The Value of social networks

Demographics and the future

Demographics play an important role in determining the future of nations and their evolution. Europe has seen a declining birth rate and it's certain that at least in our life time we will see the decline of Europe and the emergence of Asia along with America as a dominant political and economic force. Given the surging oil prices and the projection of them touching $200 by year end of course brings in one more group as a force - the Middle East.

India's demographics is "heavy" around the centre - meaning that most of her people are young, China's demographic is heavy around the top - a sign of aging population and that's one of the reason experts maintain that India will probably overtake China politically and economically.

But the demographics of the Middle East have been largely ignored. There is an older article (which is now a centre of a free speech argument) which puts a point across quite well that we have a lot to fear from this group.

Monkey Brain?

All the papers have been reporting on a paper published in Nature on how researches have inserted sensors into the head of a monkey who was able to control a robotic arm to feed itself using it's brain waves. Remarkable!!

Such systems, Dr. Kalaska wrote, “would allow patients with severe
motor deficits to interact and communicate with the world not only by
the moment-to-moment control of the motion of robotic devices, but also
in a more natural and intuitive manner that reflects their overall
goals, needs and preferences.”

Perhaps this could be used for this person - very tragic.

Malthus - a false prophet?

A lot has been written about how wrong Malthus was with his theory and how all is well with the population v/s food balance in the world. The recent increase in food prices has helped re-ignite that debate and the Economist calls Malthus a "false prophet". I have a few disagreements:

1. Malthus first set out his ideas in 1798!!! Given the time, I think his study was probably way ahead of his time.
2. In 1803, Malthus published a second edition of his essay and softened the tone by introducing the concept of a "preventive check" - saying the problem could be averted if the birth/death rates changed voluntary. Again, way ahead of his time!
   
3. This was pre-industrialization and pre-green revolution so when these happened people came to the conclusion that Malthus was wrong.
4. However, the statistics today show more than ever that Malthus was right about the "preventive check". World population growth has reduced to an annual rate of 1.2% - probably the slowest ever.

This leads me to believe that maybe Malthus had it wrong in the 1798 essay but probably got it right in the 1803. Without a preventive check we will have a problem and that should be a warning to everyone. Increased productivity of food through better use to technology can only go so far.

Moral Duty to intervene?

Given the disaster in Burma and that Government's indifference to the pain of the people - the question to be asked is: should other nations have the right to intervene in a clear humanitarian crisis where the local government is indifferent? My view is yes - Burma should have been invaded and the regime changed a long time ago - much before Iraq or Afghanistan or the nations in South America.

An article in the Economist questions the legality of a unilateral intervention by the UN in Burma

Responsibility to protect is not yet dead, but it is fragile.
Supporters point to the power-sharing deal that stopped Kenya's civil
war in February as the concept's first success. The fact that the UN, in principle, retains the right to impose its will by force may have made it easier for the world body to broker a settlement.

Perhaps. But the idea will need some clearer successes than that if
it is going to survive. And Myanmar, apparently, is not going to be one
of them.

Inside a DOS attack

Over the memorial day weekend in the US - Revision3's website was shut down by a DOS attack which shutdown their website, RSS feeds, and corporate email. They decided to investigate what/who caused the attack - their investigation reads like a mystery thriller. What's really disturbing is that how the originator (MediaDefender) system decided to innundate a system with "pings" when Revision3 removed some back-door entries into the system. The question really is that while IP rights are important and should be enforced, how do you justify taking down a legit business thru a DOS attack because they removed certain back-doors (which were probably illegal in the first place) from their system?

First, they willingly admitted to abusing Revision3’s network, over a
period of months, by injecting a broad array of torrents into our
tracking server. They were able to do this because we configured the
server to track hashes only – to improve performance and stability.
That, in turn, opened up a back door which allowed their networking
experts to exploit its capabilities for their own personal profit.

Second, and here’s where the chain of events come into focus, although
not the motive. We’d noticed some unauthorized use of our tracking
server, and took steps to de-authorize torrents pointing to
non-Revision3 files. That, as it turns out, was exactly the wrong thing
to do. MediaDefender’s servers, at that point, initiated a flood of SYN
packets attempting to reconnect to the files stored on our server. And
that torrential cascade of “Hi”s brought down our network.

Grodsky admits that his computers sent those SYN packets to Revision3,
but claims that their servers were each only trying to contact us every
three hours. Our own logs show upwards of 8,000 packets a second.

Unbalanced success

It is really unfortunate that we have been able to translate the success that corporate India ha enjoyed recently down to the poor. I am not sure what is the point of this success if 80% of the people don't benefit. How many of us have turned our face away when we have seen beggars on streets, sometimes saying that they were part of a "gang" who make a lot of money.

Amelia Gentleman writing in the IHT, talks about one such have and have-not story somewhere near her home in Delhi. Very touching but I guess most of us Indians prefer to look the other way then actually help. Specifically, we'd rather feed stray dogs than human beings:

There is a kind woman who parks her car near my gate once a day to distribute parcels of rice, neatly wrapped in newspaper, to the wild and possibly rabid dogs who roam the quiet street in this rich part of central Delhi. She caresses them and addresses them by name. One mangy yellow, malevolent animal she calls Bruno.

It is an act of generosity that I still find confusing. Around the corner, sitting by the traffic lights, is a family of four, which receives no rice parcels. The mother, Sayari, is bony thin, and the children's matted hair has a dull orange tint, a sign of the malnutrition affecting nearly half of all under-fives in India.