Word: varian
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...difficulty is noted by Hal Varian, dean of the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California, Berkeley: there are different definitions of just what the Internet is. "In a very narrow sense," he says, "it might be defined as a standardized protocol for wide-area computer networks." A broader definition, he explains, would be "the entire system of computers, plus the LANS [local area networks], plus the wide area network." That would come close to embracing most of what is generally considered information technology...
...Varian, professor of economics at U.C. Berkeley, hardly disagrees. But he warns that to tap the full potential of the Internet, more vigilance is needed in public policy ?- this is no time to go on autopilot. "As the Internet reshapes the business work force, is a brain trust shortage in the offing? Absolutely," warns Varian. "We've got to improve education at every level: elementary, high school, college, and ?- I think most importantly ?- continuing on-the-job education...
...Then there are the smaller targets. Varian sees a need for tax-code adjustments and a sweeping deregulation of the telecommunications industry far beyond the 1996 law. "If you go back to that law, really the Internet and the data networks are kind of a footnote in the whole thing," he says. The list goes on, from the mundanities of e-commerce ?- such as digital signatures or time-stamping ?- to the global question of formulating an international governing body for Internet issues. And the Fed won't be able to lay down on the job either, Varian insists. The easier...
...Varian also has a more dramatic worry. When the economy of a nation runs through little copper wires, when the efficiencies of IT are realized as a world of virtual transactions, virtual financial records and interconnected databases, isn't that rather thin ice? When the economy of the world's only superpower goes online, what happens if the system crashes? "The Internet is just basic communications infrastructure that creates huge benefits, but it also creates significant vulnerabilities to hackers, crackers and even terrorists," he says. "Computer security, I think, is a significant problem, and it's going to get worse...
Since passage of the Economic Espionage Act, only 13 criminal cases have gone to indictment. In December two men were sentenced for scheming to sell Intel prototype microchips to rival Cyrix, and most recently a California man, David Kern, was charged with stealing engineering secrets from his former employer, Varian Associates, a leading Silicon Valley maker of radiotherapy systems used to treat cancer. For more than a year, a federal grand jury has reportedly been looking into whether a subsidiary of financial-information giant Reuters was involved in an attempt to steal data from rival Bloomberg (Reuters says...