Mirror Mirror on the Wall

I am from Vijayawada(That implies I watch many movies!)
Point is,When you ask a director, he says his inspirations are the real life characters, After all the media is a reflection of the society they say.. Or is it the other way round?
A lot of debate about Raanjhnaa spurred along the past few months, citing women empowerment how cultural barricades are closing our minds to the free open lifestyle, when a male protagonist is a stalker and also the narrator, the director missed the point that this colours the act of stalking to compel the audience to sympathise with him, thus making his actions ok.. Once they are OK, even for a few, doesn't that send the wrong message through the stratas of the society. Fine! Moving on,Chennai Express, the highest grosser they say, isn't that just humour veiling cultural stereotyping? How many in the South drink, Coconut mein Lassi mila ke? Its as if men there do not wear trousers at all,meaning everyone dons a lungi. Fine the movie is only for 3 hours,laugh and leave then why a game, to perpetuate the effect, huh??! Fine, moving on..

Bangalore exodus and the Muzzaffarnagar incidents recently they all have had one thing in common,the politicians blaming the social media for flaring up the issues! Whether it is a blame or it is the true thing,god knows! But when media can be a weapon that destroys, we have to remember, it can also be a pen that constructs the impossible! The Delhi rape case,got so much of an attention, well.. apart from being outright brutal and happening in a public place, eventually killing the victim, the social media played a very important role in spurring the much needed wake up call to the society! 
What is it to some cities,even diplomatic relations of billions of dollars for some huge countries like Iran are fluctuating in few hours and days because of Social Media, as it is a symbol of openness.

Definitely,what constructs can have the same or even more immense capacity to destroy..
May be it is time schools stop giving a debate topic of 'Is TV a boon or a bane?',only to start 'Is social Media a boon or bane'.. 

The medium changes, but there will always be a mirror that shows us what we are.. To correct ourselves,shunning it will cost the self and not the mirror! If we turn out to be so arrogant and ignorant enough to not heed to  the voice that faces us toward the mirror,then who can save us? Nothing can equal the Media as a friend to the society.. To correct the self or to ignore it is only a moot choice. Because we all beleive that betterment is the only way for tomorrow. As inconclusive as this may be, one thing is for sure.. One reflects the other,the main question remains. Are we ready to learn, or are we still with the quetching or flaunting it as art?!

Cyber Rebirth

It must be because of my graduation and three months of corporate life after that, for all the problems I am studying about right now, I am tending towards a cyber solution, to be frank we need to agree that there is mounting importance in making the two ropes into a knot, for development.

- With growing concerns about ‘privacy’, everyone wants a secure and flashy site, whatever the need be. 

- User Interface grows in importance as the internet users increase in number

In a day of great advances in the Server Technology and Server Protection tactics in the cyber world, it is but an ignominy that an individual could hack eight Indian government sites, all of which after hacking are not of great difficulty to be defaced, keeping in view the stature of the source code it can have. It is of great importance, that in an age where a school kid relies on the internet to complete his homework, the government sites in India are in such a vulnerable situation.

SERVER SECURITY:

India, an emerging power in the field of information technology, known for the number engineers it produces year after year, does not have a decent way of protecting the sites from getting hacked, let alone portraying the services online? How would a customer, with growing awareness for privacy, trust the online services with the sites being so assailable?  Need is that the sites are developed in security and design to appeal to the customers, like the private sector is attracting customers.

As a country producing 3 million new graduates, of which 1.1 million are software engineers, each year, with adept human resources in the field of IT, it is deplorable that when a mere citizen having a Social networking site, page can control with great efficiency the information available about him on the net, the nation is not able to look into checking the number of sites being hacked every day.

Seems like the Technology Vaporware, 2009 could only get down the numbers from 600s to 117. Though a great number progress has been made, for a country like India, with such a stature in Information Technology, the numbers are still high. Most of the government sites take advantage of frames in presenting a large amount of information in a static web page which is vulnerable to the techniques used to gain access to unauthorized information through advanced search queries. Google hacking employs searching sites using special characters, logical operators and operators such as cache, filetype, link, site, intitle, inurl.

Lack of a prescribed procedure for auditing, hosting, maintenance and upgrading of security measures and new advancements can be taken as he main reasons for this.   

·        Government websites and applications have to be audited from the cyber security perspective prior to their hosting and after, on a regular basis, like really strict vigilance.

·        Hosting the websites which haven’t undergone a strict cyber security audit should not be made possible.

·        Immediate action should be taken in upgrading the security of the hosting structure.

·        Alerts regarding the latest developments in cyber crime and how to dodge them.

·        Damage caused by Cross site shifting should be  taken into consideration.

·        Any form of inputs like page headers, cookies, query string, hidden fields used on forms and forms fields used to gather some sort of input from the users should be validated before an update.

DESIGN AND USER-INTERFACE:

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works.

Nevertheless, it is true that what looks good is called ‘attractive’ for a reason. More than 66% of the users give importance to the design and user interface, in a site that provides or vouches for services. Serious thought has to be put in the direction of improving the design and support patterns that are incorporated in various Indian websites, especially those that are into services related to communication. Less number of frames can be incorporated in the website to make them more browser compatible, look wise. Also, for those who say that the ‘Lorem Ipsum factor’ of saying that the design matters only a little, in today’s world one has to realise the importance of design and User Interface compatibility to an average customer. When the appearance causes a deep veneration and presentation remains good, also as long as one can place trust in the security systems only then can one want to be a customer.

Though impossible to negate the hacks in total, a dedicated capacity of efforts has to be put into this area not only to protect the government sites from being hacked, but also to improve the reliance of the people on the public sector sites for information and services.

Yellow Journalism | Prohibit Pulitzer or A Riot against Randolph?

39,775 newspapers

4,207 dailies
14,00 telivision stations
India: The second largest market in the world for newspapers


After waking up late and reading the Newspaper for some time, I was really keen on doing something fun to make up for my extremely lazy weekend that summer all I could come up with, is some junk food by my side and a remote control!! :D Seee.. You are right.. Television! :D is the only thing that comes to mind.. right?

Huh.. Wait for it..
That was not the first time I heard of a criminal offense in the city, but.. Butchering is what we can call, pestering an already chafed and galled mother, Tears streaming down her cheeks, refusing to stop, of
the utterly agonizing murder of her eumoirous daughter, with unending questions for that was what I see when I was lazily scanning through those news channels. The controlled tears brimming in her eyes asked several questions.. Her tears, went unanswered!

'Bing!!'
There.. I commute to a safer zone frustrated with the urge to find something soothing.. Eventually ending up with those channels which are least bothered even if the third world war is about to commence, and all that matters is a spouse's distress in a daily serial which is not even remotely TRUE!! What we see is a young lad challenging his so-called-mentor (who are never, surprisingly, taken-aback) about his skills, everything that shows his disrespect and overconfidence which comes to a young lad whenever there is a corrected ego as a result, masquerading his actual reason of being there! Couldn't take it any longer..

That is it! There is a 'Bing!!' Here again!!
To yet another station which interestingly anchors.. Of how they sold their soul to the craving before mutilating innocence!

Lol things?? Haha! There was this ‘one n half hour’ program on a celebrity’s marriage and his affairs!! Yeah, admirers would want to know personal details.. But one n half hour?!!! Come on!! And may be if I waited, they would have spoken about many other ‘sensational’ things. So, when you wonder why someone on the TV says they spoke to Obama aide and that aide said Obama will drop out soon, just remember what Yellow Journalism is. When you want to know why MSNBC trashes Hillary, dismiss it as move on and don't give in to the "shock value" that drives what they report and how they report it.

Need less to say, A country with the second largest market in the world for newspapers, that country which ranks 4th in the list of countries by number of television broadcast stations, is no exception, invigorated by the Yellow fever! Lack of good is not what a person is complaining about!! Ethics! Lack of ethics is what is being questioned here!!

There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil, is something that was long forgotten by the media that is now suffering with the yellow fever.. "Yellow journalism" (The Spanish American war did not teach anything! No aversive stimulus! Rather promised a reward’!! ) Today, the most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust. A free press will either be good or bad but a press without freedom is nothing but bad. Well if 'freedom' was understood as sensationalism, distorted stories, and misleading images for the sole purpose of boosting newspaper sales and exciting public opinion. A small voice in my head says.. 'Sorry, we are not for it!' (Conveniently unheeding the other instincts)

Meanwhile, the TRP ratings for all those 'Bing!!!s' reach a sky-high value... I don't pause and say "Uff!!! Audience!!" ( Wanna add more?! ) Ratings=Money that's what it is all about.We talk about a free press. They hide, behind the slogans of free press make a lot of money, they can come out with any crap. It's an insult to the readers.

They make us believe things.
The first search result on Google India for ‘Trust in media’ is
“Don’t trust Indian Media!” (Yeah, ‘with’ an exclamation!!!)
It is still the same, they make us be’LIE’ve things.

What is to be done? Prohibit Pulitzer?? Riot against Randolph?? Haahh!! Why not conveniently go for the 'None of the above' option? Now, all of sudden after so many years of yellow fever, A HRC comes up to realize the violation of the Human Rights 'in every aspect', yet giving an open chance to the respective TV channel managements to discuss on the verdict delivered by Commission which ofcourse obviously goes into the list of the conveniently tackledtaboos.. Quest to impute someone?? The media? The system? Or the audience?? Whom?? Or may be.. I let myself go for the 'None of the above' again... Slyly raking through those 14,00 options infront of me for something that is less disturbing... Or may be, thought provoking!! Well, if this is the case.. How many of you chose none of the above??
BREAKING NEWS!!! ??? When they begin to look like the rest of them, It's hard to pull them back. Astray. Dismiss it and move on, and don't fall for it. I think we're all smarter than this. But deep down somewhere, I know.. Someday Sometime.. I ll find another option and I ll choose that, to make a change! The ungratified mind rants.. Though clearly ignored...
Bing!!!