Fsf-friends May 2006

fsf-friends@gnu.org.in

27 participants
28 discussions

Careers in FLOSS... (Dec 2003 issue of LFY)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 06 Jun '24

06 Jun '24

=========================================== LINUXForYou * Dec 2003 (Vol 1 No 10) In India Rs 50 (with CD) http://www.linuxforu.com Pages 102 * US$7.95 0 74470584957 =========================================== THIS ISSUE has probably reached your city. Saw it in Bangalore, and also got a complimentary copy from the LFY team at LinuxBangalore2003. But when I reached back to Goa on Dec 4, it wasn't in as yet. So it might take time to reach 'small town' India... FN REVIEWED: Mandrake 9.2 * PhProjekt * StarOffice 7.0 COMPUTERS AT TIS HAZARI, the session courts for the city of New Delhi, are being shifted over to Linux, courtesy the National Informatics Centre. - Rahul Chopra in this month's editorial. LINUX LEARNING CENTRE at Bangalore is offering courses in administration, security, development (internals and programming essentials, programming with Qt, device driver programming, MySQL & PHP), RHCE and Red Hat rapid track certification. www.linuxlearningcentre.com DotGNU RELEASES CD: It can now be used to implement application programs and Web services in C# and C applications under multiple operating systems, including GNU/Linux, FreeBSC, MacOS, MS Windows. The 219 MB release 0.1 CD is available as a free download at http://download.freedom.biz/dotgnu/dotgnu-0.1-cdrom.iso.gz.torrent e-Bridge calls itself "the new state-of-art training facility from eSpark Infotech is now open in the heart of Bangalore". It's offering embedded Linux courses (Linux fundamentals, programming Linux, embedded C & Linux, realtime C & Linux, Linux internals, device drivers, networking) and DSP courses (DSP fundamentals, TI/analog dev programming, audio/video, image processing, bio-medical systems). www.ebridgesolutions.net Linux.net provides a free e-mail service to those who want an e-mail address that ends in '@linux.net' MAJOR UPDATES and releases: OpenNA Linux 1.0, Gibraltar Firewall 1.0, Xandros Desktop 2.0, Onebase Linux 2.0, CUPS 1.120rc6. CAN YOU MAKE money with open source? Registration entails a "nominal fee" of Rs 5000 for a three-day conference. http://www.linuxasia2004.com/attendees/ February 11-13, 2004, New Delhi. SEND IN YOUR favourite slogans for a tee-shirt, and win five free copies of the shirt... LFYedit at efyindia.com MONEY CAN't buy respect, says Robert Adkins. Some of us might have met this guy at LB2003 in Bangalore. He's the CTO of Technetra Corp, and an advocate and implementer of FLOSS solutions for government. He can be contacted at radkins at technetra.com CAREERS WITH FLOSS: The number of students opting for courses in Open Source is growing steadily, even as industry experts predict a growing need for trained professionals in this expanding field. EXIT RED HAT, ENTER FEDORA: It's official now; the free (of cost) version of Red Hat Linux will not be available anymore. This has created a lot of FUD in an already unstable environment, thanks to the SCO episode. But is Red Hat closed for good? WEB-BASED COLLABORATION SOFTWARE: PHProjekt is an easy-to-install collaboration suite, which runs on the open source platform and databases. As the design of the system is developer-friendly, adding new features and components is a piece of cake. STAROFFICE: The latest version of Sun's office suite, StarOffice 7, may just be the right solution for the cost-conscious user. It loads faster than the earlier version, and sports some noticeable improvements. IN THE LFY CD THIS MONTH: Slackware (the "oldest Linux distro") and a range of GNU software for Windows users. FALLING BACK on backup systems. MAKING ADOPTION OF Linux in the enterprise easy. www.linux4e.com Business partners required: http://wwww.linux4e.com/partners ooWRITER HELPS YOU create your own templates and styles so that you can work with documents easily. Open Source is key to IBM's vision of computing. User empowerment is key to Microsoft's, writes Alolita Sharma USING DATABASE functions in Calc, a tutorial. (Wish there were more how-tos for the user in this mag! --FN) HALDIA DOCKS: it has a uniquely designed Linux installation with an active-active cluster set up, which is considered the best of its kind. This has ensured efficiency and cost-effectiveness. BASIC UNIX commands and concepts: an extract from *Running Linux* (Shroff Publishers, Pp 674 only Rs 425 in India). VxWorks and LynxOS are definitely the biggest embedded operating systems in use today. But slowly they are acknowledging the power of GNU/Linux and how it can help them maximise deployments. HELP LINUX GO INDIAN: By using various translation tools, you can join Language translation groups working across India to help translate GNU/Linux into your language. EXPERT INTRODUCTION: Multi-threaded programming under Linux. KICKSTART YOUR Linux installation (Part I): Installing Red Hat Linux on multiple machines one after another can be quite tedious. To avoid answering the same question over and over again, try the KickStart method, as it does not need any user intervention. WRITE CHEQUES. NOT JUST BOOKS: Niyam Bhushan on how anybody can turn thoughts into words, and words into wealth. NFS CLIENTS for Windows. OpenSSL PACKAGE offers a vast crypto library of algorithms WAIT QUEUES in Linux device drivers UNDERSTANDING recursive sub-routines INDIA-RELATED NEWS: HP launches GNU/Linux laptop Mandrake's latest distribution Oracle announces 10g for GNU/Linux Delixus offers India Linux CxProtect anti-virus mailing solution for mail-servers Trade management system from Network Programs Netweb Technologies unveils Tyrone MRO-Tek rolls out Network Management Systems Review of FLOSS at BangaloreIT.com =========================================== DISCLOSURE: This journalist (FN) writes a monthly column for LFY and gets paid for it. Promoting awareness about the content of LFY however is not part of the job, and is carried on with the intention spreading awareness about FLOSS among different GNU/Linux user groups in India. -- Frederick Noronha : http://www.fredericknoronha.net : When we speak of free Freelance Journalist : http://www.bytesforall.org : software we refer to Ph 0091.832.2409490 : Cell 0 9822 122436 : freedom, not price.

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mailing lists
by Kush 02 Jun '06

02 Jun '06

Hi, Can anybody tell me some good and reasonable mailman or phplist based mailing list hosting companies? We use yahoogroups now but would like a different and free or reasonably cheap system. Thanks for any help. Kush

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Elephants Dream : Worlds First Open Movie released
by Tinku Sampath 01 Jun '06

01 Jun '06

' ELEPHANTS DREAM ' ' Elephants Dream ', worlds first Open Movie which was finally realized using powerful graphic rendering engine such as Blender is released to public under Creative Commons license. The short film was created by the Orange Open Movie Project studio in Amsterdam during 2005/2006, bringing together a diverse team of artists and developers from all over the world. You can download the movie in different formats. Sound tracks and images are also available. A video documentary is also ready for download. I am including the official press release. ______________________________________________________________________ Press Release May 18, 2006 For Immediate Release Elephants Dream, internet release of the first 3D 'Open Movie' (Blender Foundation, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - The 3D animated short 'Elephants Dream' will today be released as a free and public download. This is the final stage of a successfully completed Open Movie project which has been community-financed, using only Open Source tools, and opening up the movie itself as well as the entire studio database for everyone to re-use and learn from. The movie and production files are licensed as âEURCreative Commons Attribution 2.5", which only requires a proper crediting for public screening, re-using and distribution. In the past weeks, the donating sponsors have received the dual DVD set of this project in their mailbox. This DVD set remains for sale via the blender.org e-shop as support product for future Open Movie projects. The Blender Foundation is committed to start working on similar projects soon. The movie files and download mirrors can be accessed here: [1]http://www.elephantsdream.org/download Elephants Dream is the culmination of the Orange Open Movie Project, produced by the Blender Foundation and the Netherlands Media Art Institute. The project was conceived to help develop and establish the capabilities of the Blender 3D open source tool for the creation of cinema quality animation. The film tells the story of Emo and Proog, two people with different visions of the surreal world in which they live. Viewers are taken on a journey through that world, full of strange mechanical birds, stunning technological vistas and machinery that seems to have a life of its own. 'Elephants Dream' features the voice talents of renowned Dutch movie actors Tygo Gernandt and Cas Jansen, as well as an original score by German composer Jan Morgenstern. The short brought together the talents of a team of artists from countries as diverse as Syria, Germany, Australia, Finland, and the Netherlands. In addition to the performances of the cast and creative efforts of the lead artists, Elephants Dream has had the assistance of hundreds of individuals across the world who contributed a variety of work such as programming additional functionality for Blender, creating textures used in some of the scenes, and providing international translations for the DVD release. The files have been released on two DVDs with the movie in PAL, NTSC and HD formats, a making-of documentary, and all of the studio files. The DVDs were shipped in early May 2006. As promised, shortly after, the movie and database of source material is now available for public download as well. Studio Orange team: Director: Bassam Kurdali (Syria /USA), Art Director: Andreas Goralczyk (Germany) Lead Artists: Matt Ebb (Australia), Bastian Salmela (Finland), Lee Salvemini (Australia) Technical Director: Toni Alatalo (Finland) For more information: [2] http://www.elephantsdream.org [3]http://www.blender.org Contact: Ton Roosendaal Chairman, Blender Foundation Email: ton(at)blender.org ______________________________________________________________________ - Tinku Sampath References 1. http://www.elephantsdream.org/download 2. http://www.elephantsdream.org/ 3. http://www.blender.org/

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Re: [Fsf-friends] IT@School
by Bharathi Subramanian 01 Jun '06

01 Jun '06

> Thanks much for your quick response. Is it possible for you to > post it to Chennai? Can someone from Chennai volunteer to help > AID Chennai with IT@School installation. Kindly attend the next ILUGC Meet (mostly on 10th Jun). I hope, you can find some guys with your freq. FYI: NRC-FOSS is successfully included one(!) FOSS Intro "elective" course in Anna Univ, TN. Hoping to convert some of the lab class to use FOSS Tools. Bye :) -- Bharathi S

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Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 37, Issue 16
by Mishi Choudhary 30 May '06

30 May '06

Hi Arun please get in touch with me as soon as you find time Warm Regards Mishi Choudhary

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Service interruption
by Anurag 30 May '06

30 May '06

Hello, Due to a minor DNS issue with tifr.res.in registry at ncst, FSF-India website and mailing list may not be accessible for a day. We are looking into the problem and trying to resolve it at the earliset. Please try again after sometime if your postings do not get delivered to the list. thanks Anurag -- __ __ gnu /noo/ n. Ox like antelope; (abbr.) /gnoo/ n. (recursive acronym) Gnu's Not Unix.

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IT@School
by Krishna Pagadala 27 May '06

27 May '06

Hi Arun, IT@School is being used in Kerala, is it for both English and Malayalam mediums? How difficult will it be to localise it to Tamil? I am trying to get an organisation in Chennai to be interested in IT@School. Is it available as a live CD? can somebody post it to Chennai if I give the address? Thanks -Krishna ===================================== Misinterpreting Copyright by Richard Stallman http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html http://freeknowledge.dyndns.org/ --------------------------------- Sneak preview the all-new Yahoo.com. It's not radically different. Just radically better.

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[Fwd: [GNU/FSF Press] Protestors provide a nasty "vista" for Gates]
by Ramanraj K 24 May '06

24 May '06

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [GNU/FSF Press] Protestors provide a nasty "vista" for Gates Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 13:57:08 -0400 From: Ted Teah <tedt(a)fsf.org> Organization: Free Software Foundation To: info-fsf(a)gnu.org, info-press(a)gnu.org, info-gnu(a)gnu.org Hazmat Suits Greet Microsoft Developers As They Gather For Annual Conference To schedule an interview about the campaign or for more details about the event, please contact Ted Teah at the Free Software Foundation (+1 617-542-5942 x20) or Henri Poole at Civic Actions (+1 510-684-3180). Seattle, May 23 2006 As Microsoft developers gathered in Seattle to hear Bill Gates's keynote speech on the future of Microsoft and the coming release of its updated operating system Vista, protesters wearing bright yellow Hazmat suits swarmed the entrance of the city's convention center, delivering an unsettling message to the corporation: your product is defective and hazardous to users. The surprise protest marked the launch of DefectiveByDesign.org, a direct-action campaign that will target Big Media and corporations peddling Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). "Flash protests, direct actions, and practical ways that people can get involved and help stop the stupidity of DRM," is how campaign manager Gregory Heller described the grassroots effort. An initiative of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Defective By Design is urging all technologists to get involved at the start of the campaign. "Technologists are very aware of the dangers of DRM," said Peter Brown, Executive Director of the FSF. "We see this as the tip of the iceberg and it is our duty to do something about it." The tech community is uniquely qualified to lead this effort, in Brown's view. "We know about the collusion of Big Media, device manufacturers and proprietary software companies to lock us down," he continued. "Their aim is to put Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) into all our computers and homes". Brown's case is simple: the computers, high-definition screens, phones, music players and video players that are currently being sold are "defective by design". These products don't respect the user's right to make private copies of their digital media. These devices make no provision that would allow art, literature, music or film to ever fall into the public domain. Effectively, the media purchased for these devices does not belong to the user -- rather, the networking of these DRM'd devices means that as the user watches a film, reads an e-book or switches channels on their HDTV, their habits can be recorded and actions monitored. The result is that over time, DRM technology will negate, if not completely eliminate, the rights of the individual. "In any other industry, such limitations or invasions would be considered major flaws. A media player that restricts what you can play is like a car that you won't let you steer," said Brown. "Products containing DRM are defective -- only, unlike other products, these defects are deliberately created by an industry that has long stopped caring about us." With DRM in place, media conglomerates can change the rules whenever they want, leading to more restrictions on the individual. "Media bosses scream 'pirate' equating sharing with murder and kidnap, then sue our college students. They then steal our rights and impose crippled products upon us," said Henri Poole, Chairman of CivicActions and a coalition partner in the campaign. "Media bosses have long been the 'gatekeepers to the market' for artists. Now they are threatened by new distribution methods that give artists new freedoms and direct access to an audience. DRM is the media bosses attempt to re-impose their rule". Today's event is the first in a series planned by DefectiveByDesign.org that will mobilize individuals to make a stand against DRM. ----30---- About Defective By Design DefectiveByDesign.org is a broad-based, anti-DRM campaign that is targeting Big Media, unhelpful manufacturers and DRM distributors. It aims to make all manufacturers wary about bringing their DRM-enabled products to market. The campaign aims to identify "defective" products for the consumer. Users are being asked to stand up in defense of their existing freedoms and to take action by joining at http://DefectiveByDesign.org About the Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software - particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants - and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their Web site, located at www.fsf.org , is an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support their work can be made at http://fsf.org/join They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA. _______________________________________________ FSF And GNU Press mailing list <info-press(a)gnu.org> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-press

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Ankit Fadia : The real picture
by Prabhat Sandheliya 22 May '06

22 May '06

Dear All, Yesterday (03-04-2006)I attended a seminar by a so-called "Hacking Guru" Ankit Fadia, at DAVV, Indore (MP) auditorium. I just want to share my feelings with you. The Seminar was a complete failure, though it was attended by about well over 100 people, but was a complete disaster. The very first thing by which I was offended badly was using the sacred word "Hacking" to demonstrate something we, the hackers, call cracking. The seminar topic was "Ethical Hacking", now I want to ask Mr Fadia, what is unethical about hacking ? Hacking is very positive word and there in no need to put "Ethical" before it. By the way his seminar topic should be "Ethical Cracking". If you really want to become a hacker, please read an article by a real hacker, Eric Steven Raymond (ESR). The man who changed the history by writing a paper "Cathedral and Bazaar". please read the article here : http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html<http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/faqs/hacker-howto.html> The people who can not differentiate between hacking and cracking, should read an article by the GOD of hackers Richad M Stallman (RMS), the man who started GNU movement all by himself. The gcc (compiler), gdb (debugger), emacs (editor) are some of the most popular softwares in the world written by him. Please read the article here : http://www.outpost9.com/reference/jargon/jargon_69.html The things Fadia demonstrated were ancient techniques used by crackers to break into some one's machine. Now a days even 10 year olds can download these tools from Internet to control others' machines. Can we call them hackers ?? If he calls it hacking, I doubt if he understands the term even "Cracking", leave hacking altogether. This childish behavior is called script kiddie. IP spoofing, SQL Injection, password cracking softwares, Trojan horse programs, these are the tools of cyber criminals. So I wonder what is the significance of the term "Ethical" here ?? In the entire session I kept waiting for some program or utility, written by himself. But I don't thing he had something like this to share with audience. The entire session was demonstration of third party utilities, and the saddest thing was no mention of the name of any author of any utility. He didn't care to give some credits to the utility developers. What a shame !!! Mr Fadia, I real hacker always respect the creativity of others, and before using their work proper credits are given, this is the hacker's attitude. It's not like that, you download something from Internet, use it and forget the person, who made it. That's pretty mean. Second most annoying thing was that he calls himself a "hacker" and was using a Windows XP operating system ???? I have been in to computers for the past 10 years and I never come across any real hacker who uses Windows. I met Brian(Apache creator), Andy Cleen, Alon cox, Rusty (all networking gods), RMS (the GOD himself) but all of them were using some or other form of Unix or Linux. Come on, MR Fadia, Windows is the worst OS in the world, full of security holes, so what is the point to break into a Windows machine ???? What do you want to prove ???? He only once mentioned Linux, just to tell how you can use it's live CD to boot a Windows machine and cracke the password. Actually, before attending the seminar, I Googled a lot about Fadia and his work. But what I could find was self acclaiming statement by Fadia about himself and his future and just crap, crap and crap by technology illiterate Indian news papers' reports. I just want to share my findings with you. Vulnerabilities patches by Fadia = 0 (He may know how to break in, but doesn't know how to fix up) Bugtraq id's by Fadia = 0 Hacking / Security tool by fadia = 0 (He simply Goolge and download the tools from Internet, that's not cracking. Actual cracker is the programmer, but Fadia never ever gives due credits. Now that's not hacking, that's stealing) Any open source software by Fadia = 0 (He is afraid of suggesting Linux to people, 'coz it's secure) Any Linux or Windows software security patch = 0 Any recommendation or recognition by Real Hacker Community = 0 (They laugh at him. He is just a kid) Software / Cryptography patents by Fadia = 0 Algorithms by Fadia = 0 Any official citation by FBI/CIA/CBI for Fadia = 0 (They don't even bother about any explanation) Any confirmation of his self-claims = 0 (Nobody, expect him knows, if they are real) Any confirmation of him decrypting Osama's message = 0 (Hahahahahahahaha) Any original technical tutorial or book by Fadia = 0 (He simply copy the things and never he never ever gives due credits to the original authors.) Any originality in his tutes or books = 0 (Hahahahahahaha) Skill level of Fadia = Only God knows !!! I tried to read a few books by him, but to my wonder some part of his books are nothing but simple "copy and paste" material from well known sites for Windows registry editing. Please visit www.winguides.com and compare the material with his first book. Oh God ! this is the clear violation of intellectual property rights of the website. Please inform the webmaster. I have done it already. I was astonished by the course he came to promote here, "Ethical hacker certified by Ankit Fadia" ! He sill is child in hacking field, and he is giving the certificates for hacking ????? And worst thing, Reliance web world is promoting it. What a shame !!! Have all gone mad ? Can't they see ? Unfortunately, question and answer round was cut from the seminar, that's also because of Fadia arrived there one hour late. Well, that's India's celebrity style statement. Otherwise, I would have asked all these questions to him there only. Anyways, I went to him at the end of the seminar, and asked if Windows is so vulnerable, can he suggest audience to use Linux rather than Windows. And the reply came was straight "NO". What a shame ??? I understood the reason, why he said no. The reason is same why Microsoft does not patch up it's OS. Plain economics. If you make system secure with Linux who is going to ask for people like Fadia, so called "security expert" ??? I want to make an appeal to all of you, please make all of your friends aware of these facts. Let one should not get undeserved advantage. I also want to appeal news papers, please do not make a hero out of nothing. Stop polluting the honest media by prejudiced reports. And at the end I want to tell Mr Fadia, that I don't have any personal problem with you or your achievements, but please behave properly in hacking community. We hackers are very positive people we never ever try to harm anybody, until he comes to our or our philosophy's way. Please stop calling your self a hacker, if does not understand the hacker culture. And for god sake, stop behaving like a child, now you are in college, so GROW UP !!! Prabhat. PS : I am sending this mail to Mr Fadia, Reliance web world, most of Linux mailing lists and all of my friends. Please post your comments at lug-indore(a)googlegroups.com

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Re: KC and open source
by malovika roy 19 May '06

19 May '06

hi, we keep hearing about projects like mentioned by Kush below done by various organisations. But these are isolated cases. what is slowing down the impact of open source in e-governance especially, is the lack of coordination and sharing of knowledge. Its ironic actually. to some extent there is coordiantion, but then why arent successful projects shared or talked about in forums like this one? will someone from Pune LUG tell us what they have done for e-governance? Likewise will someone from Bangalore LUG share their knowledge with Delhi LUG? I am not implying that there is no sharing at all, there is, however, how many of them are working on e-governance projects? there is nothing to quantify this fact. Point is that vaious groups tend to go thru the same cycle of planning and working out an e-governance project which can be just cloned and enhanced or modified for customised use. While Indian developer community is being noticed and praised for its work, there is still a big void of contribution to the public sector. And this is not just my opinion, but the feeling of most leading companies who are continually encouraging student community, and asking for more public sector development. We would like to know why? Malovika. > I think we will have to take multiple different approaches with respect > to the govt adopting open source. The problem is not that conscientious > officers in govt don't understand that open source is better but they > are reluctant to act as they are frequently bypassed or interfered in > day to day working thru vested interests lobbying the political people. > Open source gives the organised civil society an opportunity and a > challenge to start becoming an alternative to organised government. Once > civil society makes alternative information systems and methods of > collaboration for the general populace, the existing govt structure will > be forced to start reducing the establishment costs by giving value for > money to citizens for govt services (as citizens will start demanding > them) thru adoption of cost control technologies such as open source. > This is something which has started to happen in Mumbai now specially > for the municipal govt. Organised civil society is now taking up the IT > component of the municipality (praja.org etc). Their system is not open > source fully but by bypassing the govt IT machinery (which is liable to > political interference) things have changed. Creation of new bureaucracy > has been stalled and existing bureaucracy is being forced to act. > > Praja is also working in Bangalore. They are bypassing the formation of > new govt structures such as NIC, CDAC etc which till now had a > stranglehold on every aspect of egovernance. > > Kush > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > > ----------------------------------------------------------- > "Things work out best for the people who make the best out > of the way things work out."

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Fsf-friends May 2006