The Hindu Business Line : Wired watchdogs

At times, it may be frustrating to watch how the powerful dictate ‘the discourse on transparency, accountability and openness, leaving little space for civil society to define these concepts’. Reassuringly, however, the past decade has seen inspiring global campaigns, aided by ICT (information and communication technology) tools and techniques, says ICTs and Indian Social Change ( www.sagepublications .com) edited by Ashwani Saith, M. Vijayabaskar, and V. Gayathri.

An essay titled ‘Wired watchdogs’ by Gopakumar Krishnan Thampi, included in the book, speaks of examples of such ICT-aided public accountability campaigns ranging from the electoral awareness initiative in Bangalore, to the anti-corruption moves in Brazil.

ICT-led initiatives, though, cannot replace conventional grassroots advocacy, the author observes. The essence, he says, is to blend the potential of technology with the zeal of the advocate.

Another point emphasised in the essay is that the tool has to fit the context. “One major fallacy perpetuated by the acolytes of the ICT revolution is the primacy accorded to high-end tools like the Internet,” rues Thampi.

In countries such as India, radio and cinema are still powerful in terms of reach and access and these media are largely unexplored in terms of effective use by civil society groups, he feels. For instance, “the same objective can be packaged as mass e-mails to educated urban users and also as stills in cinemas and as promos in the cable network to reach effectively into the rural enclaves.”

Interestingly, the essay suggests that strategic alliances be forged between civil society groups and the private sector groups (be they of marketing professionals, or software designers), especially because civil society groups often find it difficult to locate competent technical support.

Another piece of advice from Thampi is to dovetail ICT applications into existing programmes and initiatives, rather than reinvent the wheel.

Of value to those who seek urgent changes!

Blended learning

Blended learning is the most logical and natural evolution of our learning agenda, say Kaye Thorne and David Mackey in Everything you ever needed to know about Training, fourth edition ( www.vivagroupindia.com). They define ‘blended learning’ as a mix of multimedia technology, virtual classrooms, voice-mail, email, conference calls, online text animation, video streaming, podcasting and blogging (where articles are published online with the facility for readers to comment and also for company experts to present a point of view).

The authors aver that blended learning has the potential to provide the right learning at the right time and in the right place for each and every individual. “It can be truly universal, crossing global boundaries and bringing groups of learners together through different cultures and time zones.”

When working on the online content of blended training, take care not to simply put onto the Web the training programme, Thorne and Mackey counsel. They assure that used properly, and with the help of specialist design software and IT skills, there are excellent opportunities to make learning interactive, dynamic and fun.

Another precaution is to include opportunities for personal contact as part of the learning experience, because technology-based learning can lead to lack of human contact, with individual learners losing the opportunity to talk through their embryonic ideas with other people. It may be useful to remember, in this context, that “one of the potential losses from the reduction in training programmes is not so much what happens in the classroom or lecture theatre, but the learning that takes place on training events in those quieter, more intimate moments when two people start talking to each other at the end of a day, or in seminar groups before someone interrupts them and tells them to get on with the task.”

For a purposeful read.

Relational algebra and calculus

The basic set of operations for the relational model is the relational algebra, write Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe in Fundamentals of Database Systems, fifth edition ( www.pearsoned.co.in). “These operations enable a user to specify basic retrieval requests. The result of a retrieval is a new relation, which may have been formed from one or more relations.”

The algebra operations thus produce new relations, which can be further manipulated using operations of the same algebra, the authors explain. “A sequence of relational algebra operations forms a relational algebra expression, whose result will also be a relation that represents the result of a database query (or retrieval request).”

Although no commercial RDBMS in use today provides an interface for relational algebra queries, the core operations and functions of any relational system are based on relational algebra operations, say Elmasri and Navathe.

“Whereas the algebra defines a set of operations for the relational model, the relational calculus provides a higher-level declarative notation for specifying relational queries,” they continue. “A relational calculus expression creates a new relation, which is specified in terms of variables that range over rows of the stored database relations (in tuple calculus) or over columns of the stored relations (in domain calculus)…”

A book for the deeply DB-avid.

Wireless worries

What happens when no security is enabled on a wireless access point? Many dangerous things can happen. For instance, “just about anyone with a wireless-equipped laptop in the parking lot can connect to a wireless LAN (local-area network) located in an office building, manufacturing plant, or hospital,” warns Jim Geier in Deploying Voice over Wireless LANs ( www.ciscopress.com). The unsecured access point continually broadcasts a beacon that the wireless laptop receives, and the Microsoft Windows operating system displays the Service Set Identifier (SSID) found within the beacon as an available wireless network, he elaborates.

“The laptop owner, possibly a hacker, can then readily connect to the access point, which makes the hacker part of the company’s network. This feature allows the hacker to use strategies and tools to steal and corrupt data located on servers in the building.”

For example, says Geier, the hacker could run a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) port scanner and uncover unsecured HTTP administrative interfaces of applications and support tools on servers. “This could allow the hacker to create an account on the system for himself and then start stealing and corrupting files and applications.”

The moral, therefore, is that you must enable effective access control on the wireless LAN to block hackers from accessing the system.

Recommended addition to the administrators’ shelf.

Tailpiece

“To save on office overheads, we gave our employees laptops and allowed them to work from home but…”

“The productivity has fallen?”

“Not much, but they are now demanding that the office be redesigned as a holiday home!”

dmurali@thehindu.co.in