Science, state and society
by Amar Chandel
These are exciting times to be in the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. The premier organisation is shedding its typically bureaucratic inertia to emerge as a modern corporate entity under the leadership of noted scientist R.A. Mashelkar.

Science Quiz
by J. P. Garg

Music over Internet set to explode
by H.S. Jatana

THE Madison Project is the American music industry’s online music distribution system. The five major US recording firms which includes Sony Music also and which accounts for 80% of the music distribution market are promoting the project, along with computer Industry leader IBM. It will be possible to purchase more than 1000 items of music content online, and tests are under way with cable modems that are capable of downloading a dozen songs at a time. From packaged music to online music, music content will enter the home as digital data, via the Internet, creating an online distribution market that will surpass the traditional packaged music market.

This also represents a business opportunity for equipment manufacturers, and they are already moving to develop devices for the new distribution scheme. The industry expects a flood of new electronic products designed for online distribution instead of packaged music.

The Madison Project marks the beginning of the era of online distribution. Behind this development is the reality that content distribution technology has reached the point of practical use, being primarily driven by copyright protection technology. Music distribution over the Internet will lay the ground-work for the handling of digital content of other forms as well, such as videos and games.

The advantage of using the Internet is that it makes possible a variety of business models that have not been feasible under the conventional business scheme based on audio CD. Key benefits include lower costs for production, advertising and distribution. In conventional music distribution, an enormous capital investment was required for audio CD production and advertising. With the Internet, advertising is essentially free.

Because these costs are so large, the record and audio CD business has generally been dominated by the large firms with the capital available to handle it. However, thanks to PC technology, data compression technology and the Internet, anyone can now enter the music distribution business.

Everyone is on the same level when it comes to music distribution over the Internet. The advantages held by the major recording companies are their stable of artists, and the richness of their content selections. Under the Madison Project, the major recording companies will start off by using the standard audio CD distribution scheme as its basis for Internet distribution. The content currently sold in the form of audio CDs will be sold unchanged on the Internet, so that an album with 10 songs will also be sold on the internet as a single unit with 10 songs.

The major recording companies seem to be in a hurry to get the distribution of music via the Internet underway; the reason being that they are apprehensive about the appearance of the new music distribution firms. These small-scale businesses have created a whole new genre of content distribution, and this has led even the major distributors to fear that they might have had the rug pulled out from under them.

Take MP3.com Inc of the US for example, a music distribution venture company. The firm’s website is a popular one, visited daily by some 200,000 people from around the world, all of whom are interested in the over 10,000 free items of music content. Most of the available tracks are from non-famous artists, but even so, some 14 million songs have been downloaded in only one year since the service started.

New players
The phenomenon of newly emerged firms dragging the established leaders into the fray can be seen in the equipment business, too. The first manufacturers to release audio equipment for music distribution were firms that formerly had no business with audio equipment. The fruit of this endeavour has been a new genre of audio equipment that uses flash memory to record music data for playback.

Such developments have led major Japanese home appliance manufacturers to place technology development as their top priority. For example, in Feb. 1999, Sony Corp. announced the memoryStick Walkman concept, which is based on the firm’s MemoryStick compact flash.

New forms of distribution
New content distribution systems with music distribution menus are appearing in droves. The basic configuration of the distribution systems is the same: copyright management technology to provide protection, a high-efficiency data encoding technology (data compression) for music content, such as the Moving Picture Coding Experts Group Phase I (MPEG I) and a billing and collection system for content fees.

One of the critical technologies, copyright management, is probably the subject of most concern for those in the music industry. In addition to preventing unauthorised copying, it is also responsible for managing copy generation data and copyright information.

Audio compression technology is rapidly coming to the forefront with the emergence of music distribution via the Internet, and the distributors can now select the high-efficiency encoding technology most appropriate for each sales objective. It is now possible to compress data to one-tenth or one-twentieth of the original data size with no loss in audio CD quality.

Music distribution utilises a technology called content control, which is one step beyond mere copy protection. There are four basic methods of content control, namely: 1) copy generation control, which specifies the number of generations of copies that is possible; 2) copy count restriction, which specifies the number of times a copy can be made; 3) playback period restriction, which specifies a period of time after which the data can no longer be played; and 4) playback count restriction, which limits the number of times you can play the date.

Combinations of these basic methods and billing technology make it possible to develop totally new distribution models, such as free promotional content that can be played only three times, or content for which a fee is charged but which is only available for a certain time period.

Content control primarily uses encryption technology. For example, the encrypted music content file A is used together with a file B that contains the control information and the decoding key for file A. When the consumer buys the content, he receives both the music and data file A, and the encrypted file B. To play back the music, the control information from file B is used to determine if file A can be played back, or copied.

The key component of copyright management; the other key technology along with content control, is digital watermarking. Copyright management based on digital watermarking generally embeds copyright information, such as information on the content producer, into the content itself. More and more manufacturers are developing digital watermarking technologies for audio including firms like Aris, IBM, NTT Corp., etc.

There is also considerable activity focused on implementing content control technology for recording media. The MultiMediaCard compact memory card makes it possible for a consumer to download music content at home and listen to it in a portable or mobile player. With recording media, content control becomes possible even if audio equipment is located elsewhere.

Trends, revenue, ads
Unlike the major firms, the emergent companies are developing a range of new business models. MP3.com, for example, is marketing a form of audio CD called digital audio music (DAM) for $6. A part of each audio CD sale is paid to the artist as a royalty, and some songs are distributed free-of-charge for promotional purposes to boost CD sales. These free items serve the same purpose as the listening samples played at conventional retailers.

Diamond opened its own RioPort site in February 1999 to offer music content and related links. The goal is to expand the firm’s business into new sectors, based on both content and equipment. Other venture firms are recovering content fees out of advertising revenue. One venture firm, “the audio diner” of the US, has entered into music distribution, mixing content with ads. The company is aiming at the television broadcasting business model, and their major revenue source is advertising income from their website. From this advertising revenue the firm then pays artists royalties for downloaded songs. Free music content is used as a tool to attract people to the site, with generally, 200-300 songs available free-of-charge.

Audio compression has been a key factor in encouraging Internet-based music distribution, and it was the establishment of the MP3 standards in 1992 by the ISO that triggered this business. The technology makes it possible to compress audio data to about a tenth of its normal size, enabling almost the same audio quality as audio CD data. With the appearance of copyright management technology, MP3 based copyright management technology has already been announced by firms like AudioSoft and AudioExplosion of USA. Sony has announced the new ATRAC3 audio compression scheme along with its Magic Gate content control technology. QDesign Corp of Canada has also entered the market with its own audio compression technology, named QDesign Music Code. This is just the beginning, and we hope to see some exciting things happening on the Internet.

Science, state and society
by Amar Chandel

These are exciting times to be in the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. The premier organisation is shedding its typically bureaucratic inertia to emerge as a modern corporate entity under the leadership of noted scientist R.A. Mashelkar.

The National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies, Delhi, (Nistads) set up in 1982 is the youngest institute under the CSIR. After remaining headless for eight months, it has now got a new Director, Prof Rajesh Kochhar, who was earlier a Professor at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow is of the view that the path that leads from the CSIR laboratories to industry and the market place passes through Nistads. The Chandigarh-based scientist aims at making Nistads a “think tank” for the CSIR, which would study various aspects of the relationship between science, state and society. The ultimate goal is in consonance with Dr Mashelkar’s philosophy to globalise Indian R and D and revitalise the CSIR in tune with the international economy. Professor Kochhar seems ideally placed for the job considering that he is already working full time on a project entitled “Modern Science in India: A Historical Study in the National and Global Context”.

The 57-year-old CSIR has to play a different role in today’s world. Science under this apex body has to make not only economic sense but also social sense. It proposes to come out with a new technological policy in the year 2002 to coincide with its 60th anniversary. Nistads will provide the draft for it. The second industrial revolution is upon us. The first that took place 200 years ago was lab-driven. India had hardly any role to play. Prior to that, the traditional knowledge about Indian plants and drugs was simply incorporated into the western thought, without any benefits accruing to its original guardians. For instance, the process of zinc metallurgy patented in England in 1738 had originated in India from where it travelled to China and thence to Europe. The present revolution is at a molecular level. There is no escape from going into the mainstream but we must have proprietary rights, opines the Fulbright scholar.

The immediate goal is intellectual property rights. Earlier, our response to the IPRs had no theoretical basis. Now we have to enunciate principles and get them accepted. That will need an ideological breakthrough. Nistads will act as the nodal agency to formulate our tactics and goals. That can be done only by providing a digital database for our traditional knowledge which is at present available only in text form, that too not in a comprehensive shape.

While getting patents on various items is very important, that is not the ultimate goal. The actual emphasis has to be on the production of wealth through science. After all, Einstein’s 45-odd patents on refrigeration neither helped him nor the refrigerator. Nistads is to evolve a vision and strategy to do so for the larger benefit of Indian society. This decisive break with the past requires concerted efforts. It is no longer possible for the CSIR to subsist on government grants. That is why it is seeking to establish a corporate identity for itself by building “an enduring science-business link”.

As Professor Kochhar puts it, Nistads can contribute at four levels: lab driven research; self-driven research; market-sponsored research and as a forum for discussion.

Nistads would be the eyes and ears of the lab, doing its white-collar bit for furthering the cause of the blue collar. On topics like industry/ technology status and forecasting, protecting the rights of traditional knowledge-holders, need for data, etc, Nistads would produce, on demand, authoritative, informative, well documented, insightful and analytical reports.

When the sister labs prepare their business plans, develop new technologies, seek higher earnings for themselves and endeavour to enhance employment opportunities in the country, they would be able to call on Nistads to shoulder responsibilities in the areas of Nistads’ experience. And, then, Nistads would assess and measure in a rigorous manner the tangible impact of the lab initiatives on industry and society.

The institute will be carrying out studies in history and sociology of science with a view to determining the forces that have gone into conditioning the Indian mindset towards modern S and T. Once these forces are better understood, there will be an attempt to mould the collective mindset towards enthusiastic support for innovation, risk-taking, production of wealth, and higher social status for makers of things.

A century ago, Professor Kochhar points out, J.C.Basu conscientiously refused to patent his radio discoveries, because for him his researches were a proof of the equality of the enslaved Indians with their European masters. But in recent times, there have been instances where Indian scientists, in their eagerness to make a mark in the West, have published their papers in prestigious journals, not realising that published results cannot be patented.

Leo Tolstoy wrote that “All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own ways”. In a similar fashion, while a poor country may consider itself to be unique, all prosperous and prosperity-seeking countries have to have mutual resemblances. Nistads will obtain insight into the successes, failures, dilemmas, internal debates and worldview of China as well as other more or less successful countries. Such studies will help India understand its own case better.

In fact, India has to coordinate activities with similarly placed countries. A focussed, foreign-policy oriented historical study of India’s scientific exchanges with other countries may be taken up in consultation with the Ministry of External Affairs and SAARC.

The CSIR’s vision is to market new technologies. Nistads’ task would be to market the CSIR’s vision, says Professor Kochhar. He has a detailed and interesting blueprint of activities at the start of his tenure. The success of its implementation will be watched with interest all over the country, all the more so in his hometown of Chandigarh. Readers of The Tribune will recall that the Nistads Director had been writing a science notebook for this page till recently.

Science Quiz
by J. P. Garg

1. Name the Soviet physicist who played a major role in the development of the Soviet hydrogen bomb but later campaigned for nuclear disarmament and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.

2. Name the US astronomer-geologist who died in July, 1997, and had his lifelong wish to go to the moon fulfilled posthumously when a vial containing his ashes slammed into the moon recently. Which spacecraft carried these ashes that was made to crash onto the moon’s surface?

3. When you see from a distance a fluorescent tube or a similar source of light through a cloth having narrow pores, you are likely to observe a band of colours around the source. Which phenomenon mainly causes this effect?

4. Which salt of copper is used in electroplating, dyeing, calicoprinting, for detecting moisture and as an insecticide? What is its popular name?

5. Because of its highest melting and boiling points, this grey metal is used in various alloys, especially for making cutting tools. Which is this metal? What is its symbol and from which German word has this symbol been derived? In which type of home appliances is this metal usually used due to its special properties?

6. According to big bang theory, the universe started as an explosion and is continuously expanding. Some scientists now believe that the universe may stop expanding, start contracting and ultimately end up. What name has been given to this opposite theory?

7. What general term is used for fats, oils, waxes, fat-soluble vitamins and other such substances found in living tissues that are essential for good health?

8. Plants and animals absorb nutrients from the environment for their growth and when they die and decay, these nutrients pass back to the environment. What is this recycling of ingredients between the living and non-living objects in the biosphere called?

9. If you happen to consume this product in some areas of India, you may be consuming urea, waste oil, detergents, chalk powder, blotting paper and other such substances dangerous for your health. Which product are we talking about?

10. The two atom bombs dropped by the USA on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, were in the news recently. What were the nick names of these bombs, which killed about 2 lakh people?

Answers

1. Andrei Sakharov 2. Eugene Shoemaker; Lunar Prospector 3. Diffraction 4. Copper sulphate pentahydrate (blue vitriol) 5. Tungsten; W. Wolfram; filament lamps 6. Big crunch theory 7. Lipids 8. Biogeochemical cycle 9. Synthetic milk 10. “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”.

SGI launches new servers
SGI, a market leader in servers, has launched Intel Architecture based Servers, the company’s first product of the SGI 1000 server family based on the 32-bit Intel Architecture.

The SGI 1400L and SGI 1400M are four-way servers that support both SGI Linux and Windows NT.

The SGI 1400M server complements SGI’s ccNUMA architecture-based Origin servers and its visual workstations and was designed to optimum price/performance for collaboration and workgroup, application, data management and internet and intranet serving.

The server comes equipped with 1 to 4 Intel Pentium III Xeon processors with a selection of 512KB, 1 MB or 2 MB of secondary cache, upto 4GB of memory, 7 PCI slots, 6Ultra SCS12 hot swap drive bays and redundant power supplies. The server is available in either rack-mount or deskside models.

TCS’s hat-trick achievement
Tata Consultancy Services SEEPZ facility, in Mumbai, one of the largest software delivery centres of the software major, has been assessed as being at Level 5 of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) of Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI). CMM Level 5 is the highest and most prestigious performace rating issued by the SEI.

The CMM Level 5 achievement is the preserve of just a handful of organisations worldwide. The TCS-SEEPZ Centre is now the third delivery centre in TCS to have achieved this distinction after the TCS-US West Centre and the TCS-HP Centre.

Apple computer’s Indian partner
Apple Computer International has appointed Unison Infotech India Ltd as the authorised partner for Apple’s mobile computers in India— PowerBookG3 series and iBook.

Apple’s PowerBook G3 powered by copper-based 333MHz and 400MHz G3 processor, weighing just 5.9 pounds and running up to 10 hours on dual batteries and the recently announced iBook with built-in 56K modem and wireless networking (optional) — have set new industry records for mobile computers. Unison will also sell directly to the corporate and SME markets in India.

— R. Suryamurthy and Gaurav Choudhury