Benazir Bhutto assassinated

27th December 2007, Benazir Bhutto assassinated. We were holidaying in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. The evening news was full of gory pictures of the blast and a still image of hers. For a split second I could not believe my ears or my eyes. What an end to the illustrious life! The next day in Aurangabad was however calm. Shops remained closed and not many people were seen moving around. By evening when we drove back into the city life appeared normal.

Definitely it is Pakistan’s internal political matter, but the lady demands a mention. Benazir Bhutto has many firsts to her credit; the most important one being the first woman Prime Minister of an Islamic nation. She was a woman of extraordinary courage and undeterred commitment to democracy. Life as a woman politician in Pakistan, the second largest Muslim country, must have been a difficult one for her, yet she fought on relentlessly. 54 is too young an age to call quits, she had lot more to offer to her country all cut short unfortunately.

May she rest in peace.

Image Based Spam

Another spam avatar that has been hounding the mail boxes for sometime now is the image based spam. A picture is worth thousand words; well in this case it is worth thousand spams.

Marketers adopt every possible means to get the message across; and when the going got tough with text based emails, they resorted to image based spam. They have turned more creative in their approach to get through the anti-spam filters. Most spam filter software checks the text for keywords, so a message embedded with .jpg or .gif image easily gets through the filters.

These image based spam are often more inappropriate and offensive than the plain text based ones. The bandwidth and storage space of image based spam are also more. The typical size of image based ones is 10kB to 100kB, while that of text based ones is 5 to 10kB. They are distributed by the spammers through the botnet and zombie machines. Spammers randomize the image by adding pixels, random lines or tilted lines instead of straight lines.

No fool proof method has been developed yet. Steps like reputation based filtering, behavior based filtering and content analysis can provide some respite.

Technological developments will keep throwing up such irritants, after all one has to pay for all comforts of life!

Cut CO2 Emissions

Obviously it will be the poor nations that will be hit hard by the drastic climatic changes taking place all around. India too figures in the list. At the international level India has asked for concessions to not include its name in the list of nations to reduce CO2 emissions. The argument put forward is that any such limitations will hamper the development of the country.

“One hundred and thirty-seven developing countries have ratified the Kyoto protocol, including Brazil, China and India, but have no obligation beyond monitoring and reporting emissions.” While the rich and developed nations are making drastic changes in their lifestyle to accommodate and aid the development of such under developed nations, Indians continue the rampant use of fossil fuels.

Is India really justified in asking for such special consideration? A peep within will reveal the huge disparity of CO2 emissions among the various socio-economic classes of its masses.

The carbon footprint of the rich in India is excessively high. The high income category in India, just recently exposed to the electronic luxuries, account for the highest CO2 emissions. Individually each device may not be contributing much but cumulatively, the whole section put together, the CO2 emissions are alarmingly high. Add to this the emissions from the transportation facilities used by them; the two wheelers, cars and the relentless air travel. The poor farmers on the other hand, have been pushed to the brink of suicide due to dwindling natural resources like water and fertile land.

I strongly feel that if the wealthy in India, take a stand in cutting down such high emissions, the poor will definitely benefit. They have to take steps to accommodate and aid the development of poor sections of the society. Once our own house is set in order, the government will not have to ask for such concessions in the international level.

Giant rat found in 'lost world'

Exciting! A giant rat discovered by a team of researchers in the remote jungles of Indonesia; a fearless one that too. At a time, when several species are slowly getting extinct the news of discovery of a new breed of animal is definitely exciting and welcome.

"These are two animals which were totally unknown to science and we're absolutely thrilled to have discovered them," said one of the explorers who ventured into the thick jungles of Indonesia's Papua province. "It's comforting to know that there's a place on Earth so isolated that it remains the absolute realm of wild nature," said Bruce Beehler, vice-president of the U.S.-based wildlife group Conservation International.

Foja Mountains, ‘the lost world’ is a part of the Mamberamo Basin, the largest pristine tropical forest in the Asia Pacific region. Modern humans first treaded the Foja Mountains in 2005 when they discovered many rare plants, birds, butterflies and frogs. Their second visit too was rewarding with discovery of giant rats and pygmy possums. The giant rat weighs around 1.4kg, five times the size of a typical city rat. The pygmy possum is one of the world’s smallest marsupial.

Another expedition is being planned… wish I could join them. Hope nature keeps revealing more of her secret species in instalments.

Source: BBC News

E-mail out IM in

E-mailing is now old-fashioned! Only a decade back these e-mails were accused of murdering the snail mail and today the same e-mails are fading out or rather are evolving, giving way to IM-instant messaging. Youngsters with all their oodles of impatience are bringing about this revolution in communication. Text messaging or instant messaging is more immediate and interactive, they claim.

E-mail messages are sent out in billions today and sometimes preferred even over a telephonic conversation; still they are not fast enough. To have instant communication through e-mail both parties, the sender and receiver need to be online the same time. The chat room concept involved a group of people and their messages visible to everyone involved in the chat. Not so with instant messaging, this involves just two people.

According to IBM, “Instant messaging is the fastest-growing communications medium of all time, reaching 50 million users in just two years, compared with six years for e-mail.” Virtual communication is fast replacing the physical; and the popularity of social network sites has soared. College going students have got hooked to instant messaging. A new funny language is evolving with new abbreviations and emoticons.

We grew on televisions and telephones. Not the kids of today. They are net savvy and confidently handle the latest gadgets. Our parents had cautioned us: Don’t talk to strangers. Today as a concerned parent the advice would be something like: Don’t answer if you don’t know who is IMing you.

Batti Bandh Mumbai: The Lights Off Campaign

Frankly I am not a very eco-conscious person, but when ever I hear about innovative ideas and events to protect the world and make it greener, it makes me anxious, excited, wishful and what not. Mumbaikars have announced their Batti Bandh program. This Bandh for once is definitely welcome as it is not like the ones called by the political parties every other day.

The event: Batti Bandh
Date: 15th Dec 2007
Time: 1930hrs to 2030hrs
Plan of action: switch off lights and appliances in your home, shop, office, school, college or where ever you are in Mumbai.
Purpose: To take a stand against global warming.
Inspired by: Earth Hour in Sydney.

Imagine a live city like Mumbai to be in darkness for one hour! I wish the event organizers a smashing mega success.

Yes, why not have a similar green movement in Bangalore. May be we can organize one Gaadi Bandh event too. Today communication is a matter of a few clicks. With ‘n’ number of social sites, youngsters and office goers tethered to their laptops, it is a matter of a few days when the whole of Bangalore will be aware of the program. Time to start the countdown for Bangalore Batti Bandh!

IBM to shrink Supercomputers

IBM has achieved yet another milestone in its efforts for speedier chips with lower power consumption. They have announced that pulses of light will replace electricity as a means of transferring data between the processor cores. The technology is based on silicon nanophotonics.

We have evolved into a strongly networked society. Each day we exchange huge amounts of information. Invariably there comes the need of devices to operate at high speeds to process the tremendous volumes of data. Manufacturers have added cores to the chips to boost the performance of these electronic devices. Transistors have been miniaturized; this has increased the clock rate and consecutively the operational speed. Beyond a particular speed the limitations faced by the manufacturers, made them think of other alternatives.

The existing electrical wiring has the shortcoming of transferring data signals only a few millimeters before breaking down due to overheating. The new optical modulator sends the digital electrical signal, after converting it in to series of light pulses, for many centimeters in a power efficient mode. The use of light pulses instead of electrical wires has made the speed of data transmission between the cores 100 times faster. This, at 10 times less power when compared with data transfer through wires.

So where are we heading to? – A supercomputer in our mobile phones? Supercomputers will shrink to tiny computer chips, expending the energy of just a light bulb. Cool execution of hot jobs! All these still 10 to 15 years away.

Tech. Toys for Tiny Tots

One of the most joyous and wild experiences I recollect of my childhood was that of our gang climbing up a cashew nut tree and sitting on one of its extra long branches. We used to take turns to shake it vigorously, twice or thrice we have fallen from that branch to the ground 3 to 4 feet below. We would get up laughing our stomachs out and climb back again and again for the same experience. Our indoctrination to basic literacy and number skills was through traditional methods and toys. That was then!

Unfortunately toys are no longer for fun and entertainment. They are more for ‘brain race’. Today, trees are replaced by jungle gym structures and the traditional toys replaced by the high tech. toys. In the west, top in gift list of most toddlers for this Christmas are items like cell phones, robotic pets, toy computers, digital cameras and MP3 players. I agree, as parents, most of us are compulsive toy shoppers. But giving children high tech toys….. I mean are we aiding their intellectual growth in any way or harming it. Isn’t it a bit of extravagance?

Some of the hottest toys for this season
These are for a 3 year old! “ClickStart My First Computer provides a safe computer learning environment.” “Easy Link Internet Launchpad makes it easy for kids to visit preschool-appropriate websites where they can play online games."


Have a look at this. “V.Smile Baby Infant Development System gives your child a sensory rich learning experience from 9-36 months.” Attractive colors so will definitely attract a child, but will the child understand its actual utility?

Anxious parents expose their children to technology with the intention of getting them ahead in life and toy manufacturers are taking full advantage of this, labeling them educational. No research supports this claim. One shouldn’t get carried away by the marketing hype. 9 month old tots or 3 year old ones are too young to understand online-offline concepts or the education curriculum. Handling a laptop or a broken plate and spoon will mean the same to them.

Children will demand the moon - the full moon, they have for ages, and even we must have. Succumbing to every demand of theirs will make them human robots without sense, sensibilities and sensitivities. Uncontrolled TV viewing has produced obese children, these high tech gizmos will produce brain blobs.

Quality parent-child interaction time is what helps the child most. This holiday take your child out on a nature walk, chase butterflies, dance with the wind, go skating on ice or simply lie down and count clouds. There can be no better gift than this!

The battle between Spam Filter experts and Spammers

To the end user the spam menace seems to be under control. In reality however, the spammers are lurking making use of every loophole possible. The spam researchers and developers on the other hand are ever vigilant to the spammers’ new techniques to infiltrate.

Email service providers have deployed spam filters to tackle the onslaught. Words that indicated spam in a mail were reasons enough to filter the mails out. The email service providers use a feedback loop system. Hotmail takes the feedback of 100,000 volunteers to label messages sent to them as good email or spam email. This information is then used to train the filters to react fast to the new spammer attacks and ploys. This filtering technique is based on the content of the message. The spammers too adapted soon and learned to trick the filters. They very cleverly avoid the use of most obvious words like “free”, “sex”, “money” and use most harmless and safe words to get through the filters. Even if they use the words they are written with various codes inserted. For example the word “money” does not appear verbatim in their messages. It is broken in to pieces using HTML comment (mon<-->ey). Or it is encoded with HTML ASCII codes (mo&#101ney). To the user it is displayed as “money”, but for the spam filtering software, HTML processing is expensive, so the word “money” is not detected.

Another technique used by the spam filter experts is to track the IP address of the sender. It establishes the black lists and the white lists. The ones in the black lists are blocked, deleted or filed. Spammers on the other hand keep switching IP addresses. As the blacklists get updated hourly, spammers acquire huge amounts of bandwidth; send millions of emails per IP address in the hour before the email is blocked and then switch to another one! Some spammers try and avoid blocking systems using the zombie machines or botnets. Computers infected with viruses or Trojans give the spammers full control of the machine and they use these machines to send spam. Spammers themselves don’t infect the machines, there are specialists who infect the machines; these machines are hired by spammers.

Securing identities cryptographically may seem to be some solution. Most spam filters have a safe list, but unless the identities are secure spammers abuse these safe lists by faking some ID in the safe list. Spammers even fake a genuine website to steal vital information like passwords, credit card numbers etc. commonly known as phishing spam. The cryptographic approach focuses on the identity of the person and not the email address and these have proved to be tough to most spammer attacks.

Spammers keep track what works best and what doesn’t and accordingly keep changing tactics. Both spammers and spam fighters are becoming more and more sophisticated. Spammers won’t move out of the scene and spam fighters will be busy finding out means to stop spammers for a long time to come.

Spam

Have you ever been flooded with mails having same message? Or, have you ever bombarded anybody’s mail box (say …of your spouse) with many copies of same message to get your point across? Well this way or that, - inbound or outbound - it is spamming.

Email spam the most sophisticated form of spamming is specially and directly targeted to individuals. Spammers collect addresses by scanning Usenet postings, Web or even steal internet mailing lists. These are then targeted with the spammers’ mail messages. They don’t loose much, as they don’t have any operating costs. These email spam will cost you, as user, additional money to receive or read them. Also count in the transmission charges that ISPs and online services incur, which are passed on to you. A spammer can send more than a million mails per hour with just a tiny investment. In 1998 the unwanted mail was just about 10% of overall mail volume. Today the figure stands at 80% to the annoyance of end users worldwide and creating a huge burden on tens of thousands of email service providers.

There are different kinds of spam mails that you may receive. One of the most frequent messages is from someone in some African country. The spammer asks for bank account to transfer $20 million. It is called a 419 scam. Then there are the chain letters that ask for money, announce pyramid schemes, promote stocks, or thrust child pornography at you. Some are just health ads which include health insurance offers, diet plans, recipe offers, health magazine subscriptions, prescriptions for health disorders and so on.

What you can do
If you are one among those who are frustrated by this ongoing battle in the inbox, you can consider the following safety tips:

Reject them outright.
Complain to providers about it.
Encrypt your email addresses.
Leave fake email address if you are not comfortable.
Use a spam filter to filter it out of your mail box

What you must never do

Never forward it.
Never reply to it.
Never open spam.