Speed

Moving with high speed in the car
Objects moved opposite and gone far

But why such a haste?
Seems there's no time to waste
Though it's not a race
Yet life should've some pace

Moving with such a speed
Came a revelation indeed

Those who were closer
Moved away faster
And no matter how fast I moved
Farthest one remained unmoved

Good that miles away you are
Hence with me always you are

Farther you go away from me
Longer will you stay with me
That's how relativity relates
Amalgamated by speed and Pace
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-Narendra Shukla

R & P

Research and Plagiarism ( R & P) are two sides of the same coin. As they that, "Copying from one is Plagiarism (P) while from many is Research (R) ". It becomes particularly important in our indian context where R & D practically and ironically stands for "Read and Duplicate" rather than its usual meaning i.e. "Research and Development". There is a thin line dividing Research and Plagiarism and usually it's very context-sensitive. All top universities in the world treat P as a criminal offence and they have publicised their anti-plagiarism policies on their web-sites. But our premier research institutions like IITs and IISc don't seem to have a policy on this in place. Even if a policy exists who cares in this country. There are so many policies and only policies on other matters also but .... I guess you got the point.

Again, as usual, there are two school of thoughts. One which says that there is nothing wrong in borrowing the idea than trying to become failed but so-called original creative. And the other which values the capability or Human mind to think independently and to create something new. This is what research is all about. It's not always putting old wine in a new bottle rather it's a creation of new flavour itself. Imagine without true researchers what would our life had been? Have a look around in your surroundings? Could you mention even a single thing which is a result of plagiarist's effort?

Let's become devil's advocate for a moment and ask ourselves, Why should not people plagiarise? What's wrong in sticking to reverse engineering and rejigging a tried-and-tested formula? To put it Shakespearically, If to P or not to P, that's the question, then why not P? i.e. the easier way out of the two. There are so many strict deadlines to meet, so much researh fundings to get, and there is so little time for research. Who has got the patience and time of Thomas A. Edison or Claude E. Shannon to spend so many years on single research topic? Then why is it a criminal offence? If people say it's just an act of morally-impaired researcher, let them say that. Well, I would exclude software copyright supporters vs open source movement enthusiasts from this writing. Interseted are directed to this article by Richard M. Stallman.

So, let's stop worrying about P and assume that our researchers too responsible to make any policy to check P. In my views, P has always been there and will continue to exist as a shadow of R. e.g. Louis Kahn got inspiration fom Piranesi, Mozart copied tunes from his arch-rival Salieri; Martin Scorsese did a remake of J Thompson Lee’s Cape Fear, and Spielberg’s background score in "Raiders Of the Lost Ark" is virtually copied from a Tchaikovsky composition.

Now coming back to the "original" question, To P or not to P? I neither advocate P nor I say that it's good for R. Since there is nothing absolutely good or bad, everthing is relative. So, I leave the ultimate choice to you. I would like to end this monologue by quoting a very famous statement by bollywood film maker Mahesh Bhatt,

"For me, there is nothing like plagiarism, since there is nothing like originality. The human brain is a recycling bin. If you hide the source, you’re a genius." :-)

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-Narendra Shukla

Aren't you God?

Miles away you are
From me
But it seems
Always you are
With me
Every single beat of my heart
Takes your name only
The reminiscence of moments
We spent togther
Flash with every breath-in

They say that
God is with me always
Similarly you are
With me always
In every moment
With every passing second
All the time
So, Tell me,

O adorable !
Aren't you God?

-Narendra Shukla

The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1916, 1923, 1928, 1930, 1934, 1939, 1947, 1949, © 1969 by Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1936, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1951, 1953, 1954, © 1956, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine.

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Rules

Rules

-R. W. Lucky
(IEEE Fellow)

Once upon a time, there were rules. They gave order to my career from the first day of my first electrical engineering course. It was then that I was introduced to Ohm’s Law. For a whole year, I dealt with the many possible manifestations of this one great rule that defines the relationships among voltage, current, and resistance. There were countless problems involving such longforgotten concepts as current loops and Thevenin’s theorem.

The rest of my engineering education was similar. In these engineering courses, there were relatively simple rules underlying all behavior. Educational life was reduced to endless repetition: given a particular problem, apply the appropriate rules, derive a solution, and so on.

When I started in industry as an engineer in the Bell System, there was a similar rule-driven paradigm for business behavior. No one who ever worked in that company will forget something called the “GEI”—the giant loose-leaf binder containing the General Executive Instructions. These were the rules of employment. In that thick binder was a rule for any situation that might be encountered in the business environment. Need to have a paper cleared? What about outside employment or when it would be proper to receive an honorarium? How should you handle an employee with a drinking problem? Every conceivable event had its own page with the relevant rules.

Those were the quaint days when there were twice-daily deliveries of paper mail. On each of these deliveries, my mail would contain new inserts for the GEI. In addition to these new pages, there would be instructions that certain pages should now be removed. The rules kept changing, but mostly they just grew. It seemed as if my secretary was kept busy just making sure my GEI binder was up to date.

I used to wonder where these rules originated. Who was making them up? I imagined that it was the mail department writing them secretly at night in order to fill up their mail baskets and promote job security.

The omnipresence of the rules was so palpable that the absence of a rule in a particular situation was a disturbing event in itself. These disturbing events would usually herald new pages for the GEI. The greatest exception was the lack of clear-cut rules for how employees would be evaluated in the annual performance review. Time and again, one of my subordinates would complain about this. “How am I to be judged?” he or she would plead. “There must be rules.” The implication was that without written rules, management could not be trusted and would undoubtedly be rendered incompetent.

After several decades of this, one day the rules seemed to disappear. I don’t know when it was, and perhaps it happened so gradually that I didn’t notice until much later—like now. I surely don’t recall hearing any proclamation like “Henceforth, there will be no rules.” Nevertheless, the inserts for the GEI became less regular, and then sporadic. The Bell System itself was torn apart, and perhaps whatever group was responsible for creating the rules was shipped to some doomed offshoot.

My theory is that life was growing so complicated that the number of rules was increasing without bounds. Before long, every employee of the company would have been occupied with the task of writing and distributing rules, and no one would have been left to do the actual work. Rules were becoming both too expensive and too constraining. Someone must have recognized this and decided that life would have to proceed without rules and would become—well, fuzzy.

I think much the same thing happened to all my cherished rules of engineering. Somewhere, I am sure, Ohm’s Law still applies, but I’m no longer confident about just where. As the size of circuits shrinks, the life of the electron becomes complex and fuzzy. In the presence of electromigration, parasitic effects, quantum tunneling, and other phenomena of the small, the electron may not realize that it has to obey Ohm’s Law. For every rule I used to know, I have to stop and ask myself: what were the assumptions behind this rule? Do they still apply? Worse yet, there is no Ohm’s Law for software. In the face of its enormous complexity, it can’t be depended upon to behave as if it knew any rules.

Living without rules gives us an uneasy freedom. We make up things as we go along amidst an increasing uncertainty and unpredictability. Life in the business world, and in technology, is fuzzy.

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Article "Robert's Rules" by ROBERT W. LUCKY (F), now retired, was vice president for applied research at Telcordia Technology in Red Bank, N.J. (rlucky@telcordia.com).
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