Valentine's Day and the irony of it

Valentine’s Day is meant to give a reason to a relationship. This day which was invented to honour and commit to true love has been reduced to an ignominious sham of avarice and perversion.

HE KNEW PRIYA since childhood. She was his neighbour. As kids, Priya and Rahul played together each day. Their constant meetings led to attraction and urge to see each other when they grew up. As expected Rahul started taking their relationship for granted and also that Priya would always be there waiting for him near that old faithful Neem tree. And Priya did turn up every time, with a twinkle in her eye and she blushed on seeing his face.

It had been 21 years then. Priya had become Rahul’s support and his reason to smile. Until one day, when Priya introduced her best friend to her boyfriend. Rahul forced a smile and with feelings left unsaid, he left the country to do his MBA. Priya soon got over with her new crush. In her solitude, she pondered and yearned for Rahul. Putting all instances together, she realized that there was more to her relation with Rahul than just friendship. His absence breathed emptiness in her life.

It was Valentine’s Day and she mustered courage to convey her immense love for him through a letter. After exchanging a series of letters for a year, the couple got married on February 14 next year.

St Valentine arranged secret marriages between lovers in order to break King Claudius’ law that forbade soldiers in his Army from marriage. Valentine’s Day was meant to bring a new beginning to a relationship. It was the culmination of true love into marriage, a promise to stay together forever.

The true meaning of Valentine’s Day has been appallingly exploited. A card saying ‘Be my Valentine’ is used an excuse to date anyone who fits your definition of attractive. A new date on each Valentine’s Day has become the new motto and expensive gifts a trademark. As such the card and gift industry is booming. Hotels and restaurants offering alluring nights for couples at an unaffordable price are increasing. The number of audacious men who beg, borrow or blow up their father’s money to ‘gift her a diamond’ are innumerable. With a result that the very spirit of this occasion is fast turning to avarice and seduction. Valentine’s Day, today, has become a symbol of flirtatiousness and the promotion of ostentation. The tricks to charm a man have developed; the meaning of true love has perished. This day suffers the derision of the word love, the very foundation of Valentine’s Day.

The only people genuinely benefiting on this day are the poor farmers in Pune who are going to make profit due to intermediate trade of flowers between Pune and UK. Remaining is feigned love. Valentine’s Day is meant to honour love, be it for parents, teachers or lovers. However, it has become a day of materialism-resulted flash. The only thing that drives youngsters on this day is eroticism and infatuation. This drive is greater than their love for anybody else. We can safely conclude that we have succeeded in aping the West completely and have lost ourselves in a causal nexus from where there is no returning.

Everything about ORKUT !!!

Orkut was quietly launched on January 22, 2004 by the search company Google. Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer, developed Orkut as an independent project while working at Google (required by its policy). Some discomfort with this exists among users and potential users of Orkut, especially since Google's other noteworthy product of 2004, the Web-based email client Gmail, had servers scan emails for keywords in order to deliver advertisements targeted at them, which sparked an idea that Google was "reading your e-mail".

While previously working for Affinity Engines, he had developed a similar system, InCircle, intended for use by university alumni groups. In late June 2004, Affinity Engines filed suit against Google, claiming that Büyükkökten and Google based Orkut on inCircle code. The allegation is based on the presence of 9 identical bugs in Orkut that also exist in InCircle.

Originally, the Orkut community was felt to be elite, because its membership was by invitation only. At the end of July 2004 Orkut surpassed the 1,000,000 member mark, and at the end of September it surpassed the 2,000,000 mark. As of December 6, 2006, the number of members was over 35.2 million.

Orkut's use as a social tool is complex, because various people frequently try to add strangers to their own pool of friends, often just to increase the number indicating their number of friends next to their name in their profile. Many "add-me" communities exist, solely for this purpose. A large number of bogus, cloned, fake, invisible and "orphaned" profiles also exist.

Popularity in Brazil

Demographics of Orkut

	Brazil		60.32%
	Pakistan		1.65%
	United States		15.25%
	India		11.97%
	Iran		1.03%
	United Kingdom		0.68%
	Japan		0.50%
	Portugal		0.44%
	Canada		0.41%
	Mexico		0.39%
	Bahrain		0.29%
	Saudi Arabia		0.25%

The Orkut community has been watching a large surge of Brazilian users registering on its service, despite the overall percentage of Brazilian users decreasing. This is the highest percentage of any single country's population using the service. According to the New York Times it's pronounced "or-KOO-chee"[1]. The number of Brazilian Orkut users is more than 60% of the total users, followed by United States and India, with about 15.5% and 11.8% respectively (As of December 3rd, 2006). Due to the number of Brazilian users and communities in the Portuguese language, users from other parts of the world became upset with the service, when it established Portuguese as the first "alternate default language," (as English was the primary default language) prompting many community owners to enforce an English-only posting policy. Some went as far as to start online communities and discussion groups dedicated to complain about this phenomenon. Hoaxes have also been spread, with the intention of tricking Brazilian users to change their nationality in Orkut^{[citation needed]}.

In a recent interview to a Brazilian news site, the creator of Orkut said he doesn't understand the phenomenon and complains about the fact that North-American press and users are ignoring the service and using similar services like Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook. He also noted that Brazil is actually the main focus of Orkut

Flooders and fake profiles

As the number of Orkut users increased, there was a rise in the number of fake and clone profiles, something that can be achieved just in a matter of a few minutes. Due to the large number of users and the deactivation of the jail system, the profiles were often left unremoved or, when removed, recreated easily. These profiles are normally created to troll, to spam, to flood or just for fun. It isn't hard to find users owning more than one profile, with some stating they own hundreds.

Later, the clones started to flood communities and scrapbooks by submitting topics or scraps hundreds or thousands of times manually. Shortly thereafter, by simply examining the source code of the page, they found it was possible to create Javascript codes to automatically flood the site. Soon (given that Orkut is a complex social network), flooding wars started to occur frequently between some antagonistic groups. Another new phenomenon is Scrapbook wars, when a group of users are engaged to zero or increase the scrapbook counter of someone.

On January 1, 2005 a Brazilian hacker called Vinícius K-Max attacked Orkut, stealing community ownership rights, using a XSS vulnerability. Eventually, various phishing sites were developed with the intent of stealing other people's accounts and communities. A couple of months later, invisible profiles, communities and topics started to appear in Orkut. This could be achieved by using HTML escaping codes and 1x1 pixel photos to fool the engine behind the site.

In the August of 2005 a freeware program made in Delphi called Floodtudo ("tudo" in Portuguese means "everything" - this was developed by a Brazilian) was created specifically for flooding Orkut. It quickly spread through the users and was easily downloadable (the most common Floodtudo versions were 1.2, 1.5, 2.0 and 2.2). As this program was massively used by thousands of spammers, a big spam wave struck Orkut in September and October of 2005. However, changes implemented by the developers in November made this program non-functional.

As the flooding of Orkut was getting out of control, the developers implemented some features in order to stop this, such as not allowing two or more verbatim topics or scrapbook entries to be submitted, forcing the user to wait before posting another topic or scrapbook entry, and the usage of captchas. They gave more rights to community moderators as well, so that they can just ban users instead of relying on the developers to remove them, and now community moderators are able to mass-delete posts too.

Other ways of profile and community attacks still exist, like testimonial flooding attacks on scrapbook and member counters, multi-profile floods and social engineering.

Hate groups

There has recently been controversy revolving around the use of Orkut by various hate groups. Virulent racists allegedly have a solid following there. Because of the invitation-only structure, closed groups of like-minded people were, and with the invitation free structure are able to thrive. Several hate communities focused on racism, Nazism, and white supremacy have been deleted due to guideline violation. However the number of these communities and profiles has not stopped growing because they can be very easily created and it is hard for Orkut to check them.

In 2005, various cases of racism were denounced to police and reported in the Brazilian media. [2] [3] In 2006, a judicial measure was opened by the Brazil federal justice denouncing a 20-year-old student accused of racism against blacks and spreading defamatory content on Orkut. [4]. Brazilian Federal Justice subpoenaed Google [5] on March 2006 to explain the crimes that had occurred in Orkut.

Anti-religion, anti-national, and anti-ethnic hate groups have also been spotted. Recently an Indian court has issued notices to Google on some of the Hate India groups created by Americans of Pakistani descent and Pakistanis. Google is expected to file its response in the court very soon. Groups denigrating various political leaders and celebrities have also emerged.

Copyright disclaimer

Orkut's terms of service state:

By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials.

This does not mean that any contribution to the Orkut community (be it forum posts or photos) becomes the property of the site owner; while it means that Orkut can use any submitted information for any purpose, the original submitter doesn't lose any rights to his materials.

Although other popular social network services such as Friendster and MySpace contain similar statements, this policy offended many dedicated Orkut users, some of whom deleted their accounts as a protest.

Legal Problems in India

On October 10th, 2006, the Bombay High Court's Aurangabad bench served a notice on Google for 'allowing a hate campaign against India'. This referred to a community on Orkut called 'We Hate India' which carries a picture of an Indian flag being burnt and some anti-India content. The community currently has 118 members.

The High Court order was issued in response to a public-interest petition filed by an Aurangabad advocate. Google has six weeks to respond. Even before the petition was filed, many Orkut users had noticed this community and were mailing or otherwise messaging their contacts on Orkut to report the community as bogus to Google, which might result in its removal. The community continues to exist and has spawned several 'We hate those who hate India' communities.

On November 23, Bombay High Court asked the state government to file its reply in connection with a petition demanding a ban on social networking site, Orkut, for hosting an anti-Shivaji Web community.'File reply on plea for ban on Orkut: HC'

The community had been blocked by the Pune police after a few violent incidents were reported in the city when its existence came to light two weeks ago.

Though the community is currently inaccessible, the petitioner Subodh Balsaraf, a Thane resident has demanded that Orkut, which has captured the fancy of many Indians, be banned.

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Euphemisms in troubled times

We live in a world of curious euphemisms. There are things we want to say at times but cannot. So we say them in different ways.

For instance, whenever we say Pakistan, what we really mean is Muslim. When we say Pakistan is behind something, what we actually mean is: These Muslims are behind it. But since it’s still politically incorrect to blame an entire community, and a minority one at that, we blame it on Pakistan. Pakistan , to the average Indian, incorrectly I dare say, represents all that is wrong with Islam. Every time we blame Pakistan, we are actually blaming Muslims.

For we, or at least a very large section among us, are veering around to the belief that a secular India is not a place for Muslims- for Muslims owe allegiance, first and foremost to Islam, not to any nation.

While this may not be entirely true, as I know many Muslims who swear by India and secularism just as I know many Arabs who swear by Palestine, not Islam, the truth is also that, worldwide, Muslims appear to be firming up in their belief that their faith is more important than their nationality. That Allah is more important than India or UK or Saudi Arabia. We read about this daily. We watch it on TV.

As a result, even the most secular among us recognise that a new brotherhood of Islam is growing so rapidly-cutting across nations, cultures, financial communities-that very soon the world will be split between those who live by Islam and those who don’t.

Just as, barely three decades ago, the world was split between those who believed in Communism and those who did not. Funnily, there was a time when Muslims hated the Communists most-for being Godless. Today, they occupy the very space that Communism has vacated. With just one crucial difference: Allah is at the centre of their universe.

Another euphemism we live with is terrorism. What we call terrorism today is actually any bloody and ghastly crime that cannot be explained. A terrorist is a person who kills others, in a flamboyant, random manner, for reasons that cannot be explained away by emotions like greed, lust, anger. The terrorist does not kill to inherit property-he inherits the Kingdom of God.

The terrorist does not kill for love or lust-he loves and fears only God and lusts after the vestal virgins waiting for him in heaven. The terrorist, in fact, does not even kill someone he or she hates-the target is always unknown and innocent people, many of them sharing a common faith with the perpetrators of the crime. So why does a terrorist kill?

No one knows. Often not even the terrorist himself. That is why many terrorists psyche or drug themselves out before committing the crime.

Of course, some terrorists are lucky. They have a real cause to fight for. Palestine is the best example. Palestine is a cause that many non-Muslims also feel for. But even there, the terrorist is fast losing sympathy because of the randomness of their strikes.

You may have lost your nation and spent your entire life growing up in a refugee camp but even that does not allow you to kill innocent women and children in a bus or a shopping mall. Were it not for Israel’s brashness and over-reaction at times, the Palestinian terrorist – the last of the terrorists with a cause that people can actually relate to would have also lost sympathy a long time back.

That is why it’s doubly important for us not to punish the innocent while hunting down terrorists. Our anger at what Pakistan is doing or what havoc Muslim terrorists are wrecking worldwide should not provoke us to retaliate in a manner that breeds more terrorists on our soil.

For that is exactly what Pakistan wants. That is exactly what Muslim extremists want. That is exactly what fundamentalists of all hues want. Pakistan wants us to hammer innocent Muslims so that they get disillusioned with secular India and can be recruited for Pakistan’s own subversive purposes.

Muslim extremist groups are waiting for the opportunity to grab new recruits and every time we get rough with Muslims here, they gain new converts.

As for the fundamentalists, every group-Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Sikh-benefits politically when their community feels besieged. That’s when their vote banks consolidate.

In other words, when the police indiscriminately round up entire Muslim neighbourhoods or pick up innocent people, they are actually strengthening the cause of the jehadis and endangering our lives even more. This is exactly what terrorist organisations pray for. It lands countless angry, bewildered, disappointed young men and women into their waiting arms. Their ranks grow. Their cause finds many new supporters. The groundswell of bitterness creates communal flashpoints where none existed. Terrorism finds new targets, new foot soldiers.

But what is even more dangerous is that not only do the jehadis gain, so do all other political formations that feed off fundamentalism. The BJP and the Samajwadi Party are actually Gemini cousins. They need each other to consolidate their vote banks. Radical Islam counterpoints Hindu fundamentalism. Both gain.


Yes, it’s time for anger. True. That’s what I keep saying . But it’s equally important that we do not allow this anger to blunt our intelligence or cloud our judgment. Neither should we allow politicians to endanger our lives any further by allowing showmanship to replace hard-nosed law enforcement. We need to beat back terrorism, not allow our leaders to use this opportunity to score brownie points off each other . Tilting at windmills wins no wars.

What could win the war for us is a concerted, all out effort to fight terrorism which hurts all of us in the end. Including innocent Muslims who get blown up in bomb blasts, just like anyone else. All, alas, in the name of Allah.

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Can India and Pakistan disarm?

Five years ago this month Pakistan became the seventh country to reveal it had nuclear weapons.

This week Islamabad said it hoped to restart talks with India, against whom it has fought several wars, about their atomic arsenals.

The offer comes amid fresh peace hopes between the two rivals.

But is it realistic to expect any country to give up such weapons? Can Pakistan and India live together in peace and security.

How do you explain a person sitting on his/her bottom right when it happens during our national anthem being played. it's shame for the nation and by and large it reflects the level of respect these fellows carry for the nation. now take a look at the picture below. The same story was broken years ago around a time and it created less hoop-la in the political circles and it's futile to expect anything from the 543 fibbers that have the control of this nation.may be we deserve better that this or may e worst is yet to come. Honestly if this picture is true then law must act with an iron fist to finish Laloo an Rabri Devi. but how much long it would take is a good guess and on that your guess is as good as mine. so for the time being or till these folks are punished i hang my head in shame. This incident had happened a few years ago in India .watch everyone in the background standing and have a good guess what might be happening

pakistan and india ..can they really become friends ever..

First of all ..let me put it straight out that ..i am an indian..so everything i say is my perspective as an indian..
Now starting up.. wat is pakistan..i would describe it as a beggar+whore born out of bad politics of gandhi n neheru during india's freedom struggle against british colonialism. so pak is a country, a culture that is no different frm ours..only the thinkin' process got rotten abt each other down the line..n that is owed to many deeper things of globalisation ..its money ,the economy , the politics..n ya above all their religion (read islam) teaches them to hate india anyways..
just think guys..wat can someone achieve for himself when only thing goin' on in his mind is to kill his own neighbours..that is the case wih pakistan ..they live is the rubble of hatred , jealousy, doctrinism n consevatism..pity on you poor people..n oh yes.. ur religion ISLAM..huh!! wat more can i say ..the world knows..9/11 , london bombings, other innumerable blasts in india.. islam permits them to marry their own sisters ..damn.. no i think it is their self imposed form of islam..they don't any family wealth to go outside when they marry their daughters to someone else(dowry)..gosh, such mean n freaky people..they say islam teaches them to destroy india n everything non-islamic..man..no religion can teach violence to kill innocent people ..the fuckin' clerics along with some mega fuckin' power crazy people is spreading this for their own good..no i should say bullshit..
guys watz the buzz words for the youth today (read genX or iGEN whichever u r comfortable with)..i think attitude , consumerism ,gizmos, hip-hop , tatoos , ubersexuality , y fronts..like all the things which make youth go ga ga..leave alone da pakis..they are into different buzz millitancy..they are into killing people..innocent people..women n children...man i am loosing control..i should clam down ..else i would break my keyboard..
its damn shittin' that india government is so patient ..that too has reasons of US n CHINA..not to flabbergast the somber pakis with a bold millitary attack..n then ka-boom..fuck..gone forever ..60 years of venomous biting n pricking that we indians are living up with..
so...india n pakistan can never be friends ..talk about anything else on this mortal world..

say no to arms..

hey ppl..how r u doin'..i have this one thing goin' on my mind these days..how do we common ppl fight terrorism, militancy that is thriving all round the world..don't u guys think that we young generation have got lot to do for this..9/11 , london bombings, insurgency in iraq, indo-pak troubles...guys , think whose suffering..innocent ppl like u n me..whoever is responsible ..be it the islamist fundamentalists, bin laden , bush whoever it is ...it is us at the receiving end full of sorrow and disgust..so common lets fight it out..lets not give into the tentacles of these ppl who have apathy for humankind n life itself..lets put it this way ..that violence can never bring sanity n prosperity to any community..it can only lead to abyss of death n mourn .. so fight terrorism coz it is a genocide of humanity...