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India's Cops Meet Technology
TopherTG writes "Do cops told to seize computers to return only with monitors, stapling pirated floppies together or arresting CEOs for their customer's crimes sound familiar? It would in India. Wired is running a rather humorous article on the minglings between cops and techies."
The guy who installed my dad's IT system. We found 2 floppies stapled to a sheet of instructions on how to back up from them...
Do cops [...] arresting CEOs for their customer's crimes sound familiar?
Why yes. It sounds like torrent tracker sites, which host no files, being taken down for the crimes of their users.
Advice to the Indian Authorities:
The best way to search for Hard Disks and other media is with a large and very powerful magnet.
Make sure you download an entire copy of the Internet so you can be sure that what you find is indeed illegal.
Oh, and bounce the computer case around a little bit on the way back to the station. It'll kill any computer bugs still in the system.
your welcome.
-Teiresias
It's cops and robbers, and cowboys and Indians.
You start mixing those up and no telling what might happen.
Garg
Garg
Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
sticker equaling shoddy quality stereotype back in the early 1960's, just before they started to kill American manufacturers.
Yeah, let's laugh at the silly Indians and their computer inexperience, while they start grabbing more and more outsourced IT jobs.
As it will hinge a lot of what can be done with India. They could easily set themselves back a few years if they keep this up and head down this route
...the officer's shoe licks you?
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
1. Outsource IT department to India.
2. Department computers siezed by Indian government containing US customer info.
3. Indian government now has full access to the detailed financial, demographic and medical information of US citizens.
But damn, they sure do know how to reinstall Windows.
India Tech Support: "Sounds like your harddrive is broken. Please find it and staple it with your receipt and sent it to..."
Customer: "Which part is the hard drive?"
India Tech Support: "It's the screen part, where the flashy picture thing comes up"
The files are in the computer?
Sounds like these guys should talk to Hansel & Derek.
Hansel: "The files are IN the computer."
Zoolander
90% of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at.
I don't find an ignorant police force beating confessions out of people with a belt that humorous.
Michael.
Linux : Mac
Maybe the cops should outsource?
"The passport official who checks your passport does not go abroad. The cop to whom you go to register a credit card misuse does not own a credit card. If a cop is in no position to own a computer, how can he fight cybercrime?"
that seems like a pretty weak argument. granted a non-computer user (read: cop) may not be able to tell a harddrive from a computer case (still synonymous to some people), that doesn't mean that he can't be given instructions on it. I doubt cops *always* know what they are dealing with but that's what makes their job interesting.
i don't know how a car works yet i still use it on a daily basis.
This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
I assume you just forgot...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
In other news:
Those goofy Westerns who cant even figure out how to use a non-western toilet in the rest of the world!
Video at 10:00
I bet there are a lot of broken coffee cup holders in the Indian police stations.
...so long as you do it right. 5 1/4 " floppies are square, the media inside is circlular.
The surface area of the floppy is about 27.5 square inches. The circular media is inscribed within the square, and can be no bigger than 21.5 square inches.
That leaves about 6 square inches that is safe for stapling.
Hmmm... about 6 inches... where have I heard that before?
This once happened with a fairly elderly person (EP) in my friends office while swapping PC monitors ....
the EP asked "can u pls transfer data on the desktop now"
Striving to be common...
I see a great opportunity for tech consultants! Just think: you could spend your days explaining what the Internet is to a bunch of uncaring government politicos. Hey, wait, I don't even have to leave the US!
Don't use the Troll mod just because you disagree with me.
I hope everyone realizes the issue at hand is rampant poverty not blatant stupidity. The west is infusing money into India's economy but the money isn't really spreading to everyone, just the techno-elite. I'm not saying that it could or should be spread evenly because the population is so enormous, but think about the situation India is in before you judge and mock.
Personally I think this is just a transient period while the country adjusts. What will happen down the road? Probably even wider economic disparity.
Once you get up to a high speed, be sure to press all pedals at once - that will make you go even faster. In addition, you need to turn the wheel really fast and hard any time another vehicle approaches in the opposite lane. This will scare away any crash demons that might try to take over your car.
Hope this helps!
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
It seems to me that 'modern' 3.5 inch floppies wouldn't lend themselves to stapling very easily. This makes me wonder -- is it common in India to use the old 5.25 inch or 8 inch floppies? For the youngsers out there, these were truly floppy, as both disk and enclosure were flexible, unlike the rigid plastic casing on the 3.5 inch floppies.
This is Jon Katz quality reporting. Stapled floppies containing pirated software? Two years ago? Nonsense. Even in the thirdest world places of the third world, there is no way anyone was using 5.25 or 8 inch floppies two years ago. And certainly not to hold application software.
This is just a racist jab at "those comical brown fellows".
Apple needs to establish themselves in India, last time I checked it's hard to sieze just the monitor from an iMac.
Some people just have no business messing with technology. If you can't understand it, or don't know if something is a good idea, maybe you shouldn't do it... It would seem to be common sense not to staple a floppy to something if it's data is to be used as evidence. Maybe this was a joke and taken out of context? I can't believe that human being could be that ignorant. Then again, maybe they are being forced to do their jobs without the proper training since their managment is trying to cut the cost of training.
Fatal Error, no keyboard present. Press F1 to continue.
yup, most indian cops are still on the learning but remember the ones who do the dirty work of confiscating stuff get paid ~$100 per month and don't know anything about a computer forget internet and storage (floppy).
It would also be a wise idea to first check the tech horror stories of the 80s in the us and uk before making fun of indian cops..
if you are so much against india and the tech support that we provide then stop using these products and start using "prouly made / supported in the us" products.. don't whine.
- dhawal
.....yep, US tax return processing is also outsourced to India (if not other countries as well)
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
No you you've got it .. backwards
Damn, i couldn't resits.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
A bill to regulate the transmission of personally identifiable information to foreign affiliates and subcontractors.
I agree that police brutality is not funny. But in the next paragraph, we learn that both people involved were subsequently hired. I know it's not ironic because nothing on Slashdot is allowed to be, but it is incongruous.
*WHAM* *THUD* *pained groan*
"So, we'd like to tender an offer for employment. The physical abuse was just some playful hazing and the people ordering it have been sacked, drawn and quartered."
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I agree. Not being a Computer Expert doesn't make you stupid.
I'm sure many people here don't know much about Fine Art or Knitting or something, and that doesn't make them stupid, either.
Their jobs aren't to work with computers, so whilst it is 'okay' to laugh at their mistakes, we mustn't mistake them for stupid.
- Jax
That's great, but stop calling me Frankly.
Wow. Only Jan 6th and we've had 4 wired articles posted to the frontpage this year already. Did they give the slashdot eds subscriptions for xmas or something?
The only story that hasn't been linked is the fake "Suck My Tiny Yellow Balls" story everyone else is running. See here, here, and here for a moderatly funny nintendo/microsoft jape.
But seriously... enough wired articles!
0daymeme.com: Great stuff.
Providing it has a long enough tongue, then yes.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
But you see...
It isn't irrelevant to them. It is their job to know what they are doing, and they don't.
They are trying to enforce old school rules in a way that doesn't make sense in modern times.
The fact that, since the DeCSS trials, they consider it to be the same, is scary. Fortunately, they're largely being sensible and giving warnings first to people who aren't repeat offenders.
That said, people like SuprNova and LokiTorrents are on shakier ground. Part of the basis of torrents is the veracity of the link. I do not believe it is possible for me to post a bittorrent to a file and then have someone change the file type, as may happen with web links. I would actually say that the case here is closer to, say, providing your office building's security plans to burglars. You know damn well that they're up to no good and therefore you're in collusion. You're not technically stealing anything but you're also not innocent of complicity. That said, I see it as a lesser crime and therefore deserving of a lesser penalty, much like how "aiding and abetting" tends to be less severe than the actual crime.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
...is the difference between +4, funny and 0, redundant
The issue is ignorance. Ignorance is oft curable. Stupidity is for life. The permanance of poverty you may take on faith or not.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
It's cops and robbers, and cowboys and Indians.
You start mixing those up and no telling what might happen.
Add a construction worker and a sailor and you might end up ruining every school dance in the country.
This is not flamebait. this is largely true. I know, I am a resident Indian.
If you could come in on Sunday, that would be great, mmmkay?
Shortly after his report, the povincial government contracted out almost all of it's information services, accounting, payroll, health billing, family services information, drivers licenses, car licences, etc, mostly to american companies or subsidiaries of american companies.
What's so strange about this? I hear the same thing from investers all the time!
I wish that official had been managing my stock portfolio in 2001....
It was posted one minute after its (+3, Funny) predacessor. Because he took the extra time to stick in that bold tag, he's going to lose karma. Is that fair?
You need some crack? You can get it from a guy with a red hat standing on the corner of 15th and K.
Can I now be charged with distributing also? What amount do you charge me with selling? How ever much he has with him or how ever much he sold since I told you where he was? What if I use different wording to describe the exact same thing.
CAUTION, I saw the idiot with a red hat at the corner of 15th and K selling crack, he must be stopped, please avoid him at all costs and call the cops!!! Can I be charged for that also? I still told you where you could get it.
The law is not as cut and dry as you think it is.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Anyhow, magic smoke is the air elemental let out of computer chips when they fry. See? Alchemy did prove something scientifical!
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Yeah, because torture is always so funny.
Really, did anyone read the whole article?
Hint: If this had happened in the US or Europe, slashbots would be up in arms. But it happened to "oh, those quaint indians" and suddenly it's funny.
...obviously has never called Dell tech support. I've had to call them twice for a broken power supply, so I know. I completely endorse and support the modded-down comment.
When India gets their own equivalent of Sony and JVC to boost the quality of their products we'll be in trouble.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
On the one hand, it is possible to staple 3.5" floppies together, although a bit of a challenge. And on the other hand, I only dragged the last of my department's users off 5.25 floppies in summer of 2003... and this at a respectable US state school. (Of course, none of the school maintained labs have had a 5.25 since 1994, but not all of the users migrated their old data when the drives started vanishing.)
There's still a few floppy, flimsy, and flappy (3.5, 5.25, 8) users out there, but thank Ghu they're getting rarer.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I was thinking that I guess you can see humor in it so long as it's far, far away (not the beatings, but most of the story). But if I lived in India, I seriously doubt I'd see anything humorous in this, if I was involved in any way with either high tech or the police. Or passports. Or driving. Come ti think of it, nobody would find it humorous except, perhaps, some anti-technology type longing for the good old days before the UK showed up. But they probably wouldn't hear about it.
>Those goofy Westerns who cant even figure out how to use a non-western toilet in the rest of the world!
Video at 10:00
Ummm.. I would hate to be exposed to video of people failing at using a squat toilet.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
But the Fine Art of Knitting is not essential to most peoples daily lives. On the other hand many (most?) people must use a computer as part of their job.
There is a certain basic level of understanding that everyone who uses computers should have in regards to computers just like there is a certain basic understanding that everyone who drives a car should have in regards to automobiles.
If you are going to drive a car you should know that it needs to have its oil changed every "X" number of miles, you should know when and how to turn on your hazzard lights. You should know how to open the trunk and you should understand all the basic rules of the road. You don't need to be an automotive engineer or even a mechanic but in order to keep yourself and everyone you share the road with safe you should have a firm grasp of all the basics.
The same applies to computers. If you use computers everyday; I don't care if you are a secretary, an accountant, whatever, you should know the basics. You don't need to be a computer scientist or even a run of the mill geek but in order to keep yourself and everyone you share the internet with safe you should have a firm grasp of all the basics.
Homer's on the sub and then the Captain started the song:
:X
IN THE NAAAAAAAAVYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
and there was from what I recall an american indian , a cowboy and Smithers! That's close enough. I dare not to imagine what would happend if we added cops and robbers
We're both kind of guilty of only targetting a particular part of each others' arguments. When you used "linking," I think you were referring exclusively to the direct linking to files, specifically torrent files whereas I initially responded thinking "link to a website" as in the DeCSS case and 2600 and probably didn't properly fix things up to show that I was thinking a more broad sense of links.
With a bittorrent link, yes, I would be pretty definitely liable unless I were linking blindly to files, in which case I'd just be ignorant and probably deserving of being punished. With a regular weblink, I might link to her MP3 recitation of "Love's Labor Party's Loss.MP3" and then she puts up a file with that name containing Britney Spears' latest hit. There, I linked in good faith, but the content was changed. With torrent files, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to change the destination file. (I think I remember someone posting here about how to break the hash, so I won't say impossible)
That said again, the torrent tracking sites were duly warned and it was only when they kept at their wicked course that they were prosecuted. I think that's fair. *wry grin* Admittedly, those warnings, when used with ISPs like Adelphia, can mean your contract is abruptly severed because they want to avoid legal trouble whether or not the complainers own the files in question... *grumble* Ok, so I'm still a bit bitter, but I'm digressing. Different kinds of links and torrents are awfully hard to be accidentally linking to illegal material.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
And not everyone enforces cybersecurity and other law pertinent to computers. But I don't think I'm going out on a limb here when I suggest that people enforcing those laws should know their way around a computer pretty well.
I think the guy with the article might need a bit of clueing too. To make the point that a part of India is very technically advanced, he calls it "the Taj Mahal of outsourcing."
The Taj Mahal is a TOMB!
Some cops just seize everything remotely relevant to the warrant. They aren't stupid. It's easier to just take everything. It punishes the target of the warrant and disrupts their life/business. Why bother with a trial?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I live in Pittsburgh, tried this and failed. I think I should move to a more metropolitan City, like Mumbai!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
"The site does host files, and those files are used for the sole purpose of unauthorized downloading of copyrighted material"
(a) Who put those files there? Was it the tracker site or their user?
(b) Did the tracker site make any illegal copies (i.e. was anyone's copyright infringed by the site?)
(c) Is referring to something the same as making a copy of it?
Some of them have started using the Simputer. The relavent news starts from the Managing Traffic paragraph in the article
>> Techflock-flock onto the best bits of technology
From the Article "The cop who checks your car license does not own a car," said Raghu Raman, who heads an information security firm called Mahindra Special Services Group. "The passport official who checks your passport does not go abroad. The cop to whom you go to register a credit card misuse does not own a credit card. If a cop is in no position to own a computer, how can he fight cybercrime? The field cop (and) the beat constable live in another world."
'No where USA' has the same problems. I can remember back in the 80s when I had a user on my BBS that crashed the BBS on purpose. He was working on his PHD in Physics at RICE and was bored. I didn't know that at the time though. I tried to get Friendswood, TX Police involved. It took an eternity to get them to understand what the crime was and then they were so happy to have the first computer crime. Long story short the cops didn't know anything about computers and we ended up catching the guy by a plain old wire tapped phone call.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Isnt it funny how this people in this country dont understand technology that is largely irrelevant to them?
I was not aware that basic technology was not relevent to police forces charged with investigating cybercrime. What an interesting viewpoint. I suppose DEA agents have no reason to learn anything about drugs either.
Finkployd
The law is cut and dry. You're either innocent or guilty. If you know someone is dealing illegal drugs and you didn't alert the proper authorities, then you're guilty of aiding and abetting. Period.
Whether or not the police would try to charge you with anything, or a jury would convict you, or a judge throws you in jail is a whole different matter. The law is binary, the application of the law has infinite possibilities.
Sony boosts quality of products?!
The story begins in punchcard days at one of the major mainframe companies (UNIVAC or IBM). A new release of software was shipped from the U.S. to France in the form of a large deck of punched cards. Upon arrival, the deck is loaded on the reader and the whole thing crashes. A second deck is shipped to the eagerly awaiting customer (remember, this was before overnight shipping) and the mainframe crashes again, but in an entirely different manner. The customer is frantic so it is decided (possibly after a few more iterations) to send an employee to babysit the delivery.
All goes well until the deck hits Customs. It turns out that Paris had recently declared punchcard decks to be a bulk commodity (until then, there'd been no category to descibe them). This category includes things like shipments of grain, goose down, or reams of blank paper. Standard procedure calls for taking a small sample from each shipment and filing it away just in case there's a later question about the quality or identity of the goods.
This means that the customs inspector would examine the card deck, verify it was what the manifest claimed it was, and then take two or three cards at random from the stack and carefully file them with the appropriate paperwork. Basically, they were removing 80 characters at a time from each release in random chunks.
In the end the procedure was fixed. Presumably, though, the missing cards are still sitting in an archive somewhere in Paris, stapled to yellowing customs forms.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
who really gives a shit about thier slashdot karma
People who don't post anonymously?
Ok so people stop replying saying the same thing, I understand what your saying and that IS what i'm saying....what the ARTICLE said or implied was that the reason cops couldnt fight computer crime was cuz they couldn't afford computers. What I (and you) am saying is that you don't have to own something to understand it.
I work at a production company (television, internet video, corporate video, etc.). In one of our offices, there is a laptop connected to an external monitor and keyboard. All the parts of this setup are visible on top of the desk. The laptop belongs to Boss A, although more than one person has access to it. One day he was out of town on business, so he disconnected the laptop and took it with him, leaving the monitor and keyboard on the desk.
Boss B came into the edit suite later that day and proceeded to have this conversation with me:
Boss B: "I can't get that computer in the office to start up."
Me: "Didn't Boss A take the laptop with him on his business trip?"
Boss B: "Why does it matter where the laptop is?"
Me: "Well, the monitor in there is just a screen... Without the laptop, there's no actual computer hooked up to it."
Boss B: "Oh, so it's a hard drive thing, then, is it?"
It's not the people who have no access to computers and don't understand them that scare me. It's the people who use computers every single day and still don't manage to learn anything about them that I find so frightening.
Only today did I have to explain to Boss B how to cut and paste a link into her web browser. I fear for the fate of humanity.
If their job is to fight "cybercrime" (i.e. stuff that's illegal anyway but sounds more glamourous when done with a computer involved) then their job is to work with computers! They can be considered stupid if they try to do a job they are not trained for, without either trying to learn more or realizing they can't do it.
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Um no, that is 100% wrong. You are not ever required by law to rat out anyone who is doing something illegal. Now, if the cops ask you and you refuse, and they CAN PROVE you know exactly the answer they are looking for, you can be prosecuted. Otherwise they can't do anything.
Except for saying "return" instead of "returning", it is grammatically correct. It is a complex construct and requires some intelligence or effort to understand.
30 years ago Sony was one of the companies responsible for the increase of the quality in Japanese products.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Wherever you have red tape government agencies in countries notorious for being too by the book, you get this when new technologies surface.
In Egypt there were similar funny stories about police when enforcing intellectual property rights in the mid 1990s.
They were confused on how to validate that you have a valid Windows license. At some point, owning a genuine Microsoft manual, or having the original CD, or having the holographic license would be valid licenses.
In theory, one can then have one license applied to three machines. A relative of mine asked the officer that question, and as I recall, the officer said Yes.
I don't know the situation now, but bungling things is part of the learning process (i.e. culture shock) they have to go through.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Well, I'll grant you it wasn't the perfect example of aiding and abetting, but it wasn't originally my example it was the GP's. The only point I wanted to make was that the *law* is always cut and dried, it's the way the law is applied that introduces the shades of grey. Using the example you cited the cops might have an air tight case that proves you lied to them, but the original offense you lied about might be so trivial as to not make it worth the effort to prosecute.
According to India Information Act "publishing, transmitting, or causing to publish any information in electronic form, which is obscene." is a criminal offense.
Now the "causing" part could mean anything anybody from the actual poster to ISP to CEO of a website. The Indian police interpreted it a certain way.
I have heard that this confusion is causing some concern among cybercafé owners as they are afraid that they can be held for "causing".
That's very likely the case in the US. Though, all the other people checking your (now digital) passport with assorted wireless receivers or reverse-engineered wireless transcievers probably don't go abroad either.
Mind you, India did get one thing right. If Apple can block alternatives to iTunes, Instant Messenger companies can block clone writers, Amazon can patent the clicking of a button, and British Telecom can even TRY to patent hypertext, then the Internet really isn't much of a credible mechanism for commerce.
To this day, the vast majority of Intetnet commerce doesn't require the use of digital signatures from the user or digital certificates from the client machine. This makes it very hard to prove that transactions ever really took place. There is simply nothing to show that the user is who they claim they are. There's only a mix of trust and hope.
America is not the only country with absurd rules and farcical implementation. The UK isn't much better. Attempts to log seven years worth of IP packets over every ISP network were only shot down when it became obvious nobody was going to try and implement the law. The mere impossibility of compliance was never a factor. (Every ISP still has to log who accesses the network, in case it is ever marginally relevent to any court case.)
There's also the decryption law, in which anyone who fails to produce a decryption key for a supposed encrypted document can be charged with a crime. True, there must be a reasonable suspicion they actually have such a key, but that's only because the Home Secretary was bombarded with encrypted e-mails he couldn't decrypt or provide a key for. The law, then, was changed to avoid looking stupider than they already did. It had nothing to do with the acceptability of the law itself.
Mind you, the stupidity isn't all one way. The courts in Britain ruled that the hacker who broke into Prince Philip's e-mail account in the 80s didn't commit a crime because the equiptment for breaking and entering (the password) only existed in the computer's memory briefly and therefore did not really exist. The fact the guy broke in was never questioned by anyone.
(Mind you, likening a password cracker to a lockpick wasn't exactly the world's brightest move on the part of the Government.)
France and Germany have both prosecuted ISPs over content illegal in those specific countries, but where the material itself was overseas and merely accessed via the ISP.
So, no, India is not the only source of naivety over technology. One of the more dangerous sources, given the degree of off-shoring to India, but it's definitely not unique.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I already knew both Integer and Applesoft BASIC and FORTRAN (MUMNF) by the time I graduated from high school in 1981, as well as some bits and pieces of 65C02 assembler, thanks to the fact that the high school I went to in the Twin Cities had Apple II machines in the math department common area as well as in several other areas.
A bunch of us were also exposed to e-mail, real-time chat (DDT, MTC, XTALK, MMT, etc.), interactive multiplayer text games (including KARNATH and MU,CCOMBAT,USMK031 - thanks Clay!), and so on through the MECC Timesharing System. There were a pair of TTY 33's sitting in a soundproof booth in the high school math department, and some of us spent more time in there than we probably should have.
They also offered a BASIC programming class when I was a senior, so I was able to get a little bit of semi-formal training in spaghetti-code avoidance before going off to college and getting my BSCS.
Not quite the same as typing classes in grade school, but I still had considerable exposure before college.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Oh yeah, I forgot, you should remove the to.
I get your point...but I think the guy made a typo. Regarding your other point, if more people would stop listening to "the man" and learn something about drugs, then maybe we wouldn't be spending billions of dollars, imprisoning non-violent people, and confiscating private property to "fight" an unwinnable "war".
(a) Who put those files there? Was it the tracker site or their user?
Let's say its a user. Now let's add some possible scenarios.
A) There's no sorting or moderation going on.
B) The site's owners check files for quality/content before making them available.
C) The site organizes torrents. There's a link for TV shows which takes you to a page listing specific TV shows (SG1, Farscape...) sorted by season.
If you're doing A, you might be OK (IMO). With B or C things could easily go the other way -the site owner is actively participating.
Japan has been, since the Shogunate, a pretty centralized operation and a land mass about equal to that of California. It has one ethnic group, Okinawans and other tiny minorities aside. Until the arrival of missionaries, the dominant religions (Shintoism and Buddhism) got along ok. By contrast, India is a large nation with many languages, violently opposing religions (Hinduism and Islam).
Americans see the (academically speaking) creme de la creme of India, and sometimes we forget that most of India, both in land mass and population, is third world. Look at a street in Tokyo, then look at one in Calcutta. If that isn't a big enough contrast, just look down. Better yet, just take a deep breath and smell. Japan was able to do what it did, IMHO, because it was able to educate and modernize itself quickly and pervasively. Whether India can do that, or even if it is willing to do that (They throw away their best engineers, who graduated from a massive, publicly-funded university system! Does this sound like a sane government to you?), remains to be seen.
I have no idea why.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
That is true, but...
We consider anyone who can't read or write "stupid". We also consider those who can't speak well "stupid". (This of course is not true for everyone, but I'm talking about the majority's perspective).
Today, computers are becoming an extension of human communication and much like one would consider a person who can't use the basic functions of a rotary phone in the 1980's "stupid", those in the future generations (like it or not) will look down on those who cannot use computer technology as "stupid".
And right now I'm sure someone is looking down on my grammar...
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
And there's the constant matter of people who try to do Instant Messanging in the lab despite the fact that we don't allow IMing in the lab. And then they try to play the tutors for stupid by closing the window but not closing the program in the system tray.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Don't give a shit either.
Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
You're right, this is generally true. However, it is possible to have a law making it mandatory to report criminal activity you're aware of under certain circumstances. For example, in many (all?) US states, if a teacher is aware that one of the students is a victim of child abuse, they are required by law to report this.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
It could just send its own highly technologically-aware cops to India to cover their lack of experience. Why, with that whole half-day of training on Windows 95, I'm sure all the Roscoe P Coltranes at the FBI and Homeland Security would kill for the chance to earn some extra cash by beating geeky suspects with belts, especially at the current exchange rate!
You must think in Russian.
I do know how to knit. NOW who's the stupid one?!?
:-D
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
"caste-insipired racism, sectarian violence, a prostitution industry that puts most of Asia to shame and one of the highest AIDS rates in the world. Not to mention the recent tsunami victims."
Apart from everything else, what on earth has the tsunami got to do with caste and violence problems? And how did this person declare hte space program to be of 'dubious value'.. heard of geo sensing, farming, mining and a zillion other industries in India that depend on the space program?
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
The place where people open up holes in buildings because they "felt like it", others worship cows while millions are starving, and classify people in chastes, treating the lowest rank as worse than animals.
So is it a mystery that cops aren't educated in I.T., when snake enchanters rely on "magical stones" to prevent poison, and the majority of the population purify themselves in a river infestated by half-burned corpses?
And don't tell me "it's not their fault" that they don't have the slightest idea of I.T. Well you're right. It isn't THEIR fault. It's the GOVERNMENT's fault. They should have education programs for the law-enforcement workers.
Indian programmers are the exception here, not the rule. "But there are millions of them!" Yeah, a few millions in a 944.5M population (by 1996). So that'd be less than 1%, don't you think? MUCH less than 1% if you ask me.
The shear complexity of supporting a windows systems, with thousands of drivers written by third party suppliers that have numerous bugs that can produce the all to common Blue Screen of Death. Considering some of these drivers that cause these problems are not installed by the company selling the PC but by the customer installing a new piece of software, the Tech Support is on a hiding to nothing to support any system. Hence we get used to that all too common solution "Please try reinstalling window Sir".
My only wish is when XP detects a critical error that instead of producing a Blue Screen of Death, that it could recover by shutting driver down and not force the user to reboot as the only solution. Considering a lot of Blue Screens appear when system is loading drivers (from my own experience), it shouldn't take rocket science to figure which driver is at fault.
It's amazing how a society can have such stark contrasts.
Yeah, like movie companies making billions in Hollywood,California, while immigrant workers in the same state are getting exhausted 16 hours a-day under the sun, being exposed to illegal pesticides and are constantly threatened with migration.
Yeah, stark contrasts, indeed.
Those goofy Westerns who cant even figure out how to use a non-western toilet in the rest of the world!
When in Rome, poo as romans poo.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
Can't find a job, become a cop.
:'(
In Mexico City I *JUST* saw a subway ad inviting people to join the Preventive Police. It read: "Live up to your expectations by joining the Preventive Police". Of course that shouldn't amaze me since Mexico City is the 4th least-productive major city in the WORLD.
And I live in it!
Strangely enough a large number of people came by the 15th and K, to my hot dog stand and ask me if I could sell them some crack.
Even more strangely, some of them asked me if I would sell my red hat!
You can't handle the truth.
BTW., I made 699USD selling my red hat to some dude with a MS logo on his jacket.
You can't handle the truth.
I have had several issues with Sony products, such as a Viao Laptop faulty power supply that Sony wouldn't replace under warranty as they believed my system was owned by Dabs (a online computer store in the UK), Car Stereo that the CDs multi stack kept on getting jammed.
Don't take it just from me, look at other peoples experiences: http://www.my3cents.com/search.cgi?criteria=sony
But then again you have to take these complaints with a pinch of salt, sometimes some customers (including myself) expect to much.
It is probably a no brainer to guess which MP3 player out I will buy out of the Apple iPod or Sony NW-HD3 player in the next month.. (hint it's not the Sony)
I work for a small IT firm that occasionally services personal computers. It is very common for clients to show up with their monitor...I have even seen someone show up with an LCD! because Windows wasn't working.
.......sometimes i don't know whether to laugh or cry ;-)
When they actually do show up with the computer it usually includes the power cord (we apparently can't obtain their one of a kind cord!) or they show up with their laptop without its charger/AC power.
There is also the client who complained his new wireless keyboard and mouse weren't working (batteries were in backwards). He complained the manual wasn't specific and the KB/mouse combo was TOO COMPLEX for him. I asked if he had ever changed batteries on his TV remote at home in the last decade...
The funniest in most recent memory was a client that my company provides IT for. I get a call asking that I restart all the company servers due to large amounts of static electricity on the network which caused certain webpages to be unavailable.......
fyi - turned out to be hijacked hosts file on one laptop.
My favorite part of the article:
And, in my detailed application in which I described my company, I had to change the word 'internet' to 'computer network' because the officials did not think (the) internet was a credible medium for business. They told me that."
I totally agree - you really cannot make money on the internet. Keep it on your local computer network and THEN the cash will start flowing in.
Apparently, it would be interesting to see them try to crack a piracy problem. "Yes, feel free to grab the monitor and any floppies. But don't touch that box in the corner. I use it to heat my room..."
In other news, American police officers are now going to solve high-tech crimes in India. No one should worry though, they will get Indian pay, and can now buy donuts at local Dunkin Donuts using rupees. Just doublecheck when you get your change at local stores to see if it's a penny or a rupee.
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
Hard to believe but computers were almost non-existent in most parts of India about ten to fifteen years ago. The computer boom started only somewhere in the early 1990's. Only high end government organisations used computers then. Even today half of the non-techie people dosen't know the difference between INTERNET and email. Needless to say the graduates who took posts as police officers and judges were not trained for the medium and hence they lack the much needed professional skills. This is primarily due to the sudden technology boom. But we are progressing and the next generations of officers would be a lot better.
I agree. Not being a Computer Expert doesn't make you stupid.
Actually, after spending an afternoon ridding my sister's computer of spyware and popups, I started to feel like being a computer expert made me stupid.
If I'd known twenty five years ago what Microsoft domination was going to do to the computer industry, I would have put my geek energies into rebuilding engines or bird identification or optics or something else.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
See those hippie Linux criminals? They sell their crack using Red Hat!
Of course, "crack" in this context is starting to sound like a keygen or something....
I've definitely heard this story about stapling floppies. But it was 10 years ago when I was an undergrad in Delhi...there's NO WAY it could have happened two years ago. 5.25in floppies were neother manufactured nor available 2 years ago in India. Half-truths and half-rumors seem to have been liberally mixed in this story. I agree the story is somewhat funny. But there sure is an undertone of "look-at-the-smart-assed-Indians" in the story... They won' be laughing for long though :-)
Won't be too long before rest of the world outsources its cybercrime investigations to the lower-paid techie-cops in India.
---- "The cop who checks your car license does not own a car," "The passport official who checks your passport does not go abroad. " ---- What bullshit points ........!!!!!
Missing 3.5. ?????
Yes, India today!=Japan in the 1960s. India today, trading with rest of the world at "somewhat" more even terms, is where Japan was in 1890s. Japan - with never under the colonial rulers sucking away its wealth - started developing industry and infrastructure for the Japanese people and reforming its society to create even playing field for industries that wanted to grow since 1860s. http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2130.html Yes, WW2 was a huge setback to thriving Japanese people and they did quite well to be where they are today. However when one generation has seen days of wealth, it does inspire the next generation to build an even greater empire. Not taking anything from them - they are probably the one of most hardworking ethnic groups. India, OTOH, had its first big war of independence against the British in 1857 and became a soveriegn country and started working for itself in 1947. Those very reforms that started as early as 1860s in Japan, started around the turn of this century in India.
Whether India can do that, or even if it is willing to do that (They throw away their best engineers, who graduated from a massive, publicly-funded university system! Does this sound like a sane government to you?), remains to be seen.
Given this historical context it seems to me India has done reasonably well in last 15 years and probably more quickly than other most other countries (including Japan) that I know of. I happen to be an engineer from these publicly funded university system you are alluding to, and I dont know where am I being "thrown". At the risk of sounding presumptuous, let me add that engineers from these schools have played a big role in this.
Hey, This article is mostly ripped off from an Economic Times.com article. They had written it just after the Bazee incident. Hm, Maybe should report Wired News to the Mumbai CyberCrime Cell. dEV Sorry couldn't find the link cos the economictimes.com search page was down while I typed this. U can try and search. I get the paper everyday so I am sure about it being ripped off.