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History - The Perpetuated Lies of the Victors!

History The stories told by the victors - An non objective descriptions of things lied over the years History is always in the making. What you live on today is history tomorrow. But over the years, as it unfolds, we see a clear pattern. This pattern if we look at it is very obvious, slowly but surely we have a tendency to fudge things and write history as it needs to be perceived to meet our ends now. (The present) It is unfortunate that alternatives even though they exist are subjected to obfuscation and over time they are lost in the quagmires of document repositories around the world. Lets see how this phenomenon unfolds. Lets say that an event X has happened to such a certainty that it exists in the collective conscience of the general public. But as the Government or as a body with sufficient muscle to change public opinion, there is a campaign to bombard with information over time about the event in such a way that people have to perceive it as required by the body that wields...

Web 4.0 and Gnocchi

web 4.0 Virtual Keyboards and the new Web 4.0? Well thought why not make it Web 4.0? Whats my concept of Web 4.0? There are a few areas that would be interesting to mull about.. This is beyond Web becoming a Services Oriented behemoth. This is the next level wherein devices start interacting among themselves a supply chain linkages that bring about changes that would change the way we do things? Lets see how things would be with this example? 1. You are looking at a recipe on your microwave oven? Well you loved the recipe http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/BUSHS-Gnocchi-with-White-Beans-and-Pesto/Detail.aspx Presto, the microwave makes a service call to your refrigerator, oops a few ingredients are missing.. reports back to you and then makes a service call to your grocer for the missing supplies. The grocer promises to deliver the goods in the next few minutes. The grocer makes a service call to his inventory manager and the robotic system delivers the goods requested and pushes it on the c...

The Frrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeee Phone

Initially thought of calling this blog.. " Death of the Phone Company.. Long Live the Phone Company" then changed it to something interesting and simple.. Well Oxymorons are fun, and the way the voice calling is evolving, it is a great time to be in. First we had Google Voice - The grand central of ideas coming to fruition and then we have a slew of products that make use of google Voice. There are so many opportunities that we may see the old gaurds failing if they do not move up the order and provide the necessary services as well as upgrade technologies. Gizmo5 and similar companies may take the mantle of AT&T.. But then the biggest block to the move from PSTN to VoIP is the cost of the phone instruments. Hopefully this is on its way too.. a tumultous times but an area to be watched in the coming days. How do I use Google Voice, Gizmo5, My Android G1, and SIPDroid and a Clearwire Modem? These devices can make a big difference to how I have come to use my Phone in the ...

The North Korean Dilemma - Why?

It is crazy that a cash starved as well as food starved North Korea spends useful funds on Nuclear Armaments, Unfortunately, this is because of the overtures from US that make them belligerent.  US is a trigger happy country and want to act as the cop of the world. This is never an area where there is common world opinion. When countries are cornered by the US and put under pressure, they tend to do something on the contrary. Export of US ideas to other countries is considered a cultural invasion and is always resented upon. This is very similar to the US missionaries that push Christianize the world by economic incentives rather than as a philosophy and as a spiritual way to attain salvation.  Why does not the US take on the North Koreans they way they did with the IRAQIS. The economics of such intervention is never positive and even though North Koreas is much worse than IRAQ was under Saddam, still we do not see the US trying to destabilize North Korea and bring US brand of democrac...

PCI-DSS Compliance or an Insurance for the Card Companies

Is PCI-DSS enough to ensure security of personnel data. Is it the minimum required to protect user information. But the way the standard has been prescribed, it looks more like a system designed to transfer the incidence from the card issuing organization to the organization handling information for the card issuers. If the controls are adequate, why are there breaches. Is the system designed to protect the end user sufficient and complete enough to warrant a certification. What does the certification achieve. If you look at the issues in hand, it is clear that the problem is not with the organization handling the data but the protection afforded by such systems to personnel information. Is it not that the card industry to protect itself have an publicly available standard that has gone through peer reviews and public scrutiny imposed on organizations which process credit/debit card information inadequate?  The balance between what is prescribed in the standard and what is requ...

The Big Bad Worm of 2009 - Conficker

Been hearing about this worm since November 2008. The researchers have found that it may have a payload that it may unleash today. Not sure how bad it could be, depending on all those un-patched machines out there in the wild. So what does it do.... It has a very interesting payload and we have already seen more than 4 variants. Interestingly it looks like they let version A and B to check on how the community is going to respond. The cabal to counter its domain generation algorithm got a new lease and a new algorithm in the C version and also contains a p2p communication mechanism. The other part is how a digital signatures can be used effectively to control the compromised host. This is important to protect other bot commanders to take over the already compromised Conficker bots. Network traces have not yielded much, but looks like it is a widely distributed system which has already started pushing the latest DLL updates across to the already compromised machines. Lets look at the ch...

Rewarding Mediocrity

Organizations fail as a consequence of decisions taken by the collective intellect of the powers at the board. They are successful because of the same powers that make effective, efficient decisions and manage risk. As an investor every individual looks at a number of parameters before investing. These rules of investing have over the years been honed and tuned to such a level that the health of an organization can be gleaned from the statistics and information available to the public. Do any of the organizations that have got funding from the Government eligible as good Investments or Investment Grade? None of them would pass the muster, they are bleeding organizations which should have been asked to die or scale down become more efficient. Well now that the funding has been secured, what is the guarantee that these funds are to be utilized properly and efficiently. Would the Government end up with another body to oversee governance of these Organizations. Are we ready and prime for ...