Suramya’s Blog

These are words you might have heard people mentioning. What exactly is Security Theater? Basically its security precautions that do nothing to make you safer but look impressive and make you feel safer. What am I talking about? Lets take a couple of examples:

In India if you visit a Mall or movie theater they frisk you before they let you come in. They also check your bags for explosives/whatever before they let you in. 95% of the time I have been to either places they just check me from my shoulder to my pockets. I could be carrying a bomb strapped to my feet or in my shoes and no one would know. So how is it making me safer? Its just an additional hassle that I have to go through everytime I want to shop/watch a movie.

Plus to make things even more secure, girls/women are not frisked. They get to walk in without any checks at all. So if I wanted to blow a bomb all I had to do was find a female crazy enough to believe that killing a bunch of innocent people was a good idea and I got the bomb in without issues.

Now lets take a look at the bag check they have. I have gone to the mall a couple of times with my laptop, (No I wasn’t planning on using it there. I took it with me because I didn’t want to leave it in the car) and those of you who know me know what a mess I carry around with me (chargers for my phone, camera, laptop, bluetooth, My camera, couple of headsets etc) and I know its hard to figure out whats in there unless you know (like I do) or you take everything out and look at it. Every time I have taken it inside the guy didn’t spend more that 30 seconds looking through it. I could be carrying anything in there and they wouldn’t know. In-fact once while flying to NY from kansas I was asked what all I had in bag as the security people couldn’t make out what was in it. I had to tell them what all I had in there (Those days I had a blackberry, ipod with their chargers in addition to everything above) before they let me board the flight. So I know you can’t look through the bag in 30 seconds.

So what does all this do? It makes people feel safer. The public sees something being done and is happy. The people in-charge can point to these measures and claim that they are taking actions to protect people. In reality nothing changes to reduce the threat.

Second example: In the sector where I stay all cars leaving the premises after 10 pm have to be logged with the house no where the owner stays. This is supposed stop people from stealing cars from the sector. My question is simple: What is stopping a thief from saying he is from B-xyz and then happily driving away? Nothing. Is there some list where all the cars in the sector are listed? Nope. So the guard has to believe what the person driving the car tells them. So how does it make the sector safer? It doesn’t. What makes people safer is the guards patrolling at random intervals and the patrols. This check at the entrance is just irritating and of no particular use.

Are there other examples of security theater? Absolutely. Though I am not going to go through all of them here ’cause that can fill a book.

Stop being so scared people. If you act scared, they win. Live your life normally. Don’t let terrorists win. When I was in the US in 1999 I was told not to go to Times Square for New Years eve as it was a terrorist target. Guess what I went there and had a blast. If I had acted scared and not gone I would have missed a once in a lifetime experience (I am pretty sure I won’t be around for 2999 celebrations) and nothing would have changed.

I am not saying don’t take basic precautions but there a difference in taking precautions and living scared. Don’t let them win.

- Suramya

Three days ago one of my hard-drives decided it was time to stop working. The irony of the situation is that I was in the middle of backing up data off that drive when it stopped working. I was happily copying data from the disk to another system when I noticed that a couple of files weren’t copied because of read errors. At first I let the copy continue, then I thought let me run a disk check on the drive first and then I can copy data off. Bad Move.

Once I unmounted the drive none of the tools would recognize it and I couldn’t access any of the data on it anymore. I tried to make a disk image of the drive but even after letting the process run for 2 days it had only imaged 16 MB (The drive was 80 GB) so I cancelled it. If I had let the copy process run I guess I could have copied most of the data off it before it failed.

Now I can’t even get the system to identify the drive. I have a backup of most of the data so its not critical that I get access to the drive but its a good learning experience. So I am going to try freezing the drive and see if that will let me get the data off.

I will document my attempts and will share it over here over the next few days.

- Sur

Its been a while since I last blogged mainly because of work but another factor is that once you get home from a long day at work you just don’t feel like thinking and creating a coherent blog post, but I guess I should post a bit more regularly.

I was reading Shipra’s blog and she has a post over there about culture shock that got me thinking: What exactly is culture shock?

In my opinion its just a catch all term that covers all the differences between the culture you are from and the culture you are encountering. This can be as small as finding people driving like sane people instead of drug fueled crazies playing carmagedon and as big as finding women walking around barely clothed (on any US/European beach).

Thanks to the global media and the internet the world is a lot smaller and there are lesser number items that could cause shock. Usually its not the big things that strike you, its the small things. As some of you might know I went to the US for my bachelors in 1999 and was there for ~8-9 years. People asked me if I felt culture shock and my answer to that is yes there was a period of adjustment and you can call it culture shock.

Just to give an example, in India its considered extremely rude to call an elder person by their first name but in the US its common and expected. Infact I have been told to stop calling people sir/mam because it made them feel old.

Another example: In the US if you are good friends with a person you hug them when you meet them, it doesn’t matter if the person is a girl and you are a guy. Infact its expected. While in India this wasn’t the case (Now it has changed and this is a common practice. But 8 years ago it wasn’t the case) I remember being a bit uncomfortable with it when I first went to the US and then when I came back I had gotten used to it and attempted to hug a good friend. She very nicely reminded me that this wasn’t the US.. Now whenever we meet we hug each other.

Office manners differ a lot in the US and in India. In the US you call everyone by their first name no matter what their post is and how much above you that person might be in the hiearchy. In India you call your seniors ‘Sir’. The environment is a lot more formal compared to a similar company in the US. Even in the US there is a difference between offices on the East coast and the West coast. The west coast offices (I have only seen offices in California) tend to be a bit more relaxed and easy going while offices on the east coast (Again, only seen New York and New Jersey Offices) are a bit more strict (as compared to the west coast).

Clubbing is completely different in the US, you can’t go to a club dressed in Jeans and sneakers, you have to wear shoes and trousers (semi-formal/khaki’s etc). In India I have gone to a club in Jeans and T-Shirt. The way you dance is also very different and the dance eticates are completely different.

Recently we had our office anniversary party and after the party me and a friend were discussing the party (Basically making fun of everyone who was too drunk to know what they were doing) and she made a comment about one of my co-worker’s who was asking all the girls to dance a bit too enthusiatically and she said that a couple of the girls were uncomfortable with that as he was acting too familiar with them. I was surprised and didn’t really say anything at the time but afterwards I was thinking that I didn’t find anything wrong with the way he was behaving. I guess it was because I had gotten used to the way people behave in Clubs in the US and for me it was normal behavior in a club.

So is culture shock real?
Absolutely.

Is it really that big an issue?
Depends. On where you are from and where you are going. A person from the middle east will have a major culture shock when they come to the US while a person from France might not have that big of a shock.

I will probably post some more of my experiences later but that depends entirely on how much interest this post generates and how lazy I am feeling at the time.

What are your experiences with culture shock? Do share.

- Suramya

This past month I have been purchasing a lot of new stuff and I am really happy with my purchases. The first major thing I bought is a new Phone, I am now the proud owner of a Nokia N95 8GB. I love the phone, it has a lot of cool features and there are a lot of applications that are available for it. Even the GPS is accurate and the built in maps also have Indian maps that are pretty accurate. I tried it while driving home from work and it showed my exact location on the map. The phone has a built in accelerometer that allows apps to get the orientation so after I installed a few apps it has most of the functionality of the iPhone (except the touch screen).

The second major purchase is a 1 Terabyte Harddrive (1024 GB). Now all my data is there on one drive that is mounted on my laptop using an external HardDisk enclosure.

Other than that I have finally bought a wireless router, mainly because Surabhi complained everytime she came over and because my phone has wireless and I wanted to play with it at home

The last item was a fridge which just arrived today. I am really happy about this because the old one was ready to die.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

- Suramya

The threat of Linux

- Suramya

Yesterday night Vinit was driving back home at about 2 am when his car (a 1986 Maruti 800) decided to stop working about 10 mins drive from our place (Thats at the speed I drive). So me and Surabhi decided to go help him.

We took a rope from home and drove to where he was stalled. The problem was that the car would start but the accelerator wasn’t working so the car would stall after a few seconds. Anyways we looked at the engine but as all three of us are computer engg and not mechanical we couldn’t figure out what was wrong. So we used the rope to tie the two cars together and towed the car home.

The rope did break twice but we managed to get home. Believe me it was really boring driving at 10 kmph on a road that I usually go at 80-90 kmph. For me it was a really easy drive but Vinit was covered with sweat by the time we got home as he had to be careful that he didn’t hit my car if I suddenly braked.

Thankfully the distance wasn’t that far otherwise it would have taken a lot more time. As it was late at night there wasn’t any traffic to worry about either.

Felt bad for Vinit, as he had just come back from Jaipur and must have been exhausted.

This is all for now will post more later.

- Suramya

You have got to be kidding me…

The US chain Dunkin’ Donuts has pulled an advert following complaints that the scarf worn by a celebrity chef offered symbolic support for Islamic extremism.

This is the image with which the idiots had a problem with:

What I can’t figure out is how a nice looking girl drinking coffee makes anyone think of terrorists. If she was standing next to a bomb/fighter plane etc it would still make sense. But in this case she is standing on an empty road drinking coffee… Scarves are not terrorist symbols people. They are just something that looks pretty.

I think Michelle Malkin(the person who started this silly process needs some serious therapy if seeing a scarf makes her think of terrorists. Whats next? Terrorists wear pants too… so is everyone who wears pants now a terrorist? People do wear stuff just because it looks pretty or they like it. Everything doesn’t have a hidden meaning in it.

Stop living in fear! Stop this stupid campaign of fear!

Thanks to Open… for the link.

Complete story on BBC NEWS

- Suramya

I have recently installed a gear lock in my Honda City. Its a lock that immobilizes the gear so you can’t change gears and is supposedly more secure than the basic car locks.

I was playing with it and realized that even though the lock stopped you from changing gears it is still possible for you to drive the car. All you have to do is press the clutch when you start the car and then just drive slowly. It works if you have left the car in the 2nd gear, if its in the 4th gear then its a bit harder as you have to regulate the clutch also but its possible.

The easiest way around this issue is to leave the car in a gear that makes it impossible to move the car without removing the lock. i.e. if you are parking the car while facing a wall, leave the car in 2nd gear and if you are backing up to a wall or another car then leave it in reverse. So even when someone starts the car they can’t drive away because the only direction they can go in is blocked.

Just thought I should share this.

- Suramya

They are beautiful and endangered! Hug a Bengal Tiger. Together, we can save them from extinction.

Got this message on Facebook today. I guess we are saving them from extinction by providing them with free food and home delivery :-p

- Suramya

The past few days it has been raining a lot over here. In-fact in the last week it had rained pretty much everyday. The rain it good but it brings assorted problems with it.

Last Tuesday night/Wednesday morning it was raining very heavily. I was at work till late and wanted to leave but because it was raining so hard, me and Shipra decided to wait for the rain to stop before we left. After almost 1 1/2 of waiting the rain stopped for a little while so we both ran out and got into our respective cars.

A minute later we found out that the left front tyre of her car was stuck in a ditch. Apparently the rain washed away a lot of the mud and the tyre sunk into the ground. Plus this hole was now filled with water so we couldn’t get any traction on the wheel. Spent almost half an hour trying to get the car out and ended up being covered in mud. (Good thing I was wearing brown pants). Finally managed to get it out on the last try. If that try hadn’t succeeded we would have left the car there and used my car to get home. Thankfully that wasn’t needed.

To top things off, Lots of power lines went down that night so there was no electricity at home and to make things even more fun there was a short in my house wiring (water got into an outlet) so the inverter also stopped working. Spent the night without power. Then in the morning when the power came back the door bell wouldn’t stop ringing. (yes, it was another stupid short). Finally figured out which fuse to trip to stop the stupid ringing. (I was half asleep and really cranky)

Its a pain to drive when its raining. Although its a lot of fun when you are sitting at home watching rain from indoors. But I guess its better than the heat.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

- Suramya