In this technique, a manager devises a trading strategy, then uses computers to rake through the historical returns of the financial markets to see how well the strategy would have done.

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It uses a central server to link computers together to avoid the complexity of other peer-to-peer programs such as Gnutella, a file-sharing program popular among the high-tech community.

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One of uses best known to the general public will be on their phones and computers through Google, which incorporates Landsat data into its Earth and Maps applications.

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"People used to talk about each stock having a principal exchange, " says Daniel Mathisson, managing director in charge of a Credit Suisse division that uses computers to direct trades to the lowest-cost exchange at any given moment.

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Instead, how about telling how the vice president of marketing at one company, an old-school executive who still uses a fountain pen and hates computers, learned how to use the software in five minutes?

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