Fsf-friends June 2006

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Internet, tech skills growing quietly in Goa...
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 02 Sep '24

02 Sep '24

INTERNET, TECH SKILLS GROWING QUIETLY IN GOA PANJIM, April 30: Goa's BSNL internet service provider is already providing some 3000 broadband connections in the state, and roughly another 24,000 people dial-up to get access the Net using this central government-run service. These figures emerged during an informal discussion at the monthly meeting of the India Linux Users Group (Goa), a network promoting Free Software and Open Source in the state. ILUG-Goa, which holds its meetings usually on the fourth Saturday of each month at the Goa Science Centre at Miramar, sees a range of tech issues -- usually directly related to Free Software and Open Source in Goa. During it's meet on April 29, a range of issues came up for discussion, from how to partition your hard-disk (to install GNU/Linux side-by-side with Windows), to software tools to ehance productivity, and various internet and broadband options available to users in diverse parts of Goa. For instance, there are some useful Free Software tools to monitor your bandwidth usage on BSNL's broadband. One such tool is available for free download at http://tinyurl.com/qgu9p Called the Data One Broadband Statistics, this is a screen-scraper written using Perl to download usage statistics of BSNL's Data One (www.bsnl.co.in/service/dataone.htm) broadband service and total it. Generally, BSNL (www.bsnl.co.in) allows only the Microsoft-based IE and has no monthly total. But trust Indian software talent to find a work-around. This solution comes from the Free Software/Open Source network in Chennai. Meanwhile, the Goa free software network stays connected and announces its event via http://iluggoaannounce.notlong.com There are no fees for joining, all are welcome, and encouraged to form parallel user-groups in diverse parts of the state. Meanwhile, the Fedora Core 5 Free Software distribution has just become available on DVD in Goa. Number of foreign magazines are also available. Members of ILUG-Goa such as engineer Bijon Shaha and software pro Arvind Yadav gave diverse views on techies-only distros like 'Gentoo'. Debopriyo 'DP' Sarkar pointed to a 'mindmap' of various Free Software distributions or 'distros' available, which was illustrated at linuxhelp.blogspot.com Earlier, there was a brief presentation on FreeMind. FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. It has the potential of playing the role of a high productivity tool. Operation and navigation of FreeMind is faster because of one-click "fold/unfold" and "follow link" operations. Other members raised a range of issues -- from how to get started in GNU/Linux, to playing around with tools like StumbleUpon, and how to encourage Free Software usage in schools and educational institutions. Remy Furtado of Rosary College, Navelim expressed an interest in working on the Free Software tool Moodle, ideal for distance education, as the Goa University moves to a pattern of semisterisation. Goa Engineering College's Prof George Easaw has done work on this platform, as have others. Reacting unofficially, BSNL officials said Goa now had six STMS 155 MBps connectivity, which was resulting in a speedy expansion of broadband to many parts of the state. But for broadband facilities to become available in village areas, at least 60 subscribers were needed to make operations viable. So far, broadband from BSNL is available in a growing number of areas in Goa: Panjim, Vasco (except Cortalim, but including Sada, Mangor, Bogmalo, Sancoale and other areas), Ponda, Bambolim, Merces, Dona Paula, Porvorim, Mapusa town, Calangute-Candolim, and Saligao, among others. Equipment has already been installed in Aldona exchange, and broadband facilities are expected to go functional -- ------------------------------------------------------------- | India Linux Users' Group, Goa | | Join the friendly user group | | Mail list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-goa/join | ---------------------------------------------------------- | | http://groups.yahoo.com/group/teach-yourself-linux | | http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-goa-announce | | http://www.iosn.net/country/india/organizations/ilug-goa/ | ------------------------------------------------------------- , , / \ .-. * SOFTWARE ((__-^^-,-^^-__)) (. .) * FREEDOM `-_---' `---_-' / V \ * SHARING `--|o` 'o|--' // \\ \ ` / /( )\ KNOWLEDGE IS POWER ): :( '.^^_^^.' SHARE IT EQUITABLY :o_o: \_/ \_/ "-"

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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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educational software for children--townplanning
by Kush 28 Jul '06

28 Jul '06

Hi all, Nowadays a lot of kids of middle class, upper middle class and rich sections of society play video/computer games which have a lot of violence etc in them. These games are generally expensive and very addictive plus they make children self centered and unable to think of working in a team or group. (sense of getting inputs from the community is not there as collaboration is not a part of the game) Lincity (or similar games) could be a way to motivate a child to the profession of town planning which is a very specialised job right now and in the hands of an elite few leading to a lot of lost inputs from the general populace. The mess in urban areas is a result of too few fossilised thinkers at the top who have a lot of power but paucity of ideas. Once children are introduced to such games which call for inputs from others (maybe at a later stage) and once such games become commonplace, more and more people will start participating in town and country planning processes far more easily than at present. I hope ngos and software developers can both think of such better ways to educate the newer generation and take away the dread of a specialised occupation by building even better games and user interfaces. Such games taken at a young stage could easily launch a child into a career and give them a headstart. Parents would also like to see children doing something constructive even while playing computer games. Besides several offshoots of such games can take place such as easily designing a place of residence etc (profession of architect, civil engineer, structural engineer, interior designer, landscape artist, GIS planners etc etc) There is a lot of scope in this idea for people in the game/educational software business. Kush -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Fsf-friends] city planning--application software Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 16:34:14 -0400 From: Kush <be_a_sport(a)rogers.com> Reply-To: Principal Support List of FSF-India <fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in> To: Principal Support List of FSF-India <fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in> CC: Anil Laul <anillaul(a)vsnl.com>, karmayog <karmayog(a)yahoogroups.com> Hi all, Is there any site which rates open source application softwares in various categories? e.g. I was trying to find applications under town planning etc and I found only one working application software which has not been improved after 2004 or so.(looks like the development has stopped) The application is known as http://lincity.sourceforge.net/ and after playing it in ubuntu one can see it is entry level and not like the commercial simcity game. Still town planning is a very specialised occupation and it will become increasingly relevant as more and more parts of India get urbanised. Allowing such FREE tools in the hands of youngsters and the youth will only lead to better plans, debates, creativity and decision making as town planning impacts so many areas for a better quality of life. Its time we start thinking strategically on key applications such as these to make India and the world a better place. Maybe then such imaginative scenarios can be added to real gis maps etc. http://www.freemap.in/ is an effort in that direction (for the city of mumbai) but it leaves much to be desired as the data used is faulty or outdated. Kush _______________________________________________ Fsf-friends mailing list Fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends

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fsf must rate and talk about application softwares too
by Kush 19 Jul '06

19 Jul '06

Hi all, Right now it is easy to always go to sites which provide certain kinds of application softwares but in the real world people need collaborative softwares. I think the business world is using propreitary applications for distributed work and we don't have sites which give any ratings for such softwares from the open source world. I am talking of the virtual private network applications or CRM or CMS or wiki type softwares where lay people can really collaborate in an office or group setting. We have no rating mechanisms to judge which features are better among a group of softwares. Typically people are interested in knowing 1 whether moin moin is better than (and in what ways) mediawiki or zwiki etc etc in the field of wiki softwares. (I came across Moin moin accidentally thru the dapper ubuntu cd which features it in the opencd.org project.) or whether egroupware is better than other softwares in the same line? (groupware substitutes for lotus notes etc) or whether joomla is comparable to drupal or mambo etc etc in features" (cms applications) or whether openoffice's base application (database) is any good and if there are alternatives available in the open source world at present which can take on msaccess? (or a workaround with a mysql application for ms access) or how does freegis compare with postgis and maxdb etc gis application softwares ? (in the gis world of open source software) or whether ruby on rails will soon outpace python, perl and php in web based application development? (though perl, php, python each have a HUGe body of historical strength) Or whether eclipse is better than kdevelop(c++) or anjuta or bluefish or boa constructor(python or delphi/pascal) or other IDEs? (when newbies have to develop open source softwares) or the merits/demerits of IDE tools which are linked to version control system tools like cvs or subversion etc etc--which are the best tools in version control according to various features/parameters or whether there are better tools than argo UML (poseidon is propreitary) in the field of application development software in terms of high level requirements specifications software and automatic generation of software tools or what are the strengths vs weaknesses in short form and dispassionately analysed etc without advertising jargon. I don't know any place where such information can be easily read and found. and these are the things which really matter for laymen to come to speed in the adoption of open source software in India. Sourceforge.net earlier used to give a maturity rating (development status) for an application but it does not do so now. Even earlier the application software results could never be ordered by the development status (except for paid customers of sourceforge) It would be great if fsfindia or somebody could enhance the work of sourceforge by having some ratings and categorisation of key application development tools/catalysts. Thanks Kush

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GPL conference in Bangalore
by Krishna Pagadala 14 Jul '06

14 Jul '06

All, I have not seen any more news about gpl conference in Bangalore. How are the preparations proceeding? Krishna ===================================== Misinterpreting Copyright by Richard Stallman "Die Gedanken Sind Frei": Free Software and the Struggle for Free Thought by Eben Moglen mp3 ogg Free Knowledge blog . --------------------------------- New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC and save big.

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Fwd: Summer Drupal training program in India
by Arun M 30 Jun '06

30 Jun '06

-- snip -- With 75,000+ Drupal power websites and an emerging industry supporting over 150 professionals, the open-source Drupal project and community is exploding. At the heart of this community is an incredibly active and productive group of contributors. Creating contributed modules, themes, bug fixes, and core enhancement, these individuals define the course of the Drupal project and the ecosystem of users, tinkerers, and professionals around it. Through this internship program we will attempt to train students from India the ins and outs of Drupal and help them established themselves as long term contributors to the Drupal project. Over two months the selected students will work closely with project mentors on real world Drupal projects; contributed modules, and core patches. They will learn the Drupal development process and gain extremely valuable experience interacting with a live open-source project. Students will be paid a stipend of 4,600 INR to 8,000 INR a month depending on the level of their contributions to the Drupal project. More Information: http://drupal.in/training -- snip --

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thoughts about increasing the spread of computing
by Kush 28 Jun '06

28 Jun '06

Hi all, If we look at the pc revolution and how it spread after the IC and microprocessors came into being, we would see that the following had a great effect on the PC phenomena. 1 --IBM came into the picture and its methods of mass producing or handling the distribution of quality items helped thru proper procedures and quality control processes 2 --a media which worked complementarily to the PC revolution (and helped advertise the social phenomenon) 3 --spread of software and hardware which met needs of small businesses which could then feel the prestige of owning a machine which was equivalent to the large corporation's multi million dollar machines. This led to much needed money/capital coming in. In the area of software for the common man and particularly software for small businesses which fueled the growth of the pc revolution by bringing in much needed money and absurd profits were the financial softwares. If open source or free software has to go beyond the researchers level and not be milked by existing corporations like microsoft, sun, IBM, Oracle etc (who just copy the code at no cost) there has to be accurate and good knowledge of application softwares particularly for the rapidly automating small businessmen of India in the tier 2 cities etc.. We need open rating systems (and impartial websites which are not market driven) for existing softwares in the field of point of sale systems and financial software. I came across these sites for rating such softwares (from the Toronto LUG mailing list) and maybe we could find others much better or complementary to them and have them put up on a wiki based website such as that of this group. http://linuxfinances.info/info/miscpersonalfinance.html http://www.linas.org ++ also another suggestion-- our fsf website URL needs to be put/added to each email from this list automatically in addition to the existing footer as below Kush _______________________________________________ Fsf-friends mailing list Fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends

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this may be off topic but ..
by Kush 28 Jun '06

28 Jun '06

Hi all, I was wondering if the computing movement in India has some sort of plan for putting information on the web about computer pioneers and leaders etc in India or from India, who have done some amazing things or are doing amazing things in the field of computers or technology.(examples could be pioneers of the cdot rural exchange etc when cdot was formed) This would really help increase the number of people attracted to computers and open source computing (or free software ) by giving pride and recognition to the best in the field and also help bring some sort of community culture. We should build this as part of our folklore on the lines of the hacker culture in the elite US universities in the 70s etc. There is a site for amazing stories about India called www.goodnewsindia.com but it is too generalised and not technology related. I know atleast 3 stories of great work done by people of Canadian origin(RIm-- blackberry phenomena, QNX real time OS from waterloo univ, APL or J by Ken Iverson) but very little about Indian achievements (except Vinod Khosla's being one of the 4 who started Sun microsystems and Sabeer Bhatia who started hotmail). The germans, italians, french, chinese and the japanese and now even the south Americans, Korean etc take so much pride in being leaders in specialised areas of the open source movement whereas we don't hear much of our pioneers. Kush

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brand recognition for our computing pioneers--2
by Kush 28 Jun '06

28 Jun '06

Its so interesting to read history and hear folklore. Maybe you have come across the name below but it was news to me and quite a surprise to know about the India connection of this person. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Osborne We can only get more young and old people into technology related areas when history becomes a part of our daily life. Kush

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Any possibility of using Nokia 3120 as gprs modem?
by sandeep Kumar 28 Jun '06

28 Jun '06

Hi, Unfortunately I invested in Nokia 3120 for accessing internet via PC(I was/am looking for a non-camera and non-song phone for the purpose). Is there any way I can get it working as modem on Linux atleast? I have tried gnokii 0.6.12 on Linux kernel 2.6.16.2 and though slow, gnokii identifies 3120 successfully, though xgnokii seems to take ages to get contact details and often I have to kill the app. I am trying with (non-nokia) CA-42 cable to connect to phone, and have been successful in using Nokia PC-Suite to view contacts etc. on windows, but again no success in using it as modem. I don't know about the possibility of it, but is it possible that a software modem simulation module (if open source community or nokia themselves provides) can be developed that once downloaded and integrated with existing phone software allows nokia 3120 to be used as gprs modem? Regards Sandeep ---------------------------------------------------- Want to know more about me? Check out http://www.geocities.com/shimple0 -- ______________________________________________ IndiaInfo Mail - the free e-mail service with a difference! www.indiainfo.com Check out our value-added Premium features, such as an extra 20MB for mail storage, POP3, e-mail forwarding, and ads-free mailboxes!

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Fsf-friends June 2006