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जरी न गातील भाट डफावर तुझे यशोगान, सफल जाहले तुझेच हे रे, तुझेच बलिदान

2010-03-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

भगतसिंग :-

बालपण आजोबांच्या आर्यसमाजी संस्कारात घालवलेले व शालेय जीवनात रोज नित्य नेमाने सकाळ व सायंकाळ प्रार्थना करणारे व गायत्री मंत्रांचा जप करणारे भगतसिंग पुढे क्रांतिपर्वात पूर्णपणे निरीश्वरवादी झाले. यामुळे त्यांना 'आत्मप्रौढी व घमेंड यांची बाधा झाली आहे असेही उठवले गेले. मात्र ऑक्टोबर १९३० मध्ये त्यांनी लिहिलेले "मी निरीश्वरवादी का?" हे प्रकटन वाचल्यावर त्यांच्या महान व्यक्तिमत्त्वाची ओळख पटते. समाज हा प्रगत असावा; प्रत्येक घटना, समज वा परंपरा या विचाराच्या ऐरणीवर घासून त्या पटल्या तरच स्वीकाराव्या, उगाच अंधश्रद्धेपोटी वा कुणाच्या व्यक्तिपूजेखातर कसोटीवर न उतरवता कोणतीही गोष्ट स्वीकारू नये, समाज हा समभावी व शोषणमुक्त असावा, समाजरचनेत व देशाच्या रचनेत धर्म, जात हे आड येऊ नयेत, उगाच कुणाचे स्तोम माजवून जनतेने आपल्या बुद्धीचा कस न लावता दबावामुळे पटत नसले तरी कुणीतरी मोठे सांगत आहे म्हणून जे वास्तविक नाही वा ज्याला तात्त्विक पाया नाही असे काही स्वीकारू नये, समजाची सर्वांगीण प्रगती व्हावी, पाप-पुण्य, स्वर्ग - नरक, जन्म -पुनर्जन्म,८४ लक्ष फेरे व त्यातून मुक्ती, मृत्यूनंतरचे जीवन, वगरे तर्कशुद्ध नसलेल्या गोष्टींवर अंधविश्वास न ठेवणारा कणखर समाज निर्माण व्हावा यासाठीच त्यांचा हा प्रयत्न होता. कामगार हा राज्याचा मुख्य घटक असावा, त्याचे भांड्वलदारांकडून शोषण होऊ नये व राज्यकारभारात त्याला स्थान असावे असे भगतसिंगांचे आग्रही प्रतिपादन होते. अत्यंत प्रतिकूल व कष्टसाध्य असे जीवन समोर असताना ज्याचा मृत्यूनंतर स्वर्गप्राप्तीवर वा या जन्मात सत्कार्य केले असता मोक्ष मिळतो वा या जन्मात केलेल्या कृत्याचे फळ म्हणून पुढील जन्म अत्यंत सुखाचा जातो या गोष्टींवर विश्वास आहे त्याला समोर असलेला मृत्यू पुढील प्राप्तीच्या ओढीने सुसह्य वाटू शकतो. मात्र ज्याचा या गोष्टींवर जराही विश्वास नाही परंतु जो मातृभूमीला परदास्यातून मुक्त करणे व समाजाला शोषणातून मुक्त करून मानाचे जीवन प्राप्त करून देणे हेच आपल्या आयुष्याचे प्रथम व अखेरचे ध्येय समजतो त्याचे जीवन हे अधिक खडतर परंतु अर्थपूर्ण असते असा त्यांचा सिंद्धांत होता. जगात जर सर्वात भयानक पाप असेल तर ते गरिबी व सर्वात मोठा शाप कोणता असेल तर तो दास्य हाच आहे. आणि या दास्याला ईश्वरी कोप मानून त्या दास्यातून मुक्त होण्यासाठी बलिदानाला सज्ज होण्याऐवजी ईश्वराची करुणा भाकणे हे मूर्खपणा व पळपुटेपणाचे लक्षण आहे तसेच मुक्तीसाठी ठोस प्रयत्न न करता केवळ प्राक्तनाला दोष देणे हे भ्याडपणाचे लक्षण आहे असे त्यांनी प्रतिपादीले. सुमारे दहा पाने भरेल इतके मोठे हे प्रकटन अत्यंत प्रभावी व भारून टाकणारे आहे. हुतात्मा भगतसिंग यांच्या चरित्राचा अभ्यास केला असता आपल्याला समजते की त्यांनी केलेले बलिदान हे भावनेच्या आहारी जाऊन वा कसल्यातरी प्राप्तीसाठी केले नसून ते अत्यंत सुनियोजित, अत्यंत ध्येयबद्ध व प्रेरणादायक होते. आपण राहणार नाही, पण आपण लावलेल्या क्रांतिवृक्षाच्या सर्व फांद्या भले शत्रूने छाटून टाकल्या तरी पाळेमुळे घट्ट रुजून राहतील व हीच मुळे एक दिवस बंदिवासाच्या भिंती उन्मळून टाकतील हा त्यांचा दृढ विश्वास होता.

एक लेखक, एक पत्रकार, एक काव्यरसिक, एक प्रतिभावंत, एक समाजवेत्ता, एक क्रांतिकारक, एक परखड तत्त्वज्ञानी, एक सहिष्णू विचारवंत, एक द्रष्टा, एक निग्रही देशभक्त अशी अनेक रुपे या महायोग्याचे जीवनचरित्र वाचताना दिसून येतात. अत्यंत ज्वालाग्रही पण अत्यंत शांत. अत्यंत निग्रही पण तितकेच हळवे. अत्यंत तडफदार पण उतावळे नाहीत. अत्यंत कणखर पण तरीही विनम्र. स्वातंत्र्य देवतेला सर्वस्वाचा नैवेद्य दाखवूनही निरीश्वरवादी राहिलेले. पुनर्जन्मावर विश्वास नसलेले पण तरीही पुन्हा याच देशात जन्माला येण्यास उत्सुक असलेले.जगात सर्वात घोर पाप असेल तर ते म्हणजे गुलामी व दारिद्र्य असे ठामपणे सांगत देवाला साकडे घालण्यापेक्षा स्वतः:ला सक्षम करण्याचा व त्यागावाचून आणि साहसावाचून उद्धार नसल्याचा संदेश देणारे. आपल्याच आदरस्थानी मानलेल्या नेत्यांनी निर्भत्सना केल्यावरही विचलित वा क्षुब्ध न होता वा त्यांना कसलेही दूषण न देता आपले कार्य तितक्याच निष्ठेने सुरू ठेवणारे हे एक अलौकिक व्यक्तिमत्त्व.

भगतसिंगांचा व्यासंग दांडगा होता. क्रांतिसाहित्याने त्यांना जणू झपाटून टाकले होते.सचिंद्रनाथ संन्याल यांचे 'बंदी जीवन' हे त्यांना प्रभावित करणारे बहुधा पहिले पुस्तक.ऑस्कर वाइल्ड्चे 'वीरा-दी निहिलिस्ट', क्रोपोटकिनचे 'मेमॉयर्स', मॅझिनी व गॅरिबाल्डी यांचे चरित्र, वॉल्टेर, रुसो,व बकुनिनचे अनेक ग्रंथ त्यांनी वाचले होते.त्यांनी वाचलेल्या पुस्तकांची नामावली फार मोठी होती. त्या यादीत विक्टर ह्युगोची'ला मिझरेबल', हॉलकेनचे 'इटर्नल सिटी', अप्टन सिंक्लेअरची 'क्राय फॉर जस्टिस', रॉस्पिनची 'व्हॉट नेव्हर हॅपन्ड', गॉर्कीची 'मदर' ह्या कादंबऱ्याही होत्या. देशातील व परदेशातील अनेक देशभक्तांची चरित्रे व समाजक्रांतीचे अनेक ग्रंथ त्यांनी अभ्यासले होते. स्वा. सावरकरांचे १८५७ चे स्वातंत्र्य समर हा सरकारने प्रकाशना आधीच बंदी आणून जप्त केलेला ग्रंथ त्यांना शिरोधार्थ होता. युरोपातील मुद्रित आवृत्ती धडपडीने प्राप्त करून घेऊन त्यांनी त्याचे इथे प्रकाशन व वितरण केले. जर क्रांती व्ह्यायला हवी असेल तर समाजाची मानसिकता त्या दृष्टीने घडविली पाहिजे व तसे होण्यासाठी क्रांतिवाङ्मयाचा प्रसार अपरिहार्य़ आहे असे त्यांचे मत होते. त्यांनी स्वा. सावरकर लिखित मॅझिनीचे चरित्र वाचले होते. त्यांनी फ्रेंच क्रांतिकारक व्हिलांत वाचला होता. साम्यवादी समाजरचना व शोषणमुक्त सक्षम समाज घडविण्यासाठी त्यांनी लेनीन, मार्क्स, टॉलस्टोय, गॉर्की, बकुनिन यांचे साहित्य अभ्यासले होते.

भगतसिंग हे एक पत्रकार होते व लेखकही होते तसेच उत्तम वक्ते होते. १९२४-२५ च्या सुमारास बेळगाव येथे झालेल्या कॊंग्रेस अधिवेशनास ते 'अकाली' या पत्राचे प्रतिनिधी म्हणून उपस्थित होते. अधिवेशन संपल्यानंतर ते त्यांचे प्रेरणास्थान असलेल्या छत्रपती शिवाजीमहाराजांच्या राजधानीवर म्हणजे रायगडावर गेले. तेथे त्यांनी तेथील पवित्र माती आपल्या कपाळाला लावून स्वातंत्र्याच्या प्रतिज्ञेचा पुनरुच्चार केला. पत्रकार म्हणून त्यांनी 'वीर अर्जुन', 'प्रताप',इत्यादी दैनिकांत काम केले होते. पत्रकारिता करतानाच त्यांच्यातला लेखक जागा झाला. सोहनसिंग जोशी यांचे 'कीर्ती', कानपूरचे 'प्रभा', दिल्लीचे 'महारथी' नि अलाहाबादचे 'चॊंद' या नियतकालिकात ते लेखन करत असत. त्यांनी आयरिश क्रांतिकारक डॉन ब्रिन याच्या पुस्तकाचा अनुवाद 'मेरा आयरिश स्वतंत्रता संग्राम' बलवंतसिंग या नावाने केला. लालाजींच्या मृत्यू नंतर त्यांनी 'चॊंद' च्या फाशी विशेषांकात 'निर्भय', 'बलवंत', व 'ब्रिजेश' या नावे अनेक लेख लिहिले. महाविद्यालयीन जीवनात पंजाबातील हिंदी साहित्य संमेलनानिमित्त पारितोषिकासाठी विद्यार्थ्यांकडून मागवलेल्या निबंधात 'नॅशनल कॉलेज' तर्फे पाठविण्यात आलेला भगतसिंगांचा निबंध अव्वल ठरला होता. भगतसिंगांनी 'राणा प्रताप','दुर्दशा','सम्राट चंद्रगुप्त' या नाटकांतून भूमिकाही केल्या होत्या; पुढे सरकारने या नाटकांवर बंदी घातली होती.

९ सप्टेंबर १९२५ रोजी भगतसिंगांच्या पुढाकाराने व आग्रहाने क्रांतिकारकांच्या गुप्त संघटनेचे नाव 'हिंदुस्थान सोशालिस्ट रिपब्लिकन असोसिएशन' असे ठेवण्यात आले. असोसिएशन हा भाग समाजप्रबोधन, माहितीपत्रके, साहित्य सामुग्रीची जमवाजमव, भूमिगतांना आश्रय देणे यासाठी तर 'आर्मी' हा भाग प्रत्यक्ष क्रांतिकार्यासाठी असे विभाजन केले गेले. हुतात्मा चंद्रशेखर आझाद हे मुख्य समन्वयक व सेनेचे 'मुख्य सेनापती' तर भगतसिंग यांच्यावर संघटनेचे समन्वयक व दोहोंचे सदस्य व नियंत्रक अशी कामगिरी सोपविली गेली. या संघटनेचे स्वप्न व एकमेव ध्येय म्हणजे सशस्त्र क्रांतीद्वारे इंग्रज सरकार उलथून टाकून भारतीय संघराज्याची स्थापना.

सुखदेव थापर :-

राजगुरु :-

राजगुरुचा जन्म पुण्या़जवळ खेड येथे झाला. नंतर त्याचे राजगुरु असे नामकरण करण्यात आले. त्यांना ‘रघुनाथ’ या नावानेही ओळखले जात असे.लहानपणी १४ व्या वर्षी इंग्रजी विषयातील अपयशामुळे वडील भावाने आपल्या नवविवाहीत वधूसमोर त्यांना इंग्रजी धडा वाचायची शिक्षा केली. हा अपमान राजगुरूंना सहन झाला नाही. अंगावरच्या कपड्यांनिशी, आईने तेल आणण्यासाठी दिलेले ९ पैसे व बहिणीने अंजिरासाठी दिलेल्या २ पैशांसह त्यांनी आपले घर सोडले. आधी नाशिक आणि त्यानंतर थेट काशीलाच (शिक्षणासाठी) ते पोहचले. काशीतील त्यांचा बराचसा वेळ हा लोकमान्य टिळक ग्रंथालयात, महाराष्ट्र विद्या मंडळातील व्याख्याने - वादविवाद ऐकण्यात आणि भारतसेवा मंडळाच्या व्यायामशाळेत लाठी-काठी, दांडपट्टा यांच्या शिक्षणात जात होता .त्या काळी कोलकाता, पटना, कानपूर, लखनऊ, झाशी, मेरठ, दिल्ली, लाहोर ही गावे क्रांतिकारकांची माहेरघरे होती, आणि काशी येथील पं. मदनमोहन मालवीयांचे हिंदू विद्यापीठ हेच सार्‍यांचे आश्रयस्थान होते, गुप्तकेंद्र होते.मध्यंतरीच्या काळात राजगुरूंनी अमरावतीच्या श्री हनुमान आखाड्यात व्यायामविशारदाची पदवी मिळवली व हुबळीला डॉ. हर्डीकरांकडे सेवादलाचे शिक्षणही घेतले. त्यानंतर ते पुन्हा काशीत परतले.

दरम्यान चंद्रशेखर आझाद यांचा राजगुरूंशी परिचय झाला आणि आझादांनी राजगुरूंना क्रांतिकारकांच्या गटात घेतले. ‘आपणासारिखे करिती तात्काळ असे आझाद, अन्‌ दुजांसारखे होती तात्काळ असे राजगुरू, एकत्र आले आणि त्यांचे ३६ गुण जुळाले. इंग्रज सरकारशी ३६ चा आकडा हेच या गुणांचे तात्पर्य होते आणि या ध्येयासाठी, हौतात्म्यासाठी राजगुरू कायमच उतावळे असायचे. जणू हौतात्म्याची त्यांना घाईच झाली होती. या संदर्भातील त्यांच्या भावना, त्यांचे वागणेच विलक्षण होते, त्यागासाठी ते कायम तयार; आसुसलेले होते. ही भावना इतकी पराकोटीची होती की, आपल्या आधी भगतसिंह किंवा इतर कोणीही फासावर चढू नये ही त्यांची इच्छा होती.

आझाद आणि राजगुरू काशीत एकत्र आले, पण ‘अॅक्शन’ ची वेळ आली आणि तुझ्याजोगे काम निघाले, तर तुला पार्टीचे आमंत्रण मिळेल, असं सांगून आझाद निघून गेले. काही दिवसांनंतर राजगुरूंजोगे काम निघाले. पार्टीतील एका फितुराचा वध करण्याच्या कामगिरीवर शिव वर्मा यांच्यासोबत त्यांची निवड झाली. दोघेही दिल्लीत आले. पण पिस्तूल एकच असल्याने व गद्दार जिवाला घाबरून घराबाहेर क्वचितच पडत असल्याने त्यांची पंचाईत झाली. रात्री ७ ते ८ या वेळेत तो इसम ज्या ठिकाणी फिरायला जात असे, त्या ठिकाणी राजगुरूंनी त्याच्या मागावर राहावे, असे ठरवून दुसर्‍या पिस्तुलाची सोय करण्यासाठी शर्मा लाहोरला गेले आणि तीन दिवसांनंतर परतले ते पिस्तूल न घेताच. सायंकाळ असल्याने शर्मा प्रत्यक्ष मोक्याच्या जागीच पोहोचले, आणि त्या ठिकाणी पोलिसांच्या गाड्या, सर्चलाइटस्‌, गोळ्यांचे आवाज पाहून त्यांनी ओळखले की राजगुरूंनी मोहीम फत्ते केली...

इकडे राजगुरूंनी एकाच गोळीत काम तमाम करून मथुरेकडील रेल्वेरूळांतून पळ काढला. पोलीस गोळ्या झाडू लागले, त्या वेळी त्यांनी रेल्वेरूळांखाली उडी टाकली आणि ते सरपटत एका शेतात घुसले. ते शेत पाण्याने तुडुंब भरलेले होते. एव्हाना पोलीस त्या ठिकाणी येऊन पोहोचले आणि चारी बाजूंनी प्रकाश टाकून गोळीबारही सुरू झाला. ही शोधमोहीम जवळजवळ २-३ तास सुरू होती. तोपर्यंत राजगुरू चिखल-पाण्यात, काट्याकुट्यात लपून राहू शकतील ही कल्पनादेखील पोलिसांना नव्हती. पोलिसांनी नाद सोडून दिला. पोलीस गेल्यावर मथुरेच्या दिशेने राजगुरू पळत सुटले. पुढील २ स्थानके त्यांनी पळतच पार केली. नंतर मथुरेच्या गाडीत बसून मथुरेत आले. येथे यमुनेकाठी कपडे धुऊन वाळूतच झोपले. तिसर्‍या दिवशी कानपूरला येऊन त्यांनी हा किस्सा ऐकवल्यानंतर वर्मांना धक्काच बसला! राजगुरूंची भारताला खरी ओळख झाली ती सॉंडर्स वधाच्या वेळी!

त्या काळी सायमन कमिशन एकाही भारतीय सदस्याला न घेता लाहोरला आले. लाहोरला पंजाबकेसरी लाला लजपतराय यांनी कमिशनची वाट अडवली. पोलीस अधिकारी स्कॉट याने सॉंडर्स याच्यासमवेत लालाजींवर तीव्र लाठीमार केला आणि यातच त्यांचा मृत्यू झाला. त्या दिवशीच सायंकाळी लाहोरच्या प्रचंड सभेत देशबंधू चित्तरंजन दास यांच्या पत्नी गरजल्या, ‘‘लालाजीकी चिता की आग ठंडी होने के पहलेही किसी भारतीय नौजवान ने इस क्रूरता का बदला लेना चाहिये!’’ त्यांच्या या शब्दांनी सरदार भगतसिंह व्याकूळ झाले. त्यांनी स्कॉटला मारण्याचा प्रस्ताव पार्टीत मांडला. स्कॉटला मारल्यानंतर न्यायालयासमोर तर्कसंगत भाषण करणं आवश्यक होतं, की स्कॉटला का मारावं लागलं? आणि हे काम भगतसिंह करू शकत होते. पण राजगुरूंना हे मान्य नव्हते. राजगुरू हट्टाने पेटून उठले. त्यांना मोहिमेत सामील केले गेले.

योजना अशी आखण्यात आली की, मालरोड पोलीस स्टेशनवर जय गोपाळ पहारा ठेवून स्कॉटच्या हालचालींवर लक्ष ठेवेल आणि भगतसिंह व राजगुरू त्याच्या इशार्‍यावर गोळीबार करतील. पण ४ दिवस स्कॉट त्या भागात फिरकलाच नाही. शेवटी पाचव्या दिवशी कार्यालयातून एक गोरा अधिकारी बाहेर आला. जय गोपाळने भगतसिंहांना खूण केली की हाच स्कॉट असावा, यावर भगतसिंहांनी खुणेनेच सांगितले की हा नसावा, पण ही ‘नसावा’ ची खूण राजगुरूंच्या लक्षातच आली नाही. राजगुरूंनी साहेबाच्या दिशेने गोळी झाडली. लगेचच भगतसिहांनी आपल्या पिस्तुलातून ८ गोळ्या झाडून साहेबाला पूर्ण आडवे केले. एव्हाना गोळ्यांचा आवाज ऐकून चौकीतील लोक बाहेर जमले. त्यातला एक अधिकारी राजगुरूंच्या अंगावर चालून गेला. राजगुरूंचे पिस्तूल नेमके या वेळी चालत नव्हते. त्यामुळे राजगुरूंनी झटकन पिस्तूल खिशात ठेवून त्या अधिकार्‍याला कमरेला धरून इतक्या जोरात आपटले, की तो सर्व गोंधळ संपेपर्यंत तो उठलाच नाही. या सर्व गडबडीत भगतसिंह यांच्या पिस्तुलातील ‘मॅगझिन’ खाली पडले. राजगुरूंच्या हे लक्षात आल्यानंतर, त्यांनी प्रसंगावधान राखत, स्वत:चा जीव धोक्यात घालून, ते मॅगझिन शिताफीने उचलले. या राजगुरूंच्या कृतीमुळे चंद्रशेखर आझादांसह त्यांचे सर्व सहकारी राजगुरूंवर खूष झाले. मेला तो स्कॉट नसून सॉंडर्स होता हे कळल्यावर त्या दोहोंना अर्थातच! विशेष दु:ख झाले नाही.

सॉंडर्स हत्याकांडानंतर लाहोरहून भगतसिंह एका मिल्ट्री ऑफिसरच्या वेषात राजकोटला निसटले. (या वेळी भगवतीचरण व्होरा यांच्या पत्नी दुर्गाभाभी यांनी भगतसिंहांच्या पत्नी असल्याचे नाटक तान्ह्या लेकरासह केले होते.) राजगुरू त्यांचे नोकर आणि आझाद हे मथुरेतील पंड्याच्या रूपात भगतसिंहाबरोबर होते. तिघेही दिवसाढवळ्या, `जागृत' पोलिसांच्या डोळ्यात धूळ फेकून, एकाच गाडीतून लाहोरहून राजकोटला निसटले.

त्यानंतरच्या काळात राजगुरूंनी लाठीकाठीचा वर्ग अगदी काशीच्या मुख्य पोलीस स्टेशनसमोर कंपनीबागेत सुरू ठेवला. राजगुरूंच्या या धारिष्ट्यास काही सीमाच नव्हती. बरेच महिने राजगुरू काशीत उघडपणे, निर्भयतेने वावरत होते. इतकेच नव्हे तर त्यांच्या धनुष्यबाणाचे कौशल्यही लोकांनी गणेशोत्सवात पाहिले. पण कोणासही कल्पना नव्हती की इतका साधा दिसणारा मनुष्य मोठा क्रांतिकारक असेल! अनेक महिने ते पोलिसांना गुंगारा देण्यात यशस्वी ठरले. पण अखेर सप्टेंबर, १९२९ मध्ये ते पुणे येथे पोलिसांच्या ताब्यात सापडले.

पुढे जेलमध्ये आमरण उपोषण, न्यायालयाच्या कामकाजावर बहिष्कार ह्या घटना घडल्या. भगतसिंह, सुखदेव व अन्य काही क्रांतिकारक त्यांच्या समवेत होतेच. सर्व क्रांतिकारकांना आपले भविष्य माहीत होतेच, पण शिवराम राजगुरूंना मित्र भेटल्याचा आनंद झाला, तसेच राजगुरू भेटल्यामुळे इतरांमध्येही एक चैतन्य निर्माण झाले.

सर्वांना राजकीय कैदी म्हणून वागणूक मिळावी यासाठी क्रांतिकारकांनी उपोषण सुरू केले. राजगुरू अर्थातच पुढाकार घेत होते. डॉक्टर रोज सकाळी १०-१२ सहकार्‍यांना घेऊन रबरी नळीने, जबरदस्तीने दूध पाजण्याचा प्रयत्न करत. या पोलिसांच्या प्रयत्नांमुळे राजगुरूंसह सर्वांनाच प्रचंड त्रास सहन करावा लागला. शारीरिक हाल-अपेष्टांचा सामना करावा लागला. पण याही स्थितीत सर्वच जण उपोषणाच्या निर्णयावर ठाम होते.

लाहोर खटल्याचा निकाल लावण्यात आला

"वर निर्दिष्ट केलेल्या आरोपींनी ब्रिटिश हिंदुस्थानात लाहोर आणि इतर ठिकाणी निरनिराळ्या वेळी अन्य कित्येक सहकाऱ्यांसह १९२४ सालापासून ते अटक होईपर्यंत राजाविरुद्ध सशस्त्र युद्ध करण्याचा, त्याचे हिंदुस्थानावरील सार्वभौमत्व हिरावून घेण्याचा आणि अवैध बळाचा वापर करून किंवा धाक दाखवून हिंदुस्थानात विधिवत स्थापित झालेले सरकार उलथून टाकण्याचा कट केला आणि त्या उद्दिष्टासाठी माणसे, शस्त्रे आणि दारुगोळा जमा केला व अन्य मार्गाने सिद्धता केली.

हे उद्दिष्ट गुप्त ठेवले तर युद्ध करणे सोपे जाईल म्हणून हि उद्दिष्टे त्यांनी गुप्त ठेवली. त्यांनी व इतर आरोपींनी 'हिंदुस्थान सोशालिस्ट रिपब्लिकन असोसिएशन' व 'हिंदुस्थान सोशालिस्ट रिपब्लिकन आर्मी' या संस्थांची स्थापना केली. हिंदुस्थानातील ब्रिटिश सरकार उलथून टाकून त्या ठिकाणी एका संयुक्त प्रजासत्ताक सरकाराची स्थापना करण्याच्या उद्देशाने ब्रिटिश हिंदुस्थानात लाहोर आणि इतर ठिकाणी बैठकी घेतल्या. आरोपींनी आपली उद्दिष्टे पुढील मार्गांनी साध्य करण्याचा प्रयत्न केला:-

१) बॆंका फोडण्यासाठी व आगगाड्या लुटण्यासाठी शस्त्रे, माणसे नि पैसा तसेच दारुगोळा जमवणे.

२) हत्या करण्यासाठी व सरकार उलथून पाडण्यासाठी शस्त्रे व बॊंब व स्फोटके यांची निर्मिती करणे.

३) ब्रिटिश हिंदुस्थानात सरकारचे सहाय्यक वा पक्षपाती असणाऱ्या पोलिस वा इतर आधिकाऱ्यांचे आणि लोकांचे, कटाच्या उद्दिष्टात खंड पाडणाऱ्या तसेच आपल्या संघटनेला अनिष्ट वाटणाऱ्या लोकांचे वध करणे.

४) आगगाड्या उडविणे

५) क्रांतिकारक आणि राजद्रोही वांङ्मयाची निर्मिती, प्रसार व संग्रह करणे

६) वैध बंदिवासातून दंडितांची व इतरांची सुटका करणे

७) कटात सहभागी होण्यासाठी सुशिक्षित तरुणांना चिथावणी देणे व

८) हिंदुस्थानात क्रांती घडवून आणण्यात स्वारस्य असणाऱ्या परदेशातील व्यक्तीकडून वर्गणीच्या रूपात पैसा गोळा करणे."

सदर आरोपपत्र वाचताच प्रत्येक भारतीयाची मान अभिमानाने उंचावेल, की स्वातंत्र्ययुद्धाचा असे महान उद्वाते आमच्या या देशात होऊन गेले .

शिवराम राजगुरू यांच्यासह भगतसिंह व सुखदेव यांना अतिशय गुप्तता राखत फाशी देण्यात आले. २३ मार्च, १९३१ च्या सायंकाळी राजगुरू, भगतसिंह व सुखदेव हसत हसत फाशीला सामोरे गेले. तो क्षण त्यांच्या आयुष्यातील सर्वोच्च क्षण ठरला.

अशा माझ्या मातृभूमीच्या शूरवीरांना माझे कोटी कोटी सलाम! जय हिंद!!!

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मी नास्तिक का झालो - शहीद भगतसिंग (वय 23 वर्षे)

With Ref :- Wikipedia

मी नास्तिक का झालो - शहीद भगतसिंग (वय 23 वर्षे)

2010-03-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

"त्या दिवसापासून काही पोलीस अधिकारी मी नियमितपणे दोन वेळा देवाची प्रार्थना करावी म्हणून माझे मन वळवू लागले. मी तर नास्तिक होतो. फक्त शांततेच्या व आनंदाच्या काळातच मी नास्तिक असल्याची बढाई मारू शकतो, की अशा कठीण प्रसंगीदेखील मी माझ्या तत्वांना चिकटून राहू शकतो, याची माझ्यापुरती तरी मला कसोटी घ्यावयाची होती. बऱ्याच विचारांती मी निर्णय घेतला की देवावर विश्वास ठेवणे व त्याची प्रार्थना करणे हे माझ्याकडून होणार नाही. नाही, ते कधीही शक्य नाही. ती खरी कसोटीची वेळ होती आणि त्यातून मी यशस्वीपणे उत्तीर्ण होऊन बाहेर पडलो. इतर काही गोष्टींच्या बदल्यात स्वतःची मान वाचवण्याची इच्छा मी कोणच्याच क्षणी केली नाही. म्हणजे मी कट्टर नास्तिक होतो आणि आजपर्यंत नास्तिकच राहीलो आहे. त्या कसोटीला उतरणे ही साधी गोष्ट नव्हती. 'श्रद्धा' संकटांची व कष्टांची तीव्रता कमी करते, किंबहूना या गोष्टी ती सुखावह सुद्धा करू शकते. देवावरच्या विश्वासात माणसाला सांत्वन व बळकट राहावे लागते. वादळ आणि तुफानांमध्ये फक्त स्वतःच्या पायावरच उभे राहणे हा काही पोरखेळ नाही. अशा कसोटीच्या क्षणी गर्व, जर असलाच तर पार वितळून जातो. माणूस इतर सर्वसाधारण माणसांच्या श्रद्घांना बेदरकारपणे धुत्कारू शकत नाही, आणि त्याने जर असे केलेच तर आपण असाच निष्कर्ष काढला पाहिजे की त्याच्याकडे केवळ पोकळ ऐट नव्हे तर याहून दुसरी अशी काही शक्ती असली पाहिजे. सध्या माझी स्थिती ही नेमकी अशीच आहे. न्यायालयाचा निकाल हा आधी पासूनच ठरलेला आहे. आठवड्याभरात जाहीर व्हायचा आहे. मी माझ्या ध्येयासाठी प्राणाचा त्याग करत आहे याखेरीज दुसरे कोणते सांत्वन माझ्याकरता असू शकते? एखादा देवावर विश्वास ठेवणारा हिंदू आपण पुढच्या जन्मी राजा म्हणून जन्मावे अशी अपेक्षा करत असेल, एखादा मुसलमान किंवा ख्रिस्ती आपल्या हाल-अपेष्टांचे व त्यागाचे बक्षीस म्हणून स्वर्गात भोगायला मिळणाऱ्या ऐश्वर्याची स्वप्ने पाहत असेल पण मी कशाची अपेक्षा करावी? मला चांगली कल्पना आहे की ज्याक्षणी माझ्या मानेभोवती फास आवळला जाईल आणि पायाखालची फळी खेचली जाईल तो शेवटचा क्षण असेल. तोच अंतीम क्षण असेल. मी, किंवा अगदी काटेकोर आध्यात्मिक भाषेप्रमाणे बोलायचे झाले तर माझा आत्मा याचा तेथेच अंत होईल. बस्स इतकेच. जर असे मानायचे धैर्य मला असेल तर कोणतेही भव्यदिव्य यश न मिळालेले, एक संघर्षाचे, थोड्याच दिवसांचे जिवन हेच खुद्द माझे बक्षीस आहे. याहून जास्त काही नाही. स्वार्थी हेतू न बाळगता, तसेच इहलोकी किंवा परलोकी फळाची अपेक्षा न ठेवता, अगदी निरिच्छपणे मी माझे आयुष्य स्वातंत्राच्या ध्येयासाठी वाहिले, कारण त्याहून वेगळे काही करणे मला जमलेच नसते. जय हिंद!"

Shaheed Bhagatsingh!

पण मी हा असाच

2010-01-13T11:11:00.001-08:00

तिला नेहमी वाटायचं...
त्याने माझ्याशी बोलाव , हसावं, मनसोक्त खेळावं
पण तो अबोल.. सगळे कळून शांत राहणारा
मनातल्या मनात कित्येक वादळ शमवणारा
ती म्हणायची , चाल ना रे आपण एकदा फिरायला जाऊ
तो ही कधी नाही म्हणाला नाही तिला
पण त्याचा तो होकार तिला कधीच आनंद देत नव्हता
तिला नकार नको होता, पण त्याचा होकार अन तिला हवा असलेला होकार यात अंतर होत काही
तो गुपचूप... शांत... अगदी सगळ तिच्या मनाप्रमाणे करणारा
पण का कोण जाणे तिला तो रुचत नव्हता तसा..
त्याला हे समजायचे.. तिला तो त्याच्या परीने सार काही द्यायचा पण
पण त्याच प्रेम अन तिला हव असलेल माणूस, यात तो अडकला होता जणू
नेहमी त्याला कळायचं की कधी तिला हव आहे त्याच्याशी रुसक भांडण
अन मग त्याच तिला समजावण, लाडीगोडी लावण
पण तो निष्प्रभ होता, प्रेमाच्या सीमा त्याने कधीच ओलांडल्या होत्या
त्याला तिच्याशी भांडण कधी जमतच नव्हत
तिला नुसत प्रेम अन प्रेम कारण एवढच माहीत होत त्याला
ती नेहमी त्याच्या त्या लटक्या रागाच्या शोधात...
अन तो नेहमी तिच्या चेहऱ्यावरील हास्याच्या शोधात
शोधांमध्ये हरवलं होत जीवन.. सगळ होत जवळ पण आपल अस काहीच होईना हा हताश विचार मनी
असाच असत न हो माणसाच... नेहमीच अती काही झाल की नकोस होत कधी
कधी हवा असतो राग, मग तो निवळला की दिसणार प्रेम...
जणू तो राग म्हणजे काळेभोर ढग, अगदी घाबरवून सोडवणारे
घर वाहून जाईल अशी भीती घालणारे
अन त्यानंतर जाणवणारे प्रेम , जिव्हाळा म्हणजे ते लक्ख उन
मनाला हव हवास वाटणारे
त्या उन्हाच्या प्रतीक्षेतच, माणूस कितीही पाउस झेलायला तयार होतो
बस , मी ही असाच
रागवणारा , तुझे प्रेम न जाणणारा
पण तुझा सहवास, तुझी मैत्री हवीहवीशी वाटणारा
आपले भांडण , तुला चिंब भिजवणारे ...
माझे शब्द, तुला गारठवणारे
पण मी हा असाच...
कधी पाऊस बनून भिजवणारा... तर कधी त्यानंताच्या इंद्रधनुत दिसणारा

Funniest read me file ever !!

2009-10-30T05:15:00.001-07:00

Do you read the read me file before installing any software??
Well some read and some don’t. Read me files are usually make your life simple by giving you the install instructions and other details of the software.
But here is a readme file of gnome-cups-manager which you wouldn’t want to miss.
This will surely bring a smile on your face.

Once upon a time there was a printer who lived in the woods. He was a lonely printer, because nobody knew how to configure him. He hoped and hoped for someone to play with.

One day, the wind passed by the printer’s cottage. “Whoosh,” said the wind. The printer became excited. Maybe the wind would be his friend!

“Will you be my friend?” the printer asked.

“Whoosh,” said the wind.

“What does that mean?” asked the printer.

“Whoosh,” said the wind, and with that it was gone.

The printer was confused. He spent the rest of the day thinking and jamming paper (for that is what little printers do when they are confused).

The next day a storm came. The rain came pouring down, darkening the morning sky and destroying the printer’s garden. The little printer was upset. “Why are you being so mean to me?” he asked.

“Pitter Patter, Pitter Patter,” said the rain.

“Will you be my friend?” the printer asked shyly.

“Pitter Patter, Pitter Patter,” said the rain, and then it left and the sun came out.

The printer was sad. He spent the rest of the day inside, sobbing and blinking lights cryptically (for that is what little printers do when they are sad).

Then one day, a little girl stumbled into the printer’s clearing in the woods. The printer looked at this curious sight. He didn’t know what to think.

The little girl looked up at him. “Will you be my friend?” she asked.

“Yes,” said the printer.

“What is your name?” asked the little girl.

“HP 4100TN”, replied the printer.

“My name is gnome-cups-manager” said the little girl.

The printer was happy. He spent the rest of the day playing games and printing documents, for that is what little printers do when they are happy.

Top 10 Hackers in the world

2009-10-30T04:17:00.000-07:00

The portrayal of hackers in the media has ranged from the high-tech super-spy, as in Mission Impossible where Ethan Hunt repels from the ceiling to hack the CIA computer system and steal the "NOC list," to the lonely anti-social teen who is simply looking for entertainment.

The reality, however, is that hackers are a very diverse bunch, a group simultaneously blamed with causing billions of dollars in damages as well as credited with the development of the World Wide Web and the founding of major tech companies. In this article, we test the theory that truth is better than fiction by introducing you to ten of the most famous hackers, both nefarious and heroic, to let you decide for yourself.

Black Hat Crackers

The Internet abounds with hackers, known as crackers or "black hats," who work to exploit computer systems. They are the ones you've seen on the news being hauled away for cybercrimes. Some of them do it for fun and curiosity, while others are looking for personal gain. In this section we profile five of the most famous and interesting "black hat" hackers.

1.Jonathan James: James gained notoriety when he became the first juvenile to be sent to prison for hacking. He was sentenced at 16 years old. In an anonymous PBS interview, he professes, "I was just looking around, playing around. What was fun for me was a challenge to see what I could pull off."

James's major intrusions targeted high-profile organizations. He installed a backdoor into a Defense Threat Reduction Agency server. The DTRA is an agency of the Department of Defense charged with reducing the threat to the U.S. and its allies from nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional and special weapons. The backdoor he created enabled him to view sensitive emails and capture employee usernames and passwords.

James also cracked into NASA computers, stealing software worth approximately $1.7 million. According to the Department of Justice, "The software supported the International Space Station's physical environment, including control of the temperature and humidity within the living space." NASA was forced to shut down its computer systems, ultimately racking up a $41,000 cost. James explained that he downloaded the code to supplement his studies on C programming, but contended, "The code itself was crappy . . . certainly not worth $1.7 million like they claimed."

Given the extent of his intrusions, if James, also known as "c0mrade," had been an adult he likely would have served at least 10 years. Instead, he was banned from recreational computer use and was slated to serve a six-month sentence under house arrest with probation. However, he served six months in prison for violation of parole. Today, James asserts that he's learned his lesson and might start a computer security company.

2.Adrian Lamo: Lamo's claim to fame is his break-ins at major organizations like The New York Times and Microsoft. Dubbed the "homeless hacker," he used Internet connections at Kinko's, coffee shops and libraries to do his intrusions. In a profile article, "He Hacks by Day, Squats by Night," Lamo reflects, "I have a laptop in Pittsburgh, a change of clothes in D.C. It kind of redefines the term multi-jurisdictional."

Lamo's intrusions consisted mainly of penetration testing, in which he found flaws in security, exploited them and then informed companies of their shortcomings. His hits include Yahoo!, Bank of America, Citigroup and Cingular. When white hat hackers are hired by companies to do penetration testing, it's legal. What Lamo did is not.

When he broke into The New York Times' intranet, things got serious. He added himself to a list of experts and viewed personal information on contributors, including Social Security numbers. Lamo also hacked into The Times' LexisNexis account to research high-profile subject matter.

For his intrusion at The New York Times, Lamo was ordered to pay approximately $65,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to six months of home confinement and two years of probation, which expired January 16, 2007. Lamo is currently working as an award-winning journalist and public speaker.

3.Kevin Mitnick: A self-proclaimed "hacker poster boy," Mitnick went through a highly publicized pursuit by authorities. His mischief was hyped by the media but his actual offenses may be less notable than his notoriety suggests. The Department of Justice describes him as "the most wanted computer criminal in United States history." His exploits were detailed in two movies: Freedom Downtime and Takedown.

Mitnick had a bit of hacking experience before committing the offenses that made him famous. He started out exploiting the Los Angeles bus punch card system to get free rides. Then, like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, dabbled in phone phreaking. Although there were numerous offenses, Mitnick was ultimately convicted for breaking into the Digital Equipment Corporation's computer network and stealing software.

Mitnick's mischief got serious when he went on a two and a half year "coast-to-coast hacking spree." The CNN article, "Legendary computer hacker released from prison," explains that "he hacked into computers, stole corporate secrets, scrambled phone networks and broke into the national defense warning system." He then hacked into computer expert and fellow hacker Tsutomu Shimomura's home computer, which led to his undoing.

Today, Mitnick has been able to move past his role as a black hat hacker and become a productive member of society. He served five years, about 8 months of it in solitary confinement, and is now a computer security consultant, author and speaker.

4.Kevin Poulsen: Also known as Dark Dante, Poulsen gained recognition for his hack of LA radio's KIIS-FM phone lines, which earned him a brand new Porsche, among other items. Law enforcement dubbed him "the Hannibal Lecter of computer crime."

Authorities began to pursue Poulsen after he hacked into a federal investigation database. During this pursuit, he further drew the ire of the FBI by hacking into federal computers for wiretap information.

His hacking specialty, however, revolved around telephones. Poulsen's most famous hack, KIIS-FM, was accomplished by taking over all of the station's phone lines. In a related feat, Poulsen also "reactivated old Yellow Page escort telephone numbers for an acquaintance who then ran a virtual escort agency." Later, when his photo came up on the show Unsolved Mysteries, 1-800 phone lines for the program crashed. Ultimately, Poulsen was captured in a supermarket and served a sentence of five years.

Since serving time, Poulsen has worked as a journalist. He is now a senior editor for Wired News. His most prominent article details his work on identifying 744 sex offenders with MySpace profiles.

5.Robert Tappan Morris: Morris, son of former National Security Agency scientist Robert Morris, is known as the creator of the Morris Worm, the first computer worm to be unleashed on the Internet. As a result of this crime, he was the first person prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Morris wrote the code for the worm while he was a student at Cornell. He asserts that he intended to use it to see how large the Internet was. The worm, however, replicated itself excessively, slowing computers down so that they were no longer usable. It is not possible to know exactly how many computers were affected, but experts estimate an impact of 6,000 machines. He was sentenced to three years' probation, 400 hours of community service and a fined $10,500.

Morris is currently working as a tenured professor at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He principally researches computer network architectures including distributed hash tables such as Chord and wireless mesh networks such as Roofnet.

White Hat Hackers

Hackers that use their skills for good are classified as "white hat." These white hats often work as certified "Ethical Hackers," hired by companies to test the integrity of their systems. Others, operate without company permission by bending but not breaking laws and in the process have created some really cool stuff. In this section we profile five white hat hackers and the technologies they have developed.

1.Stephen Wozniak: "Woz" is famous for being the "other Steve" of Apple. Wozniak, along with current Apple CEO Steve Jobs, co-founded Apple Computer. He has been awarded with the National Medal of Technology as well as honorary doctorates from Kettering University and Nova Southeastern University. Additionally, Woz was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in September 2000.

Woz got his start in hacking making blue boxes, devices that bypass telephone-switching mechanisms to make free long-distance calls. After reading an article about phone phreaking in Esquire, Wozniak called up his buddy Jobs. The pair did research on frequencies, then built and sold blue boxes to their classmates in college. Wozniak even used a blue box to call the Pope while pretending to be Henry Kissinger.

Wozniak dropped out of college and came up with the computer that eventually made him famous. Jobs had the bright idea to sell the computer as a fully assembled PC board. The Steves sold Wozniak's cherished scientific calculator and Jobs' VW van for capital and got to work assembling prototypes in Jobs' garage. Wozniak designed the hardware and most of the software. In the Letters section of Woz.org, he recalls doing "what Ed Roberts and Bill Gates and Paul Allen did and tons more, with no help." Wozniak and Jobs sold the first 100 of the Apple I to a local dealer for $666.66 each.

Woz no longer works full time for Apple, focusing primarily on philanthropy instead. Most notable is his function as fairy godfather to the Los Gatos, Calif. School District. "Wozniak 'adopted' the Los Gatos School District, providing students and teachers with hands-on teaching and donations of state-of-the-art technology equipment."

2.Tim Berners-Lee: Berners-Lee is famed as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the system that we use to access sites, documents and files on the Internet. He has received numerous recognitions, most notably the Millennium Technology Prize.

While a student at Oxford University, Berners-Lee was caught hacking access with a friend and subsequently banned from University computers. w3.org reports, "Whilst [at Oxford], he built his first computer with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television." Technological innovation seems to have run in his genes, as Berners-Lee's parents were mathematicians who worked on the Manchester Mark1, one of the earliest electronic computers.

While working with CERN, a European nuclear research organization, Berners-Lee created a hypertext prototype system that helped researchers share and update information easily. He later realized that hypertext could be joined with the Internet. Berners-Lee recounts how he put them together: "I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and – ta-da! – the World Wide Web."

Since his creation of the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT. The W3C describes itself as "an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff and the public work together to develop Web standards." Berners-Lee's World Wide Web idea, as well as standards from the W3C, is distributed freely with no patent or royalties due.

3.Linus Torvalds: Torvalds fathered Linux, the very popular Unix-based operating system. He calls himself "an engineer," and has said that his aspirations are simple, "I just want to have fun making the best damn operating system I can."

Torvalds got his start in computers with a Commodore VIC-20, an 8-bit home computer. He then moved on to a Sinclair QL. Wikipedia reports that he modified the Sinclair "extensively, especially its operating system." Specifically, Torvalds hacks included "an assembler and a text editor…as well as a few games."

Torvalds created the Linux kernel in 1991, using the Minix operating system as inspiration. He started with a task switcher in Intel 80386 assembly and a terminal driver. After that, he put out a call for others to contribute code, which they did. Currently, only about 2 percent of the current Linux kernel is written by Torvalds himself. The success of this public invitation to contribute code for Linux is touted as one of the most prominent examples of free/open source software.

Currently, Torvalds serves as the Linux ringleader, coordinating the code that volunteer programmers contribute to the kernel. He has had an asteroid named after him and received honorary doctorates from Stockholm University and University of Helsinki. He was also featured in Time Magazine's "60 Years of Heroes."

4.Richard Stallman: Stallman's fame derives from the GNU Project, which he founded to develop a free operating system. For this, he's known as the father of free software. His "Serious Bio" asserts, "Non-free software keeps users divided and helpless, forbidden to share it and unable to change it. A free operating system is essential for people to be able to use computers in freedom."

Stallman, who prefers to be called rms, got his start hacking at MIT. He worked as a "staff hacker" on the Emacs project and others. He was a critic of restricted computer access in the lab. When a password system was installed, Stallman broke it down, resetting passwords to null strings, then sent users messages informing them of the removal of the password system.

Stallman's crusade for free software started with a printer. At the MIT lab, he and other hackers were allowed to modify code on printers so that they sent convenient alert messages. However, a new printer came along – one that they were not allowed to modify. It was located away from the lab and the absence of the alerts presented an inconvenience. It was at this point that he was "convinced…of the ethical need to require free software."

With this inspiration, he began work on GNU. Stallman wrote an essay, "The GNU Project," in which he recalls choosing to work on an operating system because it's a foundation, "the crucial software to use a computer." At this time, the GNU/Linux version of the operating system uses the Linux kernel started by Torvalds. GNU is distributed under "copyleft," a method that employs copyright law to allow users to use, modify, copy and distribute the software.

Stallman's life continues to revolve around the promotion of free software. He works against movements like Digital Rights Management (or as he prefers, Digital Restrictions Management) through organizations like Free Software Foundation and League for Programming Freedom. He has received extensive recognition for his work, including awards, fellowships and four honorary doctorates.

5.Tsutomu Shimomura: Shimomura reached fame in an unfortunate manner: he was hacked by Kevin Mitnick. Following this personal attack, he made it his cause to help the FBI capture him.

Shimomura's work to catch Mitnick is commendable, but he is not without his own dark side. Author Bruce Sterling recalls: "He pulls out this AT&T cellphone, pulls it out of the shrinkwrap, finger-hacks it, and starts monitoring phone calls going up and down Capitol Hill while an FBI agent is standing at his shoulder, listening to him."

Shimomura out-hacked Mitnick to bring him down. Shortly after finding out about the intrusion, he rallied a team and got to work finding Mitnick. Using Mitnick's cell phone, they tracked him near Raleigh-Durham International Airport. The article, "SDSC Computer Experts Help FBI Capture Computer Terrorist" recounts how Shimomura pinpointed Mitnick's location. Armed with a technician from the phone company, Shimomura "used a cellular frequency direction-finding antenna hooked up to a laptop to narrow the search to an apartment complex." Mitnick was arrested shortly thereafter. Following the pursuit, Shimomura wrote a book about the incident with journalist John Markoff, which was later turned into a movie.

Create your multiple identities!

2009-10-28T00:35:00.000-07:00

Peter Bregman speaks, writes, and consults about how to lead and how to live. He is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and advises CEOs and their leadership teams. He is the author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading a Big Change.

Below is an interesting thought he offers through Harvard Business Publishing:

Recently, a woman working for France Telecom sent an email to her father. Then she walked over to the window on the fourth floor of her office building, opened it, stepped through, and jumped to her death.

The email read: "I have decided to kill myself tonight...I can't take the new reorganization."

If this were an aberration, one depressed woman's inability to handle change, we could dismiss it. But, so far, 24 France Telecom employees have killed themselves since last year. And more than that have tried. One man stabbed himself in the middle of a meeting.

When confronted with this high rate of suicides, management at France Telecom claimed that, because of its size, 24 suicides isn't that surprising. But there is something unusual happening, and not just at France Telecom. According to America's Bureau of Labor Statistics, work-related suicides increased 28% between 2007 and 2008.

It's tempting to blame the companies. A good article in The Economist pointed to a variety of things — the drive for measurement and maximizing productivity, recession driven layoffs, poor management communication — that contribute to a disheartening, depressing work environment. The article concludes that "companies need to do more than pay lip service to the human side of management." I agree. For sure there are things leaders can and must do to handle employees with more care, compassion, and respect.

But the problem is deeper and more complicated than a callous management team that cares about nothing except profits.

The problem is also in us.

It's in how we see and define ourselves, in our identities.

The first question we ask when we meet people is "what do you do?" We have become our work, our professions. Connected 24/7 via blackberry, obsessively checking email and voice mails, we have left no space for other parts of ourselves.

If we spend all our time working, traveling to work, planning to work, thinking about work, or communicating about work, then we will see ourselves as workers and nothing more. As long as work is going well, we can survive that way.

But when we lose our jobs or our jobs are threatened — and whose isn't these days? — then our very existence is put in question. "Establishing your identity through work alone can restrict your sense of self, and make you vulnerable to depression, loss of self-worth, and loss of purpose when the work is threatened," Dr. Paul Rosenfield, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University, told me in a recent conversation.

Who am I if you take away my work? That's a question to which we'd better have a solid answer. Fortunately, once we realize this we can do something about it.

We can diversify.

I don't mean diversifying your money, though that's a good idea too. I mean diversifying yourself. So that when one identity fails, the other ones keep you alive. If you lose your job but you identify passionately as a mother or a father, you'll be fine. If you have a strong religious identity or a view of yourself as an artist, you'll be fine. If you see yourself as an athlete, or even simply as a good, loyal friend, you'll be fine.

According to Dr. Rosenfield this is an issue of mental health, even for the mentally ill. "People with mental illness often feel their identity is reduced to being mentally ill. Part of their recovery involves reclaiming other parts of their identity — being a friend, a volunteer, an artist, a dog lover, a student, a worker. It takes an active and bold effort to broaden and overcome the diminished sense of identity that results from dealing with mental illness, hospitalizations, medications, ones doctors saying 'you need to accept being mentally ill' without also saying 'but I believe you are more than your illness and you still have potential to do so many things in the world.'"

Here's the thing though: it's not enough to see yourself in a certain way, you need to act on it. It won't help if you identify as a father but rarely spend time with your children. Or if religion is a big part of your identity and yet you rarely engage in religious activities.

One obstacle is money. For many people, an obsession with work is really about the concern of having enough money to support themselves or their family. How can we work less and still survive?

Perhaps it's the only way to not only survive but thrive. As I wrote about in an earlier post, stepping away from your work might just be the key to increasing your productivity.

And having multiple identities will help you perform better in each one. Because you learn things as an athlete or a parent or a poet that will make you a better employee or leader or friend. So the more you invest yourself in multiple identities, the less likely you'll lose any one of them.

Of course, if you do lose one, you'll be okay because you've got the others.

If you still believe that doing nothing but work is a necessity to support your lifestyle, then it's worth looking at ways to reduce your lifestyle, so you don't kill yourself trying to maintain it.

Walk away from the email and have dinner with your family. Leave work at a decent hour and play tennis with a friend. Choose rituals that have meaning to you and do them religiously. Most importantly, be consistent — doing the same thing repeatedly over time solidifies your identity.

A good friend of mine lost her job about a year ago and I called at the time to see if I could do anything. My intention was to help her find a new job as soon as possible; I knew money was tight.

I was pleasantly surprised though. She told me she had decided to postpone her job search for a few months. She was pregnant and wanted to focus on that for a while. Once she felt ready, she would look for work. She was too busy creating an identity as a mother to get caught up in her identity as a worker.

Recently I received an email from her telling me she was back at work. "I love the job," she told me. "It's a great balance to motherhood."

Something about Maths!!!

2009-05-18T04:41:00.000-07:00

Stupid Math Tricks

Paul Erdos (1913-1996) was one of the greatest mathematicians of all times, working with number theory. He has been called the mathematician of mathematicians and the oddball of oddballs. He lived for mathematics. He had no life, no home, no possessions, no interests other than mathematics and only spoke to people who loved mathematics. Everyone else, to use his description, was “dead”. He slept for 3 hours a day and spent the rest on mathematics. He ate very little (no time) and traveled widely with all his belongings in a plastic bag, looking for fellow mathematicians to live with for a few days (he really never had a home, but lived with whoever he could find). His hosts have said that he had no idea how to cut an apple or how to wash his underwear.

Mathematicians pride themselves as being the pursuers of the purest science of all sciences. So pure and so sublime is the purest form of mathematics, that it is blasphemy to ask “what is the use of this”. Practical applications are impure. But if course, mathematics shape out lives everyday. From buildings to toilets, from the cheap Chinese toys to supersonic aircraft, everything is crafted by mathematics.

An old joke is quite relevant. A man flying a hot air balloon got lost. So he descended and asked a woman walking in a field “Where am I?” She thought for some time and then replied. “In a hot-air balloon”. Immediately the balloonist realized she was a mathematician, for three reasons (1) She thought before replying (2) What she said was absolutely correct and (3) Her reply was totally useless.

However, much to the chagrin of real mathematicians, there is fun in mathematics. Paul Erdos would of course turn over in his grave if he heard that.

Marriage by Mathematics

People meet people, people marry people. When and how should someone decide to marry? Every time, John meets a suitable lady, he must make an important decision – to attempt to marry her or to move on to find a better mate. The problem is how does he know he will ever meet a better mate?

Lets do this mathematically. Suppose someone had 100 cards with 100 random numbers on them. He shows them to you one by one and you have to guess when you have seen the highest number in the whole pack (analogous to the best lady). The goal is to do it as soon as possible. You could wait till you have seen them all, then you will really find the largest number (in case of ladies, John has to wait his entire life to decide), but the sooner you make your move the better it is for you. Mathematicians have worked this out, and the best compromise is to pick the highest number after looking at 37 cards. That is about one third of your way into the game. Actually its not one third, but 1/e, where e is about 2.71828.

Suppose we assume the range of marriageable ages for women is about 18 to 40 and for men is about 20 to 45. Then a woman has 22 years to look for a mate, and a man has 25 years, but if a person waits too long, all the good ones will all be taken. Using the above strategy, the 1/e point for women is age 26.1 and for men is at age 29.1. Hence, this is the best time to take the plunge. The same theory, with a twist, can be used for arranged marriages. If you have gathered n prospects, make contact with the first random n/e prospects and then pick the best.

This technique is of course, quite useful in a variety of optimization problems.

The Birthday paradox

We are at a party. There are lots of people in a room. How many people must there be such that there are two people in the room with the same birthday (ignoring leap years). Of course, even if there are just 2 people, it is possible, though unlikely, that they will have the same birthday.

If there are 366 people then you are guaranteed to find at least 2 people sharing the same birthday. This is called the Pigeon Hole Principle, which states “If you stuff n pigeons into n-1 holes, then there must be a hole with more than one pigeon”.

However, there is an even more interesting situation. If there are just 23 people in a room, the probability of two people having the same birthday is more than half. This means, that quite often, in a gathering of over 23 people, there are people sharing the same birthday. In fact, if there are 40 people in a room, the probability of two people sharing a birthday is over 90%. Quite difficult to believe, but its true. This is called the Birthday Paradox.

Apart from the fun factor, the birthday paradox happens to be an important principle that is used to determine the difficulty of cracking certain encryption codes. That is, a code that looks difficult to crack, can be shown to be quite weak, using the Birthday Paradox.

Measuring a Wall

Watch Jim measure a wall. Jim is a Mathematician. He has this wall in his backyard, about 30 feet long, that he needs to measure. If he was an Engineer, he would get a foot-ruler and then use it repeatedly until he found the length of the wall. Since he is a Mathematician, he does not posses a foot-ruler.

So Jim goes to his neighbor and borrows a foot ruler, and places it against one end of the wall. Now, Jim realizes, one foot-ruler would not be enough, a lot of wall still remains to be measured. So he goes to another neighbor to get another foot-ruler. He places this ruler, after the first one, and realizes he needs more. By the time he finishes measuring the wall, he has borrowed 30 foot-rulers, from 30 neighbors.

Very pleased with himself, for having successfully performed an engineering feat, Jim goes out to return all the rules he has borrowed, but then he realizes he has no idea which ruler belongs to who. Being a good mathematician, he randomizes them (mathematical term for shuffling them), and returns them to random neighbors.

Now, here is the question. What is the chance that some neighbor gets his own ruler back? Probably pretty small. So lets ask the opposite question. “What is the chance that not a single neighbor got his own foot-ruler back?”. The probability of this happening should be quite high. And it should get higher the more neighbors there are—that is if he borrowed 100 rulers the chances of everyone getting wrong rulers would be even higher.

Actually it is not. The chance of no one getting the right ruler is quite low. It is about 37%, Which means, it is very likely (63%) at least one (or more) got the correct ruler. And this probability does not change even if the number of neighbors increase—in fact the larger the number of neighbors, the closer the probability is to 36.79%. Strange but true. Where did the 36.79% come from? It came from the very famous number, the number e. The probability for everyone getting the wrong ruler is 1/e, which is about 0.3679.

Six Degrees of Separation

Legend has it that any two people is separated by a small degree, typically about 6. That is if we take John in New York, and Rajiv in Delhi, it is very likely, we can find a six other people forming a chain of acquaintances from John to Rajiv. This story is also called the Small World Paradox. This surprising (almost) fact cannot be mathematically proven, as it obviously not totally true. For example, there is probably no connection between a Russian village dweller and an isolated tribal in the Amazon forest.

Statistical studies have shown that the small number of connections is indeed almost always true. The degree of separation amongst most people tends to be about six, and in some rare cases rises to 10. Another study involving web pages show that most web pages are also related by a small degree—that is to go from one web page to another needs a small number of click (on hyperlinks).

Movie actors talk of the Kevin Bacon game, where each actor tried to find the separation between him or her, and Kevin Bacon (Kevin Bacon is a not too well known actor). Of course, it is not quite surprising that every actor is a few steps away from Kevin Bacon, given the huge number of collaborators each person in the acting business has.

The “Erdos Number” was invented in honor of Paul Eros. Erdos has the Erdos number 0. Any person who has coauthored a paper with Erdos has an Erdos number 1, there are 507 of them (shows the prolific collaboration Paul Erdos was known for). Coauthors of people who coauthored with these people have Erdos number 2, and there are estimated to be about 6,000 of them. The largest number of people, who have Erdos numbers, have the number 5 (should have been 6). As the number increases, the population drops off. In the year 2000 there was only 1 person, known to have an Erdos number 15. Of course, this will change as time progresses.

Yours truly, has an Erdos number of 3.

The Number e

Marrying and measuring led us to the inverse of e. What is this e? In mathematics, e is a very famous number, much more famous than the ubiquitous pi or p. p is used by engineers, mathematicians prefer e.

It is hard to characterize e as a real life number. One of the best examples compares simple interest with compound interest. Let us say, you keep Rs. 100 in a bank account earning x% simple interest (that is, the interest does not earn interest). The money doubles in y years. If however, you were earning compound interest, in y years, the money would grow e times. Of course, we know e is 2.7182. And, surprisingly, the above result is independent of Rs. 100 or x or y

My Maths Tricks!

2009-03-11T04:45:00.000-07:00

*****************************************************************

Find Day for any Date!

Month code:-

Jan:- 2 for non-leap year & 1 for leap year.

Feb:- 5 for non-leap year & 4 for leap year.

Mar:-5

Apr:-1

May:-3

Jun:-6

Jul:-1

Aug:-4

Sep:-0

Oct:-2

Nov:-5

Dec:-0

Remember these month codes.

Now start with trick :-

Step1:- Take last 2 digit of year number. e.g. If year is 1827, then take 27.

Step2:- Multiply these 2 digit number with 1.25. Or add 1/4 of this number to itself.

Take only integer of answer. e.g. 27*1.25 = 33.75. Then take only 33 as ans.

Step3:- Find out & add month code from above chart to ste2's answer.

Step4:- Add date to Step3's answer.

Step5:- Take first 2 digits of year number. Add this to Step4's answer.

Step6:- Divide Step5's answer by 7. Final answer is remainder of this operation.

0-Sunday,1-Monday,2-Tuesday,3-Wednesday,4-Thursday,5-Friday,6-Sat

*****************************************************************

Examples :-

Date :- 21-01-1985

Step1:- 85

Step2:- 85+21.25 = 106.25 So take 106.

Step3:- 106+2=108

Step4:- 108+21=129

Step5:- 129+19 = 148

Step6:- 148/7 .... Remainder is 1.

So Day is Monday!!!

Likewise:-

15-08-1947

Step1:- 47

Step2:- 47+11 = 58

Step3:- 58+4 = 62

Step4:- 62+15=77

Step5:- 77+19 = 96

Step6:- 96%7 = 5

Day is Friday!!!

*****************************************************************

वेळ आली होती पण काळ आला नव्हता !!!

2009-02-09T07:12:00.000-08:00

मी दर वर्षी तिरुपतीला जातो. मला दक्षिण भारत खुप छान वाटतो. तिकडे गेल्यानंतर मन प्रसन्न वाटत. अन देवाच्या सानिध्यात काही वेळ घालवण मला नेहमीच आवडत. मागच्या वर्षी जुलै मध्ये मी मीत्रांसमवेत तिकडे गेलो होतो. तिरुपतिवरून येताना आम्ही कोल्हापुरला देवीच्या दर्शनासाठी जायचे ठरवले. कोल्हापुरला दर्शन घेतले व येताना गणपती पुळे मार्गे यायचे ठरले.आम्ही तिथे रात्री २ च्या सुमारास पोहोचलो. रात्री २ वाजता खोली भाड्याने मिळणे तस अशक्यच काम होत. तेव्हा आम्ही गाडीतच झोप घ्यायचे ठरविले. गाडी समुद्राच्या अगदी जवळ लावली अन त्यातच झोपलो. गाडीत काही नित झोप येत नव्हती. अन त्यात त्या शांततेत समुद्राच्या लाटांचा भयान अवाज येत होता.पहाटे ५:३० पर्यंत कसे तरी एक झोप घेतली अन मग उठलो. गाडीबाहेर आलो अन समोर अथांग असा समुद्र पाहिला. जरी सूर्योदय तिथे पहायला मीळणार नसला तरी पहाटेच्या कोवळया कीरणांमध्ये समुद्राचे रूप काही औरच दिसत होते. अगदी नीरव शांतता होती अन फ़क्त लाटांचा आवाज येत होता. मी बराच वेळ समुद्रापाशी बसून त्याचे ते लोभसवाने रूप न्याहाळत होतो. तिथे फ़क्त मी, अन तो अथांग पसरलेला सागर अन नुकताच उगवलेला सूर्य आम्ही तिघेच जागे असल्याचा भास मला होत होता. मध्येच कुठेतरी कुजबुज करीत पक्षी त्यांचीही उपस्थिती जाणवून देत होते.
थोड्याच वेळात माझा एक मित्र गाडीतून बाहेर आला. मग मला राहवेना, मला त्या तुदुम्ब भरलेल्या सागरात पोह्न्याची खुप इच्छा झाली. मी व मित्र , आम्ही दोघे अगदी क्षणात त्या सागराच्या लाटांना तोंड देण्यास समर्थ झालो. क्षणही न दवडता आम्ही त्या सागराच्या पाण्यात तुदुम्ब भिजलो. उगाचच आनंदाने ओरडत , त्या लाटांना तोंड देत त्यांचा आवाज आपल्या आवाजाने क्षीण करण्याचा प्रयत्न करू लागलो.आमचा गोंधळ पाहून बाकीचे मीत्रही जागे झाले. ज्याना पोहता येत होत ते थेट आमच्यात येउन सामील झाले तर ज्याना पोहता येत नव्हत त्यानी सुरक्षा म्हणुन अगदी २ फुट पाण्यातच उभे राहाणे पसंत केले. आम्ही मग त्याना हिणवत कधी खुप आत जात तर कधी लाटांच्या पाण्यावर तरंगत अगदी त्यांच्या पाशी येत. खुप आनंद वाटत होता. अन मीत्रांच्या ग्रुप मध्ये असे एन्जॉय म्हणजे एक पर्वणीच असते. आम्ही खुप वेळ त्या पाण्यात होतो. अगदी न थांबता, न थकता आम्ही त्या लाटांमध्ये खेळत होतो. भूक तर शब्दशा हरवलीच होती. दुपारचे शाधारण १२ वाजले होते. लाटांची तीव्रता काही वाढली होती. पण आनंदाच्या नादात आम्हाला त्याची जाणीवही नव्हती अन फिकीरही नव्हती.

तेवढ्यात आमच्यातल्याच एकाच्या सुपिक डोक्यात एक कल्पना आली. एकमेकांचे हात धरून लाटांना सामोरे जायच. जेवढ्या लाटा तोड़ता येतील तेवढे चांगल. आम्हीही काहीतरी वेगळ म्हणुन ते मान्य केल. २ लाटांना आम्ही सक्षमपने सामोरे गेलो. पण पुढच्या लाटेची तीव्रता काही औरच होती. त्या लाटेत आमचे हात सुटले अन ग्रुप सुटला. एक ग्रुप असल्याने आम्ही समुद्राच्या बरेचसे आत गेलो होतो. पण आता आम्ही सर्वजन एकेकटे होतो. समोर सगळे दिसत होते पण कोणाचा हात पकड़ता येत नव्हता. पाण्याला वेगही भरपूर होता. शेवटी मनाने आपोआपच बाहेर जाण्याचा निर्णय घेतला. एव्हाना किमान ५ ते ६ तास खेळत असल्याने आणी नुकतेच 3-४ लाटांना सामोरे गेल्याने सर्वच जन पुरेसे दमले होते. तेव्हा बाहेर जायला निघालो. पण दैव....

ज्या लाटांना आम्ही ग्रुपने सामोरे गेलो होतो त्या आता किनारयाला धडकून परतीच्या मार्गावर होत्या. अन त्यांचा वेग कदाचीत ओहोटी असल्याने कीवा कोण जाने कोणत्या कारणाने , खुपच वाढला होता. त्यांचा वेग आता एवढा वाढला होता की समुद्रातून बाहेर येनारया लाटा, ज्या आम्हाला त्या क्षणी आत्यांतीक गरजेच्या होत्या, त्या क्षीण पडत होत्या. आम्ही कीनार्याकडे तोंड करून बाहेर निघण्याच्या प्रयत्नात असताना समुद्रातून लाटा बाहेर येतच नव्हत्या. फ़क्त आमच्या समोरून लाटा आत समुद्रात जात होत्या. लाटांची दीशाही अशी जीवघेणी झाली होती की लाटा बाहेर येताना आमच्यापासुन काही दूरपासून जात होत्या अन परत फिरताना मात्र आमच्यासमोर येत होत्या. त्या वेळी नक्की वाटत होते की वेळ आली आहे. त्याच भयाण वातावरणात सगळे एकमेकांकडे मदतीच्या आशळ्भुत नजरेने पाहत होते. काही वेळापुर्वी ज्या डोळ्यांमध्ये आनंद ओसंडून वाहत होता , त्याची जागा आता भीती अन हताशपणाने घेतली होती. काय करावे कोणालाच सुचत नव्हते. काहीसा शिल्लक असलेला अंगातील त्राणही आता त्याची संपल्याची साक्ष देत होता. कीनारा समोर दिसत होता, पण लाटांना तोडून तिथे पोहोचण केवळ अशक्य वाटू लागल होत. एक पाउल पुढे टाकाव तर पुढचीच लाट पायाखालील मातीसह ४ पाउले मागे नेट होती. जस समुद्र बोल्वाताच होता जणू. आता सहनशीलताही संपू लागली होती. जगण्याच्या ओढीपेक्षा हताशपणाच पारड कुठेतरी जड़ झाल्याच वाटू लागल होत. हा निसर्गाचा अनोखा वीक्राळ खेळ किमान घड़याळी २ मीनीटे चालला होता. आता आशा होती ती फ़क्त समुद्राच्या कृपेची. त्या काही लाटांची ज्या समुद्रातून बाहेर येताना आम्हाला बाहेर काढणार होत्या.

बस !!! अखेर २ मिनिटाच्या त्या अभूतपूर्व संघर्षानंतर अखेर ती लाट आली. अन अशी आली की ती थेट आम्हाला ६-७ फुट बाहेर घेउन आली. त्यानंतर तिच्या मागील छोट्या लाटेने आम्हाला बाहेर पोहोच्वान्याच काम केल. बस काहीही वेळ न दवड़ता, जस सकाळी समुद्रात अगदी क्षणात आत गेलो होतो , अगदी तसाच किंवा त्याही पेक्षा वेगाने समुद्राच्या बाहेर आलो. जाताना जो आनंद होता त्याही पेक्षा किंचीत जास्त भय घेउन सर्व जण बाहेर पोहोचलो. आधी नजर सर्वाना शोधू लागली. सर्व जण आले तर आहेत ना याची खात्री मनोमन करू लागली. तोंडातून शब्दही फुटेना अन समुद्राकडे नजरही करवेना. अगदी सुन्न झालो सगळे. त्या लाटांचा आवाज काही वेळ काहीच ऐकु येइना. सकाळी जाणवलेली नीरव शांतता आता भयाण शुकशुकाटात बदलली होती.

वीहीरीत कींवा नदीत पोहायला तसे मी व माझे २-३ मित्र अगदी निष्णात, पण समुद्राच्या त्या भयाण ताकतीपुढे आमचा नीभावच लागत नव्हता. त्यातच पावसाळ्याचे दिवस असल्याने समुद्र खुपच खवळला होता. काही वेळ बाजूला बसून शांत झाल्यानंतर समुद्राकडे पाहीले. त्याचे ते रौद्र रूप आम्हाला जणू भीती घालत होते. प्रत्येक लाट वाघाच्या डरकाळीप्रमाणे आ वासूण उभी रहात होती. त्याचे कड़े पहावतही नव्हते. एवढ्या जवळून मरण मी कधीच पाहीले नव्हते. आम्ही तिथून तडक मंदिरात गेलो. देवाचे दर्शन घेतले व या प्रसंगातून बचावल्याबद्दल त्याचे मनोमन आभार मानले. लगेचच गाडीत बसलो व परतीच्या वाटेला लागलो. काहीसे अन्तर कापल्यानंतर आम्ही एक उंच ठीकाणी पोहोचलो , मी खिड़कीची काच उघडली अन समुद्राकडे एक नजर टाकली. एवढे भयाण अन रौद्र रूप मी कधीच पाहीले नव्हते, त्याचे ते रूप मनात खोलपर्यंत साठले गेले. मनात एक विचार घर करून गेला... खरच "आज वेळ आली होती पण काळ आला नव्हता"!!!

Sac...

Nothing is Random!

2008-12-30T22:35:00.000-08:00

P.S. :- Original author Mark Helprin.

Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishingly frigid winter after another.
Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one can be certain.
And yet there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple.
Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion, piece by piece. Time, however, can be easily overcome; not by chasing light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once.
The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is; everything that ever will be, is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful.
In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but as something that is.

Learning to Get Back Up

2008-12-30T22:33:00.000-08:00

P.S.:- Originally written by Craig B. Larson Adapted from "Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching from Leadership Journal Baker Books

Bringing a giraffe into the world is a tall order. A baby giraffe falls 10 feet from its mother's womb and usually lands on its back. Within seconds it rolls over and tucks its legs under its body. From this position it considers the world for the first time and shakes off the last vestiges of the birthing fluid from its eyes and ears. Then the mother giraffe rudely introduces its offspring to the reality of life.
In his book, A View from the Zoo, Gary Richmond describes how a newborn giraffe learns its first lesson.
The mother giraffe lowers her head long enough to take a quick look. Then she positions herself directly over her calf. She waits for about a minute, and then she does the most unreasonable thing. She swings her long, pendulous leg outward and kicks her baby, so that it is sent sprawling head over heels.
When it doesn't get up, the violent process is repeated over and over again. The struggle to rise is momentous. As the baby calf grows tired, the mother kicks it again to stimulate its efforts. Finally, the calf stands for the first time on its wobbly legs.
Then the mother giraffe does the most remarkable thing. She kicks it off its feet again. Why? She wants it to remember how it got up. In the wild, baby giraffes must be able to get up as quickly as possible to stay with the herd, where there is safety. Lions, hyenas, leopards, and wild hunting dogs all enjoy young giraffes, and they'd get it too, if the mother didn't teach her calf to get up quickly and get with it.
The late Irving Stone understood this. He spent a lifetime studying greatness, writing novelized biographies of such men as Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin.
Stone was once asked if he had found a thread that runs through the lives of all these exceptional people. He said, "I write about people who sometime in their life have a vision or dream of something that should be accomplished and they go to work.
"They are beaten over the head, knocked down, vilified, and for years they get nowhere. But every time they're knocked down they stand up. You cannot destroy these people. And at the end of their lives they've accomplished some modest part of what they set out to do."

This is how Google works!!!

2008-12-29T22:22:00.000-08:00

GOOGLE
With ref. to URL

Google runs on a distributed network of thousands of low-cost computers and can therefore carry out fast parallel processing. Parallel processing is a method of computation in which many calculations can be performed simultaneously, significantly speeding up data processing. Google has three distinct parts:

Googlebot, a web crawler that finds and fetches web pages.
The indexer that sorts every word on every page and stores the resulting index of words in a huge database.
The query processor, which compares your search query to the index and recommends the documents that it considers most relevant.

1. Googlebot, Google’s Web Crawler

Googlebot is Google’s web crawling robot, which finds and retrieves pages on the web and hands them off to the Google indexer. It’s easy to imagine Googlebot as a little spider scurrying across the strands of cyberspace, but in reality Googlebot doesn’t traverse the web at all. It functions much like your web browser, by sending a request to a web server for a web page, downloading the entire page, then handing it off to Google’s indexer.

Googlebot consists of many computers requesting and fetching pages much more quickly than you can with your web browser. In fact, Googlebot can request thousands of different pages simultaneously. To avoid overwhelming web servers, or crowding out requests from human users, Googlebot deliberately makes requests of each individual web server more slowly than it’s capable of doing.

Googlebot finds pages in two ways: through an add URL form, www.google.com/addurl.html, and through finding links by crawling the web.

Unfortunately, spammers figured out how to create automated bots that bombarded the add URL form with millions of URLs pointing to commercial propaganda. Google rejects those URLs submitted through its Add URL form that it suspects are trying to deceive users by employing tactics such as including hidden text or links on a page, stuffing a page with irrelevant words, cloaking (aka bait and switch), using sneaky redirects, creating doorways, domains, or sub-domains with substantially similar content, sending automated queries to Google, and linking to bad neighbors. So now the Add URL form also has a test: it displays some squiggly letters designed to fool automated “letter-guessers”; it asks you to enter the letters you see — something like an eye-chart test to stop spambots.

When Googlebot fetches a page, it culls all the links appearing on the page and adds them to a queue for subsequent crawling. Googlebot tends to encounter little spam because most web authors link only to what they believe are high-quality pages. By harvesting links from every page it encounters, Googlebot can quickly build a list of links that can cover broad reaches of the web. This technique, known as deep crawling, also allows Googlebot to probe deep within individual sites. Because of their massive scale, deep crawls can reach almost every page in the web. Because the web is vast, this can take some time, so some pages may be crawled only once a month.

Although its function is simple, Googlebot must be programmed to handle several challenges. First, since Googlebot sends out simultaneous requests for thousands of pages, the queue of “visit soon” URLs must be constantly examined and compared with URLs already in Google’s index. Duplicates in the queue must be eliminated to prevent Googlebot from fetching the same page again. Googlebot must determine how often to revisit a page. On the one hand, it’s a waste of resources to re-index an unchanged page. On the other hand, Google wants to re-index changed pages to deliver up-to-date results.

To keep the index current, Google continuously recrawls popular frequently changing web pages at a rate roughly proportional to how often the pages change. Such crawls keep an index current and are known as fresh crawls. Newspaper pages are downloaded daily, pages with stock quotes are downloaded much more frequently. Of course, fresh crawls return fewer pages than the deep crawl. The combination of the two types of crawls allows Google to both make efficient use of its resources and keep its index reasonably current.

2. Google’s Indexer

Googlebot gives the indexer the full text of the pages it finds. These pages are stored in Google’s index database. This index is sorted alphabetically by search term, with each index entry storing a list of documents in which the term appears and the location within the text where it occurs. This data structure allows rapid access to documents that contain user query terms.

To improve search performance, Google ignores (doesn’t index) common words called stop words (such as the, is, on, or, of, how, why, as well as certain single digits and single letters). Stop words are so common that they do little to narrow a search, and therefore they can safely be discarded. The indexer also ignores some punctuation and multiple spaces, as well as converting all letters to lowercase, to improve Google’s performance.

3. Google’s Query Processor

The query processor has several parts, including the user interface (search box), the “engine” that evaluates queries and matches them to relevant documents, and the results formatter.

PageRank is Google’s system for ranking web pages. A page with a higher PageRank is deemed more important and is more likely to be listed above a page with a lower PageRank.

Google considers over a hundred factors in computing a PageRank and determining which documents are most relevant to a query, including the popularity of the page, the position and size of the search terms within the page, and the proximity of the search terms to one another on the page. A patent application discusses other factors that Google considers when ranking a page. Visit SEOmoz.org’s report for an interpretation of the concepts and the practical applications contained in Google’s patent application.

Google also applies machine-learning techniques to improve its performance automatically by learning relationships and associations within the stored data. For example, the spelling-correcting system uses such techniques to figure out likely alternative spellings. Google closely guards the formulas it uses to calculate relevance; they’re tweaked to improve quality and performance, and to outwit the latest devious techniques used by spammers.

Indexing the full text of the web allows Google to go beyond simply matching single search terms. Google gives more priority to pages that have search terms near each other and in the same order as the query. Google can also match multi-word phrases and sentences. Since Google indexes HTML code in addition to the text on the page, users can restrict searches on the basis of where query words appear, e.g., in the title, in the URL, in the body, and in links to the page, options offered by Google’s Advanced Search Form and Using Search Operators (Advanced Operators).

Some helpful links:-

GOOGLE First Paper presented by Page n Brin.

* Web Crawler Algorithm used by Google n other search engines.

* Page Rank Algorithm used by Google.

Google’s page on Google’s Technology, www.google.com/technology/.
How does Google collect and rank results?, www.google.com/newsletter/librarian/librarian_2005_12/article1.html.
Google’s PageRank Algorithm and How it Works, www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/
Google’s PageRank Explained and How to Make the Most of It, www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html

Ref. With Chris Sherman and Gary Price’s description.

Famous failures of complex engineering systems

2008-12-26T02:13:00.000-08:00

P.S.:- I found this information at Original Location

“To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.”
I am listing some of most famous failures of complex engg. systems.These failures were due partly or primarily to factors beyond engineering or technical considerations, we will concentrate on the technical issues. I haven’t included some of the most dramatic failures, such as Chernobyl, Challenger, or Bhopal, because these involve much more complicated interactions of engineering and human judgment and they’ve received such extensive coverage.
I guess complexity arises from need to provide reliable predictability in the presence of uncertainty, and that failures occur when uncertainties and interactions are not properly accounted for. In retrospect, for all of these failures, we can always identify a component that failed and do simple “back of the envelope” calculations with very simple models to explain the failure. It is essentially always possible to ignore, if we choose, the system design issues that contributed to the failure. A deeper view also always reveals that there were system design flaws and that the apparent component failure was merely a symptom. Of course, the VE(Dynamics, interconnection, and uncertainty management) challenge is to create an environment where we are better at doing that before the failure occurs.

Titanic

On April 14, 1912, the Titanic, the largest, most complex ship afloat, struck an iceberg and sank. The Titanic had a double-bottomed hull that was divided into 16 watertight compartments. Because at least four of these could be flooded without endangering the liner's buoyancy, it was considered unsinkable. Unfortunately, these compartments weren’t sealed off at the top, so water could have just filled each compartment, tilting the ship, and then spilled over the top into the next one. Following recent expeditions to examine the Titanic wreckage and a review of survivor accounts, it is now generally agreed that the iceberg scraped along the starboard side of the ship causing the plates to buckle and burst at the seams and producing several small ruptures in up to six of the first compartments. This is perhaps one of the all-time great failures to correctly modeling the interaction of uncertainty in the environment and the way it can couple with the dynamics of a system. A purely static view of the ship, one that ignored the dynamics of the interaction with the iceberg and the water flow between the compartments, would not have predicted the actual disaster.

Estonia Ferry
It would seem unlikely that a mistake of the type that occurred in the Titanic would be repeated. However, a weak door lock was one of the main reasons for the 1994 Estonia ferry disaster that caused the deaths of more than 800 people. The ferry’s bow visor, a huge top-hinged door at the front of the ferry that swung up to allow vehicles to be driven into and out of the ferry’s car deck was secured by several locks. The lower lock, known as the Atlantic lock, was too weak to withstand extremely heavy pounding by rough seas. Stormy seas in the Baltic Sea on Sept. 28 broke the lock between 30 minutes and one hour before the 157-meter (515-foot) ferry sank shortly after midnight. The noise of the loose bow visor slamming at the hull was heard by several survivors. The slamming set off a chain of events including the breaking of other locks that ended in the tragedy. Only 137 of the more than 900 people on board survived. The commission that investigated the incident said the shipbuilder did not have proper blueprints for the lock when constructing the ferry in 1980. As a result, the commission says the shipbuilder apparently made its own calculations and underestimated how strong the lock should be. This particular failure would seem the one most likely to be caught with an integrated CAD system.

Tacoma Narrows Bridge
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was the first suspension bridge across the Narrows of Puget Sound, connecting the Olympic Peninsula with the mainland of Washington, and a landmark failure in engineering history. Four months after its opening, on the morning of Nov. 7, 1940, in a wind of about 42 miles (68 km) per hour, the 2,800-foot (853-meter) main span went into a series of torsional oscillations the amplitude of which steadily increased until the convolutions tore several suspenders loose, and the span broke up. The bridge was designed to have acceptable horizontal displacement under the static pressure of a much larger wind, but was not designed to handle the dynamic instability caused by an interaction of the winds and the high degree of flexibility of the light, narrow, two-lane bridge. Modeling this type of fluid/structure interaction, a particularly simple type of flutter, was within the technical capability of engineers at the time, but was evidently not considered. A modern analysis would likely view the fluid/structure flutter as a bifurcation problem, and analyze the nature of the bifurcation as the wind speed increased. Immediately after the accident, numerous investigators were able to create both simple mathematical and scale physical models that exhibited the same failure as the actual bridge, and very simple models were able to predict the wind speed that would cause the collapse.

Subsynchronous resonance in power systems
Series capacitors are often used in AC transmission systems to provide impedance compensation, particularly for long lines with high inductance, at the 60 Hz synchronous transmission frequency. Series capacitors are economical ways to increase load carrying capacity and enhance transient stability, but the capacitors can combine with the line inductance to create oscillators with natural frequencies below 60 Hz. These electrical oscillators can interact with mechanical torsional vibrational modes of the generator turbine shaft, and in some circumstances can cause instabilities that snap the shaft. This happened dramatically at the Mohave Generating Station in Southern Nevada in 1971 when the turbine shaft broke twice before the condition was properly diagnosed. This is a classic example of uncertainty management gone awry. The capacitors were introduced to improve the stability on the electrical side, and reduce the potential vulnerability to electrical side disturbances, but they had the unanticipated effect of destabilizing the mechanical side. The phenomena is now reasonably well understood and is taken very seriously in design of power systems.

Telephone and power system outages
In recent years, there have been an increasing rash of large scale breakdowns of both the telephone and power systems, typically triggered by small events that lead to a cascade of failures that eventually bring down large portions of the network. The high complexity and interconnectedness of these networks is designed to improve their performance and robustness, but can lead to extreme and unexpected sensitivity to small disturbances. In both cases, highly interconnected nationwide networks allow load balancing to be achieved more economically, and the resulting system is, in principle and usually in practice, much more robust to large disturbances or variations in demand. The high degree of connectivity also makes it possible for small failures to propagate and lead to massive outages. The solution to these sensitivities is to add additional complexity in the form of more sophisticated control strategies. Without careful design, this trend to increasing complexity will not improve robustness.

Denver airport baggage handling system
The automated system was supposed to improve baggage handling by using a computer tracking system to direct baggage contained in unmanned carts that run on a track. Originally scheduled for completion in March 1994, the unfinished $234 million project helped postpone opening of the airport until February 1995. The delay reportedly cost the city roughly $1 million per day in operations costs and interest on bond issues, more than the direct cost of the project. Significant mechanical and software problems plagued the automated baggage handling system. In tests of the system, bags were misloaded, were misrouted, or fell out of telecarts, causing the system to jam. The baggage system continued to unload bags even though they were jammed on the conveyor belt, because the photo eye at this location could not detect the pile of bags on the belt and hence could not signal the system to stop. The baggage system also loaded bags into telecarts that were already full. Hence, some bags fell onto the tracks, again causing the telecarts to jam. This problem occurred because the system had lost track of which telecarts were loaded or unloaded during a previous jam. When the system came back on-line, it failed to show that the telecarts were loaded. The timing between the conveyor belts and the moving telecarts was not properly synchronized, causing bags to fall between the conveyor belt and the telecarts. The bags became wedged under the telecarts, which were bumping into each other near the load point.

Ariane 5
The Ariane 5 was not flight tested because there was so much confidence in M&S. The first flight carried $500M of satellites and was destroyed about 40 seconds after lift off. The error which ultimately led to the destruction of the Ariane 5 launcher was clearly identified in the report of the investigating committee: a program segment for converting a floating point number, representing a measurement, to a signed 16 bit integer was executed with an input data value outside the range representable by a signed 16 bit integer. This run time error (out of range, overflow), which arose in both the active and the backup computers at about the same time, was detected and both computers shut themselves down. This resulted in the total loss of attitude control. The Ariane 5 turned uncontrollably and aerodynamic forces broke the vehicle apart. This breakup was detected by an on-board monitor which ignited the explosive charges to destroy the vehicle in the air. The code in question was reused from an earlier vehicle where the measurement would not have become large enough to cause this failure.

It is tempting to simply dismiss this as a software bug that would be eliminated by better software engineering. It is obvious that the programmer should have checked that the measurement was small enough that the conversion could take place, and if it could not, have the control system take some appropriate action rather than simply shut down. In this case the appropriate action would have been to do nothing, because this measurement, ironically, wasn’t even needed after liftoff. This may seem to make it a trivial issue, but the same code did work fine on the Ariane 4, although a control engineer would presumably have preferred it be done differently.

While the “software bug” view has some truth, it is misleading, because the failure was due to dynamics of the Ariane 5 that were different than the Ariane 4. It is the interaction of the software with the uncertainty in the environment and the dynamics of the vehicle that caused the failure. This is not a software issue, but a design flaw at a much deeper level. It is likely the programmers responsible had no idea how to determine if the Ariane 5 had dynamics such that under suitable environmental conditions the measurement would be too large. Presumably, they could have consulted appropriate experts in control and aerodynamics and anticipated the problem, but it wouldn’t have been a computer science issue at all.

Something interesting

20 Famous Software Disasters

Dont get screwed!!!

2008-12-24T02:55:00.000-08:00

PROBLEM-1
A helicopter drops two trains, each on a parachute, onto a straight infinite railway line. There is an undefined distance between the two trains. Each faces the same direction, and upon landing, the parachute attached to each train falls to the ground next to the train and detaches. Each train has a microchip that controls its motion. The chips are identical. There is no way for the trains to know where they are. You need to write the code in the chip to make the trains bump into each other. Each line of code takes a single clock cycle to execute.

You can use the following commands (and only these);
MF - moves the train forward
MB - moves the train backward
IF (P) - conditional that’s satisfied if the train is next to a parachute. There is no "then" to this IF statement.
GOTO

PROBLEM-2
Your stair-climbing robot has a very simple low-level API: the "step" function takes no argument and attempts to climb one step as a side effect. Unfortunately, sometimes the attempt fails and the robot clumsily falls one step instead. The "step" function detects what happens and returns a boolean flag: true on success, false on failure. Write a function "step_up" that climbs one step up (by repeating "step" attempts if necessary). Assume that the robot is not already at the top of the stairs, and neither does it ever reach the bottom of the stairs. How small can you make "step_up"? Can you avoid using variables (even immutable ones) and numbers?

PROBLEM-3
You have 5 jars of pills. Each pill weighs 10 gram, except for contaminated pills contained in one jar, where each pill weighs 9 gm.Given a scale, how could you tell which jar had the contaminated pills in just one measurement?

PROBLEM-4
Given a rectangular (cuboidal for the puritans) cake with a rectangular piece removed (any size or orientation), how would you cut the remainder of the cake into two equal halves with one straight cut of a knife ?

PROBLEM-5
Once upon a time there was a tyrant and clever [quite unusual] king who has 2 widow sisters. Actually, they became widowed after he killed their husbands thinking they want to take his throne. Since then, every noble man in the kingdom feared to approach them. Yet, the king wanted them to remarry again. Finally, on one day, he decided that the first man knocking his private room will marry one of them. On that same day, his minister, a wise man, entered the king's private room. Here, the king told him about his plan, but he decided to give his minister another chance. He told him to make a statement; if this statement is false he has to marry the older sister and if the statement is true he has to marry the younger sister. What is the statement that saves the minister from marriage to the king's sisters???

PROBLEM-6
If you had an infinite supply of water and a 5 quart and 3 quart pail, how would you measure exactly 4 quarts?

PROBLEM-7
Give a one-line C expression to test whether a number is a power of 2.

PROBLEM-8
There are 4 women who want to cross a bridge. They all begin on the same side. You have 17 minutes to get all of them across to the other side. It is night. There is one flashlight. A maximum of two people can cross at one time. Any party who crosses, either 1 or 2 people, must have the flashlight with them. The flashlight must be walked back and forth, it cannot be thrown, etc. Each woman walks at a different speed. A pair must walk together at the rate of the slower woman's pace. Woman 1: 1 minute to cross Woman 2: 2 minutes to across Woman 3: 5 minutes to cross Woman 4: 10 minutes to cross For example if Woman 1 and Woman 4 walk across first, 10 minutes have elapsed when they get to the other side of the bridge. If Woman 4
then returns with the flashlight, a total of 20 minutes have passed and you have failed the mission. What is the order required to get all women across in 17 minutes? Now, what's the other way?

PROBLEM-9
If you are in a boat on a lake and you throw out a suitcase, Will the level of water increase in the lake?

PROBLEM-10
Connect nine dots with four lines

o o o

o o o

o o o

PROBLEM-11
You have 2 candles. Every candle lights for 60 minutes. You have to find the way to measure 45 minutes.

PROBLEM-12
A band is going in the street with a constant speed. Someone in the last row has a dog. The dog runs ahead, reaches the front row of the band and gets back to it's owner. The dog's speed was constant
all the way and while it was running the band passed 50 feet. Find the length of the dog's path,if the distance between the front and the rear row of the band is 50 feet.

PROBLEM-13
A man is running across a bridge.When he is 3/8 of the way across, he heard a train coming behind him. If he keeps running he will reach the end of the bridge at the same time with the train. If he turns around and runs back, he will get to the beginning of the bridge at the same time as the train. The man runs at a speed of 5mph. What is the speed of the train?

PROBLEM-14
There are 100 doors in a row that are all initially closed. You make 100 passes by the doors starting with the first door every time. The first time through you visit every door and toggle the door (if the door is closed, you open it, if its open, you close it). The second time you only visit every 2nd door (door #2, #4, #6). the third time, every 3rd door (door #3, #6, #9), etc, until you only visit the 100th door.What is the state of each door after the last pass?

PROBLEM-15
A man has two paper cubes on his desk. Every day he arranges both cubes so that the front faces show the current day of the month. What numbers are required on the faces of the cubes to allow this for all possible days in the calendar?

PROBLEM-16
You have 240 barrels of wine, one of which has been poisoned. After drinking the poisoned wine, one dies within 24 hours. You have 5 slaves whom you are willing to sacrifice in order to determine which barrel contains the poisoned wine. How do you achieve this in 48 hours?

PROBLEM-17
100 prisoners agree on a strategy before playing the following game: One at a time (in some unspecified order), each of the prisoners is taken to a courtyard where there is a line of 100 boxes. The prisoner gets to make choices to open 50 of the boxes. When a box is opened, it reveals the name of a prisoner (the prisoners have distinct names). The names written in the boxes are in 1-to-1 correspondence with the prisoners; that is, each name is found in exactly one box. If after opening 50 boxes, the prisoner has not found his own name, the game is over and all the prisoners lose. But if the prisoner does find the box that contains his name among the 50 boxes he opens, then the prisoner is taken to the other side of the courtyard where he cannot communicate with the others, the boxes are once again closed, and the next prisoner is brought out into the courtyard. If all prisoners make it to the other side of the courtyard, they win.
One possible strategy is for each prisoner to randomly select 50 boxes and open them. This gives the prisoners 1 chance out of 2¹⁰⁰ to win--a slim chance, indeed. But the prisoners can do better, using a strategy that for a random configuration of the boxes will give them a larger chance of winning. How good a strategy can you develop?

PROBLEM-18
You have 240 barrels of wine, one of which has been poisoned. After drinking the poisoned wine, one dies within 24 hours. You have 5 slaves whom you are willing to sacrifice in order to determine which barrel contains the poisoned wine. How do you achieve this in 48 hours?

PROBLEM-19
A building has 16 rooms, arranged in a 4x4 grid. There is a door between every pair of adjacent rooms ("adjacent" meaning north, south, west, and east, but no diagonals). Only the room in the northeast corner has a door that leads out of the building.
In the initial configuration, there is one person in each room. The person in the southwest corner is a psycho killer. The psycho killer has the following traits: If he enters a room where there is another person, he immediately kills that person . But he also cannot stand the site of blood, so he will not enter any room where there is a dead person.
As it happened, from that initial configuration, the psycho killer managed to get out of the building after killing all the other 15 people. What path did he take?

PROBLEM-20
A rubber band (well, a rubber string, really) is 10 meters long. There's a worm that starts at one end and crawls toward the other end, at a speed of 1 meter per hour. After each hour that passes, the rubber string is stretched so as to become 1 meter longer than it just was. Will the worm ever reach the other end of the string?

PROBLEM-21
N prisoners get together to decide on a strategy. Then, each prisoner is taken to his own isolated cell. A prison guard goes to a cell and takes its prisoner to a room where there is a switch. The switch can either be up or down. The prisoner is allowed to inspect the state of the switch and then has the option of flicking the switch. The prisoner is then taken back to his cell. The prison guard repeats this process infinitely often, each time choosing fairly among the prisoners. That is, the prison guard will choose each prisoner infinitely often.
At any time, any prisoner can exclaim "Now, every prisoner has been in the room with the switch". If, at that time, the statement is correct, all prisoners are set free; if the statement is not correct, all prisoners are immediately executed. What strategy should the prisoners use to ensure their eventual freedom?
(Just in case there's any confusion: The initial state of the switch is unknown to the prisoners. The state of the switch is changed only by the prisoners.)
As a warm-up, you may consider the same problem but with a known initial state of the switch.

http://www.math.uga.edu/olympiad/02/02testsolutions.pdf

Problem -22

You are standing in a school hallway lined with 100 closed lockers. You then open all 100 lockers. After this, you then close every 2nd locker (so the 2nd, 4th, 6th…98th and 100th are all closed). Then, you go to every third locker and open it if it is closed or close it if it is open (let’s call this toggling the locker for our discussion). You proceed to toggle every nth locker on pass number n. So, for example, on pass number 16 – you will toggle every 16th locker. After your hundredth pass of the hallway, in which you toggle only locker number 100, how many lockers are now open? In a hall with x lockers, how many lockers remain open after pass number x?

Problem -23
You have someone working for you for seven days and you have one gold bar to pay them. The gold bar is segmented into seven connected pieces. You must give them a piece of gold at the end of every day. If you are only allowed to make two breaks in the gold bar, how do you pay your worker?
Problem-24
You have 5 jars of pills. Each pill weighs 10 grams, except for contaminated pills contained in one jar, where each pill weighs 9 grams. Given a scale, how could you tell which jar had the contaminated pills in just one measurement?
Problem-25
You are given two 60 minute long fuse ropes (i.e. the kind that you would find on the end of a bomb) and a lighter. The fuses do not necessarily burn at a fixed rate. For example, given an 8 foot rope, it may take 5 minutes for the first 4 feet of the fuse to burn, while the last 4 feet could take 55 minutes to burn (a much slower rate) (5+55=60 minutes). Using these two fuses and the lighter, how can you determine 45 minutes? HINT: You can use the lighter any number of times
Problem-26
One train leaves Los Angeles at 15 MPH heading for New York . Another train leaves from New York at 20mph heading for Los Angeleson the same track. If a bird, flying at 25mph, leaves from Los Angeles at the same time as the train and flies back and forth between the two trains until they collide, how far will the bird have traveled?
Problem-27
You have a birthday cake and have exactly 3 cuts to cut it into 8 equal pieces. How do you do it?

Problem-28
Let’s say that you have 25 horses, and you want to pick the fastest 3 horses out of those 25. In each race, only 5 horses can run at the same time. What is the minimum number of races required to find the 3 fastest horses without using a stopwatch?