The Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice

I've been listening to the radio and hearing more and more noise about the Taliban in Afghanistan... just the stories that one can find on the Taliban are enough to make one wonder...

• Photos document destruction of Afghan Buddhas - CNN, March 12, 2001
  
• Taleban move to make Afghan Hindus wear ID Badges - CNN, May 22, 2001
  
• Taliban Orders Foreign Women to Stop Driving in Afghanistan - News.com, May 31, 2001
  
• Taliban kisses goodbye to lipstick, movies - CNN, July 19, 2001
  
• Internet latest target for Taliban - CNN, August 26, 2001
  
• Afghanistan bars Web use - News.com, August 27, 2001
  

The articles mentioned above are just the tip of the ice-berg. CNN has an excellent special report on the Taliban, which is really worth looking at to get a sense of the insanity that still prevails in some parts of the world.

Their "Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" has got to be the most ridiculous form of beaurocracy that I have ever heard of. In fact it puts the word beaurocracy to shame. Because this is not just government meddling in people's live, but it is a clear and outright suppression of basic human rights. Come on... banning the Net? How can anyone live without the Net!! ...okay, bad joke, but seriously...

What is happening in Afghanistan is akin to what happened in Germany prior to the World War II. In fact, in some ways it seems even more extreme. but since Afghanistan is one of those countries whose economy has been decimated over the past 20 years of stupidity and insanity that has prevailed in that nation and therefor it has little to no impact on the global economy, you don't hear much about it at all. There is all this talk about human rights abuse in China, but very little with regards to what is happening in Afghanistan. Because China has an impact on the global economy and Afghanistan doesn't matter.

Unimaginable that in this day and age, things like this can still happen. But then again, if Adolf Hitler could convince so many people to follow his screwed up belief system, what's preventing some Islamic fundamentalist in Afghanistan from doing the same?

Bio-terrorism

The book I listened to over the past weekend (Vector by Robin Cooke) was a work of fiction based on Bio-terrorism. At the end of the book the authour's note made some pointed observations about the threat of N.B.Cs - Nuclear, Biological or Chemical weapons. Each one has the power to literally annihilate huge masses of people, animals, plants and pretty much the immediate world around us. It's indeed stuff that makes you sit up and wonder.

In the examples of real-life examples of bio-terrorism that the author mentioned were those initiated by followers of Rajneesh - salmonella poisoning of salad bars in Oregon which affected 751 people in 1994, infectious muffins causing dysentery in 1996 and the infamous Sarin gas attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan in 1995.

What is scary about Nuclear, Bilological and Chemical warfare is not the sheer power of mass destruction that it posesses, but the fact that the knowledge of these weapons of mass destruction is accessible to people who are so screwed up in their heads so as to use it for terroristic activities. Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City is said to have been incited by the FBI raid on Waco Texas. The bombing of the US embassy's in Kenya by Islamic fundamentalist and militant group led by Osama Bin Laden. So there is more than enugh evidence of people who believe that killing others in the name of their religious or fundamentalist beliefs is justified. I shudder at the thought of any such people using biological/chemical weapons instead of the conventional methods they have employed thus far.

In a recent conversation with a friend of mine, I remember passing a remark that these days I often wonder whether Darwinism has been reversed especially when it comes to human beings. Innocent people are killed by psychopaths. The birth rate in uneducated masses is significantly higher than that amongst those who are educated.

Bilogolocal and chemical warfare is indeed a real threat and as suggested by the author in his closing note, the only prevention against such attacks is counter-intelligence. Once again information becomes the key.

One of the characters in the book had a quote something along the lines that the threat of bio-terrorism is so real that the question is not if, but when it will happen...

The What-ifs of Coincidence

I recently finished listening to a novel (Vector by Robin Cook... yes, it's fiction, but it's based on real events that happened and extrapolates on what could happen...) in which all the pieces of the puzzle just seemed to fall into place. The book was a great, and I'll have a full review shortly in the Rants and Raves section for it; but the thing that I wanted to address here was just the way events seem to line up.

Conicidence is a curious thing. There are so many circumstances and situations that we are presented with which very often makes us all wonder what-f that wasn't what happened? What if you didn't accept that job and then you wouldn't have been in that city and then you wouldn't have met the person you're with and things would be completely different. Right? The different paths that our life can take based on the simple decisions we make everyday is indeed fascinating. Reminds me of those old Hardy Boys books that I used to read as a kid which allowed you to choose your own path to the ending (Make your own mystery?). I used to enjoy figuring out ways to read every possible scenario and combination! Even till today when I think of depth first searches and breadth first searches in trees, I always think of the mystery books since that's where I figure out how to traverse a path of a tree with multiple options.

The difference is that in those book, I could always go back and take the path that was previous not chosen and then see where that would lead. Unfortunately, we don't have that luxury in life though. In life we make that decision and then that's the one we have to go with. All we can do is simply wonder, what-if we had chosen a different path. (I've written previously about having no regrets, I still stand firm on that, but the what-ifs of coincidence are intriguing nonetheless). In the book, the male protagonist is able to piece together the cause of somemysterious deaths based on things as far-fetched as his colleague attending a conference on veterinary medicine and coming back and relating a story about a large number of rats having mysteriously perished in the sewers recently. Now, what if his colleague hadn't gone to the conference. Or even if he did, if he didn't come back and relate that particular story? Things would be different.

There are those among us who believe that there is no such thing as coincidence and everything is predestined and predetermined. I don't buy that crock one bit, but still cannot help wonder about co-incidence. What if I hadn't come to the US for my education.... would my entire outlook, my perspective and my weltanshaaung me completely different? Our environment has such a deep impact on how we develop and how we think. And the subtle experiences (and also the not-so-subtle ones for that matter) that shape how life progresses.

What if I didn't decide to graduate early? What if I didn't go to CMU for my grad work? What if the professor whose course I taught had not left for the valley? What if wasn't at the cave late that night when the person who showed up and chatted with me on my site said should start my own company and in the process gave me the entrpreneurial bug? What if I didn't meet the person who introduced me to my first financiers? What if the guy who became my best developer had already found a summer job before I got to him!? What if I didn't hire the people I did? What if I didn't send that email?

Just so many questions... each one the what-ifs of coincidence. Curious.

Before I end though, I do want to emphasize that I do not have any regrets about any of it.. None at all. Because I love the randomness. I love the fact that you cannot predict what will happen. And I wouldn't want to either. Because the surprise is what makes it interesting. It's what makes us adapt and develop.

Life is an improv.

Any recommendations on a new vice?

Everyone has some vice. Some have several. But everyone has atleast one. Some smoke. Some drink. Some do drugs (that' a little over the edge in my opinion though...). Some shop (yes, shopping can be a vice too). So what is a vice? The handy old Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary website, describes it as:

Main Entry: ¹vice
Pronunciation: 'vIs
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin vitium fault, vice
Date: 14th century
1 a : moral depravity or corruption : WICKEDNESS b : a moral fault or failing c : a habitual and usually trivial defect or shortcoming : FOIBLE <suffered from the vice of curiosity>
2 : BLEMISH, DEFECT
3 : a physical imperfection, deformity, or taint
4 a often capitalized : a character representing one of the vices in an English morality play b : BUFFOON, JESTER
5 : an abnormal behavior pattern in a domestic animal detrimental to its health or usefulness
6 : sexual immorality; especially : PROSTITUTION
synonym see FAULT, OFFENSE

Now, before, I continue, lets get is straight, that when I say vice, I mean it in definitely in the context of a a habitual and usually trivial defect or shortcoming for anything beyond that is tad too extreme and often not worth it. Also, when I say vice here, I mean a vice that we can recognize by ourselves and willingly accept as a personal vice. That is to say there may be many oher things wrong with us, but we may not recognize them. But in the contexr of this entry I'm talking specifically about that trivial defect or shortcoming in our character or behavious that we consciously choose to accept... because we all need some way of being bad right?

My previous vice was most definitely chocolate. I often said that "death by chocolate" would be the ideal way to go... well actually that's the name of a desert that we used to have at the good old Scotland Yard @ Carnegie Mellon a long time ago ;-) Recently, I've tried to give up my chocolate vice, simply by telling myself that I'm not going to succumb to chocolate any more. And it's working because I can look at chocolate and still be fine. Just depends on my state of mind. If I feel like not giving a damn any more, then I may still have it, but more often than not, I can control whether or not I want something or at least I'd like to think so!!

But then being without a conscious personal vice is tough. Coz. then you don't know what to vent on! :-) So I've recently tried drinking, but it doesn't seem to work so well. I already wrote in a previous entry about drinking. My experimentation with alcohol has been perfunctory at best, but it definitely doesn't seem to be the one for me thus far. Some nights I could have a dozen drinks and not even feel it and on other days three or four would do me in. Again, it seems like more of a mental thing about whether or not I want to get drunk. If I'm away from home or know that I need to drive back, I can still maintain my composure reasonably well.

Based in recent conversations with some of my college friends (uhh.. you should know here that we were the non-drinking, highly studious and responsible types) more and more of them seem to be experimenting with inebriation. In fact, just this afternoon, I got a call from a friend who I have a lot of respect for and who I consider to be amongst one of the smartest people I have ever had the honor of working with... and what for? For recommendations on good drinks. Needless to say I was glad to oblige! :)

So any how back to vices. Everyone has them. It seems like we all need them. You can't always be a Mr. or Mrs. Good Goody Gum Drops right? So now that I've tried chocolate as a vice and decided to move away from it, and been disappointed at the efficacy pf alcohol as a vice for me, I'm open to suggestions. Incessant blogging, hermitism, working out excessively (I'm still sore from the firecely competitive racquetball yesterday though!) seem to be good options so far, but I'm not sure I like either of those enough. I already spend too much time on the net, already spend too much time by myself and exercise as well.. so neither of those would be new and interesting enough.

What do you think??

"This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs..."

Remember the famous commercial to prevent drug abuse? The one in which they show a fried egg representing your brain on drugs... It is your brain. But you don't have to be on drugs alone to achieve the same state as the fried egg.

The mind is very powerful. It is our mind which produces the works of art, tomes of literary masterpieces, the design of the amazing machines which can make man fly, the ability to land on the moon. All human achievement has a singular source - the human mind. Without it we could not scale Everest and could not design chips which can process more information than we could hold in our heads.

At the same time the mind is fragile. It can at time be difficult to discern fact from fiction. It can play games on us. It can make us believe things so strongly that it inhibits our ability to question. Or even if we do question it can spin the most amazing tales and explanations for why things are the way they are.

Amazing...

My highschool motto...

I've mentioned this in a previous diatribe already, but I think it's worth stressing. My highschool probably taught me some of the most invaluable lessons. And none could be more invaluable than the one embodied in the motto for my school: Naimatma Balheenien Labhya. I'll quote the meaning directly from my highschool's website:

The credo of Modern School "Naimatma Balheenien Labhya" from Sanskrit literally means - Perfection can only be acheived by the strong. The question is not survival of the fittest, or survival at the cost of others. It is the path of confidence, self-respect, and humility. It is not just survival, but the constant effort of self-improvement towards a goal of perfection.

It's taken me a long time to understand the original Sanskrit saying above. For the longest time, I used to think of it as cocky and snobbish, since the literal transalation is: the weak cannot prosper But over the years, and in fact several years after I rgraduated from Modern I realized that it isn't that the weak cannot prosper, but that in order to prosper you need to be strong. And not just strong physically, but mentally strong. The strenght of conviction, preseverance and self-reliance. The strength of courage, honor and logic. The abiity to realize that you yourself are the person who can help you the most!

So it's not surprising that it infuriates me to see people who are not willing to help themselves. Who use lame excuses to justify their state of existence and survival instead of living and trying to create their own happiness. I can understand if there is a genuine problem that precludes any amount of effort from leading to success, but the lack of effort itself is unacceptable. You have to try. And yes, it may be difficult... there are some things for which I recognize my own fears and flaws and it's definitely not easy to try and overcome them... but there still has to be an effort. If you try and then for reasons beyond your control you do not succeed, that is something to be sad over. But if you don't try or if you are sad because of your own decisions... then those are things only you can control. ... and remember... Perfection can only be achieved by the strong...

It's a fine line...

Some decisions and choices that we get presented with are tough ones.... we all know that. But where does one draw the line between protecting yourself and your own sanity or helping someone else? Its always a balancing act. It's not just walking a tight-rope; it's more like waking a tight-hair. On one side there are things we know we can do to help ourselves. And then there are things we can do to be helpful to someone else, but they may be contrary to our effort to help ourselves. Like taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back. I guess as long as there is still some forward movement for yourself and it's not net-negative, then I'd rather be helpful.

Lost or Liberated?

Whether we admit it or not, everyone hates change. I'm not talking about small changes like choosing a different restaurant to go eat at, but more so of the big changes, the 10X changes as Andy Grove said in his book Only the Paranoid Survive. Be it in business or in personal life. 10X changes are disruptive. They are difficult to deal with because they take everything we know and throw it out the window. They make you go back to school and learn new lessons. Change can be liberating. Change can force action or it can force inaction due to paralysis brought on by fear. You can be lost in it. Sometimes something as small as re-arranging the furniture at home can trigger change anxiety. Because it's something that we've come to count on. We crave permanence, when there is none, and the only contant is change.

But when we are experiencing a 10X change it is up to us to determine where we stand on that line of feeling lost or liberated. But it's always a mixture of both, because you've lost something you had.

Are they roots or strings?

Moving sucks. Besides the change, the physical act of moving is just pain in the freaking rear! If there is anyone who enjoys the packing, loading, unloading and unpacking cycle, I'd be curious to meet such a person! :) From the time that I had to move a couple of years ao, I adopted the approach of trying to minimize the number of things I have since then it just makes moving a whole lot easier! Actually i should qualify that... minimize the number of heavy and large things! (Can't do without the gimmicks and gadgets!) As an aside though, however much I may try I still seem to keep accumulating books though... and man are they a pain to move! I love the idea that I could pretty much fit all the things I care about into the back of my car and be off! (I do have a big car though :))

When I described this to someone recently, they equated this to having no roots. I disagree, I equate it to having no strings. To being self-contained and in control without having to rely on movers! ;-) Ahh, who knows, one of these days I may give in a get a recliner!

Never, Forever: Promising what we cannot deliver?

This morning as I walked through Schenley, the radio was playing some of the usual songs. But as I listened, I couldn't help wonder how often all of us promise things which we cannot deliver on and on other times just don't know any better. Specifically I'm talking about the words in the English language which convey an eternal sense of time and perpetualness. Words such as Never and Forever. It seems like we still have not come to terms with our own transience and that the only tautology is that the only contant is change. Now, bear with me here since I'm not criticizing the ability to embelish and emphasize our emotion, desires and whatever we say or do with such words; but I am questioning whether we really mean it or is it purely a literary salad dressing?

I'd like to believe that as far as I can help it, I deliver on my promises. So if I say something in utmost seriousness, jest aside, then chances are that I really mean it and that I will stick to it. I have been called stubborn, persistent, obstinate, pertinacious and compared to those wonderful equine-mutts that spit at you :) - because once I've decided something, I stick to it. (And in fact, someone telling me not to do something or that I cannot do something, often pushes me further to the limit of proving them wrong, especially if their statement is based on irrationality. I'm ready to pounce and debunk - like some idiotic pundit (priest) told my mother that my name should begin with an S and so I have a middle name which I despise that begins with an S, or that I should wear white - so I wear black jeans (they're so much more practical too), or that I shouldn't play with sharp objects - so I started collecting knives...)

But when it comes to keeping ones word, it isn't always easy. Because sometimes something you promise under one set of circumstances may not hold under another set of circumstances. Even there we need to be rational right? Or is rationality a cop-out for flaking out on one's word? Can you really love someone forever? What is forever? How long is forever? Is forever as long as you decide to make it? Is it like the life-long warranty which expires as soon as your car dies?

It intrigues me that how these eternal words bind us in promises that we may not be able to deliver on or bind us into situations and actions which we may not want to deliver on at somepoint in the future? They say people are supposed to be married forever. Now isn't that interesting. The culture in the western world certainly doesn't seems to exemplify the "forever-ness" of marriage by any means. Now even though that is often positioned as a negative, I still feel that the ability and independence to free yourself of a unpleasant situation is much better than using that f-word "forever" to keep yourself in bondage to an environment or situation which simply isn't conducive to your happiness over time.

We all know that things change. Shit happens. So then why use words which will put us in a predicament which will either imprison us in the cage of our own honor - to live up to our commitments or cause us to break out of that cage and in the process break our promise?

Comments?

Hackers, Script Kiddies, Virus writers : scum of the Internet?

Is there any possibility of a hackers code of ethics?

I must have jinxed myself by saying lots more long drives in the previous blog entry. As it turns out, I may just have to head back to DC in order to rebuild a few servers. Why? Because some person who seems to lack the good sense of applying their intelligence for the right purposes decided to hack my servers.

Recently, David Coursey, the Executive Editor of ZDNet's Anchordesk, wrote a column entitled: The only fitting punishment for virus writers? Death!. Today, I think I know exactly where David was coming from when he wrote that! I spent all morning trying to track down an intruder whose antics had successfully crippled one of my crtitical servers. Still going actually, just waiting for some installation files to get transferred over to the datacenter before I return to conducting my autopsy of the hack-attack to assess the level of damage. So far, the resonating piece of advice I've received from CERT and all the people who I've spoken to is, wipe the machine and start over. I agree that that's the best thing to do, and that's what I'l probably have to do... but what a freaking waste of time and effort just because some idiot feel like they have the right to come mess with other people's systems!

Now, I'll admit that I've done my share of hacking for fun. I was never a serious hacker, but I knew enough to be dangerous. But all the hacking I did was never done with any malicious intentions and was generally limited to learning new tricks without causing any damage to anyone. The hacker mentality is one of someone who needs a challenge. I most cases, there isn't really any real work or value that the hacker intends to derive from compromising your systems, but instead, it's just a thrill, a rush... that I am smarter than the other person because I broke into their machine! From that point of view, I would actually consider hackers to be lower on the scale of "the scum of the earth" than someone who commits burglaries, steals or mugs people. At least in those cases they get something out of it!!

Even in hacking there can be some level or ethics and morals can there not? You want a challenge? You want to prove how smart you are? Then do it in a fucking constructive way. If you can't find a constructive way and you still really want to hack, then go ahead, hack away, but do it so you can alert the person who's system you've hacked to let them know that there is a hole in their system they need to plug!! Trust me a lot more people will recognize and appreciate what you do when you do it in such a way that it helps them than harms them! If your reason for hacking is because you want a kick out it, it's a bigger kick to help someone and have them thank you then to screw up something they've spent time and effort working on!

What most hackers do these days is akin to the street-vandals who go around defacing other people's property. How would you feel like if someone came in and spray painted your car huh?? That's what you're doing everyday that you go treading on other people's work and effort as you go ssh'ing, rlogin'ing, telnett'ing and su'ing from machine to machine. So develop some request for things which do not belong to you! If you want computing power, then get it the right way! Check out projects like United Devices and SETI@Home. Build your own network. Learn how to channel your intelligence in a way that you can actually get something more back from it than just the hollow thrill of patting your own back!

Well, enough ranting on Hackers, Script Kiddies and Virus writers. I left a message for the hacker who broke into my system by modifying /etc/motd. It reads:

Dear Mr. hacker:

Why the heck are you screwing with our systems?
We'd really appreciate it if you would leave them alone
and restore all the files that you messed with.

How's that for a straightforward request? :)

If you need to contact us, email <address suppressed>

regards,
-m

Let's see if he or she has the good sense to either just go away, have the courage and the decency to actually respond to it openly and explain himself or herself or if this is just another person content to be part of the scum of the Internet...

Egotistical Irrationality

I'm currently reading a book titled Everyday Irrationality : How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally on the recommendation of a friend. The author Robyn M. Dawes is a professor at Carnegie Mellon. As I would hope and expected, the book makes one question the basic assumptions of human behavior to identify the places where we are being irrational. Right up my alley. Somewhat academic (understandably so!) but still very interesting stuff nonetheless.

So as a result of reading this book and another one of my daily experiences, I started thinking this evening about how ego plays a role in irrational decisions. This is specifically in reference to a previous blog (okay, this sucks, the way my archives are setup using frames right now, I cannot link directly to a blog entry. That is unacceptable and so I'll have to change that soon, till then, you'll just have to find it in the archives yourself) titled Fear, Regret and Hope. In that blog I wrote about how IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) fear of the consequences often prevents us from taking an action and if we succumb to that fear, what we land up with is regret. Today's hypothesis based on my own experience is that the fear is primarily that of getting a bruised ego. The fear of rejection. The fear of failure. The fear of looking like a complete idiot -- what's that saying... It's better to keep you mouth shut and have people think you are a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt!.

So ego plays a huge role. Often to the extent that because of it... or better yet, because of the fear of getting a bruised ego, we choose to not take a chance, which if analyzed could be an irrational decision. Well, I'm not sure about that.. because does a bruised ego count as a possible negative outcome? How do you quantify the effect of that?

Anyhow, the bottomline is that I feel a little hypocritical, because though I can sit here and write about this stuff and analyze my own actions, it is definitely a lot harder to embody the ideas everytime, all the time, in all situations. I guess I'm still too self-conscious in some cases and still need to train myself better :) There is always room for improvement. It's the largest room in the house.

:note to self. sbux aim

Solving Problems

First, it's late. It's hot. It's really muggy and sticky. So sticky that my arms are sticking to the table and the notebook. I'd much rather be sitting in bed with the AC on, but had to get this one out.

I've found that I take a very problem oriented approach to everything... to the extent that it often makes me do things which I may not really want to do. I guess this derives from my belief that I am a Human Doing not a Human Being. To me every situation, every circumstance must have a goal. Why I do not know, but that is how it seems to be. Whenever I am presented with a situation, I always seem to try and figure out what I am supposed to do about it. And I find it incredibly frustrating to be presented wit or faced with a situation where I cannot effect a change. Where I cannot do something to make it better or make it go away.

For some things it works well. Bring me a problem and I will try and find a solution. So great, bring me a business problem, bring me a technical problem and chances are that we can together brainstorm some approach that may have the possibility of leading to better situation. Not necessarily the perfect answer each time, but an answer. An action. A strategy. A plan. A goal. A means. But all in all an attempt to try and make the situation better, even though it may be a feeble attempt.

But then there are some problems for which there are no simple answers. Sometimes it's the little things, the personal things, the things which I do not have any immediate control over. If someone is sick or if someone dies, there is very litle I can say or do in order to rectify such a situation. And in any such circumstances where no direct action on my part can help to improve the situation, the only recourse I seem to have is one of inaction. If someone has cancer, it is beyond my current ability to help solve that problemfor them. However, it is within my ability to listen. But I find it difficult to listen, because when I listen, my instant reaction is to try and think of something that can be done to alleviate the situation. (The examples chosen here are not real. But they get the point across. What I really have in mind is other problems for which I do not have simple answers...)

My desire to always "find an answer" is so strong that I find it frustrates me to the point of making me angry, apathetic and withdrawn -- to try and prevent myself from being exposed to the questions and the problems for which I do not have the answers. It is perfectly okay, if I know that I can put in extra effort, work harder, work longer and essentially do something in order to find the answer, but it is those which seem too far out of my reach which are the cause of this intense frustration. Some times, the "if you ignore it long enough, it will go away" syndrome creeps in. I know it when it happens. I can see it, but I can't get myself to do anything about it... so far.

There are problems and questions which have perplexed the brightest minds, the greatest thinkers for years on end. Not only years, but generations and centuries. So I by no means garner any false perceptions that I am in any way, shape or form going to be able to find answers to some of the problems which have eluded some of the brightest minds. I am not smarter than them.

I guess at some level all of these are choices. Choices, because if I really feel strongly about a cause, an issue, a problem, there is nothing preventing me from going gung-ho over it to try and find a solution or help alleviate the cause. But the single most important factor in making that choice is my level of confidence of whether or not I will be able to make a difference. And just how many things an I make a difference for? Would be cool if I could fork (sorry, geeky term from OS days...) of a clone to go off and devote all it's energy to the task at hand. But unfortunately, even if human cloning does get to become reality, the sciece fiction concept of cloning is very far from the reality of cloning. The truth is that there is just one me. And my time is limited like everyone elses. And so, I need to make choices. Choices which allow me to maximize what I want to achieve. And in that process the low hanging fruit gets plucked first right? The one at the zenith of the tree, may still be attractive, but if the likelihood is that I would need to spend the rest of my life to get to it, maybe it make more sense to attack only those things that are within your reach so as not to disappoint yourself too much? Does that make any sense at all (not sure, will have to read that again tomorrow to see if it even makes sense to me.)

Oh well. I guess one other thing I'll mention -- completely unrelated though, is that I'm still not completely comfortable posting a daily entry based on the days events and what I'm really thinking. It's just not that easy to do. Trust is hard to build -- and like a good German Shepherd, I can only be friends once the trust is established.

The grass is always greener... (part 1 of 2)

I've been thinking about what to write in this entry for several hours now. Essentially last night, a friend of mine who was in town was too hammered to go home and so he crashed in my living room. We landed up talking for a long time. and when I say talking, we weren't just bulshitting, we were in serious deep discussion about everything from life, work, personal lives, psychology, philosophy and all that kind of stuff which you may not expect too many inebriated individuals to be discussing.

The topics ran the gamut and our tangents often became whole discussions in themselves making it increasingly taxing on our minds to unravel the stack to figure out how we got somewhere in the first place. Now, the details of what we talked about are "out-of-bounds" for this entry or any entry on a public blog for that matter. (the vagueness creeps back...), but I will write a little about some of the realizations.

Perception is reality. What you percieve is real for you. You cannot know any other reality than what you percieve (have I said the same thing over enough times yet? ... did it hit home?). But what I've realized and what I hope others can realize is that things may not always be what they seem. In one of the many books I read recently (I did a great job of remembering the things I liked from the readings, but a pathetic job of keeping a bibliography or any references, sorry... in future, I'll be more careful and probably post a list of my readings... well at least the non-sensitive ones!) it talked about how the exact same circumstance/environment creates a completely different experience for each person. It is your own personal experience, which need not be the same as what anybody else felt under the same circumstances.

So the point I'm trying to make and not doing a good job of being succint about it, is that the same circumstances may be a completely different effect on different people. And Assumption is the mother of all f...ups... so to assume that your experience is universally applicable is probably not going to work to your advantage in the long run. Of couse, all the experiences are subjective, but it would behoove one to at least attempt to try and validate the assumptions before jumping to any conclusions. Give the benefit of the doubt. You may see things differently.

Another quote which keeps coming back a lot is the one about expectation is the first step to disappointment. This is a hard one. In fact, all of this stuff is because there are very few absolutes... that coming from a person who is most comfortable in dealing with zeros and ones, means a lot. It is easier to talk about this than to practice it. And I myself am probably guilty of not being able to practice what I preach 100% of the time.

Expectations surround us. Whether they are from friends, family, parents, work, school and most of all from ourselves.... or better said, as our perceptions of what is expected of us by others. Again, that is a perceived result which very often hasn't been validated at all and so we land up subjecting ourselves to a mental torture of trying to live up to perceived expectations. Both internal and external. This reminded me of a quote I had in the old quotes file (available in quote archives)...

...and no taskmaster is harsher than one's own self-expectations.
...Tom Clancy in the Red Storm Rising

Now, I do not mean to sounds solipsistic or selfish, but isn't that just a recipe for making yourself miserable? Living based on what you perceive others to expect of you!? Wouldn't it be more pragmatic to at some point realize that you are the only person who can do anything about how you feel and the only person you need to be accountable to is yourself. (that implicitly covers doing things for other people since if you didn't you wouldn't be happy with yourself right!?)

But what can someone who is caught in the expectation rut do? What happens when it runs so deep that it starts becoming a borderline phobia undermining your own self-esteem? That's a dangerous state to be in.

The grass is always greener... (part 2 of 2)

New thread. I also believe that I have been very fortunate in being raised the way I was. Hats of to my grandmother, my mother and my father for doing the job they did with me, because I'm quite pleased with it. (I hope they are too!) I nearly always got whatever I asked for, but I always tried not to ask for too much. I still do. I prefer it that way. I like being self-sufficient and independent. I don't need much. And since I've never had the guts to thank them for it in person, I'll do it here.

New thread. The previous blog on regret ties in here as well. I'm slowly and steadily developing a policy of no regrets - again easier said than done. But the way I rationalize it; at every step, we have to make a decision on the basis of the best information available to us. And that's what we do... we make the best decision we can based on the whatever information is available to us. We consider the outcomes (Tangent -- contrary to what is the common interpretation of the Gita, a friend who responded privately via email to a previous blog entry, helped me figure out a new interpretation which I like better... the Gita doesn't say not to consider the outcomes. What it says is don't let the fear of the outcomes prevent action or result in inaction. I agree with that interpretation. It makes more sense), we evaluate our options and then we make a decision. And once that decision is made, there is no looking back. Because unless you believe in time-travel, there is no way you can change that decision. Yes, you may take steps which will eventually get you to the same "state", but you cannot reverse a decision that has been made. What is done is done. So accept it under all circumstances and keep plugging along. (This is one of the many lessons I learnt while negotiating the deal for my first company and I have to thank one of my board members and personal advisors for helping din this into me and helping me internalize it. He knows who he is and so his name does not need to be mentioned here.)

So if we make our most educated and rational decision, then we've done our best. And if you've done your best, then there is nothing to regret is there? You just keep plugging along because there are some variables that you cannot control. For the ones you could... you gave it your best shot. But you have to give it a shot. Again, one from the old quotes file... You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

New thread. When I was in school and college, booksmarts meant a lot to me. I always had, do have and will always have a high regard for people who are intelligent in the traditional sense of the word. And I've definitely been exposed to a fair share of them at Carnegie Mellon. But I now believe that I was naive. I didn't realize then that booksmarts isn't all that matters. It also matters as to what type of person you are and what your values are. And I have a new respect for people who were not academic overachievers, but excelled at other things.

Don't take me wrong though coz. I still respect those who are traditionally inelligent and a MIT, CMU, Stanford or Berkely grad (at least for CS/EE... replace with the top 3-4 schools in your own field) would definitely make it faster to the top of my list - but not only for their level of intellgence, but for the work ethic that most of the graduates from the top schools exemplify.

But realizing that that isn't all that matters is important. What matters to me is that you pick what you want to be good at and you go after it. The drive matters. The perseverance matters. The will and the desire to be successful at whatever you choose matters. Rationality matters.

I'll end with a note on rationality (because I think blogger is already going to barf at me when it sees the lenght of this post. This may land up being a two part post as well! :( ) Pragmatism is my friend. I like it. It helps make things more objective. It takes all the things from the grey-area of subjectivity which laces the diatribe above and lends to them something that my zeros and ones oriented head can wrap itself around. If there is anything I fear losing the most, it is the power to analyze and think rationally...

Does the Internet make us narrowminded: Take 2 (part 1 of 2)

So last night I spent over an hour (I was multi-tasking, waiting for a remote CD install to finish...) writing and editing a blog on this topic. Unfortunately, I was stupid enough (I should really know better by now!) to try and do it directly in Blogger (i.e. in IE). Generally that works okay since I write for a couple of minutes and hit post just to make sure it's saved.

But I had no idea how long this one was going to become when I started it and I had written way too much without posting it. So when it was all done I hit post but it probably went directly to /dev/null since I lost all of it. Anyhow, so this is an attempt to try and recall from memory what I wrote last night and recreate it. Always an uneasy task since you're never really sure if it's quite exactly the same. Who knows, it may just be better. Of course this time I am being more intelligent about it and writing it in a real editor (if you must know, my weapon of choice for HTML is HomeSite or plain old GNU Emacs).

So anyhow, I think the entry from yesterday went something like this...

Earlier this week, I had dinner with a friend and somehow we got to talking about the affect of the Internet on people. The hypothesis we were discussing was that the Internet makes people narrowminded -- since it makes it too easy to filter the information we receive via the Internet. Now I agree with that to some extent since I do filter what information I consume and am probably especially guilty of it since for the past 6 or more years, my only "reading" was stuff that came into my email inbox. But granted, I was spending between 2-4 hours a day keeping up with the information that would be coming into my mailbox. It's just easier that carting around newspapers and magazines.

So, I can -- at a superficial level -- agree that the Internet may have a contributing hand in making it too easy for us to choose what information we want to get access to. My friend mentioned a book which talked about this called republic.com by Cass A. Sunstein. So yesterday, I just happened to go across to Amazon to check out the book and that got me thinking some more about it. The review on amazon states that, the author, a University of Chicago law professor (oh oh... maybe I should be afraid, be very afraid...) who argues that in the Internet age letting people "consume" only the news they want actually imperils the republic.

Now, before I go any further, I should make it very clear that I have not read this book. Honestly, I'm not sure if it is worth my time to read this book yet. But that's a decision for which I'll reserve my final answer for a future time. I did peruse the Editorial Reviews for this book and would highly recommend that you do the same before reading further. Also, since I have not read this book, I am not responding to what may or may not be in the book or directly to the author's opinions. Having recently read a few books which did a good job of supporting only one point of view and not addressing the other at all made me think that there may be a faction of people who truly believe that the Internet makes us more narrowminded. And it is that which I am responding to.

However, in order for you to know what got me down this path in the first place it is important for you to get some idea of what the book desription said, so I'm going to take the liberty of quoting it in here (To Amazon and the author, I've given you more than enough links to your site already, so chill ;-) )...


Book Description
See only what you want to see, hear only what you want to hear, read only what you want to read. In cyberspace, we already have the ability to filter out everything but what we wish to see, hear, and read. Tomorrow, our power to filter promises to increase exponentially. With the advent of the Daily Me, you see only the sports highlights that concern your teams, read about only the issues that interest you, encounter in the op-ed pages only the opinions with which you agree. In all of the applause for this remarkable ascendance of personalized information, Cass Sunstein asks the questions, Is it good for democracy? Is it healthy for the republic? What does this mean for freedom of speech?

Republic.com exposes the drawbacks of egocentric Internet use, while showing us how to approach the Internet as responsible citizens, not just concerned consumers. Democracy, Sunstein maintains, depends on shared experiences and requires citizens to be exposed to topics and ideas that they would not have chosen in advance. Newspapers and broadcasters helped create a shared culture, but as their role diminishes and the customization of our communications universe increases, society is in danger of fragmenting, shared communities in danger of dissolving. In their place will arise only louder and ever more extreme echoes of our own voices, our own opinions.

In evaluating the consequences of new communications technologies for democracy and free speech, Sunstein argues the question is not whether to regulate the Net (it's already regulated), but how; proves that freedom of speech is not an absolute; and underscores the enormous potential of the Internet to promote freedom as well as its potential to promote "cybercascades" of like-minded opinions that foster and enflame hate groups. The book ends by suggesting a range of potential reforms to correct current misconceptions and to improve deliberative democracy and the health of the American republic.


Okay, so here is where I stand on this...

The Internet is a medium. That's all it is. We have always had the means to chose what information we expose ourselves to and assimilate. That how you have people with different points of view and different belief systems. Some of which are so far out there that makes others wonder, what are these people smoking! The Internet is purely a more efficient medium.

I do filter what information I receive and it isn't because I'm narrowminded (well, at least I'd like to think so... opinionated maybe...) but it is because of what Herb Simon called Information Overload. There is simply too much information out there for our feeble minds to be able to asssimilate and so we need to filter the information we receive.

Does the Internet make us narrowminded: Take 2 (part 2 of 2)

The book description above talks about newspapers and broadcasters having helped to create a shared culture? A shared culture? Whatever happened to celebrating diversity and differences? I grew up in India. And having spent the first two-thirds of my life in what the westerner's consider a third world country, my view is that shared culture is a debatable term. India and probably a lot of the other countries like it have also in recent years been exposed to the "programming" by the Westerm newspapers and broadcasters (Ted Turner is no fool!). And you know what there is a damn good reason it's called "programming". Because that is precisely what it is doing! Pop-culture in India is just as much about the type of stuff you get to see on MTV or in the daily soaps as it is here in the US.

What the shared culture has achieved is a polarized effect. All the negative values of the Western world are what have been assimilated into the culture of other countries. The positive values never seems to permeate through the selctively semi-permeable membrance of the mass media. Western culture has some very positive aspects which people in India and other countries like it really need... to start with, a strong work ethic, honesty, punctuality and efficiency.

Human knowledge is advanced not by creating drones who all have the same shared culture or information, but more so by being willing, ready and able to dig into the depths of certain topics and then sharing that information with others. I definitely do not claim to be an expert on everything, but at the same time there are something that I can hope to become an expert at and help in the advancement of the overall state of knowledge for humanity.

The very premise of a Ph.D. in any subject area is to develop a depth of knowledge, which my definition is narrow. If you think that the Internet makes us narrowminded, then why not start with getting rid of Ph.Ds since they seems to be generating the highest number of people with highly specialized knowledge in a relatively narrow area! (Wait, isn't the author of that book a Ph.D?)

In the nine plus years that I have been on the Internet for lets just say more than several hours per day, I have used the Net to do all kinds of stuff. I've used it to get information specific to my business, my industry my field. I've used it for humor, entertainment, zany news stories ranging from square watermelons in Japan to make them fit better in refrigerators to conjoint twin crocodiles (sorry, couldn't find the link to this one!) to the word "Doh!" (cnn) being added in the Oxford English dictionary! I've used it to make friends, meet people, I've used it to communicate with people all over the world. My sites have at one point or the other had hits from practically every country that has Internet access... and I'm not exaggerating, I have the logs to prove it.

Take a very simple example of where the mass media failed miserably and the Internet came to the rescue... the 2000 Olympics. NBCs decision to insert the artificial delay in their broadcast of the Olympics so that they could show the games in "prime-time" in the United States has got to be the most stupid decision I've seen in a long time. Get with it people. We're in the Information Age. Information is power, but in order for it to be power, you need to be able to get to it first. Reminds me of the quote I put in the quotes file back in 1993 from the movie Sneakers...

There is a war out there... and it's not about bullets...
... it's about the information, the bits and bytes, the zeroes and ones.

So what happened with the Olympics? People who had a clue, got on the Net and found the information they were looking for. And if it wasn't on the site of the US broadcasters companion websites, it was on the official Olympics website or even on the sites originating in other countries. The Internet made it possible.

In fact the perfect example of the impact of the Internet on making it posible for people to not only find, but express their different points of view is right under your nose. You're reading it! It's called a blog! And all of those thousands of people out there who take the time and put in the effort to write what they think are contributing to the different points of view on the Internet, which no newspapers, no mass media, no broadcast medium could ever dream of achieving. (I guess I should plug things like aortal here..)

Honestly, saying that the Internet makes us more narrowminded is not doing justice to he human ability to excercise their own independent decision and free will to choose what they want to read, what they want to learn. If I want to be a narrowminded redneck/hick (well, that would be really hard for me, but hypothetically speaking...) I could do that with or without the Internet. The examples of people who have been duped by polarized information are abundant. In my opinion you don't need to look further than things like Nazi Germany to organized religion and belief systems. Mind control exists. And it's been around a whole lot longer than the Internet!

You know, there are still some of us out there, myself included, who would like to believe that we have our own good sense and discretion to choose what information we need to be exposed to and to make those judgements in a way that makes us the types of individuals we want to be, instead of the drones of a shared culture. Darwinism isn't dead yet. And as my high school motto said... "Perfection cannot be achieved by the weak".

So just let the people be. Let the Net be. Because what makes the Net, is the people....

Sucks!

I wrote this huge entry... took nearly over an hour over it and when I tried to post it, I get a cool little 500 Internal Server Error and a cloud of smoke.... puf!

Oh well, don't have the patience to write it over yet... it's never the same the second time around. So maybe later.

Blogger for the Palm

Well, since installing software over a remote CD mount is a slow affair at best, I guess I'll use the time to complete my document my thoughts from this morning...

Blogger is a very interesting tool. It has a lot of possibilities. I still remember the first time I heard about it and about the folks at Pyra Labs (I feel a instant affinity with them thanks to their use of Labs in their company name! ;-) ).... it was when they were out of money and couldn't afford to keep their service running. They did something which is very unique and IMHO honorable. They told their users what their state was. I loved the fact the the bloggers all over the place contributed whatever amounts they could in order to help the folks at Pyra get a new server to keep the service running. If that isn't a show of user loyalty I don't know what is!

Pyra/Blogger has one problem. Which is a revenue model. It is one thing to build a service while thousands of users dig and like. It's another thing to convert it into a business. I haven't spent enough time in evaluating how and what they're doing for this, but it's the kind of thing I like to think about -- building something which lots and lots of people like a lot and at the same time doing it in a way which is a viable business. There have been more than enough cool applications which came out in the past few years which got the first part right, but they failed on the second part. I sincerely hope the folks at Blogger get it right. I see the potential, but the potential sources of revenue are indirect at best, but still viable IMHO.

I have lots of ideas for feature creep into a tool like blogger. I'm sure other people have thought of them already, but some of them are worth mentioning. Starting with obviously adding the comments feature into blogger by default rather than people having to tie it in through third party add-ons or configurations. Providing the ability to backdate entries, an integrated search tool, a more feature rich template for the power-users and just more simple customizable templates for the not-so-power-users.

One which would be way cool, and is the topic of this blog, is having a blogger version for the Palm. Like yesterday at dinner, we were talking about something and I remember saying that one of the things we talked about would make it to my quotes file.... but by the time I got to a computer, I'd already forgotten what it was. And it's been bugging me all day. If only there was a Blogger version for the Palm, which would allow me to write a blog entry on the road. Then I wouldn't forget what I wanted to post!

Now there are two ways this could work. For those people who have a wireless connection to their Palm device, the entry could be posted and published immediately. That seems really easy to do as long as they can already use abrowser on their handheld. However, I still maintain that wireless access on Palm devices is primitive at best. It's just not there yet. And besides, my guess is that bloggers despite being early adopters and technophiles would still be a rather price-sensitive demographic which realize that wireless access from Palm's just doesn't deliver the bang for the buck yet. So the other approach would be to write a conduit which allows the blog entries on the Palm to get posted when doing a HotSync. Technically feasible. Easy to write to I guess, except I doubt I'll be doing that anytime soon... so if anyone wants to take that idea and run with it and make it available to the blogger population... more power to you! (or course this would require that Blogger allow the user to backdate posts by specifying the time stamp for the post instead of Blogger assigning the timestamp...)

So who's going to write the Blogger client for the Palm!??

The real truth about alcohol

So after my drinking binge yesterday I got to thinking about alcohol and the activities that surround it. Why is it that drinking is such a popular past-time? What makes it so much fun? Honestly, I doubt it could be the taste of alcohol coz. I haven't come across any alcohol that actually tastes good. Now, I'm sure lots of you will beg to differ. Especially all the beer-drinkers out there. I never really developed a palette for beer. Okay, so I'll admit that some alcoholic drinks may taste better than others, but overall, they're all somewhat bitter and burn going down (atleast the good ones do!). Even the ones which are supposed to be smooth are not really that smooth are they?

It's truly remarkable to see the whole industries that have sprung up around alcohol. The beverage companies (beer, wine, hard liquor...) the bars, the clubs, all kinds of stuff.... a whole economy fueled by alcohol (literally!) People out in the evenings to drink and get drunk. But is their goal really to get drunk? Or is their goal something completely different? To escape boredom? To escape thinking about their current predicament? To escape loneliness? To run away from the problems that they cannot run away from? Or to try and ad some fun into an otherwise mundane and boring week?

So far in my experience, drinking has never really been because I genuinely like the taste of alcohol... given a choice between alcohol and chocolate, my choice would be obvious. Chocolate wins anyday :) The times that I have consumed alcohol it has been more for the effect of alcohol than the taste. Is it the light buzz which makes you feel like it's okay to do stupid things which you woudn't do otherwise? Or is it the complete incoherence and supposed loss of inihibitions? Alcohol has different effects on different people. Some people become exhuberant, vociferous and rumbunctious, others become more reticent, subdued and pensive. I haven't been drunk often enough to know where on that scale I land when I'm hammered, but my wager would be closer to the latter camp though there may be occasional abberrations towards the former.

The popular belief is that people drink to lose their inhibitions or to forget things that they do not want to remember. I buy that. It works for short durations (tried it). But the effect of alcohol in achieving that result is transient at best. The plain truth is that alcohol is not a stimulant, but a depressant. At the end of it all, you're back where you started from, if not worse off... worshipping the porcelain goddess or nursing a hangover.

I guess the lack of a real conclusion on this topic, simply calls for more experimentation to gather more empirical data... ;-)

Alcohol, Blogging and the Net

Ack! (and yes, I meant ack, not yak! ;-)) It's 5:30 in the freaking morning on a Friday. I'm wide awake (or what would at least be considered physically awake) trying to drink a couple of glasses of water. Not because it's a blazing 75 degrees (see, I know this thanks to weatherbug which put a nice little tempterature icon in my system tray. It's actually a cool little app, except for all the advertising thrown all over it, but it's great for knowing what the temperature is outside, esp for all of us people who spend more time in front of this idiot box than out side... but I digress and my parenthetical writing (defined as writing in parentheses) is getting out of control as usual... so back to the topic at hand....). It's just wrong for the temperature to be 75 degrees at this time of the morning in Pittsburgh.

Anyhow, I'm sitting here guzzling ice-water because last night, a co-worker and I decided to go drink. And when I say drink, I mean drink. I had 2 GTs (Gin and Tonic, 2 limes), 3 LIITs (Long Island Iced Teas) and 1 Baileys across three different establishments -- The Foundry Ale Works, The Church Brew Works and The Pittsburgh Deli Company (and they all have websites! how cool is that!). I think my co-worker probably had it rougher than I did since I'm up at this hour writing while he said he may not be in in the morning ;-)

But being up at this hour after drinking that much it definitely took all my mental muscle to try and remember what I was going to ramble about today. I thought of three things, and by the time I got back after refreshing my glass of water, they had literally escaped and I had to think real hard and write them down lest I forget them again! And I still can't remember what it was that I wanted to put in the quotes file from last night! So anyway.... for now, I'm just going to post the titles of what I was going to write about because I think I'm going back to bed. Will write the actual stuff sometime tomorrow!

The real truth about alcohol

Blogger for the Palm

Does the Internet make us narrow minded?

Stay tuned...