Technology — No comments
16
Jul 10

Set SSIS variable without using Script Component

I have seen people writing .net script inside a Script Task when they have to set the value of a variable. It is true that there is no dedicated task or mechanism in SSIS to achieve this. I have even seen people writing custom components, just for setting value to a variable. And setting a variable is a basic programming requirement and is often required while developing ETL. And people struggle to do this by using custom components/tasks, Script Task, etc. But there is a small work around to get this done easily.

Remember the simple For Loop Container? It has a “InitExpression” property where you can assign value to initialize a variable, normally the one controlling the iterations. This can be used to set value to a variable. You can set the loop to terminate right after the assignment. I guess this will be faster than the Script Task and it is definitely much more user-friendly than any other methods. Below screen shots explains how to use the For Loop Container. Hope it is self explanatory.

Technology — 5 comments
02
May 10

What is next in web?

I was restless because of this idea for quite a long time now, I have shared this with my close circle of friends and they felt that it’s a good one and hence I am sharing it with you. Let me know what you think.

So what is the idea?

It is about a web platform including a web server, browser and a transfer protocol that can make web applications as powerful as desktop applications and as flexible and scalable as current day web applications. Why do we need that? Because what we have now as web, is not enough!

What is limiting the web now?

I got this feeling that the web is not powerful enough. We can do much better things in web but there are a lot of things limiting our freedom.

It all started as a network through which we can access HTML documents and slowly it added scripting functionalities to make it more and more interactive instead of the plain static documents we were used to. Then we started hearing about the web applications, which changed the way we looked at web. Instead of accessing information in web we were able to do ‘things’ in web, like shopping, collaborating – online. We got platforms like ActiveX, Java and Flash but all this were limited because a user cannot trust the code coming from a remote machine in web and this limited the power of web applications and thus the web itself.

How I came to think about it?

There were times when I had to run programs which were not safe. Like I know that the program is infected with some virus/spyware but I just need to run it once, do something using it and then forget it. But If I run it, it’s surely going to trouble my system in one way or another. So I used to run this kind of programs in a virtual PC (Microsoft Virtual PC, Sun Virtual Box, etc) and once my job is done with the program I simply turn off the Virtual Machine. Nothing is saved to the virtual hard disk and my virtual machine as well as my real machine are safe and as clean as they were before. Sounds good?

Now, I thought of another problem. Why are we limiting the web based client side scripting languages to do less powerful things? Like, most of the time they are run using an interpreter or framework or runtime which allows only a set of predefined functionalities. You cannot write a program in JavaScript that allows some OS functionality because with that much power, people can easily write viruses and the moment you go to such sites your machine will be infected like it was infected with a desktop virus program and you will be in total trouble. That’s why no client side scripting language offer powerful features. If you have power, you can use it for evil things than good and people do that.

What if you have a web browser that allows you to execute C language code on your client side? You can write wonderful web applications using that. You are no longer limited by the inabilities of the client side scripting languages. But how can we make such a browser safe that it will not harm the OS or machine in which the user is opening a web site with possible malware?

Virtualization can provide a solution to this. Instead of running the code on the real machine’s CPU,  we can run it on a virtual machine.

How it works?

When a user requests a web application by typing in the address of the web application in the browser, the browser gets a copy of the application from the web server. It then starts a virtual machine with very limited functionalities, like basic IO (display, keyboard, pointing device, sound subsystem, camera, etc), storage (primary and secondary), network, etc running probably a minimal version of an open source OS. It then executes the downloaded code in the virtual machine. The program has got full power and it will appear to the program that it is running in a real box. The specification of the hardware and software available in the virtual machine will be standardized and common in all the browsers so that web application developers will get standard platform to target on. If the program behaves naughty, the user can turn of the virtual machine through a kill switch provided by the browser and things will be safe.

For each web application requested, a separate instance of virtual machine will be created and applications will be totally disconnected from one another. Each application can have its own virtual hard disk where it can store client side data (much advanced than the storage in cookies and all) and the size of a virtual hard disk will be controlled by the browser software. An application can store both code and data locally. Caching the code in the local storage can improve the experience as it will reduce the slow downs due to network delays. To enhance the caching, programs should be divided in to as many smaller modules/DLLs as possible with proper versioning. Before executing a module of the program, a checksum check can be done against the version at the server and if a match is found for check sum and version, the module need not be downloaded again. This means that, much heavier web applications (in terms of size of code) can be downloaded and executed easily and frequently without any delays. Of course the first time you visit a new site, things will be bit slower but it will be faster for further visits. For requesting the application, checking the version and checksum, etc a new protocol will be required (may be we can call it as Executable Transfer Protocol – XTP ? ). We will also need a web server software which can deliver the particular version of the code a browser requests and do the checksum based sanity check and all.

The browser can be designed cleverly to share common resources used by multiple instances of virtual machines so that the memory utilization is lower. When an application is loaded, a boot loader kind of module will be loaded first which in turn loads other modules as the user interacts with the application and the loaded modules are cached in virtual hard disk. The entire desktop screen of guest OS need not be shown but only the window of the application, just like the XP mode in Windows 7. A call to load a module of the application (like the DLL stub) will be handled by the browser as an interrupt handling and the necessary code will be made available to the application.

What are the benefits?
  • We get web applications as powerful and richer as desktop applications (think of going to hotmail.com and you getting Outlook 2010 running in a couple of seconds, directly from web)
  • Still scalable and flexible
  • Safer than current day web applications
  • All users get the latest version of the software, just like a web application
  • Web developers can program in any language that produces native code which is executable in the virtual machine (most of the desktop applications can be easily recompiled to run as web applications)
  • Code need not be downloaded every time as it is cached locally
  • More data stored locally means applications can manage to run in offline mode as well
What could be the next thing after this?

I have already shared that long back, check out DynaOS.

General / Technology — 3 comments
06
Mar 10

Connect the dots for something good!

I am so happy today, to know that I was able to bring some help to a few who really deserved it. And the interesting thing is that I didn’t have to do much. I just got a confirmation from Deepa Xavier from Prajwala that they got the aid from Google.

It all started when I watched the the TED talk from Sunitha Krishnan about her fight against sex slavery. After the talk, I did some research about her organization Prajwala and I found that they were struggling to build a recue home in Hyderabad for the victims of sex slavery who were rescued by Prajwala. They were about to miss a deadline due to funding issues and I saw that they were accepting donations via a site GlobalGiving.com which charged 15% or something as transaction fee. I offered my help to Prajwaala to find better ways to get donations. I had couple of discussions with Deepa, Sunitha and a friend of mine – Niyaz – and we suggested Google Checkout for accepting donations as it charged the least per transaction and was rather simpler.

As per our advice, they went and applied for Google grant, a program from Google Checkout that will provide free online ads by Google, for non-profit organizations. But they were still in need for a lot of financing, for the rescue home.

Now here is the big turn in the story: On 21st of December 2009, Google announced a gift for a list of selected Google Grant members, an amount of $20 million! The intended recipients list included 25 organizations and Prajwala was at No. 7! WOW… I was thrilled. It came out from nowhere… I sent a note to Prajwala immediately and they were so thrilled to hear the news.

I was following up with Deepa about the aid from Google and today I got a confirmation from her that they got just enough money to build their rescue home.

I can see a play of technology in this story. Like I watched a talk on a site – TED – which was so touching that I decided to do something about it and the least I did was doing a little reading about their activities online – Google – and then I connected them with my friends to get more details on effective ways to get funding via donations; which finally brought them to Google and someone sitting in Google came up with this idea of gift giving and someone put Prajwala’s name in that 25-names-long list and now it’s going to help those people in Hyderabad who have gone through the worst of their lives. There are a lot of dots in the story and it is pretty complicated but interesting how these dots got connected and finally turning in to something really good. I am happy to be one dot.

Though I couldn’t do a big role in this whole story of aid coming from a giant like Google and it helping the lives of 600+ inmates of Prajwala’s rescue home, I feel grateful that I happened to get involved in this. And I believe that if your intentions are good enough, good things will happen, no matter how small is the step that you make. So keep the good work up and “don’t be evil” :)

Technology — 4 comments
23
Feb 10

SQL to wait for running jobs to finish

Below is a simple SQL stored procedure which will wait for running jobs to finish before running another job. This will come handy if you want to set up some dependency between a set or group of jobs. For example, I have some ETL jobs which run in parallel and I need to run some cube processing jobs in parallel after the ETL jobs are done. But these two sets of jobs should not run concurrently as it will cause data anomalies. So before starting a job, I need to verify that no job from the other set of jobs is running.

You can get the status of running jobs using the SP “sp_help_jobs” but it is a bit tricky as it cannot be manipulated by copying to a temp table or something since there are inserts inside SP and nested inserts are not supported. Alternate approach is to use the XP “xp_sqlagent_enum_jobs” which is called from with in the former one. But remember this XP is undocumented and its usage may not be supported in future.

/*
EXEC spWaitTillRunningJobsFinish 'ETLNightlyRun'
*/

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[spWaitTillRunningJobsFinish]
	@WaitForJobs VARCHAR(250)	-- Name prefix of other jobs (Each job category should have some prefix
								-- to identify them)
AS
BEGIN
	SET NOCOUNT ON

	DECLARE @IsJobRunning BIT		= 1
	DECLARE @StartTime DATETIME		= GETDATE()
	DECLARE @JobId TABLE (ID UNIQUEIDENTIFIER)
	DECLARE @job_owner sysname SET @job_owner = SUSER_SNAME()
	DECLARE @XpResults TABLE  (job_id UNIQUEIDENTIFIER NOT NULL,
								last_run_date INT NOT NULL,
								last_run_time INT NOT NULL,
								next_run_date INT NOT NULL,
								next_run_time INT NOT NULL,
								next_run_schedule_id INT NOT NULL,
								requested_to_run INT NOT NULL,
								request_source INT NOT NULL,
								request_source_id sysname COLLATE database_default NULL,
								running INT NOT NULL,
								current_step INT NOT NULL,
								current_retry_attempt INT NOT NULL,
								job_state INT NOT NULL)

	-- Get the Job ID of all jobs for which current job should wait
	INSERT INTO @JobId
	SELECT job_id ID
	FROM msdb.dbo.sysjobs
	WHERE name LIKE @WaitForJobs+'%'

	WHILE @IsJobRunning = 1 AND DATEDIFF(MINUTE,@StartTime,GETDATE()) < 30 -- Time out is 30 minutes
	BEGIN
		-- Delete existing records of run state
		DELETE FROM @XpResults
		-- Get running jobs
		INSERT INTO @XpResults
		EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_sqlagent_enum_jobs 1, @job_owner
		/**************UNDOCUMENTED STORED PROCEDURE**************/

		-- Check if any jobs are in running state
		SELECT @IsJobRunning = MAX(running)
		FROM @XpResults
		WHERE job_id IN (SELECT ID FROM @JobId)

		-- Wait for 1 minute
		IF @IsJobRunning=1 WAITFOR DELAY '00:01:00'
	END
	-- If there are running jobs still, throw error
	IF @IsJobRunning = 1 RAISERROR('Job execution aborted as dependent jobs are still running',16,1)
END
Movies — No comments
13
Feb 10

Tombstone and Doc Holliday

Just watched the movie Tombstone and I was so excited about the experience I had that I decided to write something about it. This is not a review of the movie or anything and I am nobody to write a review on a movie. This is just how I felt about the movie.

Though it is based on a true story I didn’t find anything that much interesting about the movie or its plot but I really liked the characters in it. Specially Doc Holliday. He has got a style that I really enjoyed and I don’t know I felt a deep connection with that character. I was so in to the movie and the character Doc that I answered to Wyatt’s question “for what?” (Wyatt: What makes a man like Ringo, Doc, makes him do the things he does? … What does he need? Doc: Revenge. Wyatt: For what?) exactly as “being born” before Doc spoke those words. I was kind of surprised with this and a bit confused whether my connection was to Doc or Ringo.

I didn’t like Wyatt much. Of course he has got balls but he is sometimes coward or selfish (when he tries to talk his brothers out of policing the town) and he fell for the kind of woman I hate the most, Josephine Marcus. Yes, she is a woman who likes to live her life easy, enjoying, without committed to any man for long but I believe that those kind of women are trouble. A man, may be, can imagine himself falling in love with such a woman or having a relationship with her. But surely he will not be comfortable being born to this world, as her son.

I know a couple of guys like Curly Bill, from my college days and I see them as highly energetic (physical) and extrovert people who appear mad and bad to all around them.This kind generally lack internal courage but have a lot of physical courage.May be they should divert all their energy to something useful or less harmful, like Michael Phelps.

Last but not the least, Ike Clanton, is a common being you can see in your daily life. I have seen many such in my life and let me say, almost every human being is Ike-like but it is just that the ‘level of Ike’ varies from person to person. I have seen Ike-like who are even successful and popular and they show their real character only when they are exposed to a crisis or danger and suddenly people realize them and may start to hate them. But Ike continues to live like normal, later, as if nothing has happened.

Two words to the writer (Kevin Jarre): hats off.

General — No comments
12
Feb 10

Mahindra Satyam/Tech Mahindra recruiting fresh candidates: in a ridiculous way

I received this forwarded email (see the picture below) from a friend of mine, which is about a recruitment process about to finalize in Satyam. I went through it and found it really ridiculous. The email looks like it’s from Tech Mahindra but upon a detailed look in to it you can see that it is for Satyam. Though Satyam was bought by TM there is still a difference in status between TM and Mahindra-Satyam.

I am a former Satyamite and I was with the organization during the Raju crisis. I decided not to leave the sinking ship and did my best to support the organization to survive the crisis and tried to help all my fellow Satyamites who were in trouble. But the response I got from the organization was quite disappointing and finally I had to move out. I faced a lot of trouble when I switched my job, just because of the organization I was working for. Though it was clear that an employee like me can do nothing to prevent scams played by high level management, the recruiters really exploited the opportunity to deny me a good pay package. I remember the words from an HR “you are a skilled resource, but you are from Satyam and this is what we can pay you”.

The campus recruitment email states that it is looking for students with good academic records, from the 2008/09 batch and on joining they have to sign a bond for 100K INR for 2 years and they will be paid an annual compensation of 290K INR.

This is ridiculous, for a deceased company like Satyam to put such conditions on candidates looking for a good career in a good organization. Instead of taking this offer, candidates can better put that money in real estate or stocks and do some other job or business with the time that they are having. That will be much more wiser. As far as I can see, Satyam is not offering anything at all. After 2 years, what these freshers will have is a brand name that they cannot be proud of, some unhealthy experience and not much in earnings. And what Satyam is getting is a fresh work force for the cheapest price you can imagine. Hire 1000 freshers, get a credit of 100,000,000, pay them 290,000,000-variable pay(10-30% usually) in 1 year and make good amount of money using them, for 2 years (if you leave before that you will not get the 100K deposit back). In plain simple language it is a very profitable business for Satyam and the candidates get almost nothing.

I know that denouncing your previous employer is not good thing to do, but I seriously doubt if they have learned anything at all from their mistakes. So I recommend all job seekers who read this, not go for this offer. You can do better things with your time.

General / Technology — 2 comments
21
Dec 09

SSN in India

[ This is an archive of an online discussion I started in Google Wave. You can find the original discussion in Wave by searching “with:public SSN in India” ]

SSN in India

Yes in India we still do not have Social Security Number. I like to discuss here with you, everything about implementing SSN in India. I had this idea about implementing SSN in India to fight the corrupted governance system here, using technology. I have dreamed about its benefits for long. Recently an article sent by a friend of mine encouraged me to start this discussion here in wave as I believe that SSN project should have maximum participation from its beneficiaries. Here is the link to the article [http://pragoti.org/node/3686], I suggest you to go through it first before participating in this discussion.

This is a discussion, not a post. So please contribute. Also check the PS for rules.

What is SSN

In the United States, a Social Security number (SSN) is a nine-digit number issued to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary (working) residents. Its primary purpose is to track individuals for taxation purposes. In recent years the SSN has become a de facto national identification number.

SSN in India will help to determine uniqueness of all individuals within the territory of India

The SSN can achieve through technology what politics has been unable to in independent India.

What are the benefits?

  • Government aid will reach its beneficiaries direclty. No exploitation by middle men
  • Collection of tax will be efficient; income tax dept expects a 400bn INR more per year through SSN.
  • Your thumb act as your identity.
    No need to provide supporting documents when applying for anything. All information is available online (for example, credit history for banks). Likely to benefit the poor who are often caught in a cyclical process of verification of records.
  • Low crime rate
    Since the SSN enrolls for life, it will force people to keep their record clean.

Do you think that SSN can help India fight poverty and corruption?

What are the fears?

  • Privacy
    Once the SSN system is in place, it would be possible to track an individual. Though the SSN plans to record a small set of data fields, it is possible to pile on more data fields onto a record without the knowledge of the record-holder.
  • Vendor lock-in
    The scale of the project is very large that it may happen like we may have to depend on the same vendor for maintenance as well as enhancement of the system. If MNCs are involved they may be able to halt the system in case of a crisis like war.

How to implement?

  • Do we need a card (like a debit card to withdraw money and all)?
    • I think it is better to use the biometrics as the identification mechanism. Instead of issuing new cards to 1bn population it will be easier to implement biometric identification in ATMs, Banks etc
      • If so do we need iris scan or just finger prints, or both?
  • Do we need a middle agent like a Banking Correspondent (BC)?
    • I think that SSN should aim at eliminating any kind of middle agent possible, including BCs as there are chances for exploitation at any middle level by the agent.
  • What all information we need to capture?
    • Compulsory
      • Name
      • Date of Birth
      • Current Address
      • Permanent Address
      • Gender
      • Father’s/ Mother’s/ Guardian’s Name and UID Number (for infants and minors)
      • Photograph
      • Prints of all 10 fingers
      • Retina scan/ Iris (decision yet to be taken)
    • Optional
      • Email
      • Phone
      • Landline
      • Mobile
  • What should be the limit/extent of usage of SSN?
    • I think it should be used to the maximum extent possible. Like even for ticketing, shopping, etc. This will not only help in preventing crime, black market but also help people to do business in a better way. People may raise a concern that privacy is compromised. Of course privacy should be respected and there should be some means to get it done. Again, my policy about secrecy/privacy is that, if you do not want others to know, do not do it.
  • How to capture the data?
    • May be we can start with migrating data from existing systems like NSR (National Skills Registry)
    • May be we can start fresh discarding all existing collected information
    • Collect data in a Wiki mode, verify later using some agency
  • How to update information?
    • User should be able to update his information through a web site or via an agent and this should be verified later.
    • For things like current address, I think there should not be a verification process. But items like permanent address should be verified.
  • Is it a good idea to use a “verfied” flag against items like Address and Date of Birth?
  • What technologies to use?
    • Storage
    • Presentation
    • Interface with other systems
  • Open source or proprietary software?
    • Open source will be the first answer by anyone. But is it feasible to design and develop a system of this scale using available open source s/w?

What would be the cost?

What ever is the cost I guess we can afford it

How long will it take/how long should it take?

ASAP

Who may go against this project?

  • Those who are benefiting from poverty and corruption
    People in India are poor not because of inefficiencies in governance, but inefficiencies in governance exist because the class interests of India’s ruling elite needs to keep people poor and deprived.
  • People who do not want visibility like those who stays in reserved forests, slums, etc
Some of the notable discussions happened are mentioned below.

I have to vehemently disagree with this. There are some spheres of a person’s life that an individual may feel ought to be private, for reasons beyond illegality. I don’t want you to know about my love life, or my political affiliation, or my opinion on certain issues, or what I buy at the supermarket. Not because I’m supporting terrorism, or engaging in the black market, but because I don’t think that Gov’t has a intrinsic right to that information on principal. All in all though, I do support a SSN equivalent in India.

Just for the information of everyone who thinks it will eradicate corruption , all the counties with SSN in place ranks higher than India in overall ranking of corruption. SSN reminds me of the lines in Tata Safari Ad “Slavery is not dead.. you have just stopped recognizing it, when did you agree to always being watched.. your life is not being yours anymore…” this is exactly what I’m going through due to this system in US. It just takes away the freedom.. and something what I like about India is I feel free. SSN is the first step to make a country capitalist. soon your credit history will be associated with SSN and then you live worrying about your credit score.. and it will make everyone slaves. However SSN may help in national security but with the expense of your freedom. I’m totally against anything done to replicate the system in US or another countries
RE: So you are stating that you will prefer to hide your credit history and cheat bankers than letting the poor get government aid? And US is more corrupted than India because things are “systematic” there? I think you should revisit the concepts of freedom and living in a system. Yeah, people love to live in India compared to well developed countries where they have “systems” in place, especially people like Abu Salim. Freedom and privacy do matter but not at the expense of a good life for poor who even don’t know what this means.

And I’m not sure whether US ranks high in corruption because its “systematic”. I didn’t rank them.. Forbes did.. they would be having better statistics than any one of us to rank different countries… and can you explain how all of a sudden poor people will get aid when SSN is implemented.. oh may be world bank will give all the money they have to India when SSN is implemented so they can give aid to all the poor people, regardless of SSN aid remains constant. I have seen people made to beggars because of bad credit history.
RE: US may be ranked by Forbes top in corruption, if considering the volume. But China and India will be still at the top if you consider the spread. In countries like US the hierarchy is vertical when it comes to power distribution and people capable of corruption are few and they do not influence the daily life of an ordinary citizen to a large extent. What they do is bigger games, like robbing governments money through  And I am not talking about paying poor enough money so that can recover in one day time. But I am talking about the efforts made till date to eradicate poverty by allowing them financial aids and how much of it really reached them. It’s not like you implement SSN and pay them large but SSN can make sure that even the small amounts paid will reach them. And if government can take a close look at credit histories of citizens, they can surely decide who needs help.

General / Technology — 6 comments
15
Dec 09

Can we prevent crime, using technology?

[ This is an archive of the discussion I started in Reddit. You can find the original thread here... ]

I watched this talk on TED from Sunitha Krishnan on her fight against sex slavery (youtube link). I was emotionally totally disturbed after watching this talk and I couldn’t get my head out of it.

I have read about rape and other forms of sexual abuse before and a severe pain/anger remained in my mind at the fact that in case where women and children are the victims, they don’t have much to do in diffense as they are physically weaker. I couldn’t agree with this way of nature. I always believed that nature keep the balance of things but not in this.

I am an engineer by profession and I believe that an engineer’s job is to find soultion to complex problems in systamatic way and implement it. Though I couldn’t think of it from the shoes of an engineer because of the emotion involved in, an idea struck my mind after sometime. I feel that the only possibility for a victim to diffend the crime is through getting help from someone else. I have read about equipments which can be used to prevent rape but they are rarely effective and practical. The victim her/him-self cannot do much even with some weapon to protect. The best possibility is to get help from others. Like what are the possibilities that, a woman get no help even after she manages to alarm people nearby and they rush to the place. Clealy if someone can reach the place, the possibilities for the attacker to continue is very low.

So the question is how can she let others know that she needs help. She can cry for help, make use of her phone, etc.. But these are not that effective and in most cases may cause more threat from the attacker in an attempt to silence her, may even result in death. I was thinking about the most practical way to inform all who can help especially people nearby and police. Something like a “Panic button” which if pressed can alarm neighbours and police.

Now the questions are,

  • Can we make such a panic button?
  • Can she really press it?
  • Does this mean she will have to carry it all time?
  • What happens after she press it?

I do not have definite answers for any of these questions but a lot of possibilties which are by the way quite appealing to me.

  • Can we make a panic button?

    • Yes. It should be someting lite, small, easy to carry, wearable electronic gadget that can inform police and all nearby people who are wearing the gadget.
    • To inform the neigbours and polic, it needs some wireless, radio based communication that can operate on low power and long distance: possible. We may use existing cellular networks or even long wave radio as we don’t need to pass lot of information but just a signal to send something like an SOS
    • To inform where to rush to, it needs GPS to give exact coordinates of the victim: possible. GPS chips operating at low power are already easily available in the maket.
    • To start the alarm, it needs a button or may be combination of buttons (like a yellow and red swith to show level of threat). All she needs is to press the button and the device do the rest of the job.
    • To tell neighbours about victim’s location, may be a small display on it show directions to the victim: possible with a elcetronic compass and a small LCD showing an arrow mark to the location.
    • To power the device, may be solar straps (I am thinking about a wrist watch) and kinetics (as in eco drive wrist watche).

  • How does it work?

    • In case of a threat from another human or a mishap a victim press the button. The device broad casts an SOS message with its current location and Serial number of device. Nearby devices can decipher thisi location information and use the display and compass to direct people to location of victim. Recievers at police aid post can pick up the location and serial number from SOS and find out where is help needed and who needs help (by comparing serial number with a database). Police can also get info about the people near by as they automatically broadcast a SOS acknowledment. Police can give directions to neighbours to help the victim till the time police reaches the location. People/police reaches the location and help prevent the attack and secure the victim. It can be made compulsary to wear the device in public, by law, to improve the effectiveness of the system.

  • Can she really press it?

    • I think it will be easier than even making a loud noise or ofcourse using a phone. But the victim should stay consious to do this. If it is in the form of a wrist watch, possibilities of managing a click on the watch is good enough.

  • Does this mean people will have to carry it all time?

    • Yes, there is no other way. But on the other hand we carry a lot of stuffs with us where ever we go, like cell phones, watch etc. So if we can turn a wrist watch to this device it will not be so much a burden to carry it. Surely considering the security it can offer. And if you want to remove it, say when you are home, you can do it using some safe word or someting. For example one can mark the coordinates of one’s home as a safe place where one will not be wearing it (disconnected mode). If the device is removed out side the safe zone say by force, it will send the SOS.
    • People will also need to carry this if they are willing to help one in need or at least their dear ones. The device can alarm not only neighbours and force but a preset list of relatives or friends, may be.

  • What happens after victim press the button?

    • Ones who get the SOS can rush to the scene and help. Police will be informed and they can take necessary action to help the victim as well as prevent the attcker from escaping.
    • Once everyone is aware of this device and if one is wearing one, chances of being attacked will be less.

Apart from preventing rape, this device can prevent any other violent crimes of this sort and it can act as a life saver. For example people can immediately inform the emergency services in case of a mishap, for example a road accident. Chances of pressing a button to making a call to 911 is quite higher. Maybe the device can be used in other forms as well for example to know where your friend are now (like in Google latitude), a social security number, etc Now here is the part where I need help from you.

Below are some notable comments I received.

I don’t like the idea of one more thing to carry around. I have a hard enough time remembering to bring my keys, ID and money with me when I go somewhere. I don’t want one more thing to keep track of. I also don’t like the inherently paranoid attitude I’d have to adopt in order to remember to grab my “rape alarm” and keep it with me at all times. Dragging a device around with me every where I go on the off chance that someone tries to rape or assault me seems kind of crazy.

I think something similar to this actually exists for senior citizens who live alone, to call for help in case they fall or have a dramatic health problem. Also, there are panic buttons on most college campuses at frequent intervals already, though I don’t think it is as common outside of campuses. I don’t really see how having more of these will benefit women, except if maybe the idea of a girl having the button would discourage men from trying to rape them in the first place.

And privacy concerns? Can you imagine the privacy advocates outrage at what would basically be a government run tracking system? And you seriously misjudge the general public if you think that neighbors are going to rush to help. Maybe you feel that your neighbors might come help but in high risk neighborhoods the general attitude is to mind their own business.

For the issue of whether or not it will be activated, perhaps it could be a passive device worn as a belt that when removed by force or without the proper combination will result in activation. Or more complicated maybe it can monitor heart rate, adrenaline levels, etc to automatically activate if there’s some distress.

Great idea, but there needs to be a way to filter false alarms from serious threats. Perhaps a combination of pushing the panic button?

General — 4 comments
08
Dec 09

When advertisement goes totally wrong…

Look at the ad I saw in Facebook from a matrimonial site in India, Shaadi.com. The ad gives us the impression that it is either a dating site or some porn stuff but never gives an impression of a matrimony web site. They (Shaadi.com) are targeting traditional Indians who get married in a very arranged way and of course using the latest of technology. Normally parents do the job of searching a suitable partner for their children. I have no clue how Shaadi.com is going to attract such web visitors through this kind of an Ad. There are a few more erotic Ads from them which I cannot put in my blog anyway…

Ad Goes wrong

Technology — 2 comments
26
Nov 09

How to terminate Lotus Notes?

We have Lotus Notes Office suit in our office and this software crashes often. The irritating part is that once we terminate the process using Task Manager, it may refuse to start again later. I did a little googling and found that there a couple of tools available in net (KillNotes.exe, StopNotes.exe, etc) just to kill/terminate lotus notes in such a way that the next time you run it you don’t face any problems. Though, I was not ready to use these tools as the author information was not that trust-able.  I figured a simple way to terminate the application completely. Just go to Task Manager and terminate all the notes related processes, including nlnotes.exe, notes2w.exe and ntaskldr.exe. This will solve the issue. I am not sure if this is the right method to do it. But it worked fine for me.

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