How Peer-to-Peer Applications can affect Society ?

After the success of Napster, p2p or online file sharing application has become the single most killer application (besides WWW) in the Internet. Not biased by the fact that the growth of the application provides ample research opportunities for the researchers, I have additional reasons to get excited about p2p. I am wondering how p2p applications will affect the world economy, how the growth of p2p applications will re-shape human beings or distribute resources in the society. So, this post is mainly about effects of p2p on society.

P2P applications such as Bittorrent, KaZaa, Gnutella, eDonkey are mainly used to download media files both audio (mp3 songs) and video (mostly movies). These media files are usually stripped off from the media records or are recorded and uploaded for other users to download for free. Therefore, media industry is a direct and major stakeholder in this process at the losing end. For example, legal entity in US, RIAA has been waging battle to illegalize such media content distribution. But as we know, everything desirable in this world is either banned, illegal, married or fattening; so I guess inspite of all rules and regulations, the usage of p2p will keep growing. What could be the consequences ?

Hollywood/Bollywood movies are available online no later than they are released in the theatres. As a result p2p users will not spend money in watching movies at the theatres. Considering that this fraction will be significant soon, the profit of the movie producers will keep decreasing and soon they will stop making quality movies or at least that will prevent them from making more movies. Consequently the money that actors/actresses make will get diminishingly less. I think celebrities are hyped and they earn undue money (compare it with the fact that I spend more than 14 hrs or more at work doing more important work for humanity and still get paid less than 1% of what they earn. In addition they get glamor, publicity, money, multiple sexual partners).

Due to the poor quality of the movies, people will start watching less movies and therefore, young generation will be less affected by social vices such as violation, rape, smoking, romance. Actors/actresses will no longer find this business lucrative and will insist their kids to opt for other professions such as engineering, medical etc. Gradually the income distribution in the society will be less skewed. To attract the viewers the producers will try hard to be creative and will produce good quality movies but they will not earn as much as they now.

Growth of p2p applications will however make some economic sectors prosperous. Would ipod have been successful had there been no abundance of mp3 files through p2p applications ? More people will get hired by software and media industry to pollute the p2p network with garbage movie files, to distribute legal copies of software/media files over the p2p network.

Some social problems will reduce but some will increase. Gamers will get more games/xbox for free and therefore more people will get addicted. There will be more cases of divorces, crime due to gaming addiction. There might be more cases of dropouts.

Someone said, talking is not free in the world and I realized that is true when I got my phone bill. Skype has become popular worldwide since it is a free VoIP phone if both the caller and callee use Skype. Skype is again a p2p application where hosts relay traffic for other users. If Skype continues to grow and assuming that soon most of the people will have computer with Internet connection, it will put Telecom industry under heavy competition. I feel the telecom service providers charge a lot; its monopoly for no good reason. As a result of Skype prevalence, many telecom industries will be out of business, many high-paying CEOs will get fired and there will be less skewed income distribution. I wish I could talk to my family everyday. Therefore, with Skype in place, we will be able to feel much closer to people, family, lovemates. As a result, those who are involved in distant romance will be able to sustain their relationship comfortably (specially when girls tend to find new lovemates in absence of physical presence of their counterparts).

Graduate students cannot afford to buy expensive books all the time or sometime the books are not available even in university library. Once I needed a book (I could not obtain it even from other libraries) and I asked a friend if I could get a soft copy of the book. After a few weeks, he downloaded it from a Turkish server. I was happy to read the relevant chapter and then deleted it. Thus, p2p is also acting as a vehicle to spread education and will thus make education/knowledge accessible to deprived ones.

More and more I think about p2p applications, it makes me more optimistic about future.

Books Sought

I am looking for good books on the following topics. The books should not just describe facts like history books by NCERT. It should interprete events with an eye of anthropologist or socialogist. Your suggestions are solicited:

a) A book on the history of Jews dating back to centuries before Christ was born. It should discuss how Jews were fled away from their homeland, how they became good in money making business, how Wall St was built by the Jewish, how Jews used to fund wars, etc.

b) A book encompassing 2000 yrs old history of Japan describing why Japanese seemingly have dual personality. I feel Japanese are deligent, responsible and polite but internally they are brutal and are always ready to invade others. I may be wrong. I also want to know the hierarchy in Japanese society describing the status of normal people and that of Samurais. I want read from the perspectives of both Japanese and others.

c) A book on Nazi and Hitler which should describe why Nazi used to hate the Jews. May be Mein Kempf ??

Important Business

Today I had a complementary breakfast in the office with 3 other early birds including our HR lady. During the breakfast conversation, the HR lady asked this guy from the Netherlands, "What does your father do in your country ?". The question made the two other guys burst into instant laughter. Why ? Even I was curious.

Instead of getting embarrassed the guy took a little while to think how to answer. Probably he never had to answer this to a woman. He said, "My father provides raw materials [you know what it is] for artificial insemination of pigs". One could have easily evaded the question by answering something else. I liked his honesty. I have observed this guy during meetings. He is very precise and clear in what he speaks. I learned two additional things: First, every work is important in life; someone has to clean toilets, some one has to inseminate animals where farming and animal husbandry is important and so on. Second, articulation of speech is really a skill and can have a completely different effect on the listeners.

INDIA and World

Many of the online news articles on India seem to be catered towards pleasing online readers, NRIs by projecting a nice view of India. While this is perfectly alright but I feel our optimism should be scaled down. Sometimes I pity how media in US and Singapore keep their citizens so ignorant of reality. The articles on India say, how India might become superpower by 2015, how Mumbai springs back to life next day after serial bomb blasts, how Laxmi Mittal is soaring as Czar of Steel, etc.

I have almost completed reading a book, The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen. Having read several essays in the book which encompass ancient, medieval and modern India and almost every aspect of India, I am left to take a pessimistic note that India has a long way to go. Numerous facts about India in every chapter of the book appalled me to far extent. I cannot emphasize less how every Indian and non-Indian should read the book. Moreover, Dr. Sen has a distinctive style of writing. Hopefully the following facts will motivate some of you to read it.

If you think everything you read in history book was correct, it is time to rethink (it reminds me of my first blog). History is written by victors. BJP-led NCERT admitted that there were factual errors in the history textbooks -- for example, Madagascar was claimed to be an island in Arabian Sea (whereas it should have been in Indian Ocean). Similarly, Lanchasire was claimed to be a fast-growing Industrial town. Many books didn't mention about Nathuram Godse who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi since he was an RSS member.

India and China had a lot of exchange in trade and knowledge as far back as 8th century. Given the closed community nature of China, I used to wonder if there was ever an Indian (except Buddha) who could influence Chinese largely. Infact, many Indian scientists, mathematicians and astronomers held high positions in China's scientific establishment. An Indian scientist named Gautama Siddhartha even became the president of the official board of Astronomy in China in 8th century.

There is an essay named Tagore and India which has been my favorite so far. Dr Sen brilliantly brings out differences in the visions of Tagore and Gandhiji. I felt Dr. Sen was advocating more of Tagore. Tagore believed in Industrialization and he was not so keen on advocacy of Gandhiji's charkha..."Charkha does not require anyone to think; one simply turns the wheel of the antiquated invention endlessly, using minimum of judgment and stamina". Unlike Gandhiji Tagore was not strict about celibacy and he was claimed to have multiple relationships. Tagore believed in scientific explanations in every aspect of life -- In Jan 1934 Bihar was struck by a devastating earthquake. Gandhiji who was actively fighting against the untouchability during that time said, "A man like me cannot but believe that earthquake is a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins". Tagore objected saying, "It is all the more unfortunate because this kind of unscientific view of [natural] phenomenon is too readily accepted by large section of our countrymen".

We envision that India is on the path to become Superpower, but even today India is worse than many sub-Saharan countries on many different measures. For example, in India there is severe bias against women as we may judge from female-male ratio of 0.93 whereas sub-Saharan countries have the ratio as high as 1.02. Moreover, the percentage of undernourished children in Africa is 20-40%, whereas in India is as high as 40-60%. India is also claimed to be the largest producer of wheat (or grains). Why is this discrepancy ?

I want to end this post with another interesting observation. We often conclude that gender inequality prevails mostly in the developing countries, say in South-East Asia. But India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh all have or had women political leaders. Bangladesh even had women leaders both in the ruling and opposition parties. On the other hand the developed western countries such as US, Germany, France and Italy never had any women Prime Minister or President nor do these countries poised to have one in near future. Through several other examples, Dr. Sen convincingly clarifies different concepts and conventional wisdom.

What I have written is only the tip of an iceberg, there are several other facts about India which will make you think what real India is.

Hierarchical Data

Finally we submitted a paper on Change Detection in Hierarchical Data. People usually talk about change in data or data streams without considering hierarchy -- for example, one is usually happy with knowing what is the percentage increase/decrease in sales volume in Walmart in California. We address the problem of detecting changes in data where attributes are hierarchical. For example, a manager in Walmart might have information about sales which is organized by hierarchy -- state/county/city/zip code in US. One can pose a question -- if the sales volume under all the zip codes in San Fransisco have doubled, what is the parsimonious way to represent the change ? We say, sales volume in SF has doubled. Our approach captures such changes with maximal generalizations and thus captures trends and counter-trends. We reduce the problem to a weight assignment problem over hierarchical tree structure under some constraints and propose efficient linear-time optimal algorithms.

Why Conference Call is so Good ?

Of late I have been attending mostly conference call meetings. I have started liking it more than physical meetings. In some cases, I find it more productive than physical meetings since I often send report and agenda before conference call meeting. Moreover, we can terminate a conference call if we don't have anything to discuss. Here are some reasons why I like conference calls.

• It gives me an impression that I am a very important person and am talking to the President of USA on secure hotline.
• The other person cannot see my facial expression. Neither do I have to be well-shaved or neatly dressed.
• I can find an excuse for being late; no one is going to notice what I was doing. I could say, phone had a problem.
• It gives me access to many other things during a conference call. I can drink coffee, I can browse. In some cases, I even did experiments on the fly as my co-author asked me questions and I could report results of those experiments to answer the questions.
  
• Its mostly Voice over IP rather than regular telephony; so it makes a case that network engineers are still of some use.
• It gives me a feeling that the world is well-connected and I can reach any corner in milliseconds.
• It sharpens by hearing skills, I tend to be more focussed since I know I have only ears in help.

Savage Omnivorous Asians

Americans think Asians are comprised of Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and not Indians. "Oh, Indians are Asians !!" was the response I got while filling up HR forms in the SDSC.

So, in the last few days I had further induction of Chinese, Korean and Japanese food culture. More and more I interact with them, more I feel they have such wierd food habits. I think now Africans have little more sanity left in what they eat. I will use the term Chinese loosely, if something strikes too odd, then it must be from the GuangDong province.

Thai food is what I like most from Asian cuisine after Indian food. Brazil lost semi-finals, we were sad. To have lunch, we went to Thai Palace. We were late by 5 mins and weren't allowed inside. Double disappointment on a fine sunny saturday in San Diego. There used to be a Thai Restaurant named NudPub (we used to call Nude Pub) near Boston Univ. The lady at the counter had a typical style, "yiieess, haou may I help you ? Pyneapple fried riiiyye, for hyere to goennn? 6 daullars pleaz".

So, disappointed from Thai Palace, we went to check out Vietnamese Cuisine, Korean BBQ, Sushi Palace. We could not form a consensus -- Korean BBQ is expensive (with full of beef and pork items); I cannot eat raw fish in Sushi, Vietnamese is tasteless. Finally we decided to go to 99 Chinese Supermarket on the recommendation of chinese friend. A rotten gust of wind hit my nasal cavity as soon we entered into the market as if some dead caracus of buffalo had been rotting in the corner for days. Soon I got used to it (as you get used to smelling your own shit in the restroom) and we ended up in a cheap restaurant at the corner. They had two modes of operation, self-service and waiter-service. We opted for the latter. Thinking that I would get nice soup with rice, I ordered Chicken with Peanuts. Korean friend ordered pork curry and chinese friend ordered duck/egg/pork combination. When the soup arrived, I lost all appetite. The first remark from the chinese friend was, Dhiman it looks they just cleaned the pan with water and brought you the water as soup. The water looked so dirty and there was a leaf from a vague plant floating in it. To be more precise, have you ever mopped your floor with a rag and after cleaning for while, have you seen the water with substrate. The soup was exactly like that.

The food was bearable. My friends devored like true graduate students, enjoying every grain and fibre. We discussed what Chinese and Koreans eat. They eat, intestines of animals, anus of animals (pig for example). There is a variety of chinese wine in which they shove in mices, lizards (pi-hu in chinese), snakes. I learned that they have two yummy dishes -- monkey brain and 3 screams (which i will describe later). A general rule of thumb is, if they want development of a particular part of your body, they eat corresponding body part in animals. So, chinese guys who are looking for penile enlargement must be eating organs (and testicles) of horse, ox, buffalo. Now, it is not hard to guess what part of cows and buffaloes the Chinese girls those who are want to avoid silicon breast implants must be eating.

The Korean friend confirmed that some people in Korea play football using the testicles of Oxes (cheaper than leather football). Remember Korea reached 1998 WorldCup semi-final :)

Its not over yet. We had to do grocery in the Chinese supermarket. I always wonder why Indians don't have such comprehensive grocery store in US (actually in NY, San Diego there are). The meat section was so gross. They had intestines of animals laid out. Then, they had claws of chicken, duck (may be cats, dogs also) in display. The claws of birds/animals are roasted and fried and are served as appetizers with drinks/beers. Both Chinese and Koreans eat that (may be Bengalies should try crow-claws-chacchori; how about crow-claws-fries and Pig-Anus-Burger). I bought Tilapia fish. The Chinese in America have learned customization quite a bit:

After buying fish I had to take of the following 4-5 options:

1) cleaning,
2) cleaning and removing the scales,
3) cleaningmust be eating, removing scales and chopping off head and tail
4) cleaning, removing scales, beheading, remove tails and chopping into N pieces
5) (4) + fry in oil (in their kitchen)

I chose (4). Oh I forgot to mention, I also eat Japanese snacks (peanuts, sea weeds) in the office the week before. A guy named Brat had brought from Japan. The Korean friend brought me 3 different korean cookies. I am just eating only Asian stuffs these days.

Now, I will descibe about those two delicacies that Chinese from GuangDong province eat.

Monkey brain is considered a delicacy. To eat it, they first tie the monkey so that it cannot move. Its head is clamped with barbwire (remember Jesus Christ had one when he was crucified). Then they break the skull-shell of the monkey while it is still alive. Then they dig out Monkey's brain and devor it with spoon (of course along with soya sauce). It is supposed to nourish human brain. Yeah right, thats why I haven't met one from that province yet.

Three Scream dish is another odd item. So, they have small white mices (the ones we used in Bio practicals) on a plate. The first scream is heard when one holds a mice with chopsticks. Second scream is heard when the mice is dipped in Soya Sauce and it is drowned for a while. Final mortal scream is heard when the mice is chewed in the mouth. All so fresh and yummy!

Now who is ready for french-kiss with an Asian after he/she has a good meal with Monkey brain and 3 Scream ?

Three Idols of Mine

I have been taught and supervised by many teachers and researchers. They are so dedicated in their work. It is difficult to to talk about all, here I will take pride in describing three such educationists who have really influenced me and taught me a lot. I feel proud and excited to talk about them always.

Eitan Altman: He (top left in red-checked shirt) got PhD under Andew Shwartz at Technion, Israel. Now he is associated with INRIA and Univ of Avignon both in France. He is one of the top reseachers in the world. I won't describe his professional achievements as those are online rather i will describe my personal experience. I think he works for 25 hrs despite the fact that he is so intelligent and has family with two kids. He also composes music. He is an editor of many journals. Once during lunch he said, "I am always eager to submit and publish papers". Unlike many researchers, he is always accessible and replies to mails immediately and he is very understanding and straightforward. One can barge into his office anytime and ask any mathematical question. I still remember, during my first visit to him, I used to go to his office and used to pose questions. On every occasion he had answers ready even before I could finish asking the questions. He is not formal unlike many researchers who like to set up appointments for discussion. I remember I used to often catch him in the corridor and would ask him questions from random paper, he would still be able to answer precisely. To tell you about his focus and dedication, I was once at his apartment and we were moving a sofa from one apt to another and we had to carry it together. So, after walking down the stairs we were on the streets while holding the sofa with hands and we were panting. Eitan didn't want to waste time, he was posing some questions on the paper we were working on; he was also giving ideas how we could try new things. To give an idea of his efficiency, in 2005 he co-authored seven INFOCOM papers (one of the top networking conferences; also single author in 1 paper) whereas there are many dedicated Networking Research Groups in US schools and barely any research group as a whole could beat such productivity. I always miss his guidance.

Clem Karl: He (top right in B&W) got PhD from MIT and now a professor in BU, EE and teaches stochastic processes, signal processing etc. He has been the best teacher I have come across in life. He is knowledgeable, full of energy, enthusiasm and focussed. So, I registered for his class Probability and Stochastic Processes. On the first day of class, he outlined the course contents and told his expectations from the students. He said, "If you are registered for this class, don't take any other serious course this semester. I will post homeworks every week. This course is heavy weight, you have to read, write and do experiments and attend two 2 hrs lecture every week. But I can assure you that if you get A in this course, you can ask the school double of what you are paid. " Such was the conviction in his voice. Without getting deterred, I remained in the class. I used to stop doing everything else from Wednesday because I had to work for this course for Friday deadline. When 2 hrs used to get over of his lecture, I used to think "why couldn't it last for one more hour ?". In the course, he taught nicely - distribution, joint-distribution, stochastic processes, estimation techniques. Before every class, he would motivate why we were doing that topic - for example, anecdote about Kalman, why Kalman filter was designed etc. I should say, it was awesome course and I never learned something so well in any other course. I hope he could teach me every course I wanted to study.

Divesh Srivastava: He (bottom right) is a research scientist at AT&T, New Jersey and I have hardly seen anymore more patient, more precise,more knowlegeable than Divesh. Besides being extraordinary intelligent and knowledgeable, he is so down to earth. When he speaks during research meetings, he does not fumble -- that is whatever he says seems final. One can say, he must be well-prepared. Even on many occasions, he would answer any online question with so much precise authority that it would take a while for me to understand. I try hard to catch up with him and sometimes I feel embarrassed that he contributes so much to my research and gives so much guidance in my research. He has long beard, long hair (at least from pic) and he also talks like a saint with utter calmness. The most important thing is he believes in me even though he does not really need me. I hope to keep working with him forever.

American English

I could never understand if Americans intentionally developed rules, styles, etiquettes and conventions which are reversed. When MKS system was already in practice in Europe and many other parts of the world, what was the necessity to adopt FPS system ? English was not a native language of America, they took liberty to twist and modify according to their wish. I was listening to a lecture by the head of Career Center, Dr. Stevens in UC, Riverside and he made it a point, "Since you are in US, watch TV, cartoons and sitcoms and listen to American music. We don't talk normal literical english that you have learned from books."

I readily get impressed by those people who don't use "pet" words, who do not repeat sentences, who have strong vocabulary, and who are artistic while speaking but those who are not natural are rather turn offs. I should say I like it when I listen to Howard Stern, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore. As a digression, it is my conjecture that researchers/scholars from top schools such as MIT, Harvard, CMU, UC Berkeley have very good oratorial skills.

I will describe some day-to-day normal conversation which I could never pick up because I never found those friendly to ears even though people use those often.I have heard them say, "I am so cold or I am so hot". Why can't they say, "I feel so cold or hot" ? Despite this, my favorite lines from Matrix I are, "Smith: You are empty. Neo: So are you".

People have this knack of using pet words such as "pretty", "super", "basically", "cool". Sometime it gets irritating. Does it make sense to say, "She is pretty ugly ?". I think one has to exaggerate while speaking in America. If you compliment someone saying, "you look good", its not enough. You have to at least say, "you look awesome". It not enough to say that you are very busy, you have to say, you are super busy. I personally prefer to hear, "sounds good, looks good" instead of "cool" for everything.

African-American english adds another dimension. I am not sure if it is funny or it is "cool" to use their version of english. It is funny when I hear, "What's up dawg ? How ya' doin,bro ? Hey nigger, how is it hangin. " Is it correct to say, "he don't know nothing. He no good" ?

Some sentences are over-used such as "Friday lunch is not free" when someone wants to convey nothing is free in the world. If lousy speakers use such phrases/sentences, it irritates me as it does not sound natural in them. Sometimes I wonder, was it really necessary to make different pronounciation for words like -- vitamins, multi-tasking, semi-finals etc ?

Everything is not so "bizarre". There are some sentences which I picked up in the recent past and I really like to use those -- "Pepsi with Easy on ice (I mean 2-3 ice-cubes)" or "Tall Cafe au Lait with Easy Whipped Cream". I like the American pronounciation of "schedule".

So, probably I have been conditioned too much with textbook English, or may be I am reluctant to adopt slangs. I am changing...