This article describes how national and international companies in the US and Europe, as well as newly industrialized countries such as China and India, are striving to gain consumer trust by offering visible and meaningful Privacy Protection Policies (PPP) on their websites. This article deploys large sets of data and descriptive indicators to compare and contrast the extent of the visibility, specificity, and lucidity of privacy policies posted by interactive companies on the Internet. Examining about 2000 Interactive companies in the USA, Europe, and Asia provides a measure of divergent responses to the growing demand for privacy protection. The results of this comparative study should help interested readers from the business world, academics, and administrations get a grasp of the extent of efforts by international corporations to protect personal information privacy in an increasingly global economy.

The authors present optimization models for software systems that are developed using a modular design technique. Four different software structures are considered: one program, no redundancy; one program, with redundancy; multiple programs, no redundancy; and multiple programs, with redundancy. The optimization problems are solved by using the authors' version of established optimization methods. The practical usefulness of this study is to draw the attention of software practitioners to an existing methodology that may be used to make an optimal selection out of an available pool of modules with known reliability and cost. All four models maximize software reliability while ensuring that expenditures remain within available resources. The software manager is allowed to select the appropriate model for a given situation.>

A software reliability allocation model is developed. This model determines how reliable software modules and programs must be in order to maximize the user's utility, while taking into account the financial and technical constraints of the system. The model is shown to provide a unified approach in which the user's requirements and preferences are formally integrated with the technical structure of the software and its module and program reliabilities. The model determines reliability goals at the planning and design stages of the software project, making reliability a singular measure for performance evaluation and project control. An example for the application of the model is provided.>