The Vault Of Souls

But, this is still just a concept and there are no plans yet to commercialize this product. Till then... keep measuring the time!!!

"THE ERA OF GOOGLE"

For most people, information on the web means 'GOOGLE'. But for serious research or searching for opinions or finding answers to some questions, Googling may not always produce the best results. Although the knowledge of Google commands, the internal working of the search engine will certainly improve the probability of 'getting lucky'!!

However, even these may not be enough to give you an adequate information about the subject. You may have to browse through many web pages to obtain a proper understanding of the subject.

LOOKING BEYOND 'SEARCH ENGINES'

This inadequacy in search engines is not relevant when you are looking for facts with keywords. But once you start asking questions or opinions, the regular search services fail.Thus, there is a need for a service which gives you a substitute for an advice from a real expert.

Thus a search service is needed which uses the net infrastructure to seek an answer from an experts mind instead of seeking the facts from the already existing database of WebPages created by unknown experts.

Here are some of the experiments worth mention in this direction:

• LEXXE – Its a search engine which uses a technology called ‘Natural Language Processing’ to return results for queries typed in regular English. E.g. The question ‘How old is the earth?’ will give the correct answer along with a number of result links and many cluster of links. But the question ‘What is the age of Barak Obama?’ may give a surprising result !!
• QUERYCAT – This service returns, not links , but an array of FAQ’s about the topic. Although the search is not very good as it does not use the collection of WebPages but rather its own database of FAQ’s. But the Querycat-Health is a good enough service which may return result to act as a substitute to a real doctors advice!!
• DocMazy - DocMazy is a ‘document search engine’, so it only searches for only PDFs, Docs, Excel, and Txt files. It quickly finds these files, which are normally stuck deep within search engines. This thing is especially useful for people looking for quick research sources.It even allows you to preview these documents in your browser itself using AJAX.
• SCRIBD – Started in 2007, Scribd is a ‘Social Publishing’ site. It enables millions of users to share , discover and read original writings and documents.it comes with an iPaper reader which converts print files such as PDF,DOC,DOCX,TXT etc into web documents and hence makes it easier to share docs.
• WATTPAD – It is the worlds largest ‘e-book sharing’ community. Started in 2006 with a tagline of “Read what you like, Share what you write”, wattpad has become a hotspot for people who want to share or read e-books.

Other than these, many other services have been launched which spark some exciting hope for the future of search engines. E.g.

• WolframAlpha
• Citeulike
• Yahoo’s SearchPad
• Ardvark

…………..etc

Our elections are the biggest event (magnitude wise) ever in the world. And the level of detail and importance each vote is given is truly remarkable.

I read this recently and really started admiring the earnest and conscientious effort the Election Commission puts to the electoral process and the belief they have in the system.

POLLING IN THE VALLEY!!

During the III Phase of the current elections, In Kashmir and Ladakh area, there were two polling booths which were at an altitude of 13,000 feet and the air force helicopters were not able to land there. So, the EC had to dispatch 6 people in 2 parties for the booths. These parties had to walk on foot in knee deep snow for 40 km to reach the booth. They walked for 2 days (obviously stopping for food, rest and sleep!!) to conduct the polls. They took satellite phones with them in order to communicate with the EC. But the most interesting fact was this: “there were just 37 voters from that place!!”

Special arrangement was made for the counting as well as the parties that went were not able to come back.

This is called DEDICATION!

Hats Off to the Election Commission!

Unless you have been living in a cave for the last week, you would have witnessed the wholesale hysteria over the recent swine flu. All this panic over a simple strain of flu got me pondering over what it was like in the IT industry whenever there was a computer virus that took the form of a pandemic in the computer world.

Searching (or rather “Googling”) the topic, I came across certain viruses that were pioneers for the technical mischief makers in their own times. Though these viruses were not the most widespread or effective (though some of them were), they were the innovators and the ones that stick to our mind and bring back memories…. Not all of them happy!!

Here are the HONORABLE MENTIONS:

CREEPER: It was the first network virus released in the mid 1971. Although 1971 is a prehistoric time in the computer world (no MICROSOFT no APPLE), It sure did harass a lot of people. It was developed by bob Thomas and spread over the ARPANET (the precursor of the internet).
To delete the creeper another piece of code was written called the REAPER (the first ANTIVIRUS!!) .

The creeper was basically a harmless virus; It only displayed a message “I’m the Creeper! Catch me if you can!!, no theft no payloads….those were happier times.
Perhaps another sign of the simpler time was that creepers creator not only wrote the virus but also the antivirus Reaper.

BRAIN: It was the first virus written for Microsoft’s DOS. It spread to its peak in 1991.It was originally written by two Pakistani brothers Basit and Ajmal Farooq Alvi for their biomedical software to prevent its piracy. Later the code for brain was separated and ‘redistributed’ as a virus.

Elk Cloner: It was written by a 15-year-old high school student called Rich Skentra as a practical joke. Unfortunately for him the joke turned bad very quickly! It was the first virus for the Apple II system (and they say Apple systems don’t get viruses).

It was a boot sector virus and spread through what is now called a “Boot Sector infection”. It copied itself to the boot sector and spread to all future disks.

This became the most preferred method to spread virus in the pre-internet times.

Klez: It was born 10 years ago and is still doing rounds today. It basically spoofs email by randomly picking one Id from a previously infected machine. This virus spread thru E-mail. It duped the users to open the mail and once the malware was installed the users contact book was his!!

For the last two hours… I have been thinking of what to write next. You’ll say that I have too much free time (who spends two hours thinking?!!) But in reality it’s because I am sick and have no other work to do lying on my bed (;-)). Lately I have been reading a lot about recession and economics. (As you would have notices if you’ve read my earlier post). Recently, I read a theory about how INDIA has survived the recession. And as soon as I saw the soaring stock markets today… I felt like I had to write this. So, here goes.

The main reason why America is the worst sufferer of this recession is
the “charuvaka” philosophy the people follow (which tells people to borrow, spend and live happily ever after).This and the habit of the Americans of spending more than what was needed made the US lose most due to the recession.

INDIA is a different scenario. During the early 2000’s the economy of country was booming. Till 2006 and the first half of 2007 the per capita income of the country was increasing. As the per capita income of the country increased, so did the per capita expenditure and the per capita savings. Thus, economists thought that INDIA would go the same way as America. But when recession hit the world, the per capita income of the country fell and remarkably, the per capita expenditure fell and the per capita saving remained the same!!. This confused many economists who thought that capitalism could not survive in a society oriented country like INDIA. It was only this society only that saved our economy. The values which were passed on from generation to generation of spending only on what is required and the famous Indian phrase “ADJUST KAR LE YAAR” were the things that helped us maintain our economy. Thus, The values taught to us by our parents and grandparents, which were ignored by the greatest minds of the world and neglected by the greatest B-schools of the world, acted as a shield at the time of trouble.

Also,borrowers by and large in INDIA especially medium and small borrowers believe in repayment of loans, as rightly said by the American Ambassador Mr. Galbraith that he could see “the richness of honesty in the poverty of agriculturists”.
JAI HIND!!!

As they sat there, in the room…Dark and grave,
She really hated him, his chewing his pen, his clothes, his shave,
They were playing scrabble on the dead hard ground,
Tap, tap, tap….She shuffled her letters,
He clenched his jaw; he was annoyed by that sound.a
He pondered…Would killing her make his life better?


She moved first…WIND with a ‘D’ on the double letter score,
Outside he heard a sound….but ignored it…he wanted to win,
He had 4 vowels “2E’s, A and an O” and “an H, T, Q”,
HEATED using the double lettered ‘D’..Ha! Today he’ll beat that whore,
…silence…The kettle sounded; the coffee was made... (”Quick!”)


Tap, Tap, Tap..Urgh!!The sound again. BREAK she moved using his A,
She got up and went to get the coffee…Thinking hard he broke his pen,
HURT he made using the H…”Ouch!!”She yelled.
She’d burned her hands off the kettle,
Trying to look concerned he passed her a cream; searching for a pen,
She came back. Tapped again(“Humph!”)..
WOUND she made to show her mettle.
FIND…he moved and saw a pen underneath the rug,
What luck! There was something fishy abt today’s game,
FLY… she moved, getting a ‘Y’ on the triple lettered score(“Bitch!!”),
Another sound…This time it was a mosquito…Wham! It was dead.
She had a paper in her hand,…how he would like to do the same to her,
QUAKE…using the U and K on the board…There was a thunder,
The ground started shaking and then went quiet. He looked up at her,
Her face was white…The FLY!, HURT!, HEAR!, FIND!, QUAKE!,…..


Realization drenched him. It was magic!!!!....
A thought came to him…he could still kill her. He’ll ne’er be caught,
He waited for her turn….DARK…she made and the lights were gone,
He’d test it first…he had 2K’s, 2O’s, L,I,M…thinking..NO..He made..
The lights were back.


Thrilled! He’d get her today…tomorrow he will be a free man…
He collected his K,I and L…he would KILL at the L of fly,
CHOKE…she made using the dark K…It was his turn…now she dies,
He got ready…in his excitement…tripped & the L slipped from his hand,
It flew up and got in his mouth…he was choking!...this was his end,
He looked up at her….she was smiling…and looked at the score,
He was dying..but he’d won the round..
At least he’d beaten the whore!!!.

11:00 PM… As we were walking down the main street of our campus, my friend asked me, “Do you know there is a ghost in VDV?” I too had heard many stories and claims. Nodding I walked along...as we came in view of the VDV. “Would you like to see it?” he asked. I was startled by the question.”YES!!”, I said feigning bravado. Then we reached VDV …. There was an eerie silence all over the place and the building did look haunted (perhaps because we were talking about it!!)… I pointed out to my friend…”Anyone would die if he sees a person thru that glass”. And as soon as I pointed to that glass BOOM! The lights of VDV went out and scared the shit out of me…laughing at the coincidence, we walked ahead..as we reached CTV(we were still laughing about the earlier incident)… as soon as we saw it , the lights of CTV went out too… We ignored it but we weren’t laughing anymore, my insides were trembling. But the real shock came when we crossed CTV. Out first step inside TIFAC... And the lights of tifac went out …and the lights of the road went out… Leaving the road engulfed in pitch black darkness….and there was not a single soul in the street… The first time a sense of fear surfaced on both of us… and we ran… away from the darkness………..

The incident sparked a question inside me… Is something like a supernatural really there? Do people have psychic powers? GHOSTS??...Well, these are the questions that are better off left unanswered. The probability of providence is what keeps the good inside people alive…….