Wednesday 11 February 2009

Growth is life

‘Growth is life’ is a tagline of India’s largest company, RIL. For a company that has achieved tremendous growth in a little time in various diverse businesses, it’s very hard to find better tag line than that. But, I see this sentence more suitable to me, as an individual person. If at any point in life if we think that we are satisfied with something, e.g. money or career, it means that we have stopped progressing. But, we always should ask for more. It’s not about greediness; it’s about development.

For me, growth in every positive prospects of life is important. I want to learn new technologies, learn new skills, and learn new techniques etc that can help me perform my job more accurately and quickly. To keep up with technical skills development, I also need to develop my mental and physical strength. Growth in those areas is helpful to become better person. I am always eager to learn about religion, philosophy, logic, science, etc because only growth in all aspects of life will make me diverse from other individuals. Some people do not want to learn new skills, while some are satisfied with their career path and some even do not want to cultivate themselves to become better person.

We may not be able to do develop in all above-mentioned things at the same time but if we decide to learn these things and put a little bit effort, we will be able to achieve significant success.

Tuesday 10 February 2009

Data security and privacy

Internet has made our lives easy. Most of our professional and personal work depends upon network and computers. But how can we be sure that various service providers have provided enough security to our data? Our personal details are store into Banks, councils, credit card providers, utility companies, etc systems and previous data thefts incidents in many of these industry suggest that our data is not secure with them. Even governments in various countries have failed to protect public information going in malicious users’ hands.

Most of new electronics devices come with embedded software; even our Digital TV viewer or refrigerators are now coming with various software inside to make our life easy. These devices store lots of our personal details. Now, how can we be sure that information stored inside these devices are secure and even companies those who have made these appliances can not access it without our permission? People buy their mobile phones from Internet and local phone shops. How can they be sure that those phone are not cracked with malicious software? It only takes a few minutes to load malicious code inside any mobile phone and cracker can use all or any particular information without user noticing anything suspicious.

It is now possible to track a person using his mobile phone. This can be done either by network location algorithm or using GPS, which now comes with new phones anyway. With the help of new software services like Google Latitude and Loopt, people can see where their friends are at any particular time. This may be a nice feature for parents to keep track of their children, this may be a nightmare for others and raises a serious questions about privacy.

Quantum computing is on the horizon, which can crack most of security algorithms almost instantly, and lack of trust for most of current cryptography algorithms that are being used in internet, it is worrying to know that our personal information is not safe and our privacy is not guaranteed anymore. Recent demonstration of basic flow in Internet itself shows that even researchers and scientists don’t trust technology for any sensitive data transfer and unless we will not able to solve these basic issues, current situation may go worst.


To probe further:

http://www.loopt.com/

http://www.google.com/latitude/intro.html

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/oct08/6818/

Monday 9 February 2009

Love



Love is one of the most complex feelings a person can ever experience. Although it is one most the most common expressions, it is very hard to define and more importantly, most difficult chemical (and emotional) behaviour in heart to understand. I am going to express my views on love that can be present between a couple, man and woman. Although being naïve in this subject, I strongly believe that it is love that completes us, and marriage and life with loved one accomplishes the purpose of our existence.

Love is not a single emotion; it’s a mixture of different feelings in our heart and brain. It is so complex that when person is in love, even he/she won’t immediately feel that. I believe in mature love, meaning love happened after certain age. This age depends upon person to person. Most of us see crush or infatuation as love in early age, especially in teenage. I am sure that love is very mature phenomenon and hence I don’t think that at teenage any of us have that much maturity to develop such a strong feeling for any person. Nevertheless, there are chances of this early crush to be developing as a love.

Thanks to Bollywood/Hollywood and experience from my friends, I have come to know the truth about a woman, and it’s that a woman is a very complex equation. Each girl has different set of parameters for life, life-partner, marriage and of course, for love. Those who have understood to find those parameters and solve them have finally solved the biggest mystery of life. As a boy, I think male person has very straight forward requirements from their life partner and unless a person is introvert, a girl can easily read boy’s feelings and make her decision whether that’s a right person or not for her.

It is a time on which we all depend for love to come to us or us to find love of our life. In order to understand a person, we will need to give time for relationship to grow and see whether that person wants the same things from life as we do. Although everyone is free to make their own decision for love and marriage, we still live in the world where either from male or female side there are always some constrains and sometime complex situations also happens where love tests both persons strength. As it has been said, a path of true love is never smooth, lovers must be ready for tough tests if it required. And, I strongly believe that if two persons have true love for each other, at the end, it is always love that wins. And, also, the beauty of love is that, it always grows even after marriage to the loved one and only death of both persons ends the journey of love.

If you are one of the lucky people who has already found your true love, first congratulations and second don’t lose that person. And, if you haven’t found your true love, yet, it is not because that person doesn’t exist but it is because that person or you might not be ready for an adventure. If we can wait few days for our exam results, a month for our salary to be credited in bank, few months for our next vacation, I think we should wait a little longer for our love to find us.

If people are right, then marriages are decided in the heaven and it’s up to us to find that partner. Hence, keep looking for that person and make sure that you will be able to read signs. And if destiny brings that person into your life, make sure that you tell your feelings. Destiny will not help a person who is not courageous enough to make the first move. If love has come to other people’s life, then I guess you are not an exception and you will find your true love one day. So, whether you are single or with partner, make sure that you make most out of this Valentines Day.

Friday 6 February 2009

Diet

My colleagues at work and most of my friends here in Southampton, follow non-vegetarian diet. Because of me being vegetarian, topics of vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism often comes in our discussions. I know that none of us are going to change their diet based upon these discussions we still enjoy discussing it. My main point about food choice is that irrespective of source of the food, we eat whatever we eat based upon taste rather than from where it is originated.

Typically, our diet pattern comes from our family and at least we stick to it until we grow-up. Its very rare for a child to be a vegetarian in non-vegetarian family, and vice-versa, unless child has some sort of disease in which he/she is not allowed to eat certain things. Those who grew up as a vegetarian, only becomes non-vegetarian if they like taste of meat or under extreme circumstances, if person moves to another region or country where it’s difficult to find vegetarian options and/or high cost of vegetarian food. But, according to my experience, most of those people who became non-vegetarian were due to meat’s taste and they couldn’t resist it. There is nothing wrong with it and a person has own choice to eat whatever they like as long as they don’t eat human! However, most of non-vegetarian people justify their view saying that they eat meat because it fulfils all body requirements that might be very hard to find from vegetables, fruits and non-meat products. That’s totally wrong. People eat food because of its taste and there are always meat alternate foods available to get necessary ingredients that are necessary for human body.

Personally, I like to be vegetarian because I don’t see any reason why I should eat meat? When I can get all the vitamins, protein, fat, carbohydrates, fibre, etc from vegetables, fruits and dairy products, I don’t see why I should eat meat. Main argument at this point I receive from non-vegetarian people that cows and calves suffers a huge pain in the whole process of milk productions in dairies. I agree with that and I insist that we all should do our best to make sure that dairy owners take care of cows and calves and other animals, too, even if it means that we have to pay higher prices for dairy products.