?
16.What are the following: (a) ePatra, (b) iLeap, (c) Sendmail, (d)
Fetchmail, (e) Passport, (f) List server and (g) Blackberry?
17.(a) A commercial service, this email converts all the snail mail
into email. What is it called, (b) What is shamail, (c) How much
dangerous is email from virus point of view, and (d) What is Google
by Mail?
18.Are two people with computer access really six emails away from
each other? An online research project at Columbia University in New
York has been launched to find an answer to the question whether ours
is really a small world or a big world. What is the name of the
project?
19.(a) An email is not, say the knowledgeable practitioners, an
ordinary letter sent electronically. It is a means of communication
in its own right. How should it then end, and (b) According to the
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, Jodie Williams won the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her contribution to the International
Ban on Landmines. She achieved that ban not only without much
government help, but in the face of opposition from the Big Five
major powers. And what did she say was her secret weapon for
organising 1,000 different human rights and arms control groups on
six continents?
20.(a) If it has been called the Google of email, what is Bloomba,
(b) If it has been called an irritating cousin of SPAM, what is SPIM
(c) What is Thunderbird and (d) Why one needs to be careful in
writing and reading emails?
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ANSWERS TO CYBER QUIZ – 3: CHECK THE EMAIL
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1.(a) Electronic mail. The term is understood to mean exchange of
mail or messages on computers, most notably, but not necessarily,
through the Internet. The first electronic mail (email) was sent
between two machines in 1972 by a BBN engineer called Ray Tomlinson
working in Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) company in Cambridge,
Massachusetts (b) Gmail, whose beta version was announced on April 1,
2004, and is in operation since then, has (free) storage capacity of
1GB (1 gigabyte or 1,000 megabytes) (500,000 pages) as against
Hotmail's (free) 1MB (megabyte), now raised to 2MB. Thus in Gmail
messages are not required to be deleted (due to practically no
limitation on storage), which is not the case with Hotmail. Likewise
messages are also not required to be filed in Gmail as a message once
sent can always be retrieved. (Check also
http://www.google.com/gmail/help/about.html and Hafner, Katie (2004):
In Google We Trust? When the Subject Is E-Mail, May be Not, The New
York Times, Technology / Circuits, April 8, Thursday,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/technology/circuits/08goog.html.),
and (c) IBM Corp. Visit the website
http://www.research.ibm.com/remail/ (accessed October 23, 2004).
2.1. Finland, 2. Denmark, 3. Australia, 4. United States, 5. Sweden,
6.Ireland, 7. Singapore, 8. Canada, 9. Austria, and 10. Mexico. India
is ranked 35th and China 55th in a ranking of 59 countries with
Vietnam ranked last.
3.1. Hotmail.com (110 million, as of October 2002), 2. Yahoo.com (101
million, as of early 2003), 3. Netease.com (53 million, unspecified
date), 4. Sina.com (20 million, unspecified date) and Rediffmail.com
(20 million, as of July 8, 2003) and 5. Libero.it (10 million, as of
April 2002). (Source: Email Service Providers by Size,
http://www.emailaddresses.com/email_market_size.htm, accessed October
20, 2004).
4.(a) 31 billion, (b) 56, (c) 174, (d) 34, (e) 10, (f) 3.1 average,
(g) $255 million. (Source: Spam Filter Review, Spam Statistics 2004,
http://www.spamfilterreview.com/spam-statistics.html, accessed:
October 18, 2004).
5.(a) It is the unsolicited email messages sent to individuals
usually by companies promoting their wares or organisations espousing
their causes. A survey conducted by Gartner Group in 1999 found that
91 per cent of email users receive spam at least once a week, and
most of them favour either regulating spam or banning it altogether.
(Source: Andrew Buchanan), (b) 62, according to Brightmail, an anti-
spam leader (Source: http://www.brightmail.com/spamstats.html, March
12, 2004), and (c) A computer program that scans websites and
databases for addresses and gather them for spammers, for example,
Target 2001, made by Microsys Technologies, Inc. of Findlay, Ohio.
(Source: Stacy Forester, The Wall Street Journal / The Indian
Express, February 11, 2002).
6.(a) 10 billion euros ($ 9.4 billion). The figure was arrived at by
a study done for the European Commission (EC) covering Europe and the
US as a part of its ongoing efforts to ensure that the development of
the Internet and ecommerce does not undermine Europe's rules on
Internet privacy and data protection, and (b) By end- 2000: 53.6
billion; By 2003: 75.6 billion. Ten per cent of all email is spam.
7.(a) According to one estimate, over 600 billion. (Source: The
Statesman, New Delhi, September 29, 2000), and (b) A third of all
email addresses changes annually, as estimated by market research
firm NFO World Group (http://www.nfo.com/).
8.(a) 24, (b) 18, (c) 14, (d) 11, (e) 7, (f) 6, (g) 6, (h) 4, (i) 2,
(j) 1(one), and (k) 7. (Source:
http://www.brightmail.co/spamstats.htm, March 12, 2004).
9.(a) (i) 8.2, (ii) 4.08, and (iii) 2.3 (Figures in million as in
February 2001). (Note: Hotmail has 110 million customers. It costs
Microsoft $ 1 per year to maintain each mailbox. Ad revenues only
cover 20 per cent of cost. It costs less than a penny for Hotmail to
send an email while it costs 5 to 6 cents for smaller email service
providers. (Source: Olga Kharif and Rutledge, Susann (2002): Clash of
the Free E-Mail Titans, March 1,
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2002/tc2002031_7723.
htm and (b) (i) 40 million (4MB), (ii) 34.4 million (2MB), (iii) 32
million (20MB), and (iv) Service yet to be formally launched,
currently in beta version. (Figures in parentheses indicate free
storage capacity provided) (Source: Hafner, Katie (2004): In Google
We Trust? When the Subject Is E-Mail, May be Not, The New York Times,
Technology / Circuits, April 8, Thursday,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/technology/circuits/08goog.html).
Since then the free storage limit in Yahoo! Mail has been raised to
100 MB.
10.(a) 70, and (b) 60, according to the E-Mail Marketing Report 2000
by US - based eMarketer, (c) 94 (Source: eMarketer 2000 ), and (d)
93, including 43 per cent who check it more than once a day and 36
per cent who check it more than five times a day. The survey was done
online. It is therefore skewed towards heavy Internet users (Source:
Spam Recycling Center E-mail User Survey 2000, Dataquest, December
15, 2000).
11.(a) Email – 536.3 billion messages; Postal mail – 206.4
billion packets (Source: eMarketer 2000 ), and (b) About 570 million,
almost six times the number in 1995. Out of these the Americans had
334 million.
12.(a) 1. In Flight Networks, the Globalstar Satellite Network, and
Qualcomm Inc. partnership. It will operate at 200 kbps and will be
deployed in late 2001, 2. Air Canada will offer it in some of 767
aircrafts, and 3. Boeing Co. will offer high-speed connections in
partnership with CNN, Mitsubishi Electric, and Loral Skynet (Source:
Cheryl Rosen, informationweek.com) and (b) On May 17, 2004 on board
the Lufthansa Flight No. LH 452, flying from Munich, Germany to Los
Angeles, California. Passengers on this flight were first in the
world to experience real-time, WiFi-based, high-speed internet
connectivity on a commercial flight route. (Source: News Releases
dated May 11, 2004,
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2004/q2/nr_040511j.html, and
dated May 17, 2004,
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2004/q2/nr_040517j.html, accessed
October 20, 2004).
13.(a) Ray Tomlinson in 1972. When this inventor of email wanted to
separate sender identification (ID) from the machine.id on which he
had the mail box, he examined the keyboard and rejected the alphabet
as the letters could not separate the two identities. He then
examined and rejected the punctuation marks as clumsy. Ultimately he
selected symbol @ - meaning at- which met his requirement, (b) Scott
Fahlman, an IBM researcher working on artificial intelligence (AI),
on September 19, 1982 when he typed " :-)" in an online
message. In the 80s, users of a Carnegie Mellon University bulletin
board proposed a variety of markers for humorous comments like *,%,
&, (#) and \----/ . Fahlman suggested :-) along with the admonition
to read it sideways. The practice spread as Internet users found the
symbol useful as a rough approximation of a twinkle in the eye.
(Source: The Indian Express, New Delhi, September 20, 2002 / Andy
Sullivan, Washington, September 19, 2002, Reuters) (c) OnTyme in
1976. It, however, found a limited market as the number of computer
owners was very small at that time. Commercial email service began
among 25 U.S. cities in 1982 and (d) The 160th anniversary of the
first telegraphic transmission on May 24, 1844. The International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), Geneva voted in December 2003 to
include the character "@" in the Morse code. Morse code is
used by amateur radio operators for exchanging emails. The character
"@" has a longer code (17 beats) than the word "at" (11 beats).
However code for "at" sounds like letter "w." (See What Will They
Think of Next: Radio?, February 21, 2004,
http://peterthink.blogs.com/thinking/2004/02/ (accessed October 24,
2004) and Glassman, Mark (2004): @ Issue: Long Code for a Small
Symbol, New York Times, April 15, available:
http://tinyurl.com/6brqc, accessed: October 24, 2004) and (e) The
request was refused as the Chinese law requires the name to be
translated into Mandarin and "@" could not be translated into
Mandarin.
14.(a)Post Office Protocol 3, a protocol used to download the email
to the computer. It can be used with or without SMTP, (b) Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol, a protocol used for sending email between the
servers,(c) Internet Message Access Protocol, a protocol used by an e-
mail client to access email on a shared mail server, (d) Multipurpose
Internet Mail Extensions, a protocol used for supporting graphics,
audio, and video in email (e) Secure MIME, a protocol used for
supporting encryption for secure email.
15.(a) It is a scheme introduced in August 2001 by the Indian Postal
Service for connecting remote villages without Internet connectivity.
A joint venture of India Post and Nettlinx Ltd., under the scheme, a
subscriber is given a generic email id based on the postal index
number (PIN) code of the delivery post office. The domain name is
Indianpostoffice.net. Mails for this address are downloaded at the
nearest epost office, printed, enveloped, and then delivered by the
dedicated postal staff. The tariff is is Rs 10 per A4 size paper. A
prospective user of the service has to get registered online at the
Web site http://www.indiapost.org/ or any of 200 ePost centres in the
country on payment of minimum Rs 250. ePost, in partnership with
Ecomenable, has accepted a 128 – bit secure socket layer (SSL)
Web server certificate for safe and secure transfer of mail. (Source:
Himanshu Singhal, Hindustan Times, February 6, 2002) and (b) It is a
commercial software program that handles a large volume of inbound
and outbound email by automatically receiving, processing,
responding, storing and tracking all correspondence. The program was
developed by EchoMail, Inc., Cambridge, Massachsetts founded by
V.A.Shiva, 37, its CEO. Shiva sometimes calls himself Dr E
–Mail. EchoMail has 125 employees including 30 developers. For
details visit the Web site http://www.echomail.com/. It competes with
larger firms, such as Siebel Systems, Inc., San Mateo, California,
and Kana Software, Inc., Palo Alto, California, that make software
for customer relationship management (CRM) and have an e mail
component. (Source: William M Bulkeley, The Wall Street Journal,
November 28, 2001).
16.(a) The first multiple Indian language email service (Epatra.com)
developed by Webduniya.com, (b) `The intelligent, Internet ready,
Indian language word processor on Windows' developed by
C–DAC, Pune in collaboration with Mithi.com Pvt. Ltd. It can be
downloaded from the website
http://www.cdacindia.com/html/gist/down/ileap - d.asp ,
(c) The most widely used mail transport program in Unix environment
written by Eric Allman. For freeware version of Sendmail™ , visit
the website of Sendmail Consortium at http://www.sendmail.org/ , (d)
`A one– stop solution to the remote mail retrieval problem
for Unix machines'. It is open source software licensed under GNU
General Public License. It was developed by Eric S. Raymond, the
compiler of Jargon File. For details, visit the website
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail, (e) Microsoft's free e-mail
service. It has 160 million subscribers, and (f) A maililing list
that is administered automatically, and (g) It is an email device,
which also serves as an organiser, address book, and a two-way pager.
Manufactured by Research in Motion, a Canadian company, its latest
model priced at $ 499 is powered by an Intel 386 processor and has
5MB memory (Source: Financial Times).
17.(a) PaperlessPOBox. All the snail mail (traditional paper mail) of
a recipient is received from a PO Box, scanned, and converted to
email and then sent to the recipient's email account the same
day.The snail mail is archived for three months. Founded by David
Nale in San Francisco, California in 1999, the PaperlessPOBox service
was started in 2001. For details, visit the website
http://www.PaperlessPOBox.com, (b) Camera–embedded phones. It
allows users to take snap shots with their mobile phones and send
them to other users via email. The service has been introduced in
Japan on March 1, 2002 by J–Phone, Japan's fast growing
mobile phone group (Source: Michiyo Nakemoto, Tokyo, March 1, 2002,
Financial Times, London / Business Standard, March 2, 2002), (c) It
is estimated that 93 per cent of all viruses are transmitted through
e–mail (Source: Goh Chee Hoh, The Times of India, April 24, 2002)
and (d) Not to be confused with Google Mail or Gmail, it is a a
unique email service by search engine Google. Cape Clear has created
an "asynchronous Google service." Send an email with your
search terms to google@capeclear.com and GoogleMail will send you
top ten results. It can be helpful in low bandwidth situation.
(Source: http://capescience.capeclear.com/google.shtml).
18. Small World Research Project led by Columbia sociologist Duncan
Watts. We live in a "small world " with "six degrees of
separation," so found Stanley Miligram, a Harvard social
psychologist in 1967. The phrase "six degrees of freedom" was
coined by him. It means that two people in the world are separated by
six intermediaries. An article in Nature in 1998 (393: 440 – 442)
by D.J.Watts and S.H. Strogatz attempted to explain the phenomenon in
terms of "random connectors" in a "network." The
research project questions the findings of Miligram and the commonly–held
belief is a small world, after all" by trying to find
whether indeed it is a Big World or Small World. For details, visit the
website, http://smallworld.sociology.columbia.edu/. For an
interesting history (October 2, 2000) of the "small world
problem" which also questions Miligram's conclusion, read Professor
Judith Kleifield, University of Alaska, Fairbanks's paper Could
It Be a Big World After All at the website
http://smallworld.sociology.columbia.edu/history.html. (See also
Hindustan Times, New Delhi, February 7, 2002 / Guardian News Service).
19.(a) The perfect email, says Steve Morris, the author of Perfect@E-
Mail, should end: "Kind regards" or "best wishes". Lucy Kellaway,writing in Financial Times, London, however, says: "The best ending for these messages is no signoff at all. A brief, simple message followed by the name of the sender. Quick, functional and characterless. Just like the medium." One would like to agree
with her, and (b) Email.(Source: Friedman, T.L. (2000): The Lexus and the
Olive Tree, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, http://www.lexusandolivetree.com/).
20.(a) A search engine for emails typically accumulated over years,
which even searches inside attachments, developed by Stata Labs,
Inc., San Mateo, CA founded by Raymie Stata (a professor of web
archeology) and Ray Stata in late 2001. (Bloomba is a phonetic
spelling of blumba meaning historically a metal tag to identify
authentic, fresh and `kosher" meat, and thus identify real
from fake email. For details, visit the website http://www.statalabs.com, (b)
Spam through instant messaging (IM) systems, that is, unsolicited
commercial instant messaging. Spim is set to triple in 2004,according
to Radicati Group, Palo Alto, CA, a technology market research firm.
The company projects that 1.2 billion spims will be sent, a mere
trickle compared to 35 billion spams expected, but the researchers
warn that spim is growing at about three times the rate of spam.
(Source: The Times of India, New Delhi, April 1, 2004, Thursday, p-14
and http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp? id=ns99994822, March
26, 2004), (c) It is an open source email client developed by
Mozilla, an open source software project supported by the Mozilla
Foundation established in 2003. (Source:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird, accessed October 18,
2004) and (d) Communication between humans is approximately 90% body
language, 8% tone of voice, and 2% what you say. With email, you
remove the first 98%, states Email Etiquette. As such one has to be
careful in writing, reading and interpreting emails. (Source: Email
Etiquette, http://www.emailaddresses.com/guide_etiquette.htm,
accessed: October 20, 2004).
______________________________________________________________________
© D.C. Misra 2004. Beta version (Posted: November 11, 2004).
(Source: http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/140).
______________________________________________________________________
Dr Misra is New Delhi-India-based eGov and IT Consultant.
Email:dcmisra[at]gmail.com
Wish you all a Happy and Prosperous Diwali.
On the eve of the festival of lights in northern India, called Diwali
or Deepawali, when Delhi, the capital of India, is all lit up, here
is the third quiz in our main series of quizzes called CYBER QUIZ on
EMAIL (the first two quizzes in this series were on the INTERNET and
the WORLD WIDE WEB).
Enjoy the quiz and remember comments are always welcome.
Dr D.C.MISRA
November 11,2004
______________________________________________________________________
CYBER QUIZ–3: CHECK THE EMAIL
______________________________________________________________________
Rightly described as the killer app of new technology, people took to
the email as fish takes to water. Individuals now communicate across
nations in a jiffy. And it is still free. No wonder billions of
messages are exchanged over the internet every day, making checking
email a daily habit. But is ours still a small or big world? Let us
check.
______________________________________________________________________
1.(a) What is email, who invented it, and when, (b) If Gmail is email
introduced by search leader, Google, how does it differ from the
conventional email, say Microsoft's Hotmail and (c) With which
company is the decade-old project Remail or Reinventing Email
associated?
2.Which are the top ten countries,in order of rank, in the use of
email and what are the rankings for India and China?
3.Which are the top five email service providers?
4.In 2003,how many(a)daily emails were sent,(b) daily emails sent
per email address,(c)daily emails sent per person,(d)daily emails
sent per corporate user,(e) daily emails received per person,(f)
email addresses per person existed and (g)how much did it cost to
all email users?
5.(a)What is spam, (b) The percentage of total internet email
identified as spam was 45 in March 2003.To what figure did it shoot
up to in February 2004 and (c) What is email harvester?
6.(a) How much amount per year is unwittingly paid by internet users
in receiving spam or junk email, and (b) Americans received 38.6
billion unsolicited email messages in 1999. To what figures was it
expected to rise by end-2000 and 2003?
7.(a) How many emails will be sent to and fro over the web in just
one year– six times the traffic of the snail mail, and (b) How
many email addresses change annually?
8.What was the percentage of spam in the following categories in
February 2004: (a) products, (b) financial, (c) adult (that is, for
persons above 18 years of age), (d) scams, (e) health, (f) Internet
(that is, Internet service and computer-related), (g) leisure, (h)
fraud, (i) political, (j) spiritual, and (k) other?
9.(a) What is the number of registered Indian email users in the
following email service: (i) Yahoo! Mail, (ii) Rediffmail, and (iii)
Hotmail, and (b) What is the number of email users and free storage
capacity allowed in (i) Yahoo!, (iii) Microsoft, (iii) AOL and (iv)
Gmail?
10.What percentage of Internet users say that (a) they cannot do
without email, (b) email makes them more efficient, (c) they waste an
hour every day responding to or deleting irrelevant email, and (d)
check their email at least daily?
11.(a) The number of email messages in the United States was 394.2
billion messages in 1999 as compared to postal mail packets of 201.6
billion. What were the corresponding figures for 2000, and (b) How
many email boxes existed worldwide by end of 1999?
12.(a) Internet Access Takes Flight, screams a news headline. Three
separate projects are under way to bring email and internet access to
commercial airline passengers. Which are these projects and (b) When
and where was the world premiere of airborne Internet allowing a
passenger on board to have Internet connectivity and enable to him to
send and receive emails held?
13.(a) Who invented one of the icons of the wired world– the
symbol "@," (b) Who invented and when the smiley face ":-) "
meaning "hey, I'm only joking" (c) Which was the first commercial
email service, (d) On May 24, 2004 the character "@" was added to
the Morse code. What was the special occasion? and (e) What was
the reason for not allowing a Chinese father to name his son "@"?
14.What are the following: (a) POP3, (b) SMTP, (c) IMAP, (d) MIME,
and (e)S / MIME?
15.(a) It is neither pure email nor pure snail mail (traditional
mail) but a mixture of two. What then is ePost in India and (b) If it
is a commercial software program, what then is EchoMail?
16.What are the following: (a) ePatra, (b) iLeap, (c) Sendmail, (d)
Fetchmail, (e) Passport, (f) List server and (g) Blackberry?
17.(a) A commercial service, this email converts all the snail mail
into email. What is it called, (b) What is shamail, (c) How much
dangerous is email from virus point of view, and (d) What is Google
by Mail?
18.Are two people with computer access really six emails away from
each other? An online research project at Columbia University in New
York has been launched to find an answer to the question whether ours
is really a small world or a big world. What is the name of the
project?
19.(a) An email is not, say the knowledgeable practitioners, an
ordinary letter sent electronically. It is a means of communication
in its own right. How should it then end, and (b) According to the
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, Jodie Williams won the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her contribution to the International
Ban on Landmines. She achieved that ban not only without much
government help, but in the face of opposition from the Big Five
major powers. And what did she say was her secret weapon for
organising 1,000 different human rights and arms control groups on
six continents?
20.(a) If it has been called the Google of email, what is Bloomba,
(b) If it has been called an irritating cousin of SPAM, what is SPIM
(c) What is Thunderbird and (d) Why one needs to be careful in
writing and reading emails?
______________________________________________________________________
ANSWERS TO CYBER QUIZ – 3: CHECK THE EMAIL
______________________________________________________________________
1.(a) Electronic mail. The term is understood to mean exchange of
mail or messages on computers, most notably, but not necessarily,
through the Internet. The first electronic mail (email) was sent
between two machines in 1972 by a BBN engineer called Ray Tomlinson
working in Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) company in Cambridge,
Massachusetts (b) Gmail, whose beta version was announced on April 1,
2004, and is in operation since then, has (free) storage capacity of
1GB (1 gigabyte or 1,000 megabytes) (500,000 pages) as against
Hotmail's (free) 1MB (megabyte), now raised to 2MB. Thus in Gmail
messages are not required to be deleted (due to practically no
limitation on storage), which is not the case with Hotmail. Likewise
messages are also not required to be filed in Gmail as a message once
sent can always be retrieved. (Check also
http://www.google.com/gmail/help/about.html and Hafner, Katie (2004):
In Google We Trust? When the Subject Is E-Mail, May be Not, The New
York Times, Technology / Circuits, April 8, Thursday,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/technology/circuits/08goog.html.),
and (c) IBM Corp. Visit the website
http://www.research.ibm.com/remail/ (accessed October 23, 2004).
2.1. Finland, 2. Denmark, 3. Australia, 4. United States, 5. Sweden,
6.Ireland, 7. Singapore, 8. Canada, 9. Austria, and 10. Mexico. India
is ranked 35th and China 55th in a ranking of 59 countries with
Vietnam ranked last.
3.1. Hotmail.com (110 million, as of October 2002), 2. Yahoo.com (101
million, as of early 2003), 3. Netease.com (53 million, unspecified
date), 4. Sina.com (20 million, unspecified date) and Rediffmail.com
(20 million, as of July 8, 2003) and 5. Libero.it (10 million, as of
April 2002). (Source: Email Service Providers by Size,
http://www.emailaddresses.com/email_market_size.htm, accessed October
20, 2004).
4.(a) 31 billion, (b) 56, (c) 174, (d) 34, (e) 10, (f) 3.1 average,
(g) $255 million. (Source: Spam Filter Review, Spam Statistics 2004,
http://www.spamfilterreview.com/spam-statistics.html, accessed:
October 18, 2004).
5.(a) It is the unsolicited email messages sent to individuals
usually by companies promoting their wares or organisations espousing
their causes. A survey conducted by Gartner Group in 1999 found that
91 per cent of email users receive spam at least once a week, and
most of them favour either regulating spam or banning it altogether.
(Source: Andrew Buchanan), (b) 62, according to Brightmail, an anti-
spam leader (Source: http://www.brightmail.com/spamstats.html, March
12, 2004), and (c) A computer program that scans websites and
databases for addresses and gather them for spammers, for example,
Target 2001, made by Microsys Technologies, Inc. of Findlay, Ohio.
(Source: Stacy Forester, The Wall Street Journal / The Indian
Express, February 11, 2002).
6.(a) 10 billion euros ($ 9.4 billion). The figure was arrived at by
a study done for the European Commission (EC) covering Europe and the
US as a part of its ongoing efforts to ensure that the development of
the Internet and ecommerce does not undermine Europe's rules on
Internet privacy and data protection, and (b) By end- 2000: 53.6
billion; By 2003: 75.6 billion. Ten per cent of all email is spam.
7.(a) According to one estimate, over 600 billion. (Source: The
Statesman, New Delhi, September 29, 2000), and (b) A third of all
email addresses changes annually, as estimated by market research
firm NFO World Group (http://www.nfo.com/).
8.(a) 24, (b) 18, (c) 14, (d) 11, (e) 7, (f) 6, (g) 6, (h) 4, (i) 2,
(j) 1(one), and (k) 7. (Source:
http://www.brightmail.co/spamstats.htm, March 12, 2004).
9.(a) (i) 8.2, (ii) 4.08, and (iii) 2.3 (Figures in million as in
February 2001). (Note: Hotmail has 110 million customers. It costs
Microsoft $ 1 per year to maintain each mailbox. Ad revenues only
cover 20 per cent of cost. It costs less than a penny for Hotmail to
send an email while it costs 5 to 6 cents for smaller email service
providers. (Source: Olga Kharif and Rutledge, Susann (2002): Clash of
the Free E-Mail Titans, March 1,
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2002/tc2002031_7723.
htm and (b) (i) 40 million (4MB), (ii) 34.4 million (2MB), (iii) 32
million (20MB), and (iv) Service yet to be formally launched,
currently in beta version. (Figures in parentheses indicate free
storage capacity provided) (Source: Hafner, Katie (2004): In Google
We Trust? When the Subject Is E-Mail, May be Not, The New York Times,
Technology / Circuits, April 8, Thursday,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/technology/circuits/08goog.html).
Since then the free storage limit in Yahoo! Mail has been raised to
100 MB.
10.(a) 70, and (b) 60, according to the E-Mail Marketing Report 2000
by US - based eMarketer, (c) 94 (Source: eMarketer 2000 ), and (d)
93, including 43 per cent who check it more than once a day and 36
per cent who check it more than five times a day. The survey was done
online. It is therefore skewed towards heavy Internet users (Source:
Spam Recycling Center E-mail User Survey 2000, Dataquest, December
15, 2000).
11.(a) Email – 536.3 billion messages; Postal mail – 206.4
billion packets (Source: eMarketer 2000 ), and (b) About 570 million,
almost six times the number in 1995. Out of these the Americans had
334 million.
12.(a) 1. In Flight Networks, the Globalstar Satellite Network, and
Qualcomm Inc. partnership. It will operate at 200 kbps and will be
deployed in late 2001, 2. Air Canada will offer it in some of 767
aircrafts, and 3. Boeing Co. will offer high-speed connections in
partnership with CNN, Mitsubishi Electric, and Loral Skynet (Source:
Cheryl Rosen, informationweek.com) and (b) On May 17, 2004 on board
the Lufthansa Flight No. LH 452, flying from Munich, Germany to Los
Angeles, California. Passengers on this flight were first in the
world to experience real-time, WiFi-based, high-speed internet
connectivity on a commercial flight route. (Source: News Releases
dated May 11, 2004,
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2004/q2/nr_040511j.html, and
dated May 17, 2004,
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2004/q2/nr_040517j.html, accessed
October 20, 2004).
13.(a) Ray Tomlinson in 1972. When this inventor of email wanted to
separate sender identification (ID) from the machine.id on which he
had the mail box, he examined the keyboard and rejected the alphabet
as the letters could not separate the two identities. He then
examined and rejected the punctuation marks as clumsy. Ultimately he
selected symbol @ - meaning at- which met his requirement, (b) Scott
Fahlman, an IBM researcher working on artificial intelligence (AI),
on September 19, 1982 when he typed " :-)" in an online
message. In the 80s, users of a Carnegie Mellon University bulletin
board proposed a variety of markers for humorous comments like *,%,
&, (#) and \----/ . Fahlman suggested :-) along with the admonition
to read it sideways. The practice spread as Internet users found the
symbol useful as a rough approximation of a twinkle in the eye.
(Source: The Indian Express, New Delhi, September 20, 2002 / Andy
Sullivan, Washington, September 19, 2002, Reuters) (c) OnTyme in
1976. It, however, found a limited market as the number of computer
owners was very small at that time. Commercial email service began
among 25 U.S. cities in 1982 and (d) The 160th anniversary of the
first telegraphic transmission on May 24, 1844. The International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), Geneva voted in December 2003 to
include the character "@" in the Morse code. Morse code is
used by amateur radio operators for exchanging emails. The character
"@" has a longer code (17 beats) than the word "at" (11 beats).
However code for "at" sounds like letter "w." (See What Will They
Think of Next: Radio?, February 21, 2004,
http://peterthink.blogs.com/thinking/2004/02/ (accessed October 24,
2004) and Glassman, Mark (2004): @ Issue: Long Code for a Small
Symbol, New York Times, April 15, available:
http://tinyurl.com/6brqc, accessed: October 24, 2004) and (e) The
request was refused as the Chinese law requires the name to be
translated into Mandarin and "@" could not be translated into
Mandarin.
14.(a)Post Office Protocol 3, a protocol used to download the email
to the computer. It can be used with or without SMTP, (b) Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol, a protocol used for sending email between the
servers,(c) Internet Message Access Protocol, a protocol used by an e-
mail client to access email on a shared mail server, (d) Multipurpose
Internet Mail Extensions, a protocol used for supporting graphics,
audio, and video in email (e) Secure MIME, a protocol used for
supporting encryption for secure email.
15.(a) It is a scheme introduced in August 2001 by the Indian Postal
Service for connecting remote villages without Internet connectivity.
A joint venture of India Post and Nettlinx Ltd., under the scheme, a
subscriber is given a generic email id based on the postal index
number (PIN) code of the delivery post office. The domain name is
Indianpostoffice.net. Mails for this address are downloaded at the
nearest epost office, printed, enveloped, and then delivered by the
dedicated postal staff. The tariff is is Rs 10 per A4 size paper. A
prospective user of the service has to get registered online at the
Web site http://www.indiapost.org/ or any of 200 ePost centres in the
country on payment of minimum Rs 250. ePost, in partnership with
Ecomenable, has accepted a 128 – bit secure socket layer (SSL)
Web server certificate for safe and secure transfer of mail. (Source:
Himanshu Singhal, Hindustan Times, February 6, 2002) and (b) It is a
commercial software program that handles a large volume of inbound
and outbound email by automatically receiving, processing,
responding, storing and tracking all correspondence. The program was
developed by EchoMail, Inc., Cambridge, Massachsetts founded by
V.A.Shiva, 37, its CEO. Shiva sometimes calls himself Dr E
–Mail. EchoMail has 125 employees including 30 developers. For
details visit the Web site http://www.echomail.com/. It competes with
larger firms, such as Siebel Systems, Inc., San Mateo, California,
and Kana Software, Inc., Palo Alto, California, that make software
for customer relationship management (CRM) and have an e mail
component. (Source: William M Bulkeley, The Wall Street Journal,
November 28, 2001).
16.(a) The first multiple Indian language email service (Epatra.com)
developed by Webduniya.com, (b) `The intelligent, Internet ready,
Indian language word processor on Windows' developed by
C–DAC, Pune in collaboration with Mithi.com Pvt. Ltd. It can be
downloaded from the website
http://www.cdacindia.com/html/gist/down/ileap - d.asp ,
(c) The most widely used mail transport program in Unix environment
written by Eric Allman. For freeware version of Sendmail™ , visit
the website of Sendmail Consortium at http://www.sendmail.org/ , (d)
`A one– stop solution to the remote mail retrieval problem
for Unix machines'. It is open source software licensed under GNU
General Public License. It was developed by Eric S. Raymond, the
compiler of Jargon File. For details, visit the website
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/fetchmail, (e) Microsoft's free e-mail
service. It has 160 million subscribers, and (f) A maililing list
that is administered automatically, and (g) It is an email device,
which also serves as an organiser, address book, and a two-way pager.
Manufactured by Research in Motion, a Canadian company, its latest
model priced at $ 499 is powered by an Intel 386 processor and has
5MB memory (Source: Financial Times).
17.(a) PaperlessPOBox. All the snail mail (traditional paper mail) of
a recipient is received from a PO Box, scanned, and converted to
email and then sent to the recipient's email account the same
day.The snail mail is archived for three months. Founded by David
Nale in San Francisco, California in 1999, the PaperlessPOBox service
was started in 2001. For details, visit the website
http://www.PaperlessPOBox.com, (b) Camera–embedded phones. It
allows users to take snap shots with their mobile phones and send
them to other users via email. The service has been introduced in
Japan on March 1, 2002 by J–Phone, Japan's fast growing
mobile phone group (Source: Michiyo Nakemoto, Tokyo, March 1, 2002,
Financial Times, London / Business Standard, March 2, 2002), (c) It
is estimated that 93 per cent of all viruses are transmitted through
e–mail (Source: Goh Chee Hoh, The Times of India, April 24, 2002)
and (d) Not to be confused with Google Mail or Gmail, it is a a
unique email service by search engine Google. Cape Clear has created
an "asynchronous Google service." Send an email with your
search terms to google@capeclear.com and GoogleMail will send you
top ten results. It can be helpful in low bandwidth situation.
(Source: http://capescience.capeclear.com/google.shtml).
18. Small World Research Project led by Columbia sociologist Duncan
Watts. We live in a "small world " with "six degrees of
separation," so found Stanley Miligram, a Harvard social
psychologist in 1967. The phrase "six degrees of freedom" was
coined by him. It means that two people in the world are separated by
six intermediaries. An article in Nature in 1998 (393: 440 – 442)
by D.J.Watts and S.H. Strogatz attempted to explain the phenomenon in
terms of "random connectors" in a "network." The
research project questions the findings of Miligram and the commonly–held
belief is a small world, after all" by trying to find
whether indeed it is a Big World or Small World. For details, visit the
website, http://smallworld.sociology.columbia.edu/. For an
interesting history (October 2, 2000) of the "small world
problem" which also questions Miligram's conclusion, read Professor
Judith Kleifield, University of Alaska, Fairbanks's paper Could
It Be a Big World After All at the website
http://smallworld.sociology.columbia.edu/history.html. (See also
Hindustan Times, New Delhi, February 7, 2002 / Guardian News Service).
19.(a) The perfect email, says Steve Morris, the author of Perfect@E-
Mail, should end: "Kind regards" or "best wishes". Lucy Kellaway,writing in Financial Times, London, however, says: "The best ending for these messages is no signoff at all. A brief, simple message followed by the name of the sender. Quick, functional and characterless. Just like the medium." One would like to agree
with her, and (b) Email.(Source: Friedman, T.L. (2000): The Lexus and the
Olive Tree, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, http://www.lexusandolivetree.com/).
20.(a) A search engine for emails typically accumulated over years,
which even searches inside attachments, developed by Stata Labs,
Inc., San Mateo, CA founded by Raymie Stata (a professor of web
archeology) and Ray Stata in late 2001. (Bloomba is a phonetic
spelling of blumba meaning historically a metal tag to identify
authentic, fresh and `kosher" meat, and thus identify real
from fake email. For details, visit the website http://www.statalabs.com, (b)
Spam through instant messaging (IM) systems, that is, unsolicited
commercial instant messaging. Spim is set to triple in 2004,according
to Radicati Group, Palo Alto, CA, a technology market research firm.
The company projects that 1.2 billion spims will be sent, a mere
trickle compared to 35 billion spams expected, but the researchers
warn that spim is growing at about three times the rate of spam.
(Source: The Times of India, New Delhi, April 1, 2004, Thursday, p-14
and http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp? id=ns99994822, March
26, 2004), (c) It is an open source email client developed by
Mozilla, an open source software project supported by the Mozilla
Foundation established in 2003. (Source:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird, accessed October 18,
2004) and (d) Communication between humans is approximately 90% body
language, 8% tone of voice, and 2% what you say. With email, you
remove the first 98%, states Email Etiquette. As such one has to be
careful in writing, reading and interpreting emails. (Source: Email
Etiquette, http://www.emailaddresses.com/guide_etiquette.htm,
accessed: October 20, 2004).
______________________________________________________________________
© D.C. Misra 2004. Beta version (Posted: November 11, 2004).
(Source: http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/140).
______________________________________________________________________
Dr Misra is New Delhi-India-based eGov and IT Consultant.
Email:dcmisra[at]gmail.com
Friday, October 29, 2004
Cyber Quiz: Book Reviews-2: Hundley et al. (2003): The Global Course of Inf. Rev.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Hundley, Richard O., Robert H. Anderson, Tora K. Bikson, and C. Richard Neu (2003): The Global Course of the Information Revolution: Recurring Themes and Regional Variations, Santa Monica, CA, RAND Corporation, pb xliv+174 pp, available: http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1680/ (accessed: October 29, 2004).
_____________________________________________________________________________________
This is a study, undertaken during 1999–2002, by the well-known think tank, the RAND Corporation, “to explore the future of the information revolution throughout the world.” This is a multidisciplinary effort with an overarching goal of mapping the likely future of the global information revolution over the next 10-15 years. This effort also includes a series of international conferences on specific aspects of the information revolution.
The book consists of three parts containing 15 chapters: Part I: Recurring Themes, Part II: Regional Variations and Part III: Some Additional Topics (A Brief Look). Part I consists of 6 chapters (1 to 6), Part II of another 6 chapters (7 to 12) and Part III of 3 chapters (12 to 15). The book is wound up with an appendix (Participants in information revolution conferences) and References.Typically the chapters are titled as summing-up findings, propositions or projections.
Part I: Recurring Themes has the following 6 chapters: 1. Introduction, 2. New technology developments will continually drive the information revolution, 3. The information revolution is enabling new business models that are transforming the business and financial worlds, 4. The information revolution is affecting mechanisms of governance and empowering new political actors, 5. The information revolution both shapes and is shaped by social and cultural values in significant ways, and 6. Many factors shape and characterize a nations approach to the information revolution.
Part II: Regional Variations, which is a regional survey of the ongoing information revolution has the following 6 chapters: 7. North America will continue in the vanguard of information revolution, 8.The information revolution is following a somewhat different and more deliberate course in Europe, 9. Many Asia specific nations are poised to do well in the information revolution, some or not, 10. Latin America faces many obstacles in responding to the information revolution: some nations will rise to the challenge, others will not, 11. Few middle eastern and north African nations will fully experience the information revolution, some may miss it altogether and 12. Most countries of sub-Saharan Africa will fall further behind the information revolution.
Part II: Some Additional Topics (A Brief Look) consists of just three chapters: 13. Geopolitical trends furthered by the information revolution could pose continuing challenges to the United States, 14. What future events could change these projections? and 15. The information revolution is a part of broader technological revolution with even profounder consequences.
The book under review is a panaromic survey of the worldwide trends in the ongoing information revolution what we have been calling in these columns as an information and communication technology (ICT) revolution though going by the definition in this book the information revolution is a more general term than the ICT revolution. What this erudite work offers are assessments, generalizations, propositions and projections almost all of which have intuitive appeal and thus ready acceptance. Such aggregation, however, hides the intra-group variation, which often is of greater significance than what the aggregation, by its very nature, reveals. For example, there are many Asian countries which are in the vanguard of the ongoing ICT revolution while there are many Asian countries which appear to have been bypassed by the ongoing ICT revolution.
To freeze the frame and take a view, well analysed and well informed no doubt, is instructive but what is the policy prescription if one wants to, and one must, correct or improve an existing (albeit unsatisfactory) situation? Such policy prescriptions squarely fall within the domain of think tanks, more so if it happens to be a venerable, well endowed 50 year old institution which in the past had often pushed the frontiers of knowledge.(Its budget in 2000 was $140 million).Take, for instance, the case of digital divide (an issue of worldwide concern as it exists not only among the countries but also within countries, developed or developing). And if you take its multidimensional view, as Norris (2001, pp 3-4) does, then you have global divide (between developed and developing countries), social divide (between information rich and information poor in a country) and democratic divide (between those who can and those who cannot use the digital resources to engage in public life). An effective solution of the problem has been eluding the best of policy makers worldwide.
Yet the ICTs offer tantalizing possibilities. The sight of a kabariwala (rag picker in India) in Delhi wielding a mobile phone and organizing his work among the co-workers efficiently, does give you an initial shock, quickly turning into an astonishment and instantly converting you into a technophile. The question here though is not of technology adoption, which is proved beyond doubt by the ease of its use (though by an unlikely adopter in this case). The question here is: can this technology contribute in imparting literacy and numeracy, provide knowledge in health and hygiene and upgrade skills of people on the other side of digital divide? ICTs will increasingly be judged by such criteria. In respect of India, the study reports:
“India has three important advantages in the global IT competition: a plentiful supply of talented IT-trained people; copious numbers of educated, low-cost workers proficient in English; and close ties to the many Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. As a result, IT business clusters have developed there, it is a world leader in back-office services and software outsourcing, and its software production has increased fiftyfold over the past 10 years. The prosperity and growth of the Indian software and back-office service industries should continue, at least over the near- to mid-term. However, going beyond software into IT hardware activities may be difficult, particularly in view of China’s growing role in this area. Also, the entire Indian high-tech industry is a thin veneer on top of the Indian economy. Much of the nation is still in the agricultural age, not yet having reached the industrial age, let alone the information age. These factors may place any broader role in the information revolution beyond India’s reach.” (p-34). (emphasis supplied).
This conclusion “Much of the nation is still in the agricultural age, not yet having reached the industrial age, let alone the information age. These factors may place any broader role in the information revolution beyond India’s reach,” however, does not bear scrutiny. First, Asian tigers (certain east Asian economies) proved it and ICTs only re-enforce it now and then that there is nothing like a linear progression in development, say, from agricultural to industrial to information stage. Indeed what ICTs do, and have already done, is to enable an economy in agricultural stage to leapfrog to information age. India itself is an example of this assertion by developing a thriving business process outsourcing (BPO) sector from nowhere and meeting the needs of the post-industrial societies. Secondly, ICTs have enormous potential in raising agricultural productivity and production through revamped agricultural research and extension by way of establishing appropriate networks and implied faster problem solving of the farmers including providing timely information through agricultural marketing networks. Lastly, the ICTs have tremendous potential in human resource development. This alone can pull out an economy from backwardness and place it on the path of self-sustaining economic growth through acquisition of new skills and increased production and productivity.
Being a panoramic worldwide survey, the book under review inevitably brings to mind the monumental trilogy on the information age by the Spanish sociologist Professor Manuel Castells (1996, 1997 and 1998), currently shuttling between Barcelona and Los Angeles. A central theme identified by him in this magnum opus is the rise of network societ .It is this network, signifying connectivity, which holds the key to the ongoing information revolution. If you are a part of network (connected), you change, survive and prosper. If not, then you languish in your present state. Indeed the learned professor himself invented a term for it – the fourth world (of unconnected countries, societies and people). Digital divide then ceases to be an empty slogan and bridging it becomes an urgent priority.
The study under review is a notable contribution in assessing the trends of different aspects of the ongoing information revolution worldwide including its inevitable, though undesirable, regional variation. It will be found useful by all those practitioners, researchers and others who are interested in understanding the broader aspects of the ongoing information revolution as it unfolds right before our eyes, very often challenging our preconceived notions necessitating change in our perceptions. And it indeed is a task of the think tanks to capture and then disseminate such broad trends of the ongoing information revolution.
Dr D.C.Misra
October 28, 2004
_____________________________________________________________
References
Castells, Manuel (1996): The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume I: The Rise of Network Society, Oxford, United Kingdom, Blackwell.
Castells, Manuel (1997): The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume II: The Power of Identity, Oxford, United Kingdom, Blackwell.
Castells, Manuel (1998): The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume III: End of Millennium, Oxford, United Kingdom, Blackwell.
Norris, Pippa (2001): Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide, Cambridge, United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press.
Hundley, Richard O., Robert H. Anderson, Tora K. Bikson, and C. Richard Neu (2003): The Global Course of the Information Revolution: Recurring Themes and Regional Variations, Santa Monica, CA, RAND Corporation, pb xliv+174 pp, available: http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1680/ (accessed: October 29, 2004).
_____________________________________________________________________________________
This is a study, undertaken during 1999–2002, by the well-known think tank, the RAND Corporation, “to explore the future of the information revolution throughout the world.” This is a multidisciplinary effort with an overarching goal of mapping the likely future of the global information revolution over the next 10-15 years. This effort also includes a series of international conferences on specific aspects of the information revolution.
The book consists of three parts containing 15 chapters: Part I: Recurring Themes, Part II: Regional Variations and Part III: Some Additional Topics (A Brief Look). Part I consists of 6 chapters (1 to 6), Part II of another 6 chapters (7 to 12) and Part III of 3 chapters (12 to 15). The book is wound up with an appendix (Participants in information revolution conferences) and References.Typically the chapters are titled as summing-up findings, propositions or projections.
Part I: Recurring Themes has the following 6 chapters: 1. Introduction, 2. New technology developments will continually drive the information revolution, 3. The information revolution is enabling new business models that are transforming the business and financial worlds, 4. The information revolution is affecting mechanisms of governance and empowering new political actors, 5. The information revolution both shapes and is shaped by social and cultural values in significant ways, and 6. Many factors shape and characterize a nations approach to the information revolution.
Part II: Regional Variations, which is a regional survey of the ongoing information revolution has the following 6 chapters: 7. North America will continue in the vanguard of information revolution, 8.The information revolution is following a somewhat different and more deliberate course in Europe, 9. Many Asia specific nations are poised to do well in the information revolution, some or not, 10. Latin America faces many obstacles in responding to the information revolution: some nations will rise to the challenge, others will not, 11. Few middle eastern and north African nations will fully experience the information revolution, some may miss it altogether and 12. Most countries of sub-Saharan Africa will fall further behind the information revolution.
Part II: Some Additional Topics (A Brief Look) consists of just three chapters: 13. Geopolitical trends furthered by the information revolution could pose continuing challenges to the United States, 14. What future events could change these projections? and 15. The information revolution is a part of broader technological revolution with even profounder consequences.
The book under review is a panaromic survey of the worldwide trends in the ongoing information revolution what we have been calling in these columns as an information and communication technology (ICT) revolution though going by the definition in this book the information revolution is a more general term than the ICT revolution. What this erudite work offers are assessments, generalizations, propositions and projections almost all of which have intuitive appeal and thus ready acceptance. Such aggregation, however, hides the intra-group variation, which often is of greater significance than what the aggregation, by its very nature, reveals. For example, there are many Asian countries which are in the vanguard of the ongoing ICT revolution while there are many Asian countries which appear to have been bypassed by the ongoing ICT revolution.
To freeze the frame and take a view, well analysed and well informed no doubt, is instructive but what is the policy prescription if one wants to, and one must, correct or improve an existing (albeit unsatisfactory) situation? Such policy prescriptions squarely fall within the domain of think tanks, more so if it happens to be a venerable, well endowed 50 year old institution which in the past had often pushed the frontiers of knowledge.(Its budget in 2000 was $140 million).Take, for instance, the case of digital divide (an issue of worldwide concern as it exists not only among the countries but also within countries, developed or developing). And if you take its multidimensional view, as Norris (2001, pp 3-4) does, then you have global divide (between developed and developing countries), social divide (between information rich and information poor in a country) and democratic divide (between those who can and those who cannot use the digital resources to engage in public life). An effective solution of the problem has been eluding the best of policy makers worldwide.
Yet the ICTs offer tantalizing possibilities. The sight of a kabariwala (rag picker in India) in Delhi wielding a mobile phone and organizing his work among the co-workers efficiently, does give you an initial shock, quickly turning into an astonishment and instantly converting you into a technophile. The question here though is not of technology adoption, which is proved beyond doubt by the ease of its use (though by an unlikely adopter in this case). The question here is: can this technology contribute in imparting literacy and numeracy, provide knowledge in health and hygiene and upgrade skills of people on the other side of digital divide? ICTs will increasingly be judged by such criteria. In respect of India, the study reports:
“India has three important advantages in the global IT competition: a plentiful supply of talented IT-trained people; copious numbers of educated, low-cost workers proficient in English; and close ties to the many Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. As a result, IT business clusters have developed there, it is a world leader in back-office services and software outsourcing, and its software production has increased fiftyfold over the past 10 years. The prosperity and growth of the Indian software and back-office service industries should continue, at least over the near- to mid-term. However, going beyond software into IT hardware activities may be difficult, particularly in view of China’s growing role in this area. Also, the entire Indian high-tech industry is a thin veneer on top of the Indian economy. Much of the nation is still in the agricultural age, not yet having reached the industrial age, let alone the information age. These factors may place any broader role in the information revolution beyond India’s reach.” (p-34). (emphasis supplied).
This conclusion “Much of the nation is still in the agricultural age, not yet having reached the industrial age, let alone the information age. These factors may place any broader role in the information revolution beyond India’s reach,” however, does not bear scrutiny. First, Asian tigers (certain east Asian economies) proved it and ICTs only re-enforce it now and then that there is nothing like a linear progression in development, say, from agricultural to industrial to information stage. Indeed what ICTs do, and have already done, is to enable an economy in agricultural stage to leapfrog to information age. India itself is an example of this assertion by developing a thriving business process outsourcing (BPO) sector from nowhere and meeting the needs of the post-industrial societies. Secondly, ICTs have enormous potential in raising agricultural productivity and production through revamped agricultural research and extension by way of establishing appropriate networks and implied faster problem solving of the farmers including providing timely information through agricultural marketing networks. Lastly, the ICTs have tremendous potential in human resource development. This alone can pull out an economy from backwardness and place it on the path of self-sustaining economic growth through acquisition of new skills and increased production and productivity.
Being a panoramic worldwide survey, the book under review inevitably brings to mind the monumental trilogy on the information age by the Spanish sociologist Professor Manuel Castells (1996, 1997 and 1998), currently shuttling between Barcelona and Los Angeles. A central theme identified by him in this magnum opus is the rise of network societ .It is this network, signifying connectivity, which holds the key to the ongoing information revolution. If you are a part of network (connected), you change, survive and prosper. If not, then you languish in your present state. Indeed the learned professor himself invented a term for it – the fourth world (of unconnected countries, societies and people). Digital divide then ceases to be an empty slogan and bridging it becomes an urgent priority.
The study under review is a notable contribution in assessing the trends of different aspects of the ongoing information revolution worldwide including its inevitable, though undesirable, regional variation. It will be found useful by all those practitioners, researchers and others who are interested in understanding the broader aspects of the ongoing information revolution as it unfolds right before our eyes, very often challenging our preconceived notions necessitating change in our perceptions. And it indeed is a task of the think tanks to capture and then disseminate such broad trends of the ongoing information revolution.
Dr D.C.Misra
October 28, 2004
_____________________________________________________________
References
Castells, Manuel (1996): The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume I: The Rise of Network Society, Oxford, United Kingdom, Blackwell.
Castells, Manuel (1997): The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume II: The Power of Identity, Oxford, United Kingdom, Blackwell.
Castells, Manuel (1998): The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume III: End of Millennium, Oxford, United Kingdom, Blackwell.
Norris, Pippa (2001): Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide, Cambridge, United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press.
Monday, October 25, 2004
Cyber Quiz: Articles-1: Governance and ICTs: Nilekani (2004a)
This* is the first of a series of three articles by Nandan M.Nilekani,CEO of Infosys on governance and information and communication technologies (ICTs).Nilekani presents a refreshing perspective to view governance from the triad of efficiency,effectiveness and equity, call it a 3E perspective, in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) can play a significant role.The 3Es are unexceptional and universal principles of good governance though the writer has the perspective of developing countries. The article is recommended for reading to any one interested in governance and the role ICTs can play in improving it. The remaining two articles will appear on next two Mondays in the newspaper in which the first article has appeared today.
Dr D.C.Misra
October 25,2004
_____________________________________________________________________
* Nilekani,Nandan M.(2004a):Redemption in this world,this land,The Economic Times,New Delhi,October 25,Monday,op-ed,p-4,available: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/897648.cms(accessed:October 25, 2004).
Dr D.C.Misra
October 25,2004
_____________________________________________________________________
* Nilekani,Nandan M.(2004a):Redemption in this world,this land,The Economic Times,New Delhi,October 25,Monday,op-ed,p-4,available: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/897648.cms(accessed:October 25, 2004).
Friday, October 22, 2004
Cyber Quiz: Reports-1: The Freedominfo.org Global Survey 2004
This is an ongoing survey of the state of freedom of information in countries which have adopted comprehensive national laws on access.This version was originally released in September 2003 and amended in April-May 2004 to include four additional countries.This report,third in the series to an updated global survey, shows that more than 50 countries by now have guaranteed their citizens the right to know what their governments are doing, and more than half of these freedom of information laws have been passed in the last decade.
The report includes links to the texts of laws and commentary on their effectiveness or lack of it.On India,the report,among other things,observes:
"Many of the states in India have enacted Right to Information Acts since 1997 due to pressure from activists fighting corruption. These include Goa, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, New Delhi and Rajasthan. Uttar Pradesh has adopted a Code of Practice on Access to Information. The Maharashtra Government's Right to Information Act was adopted (replacing a 2002 Ordinance)in August 2003 after activist Anna Hazare went on a hunger strike."(p-40).
The report covers the following 57 countries(over 30 more countries have pending efforts):
1.ALBANIA,2.ARMENIA,3.AUSTRALIA,4.AUSTRIA,5.BELGIUM,6.BELIZE,
7.BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA,8.BULGARIA,9.CANADA,10.COLOMBIA,
11.CROATIA,12.CZECH REPUBLIC,13.DENMARK,14.ESTONIA,15.FINLAND,
16.FRANCE,17.GEORGIA,18.GREECE,19.HUNGARY,20.ICELAND,
21.INDIA,22.IRELAND,23.ISRAEL,24.ITALY,25.JAMAICA,26.JAPAN,
27.SOUTH KOREA,28.KOSOVO,29.LATVIA,30.LIECHTENSTEIN,
31.LITHUANIA,32.MEXICO,33.MOLDOVA,34.NETHERLANDS,35.NEW ZEALAND,36.NORWAY,37.PAKISTAN,38.PANAMA,39.PERU,40.PHILIPPINES,
41.POLAND,42.PORTUGAL,43.ROMANIA,44.SLOVAKIA,45.SLOVENIA,
46.SOUTH AFRICA,47.SPAIN,48.SWEDEN,49.TAJIKISTAN,50.THAILAND,
51.TURKEY,52.TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO,53.UKRAINE,54.UNITED KINGDOM,
55.UNITED STATES,56.UZBEKISTAN and 57.ZIMBABWE.
The report has been compiled and edited by David Banisar,a Visiting Fellow, Department of Law,University of Leeds and Director of the Freedom of Information Project of Privacy International(http://www.privacyinternational.org)(a human rights group formed in 1990 and based in London)for freedominfo.org.He was earlier
a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government,Harvard University and a Co-founder and Policy Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The report is recommended for consultation by any one interested in the current national status of freedom of information or securing access to information from government,an area increasingly becoming important due to activism by individuals and organisations to which the information and communication technologies(ICTs)
have significantly contributed(see,for example,Norris(2004)briefly reviewed in this Forum).The sponsors and the editor of the report need to be congratulated for this undertaking which can make significant contribution to good governance.
Dr D.C.Misra
October 22,2004
______________________________________________________________________
* The Freedominfo.org Global Report:Freedom of Information and
Access to Government Records Around the World(updated May 12, 2004),
Available:http://www.freedominfo.org/survey/global_survey2004.pdf
(1.8 MB)(accessed October 22,2004).
______________________________________________________________________
(Source:http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/89)
The report includes links to the texts of laws and commentary on their effectiveness or lack of it.On India,the report,among other things,observes:
"Many of the states in India have enacted Right to Information Acts since 1997 due to pressure from activists fighting corruption. These include Goa, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, New Delhi and Rajasthan. Uttar Pradesh has adopted a Code of Practice on Access to Information. The Maharashtra Government's Right to Information Act was adopted (replacing a 2002 Ordinance)in August 2003 after activist Anna Hazare went on a hunger strike."(p-40).
The report covers the following 57 countries(over 30 more countries have pending efforts):
1.ALBANIA,2.ARMENIA,3.AUSTRALIA,4.AUSTRIA,5.BELGIUM,6.BELIZE,
7.BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA,8.BULGARIA,9.CANADA,10.COLOMBIA,
11.CROATIA,12.CZECH REPUBLIC,13.DENMARK,14.ESTONIA,15.FINLAND,
16.FRANCE,17.GEORGIA,18.GREECE,19.HUNGARY,20.ICELAND,
21.INDIA,22.IRELAND,23.ISRAEL,24.ITALY,25.JAMAICA,26.JAPAN,
27.SOUTH KOREA,28.KOSOVO,29.LATVIA,30.LIECHTENSTEIN,
31.LITHUANIA,32.MEXICO,33.MOLDOVA,34.NETHERLANDS,35.NEW ZEALAND,36.NORWAY,37.PAKISTAN,38.PANAMA,39.PERU,40.PHILIPPINES,
41.POLAND,42.PORTUGAL,43.ROMANIA,44.SLOVAKIA,45.SLOVENIA,
46.SOUTH AFRICA,47.SPAIN,48.SWEDEN,49.TAJIKISTAN,50.THAILAND,
51.TURKEY,52.TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO,53.UKRAINE,54.UNITED KINGDOM,
55.UNITED STATES,56.UZBEKISTAN and 57.ZIMBABWE.
The report has been compiled and edited by David Banisar,a Visiting Fellow, Department of Law,University of Leeds and Director of the Freedom of Information Project of Privacy International(http://www.privacyinternational.org)(a human rights group formed in 1990 and based in London)for freedominfo.org.He was earlier
a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government,Harvard University and a Co-founder and Policy Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The report is recommended for consultation by any one interested in the current national status of freedom of information or securing access to information from government,an area increasingly becoming important due to activism by individuals and organisations to which the information and communication technologies(ICTs)
have significantly contributed(see,for example,Norris(2004)briefly reviewed in this Forum).The sponsors and the editor of the report need to be congratulated for this undertaking which can make significant contribution to good governance.
Dr D.C.Misra
October 22,2004
______________________________________________________________________
* The Freedominfo.org Global Report:Freedom of Information and
Access to Government Records Around the World(updated May 12, 2004),
Available:http://www.freedominfo.org/survey/global_survey2004.pdf
(1.8 MB)(accessed October 22,2004).
______________________________________________________________________
(Source:http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/89)
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Cyber Quiz: List-7: Annual Champion Words: A Word A Year (1904-2004)
What have the following words in common:
mobile phone(1945),cyborg (1960),byte(1964),microchip(1969),double click (1984),virtual reality(1987),applet (1987),URL(1992),dot commer(1997),text message(1998)and Google(1999)?
Well,they all could be said to be annual champion words, characterising the year indicated in parentheses!
This is the second language report*, the first having been published in 2003(it contained much of the vocabulary of war). Author Susie Dent,a lexicographer of British TV words and numbers game Count Down (http://www.thecountdownpage.com/)fame argues that every year one word is born into the English language which says something about the preoccupations of the time.She has come out with a 100-year list from 1904 to 2004.
It is an interesting exercise charting a century of new words,and it has many surprises too (for example,in knowing that the word celeb is as old as 1913 or that year 1992 was characterized by the word URL(uniform resource locator).A number of words no doubt have been contributed by the information and communication technologies(ICTs). A browsing of the 100-year list,reproduced below,is a rewarding
experience.
Here are then three new words: larper, shroomer(from the title of the book)and chav,the buzzword of 2004:
LARPer:(noun)(from 'Live Action Role Playing')a person who re-enacts fantasy scenarios by dressing up and assuming character roles.
shroomer:(noun) a person who takes hallucinogenic ('magic') mushrooms.
Chav: It probably began in Chatham, Kent, as a derogatory label for an older underclass, gypsies. From the Romany word for a child,chavi,the term is used to describe young uncouth or aggressive persons who wear cheap gold jewellery and baseball caps and hang around in shopping centres all over Britain.See also Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words at http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-cha2.htm.
Here is the 100-year list:
ANNUAL CHAMPION WORDS: SUSIE DENT'S A WORD A YEAR: 1904-2004
____________________________________________________________
1904 hip
1905 whizzo
1906 teddy bear
1907 egghead
1908 realpolitik
1909 tiddly-om-pom-pom
1910 sacred cow
1911 gene
1912 blues
1913 celeb
1914 cheerio
1915 civvy street
1916 U-boat
1917 tailspin
1918 ceasefire
1919 ad-lib
1920 demob
1921 pop
1922 wizard
1923 hem-line
1924 lumpenproletariat
1925 avant garde
1926 kitsch
1927 sudden death
1928 Big Apple
1929 sex
1930 drive-in
1931 Mickey Mouse
1932 bagel
1933 dumb down
1934 pesticide
1935 racism
1936 spliff
1937 dunk
1938 cheeseburger
1939 Blitzkrieg
1940 Molotov cocktail
1941 snafu
1942 buzz
1943 pissed off
1944 DNA
1945 mobile phone
1946 megabucks
1947 Wonderbra
1948 cool
1949 Big Brother
1950 brainwashing
1951 fast food
1952 Generation X
1953 hippy
1954 non-U
1955 boogie
1956 sexy
1957 psychedelic
1958 beatnik
1959 cruise missile
1960 cyborg
1961 awesome
1962 bossa nova
1963 peacenik
1964 byte
1965 miniskirt
1966 acid
1967 love-in
1968 It-girl
1969 microchip
1970 hypermarket
1971 green
1972 Watergate
1973 F-word
1974 punk
1975 detox
1976 Trekkie
1977 naff all
1978 trainers
1979 karaoke
1980 power dressing
1981 toy-boy
1982 hip-hop
1983 beatbox
1984 double-click
1985 OK yah
1986 mobile
1987 virtual reality
1988 gangsta
1989 latte
1990 applet
1991 hot-desking
1992 URL
1993 have it large
1994 Botox
1995 kitten heels
1996 ghetto fabulous
1997 dot-commer
1998 text message
1999 google
2000 bling bling
2001 9/11
2002 axis of evil
2003 sex up
2004 chav
______________________________________________________________
(Source:http://www.askoxford.com/pressroom/archive/larpers/?
view=uk,accessed October 21, 2004).
Enjoy browsing and have a nice day.
Dr D.C.Misra
October 21, 2004
______________________________________________________________________
*Dent, Susie (2004): Larpers and Shroomers: The Language Report,
Oxford, Oxford University Press(Published October 19),174 pp
Note: See also Between chav and lip,Hindustan Times,New Delhi,
October 21,2004,Thursday,p-24.
(Source: http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/87)
mobile phone(1945),cyborg (1960),byte(1964),microchip(1969),double click (1984),virtual reality(1987),applet (1987),URL(1992),dot commer(1997),text message(1998)and Google(1999)?
Well,they all could be said to be annual champion words, characterising the year indicated in parentheses!
This is the second language report*, the first having been published in 2003(it contained much of the vocabulary of war). Author Susie Dent,a lexicographer of British TV words and numbers game Count Down (http://www.thecountdownpage.com/)fame argues that every year one word is born into the English language which says something about the preoccupations of the time.She has come out with a 100-year list from 1904 to 2004.
It is an interesting exercise charting a century of new words,and it has many surprises too (for example,in knowing that the word celeb is as old as 1913 or that year 1992 was characterized by the word URL(uniform resource locator).A number of words no doubt have been contributed by the information and communication technologies(ICTs). A browsing of the 100-year list,reproduced below,is a rewarding
experience.
Here are then three new words: larper, shroomer(from the title of the book)and chav,the buzzword of 2004:
LARPer:(noun)(from 'Live Action Role Playing')a person who re-enacts fantasy scenarios by dressing up and assuming character roles.
shroomer:(noun) a person who takes hallucinogenic ('magic') mushrooms.
Chav: It probably began in Chatham, Kent, as a derogatory label for an older underclass, gypsies. From the Romany word for a child,chavi,the term is used to describe young uncouth or aggressive persons who wear cheap gold jewellery and baseball caps and hang around in shopping centres all over Britain.See also Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words at http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-cha2.htm.
Here is the 100-year list:
ANNUAL CHAMPION WORDS: SUSIE DENT'S A WORD A YEAR: 1904-2004
____________________________________________________________
1904 hip
1905 whizzo
1906 teddy bear
1907 egghead
1908 realpolitik
1909 tiddly-om-pom-pom
1910 sacred cow
1911 gene
1912 blues
1913 celeb
1914 cheerio
1915 civvy street
1916 U-boat
1917 tailspin
1918 ceasefire
1919 ad-lib
1920 demob
1921 pop
1922 wizard
1923 hem-line
1924 lumpenproletariat
1925 avant garde
1926 kitsch
1927 sudden death
1928 Big Apple
1929 sex
1930 drive-in
1931 Mickey Mouse
1932 bagel
1933 dumb down
1934 pesticide
1935 racism
1936 spliff
1937 dunk
1938 cheeseburger
1939 Blitzkrieg
1940 Molotov cocktail
1941 snafu
1942 buzz
1943 pissed off
1944 DNA
1945 mobile phone
1946 megabucks
1947 Wonderbra
1948 cool
1949 Big Brother
1950 brainwashing
1951 fast food
1952 Generation X
1953 hippy
1954 non-U
1955 boogie
1956 sexy
1957 psychedelic
1958 beatnik
1959 cruise missile
1960 cyborg
1961 awesome
1962 bossa nova
1963 peacenik
1964 byte
1965 miniskirt
1966 acid
1967 love-in
1968 It-girl
1969 microchip
1970 hypermarket
1971 green
1972 Watergate
1973 F-word
1974 punk
1975 detox
1976 Trekkie
1977 naff all
1978 trainers
1979 karaoke
1980 power dressing
1981 toy-boy
1982 hip-hop
1983 beatbox
1984 double-click
1985 OK yah
1986 mobile
1987 virtual reality
1988 gangsta
1989 latte
1990 applet
1991 hot-desking
1992 URL
1993 have it large
1994 Botox
1995 kitten heels
1996 ghetto fabulous
1997 dot-commer
1998 text message
1999 google
2000 bling bling
2001 9/11
2002 axis of evil
2003 sex up
2004 chav
______________________________________________________________
(Source:http://www.askoxford.com/pressroom/archive/larpers/?
view=uk,accessed October 21, 2004).
Enjoy browsing and have a nice day.
Dr D.C.Misra
October 21, 2004
______________________________________________________________________
*Dent, Susie (2004): Larpers and Shroomers: The Language Report,
Oxford, Oxford University Press(Published October 19),174 pp
Note: See also Between chav and lip,Hindustan Times,New Delhi,
October 21,2004,Thursday,p-24.
(Source: http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/87)
Monday, October 18, 2004
Cyber Quiz: Occasional Paper Review-5: Impact of ICTs on Gov: Norris(2004)
Regular Internet users are significantly more politically active than others,finds a recent study* undertaken by Pippa Norris of John F.Kennedy School of Government,Harvard University,Cambridge,MA(Pippa_Norris@Harvard.edu/www.pippanorris.com)as a part of UNESCOWorld Report.
She found the overall score on the mean Political Activism Index,designed by her on four dimensions and 21 parameters,was 4.43 forregular Internet users compared with 2.56 for others,a substantialand significant difference (p-13).She predicts that the primary impact of knowledge societies will be upon facilitating cause-oriented and civic forms of activism,thereby strengthening social movements, more than upon conventional channels of participation exemplified by voting and campaigning.(ibid,p-3).
She notes four main perspectives in literature:
(a) The Internet as a virtual Agora:
The positive view of cyber optimists who emphasise the possibilitiesof involvement of ordinary citizens in direct, deliberativeor `strong' democracy.(p-3).So far hopes that the knowledgesociety could revitalize mass participation in direct or strongdemocracies finds little support from the available empiricalstudies,
(b) The knowledge elite and social inequalities:
The negative view of cyber pessimists who regard knowledge society as re-inforcing existing inequalities of power and wealth (p-4).,
(c) Politics as usual:
The cyber skeptics who argue that both these visions are exaggerated.This view stresses the embedded status quo and the difficulties ofachieving radical change to political systems through technologicalmechanisms(p-5)and
(d) The political market model:
The study hypothesizes that there is a market where the impact of the internet depends in part upon the `supply' of political information and communications, primarily from political agencies, and also upon the `demand' for such information andcommunication from the mass public.In turn the public's demand comes from the social and cultural profile of the online population reflecting long-standing patterns of civic engagement.(p-20).
The study, undertaken for Europe,compares the impact of frequency of use of the Internet on four main dimensions of activism: voting, campaign-oriented, cause-oriented, and civic-oriented. These are summarized into a 21-point `Political Activism' Index combining all dimensions,namely,1. Voting (1 point),2. Campaign-oriented (5 points),3. Cause-oriented (5 points),4. Civic-oriented(10 points)based on data from the 19-nation European Social Survey2002.The evidence presented in this study suggests that the rise of the knowledge society in Europe has had the greatest positive consequences for civic society by strengthening cause-oriented and civic-oriented activism, rather than mass participation in campaigns and elections.(p-20).
This study is highly recommended to any one interested in gauging the impact of information and communication technologies(ICTs) on governance.The author needs to be congratulated for undertaking this study and UNESCO for sponsoring it.
Dr D.C.Misra
October 18,2004
(Source: http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/83)
____________________________________________________________________________________
* Norris, Pippa (2004): Building Knowledge Societies:The Renewal ofDemocratic Practices in Knowledge Societies,Cambridge,MA,HarvardUniversity,John F. Kennedy School of Government,February,UNESCO World Report,pp 34,available:http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~pnorris/Acrobat/UNESCO%20Report%20Knowledge%20Societies.pdf(accessed October 18,2004).
She found the overall score on the mean Political Activism Index,designed by her on four dimensions and 21 parameters,was 4.43 forregular Internet users compared with 2.56 for others,a substantialand significant difference (p-13).She predicts that the primary impact of knowledge societies will be upon facilitating cause-oriented and civic forms of activism,thereby strengthening social movements, more than upon conventional channels of participation exemplified by voting and campaigning.(ibid,p-3).
She notes four main perspectives in literature:
(a) The Internet as a virtual Agora:
The positive view of cyber optimists who emphasise the possibilitiesof involvement of ordinary citizens in direct, deliberativeor `strong' democracy.(p-3).So far hopes that the knowledgesociety could revitalize mass participation in direct or strongdemocracies finds little support from the available empiricalstudies,
(b) The knowledge elite and social inequalities:
The negative view of cyber pessimists who regard knowledge society as re-inforcing existing inequalities of power and wealth (p-4).,
(c) Politics as usual:
The cyber skeptics who argue that both these visions are exaggerated.This view stresses the embedded status quo and the difficulties ofachieving radical change to political systems through technologicalmechanisms(p-5)and
(d) The political market model:
The study hypothesizes that there is a market where the impact of the internet depends in part upon the `supply' of political information and communications, primarily from political agencies, and also upon the `demand' for such information andcommunication from the mass public.In turn the public's demand comes from the social and cultural profile of the online population reflecting long-standing patterns of civic engagement.(p-20).
The study, undertaken for Europe,compares the impact of frequency of use of the Internet on four main dimensions of activism: voting, campaign-oriented, cause-oriented, and civic-oriented. These are summarized into a 21-point `Political Activism' Index combining all dimensions,namely,1. Voting (1 point),2. Campaign-oriented (5 points),3. Cause-oriented (5 points),4. Civic-oriented(10 points)based on data from the 19-nation European Social Survey2002.The evidence presented in this study suggests that the rise of the knowledge society in Europe has had the greatest positive consequences for civic society by strengthening cause-oriented and civic-oriented activism, rather than mass participation in campaigns and elections.(p-20).
This study is highly recommended to any one interested in gauging the impact of information and communication technologies(ICTs) on governance.The author needs to be congratulated for undertaking this study and UNESCO for sponsoring it.
Dr D.C.Misra
October 18,2004
(Source: http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/83)
____________________________________________________________________________________
* Norris, Pippa (2004): Building Knowledge Societies:The Renewal ofDemocratic Practices in Knowledge Societies,Cambridge,MA,HarvardUniversity,John F. Kennedy School of Government,February,UNESCO World Report,pp 34,available:http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~pnorris/Acrobat/UNESCO%20Report%20Knowledge%20Societies.pdf(accessed October 18,2004).
Saturday, October 09, 2004
There is no "byte" in the worldwide bestsellers: whatever then happened to dotcom deluge?
There is a remarkable omission of any book on information and communication technologies (ICTs) from the latest list of bestsellers on science. This glaring omission stares at your face blankly when you look at the list in the light of the oft-repeated assertion that we are living in the information age or in an era of ongoing ICT revolution.What happened then to the deluge of books on ICTs in the days of dotcom boom, the last decade of the twentieth century (followed no doubt by books explaining the dotcom bust as well)? Does the omission mean that we have no popular writers on ICTs producing "bestsellers" or "classics" (the two need not be same of course) and people(read lay readers) are not interested in ICTs but are interested in, say,mathematics and physics?
Commenting on the list The Economist, London, which has compiled the list and published it in its issue of 2nd October, notes that science writing for the lay reader is getting better and better, and the best explains even the most complex subjects without condescension. It notes that the books by the populariser, Bill Bryson, and by Richard Dawkins, evolutionist, predominate. But classic works continue to sell well, years after publication.What happened then, for example,to Brook's Mythical Man-Month or Bill Gates' The Road Ahead (or, for that matter,to his Business@The Speed of Thought) or Tim Berners-Lee's Weaving the Web or Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital or Makimoto and Manners' Digital Nomad or indeed to George Gilder's Telecosm, just to mention half a dozen or so rather familiar titles in ICTs? Does it mean that there was no paradigm shift and that the book that invented the term- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – merrily finds a place (rank 10)in the list despite having been published way back in 1962 when many of the present day geeks were not even born? Or, does it mean that people's initial enthusiasm and curiosity in ICTs have just waned, perhaps unnoticed?
The list has another surprise- the size of books. The size of a number of bestsellers ranges from rather formidable 500 to awesome 1,000 pp. The slot for the slimmest, at 240 pp, is co-shared by Hawkins and Kuhn. This is against the popularly held belief that people do not like "tombs" of scholarship. Apparently people are prepared to spend time (and money as well) on lengthy books if interesting content is offered to them or does it mean that such bestsellers are only "must have, read later" books and those who can afford buy them and then put them on the shelves, never to be read? And who is this "lay reader" who buys these books on esoteric subjects in science?
Whosoever this "lay reader" may be, no one should deny him the access to Sir Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (rank 4). The Economist describes it as "An extraordinary account of the underlying mathematics of the physical universe. Not for the lay reader." Pray, why not? If "lay readers" are not reading these bestsellers then how does Sir Roger's book attain a very honourable rank 4? Or does it mean that only libraries buy these bestsellers and individual "lay readers" have no role in the `making' of these bestsellers?
And how can any one forget Sir Roger's classic The Emperor's New Mind, a very powerful attack on 'strong artificial intelligence (AI)' whose proponents continue to remain unshaken in their claim that it is just a question of time when human beings will be replaced by computers and Sir Roger showed that human thinking can never be emulated by a computer. It certainly is surprising that this book is missing from the list of bestsellers, a case of missing another "byte"! Or its sequel The Shadows of Mind, described as 'one of the most important works of the second half of the 20th century' by The Times, London which provided more rigorous proof of consciousness far beyond the `computational activity.'
Here is then the list of top 15 Amazon worldwide bestsellers on science (with figures following the author indicating the number of pages): 1.A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson 560),2.The Ancestor's Tale (Richard Dawkins 520), 3.Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond 512), 4.The Road to Reality (Roger Penrose 1,000), 5.The Fabric of the Cosmos (Brian Greene 569), 6.Stiff (Mary Roach 303), 7.The Elegant Universe (Brian Greene 464), 8.The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins 366), 9.A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking 240), 10.The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas S. Kuhn 240), 11.Eine kurze Geschichte von fast allem.(Bill Bryson 672), 12.The End of Oil (Paul Roberts 389), 13. Kosmos Himmelsjahr 2005 (Hans-Ullrich Keller 288), 14.The Secret Life of Lobsters (Trevor Corson 289), and 15.How the Mind Works (Steven Pinker 672).(Read the complete list, together with the comments of The Economist, at http://economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3242474).
But what happened to the books which enthused us,those which tried to demystify the ICTs and those which simply excited us, some of which even forcing us to lose our sleep and read them from A to Z? What happened, for example, to Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, which, among other things laid down the three laws of robotics? Or to former Stanford professor Robert X. Cringely's Accidental Empires which became the basis for PublicTV's miniseries Triumph of the Nerds? Or to Matt Ridley's Genome, appropriately sub-titled the autobiography of a species in 23 chapters? Or to Where Wizards stay Up Late giving us the origin of Internet or to K.Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation on the coming era of nanotechnology?
The proprietary versus open source debate continues unresolved. Both sides appear to have only strengthened their respective defences with the passage of time.Yet Glyn Moody's rebel code dealing with Linux and the open source revolution has failed to make to the list.While security continues to be an over-riding concern, The Art of Deception by Kevin D.Mitnick, who is described as `a cyber-desperado and fugitive from one of the most exhaustive FBI manhunts in history' did not find favour with the readingpublic. Mitnick,understandably, is also described as `one of the most sought-after computer security experts worldwide.' Or may be these books do not fall under the category of "science"?
Whatever may be the reason, there appears to be lull in the field of ICTs today. Absence of books on ICTs from the bestseller list perhaps only indicates the present lull. This, however, may only be partly true as age appears to have no bearing on bestsellers otherwise Kuhn's book, for example, published in 1962,would not have found a place in the bestseller list. Some cyber-savvy Indians like S.S.Kshatriy (Silicon Valley Greats), Indra Sinha (the cybergypsies), Samar Halarankar (Nirvana under the rain tree), Pratik Kanjilal (Guide to Using the Internet in India) and Chidanand Rajghatta (The Horse that Flew) also tried their hands on writing on ICTs but no Indian has so far produced any popular book on ICTs for the world market not withstanding its world standard software and its aspirations to be IT superpower. Perhaps a classic in ICTs is yet to be written, anywhere in the world. Any takers, techies or non-techies?
(Source:http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/57)
Dr D.C.Misra
October 9, 2004
Commenting on the list The Economist, London, which has compiled the list and published it in its issue of 2nd October, notes that science writing for the lay reader is getting better and better, and the best explains even the most complex subjects without condescension. It notes that the books by the populariser, Bill Bryson, and by Richard Dawkins, evolutionist, predominate. But classic works continue to sell well, years after publication.What happened then, for example,to Brook's Mythical Man-Month or Bill Gates' The Road Ahead (or, for that matter,to his Business@The Speed of Thought) or Tim Berners-Lee's Weaving the Web or Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital or Makimoto and Manners' Digital Nomad or indeed to George Gilder's Telecosm, just to mention half a dozen or so rather familiar titles in ICTs? Does it mean that there was no paradigm shift and that the book that invented the term- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – merrily finds a place (rank 10)in the list despite having been published way back in 1962 when many of the present day geeks were not even born? Or, does it mean that people's initial enthusiasm and curiosity in ICTs have just waned, perhaps unnoticed?
The list has another surprise- the size of books. The size of a number of bestsellers ranges from rather formidable 500 to awesome 1,000 pp. The slot for the slimmest, at 240 pp, is co-shared by Hawkins and Kuhn. This is against the popularly held belief that people do not like "tombs" of scholarship. Apparently people are prepared to spend time (and money as well) on lengthy books if interesting content is offered to them or does it mean that such bestsellers are only "must have, read later" books and those who can afford buy them and then put them on the shelves, never to be read? And who is this "lay reader" who buys these books on esoteric subjects in science?
Whosoever this "lay reader" may be, no one should deny him the access to Sir Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (rank 4). The Economist describes it as "An extraordinary account of the underlying mathematics of the physical universe. Not for the lay reader." Pray, why not? If "lay readers" are not reading these bestsellers then how does Sir Roger's book attain a very honourable rank 4? Or does it mean that only libraries buy these bestsellers and individual "lay readers" have no role in the `making' of these bestsellers?
And how can any one forget Sir Roger's classic The Emperor's New Mind, a very powerful attack on 'strong artificial intelligence (AI)' whose proponents continue to remain unshaken in their claim that it is just a question of time when human beings will be replaced by computers and Sir Roger showed that human thinking can never be emulated by a computer. It certainly is surprising that this book is missing from the list of bestsellers, a case of missing another "byte"! Or its sequel The Shadows of Mind, described as 'one of the most important works of the second half of the 20th century' by The Times, London which provided more rigorous proof of consciousness far beyond the `computational activity.'
Here is then the list of top 15 Amazon worldwide bestsellers on science (with figures following the author indicating the number of pages): 1.A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson 560),2.The Ancestor's Tale (Richard Dawkins 520), 3.Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond 512), 4.The Road to Reality (Roger Penrose 1,000), 5.The Fabric of the Cosmos (Brian Greene 569), 6.Stiff (Mary Roach 303), 7.The Elegant Universe (Brian Greene 464), 8.The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins 366), 9.A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking 240), 10.The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas S. Kuhn 240), 11.Eine kurze Geschichte von fast allem.(Bill Bryson 672), 12.The End of Oil (Paul Roberts 389), 13. Kosmos Himmelsjahr 2005 (Hans-Ullrich Keller 288), 14.The Secret Life of Lobsters (Trevor Corson 289), and 15.How the Mind Works (Steven Pinker 672).(Read the complete list, together with the comments of The Economist, at http://economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3242474).
But what happened to the books which enthused us,those which tried to demystify the ICTs and those which simply excited us, some of which even forcing us to lose our sleep and read them from A to Z? What happened, for example, to Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, which, among other things laid down the three laws of robotics? Or to former Stanford professor Robert X. Cringely's Accidental Empires which became the basis for PublicTV's miniseries Triumph of the Nerds? Or to Matt Ridley's Genome, appropriately sub-titled the autobiography of a species in 23 chapters? Or to Where Wizards stay Up Late giving us the origin of Internet or to K.Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation on the coming era of nanotechnology?
The proprietary versus open source debate continues unresolved. Both sides appear to have only strengthened their respective defences with the passage of time.Yet Glyn Moody's rebel code dealing with Linux and the open source revolution has failed to make to the list.While security continues to be an over-riding concern, The Art of Deception by Kevin D.Mitnick, who is described as `a cyber-desperado and fugitive from one of the most exhaustive FBI manhunts in history' did not find favour with the readingpublic. Mitnick,understandably, is also described as `one of the most sought-after computer security experts worldwide.' Or may be these books do not fall under the category of "science"?
Whatever may be the reason, there appears to be lull in the field of ICTs today. Absence of books on ICTs from the bestseller list perhaps only indicates the present lull. This, however, may only be partly true as age appears to have no bearing on bestsellers otherwise Kuhn's book, for example, published in 1962,would not have found a place in the bestseller list. Some cyber-savvy Indians like S.S.Kshatriy (Silicon Valley Greats), Indra Sinha (the cybergypsies), Samar Halarankar (Nirvana under the rain tree), Pratik Kanjilal (Guide to Using the Internet in India) and Chidanand Rajghatta (The Horse that Flew) also tried their hands on writing on ICTs but no Indian has so far produced any popular book on ICTs for the world market not withstanding its world standard software and its aspirations to be IT superpower. Perhaps a classic in ICTs is yet to be written, anywhere in the world. Any takers, techies or non-techies?
(Source:http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/57)
Dr D.C.Misra
October 9, 2004
Monday, August 16, 2004
I4D QUIZ-6: ICT and Local Language Content by D.C.Misra
It is rightly believed that, unless the information and communication technologies (ICTs) are made available in local languages, the ongoing information and communication technology (ICT) revolution will remain incomplete and its benefits will reach only a small section of society who have access to the English language. The scenario is, however, undergoing a fast change.Efforts are being continuously made, some with remarkable successes, in making information and communication technologies (ICTs) available in local languages, often called regional languages in India, thus taking the long-overdue benefits of ICTs to the common man.
Check the quiz at
http://www.i4donline.net/june04/quiz.asp(for questions)
http://www.i4donline.net/july04/answers.asp(for answers).
Happy quizzing.
Comments are always welcome.
Dr D.C.Misra
New Delhi, India
August 16, 2004.
Check the quiz at
http://www.i4donline.net/june04/quiz.asp(for questions)
http://www.i4donline.net/july04/answers.asp(for answers).
Happy quizzing.
Comments are always welcome.
Dr D.C.Misra
New Delhi, India
August 16, 2004.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Indian Team for International Olympiad in Informatics in Athens in September 2004
Congratulations and Good Luck,
Kshitij, Harpreet, Rahul and Shreevatsa.
________________________________________________________________
“Only extra-ordinary people can produce extra-ordinary results and to create extra-ordinary people, we need to start investing in them when they are young.”
-- G. Ventakesh, CTO, Sasken Communication Technologies
________________________________________________________________
Kshitij Bansal of Apeejay School, Noida, Harpreet Singh, also of Apeejay School, Noida, N.S.Rahul of Padma Seshadri Senior Secondary School, Chennai and Shreevatsa R. of National Pre-University College, Bangalore have been selected to represent India at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Athens in September 2004, according to a press note issued by the Central Board of Secondary Education, New Delhi on July 7, 2004 (http://cbse.nic.in/public.htm).
The Indian National Olympiad in Informatics, 2004 (INOI-2004) was held on Saturday, May 1, 2004. The Zonal Informatics Olympiad, 2004 (ZIO-2004) was held on Saturday, January 31, 2004. Over 5,600 students participated in it at 34 centres in India and 2 in West Asia. 204 students qualified for INOI 2004. Out of these 22 students qualified for the training camp.
The IOI is one of the six Science Olympiads held annually. The Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS) (http://www.iarcs.org.in) organises it in co-ordination with Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) (http://cbse.nic.in/public.htm ). The event was supported by Nasscom (http://www.nasscom.org), Sasken (http://www..sasken.com) and The International School, Bangalore (http://www.tisb.edu.in).
India won 3 bronze medals at IOI 2003 held at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, USA in August 2003. India was represented by Ishan Behoora, Swamendu Datta, and Indraneel Mukherjee. The leader of the contingent was Prof. Madhvan Mukund of Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai (http://www.cmi.ac.in).
Let us then wish
Good Luck to
Kshitij, Harpreet, Rahul and Shreevatsa
for the forthcoming
International Olympiad in Informatics in Athens, Greece in September 2004.
Dr D.C.Misra
New Delhi, India
August 4, 2004.
Kshitij, Harpreet, Rahul and Shreevatsa.
________________________________________________________________
“Only extra-ordinary people can produce extra-ordinary results and to create extra-ordinary people, we need to start investing in them when they are young.”
-- G. Ventakesh, CTO, Sasken Communication Technologies
________________________________________________________________
Kshitij Bansal of Apeejay School, Noida, Harpreet Singh, also of Apeejay School, Noida, N.S.Rahul of Padma Seshadri Senior Secondary School, Chennai and Shreevatsa R. of National Pre-University College, Bangalore have been selected to represent India at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Athens in September 2004, according to a press note issued by the Central Board of Secondary Education, New Delhi on July 7, 2004 (http://cbse.nic.in/public.htm).
The Indian National Olympiad in Informatics, 2004 (INOI-2004) was held on Saturday, May 1, 2004. The Zonal Informatics Olympiad, 2004 (ZIO-2004) was held on Saturday, January 31, 2004. Over 5,600 students participated in it at 34 centres in India and 2 in West Asia. 204 students qualified for INOI 2004. Out of these 22 students qualified for the training camp.
The IOI is one of the six Science Olympiads held annually. The Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS) (http://www.iarcs.org.in) organises it in co-ordination with Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) (http://cbse.nic.in/public.htm ). The event was supported by Nasscom (http://www.nasscom.org), Sasken (http://www..sasken.com) and The International School, Bangalore (http://www.tisb.edu.in).
India won 3 bronze medals at IOI 2003 held at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, USA in August 2003. India was represented by Ishan Behoora, Swamendu Datta, and Indraneel Mukherjee. The leader of the contingent was Prof. Madhvan Mukund of Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai (http://www.cmi.ac.in).
Let us then wish
Good Luck to
Kshitij, Harpreet, Rahul and Shreevatsa
for the forthcoming
International Olympiad in Informatics in Athens, Greece in September 2004.
Dr D.C.Misra
New Delhi, India
August 4, 2004.
16th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI 2004)
The 16th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI 2004), the premier worldwide high school computer programming competition. will be held in Athens, capital of Greece, for eight days from September 11th to 18th, 2004. This is two weeks after the completion of Olympic Games in Athens.
The goal of the IOI is " to bring together, challenge, and give recognition to young students from around the world who are themost talented in informatics (computer programming), and to foster friendship among these students from diverse cultures."
A team of 4 students participates from each country. The event is being organised by Greek Computer Society, a scientific non-profit association, with the support of the National University of Athens and Technological Institution of Athens under the auspices of Ministry of Education of Greece.
Started with the initiative of UNESCO, the first IOI was held in Pravec, Bulgaria in 1989. The IOI takes place every year in a different country with more than 80 delegations and around 300 contestants.
For details, visit and bookmark the official Web site
http://www.ioi2004.org/
Dr D.C.Misra
New Delhi, India
August 4, 2004
The goal of the IOI is " to bring together, challenge, and give recognition to young students from around the world who are themost talented in informatics (computer programming), and to foster friendship among these students from diverse cultures."
A team of 4 students participates from each country. The event is being organised by Greek Computer Society, a scientific non-profit association, with the support of the National University of Athens and Technological Institution of Athens under the auspices of Ministry of Education of Greece.
Started with the initiative of UNESCO, the first IOI was held in Pravec, Bulgaria in 1989. The IOI takes place every year in a different country with more than 80 delegations and around 300 contestants.
For details, visit and bookmark the official Web site
http://www.ioi2004.org/
Dr D.C.Misra
New Delhi, India
August 4, 2004
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Fourth Indian National Cyber Olympiad 2004
I never knew that some thing like National Cyber Olympiad (NCO), exclusively devoted to information technology (IT), existed in India.
The Science Olympic Foundation, New Delhi (Chairman: Dr. Narindra Virmani, Former Vice-Chancellor, Mahatma Gandhi University, Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh) (http://www.sofworld.org/html2003/aboutus.shtml), a non-profit organisation set up in 1998, which started, and conducts, the National Cyber Olympiad in India, defines it as “a national level exam based on mental ability, logical and analytical reasoning and general questions on computers and information technology. The purpose is to test aptitude of the participants for taking up a career in mathematics and computers related areas.”
Students studying in classes 3 to 12 are eligible to participate in it. Rightly claimed to be “the first of its kind in the country”, it “is a nationwide talent search contest that will locate and identify cyber savvy talent amongst the younger generation.”
Fourth National Cyber Olympiad will be held on 12th August, 2004 (Thursday). Intending participants must register by July 20, 2004.
If India aspires to be an information technology (IT) super-power, popularisation of IT among school children and identifying IT savvy school children through such cyber olympiads are most laudable objectives. The Science Olympic Foundation (SOF), New Delhi deserves to be congratulated for conceiving and conducting this nationwide exercise. Well done, SOF!
Having said this, however, I have often wondered as to why no such competitions exist for adults. Is it due to the fact that adults have no time for such activities or that, even a small minority of them, is not interested in such activities? A food for thought, no doubt.
Dr D.C.Misra
New Delhi, India
July 15, 2004
The Science Olympic Foundation, New Delhi (Chairman: Dr. Narindra Virmani, Former Vice-Chancellor, Mahatma Gandhi University, Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh) (http://www.sofworld.org/html2003/aboutus.shtml), a non-profit organisation set up in 1998, which started, and conducts, the National Cyber Olympiad in India, defines it as “a national level exam based on mental ability, logical and analytical reasoning and general questions on computers and information technology. The purpose is to test aptitude of the participants for taking up a career in mathematics and computers related areas.”
Students studying in classes 3 to 12 are eligible to participate in it. Rightly claimed to be “the first of its kind in the country”, it “is a nationwide talent search contest that will locate and identify cyber savvy talent amongst the younger generation.”
Fourth National Cyber Olympiad will be held on 12th August, 2004 (Thursday). Intending participants must register by July 20, 2004.
If India aspires to be an information technology (IT) super-power, popularisation of IT among school children and identifying IT savvy school children through such cyber olympiads are most laudable objectives. The Science Olympic Foundation (SOF), New Delhi deserves to be congratulated for conceiving and conducting this nationwide exercise. Well done, SOF!
Having said this, however, I have often wondered as to why no such competitions exist for adults. Is it due to the fact that adults have no time for such activities or that, even a small minority of them, is not interested in such activities? A food for thought, no doubt.
Dr D.C.Misra
New Delhi, India
July 15, 2004
Thursday, July 01, 2004
FROM THE BOOK SHELF of Dr D.C.MISRA: know IT better
Balasubramaniam, Giri Pickbrain (2001): know IT better, Kolkata,India, Macmillan.
First Edition 91 pp. Rs 106/- ISBN 0333 935454
Available: http://www.macmillanindia.com/macnewmain.htm (accessed July 1, 2004).
This is an excellent book, a gold mine for information technology (IT) quiz lovers. Claimed to be India’s first IT quiz book, and India-oriented, it consists of 500 carefully designed questions, each a gem by itself. It has been compiled by Giri Balasubramaniam, popularly known as Pickbrain, a Bangalore-based young quiz enthusiast who has already carved out a name for himself in IT quiz field by hosting a number of quiz shows in India. The blurb very rightly states that ‘Its novelty lies in that it covers the entire gamut of IT, its various aspects, its history and applications without cluttering the readers’ mind with jargon.” Though the book is targeted, according to the author, to the urban and rural children, it can be very profitably read by adults too. Very reasonably priced (Which book, leave alone a quiz book, can you get in about $2?) and printed on good quality paper, it is a “must buy” for any IT quiz lover. The author, who no doubt has taken great pains in compiling it, needs to be congratulated for making his nuggets available to IT quiz lovers. I had purchased this book when it made its first appearance in 2001 and I find it equally entertaining, three years after, in 2004! This goes to the credit of its compiler. Thank you Mr Pickbrain.
Dr D.C.Misra
New Delhi, India
July 1, 2004
First Edition 91 pp. Rs 106/- ISBN 0333 935454
Available: http://www.macmillanindia.com/macnewmain.htm (accessed July 1, 2004).
This is an excellent book, a gold mine for information technology (IT) quiz lovers. Claimed to be India’s first IT quiz book, and India-oriented, it consists of 500 carefully designed questions, each a gem by itself. It has been compiled by Giri Balasubramaniam, popularly known as Pickbrain, a Bangalore-based young quiz enthusiast who has already carved out a name for himself in IT quiz field by hosting a number of quiz shows in India. The blurb very rightly states that ‘Its novelty lies in that it covers the entire gamut of IT, its various aspects, its history and applications without cluttering the readers’ mind with jargon.” Though the book is targeted, according to the author, to the urban and rural children, it can be very profitably read by adults too. Very reasonably priced (Which book, leave alone a quiz book, can you get in about $2?) and printed on good quality paper, it is a “must buy” for any IT quiz lover. The author, who no doubt has taken great pains in compiling it, needs to be congratulated for making his nuggets available to IT quiz lovers. I had purchased this book when it made its first appearance in 2001 and I find it equally entertaining, three years after, in 2004! This goes to the credit of its compiler. Thank you Mr Pickbrain.
Dr D.C.Misra
New Delhi, India
July 1, 2004
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
New Delhi, Tuesday, June 29, 2004
YAMUNA: i4d QUIZ
Cyber Quiz by D.C.Misra for I4D Magazine
Good morning!
I have started regularly contributing a Cyber Quiz Column in I4D, a monthly magazine devoted to information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) published from NOIDA (U.P.), India. So far my following 4 quizzes have appeared in it:
1. i4d Quiz – 1 : ICT and Women: The Princess of parallelogram shows the way, 1(3)21&40, September-October 2003,
2. i4d Quiz – 2 : eGovernance: States: e-Governance initiatives in Indian states,1(4)35&39, November- December 2003,
3. i4d Quiz – 3 : ICT and Health: A Quiz, 2(3)18 & 40, March 2004,and
4. i4d Quiz – 4 : Wireless Communication : A Quiz, 2(4)18, April 2004.
The following 4 quizzes are due to appear:
5.i4d Quiz – 5 : ICT For the Poor: A Quiz,May 2004 (in press),
6.i4d Quiz – 6 : ICT and Local Language Content: A Quiz,June 2004 (Due for publication),
7.i4d Quiz – 7 : ICT and Water / Agriculture: A Quiz, July 2004, (Due for publication), and
8.i4d Quiz – 8 : Community Radio: A Quiz, August 2004 (Due for publication).References are for the printed version).
These quizzes can be checked at the following Web site:
http://www.i4donline.net/archive/archive.htm
Dr D.C.MISRA
YAMUNA: i4d QUIZ
Cyber Quiz by D.C.Misra for I4D Magazine
Good morning!
I have started regularly contributing a Cyber Quiz Column in I4D, a monthly magazine devoted to information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) published from NOIDA (U.P.), India. So far my following 4 quizzes have appeared in it:
1. i4d Quiz – 1 : ICT and Women: The Princess of parallelogram shows the way, 1(3)21&40, September-October 2003,
2. i4d Quiz – 2 : eGovernance: States: e-Governance initiatives in Indian states,1(4)35&39, November- December 2003,
3. i4d Quiz – 3 : ICT and Health: A Quiz, 2(3)18 & 40, March 2004,and
4. i4d Quiz – 4 : Wireless Communication : A Quiz, 2(4)18, April 2004.
The following 4 quizzes are due to appear:
5.i4d Quiz – 5 : ICT For the Poor: A Quiz,May 2004 (in press),
6.i4d Quiz – 6 : ICT and Local Language Content: A Quiz,June 2004 (Due for publication),
7.i4d Quiz – 7 : ICT and Water / Agriculture: A Quiz, July 2004, (Due for publication), and
8.i4d Quiz – 8 : Community Radio: A Quiz, August 2004 (Due for publication).References are for the printed version).
These quizzes can be checked at the following Web site:
http://www.i4donline.net/archive/archive.htm
Dr D.C.MISRA
Thursday, June 03, 2004
CYBER QUIZ: The Grand Vision
The CYBER QUIZ, defined here as quizzes on different aspects of information and communication technologies (ICTs), has been conceived in three major streams, named after India's major rivers, as follows:
GANGA: CYBER QUIZ
Volume I: The Foundations
Volume II: The Applications
YAMUNA: I4D QUIZ
BRAMHAPUTRA: eGOV QUIZ
Volume I: India - The Union
Volume II: India - The States
Volume III: Global
It should thus be possible to identify a quiz stream by the quiz tag, namely, CYBER QUIZ, I4D QUIZ or eGOV QUIZ.This is essential to keep in mind as quizzes will make a mixed appearance in this blog.
Happy quizzing!
Dr D.C.MISRA
GANGA: CYBER QUIZ
Volume I: The Foundations
Volume II: The Applications
YAMUNA: I4D QUIZ
BRAMHAPUTRA: eGOV QUIZ
Volume I: India - The Union
Volume II: India - The States
Volume III: Global
It should thus be possible to identify a quiz stream by the quiz tag, namely, CYBER QUIZ, I4D QUIZ or eGOV QUIZ.This is essential to keep in mind as quizzes will make a mixed appearance in this blog.
Happy quizzing!
Dr D.C.MISRA
Monday, May 31, 2004
Cyber Quiz-1: The Internet by Dinesh Chandra Misra
Cyber Quiz-1: The Internet is now available at
http://topics.developmentgateway.org/ictsouthasia
Dr D.C.Misra
http://topics.developmentgateway.org/ictsouthasia
Dr D.C.Misra
Welcome!
Good Morning!
And welcome to the brave new world of CYBER QUIZ!
This an ambitious, rather very ambitous blog. It attempts to develop quizzes, based on research, on various aspects of rapidly developing information and communication technologies (ICTs),whose knowledge is becoming increasingy essential for a 21st century citizen, irrespective of age, gender and where he resides in this world.These various aspects are called themes. Each theme consists of wide-ranging 20 questions (call them "JUST 20!", if you will).
The quizzes are not designed as a test. They do not have any scoreboard.They have been designed only to stimulate interest in ICTs, update knowledge and provide food for thought and thinking.
YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS ARE WARMLY WELCOME.
WATCH THIS SPACE.
D.C.Misra
New Delhi, India
And welcome to the brave new world of CYBER QUIZ!
This an ambitious, rather very ambitous blog. It attempts to develop quizzes, based on research, on various aspects of rapidly developing information and communication technologies (ICTs),whose knowledge is becoming increasingy essential for a 21st century citizen, irrespective of age, gender and where he resides in this world.These various aspects are called themes. Each theme consists of wide-ranging 20 questions (call them "JUST 20!", if you will).
The quizzes are not designed as a test. They do not have any scoreboard.They have been designed only to stimulate interest in ICTs, update knowledge and provide food for thought and thinking.
YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS ARE WARMLY WELCOME.
WATCH THIS SPACE.
D.C.Misra
New Delhi, India
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