Desi In Toronto

There was a thought the other day by some politician to block 50 Cents from touring Canada because he promotes hate and glorifies violence. A liberal MP (Dan McTeague) objected to 50 Cents tour on the grounds that the rapper had criminal record and the “timing” of his being here in Toronto (he was referring to the gun violence in TO) is not right.

I think that was the dumbest idea. What gives him the notion that there are no clones of 50 Cents here in Toronto? Absolutely ridiculous idea to ban hate speech as a solution to all the violence here in Toronto.

Stephen Harper has re-confirmed my assertion why not to vote for the conservatives.

Answering a reporter’s question yesterday, Harper indicated a Tory government would reconsider legislation permitting same-sex marriage, and put the matter to a free vote.

Of course he gave no indication how he is going to reverse the court’s decision to do this and how to preserve existing gay marriages. Of course this is a political point that goes down very well with his core supporters. I think he himself knows that there is no turning the clock back. He is only trying to score points at this stage.

This has to be seen to be believed. Warning…..video is 4.5 MB large!!

A very special birthday on the 21st Nov. 2005. E=MC^2 turned 100 years old!!

This equation was part of a paper submitted by an unknown clerk at the Swiss Patent Office. By the end of the 20th century, this clerk was, consistently, in all the lists of the most influential person of century. He put forth three theories (photoelectric effect, Brownian movement and relativity) in one year! This year, 1905, is now know as the “miracle year” and UNESCO has decided to call the year 2005 the “World Year Of Physics” coinciding with the 100th year of release of the three papers (collectively called Annus Mirabilis Papers). What is astonishing is the fact that Einstein did not use any experimental data or physical data in constructing these theories. He used logical reasoning. No one had done this before and after this, the path to cosmology was revealed.

This equation still confounds scientists. What does it mean? “The energy that can be obtained from an object is equal to it’s mass times twice the speed of light” This is the simplistic form of explanation that laymen like us can understand. But it goes deeper than that.

The main thing about this theory is not the theory itself, but the postulates that Einstein put forth. The two postulates were :-

1. Laws of physics are the same at all times and in all frames of reference i.e. laws of physics and mathematics stay the same to all observers, moving or stationary.
2. Speed of light in vacuum is always the same no matter who is recording the speed and how. IT ALWAYS STAYS THE SAME.

These two postulates have been confirmed independently by experiments and they are now a fact in modern physics. On the basis of these two postulates, Einstein came up with the Special Theory Of Relativity. This theory not only modified the notion of space and time, but also the concept of mass, momentum and energy. Special theory of relativity showed that as space and time are inter-related, these aspects of an object are different representation of the same physical quality thereby overturning the Newtonian physics forever.

This equation has had a huge direct effect on our society as well. Since the equation says that energy and mass are basically the same thing, therefore, mass of an object can be converted into energy. By comparing the mass of different atomic nuclei and comparing that mass with the mass of protons and neutrons, one can calculate the energy within an atomic nuclei. This is the basis of an atomic bomb. And it was Einstein who urged President Roosevelt to pursue the study of nuclear fission in 1939 before Hitler did it. As a result of that letter, the Manhattan Project was initiated and the rest is history. It has to be said that Einstein did later recant his support for atomic bombs and famously said “I don’t know how the World War III will be fought but I do know that the World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Stolen from Daily Kos. My apologies Bill but these were too good to pass!!

“The federal government began investigating allegations of fraud against the Coalition Provisional Authority, a U.S. contractor accused in a bid-rigging operation involving millions of dollars. Asked to comment, a spokesperson for Halliburton said, ‘Millions? With an M? That is adorable.’”
—Amy Poehler on Saturday Night Live

“President Bush, is on his Asian tour now. He’ll visit Japan, China, South Korea, Mongolia. Once again, he’s skipping Vietnam.”
—David Letterman

“Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito says he’s embarrassed by some of the things he wrote in the 1980’s. Apparently Alito wrote the song ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.’”
—Conan O’Brien
-
“While the Democrats are focusing on how we were misled to war, Bush is focusing on how to mislead us out of it. … If we were wrong about why we went in, we have to be wrong about why we’re leaving. Otherwise it sends our enemies the message that America lacks the will to remain incorrect.”
—Rob Corddry on The Daily Show

“President Bush is planning on spending Thanksgiving out at his ranch in Crawford. And you know how he always pardons the White House turkey? Bad news for the turkey: There are three cabinet members ahead of him.”
—Jay Leno

Rhea and I went to The Santa Clause Parade at Toronto, yesterday and we had a great time. The first thing that struck me was the fact that the spectators were teaming with kids. I think the kids out numbered the adults by 3 to 1. So what happens when kids are in a great force……everyone becomes a kid!!

There were adults and kids using chalk on the road to make pictures on King Street, there were adults and kids playing hopscotch on Yonge Street, there were adults and kids playing tag on Queen Street. The weather was a perfect 8 C and everyone was in a great mood. The best part though was the bus ride. Rhea absolutely loved the ride. She would not stop point out the buildings and cars on the way to downtown. Here is a snippet of a half an hour’s conversation we had on the bus :-

“PAAPAAAA“

“Yes, Rhea”

“Badipaadeigoooftosatyu my toy”

“Very good”

“PAAPAAAA“

“Yes, Rhea”

“goabadrtoaketiiforkjsd my car”

“really”

“PAAPAAAA“

“Yes, Rhea”

“badepiecidmjheakej where’s sun?”

“It’s behind the building”

“Yeah!!! LOOOOOK” as soon as she realised where the sun was.

Well, the talks seem to have been inconclusive. Which means that US is still in charge.

This is pretty interesting.

Longish post……

I am not sure how many people are aware of a current war going on between the United States and the rest of the world. This battle started with an innocuous announcement by the US administration sometime in June and the rest of the world (in conjunction with the UN) took up arms and the fight continues to this day.

The battle is pretty straight forward : Who Controls The Internet?

What, you ask? What do you mean “who controls the internet”? Internet is not in anyone’s control. It’s a virtual global space which no one can disrupt. It’s a virtual global space that cannot be brought down (even though individual sites can but surely not The Internet). It’s virtual adecentralised zone and, therefore, untouchable.

Ok, my friend. You need to sit down for this.

The truth is that the internet is altogether a controllable entity. It can be attacked, it can be closed, it can be severed and it can be disrupted….. catastrophically. And do you know what else? Some of these scenarios have actually happened to the internet in the recent years. That,is the truth.

So what exactly is the internet?

Imagine a tree. A root, a trunk, branches, twigs, leaves and buds.

Now…..Invert It. That’s what an internet is.

So, you and I are the buds and the leaves, connected to the twigs (Internet Service Providers, which in my case is Sympatico); The branches (higher lever computers which helps others in uniquely identifying Sympatico and me); Trunk (higher level computers which helps others in uniquely identifying Canada, Sympatico and me); And the root (which helps others in uniquely identifying everything at the bottom).

To identify one bud from another we are assigned a unique identifier called Internet Protocol address and the higher level computers then use these IP addresses to keep a track of who we are. No two computers or sites can have the same IP address. It would cause a traffic disruption. The way this number is designed it is possible for the internet to have 4 billion uniqueaddresses. That number is now on the horizon and needs to be changed but that’s another post.

So, what happens when a person in Cambodia types out www.anuragsharma.com To uniquely identify this site, I have been assigned an IP address by the Verio Horizon company. That IP address is matched to the name that the individual in Cambodia has typed and his browser is directed to my site and the pages are downloaded to his computer for his reading pleasure. That’s the key, the site name (called a domainname) is matched to the assigned IP address. How does it work?

The moment the individual types out the site name, the first place that his computer is directed to is the ROOT server. This is the server that is donated by a ‘.’ at the end of the site name. You may not type it, but it’s always there. His computer sends a request to this ROOT server for Top Level Domain servers (TLDs, actually called Generic TLDs) which will direct his computer to the .com server. The .com TLD server will then be requested for anuragsharma which has been registered by Verio Horizon and here the name and the assigned IP address are matched. This IP address is sent to the individual’s computer which then makes the connection to the actual site on freeservers.com for downloading the pages from anuragsharma.com

An email is sent in a similar way, chatting is started in a similar way and so on. So the entire edifice that the internet rests on is this matching of name to the IP address. And where does it all start…..that’s right. At the ROOT server.

The ROOT server concept started in the 70s when the need for computers to talk to each other had just started. And the way the internet was built, it was determined that there is an actual requirement of only 13 ROOT servers.

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, there are 13 servers that run the internet. These servers are called A, B, C, D….. to …..M.

Why 13? Here’s where it gets a little difficult to explain. A single domain name (like anuragsharma.com) reply from the TLDs and ROOT servers can be only 512 bytes long and 13 servers are more than enough to perform the translation. Again this is the result of the way the
internet was implemented back in the 70s.

So we have finally arrived at the reason of the war that’s going on out there. Out of the 13 ROOT servers, 10 are in the US, 2 in Europe and 1 in Asia. The 10 ROOT servers in the US essentially form the backbone of the internet. They are key to the whole game and till 1998, it was US (professors, programmers, technicians etc.) who were calling the shots.

Because of the liberal culture among these professionals and technicians, it was easy to manage the Internet. But as the Internet got more and more useful, the bureaucrats and the politicians came to the party as well. Now the internet is viewed as a strategic tool which is essential to most, if not all, the governments and private corporations around the world. These governmental and non-governmental institutions started to point this to the US and wanted to pass the control of these ROOT servers to an NGO institution or to the UN IT department as they view US as a belligerent country. The point was pressed again and again to the point where various countries and corporations pushed the US into giving up control of the ROOT servers.

To avoid a tenacious situation, the US (Clinton) administration, set up an international organisation called Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to take over the activities of these ROOT servers. The organisation would have the US retaining the oversight controls with various delegates from different countries and private corporations forming a committee. On paper this was a pretty good deal with US to give the committee more and more control over the operations. But in reality, US was the overlord and the committee completely toothless.

Now the situation, which could have been saved, is driven to a dangerous political battle because on June 2005, the US (Bush) administration essentially said “Screw you. ICANN is under US control and that’s how it will stay”. This is the point where the US can obliterate ‘.rn’ addresses from the ROOT servers because they are at war with Iran. This is point where the internet can be brought to a halt because the US switches off the backbone.

Where do I stand in this? I am with the US.

Not for the reasons that US is probably retaining the controls of ICANN. But because we need the US to keep leading the rest of the world as far as the internet is concerned. The rest of the world cannot offer the judicial, legal and innovative control that the US can. Sure, morally the rest of the world has a say in the matter, but Nigeria and Zimbabwe (two countries leading the fight for control of ICANN) are hardly the countries to have on board a committee for a say in running of the internet. Moreover, theoretically, the US can hamper running of the internet and may even cripple it. But it cannot bring it down. E.g. India now has 3 mirror sites for the F-, K- and I- ROOT servers for the country code Top Level Domain. This helps not only in managing traffic (there by reducing heavy costs) but also in case of a crisis, the end never realises there is a problem because, the traffic can easily be diverted to other mirror sites.

So, I agree with the US stance FOR THE MOMENT. Sooner or later, the US is going to have to let other technically strong countries have a say in the matter or we will see the birth of an alternate internet which could bringit’s own set of problems.

Been missing in action for a few days because I was confined to the bed for 3 to 4 days. Had the flu and didn’t have the strength to switch on the computer leave only post.

So much happened in the meantime.

Natwar Singh fired!

Well. He had it coming any way. The nonsense he had been spewing (”bring back the good ol’ days of USSR”!!!) just before his retirement gave Manmohan Singh an “out”.

Layton to withdraw support

This too had to happen sooner or later. But I am afraid that it really will not solve anything. It will again be a hung parliament and it will be matter of who will agree to NDP’s demands. I wish, I wish, I wish I could vote. Whom would I have voted for? Probably NDP. It needs to be bolstered to be a legitimate alternative to the monoliths we have the helm today.

India Crushes Sri Lanka in Cricket

Never realised that this could happen. Not such a route. And this despite the politics at the back ground.

Narain K. Has No Contract

Just when an Indian finally broke through the F1 drivers’ barrier, back he goes to the starting point. I know he did not do well, but neither did the other guy. I think this is more a legal/management issue than performance issue.

Rhea says a sentence

That’s right folks!! She has finally said a complete sentence. Probably something she picked from her cousin because the famous first sentence is ( a drrrrrrruuuuuummmmmm roll) : It’s My Toy.

I had wanted to post this sometime ago but it completely slipped out of mind until today. Hope it remains relevant…..

She has been a symbol of the civil movement since 1955. Her refusal to give up her seat for a white man on a bus sparked the civil rights’ movement byblacks and extended desegregation to all the areas in the United States.

Ms. Parks was asked to vacate her seat in the front of the bus for a white man. But her refusal to do so, provoked her arrest. This led the civil rights movement to push the matter to supreme court where it was judged that segregation is unconstitutional, not only in the matter of bus seating but everywhere an din every situation in the country. Thus, Rosa Parks is a hero.

Because of so much noise in MSM and blogsphere about Rosa Parks, I became curious and wanted to know the details and this is what really happened :-

Before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat there were numerous similar cases. The black leaders (including Rev. Martin Luther King) wanted a case which they could use to galvanize support. They first targeted a 15 year old black girl who also refused to move and was arrested.

But then they found that she was pregnant at the time and dropped the case. Then Rosa Parks incident happened. A lot of the newspapers in America point to the fact that she was taking a ride home after a long day at work. And being asked to move for a white man was the straw that broke the camel’s back. But after reading various accounts it is obvious that this was a new form of protest by the blacks not something that Rosa Parks thought of at that moment.

In no way am I trying to disparage Ms Parks actions. It must have taken supreme courage and guts to stand up to the bus driver and to the police especially in an era when blacks were mistreated to the hilt. Dog bites, sprayed upon, battened by the police etc. In such a climate to stand up to whites was signing a death sentence. But she did it when three black men on the same bus vacated their seats. I think this kind of courage exists in very few people.

But we have to admit, after all these decades, that The Rosa Parks incident was a highly organised and was skillfully planned by the black leaders of the time. Yes, she represents everything the blacks wanted at the time butshe was the face of the movement. Not the spark that started the movement.

Well….another addition to the family.

Arman, my brother in law’s son was born at about 7pm on 1st of November. Weighing in at 7 pounds, he came into this world on Diwali. His grand momswere on top of the world.