Category Archives: SCSU

Associate Professor – Southern CT State University

Soviet Space Dog Sparks the Birth of the Internet

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laika

Laika (Sputnik II Space Dog) – Photo Source: NASA

This past Tuesday (Nov 3rd) was Election Day. Not the big Election Day where we pick a new President, that comes next year BUT did you know that over the past 220 years we have elected a new President 7 times on a Nov 3rd?

They were: 1796 John Adams (#2 – Federalist), 1868 Ulysses Grant (#18 Republican), 1896 William McKinley (#25 Republican), 1908 William Taft (#27 Republican), 1936 Franklin Roosevelt (#32 Democrat), 1964 Lyndon Johnson (#36 Democrat) and 1992 William Clinton (#42 Democrat).

Most of us also remember #42’s Vice President was Al Gore who has been quoted and misquoted as taking credit for inventing the Internet during a March 1999 interview by Wolf Blitzer. Sad to say but Al Gore didn’t invent the Internet and Al also disputes making that claim, but I digress.

Nov 3rd has great significance in the history of the Internet as on Nov 3, 1957 the Soviet Union successfully launched orbiting earth satellite Sputnik 2, which was the second spacecraft launched into Earth’s orbit, and the first to carry a living animal, a dog named Laika (knick named Muttnik in the US). First in space was….you guessed it Sputnik 1, which was a ‘dog less’ flight that launched just a month earlier.

The successful launches of the Sputniks surprised the American public and shattered the perception of the United States as the technological superpower and the Soviet Union as a backward country (The Legacy of Sputnik [Editorial]. (2007). New York Times, p. 28.)

In response to Sputnik(s), the United States established the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958 within the US Department of Defense (DoD) for the purposes of forming and executing research and the development of projects that expand the frontiers of science and technology.

From ARPA came ARPANET in 1969 with 4 network nodes in an Interconnected Network. Many twists & turns, new technologies, new communication protocols, new standards and new names over the next 20 years gave  rise to the Global Internet (INTERconnected NETworks) in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s.

In case you were wondering about Laika, it didn’t end well for her as she died by the fourth circuit of flight from overheating. It was a suicide mission from the start for poor Laika as Sputnik 2 wasn’t designed for reentry into the earth’s atmosphere.

Laika is memorialized in the form of a statue and plaque at Star City, Russia. (I’ve been there).

Think of Laika the next time that you update your Facebook status on your Smartphone as without her sacrifice we may not have the Internet as we know it today. She boldly went where no dog had gone before. (couldn’t resist)

John Mack, The Entrepreneur who brought us everything

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gold_bulldogJohn Mack (born Oct 27, 1864) can probably be credited, more than anyone else, with providing virtually everything that moves between manufactures, merchants, warehouses, retail outlets and homes.

He was an inventor and a manufacturer who co-founded the Mack Brothers Company, which manufactured heavy duty trucks from 1900 in New York City. A company that would later be known as Mack Trucks Inc.

His first mover company developed buses, the first Hook & Ladder and commercial trucks. John was inspired by Orville and Wilbur Wright, Willis Carrier and Henry Ford’s inventions, into producing heavy duty trucks and engines. 

John invented the Mack “Bulldog” type engine. The bulldog remains the present company’s icon and part of its logo and certainly the best hood ornament ever.

Interestingly enough, while in his teens and 20’s John worked on the railroad as a teamster. The teamsters later became a significant force in trucking. Is it possible that one man developing the disruptive commercial trucking industry is also responsible for bringing the teamsters into that industry? If so then John Mack might be a serial disrupter.

 

Credit Card Fraud Liability pushed to Non-compliant Merchants as of Oct 1st

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On Oct. 1, 2015, new credit card rules went into effect which will transfer fraud liability to whichever party is the least EMV-compliant in a fraudulent transaction. This would apply directly to merchants who continue to use old “swipe” credit card processing machines. Compliance is deferred to 2016 for most ATM providers and 2017  for pay-at-pump gas stations and the balance of ATMs.

EMV-compliant card with embedded chip

EMV-compliant credit card with embedded chip

To address increasing credit card fraud, the U.S. has formally moved to EMV-compliant cards, which stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa. EMV is a global standard for cards equipped with computer chips and the technology used to authenticate chip-card transactions. EMV is embedded onto a payment card in a microprocessor chip that stores and protects cardholder data.  The EMV technology is designed to improve payment security, making it more difficult for fraudsters to successfully counterfeit cards.

EMV-compliant merchant card reader

EMV-compliant merchant card reader

Businesses who accept credit card payments have been faced with updating all credit card processing machines to comply with the new cards being issued. Those firms that did not update their machines by Oct. 1 can be held financially liable for any credit card fraud that takes place. This represents a major shift in liability from the credit card companies to the businesses that accept card payments.

Consumers are already seeing a difference in the way that they use their credit cards as instead of swiping in the traditional way, cards are either inserted into a terminal slot (card dipping) or tapped against the terminal scanner (near field communication) for processing.

Dipping the card begins the process of data verification between the issuing bank and the chip.  Once the card is verified, the unique transaction data is created. Near field communications cards (aka as Contactless cards) have been rolled out largely in Canada and Europe.  Most cards and terminals in the U.S. will require dipping.

EMV does not totally reduce the risk of credit card data being captured and reproduced as it still has vulnerabilities, which is why we can probably expect to the additional authentication requirements of a signature or a PIN layered on to all transactions in the near future.

Sources: Molly Brogan (NSBA.biz) and Sienna Kossman (Creditcards.com) 

 

Bassett’s Blog Rebooted: Small Business Entrepreneurship

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Blog Clearwater 2015-10-09 15.21.54

There is no reason that business can’t be transacted poolside as technology is the great ‘place shifter’.

This Blog has been home to well over 400 Rotary related posts over the past few years. While it has enjoyed a rich and an extremely large global readership as a Rotary Portal of sorts, it’s time to reboot it with an entirely new focus: Small Business Entrepreneurship with an emphasis on technology challenges and opportunities.

One of the challenges that a college professor wrestles with is determining exactly what their research focus / agenda is going to be as it largely defines their academic career. While some professors are able to narrow down a research focus very early on, others vacillate for years before settling into an area that suits their unique qualifications and interest level, unfortunately I fall into the later camp.

For nearly the past 15 years I’ve done research and/or published papers on Cybersecurity, Outsourcing, Databases, Social Media Mining, Sustainable ERP, Project Management, Cloud Computing and Infrastructure hoping that a thread amongst them would emerge as a single theme. Finally the preverbal lightbulb has lit up with the focus of: Technology challenges and opportunities  Small Business Entrepreneurs face.

It’s surprising that it took this long to narrow down this research focus as I have over 3 decades of first hand experience as a successful Small Business Entrepreneur running several companies and working directly with nearly 1,000 other Small Business Entrepreneurs but sometimes you just can’t see the hand in front of your face until it slaps you hard enough.

Rick Bassett
Associate Professor & Dept Chair
Management / Mgmt Information Systems / Int Business Dept
Southern CT State University

New Rotaract Club forming at Southern CT State University (SCSU)

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New Haven Rotary President David Hunter giving opening talk

New Haven Rotary President David Hunter giving opening talk

The kick off meeting for D7980’s newest Rotaract Club was held in the School of Business at Southern CT State University (SCSU) last evening.

The New Haven Rotary Club has been diligently working to establish a University based Rotaract Club at SCSU and is sponsoring this new Rotaract Club.

Arzoo Rohbar is the SCSU student who has taken the initiative to launch the Club and will most likely be be Club’s first president. Rick Bassett (me) will serve as the faculty advisor for the Club.

Rotary District 7980 currently has 10 Rotaract Clubs; 7 are University based and 3 are Community based. The addition of this Club would make the count 11, 8 and 3.

Members of Rotaract are part of a global community of young adults taking action for positive change. Rotaract is a club for adults ages 18-30 that meets twice a month to exchange ideas, plan activities and projects, and socialize. While Rotary clubs serve as sponsors, Rotaract clubs decide how to organize and run their club and what projects and activities to carry out.

“Rotaract” stands for “Rotary in Action”, although the name originally comes from a combination of “Rotary” and “Interact” (International + Action), the high school level program created by Rotary International in 1962.

Rotaract originally began as a Rotary International youth program in 1968 at Charlotte North Rotary Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, and has grown into a major Rotary-sponsored organization of over 9,539 clubs spread around the world and 219,397 members

The purpose of Rotaract is to provide an opportunity for young men and women to enhance the knowledge and skills that will assist them in personal development, to address the physical and social needs of their communities, and to promote better relations between all people worldwide through a framework of friendship and service.

Students who are interested in joining this newly forming Rotaract Club should contact Arzoo Rohbar via email at Arzoo.Rohbar@gmail.com

Southern CT State University welcomes the Class of 2018

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SCSU Class of 2018

SCSU Class of 2018

SCSU Fall 2014 Move-in Day

We take this education thing seriously at SCSU 🙂

The Fall semester at Southern CT State University (SCSU) is about to begin with thousands of returning students and a bumper crop of new bright eyed eager students otherwise known as the Class of 2018 .

Classes start tomorrow, traffic will get crazy for awhile, there will be great confusion all over campus as our new arrivals try to find  their way to classrooms, the bookstore, the library, the computer labs and the all important student center.

SCSU School of Business

SCSU School of Business

I have been elected to the Chair Position of the Management / MIS Department in the School of Business at SCSU and look forward to working with the many faculty, students and yes even administrators in this new role. My new role will having me teaching  several classes each year while coordinating the activities of the largest academic department in the School of Business. It is especially nice to be working in a modern state-of-the art sustainable building which our School of Business is housed in.