Igniting Social Change

E-mail retrieval is becoming increasingly expensive in today’s world. The expense is incurred by the receipient rather than the sender. The expense is more in terms of loss of time, bandwidth & productivity.

Spam filters are merely a workaround to solve this problem. Research projects such as Penny Black project are aimed at resolving the spam problem by attacking the root cause.

In a nutshell, the idea is this: “If I don’t know you, and you want to send me mail, then you must prove to me that you have expended a certain amount of effort, just for me and just for this message.”  The approach is fundamentally an economic one.  Suppose we measure effort in CPU cycles.  Since there are about 80,000 seconds in a day, a computational “price” of just ten seconds per message would limit a spamming computer to at most 8,000 messages daily. So spammers would have to invest heavily in hardware in order to send high volumes of spam.

Four Stanford undergraduates, under the supervision of Dan Boneh, implemented the computational approach using a very simple proxy architecture. The research component of this project is largely complete & the researchers continue to investigate how these ideas might be realized in practice.

Reference
http://research.microsoft.com/research/sv/PennyBlack/demo/index.html
http://research.microsoft.com/research/sv/PennyBlack/
 

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Chak De SCG

Yesterday I watched Chak De - a recent bollywood box office hit. Good movie, the screenplay could have been better, the dialogues needed a bit more power, and the end was not really upto the mark. But definitely the storyline was unique and the sole reason the movie has done really well.

Chak de is about Indian Womens hockey team winning the world cup, it is apparently inspired by a real story. Hockey is India’s national game but does not get the money or sponsorship as CRICKET, which is the mass favorite. The coach played by Sharukh Khan - plays a tyrant coach to unite the team against him. Sharukh’s severe training schedule gets the team united against him, till they realize that his strategy and finally go on to win the Womens world cup.

What we can learn from Chak De??

The story tells us that teamwork can help us achieve the impossible. The important thing is to be united in all circumstances, work collectively towards your goal, first for your country (organisation), then for your teammates, and if you still have some energy left, work for your own pleasure.

It tells us that if you are selfish, then you maybe working against your own team, since opponents may notice this and exploit this weakness.

Everyone is equal and will get an opportunity to showcase his or her talent in the team. Everybody gets a chance to stand out, never mind if you are not in limelight now, do your duty, and appreciate others, the goodwill will help you achieve the impossible and scale new heights.

I think we can learn a lot from Chak De, after all SCG is not a proven concept, its an opportunity, for the nation, for the society and for the world, and ofcourse for you. The only way we can succeed is by teamwork.

Watch Chak De..! Enjoy

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Although the concept of CSR has been developing since the early 1970s, there is no single, commonly accepted definition of CSR.  Below we provide some examples of CSR definitions.
 
“CSR is defined as operating a business in a manner that meets or exceeds the ethical, legal, commercial and public expectations that society has of business. CSR is seen by leadership companies as more than a collection of discrete practices or occasional gestures, or initiatives motivated by marketing, public relations or other business benefits. Rather, it is viewed as a comprehensive set of policies, practices and programs that are integrated throughout business operations, and decision-making processes that are supported and rewarded by top management.” Source: BSR
“CSR is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large. (The above definition was developed in 1998 for the first WBCSD CSR dialogue in The Netherlands.)”
(more…)

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Well in what people call “news”, IBM has agreed to support Solaris on its x86 platform. But for me this is’nt a great deal.Why would somebody run solaris on IBM x86, IBM must have asked SUN to port solaris on to IBM mainframes. IBM is for sure a better deal maker than Sun.

Windows running on Sun boxes, V40Z, V20Z e.t.c. Sun’s x86 series…was also a shock. The first time I heard somebody was installing windows on a Sun box, I ran into the data center to find this thin 1 U (v20z) server, and later saw Windows 2003 on the T6400 e.t.c. So is hotmail still on solaris?? or is it on windows installed on sun.

Sun is upbeat this week, google has started packaging its StarOffice into google pack. I dont know how this helps SUN, unless google has paid Sun a royalty.

Also big news for open source followers, xensource is in the process of being aquired by Citrix. However Xensource CEO has said that his company will abide by the commitment to all vendors.

The market these days seems to love to shock people..!

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A SCG online meet was held mainly to finalise the website design and also involve any potential members so as to give them a feeling of how SCG virtual community gets work done.

Timings : 20:00 - 21:40 hours IST (Meeting extended a couple of minutes beyond schedule)
At around 09:30 - 10:40 CST for US members.
 
The agenda was

Introduction session for prospective members.

We had just one prospective member participating. Ms. Sharalene Moonjely(SM), has already crossed two levels of her induction into SCG. She’s on her way to become a SCG member soon.

Celebrating sucess, NIMITT and Business Standard.

The members were informed of the media and event coverage SCG recently received.

NIMITT a SP Jain B-school event for technomanagers of tomorrow. Attended by lumanaries from both the industry as well the academic instituions from across the country and students from the B-schools in India. SCG made its prescense by organising a case study contest, which saw participation from 30 teams.

SCG received some good coverage in the business standard, due to the continous efforts from Avinash, who helps SCG with media coverage.

http://www.businessstandard.com/general/storypage.php?&autono=292756

http://www.business-standard.com/general/storypage.php?&autono=292757

SCG Website build status, ideas suggestions, finalization of design.

The consulting section of the SCG website was finalised. Deadlines have been set for submission of SCG content by members.

Brainstorming session for ideas on increasing membership base and bringing in sales.
SM had some creative ideas and we are looking forward for the implementation.

An applause for SCG heroes Nikhil, Jeetendra and Avinash for their hardwork this quarter.

Nikhil for his astounding planning and efforts for SCG @ NIMITT

Jeetendra for his brilliant job of giving our website a new look.

Avinash for helping SCG get the right media attention.

Looking forward to have a longer list of SCG heroes in the coming meets.

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