Scribbles of Ramesh

My first loss...

2009-06-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

In my life, I don't remember having lost anything. This is the first time I have lost something, and that too my wallet.

Here is the list of things I recollect having in my wallet:

1) Credit Card
2) Debit Card
3) Drivers License
4) Checking/Savings account numbers
5) MetroCard (81$)
6) SmartLink Card(54$)
7) Laundry card (15$)
8) Chicago Card (15$)
9) MetroCard (10$)
10) ~20$ Cash
11) Insurance card
12) Wage works
the following things I did not remember... until later...
13) Bj's free membership card
14) Vivek's Photo
15) Ganapati's Photo
16) Border's Card
17) Stop & Shop Card
18) Duane Reade Card

Losing it was not a big deal. The uncertainity of the contents of the wallet is what causes you to worry. The first thing I did was call up a friend and borrowed some money. Lucky me, my friends house was close by about 3 blocks. Borrowed 40$, and reached the station. Once I reached the station I bought the metrocard(20$), which could be used for both the path and mta. I had a glimmer of hope that I might get it.

After reaching JSQ, took a cab to my place. (8$). All I had was 12$ in cash and some change at my place. Guess it worked out around ~ 20$.

The first thing I did while reaching home was to cancel my credit card and my debit card. Remember you have to cancel your credit card first, because liability could be more. Because debit card requires a PIN. :)

The Chase guys mentioned that, I could get a temporary card from the local bank. hmm.. there was some hope to survive the next day.

Well, after the cross check of information got my card canceled. Then had to make sure none of my one line account payments bounced.
a) Airtel CallHome
b) T-Mobile bill ( payed using my bank account)
c) Skype account

Tried to cancel my wageworks card, could not find how to do it online. Was so tired, went to bed.

Next day, woke up pretty late. Called up my workplace and mentioned that I had to straighten things. Got some wishes for luck. hmmm that is a start. I did not have hope.

The first thing I needed was cash. The daily commute costs me about ~11$. So decided to go to the bank at JSQ.

I thought my company id was enough, so went to the bank and explained to him that I had reported the lost card and needed a temporary card. The clerk, asked for an id. I showed him my company id, he said that is a secondary id and he had to check with the manager. He came back after 5 mins and said that he cannot accept it, as the company id did not have any company name on it. He said he could accept a passport. I asked him how much time would it take to give me a temporary debit card, he said probably 2 mins. ~9:15 AM

With hope, promised him that I would be back with the passport. I went back home got my passport and reached the bank. Talked to the clerk, he was happy and asked for my social, pin and was getting ready to give my temporary card. That is when he realized that he could not give me a temporary card, because my account was opened at Illinois. He said that, the major operations like this(issuing a temporary card) could be done only at the bank at which the account was opened. So, much for the promise of getting a temporary card.

Then he offered me to get some cash from my account. At that moment I felt, it is my money and had to go through so much pain to get hold of it. So much for security. You are no-one without your ID cards.

Finally, withdrew 300$, nice way to start a monday morning huh!. Then I decided to go to the Van Houtte at Exchange place, which was the last place I took my wallet out.

I reached there and inquired, whether they had seen my wallet. The lady at the counter did not even bother to take much effort. She said nothing was found. ~10:15AM

Then I decided to file a report, with the appropriate precinct. I did not know where it was. Then I saw a cop and asked him where to file a report. He mentioned that I had to go to 207, 7th street(near New Port) I did not know where it was then.

Was looking for a cab, could not find one. Was walking back and forth, then I decided to get some water at the cart near the Hudson St & Christopher Columbus drive intersection. I was asking him where this place was and how to go there. The person (Ebrahim) said that he would take me there. I said, I would pay him. He is said, "It is not about the money". Somebody has to take you there. He seemed to be a bit busy. As I saw a couple of cab's I told him that I would take a cab, for that he replied, don't bother will leave in a couple of mins. ~10:30AM

I said ok. I still felt a bit weird, because I don't normally get into a car of a person I do not know. He drove me to the place, he was also not clear where the precinct was. He thought it was on 8th street. He was looking out for me, I said that I could figure it out. I asked him how much was it, he said it was 7$, it was a nominal charge. ( probably I should have tipped him, but I could not tip a person who helps me, I feel it is an insult). Finally he said, "I hope you get your wallet back". I said "I do not expect to get it back" . for that he replied "There is always hope, do not give up" (I know the quote that hope is a very strong thing from "Shawshank Redemption", but hearing from a different person , made me feel different )

There was something in the way he said. The words he said still keep ringing in my ears:
"It is not about the money".
"There is always hope, do not give up"

Finally I walked into the precinct for the first time in more than 3 years. I told the cop at the desk, that I had lost it yesterday night at the waterfront. She took all the details and filled out a form and it was all done it 5 mins. I thanked her and left to work. ~10:30AM

During the busy day, at 5:15 I received a call from a sergeant that someone has turned my wallet in. I was surprised. I still was not sure, that it was my wallet.

After work, went to the precinct. And voila, I saw my brown wallet.
(as I'm writing this and watching Cast Away, I saw an almost similar brown wallet in the hands of Tom Hanks, where he is checking out the contents of the wallet, does that mean something?)

It was all bagged in a evidence plastic bag, which was tamper resistant. It was a surprise. I was ecstatic. It looks like someone by the name "James" from 2nd Street a good Samaritan had returned my wallet. With my cash and cards and commuter cards intact. I got the contact details of the person, to send a thank you note.

Looking back, it gives me hope that there are good Samaritan's around the world... there is HOPE that this world will be a better place.

p.s: nobody has ever checked the contents in my wallet,except one, if you are reading this, you are one of the selected few to know what I carry in my wallet.

updated on Aug 1st 2009: looking back it was not really my first loss.. I have lost my bike key(some years before), a ring(this happened after I wrote this post... 07/18)...

My first Sky Diving Experience

2009-05-30T22:49:00.000-07:00

From Sky diving May 24th 2009

My interest in skydiving started last summer(2008). But somehow managed to miss skydiving last year. This year(2009) was so determined to do it this summer.

Bunch of my friends showed interest in joining me for sky diving. Finally we decided to go for it during our visit to Pasadena, Texas.

We went on may 24th to Spaceland for skydiving. It was a clear sunny day, when we started. It hits you hard when you fill up the forms and sign it giving up all your legal rights. That is when you realize that you have everything to lose and nothing to gain. (I)

As soon as we signed and payed our bills, it started raining. :( was that a sign... we did not know... Then we took the rain check's and left for the temple. So that we do not waste time waiting for the sky diving.

Once we were done with the temple, the sun started coming up. So we called up to check whether it was a good time to sky dive. They said the batches are going out, and we could stop by.

So we left for the skydiving place. As we reached there, we took the rain with us.... :( So was that a second sign... we never knew...

We decided to do it, so we stayed there, it was a long wait... about a hour. The thought about going to do the skydive along with the wait was a bit killing rather than the dive itself... hmm the power of thoughts...

We all got dressed up with basic instructions. We were supposed to watch some instruction videos, but luckily or unluckily we never got to watch it...

It hits you the second time, when you are about to get into the plane... the realization that you are really going to do it... (II)

Then the plane takes us up... and one of the videographer opens up the plane door... that was the first time I was in a plane whose door was open... :) It hits you again with the cool wind blowing on your face... and the realization that you are really going to do it. (III)

Finally the instructor buckles you up and we are getting ready for the jump. There you are standing near the open plane door, all nervous... you should look at my face in the video... ha ha ha... this when you realize you are doing it... he he he... (IV)

And there you go, you jump out of the plane and we start rolling... the view was awesome... It is one of things next to Love, that has to be experienced... it is hard to explain with words... you feel a mixed set of emotions...

There you are falling down at 120mph... the cool wind hitting your face... you feel cold even under the jump suit.... as you are falling that is when you realize what the hell are you doing falling from the sky... ha ha ha lol... (V)

The free fall was awesome... then we send off the videographer at 7000 feet. And I open the canopy at 6000 feet. There we are going down the canopy... flying like an eagle...

There we are gliding down the sky... the instructor was explaining about where we are going land and asked me how it was... I said... it is really awesome and I do not want to go down... he he he... yeah we did talk while gliding down...

As we were near 1000 feet I started getting nausea... then after that it was a bit unpleasant...

After we landed... we were so joyful... now looking back... it was one of the best experience...

I started realizing that everything around was great and pleasant... the food taste's better, the commute to work is pleasant... work is fun... in all, life is great!!!

disclaimer: do this at your own risk. you will realize that you have everything to loose and nothing to gain...

What happens if your memory fails?

2009-02-22T17:50:00.000-08:00

You will be flooded with questions like...

Where am I ?
What am I doing here?
What next?

... it never ceases

World Says: If you loose your memory, you are insane...

If you stare at these questions, you would realize that these are philosophical questions. Philosophically speaking, I don't think anyone has answers for these questions.

These are the questions you ask yourself when you meditate, for self-inquiry. These help us shape our future and forge ahead.

So, what does memory serve us then? During the short duration between birth and death, it helps us relate to things, people, our feelings and our past experiences. So how we feel NOW and what we do NOW are all defined by our memory footprints caused by our thoughts. The thoughts in turn arise from the memory of our experiences. This is a vicious circle of thoughts and memory.

World Says: If you get caught in the vicious circle, you are insane...

This implies that what happens to us, our experiences, gives food for the thought. Our thoughts create new memory footprints as to what to do next and how to handle future experiences.

Thoughts arise due to contemplation on the experiences we had. These thoughts are nothing but desires i.e where we want to be, rather than where we are today.

Desire acts as fuel and pushes your thoughts further ahead to create dreams.

World Says: If your dream is harmful then your are insane...

Concentration on a dream/desire/thought is nothing but meditation. When you meditate on a dream/desire/thought, you create new footprints for the next step , based on your past experiences and thoughts. This means that meditation helps us create guide posts. These new memory footprints helps us decide what to do next.

If you act on your thoughts, dreams becomes a reality and you start experiencing it. The cycle continues.

If you don't , it remains as a unfulfilled desire, a wishful thought, a dream.

The actions we take defines who we are. This definition of who we are is nothing but our attempt to give purpose to our life between birth and death.

In short we try to maintain a balance, between being sane and insane. Being sane or insane is determined by peoples judgment. Which in turn is defined by their own experiences and thoughts.

So you don't have to do anything or be anyone, unless, you want to. Your thoughts, define it...

Control your thoughts and you control your life...

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
-William Shakespeare

love redefined...

2007-01-09T22:56:00.000-08:00

Love is a magic word which makes the world spin... In the modern world love is also the most abused word. before we get into the specifics let us define Love: it is a relationship in which you put the other person in front of you. You value their feelings and respect their likings, eventually giving up or sacrificing what you value the most.

here is one such love story, which moved me... (original names have been changed)

As in any other love story, there was a guy named butter and the girl named ginger. Butter was a guy who kept to himself, self contented and happy person. Ginger on the contrary like most other girls needed a shoulder a guiding post, someone to help them out of their sorrows. - I don't know why most girls dream about a prince coming out of the sky who IS the medicine to all their sorrows, little do they realize it is in their hands rather than the prince himself- Butter, a normal, helpful and resourceful guy helps her out of her current problems.

Eventually as in any other love story, butter realizes that he has special feelings for ginger and gets counselling and finds out that the undescribable feeling he has is love. They realize that they are in love, and start building a future.

They start planning how they want their future to be, how they want their family to be. As in any other loving relationships, dreamz are unlimited, they dream about a bright future how it should be and so on.

Due to a career decision butter decides to move away from ginger for better prospects. Ginger respects his decision and they mutually agree that it is for their welfare that they are going to be separated by approx 8700 nautical miles. It was a conscious decision they made for their future.

Though there were uncertainities in their future, they hoped it will work out! - hope is a very strong thing- . As in any other traditional family, the family waves decide the choices of the children, ginger came to know of butter's family problems because of this relationship. Ginger did not respond, she probably had it in her back of her mind.

They were still getting so closer that everybody around would envy them. I guess it would have made people around butter and ginger to long for such a relationship. Then one fine day, something happened to ginger and she informed butter that, she was moving on with her life.

Butter was shattered, he wanted to fix the relationship, he tried to convince her. She seemed to be convinced at that moment, but she came back with a strong NO Butter was perplexed, he did not understand why ?

In due course, the original reason popped up, she was concerned that this cross cultural relationship might cause harm to butter's family. This concern was seeded by some bad experience of her relative and the fact that butter had some family problems due to this relationship.

She seems to have worried about his family more, than her need to have butter for the rest of her life, so she had decided to give him up back to his family.

Hearing this butter, was astonished to see her care. Though butter was not in a position to talk to his family he talked to them and explained the situation. Alas, it did not materialize.

Their main goal was to be with their families and lead a happy life. Since it did not materialize, they let go of their relationship for the welfare of the two families. Butter and Ginger had to let go of each other with heavy hearts, because they valued the parents who cared and loved them since they were born.

I'm confident, they did not let go of their LOVE... but they did let go of their relationship.

LOVE does not necessarily mean being together, letting go is also LOVE!

p.s: published with the permission of my friend...

Leadership -an art, is it?

2006-03-01T01:04:00.000-08:00

Why not a science? why an art? it is because of the fact that there are no hard and fast rules, that is why Leadership is defined an art. Everyone has the right to create his own leadership style. The leadership style is mostly defined by the various factors to name a few the principles they follow, business ethics, interpersonal relationship. Let us see the key points that define a leader.

The most prominent principle of being a leader is to be a authentic leader. This is the most important principle or quality any leader should have. It is the most defining factor to be a leader. Authentic means you reflect and follow what you say and mean! In layman terms it is NOT saying something and doing something. The most obvious question that arises is why? why is "Authenticity" a defining factor? The sole reason is the fact that your credibility increases, your dependability increases. Please note that it does not mean that doing whatever you say irrespective of the consequences. What it means is you commit yourself to what you say! just in case you face problems, you acknowledge gracefully and setout the alternative courses or corrective measures.

The second important principle is being people's man rather than the management's man. Well, the managers out there might be after me! but the fact is that "People first" should be the rule. No matter what people come first than anything else. Because they are the building blocks over which the entire management rests! If they fail or grumble the company is at loss. In business terms you might want to calculate the loss of productive hours, poor quality output etc.
Once these key principles are in place, the next important factor is the business ethics. It is hard to define business ethics, so in short it is all about cross the line. Trust me, you will know it when you are bound to cross it.

The next important aspect is the interpersonal relationship, how the leader deals with people around him? Here too there are no defined rules, because the rules are bound to change depending upon the person you are interacting with. Not every other person is the same, are they? So each one has to be handled differently depending upon their weakness and strengths. The leader builds upon the strengths of the individuals and helps them to strengthen the weakness. This concept of making them strengthen their weakness, plays a major role in their personal growth as well as the organization they work for. Most people disregard this aspect that once they are trained or shaped they might switch companies. Well, in that aspect that is a risk we need to take, for the evolution of the organization.

Some of the other key factors that are key for a leader are as follows:

The other important aspects in leading a team are to keep them informed periodically about the vision/path ahead of them. The prospects, the pitfalls, the irony everything has to be set out on the table, so that the team is aware of reality. In a sense this will help the team to adapt to reality and make changes as quickly as possible.

Making people realize that the limit for their potential and ideas is the sky. i.e the limits they define are illusions. Need to help them understand that whatever they envision can become reality once they start strengthening their vision.

Periodic feedbacks after a milestone or key achievement is mandatory. This does not include the corrective or immediate feedback, these have to be given then and there. The periodic feedbacks mostly concentrate on developing the team members strengths and strengthening their weaknesses. And most often bring back focus to what they want to achieve in their career. This is advantageous in two ways, i.e. the leader knows what is happening exactly and the team knows where they stand always!

The other most important aspect you might want to cultivate in your team is the maturity to see the problem and the person differently. i.e. whenever somebody complains or points out a problem it does not reflect on the person but on the solution proposed by the person. This is one of the major causes of confusion in any organization. This creates havoc within the teams, and most often lead to the splitting up of the team into sides, which is one of the least you want as a leader.

The leader should talk about only the current problem at hand, and forget the previous recurrences when resolving a issue. This gives the team the clarity and focus to solve the problem at hand, rather than looking back what went wrong last time and who to blame this time.

One of the important factor that you might want to cultivate in your team is the frankness to accept when something is wrong, even if it is the leader! This openness in the team helps to build a open culture organization.

Moreover you need to educate the team that falling short is ok! as long as you get back quickly and learn from the past and forge ahead. Because the normal tendency of people is the "Fear Factor" i.e. what if I fail? well, it is a tough question to answer, but let me put it this way, as long as you did your best and it failed, it does not matter. All the team has to do is learn from the mistakes and forge ahead! That is the key!

Many have defined leadership in terms of their own perspective. This is a novel attempt to redefine Leadership in my own terms.

Network Security - The Road Ahead

2005-12-19T04:35:00.000-08:00

Network Security - The road ahead

Conclusion

Introduction

Network Security is the next wave which is bound to sweep the software market. Increase in offshore projects and transfer of information across the wire has added fuel to the burning urge to secure the
network. As the famous adage goes, the most safest computer is one which has been unplugged from the network(making it almost useless). Network security is becoming more of a necessity. Interestingly the type of security required across different enterprises depends on the nature of its business. Offlate some laws & acts have been defined to identify security breaches, which is a very good move to prevent fradulent use/access of information. There are two types of softwares for Network security, one which prevents it and one which does the forensic analysis. The main focus of this article would be the forensics of network security.

What is Network Security?

network security: the protection of a computer network and its services from unauthorized modification, destruction, or disclosure

Network security is a self-contradicting philosophy where you need to give absolute access and at the same time provide absolute security. Any enterprise needs to secure itself from two different access of information/transaction for that matter(ex:ftp,http etc.), internal access and external access. Securing the access of information or resources from the external world(WWW) is quite a task to master, that is where the firewalls pitch in. The firewalls act as gatekeepers who seggregate the intrusive and non-intrusive requests and allow access. Configuring & maintaining a firewall is by itself a task which needs experience and knowledge. There are no hard and fast rules to instruct the firewalls, it depends on where the firewall is installed and how the enterprise intends to provide access to information/resources. So, the effectivity of any firewall depends on how well or how bad you configure it. Please be informed many firewalls come with pre-configured rules, which intend to make the job of securing the information access from external sources. In short firewall gives you information about attacks happenning from the external world.

The toughest job is to secure information from the internal sources. More than securing it, managers need to track the information flow, to identify possible casuatives. The tracking of information flow will come in handy in case of legal situations. Because what seemingly to be a sharing of information could be held against you in the court of
law. To enforce this, acts such as HIPAA, GLBA, SOX have been putforth, to ensure that the scam(s) like that of "Enron" does not happen. In short the tracking of information and audit gives you information abouot security breaches and possible internal attacks.

There are a variety of network security attacks/ breaches:

Denial of Service
Virus attacks
Unauthorized Access
Confidentiality breaches
Destruction of information
Data manipulation

Interestingly , all these information are available across the enterprise in the form of log files. But to read it through
and making sense out of it, will take a life time. That is where the "Network Security" monitoring also known as "Log Monitoring" softwares pitch in. They do a beautiful job of making sense out of the information spread across various locations and offer the system administrators a holistic view of what is happening in their network, in terms of Network Security. In short they collect,collate,analyze & produce reports which help the system administrator to keep tabs on Network Security.

"Network Security" -Monitoring

No matter how fine your defense systems are, you need to have someone to make sense out of the huge amount of data churned out of a edge device like firewall and the system logs. The typical enterprise logs about 2-3GB/day depending upon the enterprise the size might vary. The main goal of the forensic software is to mine through the vast amount of information and pull out events that need attention. The "Network security" softwares play a major role in identifying the causatives and security breaches that are happenning in the enterprise.

Some of the major areas that needed to be addressed by any network security product is to provide a collective virus attacks across different edge devices in the network. What this offers for an enterprise is a holistic view, of the attacks happening across the enterprise. It offers a detailed overview of the bandwidth usage, it should also provide user based access reports. The product has to highlight sescurity breaches and misuse of internet access, this will enable the administrator to take the necessary steps. The edge devices monitoring product has to provide other stuffs like Traffic trends,insight into capacity planning and Live traffic monitoring, which will help the administrator to find causes for network congestion.

The internal monitoring product has to offer the audit information of users, system security breaches and activity audit trails (ex: remote access) As most of the administrators are ignorant of the requirements for the
compliance acts, it is better to cross reference which acts apply to their enterprise and ensure that the product supports reporting for the compliance acts(please refer here for details on compliance)

In altoghether they will have to support archiving, scheduling of reports and a comprehensive list of reports. please follow the next section for more details.

"Network Security" -Forensics

The most important features you need to lookout,when you short list a network security forensic product is the
ability to archive the raw records. This is a major factor when it comes to acts and laws. So in the court of law, the original record has to be produced as proof and not the custom format of the vendor. The next one to lookout for is the ability to create alerts, i.e the ability to notify whenever some criteria happens ex: when 3
unsuccessfull login attempts mail me kind of stuff, or better still if there is a virus attack for from the same host more than once, notify me etc. This will reduce the lot of manual intervention needed in keeping the network secure. Moreover the ability to schedule reports is a big plus. You don't have to check the reports daily. Once you have done your ground work as to configure some basic alerts and some scheduled reports. It should be a cakewalk from then on. All you need to do is check out the information(alerts/reports) you get in your inbox. It is recommended that you configure reports on a weekly basis. So that it is never too late to react to a potential threat.

And finally a comprehensive list of reports is a vital feature to lookout for. Here is a list of reports that might come in handy for any enterprise:

Reports to expect from edge devices such as a firewall:

Live monitoring
Security reports
Virus reports
Attack reports
Traffic reports
Protocol usage reports
Web usage reports
Mail usage reports
FTP usage reports
Telnet usage reports
VPN reports
Inbound/Outbound traffic reports
Intranet reports
Internet reports
Trend reports

Reports to expect from compliance and internal monitoring: ( see compliance sub-heading for reports on compliance)

User Audit reports (successfull/unsuccessful login attempts)
Audit policy changes (ex: change in privileges etc)
Password changes
Account Lockout
User account changes
IIS reports
DHCP reports
MSI reports( lists the products installed/uninstalled)
Group policy changes
RPC reports
DNS reports
Active directory reports

The gating factor for choosing a monitoring product is to cross verify whether the devices you have in your network are supported by the vendor you choose. There are quite a number of products which
address this market, you might want to search for "firewall analyzer" and "eventlog analyzer" in google.

"Network Security" -Compliance

Most of the industries such as health care and financial institutions are mandated to be compliant with HIPAA and SOX acts. These acts enforce stringent rules in all aspects of the enterprise including the physical access of information. (This section concetrates on the software requirement of the acts) There are quite a number of agencies that offer the compliance as a service for an enterprise. But it all depends on whether you want to handle compliance yourself or employ a third party vendor to ensure compliance to the acts.

HIPAA Compliance:

HIPAA defines the Security Standards for monitoring and auditing system activity. HIPAA regulations mandate analysis of all logs, including OS and application logs including both perimeter devices, such as IDSs, as
well as insider activity. Here are some of the important reports that need to be in place:

User Logon report: HIPAA requirements (164.308 (a)(5) -log-in/log-out monitoring) clearly state that user accesses to the system be recorded and monitored for possible abuse. Remember, this intent is not just to catch hackers but also to document the accesses to medical details by legitimate users. In most cases, the very fact that the access is recorded is deterrent enough for malicious activity,much like the presence of a surveillance camera in a parking lot.
User Logoff report: HIPAA requirements clearly state that user accesses to the system be recorded and monitored for possible abuse. Remember, this intent is not just to catch hackers but also to document the accesses to medical details by legitimate users. In most cases, the very fact that the access is recorded is deterrent enough for malicious activity, much like the presence of a surveillance camera in a parkinglot.
Logon Failure report: The security logon feature includes logging all unsuccessful login attempts. The user name, date and time areincluded in this report.
Audit Logs access report: HIPAA requirements (164.308 (a)(3) - review and audit access logs) calls for procedures to regularly review records of information system activity such as audit logs.
Security Log Archiving Utility:Periodically, the system administrator will be able to back up encrypted copies of the log data and restart the logs.

SOX Compliance:

Sarbanes-Oxlet defines the collection,retention and review of audit trail log data from all sources under section 404's IT process controls. These logs form the basis of the internal controls that provide corporations with the assurance that financial and business information is factual and accurate. Here are some of the important
reports to look for:

User Logon report:SOX requirements (Sec 302 (a)(4)(C) and (D) - log-in/log-out monitoring) clearly state that user accesses to the system be recorded and monitored for possible abuse. Remember, this intent is not just to catch hackers but also to document the accesses to medical details by legitimate users. In most cases, the very fact that the access is recorded is deterrent enough for malicious activity, much like the presence of a surveillance camera in a parking lot.
User Logoff report:SOX requirements (Sec 302 (a)(4)(C) and (D) clearly state that user accesses to the system be recorded and monitored for possible abuse. Remember, this intent is not just to catch hackers but also to document the accesses to medical details by legitimate users. In most cases, the very fact that the access is recorded is deterrent enough for malicious activity, much like thepresence of a surveillance camera in a parking lot.
Logon Failure reportThe security logon feature includes logging all unsuccessful login attempts. The user name, date and time areincluded in this report.
Audit Logs access report:SOX requirements (Sec 302 (a)(4)(C) and (D) - review and audit access logs) calls for procedures to regularlyreview records of information system activity such as audit logs.
Security Log Archiving Utility:Periodically, the system administrator will be able to back up encrypted copies of the log data and restart the logs.
Track Account management changes:Significant changes in the internal controls sec 302 (a)(6). Changes in the security configuration settings such as adding or removing a user account to a admistrativegroup. These changes can be tracked by analyzing event logs.
Track Audit policy changes:Internal controls sec 302 (a)(5) by tracking the event logs for any changes in the security audit policy.
Track individual user actions:Internal controls sec 302 (a)(5) by auditing user activity.
Track application access:Internal controls sec 302 (a)(5) by tracking application process.
Track directory / file access:Internal controls sec 302 (a)(5) for any access violation.

GLBA Compliance:

The Financial Services Modernization Act (FMA99) was signed into law in January 1999 (PL 106-102). Commonly referred to as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act or GLBA, Title V of the Act governs the steps that financial institutions and financial service companies must undertake to ensure the security and confidentiality of customer information. The Act asserts that financial services companies routinely collect Non-Public Personal Information (NPI) from individuals, and must notify those individuals when sharing information outside of the company (or affiliate structure) and, in some cases, when using such information in situations not related to the
furtherance of a specific financial transaction.

User Logon report:GLBA Compliance requirements clearly state that user accesses to the system be recorded and monitored for possible abuse. Remember, this intent is not just to catch hackers but also to document the accesses to medical details by legitimate users. In most cases, the very fact that the access is recorded is deterrent enough for malicious activity, much like the presence of a surveillance camera
in a parking lot.
User Logoff report:GLBA requirements clearly state that user accesses to the system be recorded and monitored for possible abuse. Remember, this intent is not just to catch hackers but also to document
the accesses to medical details by legitimate users. In most cases, the very fact that the access is recorded is deterrent enough for malicious activity, much like the presence of a surveillance camera in a parking lot.
Logon Failure report:The security logon feature includes logging all unsuccessful login attempts. The user name, date and time areincluded in this report.
Audit Logs access report:GLAB requirements (review and audit access logs) calls for procedures to regularly review records of information system activity such as audit logs.
Security Log Archiving Utility:Periodically, the system administrator will be able to back up encrypted copies of the log data and restart the logs.

Conclusion

"Network Security" has to be done both internally as well as externally, the job of nailing the problem is a huge task which needs expertise and mostly help from softwares such as EventLog Analyzers(compliance and internal monitoring of internal machines) and Firewall Analyzer(virus,attacks and traffic monitoring of edge devices).

Bibliography

http://www.interhack.net/pubs/network-security/
http://www.hipaa.org/
http://www.sarbanes-oxley.com/
http://www.senate.gov/~banking/conf/

About the Author

The author is the product manager of a suite of network security products Firewall Analyzer and EventLog Analyzer. The author is part of the sotware company AdventNet

-Ramesh-

Rose! - A Symbol of Love ?

2005-11-30T11:17:00.000-08:00

As some of you are aware the Rose is the most widely cut flower in this world even today! The rose is generally associtated with Love. The goddess of Love, seemed to have created the rose from her tears and the blood of her son Adonis(attacked by a wild boar). Which eventually became the symbol of Venus( goddess of love). In Roman mythology it is stated that Harpocrates, Roman god of silence, was offered a rose by Cupid(son of Venus) to maintain the secrecy of his various love affairs. Harpocrates is depicted with a rose in one hand and his finger on his lips depicting secrecy. This established rose as a symbol of secrecy. The term "sub rosa" meaning "under the rose" which indicates confidentiality.

The old tradition states that whenever people wanted their meetings to be confidential they hung a red rose on the door. In some cases the doors were embellished with a rose indicating that the meetings where held "sub rosa".It is also said that people give their lovers a rose not to mention love but to ask them to keep their affair confidential until the time is right.

Some other meanings of a rose:
Christians have seen the rose as an important symbol of their faith. Early Roman Catholics strung rose buds together using them in prayer, establishing what is now known as the rosary. The red rose has been taken by some Christians as a symbol of Mary, mother of Christ, and by others as a symbol of Christ himself: “I am the rose of Sharon” (The Song of Solomon 2:1).

In other words, roses act as a metaphor for life: after overcoming difficulty you will find inner harmony, union and happiness.

Rose leaves are a symbol of hope.

So, the next time you give a rose, think twice ;-)

Bibliography
http://www.huntingtonbotanical.org/Rose/subrosaname.htm
http://www.srmason-sj.org/web/journal-files/Issues/jan-feb04/graham.htm
http://www.findflowers.co.uk/choosing-the-perfect-flower.html
http://www.rose-garden-online.com/
http://www.boloji.com/environment/007.htm
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sub1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose
http://www.ludwigsroses.co.za/SECTIONS/diduknow.htm

p.s: for enthusiasts, this was an offshoot of "Da Vinci Code"

40/sec to 500/sec

2005-08-31T05:44:00.000-07:00

40/sec to 500/sec

Introduction

Surprised, by the title? well, this is an tour of how we cracked the scalability jinx from handling a meagre 40 records per second to 500 records per second. Beware, most of the problems we faced were straight forward, so experienced people might find this superfluous.

Where were we?

Initially we had a system which could scale only upto 40records /sec. I could even recollect the discussion, about "what should be the ideal rate of records? ". Finally we decided that 40/sec was the ideal rate for a single firewall. So when we have to go out, we atleast needed to support 3 firewalls. Hence we decided that 120/sec would be the ideal rate. Based on the data from our competitor(s) we came to the conclusion that, they could support around 240/sec. We thought it was ok! as it was our first release. Because all the competitors talked about the number of firewalls he supported but not on the rate.

Memory hits the sky

Our memory was always hitting the sky even at 512MB! (OutOfMemory exception) We blamed cewolf(s) inmemory caching of the generated images.But we could not escape for long! No matter whether we connected the client or not we used to hit the sky in a couple of days max 3-4 days flat! Interestingly,this was reproducible when we sent data at very high rates(then), of around 50/sec. You guessed it right, an unlimited buffer which grows until it hits the roof.

Low processing rate

We were processing records at the rate of 40/sec. We were using bulk update of dataobject(s). But it did not give the expected speed! Because of this we started to hoard data in memory resulting in hoarding memory!

Data Loss :-(

At very high speeds we used to miss many a packet(s). We seemed to have little data loss, but that resulted in a memory hog. On some tweaking to limit the buffer size we started having a steady data loss of about 20% at very high rates.

Mysql pulls us down

We were facing a tough time when we imported a log file of about 140MB. Mysql started to hog,the machine started crawling and sometimes it even stopped responding.Above all, we started getting deadlock(s) and transaction timeout(s). Which eventually reduced the responsiveness of the system.

Slow Web Client

Here again we blamed the number of graphs we showed in a page as the bottleneck, ignoring the fact that there were many other factors that were pulling the system down. The pages used to take 30 seconds to load for a page with 6-8 graphs and tables after 4 days at Internet Data Center.

Road To Nirvana

Controlling Memory!

We tried to put a limit on the buffer size of 10,000, but it did not last for long. The major flaw in the design was that we assumed that the buffer of around 10000 would suffice, i.e we would be process records before the buffer of 10,1000 reaches. Inline with the principle "Something can go wrong it will go wrong!" it went wrong. We started loosing data. Subsesquently we decided to go with a flat file based caching, wherein the data was dumped into the flat file and would be loaded into the database using "load data infile". This was many times faster than an bulk insert via database driver. you might also want to checkout some possible optimizations with load data infile. This fixed our problem of increasing buffer size of the raw records.
The second problem we faced was the increase of cewolf(s) inmemory caching mechanism. By default it used "TransientSessionStorage" which caches the image objects in memory, there seemed to be some problem in cleaning up the objects, even after the rerferences were lost! So we wrote a small "FileStorage" implementation which store the image objects in the local file. And would be served as and when the request comes in. Moreover, we also implmentated a cleanup mechanism to cleanup stale images( images older than 10mins).
Another interesting aspect we found here was that the Garbage collector had lowest priority so the objects created for each records , were hardly cleaned up. Here is a little math to explain the magnitude of the problem. Whenever we receive a log record we created ~20 objects(hashmap,tokenized strings etc) so at the rate of 500/sec for 1 second, the number of objects was 10,000(20*500*1). Due to the heavy processing Garbage collector never had a chance to cleanup the objects. So all we had to do was a minor tweak, we just assigned "null" to the object references. Voila! the garbage collector was never tortured I guess ;-)

Streamlining processing rate

The processing rate was at a meagre 40/sec that means that we could hardly withstand even a small outburst of log records! The memory control gave us some solace,but the actual problem was with the application of the alert filters over the records. We had around 20 properties for each record, we used to search for all the properties. We changed the implementation to match for those properties we had criteria for! Moreover, we also had a memory leak in the alert filter processing. We maintained a queue which grew forever. So we had to maintain a flat file object dumping to avoid re-parsing of records to form objects! Moreover, we used to do the act of searching for a match for each of the property even when we had no alert criteria configured.

What data loss uh-uh?

Once we fixed the memory issues in receiving data i.e dumping into flat file, we never lost data! In addition to that we had to remove a couple of unwanted indexes in the raw table to avoid the overhead while dumping data. We hadd indexes for columns which could have a maximum of 3 possible values. Which actually made the insert slower and was not useful.

Tuning SQL Queries

Your queries are your keys to performance. Once you start nailing the issues, you will see that you might even have to de-normalize the tables. We did it! Here is some of the key learnings:

Use "Analyze table" to identify how the mysql query works. This will give you insight about why the query is slow, i.e whether it is using the correct indexes, whether it is using a table level scan etc.
Never delete rows when you deal with huge data in the order of 50,000 records in a single table. Always try to do a "drop table" as much as possible. If it is not possible, redesign your schema, that is your only way out!
Avoid unwanted join(s), don't be afraid to de-normalize (i.e duplicate the column values) Avoid join(s) as much as possible, they tend to pull your query down. One hidden advantage is the fact that they impose simplicity in your queries.
If you are dealing with bulk data, always use "load data infile" there are two options here, local and remote. Use local if the mysql and the application are in the same machine otherwise use remote.
Try to split your complex queries into two or three simpler queries. The advantages in this approach are that the mysql resource is not hogged up for the entire process. Tend to use temporary tables. Instead of using a single query which spans across 5-6 tables.
When you deal with huge amount of data, i.e you want to proces say 50,000 records or more in a single query try using limit to batch process the records. This will help you scale the system to new heights
Always use smaller transaction(s) instead of large ones i.e spanning across "n" tables. This locks up the mysql resources, which might cause slowness of the system even for simple queries
Use join(s) on columns with indexes or foreign keys
Ensure that the the queries from the user interface have criteria or limit.
Also ensure that the criteria column is indexed
Do not have the numeric value in sql criteria within quotes, because mysql does a type cast
use temporary tables as much as possible, and drop it...
Insert of select/delete is a double table lock... be aware...
Take care that you do not pain the mysql database with the frequency of your updates to the database. We had a typical case we used to dump to the database after every 300 records. So when we started testing for 500/sec we started seeing that the mysql was literally dragging us down. That is when we realized that the typicall at the rate of 500/sec there is an "load data infile" request every second to the mysql database. So we had to change to dump the records after 3 minutes rather than 300 records.

Tuning database schema

When you deal with huge amount of data, always ensure that you partition your data. That is your road to scalability. A single table with say 10 lakhs can never scale. When you intend to execute queries for reports. Always have two levels of tables, raw tables one for the actual data and another set for the report tables( the tables which the user interfaces query on!) Always ensure that the data on your report tables never grows beyond a limit. Incase you are planning to use Oracle, you can try out the partitioning based on criteria. But unfortunately mysql does not support that. So we will have to do that. Maintain a meta table in which you have the header information i.e which table to look for, for a set of given criteria normally time.

We had to walk through our database schema and we added to add some indexes, delete some and even duplicated column(s) to remove costly join(s).
Going forward we realized that having the raw tables as InnoDB was actually a overhead to the system, so we changed it to MyISAM
We also went to the extent of reducing the number of rows in static tables involved in joins
NULL in database tables seems to cause some performance hit, so avoid them
Don't have indexes for columns which has allowed values of 2-3
Cross check the need for each index in your table, they are costly. If the tables are of InnoDB then double check their need. Because InnoDB tables seem to take around 10-15 times the size of the MyISAM tables.
Use MyISAM whenever there is a majority of , either one of (select or insert) queries. If the insert and select are going to be more then it is better to have it as an InnoDB

Mysql helps us forge ahead!

Tune your mysql server ONLY after you fine tune your queries/schemas and your code. Only then you can see a perceivable improvement in performance. Here are some of the parameters that comes in handy:

Use the buffer pool size which will enable your queries to execute faster --innodb_buffer_pool_size=64M for InnoDB and use --key-bufer-size=32M for MyISAM
Even simple queries started taking more time than expected. We were actually puzzled! We realized that mysql seems to load the index of any table it starts inserting on. So what typically happened was, any simple query to a table with 5-10 rows took around 1-2 secs. On further analysis we found that just before the simple query , "load data infile" happened. This disappeared when we changed the raw tables to MyISAM type, because the buffer size for innodb and MyISAM are two different configurations.

for more configurable parameters see here.

Tip: start your mysql to start with the following option --log-error this will enable error logging

Faster...faster Web Client

The user interface is the key to any product, especially the perceived speed of the page is more important! Here is a list of solutions and learnings that might come in handy:

If your data is not going to change for say 3-5 minutes, it is better to cache your client side pages
Tend to use Iframe(s)for inner graphs etc. they give a perceived fastness to your pages. Better still use the javascript based content loading mechanism. This is something you might want to do when you have say 3+ graphs in the same page.
Internet explorer displays the whole page only when all the contents are received from the server. So it is advisable to use iframes or javascript for content loading.
Never use multiple/duplicate entries of the CSS file in the html page. Internet explorer tends to load each CSS file as a separate entry and applies on the complete page!

Bottomline

Your queries and schema make the system slower! Fix them first and then blame the database!

Broadband & Me

2005-02-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

wow! this is my first post using my BSNL broadband. Though the road to nirvana was not so smooth as planned, the ending as in any fairy tale was a happy one!

I have always eyed on jumping into the broadband wagon. But whenever I tried, it always lead to burn a pretty large hole in my purse or rather snatch my purse from me. ha ha ha! I was lured by the cost effective plan of BSNL and always on factor. The major driving factor was the fact that my monthly dialup bill with VSNL was more than what BSNL had in store.

Without much hesitation, I made a registration over the net. But, as any other GO, it is yet to be processed. On further enquiry it lead to the fact that, a face to face submission at the office worked pretty fast. In about 2-3 days(max) the phone line was changed to broadband about feb-03.

During this time, I was excited and enthusiastic about it, and bought a ADSL modem from the local market. I was determined to outsmart the service provider, by getting a latest sleek modem and was confident about setting it all up.( forgive my ignorance to the exact specifications). I suppose this modem was widely used for touchtel and other DSL service providerss.

After two days of hard ship over the weekend(5th,6th) it was all in vain. The modem required RASPPPOE package available over the net. I was on the verge of cursing me for being an early adopter. Then frustrated turned back to the officials out there and the local market guys. Luckily the local guy, said he will pay back on return of the modem. Because I had enquired about compatibility of the ADSL modem with BSNL service provider, during purchase.

So rushed out to the BSNL exchange and registered to supply the modem on 9th 3:00P.M. I thought those guys would end up the next day or something. But they landed at 4:00P.M, but unluckily I had removed the network card last week. I was not available, so they had to return back, leaving the modem here.

Finally I brushed through the modem brochure and installed it successfully. My first reaction was it is pretty fast. Faster than I thought, on my 450 MHz and PIII machine.

The cost of BSNL broadband:
Broadband service cost: 500 Rs p/m
Modem+Installation charges:2000+500 Rs one time payment
The total cost, was 3K + service tax.

my 2 cents: Though it was a one time payment, it was worth it! Don't strain yourself, just go with their modem, it is a cake walk installation process.

coming soon: the technical stuff of the installation...

Travails of assembling a PC

2005-01-14T21:45:00.000-08:00

my family friend needed a decent pc for home use. They were totally ignorant of the pc stuff, so they contacted me for some advise... as any other commitment it started as a small spring. Little did I know, what I was getting into... I never thought this would change my perception of hardware engineers.

So I pitched in with my programming brain, and enquired couple of vendors who were eager to pitch in for a lower price and of lower power. I realized the fact that the common consumer just worried about the price and not what it has t offer. That is when it struck me that, I must also be ignorant of these facts in areas which I'm ignorant of ha ha ha....

Anyway, I decided to go ahead and assemble a monster of P4 2.8 Ghz Given the money constraint decided to go with a 256MB RAM. and the rest as usual, UPS,speakers,keyboard,CD R/W optical mouse.

I decided to get some help from my friend, who has been in the assembling market for nearly 2-3 years. His original estimate was around 2hrs, without the OS installation. So we marked Jan 8th as the D-Day. He decided to pitch in with a 2 hr permission from his boss.

11:00As planned he dropped in at around 11:00A.M and we went to my family friends house and got the money.

11:30From there we went to the market and started negotiating various configurations. We were on the lookout for decent stuff, something that looks and works decent. Believe me the market was buzzing with people hovering all around. Actually the market seems to be on fire.

2:30 Around this time we paid for the stuff and started from the market. By the time we paid our bills the shop had already sold computer accessories for 3 PC and addressed 2 faults and 5 other minor purchases. I suppose it would come around a hefty sum of 1 lakh.

3:00 we were there at the destination, this was against our original plans to assemble the machine in my house. We were actually starving, but wew wanted to pull this off and then have a hearty meal. But to our astonishment we realized that we did not have a screw driver set(dummy me!)

3:30 we left for my house and decided to have the lunch first. So that we could head out all guns blazing to assemble the monster. It was a hearty meal.

4:00 we were back on track and started putting on the motherboard, SMPS and the processor. To our dismay we could not see the SMPS running. in the flurry we somehow managed to skew one of the legs of the processor. phew! believe me I was shattered, it was someone close and you took the complete responsiblity of getting things up. And unconsciously I started sweating. Then we tried couple of gimmicks but nothing worked. So we carefully straightened out the leg...

5:45 we decided to head back to the market. and headed for it on my bike

6:00 we were in the market, and we were puzzled when it worked the moment we plugged it in. The vendor explained that it could be because of voltage fluctuations and improper earthing in the house. And luckily he put the processor in the slot and it seemed to work... that was sense of relief which is worth experiencing rather than explaining.

6:30 we were back on track and made the PC up and running with the help of the UPS. and the cmos screen flashed. Just at that time all the anxiouos people in the house dropped in and made us nervous. I stated that it is bound to take couple of more hours, because we were yet to partition the disk and install the OS. That is when we realized that the partition did not show 80GB whereas the CMOs shows all of it.

7:00 just then the dreaded call from his manager, who desperately called hm back. So we decided to head out and drop him there and get the windows XP CD from my other friend (Sai)
So we promised to get back by 8:00P.M

7:30 we were at the BDPS office at porur, and was waiting for this guy to wind up the office. So that we could head back.

8:00 we headed out and visited Sai, and there we got the CD and asked for help for Rajesh...

8:30 we started back to complete the setup... straightaway we left to my friends house and gathered the CPU and decided to have it in our house and install the OS and deliver it next morning.

9:00 we were at my house and we decided to have dinner and I was sure that we were going to have a long night.

9:30 we started playing with the parition stuff and voila we found that dm /x did it all.

10:00 now we got started and installed the win98 and believe me we had to install it 3-4 times because of some dumb error and our negligence. C'mon we were half dead already. Given the amount of stuff we went through..

12:00 we installed XP and finally we had to do it all once more and I wrapped it up all by 2:00A.M in the morning. Wow what a sense of satisfaction. This what we all work for.

7:15A.M we woke up, remember we were already half dead with less sleep and the amount of travel we made yesterday...

7:30 A.M we booted the machine and to our surpise the machine did not boot, it just said insert boot floppy... shucks we were shocked. But when we did a ALT+CTRL+DEL it worked. we were groping in the dark.
8:00 A.M we recollected the fact that somebody was in the shop, with the same complaint, we tried calling couple of guys but in vain.
8:15A.M got pissed off and I badly neaded some rest so I asked him to have a look at the problem and then I tried to doze of ( You know what I get answers in my sleep, that might sound weird) but that is a fact!!!
9:00 A.M something struck me I cannot just like that sleep around when the house is on fire. I had already promised my family friend that we would deliver it by sunday morning ( that is the current time) So I decided to browse the net
8:30A.M by this time we formatted once again and formatted the C: drive. but in vain. we had lost all hope and were desperate and were searching on the net and came up with couple of options fdisk /MBR etc.... at the end of the search I had around 6-7 options.
9:00A.M all during this time something flashed me, there was an option called pre-delay which kept flashing all along...and in the search it talked about the speed mismatch between the harddisk and the CPU. ie. the CPU starts searching for the hdd, even before the HDD can catchup to the normal speed.
9:15A.M we struck on the gold pot,we fixed it! Eureka!!! it worked!!! wow! you should have looked at our excitement!!!!
9:30A.M We had our breakfast while the installation was going on.
10:00 A.M we could feel that it is going to end happily.
10:30A.M everything was inplace and we left for destination
11:00A.M we gave a demo and ESCAPE from location
11:30A.M dropped rajesh at his place.
12:30A.M was back home what an experience....

will update my learnings soon...

Media & Children

2004-09-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

"The increasing violence in the media is a cause for concern, but we cannot blame the media alone for polluting the young minds, with violence.

Given the nature of children, they tend to playback whatever they experience in this world. Based on these experiences they build their belief and value systems. This collective belief and value system constitutes the ""society"". This means whatever they see at these tender ages have an everlasting impact on them. The interaction between the individual and the society is very high, which implies that children reflect upon the environment in which they are brought up. Let us take sports for example, Cricket is a religion in India, Baseball is a religion in U.S.A , even after decades why is that ? It is because the beliefs of the elder people are being imparted into the tender minds, and they also tend to think in the same direction. The belief in the game has been passed on to future generations unconsciously, and this chain continues. Similarly we tend to pass on our beliefs and values from one generation to the other, so the future generations are nothing but the reflection of whatever we are today, but a little bit advanced than us. So whatever violence we see among children are nothing but an advanced version of whatever we were yesterday!

Does that mean media as not impact? Nope! Media also plays its role well! It also reflects on whatever is happenning around us. It provides a global picture of what is happenning around us. It helps us understand the unknown's and so on. So how come it can pollute the children? Well it just shows you what happened across the world, and the interpretation is left to us. So based on the individuals value system, the child can empathize/ignore/react to an atrocious act described by the media.

Moreover, the children, lookup at the elders as role models. Starting from the kind of food they eat, and habits they reflect upon the elders in the society. This means that they tend to eat whatever you eat, and watch whatever you watch etc,. So the choice of the children normally tend to be based on the people in the society they come in touch with. Take ourselves for example: We still have a couple of mannerisms or habits, which we cannot explain. Like playing with the key chains, watching T.V while lying on the sofa etc. Where did all those behaviours come to us? These behaviours were those of the elders around us, like our uncle/aunt etc., and we subconsciously modelled those behaviours. And we still display it!

Any act by itself is neither good or bad, it is the perceptions that make them so. Let us take a recent example: A couple of hostages were beheaded in Iraq. We as the socity emphathize and feel bad for the people who were killed. But the kidnappers did not think so,they thought that they were destined to do it. And think that what they did was right. Why this difference? It is because those people were brought up in a poverty stricken condition and literally grew up in the war stricken zone. These happennings around the kidnapper made an everlastingh mark on him, which changed his value system and beliefs. This caused him to perform the atrocious activity.

So what do we do to reduce this impending problem? The change has to happen from within from each one of us. We will have to shed our violence,and seek a harmonious world. We need to take responsibility for our actions and be conscious about what we do, because it can make an everlasting impact on the society we live in.

Now the burden of creating a peaceful society (world) rests on us. Let us join hands to make this world a better place!"

Is there something called free will

2004-09-16T06:45:00.000-07:00

"The statement ""The concept of free will is a fallacy"" is actually fallacious! How do you live your life? of course you live with free will. You decide what to eat for breakfast, what to wear today and so on. don't you? So how can you not be responsible for your actions?

Let us take a simple scenario to understand the fallacy behind this kind of reasoning. Assume you decide to wear a formal attire to office. And suddenly it starts raining, what do you do? You decide whether to go ahead with your formal wear or to wear casual attire better still call it a day, and end up sleeping in bed! Unfortunatelty, there was a surprise visit from your head office, and you were not available.Which leaves you with a black mark in your office. Normally you tend to blame ""the rain"" as the factor that caused all the problems.A careful dissection of the happennings will, help you understand the situation better, the intial choice you made was to wear a formal attire. And then ""the rain"", the external factor influenced your choice. Remember you still had number of choices, but you chose to call it a day! Even when there were external factors affecting you had the choice to act in ""n"" different ways, and you chose what should happen. So how can you not take responsiblity for something that you have chosen?

Normally, people tend to blame ""the rain"" or rather the external factor for their wrong choices.It is actually a means by which people tend to escape from the guilty feeling of taking a wrong choice. This approach is ok, to the extent of soothing oneself, for having taken a choice that backfired. This approach is normally taken by people who hide behind a false reasoning, and fear to face the consequences of their actions. But this approach will not work in the long run, you just have to face reality, and take responsibilities of your actions.

In our day to day lives we encounter many such instances that tend to point that the root cause lies somewhere else. But on carefull analysis, the truth will evince that YOU are the reason behind your success or your failure. The ""thoughts"" you make today transform itself into the ""actions"" of tomorrow. Let us take another example, the Iraq war, why was it taken up? It was decided to strip of the terrorists. This issue has been the most highly debated topic in recent years. No matter whatever the consequences, the president took responsiblity for his actions and publically acknowledged the wrong assumption of the availability of the WMD( Weapons of Mass Destruction).

The normal human tendency is to blame others, they tend to make reasons, to escape from the bitterness of their wrong choices. As an unsophisticated human being it is acceptable, but in this modern world it is high time we start taking responsibilites for our actions. Let us face the world, without fear!"

Technology does it Isolate u?

2004-09-16T06:42:00.000-07:00

The technological advancements and their uses, seems to have created a secluded society. A careful analysis will prove the fact that, technology has brought people together and has also offered solutions to remove loneliness. It is up to us to do a balancing act.

The normal populace, think that people have become lonelier, by the arrival of the television, computer, and most of all internet etc. It is because they see only one side of the coin. Let us take a typical scenario, where somebody visits a hospital. And while strolling around hospital, he sees a doctor engrossed in thought over a computer screen. The normal thought wave, would be to doubt the doctor as a malingerer. But actually the doctor is guiding another doctor, say in Timbuktu, to operate on a very difficult case. This misunderstanding is the normal shortcoming of human beings, we tend to take things for granted. This kind of wrong assumptions is very much synonymous to blaming the technological tools for creating a secular society.

Technology offers you a variety of means to communicate with people across the world. Using which we are currently able to give demo's, hold conferences, advice students, provide counselling etc over the web. From a companies perspective it reduces the cost of holding a demo etc. It also enables quicker decision cycles and best of all reduces the overhead for a company.

On the other hand, a obsession over the technological tools, is bound to make this world a seclusive society. Because nowadays, the technological tools, tend to remove direct human contact as much as possible. Let us suppose, you want to buy a Digital camcorder, all you have to do is log on to the net and choose the product you want. Wherein you could also compare features, prices and so on. And once you have decided on the product, you can pick the product and enter your credit card details, and voila, the product will reach you! Is'nt it amazing, to buy a product, without any human intervention. Yes it is! It is ok for some occasions, but not for all, because we loose that sense of personal touch.

There could be some instances, where we need to have the human intervention, to guide us through. Suppose you want to buy a couch, and you enter into a furniture shop. The shopkeeper walks you through the features of the couch, and recommends that a particular one is fast moving, and so on. But you are not comfortable with the couches in display, so you explain that you need something that is cosy and comfortable. The shopkeeper immediately points that you might need a foldable couch cum bed, which will be more appropriate for your need. And finally you end up buying that. This is one of the scenarios where we would appreciate a human intervention rather than logging into the net and buying one.

Technology as such offers you various means to achive whatever you want. The concept of "Six degrees of separation" * could be reduced to "One degree of separation". So it is upto us to perform a balancing act of lead a life in seclusion or not.

*Six Degrees of Separation - To get to or contact anyone in this world, the maximum number of people you need to pass through is five.

Media & Society

2004-09-16T06:37:00.000-07:00

We are what we repeatedly do or see,so media plays a major role in shaping the values of a society. The irony is that the media does not seem to realize that it is playing a major role in shaping the future of the society.

Media revolves around the worldly happennings. It actually replays or analyzes an event with its undertstanding of the event. Whenever media, tries to enforce a value/belief, people tend to identify it quickly. The society is becoming shrewd day by day and often keeps the tab on, the media. Still, there has been various instances where the media has been biased and tend to cultivate a belief or value into the society,and has escaped unscathed.

A successfull impact of the media on society, can be seen very much in children, the future generations, of our society. The media has very much influenced the thinking and value system of the next generation. There was an instance, a couple of years ago, where a school kid jumped off the second floor, believing that "Shaktiman", a kids show similar to "Superman", will save him. On the outset we tend to blame the media. But is this really the cause? Actually the media alone cannot be blamed, the society is also responsible for failing to educate the kid, to distininguish the real world and the fictious world. This is the extent to which the media can drive people into an illusive world, very far from reality.

In a sense the illusive world, is ok for someone in depressed state. This temporary departure from reality can reduce the gravity of the situation, and help him recuperate soon. But a prolonged exposure will lead to depression and chaos.

Media influences the children very much, in that sense it controls the society holistically. The important fact is that, the media does not realize that it is having an impact on the society. It is high time they realize the fact that they play a active role in shaping the society. Once they realize that, and streamline what they offer to the society, we could have a better society to live in.

Business and Academia!

2004-09-16T06:33:00.000-07:00

The driving factor of any university is to make the students understand the business needs of today and equip them for a better tomorrow. This means there has to be a constant inflow of feedbacks on "what" the business needs today and what it might need tomorrow. This philosophy works best when the time taken, to constantly educate the student of the business needs is very low.

Business needs are changing at a very high pace, so they expect the recruits to be up to date of the recent happennings. For this to happen the instructors at the college have to be on their toes, to understand the new activities. Once they get a complete understanding of the business needs they can very well mould and motivate the students to move in that direction.

A conventional thought could be one of, "why can't we achieve this by means of contact sessions between the students and professionals?" It is very much possible but, for all practical reasons its negatives outweigh the positives. We can schedule contact sessions every week or so. But for all practical reasons, all we could have is a couple of contact sessions over a span of 6 months. And we also expect the visiting professional to list out the business needs, which will be very much misunderstood by the students. Because the professional, presents from a businessman's perspective and transalting it, in terms of educating the students is completely a different task.

Let us take a typical example of a post graduate school: Iin the fast pace of technological advancements, whatever that is vogue today becomes outmoded tomorrow. So any education that teaches something that is outmoded is of lesser value. This pushes the schools to be agile, and flexible. This nimbleness will directly mould the students to adapt to the latest technology. So once the students are out of the schools, they are very much on their toes, with respect to latest technological shifts and conceptual business changes.

Let us take a classical example of Jack Welsh ex CEO of GE , he formulated a unconventional management philosophy that "When something is working, it has to be fixed". That is , when something is working, it is bound to die and it has to be fixed soon, before it falls apart. This was very much contradictory to the traditional adage " When something is working, do not touch it". This is a very valuable lesson in terms of management students. Because they are the people who are going to rule the world tomorrow, that means this shift in business has to be imparted to the students. And more than that, they need to be informed whether that principle holds good for any field.

We can also attribute pessimistice notions to this approach, such as, the instructors will not be able to do justice in handling both the streams ( teaching and professional work) . But there are many other options, such being a consultant etc,are available for the instructors to be in constant touch with the industry. It is just that they need to run that extra mile to do justice to the students.

Solitude Vs Team work !

2004-09-16T06:31:00.000-07:00

Irrespective of any given situation, "Team Work Works!" . It is not that students are incapable of studying in solitude, it is just that when they study in collaboration the synergy drives the students, one step further. During the learning period people tend to be skeptical and filled with fraught of underachieving, so they stick with the habit of solitary learning. They often underestimate the power of a "group".

The synergy between the groups is the major impetus that has the power to take them to new heights. Hypothetically, let us assume the research students are challenged to disprove "The theory of relativity" it is near impossible for an solitary individual to disprove the theory, as it is going to take ages. When they form a group they have a better chance to conclude, leave alone disproving it.

The individual complacent attitude often limits the levels of the individual, this never happens in a group activity. The students of the group tend to push the other members to the extreme, thus getting the best out of everyone. Assume a group of students are asked to design a roman amphitheater, with a touch of modernity. Each individual perceives the structure in his own thoughts, this leads to a healthy discussion of the design. Where the design thoughts of each individual is validated against the other students, which helps in bringing out the best of every student and never lets the air of complacency settle in.

In solitude the individual tends to focus on minor aspects and eventually loses the sense of direction. This seldom happens in a group activity, there is always someone to keep tabs on where they are heading. It also helps in playing a balancing act, i.e. the shortcoming of an individual is supplemented by somebody else in the group. This is the power of indulging in group activity. Eventually leads to better results, increase in productivity and agility. The winning ingredients of the group acitivity are the individual members, they can make or break the activity.

There are situations where solitary activity is more effective, incase of a activity which lacks breadth. Whereas Group activity is highly effective when the activity shows breadth that is overwhelming for an individual. Irrespective of all these, group activity works most of the time.

Technology - does it really help us?

2004-09-16T06:28:00.000-07:00

Imagine a world devoid of technology, where will we be? living in caves or better still in tree houses. Looking around we can hardly make a list of items not influenced by technology. Technology has become an innate part of our day to-day life.

Assume a natural disaster is going to happen. Technology helps us to forecast such occurrences and warns us ahead of the disaster. The forecasting helps us to take preventive measures. If necessary, we can also transport people to safer places. Technology helps us to survive and reduce the impact of such disasters. Looking at a much more realistic example, like the SARS virus. If it had not been for the medical advancements and communication mechanism the virus could have been - a silent killer spreading its tentacles across the globe - epidemic. Hypothetically speaking mankind could have been made extinct.

On the education front it has opened wide doors, by the arrival of the Internet. It makes it possible for people to share knowledge. On the medical front the average life span of a human being has increased from 40-60 years. This is the direct result of the medical advancements we have made and it has been acknowledged and published by the International medical council. On the entertainment front it helps us to be part of

A.R.Rahman's live musical concert - Bombay Dream's- at London by bringing them to our living room. On the scientific front it helps us to understand, from the creation of the planet (called "Earth"), to the evolution (transformation of a single cell into a homo sapien) of life.

On the other hand we can attribute Hiroshima & Nagasaki, Gulf war, Global warming and many other, as the downside of technology. But the positives outweigh the negative effects of Technology, so Technology solves more problems than it causes and improves the quality of life.

Schools and peace - r they related

2004-09-16T06:23:00.000-07:00

"Today's students are tomorrow's leaders" , so it is best to inculcate the need for peace in schools. This is a welcome change, which will make the world a better place to live. In those tender ages, the ability to absorb concepts is very high, so it is the right age to start building a new society.

At the tender ages, they find it difficult to distinguish right from wrong. So it is the responsiblity of the schools to impart those moral convictions in early childhood. Once these students are imparted with the positive ideals, they unconsciously tend to prefer peace rather than war. Because whatever is learnt at an early age has an everlasting impact on their life. So we must be careful in what we impart to those kids.

Let us take India for example, where people tend to find unity in diversity. How did this happen? The current generation never even thinks about communal or cultural clashes? It was not a overnight success? It was not a overnight success? Why? Because, a conscious decision was taken to impart unity among diversity to the students of yesterday. The end result, we harldy find cultural clashes and communal riots. (Leave alone the Gujarat clashes, it seems to be politically motivated)

Let us see the impact on a child, which grows in a war zone. He sees the bloodshed and the atrocities during the wartime. What will be the impact on the child? Obviously the child starts to think that it is OK! to kill someone, and it is fair to kill someone to gain control. The child starts to develop with these moral convictions, after a decade the child could be someone like "Bin Laden", fighting for a fictious cause.

As you can see the impact of early adoption of morals has a everlasting mark. Though this approach of teaching moral convictions about peace is excellent, it takes over a decade. It really cannot not give you an immediate solution. We need to have a portfolio of solutions to tame the atrocious beasts which disrupt "peace" in this world.

Are Observations objective?

2004-09-16T06:17:00.000-07:00

On the outset all observations may seem to be objective, but in reality subjectivity tends to shape the objective observations. The observations can be categorized into three for better understanding Objective, Subjective, medley of subjective/objective observations.

Any observation that requires objective proof falls under the objective category. Ex: the observations of scientific laws. Majority of the scientific observations such as the "Brownian Motion" etc. are Objective in nature. But it is very much possible for the observer to incorporate his expectations and desires unconsciously. Given the nature of human being, it will be unfair to blame those observers. In the field of science, Objective observations are very much dominant. There is nothing called subjective observations, it is actually baseless to be purely subjective.

A medley of subjectivity over objectivity is the norm of the world. This is something that happens in our day to day life. Most part of our day we observe and make choices. Our observations differ with someone elses. Why? It is because 'People see the world with their beliefs and values', each ones perception of the world differs,adding subjectivity to the observation.Let us see an anecdote to emphasize that subjectivity prevails. " Two marketing guys from two different shoe sales company were asked to visit a under developed country. To study the market scenario and plan whether it makes sense for the company to open a branch there. The two guys visited the country and came back with their findings. The first guy said ' These people do not even wear slippers, there is no market here. It is not advisable to branch out here'. The second guy was with full vigor his report stated ' These people do not wear slippers, there is a huge market' " This explains the power of Subjectivity.

The worldly trend is to be objective but unconsciouly we tend to be subjective, it is high time we recognize that!

Are u living?

2004-07-10T03:57:00.000-07:00

When was the last time you did something for the first time in your life?
i)Today
ii)This month
iii)Don't remember

If your answer was i) or ii) then you deserve a treat! You are living and you can skip reading this :-). If your answer was otherwise, face it! you are vegetating!!! You are living a monotonous life, a life devoid of vigour and pep. Metaphorically speaking you are a vegetable( sorry for bing so harsh on you, you deserver it!) or rather you are in a trance thinking that you are living, but friend I am sorry to say that you are jus' pushing your life. You tend to attribute reasons for your inactivity and subsequently failure( which occurs mainly b'cos of indolence).. Please do not break your reading, this is about you and I want to help you come out of your trance. All I can do is layout the facts and steps to come out of the trance of vegetation, the rest is upto you! It is very similar to education for that matter, the prof teaches everyone impartially( ok! ok! ideally) it is upto you to take the best out of it!

Stop, having a drooping face, that is the first blow for your downfall! put on a smile, this is your fisrt step! There is nothing in this world as sweet as your smile, best of all it does not cost you a thing. Jus' have this policy to give a smile to anyone who does not have one. It is not an easy job to start with, but it is worth a try.

Ask yourself, is this how you want to lead your life? Is this what you deserve? I can hear a straight NO! from you heart. Well! this is the second step, start facing reality! This is not the life you deserve, you have your dreams it is just that a sense of complacency has set in, eventually leading to vegetation. Out of the blue, a question might arise, "God! I'm incapable of doing anything right" for heavens sake please remove those thoughts! You are not a failure? don't be a defeatist even before you start something. Start facing the reality, best of all face the stuff you fear the most. It could be standing up to someone or even simpler fear of ants!

So far so good, now to the act of "belling the cat". You know what your heart desires, and you don't pursue, what do I call you a coward! no you are not, are you a defeatist absolutely not, then what am I? a dolt! On the contrary you are a stupified person who has lost inertia, and you tend to attribute reasons for your indolence (inactivity). Ironically you are happy, by indulging in the thought that you will do it ONE day! But this thought without action makes you shift from reality. There you are caught red-handed in a trance. Where you are cheating none other than yourself. The worst sin (crime) of all . This is the next step, All the best!

FAQ

*What is the purpose of this article?
The article is aimed to pull people out of the quagmire they have caught themselves in. Nobody can help them better than themselves! The purpose of this article is to make people realize what they are doing with their life. If I was successful in opening atleast one mind, I think I have succeeded!

*There seems to be a kind of mismatch between the title and the article, why is that?
Generally peopl have that inertia and motivate themselves to a point, after which smugness (sense of complancency) settles in! and you start vegetating. So the bottom line is to be cheerful, face reality and Act. Once these are done, automatically smugnesss will have no option other than to exit the system ;-)

*I'm not complacent, I do not have a goal, I am unable to comprehend what I am doing, what is my problem?
Well the good news is that you are in transitory phase! But the bad news is that there is no uniform answer for all, it is something you need to feel and understand personally, people can influence or rather coerce you into something, but your heart will point out where you want to go. You are evolving, and with the ability to face reality I am pretty confident that you can work your way out.

*You article does not have any examples, it does not tell me what to do? Why ?
As I mentioned earlier, these are my learnings. I do not intend to impose any hard and fast rules, it is left to the imagination of the reader! As it varies from one indvidual to other. I just want you to realize LIFE as a whole and nothing else! After which it is upto you to decide what to do with it! After all you just have one life to live, don't you?

*I'm failing to understand the complete picture? what am I missing?
Well I'm not surprised,and I do not blame you either! The article is meant to transcend the adage:
"The darkness of an unthinking mind
illuminated by the magic..."

Siddharthaa -book review

2004-07-09T15:49:00.000-07:00

A nice philosophical book, which makes you realize that " people see the world with their beliefs" - In this book he believes that there is no two paths ascetic and a luxurious life! It is a combination of both.

Gmail & Me!

2004-07-06T23:42:00.000-07:00

GMail & Me?

prelude:
My initial thought " Jus' b'cos it offers more space it does not have to be good" It was jus' another mail account,the only difference "1GB"![the marketing team of google has got my attention :-) ]Started using gmail with some initial reluctance, as the loading time was much similar to yahoo.The user interface :-( is not something u fall for @ first sight.

The "Speed" was something that caught my attention first. My thought was "what the heck these guys have a scalable grid"(there is nothing new!)Then the labels was something hmmm hmm... that kind of aroused some interest.( 'm still not convinced how it will scale for 10,000 mails)
Then started to play with it, enabled the stars, applied the labels etc.The response was very good! so far so good.The threading of mails as tabs was good!. Now!!! these guys are talking business! The archiving of mails was quite Ok! was not completely impressed.The provision to revert back from archive was thoughtful.

Some good features:
* Automatic adds to contacts.
* Auto storing of sent mails is good. ( In yahoo you need to configure!)
* Messages when no mails are there, are amusing ( Hooray, no spam here! etc..)
* Automatic search results while creating filters is impressive. 8-)
* Keyboard short cuts are cool!
* Delete account info is thoughtful,this is something I have cursed some mail providers for
not having! Having it just gives you that sense of freedom,to break free from something :-)
* Actual message along with the subject is pretty useful

Some drawbacks:
* Initial loading time is slow
* No support for draft mails
* Delete options is hidden under more options ( two costly web clicks... yuk! )
* Some javascript errors ( harmless, as all the actions performed worked)

2004-05-07T12:57:00.000-07:00

A man sitting in the porch of his penthouse on the sands of the beach, reads the newspaper and smirks at the sports page flashing his thoughtful semblance. And finally musters to laugh it out that the nightmare is over. but his inner conscious knows that it is still haunting him. Suddenly lost in reverie... goes back 2-3 years from now, he sees himself staring in front of the president of the cricket council board, sweating out with perplexity and tired with the tirade and denigeration thrown at him. Finally with all difficulty he musters and says. "Well" with a heavy heart he said " I will accept it with only ONE condition" you need to promise me to give me new leash of life!, including of my family.

The sound of the gushing waves, awakening him suddenly... It seems as though it was yesterday that he had made that decision. He was'nt sure how on earth he came up with that decision to loose one's identity jus' like that. But in other words it was worth it, free from all the commotion and banter about him.
Interrupted by his kid's noise he went inside, remembering the vague scenes of his, final minutes of his old identity, family alighting at an rickety runway among the mountains sometime after boarding at Pretoria. Just before the staged plane crash was supposed to happen!

Hansie Cronje... a cricketer... a gambler... who is he? or rather where is he?

p.s: republished from my other blogspot

The magic of Diwali!

2004-04-02T23:05:00.000-08:00

Diwali is the season of sweets, crackers and especially fun, in child hood days (those are golden part of life, that I long for). As the years pass by, the festive mood started fading…and it became another day in life! That vigor in celebrating vanished not only in me but also in our gang (gang of four friends), we take diwali for granted. Due to the urge from the family members, we head out to purchase new raiment the penultimate day.

This diwali, the ordeal began @ 8:00 PM with a local shop and we tried out different attires, and most of the time we just had fun, pulling the others leg and making pun and passing on comments (like an experienced critique). During this course we realized that one of the guys was hesitant to get a shirt (as he fell short of cash, he had donated to an orphanage a day before! Not minding much about him) without hesitation one of the guys filled up.
Well everything went well, until two of us could not find a fitting jean! (The jean of our kind ;-), maybe) We searched until 11o clock and we were exhausted. As Ideas to head out to other shops at a distance of (5-10Kms) sprang up, but we decided to go without the jeans for this diwali.

Tired and exhausted we entered a cafe and had a decent dinner! (sumptuous one). Then we parted for the night, as I was returning home I bounced upon the shop on the way home (I normally do not head out this way!) and the collection was pretty decent, called up the guys to fall in and they did in quick time. By the time they arrived I had selected a couple of jeans of my taste. And finally, the other guy started searching for a jean similar to whatever I had selected, but in vain. As I had selected another one I decided to part itÂ… And said " Go ahead mams! It looks great on you!" Little did he realize that I had selected it (incase he had known he would have cooked up some dumb reason to do away withÂ…), finally we billed the jeans at 1:00A.M (on Diwali morning).

I was reminiscent of the incidents that happened this Diwali, it took me some time to realize that the festivities and celebrations are there to bring people closer and as an ultimate feat unveils the meaning of Living…Happy Diwali!

Review of -India clinches first-ever ODI series in pakistan @25/3/2k4

2004-04-02T22:56:00.000-08:00

The author is ecstatic about the victory. Summarizes the match and
Highlights, the notable events of the day.

Emphasizes the importance of the victory dating back to history.

Indian captain retrospects the victory.

Narrates the happenings, of the day, highlighting the fight back
of the tail-enders. Also narrates the setback in the form of
Ganguly's injury, also indicates the closeness of the
Indian team. The twist in the form of the catch taken by
Tendulkar is highlighted.

Then quotes Pakistan captain's retrospective comment. Highlights the
Magnificent, century of VVS and is fall, also highlights the only six.
Commends the bowling figures of Akhthar.

Narrates the top order batsmen's partnerships.

Scribbles of Ramesh

My first loss...

My first Sky Diving Experience

What happens if your memory fails?

love redefined...

Leadership -an art, is it?

Network Security - The Road Ahead

Rose! - A Symbol of Love ?

40/sec to 500/sec

40/sec to 500/sec

Introduction

Contents

Where were we?

Memory hits the sky

Low processing rate

Data Loss :-(

Mysql pulls us down

Slow Web Client

Road To Nirvana

Controlling Memory!

Streamlining processing rate

What data loss uh-uh?

Tuning SQL Queries

Tuning database schema

Mysql helps us forge ahead!

Faster...faster Web Client

Bottomline

See Also

Broadband & Me

Travails of assembling a PC

Media & Children

Is there something called free will

Technology does it Isolate u?

Media & Society

Business and Academia!

Solitude Vs Team work !

Technology - does it really help us?

Schools and peace - r they related

Are Observations objective?

Are u living?

Siddharthaa -book review

Gmail & Me!

The magic of Diwali!

Review of -India clinches first-ever ODI series in pakistan @25/3/2k4