Headline Jan 24, 2016/ ''' WHAT IS A STUDENT'S LIFE WORTH ? '''

''' WHAT IS A STUDENT'S 

LIFE WORTH ? '''

I DISAGREE WITH Chetan Bhagat, when he says that in India, a Student's life is cheaper than a Fish. 

*NO, SIR!  It is worth only a Fig in the whole of the developing world*.

IN PAKISTAN   -I acknowledge with a growing sense of appreciation, that the Chief Minister of Punjab Mian Mohammed Shabaz Sharif, through an executive order :

Has banned all  ''child labour''  working at the brick and kiln factories. 

As a compensatory measure, for the family's loss of income,  the children have been offered a monthly stipend of Rs 1,000/=, free related schooling , free books, free transportation to and from school.

!WOW!   -the World Students Society will watch the execution and forward integration of this order in Punjab, while  it also  begins  researching this subject in all of the- Developing World.

And at the Host, Pakistan, - *terrible suffering and a pall of gloom* surrounds not only the province of KPK, but the whole country, after the attack and the subsequent bloodbath, at the Bacha Khan, University.

52 GAURDS, YES, 52 GUARDS, -and they couldn't ward off 4 to 6 attackers. Zero Patrolling. zero outposts, zero lookouts; Close circuit Cameras not operating, even defective.

Zero security awareness, and all that when the country of Pakistan is in a mortal combat, in state of War since the last complete decade. 

The tragedy was ripe and plum, destined to happen. What more lies in the pipeline, if the Nation continues to turn a blind-eye to the dire needs of this hour?

Great stories of  Student Heroism  have broken through, a terrible fog, that normally surrounds the pre and post attack scenarios. When I gather my own bits and pieces, in the future, !WOW! will publish them as a token of honour, to mark the bleeding hearts.

Memory serves, so let me narrate a real life story: Imagine-  a doting and a loving parent kissing his child good night. He returns to his room to sleep. Poisonous gases, from some uncared  for source, enter the child's room, suffocating him to death. It then kills the entire family.

This,... maybe a gory scene  -and I wish and pray that it never happens. But this is what precisely happened to thousands by thousands families in Bhopal,India, in 1984.

Many factors led to  -and could have prevented- the incident. The location of a poisonous pesticide factory so close to the city, terribly poor maintenance of equipment, cutting corners on safety by management, previous warnings about plant safety, labour issues -

All these have been identified by studies, post the incident.

There are clearly two guilty parties  -the company, Union Carbide that owned the plant and various government authorities that gave approvals for it.

More disturbing was the post-incident handling of affairs by the government. It is reported that the government actually assisted Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide India Limited, in leaving the country. 

The seven other accused were punished after twenty-five years, getting a maximum of two-years' sentences, and were out on bail after paying a bond of Rs 25,000 each.

COMPARE THIS to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico:

In 2010, sixty-five kilometres away from the US shoreline. The spill started one April due to an explosion on Deepwater Horizon, an offshore drilling rig leased by BP, one of the world's leading oil exploration companies.

Eleven people died in the explosion and seventeen people were injured. The spill also caused significant damage to marine life and ecology.

The US government spared no effort in bringing BP to book. 

Hundreds of law suits were filed against BP. President Barrack Obama himself made several anger-filled statements about BP's 'recklessness' and 'doing what it takes' to get BP to fix it.

Such was the fear of the  US government's resolve to teach the company a lesson that its shares lost close to $105 billion since the spill. 

BP also created a  $20 billion trust to compensate claims that paid about $8 billion in damages.

BP, on the other hand, had to cut its dividends and has spent billions trying to plug the leak.

That's how you teach big corporations a lesson. 

You make the cost of playing with safety so high that they never even dream of shortcuts. While it is unfortunate that one incident can wipe out a global corporate, there is no other choice.

One big guy punished changes the way thousands of other companies think. I can bet that every oil company thoroughly evaluated its safety procedures after the BP incident.

To protect marine life and related industries, even the  business-friendly US government was ready to   -as a White House spokesman said : 

''Put the boot on BP's neck.''        

Back to Indian Punjab, the kids/students have developed neurological problems and deformities as there is  uranium  in the water due to pollution by nearby plants.

And Bhopal, the mother of many great industrial disasters, serves as an example of how little the developing world values any, any citizen, any student, any life.

*Let there be no doubt on this inference and real conclusion*. That's the real state-of-affairs in the entire Developing World!

All hope is not lost, however. We can still learn our lessons and do a couple of things right. Our laws needed to be amended. But far, far more important and critically:

This generation of students must endeavour to relate to their grave responsibilities. In which the most obvious one is: what they owe to the future generations. 

!WOW!'s success or failure would be a good measure of the veal of every nation. 

Issues dating back 40 to 50 years continue to plague and bleed the developing world nations. Students keep asking me, if this state would ever change: Whose fault is this that they haven't? 

I look upwards to the heavens. I never have all the answers. But then who has all the answers?  Just raise your voice, if not your hand. 

With respectful dedication to the Leaders of the World. See Ya all Your Excellencies on !WOW!   -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011.

''' The Connection '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Headline Jan 23, 2016/ GOOGLE THE GIANT..... BUT *!WOW! THE WONDER*

GOOGLE THE GIANT..... 

BUT  *!WOW! THE WONDER*

Master Students : Marium, Rabo, Haleema, Dee, Malala {Nobel Prize}, Paras, Sorat, Saima, Sarah, Shazaib Khan, Salar Khan, Bilal Malik, Aqsa, Talat,  Hussain, Ali, Ehsan, Vishnu/India/ Reza/Canada, Jordan/US, Toby/China,

Noman, Mustafa/LUMS, Ibrahim, Eman, Haider/FAST, Zaeem, Hazeem, Daniyal-Rahym/UK, Sannan/MAJU, Hamza, Haanyia, Merium/Dublin, Nina, Faizan, Hassaan,Tooba, Ghazi, Armeen, Maynah, Sameen, Areesha, Nayab, Asim, Anique.........

Must setup the  Right Attitude and must envision the Right Foundation. This is critical to the  success of building a New and a  Great World!

We now move to a behind-the-scene glimpse into work  -and play-  at the giant Internet search company to see first hand,  Life in the Plex. 

LAUGH AS YOU MAY and laugh, as you must and  much   - there  is every possibility that by the time this century is out-   

Either and both  of these organisations-  *Google and  !WOW!*    would be well positioned for great power and great influence, to nurture such an idea and plan taking over the world And then, and so-

Should we be worried by the vast array of information Google captures about its users?

''The reason we keep track of your searches is to keep improving our search process,'' Menzel tells. 

He reminds me of one of the company's informal mottos  : Don't be evil - and says, ''We take that very seriously.''

NOT EVERYONE AGREES. Google's critics have blasted  it for everything from violating antitrust laws to being an unfair competitor to trying to monopolise search processes.  

I AM FINALLY admitted to the company's usually off-limits, locked-down and highly secretive security department. 

''Welcome to 'Security Land', says Ian Fette. product manager with Google's 200 security team-

As he ushers me through  double-locked doors. ''Not many outsiders get in here.''

As we walk through the department I see scores of security engineers poring over lines of complex computer coding that fill their huge twin monitors. 

No-one looks up; each is a study in concentration. These are some of the world's most accomplished  software engineers. They are Google's elite, the first line of defence against hackers, crackers and bad guys.

Fette and the department's anti-malware and the anti-phishing teams do constant battle, protecting Google and its users from a daily barrage of attackers-  intent on crippling the search engine giant or-

Stealing information from user accounts. ''Protecting our users data is what keeps me awake at night,'' says Fette. These cyber attacks range from the proverbial 15-year-old in his pyjamas to sophisticated assaults launched by skilled hackers or even governments.

''We try to keep one step ahead of the attackers. They are constantly evolving and so are we.'' explains Fette, a computer science graduate who speaks German and Japanese, flies his own plane-

And once worked for the  US  Defence Intelligence Agency. ''It's the New Cold War.''

Last June, the Security Team uncovered a sophisticated China-based attack that hacked into the personal Gmail account of hundreds of people, including top US officials, military personnel, journalists and Chinese political activists.

The team declared a  ''Code Red''  and sent an elite team of security experts into the department's war room, the nearby Incident Response Area.

As we walk by the room I notice door's series of locks and  signs that read '' Restricted Area '', ''No Visitors'' , and  ''Authorised Googlers Only''.

''Any chance I could peek inside?'' I ask Fette. ''Sure, but then we'd have to kill you,'' he jokes. At least I think he's joking.

WILL GOOGLE take over the world, as some fear? Unlikely, but part of the corporate vision is to look for : ''uncomfortably exciting idea that can change the world'', as Larry Page likes to say.

After my four-day visit to the  Googleplex, news is leaked that the firm's California-based  top-secret, clandestine laboratory, dubbed Google-X, is working on such outlandish inventions as a-

Lift that could transport people into outer space via a cable that instead of a rocket, driverless cars robots that would go to work while their human owners stay home, and even more outlandish ideas.

SOUND CRAZY?  

Those driverless cars are already here; Google introduced the world's first working  robot-controlled vehicle in 2010 and it has driven roughly 320,000 km on Nevada's and California's highways since then.

It's mind-boggling, isn't it?''

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011:

''' True Grit '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Headline Jan 22, 2016/ ''' 2 MILLION JOB RESUMES A YEAR ''' : * GOOGLE THE GIANT *

''' 2 MILLION JOB RESUMES A YEAR ''' :

 * GOOGLE THE GIANT *

PAKISTAN............ AND THE WORLD STUDENTS SOCIETY DEEPLY MOURN :

'ON These greening, lifting moores,......- with a beautiful life to   RUN!

Why then did DEATH come calling, --. AND EVERY MERCY   SHUN?

What say thee Now,--------- -------------.....  O'' Students of every Galore?

AS the caring world's, litlle bleeding heart, into ...a million pieces tore !'

''Anon''

With Most Respectful dedication to all the Students, Professors and Teachers of:

Bacha Khan University, Charsadda University, Pakistan

GIANT GOOGLE receives a staggering  Two million resumes a year, all competing for roughly  8000  positions.

*Less than  one per cent  of the applicants will get hired*.

When I ask her about all the employee perks,  such as the free food, the company lounges, and the ubiquitous  foosball and pool tables she confesses that there is a method to Google's madness.

What looks to an outsider like  ''playtime''  is much more serious. ''All of these things make Googlers'  working lives easier and fun, but they also promote collaboration,'' she explains.  ''There's very little hierarchy here and we encourage cross-fertilisation.''

She reminds me that the engineers I may have seen playing table tennis or volleyball were probably also talking over their latest project. ''It's one of the ways we get things done here.'' 

Another novel Google concept is  ''20 per cent time'' . 

''Sergey and Larry want all  Googlers to devotee 20 per cent of their time to work on any project they are interested in,'' says Mangolini.

She notes that such products as Gmail  - Google's wildly successful email system   -Google News and others were developed during Googlers           20 per cent time.

ONE OF THE COMPANY'S shining stars is Jack Menzel, director of product management at Google  Search, He's part of the team that is continually refining Google's complex search operations.

As we sit in a third-floor conference room, he tries to explain to me what happens when someone types a search query into Google's search engine. 

I say  ''attempt'' , because Mezel is so bright and the process is so complicated that I can barely understand what he is saying.

''Why don't you pretend that you're explaining this to ten-year-old, Jack?'' I ask. 

It doesn't help much. Finally, he just types my name into the search engine. In less than a second,  0.22  of a second to be exact, Google produces  ''About 3460''  results, each of which contains my exact name.

''It's remarkable, isn't it?'' says the bright eyed, bespectacled Menzel. ''Sometimes, it even blows my mind!''

The company's worldwide network of computer servers is constantly ''crawling''  the billions of pages that populate the Internet, to help build its own ''representation''  of the web.

Menzel asks me to imagine the Internet as a vast library. ''Every time it adds a book,  -we record it  -as well as everything that's inside that book. Than we scan for your name.'' Again, his eyes light up.  ''It's mind-boggling isn't it? 

Now,what's equally amazing is that we also show you those results according to how relevant we think they are to you. And we do all that in less than quarter of a second!''

Page rankings are derived from more than  200 different signals, which can include the user's past searches; rankings are generated by complex algorithms    -software programs that direct the search.

These proprietary algorithms are the company's   ''secret sauce'' and are entrusted to only a select few. 

By perfecting their search engine and matching paid ads to users' search results,  Google has risen from a startup in  1998  to become a one of the most profitable companies in the world.

The Honour and Serving of the  ''Technology Operational Research'' continues. Thank Ya all for reading and sharing forward. And see you on the following one.

With respectful dedication to the whole world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011:

''' The Road To Honours '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Headline Jan 21, 2016/ ''' O ''GIANT - *GOOGLE ! '''

''' O ''GIANT - *GOOGLE ! '''

*DON'T BE EVIL*....... is one of  Google's company mottos. '' We take that very seriously,'' says Jack Menzel, director at Google search.   And the year is 2012-13

It;s just after 9am and I'm standing outside the Silicon Valley, USA headquarters of Google, the hugely successful Internet search company whose name has entered the international lexicon. 

Most of the world doesn't   ''search''   the Internet, it  ''googles''.

Under an impossibly blue Californian sky, I watch hundreds of  **Googlers**, as the company's employees are known, stream into the 100,000m sq    Googleplex, a collection of low-rise, landscaped office buildings.

T-shirts are big here. Many people have backpacks, others carry computer notebooks tucked under their arms or open in front of them. Some tote bags of dirty laundry.

I've been invited by Google management to the  Googleplex  for an exclusive inside look into this highly secretive operation. Google has promised me an unprecedented access to its facilities and employees.

I'm hoping to prove or disprove some widely held beliefs  -and rumours- about this company that in 13 years  has grown from a tiny Internet search startup to a multinational colossus that employs more than 32,000  people in 60 offices around the world.

*For example, does Google know everything about us how we search the Internet?*   Should we care?  Do Googlers spend most of their time skateboarding around their offices, shooting pool or playing practical jokes  on one another?

Aren't most Googlers  20-something millionaires? Do they even hire someone older than 30? And is Google, which made nearly   $38 billion in revenue in 2011, about to take over the world?

TO EXPLORE the sprawling Googleplex I jump on one of the hundreds of trademark blue, red, yellow and green bicycles  that are left around the campus for employees to use. 

I ride with Cliff Redeker, 28, the company's ''impressario''-

Who organises the visits of celebrity speakers to the Googleplex. As we pedal past glistening glass and steel buildings, Redeker tells me, ''We like to combine fun with business. It's called being ''Googley'. 

As we park our bikes outside  Building 43, I spot a Googler wearing old jeans and polo shirt dashing up the steps with a guitar sticking out of his backpack.

When I tell Redeker that's not something you'd see at many other companies, he tells me.

   

''That's our CFO, Patrick Pichette. We are casual at Google.''

Indeed, how many other companies have a corporate philosophy that notes:........... you can be serious without a suit?   As I learn quickly at Google, It's a cardinal sin to take oneself too seriously.

After passing through Building 43's security check, we bump into Wanda Hung, who works in the Search department. She's accompanied by her four-year-old-dog Lily, a striking white-haired Samoyed. 

''She's been coming to work with me since she was four months old,'' says Hung. ''She loves it here. So do I.''

Redeker and I walk on. A Googler wearing rollerblades and clutching a notebook zoom by us. I meet several workers who have ditched their office chairs to sit on giant,inflatable exercise balls.

At a staff canteen that offers everything from organic yogurt to freshly roasted coffee to energy balls   -ALL FREE- ,  Redeker tells me that co-founders  Sergey Brin  and  Larry Page wanted employees to feel free to snack whenever they got the urge.

''They dictated that  no Googler should be more than  150 feet   away from a micro-kitchen.'' he tells me. There are more than  150 micro-kitchens in the Googleplex.

FOOD, all free, is a big deal at Google. There are 25 cafes, including 25 gourmet restaurants, that serve everything from fried calamari with Chinese sausage to rack of lamb to vegetarian you-name-it, to a reported annual cost to Google of more than  $70 million. 

New staff report having to cope with what's called the   ''Google 15'' :

''That's the  15 pounds  [seven kilos]  they put on after they start working here, '' says Redecker. No worries, they can then head to one of the firm's six free gyms to work it off.

And those laundry bags I saw?  ''We have washing machines and dryers here, so employees can do their laundry while they work,'' says Redeker,

BACK ON OUR BIKES,  Redeker laughs when I ask him if the rumours about so many   Googlers   becoming millionaires are true.

''I wish!'' he says.

''Many of the early employees became millionaires when the company went public, but things are different now.'' Salaries are a closely guarded secret, but new employees can easily earn more than $100,000 a year.

OK, but aren't all newbies in their 20s?  ''That's another misconception,'' says Yolanda Mangolini, a director within  People Ops [Human Resources], as we sit a quirky playground-type bench inside her department.

''We hire lots of people in their 30s, and 40s and older.'' Although Google doesn't release information on the age of its workers, the average appears to be the mid-30s

The Honour and Serving of  ''Technology Operational Research'' continues. Thank Ya all for reading and sharing forward.

With respectful dedication to....... Giant Google, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and Ecosystem 2011.

''' A Quirky Masterpiece '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Headline Jan 20, 2016/ ''' THOSE *W I T C H E S* OF YORE '''

''' THOSE *W I T C H E S* OF YORE '''

THE HALLMARK OF A GREAT SCARY STORY is that it gets scarier the longer you sit with it. Come home from the bonfire, climb into your warm bed-

Remind yourself that the hitchhiker with the hook isn't real  -but suddenly the branch scraping on the windowpane becomes altogether more sinister.

SALEM, in Schiff's telling, has that power . In the Massachusetts woods, a Puritan village is afflicted by the devil. His guilty consorts  -mostly women- live among the innocent, as their neighbors and relatives.

The village, with help of the most learned men of the colony, sets out to find them. The witches are fearsome, but the witch trial becomes more so. Those who profess innocence are sent to death-

Unable to prove that they are not guilty of a crime that was itself beyond proof: ''Witchcraft inscribed a vicious circle,'' Schiff writes, ''its allegations generating witchlike behavior.''

The year passes,  -19 people are executed, and the mist clears as suddenly as it settled.  

EVEN TODAY, -HAUNTED HORDES descend on Salem. The Massachusetts city draws a quarter-million tourists each October with its-

Devil's Chase fun run, magic shows, booze cruises, seances, parades and the Official Salem Witches' Halloween Ball.

All that fun, of course, comes at a somewhat forgotten cost: the lives that ended during the  1692  witch trials. And as Stacy Schiff demonstrates in her new work of history,  The Witches : Salem, 1692, we still know frighteningly little about that strange, terrifying year. 

Schiff, who won a Pulitzer in 2000 for  Vera, her biography of Vladimir Nabokov's wife, and the best seller list in 2010 with Cleopatra : A Life, -is skilled at turning-centuries-old documents into a visceral universe.

Salem was surrounded by a frightening wilderness, and when all the wilderness stopped, the familiar wasn't much better. The village was a hotbed of property disputes, religious differences and family feuds.

Life veered between drudgery, prayer and terror. The Puritan belief system also left Salemites unlikely to chalk anything up to chance, which made them seek a guilty party for every happening, which is a scary thought in itself.

The resident of Salem were wrong about a lot   -and by the end of 1692, many of them knew it  -but they weren't faking their fear of what lurked in the dark.

The obvious question here is Why? Why did the accusers start down this path, and so quickly, and why did anyone believe them?  That's what readers want to hear, and the possible answers Schiff uncovers are intriguing: political upheaval, social imbalances, psychological disorders, even fairy tales.

But while she occasionally leans on the crutch of suggesting that a revelation is forthcoming, she also knows that she can't fully resolve the question. Through Massachusetts Puritans were usually reliable record keepers, many chose to omit or expunge this saga.

Schiff introduces the text with several pages of dramatis personae and a quote from Chekhov, and the trials present a beginning-middle-end arc, but the drama here doesn't take a traditional narrative structure. There's no real climax or denouement. 

Unlike Cleopatra, this work also must struggle with the formidable hurdle of having several compelling characters  -bewitched tweenagers, stubborn justices, the omnipresent Cotton Mather  -but no protagonist.  

As`a result, the experience can become less like a scary movie than a haunted house : one fright follows another, and they can easily blur together.

It's when you abandon the Why? that other questions began to bubble. What do their contracts with the devil tell us about  17th century girls who'd sell their souls for help with the chores.? What do the trials say about the path and wake of rumor?

And while Schiff leaves it mostly unsaid, how could we stop a version of this hysteria from happening again?

By the time the last witch hanged, Salem's upheavel was more than spectral. Fortunes were squandered. Children were orphaned. Even the Church was hit, as many residents were forced to re-examine the beliefs that had let them so far astray.

The village was dazed and preferred to forget, and centuries passed without the true cause of the episode revealing themselves. Centuries more will likely pass the same way; If Schiff nail down a final answer, it seems unlikely anyone will. Maybe that's because there isn't one.

That's why the witch hunt has endured a scary story. If we can't say how it started, it can't teach us how to prevent its modern incarnations  -and that's enough to make anyone shiver.

With respectful dedication to the Students of the world. See Ya all on !WOW! -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011- 

''' LightBox '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless