F.A.L.T.U : A Plagiarised movie from Hollywood movie 'Accepted' : Who will detect Plagiarism?

Those who have seen movie F.A.L.TU. may want to know the fact that it strongly resembles with the Hollywood Flick 'Accepted [2006]'.






"A high school slacker who's rejected by every school he applies to opts to create his own institution of higher learning, the South Harmon Institute of Technology, on a rundown piece of property near his hometown." [IMDB Page of 'Accepted']

Don't these lines make you think of the plot of Bollywood movie F.A.L.T.U? Yes its true, its the same story with a little makeover and in my opinion, they had to do those changes because they were inefficient even to reproduce the same story :D . Well I seriously pity on the debutant director who starts the career from such a plagiarised story and talks about creativity and passion in the movie.

This is not the only plagiarised movie, The list is long and includes some of the big names like 'Gajni' from 'Memento', 'Partner' from 'Hitch' . Sometimes songs are copied from some other songs, and our Anu Malik and Pritam are famous for that.

Plagiarism is prominent also in text, like we use someone else's work or text without explicitly acknowledging the person or source. “You know the feeling while reading an article on a topic related to your own research, you gradually become aware of a strong similarity between the ideas expressed and those you published some time ago. A quick glance at the references cited shows you that your article isn’t mentioned. ”[Garfield, 1980]. Here, as I have given the reference to Garfield so it is not Plagiarism! You may find it very frequent in student reports, even there are very funny cases like professor publishing book from the Ph.D thesis of his/her student.

As one of my research area is Natural Language Processing and somewhat plagiarism detection in text, this kind of incidents provoke me to write something about it. Plagiarism Detection has much moral and social impact than merely a profitable application. Because we help directly the society by making life of the plagiariser hard and promote the original work at the same time make the environment more ethical and authentic.

I sign off with a hope not to come across such cases again!

A day in the Life of India!

You may find very interesting things about India at the following link. It is the initiative of Times of India.

A very sarcastic view of India presented there and one should not take it as a disrespect to the nation. You may love it. It captures lot of such scenes where you would utter to the next guy "Yeh India hai Bhai!!"

http://adayinlife.timesofindia.com/

Goverment Employees Are Non-Cooperative

You must have come across the situation when you need to get driving license or passport or any other govt formality. I just describe a typical scene.. You step in the office, you will look for the inquiry counter, probably there will not be anyone to attend you but if you are lucky enough to have one, then the fellow would give so short answers that you will be confused and feel, what should I do to have him/her giving elaboration. And, if you dare to question more then you are gone. They will screw you. Well, I admit that there are also some good people but most of them are very bad and non-cooperative.

Its like if you want your work to be done in a better way then strive hard to find any of your relative/neighbour/friends/friends of friends:)/any damn relation in that office. Otherwise you will need to visit that place so many times and out of frustration you will have to contact a agent sitting outside and give him extra fees (in some cases cumulatively it is a cheaper option!).

When I discuss these things with other people they say its like that only and we have to be habitual. But the situation has risen due to the attitude of the government employees who are less dedicated/committed to their work. If they are responsive enough and humble enough to give the correct and full information then a person who is very much occupied in the daily routine of life would be so happy and satisfied. The person who is frustrated by this, will frustrate more people at his/her workplace and this chain will go on.

I urge to the readers if you are related to any kind of public dealing then please give a better experience to your customers i.e. citizens of India and it can be a very effective contribution in the nation building.

Rajasthan Gujjar Reservaion Issue

For a couple of days with the dinner I am listening to reporters giving details about the "Gujjar Andolan" in Dosa (Rajasthan). Those who don't know anything about this, let me give a brief background to this issue. Gujjar is a community in India especially in Rajasthan who have their leader Colonel Baisla who is ex-army man. In leadership of him they have started a movement in which they have removed the rail tracks destroying the rail transport passing from Rajasthan. Well, you should not conclude that I am an activist in the field of Reservation quotas just because my last post was somewhat related. Its merely a coincidence and this post is independent.

They did the same before a couple of years ago and they succeeded. Now when there is a hope of new government jobs, they want some benefits. I am wondering that our government will again surrender to these people? I still remember the statement of Supreme Court on the issue of reservation quota that People have started to fight to be called backward!

In my opinion this is not the civilized way of demanding. The rail network has collapsed. There is not at all rail commutation in western region. Trains are diverted and passengers as well as the local residents have to suffer. Who doesn't want benefits? When we talk about equality after 50 years (oops, 60) years of independence, let those people have chance who have merit and not caste advantages. I wondered what a young 25 years old General category unemployed guy who doesn't have these advantages and have high hopes for the jobs, will think of this country on hearing this news? Lets put general category aside, what if other castes take the example of this and start doing the same?

To be direct, its like a man-eater tiger. If a tiger tastes the blood of human then tiger is always looking for humans otherwise generally tigers get afraid of humans. So I hope this time Govt of India doesn't surrender and take some actions that there is no scope for this kind of movement in future.

Should the house accept 'Reservation Quotas'?

Around a week ago I visited session of one of the students club called 'Parliamentary Debate club'. Parliamentary debate is little bit different, it follows certain rules and a specific format. The topic was "This house will accept quotas". One group will defend it and other will oppose. Well this is a very common and controversial topic. We generally come across this topic every now and then, sometimes we speak and sometimes just leave it. One month back I was short listed for the GD round of placement process of Tata Technologies. There too the topic was 'Does reservation degrade the quality of education'. Though I cleared he round but was not that happy because non of us actually could found a solution to the problem. One thing that emerged out of discussion was we should reconsider the criteria of reservation like it should not be caste based but is should be economical condition based or so.

Similar case I saw again in the debate of this club that whenever we are asked what should be done with this quota thing at that time we spontaneously react and then refrain. Like it starts with one boolean query that quotas should be there or not just 0 or 1. Then we realize it is not a problem of Digital logic but its one of fuzzy logic where you can have intermediate values between 0 and 1. Because if there are quotas then after 60 years of independence we are generating social imbalance in the society. But argument will be still there are some people who need a helping hand and such genuine unprivileged people should be given benefit. Now a question arises that these needy people can be of any caste. So the prevailing criteria is not apt for the situation. Someone would argue that government is taking action and Creamy Layer is the outcome of it. But the argument is still that concept is not practised. And the discussion goes on...

It seems that first it is a very hard to decide that should we need quotas or not and if yes then what should be the criteria for the reservation if not caste then. And if you come up with some practical criteria then how would you practise it? So to me this problem turns out to be a NP Hard problem. You are welcomed to give your word on this.