The history and mystery of "bitcoin"

To understand bit coin, let’s first brush up a few basics on the concept of money a.k.a currency.

Well, we all know trading started with some form of barter system in the beginning. The concept was simple. I have rice, you have wheat. I need wheat, you need rice so lets exchange.

Hurrah and the world was a happy place.

But what if I did not need wheat and instead needed x-box. The guy having x-box did not need rice but needed, lets say, a car. And no one knew where was this guy who sold cars so no one knew what he wanted.

What a bummer as everybody’s produce goes for a waste.

So the smarter folks felt that why don’t we create a common place where everyone can come and buy or sell what they want. Let’s call this common place as ‘market’. And let’s create this thing called ‘currency’. So instead of goods exchanging with goods, lets exchange goods with this ‘currency’ thing.  The cumulative supply or demand will decide the exchange rate of a particular good or commodity. That in a nut shell formed the basis of fancy terms like ‘price discovery mechanism’. And there you go, I just explained how economics works.

So now that everybody agreed on this ‘market driven’ system, the next thing was to figure out who owns this currency? where does this come from? Who backs it i.e. what is the guarantee that it actually represents it’s value? 

Now a simple concept started to become complex as now came in the concepts of government, monetary regulations and central banks who owned the supply of this currency and backed its value. Initially it was pegged to a natural resource like gold but because there is only a finite amount of gold in the world, which meant only a finite amount of currency could be printed, which meant nobody could become infinitely rich to be able to own private jets, holiday mansions or beautiful islands, the governments felt, ‘hell with this whole finite concept, let us just become the guarantors of the value associated with money. That way we can mint more when we need’.

As the concept of government was jurisdictional, the concept of currency also ended up jurisdictional and then came in further complication of inter-currency exchange rates. Newer forms of currency also started to show in form of cheques, promissory notes, credit cards, debit cards etc. But they were all controlled, monitored and regulated by these few central institutions like the government and the banks who controlled all these inter-currency exchanges and the value associated with the currency also as they had the power to infuse more currency in the system (or withdraw).

Anyways, this currency system enabled me to buy x-box by selling my rice but in the process I had to trust these middling central institutions and this enormously complex system that was potentially taking a cut in the process of my rice getting converted into x-box.

Now these intermediaries that we have to ‘trust’ are known to malfunction. Countries have gone bankrupt, governments have failed and their currency systems have fallen in the past. The very fact that the supply of currency or it’s exchange was controlled by handful of these institutions, made them immensely powerful. With great power comes great greed and every now and then we got a financial meltdown. 

Enter ‘bitcoin’. The formal words to describe bitcoin is “an unregulated peer-to-peer digital currency”. But actually it is a great social, technological, philosophical and economic experiment.  Sometime in the fall of 2008, someone named Satoshi Nakamoto  published a paper called “Bitcoin: A peer to peer electronic cash system”. This led to the development of the open source software that led to realization of bitcoin. The beauty of the algorithm was that no one owned bitcoins. They were “mined”, like how gold is mined. One could participate in the bitcoin mining by being part of it’s network by donating computing power. Like no one owns ‘internet’, no one owns bitcoin network. Collectively these connected computers maintain the bit coin ledger, transactions and record, which is just book keeping of who owns how many bitcoins. Bitcoins are ‘mined’ or rewarded as a part of verification of these transactions to the users. Overall there can be only 21 million bit coins and it gets progressively harder to mine newer coins. At the current rate, it is expected that after 2140 no more bit coins will be generated. Underlying this bit coin network is a very strong system of cryptographic technologies which is all in public domain for anyone to view, validate, improvise and contribute.

Geeks around the world contributed (and are contributing) their hardware into the bitcoin network in the hope of getting rewarded. But what good is a money if you can’t spend it? So the first bitcoin use as money happened in middle of 2010 where in 10,000 bitcoins were exchanged for pizza worth  USD 25. The transaction happened over internet. Bitcoins got transferred from one electronic account to another and pizza got delivered. This brought in the acceptance of bitcoin as a real world asset and very soon a bitcoin exchange called “Mt. Gox” was established in Japan. Bitcoins could be traded on the exchange for real world currency and from 10000 bitcoins being worth USD 25, the price of one bitcoin went as high as USD1240 in 2013. In 3 year, the pizza guy’s value would be 12.4 million. An entire economic ecosystem got developed around bitcoins with payment systems, exchanges, gateways and more and more merchants started to sign up for bitcoin as an accepted method of payments. It worked better than credit cards as the transaction fee was much lower. In the form of biticoin, a parallel peer-to-peer monetary system without the involvement of any corruptible middle institution got established.

Another interesting fact about bitcoin is that no one knows it’s founder. All the community knows is a Japanese name “Satoshi Nakamoto” but it’s just a pseudonym. It could be an individual or a group of individuals. The proficiency and usage of english phrases in his (if it is a ‘he’) email communication raises doubts on his being a Japanese. Furthermore, while there is an immense economic ecosystem being created around bitcoin today, he is no more actively involved. In a world where people scramble around to take credits for piddling things, someone choses to be anonymous  for a new invention that can potentially make us relook at the very basis of civilization, is indeed incredible.

If anything the human history tells, then that is that no matter what, we WILL figure a way out of misusing any invention. Guns, automobiles, nuclear energy or social networking websites, no matter what, the criminal side of civilization will find a use of it. In the words of Agent Smith “as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery”. We just can’t be happy with the good side of the coin and have to neutralize it by creating a bad side. So came out to be true for ‘bitcoin’. In no time, bitcoin became the currency of the illegal transactions on internet. Business of money laundering, drugs, prostitution, guns and what not started to adopt bitcoins as their currency of choice. The anonymity of it came as a boon to those who love being anonymous. Furthermore, ‘bitcoin’ is based on enormously large infrastructure of software. Despite what we may think, software really is not a secure infrastructure and it also has it’s wear and tears, that leave holes as vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities provide the criminals an opening to exploit the software and use it for illegitimate gains. The hacker eventually broke into bitcoin as well as bitcoin exchange (MtGox) causing price fluctuations and artificial supply of bitcoin (Although real money is also subject to such vulnerabilities by means of robbery or fake currency). Hacking, coupled with the axe the law enforcement agencies swung on “legitimate” companies engaged in bitcoin economy (because somewhere some a-hole used bitcoins for illegal purposes) dented the reputation as well the price. Today the bitcoin is fluctuating at a price of around USD 300 (down nearly 80% from it’s peak). 

Whatever the future of bitcoin might be, one thing that can not be taken away from it is the artistic novelty of the concept and the its un-institutionalized or headless realization. In a world where institutions are getting increasingly powerful, corrupt and control freaks, any such concept comes as breeze of fresh air.

Scam or Crime - Part Deux

In my earlier blog, I discussed the modalities of a sophisticated ponzi scheme crafted to cheat gullible citizens of Bengaluru. Also discussed in the blog were the provisions or remedies available in the law that the state has provided to the aggrieved citizen.

In this blog, let’s see the efficacy of those remedies.

As mentioned earlier, in case of cheating there is the section 420 of IPC under which the state can initiate the investigation, in response to an FIR, against the accused and prosecute, if necessary. (After all we are paying taxes to the state, it can do something to safeguard us, isn’t it?)

Although for some inexplicable reason, the state’s law enforcement agency showed some reluctance to register the FIR. Thankfully, and to the good use of taxpayer’s money that, we have kiosks that were launched in the city of Bengaluru that helped file an FIR (005/2015 u/s 420) against one Mr AA (name withheld), an alleged perpetrator of such a scam.

(Normally I wouldn’t have revealed any personally identifiable information on the blog with the fear of case of defamation against me, but hey, the draconian section 66A of the IT act is a talk of the past. That saves me from 'computer-blog-based-defamation' although acts of IPC could still be invoked. In that case, well, the information revealed here is already available in public domain, as we will see. So I am not really cooking up anything or passing judgements. Just making some inferences by highlighting the data from the functioning of the system, and as the great Morpheus told Neo, "It is the system that is our enemy" : Matrix-1)

The FIR should kick off the criminal justice system with the state doing the needed and proper investigation and if found grounds for criminality, charge sheet followed by prosecution of the accused in the court, which will eventually determine the guilt based on the evidence presented.

Or so one would think.

Besides the e-kiosks for FIR, another great use of taxpayer’s money has been the e-governance, under which the government data is becoming transparent and accessible to citizens at their fingertips. Cool, isn’t it.

So at the website, http://ecourts.gov.in/services, and selecting the “state” as “Karnataka”, “district” as “Bengaluru” and querying the status of the FIR (005 in the year 2015) in the CMM court of Bangalore, following data shows up:

Case Type/Reg No.	Decision Date	FIR/PS		IPC Section	Case Status	Nature of Disposal
Cr.1332/2015	19th Jan 2015	5/2015 – Koramangala	420		Disposed	Contested-closed

Interpretation of this data seems to suggest that the case has been closed and disposed of, without any verdict against the accused.

Well, so perhaps the investigation did not reveal a wrong doing and the case did not have any merit for the state to be able to prosecute the accused.

One of the main things to prosecute someone under IPC 420 is the establishment of ‘mens rea’ on the part of the accused. In English, it implies the establishment of the intent of the accused or the fact that the accused did indeed intend to commit the crime.  This safeguard is understandable and necessary. After all you don’t want law to be misused.

Anyways, to see if the accused in this case (name withheld, but let's call him Mr AA), was indeed of criminal intent or not, I looked at some more past data from the ‘ecourts’ website to get a list of cases against him and see if it offered any result or pattern. Following data shows up:

Case Type/Reg No.	Petitioner – Respondent	Decision Date	FIR/PS	IPC Section	Case Status/Details	Nature of Disposal
P.C.R. 17603/2006	STATE BANK OF MYSORE Vs AA	14th March 2013	NA	NA	Disposed (Cognizance  on 17-01-2007)	Bulk disposed
P.C.R. 6812/2007	Veena Rathod Vs AA	01st July 2012	NA	NA	Disposed	Converted
C.C. 3952/2007	S B M BASAVA GUDI Vs AA	16th August 2012	NA	NA	Disposed (NBW issued on 31-05-2008)*	Bulk disposed
Cr 411/2015	GOURISHANKAR SINGH Vs. AA AND ANOTHER	6th January 2015	9/2015 – Koramangala	420	Disposed	Contested-Closed
Cr.1332/2015	SMITA AGRAWAL Vs AA	19th Jan 2015	5/2015 – Koramangala	420	Disposed	Contested-closed

*I am not an expert on court language but I think NBW implies “Non Bailable Warrant”

This is just a list of cases against the person named “AA ”. Since in many cases and complaints, only the first name might have been used, the list can potentially be much larger.

Obviously, I don’t have any proof to establish that all these AA are the same person. In theory, they could all be different people, which would imply that the citizens of Bengaluru have something gravely against people named “AA” and the law is doing well to save them.

However, assuming they are all the same person, one of the 2 seems possible:

      Either Mr AA is a severely misunderstood person that almost every year he has someone falsely complaining against him

         Or He is in fact a person of criminal mindset with a mens rea to cheat others, in which case the law  (and law enforcement) somehow seems overly generous towards him that all cases against him get disposed/closed and he is still out at large.

They say beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Similarly interpretation of the data lies in eyes of the interpreter. With that, I leave you to form your interpretation.

One could file an RTI to get the copy of these weak charge sheets (although there is some unclarity in the legal fraternity about 'chargesheet' being a public document and hence accessible via RTI) and then present an application in front of the concerned magistrate and request to invoke the powers under section 156(3) of the CrPC, that can allow the magistrate to order a proper investigation of the FIR. But if the law enforcement (which is also the investigative arm) is anyway generous towards a particular perpetrator, how likely is that the magisterial order will lead to a different result?

Hmm, the plot gets thicker. Let's see if there is a "Part 3".

The security of cyber

The RSA conference for 2015 is beginning. This is the ‘woodstock’ of companies and professionals working in the field of cyber security to get together and showcase their innovations. The who’s who of cyber security is expected to be present. 

Well, good time to talk about cyber security. Isn’t it?

From ‘wheel’ to ‘whatsapp’, technological innovations and revolutions have been taking place but never ever has been the ‘security’ of any innovation has been such a demanding subject as has been with the cyber or software related innovations. I mean I am sure there are ‘automobile-security-conventions’ somewhere but its not likely that it has created an industrial ecosystem worth multi-billions of dollars.

Let us try to understand why security in the software world is such an important subject.

Like any other form of engineering, software too, is a form of engineering. Just like in mechanical engineering, principles of basic physics, mathematics, energy transmission etc are applied to create products that transmit one form of energy into other to reduce the human effort (for e.g. wheel, automobiles, cranes etc), software engineering is the application of mathematical principles and computer science to create products that are of use to humanity.

Earlier in the days, these products were largely centered around easing the communications and information exchange. Today, however, we have software products in just about every aspect of our life. Health care, personal finance, automotive, entertainment, mass communication, personal communication, food delivery, law enforcement or governance, you name a domain  and you will see application of software product in that domain.

Nearly 2 decades ago, computers were predominantly owned at institutional level. Very few in the society had personal computers. Internet access was even lesser and mobile phones, though available at a staggering rate of 32/- per minute of calling, were only for telephony.

Today, almost every household has multiple devices to get to internet (phone, tablet, laptop, desktop or even television) and we have software products touching our lives nearly 24 hours in a day.

So what is it about “software stream” of engineering that causes its “products” to proliferate at such a rapid rate whereas other streams of engineering are still limited in their types of offering? I mean despite being there for much longer, the types of automobiles that have come up is still a handful (trains, buses, trams, trucks, cars, mopeds, scooter etc), whereas the list of software products is so high that I am not sure if anyone can even come close to enumerating them. 

There are 2 very big factors that make creation of a product in software much easier than any other form of engineering, and thus there is this rapid proliferation.

1) No physical raw material - You can create software with minimal raw material waste. The only thing that is wasted is human effort. Whereas if you try to innovate something in the brick and mortar world, you better be sure as the upfront capital cost in acquiring all the raw material itself is so high. This has caused innovation into software far more easier and inexpensive than the brick-and-mortar world.  As the innovation now has a commercial value (where else would you see 30 year old billionaires), it has further fueled the creativity of engineers to come up with new and newer concepts and feature driven software to catch the fancy of the user. If it fails, big deal. Let’s come up with another one. Doesn’t cost much, re-use the parts and bam, a new software application is ready.

2) The elastic nature of software -  Unlike the counter parts of the brick-and-mortar engineering, the software products can be deployed, upgraded or debugged with much ease. I mean, imagine if a car had an issue in it, the company will have to recall all the models (Toyota as well General Motors had to recall a large volume of their cars in recent times) and then give a new version. Furthermore, imagine the risk with drivers driving unstable cars. Whereas in software, when a buggy or unfit software gets released, the manufacturers push a new upgrade very easily. And whats the worst that could happen? I mean nobody is dying just because you can’t attach videos to your favorite messaging software. A new version will fix it.

The whole industry is driven by the desire to hit the market with your software as soon as possible with as new features as possible. The immense competition is not making it any easy. As a result the traditional quality controls and safety checks as often practiced in other streams of engineering, are often ignored. Because of the upgradable nature, the cost of failure is further perceived less and the quality and safety takes even more of a  back seat.

Having seen mechanical engineering shop floor and a software engineering production methodologies, at least in my experience I can attest that the quality and safety procedures followed before shipping a software are far below where they need to be. Consequently we are now sitting on this enormously large labyrinth of software applications, which is extremely feature rich but has “cracks” all over the place. These cracks exist because the industry was focussed on ‘features’ rather than quality. And these cracks lead to what we call as ‘vulnerabilities’. The ‘vulnerabilities’ provide the attackers opportunity to ‘exploit’ them (just like how cracks in your doors or walls will give thieves an opening to break-in). As more and more everyday life’s functions get dependent on software infrastructure, it is leading to rise in motivation for attackers to find such ‘cracks’.

This fact gets validated by the evolving attacker/hacker profiles who, few decades back, were bunch of college kids trying to have fun, to modern day hacking for financial gains and now nation state sponsored hackers.

Cyber security has become a big enough problem that law makers have also started taking cognizance but law is a much slow moving machinery than software and it would be a while before it catches up.

Till then, let us be ‘cognizant’ of the fact that while its fun and convenient to use all these various software applications around us, they are built on top of a infrastructure that has plenty of cracks. As cyber security professionals are filling them, newer ones are being uncovered. 

So happy surfing and safe surfing.

Scam or Crime - What difference does it make?

Laws have traditionally been divided into two broad categories of Civil and Criminal laws, and while it may be very hard to define a very clear distinction between the two, the popular understanding (though not necessarily always true) would suggest that if the conduct affects society at large, it is a "crime" where as if it the conduct merely harms a single individual (or group of individuals), it is characterized as "civil wrong". Since crimes are an offense against society, normally the state (through its law enforcement agencies) prosecutes criminal allegations on the victim's behalf. The state, normally, does not play a role in civil cases and the aggrieved parties are expected to present the case in a court and obtain resolution. The acts considered as "crime" are obtained from a variety of sources including the most common Indian Penal Code.

Scam is a form of crime but for the sake of current discussion, let's say crime is something that results into a visible bodily harm or damage of material (e.g. murder, rape, dacoity etc), or legally speaking 'cognizable offense' where as scams are more subtle in nature. Scams are usually the result of gaps in the complex layers of the system. They are not very different from what we term as 'innovation' except that innovation leads to a value creation in the system whereas scams lead to a value erosion.

One such commonly known scam is often termed as the Ponzi Scheme in which no one really makes any wealth besides the promoter of the scheme, who is just shifting money from one hand to the other and taking a cut in-between. The only way the system grows is by means of adding more and more hands into it till comes a point where it fractures. Over the years many sophisticated variants of such schemes have come up all the way from the Bernie Madoff investment scandal in United States to the much hyped Speak Asia scam closer home. It won't be too far fetched to say that the burgeoning economic activity and rise in disposable income would attract an increase in such scams as well, as these scams are largely conducted for financial benefits and it probably would be hard for such schemes to succeed in areas that are already 'hand-to-mouth' in their economies.

Ever since India opened up its economic doors by means of liberalizing its economy, the benefits of growth have trickled to a variety of Indian cities outside of the erstwhile metros. Bangalore (a.k.a Bengaluru) probably figures on the top of the list of the cities that reaped the benefits of this liberalization and as a result the city had been on an exponential growth trajectory since then. From what was a 'pensioner's paradise', with an economic growth rate of almost 10% and a population crossing 9 million, Bangalore today is one of the fastest growing metropolis in the country. Such growth has obviously strained city's infrastructure but then at the same time spurted an enormous activity in its real estate sector. The rise in immigrants (white as well as blue collared workers) as well as business visitors into the city, caused a 'demand-supply' gap into the city's housing and presented an opportunity for the home owners in terms of choices for letting, sub-letting, guest housing or serviced-apartmenting their homes. The gap is large enough to accommodate a series of middle-men (or brokers) into the transactions between the provider and end consumer and eventually the brokers started to dominate the entire supply chain. While the brokers charge a whopping 'finder's fee', in practice that's all it is i.e. 'a finder's fee' as they assume no responsibility post that. The owner and the tenant rely on a piece a paper with a government stamp on it (and thus aptly called 'stamp paper') about each other's good will regarding the terms of agreement. The owners rely on the good will of the tenants to vacate their homes at the end of the agreed upon time and the tenants rely that the owner is not going to violate any terms agreed from his side. Should there be a violation of terms regarding the rights to stay in the house, it is largely a 'civil dispute' between two aggrieved parties as it's not really an offense against society'. Either party does realize that challenging each other's assertion in a 'civil court of law' is a gargantuan task as the wheels of justice, especially in 'civil courts' move rather slow in our country and therefore does not want to rely on it. As a consequence, for most part, the faith-based-system gets honored.

Greed is a human vice and it is this vice that the scamsters usually appeal to, in order to allure people into their schemes. An excruciatingly slow and complicated justice delivery system adds to the encouragement of the scamster.

                 
Armed with this knowledge, some middlemen in Bangalore's rental space have come up with a variation of the Ponzi scheme of their own. They approach the home owner and allure him into their trap by promising a high monthly rental for their dwelling and, sometimes, in return ask for the permission to 'sub-let' the premises. On the other end, they look for a vulnerable tenant and allure him (or her) into their trap by promising a 'long term leased' agreement under which a large lump sum amount is requested upfront and is promised to be paid at the end of the lease tenure. During the tenure, a minimal or no-rent is promised. Everything is promised to be agreed upon on the 'stamp paper'. The deal appears too alluring to give up to both the parties and they fall an easy prey. The agreement on the stamp paper along with the reliance on the faith based system adds to their confidence. In the end, the middleman is left with a large amount of money upfront, a part of which is used to pay the insurance deposit to the owner and then a month liability towards the owner. The middlemen uses chunks out of the lump sum to pay the owner on the monthly basis and before his money runs out, he gets another such deal executed between another pair of tenant and owner thereby getting another large sum available to sustain for some more time. The scheme keeps on growing as long as new owner/tenant pair keeps coming in but at one point the system starts to crumble. At this point, the middleman vanishes himself and the owner and the tenant get into a dispute with the piece of paper in their hands. The local law enforcement agency (i.e. the police department) finds itself incapacitated to deal with the matter as they view the matter as a contention of 'rights to enjoy the premises' between a landlord and a tenant and from their point of view this dispute being 'civil' in nature needs to be arbitrated by a competent judicial authority. However, the breach of criminal law has actually been conducted by the middlemen (under various sections of the IPC like 405, 406, 420 among others, some of which also fall under the 'cognizable' category according to the CrPC) but the issue gets completely muddled between the owner, the tenant and the law enforcement. With the owner and the tenant pointing fingers at each other for the omission of due care and trying to literally use "muscle power" against each other, the actual criminal, with a large remnant chunk of money at his disposal, manages to run scot-free between the layers of jurisdictions and the fighting tenant and the land lord.

A variety of complaints against 'one' such middleman (alleged scamster) from various independent individuals have been made in the Kormangala Police Station of the Bangalore city. And this is only one jurisdiction in a city that has nearly 40 plus police stations. One wonders if data is collected from all of them then if many such other complaints will come to the fore, or did he just chose Kormangala for it represents a suburb that arguably is representative of the growing Bangalore. Some such complaints have resulted into an FIR (the initiation point for a legal proceedings when a crime is alleged to have taken place) but only the efficacy of the investigation and the subsequent charge sheet will decide if the justice gets served in the court of law. Either ways there is little hope of the tenants or the landlords to look for in terms of recovering their lost time, energy and money.

It would be a long shot to expect that any senior law enforcement officer from the city of Bengaluru would actually read this (or read this far) but Sir/Madam if you do, the writer in his earnest requests you to consider the gravity of the matter. It is well understood that the rapid urbanization has put immense pressure on the law enforcement agencies as well. The media reports are abuzz with the crime activity of various nature that keep the under-staffed organization over-worked. But while the 'soft-crimes' or 'scams' like this may not appear as gruesome as the ones that are more 'cognizable', the impact on society's well being is no less. A fair and just intervention by law enforcement would keep such criminals in check and ascertain a healthy social fabric.

The number or the people - What's your type?

 You know how people who are bad in mathematics or logic always try to hide their dumbness by classifying mathematics as a subject of theoretical and academic pursuits only. “Oh, I am more of a creative person” , or “Oh I am more right brained”. The best one is “I am more of a people person. I understand people better than numbers. Numbers are just theory. People are more real, interesting and diverse due to their varied personalities”. 

Well, sir/ma’am, here is some news. Numbers are no less “people” than “people”. You don’t believe me? Alright then, take this journey with me.

So let’s see. At beginning we have the “whole” numbers (or the “natural numbers”). Nothing complicated about them. Simple minded folks like 1,2,3,4… Easy to add, subtract. Easy to understand. Just like that perfect boy who takes all his lectures regularly, very dedicated to his family, job, friends; very dependable; easy to hang out with; has clean ideas of fun like watching a movie or a travel with family; keeps his teeth and shoes shining all the time and can enjoy a fine wine every now and then. Some are ‘even’ and some might be ‘odd’ but overall kind of simple minded.

Then comes “fractions”. Now things get tricky. Well, somewhat. I mean, they are not as clean as “whole” numbers but you can live with them or at least you know the ones you can live with. A “1.5”, sure I can take it. I know how to understand that. A “1.33333…”, mmm, that’s dangerous and best to be avoided. The point is you know the kinds you like and the kinds you don’t and its easy to make the choice.

For every alpha there is an omega. For every good, there is evil. For every God, there is a devil. Life works on the principles of ‘duality’ and hence for every “positive” number,  we a “negative” number. The dark side. So you have a -1,-2,-3…as well as -1.5, -1.25, -1.33. Nobody likes negativity but its a hard fact of life. The only was is learn to deal with it.

It’s easy to understand good or bad but then what happens when good becomes “irrational”. Yup, someone can be good but “irrational”. Thats where we talk of “rational” or “irrational” numbers. Mathematically speaking any number that can be described in the form of p/q where p and q are whole numbers (with a minor exception, which we will see later), it is a rational number. And anything that’s not rational is irrational. I mean, what would you say if I tell you that you can have a perfect whole number defining one side of a right-angled triangle and the exact same number defining other side but you just can not find the exact length of the third side. Pretty irrational, i would say. Similarly I give you a circle. You can see it’s circumference and measure it. You can also see that it’s diameter is a finite length. Yet you can not describe their ratio. Man, what has the world come to? How irrational can you get? As if positive and negative was not enough, now we have rational and irrational too?

Between this positives and negatives, sits the aptly neutral “0”, the Switzerland of numbers, the arya-putra. No wonder it got discovered by someone named “Aryabhat”. It’s neutrality gives it interesting properties. If you simply hang around with it (add/subtract), it doesn’t change you at all. It takes you for what you are and leaves you as it is. But it keeps its borders open so if you want to merge into it, you will become like it. It doesn’t take sides and therefore can not be used for any divisive purposes. And that’s the exception to rational numbers i.e. q can not be 0.

Alright, so we have all these positive, negative, whole, fraction …whatever. Fine, it’s tricky but it’s all real. One can see and follow these based on geometry. Of course it is, because we haven’t yet reached an “imaginary” number. Try mixing some of these irrational numbers with a negative number and you land in the territory of “imaginary” numbers. You see there is a whole number and when you multiply it with itself, you get it’s square. So for e.g. square of 2 is 2 X 2 and that is 4. Similarly square of 3 is 9, so on and so forth. For negative numbers also, the squaring results into a positive output because you know, two negatives just cancel each one out. So -2 square is also 4. Now reversing this operation is called the square root of the number. Thus Square root of 4 is 2. What would be square root of “-4”? Can’t imagine, right? That’s why they are “imaginary” numbers. Just like that childhood friend that you had but you never had. Just like all those villains whose ass you kick when you are imagining you are the superhero. They are but they are not. They exist but they do not.

Throw in an imaginary number with a real number, and what do you get? ..Gosh, can’t you keep it simple? Of course not, and thats why we have “complex numbers”. Half true half untrue. Real and imaginary. Awake and dreaming. Simple yet complex.

Tired? Oh c’mon. You maybe a people person but haven’t you seen those ‘lone rangers’ who are just happy with themselves? Very hard to read them and impossible to decompose them. Yup, they are the “prime” numbers. They are completely happy with themselves or whatever notion of unity they believe it.

Although don’t confuse the ‘prime’ types with the egoist types. The ‘primes’ are happy with themselves but the ‘egoist’ are full of themselves. Those are called the “narcissist” numbers’ i.e. a number that is the sum of its own digits each raised to the power of the number of digits. See, so full of themselves. Although be careful with the “radical narcissist” types. You never know, you know.

Boy, is their anything called perfect? Well, I don’t know about people but surely numbers can be “perfect” numbers. Beat that now. 

And then above all there is the “god” number. The one number that answers everything. The one number that answers the ultimate question of life, death, universe and everything. It took a supercomputer nearly 7.5 million years to compute that and the number is “42”. Why “42”? Well, either you know it or you don’t :)

The Fake currency - Be cautious

Recently received a few of the fake currency notes and felt like a good samaritan to inform everyone and potential ways of how to distinguish the fake from the real.

Following is based on 2 notes of denomination of 10/-, one real and other fake.

Let's take the real first.

Here is how it looks.

That's easy. No surprises there. A regular looking 10 rupee note with the number 68D 705574. I am sure in this era of rising disposable income, you would have seen many such notes and surely would have observed the silver lining in the middle.

Now let's zoom the white blow on the left edge just above where the currency note number is printed and look it through light.

Besides the embossed "Gandhi" picture, you could see a '10' [horizontally embossed] and another '10' right above it, kind of embedded in the floral pattern.

Now let's turn over the note and look at the other side.

Hopefully you can see the year '2012' written right almost at the end of the pattern design and in the middle of the note.

Now I am uploading the 3 similar pictures of a fake note with the number and it's missing these 3 identifiers. I am sure there may be many others too but for now these seem to give a differentiation between the fake and genuine.

The fake note number is 06N 607202.

To begin with, it looks amazingly crisp as if it is freshly minted and the color is a little too bright.

It's so bright that you would find the central 'silver lining' missing, although on closer inspection you might see it.

Let's pull up the translucent white on the left end under light.

Whoa. No embossing. No "10" anywhere. And a meaningless 'floral' pattern instead. Let's turn it over and see if there is any year printed.

Clearly, the 'fake' people have done a lot of effort with all that printing but seems like they couldn't get everything right. There are a few other differences I noted by the time I finished the blog but I will not make them public, primarily out of my laziness and secondarily, let's not give it all away.

Isn't it? (or as the English say 'in'nit'?)

PS: All the pictures in the blog or any other content is free to download, inspect and do whatever as long as you do not mis-represent it.

PPS: A little bit of googlig made me land at the page of RBI around the security features in the currency note (http://www.rbi.org.in/currency/security%20features.html), although that's slightly more technical in nature with words like "Instagilo printing" and "Micro lettering", but still worth a read.

Enjoy and be cautious from these photo-shop wizards trying to make a quick buck.