Cyph3rpunk's Mixed Bag

Analogy between (biological) epidemiology and computer virus propagation

2004-12-13T15:07:00.000+08:00

Links to some articles follow :

http://engr.smu.edu/~tchen/papers/talk-lmu-Nov2004.pdf
http://as.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471007684.html
http://www.research.ibm.com/antivirus/SciPapers/Kephart/VIRIEEE/virieee.gopher.html
http://www.research.ibm.com/antivirus/SciPapers/Kephart/Spectrum/Spectrum.html
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/abs_free.jsp?arNumber=275061
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel3/6/6814/00275061.pdf?isNumber=6814&arnumber=275061&prod=JNL&arSt=20&ared=26&arAuthor=Kephart%2C+J.O.%3B+White%2C+S.R.%3B+Chess%2C+D.M.
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~garlan/17811/Readings/p88-forrest.pdf
http://csgrad.cs.vt.edu/~rpande/worm_modeling.html
http://csgrad.cs.vt.edu/~rpande/Thesis%20Proposal.pdf (see references 3, 9 and 11 for foundational readings on epidemiology)
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html
http://vx.netlux.org/lib/static/vdat/epepidem.htm
http://www.securityfocus.com/library?cat=41&offset=20
http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/Workshops/Analogies/announcement.html
http://www.textfiles.com/virus/readlist.vir
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/papers/email.ps (postscript file)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/dmn.html
http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/newsroom/pr.cfm?ni=15000000000118
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11268
http://www.cs.uwyo.edu/~wspears/virus.html (two papers are linked from this page)
http://www.jour.unr.edu:16080/j705/AB.LI.VIRUS.HTML
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dujs/2001S/beubonica.pdf
http://www.cacs.louisiana.edu/cybersecurity/malware-tutorial/material/8-Bibliography.pdf
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/292/5520/1316
http://www.madchat.org/vxdevl/papers/avers/
http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=cache:ytjdm1u7Uz4J:www.usenix.org/publications/login/2004-12/pdfs/propagation.pdf+epidemiology+computer+virus&hl=en
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/publications/viruspaper/version.PDF
http://www.aegis.com/news/upi/2002/UP021211.html
http://www.jaist.ac.jp/library/thesis/ks-master-2003/abstract/m-minou/abstract.pdf

Comments anyone ? Does the analogy yield any useful insights ?

Articles on the psychology of virus writers

2004-12-13T15:02:00.000+08:00

Links to some popular press articles on the topic ...

http://www.research.ibm.com/antivirus/SciPapers/Gordon/GenericVirusWriter.html http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=363504
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=16000606
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3172967.stm http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3240901.stm http://www.frame4.com/php/article721.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/34326.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1153270,00.html

Anyone wants to comment on the realism of these descriptions ?

'Laser scam' gamblers to keep ?1m

2004-12-06T10:24:00.000+08:00

The trio - a Hungarian woman and two Serbian men - were arrested in March but police have apparently decided that they did not break the law.

A laser scanner linked to a computer was allegedly used to gauge numbers likely to come up on the roulette wheel.

But police said the case had now been closed, with no charges brought.

Simson Garfinkel's Database Nation describes a similar incident when a gambler observed slot machines to predict the randomness generated by machines and then played and won a sizeable sum but he was not allowed to keep the money.

Seinfeld Dictionary

2004-12-06T10:15:00.000+08:00

A little refresher on the special brand of terminology used on the show

Global IT Security Market Forecast to Near $13 Billion

2004-11-29T00:34:00.000+08:00

Revenues for the world's IT security market is expected to near $13 billion in 2004, with Cisco Systems Inc., Symantec Corp. and VeriSign Inc. leading the market, a research firm said Monday.

The projected $12.9 billion market consists of three components, threat mitigation, command and control and managed security services, The Yankee Group said.

Source: Yahoo! News

Related Links
Cisco Systems
Symantec Corporation
VeriSign Inc.
The Yankee Group

Clean bandwidth

2004-11-29T00:14:00.000+08:00

The rise in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks is creating a market for ISPs that offer that offer a 'clean feed' to clients. Hosting companies and ISPs might be able to charge a premium of between 20 and 50 per cent for bandwidth filtered to remove hostile traffic, according to security appliance firm Top Layer.

Source : The Register

Related Links
Top Layer
Tipping Point

SSL VPN (& Hybrid VPN) Gateways - Product Matrix

2004-11-25T23:13:00.000+08:00

The SSL VPN competitive landscape has all the typical markings of a young and vibrant hi-tech marketplace. By the start of 2004 the vendor ranks had expanded to 20+ companies, and until recently, most were small ventures that had shipped their initial SSL VPN Gateways only in the past two years. Since July 2003, several well-established public companies have acquired SSL VPN Technology- F5 Networks (uroam), Juniper (NetSceen ((Neoteris)), Symantec (Safeweb) and SafeNet (Rainbow). No vendor yet enjoys a large, defensible position - although Juniper is currently leading the pack based on 2003 product sales. While Cisco has announced SSL support on firewall/IPsec VPN products, this is not yet a feature-rich, remote access solution. Check Point announced its first SSL VPN appliance in May 2004.

Source: SSL VPN Central

Citrix buys Net6

2004-11-25T23:11:00.000+08:00

Server-based computing firm Citrix yesterday announced a deal to acquire SSL VPN vendor Net6 for approximately $50m cash. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.

Source: The Register

Popular Risk Metrics for IT Security

2004-11-24T01:44:00.000+08:00

Information Systems Security Association - GAISP
The International Information Security Foundation (IISF) - GASSP (GAISP Predecessor)
The International Standards Organization (ISO) - ISO 17799
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) - Information Security Principles
The European Information Security Forum (ISF) - Standard of Good Practice
The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) - Systems Assurance and Control (SAC)
The Information Security Audit and Control Association (ISACA) - Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (CobiT)

USPS gets SSO

2004-11-24T00:31:00.000+08:00

To move the mail across the network of 37,000 locations, Postal Service workers must access mail processing systems, tracking and distribution software, scheduling and financial recordkeeping databases and the usual array of office applications. The average user has 10 unique identities, higher than the six-to-eight average of most enterprises. Stretch that across 300,000 regular computer users and the dizzying array of applications they touch every day, and you've got a lot of pain, says Bob Otto, the Postal Service's CTO.

"If users can't remember their passwords, they'll write them on sticky notes and post them on their monitors, or call our help desk, which costs us money and lost productivity," says Otto. "We wanted to simplify."

Quantifying Infosecurity

2004-11-24T00:29:00.000+08:00

For a long time (at least in Internet terms), businesses didn't take security into consideration when launching e-commerce ventures and online services. Security was usually injected as a secondary consideration, and sometimes not until there was a security breach--the proverbial closing of the barn door after the horses got loose.

The real cost of open source

2004-11-23T15:13:00.000+08:00

"With open source, who's going to support the hundreds of thousands of users?" asked Quazi Zaman, platform technology specialist manager for Microsoft's federal division, based in Washington, D.C. "With commercial software, end users have direct vendor support, third-party systems integrators and help desks. Then there's the training piece. How am I going to reduce enterprise costs if I have to get thousands of people up-to-date in using open source?"

Source: Federal Computer Week

Whats that supposed to mean? By that logic we shouldnt invent new things, no new cars, no new phones etc. because who is going to train the users? From the way I see it IT is just a tool, and of course there will be some pain when learing new ways to harness its power that doesnt mean we shouldnt do it.

A good risk to take

2004-11-23T14:01:00.000+08:00

At the request of Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), GAO analysts studied the idea of creating a system that could crunch reams of economic and social indicators to create something of a national barometer — a Web-based system for evaluating the state of the state. It is within the realm of possibility, they determined, although it would not be easy.

Indeed, the risk of failure is real. There's no shortage of data to analyze, nor is there a dearth of technology to analyze it. But how do you develop a system that turns all that data into a reliable gauge of the nation's health?

Source: Federal Computer Week

Handbook of Information Security Management

2004-11-20T19:15:00.000+08:00

(Imprint: Auerbach Publications)
(Publisher: CRC Press LLC)
Authors: Micki Krause, Harold F. Tipton
ISBN: 0849399475

2003-06-05T21:20:00.000+08:00

Unbreakable
Within three years, companies could be using quantum cryptography to protect sensitive messages. British researchers say they are close to producing an off-the-shelf system that exploits quantum physics to create a secure communications channel. The system encodes bits of information on individual particles of light. This week, the researchers demonstrated their system working over fibres 100 kilometres in length. [BBC]

2003-06-04T03:06:00.000+08:00

Quite frankly, I found it mostly interesting in a Jerry Springer kind of way. White trash battling it out in public, throwing chairs at each other. SCO crying about IBM's other women ...
- Linus Torvalds on SCO vs. IBM lawsuit.

Hehehe Jerry Springer... :)

2003-06-03T16:17:00.000+08:00

Just Soft
The tale of Soft and Microsoft is the tale of David and Goliath. UK-based Hermann Chinnery-Hesse was on holiday in his home country of Ghana when he accepted a school friend's bet to try to make his fortune in West Africa. Starting with a battered old personal computer in his bedroom, Mr Hesse developed Ghana's own software firm which, for the moment at least, is holding Microsoft at bay.
"No, no, we only use Soft," says the hotel receptionist where I am staying, when I ask if they use Microsoft. The shops around Accra say the same. "We're taking it industry by industry," Mr Hesse says, who has already designed e-SuSu software for microfinance projects and the Ndua system for Ghana's timber industry. [BBC]

2003-05-23T17:21:00.000+08:00

Who invented spaghetti?

AJ: Is it true that the chinese invented spaghetti?
Tony Soprano: Now think about it, why would people who eat with sticks invent something that you need a fork to eat?*

Oh man, I am loving every bit of The Sopranos.

* s1e08

2003-05-18T23:22:00.000+08:00

Bird watching
A new and rather different version of the Big Brother reality show is drawing large audiences in Norway.

The show's contestants are not young or famous people, but a tight-knit family of birds.

And they are proving to be the saviours of Norwegian reality shows. [BBC]

Sounds interesting, I would prefer watching the birds over those idiots in Big Brother anyday...

2003-05-16T02:29:00.000+08:00

Schlosser is back..
In his new book, "Reefer Madness," Eric Schlosser rips into the American hypocrisy that drives pleasures of the flesh underground -- and turns a blind eye to exploited labor. [Salon]

2003-05-12T00:36:00.000+08:00

IT is getting older
Today, everybody is older and wiser. Given the current recession in IT, the idea of a parallel digital universe where the laws of economic gravity do not apply has been quietly abandoned. What has yet to sink in is that the current downturn is something more than the bottom of another cycle in the technology industry. Rather, as this survey will argue, the sector is going through deep structural changes which suggest that it is growing up or even, horrors, maturing. Silicon Valley, in particular, has not yet come to grips with the realities, argues Larry Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle, a database giant (who at 58 still sports a youthful hairdo). "There's a bizarre belief that we'll be young forever," he says. [Economist]

Some really good reads about how the IT industry is getting older and wiser from the Economist in their survey on the IT industry.

2003-05-10T00:36:00.000+08:00

MS Passport flawed
Microsoft has admitted that for the last seven months up to 200 million Passport accounts have been vulnerable to plundering by thieves and malicious hackers.

The loophole in the online identity service only seems to have been exploited in the last month and Microsoft said it had locked all compromised accounts and fixed the bug. [BBC]

I read a gem of a statement some days ago while browsing The Hundredth Window

Dont say the word secure, if you are talking about computer systems. - Donald H. Rumsfeld

2003-05-07T23:41:00.000+08:00

Laughter - The Best Medicine
I recieved the following as an email forward today...

This story was told by a nurse who was on duty at the SARS ward in Tan Tock Sen Hospital, Singapore and she swears this really happened in her ward. A man suspected of SARS was lying in bed with a mask over his mouth. A young intern nurse appeared to sponge his face and hands.

Patient (wearing a mask): Nurse, are my testicles black?
Intern Nurse (embarrassed): I don't know, and I'm here only to wash your face and hands.

Patient (struggling from behind the mask): Nurse, Are my testicles black?
Nurse (still embarrassed): I can't tell. I'm here only to wash your face and hands.

The Head Nurse was passing and saw the man getting a little distraught so she marched over to see what was wrong.

Patient (to the Head Nurse): Nurse, Are my testicles black?
Being a nurse of long-standing, the Head Nurse was undaunted. She whipped back the bedclothes, pulled down his pajama, had a right good look, pulled up the pajamas, replaced the bedclothes and announced, "Nothing wrong with your testicles!!!"

At this the man angrily pulled off his mask and barked, "I SAID.... Are my TESTS RESULTS BACK!! ???"

Hehehe...

2003-05-07T03:25:00.000+08:00

A different kind of animal

cypherpunk becomes the Ullu man... read more here

2003-05-06T09:32:00.000+08:00

Defender of Democracy Award for Dr Chee
Dr Chee Soon Juan has been given the 2003 Defender of Democracy Award by the Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA). Dr Chee was informed on 1 May 2003 of the PGA’s decision to award him the prize in a letter by the organization’s President, Mr Kenneth Dzirasah (see below).

The PGA is an international association made up of parliamentarians from across the world. It is supported by the United Nations, European Commission, the Governments of Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom as well as private foundations and universities (see website at www.pgaction.org). Its stated goal is to strengthen individual legislators’ capacity to pursue international peace, social justice and development.

In his letter to Dr Chee, Mr Dzirasah said that the “PGA admires your lifelong commitment to promoting democracy in your country.” The award ceremony will take place in Washington DC on 16 September 2003. [Singapore Democrats]

Last night I was talking to a friend of mine about the general state of affairs in Singapore. I told her how there is only one party that has been ruling since independence etc. etc.

cypher: Only one party has been in power since independence here and they are quite authoritarian...
friend: ic, what is the name of that party
cypher: PAP, Peoples Action Party
friend: hmmm, Peoples Action Party. How ironic...

Well said my friend, well said...

2003-05-04T21:16:00.000+08:00

25yrs of SPAM
One of the most annoying aspects of the internet, spam, is 25 years old this weekend. Net historians have trawled records and found that the first junk e-mail message hawking a company or its wares was sent back in 1978. Coincidentally, the first commercial spam sent to Usenet discussion groups was sent a little over 10 years ago. Now spam is thought to account for up to 40% of all e-mail messages sent across the net and many industry groups, companies and technologists are uniting to fight the flood. [BBC]

2003-05-02T23:35:00.000+08:00

Brotherhood
Web log writers around the world are joining forces to protest against the detention of a fellow blogger. Iranian Sina Motallebi has been held by the authorities on, so far, unspecified charges and now fellow web users are banding together to press for his release. An online petition has been set up calling for the release of Mr Motallebi and for a halt to harassment of journalists by the Iranian Government. The cause has been picked up by other bloggers, who are also calling for his release. [BBC]

2003-04-30T04:28:00.000+08:00

Rodent Roadsigns
Mice can retrace their steps because they arrange objects to help them remember where they have been, say researchers.

These rodent "roadsigns" - piles of seed shells, leaves and other small objects - could be the first evidence of such sophisticated behaviour in any mammal apart from humans. The phenomenon was uncovered by researchers at Oxford University, UK, who noticed that wood mice tended to move piles of small objects, then return to them frequently. They had the theory that these were primitive landmarks, designed to help them forage for food efficiently. To test this idea, Drs Pavel Stopka and David MacDonald brought eight wild mice into a controlled environment inside a laboratory and left them to explore it. [BBC]

Nature... ah what can I say, never ceases to amaze me... Btw, who all have watched Mouse Hunt? I loved that flick.

2003-04-28T17:13:00.000+08:00

Everest Online
Everest, the roof of the world, a place of freezing winds, glittering skies, and awesome silence. Or maybe not. Climb the mountain this spring and you may encounter a middle-aged entrepreneur chattering busily into his mobile phone. It will be Charles Zhang, founder and chief executive of Sohu.com, one of China's most successful internet companies. Mr Zhang's trekking diary will appear daily on Sohu.com's site alongside a medley of news, shopping tips and adverts. Expect it to be garnished with digital snapshots from his mobile handset. [BBC]

A blog from Everest could prove to be the most remote location for a web diary yet. Weblogs are becoming increasing popular as online diaries discuss every topic under the sun, including now one of the world's most ambitious climbs. Lorenzo Gariano is one of an army of climbers who will be setting out to tackle the world's largest mountain in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Everest's conquest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. He has been recording every stage of his momentous journey via a satellite phone which beams live audio blogs to a website run by the Open University's Knowledge Media Institute, (KMI), based in Milton Keynes. [BBC] [Lorenzo Homepage]

Man the world is gonna be a real geeky place soon... :)

2003-04-27T22:32:00.000+08:00

Because we are French
...It was just over three-and-a-half years ago that he first gave us a piece of paper, suggesting we add that venerable blue cheese to our daughter Maya's diet.

For - this being Paris - he gave her marks for elegance and charm. One time he decided she was a "belle poulette", on another occasion a "lovely little lady" - written in English.

Rather sadly, I was more concerned about how he'd rated her poise than whether he'd decided that she had some terrible disease.

And then - in no time at all - Maya went from being a charming baby to a boozing toddler.

When we asked our local boulangerie to bake a cake for her third birthday party, we were bemused, shall we say, when the impressive gateau came infused with unmistakeable aroma of Grand Marnier. One bite was enough to tell us that it was soaked in the stuff.

It turns out that this is common practice. In fact, the lady who runs Maya's nursery has a strict rule about birthdays - parents can only bring homemade cakes.

"I don't want a load of drunken kids on my hands," she says. [BBC]

As Robin Williams would say - Why are you doing this? Because we are french...!! Oh boy I love BBC for filing these amusing reports...

2003-04-27T22:08:00.000+08:00

Father Cappuccino
Pope John Paul II has formally placed a monk who inspired European resistance to Muslim invaders in the 17th Century and five other historic Italian religious figures on the path to sainthood.

...Marco d'Aviano, a wandering preacher for the Capuchin monastic order, is credited with rallying Catholics and Protestants on the eve of the Battle of Vienna in 1683, which was crucial to halting the advance of Turkish soldiers into Europe.

...He is also remembered by some as the man who, by legend, inspired the fashionable cappuccino coffee now drunk by millions across the globe. The monk, who was born in the city of his name in northern Italy in 1631, was sent by the pope of the day to unite Christians in the face of a huge Ottoman army. Legend has it that, following the victory, the Viennese reportedly found sacks of coffee abandoned by the enemy and, finding it too strong for their taste, diluted it with cream and honey. The drink being of a brown colour like that of the Capuchins' robes, the Viennese named it cappuccino in honour of Marco D'Aviano's order. [BBC]

2003-04-25T05:46:00.000+08:00

BigMac Index explained
...Invented in 1986 as a light-hearted guide to whether currencies are at their ?correct? level, burgernomics is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP). This says that, in the long run, exchange rates should move toward rates that would equalise the prices of an identical basket of goods and services in any two countries. To put it simply: a dollar should buy the same everywhere. Our basket is a McDonald's Big Mac, produced locally to roughly the same recipe in 118 countries. The Big Mac PPP is the exchange rate that would leave burgers costing the same as in America. Comparing the PPP with the actual rate is one test of whether a currency is undervalued or overvalued. [Economist]

2003-04-25T04:35:00.000+08:00

SARS virus in your email
A computer worm that takes advantage of growing concerns about the Sars virus has hit the web.
The computer virus, known as Coronex, takes advantage of public panic about the real life virus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

The mass-mailing Windows worm aims to persuade people to open an attachment offering details on the current epidemic.

Subject lines include "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome", "SARS Virus" and "Hongkong.exe". [BBC]

Frankly, I am bored of these viruses that come in the mail and fwd themselves to all the people in your address book, its the same story over and over again just with some different name. I am no great programmer and all but I mean come on grow up already, the whole thing was fun for about 10 mins after the first virus of this kind was sent out.

And whats with the users, how hard is to understand one simple sentence - Do not open attachments with funny names and unknown users. Dimwits...

2003-04-23T16:49:00.000+08:00

DNA: A design icon
Denna Jones, curator of the TwoTen Gallery and Contemporary Initiatives at the Wellcome Trust, looks at how DNA's double helix became a design icon.

Why has the double helix become so popular? Simplicity, symmetry and serendipity are key.

The simplicity of the design - a spiral form resembling nothing more complex than a twisted ladder - means the metaphors used to describe DNA are easily understood and even more easily depicted. [BBC]

Beautiful article.

Heres some more DNA trivia, the title of the sci-fi "Gattaca" is composed entirely of the starting letters of nucleotide bases of the DNA - Gaunine, Adenine, Thymine and Cytosine.

2003-04-23T02:20:00.000+08:00

Surviving a dog-day morning
A dog called Dosha may have as many lives as a cat. She was hit by a car, shot in the head and kept in a freezer for two hours, but she survived and is now doing well under a veterinarian's care. [BBC]

It never ceases to amaze me, how strong the will to survive is...

The title of the report is a play on the title of the movie Dog Day Afternoon I think (Btw, is this a phrase?). I saw it last semester, brilliant performance by Al Pacino.

2003-04-22T18:46:00.000+08:00

US wants bases in India
A classified report commissioned by the United States Department of Defence, a copy of which is available with rediff.com, states that the country wants access to Indian bases and military infrastructure with the United States Air Force specifically desiring the establishment of airbases in India.

The report on the future of Indo-US military relations, being distributed among decision-makers in the United States and made available to a handful of senior members of the Indian government, also speaks of the USAF's desire for 'having access closer to areas of instability'.

...The report, prepared by Juli A MacDonald, an associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, for the department of defence, is based on interviews of 42 key Americans, including 23 active military officers, 15 government officials and four others. [Rediff] [Booze Allen Hamilton]

Addendum: Part II of the series is now online.

2003-04-19T15:48:00.000+08:00

INS Shivalik
MUMBAI: India on Friday unveiled to the world its capability to incorporate stealth technology for military purposes with the launching of "Shivalik," a warship which has this system, at Mazagon Dock here.

At 1 pm, Kaumudi Kumari, wife of Admiral Madhvendra Singh, chief of naval staff, broke a coconut on the warship's hull and named the vessel after a Himalayan peak. She then pressed the launch trigger and the new radar-evading warship, resplendent in its colourful buntings, slid down the slipway to the strains of 'Sare Jahan Se Achha." [TOI]

This is just awesome, I searched for some pics but havnt been able to find any so far. Any sources?

Sare Jahan Se Accha, its almost becoming a pseudo-national song or something. Yuck, I hate it... Absolutely despise it... I hope Iqbal's word rang true for him when he decided to go to Pakistan after the partition. ;)

2003-04-18T04:21:00.000+08:00

Great...!!!
A court in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu has sentenced three people to life imprisonment for killing a new-born baby girl. [BBC]

2003-04-17T00:27:00.000+08:00

Ad Crazy
Bored? Check out some cool ads at AdForum.com

If you really like the ads, you can download the clips by following these steps:

1. Open the ad window
2. View Source
3. Search for extension .mpg (all ads that I've seen so far in MPG format)
4. Copy-paste the location of the file in your browser or download accelerator.

It should be on your hard drive in a couple of mins time... ;-)

Once upon a time I ripped a lotta ads from AdCritic.com but sadly they went kaput during the dotcom meltdown... :(

2003-04-14T18:55:00.000+08:00

Mr. Garg on French Fries
After a recent week of words from law, where many of the words are of French origin, I received this email from a reader:

"I propose you no longer feature words which have a base or stem from the French language. I no longer see that as a positive e-mail."

In these times when emotions run high, it's understandable why someone would say that, why US lawmakers would rename French fries and French toast in their cafeteria menus. Or why some German professors think they need to exclude English terms from their vocabulary.

This is not the first time linguistic revisionism is being attempted. During World War I, in the US, some had tried to rename sauerkraut as "liberty cabbage", for example. But we're all so interconnected, as are our languages, that any such attempt quickly falls flat on its face.

"Freedom fries" they say? Well, there's still some French remaining, as the word fry comes from Old French frire. "Freedom toast"? What about toast which comes from Middle French toster. Thinking along these lines, we may even have to rename the US (from Old French estat). Estimates vary, but one-quarter or more of words in the English language have a French influence. In the two lines that the above-mentioned reader sent us, at least six words have French connections (propose, feature, base, language, positive, mail).

A language isn't owned by a country. French belongs as much to France as to Senegal or Canada or anyone else who speaks it. To celebrate the diversity of the English language, this week we'll look at five words that have come into English from five different languages.

-Anu [Wordsmith]

Renaming this and that is a waste of valuable time, energy and money, be it in the USA or India. But thats just my opinion, I could be wrong.

2003-04-14T02:58:00.000+08:00

For the Film Geeks
Check out ImagesJournal.com, a site that takes quite a geeky outlook towards films. I spent the afternoon reading the articles on Hitchcock. No marks for guessing who sent me this link. :)

2003-04-13T03:42:00.000+08:00

How right our Aryan ancestors were to create gods. We seek sex, and are left with two private bodies on a stained bed. The larger erotic dream, the god, has eluded us. It is so whenever, moving out of ourselves, we look for extensions of ourselves. It is with cities as it is with sex. We seek the physical city and find only a conglomeration of the private cells. In the city as nowhere else we are reminded that we are individuals, units. Yet the idea of the city remains; it is the god of the city that we pursue, in vain. [The Mimic Men by V. S. Naipual]

Is the god of your city elusive too?

2003-04-10T17:36:00.000+08:00

Dark Ages?
One of the first signs that something was changing came in March last year in the suburbs of northern Atlanta, when people started talking, a little more frequently than might be expected, about mousetraps. It was hardly unprecedented in the US that a group of local parents should be lobbying for their children to be taught that evolution was a disputed theory, not a fact.

...Some other signs: if you were contemplating an abortion and were worried about the rumour that it might increase your risk of breast cancer, you might visit the website of the government-funded National Cancer Institute to read their factsheet, which noted that most scientists doubt a link. Or, at least, you might have done so until June last year, when the page, criticised by some Republicans in Congress, simply vanished. (A replacement page was posted last month.) Or maybe you were an Aids activist, elated by the president's unexpected (and genuinely revolutionary) announcement in the State of the Union address of $15bn (£9.7bn) in funding for fighting the epidemic worldwide - and then surprised to find that only around 10% was destined for the Global Aids Fund, while the rest would be funnelled through US agencies, where it is more likely to be accessible to American abstinence-only groups campaigning against condoms.

...Welcome to the new battlegrounds of American science. No conspiracy, nor even one political agenda, links the incidents above. But US scientists say they are indicative of a new climate that has emerged under the Bush administration: one driven partly by close relationships with big business, but just as much by a fiercely moral approach to the business of science. The approach is not exclusively religious, nor exclusively rightwing, but is spreading worry as never before through the nation's laboratories and lecture halls. [Guardian]

I am not easily scared, things like ghosts and fate dont scare me. What scares me is ignorance, and as of this writing I am turly scared, reading the article sent a shiver down my spine. Seriously, am freaked out.

P.S. I encourage all of you to read The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins, its a masterpiece and should not be missed by anyone who wants to understand evolution.

2003-04-08T05:12:00.000+08:00

Be Grateful
If you're wondering why *I* am so worked up about the Marines, well, I think all soldiers everywhere -- EXCEPT Pakistan's, because they are all jihadis, besides which, they've never EVER won a war, all 4 of which THEY had initiated -- should be honoured by civilians, and given more than a fair chance by bureaucrats and politicians, who control their training, arming, clothing and thus, their life-spans. Whether the DoD or the MoD, every person therein is suspect. There's no space left to go into the crimes the MoD has committed against our soldiers (remember the canvas shoes our jawans were given to battle in the Himalayas?), but the Millennium Challenge 2002 saga should alert us to the despicable attitude of civil servants and politicians -- everywhere. [Rediff]

For more takes on the Millenium Challenge and other goofups during the build up towards the war, I encourage you to download/watch the Channel 4 mockumentry called Between Iraq and a Hard Place.

2003-04-07T06:14:00.000+08:00

Lets be creative
MUMBAI: The ban bandwagon is on the roll again. People who wouldn’t usually be seen dead without their Nikes and DKNYs are jolting awake to protest US ‘neo-imperialism’ by dumping their designer togs.

In Mumbai’s Muslim neighbourhoods, a door-todoor campaign has been extolling the virtues of Babool over Colgate and Masala Soda over Pepsi.

There’s a sense of deja vu. When the Afghanistan war began, Sosyo was the flavour of the moment from Crawford Market to J.J. Hospital. Well- heeled executives on Mohammed Ali Road were declaring with surprise, ?Hey, Raymonds isn’t so bad, you know,’’ as they put aside their Arrows and Calvin Kleins. But the moment Hameed Karzai’s regime was installed, Coke and Reebok were back, occupying pride of place in the lives of people who don’t know Khadi Bhandar from Apna Bazaar. [TOI]

Ah Sosyo, does anyone remeber that ad in which Juhi use to come and throw the hat that turned into the words "Sosyo, choice of the new generation"? I loved that drink, probably I still do but its close to 8-9 years that I last tasted it so I dont really remember the taste now. I loved Masala Soda too, they used to have it in those bottles with a marble as the stopper.

I hope Indian brands take maximum advantage of the public sentiment and come up with creative ad campaigns and marketing strategies.

2003-04-05T23:58:00.000+08:00

What a time to be born

2003-04-05T17:46:00.000+08:00

Twin Primes Breakthrough
A pair of mathematicians has made a breakthrough in understanding so-called prime numbers, numbers that can only be divided by themselves and one.

...It was made by Dan Goldston, of San Jose State University, and Cem Yildirim, of Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. It has just been announced at a conference in Germany on Algorithmic Number Theory. The advance is related to an idea called the twin prime conjecture. This idea, still unproved, is that there are an infinite number of pairs of prime numbers that differ only by two.

...One of the important things about primes is that they are the building blocks of the integers - whole numbers. Primes can be multiplied to obtain all of the other integers.

A curious observation is that primes occur in twins with a surprising regularity. For example: 11 and 13; 17 and 19; 29 and 31; 41 and 43; 59 and 61.

Just as with single primes, the frequency of twin primes decreases as one gets to larger numbers. But do they completely fizzle out beyond some very large number? That is the big question. Around a trillion, for instance, only about one in every 28 numbers is a prime. [BBC]

When I read stuff like this, I realise how useless my life is. Yeah, so anyway, one thing that surprised me was that the article took note of all the major breakthroughs on primes, but failed to mention the work done by the students from IITK. Read more about them here.

2003-04-05T16:17:00.000+08:00

Lefty Profs, Righty Students
Across the country, the war is disclosing role reversals, between professors shaped by Vietnam protests and a more conservative student body traumatized by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Prowar groups have sprung up at Brandeis and Yale and on other campuses. One group at Columbia, where last week an antiwar professor rhetorically called for "a million Mogadishus," is campaigning for the return of R.O.T.C. to Morningside Heights. [NYT req reg.]

2003-04-05T16:09:00.000+08:00

Akamai cancels contract with Al-Jazeera
Akamai Technologies was hired by the Arabic TV station to help it cope with increased traffic and repeated hacker attacks.

Al-Jazeera has blamed the Akamai's decision to pull out of the contract on political reasons.

The Qatar-based network has been criticised by the US and British governments for broadcasting footage of coalition prisoners of war and images of slain soldiers. [BBC]

I aint surprised...

2003-04-04T15:15:00.000+08:00

My first quiz post
I was browsing through Vinay's posts and found this. Generally, I dont take these tests and if I do, I try and figure out how to rig them... ;-), but today I didnt have to cuz the result came out to be as I wanted it to be in the very first go...

Result:

Neutral:
Harmony and balance is key. You don't look at the
world in a negative or positive way and you'll
never judge or assume a situation- you just
look at the facts. People like you are peaceful and accepting.

What color do you see the world in?

2003-04-03T04:48:00.000+08:00

Dumb Americana
If America wants to be a good imperialist, perhaps it might turn its attention to the lives and careers of the Great Gamers of the British empire, who, exploitative colonialists as they were, still brought detailed knowledge and human engagement to the imperialist project. ?The Great Game? is the name given to the period of intense competition between Britain and Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries, for control of the interiors of Asia.

...In fact, the wealth of American intellectual life in its universities stands in sharp contrast to the provincial insularity of its leadership. Morris Berman, professor at MIT, writes in Twilight of American Culture that America has fallen into an irretrievable ?dark age?. The ?dumbest? president in the history of the US presides over a society where the number of people reading a daily newspaper has halved since 1965. In Berman’s survey, 40 per cent Americans couldn’t name the US’s World War II enemies and 120 million Americans had the cognition of an 11-year old. [IE]

As Danny says so rightly in The Believer - If you hate somebody know why do you hate them.

2003-04-02T11:08:00.000+08:00

Happy New Year

2003-04-02T03:58:00.000+08:00

Fools Day Adventure
Woke up yesterday like any other day, didnt even remember that it was April 1st, it was the same routine day, until things started happening. Around 230-3ish Jedi messaged me saying India has been awarded the WC cuz 3 aussies tested +ve for doping. I was like huh? April fool kisi aur ko bana, so as his plan fell through, he said lets try it on someone else. So Jedi, OJ and I messaged Vinay on msn breaking the sensational news, Vinay being a good boy getting ready for the upcoming exams was busy with his books and like any other Indian started jumping up and down as he recieved our messages. A quick round of Aussie bashing followed, with Jedi, OJ and I playing along. Jedi came running to my room all excited now that he had gotten aleast one tropy for his fools day.

[Trascript]
cypherpunk: oye india declared winners of world cup
Vinay: haan charit bol raha tha.......bhaav nahin haio...but still drug default se milne main thoda pride to hai..now we know where the fuck gilchrist and symonds were getting all that power behing the pulls
cypherpunk: yeah man i know watcha mean
cypherpunk: says: and bret lee too
Vinay: kaun kaun lee adam aur?
cypherpunk: abhi tak to nahi pata
Vinay: hmm i c
cypherpunk: yep
Vinay:anyways chal i will talk to you in person in the evcening
cypherpunk: yeah ok
[/Transcript]

Well, the devil that I am, I declared sitting on my chair while checking news that lets send out SMS(s) saying that I have been diagnosed with SARS. SARS, yeah the mystery flu, is the latest scare thats going around S. E. Asia. Jedi had tasted blood so he got into action real quick and fired a few quick SMS(s) to Mav, Photon, The Dude and Ankit. Ankit, poor guy, hadnt slept the night before and was least bothered about anybody getting infected by virus. Mav with his presence of mind right on spot responded in kind to Jedis message saying - Fuck You...! Photon was sound asleep and didnt hear the incoming SMS alert. But The Dude being a kind and gentle SNAG types, called promptly to inquire what exactly was happening and we devils got our prey. By this time, we - Jedi, OJ and I - had already made Vinay the member of the inner circle and Mav had also been handed out the SOP.

Now because I am ill and supposed to take rest, read the rest of the account here.

OJ left my room sometime ago telling me that hes gonna post a more juicy version of today's events but I believe right now he's busy with some other stuff cuz its not online as of now. I will post a link as soon as it comes online.

P.S. As of now there still are some poor souls on campus who think that I am down with SARS, I got a couple of calls asking how am I feeling? ;-) Oh but the highlight of the day came around 9 pm with NTU announcing that exams have been postponed by 15 days, my first reaction was whoa where did NTU get such a good sense of humour from? It turns out they didnt, its for real... COOL...!!

Addendum: Check OJ's piece here

2003-03-31T19:24:00.000+08:00

Good bye iMac
The computer that came in 15 different hues and revolutionised the home computing market - not to mention Apple's fortune - is finally being phased out. [BBC]

Ah, all good things end eventually.

2003-03-31T17:33:00.000+08:00

Why Al Jazeera Matters
...In truth, it seems that New York’s exchanges have a broader complaint, heard in various forms elsewhere ? that Al Jazeera is insufficiently supportive of America and its war in Iraq. As the only uncensored Arabic television in the world, Al Jazeera does indeed slant its debates and discussions in a way that can be hostile to the West. It is not Fox News. But if the U.S. hope for the Arab world is, as the Bush administration never ceases to remind Americans, for it to enjoy a free, democratic life, Al Jazeera is the kind of television station Americans should encourage. [IHT]

Free speech and nationalism, its rock and a hard place indeed...

2003-03-31T05:36:00.000+08:00

Betting on Saddam's life - Updates
In an earlier post, I had talked about bookies betting on Saddam's life, literally. I managed to locate a site today. Visit radeSports and then click on IRAQ.SADDAM.MAR03.

2003-03-31T05:21:00.000+08:00

Body Count
Praised by Boston Globe and Associated Press, Iraq Body Count is fast becoming a authorative source about civilan casualties in America's unjust war in Iraq.

2003-03-31T05:15:00.000+08:00

Free as in free speech stuid...!
Go to any gathering of open-source developers and someone is bound to tell you that free software isn't free -- not free as in "free lunch," anyway. Free as in "free speech." Such politics have sparked another technological transformation, this time freeing a DVD from the constraints imposed by copyright-protection technology.

The documentary film Revolution OS was released Friday on DVD. The film features interviews with Linus Torvalds of Linux fame; Richard Stallman of the GNU/Free software project; Eric Raymond, author of Cathedral and the Bazaar (a treatise on marketing and open source); Rob Malda of hacker discussion and news site Slashdot; Larry Augustin, co-founder of VA Linux Systems; and others.

In the spirit of open source, the DVD was released without CSS, the content scrambling system used on most commercial DVDs. J.T.S. Moore, the film's creator, said it's an experiment in going "CSS-free" -- one he fervently hopes won't blow up in his face. He hopes his film won't be pirated, and that his success will encourage other filmmakers not to use CSS. [Wired]

Pretty darn cool I think

2003-03-31T04:53:00.000+08:00

Freedom food?
Republican members of the US Congress have asked Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to boycott a French firm catering for the US Marines. The firm in question, Sodexho, has a $881m contract to feed the Marines. "My colleagues and I abhor the idea of continuing to pour American dollars into a French based firm when those dollars could be feeding our wartime economy," wrote Representative Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican. [BBC]

Hahaha...!

2003-03-30T17:02:00.000+08:00

Codebreakers
MATHEMATICS is often desperately abstract. Yet it has a great deal to say about the world, from bombs and bridges to cars and codes. Keeping things secret is vital not only to spies, but to anybody who uses a computer or a credit card. The codes employed are all based on numbers, so understanding the science of numbers, known as number theory, is fundamental to the making and breaking of codes. That is why a workshop on number theory organised in Palo Alto by the American Institute of Mathematics was not quite as esoteric as it sounds. [Economist]

2003-03-29T00:19:00.000+08:00

Dual Use
Take pencils. The schoolchildren in Iraq can't use pencils because some bloody genius in Bush Senior's administration figured that pencils contain lead, and lead can be used in a nuclear weapons programme. My ass.

...Okay, how about this? Chlorine, an essential ingredient of any half-assed water purification plant, is banned. It's banned because Hussein could use it in a chemical weapons programme. My ass.

...Next, we've got X-Ray machines. That's right, the same gizmos your friendly neighbourhood clinic uses to locate cervical cancer and ovarian cysts.The Security Council consistently blocks X-Ray machines, claiming their Cesium isotopes (as well as their on-board computers) could be used in a nuclear weapons programme. My ass.

...As weapons inspectors turn Iraq upside down and inside out, the Iraqis plead that plastic slippers should not be considered "dual use" items. Reacting to this grievance, CNN anchor Paula Zahn comes up with one of the most objective and incisive comments ever heard across mainstream media: "they are effectively lying."

I'm not making this up. Paula Lobotomized Zahn actually said that. [FTW]

I am convinced that Bushies have a dual use for their arses, "thinking" is one of it. :P

2003-03-28T22:49:00.000+08:00

No Wonder
Shanti had posted earlier today that its a good first step that US & UK were asking Pakistan to stop infiltration across the LOC, being a skeptic I disagreed. Here is the reason why.

Rediff first posted this around 0900 IST
The United States and Britain on Thursday strongly condemned the recent massacre of 24 Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir and asked Pakistan to stop infiltration across the Line of Control.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in a joint statement in Washington, said Pakistan should also do its utmost to discourage any acts of violence in Kashmir.

Then BBC posted this around 0743GMT (1303 IST)
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is reported to have turned down requests by US President George Bush to help the ongoing military campaign in Iraq.

Suddenly everything seems clear. US and UK wanted India to be a part of their unjust war, take a hike I say...

2003-03-28T02:57:00.000+08:00

Al-Jazeera Webcast
All day long Al-Jazeera feeds can be found here. But its a paid service Euro 0.10/min.

:(

2003-03-28T02:46:00.000+08:00

What is going on?
LONDON/NEW DELHI: In an indication of the apparent tightening of visa regulations across Europe, officials in London have confirmed the arrest of the head of an Indian software services firm on alleged visa-related offences.

On Wednesday, the British authorities arrested London- based Senthil Kumar, CEO of i-flex Solutions Ltd. Kumar remains in judicial custody.

Kumar, whose firm transacts a lot of business with the Netherlands, is understood to have been arrested by Britain at the request of the Dutch authorities. A spokesman for the Indian High Commission said, ?We are in touch with all the concerned authorities and are trying to facilitate the matter.? According to sources, i-flex is accused of importing Indian staff into Holland on irregular visas. The Dutch authorities suspect that the visas of the Indian IT professionals did not permit employment. [TOI]

2003-03-27T15:53:00.000+08:00

Con Condi
WASHINGTON--The coalition that is currently engaged in the hard, dangerous work to disarm Iraq is strong, broad and diverse.

Nearly 50 nations are committed to ridding Saddam Hussein's regime of all its deadly, destructive and illegal weapons. To put this in perspective, the combined population of coalition countries is approximately 1.23 billion people, with a combined gross domestic product of approximately $22 trillion. These countries are from every continent on the globe, representing every major race, religion, and ethnicity in the world. [OpinionJournal]

What crap is this? The other day I heard Fleischer giving this same shit, his country count was 34 then, at a White house press briefing.

GDP of coalliation = approx $22 trillion
GDP of the world = $31.3 trillion*

Population of the coalition = 1.23 billion
Population of India & China = 1.0 billion + 1.3 billion = 2.3 billion*

Ok fine so coalition is richer than the countries not supporting the war, but dont even get me started on the population figures. And if I remember my civics lesson correctly, it doesnt matter how rich or poor you are, in a democractic world every vote counts and has the same importance. So if you wanna put forward figures, majority of the world is against war.

Condi go and give this shit to ignorant fools from Alabama, I for one do this very complex thing called thinking.

*src: World Bank

2003-03-27T10:07:00.000+08:00

Hacking for War
Hackers attacked the Web site of Arab satellite television network Al-Jazeera on Tuesday, rendering it intermittently unavailable, the site's host said. [Washington Post]

As I had said earlier, sounds fun.

2003-03-27T08:04:00.000+08:00

Baby Saddams
Many Palestinian couples in Nablus, the largest city on the West Bank, have begun naming their newborn babies after Saddam Hussein.

According to the London-based pan-Arab daily al Quds al Arabi, the favorite name for Palestinian families in the city these days is Saddam. The paper said male infants born in local hospitals in the last few days have been named Saddam in honor of the Iraqi president.

"Many Palestinians are proud of this name," the paper's correspondent, Ala Badarneh reports from Nablus. "Many families are also keen on keeping posters of Saddam Hussein in their homes. Usually you would find pictures of Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat together at previous meetings between the two. Many people are buying these pictures in the market and keeping them at home." [Jerusalem Post regn req]

Cool eh?

2003-03-27T06:00:00.000+08:00

Soldier Blogs
LONDON, March 26 (Reuters) - There's a new breed of combat personnel at the war front: soldier "bloggers".

Once the narrow domain of geeks and technology journalists, "Web logs" -- or diary accounts published online -- have gone mainstream, making it possible for even soldiers to transmit daily updates to Web sites about the rigours of battle.

War-themed blogs, appearing on sites such as www.blogsofwar.com and www.sgtstryker.com, have become a popular alternative news source since fighting broke out in Iraq a week ago, sometimes beating newspapers and television with war developments. [Reuters AlertNet]

I checked out a few of these. Pretty neat I say, I like know from both the sides.

2003-03-26T10:47:00.000+08:00

Whats your stake?
NEW YORK (Reuters) - While pundits around the globe speculated on the fate of Saddam Hussein, others were putting money on it. [Yahoo! News]

And they call him evil, go figure...

2003-03-26T10:34:00.000+08:00

War Blooper #5
US F-16 fires on own missile battery.

2003-03-25T13:39:00.000+08:00

On second thoughts
I had said CNN's forbidding Kevin Sites from blogging amounts to taking away his right of free speech, but now I have second thoughts. I believe its got to do more with conflict of interests rather than crubing free speech. If he were to write poetry I dont think CNN would have objected, but hes covering the war officially for CNN and at the same time blogging about it unofficially. Its like stopping financial analysts from running a private consultancy while working for an I-bank. I believe, in years to come, forbidding employees from blogging will be on the employment contracts, especially for journos.

BBC has taken a more balanced approach, by taking the blogs under the official umbrella or rather they are making the reports appear as if they are blogs. Thanx for the link Vyom

2003-03-25T10:37:00.000+08:00

Human Cc:

A company claiming to have created the world's first cloned babies has distributed a photograph of one of the "clones" for the first time. [BBC] [Clonaid]

2003-03-25T00:37:00.000+08:00

War Blooper #4
The official Syrian news agency says five Syrian civilians have been killed by an American missile on the Iraqi side of the border. Syria has delivered an official protest to the US and Britain over the attack which it has condemned as a "terrible aggression". [BBC]

The American smart weapons are as smart as their president. Two or three more of these and am buying warbloopers.com

2003-03-23T06:31:00.000+08:00

Americans Not Allowed
BANGKOK (Reuters) - A hotel on the Thai holiday island of Koh Samui has banned American tourists in a protest against the U.S.-led war in Iraq, its owner said on Friday.
Virach Pongchababnapa, owner of the 62-room Pavilion Resort on the island, 550 miles south of Bangkok, said U.S. visitors were not welcome because he was against the U.S. campaign to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. [Reuters]

Hes either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid...

2003-03-23T00:47:00.000+08:00

Hacking for Peace
The number of web defacements has leapt up since the US-led war against Iraq began.According to security firm F-Secure, more than 1,000 sites have been hacked in direct relation to the Iraq conflict. Many of the hack attacks contain anti-war slogans and some have direct anti-USA or anti-Iraq slogans. [BBC]

Sounds fun. Take up the cause of any downtrodden guy on earth and start hacking... ;-)

2003-03-22T07:22:00.000+08:00

A few good souls
March 21, 2003
SALAM'S BLOG
UPDATE. A reader writes: "I see the current entries on Salam's blog using Mozilla. With IE, it forwards to the Feb posting. There is a recent post."

I've gotten a bunch of emails telling me that Salam's blog is down, or that they are having problems accessing it. I had no problems, so I disregarded the emails. But now there does seem to be a problem. I keep getting referred to an entry in February. I have NO idea why that's happening.

Civax created this mirror site. Not sure whether this reflects new entries, if there are new entries, but it is the best we can do under the circumstances. Civax has contact info on his blog; email him with questions. He seems to be a computer expert, or at the very least, technically adept. (Anyone's more technically adept than I am.)

I cannot not not not get over the irony of this war and how we are all communicating with one another. I am a sort-of-hawk (at least, conditionally pro-war), and I am communicating with a Baghdadi from New York City; an Israeli puts up a mirror site for this Iraqi; the guy in Baghdad wishes an Israeli woman and her family well while he is about to be shocked and awed by my country's unparalleled ability to wage war; she puts up a website from the IDF Home Command for him to download a PDF survival guide in Arabic.

The wrong people are running the world but that's nothing new, is it? [gotham]

Above is a really touching entry I found while trying to find a mirror for Where is Raed?

2003-03-22T04:31:00.000+08:00

18 holes at what cost?
The United States is the most wasteful water user in the world, according to figures released at the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan.

And a key reason behind America's placing is the country's love of golf. Keeping fairways lush and greens green requires vast amounts of water. But the overall benefit of such water use is largely restricted to the golfers and the club owners. In other words, golf is a highly inefficient use of water. The US has about 23,000 golf courses - far and away the largest number in the world. [BBC] [BBC Water]

Golf is by far the most boring and lifeless sport I have seen, rather than me saying anything more I suggest you download some George Carlin and Robin Williams.

2003-03-18T18:29:00.000+08:00

War protest from Sydney

After being led down from the sails by Police Rescue, British astronomer Dr Will Saunders, 42, and Australian David Burgess, a 33-year-old environmental campaigner from Bucketty, NSW, were charged with malicious damage and "climbing a structure and painting it''. The malicious damage charge carries a maximum penalty of 5 years jail. [SMH][-via itsjoy]

2003-03-17T14:39:00.000+08:00

Charu's Angels Accomplish Mission
The evidence is everywhere. In homes across the country, the eves are glued to their telly, following the fortunes of the Indian team. In restaurants, pubs and coffee shops boasting big-screen TV sets, giggly girls and matronly home-makers alike watch cricket cheek by jowl with their beer-guzzling, coffee-drinking, chain-smoking male counterparts, wildly cheering India. Teachers keep track of scores via sms and young girls are betting on the fortunes of the Indian team. Even the Indian media corps covering the Cup in South Africa is packed with women hacks.

It's also just what Sony Entertainment Television (SET) MAX, the channel that's spent close to $255 million to bag the Cup and other icc tournament rights till 2007, ordered. Get a load of this: over 2.2 crore women have watched the matches being played in South Africa on MAX and Doordarshan and the numbers are increasing. Female viewership comprises an astounding 46 per cent of the total. trps for female viewership for India matches till last week climbed to a phenomenal 9.8, up from 3.9 during last year's NatWest Trophy in England (see graphic). "This rating surprised us all," confesses SET executive VP Rajat Jain, "though we'd strategised to get women to watch as much cricket as possible." [Outlook]

2003-03-14T07:44:00.000+08:00

Urine 'Remedy'
The Cameroon health minister has deemed it necessary to warn people that drinking urine may not be good for your health. [BBC]

In Singapore if you go to a drink stall there will be cartons which read - Dutch Lady Chocolat Susu, Strawberry Susu, etc. hehehe... Well, in Malay "susu" means milk, but even after 4 years I cant wipe off that silly grin off my face everytime I read it... :D

2003-03-14T04:06:00.000+08:00

Google Stalkers
Savvy Web users are using Google (http://www.google.com) and other powerful Web search tools to track down or keep tabs on long-lost acquaintances -- be they former lovers, classmates, friends or enemies.

These searches, which once might have required hiring a private detective, have become increasingly easy as the amount of data available on the Web grows. Sites like AltaVista (http://www.altavista.com), which indexed about 20 million Web pages when it was founded in the mid-1990s, now has information on billions of pages.

....Indeed, if someone's public information has never been published on a Web site, even the best search engine won't help.

And, what if you don't want your information to be found?

"If you don't want people to know about your personal details, don't put them out on the Web in any way, shape or form," said Sullivan. "People say they can't believe their resume is online, but they put it up on their homepage."

People who run their own Web site can insert codes that warn off the search engine "robots," as small computer programs that cull data from the Web are known. But not all search companies respect such standards.

Users can also contact search engines and ask them to remove results from their databases. [Reuters]

Yes people, I shamelessly confess that I am one. Its one of my favorite things to do on those days when I have nothing better to do, and trust me there are many of those :P. Jokes apart, this is a pretty serious issue, about which a lot of people hardly seem to care, even IT professionals..! Especially when it comes to blogs I have seen people giving out excessive information about themselves e.g. signing off posts with their full names, giving out names of friends and family, publishing email ids, to name a few. I swear to god I have seen blogs which have full addresses right to the last digit in the postal code...!!! And now that Google has bought over Pyra its just a matter of time that you start getting targeted ads on top of your blogs. Abhi to shuruat hai, aage aage dekho hota hai kya...

As for me, I am pretty paranoid of anything about me showing up online without me knowing about it, it doesnt have to be structured, bits and pieces here and there are good enough to make a complete picture. As far as I know there are at the most two relevant hits related to me out there and I am happy about it.

2003-03-12T09:34:00.000+08:00

ICC opens
The world's first permanent international criminal court opened at The Hague yesterday when its 18 judges took their seats on the bench of global justice."Without justice, there can be no lasting peace," the court was told by Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general.

...The US has already signed agreements with 24 nations ensuring immunity for its civilians or soldiers to ICC prosecution for complaints lodged in those countries, while Congress has empowered President Bush to use "all means necessary" to free Americans taken into the court's custody. [Telegraph]

hmmm..."All means necessary". I wonder what that means?

2003-03-12T05:27:00.000+08:00

Sea Lions not SEALs
With the military build-up in the Persian Gulf showing no sign of abating the US Navy has unveiled its secret weapon - a crack troupe of sea lions.

....And in the event of a US-led attack on Iraq the US army plans to ride chickens into battle in cages atop Humvees, used as early warning gas detectors.

The US Army calls the strategy Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken - or KFC - but the plan has been put on hold after 41 of the 43 chickens deployed to the Gulf died within a week of arrival. more

2003-03-08T19:08:00.000+08:00

Ni putes Ni soumises
...Since the beginning of February, the movement has staged demonstrations across France to highlight their plight. It arrives in Paris Saturday, coinciding with International Women's Day.

"Until now, nobody's really been talking about what's been happening in these suburbs," said Sarah Benichou, secretary general of the Paris-based group SOS Racism, which works to eliminate discrimination in the suburbs. "We were always talking about suburbs from a masculine point of view -- as hubs of violence or Islamist extremism. Nobody's been addressing the women, who are victims."

The group's slogan is brutally frank: "Neither whores, nor under submission." Indeed, according to French news reports, that it has frightened off many ethnic immigrants it hopes to enlist.

Its message: A normal French lifestyle, complete with makeup, short skirts and having boyfriends, does not make these women prostitutes. And they will no longer tolerate a stifling, male-dominated culture they say is common in France's impoverished housing projects. more

Time Magazine did a special report on Sisters in Hell in Dec 2002. link

Its quite ironic that all this oppression is happening in the land of liberty, France and none of the dailies I visited so far have any comment/article on the demonstrations. My two cents worth for International Women's day.

2003-03-07T03:42:00.000+08:00

And they say Mathematics is boring...
While reading about Euclid's Algorithm* today I found these two poems

Euclidean Algoryhme
You're given two numbers, and now you desire
a method for finding their common divisor.
(The greatest, of course, is the one you must name.)
To do it, you'll keep shared divisors the same
while repeatedly shrinking each number in turn
'til one of them's zero, and then you discern
that the other's the greatest divisor they share.
So how do you manage to lessen the pair?
You divide large by small, then large is ejected,
small becomes large, as remainder's injected.

Multiplicative inVerse
Now if clever you are can take this lots farther,
by some bookkeeping work which is not much a bother.
Each number you deal with, depict as duple
to dot-product with the original couple.
You start with one-zero, then zero-one,
then each new remainder's the combination
of the smaller one's duple times minus the quotient
plus one times the larger one's duple. The notion?
If the numbers you're given are relative primes,
the gcd's duple holds inverses (times).

--Mike Speciner [taken from Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World]

*Euclid's Algorithm is a method of finding the greatest common divisior (gcd) of two numbers x and y. The idea is to repeatedly replace the original numbers with smaller numbers that have the same gcd until on of the numbers is zero. The remaining mumber is the gcd. The algorithm is also used to find multiplicative inverses mod n

2003-03-06T07:16:00.000+08:00

Exodus
An old article I found while reading Easyguru's archive, talks about the phenomenal numbers in which Indians are leaving the country.

Where do I stand on the issue of immigration? Being in a foreign country myself, I dont have problems with Indians immigrating to some different place. As long as their loyalties lie with the India, ofcourse their first duty would be towards the new country, if they choose to be citizens there. As long as an Indian version of Zionism keeps going on I am ok with it.

2003-03-03T00:39:00.000+08:00

Sportsmanship
Thanks to that friend, and about half a dozen emails this morning, I now have some sort of clue what it is all about. Apparently, Rameez Raja said on air that if Pakistan couldn't get Tendulkar out, they should look at injuring him; that it was in order to deny him a runner if he asked for one; that cricket is a hard game.

What's to say? Raja appears to have done all the saying necessary -- and in the process, given a rather clear indication of the kind of material he is molded of.

In cricket, it is perfectly in order to target any weakness. If for instance a batsman has a hamstring problem, you bowl the good length more often, to constantly bring him forward, and put pressure on the injury; if his mobility is impaired, you ensure that your fielders push him harder, constantly throw to the end he is running at.

Since I didn't get to hear what Raja actually said, I'll take the charitable view of it -- maybe this is what he was talking of; maybe it was just unfortunate phrasing.

But it is interesting that he talked of the possibility of denying Tendulkar the runner; the suggestion proves how short memory can be.

Remember Saeed Anwar -- the batsman who scored a good century yesterday at SuperSport Park, and was so exhausted at the end of it that he never came out to field? Throw your mind back to May 21, 1997 -- the Independence Cup game between India and Pakistan, at the M A Chidambaram stadium in Chennai.

On that occasion, too, Pakistan won the toss -- and batted first. Anwar was just about into double figures when he began cramping; clearly, not an injury suffered in course of play.

He asked for a runner, and got one. Anwar then went on to add some 170 runs to his total, in five-star fashion -- hit the shot, let the other bloke do the hard yards while you rest before the next shot.

The Indian captain who permitted the use of the runner, on that occasion, and who was subsequently slammed for it in the media, was one Sachin Tendulkar. And the Pakistan captain was Rameez Raja.

Sportsmanship is like that -- you either have it, or you don't. [Rediff]

Its time SetMAX fired Rameez Raja....

p.s. suku, thanx for sending me the link.

2003-02-28T08:00:00.000+08:00

Double Helix turns 50
Fifty years ago, on 28 February 1953, Francis Crick walked into the Eagle pub in Cambridge, UK, and announced something for which he would later share a Nobel Prize. "We have found the secret of life," his collaborator and subsequent fellow Nobel laureate James Watson later quoted him as saying. The pair really had figured out something very close to that. Working out the famous double helix structure of DNA was an achievement which led to countless advances and solved a mystery which had troubled scientists for decades. [ -BBC] [Celebrating 50 years of DNA]

Addendum
Today's NYT has a section celebrating the anniversary. Lots of good reads there.

2003-02-28T05:27:00.000+08:00

Sneaking into Los Alamos
Noah Shachtman in his article at Wired.com describes how he snuck into the Las Almos National Laboratory, NM.

There are no armed guards to knock out. No sensors to deactivate. No surveillance cameras to cripple. To sneak into Los Alamos National Laboratory, the world's most important nuclear research facility, all you do is step over a few strands of rusted, calf-high barbed wire.

I should know. On Saturday morning, I slipped into and out of a top-secret area of the lab while guards sat, unaware, less than a hundred yards away. ....

Some people are not convinced and they wrote to Politech, but to me its seems like a knee jerk reaction when someone says something bad or makes fun of the place where you live.

What are the Homeland Security guys upto if its as easy to as to just walk in? just wondering...

2003-02-27T12:20:00.000+08:00

The Shia Connection
B. Raman explores the Shia connection in an informative piece

Three terrorists struck again in Karachi in Pakistan on February 22, when they opened fire on some Shias watching a World Cup match outside an Imambargah, a Shia place of worship. Nine people were killed, eight of them Shias, all Kashmiris belonging to Gilgit in the Northern Areas. Subsequently, there were violent disturbances in Gilgit when the bodies of five of them were taken there for burial. To understand the background to this, one has to go into the history of the Northern Areas and the Sunni-Shia divide.

Of the Kashmiri territory occupied by Pakistan in 1947-1948, the Sunni majority areas (4,144 square miles) were constituted by it into a separate administrative unit which Pakistan calls 'Azad Kashmir' ('Free Kashmir') and India calls Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, PoK. The Shia majority areas of Gilgit and Baltistan (29,814 square miles), which were known before 1947 as the Northern Areas of Jammu and Kashmir and which had been given on lease by the pre-1947 ruler of Jammu and Kashmir to the British, were incorporated into Pakistan and are directly ruled from Islamabad.

....To keep the Shias under control, the military-intelligence establishment encouraged the Sunni extremist Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and its militant wing the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to open their branches in Gilgit. This led to the import of sectarian clashes, which frequently take place in Pakistani Punjab and Karachi, into the NA too. To counter the SSP and the LEJ, the Tehrik-e-Jaffria Pakistan, the Shia organisation, and its militant wing the Sipah Mohammad too opened their branches in NA to help the local Shias.

While the SSP and TEJ came into existence in the 1980s, their militant wings came into existence in the 1990s. The SSP was financially assisted by the intelligence agencies of the USA, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the 1980s to counter Teheran's activities in the region. Iran retaliated by assisting the TEJ and the Sipah Mohammad.

Being better trained and armed than the TEJ and Sipah Mohammad and enjoying the official patronage of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment, the SSP and LEJ went on a rampage not only against the Shias of the NA, but also against those living in Punjab and Karachi, killing hundreds of Shias since the late 1980s.

Embarrassed by this, the intelligence agencies of the US and Saudi Arabia cut off contacts with them, but Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and Iraqi intelligence continued to support them -- each for its own reason. The ISI needed them for keeping the Shias of the NA under control. The Iraqis helped them because they not only targeted the Shias of Pakistan, but also Iranians living/working in Pakistan, including some Iranian military officers undergoing training in Pakistan.

I never knew there was Shia-Sunni angle to the PoK politics.

2003-02-26T06:56:00.000+08:00

Hope is a good thing
Vaxgen, a California based pharmaceutical company, has released the findings of its three year long study on the first Aids vaccine to be tested on humans. The study involved more than 5000 volunteers. Initial results show the vaccine only reduced the rate of HIV infection by 3.8%. Black and Asian people who were given the vaccine, however, had a 67% lower rate of infection than those who received a placebo shot. But these subgroups were small, which means the results have to be treated with caution. To be granted a licence, scientists needed to show that any Aids vaccine was effective in at least a third of patients.

IE has a nice edit on the story today calling for more optimism on the findings.

2003-02-24T18:05:00.000+08:00

Moblogging
...There are millions of blogs on the web and they are often interlinked, creating an eco-system of ever-changing ideas on the net. The latest trend is moblogging - updating your blog with a mobile phone. Programs like FoneBlog, Manywhere Moblogger and Wapblog allow bloggers to post details about their lives from anywhere, not just from a computer.

...."In two year's time every phone user will have a website and be using blogs as their version of the world," he said. ... more

Is Google too powerful?
Google is a privately-owned US company that has a policy of collecting as much information as possible about everyone who uses its search tool. It will store your computer's IP address, the time/date, your browser details and the item you search for. It sets a tracking cookie on your computer that does not expire until 2038. This means that Google builds up a detailed profile of your search terms over many years. Google probably knew when you last thought you were pregnant, what diseases your children have had, and who your divorce lawyer is. It refuses to say why it wants this information or to admit whether it makes it available to the US Government for tracking purposes. And the much-loved Google toolbar tells Google about every web page you look at. Yet it so dominates the search engine market that no website can afford to ignore it, and it indexes so much of the web that few users think of using another. The way it ranks pages is a commercial secret, outside any external supervision or control. If Google decides it does not like you then you can be dropped from the index. more

2003-02-23T02:24:00.000+08:00

Coercion, Carrots, Covert action, Containment
Check out this explosive article by Rajeev Srinivasan.

2003-02-20T23:55:00.000+08:00

Good Bush, Bad Bush

[snapped @ Melrose Ave, LA, via - the reverse cowgirl]

2003-02-17T17:39:00.000+08:00

Lil' Ones
Two protest pictures that I liked the most out of all those I've seen so far.

[G Armytage, Amsterdam]

[Serena Tremlett, Douaire, Guernsey]

I doubt how much these kids really know about the issues involved,but just turning up at the rallies is commendable.

2003-02-12T04:23:00.000+08:00

Mitnick hacked
One of the world's best-known computer hackers has suffered the indignity of having his own website hacked. For the second time in as many weeks, online vandals have broken into the site of Kevin Mitnick's new security consulting company,Defensive Thinking. The latest breach was by a hacker in Texas, who said he wanted to be hired as Mitnick's security officer. [- BBC]

2003-02-11T04:14:00.000+08:00

Time for India to go truly Fedaral?
An article in today's IE tries to explain what policies should be adopted by the Hindi region for sustainable development.

Time and again, it has been pointed out that, poorly performing states namely Bihar, MP, UP, Rajasthan, and now the newly created Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttaranchal in India are a burden on the other prosperous states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamilnadu etc. Classifying linguistically, its the non-Hindi region that is doing well and the Hindi region thats not. A look at Indian political history tells us that its the Hindi region that has had the majority of the influence. Though I have not heard or read of any official demand issued by any of the non-Hindi states explicitly asking for a complete federal structure, I have come across a lot of people from these states who support the fedaral model.

I believe that if India goes fedaral then India runs the risk of a complete balkanisation with every state doing things their way. The reason for this is the fact that the states in India are divided on linguistic basis. You go from one state to another, you encounter a totally different language. Language being the medium through which people interact also influences cultures of those places and hence, you also encounter a totally differnt culture. In such a scenario, what is that thing, that bond, that will keep India together? On the other hand I also believe that if the burden on the non-hindi region is not taken away fast there would be outright demands of breaking away. So what should be done? Should India go federal, try and give it a shot? or Should the Hindi region get their asses to work and come at par with the non-Hindi region? Is India stuck between a rock and hard place?

2003-02-07T18:01:00.000+08:00

Annan's New Toy
Russia's foreign minister has given Secretary-General Kofi Annan a small, carved wooden bear walking a tightrope between war and peace - symbolizing the U.N. Security Council's current dilemma.

The five veto-wielding council members - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China - are divided over disarming Iraq. The United States and Britain are moving toward a military solution while France, Russia and China want continued weapons inspectors and intensified efforts to settle the crisis peacefully.

Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov presented the gift Wednesday. U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard brought it to Thursday's daily briefing.

The bear, symbolizing the secretary-general, carries five balls - each with the name of a permanent veto-wielding member - as it walks the tightrope between two trees called "war'' and "peace.''

"The bear is moving toward the tree called peace, but if you take out one ball, the bear would fall,'' Russia's U.N. Ambassador Sergey Lavrov said Thursday.

Eckhard pulled out a ball for reporters, and the bear, about 5 inches tall, toppled from the tightrope.

"I think it speaks for itself,'' Lavrov said. [- Guardian]

Who says russians dont have a sense of humour??

2003-02-06T16:52:00.000+08:00

Guru Currency

check out more at kaikstocracy and BBC

I aint no ram bhakt [devotee] but hey,as long as anything Indian comes in vogue I am cool with it... totally...!!!

2003-02-05T06:26:00.000+08:00

Photonic Ramblings
I have a junior, whom I shall refer to as Photon, he has a habit of penning down his incoherent thoughts and that too in hindi. The transcripts read as if a schizoid has written it but mind you this guy is a straight A student. Here are a couple of samples.

Samay To Ek Abhilasha Hai
Samay ka hamari dincharya mein bahut adhik mahatva hai. Jiske pas samay hai uske pas duniya ke kunji hai kyon ki uske pas khana khane ke liye bahut samay hota hai. Wah apne kutte se bhi bahut pyar se khel sakta hai. Jab wah theek se kuch karyaa karta hai to use ananta anand ki prapti hoti hai jiske karan use apni zindagi mein har din deepavali ka anubhav hota hai. Atah humein samay ka palan karna chahiye.

Translation:
Time is just an aspiration
Time is very important in our daily routine. One who has time has all the wealth in the world because he has a lot of time to spare to have his meals. He can lovingly play with his dog. When he does any chore properly he gets utmost satisfaction because of which he feels like Deepavali* everyday. Hence, we should all be punctual.

*: Deepavali or Diwali is the festival of lights celebrated by Hindus. It generally falls in the month of Oct or Nov. read more

Charitra ke Phehlu
Vyakti ke charitra par vaani ka bahut adhik prabhav rehta hai. Wah vyakti jo bena ruke teen saal tak bol sakta hai aur wah bhi jise tarju taul ke wah bahut lambi aangooliyon waale jadugar ke tone karne ke kshmata rakhta hai.

Dilli shahar mein mare ghaghro ko ghumiya. Chidiya ke pair ulte the jisase jasoos ko uske dayan hone ka shak ho gaya. Yeh janane par usne ek chapati par diya salayi se chipka kar us par teen paise rakh kar khila diya. Yeh karne se chidiya ka vajan ghatne laga or duniya mein khusi chaa gayi. Es vidhi ko puratan kali vigyan mein patli vidhi kahte hain. Es vidhi keval lambi aangooliyon wala jadugar hi prayog kar sakta hai. Itihaas bhi gavaha hai ki jab jab patli vidhi ka prayog kara gaya hai motape ka nam or nishan mit gaya hai. Atah hum sab ko apne charitra par mahatva dena chahiye aur use apne kshetra mein rakhna chaiye.

Translataion:
Facets of Character
A person's character is influenced a lot by language. One who can talk nonstop for three years and one who balances using a weighing balance and has the ability to cast a spell on magicians with long fingers.

In the city of Delhi my ghagra* flutters. Sparrow had antipodal feet so the sleuth wondered if she was a witch. When he came to know of this he took a took three pennies, pasted it on a chapati** using a matchstick and fed it to her. Because of which the sparrow started losing weight and happiness spread all over the world. This ritual according to ancient black science is known as slimming ritual. History bears witness that whenever slimming ritual was practised obesity has been wiped out. Hence we all should give importance to our characters and keep it within our limits.

*: ghagra is a traditional pleated skirt worn by women in state of Rajasthan in India.
more pics

**chapti is the traditional indian bread.
recipe