Bits Of Success

The Pilani Pioneers profiles twenty-five accomplished BITS Pilani graduates, including startup founders, entrepreneurs and CEOs, who have made an indelible mark on the Indian and global business landscape while deftly navigating the twists and turns of their professional and personal lives. It introduces us to mavericks such as Baba Kalyani, Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Forge; Hari Menon, Co-founder and CEO of BigBasket; Harish Bhat, Brand Custodian at Tata Sons; Sunil Duggal, Dabur's longest-serving CEO; Tulsi Mirchandaney, MD of Blue Dart Aviation; Nandini Chopra, MD at Alvarez & Marsal; Phanindra Sama, Co-founder of redBus; among others, whose stories of passion and perseverance reveal what it takes to not only achieve success in the competitive arena of business but also make a positive difference in both industry and the world at large. Inspiring, with a touch of nostalgia, this book is an essential read for anyone looking to find their niche and build a meaningful professional life.

Each of our lives is a stained glass window in the making. The most satisfying experience I have is seeing people embrace GodÕs plan for them, to begin to see something beautiful emerge from all the disjointed bits and pieces of their often severely troubled lives. IÕve collected a number of my own bits and pieces here, often broken fragments becoming part of the window of my life. Some dark. Some brilliant. Some warm. Some cold. I trust all will become something beautiful in the end.

"Some moments in our life might seem to fade away but the hue of that memory stains a scrap of our hearts forever." The book shines out with the thrills of first love. The many beautiful shades of memories scraped out of young hearts forms the core of this anthology. From falling in love, to first felt romance, desire, passion, heartbreak and feeling the pain of first separation has been portrayed into beautiful verses which are inked down to perfection by some of the most dedicated writers.

In scientific computing (also known as computational science), advanced computing capabilities are used to solve complex problems. This self-contained book describes and analyzes reported software failures related to the major topics within scientific computing: mathematical modeling of phenomena; numerical analysis (number representation, rounding, conditioning); mathematical aspects and complexity of algorithms, systems, or software; concurrent computing (parallelization, scheduling, synchronization); and numerical data (such as input of data and design of control logic). Readers will find lists of related, interesting bugs, MATLAB examples, and ?excursions? that provide necessary background, as well as an in-depth analysis of various aspects of the selected bugs. Illustrative examples of numerical principles such as machine numbers, rounding errors, condition numbers, and complexity are also included. ?

The EUROCRYPT ’96 conference was sponsored by the International Asso- ation for Cryptologic Research (IACR)l, in cooperation with the University of Saragossa. It took place at the Palacio de Congresos in Saragossa, Spain, during May 12-16, 1996. This was the fifteenth annual EUROCRYPT conference (this name has been used since the third conference held in 1984), each of which has been held in a different city in Europe. For the second time, proceedings were available at the conference. JosC Pastor Franco, the General Chair, was resp- sible for local organization and registration. His contribution to the snccess of the conference is gratefully acknowledged. The Program Committee considered 126 submitted papers and selected 34 for presentation. Each paper was sent to all members of the Program Committee and was assigned to at least three of them for careful evaluation. There were also two invited talks. James L. Massey, this year’s IACR Distinguished Ltcturer, gave a lecture entitled “The difficulty with difficulty”. Massey is the third to receive this honor, the first two being Gustavus Simmons and Adi Shamir. Shafi Goldwasser gave an invited talk entitled “Multi party secure protocols: past and present”. These proceedings contain revised versions of the 34 contributed talks. While the papers were carefully selected, they have not been refereed like submissions to a refereed journal. The authors bear full responsibility for the contents of their papers. Some authors may write final versions of their papers for publication in a refereed journal.

The four-volume set LNCS 3043-3046 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Science and its Applications, ICCSA 2004, held in Assisi, Italy in May 2004. The four volumes present a total of 460 revised reviewed papers selected from numerous submissions. The proceedings spans the whole range of computational science from foundational issues in computer science and mathematics to advanced applications in virtually all sciences making use of computational techniques. The four volumes give a unique account of recent results in the area.

An argument that the material arrangements of information—how it is represented and interpreted—matter significantly for our experience of information and information systems. Virtual entities that populate our digital experience, like e-books, virtual worlds, and online stores, are backed by the large-scale physical infrastructures of server farms, fiber optic cables, power plants, and microwave links. But another domain of material constraints also shapes digital living: the digital representations sketched on whiteboards, encoded into software, stored in databases, loaded into computer memory, and transmitted on networks. These digital representations encode aspects of our everyday world and make them available for digital processing. The limits and capacities of those representations carry significant consequences for digital society. In The Stuff of Bits, Paul Dourish examines the specific materialities that certain digital objects exhibit. He presents four case studies: emulation, the creation of a “virtual” computer inside another; digital spreadsheets and their role in organizational practice; relational databases and the issue of “the databaseable”; and the evolution of digital networking and the representational entailments of network protocols. These case studies demonstrate how a materialist account can offer an entry point to broader concerns—questions of power, policy, and polity in the realm of the digital.

The CRYPTO ’94 conference is sponsored by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), in co-operation with the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security and Privacy. It has taken place at the Univ- sity of California, Santa Barbara, from August 21-25,1994. This is the fourteenth annual CRYPTO conference, all of which have been held at UCSB. This is the first time that proceedings are available at the conference. The General Chair, Jimmy R. Upton has been responsible for local organization, registration, etc. There were 114 submitted papers which were considered by the Program Committee. Of these, 1 was withdrawn and 38 were selected for the proce- ings. There are also 3 invited talks. Two of these are on aspects of cryptog- phy in the commercial world. The one on hardware aspects will be presented by David Maher (AT&T), the one on software aspects by Joseph Pato (Hewlett- Packard). There will also be a panel discussion on “Securing an Electronic World: Are We Ready?” The panel members will be: Ross Anderson, Bob Blakley, Matt Blaze, George Davida, Yvo Desmedt (moderator), Whitfield Diffie, Joan Feig- baum, Blake Greenlee, Martin Hellman, David Maher, Miles Smid. The topic of the panel will be introduced by the invited talk of Whitfield Diffie on ”Securing the Information Highway. ” These proceedings contain revised versions of the 38 contributed talks. Each i paper was sent to at least 3 members of the program committee for comments.