“Got Those Opec Blues Again” And “Rational Exuberance”

“Got those OPEC Blues Again” and “Rational Exuberance” SUMMARY Since March of 1999, when the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil was at $13 a barrel, we have seen a steady increase in prices in all phases of the economy. OPEC, the organization that is largely responsible for setting production goals in the Middle East, was under fire to find ways to increase prices. OPEC members at this time “pledged to cut back the supply of crude and push oil prices higher.” (Business Week, 48) The results were better than most expected: crude oil prices were almost $27 a barrel on November 23, 1999, the highest price since the 1991 Gulf War. (Business Week, 48) The demand for oil is outpacing current supply by 2.8 million barrels, causing some in Congress to push for relief by tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserves. (Business Week, 49) The rapid increases in prices have had a welcome effect on “Big Oil”, however. Companies such as BP Amoco, Chevron and Royal/Dutch Shell Group have posted 15% increases in earnings (Business Week, 49) This trend is expected to continue, with L Bruce Lanni, an analyst at CIBC World Markets Inc. noting, “I see clear sailing ahead for the next two to three years.” (Business Week, 49) “Happy days are here again!” This quote, noted by Jodie Allen of U.S. News and World Report, refers to the booming U.S. economy. (Allen, 71) The stock market, as of November 8, 1999 was flying high, posting strong gains, prompting inflationary fears and a hard once-over of the situation by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. However, the numbers are extraordinary. The Gross Domestic product surged at an annual rate of 4.8% in the third quarter of 1999. The employment cost index, which measures total compensation paid to workers in a broad sampling of jobs, rose by 3.1 percent over the past 12 months. (Allen, 71) But, cautions Princeton economist Alan blinder, “this is a change in the measurement system, not in the reality.” (Allen, 71) Still, he concedes, “the underlying reality was looking good even in the older data.” (Allen, 71) Even in this seemingly booming economy, Greenspan warns “It is not clear” whether interest rate hikes the Federal Reserve has already made will suffice to prevent overheating of the economy (Allen, 71) APPLICATION In the case of OPEC’s decision to cut supply to raise prices, it is clear that all sectors of the economy will be affected in some way. This decision causes a shift of the Aggregate Supply curve, because of the resulting increase of energy prices. Looking at Oil on a simple Supply/Demand curve, we see that the resulting decrease in supply and saying demand is equal, or ceteris paribus, results in the increase in prices that OPEC was looking for. See the following graph: Notice how the shift of the AS curve from AS1 to AS2 results in a price level adjustment from P1 to P2. The economy as a whole as suffered from this increase in oil prices, however, there is little reflection in the stock market. As unemployment stays low, we are in a “help wanted” economy—firms are looking for “warm bodies” to fill needed positions. We also have seen a tremendous rise in GDP and in personal spending. The combination of low unemployment and higher than normal GDP has Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan worrying about how to cool off the economy a bit to control inflation. Unfortunately for some of us, his “big stick” is raising interest rates, increasing the cost for both firms and individuals to borrow money. This will have the desired effect, as the shift in monetary policy will cause aggregate output to fall. But Greenspan will have achieved his goal: keeping inflation low. VIEWPOINT In my humble opinion, as a student, the gas prices do affect me, as the do everyone. There seems to be relief in the future, as OPEC may decide this week to increase production, helping lower costs to a more “reasonable” level. The one thing I find interesting, however, is that there has not be as much complaining about these gas price increases. This can be attributed to how the economy is performing as a whole. Also, although I may not like it, Alan Greenspan’s monetary policy has been very sound and the resulting increases in interest rates will have the desired effect. It will be interesting to see how the upcoming Presidential elections help or hinder the economy.

Economic Crime In Russia

In Russia, where bureaucratic markets have been legalized, power and influence is highly monopolized, even by socialist standards. Liberalization and privatization of prices and trade have led to a cutthroat battle for redistribution of and control over property, resources, and allocation channels, and also have fed economic crime. Types of Wrongdoing Economic crime is hardly a new phenomenon. As long as people have exchanged goods, they have cheated. With the rapid development of technology and communications and the explosive increase in financial interactions between people in the second part of the twentieth century, economic crime has become a highly diversified and fast-growing industry. It is impossible to point to crimes that are specific to countries currently in transition, but some particular crimes flourish in transition, some could not be committed during socialism, and others decline when reforms begin. Illegal economic activities can be grouped in the following broad categories: • Corruption—abusing power related to a particular job or position to gain unlawfully wealth or influence. • Fraud—financial gain obtained through loopholes in regulations, manipulation, or exploitation of public or personal trust (smuggling, illegal operations with hard currency, falsified bankruptcies, forgery, falsified credits, illegal capital flight, and so on). • Theft and extortion (racket)—direct (physical) intervention of criminals; expropriation of property or the property rights of others. • Tax evasion. This category is beyond the scope of the this aticle. (Russia's tax police in the first half of 1996 uncovered about 12,000 cases of evasion resulting in 3,100 criminal cases, raising 13 trillion rubles for state coffers, and lodged penalties that will bring in another 9.3 trillion rubles, Interfax News Agency reported. Compared with previous years, the numbers reveal a change in government policies on tax evasion. During 1994 only 1,500 tax offenses were filed in court, of which only 20 cases were considered as criminal and only 10 saw sentences pronounced. In 1995, of 4,229 tax evasion cases, 1,611 were considered criminal and 312 evaders were sent to court.) There is a crucial difference between the second economy and economic crime. The second economy is a productive sector guilty of one main crime—tax evasion; economic crime is only a redistributor of wealth. Crime Then and Now In the Soviet Union theft of socialist property, corruption, and illegal hard currency operations were the major economic crimes. Large-scale theft of socialist property and massive fraud involving hard currency could be, and were, punished by death. (William A. Clark analyzed trials of Soviet government officials and enterprise managers charged with economic crimes, as reported by the Soviet press between 1965 and 1990. Of the 849 officials tried, about 500 received jail sentences, with an average of eleven years jail for embezzling public property and eight for bribery. Thirty-two persons were sentenced to be executed.) In 1994, particularly, the Russian public discovered how much damage can be done by investment fraud and pyramids. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union new business rules, including the opportunity to establish limited liability companies, have opened a wide gate for fraud and other market type economic, white-collar crimes. Crime has become a highly profitable business in Russia. From an international perspective, the Russian criminal economy is extremely efficient. The sudden explosion of economic crimes has caught the Russian public and the government off guard. According to some estimates, the 1994 worldwide average per capita income from economic crime reached $100. The corresponding figure for Russia, however, was $130, assuming 38.4 trillion rubles in annual crime-related income (box 1). In Ukraine revenue from the infamous black economy reached $1.3 billion in 1994, or only $25.20 per capita. A high degree of the criminality in the transition economies was brought about by the privatization and marketization processes. These crimes are not specific to transition economies but rather are related to the process of redistributing property rights. In Great Britain, for example, the Thatcherite promotion of popular capitalism during the 1980s distributed shares of denationalized industries to a large number of first-time investors. Despite the best intentions of policymakers and special legislation to protect investors (absent in Russia when privatization started), many small investors were tricked into selling their shares at unfairly low prices to those who flocked to London to take advantage of the new, deregulated financial markets. Economic crime is mobile. It is moving away from traditional sectors, such as industry and agriculture, and from traditional activities, like property theft and improprieties in the office, to new sectors, such as banking and insurance, and new activities that require sophisticated skills and organizational structures. The number of economic crimes in industry and agriculture in Russia declined from 36 percent of total registered crimes in 1993 to 25 percent in 1994, while the number of crimes in the financial sector more than doubled during the same period (a tenfold increase between 1992 and 1994). The share of skilled crime (fraud, illegal hard currency operations and counterfeiting, falsification of securities) increased to 31.3 percent in 1994 from 16.9 percent in 1993, while the share of routine thefts in the economy went down to 9.8 percent from 15.6 percent during the same period. Fertile Ground for Criminals Bribery and corruption are unavoidable in the current situation because the salaries of public servants are several times below the level of available supplementary income. For example, the salary of a top-ranking police officer in Moscow is about $200 a month, while street patrols in the capital can demand $100 to look away if they spot drunk drivers. Experienced detectives leave the service. Junior and mid-level judges get about $160 month, less than half what a secretary receives in the burgeoning private sector. And the anticipated gain is always high enough to dwarf the expected punishment. With property rights unclear and lacking well-established rules, government officials in charge of redistributing property and company insiders with the necessary connections can hardly resist the available opportunities to enrich themselves. Presumably, many privatizations were inappropriate if not downright fradulent. Although the real scale of misrepresentation probably will never be revealed because of the involvement of top officials. (For example, in late 1992, before Gazprom was privatized, the giant Russian natural gas monopoly was valued officially at $298 million; Western sources however, estimated its realmarket value as at least $250 billion.) Clearly, some in the leadership are interested in maintaining uncertainty and delaying the introduction of clear rules that could dramatically reduce their profits and rents from the redistribution of assets. Because of the highly discretionary process of resource and benefits allocation by government staff, rent-seeking is rampant. Reports indicated, for example, that, with a 10 to 20 percent commission paid in cash criminal groups could persuade commercial banks to provide an advantageous credit line. Another example: Sports Foundation, a nongovernmental organization with government connections, was granted an export/import tax exemption that helped it keep $4.2 billion in profits. The price of such corrupt practices can be steep. The high murder rate of directors of oil refinery enterprises (second only to that of bankers) is explained by their access to almost unlimited rents and opportunities for theft—a result of the oil monopoly and the discrepancy between domestic and world market prices. A comprehensive criminal code, incorporating measures against these kinds of economic offenses, still awaits final approval by the Duma (see Transition, November-December 1995, page 7). Meanwhile, new players are working and new financial transactions are being conducted without a clear regulatory framework. According to the chairman of Incombank, Vladimir Vinogradov, you have to have 10 or 15 people who can give a credit and about 1,000 who make sure the agreements are enforceable. As a result dishonest players have a lot of room to maneuver, and players (local and foreign) who want to play by the rules are often forced to make lubricating payments to get the deal done. Laundering money in Russia is almost as easy as conducting a regular financial transaction. • Privatization enables the transfer of large amounts of cash into assets, due to the lack of a legal and regulatory framework. • Access to offshore transactions is more or less unregulated. As a result, about half of all foreign investment in Russia originates from illegal domestic transactions, proceeds of which were laundered through offshore banks, according to Russian financial experts. About 40 percent of Russian investment abroad is illegally exported capital, mostly held in cash, securities, and real estate, according to an EBRD report. • The economy is cash-oriented. About 40 percent of the working capital used in the economy in 1993 was estimated to be in cash (an increase from 20 percent in 1992). Thus the government is unable to track most cash-related transactions. Positive and Negative Scenarios Until this first massive property redistribution is complete, crime associated with privatization and the misuse of enterprise funds can hardly abate. The same is true for crime connected to the redistribution of limited resources, such as credits, government aid, export and import licenses, and tax exemptions. But once market prices and market leverage prevail in distribution and competition strengthens, rent-seeking opportunities will decrease significantly. Transparency in decisionmaking and clarification of property rights will also help to drive crime out of business. The fight against fraud—especially pyramid schemes, which affect a large part of the population through lost savings—can be waged effectively by improving civil and commercial codes, inserting specific articles in the criminal code, and publicizing hearings and convictions of pyramid builders. The rapid growth of financial fraud (box 2) parallels the speedy development of the banking and insurance sectors and lack of control over financial flows. (Moscow, Russia's financial capital, records an annual 13.3 crimes committed in the financial sector per 100,000 Muscovites, almost twice the country's average of 7.6 per 100,000 people.) One can assume that with the further refinement of banking institutions and strengthening of financial regulations, the number of crimes (though not necessarily the overall extent of losses) will go down. Growth of financial crimes in the banking sector is already slowing: these types of crimes jumped fourfold between 1992 and 1993 but only doubled between 1993 and 1994. The consolidation of the banking sector, which started in 1995, together with the tightening of central bank requirements and oversight of financial activities, are other encouraging trends. And what are the prospects of the Russian economy if economic crime could not be checked? In a worst case scenario Russia could become a country run by keiretsu—powerful groups formed as symbiosis of criminal and official organizations with stakes in extracting and mining, manufacturing, international trade, with Moscow as their financial center. Finance Is the Largest Crime-Income Generator In 1994 total revenue from economic crime in 1994 amounted to at least 38.4 trillion rubles ($17.4 billion at the average annual dollar-ruble exchange rate) or 6.1 percent of GDP, which is almost as much as the 6.3 percent share of agriculture in GDP and more than the value added tax collected by the federal budget (6 percent of GDP in 1994). Of the 38.4 trillion rubles in illegal revenues, yields from pyramids and other investment projects accounted for 20 trillion rubles. Adjusting for one-time fluctuations (the early 1990s were record years for criminals; many pyramid schemes have since collapsed ), in 1994 criminal revenues still amounted to 22.4 trillion rubles, or 3.6 percent of GDP. The financial sector generated 53 percent of all criminal income, (12 trillion rubles, or $5.4 billion). Two-thirds of this amount came from falsified credit and other payment operations and one- third from pyramid frauds. Fraud Is Surging Russian criminal statistics report misappropriation of property and property rights in a single category, regardless of whether the case was fraud, theft, or racket. About 50 percent of all recorded economic crimes are identified as property thefts. Theft from the workplace has become a low profit activity, and economic crime has become more of a white-collar business: fraud increased fortyfold between 1992 and 1995. A breakdown of fraud by sector in 1994 (the latest year this data set has been available) indicates that most cases of fraud—24 percent—were committed in the financial sector, followed by commerce and catering (13 percent), industry (9 percent), and agriculture (7 percent). Two major cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, accounted for 28 percent of all fraud cases. Professional crimes have shot up in recent years. Their share in all registered crimes increased from 17 percent in 1993 to 34 percent in 1995. The share of crimes related to abusing position or office for private gain dropped notably—the incidense of office malfeasance and appropriation of entrusted property fell from 47.7 percent of all recorded economic crimes in 1993 to 35.6 percent in 1995. About one-third of all cases of office malfeasance were related to bribery. In 1994 government officials were involved in 25 percent of all recorded bribery cases. In 1995 law enforcement officers were implicated in 10.9 percent of all recorded cases of office malfeasance (7.6 percent were involved in 1994).

Economic Conditions Of Japan

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF JAPAN Japan is currently in an economic recession. We can see that the value of the yen is falling; unemployment is rising, and purchasing of durable goods is down. This unhealthy state of economy has progressively become bleaker over the years. Many believe that the start of the slump was due to the economic bubble in the late 1980’s when low rates encouraged an inordinately large amount of investment. When a country has an elevated investment rate, large amounts of capital stock are purchased. This means that an elevated rate of investment must be maintained in order to accommodate for the high levels of depreciation. In the early 1990’s when investment began to slip asset values imploded. As a result, banks were making bad loans. The Japanese government was not quick to react, and by 1998 many major banks were on the verge of collapse. To try to combat the trend of failing banks, the Bank of Japan Governor, Masaru Hayami, started a “zero interest rate policy” in 1999. This move built confidence in Japanese banks and the Japanese economy. However, this positive reform did not last. Banks were not using this recovery policy to write off their bad loans. They also did not get rid of very risky stock market shares. Hayami became fed up with the actions of the banks and raised interest rates in August of 2000. Then when the stock market began falling, those risky shares that the banks owned caused them to lose even more money. So now the country is a facing a major problem: what to do about the losses experienced the stock market and from default loans. In the worst-case scenario calculated by Merrill Lynch credit analyst Koyo Ozeki, banks would have to write off more than 70 trillion yen in loan losses. In order to do that, banks would have to pull the plug on thousands of deadbeat borrowers. This would be devastating to the unemployment rate. Japan’s unemployment rate is currently at 4.9%, which is a postwar high for the country. This is due in part to the number of workers losing their jobs. Another big part of the increase in unemployment is due to the increase in the labor force. Traditionally, Japanese women stay at home to take care of the house in order to give their husbands full opportunity to excel at their jobs. It was a position known as shegyo shufu, which was honored by the government with tax breaks and free pensions. But now that many working men are receiving decreases in pay; they cannot support their families. This forces more women to enter the workforce. If Japanese banks forced firms to payback on their delinquent loans, this would cause the firms to go under, and many more people to be laid off. Japan would be facing a catastrophe. All of this instability in the economy discourages foreign investment. Foreigners find that investing in Japan is much too risky right now. They also see that there is a very low rate of return on investments there. So Japan will get no help from foreign investors. The one way foreigners might help is to purchase Japanese products. Right now the exchange rate for the yen is very low (about .008). This means that one U.S. dollar will trade for approximately 120 yen. And with the recent fall in the prices, Japan can expect to experience high volumes of exports. Policy makers are working around the clock to find a solution for the economic problems in Japan. Japan is looking to Masaru Hayami once again to take some kind of course of action to turn the banks around, and with them, the economy.

Budget For Terrorism

Budgeting Against Terrorism This year’s budget will be required to address the new and dangerous reality of terrorism on the US home front. Over the next 5 years $50 billion dollars has been allotted to plans that are specifically geared to dealing with terrorism. In my belief in is important to separate the budget into two different categories of counter-terrorism. The first category allocates money in response to the attacks of September 11th. This money will contribute to programs that offer monetary assistance to both those directly affected by the attacks and those suffering from the negative economic impact of the attack. Approximately $30 billion dollars will be allocated to these programs for the first 2 years of the budget. In the following three years the monetary aid will be decreased to $20 billion dollars and that money will be funneled into maintaining security concerns both at home and abroad. The second category of programs seeks to combat terrorism on the home front. The programs included here will focus on preparing the US for and against more attacks. For the first two years the remaining $15 billion dollars will be given to these programs. After two years that $15 billion will be increased to $25 billion dollars because of the assumption that as the war on terrorism continues new avenues of terrorism will develop and new security measures will have to be developed. In the first 2 years $25 billion dollars of aid will be distributed into economic aid programs. $10 billion dollars will go as aid to US commercial airlines and the other $15 billion will go to increasing the benefits of the unemployed. It is important to help the airlines recover because of the money the represent in business and tourism. Also there is the issue of the lose of jobs in aviation since the attacks. In the 2-month period since September 11th 200,000 jobs have been lost in aviation. With the unemployment rate at it’s highest in the past 20 years the government cannot afford an even larger decrease in jobs. After 2 years this $10 billion will be decreased to $7 billion. This is an optimistic assumption that within this time period the airlines will be able to stabilize from the emergency and also be able to adapt to the new demands on their business. However, it is important to continue the aid for the final 3 years because it is unlikely that all the new changes that need to be made can be accomplished in 2 years and also because you have to allow time for the consumer trends to swing back to a place of normalcy in which more people are utilizing the services of the airline industry. The $15 billion increase in unemployment benefits will include both a lengthening of weeks unemployment is received. The time period will be increased for two reasons. Firstly, the job market is currently suffering because of a lack in consumption by the US public, which is a trend that is hard to predict. Secondly, increasing the time period helps worker efficiency. If workers take more time to search they may find jobs that are more appropriate for their skills, which enhances efficiency. There will be no formal time decrease on the amount of aid given to the unemployment program. Rather the aid will be adjusted over the five-year span in accordance to the unemployment trends being experienced. The hope is that after the first 2 years of the US dealing with this new threat and recovering from the attacks that an increase in consumer confidence will help the job market. If this is the case then the allotment to unemployment will be decreased by $5 billion. The last part of the aid category focuses on specifically aiding New York City. For 2 years this aid will be $6 billion dollars and then after will be decreased to $3 billion. This money is in addition to the emergency aid already provided to the city, which approximates $20 billion dollars. Instead of going simply to debris clean up and over time this money will try and help rebuild the New York economy. After the first 2 years the program will begin to focus more on increasing security through more personnel and training geared towards counter-terrorism. It will also help with the economy by trying to entice businesses back to the area with building and city tax incentives. The severity of the damage that the city of New York has endured will take many years to repair. The costs of life that will result in millions of dollars of benefits that need to be paid to the effect of the stock market floundering has put the city in definite economic trouble and that is why the instead of stopping the aid once clean-up measures are completed it will be decreased and continued. The second category of the budget against terrorism focuses on counter-terrorism measures. In the beginning of the budget $15 billion dollars will be allocated to these programs, which will be increased by $10 billion in the last 3 years of the budget to allow for heightened security measures. This money is allocated in response to the expected costs of more terrorists attacks and thus can be considered a public good since everyone will benefit from a reduced likelihood of attack. New York State Governor Pataki calculated that to recover from the attack the state would need $54 billion dollars in aid. If you take that $54 billion and multiple it times a modest 20% chance of another terrorist attack the outcome is $10 billion dollars. An expected costs of $10 billion dollars per attack is rather high when it is considered that total of $15 billion dollars a year can help prevent further economic loses not to mention the lose of life from these attacks. The money allocated towards counter-terrorism will focus on three areas: bio-terrorism, increasing airport security, and increasing security in major cities. $10 billion dollars will be allocated to help prevent bio-terrorism. This money will go to the budget of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The money will to hiring trained epidemiologists and public health advisors in all 50 states. This money will also improve the state and local laboratory facilities to test suspected biological and chemical agents and to enhance communication networks. Included in this fund will be insurances that medicines such as Citpro and the small pox vaccine are being produced in case there becomes a widespread need for them. Next is the issue of airport security. The budget will allocate $7.5 billion dollars to help advance airport security in the next 5 years. $1 billion dollars of this will go to employ 25,000 federal airport security workers. These workers will be paid approximately $30,000 dollars a year plus benefits. This enhanced security will help reduce the risk of more airborne attacks by making it more difficult for hi-jackers to board plans. The other $6.5 billion in airport security will go to tightening FAA regulations in regards to such things as cockpit security and matching baggage on airplanes with the passengers. The FAA has not previously required baggage to be matched because of an executive order issued by President Ronald Reagan, which stated that federal agencies imposing regulations on businesses must demonstrate that the benefits justify the cost. Before the attack on September 11th the FAA estimated that the cost of a bombing would be approximately $200 million dollars, which did not justify the $6.5 billion needed to establish the matching baggage program. However, the actual costs of the attack dwarfed the FAA’s assumptions seeing as how the property damage alone in New York City has been estimated upwards of $30 billion dollars. The remaining $1.5 billion dollars will go to help major cities across the US prepare for and prevent terrorist attacks. This program includes counter-terrorism training for local police and fire departments, money to help fund heightened security of national landmarks, tunnels, and bridges, and also funding for increased emergency medical services in the case of a large disaster. If all these programs are effect than their benefits outweigh the costs as has been proven by the large sum of economic damage that New York City endured because of terrorism. The increase in this categories budget from $15 billion from the first 2 years to $25 billion in the last 3 years of the budget will address what needs develop due to the ongoing war against terrorism. For instance, the increase could be needed by the CDC in the case that more biological threats develop or it could be needed as an increase in home front personnel such as the National Guard. The reason that I feel it is important to focus the counter-terrorism budget on domestic aid and domestic security is because it is at home that we are posed the largest threat. The fight against terrorism abroad will be traditionally funded by the defense budget but since the fight against terrorism at home is new it requires the funding of its own budget. It is important that US citizens regain confidence in their safety because once they do so their spending habits will return to normal and that will help boost the economy through consumption and through investments. It is also important that we aid those who have been affected to show the rest of the country that even if our best efforts to prevent more attacks fail that their government will help them recover because these attacks are not just against them but are orchestrated against our country as a whole.

Archimedes Of Syracuse

Archimedes of Syracuse (ca. 287-ca. 212 BC) Greek mathematician who flourished in Sicily. He is generally considered to be the greatest mathematician of ancient times. Most of the facts about his life come from a biography about the Roman soldier Marcellus written by the Roman biographer Plutarch. Archimedes performed numerous geometric proofs using the rigid geometric formalism outlined by Euclid (Greek geometer who wrote the Elements, the world's most definitive text on geometry.), excelling especially at computing areas and volumes using the METHOD OF EXHAUSTION(a integral-like limiting process to compute the area and volume of 2-D lamina and 3-D solids.). 2-D Lamina’s: 3-D Solids He was especially proud of his discovery for finding the volume of a sphere, showing that it is two thirds the volume of the smallest cylinder that can contain it. At his request, the figure of a sphere and cylinder as engraved on his tombstone. In fact, it is often said that Archimedes would have invented calculus f the Greeks had only possessed a more tractable mathematical notation. By inscribing and circumscribing polygons on a circle, for instance, he was able to constrain the value of (pi ) between 3 10/71 and 3+1/7.  Archimedes was also an outstanding engineer, formulating Archimedes' principle of buayancy and the law of the lever. Legend has it that Archimedes discovered his principle of buoyancy, which states that the buoyancy force is equal to the weight of the liquid displaced, while taking a bath, upon which he is supposed to have run naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting ``Eureka!'' (I have found it). Archimedes is also purported to have invented the Archimedean screw. Some of Archimedes's geometric proofs were actually motivated by mechanical arguments which led him to the correct answer. During the Roman siege of Syracuse, he is said to have single-handedly defended the city by constructing lenses to focus the Sun’s light on Roman ships and huge cranes to turn them upside down. When the Romans finally broke the siege, Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier after snapping at him ``Don't disturb my circles,'' a reference to a geometric figure he had outlined on the sand.

Yahoo!

Yahoo! rode the bull market Thursday, primarily on the strength of a report by Lehman Brothers, which raised its recommendation on the stock to a Buy. But Lehman analyst Holly Becker may well be the lone voice in the dark with her Yahoo! upgrade. Most other analysts are scratching their heads, taking a wait-and-see approach, and noting the many internal conflicts Yahoo! is currently undergoing. Some are even saying it may get worse before it gets better, that the Web portal may actually have to go through a round of layoffs in the not-to-distant future. When asked about the possible layoffs, a Yahoo! spokesperson said that the company does not comment on rumors. In the near term, the waters remain pretty turbulent for the company, said Derek Brown, an analyst with WR Hambrecht. There are strong forces at work right now against Yahoo!, and layoffs are a distinct possibility in the near future. Plus, the company is still searching for a new chief executive, analysts note. In her report, Becker set a 12-month target price for Yahoo! at $20 a share.

The Matrix

In the science fiction movie The Matrix people are ruled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), machines made by men to make life easier on the human race. This form of industrialization has also begun in our world today. We have given birth to a host of machines that think for themselves, hoping they would make our lives easier and less taxing on our bodies. In the movie the machines have taken control of the humans and rule over them by hiding from them the real world. In today's society machines have begun a hostile take over of the lives of humans. Ironic, is it not, that in the movie, and in our lives today, machines have become rulers over the humans who made them. In the time when the movie takes place, the humans of the world are being governed by the machines they created. At first the machines, after becoming fed up with working for the humans, attacked the humans through technological warfare. The humans countered by destroying what they thought to be the only source of energy for the machines, the sun. When the machines lost the power of the sun, they had to find a new source of energy. The machines learned that the human body itself can produce the kind of energy necessary to sustain their lives. But humans would never just bow down to their enemies and so the machines had to devise a way to detain the humans so that they could extract that energy. The machines created a computer program called The Matrix. In the movie this marvel displays the digital image of a human's mental self along with that of other humans and a mock up of the world as it was at the highest point in human history. While some humans were detained in the matrix to be used for energy, other humans were fed intravenously to them. Humans became crops to the machines, they were grown in massive fields and harvested like wheat until they were ripe enough to be fed to the other humans. The living humans merely lived out what they thought were their real lives, not knowing that they were powering their own enemies through a war. Ironic that the humans became slaves to those they created as slaves is it not? In the modern world we find humans churning out new inventions constantly. AI is one of the most recent of these inventions and was invented for the sole purpose of making the lives of humans less hectic. However, different duties call for different machines. For example, the machine inside your automobile is not as smart nor as quick as the one inside a government-spec supercomputer. Recently humans devised a way to interconnect the thoughts of these machines and to allow them to hook up to and speak with one another. This wonder of the modern world is called networking. What if a few of the smarter machines found a way to network themselves together through this web of computers? They could begin to change the chain of commands going in and coming out of other machines, in effect taking control of those machines. Considering how much impact machines have on the daily lives of humans, could these smarter machines not bring the world to a sudden standstill? Think what would happen if machines began to make their own commands and would not allow even the slightest input from humans. Our lives would soon be governed by what the machines told us to do. You wouldn't be able to cash a check at the bank or put gas in your car. These machines would soon learn how to command those used to assemble other machines and they would begin churning out new machines day in and day out. The machines would then have a foothold for the beginning of their attack on the human race, which leaves us at the beginning of the movie, The Matrix. Humans are setting themselves up for a fall by allowing machines so much freedom. Ironic is it not that humans make themselves so vulnerable to attack from the one enemy they could never stop? Imagine for a second that all the machines in the world today suddenly turned on humans. What would happen? The cataclysmic apocalypse referred to in all Holy books known to mankind would reek havoc on the earth. The world would bow down to an era fraught with boundless greed and corruption, global monetary systems would collapse leaving brother to kill brother for a grain of overcooked rice. Political systems around the world would disintegrate under the pressure of mutiny. Revolutions would be spring up everywhere, started by once faithful citizens who lost hope after all the civilized nations of the world collapsed. Those humans not experienced in the ways of old would die. Young children and those humans whose every breaths are governed by machines would soon follow painlessly. The lives of all humans would depend upon their ability to produce their own food and drink. Education would become a thing of the past, humans would be left to feed themselves while trying desperately to find a way to make things better. The invention of machines has not helped humans, but actually hurt them. Humans have become dependent upon machines for survival. No humans would be left alive if machines were to shut down. All that humans have created has served to leave lay waste to the earth. The world has been left in shambles by the disease known as mankind, leaving humans no shelter from the havoc created by the machines. Ironic is it not that humans have destroyed the earth, the one thing that could sustain them in the event of the apocalypse? The world today mirrors that of the world at the beginning of the movie The Matrix. Humans are closing in on the time when they believe they will no longer need to work for themselves. They will have created machines to do all the jobs required of them. However, humans will soon no longer have control over the machines they build they will then lose control their own lives. The machines will take over the earth laying waste to anything in their path, much like humans have done over the years. Humans are setting themselves up for a fall and they have yet to realize it. Ironic, is it not?

Web Publishing

Web Publishing Before the advent of the World Wide Web, the means to share opinions and ideas with others easily and inexpensively was limited to classroom, work, or social environments. Generating an advertisement or publication required a lot of expense. Today, Businesses and individuals can convey information to millions of people by using Web pages. Web publishing is the process of developing, maintaining, and posting Web pages. With the proper hardware and software, Web publishing is fairly easy to accomplish. For example, clip galleries offer a variety of images, videos, and sounds. A sound card allows users to incorporate sounds into Web pages. With a microphone, a Web page can include voice. A digital camera provides a means to capture digital format. A video capture card and a video camera can incorporate videos into Web pages. A video digitizer can capture still images from a video (Thrall and Winters 46-68) HTML (hypertext markup language) is a set of special codes used to format a file for use as a Web page. These codes, called tags, specify how the text and other elements on the Web page display in a Web browser and where the links on the page lead. A Web browser translates the document with the HTML tags into a functional Web page. Developing, or authoring, a Web page does not require the expertise of a computer programmer. Many word processing and other application software packages include Web page authoring features that assist in the development of basic Web pages. Microsoft office 2000 products, for example, provide easy-to-use tools that enable users to create Web pages and include items such as bullets, frames, backgrounds, lines, database tables, worksheets, and graphics into the Web pages (Shelly Cashman Series® Microsoft Word 2000 Project 2). Web page authoring software packages enable the development of more sophisticated Web pages that might incorporate video, sound, animation, and other special effects. Both new and experienced users can create fascinating Web sites with Web page authoring software.

Sophisticated Military Aircraft Used In Wars

Military aircraft has become more sophisticated in variety, effectiveness in war situations, and special maneuvering techniques in recent years. With the advance of stealth technology, many new and very effective aircraft have been developed. The F-117A was used during Operation Dessert Storm and every plane came back without a scratch. The very expensive B-2 stealth bomber has never been used in actual war, but during testing it was a success. The Advanced Tactical Fighter program was started to make an aircraft that could supercruise, the ability to cruise at supersonic speeds, and didn't cost very much. The YF-22 and YF-23 were the first planes to accomplish this. With all the planes we know of, there are also top secret programs probably going on right now. A new fighter that has never been heard of before has been spotted. As John Welch, the assistant secretary of Air Force said, Stealth gives us back that fundamental element of war called surprise (Goodall 9). After it was found that aircraft could be very useful in war, it was used for large scale reconnaissance. Then people started to add bombs to aircraft and then airplanes started to become an essence of war. After World War 2, new bombers were developed with fast speed, and could travel far distances. They could also carry nuclear bombs and missiles. The use of the bomber aircraft then led to the fighter, which was equipped with guns and missiles. Helicopters were also found to be good strike aircraft. They were armed with cannons, machine guns, rockets, torpedoes, and a variety of missiles. Vertical takeoff made the helicopter an advantage. The first flight of the F-117A was in June of 1981 in Groom Lake test facility. The total cost for the development of the F-117A was just under two billion dollars, but it only cost $43 million to make each plane. It became operational in October of 1983 and was the first operational stealth aircraft ever built. The F-117A is a night attack plane powered by two, nonafterburning General Electric engines. F-117As were designed for first-strike capabilities and to be able to fly into any countries airspace undetected. The primary task of the F-117A is to break through enemy airspace, destroy high value targets, and return back unharmed. They were considered to first be used in several different tasks, but weren't used until Operation Dessert Storm where they did an excellent job. As Donald Rice, Secretary of the Air Force, said, Everyone now agrees the F-117 was a real bargain (9). During Operation Dessert Storm the F-117As were found out to be very successful. The war began on January 16, 1991 when the F-117A fighters entered the Iraqi airspace on their way to downtown Baghdad. There were 43 of them over the skies of Iraq and not one was lost even though they went against one of the most modern air-defense systems in the world. Operation Dessert Storm was the largest aerial bombing attack in war history. It was also the first time a stealth aircraft was used as a main weapon. On the first day of Dessert Storm the Lockheed F-117As dropped sixty-two 2,000 pound bombs on Baghdad destroying the most critical targets of the Iraqi military, including the headquarters of the Iraqi air force. We've seen that not only does stealth work, but that it puts fewer assets at risk and saves lives (9), as Donald Rice said. The pilots of those F-117As flew through the hardest anti-aircraft missiles any pilot has ever flown through. When you think of stealth, most people probably think of B-2 stealth bomber, but most people don't realize that it hasn't even been used in a real war situation yet. In November of 1987 the Pentagon ordered the first four B-2s to be built for $2 billion. Each B-2 cost $437.4 million to build. After the military liked the bomber, they originally ordered 133 of them, then they cut back to 75 because of the deficit-reduction bill. Then, in 1992, the House of Representatives voted to buy only twenty, and later only 15 saying that 10 would be enough. With four General Electric engines with 19,000 pounds of thrust each, the B-2s were made to carry a lot of weight. The Advanced Technology Bomber, as it was called, was made so it couldn't be spotted by enemy radar. After testing it was found out that it is almost impossible to track it constantly using radar. The B-2s were designed to be an all-flying wing and it is made up of over eighty percent of composite materials. The B-2 is 69 feet long, has a wingspan of 172 feet, and 17 feet in height. They also can carry a payload of 40,000 pounds and can travel at mach 0.85 (Jones 86). The B- 2 can carry 80 bombs, including nuclear bombs. All fifteen of the B-2s are assigned to Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and await to be used in actual combat. In 1983 the Advanced Tactical Fighter program office was formed at Wright- Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The Air Force wanted to build an aircraft that had the ability to supercruise without the use of afterburners or running out of fuel in a couple of minutes. It should be able to cruise at mach 1.4 or 1.5 and be able to take off on runways less then 2,000 feet long. Since the money was starting to get tight, the Advanced Tactical Fighter should cost under $40 million each to build. To come up with this aircraft, the Military gave a contract to both Northrop and Lockheed to each build it with these specifications. The Air Force wanted an air-superiority fighter to replace the Douglass F-15 Eagle. In 1986 the Air Force gave a contract to Northrop and Lockheed who would each build two Advanced Tactical Fighter prototypes. The Northrop YF-23 made its first flight in August 1990. It was powered by a Pratt and Witney F-119-PW engine. The YF-23 can hold four AIM-120 missiles. The YF-22 prototype made its first flight in September of 1990 and became the first to pass the Air Force's supercruise specification. It could reach mach 1.58 and faster. The YF-22 has three weapon bays that can each carry two air-to-air missiles. Both fighters can supercruise at speeds of Mach 1.5 to 1.7. Their top speeds are classified but they can most likely go over Mach 2. In April of 1991 the Air Force had to decide which plane they wanted, they chose the Lockheed YF-22 even though the YF-23 was more stealthy and could go faster. A new swing-wing stealth aircraft has been spotted undergoing test. In September of 1994 it was seen circling high over Anarillo, Texas. While it was circling, a radio scanner picked up a military UHF channel with the call sign Omega. This call sign has never been heard before. The pilot was talking about a hydraulic malfunction and was saying he was dumping fuel to prepare for an emergency landing. If there is a new plane like this, it will probably be called the A-17 and will replace the F-111 which has been in service since 1967. Recently there have been millions of dollars spent expanding the Cannon Air Force Base and a new plane might be undergoing testing there. It has also been said that high ranking officials have gathered there to look at the new aircraft. The Pentagon has announced that the F-111 will be retired by the end of 1995. The new swing-wing aircraft spotted will most likely replace it. Swing-wing aircraft add weight and make a plane more complex, but give many advantages. When the wing is swung forward the plane can travel farther and can land and takeoff on shorter runways. When swung forward it can reach supersonic speeds. It was noticed that the new airplane spotted was armed with bombs and self-defense missiles. The A-17 has many things in common with the YF-23 like the air inlets and the humps on top of the fuselage that hide its engines. The engines on it are probably General Electric YF-120 turbo fan-turbojet engines which can reach speeds up to Mach 2. One of the best recent advances has been in the area of flight guidance and control such as the pilotless plane or drone. The Firebee is a pilotless plane that can be controlled by ground, plane, or by a computer. It can fly following a preset course and return. Another advance is vertical takeoff. It is a big advantage when an airplane can land and takeoff almost anywhere. The British were the first to design it, but we built prototypes right away. With the advance of stealth technology, radar avoidance has become very important. If the enemy doesn't know you are coming then they won't even know what hit them if we want to attack them. When Donald Rice said, Stealth saves lives, money, and does the job better (Goodall 10), he was right. Operation Dessert Storm showed us that. With the many advances of military aircraft, it has become a main and effective part of war in recent years.

Mp3’S: Friend Or Foe?

MP3’s : Friend or Foe? MP3’s, a breakthrough in technology or are they just another bomb waiting to explode on us? Some say they are good while others argue that they are not just bad, but horrific to musicians that want to make it to the top. MP3’s are used widely by teenagers on their home computer, usually illegally and are constantly being threatened by the producer of the music. Billions of dollars are being lost due to the Internet craze of the MP3 technology mainly because no one is buying the legal music from record stores anymore, its like a style gone dead. Now that the problem is out, Internet police are on the loose to find these illegal distributors of music and put them to a stop. When all the smoke is cleared, it is apparent that the producer of music will have eventual victory over the users in the MP3 battle. MPEG Audio Layer 3, which is what this anarchic instigator of war file format is known as, but to us it is a MP3 which is a part of the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 specifications which could be used for movies. MP3’s compresses CD-quality sound by a factor of 12 or more while still providing a great high quality sound to it. A MP3 is now becoming mainstream format for music like records, tapes, and CD’s which are currently being used, but to play MP3’s a program is needed like Winamp or Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. The MP3 has become the most commonly used but unofficial file format to encode digital music for downloading off the Internet. The Internet is the heart of the MP3, without it, this new format would never survive because the Net allows surfers to download songs in a matter of minutes without cost or legal implications. This compressed MP3 technology is popping up everywhere on the Internet. There is no music site that you can go to where a MP3 of some sort is not being offered, just log on and download. A lot of people believe that MP3’s are breaking copyrights and is a part of online piracy. Online piracy is playing or downloading from the Internet songs and lyrics without authorization and without compensating the artists. Downloading even one song without permission or compensation is considered online piracy. Pirate recordings are the unauthorized duplications of copyrighted recordings, the packaging of the recording, art, label, title, sequencing, etc. are all a part of piracy. When people download MP3’s from the Internet, they fail to recognize the copyrights that are in place because they are written in font sizes under 10pts or are skipped by the user. Though it is the fault of creator of the site, the creator knows that if people stop going to the site, money stops being made so the creator must hide all items that might deterrent the user from leaving the web site. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has two copyrights that apply to MP3’s. 1. Copyright in musical work – That is, lyrics and musical notes as they’re written on paper. This copyright is typically owned by the songwriter or music publisher 2. Copyright in the sound recording – Which is a recording of a performer singing or playing the particular song. This copyright is usually owned by the record company. Therefore the only legal way to copy, download, upload, a piece of music is to get permission first which every user forgets about or doesn’t even bother. This the primary cause for the war of legal rights that goes on every day because free is good right? Wrong! It isn’t just that people are taking music for free or that fans of every musical taste have turned to the Internet to satisfy their need for music, its because millions and millions of dollars are being lost everyday to the people that make the music all possible. The Canadian Recording Industry Association reports that there are around 80, 000 infringing MP3 sites on the Internet and each one is carrying around 300 or more recordings , and that’s just counting plain MP3 sites excluding pornographic sites with MP3’s, Wares applications and game sites with MP3’s etc. Major money is being lost here. The RIAA calculated that there are 120 million downloads from MP3 sites weekly and climbing, representing an annual loss of $5 billion (US) to the recording industry and around $1 million a day in the United States alone. It isn’t stopping there when these numbers increase higher and higher just in one day. This major concern has the recording industry going frantic on how to tackle this problem and hardly any solutions have come around on their part. Brian Robertson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association spoke at a conference and said “There’s tens of thousand of sound recordings that are basically sitting around in a virtual record store with the door wide open and everyone is helping themselves” and concluded by saying “Everyone using MP3’s feels they have the inalienable right to use the product” . That’s true, as people download freely, not knowing that they are breaking any of the copyright laws and without paying royalties to the artists or the record companies. Before it was just individual songs but since an increase in hard drive capacity is increasing, whole albums are being traded back and forth on the net. It is mostly the younger generation involved in this. Statistics prove this theory because the sales industry went up 8% last year, but the teenage demographic went down 5 to 6% which has never happened in a year before which makes you wonder where the teenagers are going to get the latest chart-toppers. It gets worse as anyone can start their own MP3 factory by going to a computer store and spending $180 and getting yourself a CD-burner, and blank CD-R’s and start burning away by putting MP3’s onto CD and selling them to your friends. The potential MP3’s have to harm recording companies is “exponentially greater” than the old fashion piracy methods, such as copying audiotapes, bootlegs, or videocassettes combined. Now that we have an understanding of why there is such a cause for concern for MP3’s, we need to look at who is getting hurt by them in more detail. It is clear that MP3’s are intended to be used by the general public and therefore hurting the recording artists real bad by making them lose lots of money due to lack of sales in the stores. A lot of MP3 fans claim that this file format will revolutionize the music industry since it is easier to download an album than making the effort to go to a store and buying it. These are the same people that are breaking copyrights by the second and are not caring one bit for their actions. The recording artist does though. This loss of money has some of them thinking on what to do since this problem is not going away anytime soon. Some companies have opened free-for-all sites such as MP3.com where individual bands or other companies can post their music for other people to download for free. Growing even more MP3.com announced to make a deal with another huge recording company Cox Interactive Media, worth $45 million (US) to develop and operate music related sites . Another company that has been affected but decided to take the side of the MP3 is Amazon Records. Amazon.com added recently on their high-traffic website a free digital download area allowing visitors to get free songs form artists such as Public Enemy, Randy Newman and Lyle Lovett. The point is that these artists understand the problem and see MP3’s as a sign to the future and a helping hand on their journey to fame and fortune. On this site you will find many no-name bands that haven’t made it big, but in no way will you find a Backstreet Boys song or a Ricky Martin song. This is because of the huge recording companies they are signed with that are against MP3’s and because of the financial impact. Bryan Adams, a famous Canadian recording artist, spoke to Reuter’s magazine, via through an email telling them that he is well aware of the MP3 problem and he knows he is loosing money everyday as his fans turn to download his singles rather than buy them. He continued by also stating that even though the fans think they are winning at this game, that no MP3 or movie could replace being at a live concert. The fact that MP3’s are not going away has got to sink into the heads of major recording companies so they can try to avoid heavy money loss by sitting back and taking the bullets when they could try and use it to their advantage like other companies mentioned before. Larry Miller of Reciprocal Music claims like dinosaurs, recording companies will be rendered extinct when asked about the future of retail music . He also says that the retail business is going to look totally different than the way it currently is today, he adds by saying, “Is that necessarily bad? I think it’s just called evolution of business. The best of them will get better. The worst of them will go away.” The people that get hurt most by this phenomenon is the struggling artists who try to strike deals with recording companies that are not into the digital age, rather then the ones who have a fan base of cyber surfers and can rely on them for sales. The users of MP3’s are having their fun now but how long will this adventure last? How long will recording companies and artists allow their money be sucked right from their pockets by some petty teenager who has no clue about the copyrights or laws he is breaking? Not very long at all as it seems today as more and more companies are teaming up together to bring the fall of this virus before it gets any worse. The 5 biggest global music and entertainments companies which include Time Warner Inc., EMI, Sony, with Seagram and Bertelsmann have hooked up with computer firms like IBM to try and create a secure music distribution system over the Internet as they try to make the Internet the good guy and not the bad guy. Legitimate Internet-related music sales actually rose to $147 million from $29 million in 1997 according to Market Tracker International showing that with work bumps can be passed and companies can use the Internet for their advantage. In the very end companies need to use marketing techniques to lure users into their sites to actually pay for music even though the net is filled with illegal web sites. Vorton Corp. lures as many as 10 000 visitors a day just for the sake of selling CD’s at reasonable prices and the numbers just increase and the illegal ones decrease. Organizations all over the web have full-time employee’s surfing the Internet all day looking for offending MP3 sites each day, and in total around 20 cease and desist letters are sent to each creator a week . Another huge collaboration of companies have called themselves SDMI or Secure Digital Music Initiative which is a collective effort at creating standards for providing secure online music so the artists involved can receive their piece of the pie. SDMI included America’s AT&T Corp and Japanese electronics maker Matsu*censored*a Electric Industrial Co. Ltd along with record companies Universal Music and BMG Entertainment. SDMI claimed that they would create their own technology other than the MP3 to accord with evolving standards of users but nothing lately has been released and actually the life span of SDMI has been shortened due to the fact that many other companies involved are leaving to try and tackle the problem by themselves. It appears to be so hard to protect copyrighted music on the Internet as the RIAA and member companies try to find a method to protect copyrighted music on the Internet. The RIAA was quoted on saying “The challenge is to find a method that can prevent copyright infringement online without interfering with legitimate uses of recorded music or missing the opportunities offered by digital technology and the Internet” . The RIAA has launched a campaign called SOUNDBYTING, which deals with educating university and college students to reproducing and distributing music illegally and is currently in effect with more than 150 schools . The RIAA hopes to clearly outline what is allowable and provide informative material about copyright law and punishments that go along with breaking them which includes penalties of up to 5 years in prison or $250 000 fine even if no money was made from the published site. Students at universities and colleges are the ones that are found establishing their own MP3 factory and tell other students who download and create their own and so on to the point that every student is in contact with a MP3 or a illegally copied CD. “It’s a big problem” said Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association, “We picked schools based on having found MP3 sites operating there and, frankly, on gaining cooperation from administrators.” The RIAA other than opening a site dedicated to SOUNDBYTING has provided 10 schools with additional information such as poster and sample lectures. The major attempts of the SOUNDBYTING campaign is to forge new ethics and aware students about copyrights which protect Americans creativity, as well as arming college/university administrators and staff with the tools to easily educate students about the application of copyright law as it pertains to music on the Internet. Having the RIAA and college/universities working together, they can set a tone for a successful campaign to work and be an example for high schools, and other high-populated establishments. To stop MP3’s you must not just look to the Internet but you must look to where the MP3 will eventually travel to, CD’s. On user’s hard drives, MP3’s are not causing any problems because profits are not being made from there, but a CD can be copied and sold to millions of people through a small chain reaction. The RIAA has introduced “Good Business Practices” which means that CD plants should know their customer and the product they are selling. This process lead to a total of 70 734 counterfeit/pirate CDs confiscated in the first half of 1999 . The RIAA also constantly receives numerous tips every day from CD replication companies regarding suspected orders, which has lead to the prevention of close to 100 000 CD’s from being manufactured and distributed in the United States alone . Adding to the pile of good news, the RIAA has settled with 3 CD-plants totaling more than $7 million for copyright infringement and all three plants have agreed to follow “Good Business Practices”. Compared to 1998 midyear statistics to 1999 midyear stats, search warrants went from 55 to 71, arrests went from 174 to 438 and convictions went from 398 to 492 which means that the RIAA is slowly becoming stronger every day so copiers beware, were coming for you! Another company on the battlefield is TTR Technologies, Inc, where on September 24, 1999 announced the release of MusicGuard ™ . MusicGuard ™ is the latest anti-piracy movement of the year and takes affect only upon CD’s that are illegally copied or stripped. Warlock Records and Strictly Rhythm Music were the first to sign the agreement to use this technology on most of there CD’s released upon the coming of the new millennium, Warlock Records reported that out of 4 million CD’s created in 2000, 2 million will contain the MusicGuard ™ technology on them . What MusicGuard ™ does is prevents the unauthorized copying of CD’s onto other peoples hard drives or to other CD’s for distribution. What happens is the CD that is copied will encounter a process abortion due to error and when trying to make a MP3 out of a song, will either fail or result in inferior and unusable audio. Mark Finkelstien, president and CEO of Strictly Rhythm Music said “When the kids who make compilations of dance music realize that illegal copies of my CD’s don’t’ play, they will go to the store and buy our version.” This proves that TTR and other companies believe that stopping the MP3 problem once it reaches the CD is the better way to go and TTR is the only company to have a technology that works similar to MusicGuard ™. It is clear that the MP3 phenomenon will not be going anywhere because this new file format is so attractive to Internet users. The reason for concern over online piracy and MP3’s is mainly because recording companies and artists are willing to sit back and let money get taken from their hard work. Recording companies and organizations are ready to take on the problem and fight the MP3 battle by either using the Internet to their advantage or make a way to provide secure digital music on the Internet for a price while washing up illegal web sites that provide them for free. The RIAA and many other companies are putting to work strategies that will straighten out the Internet’s back and teach the people that use the Internet the most, in the long end after you pay a hefty fine for infringing copyright laws that crime doesn’t pay!

Switching Network In Telecommunications

SWITCHING NETWORK IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS (AT&T 5ESS SWITCH) The direction of this paper is to describe a telecommunications switch and show its purpose and multitasking abilities. This paper will use the AT&T 5ESS Switch to give a real world example of a top rated telecommunications switch. The end result will be an understanding of how a switch works and what it can do. Also, it will show why the AT&T 5ESS Switch is #1 in today's telecommunication world. SWITCHING In today's world a person should be able to pick up his phone and dial to almost anywhere in the world. Without knowing anything about switching, one would think that there phone would have to have a separate line to everyone other phone in the world. This would be quite a lot of lines into just one phone and know that this is an impossible scenario. This is why the switched network was developed. A switched network brings each subscriber line into a centralized switching system, where connections are made for each call. The earliest telephone switches were hand-operated - that is, they required a human operator to make connections by plugging circuits into a switchboard. When the customer rang the central office, the operator scanned the switchboard and connected the caller by plugging into the requested line. The invention of the mechanical switch came about in the late 1880. Now, the mechanical switch replaced the human operator, who handled the physical connections. These early switching systems were based on the analog technology that was state-of-the-art electronics at the time. By the mid 1970's digital technologies were being introduced into the core of the public switched network. Digital switches fully capitalized on the strength of the computer revolution by routing both voice and data through the switch in the form of 0/1 binary coded information, which can be moved through the switch in a very short period of time. A single digital switch typically serves anywhere from under 1000 to over 100,000 subscribers. The typical digital switch has four components: the central processor, the switch matrix, a range of peripherals, and input/output controllers. Central Processor - The central processor controls call processing activities. Examples of some activities are assigning time slots and administering special calling features such as call forwarding. The central processor is also responsible for directing system-control functions, system maintenance, and the loading and downloading of software. The central processor is usually duplicated within a switch to ensure reliability. If the hot processor should develop a problem while a call is being processed, the system automatically shifts to the standby processor - without the caller noticing any interruption of service Switch Matrix - This is also referred to as the network. It handles the actual connection of calls to their destinations. Peripherals - These convert incoming voice and data signals into the digital format used by the switch and perform some low-level call processing tasks. There are usually a range of peripheral modules to interface the range of lines and trunks coming in from the network. Input/Output Controller - This system provides access to the switch for billing, maintenance, loading of software, and routine operations and administration. The primary function of a switch is Picture - lucent.com/netsys/5ESS/family to establish connections between telephones and data equipment for the transmission of voice or data. When a local call is placed, a digital switch performs multiple call processing functions. These functions are: ¨ Call Detection - Detection that the telephone receiver is off the hook. ¨ Dial Tone Provided - Provides dial tone to the caller. ¨ Digit Collection - Collects the dialed digits. ¨ Digit Translation - Translates dialed digits into a call number. ¨ Call Routing - Routes the call to its destination. ¨ Call Connection - Connects parties. ¨ Audible Ringing/Ringback - Signaling the called party by audible ringing, and the calling party by ringback. ¨ Call Termination - Disconnecting and terminating the call when a party hangs up. How does a switch accomplish all these functions? The answer is Software. The switch is a large scale, real time software based system. The switch itself, works through commands located in the software applications used. Software is the guiding command that makes the switch execute its processes. Now that the function and purpose of the telecommunications switch has been established, lets look in detail at the AT&T 5ESS digital switch. This switch is the leader in the market of Service Providing switches. It handles all forms of media transmission and is setup to be expanded very easily. With its flexible architecture it is easy to see why the AT&T 5ESS Switch serves over 70 million subscribers in more than 40 countries. AT&T 5ESS Picture of 5ESS - http://www.lucent.com/netsys/5ESS/family The first 5ESS Switch was installed in Sugar Grove, Illinois in March, 1982. It is a digital switch that provides local service, ISDN, Operator and International Gateway services, and a host of custom business and residential service offerings. The new digital switches replaced earlier electromechanical or analog switching systems. The 5ESS Switch is the most flexible digital exchange for use in the global switching network. The 5ESS equipment switches ISDN voice and data, local voice calls, long distance calls, Internet access, wireless PCS, Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) services, interactive video and multimedia services….moving any media on the public switched network. The 5ESS Switch architecture is a modular, distributed architecture with an administrative module, a communications module, and a varying number of switching modules that provide the major processing power in the total communication system. Picture - http://www.lucent.com/netsys/5ESS/5esswtch.html A big advantage of the 5ESS Switch is its modular design. This modularity allows for ease of implementing continuing enhancements and allows service providers the ability to change their communication network quickly. Telephone administrations are often concerned with: ¨ Increasing busy hour call completion capacity ¨ Minimizing floor space requirements ¨ Enabling growth in small increments ¨ Integrating multiple applications in one exchange ¨ Reducing power consumption and operational costs The 5ESS Switch architecture and software addresses each of these concerns. Advanced services from the 5ESS Switch can be provided to all customers wherever they are located. Picture - http://www.lucent.com/netsys/5ESS/5esswth.html The newest 5ESS Switch out on the market is the 5ESS-2000 Switch, which provides local and long distance, wireless and wireline, custom and national ISDN and multiple advanced services. The 5ESS-2000 Switch continues to handle the changing and increasing needs of customers, providing a multi-services platform that gives service providers the ability to offer subscribers a wide range of services. These services include wireless services (both cellular and PCS), Internet and on-line services access, Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) services, multimedia services, local and long distance services - all from a single switch. The 5ESS-2000 Switch stands alone as the only platform in the industry capable of simultaneously supporting any combination of wireline, voice, data and video services off the same switch. This unique concept - what we call the AnyMedia Network Solution - enables the 5ESS-2000 Switch to deliver the total strategic flexibility and cost-effectiveness that a business requires and that no other platform can match. Picture (5) - http://www.lucent.com/netsys/5ESS/anymedia/index.html Whether a service provider modernizes switches, flattens a network hierarchy through consolidation or builds an entirely new network, 5ESS-2000 Switch is an ideal choice. As the most cost-effective, flexible switching platform on the market today - and the only switch to offer AnyMedia capability - it can meet short-term market needs while providing a solid foundation for long-term business growth. With this unrivaled AnyMedia Platform flexibility and modular, distributed architecture, the 5ESS-2000 Switch is being used throughout the United States and internationally. In fact, all major U.S. telephone companies and many emerging Service Providers have placed 5ESS-2000 Switch and its product family at the heart of their new flat, more flexible networks. RELIABILITY The AT&T 5ESS Switch can do multiple functions that offer a lot to subscribers, but what good is it if the system is not reliable. Residential and business customers expect that their telephone services will be consistently up and running, under any conditions short of the occasional catastrophic natural disaster that destroys the actual facilities that deliver their service. The phone is now perceived as more than a convenience. Network reliability has become the industry watchword - and with good reason. A series of lengthy and extensive outages in 1991 led the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to scrutinize the reliability issue more closely. AT&T 5ESS Switch system reliability is achieved by complete duplication of all critical system hardware and software elements. The FCC quality monitoring process has shown the 5ESS Switch is highly reliable, in fact the 5ESS-2000 switch is four times more reliable than its nearest competitor. Today the 5ESS switch is considered the workhorse of the public telecommunications network in the United States with its lower life cycle costs and its proven record of reliability. CONCLUSION Today's digital switches have allowed telecommunications to meet the demands of both residential and business customers. No longer is telecommunications a convenience. It is a necessity. Businesses need to be able to transmit and receive information in order to keep them competitive in today's world. People need access to 911 emergency services and hospitals and doctors need access to lifeline services for the care of patients. As the world continues to change and advance technologically, the demands are going to continue on the telecommunications world. With this in mind, a company would want to have a switch in place that can grow and change, both easily and inexpensively, with the demands of the market. The AT&T 5ESS-2000 Switch is the right tool for this job. A key strategic advantage of the 5ESS-2000 Switch is its modular design. This design allows ongoing enhancements to be added easily and cost-effectively, but more importantly, it enables quick changes to communication networks to accommodate market, regulatory or technology changes. I feel that the AT&T 5ESS-2000 Switch is the best switch on the market today. It is set up to meet current and future needs of the subscribers it services. It takes a lot to be considered the best, but the main reason noted should be that the AT&T 5ESS-2000 Switch serves over 70 million subscribers in more than 40 countries. This accomplishment is what makes the 5ESS Switch #1.

Voice Over Internet Protocol(Voip)

VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL (VoIP) INTRODUCTION: In the eyes of most, all packets are created equal. One of the most active areas of telecommunications today is in the area of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The logic behind this trend makes perfect sense. If we have invested heavily in an Internet Protocol (IP) network, why can’t we make full use of it? This is a question posed by many managers and Information Technology (IT) professionals in a wide range of businesses. Many businesses would prefer to have one network in and out of their business for reasons ranging from cost effectiveness to manageability. IP telephony offers a promise of consolidation. This will allow an enterprise to converge its traditional phone system and newer data network for greater efficiency. Arieh Dranger, president of neXTel Systems LLC says, “I don’t think it’s a question of whether we need VoIP, but when it will come together, because it represents a natural progress of integrating data—period. The IP protocol is probably the most efficient at combining a universal communications network.” Basically, IP telephony is taking the telecom world by storm. It has evolved from a little known and used application in 1995 to an application that is poised for global adoption. But as with all technology, there is a price to be paid, and several entities vying for a piece of the pie. WHAT IS VoIP and HOW DOES IT WORK? To put it simply, VoIP means Voice over Internet Protocol. It’s a technology that allows network managers to route phone call over the network they use for data transmission. A voice travels over a corporate Intranet or the Internet instead of the public telephone system. Special gateways installed at both the sending and receiving end of a communications channel converts voice to IP packets and back again to voice. This process must take place in a time frame of less than 100 milliseconds to sustain the Quality of Service (QoS) that users are accustomed to from the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Now let’s take a walk on the more detailed side of what VoIP is and how it works. First and foremost, VoIP is an emerging technology still in the early stages. A personal computer (PC) must capture an analog voice and convert it to a digital signal, compress the audio with a compression-decompression (codec) device and then move it into the IP protocol stack. The codecs are at the heart of any IP telephony software. It is an algorithm that transforms analogue signals into digital ones and vice versa. The next step is to access the network, which is the premise modem connected to the PSTN and channeled to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) modem. The next link in the chain of events is the IP network itself or the Internet. The current structure of the Internet can make it an unstable and unpredictable carrier. Finally, the voice packet must transition back from the IP network to the PSTN, to the receivers’ modem for conversion back into analog. Each of these steps adds more delay to the voice packets. A delay approximately of over 550 milliseconds, which is 400 msecs over the QoS acceptable limit, is found to occur. These delays and other issues are just some of the challenges facing the future of VoIP. WHY IS VoIP AN ISSUE? Between 1994 and 1997 ISP revenue grew from about $189 million to over $4.75 billion dollars, making it the telecommunications success story of the nineties. This extraordinary growth, coupled with relatively inexpensive connectivity for the typical user has helped drive the emergence of VoIP. To the typical personal user, this technology will mean nothing more than the ability to make “free” long distance phone calls. However, to the business world, this technology holds some very profound promises. It’s the ability to avoid long distance phone charges that has many scrambling to control the future of VoIP. Companies ranging from the traditional common carriers to the newer next generation telcos are all scrapping for a share of this lucrative market. The VoIP portion of this emerging market is expected to grow at a rate of 149 percent annually through 2001 to about $1.89 billion dollars with high estimates of $9.4 billion by 2002. With this much money and revenue at stake, local and state governments, which derive millions of dollars from taxing voice carriers, are also taking notice of this emerging, unregulated threat. Another issue of this technology is the fact that there has yet to be a standardized set of protocols for the manufacturers and vendors. This is leading to proprietary hardware and software, which all leads to incompatibility and increased expense. As with all technologies and advances, the bottom line is the dollar. These are just a few of the many issues facing global adoption of VoIP. THE PLAYERS INVOLVED To follow this technology and understand its implications, one should be aware of the players involved in the game and know each ones motivation. The Big Three. The Big Three players are AT&T, MCI WorldCom, and Sprint. They perhaps have the most to lose and the trickiest balancing act to perform. They must take special precautions to ensure they do not cannibalize their very lucrative PSTN. The traditional phone system is over an $100 billion a year business. In terms of market share, VoIP is barely a blip on the Big Three’s radar screens. However, these big carriers have not let this technology go unnoticed. AT&T offers a calling card that allows its user VoIP for as low as 3.5 cents a minute. AT&T has recognized this new threat and is aggressively doing something about it. They have hired new talent and leadership; acquired a new facilities-based business company in TCG; bought a facilities-based consumer company in Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI); began a global venture with BT; bought the IBM global services network for IP; and expanded its wireless reach with Vanguard Cellular. Also in February of this year AT&T announced a joint venture with Time Warner Inc. that allows it to enter the local-service market via cable in 33 states. AT&T is also experiencing a metamorphosis of its corporate culture which is allowing more free flow thinking from all employees. MCI WorldCom sells a click and talk Web-based voice service for enterprises with e-commerce sites which allows customer service reps to talk to buyers over the IP connection while shopping online. MCI WorldCom has also been on the mergers and acquisitions path in order to meet this new challenge. The Big Three have aggressively been working on this new market and the outcome has yet to be seen. With lower barriers to entry than in the traditional communications networks, they face many new entrants in this battle. Regional Bell Companies (RBOC’s): The regional Bell Companies have a vested interest in this area as the Internet replaces the private networks in which they have such heavy investments. It takes nearly 8 years for PSTN capacity to double. The Internet doubles capacity every 18 months. This is strong motivation for the regional Bells to preserve their investments. The smart regional Bell companies are already putting new strategies in place. US West is relying on its nationwide XDSL rollout. This program will combine US West’s voice and data customers by replacing a $30 dollar a month voice customer with a $60 dollar a month high speed Internet and voice customer. It treats voice as an Internet service. Bell Atlantic is also working on its’ plans. It is looking to provide services similar to that of US West. These regional carriers are however limited to their own calling territories as per FCC regulations until they can show that they have local competitors. Many cable companies are following this approach. To protect revenues, US West, Bell Atlantic, and Southwestern Bell have provided for tariffing and will tax a VoIP call. Next Generation Telco’s: Service providers are also positioning themselves as next-gen telcos by adding to their Internet service offerings. Qwest is planning and implementing a high capacity, IP based fiber optic network. Its mission is to allow customers to seamlessly exchange multimedia content images, data, and voice as easily as traditional telephone networks enable voice communications. Qwest’s OC-48, IP over Sonet backbone, spanning 130 countries, is nearly complete. The Denver based company will offer an IP based integration service for business. It will be capable of taking out multiple private lines and do multiple applications over a single IP service pipe. Level 3 is another player in the Pure VoIP field. Level 3 doesn’t use compression on its network for voice calls. That allows a packet to travel from one end of the country to the other in less than 90 msec., which matches PSTN quality. Along with companies like Qwest, Level 3 is pouring billions of dollars into developing and deploying cutting edge backbones for offering IP based voice, data, and video services. Government: Another player to this game is of course the Government, Government at every level. Many questions are arising in their eyes. What defines an Internet call? How will local governments react to losing a large source of revenue that was being generated from local telephone calls? Some foreign governments are already taking a stand against VoIP. Pakistan’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, due to losing revenue to VoIP, has banned voice over the Net. The Government players will ultimately have the most profound effect on how this technology plays out. This player needs to be closely watched. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF VoIP There are numerous advantages cited for VoIP. They are as far reaching as they are controversial. Some of the advantages to the business user included: Cost reduction, simplification, consolidation, advanced applications, backward compatibility, new revenue streams, and more efficient infrastructures. Cost reduction will be seen across the board from cheaper to “free” long distance calling to less investment in hardware and software. This will be extremely beneficial to those companies with international markets. It will be more cost effective for a business to maintain one network than two separate ones. Standardization of a voice/data network will reduce total equipment costs as well. Network managers will have to assume the role of managing voice packets and protocol as well as data. VoIP is backward compatible with video conferencing and other applications already in place in many organizations and it supports multimedia applications and multiservice applications, something the traditional phone service cannot compete with. There are several obstacles that VoIP must overcome. Latency is one of the largest obstacles facing this technology. Latency is the delay or time between packets that have the same destination and compose the same message. If there is latency between voice packets this will cause the conversation to be choppy and unintelligible. VoIP expends and average of 40 to 60 msecs of delay per gateway. That kind of overhead gets noticed pretty quickly, especially when you are traversing multiple gateways. Interoperability is another key issue. The best way to date for voice traffic to travel from an IP network to PSTN is Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP). This protocol allows an ISP’s switch server to manage and control SS7 switches on a PSTN, and the gateways on an IP network. Security, reliability, and training are also drawbacks too fully integrating VoIP within an organization. Security is an issue with the H.323 protocol. H.323 is a protocol used for voice over Internet protocol. Compared to more mature services such as FTP, Telnet, and HTTP, H.323 is relatively new, thus many proxy servers do not support it. Users making calls on this protocol must be placed outside of the corporate firewall. Many people have become accustomed to their phone with all its fancy features. Call waiting, holding, transferring or redirecting calls are options not available with todays software. Finally, reliability remains a major obstacle. When it comes time to have to reboot the computer after it locks up, that lost call was hopefully not an important client. WHAT’S NEXT As with all technologies, new products and systems are emerging everyday to help alleviate some or all the disadvantages of incorporating VoIP. New protocols are emerging as well. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), and Simple Gateway Control Protocol (SGCP) are protocols designed as alternatives to H.323. They are designed to reduce bandwidth overhead, security issues, and time sensitivities not covered by H.323. Level 3 and a group of other next-gen telcos has developed a protocol called Internet Protocol Device Control (IPDC). This protocol was designed for use between centralized switches and IP-based gateways, providing management and integration on a very large scale. By working on the problems of latency, security, reliability and manageability, VoIP will be more poised than ever to begin its global roll out. CONCLUSION The VoIP market is turbulent and characterized by a variety of approaches. These approaches range from the desktop to the carrier switch to the Internet. The players are as equally far flung, from the traditional cornerstones of the Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) to the new generation startups, to the steps of local, state, and federal governmental agencies. Such dynamism makes it difficult for IT managers to filter the flood of information and assess how VoIP might fit into their networks. Unless PSTN undergoes some massive restructuring, its long-term existence in its current form is in serious doubt. Emerging Internet technologies will be the low cost solution for managers looking for mixed traffic connectivity. Only in the end, after all the smoke has cleared will we know which business models survived the shake down in this lucrative market. Other problems are bound to arise in the arenas of technology and regulation. At this point there is significant progress to be made in the area of VoIP to achieve the quality we enjoy today with the PSTN. The only sure thing from this technology or any other that will always be consistent, reliable and never become outdated is that the Government WILL find a way to ensure their revenue stream… after all “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Processor Comparison

1. Investigate the instruction set and architectural features of a modern RISC processor such as the Digital Equipment Corporation Alpha or Motorola/IBM PowerPC. In what ways does it differ from the architecture of the Intel Pentium processor family? The main difference between the architectures of Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) Alpha and Intel's Pentium processors are the instruction sets. In this paper I intend on defining both RISC and CISC processors. In doing this I will be comparing DEC's Alpha 21164 (a microprocessor that implements the Alpha architecture) and also Intel's Pentium processors (from the Pentium-R through the Pentium II). Reduced Instruction Set Computing or RISC processing is a CPU architecture with an instruction set that eliminates some (but not all) complex instructions by pairing down and reducing them in complexity so that instructions can be performed in a single processor cycle. This is accomplished through high-level compilers that breakdown the more complex, less frequently used instructions into simpler instructions. Thus, allowing the RISC architecture to im-plement a smaller instruction set that utilizes more registers and eliminating the need for microcode. The Alpha architecture is a 64-bit load and store RISC architecture designed with particular emphasis on speed, multiple instruction issue, multiple processors, and software migration from many operating systems. (1, pg. 1-1) Most recent CPU designs are superscalar and superpipelined. Superscalar means that the architecture provides two pipelines for executing multiple instructions in parallel. Superpipelining increases the number of pipeline stages, allowing for results from either pipeline to be simultaneously used to avoid stalls thus, improving data flow by removing data dependency. The 21164 microprocessor is a superscalar pipelined processor manufactured using 0.5-micron CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semi-conductor) technology. (1, pg.1-3) The Alpha 21164 can issue four instructions in a single clock cycle. This combined with the low-latency and/or high-throughput features in the instruction issue unit and the on-chip components of the memory subsystem reduce the average cycles per instruction. All data manipulation is done between registers. The registers are 64 bits in length and all instructions are 32 bits in length. Memory operations are either load or store operations. Since many early computers had extremely limited memory and processing power, complex instruction sets were developed. Complex instruction computing or CISC processing is a CPU architecture in which a large number of instructions are hardcoded into the chip. Intel's Pentium processors still adhere to this philosophy. The Pentium processor was Intel's first CPU to employ superscalar architecture. With its 3.3 million transistors it is able to execute two instructions per clock cycle resulting in twice the integer performance relative of an Intel 486 CPU running at the same frequency. Pentium also employed on-chip dual-processing support as well as an onboard interrupt controller. Next came the Pentium Pro, which introduced dynamic execution technology that pre-dicts the program flow through multiple branches. Multiple branch prediction lets the CPU pre-fetch possible next instructions rather than waiting for the outcome. This technology can actually change the order of executed instructions based on analyzed data dependencies, which in turn provides optimum execution speed. However, the Pentium Pro was only available in speeds from 150MHz to 200MHz and has only 16KB of internal cache (half as much as the MMX). In 1997 Intel introduced the Pentium MMX processor. The MMX processor added1.2 million more transistors (4.5 million total) and also SIMD technology (Single Instruction, Multiple Data). SIMD technology included 57 new instructions, 4 new data types and eight 64-bit registers. As in the original Pentium, the MMX Pentium provides both a fixed-point integer data path that allows up to two operations to be executed simultaneously, and a floating point data path that allows one operation to be performed at a time. In addition, the MMX Pentium provides a new MMX data path that allows up to two MMX operations to execute simultaneously, or up to one MMX operation and one integer operation (in the integer data path) to execute simultaneously. The inte-ger data path includes two ALUs and supports operations on 8-, 16-, and 32-bit integers. (4) The MMX processor is available in speeds from 166MHz to 333MHz. Finally the Pentium II processor combines the best features of both the Pentium Pro and Pentium MMX on one chip. Including a 64-bit dual independent bus (system bus & cache bus) enhances performance. This was first realized on the Pentium Pro, the pipelined system bus en-ables multiple simultaneous transactions, which accelerates the flow of information within the system and boosts overall performance. Another feature stemming from the Pentium Pro is Dynamic Execution Technology (changing the order of executed instructions based on data dependencies). With its 7.5 million transistors the Pentium II processors can handle up to 64GB of RAM. “The independent cache bus runs at half the CPU clock, giving a bus speed of 166MHz with a 333MHz processor.” (2) In short, modern RISC processors such as the DEC Alpha 21164 execute many simple instructions by using more registers. RISC processors are able to execute the instructions rela-tively fast due to the use of fixed length instructions. The Alpha for example requires that all instructions are 32 bits in length. Each instruction is loaded and executed before the next. CISC processors on the other hand, deal with variable length instructions and typically become bloated or bogged down by complicating the job of the control unit. Intel seems to have gotten around this inconvenience by implementing Dynamic Execution Technology and dual independent buses. 1. Choose a commonly used microprocessor such as the Intel Pentium, the DEC Alpha, or the IBM/Motorola PowerPC. What data types are supported? How many bits are used to store each data type? How is each data type internally represented? Through researching Digital Equipment Corporation’s (DEC) Alpha processor I found that the following data types are supported within its architecture: integer, and floating point formats for both IEEE and VAX. I intend to briefly explain what each data type is, how many bits are used to store, and how each data type is internally represented specifically within the DEC Alpha 21164. The basic addressable unit in the Alpha architecture is the 8-bit byte. Virtual addresses are 64 bits long, however, the Alpha may support a smaller virtual address space of at least 43 bits. These virtual addresses are translated into physical memory addresses by the memory management mechanism. The following data types are described in terms of little-endian byte addressing, meaning; the bytes are numbered from right to left. Implementations may also include support for big-endian byte addressing (bytes numbered from left to right). The Alpha 21164 architecture provides support for four integer data types. Integers are “whole numbers or a value that does not have a fractional part.” (6, pg.110). Please refer to the chart below for a detailed description of each integer data type. Data Type Description Byte A byte is 8 contiguous bits that start at an addressable byte boundary. A byte is an 8-bit value. A byte is supported in Alpha architecture by the EXTRACT, MASK, INSERT and ZAP instructions Word A word is 2 contiguous bytes that start at an arbitrary byte boundary. A word is a 16-bit value. A word is supported in Alpha architecture by the EXTRACT, MASK, and INSERT instructions. Longword A longword is 4 contiguous bytes that start at an arbitrary byte boundary. A longword is a 32-bit value. A longword is supported in the Alpha architecture by sign-extended load and store instructions and by longword arithmetic instructions. Quadword A quadword is 8 contiguous bytes that start at an arbitrary byte boundary. A quadword is supported in Alpha architecture by load and store instructions and quadword integer operate instructions. (7, pg. 1-2) Numbers are also represented using floating-point notation. Floating point notation is just that, the radix, or decimal point is allowed to “float” or move left or right as needed. This allows the values to become either very precise or very large. The Alpha 21164 supports IEEE 754 & 854, and VAX floating point formats. IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) addressed the lack of transportability of floating point data among different computers by setting standards for both 32- and 64-bit floating point coding formats. The Alpha 21164 provides support for both S_floating formats and T_floating. S_floating (single precision), datum occupies four contiguous bytes in memory or 32 bits numbered 31 through 0. The 31st bit is the signed bit (indicates negative or positive values), bits 30 through 23 represent exponents, and bits 22 through 0 represent the fraction. The store instruction reorders register bits on the way to memory and does no checking of the low-order fraction bits. Thus register bits 61 through 59 and 28 through 0 are ignored. The load instruction reorders bits on the way in from memory. In doing so, the exponent is expanded from 8 to 11 bits, and the low-order fraction bits are set to zero. This produces an equivalent T_floating number. An IEEE double precision, or T_floating, datum occupies eight contiguous bytes in memory. The bits are labeled from right to left, 0 through 63.Bit 63 is a signed bit, bits 62 through 52 repre-sent the exponent, and bits 51 through 0 represent a 52-bit fraction. In IEEE T_floating data types, no bit reordering or input checking is performed during load or store instructions as it is in S_floating. The Alpha 21164 also supports VAX floating point formats. VAX is short for Virtual Address eXtension. VAX systems feature the operating system, VMS that support virtual memory. VAX floating-point numbers are stored in one set of formats in memory (datum) and in a second set of formats in registers. The floating-point load and store instructions convert between these formats purely by rearranging bits; no rounding or range checking is done by the load and store instruc-tions. Alpha processors support F, G, and some D floating point formats. F_floating data types are much like IEEE S_floating in that they are also four contiguous bytes, the 31st bit is the signed bit, bits 30 through 23 represent exponents, and bits 22 through 0 represent the fraction. However, instead of producing an equivalent T_floating data type, it produces an equivalent VAX G_floating data type in the register The G_floating operand occupies 64 bits in a register. According to Digital Equipment Company, the bits are as follows: The form of a G_floating datum is sign magnitude with bit 15 the sign bit, bits *14:4* an excess 1024 binary exponent, and bits *3:0* and *63:16* a normal-ized 53-bit fraction with the redundant most significant fraction bit not repre-sented. Within the fraction, bits of increasing significance are from 48 through 63, 32 through 47, 16 through 31, and 0 through 3. The 11-bit exponent field encodes the values 0 through 2047. An exponent value of 0, together with a sign bit of 0, is taken to indicate that the G_floating datum has a value of 0 (9, 2-5). D_floating data types are only partially supported in Alpha architecture. For backward compatibility, exact D-floating arithmetic may be provided via software emulation. D_floating format compatibility in which binary files of D_floating numbers may be processed, but without the last three bits of fraction precision, can be obtained via conversions to G_floating, G arithmetic operations, then conversion back to D_floating.” (9, 2-6) The reordering of bits required for a D_floating load or store is identical to that of G_floating load and store instructions, therefore those instructions are used for loading or storing D_floating data. Except for 32 additional fractional bits of low significance, the memory form of a D_floating datum is identical to that of a F_floating datum. Within the fraction, bits of increasing significance are from 48 through 63, 32 through 47, 16 through 31, and 0 through 6. “The exponent conventions and approximate range of values is the same for D_floating as F_floating.” (9, 2-6) According to the Alpha Architecture Handbook hardware support is not provided by the Alpha 21164 for the following data types:  Octaword (VAX data type)  H_floating  D_floating (except noted previously)  Variable-Length  Character String  Trailing Numeric String  Leading Separate Numeric String  Packed Decimal String (9,2-12) In summation, the Alpha 21164 supports four integer data types, two IEEE floating-point data types, and three VAX floating point data types. The integer data types utilize the EXTRACT, MASK, and INSERT instructions. The floating-point data types use combinations of different LOAD and STORE instructions and in doing so, perform some bit reordering. In order to accommodate some of the floating point data types other data type instructions are used as in the VAX convention D_floating.