Afterstep I have just rediscovered the joys of afterstep window manager :D

also I have gotten my bsd box to connect to the sun nis and mount my home dirs from the global nfs exports [no auto mounting yet, but from what I gather, it is still a hack with fbsd, with having to create temporary map files and all..] it is such a joy to return back to the favorite platform after being away for so long...

and junked KDE in the process,, (with regards to gnome, I never liked sun's gnome based JDS desktop anyways..)  ¶ 8:22 PM 0 Comments

  Some images. I have uploaded some of the images I had [from Raghu's archive] to the site. accessible here


(-edit I lost these when my account in blufox.batcave.net was deleted by them-)

It seems like google is loosening up their gmail signup, (since rediff and spymac are offering free accounts 1GB each), I have received around 15 invitations, If any one needs it, you are welcome to contact me.  ¶ 7:18 PM 3 Comments

  G8 and India India's tentative Invitation to G8, Should we be eager to accept?

Aside from the fact that we tend to see it as the growing up of the Indian nation, I believe that we should weigh in multiple factors present in this option.

Let me state the facts first,

The countries that originally formed the G6 were France US Britain Germany Japan and Italy [1975]
Then Canada joined them [1976]
European Union (country? now is still believable but at 1977 ??) [1977]
and Russia started from [1994] and will take until 2006 to complete the procedure. (After they have exhausted all the necessary juice that can be extracted in terms of demonstrating the commitments to the forum and its views.)

The G8 is a kind of grouping of like minded nations that has a lot of things in common with a school with a school master and end of the term exams. See Here.

Some of these issues for assessments [
Political Security General
Arms control and nonproliferation
Indian nuclear explosion
Land mines
Regional Security
Balkans/Kosovo
Balkan reconstruction
Indonesian crisis
Human Rights/Democratization
Hong Kong, China, human rights
Conflict Prevention
Terrorism

Global Governance
Globalization
UN reform
G8 Governance:
G7/G8 process reforms
Russian participation
Other country/IO outreach
Civil society participation
] are too important for our countries (both India and China) to be trapped in conditions where we are caught between demonstrating commitment to the forum (Which will be demanded - see how long it took for Russia to become a member) and being true to our needs. We will need to demonstrate improvement in these issues to 'Pass' or be asked to give 'certain concessions' so that the others will look away.

We [India and China] along with Brazil were the three major countries that focussed the developing world's opinion, and thus formed a Team. of which only India and China are invited, So why not Brazil? That smacks of an effort to break up a threat than as Brazil not making the grade. (remember that Brazil is also a contender for the UN Security Council) (Brazil is South America's leading economic power and a regional leader with area slightly smaller than the US)

At the moment we have a friendly relation with China, Arab Countries and Palestine , And many of the issues which are before the council will require that we know-tow to the Founder-members interests (Under the threat of extending the time of joining [remember how the Russia was persuaded to give up its cooperation with India?] or failure at term exams to make the grade!!) These will be mostly against the policy which we have followed until now.

Look at the current members of the forum,
Of these eight (9??) how many countries are economic super powers in the world today? [The same with UN Security Council but at least that body has Veto powers, what does this forum have?], Is it the need of India and China to join this forum or Is it the need of this forum to include India and China so that the forum can retain and make a show of its exalted status?

Do we gain any thing at all? other than the status that comes with being a member of an exclusive club?

When we are in the G15 we are the leaders and are able coordinate our peer nations who have the same view points and needs, but the moment we are in G8, we loose that prerogative, and instead we will be a minority, a lone nation that will be forced to give up on things that will matter most (They wont allow us to be full members until they have extracted the last pound of flesh that they can extract and even then there will always be a block of nations who will effectively put an end to any dream of making our issues heard or making our views felt.) (And think of the ignominy of failing to pass the grade on these assessments), and we will have the unpleasant duty of explaining the decisions of G8 to the developing world loosing our leadership there in that process.  ¶ 9:18 PM 1 Comments

  Earthen cups for trains It seems Lallu Prasad Yadav (our Hon Railway minister [India]) has some Interesting ideas, The new directive to use earthen cups for tea in Rajathani seems to be quite nice, It provides some employment for the people making the pottery, but more importantly it is more environment friendly than the plastic cups that we use in train,..

My only concern is the transportation of these cups (They will take up much much more space than the plastic ones take, and are quite fragile too..)

Still, it is a good initiative, one which i would n't have expected from him,,  ¶ 4:28 PM 0 Comments

  asimov@orkut A new episode from asimov@orkut,...
Suggestion from Night [
But my way to rule robots as persons or not would be this:
Make a series of double blind experiments, where real people and robots interact with each other, maybe in a chat like environment, with the instructions to not have anything pertinent to the three laws (if they are implemented) discussed. If it is impossible for either robots or people to distinguish between themselves in such experiments, then you can safely say it would be adequate to consider robots people too. Also, if there are some perceived differences, maybe robots can have a different set of rights, but still more than mere "machines".(A turing test)]

Now my gripe is this..

Any Turing test that is applied suffers from two flaws, one is that they rely on reducing the inputs available (In night's case the three laws and blind folding) and secondly the amount of time permitted for conducting the test.

To make the argument clear, let us consider the same argument in a more restrictive way, Suppose that you are faced with an entity whom you are supposed to test, and the method of testing allows moving the pieces of a chess board, How long would you need to determine if the entity that you are facing is Human or not? The difference between this and the other one is just in degrees (with the corresponding restrictions - no testing on three laws, no question beyond a limited database, etc). The moment you want to remove this flaw by loosening the restrictions, time required for a decision increases exponentially, This is the reason why we need the meta rules to judge.

On Nights second opinion,
[Capacity for distinguishing "good" from "wrong". It's clear from our experience with the legal criminal system that some people don't know the difference. Those are usually declared "insane" and put aside society, receiving a different set of rights and duties.

Would not be, then, coherent to give robots rights based on that scale to? If a robot is self-aware, can conduct conversations and think the same way or better than a human being, while being able to distinguish "good" from "bad", it is perfectly clear to me "he" would have all the right to be called a person. Even more than some humans.]

Judging good and bad aside from simple ones are pretty difficult, and is dependent on the social environment prevalent at that time, And I would say that distinguishing good and bad is not a requirement for the Being in question,
As an example, in today's world, Can you say whether George Bush's war on Iraq was good/just ? what does Bush think, what does the Iraqies think, and what do you think?  ¶ 4:19 PM 0 Comments

  gmail invites On those Gmail Invites,
One for raj My sainik school mate,
Next for ajith, again my friend for 14 yrs

Last for ritu whose post in gmailswap i liked..  ¶ 4:07 PM 0 Comments

  Gmail again (and again) Cant really believe it :D,.,
I got free invitations for friends...... :P from gmail...
Guess they have finally restarted giving invitations away again.  ¶ 1:18 AM 0 Comments

  New kind of science Found Wolframs book A New Kind of Science online. :D It was some thing I have wanted to read for a long time, but could not due to its non availability in paper back (I cant afford it otherwise with the salary i get here). It is supposed to be on par with [Brief History of Time] and [Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid] both of which expanded my outlook quite considerably.  ¶ 9:07 PM 0 Comments

  Sentience I got an interesting response from Night (asimov@orkut) on the sentience and Humaneness of Robots, (Slightly modified)
[Most provide arbitrary definitions of what is life or what is human, but that does not concern the question, which was if the robots were PEOPLE. For people, one would take an individual with rights and duties. What is important is if it has "self-awareness", and can recognize itself as being different from the environment and other robots/humans.

If it has more rules to abide to is not relevant either, as each society has it's own rules, and they change over time. What might restrain you from doing something now may have not in the past, and may well not again in the future. So, it doesn't matter the laws are different, neither that they HAVE to abide to them. Because their existence doesn't encompass ONLY the three laws, but in fact they would have "free will" (at least in the same way we have) in any matter that doesn't directly concerns the three laws.

So, for all that I am concerned with, robots COULD be perceived as people, as long as they are autonomous, can form new thoughts and learn, and can bring value to society with their novel ideas. All other issues are circumstantial, not absolute.]

And here is what I felt about the issue. (As posted there.)

[May be we need to differentiate between the term *people* and *Sentient beings*.Self awareness is sufficient to become a sentient being, but it is not sufficient to be included in people. If an alien Intelligence is discovered tomorrow, we probably would have no trouble calling them sentient beings (regardless of whether they were first-born or were created by other beings) but we would definitely have trouble including them under *people*.

I agree that the rules and views of societies change, but I do believe that there is a meta nature to the human society than what is defined by the rules and views alone (essentially because of the nature of beings forming the society).
In 's novels, there is never any question of the immortals not being considered sentient but the question that is asked again and again is whether and how much they are humans.]  ¶ 9:07 PM 0 Comments

  Nukes A comment on a recent article by M. V. Ramana & R. Rajaraman in thehindu on Indias nuclear options.


[A recent example of a serious accident involving a missile occurred on February 23, 2004 at the Sriharikota High Altitude Range. Engineers were testing a motor for the Agni missile when it caught fire and exploded, killing at least six people. If such an accident were to occur in an Agni missile loaded with a nuclear warhead, it could well lead to the dispersal of fissile material (plutonium or enriched uranium) into the atmosphere, potentially causing thousands of fatal cancers among the nearby population.

The above estimate of casualties is not for a nuclear explosion, but only for the detonation of the chemical explosive in the weapon. This chemical explosion could well trigger a nuclear explosion. An accidental nuclear explosion with a yield of 15 kilotons, the same as the weapon detonated over Hiroshima, would destroy over 5 square kilometres from the combined effects of blast and firestorms. Over 24 square kilometres would be subject to radioactive fallout at such levels that half the healthy adult population would die of radiation sickness. If this were to happen in the vicinity of a large South Asian city, several hundreds of thousands of people would die. In addition, such an explosion, especially in times of crises, might be assumed to be a nuclear attack and lead to a nuclear response. Thus an accidental nuclear explosion may even initiate a nuclear war, which could cause millions of casualties.]

Notice how the authors are careful to build up the FUD.
The missile was being *tested* when it caught fire. If a motor was being tested, it is conceivable that the parts being tested had some of the previously unproved parts or technology in them, and testing probably means what we ppl in s/w industry are familiar with, that of applying stress variables near the applicable limits of the machine. A missile being tested will not be loaded with nuclear weapons nor a missile in storage which is in storage be subjected to the kind of stress that it is subjected to while being tested.

Now see the claim : the chemical explosion could trigger a nuclear explosion.

so they are referring to missiles which are stored with the warheads. not the ones being tested.
They further claim that if the nuke explosion caused by a chemical explosion were to occur near a large city several hundreds might die.
Now wait for a moment and think, why would a missile be stored in the vicinity of any such cities? The logic points to the fact that they would be stored in places where the govt has easy access to controlling inflow and outflow of people, And it should also be a region where the assembling of the infrastructure to deliver the missile be relatively easy and not under prying eyes. neither of which is easy near a city. I can not think of any advantage the govt will get in storing it near a city. The more chances are also that they will be stored near the borders so that we will get more range out of them. Now think how many cities are near our borders..


Now take up the second assumption, that in case of a crises, it will be assumed to be a nuclear strike and escalate to a nuclear strike. -- But whom do we suspect? unlike the case of US and USSR, we have two or more enemy states surrounding us (more in the sense the jihadi framework) we cannot just aim and shoot before we know who at least did it, and that requires at least some proof.

now look at their recommendation

[Our second recommendation is that the UPA Government immediately stop installing early warning systems. These systems are intended to detect incoming ballistic missiles and, it is hoped, inform decision makers that nuclear war has begun before the warheads themselves explode. The last few years have witnessed the acquisition of key components of an early warning network, including the Green Pine radar from Israel. There have also been reports of attempts to purchase the Arrow anti-ballistic system. However, as we have calculated in some detail elsewhere, these systems simply cannot offer more than a few minutes of warning in the South Asian context. This is grossly insufficient for decision making in any meaningful sense of the term. ]

They fail to realize that these warning systems can act as another mechanism, that of providing a smoke trail after a strike has occurred. With out such a system, the nuclear capability is worse than useful, Since with out knowing who struck us first we can not act. Remember that we have a no first use doctrine. Which effectively means as a corollary that we are ready to suffer a first strike but who ever struck us will not escape unhurt. Remember that we might have around 45 to 60 nukes, and in all probability they are kept in 20 to 30 different sites, if an early warning system gives info that nukes have flown in targeting one or two we can discount it as actual warning as we will still be left with sufficient capability to hurt the enemy. See the example given [In 1995, for instance, a Norwegian scientific rocket launch was interpreted by the Russian early warning system as a possible attack and the matter went all the way up the command chain to President Yeltsin.] This is the typical spurious warning that India need not fear due to the nature of our doctrine, However these warning systems can perform another role too, that of getting the decision making people to safety before the strike, and that is a perfectly valid reason for having them.

  ¶ 1:33 AM 1 Comments

  Asimov again Recently There was a question on the online forum of asimov@orkut on whether we can consider Robots in Asimovian stories Humans This was my answer,

Here is what I feel I believe what constitutes Humaneness of a Human being.

1) Ability to feel wonder and curiosity towards nature. (Central to being a human -what differentiates from lower order, but did the robots have it? That is to feel wonder about things that may not have been of any use to them?)

2) Empathy to other life forms,
Do the robots feel it? Other than sensing that the other intelligent life forms in galaxy might be a threat to humans in the long run, Did it dawn on them to preserve what was different? They did not feel that bond to organisms in earth, which they destroyed, nor did they feel it towards the meme minds and the intelligent life they found in the galaxy, their impulse was to destroy them on the slim thread that they may prove a competition to Human kind.

3) Ability to take Risks (defined as results with more than 50% of the outcome is unknown)

4) To understand your limitations and find workarounds.
Perhaps they did it with the zeroth law, but did they go beyond ? Only one robot propounded the minus one law, but none accepted it.

5) To feel part of society - either human or robotic, Not as masters and nor as servants, but merely as fellow beings. To be able to accord another being privileges based on your good will alone..

6) To value freedom.

7) To have beliefs (irrational or non justifiable convictions) like our belief in god, humanity, soul etc.. Each human has at least some by default,at least we have to expend energy to purge us of it, and even then i am not sure we can purge it.

8) To Love & To Hate

9) To Learn and to Forget

10) To laugh and have emotions

there are lesser ones too but these are the first ten. And remember these are not like robotic laws - universal in their order, each of us have a different order for these things.  ¶ 3:53 PM 0 Comments

  seti At last I got around to making a new account on seti@home,

They had removed my email access from my old account (due to inactivity for some time?) but still continue to list it. I guess I dont have ny other option than to make a new one hope they don't kill it again.
[I am now running it on a sun blade 2k with 2gig ram. :P ]  ¶ 8:22 PM 0 Comments