50/- ` ISSN 0970-647X | Volume No. 36 | Issue No. 5 | August 2012 36 | Issue No. No. | Volume 0970-647X ISSN

Cover Story Article Computing in - Software Techniques Strolling Down Memory Lane 5 in Computer Graphic Technology 12 CIO Perspective Managing Technology » CIO Perspective Business Information Systems: Digital World Beckons IT Infrastructure and Services 29 Marketers!!! 32 www.csi-.org www.csi-india.org CSI Communications | August 2012 | A Prof. S V Raghavan CSI Calendar Vice President & Chair, Conference Committee, CSI 2012

Date Event Details & Organizers Contact Information August 2012 Events

7-8 Aug. 2012 First Rajasthan State Student Convention Prof. Archana [email protected] Aishwarya Institute of Management & IT, Udaipur Mr. Akhil Pandey [email protected] 9-10 Aug. 2012 Regional Student Convention – Region 5 Prof. I K Ishthaq Ahamed [email protected] G. Pulla Reddy Engineering College, Kurnool, A.P Mr. T Sabapathy [email protected] 11 Aug. 2012 Workshop on Cloud Computing Prof. Keerthi Venkat ER Perumal Manimekali College of Engineering - Hosur [email protected] 13-14 Aug. 2012 Kerala State Student Convention Dr. Chitraprasad [email protected] TKM College of Engineering Mr. Muraleedharan Pillai [email protected] 13-14 Aug. 2012 Workshop on Personal eff ective skills Prof. Keerthi Venkat ER Perumal Manimekali College of Engineering-Hosur [email protected] 24-25 Aug. 2012 Regional Student Convention - Region 3 Prof. Tejpal Upadhyay Nirma University Institute of Technology, [email protected] Dr. Rajveer S Shekhawat [email protected] 24-25 Aug. 2012 Sixth Tamilnadu State Student Convention Dr. C G Ravichandran [email protected] R.V.S College of Engineering, Dindigul, T.N Dr. M Sundaresan [email protected] 31 Aug.-1 Sept. Third International Conference on Transforming Healthcare with IT Dr. T V Gopal [email protected] 2012 CSI Division II (Software), www.transformhealth-it.org September 2012 Events

5-7 Sept. 2012 International Conference on Software Engineering ( CONSEG 2012) Dr. T V Gopal [email protected] CSI Division II ( Software), Indore www.conseg2012.org 6-7 Sept. 2012 Cloud Computing Prof. Rajapusha MVJCE, (SBC), CSI Division V [email protected] 13-14 Sept. 2012 Global Science and Technology Forum Business Intelligent Summit and Awards Dr. T V Gopal [email protected] CSI Division II ( Software), Singapore www.globalstf.org/bi-summit 13-15 Sept. 2012 FDP on Intelligent Computing Prof. Ilango New Horizon College of Engineering, Bangalore [email protected] 19-20 Sept. 2012 Fourth e-Governance Knowledge Sharing Summit (KSS2012) Mr. A M Parial [email protected] Govt. of Chhattisgarh, in association with CSI-SIG-eGOV at Hotel V W Canyon Maj. Gen. (Retd) Dr R K Bagga Raipur [email protected] 27-29 Sept. 2012 Regional Student Convention - Region 6 Ms. Parminder Kaur [email protected] MGM's Jawaharlal Nehru Engineering College, N-6, CIDCO, Aurangabad Prof. S S Sane [email protected] October 2012 Events

12-13 Oct. 2012 26th Annual Karnataka Student Convention on Green Computing - Challenges & Change Prof. Sunita Sidganga Institute of Technology, Tumkur, Karnataka [email protected] 20 Oct. 2012 Communication Technologies & its impact on Next Generation Computing (CTNGC-2012) Prof. Umang [email protected] I.T.S - Management & IT Institute Mohan Nagar, Ghaziabad, U.P Prof. Ashish Seth [email protected] Prof. Alka Agrawal [email protected] November 2012 Events

29 Nov.-1 Dec. Third International Conference on Emerging Applications of Information D P Mukherjee/Debasish Jana/ 2012 Technology (EAIT 2012) Pinakpani Pal/R T Goswami CSI Kolkata Chapter Event at Kolkata URL: https://sites.google.com/site/csieait2012/ [email protected] December 2012 Events

1-2 Dec. 2012 47th Annual National Convention of CSI (CSI 2012) Subimal Kundu/D P Mukherjee/ CSI Kolkata Chapter Event at Kolkata, URL: http://csi-2012.org/ Phalguni Mukherjee/J K Mandal [email protected] 6-8 Dec. 2012 Second IEEE International Conference on PDG Computing [PDGC 2012] , Technically Dr. Nitin [email protected] CSI Special Interest Group on Cyber Forensics at Jaypee University of information Dr Vipin Tyagi [email protected] Technology, Waknaghat-Solan (HP) http://www.juit.ac.in/pdgc-2012/index1.php 14-16 Dec. 2012 International Conference on Management of Data (COMAD-2012) Mr. C G Sahasrabudhe SIGDATA, CSI, Chapter and CSI Division II [email protected] CSI Communications Contents

Volume No. 36 • Issue No. 5 • August 2012

Editorial Board Cover Sto ry Practitioner Workbench Computing in Kolkata - Strolling Programming.Tips() » Chief Editor 5 Down Memory Lane 27 Wallace Jacob Dr. R M Sonar Dr. Debasish Jana Programming.Learn (“Python”) » Editors 28 GUI Design with Python Dr. Debasish Jana Articles Umesh P Dr. Achuthsankar Nair Software Techniques in Computer Graphic Technology Resident Editor 12 V K Mohanan CIO Perspective Mrs. Jayshree Dhere Managing Technology »

Challenges in Early days of Programming in 29 Business Information Systems: Advisors IBM 360 - An Introspection IT Infrastructure and Services Dr. T V Gopal 15 M Jayalakshmy Dr. R M Sonar Mr. H R Mohan FishNet: An Early Experience with Email Digital World Beckons Marketers!!! Published by Satish Babu Dr. Anil V Vaidya Executive Secretary 18 32 Mr. Suchit Gogwekar MINSK at Space Center - A Nostalgic For Computer Society of India 19 Flashback Security Corner R Narayanan Information Security » Design, Print and Software IPR in India 35 Dispatch by In Remembrance of Alan Turing, the Father Adv. Prashant Mali CyberMedia Services Limited of Computer Sciencel 20 Dr. Debasish Jana IT Act 2000 » Prof. IT Law in Conversation with Technical Trends 37 Mr. IT Executive: Issue No. 5 Let’s do LESS Mr. Subramaniam Vutha 21 Hareesh N Nampoothiri Near Field Communication (NFC) and HR 23 Changing the Airline Passenger’s Demystfying Assessment in Travel Experience Nemil Sheriff and Diptiman Dasgupta 38 the World of Work Please note: Ambereen Pradhan CSI Communications is published by Computer Society of India, a non-profi t organization. Views and opinions expressed in the CSI Communications are those of individual authors, contributors and advertisers and they may diff er from policies and offi cial statements of CSI. These should not be construed as legal or professional advice. The CSI, the publisher, the editors and the contributors are not responsible for any decisions taken by readers on the basis of these views and opinions. Although every care is being taken to ensure PLUS genuineness of the writings in this publication, CSI Communications does not attest to the originality of the respective authors’ content. Brain Teaser Dr. Debasish Jana 40 © 2012 CSI. All rights reserved. Instructors are permitted to photocopy isolated Ask an Expert articles for non-commercial classroom use 41 without fee. For any other copying, reprint or Dr. Debasish Jana republication, permission must be obtained in writing from the Society. Copying for other Happenings@ICT: ICT News Briefs in July 2012 than personal use or internal reference, or of H R Mohan 42 articles or columns not owned by the Society without explicit permission of the Society or the CSI News 43 copyright owner is strictly prohibited.

Published by Suchit Gogwekar for Computer Society of India at Unit No. 3, 4th Floor, Samruddhi Venture Park, MIDC, Andheri (E), -400 093. Tel. : 022-2926 1700 • Fax : 022-2830 2133 • Email : [email protected] Printed at GP Off set Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai 400 059.

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 1 Know Your CSI

Executive Committee (2012-13/14) »

President Vice-President Hon. Secretary Mr. Satish Babu Prof. S V Raghavan Mr. S Ramanathan [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Hon. Treasurer Immd. Past President Mr. V L Mehta Mr. M D Agrawal [email protected] [email protected]

Nomination Committee (2012-2013) Dr. D D Sarma Mr. Bipin V Mehta Mr. Subimal Kundu

Regional Vice-Presidents Region - I Region - II Region - III Region - IV Mr. R K Vyas Prof. Dipti Prasad Mukherjee Mr. Anil Srivastava Mr. Sanjeev Kumar , Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Assam, Bihar, West Bengal, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, North Eastern States Rajasthan and other areas Orissa and other areas in Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and and other areas in in Western India Central & South other areas in Northern India. East & North East India [email protected] Eastern India [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Region - V Region - VI Region - VII Region - VIII Prof. D B V Sarma Mr. C G Sahasrabudhe Mr. Ramasamy S Mr. Pramit Makoday Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh Maharashtra and Goa Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, International Members [email protected] [email protected] Andaman and Nicobar, [email protected] Kerala, Lakshadweep [email protected]

Division Chairpersons, National Student Coordinator & Publication Committee Chairman Division-I : Hardware (2011-13) Division-II : Software (2012-14) Division-III : Applications (2011-13) National Student Coordinator Dr. C R Chakravarthy Dr. T V Gopal Dr. Debesh Das Mr. Ranga Raj Gopal [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Division-IV : Communications Division-V : Education and Research Publication Committee (2012-14) (2011-13) Chairman Mr. Sanjay Mohapatra Chairman Division V Prof. R K Shyamsundar [email protected] To be announced [email protected] Important links on CSI website » Structure & Organisation http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/structure ExecCom Transacts http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/execcom-transacts1 National, Regional & http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/structure/nsc News & Announcements archive http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/announcements State Students Coordinators CSI Divisions and their respective web links Statutory Committees http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/statutory-committees Division-Hardware http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/division1 Collaborations http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/collaborations Division Software http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/division2 Join Now - http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/join Division Application http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/division3 Renew Membership http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/renew Division Communications http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/division4 Member Eligibility http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/eligibility Division Education and Research http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/division5 Member Benefi ts http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/benifi ts List of SIGs and their respective web links Subscription Fees http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/subscription-fees SIG-Artifi cial Intelligence http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-ai Forms Download http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/forms-download SIG-eGovernance http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-egov BABA Scheme http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/baba-scheme SIG-FOSS http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-foss Publications http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/publications SIG-Software Engineering http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-se CSI Communications* http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/info-center/communications SIG-DATA http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sigdata Adhyayan* http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/adhyayan SIG-Distributed Systems http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-ds R & D Projects http://csi-india.org/web/csi/1204 SIG-Humane Computing http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-humane Technical Papers http://csi-india.org/web/csi/technical-papers SIG-Information Security http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-is Tutorials http://csi-india.org/web/csi/tutorials SIG-Web 2.0 and SNS http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/sig-web-2.0 Course Curriculum http://csi-india.org/web/csi/course-curriculum SIG-BVIT http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/sig-bvit Training Program http://csi-india.org/web/csi/training-programs SIG-WNs http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/sig-fwns (CSI Education Products) SIG-Green IT http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/sig-green-it Travel support for International http://csi-india.org/web/csi/travel-support SIG-HPC http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/sig-hpc Conference SIG-TSSR http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/sig-tssr eNewsletter* http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/enewsletter Other Links - Current Issue http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/current-issue Forums http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/discuss-share/forums Archives http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/archives Blogs http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/discuss-share/blogs Policy Guidelines http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/helpdesk Communities* http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/discuss-share/communities Events http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/events1 CSI Chapters http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chapters President’s Desk http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/infocenter/president-s-desk Calendar of Events http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-eventcalendar * Access is for CSI members only. Important Contact Details » For queries, correspondence regarding Membership, contact [email protected]

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 2 www.csi-india.org Satish Babu President’s Message From : [email protected] Subject : President’s Desk Date : 1st August, 2012

Dear Members

CSI was founded in 1965, when computing technologies were confi ned to a few research institutions, universities, and government departments. In particular, there was no IT Industry that is so prominent today, and computing was fragmented between diff erent hardware manufacturers, who also made the software for the computers that they manufactured. The computing domain at that time was driven by a few stalwarts, many of whom CSI has had the good fortune to associate with.

Given that CSI was the only organization who was associated with the growth of the computing domain in India - later to develop into the IT Industry - during its early days, it is only natural that CSI has a special affi nity towards this period. It is of the numbers of people impacted, the tripping of the three important to remember that the founding fathers of CSI were grids is a major catastrophe. themselves the pioneers of computing in India. As technologists, it is perhaps time that our talk about smart History of IT in India computing, manifesting itself as initiatives such as smart This issue of CSI Communications has the theme of “History homes, smart vehicles, and smart grids, became a reality. As of IT in India”. We look at some of the early initiatives in we know, a smart grid is an electricity grid that uses IT to gather computing in the country in this issue for the benefi t of the and process information“... in an automated fashion to improve newer generations of IT professionals. Of course, IT and the effi ciency, reliability, economics, and sustainability of the Communications are interleaved so much today that one production and distribution of electricity”. Of course, we are cannot exist without the other. Together with computing, still at the preliminary stage of transitioning into smart grids, the Internet has also been a major driving force behind the but events of this kind shows the vulnerability of technologies popularization and democratization of what has come to be that are in everyday use, and the increased responsibility that known as Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in engineers and technologists have in ensuring the quality of life the last two decades. of people. At a personal level, this has also provided me an occasion to ACC 2012 refl ect on my own early days in programming - which started An important event held last month was ACC 2012, the as a hobby in college in the early 80s, later becoming a International Conference on Advances in Cloud Computing passionate avocation. After encountering the Internet for the held at Bangalore. This event showcased the technological fi rst time in 1993 at a UK University, its immense possibilities developments in one of the most talked-about technologies were immediately clear to me, and prompted me, in 1994, in the recent past, Cloud Computing. The event attracted to become a part of the United Nations Volunteer (UNV) signifi cant participation. Congratulations are due to Dr. Anirban program named “IndiaLink”, connecting a few NGOs around Basu and the other team members of CSI Bangalore Chapter the country using ERNET as backbone. My experiences are who were able to successfully organize this Conference. provided in a brief article, “FishNet: An Early Experiment with Student Chapter Handbook Email”, in this issue (page 18). I am happy to report that, in order to provide the student branches with a comprehensive framework Given CSI's preeminent position in the history of computing in to enable the formation, operationalization, mission India, we have plans to strengthen the CSI History Initiative, delivery and reporting, CSI Education Directorate and which has been initiated a few months back, so that we have the National Student Coordinator have prepared a brief a chronicle of the eff orts of the early pioneers of computing in presentation and handbook, which can be accessed at India. http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/1330 Smart Computing As I write this piece, there are news of crippling power With best wishes, breakdowns across much of the country, aff ecting a reported 600 million people. Although it is the fi rst time in a decade Satish Babu that a disruption of this magnitude is being reported, in terms President

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 3 Rajendra M Sonar, Achuthsankar S Nair, Debasish Jana and Jayshree Dhere Editorial Editors

Dear Fellow CSI Members,

India had her tryst with computing more than half a century Jana to mark the occasion. Under Technical Trends section the ago. Unlike the present when the cyberpace brings in a wave of article curiously titled "Let's do Less" by Hareesh Nampoothiri homogenising, the early years of computing evolved diff erently in introduces the latest open source CSS dynamic language LESS. diff erent parts of the world. The HEC and URAL in Kolkata and Another article we present in Technical Trends section is "Near the MINSK down south in Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre were Field Communication and Changing Airline Passenger's Travel key triggers of the early computing age in India. The present IT Experience" by Nemil Sheriff and Diptiman Dasgupta of IBM. community of India may not be aware of the great challenges faced by the professionals in the yester years. As a matter of curiosity, as a matter of taking stock, as a matter of paying tributes As a matter of curiosity, as a matter of to early contributors, this issue of CSI Communications features the theme of "History of Computing in India". The editors were taking stock, as a matter of paying tributes overwhelmed with a large number of contributions, most of which to early contributors, this issue of CSI were unique. We have therefore decided to continue with the Communications features the theme of theme in selected future issues. This issue rightly features "Computing in Kolkata - Strolling "History of Computing in India". The editors Down Memory Lane" as the cover story. Dr. Debasish Jana has were overwhelmed with a large number of compiled a comprehensive picture of the Kolkata computing contributions, most of which were unique. scene of 1950s and 1960s. The computing saga at ISI of course marks the glorious beginning of Indian computing. It features We have therefore decided to continue with the profi le of early pioneers associated with the Kolkata the theme in selected future issues. computing scene.

Practitioner Workbench column has a section titled The HEC and URAL in Kolkata and the MINSK Programming.Tips() and it provides a write-up by Prof. Wallace down south in Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre Jacob on diff erent usage of main(), scanf() and printf() functions. were key triggers of the early computing age in The other section called Programming.Learn("Python") under Practitioner Workbench covers guidelines on "GUI Design using India. The present IT community of India may Python". not be aware of the great challenges faced by In his series of articles about Managing Technology in the professionals in the yester years. the CIO Perspective column, Dr. R M Sonar has written about “Business Information Systems: IT Infrastructure and Services”. CIO Perspective column is also enriched with an article by Down south, a few years later, the Vikram Sarabhai Space Dr. Anil Vaidya on “Digital World Beckons Marketers!!!” Centre started its initiatives with a Russian MINSK computer. Information Security section of the Security Corner feature To give a real taste of the challenges faced in those ages, we has an interesting article on “Software IPR in India”, which reproduce a 1985 article by a CSI member, Er V K Mohanan, throws light on the kind of protection to provided to software who was instrumental in producing graphic output with a crude as intellectual property in our country. Another section called digital computer. He produced a typesetting system which could IT Act 2000 under Security Corner comes with a write-up by set maths symbols and also Malayalam text. We hope that the Mr. Subramaniam Vutha, wherein he explains key challenges in article "Software Techniques in Computer Graphic Technology" gives the young IT professional an opportunity to contrast the the context of electronic commerce or electronic contracts. present with the past. "Challenges in Early days of Programming in HR column is enriched with an article on “Demystifying the IBM 360 - An Introspection" by Ms. Jayalakshmy M and "MINSK Assessment in the World of Work” by Ambereen Pradhan, who is at Space Center - A Nostalgic Flashback" by R Narayanan are Director of Energia Welllbeing Pvt. Ltd. both articles that further give a glimpse of early computing at the As usual there are other regular features such as Brain Teaser, Space Centre. Ask an Expert and Happenings@ICT. CSI Reports and CSI News The CSI President Sathish Babu who was a pioneer in section provide event details of various regions, SIGs, chapters popularising IT in the modern times shares his memories about and student branches. a public email facility that he initiated in 1990s, in the article Please note that we welcome your feedback, contributions "FishNet: An Early Experience with Email". and suggestions at [email protected]. We have not been able to do justice to the theme as we realise it is really very vast. We hope to cover more ground in coming issues focusing on the same theme. With warm regards, Alan Turing is being remembered all over the world this year Rajendra M Sonar, Achuthsankar S Nair, as it is his centenary year. We have the article "In Rememberance Debasish Jana and Jayshree Dhere of Alan Turing, the Father of Computer Science" by Dr Debasish Editors

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 4 www.csi-india.org Cover Dr. Debasish Jana Story Chairman, CSI Kolkata Chapter; Editor, CSI Communications

Computing in Kolkata - Strolling Down Memory Lane

The memories of punch card puts me in the history lane, although history as a subject was too repelling for me in school days, and used to drag my marks down in schools. As time passes by, memories of the past as well as knowing the history of things, places, events become so sweet, so pounding, motions get dragged by emotions. In Rabindranath Tagore’s words, Purano shei diner kotha, bhulbi ki re, haay o shei, chokher dekha, Praner kotha, shei ki bhola jaay? aay aar ek ti baar aay re shokha, praner maajhe aay mora, shukher dukher kotha kobo, praan judabe taai (The memories of the good old days, can you ever forget them? They were witnessed by our eyes, were the voice of our life, Can they ever be forgotten? Come back once more, my friend, come and be a part of my life. We will talk of smiles and tears, and will feel very good about it). Last June, I completed 25 years (silver jubilee) since graduating in Computer Science from Jadavpur University. We were the third batch of undergraduate Engineering in Computer Science Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India visited ISI in Machine from this University. Unbelievable! So many years have passed by. We had One Regional Computer Tabulati on Unit P C Mahalanobis, Pandit Jwaharlal Nehru & K C Poddar on 1954 (Photo courtesy: Reprography and Centre (RCC) that used to meet the computing need of the University as well as for the local Photography Unit, ISI Kolkata) industries and corporates because almost none had an in-house infrastructure back in mid-80s. In the RCC, we had two windows, one labeled as "Input" and other labeled as "Output". In Input window, we used to submit our deck of punch cards containing program in or Cobol or Algol or PDP-11 Assembly. I was an expert in reading punch card holes to decipher the character punched in a column. And I remember, when we were not allowed to punch ourselves, the punch card operator who was familiar with COBOL syntax used to correct our assembly statement written as MOV command by MOVE, thinking it was a spelling mistake. And, we had to re-punch those cards. Later, we were allowed to punch ourselves. After submitting the deck of cards to Input, we had to wait at least 3-4 hours (sometimes more) to get the output (in 132 column line printer sheets) from the Output window. Since so much waiting time to see the output coming in, we had hardly any option to write incorrect programs. So, automatically, our programming skills were forced to be better, one mistake (syntax or logical) could lose so much time that we couldn’t aff ord. In Hindu mythology, it is believed that Goddess Durga was created from collective energies of all the Gods. She got her weapons from various Gods: trident from Rudra, discus from Vishnu, thunderbolt from Indra, kamandalu from Brahma, ratnahar from Kuber etc. Computer Science course and syllabus were designed from collective synergy of several diff erent fi elds, electronics, mathematics, physics, mechanics, and many others. While trying to collate memories from several thought leaders, pioneers, sweet and sour old recollections churned down memory lane, we present here their personal reminiscences that had captured the emotions and of course historical footprints for computing in Kolkata, some told and some untold earlier. Let’s get straight from the mouth of the horse, the Gurus and disciples of computing in Eastern India: “I'll tell you a tale strange but true, Sir, And you can believe it or not, But I swear every word, Sir, is Gospel, A liar is one thing I'm not! I'll relate the events as they 'appened, A singular tale you'll agree...” (from The Fisherman's Tale by Paul Wilkinson) Glimpsing through Early Days of Computers in Kolkata Devaprasanna Sinha Fellow, Computer Society of India; Formerly, Director, Cad Cam Consultants Pvt Ltd and Former Chairman, Computer Society of India, Kolkata Chapter

Kolkata (the then Calcutta), being the capital of British India, by end August 1955. By the end of 1959, the URAL-1, the can boast not merely of few fi rsts in India, like trams, metros second such machine from USSR was in operation. Prior but is well-known for its pioneering roles and innovative to HEC-2M and URAL-1, there were large number of projects in arts, sciences, social work, and politics. Pursuits electromechanical DP machines from IBM, Hollerith (UK) in Kolkata in Computer Science and technology may well and Powersemes (UK). These have been largely used in claim for such an enviable status. It is, however, not too statistical work and government work in National Sample well-known that computer age dawned in Kolkata when Survey Organization (NSSO). the fi rst analog computer was fabricated out of surplus- It is to be mentioned that activity in the area of materials at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata in 1950 with electronic computer development started in India in 1954 at Tata its early use primarily with solution of simultaneous linear equations. Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) where the design of Professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanabis, the architect of a pilot model general purpose computer became operational in ISI, could realize in those days the tremendous potentials of the 1956 and subsequently a fullscape version in 1960. This machine fast and massive computational capabilities that would open up named TIFRAC was in operation till 1964 and many early users of the electronic era. As early as in 1953, the ISI had mounted its the computer in the country had the opportunities of their initial own models on research eff orts in this direction. But technology experiences on it. The TIFRAC project was carried out in the fi rst overseas moved faster and ISI went for a purchase as well. British generation computer and was built with electronic hardware of the Tabulating Machines (BTM) agreed to sell their machine, called time, namely, vacuum tubes, semiconductor bodies and ferrite core HEC-2M (Hollerith Electronic Computer model 2M) to ISI but memory. The fi rst attempt in India for the development of a general would not undertake either to install or commission it or to maintain purpose second generation computer was undertaken jointly by it in India. Two engineers, Mr Mohi Mukherji and Mr Amaresh the Indian Statistical Institute and Jadavpur University in Kolkata Roy were recruited for this purpose. HEC-2M became operational in 1963. This was a system that was cost limited but reasonably

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 5 fast and versatile, incorporating features of the time. The system 1964, it was decided to rename AICUG as the Computer Society became operational in 1966 and christened as ISIJU-1, after the of India to broaden the scope of the group. Kolkata hosted the fi rst names of the two institutions. A number of graduate students Annual Convention (then called Meeting) of Computer Society of became involved in the project. ISIJU-1 has been used for a fairly India at Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata from 15-17 December, long period on teaching in programming, computer circuit design 1965 with the theme “An Ideal Computer Map in India”. Compared as well as performing research problems of moderate size on the to CSI Convention today, this was a rather tame aff air, with hardly limitations arising from limited memory size. fi fty participants with representations from all corners of India Upto the mid-60s, electronic computers were being used in India and from many areas of applications - scientifi c research, defense, only in a few educational institutions of advanced learning. They were economic planning, education, business, and industry. Since 1982, too complicated for use on a large scale in the Indian industrial and all the chapters of the Society are celebrating 15th December as the commercial environment of those days. It was only after when IBM Computer Day every year for promoting the computer awareness marketed their highly successful second generation computer of the amongst every citizen of the country. Kolkata Chapter also organized 1400 series in India, large business houses started using them for their the Silver Jubilee Convention in Kolkata in 1990. Professor Jogabrata commercial data processing work. Roy, ISI, was the Chairman of CSI Kolkata Chapter. Past chairmen of Automation activities such as the large scale of computers in CSIKC till eighties include Prof J V Ranga Rao, Mr J S Kalotra, Dr C A business was initially routine clerical work - pay bill, accounts ledger, Verghese, Prof D Dutta Majumder, Mr A K Ghosh, Mr N K Roy, Mr issue of shares, inventory control, and accounting and the like. The Amal Roy, Mr P B Ghosh and Prof A N Daw. Obviously, the names white collar employees felt threatened that computer would replace listed here are not an exhaustive ones. There were many members them all. The management did nothing to allay the fears of workers in diff erent capacities who served the Society at all levels during and politicians found an issue which was, rightly or wrongly, felt to that time and later, as well. be a question of life and death day by many. Thus sprang up a very It may not be out of place to mention that the Indian Society strong anti-automation agitation of white-collar workers which was for Automation & Information Sciences (ISAIS) was formed, way partially successful in Kolkata, not allowing installation of electronic back in 1962, after the Conference on Automation and Computer computers anywhere for the purpose. One remembers the violent Scientists of India in 1962 in BIT Sindri, possibly the fi rst Conference opposition by the trade union leaders against the installation of of computer scientists in India. ISAIS could carry out some activities CESC computer in late 1960s. Indiff erent attitude by the state in the region among research groups but after the formation of CSI, government over more than three decades undoubtedly made it it did not pursue further activities. clear that Kolkata has apparently missed the bus. IITs started Computer Science departments way back in Neverheless, in the education and training areas, posts were the 1960s. In Kolkata, One–year Diploma Full Computer Course advertised for trainees in 1953 at ISI. Those were the fi rst computer in two diff erent streams, namely, Hardware and Software was posts in India, apart from traditional disciplines like applied started in ISI and JU in 1968. Jadavpur University would become mathematics or electrical engineering. the fi rst University to start Computer Science as a subject in the Mid-60s saw many IBM and ICL installations in companies undergraduate course. School of Computer Research was formed like Bata, Dunlop, Union Carbide, HMV, Hind Motor etc. and a large under the able guidance of distinguished professors at ISI, JU, number of applications written in Autocoder and Plan had been CU, IIT Kharagpur, IIM Kolkata, B E College on diff erent areas of developed. specialization not only in theoretical aspects but also on applied The fi rst organizational meeting was held at IBM Educational research and projects also undertaken by RCC, Kolkata. Centre at Faridabad, Delhi where sixteen representatives from seven Regional Computer Centre (RCC), Kolkata was set up in 1976 computer establishments attended the meeting and the All India with the installation of Burroughs 6738 computer system to provide Computer User’s Group (AICUG) was constituted. The AICUG held the high-end computing facilities in the Eastern Region. its fi rst meeting at IIT Kanpur on December 18, 1964. The Group One can also mention in this connection that Concordance from ISI was also involved in the formation of Computer Users’ works on the literary works of Rabindranath were started way back in Group in this part o the country and met frequently in a number early 1970s, possibly the fi rst in India, before similar works undertaken of meetings at ISI and other organizations. On 18th December, elsewhere and the Multimedia Rabindranath project in mid-90s. Reminiscences of Computing: Infrastructure and Practice Nirajit Kanta Roy Fellow, Computer Society of India; Formerly, EDP Manager, Bata India Limited; Former Chairman, Computer Society of India, Kolkata Chapter

Way back in 1953, I attended a course as a Trainee in Unit application systems using Autocoder. We did install the Record Machines (URM) at ISI, Kolkata. And in course computer in the EDP department as a separate unit at of time, got acquainted myself with the panel wiring of Kolkata and not in the factory for obvious reasons prevailing various applications. At that time, there was a system at that time. In those days, we made a direct changeover called Powersemes. Many applications were done using of our systems, not even a pilot run. We implemented the URM. We learnt that and spent almost 24 hours at ISI. I systems and then ultimately accepted by the trade unions. still remember the 45 column card punch. I joined Union Applications like invoicing was taken earlier, then payroll, Carbide caused by a vacancy there again on unit record systems. I and we went to use IBM 1401 system at ISI to test the programs, as had a mastery over panel wiring at that time, and soon after, off ered our installation was not ready at that time. It took huge time to build a post in Bata India Limited. I still remember those old places and the conversion/migration work with accuracy and human eff ort, offi ces and some names with whom I worked with in that period. as well. During eighties, I was responsible for implementation and At Bata, with tabulator, collator, I did redesign our applications installation of many application systems all over India like Faridabad and with the installation of IBM 1401, the most popular computer using yesteryears’ computers TDC-316, HCL Horizon and other in the commercial environment at that time, we developed many systems.

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 6 www.csi-india.org Reminiscences of Computing: Education, Teaching, and Practice Debabrata Ghosh Dastidar Fellow, Computer Society of India; Formerly, Professor, Jadavpur University, Kolkata I was in IIT Kanpur from 1965 to 1967. Prior to that, I was several occasions. The machine was shut only because doing my PhD in a branch of applied mechanics. I became of weekly maintenance of air-conditioner system. IBM interested in computers and attended a computer course 7044, a powerful computer at that time, was installed there in 1964 which lasted for two weeks. This was attended later at IIT Kanpur. After a brief period in Department by 40 participants from diff erent parts of India. Five IBM of Mathematics at Jadavpur University, I joined in the 1620 computer systems were installed at that time at Electronics & Telecommunication Department of Jadavpur IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur and other places. Prof Harry D University. At that time, in the Compute Centre under the Huskey, who formed the Computer Users’ Group with Mr Department, Post Graduate Diploma of Computer Science Bijay Kumar Chatterjee later, was one of the visiting professors at was stared in 1968 in two groups - hardware and software. We had IIT Kanpur. Professors from American universities and institutes to send our students to IIT Kharagpur and University of Calcutta to used to come at IIT Kanpur at that time. I remember Prof. Kesavan test their programs on IBM 1620 and IBM 1130 respectively. Students and Prof. Rajaraman were there in the Computer Centre. We after obtaining their diploma joined in diff erent companies. We also were taught FORGO and FORTRAN II to help research workers visited other computer installations in Kolkata like Union Carbide, to solve their problems, I took tutorial class in the course for the Kulgian, Indian Oxygen to test ALGOL, COBOL, and other programs. research workers in the centre. I still remember the machine was There were many colleagues in these days. I may recall Asish Sen, so hardy that it worked for 24 hours. We had to work at nights on Prabhat Kumar Mitra, Bimal Chanda and Ajay Kumar Majhi. Reminiscences of Computing: Education, Infrastructure, Teaching, and Practice Mohit Kumar Roy Formerly, Professor, Jadavpur University, Kolkata; Former Chairman, Computer Society of India, Kolkata Chapter After obtaining my MSc degree in Applied Mathematics one-year diploma course on computers were introduced from the University of Calcutta, I agreed to join to do in 1965 that lasted for one year only. I taught in that computational work at ISI, Kolkata at the request of our course. Along with computational experience, I started teacher Professor Parimal Kanti Ghosh. I learnt machine to acquire teaching experience there. After a brief stint at language programming on HEC-2M and URAL machines. ICL Limited, I joined the newly formed Computer Centre That’s my initial exposure and computational experience. I of the Department of Electronics & Telecommunication remember that I was initially assigned the work to calculate Engineering at Jadavpur University in 1968 to teach PG the trajectories of ballistic missile using computer. At that time, Prof. Diploma course in Computer Science. At the All India level, every Samrendra Kumar Mitra, Prof. Prabhat Kumar Mitra, Prof. Biswajit year 10 students from software and 10 from hardware joined this Nag, amongst others, were there. Project ISIJU-1 was mooted at that one-year program. Many students passed from this course before time, the fi rst second generation indigenous computer. In 1963-64, the degree course was instituted in the university in early 1980s. courses on computers were organized at IIT Kanpur under the Indo- Prof. J S Chatterjee, the then Head of the Department, told me to American program. I, from ISI, along with others, was in the second pursue research in computer science. I got my PhD in 1978 on data course. Prof. Harry D Huskey, Prof. Acton and Prof. Rabinowiecz taught structures. I read a paper in the First CSI Convention held at Kolkata us on diff erent aspects of computer and related areas like numerical in 1965. On deputation, I spent a few years at the Regional Computer analysis and methods. There I heard the word assembly language for Centre, Kolkata in the early days of Burroughs 6738 system, involved the fi rst time and later, high level language. Programs were written myself not only in various teaching assignments but also in many by us in assembly language to solve the computational problems for government and commercial projects with my co-workers, before a host of research workers in diff erent disciplines. I remember that my joining as Professor of Computer Science at Jadavpur University. IT Scenario in Seventies and Early Eighties, Contribution of RCC Aditya Bagchi Professor, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata During the 70s of the last millennium, computing facilities manually. On the other hand, there was no computer available in Kolkata hardly matched with the growing manufacturing facility available in the country. Only resort demands in commercial, industrial, government, and was to import computers from Europe or USA, which was academic sectors. Most of the commercial applications very expensive for most of the academic and commercial were running in old IBM 1401 systems using assembly organizations. Realizing this growing need and consequent language like AUTOCODER. There were very few market pressure, Dept. of Electronics (now, Dept. of IT), computers even for running applications developed using Govt. of India decided to open Regional Computer Centres COBOL. Situation in academic sectors was no better. Only in collaboration with the state governments as well as facility available in Kolkata was an IBM 1130 system at the University commercial sectors. First Regional Computer Centre (RCC) started of Calcutta. On the other hand, demands for good computing functioning in Kolkata in January 1977 with a Burrows 6700 system facility were steadily increasing. Even political apathy towards installed at the Jadavpur University campus. Later another RCC was computerization was gradually waning since both central and state also established in Chandigarh. RCC in Kolkata was established as a governments started realizing that processing huge data generated joint eff ort of Dept. of Electronics, Govt. of India, Govt. of West Bengal, in diff erent areas of government activities can hardly be handled and UGC. Vice-Chancellor of Jadavpur University was the Chairman

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 7 of the council of RCC as UGC representative. Establishment of this quite frequent. Bit dropping was very high. Reliable communication Regional Computer Centre had far reaching consequences. could be made only at around 300 bps. However, users started 1. It was the fi rst multiprogramming facility available in the eastern believing that computer can be used even without punching cards. region of the country. So, it started catering as a computing 5. The greatest impact of RCC was possibly in generating general facility to many users concurrently. The demand grew so fast, computer and computational awareness. It started off ering courses that RCC authority soon had to start operating round the clock. at diff erent levels, participated by college students to retired 2. A relatively lower rate of charging for academic users, encouraged professionals. It even arranged visits by school students to see and researchers to use the RCC facilities rather than going to TIFR experience a real-life computational facility. RCC even arranged or IIT, . They even started procuring special purpose courses at diff erent locations in the eastern region. Ultimately, RCC packages from abroad and donating them to RCC for installation. started a one-year diploma course in Computer Science. 3. Users from commercial and industrial sectors found it a very In short, RCC, Kolkata made a signifi cant contribution in developing useful facility and started developing new applications which future professionals, encouraged diff erent user communities to were not possible in the AUTOCODER environment. Large-scale try and accept new and challenging areas of applications hitherto simulation and diff erent optimization oriented applications unexplored and above all, had a very positive impact in developing became possible. computer awareness in the society. From mid-80s onward, 4. A very important impact of RCC is in establishing online computational microprocessor-based systems started entering the market and facility through terminals. An experimental link was provided at computational facility became inexpensive. PCs fi rst entered the Mecon, Ranchi. The connection was a combination of ordinary offi ces and then to drawing rooms and establishment like RCC lost telephone line, coaxial cables, and microwave link. Link failure was its demand. Foundation of Information and Computing Technology (ICT) in India and role of Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) Dwijesh Dutta Majumder Professor Emeritus, Electronics and Communication Sciences Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata Emeritus Scientist, CSIR and Director, Institute of Cybernetics Systems and Information Technology

The fi rst Electronic Digital Computer HEC-2M was scientists presented a Fifth Generation knowledge- installed in 1956 in the Indian Statistical Institute based Computing (FGCS/KBCS) Program indicating (ISI), and the subsequent one Russian Machine that up to 4th Generation both PCs and large-scale URAL-1 in 1958. I joined the skeleton of an Electronics computers were number-crunching machines, but Laboratory in ISI after my MSc (Tech) Exam in the for human decision-making process in the society, then newly started Radio-Physics Electronics in science, health care and industry - what is needed 1955 (practical exam was yet to take place). After is about 70% nonnumerical information processing seeing a news item in a Calcutta newspaper in (pictures images, speech, language etc.), and 30% which Prof. P C Mahalanobis (PCM) was showing number-crunching problems. Coming back to India, an incomplete Analog Computer to the then some of us tried our best to convince the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. I met Professor Government Departments DOE & DST, about the Mahalanobis who gave me a detailed lecture on need for taking national-level KBCS/FGCS projects. the importance of computer for developmental The other important event that occurred in India planning in India, and asked me to join the computer laboratory was that in 1984. Shri. Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister yet to be formed. ISI did develop one small ten by ten matrix solver, with an ambition to make India a powerful computerized modern not fully complete though, in 1954. After my joining in 1955 we nation. The new computer policy of 1984 was announced within started R&D in Digital Computers about which we knew very little 19 days of Shri. Gandhi’s assumption of Prime-Minister’s offi ce except a few reports received from abroad. liberating the shackled potential of Indian IT. Shri. Rajiv Gandhi also After an intensive successful R&D in 50s & 60s on magnetic believed eff ectiveness of the power of R&D in shaping the destiny drum memory and tiny toroidal core memories, we in collaboration of a nation. with Jadavpur University developed the fi rst solid state Computer In 1985, DOE launched the famous KBCS/FGCS project ISIJU-I, and TIFR in the same period developed TIFRAC-I with following the style of Japan’s and UK’s ELVY projects, involving vacuum tubes - which were the fi rst two digital computers in ISI, TIFR, IISc & IIT (Madras). ISI became the Centre of Excellence India. TIFR transferred its computer technology and ISI transferred with myself as the national coordinator in the areas of Pattern its memory technology to ECIL that started developing TDC- Recognition, Image Processing, Computer vision, & AI; TIFR with 12, 16 etc. But both ISI and TIFR stopped hardware research and Prof. P V S Rao as the national coordinator started research work concentrated on advanced level applications with nonnumerical in the areas of speech & language processing; IISc (Bangalore) with information processing namely pattern recognition (speech, Prof. Raja Raman as the national coordinator concentrated in the speaker, and pictures), image processing, computer vision, and areas of parallel processing. Prof H.N. Malabala of IIT (Madras) was artifi cial intelligence. ISI developed internationally recognized Soft- the national coordinator in the areas of Expert System Development. Computing R&D groups, (Fuzzy Logic, ANN, Genetic Algorithms There was an apex committee with all these national coordinators etc.). TIFR concentrated on Theoretical Computer Science. In late as members and Dr. N Seshagiri was the Chairman of the Apex 1970s, ISI developed some very signifi cant theoretical and applied committee. The project had substantial amount of foreign exchange research program on Cybernetics & Systems theory. The decade for the travel & training of the young scientists learning in each of of 80s was very signifi cant both from National & International the national centers to diff erent International centers of excellence developments in the fi elds of ICT. like MIT, Stanford, Maryland, Oxford, Cambridge, Michigan etc. in In 1980 at the 8th World Computer congress in Tokyo, Japanese respective areas, and about 50 young scientists were trained.

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 8 www.csi-india.org In collaboration with the FGCS/KBCS program, the Centre for Rajiv Gandhi. Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) was established It may be mentioned that Dr. N. Seshagiri played a crucial role for the development of parallel and Supercomputing facilities, and in shaping India’s IT policy for about 50 years. Two other names the Centre for Development of Telecommunications (C-DOT) was that must be mentioned in connection with India’s phenomenal established for the modernization of Telecommunications with Mr. growth of Software Industry are Wipro’s Azim Premji and TCS’s Sam Pitroda as in-charge. It may be mentioned here that, though the F C Kohli. I have come across in the recent past that Fakirchand UK’s ELVY project and Japan’s FGCS/KBCS program continued for Kohli is campaigning for hardware and microelectronics. In 15 years, India’s FGCS/KBCS was stopped only after fi ve years - may this connection I may mention that I shall not be surprised if be because the emphasis did change from R&D and advanced-level nanoelectronics becomes the driving force in the Web-based ICT teaching & training to market forces after the untimely demise of Industry of the world. About A Forgotten Pioneer: Prof. Arun Kumar Chaudhuri Subho Chaudhuri Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology Mesra, Kolkata Campus

Prof. Chaudhuri did his BE in Electrical state-of-the-art. His name unfortunately now is a forgotten one, Engineering at University of Calcutta, ME in even at IIT (KGP). He was also an important member of the team Electronics & Telecommunication Engg., with under late Prof. Meghnad Saha, which designed the electron specialization in Computer Engineering at microscope at Rajabazar Science College, probably the fi rst in Jadavpur University. He has over 25 years of India. He retired from Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata. His teaching experience in the areas of Computer research interests are represented through publications scattered Architecture & Organization, Operating Systems, Digital Logic, over a large number of international journals on subjects ranging Compiler Design, Computer Graphics from analog computation, control theory, to applied & pure mathematics, to physics, to mechanical engineering, to electrical The scientifi c history of India is replete with names who have not engineering, and of course in the areas of management. In fact been given their due recognition and honor - mainly because of being the fi rst to theorize and solve the mathematical intricacies negligence and apathy. One name that immediately comes to of third-order servomechanism, he came to be known as Third- mind is the multifaceted persona of the late Prof. Arun Kumar Order Chaudhuri in the Control Theory community. He had told this Chaudhuri (DSc). He was one of the founder teachers of the Indian correspondent a few years before his death that he could visualize Institute of Technology, Kharagpur when it was set up in 1951. At a solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem, which alas was not to be. that time he was instrumental in designing and implementing Born in Kolkata on the 23rd of June, 1924, he breathed his last, an the fi rst analogue computer in India, which was at that time the unsung pioneer, on 12th of May, 2002.

Russian Hollerith Company: Punch card machine installed by Russian Delegati on at ISI, in 1956 Dr. S Bhagavartan, scienti fi c advisor of defense minister in ISI on 22.01.1966 Russians engineers in ISI on, 20.07.1956 (Photo courtesy: Reprography and Photography Unit, ISI Kolkata) (Photo courtesy: Reprography and Photography Unit, ISI Kolkata) (Photo courtesy: Reprography and Photography Unit, ISI Kolkata)

CSI Annual Conventi on Committ ee in CSI-1994: Standing (from left ) : It was a second generati on advanced machine that was transistor- First CSI Conventi on 1965, Kolkata, Dr. Dwijesh Dutt a Majumder Mr. D Roy, Mr. R Datt a Gupta, Mr. D P Sinha, Mr. S Bandyopadhayay, driven, at Jadavpur by Chagla and others, on 18.03.1966 explaining to the delegates Mr. D Sinha, Mr. A Mukherjee and Sitti ng (from left ): Mr. M K Roy, (Photo courtesy: Reprography and Photography Unit, ISI Kolkata) Mr. N K Roy, Mr. S Chatt erjee, Mr. A Deb, Mr. D Ghoshdasti dar (Source: Inside Back Page of CSI 94 Commemorati ve Volume)

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 9 Mr. J Roy, ISI seen with Mr. Michael Lackner during First CSI Conventi on Exhibiti on of books at First CSI Conventi on 1965, Kolkata Transistor-driven computer. In collaborati on with the Indian Stati sti cal 1965, Calcutt a Insti tute, the university developed the ISIJU, India s fi rst indigenously made it. 1966 (Photo courtesy: Reprography and Photography Unit, ISI Kolkata) Views from Disciples made in Jadavpur University embarrassed to admit today that my 10-year-old1 son knows more about Views from Ramanuj Bhattacharya, fi rst Batch computers and other gadgets (like iPhone, IPad etc.) in BE (Computer Science), Jadavpur University than I do and often he teaches me new tricks. Ramanuj Bhattacharya did BE and ME in Computer Science and I should also mention that a lot of private Engg (1985 and 1987), MBA from Univ. of Chicago (1999), PMP from PMI. He started his professional career in 1987 in India concerns were coming up in the early 1980s in and moved to the US in 1991. He has worked for several large order to teach basic computer skills to the young US companies including CSC, Sears, PWC, and IBM. Few critical generation who were looking for a job. It was a projects include - PMO manager for Sears/Kmart merger ($55 common joke that time that if one failed to get a Billion), Strategic transformation of $2 Billion Sears Home Services job in other areas after best attempt, one started Business, IT Strategy and Procurement transformation for Blue learning computers as the last resort. Some people chip Canadian and US clients with signifi cant bottom line impact. viewed me as unsuccessful in fi nding a good job and had pity on me that I was studying computers. Common people In 1981, I joined 21 other students to start my journey into the 4-year didn’t understand the diff erence between the graduates in Computer BE course in Computer Science and Engineering at Jadavpur University. Science and somebody who took a data entry class for 3-6 months. I am It was a brand-new course at the University and in the region in 1981. mentioning this just to make the reader familiar of the state of computer Additionally, everything was also new for me - the city of Kolkata, the awareness in Kolkata and other parts of India. Kolkatans, the University, engineering curriculum, and most importantly When we passed out in 1985, there was immense demand for the magical world of Computer Science. I joined the course because the the freshly minted graduates. I can remember I got off ers from TIFR, name sounded very interesting and appeared to be shrouded in untold ISRO, and several private companies. However, I decided to continue my mysteries. When I started, I got tons of free and friendly advice about master’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering at the University computers in general and a long scary list of do’s and don’ts. Everybody (again the fi rst batch at the Master’s level). This course required I knew was very knowledgeable about computers (except me) even undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering. I was also though they had never seen one in their lives. So, most of the advisers working as a research associate at the CAD project funded by UNDP had pity on me. Keep in mind that personal computers had not reached and teaching computer courses at a private institute during that time. In India at that time as it was being launched in US in 1981. Anyway, I am 1987, I took up a full-time job in Kolkata. Today, I am proud that I had the glad to say that none of their advice was useful and their predictions opportunity to be a part of the fi rst generation of IT revolution in India. never became a reality. In 1987, three months after taking up a job, I was deputed to a We had the opportunity to learn from a fantastic group of Computer sister concern in Philadelphia. The concept of bringing in cheap Indian Science Professors at the Jadavpur University and it was defi nitely one labor force to US was new to many including me and I unknowingly of the best programs in the country at that time. These professors became part of the next revolution that was going to be an important were very experienced and knowledgeable. They also exhibited sincere chapter of the Indian IT industry. My US coworkers were impressed devotion to teaching and genuine care for the students. The quality with my skills I learnt at the Jadavpur University and soon realized that of the students was also very high in our class. The curriculum was Indian programmers were no less qualifi ed than their US counterparts if brand-new with ambitious goals and there was equal emphasis on both not better. Gradually, many more Indians arrived in the US and quickly hardware and software. Although the fi eld of computers is much more won over the respect and trust from the US companies with their hard varied and advanced today, the concepts I learnt there are still valid and work, commitment, and can-do attitude. I saw this massive, turbulent useful and make me stand tall even today. Although a lot of institutions revolution and its impact on the US socioeconomic fabric from the very are teaching computers in India today, we must recognize the fact beginning and the slow ascendance of Indians from low-cost laborers to that Jadavpur University was a pioneer in spreading the knowledge of board room consultants; but, it’s a diff erent story for another day. computers and its practical use at that early age in India. I have been in the US for the last 21 years. Today, I focus on When I look back today, I get amused with the then state of providing strategic, transformational services by synthesizing Business technology. We learnt programming by submitting programs in punch and Technology Strategies to very large global companies in the US cards at the Regional Computer Center (on Burroughs 6700) which was and Canada. Although, I had to get an MBA from a top US University to situated within the University campus. What a pain it was to replace a complement my technical skills, I still consider the education and learning wrongly punched card from a deck of cards when the program didn’t I had at Jadavpur University as the bedrock of my professional foundation. run after waiting for several hours. In friendly fi ghts, a big punishment The journey I started 31 years ago at Jadavpur is still going strong and I was to mix-up the deck of opponent’s punch cards. Later on we got hope this will continue into the future. I also would like to mention that access to monochrome terminals which were a big relief. I saw the fi rst majority of my classmates and juniors have been more successful than PC with dual fl oppy disk in 1984-85 which made life much easier and a me and have helped tremendously behind the scene to bring on the IT new era of video games started. We also learnt about basic electronic revolution in India in their own way as it stands today. I end my write up circuits, computer hardware, and Intel 8085 microprocessors. It really with these fi nal words - Thank you very much Jadavpur University and all amazes me when I about the changes in technology, the overall my professors, class mates, my juniors at Jadavpur and staff for making transformation, and the impact of technology in our daily lives. I am not me successful and proud. My heartfelt love and respect go out to you all.

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 10 www.csi-india.org Angshuman Guha, Suprateek Sarker, Professor, Washington State University, USA Principal Engineer, Yandex Labs, California, USA (Suprateek Sarker, BCSE ’87. MBA, MS, PhD is Philip Kays Distinguished Professor of (Angshuman Guha did BE in CS from JU, 1983-1987. He Information Systems at Washington State University, Pullman. He also concurrently worked on handwriting recognition for 11 years at Microsoft holds the University of London Chair of Technology and Information Management. and then he was at Google for 5 years doing web search, book Suprateek researches managerial implications of IT and has published in many search, and conversion prediction for ads.) leading journals and conferences. He is currently a Senior Editor of MIS Quarterly (the top-ranked research journal in MIS), and serves on editorial boards of many I wrote my fi rst program in BASIC, punching it on a stack of cards using a Hollerith journals including Journal of MIS, Journal of the AIS, IEEE Transactions on Engineering puncher and submitting it for batch execution on a Burroughs 6700 mainframe. Management, and IT & People). The problem was to fi nd each 3-digit integer that equals the sum of cubes of its digits. My teacher, Mohit K Roy, had given us the fi rst number, but how many such We were fortunate to study in our BCSE program with 29 other individuals, most numbers existed was an exciting unknown to me. His enthusiasm still infects me with superior intellectual capability by any standards. As I look back at those days, after 25 years. He taught us two more programming languages that fi rst year - I cannot help but think of the classmates who were gifted not only with brilliant Fortran and COBOL. I spent long happy hours debugging my implementation minds but also with hearts of gold - ones who would have mathematical and of the Towers of Hanoi (recursion!) with a pen on the back of dot-matrix technological insights beyond the grasp of most in the cohort around the printouts of unsuccessful batch runs. Despite my hero Dikjstra’s warning country, and at the same time, would stand out as being the most giving, against anthropomorphization of programming, I have to admit that unselfi sh, and humble. Somehow, the JU BCSE culture attracted and pretending to be the computer was excellent training for a career nurtured such individuals. Many years have passed since our in computer science. I graduated without C and OOP, almost graduation, and in this period, I have met many successful without PCs, and with my usual Indian sense of inadequacy. scholars and business leaders in disciplines related to The fi rst few weeks at my American university were computing. I must say that my BCSE classmates, fi lled with a dread of being “found out” and especially those who, through their actions more Samik Gupta, Vice President Engineering, Converged expelled, until I realized I had received a world- than 25 years ago, represented to me the best of Communication Processing, Mindspeed class education that prepared me more than the intellectual and human qualities, remain my idols from whom I continue to draw Technologies, USA adequately for tackling what lay ahead. (Samik Gupta did his BE in Computer Sc & inspiration. One of these special The price of that education was a Engg from Jadavpur University, Kolkata in 1987, individuals, Amitabha Dey is no mere pittance, as my mother having a rich 25+ years of experience in several IT Anindya Banerjee, more with us, but his unique would point out: India industries) Professor, Madrid Institute for educated me, only to see contribution to our educational Advanced Studies, Spain me immediately leave experience at JU has not (Anindya Banerjee did BE in CS from JU, My earliest memory of the JU computer science department on the brain drain been and will never be 1983-1987, later earned his PhD from Kansas was writing BASIC programs in our fi rst semester. We punched train. forgotten. State University and was a postdoctoral fellow cards on a machine that never had an inked ribbon and the at the Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, and the University line of code never printed at the top of the card. We held up of Aarhus, Denmark. Before Madrid Institute, he was ompleting 25 the card to the light and visually decoded the Hollerith code. 7, c yea Professor of Computing and Information Sciences at Kansas 98 rs Today we use IDEs that seem to almost write the code by State University and Assistant Professor of Computer Science 1 a themselves and those card punch machines seem so f ft at Stevens Institute of Technology, USA). o e archaic. Didn't seem that way back then - it felt like we s r s g were doing something incredibly special and cool. We a Many fond memories of my time studying computer science l r were "programming" when most people had no idea a C at Jadavpur University (1983-1987) relate to the high-quality d what that was. That sense of wonder is what I remember

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instruction imparted by Profs. Sukumar Ghosh, Debabrata m most about my four years at JU. Our teachers had the a

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Ghosh Dastidar, Shyamal Majumdar, Debidas Mukherjee, t foresight to develop a curriculum that covered all

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drawn to computer science during the fi rst couple of years s to fl ip-fl ops to algorithms to communication theory.

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at Jadavpur. At the end of the second year, it never ceased to e Each semester seemed to fi t in one more piece to i surprise me how quickly the fi rst two years had vanished and V the puzzle and helped me understand this how little problem-solving skills I had acquired. This was despite thing called a computer (or "machine" the fact that we had encountered excellent teachers along the way. as we sometimescalled it). (It was only years later I realized that "things take time".) Looking back after 25 years, Things started changing with Prof. Roy's data structures course in the fi rst semester I'm grateful for that of the third year. That course convinced me that there was something very deep and Arobinda Gupta, education. mathematical about computer science that went beyond simply making a program "work". Professor, Department I suppose that semester was also the fi rst time we heard of Dijkstra, Hoare, Wirth, and other of Computer Science & computer scientists. Amazingly, some of their books were also available in our departmental Engineering, IIT Kharagpur (Arobinda Gupta did his Bachelors and Masters in library. A few of us learnt to bribe our librarian, the evergreen Mr. Nirmal Dey, with cigarettes, so Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from Jadavpur we could keep the books beyond the due date. University, Kolkata in the late 80s. He is currently a Professor in the That I chose to pursue research as a vocation was certainly aided by many discussions with Department of Computer Science & Engineering at IIT Kharagpur) the above core group of faculty, particularly Prof. Shyamal Majumder. I fondly recall the time when I borrowed a book on Mathematical Logic by Stephen Kleene from the departmental library. Prof. Majumder simply said that I had stumbled upon a "gold mine" and that I should "study the book". It was the mid-80s when we fi rst got the chance to program on a He also made time every week to discuss the chapters of the book. At a certain point, he suggested that computer. The Burroughs mainframe in the Regional Computer Center I meet one of the senior PhD students, Debasish Banerjee. Debasish da introduced me to the magic of (RCC) located in Jadavpur University, Kolkata used to be the pride programming language semantics and gave me a photocopy of one of the earliest books on the subject. I of Eastern India in those days, with many companies and other have gone back to that book many a time in the intervening years and the photocopy still remains with me. institutions depending on it for their IT and other computational We were able to interact with Prof. Sukumar Ghosh only in the second semester of our fi nal year. The needs. We being students were the less important users, and high quality of his operating systems lectures still remain a fond memory; that clarity and meticulousness our interface to the vaunted machine was limited to two is something to which I still aspire. Debasish da was a student of Prof. Ghosh and had alerted me to the windows, an "Input" window to submit our programs on a scholarship of some of the faculty in our department. Despite the paucity of resources, Profs. Roy and deck of punched cards, and an "Output" window to collect Ghosh Dastidar had published in the Communications of the ACM and The Computer Journal. Prof. Ghosh the printouts with the result at the end of the day. Well, had published in the Journal of the ACM. Moreover, we were very proud to discover that Prof. Ghosh had that, and looking at the giant machine wishfully through communicated a theorem to Dijkstra which became the topic of one of Dijkstra's famous EWD notes. glass partitions, and just being jealous at the seemingly Debasish da, himself, had published an article in the ACM TOPLAS; he had an uncanny ability to ask probing superhuman CMC Engineers who got to walk around and questions, to most of which I had no answers. fi ddle with the machines; more so in the hot summer Finally, it was a great pleasure to share in the process of learning with my classmates. Not only did months as the RCC fl oor where the machine was they unknot many of my complicated reasoning processes, but also they opened my eyes to the world housed had the only air-conditioning around! beyond computer science. I fondly remember our many discussions on theater, cinema, literature, politics, love, and the meaning of life. By a great stroke of fortune I have been able to retain contacts with a few of them over the past 25 years.

CSI CommunicationsCommunications | AugustAugust 20122012 | 1111 V K Mohanan Article Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre Trivandrum, India

Software Techniques in Computer Graphic Technology

A 1985 article from V K Mohanan of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre which clearly indicates the enormous challenge of those days in producing graphic output and how the challenge was successfully faced by the clever engineers and scientists of our country. The new generation IT professionals may be able to appreciate the sophistication of the modern technology better with this contrast.

ABSTRACT: The objective of this paper is to present an overview of the basic software Using these two basic primitives it is possible techniques used in computer graphic technology. to define any other primitives. Using this techniques a graphic software package called 'Typesetting and Graphic System' has been A graphic system should provide the facilities for developed and implemented on the Cyber Computer altering a picture already drawn. For example, it at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Trivandrum. should be able to magnify or reduce the size of a The general features Of this Software is also picutre. It is achieved by translation, rotation explained in this paper. and sealing.

INTRODUCTION TYPESETTING AND GRAPHIC SYSTEM The use of computer graphics is rapidly growing Using the basic primitives defined above, a importance in the computer field. It has always graphic package called "Typesetting and Graphic been one of the most visually spectacular branches System" has been developed and implemented on of computer technology. Computer graphics is also the Cyber computer at the Vikram Sarabhai Space an extremely effective medium for communica- Centre, Trivandrum. TAGS is an easy to use tion between man and computer. The human eye can plotting tool for the terminal users. This can absorb the content of a displayed diagram or a be used for generating x-y curves, logarithmic perspective view faster than it can scan a table curves, polar curves, bar diagrams, pie diagrams, of numbers. line diagrams, flow diagrams, charts, posters or any other picture, without developing any GRAPHIC SYSTEM user programs. This can be used for writing A graphic system may be defined as a collection and composing texts in different languages viz, of hardware and software designed to make it Malayalam, Hindi, English and Greek. A set of easier to use graphic input and output on a Mathematical symbols are also available to write computer. The design of graphic system is a very mathematical expressions and equations. Users who important aspect of computer graphics. It is would like to compose pages of texts in graphic only by constructing suitable graphic software art quality consisting of graphs, mathematical packages we are able to exploit the potential use symbols and graphic designs can easily use this of computer graphics. This software package is a system. This software can be implemented on any set of subroutines or functions which is capable computer having graphic facility by suitable of generating pictures on a display terminal or modification in the software. This is developed plotter. in FORTRAN language.

GRAPHIC PRIMITIVES TAGS Commands A graphic software consists of a set of TAGS consists of a set of commands. Using these graphic primitives. Those primitives are the commands, you can generate your graphic outputs basic subroutines that we use to develop other on the display screen of your terminal. Some of subroutines in the graphic package to generate a the commands and their abbreviations are given picture. Let us define two basic primitives that below:- you may find in all graphic packages. GRID (GR) 1) MOVE (x,y) XAXIS (XA) This is used to move the drawing beam (cursor or YAXIS (YA) plotter pen) to the point (x,y) on the display CURVE (CU) screen. PLOT (PL) FIGURE (FI) 2) LINE (x ,y) LINE (LI) This is used to draw a straight line from the XTITLE (XT) current beam position to the point (x,y) and YTITLE (YT) reset the beam position at (x,y) TITLE (TI)

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 12 www.csi-india.org CIRCLE (CI) Data file for plotting. Ist column contains SCALE (SC) x-values. 2nd & 3rd columns contains y-values MOVE (MO) 0. 10. 90. The general form of a command is as follows:- 10. 50. 40. 20. 20. 10. COMMAND, arg1, arg2, arg3,... arg1, arg2 etc. 30. 80. 50. are arguments in a command. Many of the commands 40. 40. 20. have optional arguments. An argument in a command 50. 0. 10. can be omitted, but the comma that immediately 60. 70. 20. follows it, must be retained. Last arguments 70. 90. 40. can simply be omitted if not required, without 80. 10. 80. putting any commas. If an argument is omitted, 90. 30. 20. default or previously defined value will be taken for execution. Arguments are detected by their Plot produced on the display terminal of the relative positions. The first two characters are Cyber computer. enough for a command. TAGS is executed through a TAGS command file. You can create your command file using any of the text editors available in your computer. After creating your command file say 'lfn', execute it by typing the following command on the terminal followed by 'RETURN' key. TAGS, lfn Your command file and data file if any, must be available as local files at the time of executing TAGS. The commands are executed from 'lfn' and your graphic output will be displayed on the display screen. This can be routed to a plotter or a hard copy device.

GRAPHIC TERMINAL TAGS commands are to be executed from a Tektronix or a CDC-795 graphic terminal of the Cyber Computer. This can be changed by suitable modification in the software if required. The display screen of the terminal is divided into 1024 x 780 raster dots or points. Each point is addressable in the form (x,y) where 'x' varies from 0 to 1023 in the horizontal direction and 'y' varies from 0 to 779 in the vertical direction. The lower left corner of the screen is taken as the origin (0,0) in the screen coordinate system. HOW TO DRAW AXES Axes can be drawn using any of the following PLOT AREA commands. 'GRID', 'XAXIS', 'YAXIS' commands are Plot area is a rectangular area on the display used to draw axes. screen in which you want to draw your graphs. To The GRID command is as follows: specify the size and location of the plot area GRID, xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax you have to use an 'ORIGIN' command. This command will draw the x & y axes. You ORIGIN, xorg, yorg, xlenth, ylenth have. to specify the maximum and minimum values This command defines xy-coordinate position of of the variables to be plotted along x & y axes. the lower left corner and length and breadth of Example 1:- Let the values on the x-axis lies the plot area. between -1 and +1 and the values on the y-axis lies between -10 and 20. Then the command to draw TAGS COMMANDS TO PLOT TWO CURVES x and y axes can be given as follows:- GRID, -1, 1, -10, 20 ORIGIN,300,200,300,500 XAXIS ,0,10,10,5,62,0 The 'XAXIS, and 'YAXIS' commands are as follows: YAXIS ,0,10,10,5,62,0 XAXIS, xmin, xinc, nmaind, nsubd, id PLOT ,3,1,2,5,4 YAXIS, ymin, yinc, nmaind, nsubd, id PLOT ,3,1,3,1,3 XTITLE,6,X-Axis. In these commands axes are drawn always at the

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 13 boundaries of the plot area. Here, you can have FIGURE, filename, figno, penup major and minor tic-marks. Axes can be drawn at filename : The name of the file containing the all the four sides of the rectangular plot area digitized values of the picture to be in different forms by selecting suitable 'id' drawn. values. figno : The number of the data set to be selected. Example : The following commands will draw X and penup : A code used to make the plotter pen up. Y axes. XAXIS, -1, 0.2 Here xmin = -1 & xine = .2 To draw a picture, the first thing you have to YAXIS, -10, 3 ymin = -10 & yine = 3 do is to digitize the picture into a set of (x,y) HOW TO DRAW GRAPHS coordinates. Pictures are drawn by connecting Graphs are drawn by joining points with straight lines between successive (x,y) coordinate pairs. lines. Points are to be represented by a set The digitization of a picture should conform of cartesian coordinates or polar coordinates. to several restrictions. They should be adequate First, you have to arrange the values column- in detail to provide suitable representation of wise in a file. Columns are to be separated by the picture. The data set must be the minimum comma or space. Values can be given in integer required to represent the picture on your or flotting point form. You can plot one or more terminal. A complicated picture can be divided curves using the data file created. There are two into different rectangular segments and each commands available for graph plotting, 'CURVE' segment can be digitized independently. The and 'PLOT'. digitization is done with respect to some origin choosen within the rectangular segment. The CURVE command is, The digitized data set is to be created as CURVE, ncolns, xcoln, ycoln1 ,ycoln2 a data file. In one file you can have many data ncolns: Total number of columns in your data sets. Each data set is identified by a number file. 'figno'. xcoln : The column number selected for x-axis. You can enlarge, reduce, or rotate the picture ycoln1: Column number selected for y-axis to using a SCALE command. The figure can be drawn draw the 1st curve. anywhere on the screen by moving the cursor to ycoln2: Column number selected for y-axis to that point by a command. draw the 2nd curve. EXAMPLES OF TAGS OUTPUTS: HOW TO FORM TEXT STRINGS Following Mathematical text is produced on a We can write any text in Malayalam, Hindi, English graphic terminal using TAGS. and Greek. Alphabets in Malayalam, Hindi, Greek and some of the mathematical symbols are given some unique codes using the key-board characters available on the terminal. You have to use these codes in your command lines for writing strings using these characters. Some mathematical expressions require complicated positioning of individual symbols, but in TAGS the problem reduces to a much simpler one, namely that these formulas need to be represented as a sequence of codes. In mathematical expressions you may have to use sufixes and superscripts. Sufixes are to be enclosed within two symbols ' < ' and superscripts are to be enclosed wihtin two symbols ' > '. Any string can be used as sufixes or super- scripts. Greek alphabets are to be coded in your text string using the codes defined. If you want lowercase Greek letter, write the corresponding lowercase English letter preceded by backslash ( \ ) and for uppercase Greek letter, write the corresponding uppercase English letter followed by '\ '. A text string can contain sub-strings in different languages.

HOW TO DRAW PICTURES Any picture can be drawn on the display screen of your terminal by using a FIGURE command. The command is as follows:-

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 14 www.csi-india.org M Jayalakshmy Article Vice-Chairman, CSI Trivandrum Chapter Contact: [email protected]

Challenges in Early days of Programming in IBM 360 - An Introspection

Introduction communication culture were not a common debugging . Considering all these aspects A few R&D organization like BARC, TIFR, practice like today. For doing any small the software development activities were PRL, ISRO, NPOL and prestigious high job one had to depend on library books, as much artistic as scientifi c. periodicals, manuals and the experience academic Institutions like IIT's, Indian IBM 360, Fortran4 Programming and Institute of science etc. were privileged of the peers. The facilities and resources the Punched Card System establishments to own centralized were minimum and our university skills One had to be a registered computer user computers in early 1960-70 period. Even were inadequate to make a good start up. to use a centralized computing facility. A to those, having their higher education Still the reminiscence of early hurdles in registered user was provided with a set of in Indian universities, the awareness of a learning the programming techniques are job controlled punched cards and a pigeon computer and its capabilities were limited fresh down the memory line even though in hole in a big cupboard for output storage. to the name of the system- as a number later years I received training in advanced The job control cards were to crunching machine only. The wonders systems and programming languages like be duplicated, arranged according to which it was capable of doing became pascal, C, Ada etc. as a part of the skill specifi cations with your programs in more popular through science fi ctions enhancement program. punched cards and tied as a deck before and also of the news coverages in dailies With the advancement of technology submitting for processing. This pack of and contemporary magazines about U S and computing powers, distributed cards is called a job card deck. A register & USSR manned mission space programs. computing facilities, minicomputers, microprocessors, PCs and facilities for entry was to be made for each job card advanced software training programmes, deck to be submitted for processing. The there was an exponential growth of skilled fi rst card of the deck will contain the man power after the 80's and the rest user name along with some processing became a history. instructions like approximate time of execution etc. Early Computing - Art or Science? The jobs were categorized as There were even doubts regarding the express(<2 mins), short( <5mins), programming activity whether it was an long(<15mins), and very long(>15 mins) art or scientifi c work. It was a scientifi c and decks were stacked diff erently, since activity, since it involved mathematical they were scheduled for processing as modeling of engineering design, analysis batch jobs at diff erent timings round the and simulation activities. It is equally an clock. Hence the availability of the results Specialization in higher mathematics, of computations were also at specifi ed like linear algebra, numerical methods, artistic activity in the sense that the inputs to the computers, punched cards, had to intervals, once, or 2 times a day, not computational statistics etc. were a pre- instant like today, with display systems. requirement for a good programmer. But be well ordered and aesthetically arranged these subjects were taught in science for easy handling by human beings as well Labour Intensive Software disciplines without any mention to their as the machine. The outputs produced Development Process applications. Software development was from the system should be readable The facility available was a centralized yet to become an engineering discipline and presentable. As the documentation IBM 360 computer with card punching in India. Hence a new entrant to this facilities available were minimal, limited to stations, line printer outputs , 64 k bytes software activity, either with a science the printed program listing and the results, of user storage RAM for programming or engineering background had to start planning the formats of the input data, activities, magnetic tape and magnetic disk learning from elementary level of what is coding style and the output of computed for auxiliary storage purpose. FORTRAN 4 a bit, byte, memory, storage, input output results were a major task. In the case of & assembly were the language support and so on. The challenges and the travails printed outputs, the aesthetic sense of the available. Programs were to be submitted for an early programmer like me, straight programmer had a major role to play. The in punched cards only. from university, were many. descriptive statements or phrases were In early computer programming There was no induction training to to be interspersed with the formatted restrictions were many. One had to follow learn the programming techniques and output variables to be printed for clarity very stringent coding restrictions. After acquire the necessary minimum skill, for and readability. The documentations making the fl ow charts the program steps starting the work. Established training of the program were to be a part of were to be written in paper. This program centers or well experienced seniors as the programming itself, as interleaved had to be taken to the centralized punching mentors were also not available for any comment lines well spaced and neatly stations to punch the cards . Each line of sort of consultation. Interactions and coded for clarity, readability and easy coding require one punched card.

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 15 In FORTRAN 4 programming there were division, the early requirements started . After learning the rules of how stringent restrictions like, comments on of programming were numerical to declare variables for a program, make fi rst column of the card, continuation computations for computing parameters assignment statements, IF, DO, read character on 6'th column, 1-5 columns for communications subsystem design, and print statements, I acquired the for statement labels, 7-72 for program synthesis of design parameters and necessary confi dence to make a venture in statements and 72-80 for comments. A simulations of subsystems through programming. shift in any of the column punching will mathematical modeling and numeric result in wrong punching of the statement computations. After learning the basic The sequence of process involved are forcing the card to be rejected. elements of computer and the elementary depicted in the following is images given As my career started in an instructions of FORTRAN 4 programming, below. Electronics & Communications R&D the computational programming activities

Flow chart Coding sheet Punching stati on

A punched card Card deck Computi ng center

Card reader Line printer Printed output

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 16 www.csi-india.org Punching Ordeals allotted for the registered programmer, This was a really challenging activity for A punched card contains 80 columns for in the output cupboard. The Number of a programmer, to get an uninterrupted punching. A deck of plain cards have to occasions in which one gets the output as sequence of processing and the associated be stacked in the fi rst slot of the punching a rejected deck with a single sheet of paper results. Often the intermediate results may station. The card to be punched is to be with rejected information were many. The be pushed to temporary magnetic tape pushed in and moved to the punching slot. time and energy wasted may be due to drives and retrieved. These activities were The punching process is done by typing on an oversight in card punched location, directed with appropriate programming the keys which will cut holes in the card misplaced cards, a bent or jammed card steps and additional job control cards, to corresponding to the character typed or a shift in punched location, in spite of give instructions to the operator staff to in. Each statement of a program should taking extreme care in these activities. mount a tape or unmount the tape from be punched in a separate card. After On many occasions cutting a sorry fi gure a tape drive. before an eagerly waiting designer due to completing the punching a card it has to be Conclusion move to the destination slot for stacking. A silly mistakes in the job deck were added The solution to a computational problem programmer not having punching/typing cause for disappointment. Debugging the is a multi-step activity as given below. experience, a careless fi ngering of any program, isolating the erroneous cards 1. Model engineering computational wrong key character will punch unwanted and repeating the submission process will problem as a numerical mathematical holes in a card, which has to be moved to again add delay to the waiting designer as problem. This is called the algorithm the destination slot and physically thrown much as the programmer. Hence the delay development process. out. The chances of correct punching of in further activities. 2. Identify the input variables, a card for a single statement is very rare. Most often there will not be a intermediate variables , functional Hence in early days, for each correct documented requirement procedures and process and output variables. punched card, on the average, 3-5 cards each successful result of the computer 3. Associate the appropriate data will be wasted. Chances of card jamming program will be an input to the next process types with the variables and decide inside the punching station and the of design of a subsystem realization and appropriate data structures. associated hassles were also not small to testing. Hence a small error or oversight 4. Code in FORTRAN or assembly speak of. may paralyze a chain of activities. language. So the cost of computing have to be 5. Prepare the punched cards accounted not only in terms of the amount acceptable to the system. of computing power, time spent to get an 6. Link the necessary system library error free output from the computer but programs to realize specialized also the wastage of punched cards and functionality, if any. Submit for paper output generated. execution. Program Segmentation and With the advancement of technology A Jammed card Memory Overlays Since the memory availability is very and the availability of unrestricted mass limited,64 K bytes for program loading scale computing facilities with high speed Disappointing Outputs and and data storage, a large storage network access and unlimited storage Time Waste consuming program had to be optimized facilities, the procedures involved in After submitting the job deck for in one of the several methods. Program using the legacy systems were totally processing, one had to wait for hours or segmentation and overlaying the program forgotten and the amount of human even days to get an output to be collected segments in used memory areas which interactions and eff orts required even for as printed continuous sheets of paper. were not having immediate requirements a simple computation have become an The paper output along with the punched were to be identifi ed and controlled using unbelievable story. card deck would be kept in the pigeon hole programming steps and job control cards. n

M Jayalakshmy is a retired Scientist/Engineer, Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (VSSC), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Dept. of Space, Govt. of India, Thiruvanathapuram. She was also formerly Webmaster of VSSC intranet & Head of Enterprise Software Section, Computer Division. At present she is the vice- chairman, CSI Trivandrum Chapter. Her main expertise is in the fi eld of Software Applications especially computational numerical software in avionics sub-systems, microprocessor based on-board computers & telemetry systems, quality assessment of launch vehicle mission software and Development of applications software for VSSC intranet. About the Author

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 17 Satish Babu Article President, CSI FishNet: An Early Experience with Email Satish Babu, President, CSI, recalls the public email service that he started in 1994 in Trivandrum as a part of the IndiaLink programme of the UN. In 1993, I took up a short course at the IndiaLink programme. 10 users in Kerala in 1994 on account of University of Hull, UK. During the course, At that time, there was no public Internet this reason. Since STD to Bangalore (from most of my time was spent in the University available. The Education and Research Trivandrum) was expensive during daytime, Library, where a new technology was being Network (ERNET) was perhaps the only my computer was programmed to call FRLHT piloted: the Internet. By the time my course pan-India network available, but this was a at 3.00 am and exchange mail through the was over, I was an accomplished and excited private network connecting institutions such modem. The system worked well, although user of the Internet, using tools such a telnet, as the IITs and IISc. Fortunately, IndiaLink there was at least one-day delay in getting ftp, gopher and the inchoate, text-oriented, was able to use the network access at IISc, responses. It continued to work well until World Wide Web. Bangalore, for its connectivity. VSNL, which brought public Internet to India At this time, I was working for the Toward the second half of 1994. I set on 15 August 1995, provided local dial-up at South Indian Federation of Fishermen up the IndiaLink software (uucp-based PSTN Trivandrum in 1996 (until then, the traffi c Societies (SIFFS), an NGO working with transport, with a bulletin-board system was through STD or X.25 to Chennai). small-scale fi shermen of south India. I had (BBS) called Waffl e, for interactive email) Please see http://tinyurl.com/fi shnet-bbs set up a computer centre there, and had in my offi ce. I also confi gured my domain, for a 1996 Usenet post announcing Internet developed all software for the business units named as "FishNet" (since I was working in in Kerala. of the organization. I was also, together with the fi sheries sector), which was a subdomain The FishNet BBS was probably the Mr. Amarnath Raja (a colleague and past of a Bangalore-based NGO, the Foundation fi rst public email service in Kerala. Besides President of the CSI Trivandrum Chapter), for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions actually using email, the BBS was also teaching myself C and Assembler. (FRLHT), which was itself connected to IISc handy for demonstrating to the world the In 1994, after my return to India, I was through a modem connection. My FQDN use of email. On a personal level, it gave informed of a new UN electronic connectivity was thus FishNet.frlht.ernet.in, and I could me an early exposure to communications project for NGOs, the IndiaLink project, give provide my users with email IDs such as technology and the power of email and the run by Mr. Leo Fernandes of Indian Social satish@fi shnet.frlth.ernet.in. Internet. Coincidentally, it was in the same Institute (ISI), New Delhi. Amarnath and I The FishNet domain was opened to IndiaLink programme in 1995-96 that I fi rst met Leo (the meeting was held in early 1994 anyone who wanted free email services, but used Linux, and learnt about Free and Open in an Indian Airlines fl ight from Bangalore a major constraint was the poor availability Source Software (FOSS), which became a to Ahmedabad !) and enrolled SIFFS in the of accoustic modems. There were only under matter of great personal interest later. n A CSI Member Recalls Early Computing Days Dr. N L Kalthia

At this fag end of life, often I remember my work through punched cards. such as hostel library department etc. waste golden days spent at IIT Kanpur. Those were I was again at IIT/K during years 1972 paper baskets were fall of punched cards. the days when the word like “Information & 1973. In my research problems I used to Even on the roads you fi nd cards. Because of Technology” was not coined even. At that time undergo lot of calculations (problems related such heavy use of cards in most of advanced it was a big thrill to work on computers. During to “Fluid fl ow”) through FORTRAN IV In those educational and research institutes, often news summer of 1965 I was at IIT/K under minor days IBM 1620 and later on IBM320versions papers used to publish what a horrible situation research project sponsored by UGC. For the fi rst were considered quite fast for handling of can be there after 20-30 years. time saw the computer. Though it was labeled computer programs. Sometime one had to Fortunately the forests got sanded as computer, in some sense it was a speedy pursue the solution of their problems, only because of the advancement in computers calculating machine. I do not exactly remember because of limited facility to be shared among like PC., PC/XT, PC/AT etc. Not only the tons its name but probably it was P.D.P.II. We use to a thousand users. of papers were saved but the new technology feed the data through typewriter keys. Have a At IIT/K system was something like this. reduced a time lag of 24 hours to 24 minutes cup of tea. Solution may be available when you Computer centre opens at 8.00 A.M. Go there. of less than that. Today one can correct his return after 15-20 minutes. Put your deck in ‘Q’. Handling of decks was programs error within a fraction of minute. Computers were used mostly to handle done through a batch process output along with Often I used to tell to my students about loss of scientifi c research and there by numerical decks were available only after 4 p.m. we used a thrill in computing business. Today, the card problems. On other side a subject like to check there only. Depending upon the errors numerical analysis or numerical techniques was in the program changes were done in deck. has become an item for a museum. introduced in most of the Indian universities. Some time I used to work midnight 12.00 hours Roughly in seventies, slowly, an era began After the end of era of feeding data to make the deck ready for next day. It was must to use computer technology in handling / through typewriter keys the punched card, for us because one gets only one chance in day. storing the information. This was done mostly tapes technology began. On the other side Thus, often it used to consume 4 to 6 weeks to through BASIC & COBOL Again these things developments were already stared for the better obtain a solution of the problem. We used to were limited to pay bills and its related issues version of FORTRAN and COBOL languages. celebrate the day when we get a correct output. Inventory control, Library handling etc. of Though PASCAL was getting much popular in One more thing use of cards was course these things were done without the label foreign countries (Because of its capacity to tremendous at IIT/K because of no restriction of I.T. and we all know the history of I.T. from handle varied data types) in India we used to on use of cards. Where ever you go in campus eighties onward. !! n

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 18 www.csi-india.org R Narayanan Article Senior Life Member, CSI

MINSK at Space Center - A Nostalgic Flashback

The year: 1969-70 Two’s complement notation was not depositing fi fty 10-rupee notes while the used, one bit being exclusively devoted cashier maintained that he had given only Location: Thumba Equatorial Rocket for the sign. The machine language was forty. Both of them stuck to their respective Launching Station near Trivandrum friendly enough because with 36 bits, stands after repeated counting, before I higher level operations could be achieved noticed that my friend was counting in The Russians had donated a digital using a single instruction. For example, a octal form! computer called MINSK to the rocket whole iteration through a loop (with initial The one feature of the language station. It comprised bare hardware and value of index, fi nal value, and increment) that taxed us was the “**” symbol for absolutely no system software to support. could be coded using just one machine exponentiation. The Standard syntax The early group of aerodynamic engineers instruction. The only input medium was required AB to be coded as A**B. We toiled by coding fl ight mechanics software paper tape of the kind that was used decided to deviate from the Standard directly in machine language! I learnt in telex machines. Changes had to be and used a library function POWER (A,B) that some MINSK users had access to made by cutting the tape and splicing instead. That one deviation reduced the a perverted high-level language called it with another bit. We also reveled in length of the compiler code by 40%. With Autocode (not to be confused with IBM directly entering the contents of a word 4K memory the compiler had necessarily 1401’s Autocoder) but it was not very using 37 piano switches on the console. to be a multipass one, the intermediate friendly. I was hired in October 1969 to lead The display was through a series of 37 outputs being written on to the free a project to develop a FORTRAN compiler incandescent lamps. This short cut of fl owing magnetic tape. The project had for MINSK. My credential was that I had direct entry of content into the machine, huge educational value for us since we knowledge of FORTRAN, having earlier though, gave us anxious moments in could empathize with the diffi culties of developed applications in the domain confi guration management and version the compiler writers and did not crib about of Molecular Biophysics. Around the control. The magnetic tape was much syntactical inconveniences later. same time a team from Indian Statistical wider than the standard ones and there We soon progressed to an IBM 1620 Institute and Jadavpur University had were no release and take-up spools. The with the luxury of punched cards and jointly developed an indigenous hardware tape was dumped in a heap in a cylinder then an IBM 360/44. Interactive dumb called ISIJU. This team too wanted to by the side of the machine. Start and end terminals came with Cyber 170/730 develop a FORTRAN compiler and so we of tape was marked by punching a hole before we installed a network of IBM collaborated during the design phase with in the middle of the tape across its width RS6000 intelligent workstations. I was the blessings of Vikram Sarabhai and Prof. (no fancy silver foils). We had to code, in lucky to be part of the evolution. The B Nag. Our mentor was Prof. S K Mitra addition, several mathematical functions thrill of working with primitive facilities who had been a student of Dijkstra. With and create a library! inculcates a respect for the profession the excitement of being grand students We were a team of two during the and a sense of paying attention to details. of Dijkstra we learnt all about hashing design phase and a team of three during With intelligent workstations personalized algorithms, BNF grammar, and relocatable the implementation stage. We used to to the user, the concept of a centralized code. document the code by writing it out on computer center became redundant. The It did not occur to us to fi rst notebooks (paper notebooks!) using octal end users did not require intermediaries to develop an Assembler and then code the notation, the 36 bits being grouped into get their computations done. Sensing the compiler in Assembler. We coded the 12 octal numbers. The fact that we were shifting paradigm, many of us diversifi ed compiler directly in machine language. eating, sleeping, and dreaming in octal to other responsibilities. The architecture of the machine was notation gave rise to funny incidents. I regret I did not preserve a photograph peculiar, it had a memory of 4K words My colleague had an argument with the of MINSK. I am told it is still preserved in a (yes, 4K!) each word being 37 bits long. cashier in the bank, claiming that he was science museum in Northern Kerala. n

R Narayanan has over four decades of experience with IT. In addition to developing Application Software in Molecular Biophysics and Space Avionics, he has designed Systems Software for mission critical applications. He has specialized in software engineering processes, Quality Assurance for embedded systems, and holistic paradigms for societal problems. In his capacity as Vice President (Learning & Development), TCS, he led the learning initiatives of TCS professionals in Technology, Domain, Management, and Soft skills. He has worked closely with academic institutes in infl uencing higher technical education globally. He was a member of the International Steering Committee on Software Engineering Education & Training (CSEET), and Program Committee chairman for CSEET 2007 conference held at Ireland. He has served as Chairman, IEEE Kerala Section and Chairman, CSI Trivandrum Chapter. Narayanan is currently assisting industry and academia in achieving global excellence levels. About the Author

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 19 Dr. Debasish Jana Article Editor, CSI Communications

In Remembrance of Alan Turing, the Father of Computer Science

Alan Mathison Turing was born in London on June 23, 1912 to upper middle- taps at a keyboard, opening class British parents, Julius Mathison and Ethel Sara. During British rule, his a spreadsheet or a word- father Julius was in Indian Civil Service, in the Madras Presidency. His mother processing program, is was from an Anglo-Irish family, daughter of the chief engineer of the Madras working on an incarnation railways. of a Turing machine". Turing graduated with mathematics from King's College, University In 1950 he proposed, what of Cambridge in 1934. During the World War II, he joined the British was later known as the Government's cryptanalysis team at Bletchley Park to help breaking the cryptic Turing test, a criterion to naval communications used by the Germans during the war. After the war, test whether a machine Turing joined the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) where he designed and can think. The Turing test developed ACE, one of the fi rst computers with stored programs. In 1948, has made a signifi cant he quit the NPL to head the Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester contribution to the University where he designed the Mark I, which was the fi rst true electronic debate regarding artifi cial digital computer. His interest in mathematical biology led to very interesting intelligence. work on morphogenesis where he predicted oscillating chemical reactions such The ACM A.M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, fi rst observed in the 1960s. He is now for Computing Machinery (ACM) to "an individual selected for contributions also touted as father of computational biology. of a technical nature made to the computing community". It is stipulated that He brought the concept of computation consisting of a fi nite state "The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the machine controller, a read-write head, and an unbounded sequential tape. computer fi eld". The Turing Award is recognized as the "highest distinction in Depending on the current state and symbol that is read from the tape, the Computer science" and "Nobel Prize of computing". machine can change its state and move the head to the left or right. This was Some Famous Recipients include Richard Hamming(1968), John later termed as Turing machine that is believed to be the root of all computing. McCarthy (1971), Edsger W Dijkstra (1972), Donald E Knuth (1974), John In 1999, Time Magazine, while establishing Turing as one of the most important Backus (1977), C Antony R Hoare (1980), Edgar F Codd (1981), Ken Thompson, 100 people of the twentieth century, said: "The fact remains that everyone who Dennis M. Ritchie (1983), and Niklaus Wirth (1984).

CSI Celebrates Alan Turing Year Reported by Mr. Devaprasanna Sinha, Fellow, CSI Alan Mathison Turing, universally recognized as the father of modern computer science, was born on June 23, 1912. Year 2012 is being celebrated all over the world as the Alan Turing Year. To commemorate the Alan Turing Year, more that 140 conferences, seminars and workshops are being organized in 18+ countries. The Computer Society of India (CSI) is committed in celebrating the Alan Turing Year in India under the able leadership of Prof. T V Gopal of Anna University and Chairman, CSI Division II (Software). As a part of this initiative, CSI Kolkata Chapter in collaboration with the CSI Division II (Software) had recently organized the inaugural Alan Turing Year programme in India on the birth day of Alan Turing in Kolkata, the birthplace of the fi rst indigenous computer in India. The focal theme of the celebration programme in Kolkata was a one-day workshop on Computability, Complexity and the Digital Era and the venue was the BIT Mesra Kolkata Campus. The workshop was co-sponsored by CDAC Kolkata and Chemuturi Consultants, Hyderabad. Inaugurating the Workshop, Dr. Debasish Jana, Chairman, Kolkata Chapter welcomed the participants of the Workshop. He also gave a brief but concise life-sketch of Alan Turing including the comments on his tragic death. Prof. Debesh Das, Chairman, CSI Division III (Applications), highlighted the contribution of Turing in today’s computer science and ushered the era of quantum computing to move beyond Turing’s world. Mr. Subimal Kundu, CSI Fellow, introduced the speakers of the event and the vote of thanks was off ered by Mr. Radha Tamal Goswami of the CSI Kolkata Chapter and in-charge, BIT Mesra Kolkata Campus. There were three principal speakers in the pre-lunch session. The fi rst speaker was Prof. T V Gopal, Anna University, Chennai. He introduced the year-long celebration programme of Alan Turing Year. Prof. Gopal, many of us know, has prepared a voluminous compendium, on behalf of CSI, an elaborate powerpoint presentation consisting of more than 200 slides in diff erent sections on diff erent aspects of Alan Turing’s life and works with old available pictures and texts. He showed and discussed some of these slides and referred to the presentations as available in the CSI India website for popularizing the contributions of Alan Turing. The next two speakers were Dr. Ashish Kuvelkar of CDAC, Pune and Prof. Barry Cooper of the University of Leeds from Manchester. Dr. Kuvelkar covered many aspects on High Speed Computing, Super computers worldwide and the position of India in this regard with applications. He also talked about the C-DAC’s initiatives in this regard during the last two decades, covering all Param series of supercomputers. Prof. Barry Cooper, in his uninterrupted lecture that continued for more than one hour from 1 pm, highlighted the contribution of Alan Turing and traversed all the paths from applied mathematics, computability, to intelligent machinery, cybernetics, artifi cial intelligence with implications and relevance of the stuff in today’s context. Prof. Cooper is the Chairman of the Turing Centenary Advisory Committee. The post–lunch session included an illuminated talk by Mr. Murali Chemuturi of Chemuturi Consultants He presented and redefi ned, in essence, a host of problems of computability of diff erent complexities, even problems for which solutions are yet to get acceptance or gained partial acceptance, not only in the academic arena in mathematics/computer science but also in other areas like material management, OR, cybernetics etc, as well. Dr. Nabarun Bhattacharyya, CDAC, Kolkata, in his presentation, discussed many innovative projects undertaken by CDAC at Kolkata. He mentioned about electronic nose, electronic Tongue, electronic ear - an array of sensor devices , sometimes taken together, to discuss the science, as well as the technology of these devices along with their possible applications like tea toaster. He also pointed out some of the on-going projects in the areas of application of ICT in agriculture. Prof. D P Mukherjee, Regional Vice-President (Region II) presented formal vote of thanks. While thanking all the speakers, sponsors and the participants/ delegates present on the occasion, Prof. Mukherjee mentioned that the CSI family is looking forward to the year-round celebrations of Alan Turing Year with a view to focus on solving challenging computationally hard problems effi ciently.

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 20 www.csi-india.org Hareesh N Nampoothiri Technical Research Scholar, University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram Trends http://www.newnmedia.com/~haree Let's do LESS CSS dynamic languages are the new buzz in the web development world. LESS, developed by Alexis Sellier (alias cloudhead), is an open- source CSS dynamic language which adds mechanisms like variables, nesting, mixins, operators and functions to normal CSS.

Since the beginning of SGML in the 1980s, an editor of that kind. It also serves as a // LESS style sheet languages were in use in one compiler which can be used to convert @my-color: #43464C; form or the other. Cascading style sheets a fi le written in LESS to normal CSS. The header{ were developed as a consistent approach application can be downloaded from here: background: @my-color; in providing style information for web http://crunchapp.net/ } documents. In 1994, Håkon Wium Lie footer{ proposed Cascading HTML Style Sheets background: @my-color; } (CHSS) which can be considered as the fi rst version of CSS. Later, the 'HTML' When compiled to CSS it will give the part was removed from the name, since following result. the style sheets can be used with other markup languages besides HTML. In /* Compiled CSS */ December 1996, W3C offi cially released header{ the level 1 version of CSS. W3C Working background: #43464C; Group addressed the various issues faced } in CSS level 1 and released the CSS level footer{ 2 in November 1994. CSS level 3, which If you are a Notepad++ user, then background: #43464C; was started in 1998, is in its fi nal stage LESS can be enabled using the User- } of development as of now. The 3rd level Defi ned Dialogue... option available in the of CSS extends the features defi ned in Mixins View menu. Download the user-defi ned CSS 2 and incorporates many modules Using mixins we can mix things up. Here language fi le for LESS and then import it which adds new capabilities. CSS dynamic we will defi ne a class (mixin class) and in the window opened by selecting the languages (LESS, Sass, Stylus etc.) extends then mix it in other classes to achieve the above option. The user-defi ned language the CSS 3 functionality further by adding properties defi ned in the former class. fi le for LESS can be downloaded from here: dynamic behavior such as variables, Mixins can also act similar to a function. http://bit.ly/notepad-language-fi les mixins, operations, and functions. We can pass arguments to a mixin class You also need the latest version of Sometimes, these languages are also and get custom results based on the less.js fi le, if you intend to use the referred as CSS Preprocessor languages. passed values. LESS style sheet directly in an HTML fi le. It can be downloaded from here: Using LESS Mixins allow you to embed all the http://lesscss.org properties of a class into another class by Features simply including the class name as one of We all love to achieve more by doing less its properties. It’s just like variables, but for and in less time. LESS exactly enables whole classes. us to do the same. Let's move on to the // LESS features of LESS, which extends the basic .fullround (@radius: 10px) { functionality of CSS and help us to achieve border-radius: @radius; more by doing less. -webkit-border-radius: @radius; Those who are familiar with CSS can -moz-border-radius: @radius; instantly start working with LESS. Variables } Since both CSS and LESS use the same An explanation seems unnecessary header{ semantics, any valid code in CSS is valid here. CSS do not provide an option to .fullround; in LESS as well. The major advantage of } use variables and LESS simply adds that #header-inner{ LESS (in comparison with other similar functionality. The offi cial website gives languages) is that it has a smaller learning .fullround (5px); this description: } curve (almost nil) for designers and developers as the familiar CSS syntax feels /* Compiled CSS */ very natural. Variables allow you to specify widely used header{ Requirements values in a single place, and then re-use border-radius: 10px; You may use any normal text editor to them throughout the style sheet, making -webkit-border-radius: 10px; write LESS. But, it is highly recommended global changes as easy as changing one -moz-border-radius: 10px; to use a specialized editor. Crunch! is line of code. }

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 21 #header-inner{ header p a{ Usage border-radius: 5px; text-decoration: none; First ink the *.less fi le in the HTML with -webkit-border-radius: 5px; color: #00F; rel set to "stylesheet/less". Then -moz-border-radius: 5px; } include the less.js fi le in the header p a:hover{ } element of the page. The style sheets Nested Rules color: #0FF; } should be included before the script fi le. Using LESS it is possible to nest selectors Sample HTML code is given below. inside other selectors. This helps the Functions & Operations designer to avoid constructing long LESS provides some inbuilt functions selector names. Another advantage is that and operations. Operations will help to it makes inheritance clear and style sheets defi ne elements proportional to other to manipulate the values in diff erent ways. header{ Operations let you add, subtract, divide background:#FFF; and multiply property values and colors, color: #000; h1{ font-size: 20pt; giving you the power to create complex font-weight: bold; relationships between properties. Functions } map one-to-one with JavaScript code, This method is often recommended p{ allowing you to manipulate values however only in the development stages. Once a font-size: 12pt; you want. website is fully developed, it is advisable to line-height: 14pt; compile LESS fi les to normal CSS and link font-weight: normal; // LESS it in the HTML fi les. Otherwise, if the user a: { @my-color: #43464C; prefers not to run JavaScript, the styles text-decoration: none; @default-height:150px; color: #00F; will not get applied to the pages. Another &:hover{ color: #0FF; } header{ option is to compile it in the server itself, } background: @my-color; when each time the page is requested. It } height: @default-height; requires confi guring the server as well as } } it will increase the time required to load footer{ the page. /* Compiled CSS */ background: fade(@my-color,50%); To compile LESS, Crunch! can be used header{ height: @default-height * 2; in Windows/Mac machines. WinLess background: #FFF; } color: #000; is another application for Windows } machines which will help you to compile /* Compiled CSS */ header h1{ LESS fi les. WinLess can be downloaded header{ font-size: 20pt; from here: http://winless.org/ background: #43464C; font-weight: bold; height:150px; SimpLESS is another compiler } } which supports Windows, Mac and Linux header p{ footer{ platforms. Download the application from font-size: 12pt; background: rgba(67,70,76,0.5); here: http://wearekiss.com/simpless line-height: 14pt; height:300px; n font-weight: normal; } }

Hareesh N Nampoothiri is a visual design consultant with an experience of more than a decade and worked with government organizations like C-DIT, C-DAC, University of Kerala and other private organizations. Currently he is doing research in University of Kerala, on communication design with special reference to the aesthetic principles of Indian art. He is an author of two books on graphic design and a regular columnist in leading technology magazines including CSI Communications. Kathakali, blogging and photography are his passions. He has directed a documentary feature on Kathakali and also directed an educational video production for IGNOU, New Delhi. About the Author

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 22 www.csi-india.org Nemil Sheriff * and Diptiman Dasgupta** Technical *Senior Consultant – Travel & Transportation, IBM GBS Solutions & Assets Trends **Lead Architect - Travel & Transportation, IBM Global Delivery Near Field Communication (NFC) and Changing the Airline Passenger’s Travel Experience

Changing the Airline Passenger’s much faster than Bluetooth. It is more on the micro payment data is stored in a Travel Experience contactless transactions, data exchange, secure device - this could be a contactless Mobile Near Field Communication (NFC) and simplifi ed setup of more complex Smart Card, but could as well be a mobile is considered as the “third wave” in the communications such as Wi-Fi. phone. When the user wants to perform a payment or use the stored ticket, the user mobile telephony revolution. NFC is an How NFC Works presents the device to a reader, which industry standard for mobile devices which Working principle of NFC depends on checks the received information and enables exchange of data with each other three key things like Contactless Token, processes the payment or accepts/rejects when at a close proximity to each other. Ticketing, and Device pairing as below: [5] the ticket. Recent Gartner study suggests that NFC • Contactless Token • Device Pairing is anticipated to impact several industries This covers all applications, which use NFC In this application the two devices such as mobile, banking/payment, retail, to retrieve some data from a passive token. communicating would belong to the same transportation, and health care. In this The passive token could be a contactless article, we will mainly focus on application group of devices (such as a mobile device). Smart Card, an RFID label, or a key fob. NFC could be used either to establish of NFC in airlines/airport segment. The primary use would be to store some [6] a Bluetooth connection or enable data A recent survey by SITA suggests data, which can then conveniently be read [7] exchange. that nearly 80% of the world's top 50 by an active NFC device. Examples of such airlines are planning to provide NFC data would be a company URL or product Mobile NFC - Key Features services by 2014. The airline/airport information stored in a tag embedded on a NFC-based applications provide following industry is in the process of redesigning smart advertisement. key technical[2] features that brings a lot of their business processes to fully utilize the • Ticketing/Micro Payment benefi ts as below: advantages of NFC and to overcome the Another major application for NFC is 1. Intuitive: NFC interactions require no challenges involved. Now let us see basics ticketing/micro payment. The ticket or more than a simple touch. about NFC and its working principles before we do more deep dive on its specifi c applications in airlines domain. What is NFC NFC or Near Field Communications is a short-range wireless communication technology which enables exchange of data between two devices. It is a set of standards that enables smartphones to establish radio communications when they are brought very closer within a few centimeters of distances. NFC involves exchange of data between two pieces of hardware - an initiator (could be a mobile with NFC) and a target (or NFC reader). NFC is an extension of RFID but works over very short distances (10 centimeters or 4 inches). However, NFC overcomes several security shortfalls that RFID has and is considered to be extremely secure. The way NFC operates is considerably similar to Bluetooth albeit with a few diff erences - NFC does not require pairing of devices like Bluetooth and establishing a connection between devices is achieved

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 23 2. Versatile: NFC is ideally suited to 4. Pay with their mobile phone; check-in transaction. Once check-in is the broadest range of industries, 5. Interact with NFC-enabled complete, passengers will obtain their environments, and uses. advertisements; NFC boarding token over the air (OTA). 3. Open and standards-based: The 6. Exchange information with other The boarding pass data will be securely underlying layers of NFC technology travelers by simply bumping their stored in the NFC mobile handset. follow universally implemented ISO, NFC-enabled phones; Benefi ts for passengers ECMA, and ETSI standards. 7. Security check; • Ergonomics and ease of use 4. Technology-enabling: NFC facilitates 8. Use the phone for boarding; and - Passengers will not have to carry fast and simple setup of wireless 9. Use the phone for public a paper document and can instead technologies, such as Bluetooth, Wi- transportation use the boarding pass data stored on Fi etc.). Let’s have a closer look at some of these their mobile handset. Passengers can 5. Inherently secure: NFC transmissions business functionalities[4] in greater details present their mobile NFC phone in close are short range (from a touch to a few and investigate how NFC can add value proximity to the target reader for the centimeters). to this both from passengers’ perspective boarding pass data to be read. This also 6. Interoperable: NFC works with (i.e. consumers) and from airlines/airports’ means that passengers need not worry existing contactless card technologies. perspective (i.e. providers). about how to position the screen or 7. Security-ready: NFC has built- 1. Passenger check-in whether to remain still when the reader in capabilities to support secure In today's highly cost competitive market, is scanning. applications. airlines are increasingly relying on • Reliability - As opposed to an Envisaged Applications for Airlines more self-service options. With better electronic bar code image, once the & Airports Using NFC technology and increased adoption, NFC boarding pass is stored in the chip, A recent report[3] detailing the possible self-service especially for check-ins is the mobile phone doesn’t need to have innovations for the future airport details expected to considerably grow over the network connectivity or to be switched on NFC as one of the key process enablers. next few years. The NFC technology in order to read the data. This allows the The predicted 247[3] million NFC- can bring in signifi cant benefi ts to the passengers to overcome issues such as enabled smartphones is one of the key passenger experience at the airport as a fl at battery or high roaming data costs. drivers which will enable the adoption it will replace the physical bar code and Also we expect losing the mobile devices of NFC-based processes. By disbursing utilize standardized data structure in the would be much lesser than losing the the NFC readers throughout the airport, NFC chip. paper boarding passes. passengers will be able to: NFC at work - envisaged check-in Benefi ts for airlines & airports 1. Check-in with their mobile phone; process • NFC Boarding Pass removes the 2. Baggage check-in; Passengers will use one of the existing constraint of screen resolutions or other 3. Receive coupons for airport shops; self-service channels to perform their hardware specifi cations of the mobile phone that they currently have to deal with when sending a bar code image. • Airport will be able to implement more scanning points, enabling passengers to swipe phones in an ergonomic and easy manner, speeding up passenger process fl ow and so reducing queues. • This will be more ‘greener solution’ as paperless boarding pass will be environment friendly. 2. Baggage check-in Hold baggage is still perceived as one of the major impediments to self-service check-in as passengers still have to queue to drop their bags at a desk, where the process is not optimized for that function. NFC technology will facilitate a more effi cient overall baggage acceptance process and help deliver the full self-service check-in value proposition.

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 24 www.csi-india.org NFC at work – envisaged baggage security. Other data fi elds contained in Benefi ts for airlines & airports check-in process the NFC boarding token could be used as • NFC will enable increased penetration Passengers already checked in will go eligibility criteria to use a Fast Track Lane of self boarding which would in turn lead to a kiosk and easily identify themselves (e.g. class of travel, frequent fl ier tier). to cost reduction for the industry. with their NFC mobile phone and get their Eligible passengers will swipe their NFC phone at the entrance of the security check bag tags printed. Once the tags applied Same use case can be extended for Lounge point and will be directed to the correct to the bags, they will go to a drop point Access[9] as well. dedicated to baggage acceptance only. At lane. Passengers may also purchase Fast this bag drop location, they will identify Track access via their NFC mobile phone. 5. Postfl ight transportation themselves using their NFC phone again Benefi ts for passengers On arrival, most of the passengers are and drop their bags. • It’s an easier process for the travelers using another mode of transportation to reach their fi nal destination. Most Benefi ts for passengers since passengers will only use their phone to enable access to the security airports are linked to city centers by • Identifi cation of the passenger by checkpoint with no need to carry a paper direct high-speed trains. Today, many using the NFC boarding pass will be easier boarding pass. passengers need to buy a separate ground and the process will be more seamless for • Passengers who have the right transportation ticket on arrival at the the travelers. credentials or have purchased an access airport. NFC will enable airlines to sell • Reduced transaction time for voucher from the airlines or the airport can add-on ground transportation tickets and passengers at kiosk and bag drop. use their NFC token to access Fast Track. send the NFC ticket over the air to their • Seamless process and one stop shop passengers. for check-in and payment of ancillary fees Benefi ts for airlines & airports related to baggage. • Easier passenger segregation at NFC at work - envisaged postfl ight Benefi ts for airlines & airports security process • Airlines can track location of their • The NFC Boarding pass token will • When buying their airline ticket, passengers enabling better decision allow much easier passenger identifi cation. passengers can also buy ground making for fl ights departure and fl ight This will signifi cantly improve processing transportation tickets for their transfer operational management. times and reduce queues. from the airport to the city center, for • Ancillary revenues can be generated • Airlines and airports will be able to example. The ticket will be stored on the as Fast Track access can be off ered to apply their new business models with NFC phone and used to directly board the passengers prior to arrival or directly at far less operational drawback for the ground transport (e.g. train). the airport. passenger process. Benefi ts for passengers 4. Boarding 3. Security check • Seamless end-to-end travel. One of the main challenges that airlines IATA and Airport Council International face in Self Boarding implementation is Benefi ts for airlines & airports (ACI) are recommending that airports the ergonomics around the access control Facilitates ancillary revenue generation implement centralized security process. While bar coded boarding opportunities to airports by off ering checkpoints as opposed to gate passes have already improved the process ground transportation services in screening. As a result, it is important to compared to magnetic stripe tokens, conjunction with airline tickets. identify passenger credentials to access passengers are still not familiar with the security. Fast Tracks are also increasingly self-scanning process and often fi nd implemented by airlines and airports. Current Challenges of NFC-based diffi culties in properly positioning the bar Eligibility for Fast Track access usually Applications code on the reader and remaining still while depends on the passenger category the reading occurs etc. NFC technology[8] Standards - technology & business (business class, frequent fl yer etc.) or will bring much better ergonomics in this processes granted to last minute passengers. It can process. It is a user-friendly solution that also be off ered by the airline or the airport For mass adoption, NFC needs to be based improves implementation of self-boarding as a payable service to any passenger. upon a single set of agreed standards for airlines and airports. To facilitate implementation, it is for securely storing and accessing therefore necessary to deploy access NFC at work - envisaged self boarding information. However, currently there are control processes to verify eligibility process three diff erent ventures led by: • Phone software companies - Apple without slowing down the passenger • At the gate, passengers will just have and Google: Standards based on their OS fl ow. NFC technology provides a seamless to present their mobile NFC phone in close and NFC chip designs. solution to perform this eligibility check. proximity to the boarding gate reader to • Telecoms - Verizon, Vodafone, and be granted access to the aircraft. NFC at work - envisaged security Orange: Standards based on SIM cards. checkpoint process Benefi ts for passengers • Credit card processors - Visa and Depending on their fl ight details • Passengers can benefi t from a simple Master Card: Micro-SD cards which one passengers can be granted access to and standardized process. puts into the phone.

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 25 This lack of a standard among "standards" frequent fl yer mileage in the short term; content/near-fi eld-communications- is hampering the progress of NFC. move on to more complicated applications demo From a business standpoint, airlines such as NFC-enabled lounge check-in [7] NFC World - an international, & airports are slowly adopting NFC as a and progressively utilize full-blown NFC- independent and objective trade technology and are progressively fi guring enabled processes in the long term. NFC publication for those that design, out business processes. Industry bodies will for sure change how we do business, supply, buy or use NFC-based such as IATA will hopefully enable the the only question is when! adoption of standardized process across products; Source - http://www. airports and airlines. References nfcworld.com/2012/02/09/ [1] Security in Near Field Communication Huge investment 313088/four-in-five-major-airlines- (NFC) - Ernst Haselsteiner and plan-to-use-nfc-by-2014/ NFC does require a signifi cant Klemens Breitfuß; Link - http:// [8] Future Travel Experience - A website infrastructure investment such as NFC events.iaik.tugraz.at/RFIDSec06/ with content that focuses on the compatible gate readers or payment Program/papers/002%20-%20 end-to-end travel process from the terminals. For the technology to succeed, Security%20in%20NFC.pdf passenger point of view, from the a critical mass of NFC mobile phone [2] The Near Field Communication penetration is also required. Another key (NFC) Forum is a non-profi t industry moment of booking through to the challenge for NFC is the relatively higher association that promotes the use of collection of baggage at the arrival merchant transaction fees for NFC when NFC short-range wireless interaction destination, and assesses how every compared to even premium credit cards. in consumer electronics, mobile aspect of the passenger experience Privacy & security concerns devices and PCs. Link - http://www. on the ground can be improved. Link NFC by itself does not ensure secure nfc-forum.org/home/ - http://www.futuretravelexperience. communications. Ensuring security for [3] ‘Navigating the Airport of Tomorrow’ com/2012/01/japan-airlines-to- NFC data will require the cooperation of Travel industry report by Amadeus; launch-nfc-boarding-pass/ multiple parties such as device provider, Link - http://www.amadeus.com/ [9] Future Travel Experience - A website application provider, transaction parties, airlineit/navigating-the-airport-of- with content that focuses on the and customers[1]. As with credit cards, the tomorrow/index.html end-to-end travel process from the sensitive fi nancial data stored on mobile [4] 'The Benefi ts of Mobile NFC for passenger point of view, from the phones will become targets for thieves Air Travel' Whitepaper by GSMA moment of booking through to the and the unscrupulous. and IATA; Link - http://www.iata. collection of baggage at the arrival org/whatwedo/stb/fast-travel/ Conclusion destination, and assesses how every As with any technology innovation, NFC Documents/iata-public-whitepaper- aspect of the passenger experience too faces stiff challenges on diff erent issue1.pdf fronts such as Evolution of Standards, [5] Gartner Report – ‘Near Field on the ground can be improved. Link Technology Limitations, Cost, User Communication is a Long-Term - http://www.futuretravelexperience. Acceptance to name a few. Depending Opportunity’ com/ 2011/06/sas-launches-nfc- on the risk appetite airlines and airports [6] Near Field Communications Demo by smart-pass/ could look at applications such as logging SITA Lab; Link - http://www.sita.aero/ n

Nemil Sheriff is a Senior Consultant for Travel & Transportation Industry and is currently working with IBM GBS Solutions & Assets team as an SME for Travel & Transportation. Nemil has worked with several leading airlines as part of key IT projects. Key profi ciencies include - Business Consulting, Product Management, and Requirements Engineering.

Diptiman Dasgupta is the Lead Architect for Travel & Transportation Industry in IBM Global Delivery and is a member of IBM Academy of Technology (AoT). He is an IBM Certifi ed Senior IT Architect and Open Group Master Certifi ed IT Architect in the area of Enterprise Integration (EI). He has 15+ years of experience in design and development, architecting, providing technical strategy, solutions for creating and leveraging assets in client solution, as well as providing technical leadership to the organization. About the Authors

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 26 www.csi-india.org Practitioner Wallace Jacob Sr. Asst. Prof. at Tolani Maritime Institute Workbench [email protected] Programming.Tips() » The article illustrates the diff erent usage(s) of the { void testfn() main(), scanf() and printf() functions, for instance char str[80]; { printing a string in ‘C’ without using double quotes, system(“clear”); printf(“\nWithin testfn()”); the usage of the %i and %p formatting characters, an printf(“\nEnter any string, } interesting property of the sizeof() operator and the terminate with TAB key : “); main() scanf(“%[^\t]”, str); return value of a function { printf(“\n\nstr=%s”, str); I. Can the main() function in a C/C++ program accept system(“clear”); only two arguments? return 0; testfn(); The program below and its sample output illustrate } that the main() function in a C/C++ program can The statement scanf(“%[^\t]”, str); implies that testfn(1); /* function testfn() is invoked with a single accept three arguments: whatever the user types before pressing the argument */ #include key will be stored in str variable. [Obviously the input testfn(1,2); /* function testfn() is invoked with two main(int argc, char **argv, char **envr) should not exceed 79 characters]. The user may arguments */ { indicate any other terminating character by writing it return 0; int i=0; after the ^ symbol. } system(“clear”); (ii). Is it possible to printing a string without using A sample output of the program is given below: while(envr[i]) double quotes. Within testfn() { Yes, it is possible to print a string without using Within testfn() printf(“\nenvr[%d] = %s”, i, envr[i]); double quotes. As an example a program is produced Within testfn() i++; below: The output of the above program testifi es that the #include } compiler ignores the extra arguments in the function #defi ne x(e) printf(#e) return 0; call. } main() NOTE: The user can also type char *envr[] instead of { IV. What will be the eff ect of using the unary arithmetic char ** envr in the above program. x(abcde); operator within the sizeof() operator? A sample output of the program is given below: printf(“\n”); #include envr[0] = HOSTNAME=test-252 return 0; main() } envr[1] = TERM=xterm { envr[2] = HISTSIZE=1000 A sample output of the program is given below: int x= 7; envr[3] = KDE_NO_IPV6=1 abcde envr[4] = WINDOWID=12582929 Any argument which is passed to the macro x will system(“clear”); envr[5] = SDM_VER=0306 be printed. Instead of abcde, an integer can also be printf(“\nsizeof(++x) = %d”, sizeof(++x)); envr[6] = QTDIR=/usr/lib/qt-3.3 passed or characters such as #(hash) or $ can be printf(“\nx = %d”, x); envr[7] = QTINC=/usr/lib/qt-3.3/include passed, but the comma should not be passed. return 0; envr[8] = XTERM_SHELL=/bin/bash (iii). Is it possible to print a string from the nth } envr[9] = USER=wallacej character? A sample output of the program is given below: envr[10] = LS_COLORS=no=00:fi =00:di=00; The program below illustrates a method of using sizeof(++x) = 4 34:ln=00;36:pi=40;33:so=00;35:bd=40;33;0 printf() function in ‘C’ x = 7 1:cd=40;33;01:or=01;05;37;41:mi=01;05;37;41: #include The output of the above program proves that the unary ex=00;32:*.cmd=00;32:*.exe=00;32:*.com=00;32:*. main() arithmetic operators do not work within the sizeof() btm=00;32:*.bat=00;32:*.sh=00;32:*.csh=00;32:*. { operator in ‘C’. tar=00;31:*.tgz=00;31:*.arj=00;31:*.taz=00;31:*. system(“clear”); lzh=00;31:*.zip=00;31:*.z=00;31:*.Z=00;31:*. printf(0+”goodbye\n”); V. What will be the return value of a function in a ‘C’ gz=00;31:*.bz2=00;31:*.bz=00;31:*.tz=00;31:*. printf(1+”goodbye\n”); program which does not explicitly return an integer? rpm=00;31:*.cpio=00;31:*.jpg=00;35:*.gif=00;35:*. printf(2+”goodbye\n”); (i). #include bmp=00;35:*.xbm=00;35:*.xpm=00;35:*. return 0; samplefunc() png=00;35:*.tif=00;35: } { envr[11] = KDEDIR=/usr A sample output of the program is given below: } envr[12] = PATH=/usr/lib/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/kerberos/ goodbye main() oodbye bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin { envr[13] = MAIL=/var/spool/mail/wallacej odbye system(“clear”); envr[14] = PWD=/newhome/wallacej (iv). Apart from %d is it possible to use any other envr[15] = INPUTRC=/etc/inputrc formatting character for printing an integer? printf(“\n%d”, samplefunc()); envr[16] = KDE_IS_PRELINKED=1 #include printf(“\n%d”, samplefunc()); envr[17] = LANG=en_US.UTF-8 main() return 0; envr[18] = XTERM_VERSION=XTerm(215) { } envr[19] = SSH_ASKPASS=/usr/libexec/openssh/ int x = 9; A sample output of the program is given below: gnome-ssh-askpass int *p=&x; 0 envr[20] = HOME=/newhome/wallacej system(“clear”); 2 envr[21] = SHLVL=2 printf(“\nx = %i”, x); The program illustrates that if the return value of a envr[22] = LOGNAME=wallacej printf(“\nptr = %p”, p); function is not void and if a function does not contain envr[23] = CVS_RSH=ssh printf(“\nptr = %u”, p); an explicit return statement, then it returns a junk envr[24] = QTLIB=/usr/lib/qt-3.3/lib printf(“\n&x = %u”, &x); integral value. envr[25] = LESSOPEN=|/usr/bin/lesspipe.sh %s return 0; (ii). Is it possible to swap the value of two integer } envr[26] = DISPLAY=:10.0 variables with the help of bitwise operators? envr[27] = TC_IP=192.168.51.232 In ‘C’ language %i can also be used as a conversion The program below swaps the value of two integer envr[28] = G_BROKEN_FILENAMES=1 character for printing integers and %p can be used envr[29] = _=./a.out to print the contents of a pointer. The program above variables with the help of bitwise operators. The output of the program actually displays a few can be run on any machine with a ‘C’ compiler. #include of the environment settings. Some of the lines in A sample output of the program is given below: main() the output are common with the output of the set x = 9 { command. The user can simply type set in the terminal ptr = 0xbff 220fc /*address is printed in hexadecimal int a = 189; and press . notation because of %p in the second printf() int b = 712; statement*/ printf(“\na = %d, b = %d”, a, b); II. The programs below explores a few ways in which ptr = 3220316412 a^=b^=a^=b; scanf()/printf() can be used: &x = 3220316412 (i). Is it possible to store the ENTER key in a string printf(“\na = %d, b = %d”, a, b); variable (during runtime)? III. What will happen if a function is defi ned which printf(“\n”); Yes, it is possible to store the ENTER key in a string accepts no arguments, and then arguments are passed return 0; variable during runtime. The program below illustrates to a function while invoking the function? } how the ENTER key can be stored in a string variable: The program and its output below answer the Ans. #include aforementioned question: a = 189, b = 712 main() #include a = 712, b = 189

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 27 Practitioner Umesh P Workbench Department of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, University of Kerala Programming.Learn (“Python”) » GUI Design with Python

We have discussed essential tools and syntaxes for Python 5 self.panel=wx.Panel(self) programming. Let us now familiarize a new tool kit - wxPython for 6 app=wx.PySimpleApp() Python, which will help us to develop GUIs in Python. wxPython is a 7 frame=Example(parent=None,id=-1) 8 frame.Show() free cross platform toolkit for developing GUI applications in Python. 9 app.MainLoop() First of all, download and install wxPython tool kit according to your operating system, and Python version. All versions are available in the Now try the following program which creates a GUI of 500x 500 domain - http://wxpython.org/ pixels with one text box and two buttons. When you enter your name After fi nishing the installation you can check whether your PC is in the box and press ‘ENTER’ button, your name will be printed in the equipped with wxPython, by importing the module. For doing your fi rst IDLE. The program can be modifi ed to manipulate the string that gets program using wxPython, try the following code in your favorite editor printed in the IDLE, if you manipulate the defi nition block in the code. and run it. 1 import wx 2 class Example(wx.Frame): 1 import wx 3 def __init__(self,parent,id):#initializati 2 class myGUI(wx.App): on, size of window can be given here 3 def OnInit(self): 4 wx.Frame.__init__(self,parent,id,'My

4 frame = wx.Frame(parent=None, title=’Python GUI’) First Python GUI', size=(500,500)) 5 frame.Show() 5 self.panel=wx.Panel(self) 6 return True 6 # the following code gives the definition 7 app = myGUI() of label and text box 8 app.MainLoop() 7 Label=wx.StaticText(self.panel, -1, "Type your Name: ", pos=(80,150)) 8 self.name=wx.TextCtrl(self.panel, -1, "Name", size=(200, 20), pos=(180,150)) 9 self.name.SetInsertionPoint(0) 10 # Definition of Enter button follows 11 Enter=wx.Button(self.panel, -1, "Enter", pos=(120,200), size=(120,30)) 12 self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.Result, Enter) 13 # Definition of Exit button follows 14 Exit=wx.Button(self.panel, -1, "Quit", pos=(250,200), size=(50,30)) 15 self.panel.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self. Exitbutton, Exit) 16 # Action of Enter button Program Output 17 def Result(self, panel): Now let us analyze the program. 18 Name= self.name.GetValue() import wx, imports all modules in wxPython. Here wx is a namespace 19 print Name for the toolkit. All functions and objects will start with the prefi x 20 # Action of Exit button 21 def Exitbutton(self, panel): “wx.”. wxPython has a collection of widgets. One of the important 22 self.Close(True) widget is wx.Frame, which we will use to create an application. For this, 23 # loop controls and to show frames we defi ne wx. App class as -‘myGUI’. 24 app=wx.PySimpleApp() Here we have used wx.App with OnInit() method for simplicity. 25 frame=Example(parent=None,id=-1) Elements of python GUI is defi ned under defi nition of OnInt(). Here 26 frame.Show() we have defi ned a frame with title ’Python GUI’. To show the frame on 27 app.MainLoop() screen we have used frame.Show(). app.MainLoop() works like an infi nite loop, which will wait until a message comes in or the user closes the window. There is one more method to create a GUI frame in Python. It is __init__ (double underscore at the start and end of init). The __init__ method is used to initialize the new instance and it is similar to a constructor in C++ or Java. The __init__ method not only defi nes the class but also pass arguments when a new instance is created. So in the example cited earlier we have used wx.App with OnInit() method. Now let us see the same program using wx.Frame with __ init__ 1 import wx 2 class Example(wx.Frame): 3 def __init__(self,parent,id): We will have more exciting experiments of GUI programming in Python 4 wx.Frame.__init__(self,parent,id,'Python GUI') in the coming issue of practitioner workbench. n

CSI CommunicationsCommunications | AugustAugust 20122012 | 28 www.csi-india.orgg Dr. R M Sonar CIO Perspective Chief Editor, CSI Communications

Managing Technology » Business Information Systems: IT Infrastructure and Services

Since last fi fty years the computing Component Example technologies have gone through evolution starting with centralized computing: Computing Servers, mainframes, desktops, laptops, smart and mobile mainframes and minicomputers to more platforms and devices etc. of distributed computing: PCs, client/ devices server computing, n-tier computing, Communication Communication media (e.g. fi ber optic cables, VSATs, twisted cluster computing, and now cloud equipments, cables), switches, hubs, repeaters, routers, leased lines, local computing and mobile computing. There devices, and and wide area networks etc. are many hardware, networking, software networks technologies, standards, platforms, and Utility and storage Printers, scanners, hard disks, RAID etc. vendors exist to choose from. Some of devices them are proprietary while some are based on open and widely accepted Enterprise Operating systems, web servers, database servers, ERP standards. The software licensing software, tools, and software, CRM, SCM and KM systems, ETL (extraction, policies have changed from perpetual to applications transformation, and loading) and BI tools etc. more subscription based. Open source Contents and Content and document management systems, corporate level technologies opened another avenue databases database, third party databases etc. for IT managers to have a serious look at them. Some of the fi rms spent heavily Physical facilities Physical infrastructures hosting data centers, server rooms, air and end up with so many diff erent kinds conditioning etc. of technologies and applications in place Table 1: Examples of IT infrastructure because of organizational structure, IT function: centralized v/s decentralized, mergers and acquisitions. Integrating and decision makers struggled with decision business models, scale of operations, managing all these technologies always of build v/s buy, now it is a choice between geographic spread and may be because of remains a challenge. IT managers and buy v/s outsource. IT Investments and Infrastructure Mandated The fi rms can see opportunities to invest • Compliance to regulation and various standards by regulators, government and statutary bodies, in IT apart from investment that help the industry consortiums etc. • It is cost of doing business fi rms in operational, decision making, • e.g. KYC (know your customer), DND (do not disturb), mandatory tax online tax fi lings etc. and knowledge management activities. Competitive necessity These investments in IT can be because • Technology becomes de facto and well accepted, must have because competitors are using technology of various reasons. Some of the major • Technologies and systems mandated by other players in the business ecosystem (e.g. Walmart) ones are given in Fig. 1. Investment in IT • e.g. ATMs, Net Banking, EDI (electronic data interchange), ePayment, eTicketing etc. infrastructure amongst all these is crucial Complexity of operations as it provides the back bone for other IT • Operations are diffi cult to handle manually because of scale, volume, and complexity investments and developing, deploying, • e.g. railway and airline reservation systems, global payment systems like SWIFT, air traffi c control, and supporting various business global positional systems etc. information systems. IT infrastructure Gain competitive advantage largely includes: a) computing, network, • Unique and out of box technology that provides cost leadership, diff erentiation, and focus storage and utility hardware, and devices; • e.g. Technologies that help to off er unique user experiences e.g. by Amazon and Netfl ix, highly customizable and confi gurable solution etc. b) enterprise software and applications; c) contents and databases applicable across Implement new business models the fi rm; and d) physical facilities that host • Technologies that change the basic structures of the organizations and the way they do the business • e.g. eCommerce, virtual fi rms etc. IT hardware and software. Fig. 2 shows various components of IT infrastructure IT infrastructure and Table 1 describes examples. IT • Investment for current and future IT/IS requirements management services involve activities • e.g. computer networks, data centers, network storage devices, enterprise system like ERP, CRM, SCM etc. and processes to explore, budget, procure, install, support, standardize, and Fig. 1: Major reasons and opportuniti es of IT investments integrate IT infrastructure components.

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 29 Web services add layer of extraction to wireless technologies; multi-core processors Utility and integrate various applications by hiding (using multiple CPUs on a chip to improve storage what hardware platforms, operating performance); blade servers (ultrathin devices Enterprise systems, programming frameworks, and computers specially designed for servers Communication software, languages the fi rm uses. Some of the with processors, memory, and network equipments, tools, and devices, and applications latest technology trends are changing connections that are stored in racks); networks IT the way IT infrastructure is managed. For cluster computing (coupling many low-end management example, focus of autonomic computing machines together to get more computing services is developing systems those can self- power); and grid computing (loosely Enterprise Computing contents and manage (e.g. confi gure and tune) and heal coupling many small computing resources platforms databases themselves on failures etc. thus reducing like PCs to get massive computing power and devices the support eff orts and cost. like super computers have). Physical facilities Virtualization adds one layer of Get Rid of IT Infrastructure: abstraction while accessing various physical IT resources such as servers, Cloud Computing! The fi rm need not own IT infrastructure, Fig. 2: Components of IT infrastructure storage devices, PCs etc. These resources are not only accessible directly on cloud computing facilitates to access individual basis but as shared pool of shared pool of virtualized IT resources IT infrastructure is crucial as it has direct resources in more logical way thus hiding (computing, storage, network, and impact on what kind of IT systems the physical characteristics. Many physical software) often over the network fi rm can buy, install, and use. For example, resources such as hard-disks may be especially the Internet as services. Since if a fi rm is using more and more open shared as single shared resource (storage) resources are accessed using the Internet, standard, widely used, and accepted while single resource like high-end server all diff erent kind of resource users like technologies, the fi rm has wider choices may be accessed as multiple logical customers, suppliers, franchises, sales, and to choose, install, and integrate new resources (VMs: virtual machines). For service partners can access it seamlessly applications on existing IT infrastructure. example, in desktop virtualization, many at one-to-one basis. Based on the fi rms Managing IT Infrastructure users can simultaneously and virtually requirement they can choose appropriate models like software as a service, platform Major challenges in managing IT access the same desktop machine as service, and infrastructure as service. infrastructure are to deal with the rapid using I/O devices such as monitors and The fi rms have options to test the changes in technology, scalability, and keyboards. Virtualization helps the fi rms functionality, choose the functionality, and security. What technology fi rms buy to: reduce the cost, share and utilize diff erentiate subscription models. Cloud today may become outdated down the resources eff ectively, reduce support line, the cost of replacing or upgrading eff orts, and continue to use existing IT vendors provide resources on demand. to new may be a major factor that can resources to certain extend. The fi rm can get rid of many of the eff orts bring down the RoI in IT infrastructure There are other advancements and issues in managing IT infrastructure. investment. Many systems exist in technologies to reduce power However, the fi rms are often skeptical and integrated together facilitating consumption, space requirements, take and cautious about the issues of lack of distributed computing, connectivity to care of variable and high computation maturity of cloud technologies, security, mobile devices and individual machines requirements, and using resources more availability, and dependence on cloud increase vulnerabilities and bring more eff ectively and effi ciently. These include vendors. Private clouds can be an answer security threats. Other issues involve managing with diff erent platforms, Cloud changing licensing terms and conditions, computi ng lock-in and monopolies of hardware and SOA (service- oriented software vendors, discontinued support architecture) to old infrastructure by vendors and Extranet & integration with latest technologies and intranet Autonomic delivery channels like smart phones, computi ng kiosks, and RFIDs. Virtualizati on However, some of these challenges and consolidati on and issues can be mitigated. Technologies Cluster like intranet make it easier to use existing computi ng servers and allow users to access Multi -core applications through PCs, laptops, and processors smart devices that support browsers. Eff ecti ve Load Reduced Integrati ng Seamless Power and On demand Extranets allow external stakeholders use of balancing support and heterogeneous access to space saving computi ng resources maintenace applicati ons applicati ons and eco-friendly like dealers, service support centers etc. to access the applications the same Fig. 3: Benefi ts of various technologies way fi rm’s internal users access them.

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 30 www.csi-india.org to some of these issues. The smaller issues involved. Build test setup to and managing relationships with fi rms may be able to adapt to the cloud test such technologies. them. computing quickly; however, for the fi rms • Understand organizations’ long-term • Maintain complete information having huge IT setup, investment and plans and goals, choose, evaluate, (inventory) of IT resources having many proprietary systems may not and invest in the right technologies. (confi gurations, versions etc.) be that easy to migrate. Fig. 3 shows some • Train and develop manpower and and related knowledge-base that of the technologies and advantages they skills. constitute IT infrastructure, IT bring to the fi rms. • Develop/adopt and enforce various personnel, and vendors. standards, governance, practices, • Optimize resources wherever IT Services and policies (like security, usage, possible, support, monitor, and Major IT services as far as IT infrastructure access, buy etc.). maintain IT infrastructure on an on- is concerned are as follows: • Defi ne administrative roles and going basis. • Keep watch and get educated on responsibilities of IT personnel. • Ensure availability, continuity in current computing trends and • Take care of various compliances, business operations, and have proper technologies, understand the value adopting the best industry practices disaster recovery plans. such technologies bring to fi rm and and initiatives like green computing. Each of these services can be exhaustive its partners, acceptance of such • Having proper SLAs (service level and need skills and manpower. For technologies by other players and agreements) in place with vendors example, choosing the enterprise

Centralized Decentralized Choosing the right IT investment • Possible to evaluate and choose the right technology that • Local needs (business as well as technical) and fi ts to overall organization’s needs, requirements, and issues can be well taken care of future plans • Cost-eff ective technologies, innovations, and • Unifi ed IT infrastructure services available locally can be leveraged on • Negotiation power with vendors • Less redundancy and eff ective utilization of resources • Overall cost can be less • Greater agility, relatively easier migration, or adoption to new computing models like cloud computing Defi ning/adopting standards • Organization level uniform standards and policies • May be able to adapt to local standards and and policies • Better control and overall adherence to compliance and compliance requirements. best practices Support and maintenance • Easier to monitor and lower support eff orts and costs • Local IT support staff can take care of support • Proper and enterprise level SLAs can be in place and maintenance services • Help of local vendors can be sought Security and business continuity • Robust and state-of-the art security standards and • Based on local IT infrastructure, appropriate technologies can be employed security measures can be employed • Better disaster recovery measures • May not need high-end resources for disaster management Issues in general • There can be lock-in cost from the vendors who provide • Many heterogeneous systems enterprise solutions. • Too many support and service vendors • The cost of building enterprise infrastructure can be very • Many standards and policies in place high and can be a deterrence. • Unavailability of skilled personnel for • IT infrastructure needs to be robust and scalable and sophisticated technologies considering local computing needs. • More security risks • One size must fi t all parts of the business many not be able • Great degree of redundancy in IT resources to customize or confi gure for specifi c business needs and • Increase overall capital and services costs potential • Sharing of knowledge is limited Best of both The best way is to incorporate advantages of both the models and take care of issues. • Selecting the technologies at enterprise level with ability to extend, customize, and confi gure functionality for local needs and also ability to leverage on/plug-in/integrate local technologies and services • Making list of preapproved and evaluated hardware and software confi gurations (such as laptops, desktops, smart devices, operating systems, productivity tools etc) • Proper mechanisms to capture, tap, and channelize local business opportunities and innovations • Crucial IT services can be centralized, while others like support and maintenance operations can be decentralized • Defi ning and enforcing strong centralized standards, best practices, policies and governance at the same time provide ability and autonomy to incorporate local standards, practices, and policies • Proper centralized monitoring, approval, audit, checks, and control mechanisms in place to make sure decentralized services are performed in accordance, following and adhering to centrally defi ned standards, policies, and governance • Centralized repository of knowledge base that can be shared with all Table 2: IT services, centralized v/s decentralized

Continued on Page 34

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 31 Dr. Anil V Vaidya CIO Perspective Adjunct Professor, S. P. Jain Institute of Management & Research [email protected]

Digital World Beckons Marketers!!!

The Internet has transformed our lives with its reach and communication capabilities. The eff ect of globalization and networking has been profound. Good and bad news for a product, service, and individual travels fast and far, showing the relevant object in a bright or poor light aff ecting the perception and image. Recognizing these possibilities the digital world has innovated new ways of reaching consumers and customers. Some of the marketers have availed such opportunities, some are still to benefi t from those. This article brings out various models and the signifi cant players in the game.

Introduction The cost structures and reach of the two Digital Media The younger generation seems to have media are signifi cantly diff erent. A viewer Internet, in commercial and societal sense, fallen in love with the mobile phones that of a TV ad reaches Internet site to gather has been in place for the past two decades. they carry all the time. The earlier craze more information and may ultimately make Company websites promoting products of listening to music with earphones in a buy decision that is diffi cult to attribute and disseminating information is a common the ears and wires hanging from the iPod to any one channel. Such crossovers occurrence. In the recent times, one notices seems to have given way to chat and posts pose challenges to channel eff ectiveness, Facebook pages of companies for branding on mobile. The social networking has really measurements, and the advertising and social interaction purposes. They picked up with the younger generation. strategy decisions. have created pages and assembled their The older people are not to be left behind; Marketers derive their advertising fan population. Many allow the visitors to many in the 40’s & 50’s have accounts on plans from marketing plan and overall express their views on these pages. In the Facebook, LinkedIn, and other sites though business plan. Fig. 1 here depicts the traditional websites the content is directly they may not be as active as the youth. decision fl ow. under control of the website owner, while Facebook keeps announcing its users, 900 It is unlikely that a marketer in the Facebook pages allow fans and friends million as the count in Q1 2012. Of the 21st century will leave out digital options to contribute. Here on Facebook pages world’s population almost one-third access altogether. It is true that he still has to companies want to create stronger bonds the Internet, estimated to be 2.27 billion decide the allocation between the two and relations rather than selling[7]. However, in Q1 2012. No wonder such numbers media, how much of the budget be allocated some also off er incentives through coupons attract innovative marketers. Advertising to traditional media and what quantum and sweepstakes that help direct sales Bureau reports a 15% in Q1 2012 jump over should be spent on digital channels. Coca- activity. Q1 2011 in online ad spending. Spending Cola and Ford Motors are reported to be Digital media off ers many alternatives has increased to $8.4 billion in Q1 2012 spending 20-25% of the advertising budget to reach customers, prospects, and general according to PwC report[1]. The full year on digital media[8]. One should also note population. While browsing Internet sites advertising spend in 2011 was $31 billion[2]. that General Motors had earlier announced surfers see many advertisements, mostly The Internet and websites are not new withdrawal of its $10 million campaign unsolicited, at times even annoying. to the marketing community; however, the from Facebook. The banner ads, ads on search pages as waves of innovations in digital advertising well as other forms of advertisements keep creating new opportunities. Social are displayed to reach networks off er a completely new and viewers. Fig. 2 here Business plan diff erent channel. It is an opportunity but depicts various options also poses challenges, for one the Return and the inputs that go on Investment computation and convincing HR plan into devising the digital management to invest proves to be quite a advertising strategy. Finance plan task. Besides advertisements on mobiles Marketing plan Approach to Digital are reported to be producing staggering Manufacturing results; Twitter is showing early signs R&D, etc. plans Advertising Ads on popular sites of success while selling ads on mobile - devices[6]. Advertiser Display of ads on Wall strategy Street Journal Digital is Marketers’ Viewpoint an attractive opportunity Marketers have been using traditional Reach for advertisers. Similarly, channels and advertising styles to reach Traditional media cost, Traditional media Forbes and many others or channel and their customers and prospects. Now Digital media crossover, Digital media off er to place ads on their with digital media available marketers ...etc sites. These are frequently fi nd another challenge. The traditional Marketer will rarely exclude any visited sites that reach and digital media diff er in research and channel from his plan large population quickly; measurement. Earlier concepts of the much more signifi cant is Fig. 1: Adverti ser strategy channel independence do not seem to work. that the target audience

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 32 www.csi-india.org is well-defi ned. An ad tailored for target may be placed on: has 27 million fans on Facebook page. Tiger population serves well as a trade-off 1. Google search - when people Woods has 2.5 million fans, Roger Federer between the cost and eff ectiveness. specifi cally search using Google. and Rafael Nadal with 10 million each, 2. Google search network - that Lady Gaga and Shakira 51 million each, Ad Networks - Google was instrumental includes its search partners like AOL Britney Spears 19 million (all numbers as in innovating the ad network concept. It and other Google sites like maps, of June 2012). Advertisements on social collaborated with numerous partners to shopping, images etc. networks have another way of reaching create a large advertising canvas. Two of 3. Google display network - an the target audience. Professional networks its main products have been the search Advertiser advertises on Google like LinkedIn off er solutions for reaching network and content network. On the Display network using AdWords that required audience in time period as well as search network the advertiser bids for a allows various targeting methods: geography. There are other confi gurable keyword, when the keyword appears in the (a) contextual targeting; parameters which can be tried as well. search the ad is shown on the search page. (b) managed placements (on Facebook also provides ad service off ering On the content network, when a viewer specifi c sites or pages); an excellent reach, considering that reads an article and the keyword or theme (c) Audience, to specifi c user Facebook has 900 million subscriber base. of the article matches the keyword the groups; advertiser has bid upon the ad is shown. (d) Specifi c topics; and Mobile ads - The smartphone era has The user engagement process diff ers based (e) Mobile devices. transformed younger population; they on the page where ad is shown. On search have gone mobile in every sense. Many networks the viewer is actively engaged in Email advertisements - Yahoo currently applications as well as email accounts are looking for a particular search item, while is not placed on the priority list by most being accessed on mobile devices. Sixty- on content network the reader is actively advertisers, although Google fi nds room four percent of mobile users access their engaged in reading a particular piece and there. However, it is interesting to know emails from devices representing a growth the ad is presented to him. Though Google that according to comScore Hotmail has of 20 million mobile email audience network is the most popular one, there are the largest email active user base at 325 in US[3]. It also presents an important many others who off er similar opportunities million with Yahoo at number two and channel to reach this audience. While to advertisers. Microsoft Ad Network and Gmail at number three. Google contests Google and Facebook are still struggling Yahoo Advertising Network (Yahoo Network this placement and has announced it to in this area, Twitter has posted many Plus) are the other two search-affi liated be number one with 425 million active successful mobile ad campaigns[6]. advertising networks. PocketCents, Clicksor, users[5]. In any case, the three email Bidvertiser, and AdBrite are examples of service providers together have more than Return on Investment alternate ad networks. Examples of tools 900 million users. This presents a unique Many advertisers follow count, the reach, and information off ered by leading networks opportunity for email advertisers that can and frequency as the primary measures are AdWords, AdCenter, AdContext, and be targeted to the appropriate audience to follow the objectives of campaign. Yahoo Advertising Solutions: segment. It is important to decide which kind of To cite an example, one may look at advertising one should go for. There are these possibilities on the Google network. Social networking sites - In past few many possibilities. Whether advertising From the Advertiser’s perspective, ads years there has been increasing interest on Google network or Yahoo ads yield in social media on the better results or the social networks off er Advertiser Digital Strategy part of marketers. They better reach is the key question. have noticed the brands Computing returns on digital Products & Customers & and individuals who advertising has not been easy. Many services prospects have been successful fi nd it diffi cult to connect the advertising in getting people to expense to the impact on sales; still ‘like’ their Facebook more challenging for marketers is to Current status Future plans pages. Coca-Cola and convince management on investing on Campaign internet advertising. Calculating return objectives Starbucks are two excellent examples on investment (RoI) in the traditional of brands with 42 ways may not align with the current Marketer environment of connected communities. budget million and 30 million Digital Two aspects need to be well attended; Mobile fans, respectively. channels the fi rst relates to the objectives of digital ads Individuals are not to be left behind in this advertisement and the second focuses on measuring the outcome. While channel- endeavor. Many political Banner Social by-channel evaluation may the regular Own personalities, actors, ads on network Ad networks method of assessing eff ectiveness, Haiges popular sites websites and sportspersons have sites and Lewis[4] recommend that RoI be created their Facebook calculated on all marketing eff orts rather pages. Barack Obama Fig. 2: Adverti sers digital strategy than individual channel.

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 33 A Diff erent Opportunity - The younger generation is very tech on June 17, 2012 from http://www. A Publisher Perspective savvy and mobile, wanting to stay ever iab.net/about_the_iab/recent_press_ An organization or an individual whose connected. The information availability releases/press_release_archive/ website gets lot of visitors may consider has made consumers knowledgeable, press_release/pr-041812 an opportunity to become a publisher they make more informed choices. New [3] comScore (2012). US mobile email as well. A publisher may collect some age companies such as Google, Facebook, audience grows by nearly 20 million revenue by participating in Ad Networks and LinkedIn have created new channels. users in the past year comScore Data Mine. like that of Google. One may partner in These off er opportunities to quickly [4] Haiges, S and Lewis, M (2008). The reach information-hungry consumers. AdSense or in Google’s affi liate network, ROI of digital marketing ROI Research. The marketers have noticed the changing allowing advertisers of Google to display [5] Ludwig, S. (2012). Gmail fi nally consumer behavior and have started to ads on his/her website. AdSense partner blows past Hotmail to become remodel their strategies. It is vital that is passive, makes ad space available. Such the advertisers use all possible avenues world’s largest email service a partnership does not actively control the frequently assessing their performance, at VentureBeat accessed on June 29, ads shown on his website. Comparatively, the same time keeping an eye on the fast 2012 from http://venturebeat. an affi liate partner is more active and has changing digital world players and ever com/2012/06/28/gmail-hotmail- to integrate ad on-site (more hands-on) transforming channels. yahoo-email-users/ controlling which ads appear on his site. [6] Ovide, S. (2012).Twitter’s mobile ads References The publishers receive a share of revenue begin to click The Wall Street Journal [1] IAB (2012A). Internet advertising collected by Google from advertisements. June 29, 2012 revenues set fi rst quarter record at $ For displaying ads with AdSense for [7] Parsons, A. (2011). Social media 8.4 billion IAB June 11, 2012 accessed Content, publishers receive 68% of the from corporate perspective: A amount Google collects from advertisers. on June 17, 2012 from http://www. iab.net/about_the_iab/recent_press_ content analysis of offi cial facebook For AdSense for search, publishers pages. Allied Academics International receive 51% of the amount collected from releases/press_release_archive/ Conference, Proceedings of the advertisers. press_release/pr-061112 [2] IAB (2012B). Internet ad revenues Academy of Marketing Studies 16(2). Concluding Remarks hit $ 31 billion in 2011, historic high [8] Raice, S, et al. (2012). Facebook gains It is interesting to see how the digital world 22% over 2010 record-breaking two big advertisers’ support The Wall has opened new avenues for marketers. numbers IAB April 14, 2012 accessed Street Journal June 20, 2012. n

Continued from Page 31 software itself includes multiple tasks. control, assessment of various security intranet and extranet facilitate seamless It involves: a) understanding, analyzing, measures, and have proper SLAs in place. access to applications from anywhere and documenting existing business anytime using PCs, laptops, and devices IT Services Function: processes; b) reengineering the processes that support browsers; and middleware, to take advantage of currently existing Centralized or Decentralized? XML, web services technologies make it technologies and best practices; There has always been a debate on the easier to integrate various applications c) gathering and documenting functional coordination and management of IT thus realizing better RoI on existing IT and technical requirements in detail services. Typically, decentralized function investments. However, issues of increasing possible; d) preparing expression of is more responsive to local needs and costs of technologies, monopolies of interests/RFP (request for proposal) opportunities; however, it can create many vendors, hiring, developing and retaining and RFQ (request for quotes); e) getting heterogeneous systems and costs can be IT skills, support to legacy systems and proposals from vendors; f) evaluating RFPs higher. Table 2 shows pros of centralized security remain a challenge. against requirements; g) evaluating vendors v/s decentralized IT service function, themselves and negotiating commercials issues, and better option. Bibliography: with them; and h) customizing software etc. [1] Laudon, Kenneth. C., and Laudon, Based on type of technologies which Bottom Line Jane. P. (2012). Management form the part of infrastructure (virtualized One of the real challenges the IT managers information systems: Managing the resources, cluster servers etc.) or models face is to deal with rapid changes in digital fi rm, 12th edn., Prentice Hall. (outsourcing), the eff orts, activities, skill technologies. Complexity of managing IT [2] James O'Brien, George Marakas and sets and manpower required can vary infrastructure increased over time with Ramesh Behl. (2010). Management greatly. For example, adapting to cloud evolution in technologies. However, many information systems, 9th edn., Tata computing model can drastically reduce other technologies come to rescue such McGraw Hill. support and maintenance eff orts as as VMware and thin client technologies [3] Henry C. Lucas Jr. (2008). Information they are managed by the cloud vendor. from Citrix allow virtualization of various Technology: Strategic Decision Making However, fi rm needs to have greater computing resources; technologies like For Managers, Wiley India. n

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 34 www.csi-india.org Adv. Prashant Mali [BSc (Physics), MSc (Comp Science), LLB] Security Corner Cyber Law Expert Email: [email protected]

Information Security » Software IPR in India In India, we follow the European model that Computer program being a literary programs are not patentable. However, this allocates copyright protection to software work - for being capable of copyright was not always the case. The provisions unlike patent protection that is granted in protection - it should be “original”. concerning patentability of software have the US. It is classifi ed as a ‘literary work’ Originality for the purpose of copyright been amended a number of times. The instead of an ‘invention’, which performs a law relates to the expression of thought, original unamended Act did not exclude mechanical function. but such expression need not be of original explicitly patents for computer-related The term Computer software is very or novel form. To be original, the work inventions, as computer technology at that wide and includes: Preparatory design must not be copied from another work but point of time was relatively unknown, but materials, e.g. fl owcharts, diagrams, must originate from the author. To secure the defi nition of the term ‘invention’ itself specifi cations, form and report layouts, copyright the author should expend excluded patents for computer programs. diagrams, specifi cations, form and report suffi cient labor, skill, judgment, and A major amendment was layouts, designs for screen displays, capital to impart the work some quality introduced in Section 3 with respect to etc.; Computer program’s (object code or character which the raw material did the patentability of computer programs and source code) and other executable not possess and which distinguishes the through the Patents (Amendment) code; Software development tools, e.g. work from the raw material. However, Ordinance on December 27, 2004. The Relational database development systems, what is the precise amount of labor etc. Ordinance split the sub-section 3k into two compilers, report generators, etc.; which the author must bestow upon subsections: 3(k) and 3(ka). The excluded Information stored on computer media, the work in order to acquire copyright subject matters as originally contained e.g. conventional works such as literature, cannot be defi ned in precise terms. Most in subsection 3(k) were provided in the artistic works, music, etc. stored digitally, computer program’s however small are new subsection 3(ka). They included ‘a Database and data fi les; Computer output result of skill and judgment and therefore mathematical method or a business method e.g. Sound, print-out, computer fi le or entitled to copyright. However, there is a or algorithms’. The amended Section 3(k) data, electronic signals; Screen displays; `De minimis’ rule in copyright, i.e. trivial, read as follows: Manuals and guides (on paper or stored insignifi cant, or very small works are not “(k) a computer programme per se other digitally); and Programming languages. protected. Protectability may depend than its technical application to industry or a Depending upon the nature of the work, upon the language used. For example, combination with hardware”. software is protected as artistic or literary to achieve the same result a program The key expressions contained in the above amendment are ‘technical work. In India, a Computer program is written in one language may fall in the application to industry’ and ‘combination protected as a literary work. However, `De minimis’ rule but if written in another with hardware’. The legislative intent the debate is still on internationally as to language be entitled to copyright. under which head of Intellectual property behind these words was clear. If an computer program should be protected - Patentability of Computer Software invention is directed at computer software copyright or patent. It is a well-established proposition that having technical application to industry or Article 10 of the TRIPS reads: “(1) computer programs are copyrightable coupled to hardware - then it is patentable. Computer programmes, whether in source subject-matter, just like any other literary The law as it stands now however reverts to or object code, shall be protected as work. Loading a program into computer the original position of excluding computer literary works under the Berne Convention. memory, saving the program or running it program per se from patentability. (2) Compilations of data or other material, without authority may infringe copyright. From the above discussion it follows whether in machine readable or other Despite protection aff orded to computer that if a patent is sought only for the form, which by reason of the selection or software through copyright law, it is software tools, i.e. a patent is sought only arrangement of their contents constitute submitted that copyright protection is for a computer program per se, then a patent intellectual creations shall be protected not always ideal. Problems arise when, would not be available for the invention, as such. Such protection, which shall not in a particular invention, software and as it would be hit by the provisions of extend to the data or material itself, shall hardware coexist. Section 3(k) elucidated above. However, if be without prejudice to any copyright Section 3 of the Patent Act, 2005 the patent is sought for a combination of subsisting in the data or material itself”. contains a list of ‘what are not inventions’. software and hardware, then it would not If the ‘invention’ for which the patent is be a computer application per se, and hence Indian Provisions sought falls within the provisions of Section might be patentable. As observed in S.2(o) “literary work” includes computer 3, no patent would be granted, even if it Gales’ case: program’s tables and compilations otherwise satisfi es the requirements of “Although those instructions are not including computer databases. patentability outlined above. patentable as such, that is not the end of the S.2 (ff c) “Computer program means Section 3(k) of the Patent Act, 2005 matter. Computer instructions may represent, a set of instructions expressed in words, prescribes: ‘mathematical or business for instance, a technical process. What is codes, schemes, or in any form, including method or a computer program per se recorded in the instructions may be the a machine readable medium, capable of algorithms. means for carrying out a technical process causing a computer to perform a particular Section 3 (k) of the Patent Act, 2005 with the aid of a computer. In such a case the task or achieve a particular result”. thus clearly lays down that computer process is not barred from patentability by

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 35 reason of the use of a computer as a medium infringer had access to and had copied the library and archive use, use associated by which it is carried out”. copyrighted material. For example, imagine with public administration, certain acts Analogy may also be drawn to the a reporter who covers Olympic event of carried out by lawful users of computer Diamond v. Diehr, where the US Supreme Vijendra Singh boxing bout and writes in program etc. Court granted a patent for a rubber curing a newspaper about it. Another reporter In respect of computer program’s process controlled by software as the covers the same bout (i.e. uses the same permitted acts allow lawful users to make patent was for the ‘rubber curing process idea) and writes an article the next day back up copies, to decompile program in and not the computer software per se’. using almost exactly the same language limited circumstances, and to copy and From the above, it may be concluded as the fi rst article. Because the second adapt programs in ways consistent with that in ascertaining the patentability of an reporter independently created the second lawful use. invention, the invention must be looked at article without copying the fi rst article, no Creation of a similar work does not as a whole. A claim directed to a technical copyright infringement has occurred. infringe if it is created independently process which process is carried out under If any of the acts specifi ed in Section without copying the original work. For the control of a program (whether by 14 relating to the work is carried out by a example, A and B click photograph means of hardware or software), cannot person other than the owner or without of the same beautiful fl ower from the be regarded as relating to a computer license from the owner or a competent program per se. An invention consisting same angle and have identical looking authority under the Act it constitutes of a combination of hardware and photographs. A and B are both entitled software may be considered patentable, infringement of copyright (Sec.51 of the to separate copyright in their own if it satisfi es the other requirements Copyright Act). The type of acts, which photograph and one photograph does not prescribed by the Act. will constitute infringement, will depend infringe the other. upon the nature of the work. Secondary Infringement infringement such as making for sale or Remedies Diff erence between copyright and patent hire of, exhibition in public by way of trade Civil: Remedies available are injunction, protection relevant in the fi eld of software of, distribution - infringing copies - is also damages, and accounts of profi ts, delivery patents, and which explains in part why prohibited and punishable under the Act. up of infringing copies and material. software patents have come to be viewed Compensation can also be claimed under as particularly desirable is that copyright Acts Which Do Not Constitute Section 43 of the IT Act, 2000. protection generally does not protect Infringement Criminal: Section 63 to 70 of Indian the owner from independent creation or Acts which do not constitute infringement Copyright Act and Section 65 and 66 reverse engineering. In other words, to of copyright, Section 51 gives a list of such of the IT Act, 2000 deals with criminal prove a copyright violation the copyright acts. Permitted acts can be classifi ed remedies against the software infringers. owner must prove that the alleged as: fair dealing, educational purpose, n

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CSI Communications | August 2012 | 36 www.csi-india.org Mr. Subramaniam Vutha Security Corner Advocate Email: [email protected]

IT Act 2000 » Prof. IT Law in Conversation with Mr. IT Executive: Issue No. 5

IT Executive: Hi Prof. IT Law! In our last meeting you showed Prof. IT Law: You are right. But, both for the website me how a website’s “off er” of products should be structured owner and for the potential buyer, it is diffi cult to be sure from a legal standpoint. You told me that a website should as to who the other party is. This, in legal terms, is what “invite off ers” rather than “make off ers”. we call the “authenticity” challenge. Prof. IT Law: Yes, and I also explained the serious IT Executive: So, in electronic commerce, how do the parties problems a website owner can get into by making an determine the “identity” of the other party? And make sure off er and having it accepted by a visitor to the site. they know who they are dealing with? IT Executive: Yes. Thanks. What will you teach us today? Prof. IT Law: By various means. Some of which you are Prof. IT Law: Today, I think we could talk about one of the already aware of. But which you do not think about key challenges of electronic commerce or of electronic because such measures are now common. contracts. IT Executive: By insisting on credit cards? And various IT Executive: That sounds interesting. What is that challenge? validation measures? Prof. IT Law: You remember that I told you that all it takes Prof. IT Law: Yes. And the banks, credit card issuers, and to form a contract in real life is for one person to make an payment gateways act as trusted intermediaries, making off er and for another to accept it? it possible to know who it is that you are dealing with. IT Executive: Yes I do. IT Executive: Yet, dealing with sellers on the Internet appears Prof. IT Law: Well, so every contract requires two persons such an “anonymous” activity! or parties [or two entities such as companies]. And each Prof. IT Law: Yes, it does appear like that. But behind the party to the contract should know the other. That is the screens a lot of work is done to make sure the parties can challenge. identify each other well. That is because fundamentally, IT Executive: I see. But that is quite simple. Is it not? each party to a contract [whether electronically or in the Prof. IT Law: In real life that is quite simple. The parties real world] should know who the other is. often know each other already. Or have been introduced IT Executive: And the “electronic trails” can often be more to each other by a trusted third party or parties. Can you reliable in tracking people and their purchases! think of other ways in which parties get to know each other in the “real world”? Prof. IT Law: You are right. In the “real word” or nondigital economy, anonymity is possible by using cash and IT Executive: Through agents, distributors, or dealers? agents and other devices. But in the world of electronic Prof. IT Law: You are right. And often, each party makes commerce that is more diffi cult in many ways. enquiries about the other. Or asks for information about the other, while making some disclosures about itself. IT Executive: But why is it important for the parties to know each other? IT Executive: I know about this. We call it “due diligence” in our company. Prof. IT Law: Because the basic aim of commercial law is to bring “certainty” to dealings. And for that, each party Prof. IT Law: That’s right. Now consider web-based should know who he or she is dealing with. contracts that we now know are fundamental to electronic commerce. How do you know the other party here? Or IT Executive: Ah, thank you. I do appreciate how you simplify that the other party is genuine - that is he is really who law for people like me. I look forward to meeting you again he says he is? soon. IT Executive: I now see the challenge here. I guess buyers on Prof. IT Law: Yes, I enjoy the sessions with you too. See a website go by the reputation of the website owner. you soon. n

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 37 Ambereen Pradhan HR Director/Promoter of Mumbai-based Energia Wellbeing Pvt. Ltd.

Demystfying Assessment in the World of Work

My heart was in my mouth when people hitting professional statements. people’s lives through automobile called me an extrovert. From my school ‘Tell me about yourself’. I was manufacturing. Your goals should also be days till date I always felt I am an introvert. showered with this question in my in line with the company, i.e. to increase Reading was my passion, I always enjoyed interview. Strange but true I was not in the company’s sales by 20% in 1 year and working independently, and I could lend position to answer it contentedly. expand its regional presence. my ears to other people’s thoughts for I’m not talking about your roles or However, you as a person have hours together. The brownie point about social identities. You can be a friend, other dreams and goals outside which me was my jovial & comical character. brother/sister, employee, boyfriend/ diff er from your company’s. Perhaps you I did MBA with dual specialization in girlfriend, husband/wife, partner, father/ really love volleyball with a passion. Your Marketing & HR. mother, son/daughter, all at the same time, ideal vision is to be an internationally I took a sales job not because I but these are just an aspect of you. They accomplished volleyball player and wanted but as per public opinion I could don’t represent who you fundamentally become a highly sought-after volleyball connect with people faster & so selling are inside. Your inner self is who you really coach, training national-level teams. & marketing was my key strength. When are on the inside. That’s defi nitely diff erent from the visions I moved on the fi eld I became conscious you are expected to have as an employee. that I could not sell the product. My selling Hmmm.....again I was left with a question.... Likewise, this applies to all your other point was description of the product but identities too. For every identity, you with a swift jump to markdown pricing. Six Friday evening, I made up my mind have a set of purpose/values/visions/ months on fi eld and sales was not fl oating to raise this query in the HR Conference. motivations/goals/beliefs which are not around me. I quit my job and thought of As usual I walked in late & missed the entirely the same as your inner self’s. taking few steps backwards. I was more opportunity of Networking. To my luck These words actually unturned all the comfortable with the internal world than I came across a renowned psychologist stones in my mind & I got a clear picture of with external world. who used corporate assessment as a what she actually meant. I gradually took up an HR generalist major tool for working professionals to profi le. I was more restful with MS-Offi ce understand themselves at conscious, A company's worst enemy is not always and sticking to my desktop. I did that subconscious, & unconscious level. This the competition. Sometimes it's the fear for 8 months and realized that the job helps the employee to understand his that lives within its own walls. So it should I am doing is too droning and it couldn’t optimal level of functioning at individual, begin by clarifying who “the employee” captivate my interest for too long and I left team, & organizational level. is... the job. I was zapped if these assessments The noise of waves on the beach, could actually help me uncover my hidden I very clearly remember her words.... pampering myself with a cold coff ee & potential and give a signifi cance and We believe that it’s not the outer covering my thoughts churning from positive to rationale to my perplexed state of mind & which matters but employees need to negative, I was trying to comprehend the career. get in to new fragile attire by tying their unique fl avor in me. It was a war between Trying to uncover your inner self knot with assessment to give them a true internal interests & external suggestions. can be a tricky process. For one, you hold understanding of self in order to live a I realized my organization couldn’t add multiple identities in your life, each with smooth coalition in diff erent arenas, i.e. color to my wings nor I could get my their own sets of socially defi ned values, personal, professional, and social. problem fi xed. I guess I had to learn to visions, expectations etc. These may not With the incessant evolution of walk between both the worlds. directly conform to what you represent. technology we have often wondered Two weeks later, I got an interview For example, let’s say you are an about what pre-employment testing call from a company and I was all prepared employee of an automobile company. will look like in the not so distant future. to crack it. Meanwhile I not only upgraded As an employee, your mission should be While psychometric tests have changed my CV but also got a new pair of formal congruent with whatever your company’s over time, the evolution of psychometric attire, formal shoe & geared up with hard- mission is, say to improve quality of testing has been measured. By no means is this slow metamorphosis a bad thing. Psychometric tests are highly Psychometric tests are highly important scientifi c tools and care important scientifi c tools and care must must be taken to preserve the integrity of these tools, especially be taken to preserve the integrity of these tools, especially when they contribute so when they contribute so strongly to high-stake decisions. strongly to high-stake decisions.

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 38 www.csi-india.org In the last decade we have seen a migration from ‘paper and pencil’ tests Modern day assessments cover enormous subjects such as Risk- to online assessment; and now the shift Taking, Leadership, Positivity, Creativity, assessing Organization seems to be toward mobile technologies. Although the medium for testing has Health, Climate, and Commitment. changed, the content of assessment has remained largely unaltered. This is where literacy among working professionals has implement employee development and we see the largest potential for change. become critical to organization success. training. Employee development will help Say your organization wanted to The purpose of the needs assessment managers eff ectively manage, motivate, assess how a managerial candidate would is to help professionals determine what and empower employees resulting in respond to a scenario when approached you need to learn to, for example, qualify higher rates of employee retention. By by a staff member with a particular type for a certain job, overcome a performance using employee assessments, managers of issue. Is that individual able to not problem or achieve a goal in your career are better able to take stock of an only interpret the dialogue between two development plan. The assessment tools employee's interests and aptitudes and characters, but also pick up on non-verbal are helpful when the source of information help them apply these talents where most cues such as facial expression? What are is specifi c and reliable. appropriate. they focussing on, do they notice changes Assessments throw radiance on So many people are left with scars in mood, and are they oblivious to key ‘Know What You Don’t Know’....With from their childhood from how little skills information? Depending on the set of the onset of Corporate Assessments & potential they have. More scars develop actions taken by the virtual manager, the and availability of information, change as people get older and experience more situation could be resolved in the best becomes the only permanent thing in this pain. I was also a victim of it as I was possible manner, or take a turn for the world. What you think you are a master conditioned to think and rethink in the worse. This technology could facilitate of today may not be the same tomorrow. same track without any self-knowledge this revolutionary type of testing. Therefore, Assessments connections and awareness. Integration of HR, Psychology, and matter. Determining and accepting which Technology has brought a consistent areas you have inadequate information My assessments gave me a true picture of change in the eff ectiveness of and knowledge is very important towards Who Am I... organizational style of functioning. successfully installing some credibility upon With competition moving Global it According to me assessment was yourself and making an informed decision is important to face change not just as limited to recruitment and performance towards learning and upgrading skills. a bottom line challenge but along with management, but Software-based The meaning and dynamics of opportunities too. Assessment model which stands apart eff ective assessment and instruction Assessments helped me obtaining by incorporating assessment in not only identify some of the related, hitherto objective, comprehensive evaluation and just standardized HR processes but also unanticipated, expectations for leadership relevant information about my capability customized HR tools & techniques by and business development. Assessments followed with intervention to function in a using principles of Positive Psychology. frame these expectations in terms of sets wide variety of areas. Modern day assessments cover of skills strength, areas of improvement, I got myself parked in the profi le enormous subjects such as Risk-Taking, which may serve as a focus for principal matched as per my skills, knowledge, and Leadership, Positivity, Creativity, assessing self-refl ection and professional planning. ability and have become a star performer Organization Health, Climate, and This will ultimately enhance from a nonperformer. Commitment. These assessments creates ‘Psychological Contract’ between the two Connecting the dots between a win-win situation for both the employee coworkers. your true potential and organizational & employer by creating a matrix for One of the greatest challenges faced productivity is the master key in today’s organization by profi ling their employees by managers is the strategic personal World of Work. using our distinctive assessment tools and development of their employees in order designing interventions for all levels. to ensure eff ective use of their talent. To Pursue a New You through Eff ective In a climate of accountability & properly manage this important resource, Organizational Assessment... I Did It....So autonomy, the development of assessment they must identify their challenges and Can You!!! n

Ambereen Pradhan is the Director/Promoter of Mumbai-based Energia Wellbeing Pvt. Ltd. Ambereen, Cofounded Energia Wellbeing in August, 2010 after jointly heading Masina Institute for Psychotherapy and Behavioral Sciences and Dr. Matcheswalla's counseling Center at Masina Hospital. Completed her graduation in the fi eld of Sociology & Psychology, from Sophia College, Mumbai followed by Masters in Developmental and Counseling Psychology from S.N.D.T. Women's University, Mumbai. Futher she has completed diff erent specialization programs in the fi eld of psychology: R.E.B.T. Trained, Diploma in School Counseling, NLP & Self Hypnosis Workshops, and Short-term Psychotherapies courses. About the Author

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 39 Dr. Debasish Jana Brain Teaser Editor, CSI Communications

Crossword » Test your Knowledge on History of IT Solution to the crossword with name of fi rst all correct solution provider(s) will appear in the next issue. Send your answers to CSI Communications at email address [email protected] with subject: Crossword Solution - CSIC August 2012 123 4 5 CLUES 6 ACROSS

2. National Centre for Software Development and Computing 7 Techniques (6) 7. An early storage medium (4,9) 89 8. Earliest known counting tool for use in computation (6) 10. Considered as Father of Computer Science (4,6) 13. The type of computer language that is made up of 0’s and 1’s (7) 16. Person known for mechanical tabulation of punched card data (9) 18. The fi rst electronic computer of the world (5) 10 11 20. Indian company that made the fi rst indigenous digital computer (4) 21. The company that introduced the fi rst personal computer (3) 22. First electronic computer component (6,4) 24. The fi rst Indian software and management consultancy fi rm established in late 60s (3) 12 13 14 15 25. A time-sharing operating system of the late 60s and early 70s (3) 26. Family of mainframe computers developed and produced in the 16 17 Byelorussian SSR from 1959 to 1975 (5) 28. Programmed Data Processor as series of minicomputers made by DEC (3) 18 19 29. An object-oriented, imperative, refl ective, and functional programming language (4) 20 21 30. An operating system initially created by Microsoft and IBM (3) 31. Early adopter of ferrite core memory computer developed at TIFR in late 50s (6) 22 23 32. The primary language of IBM 1401 (9) 34. Data storage medium that used magnetic recording (8,4) 24 DOWN 1. Online Data Processor machine developed at TIFR in late 60s (5) 25 3. The computer language that is claimed to be the fi rst object-oriented language (6) 26 27 4. First single chip microprocessor made by this company in early 70s (5) 5. A multi-paradigm computer programming language (4) 28 6. A disk storage medium (8) 9. World's fi rst lady computer programmer (3,8) 11. Size in inches for early fl oppy disks (5) 29 30 12. Early use of a special card that carried digital information (5,4) 14. First Indian transistorized computer developed by ISI and JU in early 60s (5) 15. Inventor of FORTRAN computer programming language (4,6) 17. First Personal computer was known as this (3,2) 31 32 33 19. First dedicated Indian fi rm responsible for maintaining computers (3) 22. Stored program architecture is commonly known as this architecture (3,7) 23. A popular functional programming language (2) 26. Operating system for x86 based personal computers (2,3) 27. The Formula Translator computer programming language (7) 34 32. An early object typed programming language (3) 33. Disk Operating System (3)

Solution to July 2012 crossword

Do you know Punch Card? 1 2 A SPEC T 3 (Courtesy: Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card) A B 4 5 M ATLAB C 6 7 8 A punched card or punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper G RAYS C A LE E U R 9 that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes HV R R GB O 10 11 in predefined positions. Now obsolete as a recording medium, punched cards were D ILATION A R P S 12 widely used throughout the 19th century for D G IP 13 14 controlling textile looms and in the late 19th and C ONVOL UT ION I 15 early 20th century for operating fairground organs WOFG REEN 16 17 and related instruments. They were used through E R D AS W G 18 19 20 the 20th century in unit record machines for I I D EMPOT ENT C 21 22 input, processing, and data storage. Early digital H G C IA O 23 24 25 computers used punched cards, often prepared IIC ONT RAS T L F L 26 An 80-column punched card STD H S H UE L O using machines, as the primary medium (Source: Wikipedia) for input of both computer programs and data. TI E M IR 27 OZ R ESOLUTION P I 28 GA P INPM 29 30 31 Congratulations to R OTAT ION T A FFLINE 32 Ms. P. Deepa (Panimalar Engineering College, Chennai) and AI XGB ITS N N T Dr. Suresh Kumar (Manav Rachna International University, Faridabad) MO E F C G R 33 for getting ALMOST ALL correct answers to July month’s crossword. NLH ALFTONE Y

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 40 www.csi-india.org Dr. Debasish Jana Ask an Expert Editor, CSI Communications

Your Question, Our Answer “I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then fi nding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” ~ Isaac Newton

Subject: Recursive Shell Programming statement is given in line 10 as echo 1, wherefrom the recursion starts returning. Thus, the evaluation sequence is expected as: I was trying to write a small recursive shell script for unix, but getting a factorial(3) = 3 * factorial(2) = 3 * 2 * factorial(1) = 3 * 2 * 1 = 6 peculiar error stating “expr: non-numeric argument”. The code is given below: 1. #!/bin/bash When the recursion starts returning, at line 6, the variable $val1 gets 2. function factorial() the value as returned from factorial $val0. In the ground case, in factorial 1, 3. { you are echoing 1, thus $val1 gets 1 (whatever you have echoed), and (line 4. if [ $1 -gt 1 ]; then 7) $val2 becomes 2 * 1 i.e. 2 which is returned to the factorial 3 call waiting 5. val0=`expr $1 - 1` on the statement val1 = `factorial 2`. 6. val1=`factorial $val0` In the process, if you use (original line 8) echo result is: $val2, then 7. val2=`expr $1 \* $val1` the caller factorial 3 that has called factorial 2 recursively, gets the value as 8. echo result is: $val2 ‘result is: 2’ (this does not happen for the caller factorial 2 that had called 9. else factorial 1 recursively, as factorial 1 returned only 1 (echo 1 in line 10), which 10. echo 1 is pure numeric. So, factorial 3 when gets a return values as ‘result is: 2’ 11. fi in the expression evaluation line (line 7) val2=`expr $1 \* $val1`, it fails 12. } because $val1 has the value of ‘result is: 2’, which is nonnumeric. As such, 13. echo "Enter a number: " when you correct this statement as (line 8) echo $val2, you are returning 14. read num the numeric expression that goes well in the caller in the ‘expr’ argument. 15. result=`factorial $num` The ‘expr’ getting the numeric argument now is happy, and the desired 16. echo "Factorial of $num = $result" result comes. This small program is supposed to print as “Factorial of 5 = 120”, when I run the This does not mean that you cannot return string from a function. unix shell script and provide 5 as input. The output is coming as below: You can echo a string as well from within a function. But, you cannot use a Enter a number: returned string in a numeric expression, that’s all. Another alternative is to 3 use a variable instead, for example the last value of val2 can be used as the expr: non-numeric argument return value from the function, for example: Factorial of 3 = result is: 15. factorial $num Another observation is that if I change the statement at line 8 as below: 8.echo $val2 16. echo "Factorial of $num = $val2" The output is coming as: Another way is to use return, here is the complete script using return. Enter a number: Note, when we use return from function, we use $? To get the value 3 returned from the function. Factorial of 3 = 6 1. #!/bin/bash What could be wrong? Thanks. Abhijit Patra, Kolkata 2. function factorial() This is an interesting question. From the shell program you 3. { A have given, it looks like this is running under bash shell. However, 4. if [ $1 -gt 1 ]; then this may run on other shells too. In general, a function in a bash shell (and in other shells too) can echo a string, return some exit status (must be a 5. val0=`expr $1 - 1` number, not a string), or defi ne a variable so that this can be shared. 6. factorial $val0 Let’s go step by step in your given program in a top-down way of 7. val1=$? execution sequence. Down below the function, you are executing 13.echo "Enter a number: " and then 14. read num. Upon executing the shell 8. val2=`expr $1 \* $val1` script, this echoes or prints the message text Enter a number: and you are 9. return $val2 providing 3 as input. So, the variable $num stores the value 3. Now, you are calling the shell function factorial passing $num as argument (as in line 15): 10. else 15.result=`factorial $num` 11. return 1 So, the control goes to the function factorial starting from line 2 12. fi (actually line 4). The argument $num is obtained as $1 within the function 13. } factorial. In fact, if you had more arguments you could have got them as 14. echo "Enter a number: " $2, $3 etc. $@ as all of them, $# for number of arguments. Interestingly, to get the last argument, you may use eval last=\${$#}. 15. read num Now you check, in lines 4, if $1 is greater than 1, then you have (line 5) 16. factorial $num $val0 set as $1 -1 i.e. 2 for the fi rst call of factorial for your data passed as 3. Then, you call factorial function again (recursively) with argument now 17. echo "Factorial of $num = $?" passed as $val0 i.e. 2. This goes in a recursion, and the recursion breaker This will also provide you the desired result.

Send your questions to CSI Communications with subject line ‘Ask an Expert’ at email address [email protected]

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 41 H R Mohan Happenings@ICT AVP (Systems), The Hindu, Chennai Email: [email protected] ICT News Briefs in July 2012

The following are the ICT news and headlines • Govt not for Internet censorship - Law • As bench gets crowded, IT majors delay of interest in July 2012. They have been Minister Khurshid. hiring freshers. compiled from various news & Internet • The former Telecom Secretary, Mr. sources including the fi nancial dailies -- The Siddharth Behura, has blamed the then Company News: Tie-ups, Joint Hindu, Business Line, Economic Times. Telecom Minister, Mr. A Raja, for the Ventures, New Initiatives irregularities in spectrum allocation. • TiE Global Deal Connect to enable start- Voices & Views • TRAI stipulates quality norms for ups in tier-II and -III cities to access • The public cloud computing market in mobile data services. It has suggested capital. India that was pegged at $160-192 million that operators have to off er a minimum • Airtel, HP to provide cloud services for in 2011 is expected to grow at $685 million throughput of 90% of the subscribed small enterprises. by 2014. The overall Indian market for speed on an average. • Pressmart to launch an app soon for public and private cloud stands at around • DoT may de-link auctioneer fee from textbooks to lighten your kids’ school $860-$912 million in 2011- Zinnov. reserve price. bags. • India emerged the third most infected • Spectrum can be pledged for bank loan. • Microsoft’s image-matching tech helps country after the US and Italy to lose • Cabinet approves incentive plan for stamp out child abuse on the Net. connection to the Internet on July 9, if electronics manufacturing. • US court has refused to lift the ban on the PC is infected by a malware called • 2G case: Enforcement Directorate sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab in the DNS Changer. questions Raja for the fi rst time. country. • Global IT spending to reach $3.6 trillion • Delhi High Court quashes blanket cap of • ‘Leap second’ wreaks Internet havoc. this year - Gartner. 200 SMSs/day. • Datawind grapples with huge demand • Sixty-two percent of affl uent children • Govt. to issue fi nal document for for tablets. It has to deliver 30 lakh share personal information online - spectrum auction on Aug 22. tablets to those who booked online. McAfee survey fi ndings in 10 Indian • Spectrum pricing: EGoM may cut reserve • Google phasing out fi ve products. cities. price, but hike revenue share. Google Mini, iGoogle, Google Talk • Software tools best way to monitor • 2G spectrum: 9 benefi ciaries under Chatback, Google Video, and Symbian CBDT lens. child on Internet - Trend Micro’s country search app. • Govt. to set up testing labs for IT manager, Mr. Amit Nath. • MobME Wireless has developed an products. • By 2015, India is expected to have 237 advanced 3G-based security solution, • 2G scam: No evidence against PMO, million mobile Internet users - survey by a mobile-based crime and incident FinMin, says CBI. Norton. reporting platform (MCIRP) for National • DoT’s monitoring wing to inspect tower • Proposed US Jobs Act to have limited Investigation Agency (NIA). sites for radiation norms. short-term impact on TCS - Moody’s. • RCom arm fi les preliminary prospectus • Google, Facebook should share revenue IT Manpower, Staffi ng & Top Moves for IPO in Singapore. with us as they are enjoying at the cost • Pawar quits as head of ministers’ group • Facebook to soon launch job board. of network operators - Airtel. on telecom. Chidambaram to head • gets EuroFinance Treasury • Beware of mails with photos, fake traffi c EGoM on telecom. award. tickets - Kaspersky Lab. • Kris Gopalakrishnan to head Govt. cloud • R&D center of Alcatel-Lucent in Chennai • Indian IT spending to grow 16.3% this computing panel. has fi led nearly 75 patents on various year to $43.57 billion - IDC. • US fi rms seek more green cards for technologies. • “The Indian IT industry is consuming Indian, Chinese techies. • Yahoo! sets up big data research unit at 14,000 MW of power to run about • Huawei redeploys over 300 Indian IIT Madras. 43 million servers, but only 5-10% of employees in global operations. • Yahoo! apologizes for password breach aggregate capacity of these 43 million • A number of leading multinationals of 4.5 lakh user. servers is being used”. ‘Deployment are using virtual games as part of their • Microsoft launches Offi ce 2013. of cloud will help industry save power’ recruitment process. • Education institutions may get access – Mr. V Srinivasa Rao, SVP, Mahindra • Kalam ‘to inspire’ youth through ‘Billion to super computing research though Beats’, his Facebook page. Satyam at a FICCI meeting. “Garuda’, the Grid Computing initiative • TCS adds 4,962 employees in the fi rst of CDAC. Telecom, Govt, Policy, Compliance quarter ended June 2012 and expects • Google has launched a beta version of • The Finance Ministry and the Planning to add 50,000 employees in the current Web Lab, which will host - physically and Commission have opposed the proposal fi nancial year. to charge one-time fee whereas the • Citrix India to increase headcount by virtually - fi ve experiments: Universal cabinet lobs one-time spectrum fee 200 this year. Orchestra, Data Tracer, Sketchbots, decision to ministers’ group. • Keste to double staff strength to 150. Teleporter, and Lab Tax Explorer. • Auction guidelines silent on liberalizing • Hiring plan of 35,000 on track - Infosys. • Microsoft to release Windows 8 on CDMA spectrum. • AP Governor lashes out at IT industry for Oct 26. • Cabinet okays scheme for electronics high salaries. • Microsoft reports its fi rst quarterly loss manufacturing clusters. • MindTree reduces headcount by 170. in its 26 years as a public company. • ‘India cannot sidestep obligation under • Hinduja Global to hire 3,000 this year. • Google unveils world’s fastest Internet bilateral treaties’ - Lord Goldsmith QC, • Pitney Bowes to hire 200 people for connection off ering lightning-fast access former Attorney General of UK. Pune R&D center. of one gigabit per second. n

CSI Communications | August 2012 | 42 www.csi-india.org CSI News

From CSI Chapters » Please check detailed news at: http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chapternews-August2012

SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GIST BANGALORE (REGION V) Mr. G S Chandy 21 April 2012: Workshop on “One Page Management System (OPMS)” Mr. G S Chandy, invented the ‘One Page Management System’ (OPMS). He was close collaborator of the late John N Warfi eld and he facilitated over 60 highly commended OPMS workshops for organizations. OPMS integrates various management systems for achieving a MISSION, like Things To Do, Transitive relationship between Things to be done, Barriers, Strengths, Opportunities, Milestones to be achieved & other systems like Planning/ Marketing/Information/Production/Learning/Problem Solving and Finance Control Systems.

Mr. G S Chandy, Inventor of OPMS, interacti ng with the workshop parti cipants Dr. Kodlady Surendra Shetty, Dhruv Taneja 28 April 2012: Talk on “Issues: Back & Neck pain, why is it common among Software professionals? ” Key points of the talk were - a) Reality behind every spine-related injury, b) How to manage and eradicate pain without the help of medication, c) How advanced technology brought revolutionary changes in comparison to old conservative approach towards these injuries, d) Signifi cance of vertical MRI scanning facility over traditional MRI scanning facility, and e) Pictorial presentation of few simple physiotherapy exercises which could make management of few chronic pain simple and easy. Ms. Aparna Naik 26-29 May and 9-10 June 2012: Workshop on “Selenium Testing” Selenium is a leading software test automation tool. It is Open Source tool and is becoming very popular among Software Testing fraternity. This workshop was completely hands-on for two days. In this workshop, participants learnt from the basics of Selenium to how to create good automation framework.

Parti cipants att ending workshop NASHIK (REGION VI) Mr. Madhav Shirvalkar 14 July 2012: Lecture on “Unicode” A talk on "Unicode" was organized to raise awareness of it in the society and industry. The Unicode Consortium enables people around the world to use computers in any language. An essential part of this seminar was to educate and engage academic and scientifi c communities, and the general public. The speaker spoke about the current status of Unicode in the Indian regional language and appealed to all to become members of Unicode consortium and make diff erent Indian regional languages available on the globe.

Mr. Madhav Shirvalkar during seminar talk

CSICSI CoCommunicationsmmunici ata ioonsn | AugustAugust 20122012 | 43 SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GIST COCHIN (REGION VII) Mr. Sreejesh 27 June 2012: Technical Talk on “Network Auditing” Mr. Sreejesh S explained about the networking architecture and emphasized that it is vital that an organization’s network infrastructure keeps pace with the business growth. Therefore, Network Audit Service is a must to identify and avoid potential problems caused by rapid expansions. He also mentioned that Network Audit can help determine how well the existing infrastructure is working, and gives an idea about new services and applications that may be required.

Mr. Sreejesh S taking a session on network auditi ng (REGION VII) Mr. S N Ravichandran 24 April 2012: Cyber Security Meeting The speaker talked about threats and vulnerabilities in the context of cyber security. Highlighting today's challenges in this area, he recommended a cautious approach for all the netizens especially in the light of dangers posed by professional hackers and by organized hackers' groups. He spoke about the relevance of IT Act and the evidence mechanism. He described various IT Acts as amendments of 2008. He shared his experiences in investigating and assisting the police in investing cybercrime especially in bank fraud cases. He highlighted practical problems faced by investigators right from the stage of enquiry and FIR up to the stage of fi nal conviction.

From L to R : Mr. S N Ravichandran, Mr. C Ravi, and Mr. Valliappan Dr. P Narayanaswamy, Dr. S Subha Rani, Dr. A Chitra, 24 June 2012: Orientation programme on “How to face Anna University Dr. K Natarajan, and Dr. G Sankarasubramanian Engineering Counselling” This orientation program was for aspiring engineering students. The objective was to provide a platform for parents and students to listen to and interact with senior academicians. The academic experts guided students on the Anna University Single Window Engineering Admission process and provided clarity on various queries regarding choice of branches/colleges and latest industry and placement trends. Dr. P Narayanaswamy assured the students that the process is very transparent.

Dr. P Narayanaswamy, addressing the details of engineering counseling of Anna University Mr. Sandeep Agawam 25 June 2012: Talk on “Enabling Business Agility in a Dynamic World” Mr. Sandeep Agawam spoke about changing times and the need to stay competitive. Businesses also have to change. Successful companies are preparing by shifting their focus from deployment to delivery. Citrix enables organizations to step ahead of new application requirements. Today, applications are the life- blood of the enterprise. Organizations are increasingly represented by the quality of those applications. He mentioned that everyone in the organization will play an important role in delivering the benefi ts of Desktop Virtualization to the business. TRIVANDRUM (REGION VII) Mr. Raghunandan Menon 30 June 2012: One-day workshop on “Risk Management” Chapter organized a one-day case study based Workshop on Risk Management in Software Projects. The workshop focused on preparing an eff ective risk management plan by identifying risks, qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, risk response, and contingency planning using case studies in software projects.

Speaker during workshop

CSICSI CoCommunicationsmmuniccattionss | AugustAuA gusts 20122012 | 44 wwwww.csi-india.orgw.csi-i indiaa.org From Student Branches » http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chapternews-August2012 SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GIST AES INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER STUDIES (AESICS), AHMEDABAD (REGION-III) Prof. Amit Ganatra 6 May 2012: An expert lecture on “Research areas in Data Mining” The speaker explained how to start research and discussed the exact fl ow of research. He spoke on classifi cation and diff erent algorithms used in data mining. He explained how classifi cation & algorithm is useful in research and how to select a topic. He told students to select the subject fi rst and then fi nd papers on the subject. He spoke about various available tools like Weka , XL Miner, R-GUI in Data Mining and gave various examples of Data Mining.

Prof. Amit Ganatra giving lecture on research areas in data mining Dr. Sashikant Sharma 6 May 2012: An expert lecture on “Research areas in Artifi cial Intelligence” The speaker talked about diff erent research areas in Image Processing, Image Compression, Image Segmentation, Image Pre-processing, Image Restoration, Image Sharpening, and Image Enhancement. He spoke about Geo Information Technology (GIS). He informed that ISRO has large satellite data available which can be used for research work and discussed about what type of research work is being done by researchers in Image processing. He gave example on Image sharpening and smoothing and explained various fi lters that are useful for removing noise in Image.

Dr. Sashikant Sharma giving lecture on research areas in image processing NIRMA UNIVERSITY (REGION-III) 24 March 2012: Computer Literacy Program Since computers have become a necessity in today’s world and so this event was aimed at teaching the underprivileged students about how to operate Internet, MS Word, Notepad, Paint etc.

31 March 2012: Inspirational Movie The students were shown an inspirational movie ‘I am Kalam’ in the auditorium to teach them values.

Volunteers giving online training BAPATLA ENGINEERING COLLEGE, BAPATLA, AP (REGION-V) Dr. Mohit P Tahiliani 13-14 July 2012: Workshop on “Network Simulator-2” The topics covered during the workshop were - a) C++ architecture of NS-2, b) Wired TCL Scripts, c) Wireless TCL Scripts, d) MANETs simulation using NS-2, e) Understanding Trace fi les, and f) Writing AWK Scripts. BTech students from Department of IT and Computer Science & Engineering underwent training on NS-2 tool in the workshop.

Speaker conducti ng the workshop

CSICSI CoCommunicationsmmunici ata ioonsn | AugustAugust 20122012 | 45 SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GIST DADI INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY (DIET), ANAKAPALLE, AP (REGION-V) Mr. S Poorna Chandra Rao and Prof. B Jagan Mohan Rao 23 June 2012: Alan Turing Centenary Celebrations and technical talk on “Corporate Communication” Speaking to students, Sri. S Poorna Chandra Rao remembered the great contribution to the computer industry by Alan Turing. He said that nowadays communication skills are important to present ourselves in front of interviewers of any company. He advised to inculcate learning of communication skills in parallel with their regular academics. He told students how to learn the technical skills. On this occasion, Prof. B Jagan Mohan Rao explained the contribution of Alan Turing’s research to the modern computer era.

Left : Speaker conducti ng technical talk, right: Parti cipants at DIET GMR INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, RAJAM, AP (REGION-V) Mr. J Vasudeva Rao and Mr. M Satish 7 July 2012: Event with theme “Express Yourself” COLLAGE event was conducted with the theme “Express yourself”. Students brought newspaper cuttings, ribbons, magazine cuttings, and other paper material to participate in the event. Posters were made with innovative thinking and ideas. Creativity was applied to justify the theme. This event provided a platform for students to express themselves by designing a poster through paper cuttings in which they expressed their ideologies, interests, aims etc.

Students parti cipati ng in the collage event Mr. B S P Srinivas and Mr. MallikarjunaMatam 14-15 July 2012: Two-day National Workshop on “Application Development using DOT NET” Mr. B S P Srinivas inaugurated the workshop and on the fi rst day shared his knowledge on DOT NET, CLR Execution model, Building, Packaging, Deploying and Administering Applications, Types, and Assemblies. On the second day, Mr. MallikarjunaMatam delivered a lecture on ASP.NET, ADO.NET, fi les, images, and media and security in DOT NET.

From Left to Right: Mrs. G Anuradha, Mr.B S P Srinivas, Dr. C L V R S V Prasad, Mr. MallikarjunaMatam, and Prof. Shashikumar G Totad K.K. WAGH INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND RESEARCH, NASHIK (REGION-VI) Mr. Sumit Kumar Singhavi 14-15 July 2012: Two-day workshop on “Cloud Computing” Topics covered during the workshop were: a) Introduction to Cloud Computing and Salesforce.com demo, b) Developing Application on Salesforce.com, c) Developing Application on Google App Engine, and d) Cloud Security, QoS, Middle-wares and Mobile Computing. Students from TE, BE Computer Engg., and TY MCA attended the workshop.

Speaker while conducti ng workshop A.V.C. COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, MANNAMPANDAL (REGION-VII) Mr. S Tamizhvendan 3 July 2012: Awareness Programme - Placement Opportunities The Resource Person started his session with the importance of communication skills and advised students to speak with more confi dence. He discussed many live examples and narrated small stories for showing the importance of attitude. He also touched upon the concepts of Object Oriented Programming. At the end, he asked students to read books and newspapers.

Mr. S Tamizhvendan delivering the lecture on placement opportuniti es

CSICSI CoCommunicationsmmuniccattionss | AugustAuA gusts 20122012 | 46 wwwww.csi-india.orgw.csi-i indiaa.org SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GIST JAYARAM COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, TIRUCHIRAPALLI (REGION-VII) Dr. S A Sahaaya Arul Mary, Mr. S Ramasamy, and 6 July 2012: Inaugural function for next year Dr. N Kannan The welcome address was delivered by Dr. S A Sahaaya Arul Mary. Mr. S Ramasamy discussed various qualities that are required for software professional and the ways to improve communication. The presidential address was delivered by Dr. N Kannan.

Guests on stage for the inaugural functi on S Sathiya Devi, Dr. S A Sahaaya Arul Mary, and 20 July 2012: Seminar on “Data Mining” Dr. N Kannan Prof. S Sathiya Devi explained various techniques in data mining and explained how to apply association rule mining in remote clinical diagnosis for health care. The welcome address was delivered by Dr. S A Sahaaya Arul Mary.

Guests on stage conducti ng seminar

Following new student branches were opened as detailed below – REGION V . B.N.M. Institute of Technology, Bangalore - Inauguration of Student Branch was held on 11th May 2012. The chief guest of the function was Ms. K S Bhanumathi. Mr. Piyush Gupta was the resource person, who presented a talk on “Cloud Computing & Virtualization”. He highlighted the need for virtualization, advantages of virtualization and how cloud computing goes hand- in–hand with virtualization. Lighting of the lamp by the Dignitaries: Dr. B G Dr. Kavitha C briefed on the benefi ts of being a member to CSI and encouraged students to Prasad, Prof. T J RamaMurthy, K S Bhanumathi, organize and participate in various activities. Piyush Gupta, Sri. Narayan Rao R Maanay, Dr. Sahana D Gowda,, DDr.r. KKavKavithaithha C REGION VII . Union Christian College, Aluva, Kerala - The CSI Student Branch was inaugurated on 25th June 2012. Mrs. Ambika I S, Chairperson, inaugurated the Chapter. In her inaugural address, she pointed out the benefi ts of joining CSI and the various activities held under Cochin Chapter. The programme was presided over by Director of M.C.A, Dr. A V Alex. He gave an insight about the role of professional bodies like CSI in colleges.

Cochin : Mrs. Veena Jose, CSI welcoming the guests on the inauguration of the Student Chapter

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Registered with Registrar of News Papers for India - RNI 31668/78 If undelivered return to : Regd. No. MH/MR/N/222/MBI/12-14 Samruddhi Venture Park, Unit No.3, Posting Date: 10 & 11 every month. Posted at Patrika Channel Mumbai-I 4th fl oor, MIDC, Andheri (E). Mumbai-400 093 Date of Publication: 10 & 11 every month

47th Annual National Convention of the CSI 2012 Computer Society of India organized by The Kolkata Chapter December 1-2, 2012, Science City, Kolkata

Call for Paper and Participation Keynote Speakers Convention Theme: S V Raghavan Scientifi c Secretary,Offi ce of the Intelligent Infrastructure Principal Scientifi c Advisor to the Government of India, Convention Event: Chief Architect, National Knowledge Network International Conference on Intelligent Infrastructure Prof. Pradeep Ray Director of Asia-Pacifi c Ubiquitous The Computer Society of India Kolkata Chapter (CSIKC) cordially invites you to participate in Healthcare Research Centre (APuHC), School of Information the 47th Annual National Convention of CSI. While this event will follow the glorious footsteps Systems & Technology Management, of previous conventions, it would still be a unique event focussing on the theme of Intelligent University of New South Wales, Australia Infrastructure. The event will comprise of Plenary Sessions, Paper Presentations and Panel Discussions.

Prof. V S Subrahmanian Director of the Center for Digital Intelligent Infrastructure: Compelling changes in society and nature require fusion between the International Government (CDIG), and Co-Director of the Laboratory for physical and the virtual worlds. Today’s society is a complex system of systems; it is a combination Computational Cultural Dynamics (LCCD) at the University of Maryland of economic development, public safety, healthcare, energy and utilities, transportation, education and various other systems. The function of intelligent infrastructure is to model as well as manage Invited Speakers these complex interconnected systems based on a greater understanding of the interconnectivity Reji Kumar Pillai, President of India Smart Grid Forum Dr. Alakananda Banerjee, Head. Department of and utilisation of the latest developments in ICT. The inter-disciplinary nature of intelligent Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Max Healthcare infrastructure provides a great deal of opportunity for creative approaches to problem solving. The Vinod Gupta, Founder, Space Design Consultants International Conference on Intelligent Infrastructure in CSI-2012 aims to provide a platform for Deepak Konnur, Vice President – Solutions, Energy and Utilities - IBM fruitful deliberations on this theme of the hour. Dr. Suman Bhusan Bhattacharyya, Head - Health Informatics , TCS The theme includes (but not limited to) following topics: Debasish Ghosh, CTO at Nomura Research Institute Financial Technologies • Intelligent Infrastructure Applications Col. A. K. Nath (Retd.), Executive Director, Centre For ° Precision Agriculture and Smart Growth Systems Development of Advanced Computing ° Smart Grids and Wide Area Measurement Systems Debabrata Ghosh, Senior Consultant, IBM India ° Intelligent Building Automation Systems Venue: Science City Kolkata ° Intelligent Energy and Water Management Systems Convention Website: http://csi-2012.org/ ° Intelligent Manufacturing, Healthcare, Transportation Systems (Paper submission through convention website) • Intelligent Infrastructure Technologies The conference proceedings will be published by: ° Smart Structures and Federated Devices ° Sensor Signal Processing and Sensor Modelling ° Miniature Wireless Sensors and Networks, Nanoscale Sensors ° Security Issues in Smart Infrastructures, Smart GIS Last date of paper submission: Computational and Machine Intelligence Tools Aug 30, 2012 ° • Intelligent Infrastructure Platforms Notifi cation of paper acceptance: Sept 30, 2012 ° Sensor Web-enablement, Sensor Data Analytics Please contact ° Management of Big Data and Associated Development Technologies CSI Kolkata Chapter ° Next Generation Data Centre Technologies for the Exascale Era 5 Lala Lajpat Sarani (Elgin Road), 4th Floor, Kolkata 700 020 Phones: 2281-4458 Proceedings: Original unpublished research articles, development notes and position Telefax: 2280-2035 papers aligned with the theme of the convention will be published in the Proceedings of Email: [email protected] Web: http://csi-kolkata.org/ the International Conference on Intelligent Infrastructure. The author instructions for Registration paper submission are available at http://csi-2012.org/.

Registration Early Late Journal Special Issues: CSI Journal of Computing (ISSN: 2277-7091) will publish a Category (Till 30/10/2012) (After 30/10/2012) special issue on Intelligent Infrastructure after FAST TRACK review of extended CSI Member Rs. 4500 Rs. 5400 versions of selected papers from the conference. Non CSI Rs. 5000 Rs. 6000 Member Students Rs. 2000 Rs. 3000 CSI Communications | August 2012 | 50