Wholeness - From Advaita Vedanta to Quantum Physics

Wholeness – From Advaita Vedanta to Quantum Physics

The concept of ‘Wholeness’ or ‘Oneness’ is more than 2000 years old, from Greek philosophers in the western civilization to the Vedic scholars in the eastern civilization. So, the debate over mind (Consciousness) and matter is not new. These concepts were broadly classified under Monism (in Greek ‘monos’ means single) and Dualism.

Monism and Dualism from Ancient Greek Philosophers

The term monism was first used by a German philosopher Christian Wolff (1679-1754) even though the philosophies dates back to Ancient Greek philosophers, and notable among them is Parmenides, who viewed matter and mind as a single entity. According to Monism the ultimate reality is made up of matter or mind (Consciousness) or a third substance or a combination of all.

In Hinduism Advaita Vedanta subscribes to Substantival Monism emphasizing the atomicity of the mind and the matter while in Buddhism all things are part of a connected world. Creationist philosophy supported the belief where God (Consciousness) and the creature (matter) is considered as two separate entities and God is the supreme and ‘Idealism’ is the only monism which is theologically acceptable.

To find out more about this, read more in my blog The Land of Vedas / Wholeness - From Advaita Vedanta to Quantum Physics

The Art of Digital War - [Part 3] Abstract Data Types in the Security Domain

Abstract Data Types in the Security Domain

The objective of this section is to identify the key abstract data types required to handle any type of security related data to identify the Digital Intrusions / Extrusions and take necessary remediation process to mitigate those attacks.



Handling of millions of network events (generated by Routers, Firewalls, IDS/IPS etc) per day is one of the key elements of all the Security Management solutions. Other set of information collected for processing and mining the attack pattern involves OS logs, vulnerability information of an asset, network topology, Asset Database, Identity Management systems and Application Logs. So you end up having lot of different data types. One of the biggest challenges is to normalize this information across the vendors. However, before the normalization process the key element is to identify and classify the data types.

So, let me start with two fundamental data types and let us see how these data fits into all the data sources available from different vendors and creates Digital ‘Conversations’. 

To find out more about this, read more in my blog

 Security Data Mining / Art of Digital War - Part 3

Found Dark Matter

Dark Matter which makes up 25% of the Universe finally detected. Dark matter eluded scientists for years as it doesn’t emit or reflect light. Scientists found proof of dark matter in the galaxy cluster 1E0657-556. The evidence provided by a cosmic collision between two huge clusters of galaxies. As per Maxim Markevitch of the Harvard Smithsonian Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the “most energetic cosmic show, besides the Big Bang” that we are aware of.

To find out more about this, read more in my blog Particle Physics / Found Dark Matter

Solar System with 12 Planets

IAU’s executive committee submitted (which only submits recommendations likely to get two thirds approval from the group of 2500 astronomers from 75 nations meeting in Prague to decide a universal definition of a planet) a draft proposal to expand the Solar System to 12 planets. They will have two brain storming sessions before they vote on the resolution next week (August 21-25, 2006).

The change will force the schools across the world to change their text books and the elementary school solar system models. More interestingly astrologers need to tweak their formulas to make predictions as their model of classic nine planets is not valid anymore! :-)

To find out more about this, read more in my blog Particle Physics / Solar System with 12 Planets

Sodoku Puzzle

The Sodoku puzzle is a logic game using numbers 1-9. It came to western world an year ago (2005). Read the history of this game in wikipedia.org.

The Rule: Every Column, Row and 3x3 box contains digits 1-9. No duplicates and no missing numbers.

Tips: Use logic and reasoning instead of guessing a number

To find out more about this, read more in my blog The Mind Games / Sodoku Puzzle

Rich Internet Applications

Rich Internet Applications are the next wave in User Interfaces (Google Gmail, Google RSS Reader, Google Finance etc). AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a key technology in this direction. RIA’s are designed to deliver 8A’s of software simplicity. 8A’s is Bill Gates old information at your finger tips or IBM SAA (System Application Architecture). According to Gartner (Article: RIA’s are the next evolution of the web by Mark, Ray, Gene) at least 60% of the application development in 2010 will include RIA technologies and 25% in that will primarily on RIA.

Applications Able to deliver Access to Anyone Authorized Anytime, Anyplace on Any Device.

To find out more about this, read more in my blog Java and Technology / Rich Internet Applications

The Lost Gospel

Judas Iscariot a name synonymous with the word ‘traitor’. Here is the history – Judas betrayed Jesus Christ to his enemies (the Roman soldiers) for a mere 30 pieces of silver.

According to the four gospels of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John in the New Testament in which Judas is portrayed as a traitor. However, The Gospel of Judas shows that he was not only Jesus’ favorite disciple, but also that Judas betrayal was a plan between Jesus and Judas.

To find out more about this, read more in my blog The Conscious Mind / The Lost Gospel

Multi Core Mania

In December 2005 I blogged about the new set of programming languages (Metaphor and Fortress - New programming Languages) and how multi core systems could change the computing scenarios. Here is something more on multi core systems. Last week Azul systems announced a 48 way multi core chip, redefining the enterprise computing. However, the current hurdles for the Intel, Sun, IBM and other Hardware vendors with multi core CPUs will be picking the right memory technologies. "If you can't keep the cores fed fast enough from memory, you haven't gained anything," says AMD chief technology officer Phil Hester.

To find out more about this, read more in my blog Java and Technology / Multi Core Mania

The Art of Digital War - [Part 1]

The objective of this article is to identify the core issues around a digital intrusion. What are the key elements in Digital Intrusion? What is the impact on the enterprise? How do you classify the Intruders? How do you categorize your Assets?

Latest CERT reports a total of 5990[1] vulnerabilities for the year 2005 an increase of 58.5% from the year 2004 and a 3402% increase from the year 1995. Usually vulnerability in an application is due to un-identified bug in the code. However there are times when backdoors written explicitly in some application to get into a users machine.

To find out more about this, read more in my blog Security Datamining / The Art of Digital War

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[1] 2005 Vulnerability List http://www.cert.org/stats/cert_stats.html

Virus / Worm Behavior Analysis

Viruses of the new era posses attack models, similar to a sophisticated Hacker (or Cracker). It scans your network, exploits your vulnerable applications, creates backdoors for control, and does DoS (Denial of Service) attacks against other systems and even fights other viruses and worms to show supremacy!

Its time to re-look at these Malwares from a completely different perspective to contain and prevent these Malwares from attacking your networks and other critical assets.

To find out more about this, read more in my blog Security Datamining / Virus and Worm Behavior Analysis

The Art of Digital War - [Part 2] Alarms in Intrusion Detection Systems

The following table shows a set of words and its frequency.

Word	Frequency		Word	Frequency		Word	Frequency
The	1101		I	561		In	414
And	878		You	544		It	414
To	726		My	508		That	389
Of	657		A	498		….	…..

I know you must be wondering about, frequency related to what? That’s the key!

To find out more about this, read more in my blog Security Datamining / Alarms in Intrusion Detection Systems

Metaphor and Fortress - New programming Languages

Advances in programming languages from Assembly, C, C++ to C# or Java absorbed the complexities of programming. However, modern software development is not just programming. Lot of work happens outside the programming. Dr. Alan Perlis a prominent US Computer scientist said that “A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.” Metaphor is such a next Generation Language by Victoria Livschitz of Sun Microsystems.

Features of Metaphor

Following are the Four Features of the Metaphor Language

1. 
   
   Distributed Runtime Environment
2. 
   
   Contextual Programming
3. 
   
   Support for autonomous executable entities
4. 
   
   Support for Software evolution and re-use

To find out more about this, read more in my blog Java and Technology / Metaphor and Fortress – New Programming Languages

The Future of the Brain

Picower Institute for Learning and Memory held a major scientific symposium entitled “The Future of the Brain” on December 1^st , 2005. The symposium focused on the future of neuroscience research. MIT president Susan Hockfield opened the days discussion.

The morning session featured talks by five Nobel Laureates including Susumu Tonegawa, Director of Picower Institute, and James D Watson. The afternoon session entitled “Change your mind” focused on the impact of Neuroscience of learning and memory on human health. The second session in the afternoon entitled “Expand your Mind” looked at the relationship between the human brain and mind.

To find out more about this, read more in my blog The Conscious Mind / The Future of the Brain

3 Players, 2 Visions and 1 Destination

3 Players

Microsoft, Sun, Google

2 Visions

Microsoft – A Desktop (Computer) in every home.

Sun Microsystems – Network is the Computer

Microsoft’s vision of ‘A Desktop in every home’ has helped the spread of internet and its economy which is considered around $100 billion dollars (The Search by John Battelle). This indirectly helped to realize the vision of Sun Microsystems ‘Network is the computer’. Sun Microsystem's Java platform, fast tracked the internet software development (Web site / portal development using Java technologies like servlets, enterprise java beans etc) which helped the normal users to get more value out of internet and letting it being part of their daily life.

Most of the computing for the common person revolves around the web browser and it became the interface to giant network (or should we say the Computer) called internet.

What did Google do over here?

To find out more about this, read more in my new blog Java and Technology / 3 Players, 2 Visions and 1 Destination

Neuroscientists break code on sight

By Cathryn M. Delude, MIT News Office Correspondent, November 3, 2005

In the sci-fi movie "The Matrix," a cable running from a computer into Neo's brain writes in visual perceptions, and Neo's brain can manipulate the computer-created world. In reality, scientists cannot interact directly with the brain because they do not understand enough about how it codes and decodes information.

To find out more about this, read more in my blog The Conscious Mind / Neuroscientists break code on sight