Dr Shashi and Mr Hyde

Shashi Taroor states thusly…

“Of course, the real problem for many critics is not the agreement itself, but the Hyde Act, which requires the administration of the day in Washington to certify annually that India’s foreign policy is congruent with the US’s. The GoI’s stalwarts point out that the Act is not binding on India; its critics retort, with relish, that it is binding on the US. But neither side, for reasons one can readily understand, has publicly admitted that certification is a hollow requirement, routinely accepted by American administrations in the full knowledge that they can certify whatever they wish to certify. The famous Pressler Amendment required the administration to certify that Pakistan was not developing nuclear weapo-ns; successive American Presidents did just that, even though they were completely aware of Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear programme. When relations with Islamabad cooled, the certifications stopped. In other words, as long as an administration in Washington wants to preserve good relations with India — for whatever reason — it will certify that India’s policies meet the standards of the Hyde Act, even if we are regularly burning American flags at India Gate every week. And if we cease to matter, or a US administration wants to get tough on a government in Delhi, it can just as easily withhold such certification, even if India has been going out of its way to play footsie with Washington. The real issue is the state of the bilateral relationship, not the certification requirements in a piece of legislation.”

Highlighting is mine.

What does this mean?

Eduphistication

While taking part in a big wedding ceremony, I made an observation:

As I observed the bride, the groom and their parents/kins, I realized that a normal West-centric Indian Education adds some level of sophistication in various dimensions to oneself (to begin with). What I mean is, the first-generation that is educated gains a distinct sophistication over the rest of their family. Surprisingly, it seems to add nothing else. Being a normally educated Indian, I tend to like the sophistication that I have gained – thanks to the education and the life style it entailed. This (me liking it) is obvious because of my natural proclivity in this case – being one among them (normally educated Indian).

From an observer’s stand point, I wonder whether this sophistication is of any worth. Or, whether this is an expected result in our education system. Or, whether this is a mandatory step in ‘educating’.

By ‘normal West-centric education’, I refer to the lakhs of engineers. The not-high-quality-but-decent-enough types that we produce to cater to the so called globalized world.

How will Economics evolve?

As I sat and discussed some strategies about maximizing the productivity of few of the teams with my bosses, my thoughts went tangential (what’s new?!!)! I had no clue on the connection at that time, but after mulling over it for a while I think I know now. Anyways, I am penning it here…

We (myself and few of my bosses) were discussing about productivity enhancements. I was playing the devil’s advocate (which is the easiest thing to do…not all bosses are that intelligent and their schemes aren’t well formed…obviously picking out holes in such schemes is easy and enjoyable at the same time!). At one point, they were talking about “effective utilization of resources”. I think this is when I started wondering about something else.

“Effective utilization of resources” – this is what economics is all about. They predominantly worry about ’scarce’ resources – nowadays they have branched out too..But then, it is about resources and distribution of same (there are other aspects as well, as brought out in this and this).  The basic premise is, there are some resources that are sought after/needed by mankind universally. Most of such resources are ’scarce’, in the sense that, the distribution of them isn’t even – and hence the supply-demand is skewed by various divisions like nationality, culture, geography etc. This calls for defining a scheme on how best to handle this situation – and there comes in Economics (though highly convoluted and advanced, the premise remains the same). It draws heavily from the advancements in Group Theory as well, but that’s beyond the point.

In this state, I wondered about a situation where the “basic needs” of mankind are met. There is a big leap when you move from “basic needs” to the next set of “needs”. The next set of “needs” aren’t universal in nature. Identifying them is tricky, and as far as I could think of, it is impossible too. It isn’t a natural progress.  It isn’t like saying to oneself, “i’ll first solve these issues and take up the next ones”.

From this stance, how will Economics evolve? Without a clear definition of basic needs, it cannot operate. Even if someone defines those needs, that will be heavily disputed – IMO. I do not think anything that’s beyond food, shelter and other basic needs of today can be deemed “basic” in an undisputed way. On this note, I am reminded of one of my friend’s (a pseudo economist) statement in the recent past when we were talking about some aspect brought out in Zen…”If the basic needs are met, democracy isn’t a sustainable model. Most probably anarchy will prevail”. I tend to believe him as of now. Anarchy as the model of society and Existentialism (self definition of meaning of their lives by individuals) as the philosophy, might become the corner stones of the future.

Unfortunately I don’t have the life time to see how it pans out! Not a big deal, I am not going to see many such things

Ahem! Well, what is “right”?

Microsoft has filed a (patent) disclosure on “Phishing Detection, Prevention, and Notification” on (Application #  20070039038).

The method described here is as follows:

The Web browsing application initiates a display of the content, and a phishing detection module detects a phishing attack in the content by determining that a domain of the network-based resource is similar to a known phishing domain, or that an address of the network-based resource from which the content is received has suspicious network properties

This means:

Add phishing details (as you learn about them) to a database of some sort (like Virus Definitions) and use that information to detect possible phishing items in a web page (before displaying the page in a browser).

Isn’t this the first thing any body (with some basic understand of the problem) propose as a solution? The answer would determine the obviousness of the solution.

Another aspect is, how effective this scheme is going to be – definitely it is not going to be a harmful – but is it going to be making any difference?

With PhishTank (a way to track phishers and allowing the browsers to safe guard the user) already functioning and being used in some browsers (without expected success rate – as pointed out in some test reports), where does the above disclosure from Microsoft stands? Will it/Should it be patented? More from a ethical stand point, should a corporation (I am not targeting Microsoft here – any corporation for that matter) aim at getting such ideas patented? What does it serve them?

MeThinks: More than trying to get money out of it, such ideas are patented out of fear – “What if my competitor patents it?”. In fact the more troublesome fear is “What if some individual inventor patents this idea?” – this would be a worst nightmare because big corporations cannot negotiate with individual inventors (as the individual inventors have nothing to lose here and the corporations wouldn’t be able to “cross-license” patents with individual inventors). Would it be possible for the corporations to patent this idea on behalf of a third (and neutral) party – like some division of United Nations? If such a system is agreed upon by corporations for the goodness of all, they can rest in peace.

Rapercussion

As I was browsing my television channels…I heard a line from a Telugu movie which had “rape” in it. Except for that word every other word was in Telugu. Now, I am confused because there is a Telugu word which will make isPronunciationEqual(“rape”) succeed!! Now, was that “rape” or the Telugu word with the same pronunciation?

PS:  I don’t know Telugu language.

What’s dupery?

When something is a common practice, but is deemed illegal by laws/ethics – how should that be approached?

 Should the practice be curbed? OR Should the law be amended (ofcourse, with due care so that this doesn’t become a bad precedent for future fraudulent behaviors!!) ?