Is Technology the new God ?

"Uparwala sab dekh raha hai" 

the saying is as old as the hills, but what's new in the TV commercial is that  'Uparwala' here  refers to 'CP Plus' CCTV.

Earlier days, a child was told "God sees all,  knows all, is all powerful and  he knows what you are up to , anywhere, any time, so better behave....." As one grew up either the conscience took over the role of God or one just concluded that as an adult one had only his boss or the policeman to watch out for.

Today, be it a child or an adult, we have Technology watching over everyone. The Omnipresent,omniscient, and omnipotent God is in the form of CCTVs, databases and drones armed with all kinds of sensors and weapon systems.You may receive a challan for overspeeding and you may not even be aware as to  where and when you broke the speed limit. To compound the issue thee is no human face, call it cop, to negotiate or reason with. You may receive a demand note from IT dept for arrears of tax dues along with fine and you may be  blissfully unaware of any tax evasion on your part; nor is there any other human being aware; it is just as "What God giveth, He taketh back"

With the kind of digital foot print you leave of every activity; details of your movements, telephone calls, money transactions, shopping habits are  all saved in some server and some software is forever crunching the 'big data' to catch you with 'hand in the cookie jar'.

So have we finally invented a God, as Voltaire had wished we should ? But so far we have seen this God acting as a policeman, faithfully  enforcing man-made laws.

       May be some day we have Technology used to locate a hungry child and direct a food-laden drone to feed her; providing the proverbial "manna from the heavens". Till then , God is God and Technology is just Technology.

Travelling Light

Continued from Fauji and his Baggage

In addition to all that contraptions and devices to see one through any latitude from 10 degree N to 35 degree N, one has to plan for the transportation of all the  flora and fauna that an army man's family falls in love with.

Then you have a an archaic rule that a govt servant cannot have two quarters on his name, at the same time, for a period of more than 10 days  If the move is  say, from Coimbatore to Pithoragarh, that makes it a little like a photographer trying to cover both the start and finish of a 100M dash.

In any case , most of the time you don't have to worry about such situation , as it takes at least six months before you get a large enough accommodation to open all the packages.Yet some remained in packed condition for years. May be for this reason everything is packed in heavy Steel and wooden boxes.

One often hears , "..a two bed room house is more than enough for us, but what about our baggage and the empty boxes ?" I have seen a family of four huddled in a drawing room and one bed room while rest of the space including the second bed room and verandas on either side were stacked with boxes.

There is a popular formula for the number of boxes required; 2n +2 where n is the number of years of service. So, you start with two and add two boxes a year and end up with between 65-70 at the time of retirement.This is a very conservative estimate and people do reach three figures.

I myself stopped adding on to my tally , when it was around 25, somewhere in the mid-way through  my long service.

I was moving from the North East to Chennai and I had decided to take a truck with part load. With plywood loaded it had weight but not volume. The truck driver was also carrying some new refrigerators from the show room. As my 5 year old fridge was being loaded packed in a heavy wooden box made of pine wood and being placed next to  the brand new refrigerators in their original card board packages, it was a  eureka moment for me.

It suddenly dawned on me that all goods, however fragile, however new, however costly, are transported across the length and breadth of the country in cardboard boxes and gunny bags, till the time they become proud possessions of an army man.

Yet, it took two more transfers before I relieved the fridge of its body armour, though I stopped buying any more new boxes. Since then I have kept my faith in the original card board packing and that trust has never been betrayed. If cardboard was good enough for white goods, then why not for  clothes , books,  kitchenware etc ? Now, having disposed off the few steel boxes I had,  I feel a lot lighter and better. 

  

A Fauji and his Baggage

Well baggage is baggage; what is so different about a fauji's house hold baggage ? He is always on the move, every year or two. I can hear a civilian friend saying, "What's so great in 'relocation' ? even we do that you know ? I mutter to myself 'From Bombay to Bhopal (and back after a year)'. Having criss-crossed this great Bhatratvarsh from East to West and North to South, with 22 moves in 36 years , that is not the kind of 'relocation' I am talking about. 

 A Fauji is posted to places, which to a civilian will not even qualify to be called a place. A typical conversation may go like this "hi where are you these days ?", 'Binaguri'... 'where's it?', 'New Jalpaiguri ... that's near Siliguri' 'and where is that ?' 'somewhere near Darjeeling' 'Oh ! You are at Darjeeling, why didn't you say that ? nice place eh ?'

or it could be 'Samba', ' near Pathankot' ending up as "So you are in Kashmir ?"

    I am digressing, let us go into the details of a fauji household baggage.

   A typical fauji household baggage would have an assortment of stuff. In addition to regular stuff like TVs, Refrigerators, Air conditioners and kitchen gadgets, you will encounter some place-speific essentials ; Woollen clothings , quilts and a Kero-heater  to survive himalayan winters (a room-heater actually working on kerosene) popular at Dharchula (one can  google to find the loc), a  heavy duty voltage stabilizer to bring up the voltage from 75V to 200V or a  diesel generator (for  places where power supply is near zero and  a couple of Desert Coolers (for our western regions). You can't discard any stuff any time as by now you are only too aware as to how indispensable these  are at places where you bought them . And one never knows the place of the next tenure and if there is anything to go by , you can consider Murphy's law for fauji postings "Thou shalt see three postings along the coastal areas once you have acquired desert coolers to survive in Thar Desert and  enough woollens and jackets for a trip to Tibet . I  speak from personal experience.

      Original idea was to write about how the stuff is moved but as it has been a long preamble , that would follow in the next post.

Contd -- Travelling Light

Pen Drives are Secure

Ever since  the news of 'Navy War room leaks' broke out in 2006 , pen-drive phobia reached such proportions that many senior officers would not touch a pen drive with a barge pole. Ironically use of CDs increased though they can be as much of security hazard as a pen drive. Had pen drives not been available probably CD or some other media would have been used to steal info.

There are many myths related to pen drives, that they cause  virus infection, security leaks and loss of data.

Let us do a reality check. Is a CD or DVD any more secure than a pen drive ? I can hear the users saying " a pen drive is inherently insecure as it allows easy reading and writing "

The biggest disservice done by developers of propriety software is to make the users believe that they were imbeciles and cannot be trusted to alter anything made by  the Gods of Technology .


Your work environment should be customisable to the extent that if you want to open a window or close a window, whenever you want, the way you want, you should be able to do it. Everyone has the basic common sense to know when to open a window (not MS Windows) and by how much. So is it with a pen drive. If only a user is trusted to know how to partition, format and configure a pen drive, it is very very safe and secure.

People do not know much about pen drives. The other day, I had gone to the market to take a printout. As I plugged in my pen drive into a Windows machine, the file I wanted to print wouldn't show up. I realised that the entire partition was invisible to Windows. When I explained the problem to the guy there, he  sagely pronounced " only hard drives have partitions and pen drives don't " It sounded absurd to me as I have always used pen drives with multiple partitions. To confirm, I went to the adjacent shop and tried another Machine. One windows machine is as dumb as another, and this time, a young boy, may be tenth pass (or tenth fail ?) gave an exasperated look and said,"Uncle, ek pen drive, ek hi partition (one pen drive, one partition"

Coming back to reality check, whenever I bought a pen drive, the first thing I did was to partition it and format it as per my requirement. It had a bootable partition (if required), a small secure partition with 128 bit encryption and a large general purpose data partition for data . This way, data is secure and if you want to protect the drive from virus attack, you can make it read only as well.

Why is every one not using it ? At the risk of  sounding too condescending , I would say ' due to ignorance'. Manufacturers of pen drives and the dominant OS, M$ would want us to believe that you cannot customize a pen drive. The main threat is that the warranty would become Null and Void.


How to do it ? One word answer is "Linux". I tried some googling on how to do it through M$. All solutions appear too complex and involved third party, propriety software.

'Disks' is a simple free utility which is part of ubuntu installation. Here's a snap shot of my usb drive partions. I normally have a small secure portion and a large general purpose portion.

The reality is that 80 % of Computers have M$. So is it an advantage or a disadvantage to partition a disk ? I would say it is a definitly a step in the right direction for safety and security.

In a multi-partitioned disk, Windows sees just the first partition. So when using a M$ Machine I just have to have a very small first partition . What I have realised is that my pen drives are really safe from M$ virus. How can a virus attack when the entire partition is Invisible ? The real virus or the threat is the Windows Operating System, and blaming a pen drive is like shooting a messenger. Avoid M$ and you avoid Virus.

If only everyone uses Linux Machines and Linux partitioned Pen Drives, the Infotech world will be safer, much more secure and a lot more happier. Is the IT God listening ? Om Computaraya namaha ! Thathastu !

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Though, in the West, Rum is generally associated with sailors, In India, it is the soldier and an infantryman at that, who is more attached to this incarnation of Soma Ras.

It is not just the contents, even the container serves the infantryman so well. There are some unusual applications of this container and here we are talking only about a bottle having a  uniformly cylindrical body and  narrow neck and is made of glass;  fancy shaped ones or PET bottles will not do.

In the field areas, generally in mountains, bunkers are made using available natural resources, ie Rocks, timber and mud. A CGI (Corrugated Galvanized Iron) Sheet is generally fabricated to form the door(fabrication involves putting a few holes in the iron sheet and using some wires to anchor it to a pole on one side or to use as a door handle or a door fastener !) What do we do for windows ? Getting glass panes is out of question. This is where the empty rum bottle comes into picture. Just make a rectangular hole in the wall and fill it up with a neat row of bottles. Sheer simplicity does it; your skylight is ready to brighten up your living space . Should you favour tinted glasses, well, you can try using beer bottles. I wish I had a photograph, but had to do with a simple illustration.

    While on a Long Range patrol, the bottle is used just about everywhere. Though there is a whole range of equipment issued by the Ordnance Depot, like Mess tins, 4 men cooking set, 45 men cooking set and so on, what really works is a simple kerosene stove, a tawa (hot plate ?) and patila (a handle less pan) locally purchased. All solid (I wouldn't say dry , as in army, opposite of dry is fresh and cooking oil comes under dry rations !) rations are carried in bag-packs and liquid or semi solid rations are carried in , you guessed it right, rum bottles. So you have milk, Curd, Cooking Oil, kerosene, and of course rum, all carried in rum bottles.

    When you halt for the night, the patrol gets cracking to prepare a meal. You knead some dough , find a flat surface or use steel plate, and start rolling out the chapattis using the good old rum bottle as belan or the rolling pin. For a housewife a rolling pin might become a weapon, but for a soldier, his rum bottle becomes a rolling pin.

    After the meal, which is generally cooked before it gets dark, you need a lamp. Fill up a bottle with kerosene, stick a piece of chindi (cloth for cleaning weapons) and you have a nice lamp; not so nice really , but so what ? I have actually read though nights using these lamps.

    If that's  the story in a Field area, what happens in the peace station ?  Well, you can see manifestations of a soldier's sense of Good Life, in a Peace station. It is not uncommon to find money plants growing in rum bottles on window sills. And during the company bara khana , some hibiscus flowers or even a bunch bougainvillea flowers placed in rum bottles pass for flower arrangement.

    Even in Officers messes, a rum bottle had its use. In the earlier days, cash strapped as we generally were, the mess secretary took pains to ensure that the empty bottles were sold at a good price to augment the income for the officers mess.

    God knows how a soldier could have lived and fought without the Gift of Rum bottles with or without the original contents.

Shelf Life of anything

    

 These days I am wary of the word 'latest' as  I am only too aware that 'latest' is, more often than not , not the greatest .

    I am not against technology or progress, but then most of the latest gadgets, software, fashions, movies etc are just aimed to fill the coffers of the producers from the pockets of ever obliging consumers. If there is a tremendous rage for profits on the part of producers, so is the rage for consuming among the general public. So the consumer and the producer are merrily plodding along supporting each other even while leaning on each other like two big drunkards. Obviously , even they would not know Where they are  heading for.

    So we have  new launches for auto-mobiles, electronic gadgets every month, Windows version every two years, and a Bollywood flick every week. Is a movie or a car model , a perishable commodity ?  Microsoft has to come up with its latest version of Windows not just to boost its bottom-line, but also to help the hardware manufacturers as the 'latest' software needs the 'latest' hardware' . Had Microsoft been producing auto-mobiles, we would have been upgrading our roads and bridges every two years.

     If that is the state of consumer goods, so is the case of skills in every field. In the field of Sports, I grew up watching, or hearing about, the famous Vishy square cut, the shot the great cricketer kept working on to perfection from his first match till the day he finally hung up his boots. Today a cricketer has to reinvent himself at every stage as even cricketing strokes get obsolete ! A good teacher is struggling to come to terms with the ever changing demands of parents , School System  , the examination system, Technology and the whole environment of education and employment. So we have the Kota type coaching classes clearly scoring over teachers with decades of experience and may be even a Presidents Award. We need the latest method of coaching in tune with the latest system of examination and evaluation. Is education also a perishable commodity ?

        A whatsapp / facebook message is drowned by a barrage of other messages in minutes. There is a 'breaking news' every ten minutes. News of a Nobel prize or an Olympic gold medal may be pushed into oblivion if there were to be  a wardrobe malfunctioning concerning the latest cutest model in the same hour. The old adage that "This too shall pass " has never been more real.

    Housing, Food, Apparels ,Gadgets, Entertainment, Job Skills and even Relationships today, come with a clear and present danger of Obsolescence . The Expiry date or 'a shortening shelf life' is the ultimate reality.


    Is there anything at all which is bucking the trend, where the shelf life is actually increasing ? Ironically, all I can think of is 'Milk', the most perishable commodity of yester years has increased its shelf life from 6-8 hours to 6-8 days and actually 6-8 months in a tetrapak .

What's in a name ?

       Shakespeare said "What's in a name ? A Rose by any name will smell as sweet" .

       Well, I say,  there is everything in a name. What would Edvige Antonia Albina Màino have been had she not changed her name to Sonia Gandhi ?

       Try as you might it is extremely difficult to explain to a north Indian that, South of Vindhyas, a name just consisted of two parts, one was your name and the other was one or a group of letters which was simply called initials, ie the full name was not used anywhere. Well the documentation calls for a full name. So a Punjabi ends up calling someone, Gangaikondan or hardanahalli, thinking he is on a 'first name basis' ; first name comes first isn't it ? Not always.  I had a class mate VAB Raghunathan and what his initials meant we never knew, and one day we learnt that he also was not aware.

       That was when the odd teacher we had from Punjab, had set about the task of  educating himself on the naming conventions in the South.  After asking all the boys as to what their initials meant, he  thought he had got a grip over name, patronym village-nym, family name caste name and so on. Too bad that just then, he got bowled by the system followed by Chettiyaars who usually took the first two letters (instead of one)  of their father's name as initials; A  child of Annamalai becomes AN Somename. That was the last straw. He left it as a bad joke and said with a big relief 'my initials are ASR , and thank God, it is all my name 'Amrit Surya Ram'

      When I joined NDA, I became aware that I too had a difficult name to remember.. " Subramanian Muralidharan' . Every problem carries with it an opportunity. At NDA you had the sergeants at every 100 yards looking for law-breakers; that is , cadets who have a speck of dirt in their hankies or cadets running too slowly or may be cadets trying to run too fast when yelled at to stop ! The defaulters had to hand over their identity slips or I-slips as it was called, to the sergeants and then keep reporting to them to retrieve the I-slip.

       This is where my name came to my rescue. As a lost case, I was generally on the wrong side of Academy-law. I had two sets of I-slips. For every one of  S Muralidharan there were two of M Subramanian. While I was known in my squadron by the former name the latter one functioned as the decoy for other squadron types. It all worked very well till the better part of the second term; A sergeant looking for an elusive M.Subramanian in my squadron would lose interest after some days.

    One fine day just as S Muralidharan was reporting to one sergeant, another swooped on him from no where ,'So, Subramaniam, got you at last." I didn't have to try too hard to give a lost look. There ensued some animated discussion between my tormentors , on my real identity and in the process anger gradually  led to sheer amusement so much so that I ceased to be a defaulter and found myself explaining with an air of authority on the naming oddities in the South.