We started with prepared speeches and it was a good listening experience for all members. Guess what, we had 3 Ice breakers, and that was not enough, we had a very humorous and meaningful speech from Siddharth {President of Kolkata Toastmasters Club}. As a new club in scene, the speech was a great help for us. During these 4 speeches we talked about “Who Am I”, “Men vs Women” and lots of other interesting things.

As a first timer GE today, I tried my best to cover as much as I can. Looking forward to more entertaining and fun-filled sessions.

Before table topic session, I delivered my Project 4 and the title was “Snap Decision”. Very soon I’ll be coming up with a blog post on that. I complete my 4 projects in a short span of 2 months and now I have decided to take a break of minimum one month to improve on my speaking abilities. I have got so many feedbacks and I know I have to work on these constructive feedbacks now.

As it was the first meeting of Salt Lake Toastmasters Club after getting chartered we had a little celebration with cake cutting. It was chocolate flavored yummy cake {sorry to those who missed it}.

Looking forward to another fun-filled session.

Start of Speech:

Do you know who the Time Magazine’s most influential person of the year for 2009 is? His name is ‘moot’. I don’t mean ‘moot’ as in ‘beside the point’. The name of this person, or rather handle as it is called is really moot. People believe that he’s a certain 21 year old known as Christopher Poole, but it can’t be proved.

Dear Toastmasters and Guests,

I present before you ‘A Brief History of Hacking’.

Beneath the humdrum of the internet: facebook, orkut, twitter.. you name it there is great instability and chaos.

There is a war on.

There is a war on between those who want to disrupt the system and those who are given the job of protecting it.

The war is between security experts and hackers.

As in a war, there are casualties.

People die in this war.

In real life.

Everyday.

Recently in Bangalore a very promising entrepreneur took his own life because his life’s work was destroyed by hackers.

Just like in a real war, there are double agents. You never know who the good guy is and who the bad guy is. And added to that is the involvement of the mafia worldwide. The world of hacking is a dangerous world. That world is just the click of a mouse away from you.

What is hacking?

Hacking really means to explore the limits of something. As an example, I can hack together a pizza very nicely. But in common usage the term relates to illegally exploiting weaknesses or holes in computer systems for malicious purposes. The common usage is not really accurate but I will use it in this speech because as I said, it is common usage.

There are three types of hackers: Blackhat, Whitehat and Greyhat.

The Blackhat hackers are malicious hackers, on the wrong side of the law. The Whitehats are the good guys or heroes or ethical hackers. The Greyhats are those who may or may not be malicious, but those who are not always on the wrong side of the law. You never know about the Greyhats, which way they will turn.

But.. let me take you back a few decade and we will take a look at the history of hacking…

The form of hacking which became very popular in the 70s was known as phreaking. While it cannot be considered hacking, the two fields are intertwined. Phreaking was used to gain control of telephone systems by whistling a precise tone into a regular telephone. And hey presto, you had the ability to make free untraceable calls anywhere.

It was in 1998 that a hacker (Whitehat) by the name of Aleph One wrote a paper for Phrack magazine, a magazine for hacker. This paper was a very important papers in the annals of hacking as it explained the details of one of the most common and deadly forms of attack known as the ‘Buffer Overflow Attack’. This paper was titled ‘Smashing the stack for fun and profit’. If you are so inclined, you can search for and read this paper online. Aleph One is now the CEO of a prestigious security consulting firm.

This was the age of Remote Hacking, enabled by the usage of the buffer overflow attack. One could send you an email, and the moment you opened it, your computer would no longer be under your control. Of course you would never detect that. Even to this day..Does your computer have a webcam? Is it only you who can control it? Are you sure?

This was followed by the age of Malware. Viruses, Trojans, Worms. That continues to this day and is growing stronger by the day. Now even when you install a brand new Operating System, you cannot be sure that you and only you control it.

The third phase emerged with the advent of the web. The popular ones are SQL injection attack and the XSS attack. These are commonplace now. You can use these to gain access to wireless networks. There are numerous more complicated attacks. I will not go into those, but let me tell you, if a computer is on a network, it is not safe. Even if it is not on a network, still it is not safe. Think of pen drives..

The fourth phase is that of automated hacking. Computers gain access to other computers, at the bidding of their masters, automatically.

Now a few big hackers in the game:

Kevin Mitnick – The most wanted computer criminal in US History. Sentenced to several years in jail allowed no access to computers for 15 years. Recently AT & T disconnected his cell phone. It seems that they don’t want him as their customer.

Fyodor – Again a nickname. We know who he is, but his real name is irrelevant. He is perhaps the best known Whitehat hacker.

Aleph One – I have already described him.

What can hackers do? They can bring the internet to a full stop. They can stop the telephone systems. They can turn off Power Plants. All this, they can do while sitting at home or in a coffee shop.

So, finally, who is moot? Moot is the owner of a website called 4chan, as in 4 channel, which is frequented by hackers. 4chan is the greatest source of internet memes ever. 4chan has even taken on the Scientology (of which Tom Cruise is a member) organization in the past. So how did moot end up as the winner of the Time person of the year? The hackers who frequent 4chan may have done it. Moot probably did not even know who was involved. He is a mere mascot. Or at least that is what he wants you to believe.

End of Speech

My Notes: The speaker missed this part. Go to the Time magazine’s most influential person for the year 2009 list. Look at the first letters only. You will find a pattern that says ‘Marblecake Also The Game’. I wonder what it means. But I am amazed at the fine tuned hacking that was done. I also wish people would use the word ‘hacking’ in the real sense which the speaker explained but did not dwell on for long enough.

I will try to attend future meetings and post what I hear and observe.

— some intro / humor —

The coming 5 minutes I will try to bore you as much as possible. What I am going to present to you will be in three segments. First I will give you my personal introduction, my background, family, etc. Then we will move onto my professional life, my work. Last I will tell you about who I am, what defines me, my vision, my thoughts.

So Hello again,

I am Sumit Datta. I am quite certain I was roaming around the universe looking at black holes or walking through worm holes when I suddenly found myself coming out of my mom’s tummy.

Well the details are graphic but I guess my vision was not good enough, neither is my memory intact. But that’s alright. The main point is that I was brought here against my will and yes when I get a chance I will complain about this.

Well moving ahead, I was born in a small hospital in Burdwan. My father is a Mining Engineer, and you can imagine we live pretty close to a mining belt. Life was fine till I was about 3 years old. All I did was sit, eat, sleep and poo. Uhhhh… nasty smell. But then we all did it.

I went to St. Patrick’s School, Asansol and that’s probably where I got the better half of my education. Although my father was in a hurry to come to Kolkata since he could not adjust to the work there. Thus when I was in class 6 I landed in St. Mary’s Dum Dum. I completed my class 10 there, moved on to St. Xavier’s Sodepur. The only thing I can and should remember at that school is that I fell for two girls! Cool.

I took up graduation in Computer Science from Manindra College. Dropped out in the first year to join a company, worked well. I was rather forced to complete my grads and so I did in 2006, by which time me and my friends from college we also planning to start a business.

We did great things and in 2008 I fell in love with my school friend. Wonderful times they were, we are not together anymore for some rough weather above us. But I am sure we love each other as have ever had. For many different reasons our business stopped and now I am a consultant.

–– 3 mins —

Moving on to my professional life. I have been interested in web for many years now. Have tried doing a business on it since year 2000. My life and work took me through a lot of really brilliant and nice people, some here, some outside India. Finally I am not working as a consultant and will continue to do so for some time. My world is of technology, thus it is not as graphic as say a musicians work or a painters. Thus I can not go into the gory details of work and bore you even more. So lets come to my vision, what defines me, what I am working towards.

— 1 min —-

Who am I? I think every once a while a person comes across this question. How do I define myself. If I were to present an introduction of myself, as I am doing now, I would define myself with my thoughts, my ideas, my vision. Most of that goes back again to where I spent my childhood. Interesting thing about living in colonies in mining belts is that you live in land of differences. We lived in Officers’ quarters and around us were many small Staff quarters. The difference in a Officer and a Staff was mostly his graduation, learning, degree but that change how I looked at things around me. We know the world is not flat, it does not have equal opportunities for everyone, but it could be better. I believe in the future, believe in how the world is changing, and that with the right tools and some time the world will become better, more equal to more people. I believe in taking up causes, fighting for my rights, I believe in a lot of fiction because it was humans who imagined going to the moon. Now we have been there. I am a mentor to others who wish to build something bold. I am currently helping in bringing up the start-up eco system in Kolkata and leading the Open Coffee Club efforts in here. There is more that each of us can do only if we help one another. In a world where some fly in rockets, there are still some who find it difficult to arrange a regular meal. This needs to be changed. I believe golden age of mankind is just around the corner and mankind will evolve into even better forms of themselves. I am just trying my best to see it in reality.

Sir Walter Raleigh was a famed English writer, poet, soldier, courtier, and explorer. This story talks about his early childhood when he was attending a prestigious boarding school. He was an excellent student and wanted to be number one in his class. However, one lad always finished ahead of him, so he determined to discover the secret. Each night when he prepared for bed, he looked across the grounds that separated his room from that of his competitor and noticed that his candle was still burning. One night he noticed that the other boy studied only about fifteen minutes longer than he did. After that, Sir Walter Raleigh studied an extra twenty minutes every night. At the end of the year he was the number one student. He got the number one position because he was ready to put “A Little Extra” and that’s my topic of the day, “A Little Extra”.

I’ve often wondered how many students miss out on a college scholarship because they did not study an additional twenty minutes each day.  Research shows that over 98 percent of all scholarships are either academic or hardship, so some deserving students miss out not because of lack of ability, but because of lack of effort. Many times people grow frustrated because promotions or raises don’t come as fast as they think they should, so they jump ship when just around the corner the promotion awaits.

I often say, follow the mantra of “a little extra” and you will get magical outcomes. Keep every promise, and then “a little extra”; give your clients or customers everything they expect, and then “a little extra”; give whatever you do an honest effort, and then “a little extra”.

The old adage, “The difference between mediocrity and greatness is a little extra effort” applies everywhere. Try to see the food stalls in our food lane. Take a few minutes of walk, talk to few of your friends and you’ll realize the stalls who are taking care of “a little extra quality”, “a little extra hygiene”, “a little extra taste” are doing much better business than others.

You may ask how we can use the same in our daily life, the answer would be “Eliminate one half hour of television watching each day and you’ll gain 182.5 hours each year to use elsewhere (equivalent to four and a half weeks of work)”

Make just one extra contact each day …a sales call … a customer … a brief discussion with a col- league … an encouraging talk with a member of your team. With contact comes opportunity. At the end of the year you’ll have opened more than 200 additional doors of possibility.

The concept of “A Little Extra” applies almost everywhere, even in personal life. Few days back I met one of my old friends. He was looking little sad. I asked, “What happened?” He replied, “I was trying to woo a girl from last couple of weeks but ultimately I failed”. I got little more curious. I asked for details. He said, last week it was her birthday. I gave her a pack of Cadbury dairy milk but there was another guy who gave a pack of Cadbury fruits and nuts. He later got a dinner date with her.

So, it’s applicable everywhere  :)

There is a management theory called 212 degree approach. It says, at 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees, it boils. And with boiling water comes steam. And with steam, you can power a train.

Applying just one extra degree of temperature to water means the difference between something that is simply very hot and something that generates enough force to power a large machine.

And, one extra degree of effort in our life and the business separates. Good from great.

In 100 meter race, the margin for victory between an OLYMPIC GOLD Medal and No Medal is less than a second. At Indy 500 Car Racing, the average margin for victory for the past 10 years has been 1.54 seconds. An average winner took home $ 1, 278, 813 and the second prize was $ 621, 321, a difference of $ 657, 492.

It’s our life. We are responsible for our results. It’s time to turn up the heat. To get what we have never had we MUST do what we have never done. A little extra belief to fuel our enthusiasm, A little extra focus to cut through the fog like a beacon in the night,  and A LITTLE Extra kindness to help ourselves and also to help others.

Thanks You !!!

I’m looking forward to share some of my experiences which I had while delivering my project  speeches. I would also write about my day-to-day experience in our Toastmasters meetings.