Fsf-friends February 2005

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Freesoftwaremagazine.com Issue 2 is out...
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 24 Feb '05

24 Feb '05

Issue 2 of Free Software Magazine is finally out! Download your PDF copy for free from http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com Contents... o EDITORIAL / Your part-time job The trials and tribulations of being a "computer person" o FOCUS / The history and future of SMTP by Kirk Strauser SMTP's adaptation to a hostile Internet o Filtering spam with postfix by Kirk Strauser Effective ways to reduce unwelcome mail o Mail servers: resolving the identity crisis by John Locke How to get Dspam, Postfix, and Procmail to play well together o TECH WORLD / Poking at ITunes by Chris J Karr A developer's guide to the iTunes platform o Why free IT management tools are gaining traction by Will Winkelstein Enterprises are increasingly receptive to free software alternatives for IT management. o CASE STUDY: Mythic Beasts By Tony Mobily A small company specialised in Linux servers and amazing support o Interview with Bernhard Reiter at aKademy by Tom Chance What we can do to promote the future of free software o Hard passwords made easy by John Locke Creating strong memorable passwords using mnemonic devices and word lists o WORD WORLD / The FUD-based Encyclopedia by Aaron Krowne Dismantling fear, uncertainity, and doubt, aimed at Wikipedia and other free knowledge resources. o Guerrilla marketing by Tom Chance Part one: promoting community projects in the marketplace o A law for free software by Maureen O'Sullivan Don't we have enough laws already? o The Libre Culture Manifesto by David M Berry, Giles Moss A manifesto for free/libre culture o Richard Stallman's blog by Richard Stallman Selected entries from Richard's blog (http://agia.fsf.org/rms-blog) from November 2004 to December 2004. 75 PGS * WORLD-CLASS PRINTING, GET-UP * A DOWNLOAD AWAY * unbelievable? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia Freelance Journalist P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436 http://fn.swiki.net http://fn-floss.notlong.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation. --Aristotle

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Re: Extramural Lecture by RMS @ IIT-Madras
by Bharathi Subramanian 24 Feb '05

24 Feb '05

On Wed, 2 Feb 2005, Bharathi Subramanian wrote: Hello All, > Topic : "The Danger of Software Patents" > Speaker: Richard M Stallman (RMS) > Time : 15:00 - 17:00 Mon Feb 7th 2005 Audio Files for the above Talk is avail in the ILUGC site: http://www.chennailug.org/meeting/info/TheDangerOfSWPatent1of2.ogg http://www.chennailug.org/meeting/info/TheDangerOfSWPatent2of2.ogg Note: Each file size ~= 8MB. Bye :) -- Bharathi S

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IOSN-CDAC Localisation How-To and Toolkit...
by Rajendra Prasad Murakonda 24 Feb '05

24 Feb '05

The near final version of the IOSN-CDAC L10N How-To and Toolkit is now available for a final round of comments and feedback. http://anakin.ncst.ernet.in/~aparna/consolidated/CD/ Plase go through it and give your feedback as soon as possible. Most probably, the guide will be licensed under "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0". Also can somebody throw me some light on the differences between GNU FDL and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 ? Thanks & Regards, -- Rajendra Prasad Murakonda, ETU division, C-DAC Mumbai (erstWhile NCST). Off Phone : 91 22 27565303 extn : 302 Mobile(WLL) : 0 93235 83185 http://www.livejournal.com/~prodizy/

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Norms for software patents to be finalised
by CK Raju 23 Feb '05

23 Feb '05

>we need to find out how to submit guidelines. Should'we submit them >immediately to the concerned. whom to send the guidelines. >Nagarjuna http://rajyasabha.nic.in/legislative/amendbills/ personal_law/pressrelease_rightbill.htm I think we can incorporate our views here and have the same forwarded to watts(a)sansad.nic.in In the meantime someone can explore who is after the Patents exercise. CK Raju _____________________________________________________________ LinuxTimes.Net --> An Online Linux Magazine

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Free Software notes ... by Niklas Vainio (Finland)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 22 Feb '05

22 Feb '05

http://hiisi.fi/blog/post/2005/02/18/linux-asia-2005/ 2005/2/18 Linux Asia 2005 Filed under: * Free Software -- Niklas Vainio @ 13:49 ... First day was on Linux on desktop and support. Professor Deepak Phatak gave some interesting figures. In India, there are 7 PCs per 1000 citizens, in China that is 37 per 1000. Average price of computer is now 30 000-40 000 Rs. First 500 million computers are in the developed world, the next 500 million should come from Asia and Africa. To make that possible, there should be more investments in India and the cost of computer, including software should drop to 1/4th of current, i.e. to 10 000 Rs. At the moment, India is a "net taker" in the open source movement, but in few years it should become a "net giver". Dr. Phatak is currently running a program to get computer science students involved in open source development. Matthew Szulik of Red Hat said basically that customers don't want operating systems, they want solutions and that Red Hat doesn't sell operating systems, it sells subscriptions. Ju"rgen Geck of Novell SUSE had an interesting parallel of the early history of automobile industry. Henry Ford didn't only invent the assembly line, he also created open standards - standard screws, bolts etc. Second day was about storage and high performance computing. I was getting flu and wasn't so interested in the topic so I skipped most of the day. Third day was the most interesting for me. Jitendra Shah spoke about his Janabhaaraati Live CD with localized software. He said a couple of things I hadn't thought about the use of IT in government offices. For government use, you need: Indian language support, office tools, printing, network, communication utilities, document management, search in Indian languages, name translitteration, GIS and low-cost support (can IBM/Red Hat/Novell do that?). The most interesting session was an ad-hoc session right after the official program about why Open Source still hasn't gotten off in India yet. This session had the most discussion and argumentation, about piracy vs. free software etc. Somebody from the audience criticized David Axmark (of MySQL) that it's easy for him to develop software and give it away since he's from a social democracy. On one hand it's very true that FLOSS has hidden assumptions on the background of the free software hacker. A large part of free software is software somebody wrote on their free time. Not everybody can afford that. On the other hand, freedom of the software is part of the strategy of MySQL - it wouldn't have become so great piece of software if it hasn't been free. Same applies to Linux, gcc, KDE, Firefox and many others. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia Freelance Journalist P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436 http://fn.swiki.net http://fn-floss.notlong.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation. --Aristotle

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Anti patents day for drugs
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 22 Feb '05

22 Feb '05

Shouldn't we be joining such initiatives? FN Vidyadhar Gadgil reminds us of a protest in Panjim to mark Anti-Patents Day for Drugs. The Indian Patent (Amendment) Bill is likely to be passed in the Parliament in March 2005. However, it is seen as draconian, since it would cause prices of essential medicines to go out of reach of common man. A Global Campaign has been launched around the world against this Indian Patent (Amendment) Bill. February 26, 2005 (Saturday) is going to be observed as the Anti Patents Day for Drugs. On this day, the world over, rallies, campaigns, etc., are being organized. Here, in Goa, a people�s protest rally has been organized by Positive People in Panjim on 26th February 2005 starting at the Panjim Church steps at 10.a.m. The rally will move through the city and culminate at Azad Maidan after which a delegation will be forwarding a memorandum to the Chief Minister of Goa. We call upon all of you to join us at the rally, and protest against the Patent Amendment Bill. Yours in Solidarity Positive People. Convener: Raj Vaidya Co-Conveners: Reggie Gomes & Cynthia Andrade ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia Freelance Journalist P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436 http://fn.swiki.net http://fn-floss.notlong.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation. --Aristotle

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Re: [Fsf-tn] Gnowsys, gnoware and gnowledge
by Ramanraj K 22 Feb '05

22 Feb '05

Nagarjuna G. wrote: >just wanted to make a minor correction in the account that gnoware is >different from GNOWSYS. you mentioned gnoware, where it should be >GNOWSYS. > Oops ;) Gnow these :) GNOWSYS is an acronym for Gnowledge Networking and Organizing SYStem and a pun on gnosis as well. http://www.gnowledge.org/GNOWSYS/Programs/Data/ObjectType/G/GNOWSYS/viewObj… GNOWARE is the name of a GNU/Linux distro ( www.gnoware.org ) GNOWLEDGE at http://web.gnowledge.org/ gives more info about the things to gnow. Part of the argument during our travel together, was that oop is not suitable for gnowledge like services. oop serves computer programs themselves well, but the same is not suitable for modeling the real world. An elaborate discussion about that is available at: http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/oopbad.htm

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Sad news... on the Santhali front
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 21 Feb '05

21 Feb '05

These guys, young friends from West Bengal, are trying to get the tribal Santhali language working with Free Software. Below is a self-explanatory entry from http://blogs.randomink.org/ It is from "Weekend Aantel". Sayamindu from Kolkata was mentioning the Santhali project recently. [Wikipedia has this to say about Santhali, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santhali: Santali is a language in the Munda subfamily of Austro-Asiatic, related to Ho and Mundari. It is spoken by about six million people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan. Most of its speakers live in India, in the states of Jharkhand, Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Tripura, and West Bengal. It has its own alphabet, known as Ol Cemet', but literacy is very low, between 10 and 30%. Santali is spoken by the Santhals.] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Adieu Mandal Hembrom! Weekend Aantel 21/02/2005 - 17:23 Mandal Hembrom passed away at TMC, Mumbai, today in the early morning. He was under-going treatment at TMC. I don't yet have the details of the exact cause of death, but so far it is known that his condition detoriarated after he underwent Chemotheraphy and lapsed into a severe cardiac arrest. Mandal-da was the lead linguist (as also being a native speaker) in our Santhali CASTLE Project. His death is not just a great loss to our project, but a loss to all the Santhals struggling to establish their identity in a globalised world that dictates a lop-sided homogeneity at the cost of losing unique cultural traits, language and social structures. Mandal-da's illness was detected at an advanced stage. He wanted to use the time he had to complete the work on the translation of the strings. Unfortunately, he was taken away from us before that could happen! Perhaps, its a strange co-incidence that today happens to be the International Mother Language Day (21st Feb) that Mandal-da breathed his last. We need to reaffirm our commitment to the work on bridging the ICT divide. As I wrote in my "A walk across the Digital Divide" experience, its not as un-bridgable as it often sounds. Its only by ensuring the continuance of the Santhali L10N project that we can truly pay our respect to the dreams and efforts of Mandal Hembrom. END OF QUOTE On behalf of BytesForAll, let me dip our flag to all these guys trying to make computing work for for forgotten people and the poor... whose languages otherwise barely make for a 'viable market'. FN ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia Freelance Journalist P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436 http://fn.swiki.net http://fn-floss.notlong.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation. --Aristotle

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Reply to archana regarding the blog site
by vishravars Ramasubramanian 21 Feb '05

21 Feb '05

Archana, i think you have to create an acc in that site and then start looking at the blogs. I think u can only watch the blogs with the id and passwd given. When i registered, i received a mail like.., vishravars, You may now log in to http://blogs.randomink.org/user/login using the following username and password: username: vishravars password: xxxx *Your new Blogs @ Random Ink membership also enables to you to login to other Drupal powered websites (e.g. http://www.drop.org/) without registering. Just use the following Drupal ID and password: Drupal ID: vishravars(a)blogs.randomink.org password: kLQfTEkqVd I think, that answers you question. Cheers Vishravars.R __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

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Helped a Tomato Guy, Freedom
by vishravars Ramasubramanian 21 Feb '05

21 Feb '05

Hi Everybody. This is my first mail to FSF-Friends ml. I am trying to nerrate an incident which took place today morning when i was travelling to my college by my motorcycle. Situation: It was a double road, with a partition in the centre. It was early morning and the weather was really cold. I could see many young students waiting on the road side for their school buses to come and some were waiting for the city corporation bus. All the vehicles were just flying in a hurry. ----------- x ------------ When i was riding, i suddenly saw a old man with a bicycle on the middle of the road struggling with lots of tomatos (it seems he had bought some tomatoes from the market early morning and taking them to his retail shop located somewhere in the city). The problem was, he had 2 huge baskets on both sides of his bicycle and hence could he could not get off from the cycle easily(and he was also a short guy). There were lots of tomatos on the ground, spread. And thank god there was not much damage (to the tomatoes). By seeing the poor man struggling to get those tomatoes, i just parked my motorcycle on the side of the road and i took tomatoes in my hands and helped to get them to the baskets. Roughly it was about 150-200 tomatoes. When i started picking them, one more guy who came that way started picking and helping. The problem was, it was a really busy road, and vehicles were just flying. I thought i should also direct the traffic so that the other person can continue picking the tomatoes. I did exactly that, and the whole mess got cleared in just 8 to 10 minutes. The tomato guy thanked me and the other person *whole-heartedly*. Then i started my journey to the college. Moral of My Blog: ------------------ I would like to associate the incident with the Free Software movement or the idea of free s/w. The first thing is, the tomato guy is now way connected with me (ofcourse he is not my boss or i am not a boss to him) and i'v never seen him before, in simple words, a stranger. But what made me to help him???? The following could be the reasons..... 1. The tomato guy was an obstacle to the traffic and i thought of helping the traffic to get cleared 2. I am really a soft hearted and could not see the preson struggling on the middle of the road, hence i helped. 3. It's my duty to help the one who is struggling... 4. or just thought of helping... thats all etc...... Well, in all the above said, one word stood still like concrete, that is *helping*. Ok. What do i get, by doing so? My Answer :- Peace of mind.... and self-satisfaction.. or what ever one may call this as As we see the above lines, there is no word like Money or Rupee or Cost or Price or dollar or ...... Can this be associated with free s/w?? My Answer: Yes. How ? Ans: It is not that you should help your neighbour alone... but you (and we) can also help strangers...I hope Free Software does exactly that... Why am i making a blog like this ?? Ans. That again sharing my thoughts and hence *Freedom* to share thoughts..... :) PS: There were many people on the road side waiting for bus to come. But no one can blame them for not helping the poor guy. B'cause, they will be under trouble if they miss their bus. Cheeeers Vishravars.R __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

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Fsf-friends February 2005