---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay <sankarshan.mukhopadhyay(a)gmail.com>
Date: 17 Sep 2007 16:50
Subject: [Ilug-cal-discuss] [Phoronix] AMD Releases 900+ Pages Of GPU Specs
To: ILUG-Cal's principal mailing list <ilug-cal-discuss(a)list.ilug-cal.org>
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http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjA1Mw
Ending off the X Developer Summit this year, Matthew Tippett handed off
ATI's GPU …
[View More]specifications to David Airlie on a CD (as reported by Daniel
Stone). However, the specifications are also now available on the
Internet! At http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/ is the location of the
documentation where you can freely download the files. Right now there
is the RV630 Register Reference Guide and M56 Register Reference Guide.
The RV630 Reference Guide is 434 pages long while the M56 Guide is 460
pages. Expect more documentation (and 3D specifications) to arrive
shortly. The new open-source R500/600 driver will be released early next
week.
- --
You see things; and you say 'Why?';
But I dream things that never were;
and I say 'Why not?' - George Bernard Shaw
www.linkedin.com/in/sankarshan
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[View Less]
http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/2007/smc-sfd07-wide-news-coverage-in-malay…
Swathanthra Malayalam Computing(SMC) got widespread support from
malayalam mainstream print media for the 2 day (14th & 15th september)
software freedom day celebration & the release of 7 software packages
developed during last year. It is the time to look at our history.
SMC is reactivated from a dead state, as a result of personal
discussions with praveen, hiran & vimaljoseph in the sidelines of
GPLv3 …
[View More]Conference in bangalore. The new team is setup at last year SFD
celebrations in Thrissur. Suresh, Baiju(the founder of SMC), Hussain
KH (rachana), Anwar, Students in GEC etc also joined in the team at
that time. Now we have more than 30 developers+localizers. The
astounding progress within the short span of time is described below
* December 2006: Debian Installer is Fully Translated into
Malayalam ( The Work of Debian malayalam, a sub team of Swathanthra
malayalam computing)
* January 2007: Santhosh Thottingal of SMC done a complete
architectural rewrite of Dhvani, the Indian language text to speech
system by Ramesh hariharan & added Malayalam support to It.
* March 2007 : participated & Conducted workshops in FOSS
Meet@NITC, Kozhikkode
* March 2007: Swathanthra Malayalam Computing selected as a
participating Organisation ( and only Indian Organisation) in Google
Summer of Code Project. 5 projects were allotted.
* April 2007: GNU aspell supported Malayalam (major issues are resolved)
* May 2007: Swanalekha: a Phonetic Input scheme for malayalam using SCIM
* June 2007: Lalitha, Bolnagiri based xkb keyboard for malayalam by Jinesh
* July 2007: Added pango support to Tuxtype by Mobin M as part of
GSoC work. Now Tuxtype is usable for all Indian languages
* July 2007:Debian package (Debconf )Translations. Malayalam is
the Most translated indian language with 27% translation of
configuration strings
* August 2007: Malayalam Matrix screen saver Release, & First
Public Release of Aspell- malayalam spellchecker with More than 137000
words list (It is the largest Indian Language Aspell wordlist. Second
is hindi with 25000 words).
* September 2007: Gnome Officially supports malayalam in Gnome
2.20 with More than 80% translations
* September 2007: Sarika : The first Free Indian language speech
recognition engine is developed by Shyam K (as a part of GsoC). It
Currently identifies more than 50 malayalam words
* September 2007: Tuxtype malayalam is Released by Mobin.M &
friends (Vimal, Shreyas, Sreeranj, Prince)
* Meera , a Malayalam Traditional opentype font with more than 900
glyphs is released under GNU GPL by Hussain K.H and Suresh P . It is
developed for Suruma renderering scheme (not compatible with Uniscribe
scheme for windows) . Authors are working on a Uniscribe compatible
(windows) version now
Pramode Sir wrote:
A society and a culture is identified by its language - once the
language is dead, the society starts losing its identity. A good way
to keep a language alive is to take it to the digital world - the
world of the PC/Communication devices and the Internet. This is one
context in which developing regional language computing environments
and popularising them has great significance.
The theme for the 2 day event was "Swathantra Software and Malayalam
computing" . Free software is touching the lives of common man now !!
Digg It: http://digg.com/linux_unix/Wide_spread_coverage_for_Software_Freedom_Day_in…
FSDaily: http://www.fsdaily.com/Community/Wide_spread_coverage_for_Software_Freedom_…
[View Less]
It is really a good attempt by Sasikumar. I appreciate him for this
write-up.
However, since the narration of this write-up is mainly based on the
experience of free software movement in Thiruvananthapuram, I feel the title
is better renamed as "The Story of Free Software in Thiruvanathapuram,
India". My other comments on this article are pasted below.
Regards,
Anil
Anil <http://www.blogger.com/profile/14066963594571131093> said...
The name of Kochi based firm mentioned in this write …
[View More]is not Open Source
Solutions.
It is Open Software Solutions Industrial Co-operative Society ( OSSICS ).
This group is formed in 1998 as a part of Peoples Plan Campaign and
registered as a Co-operative society in 2000, and it is the first Industrial
Co-operative Society for the promotion of Swathanthra Software especially in
Keralam.
11:08 AM
<http://swatantryam.blogspot.com/2007/08/story-of-free-software-in-kerala-in…>
<http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=34899069&postID=525490467922…>
Anil <http://www.blogger.com/profile/14066963594571131093> said...
This write-up did not mention the role played by many of the organaisations
and initiatives, Some of them are listed below.
1. ATPS (Appropriate Technology Promotion Society) Kochi,
2. SEPSIT (Social Entrepreneurship Promotion Society on Information
Technology )- Kannur.
3. Initiatives by Ernakulam District Panchayath and EIID
4. S2S2, Kannur
5. Earlier Free Software Initiatves Initiatives in Kannur University.
6. Free Software initiatives in various Engineering Colleges in Keralam,
other than one mentioned in the article.
7. Activities of FSF-Kozhikkode
8. Initiatives by Swathanthra Malayalam Computing.
9. Nila and Kaveri projects of CDIT.
10. Kerala Social Forum
11. Efforts of various persons such as Dr. Achuth Sankar and Prof. Ignatius
Kunjumon.
12. Vivarasangam meet
13 . Vivaravicharam magazine
14. NIC initiatives in Free Software,
11:40 AM<http://swatantryam.blogspot.com/2007/08/story-of-free-software-in-kerala-in…>
[View Less]
http://swatantryam.blogspot.com/2007/08/story-of-free-software-in-kerala-in…
Free Software in Kerala
V. Sasi Kumar
A friend, who had worked in Brazil for a couple of years, once told
me, "Kerala is known in Latin America for Free Software." This
indicates the extent to which Kerala has dominated the Free Software
scenario in India. It is not by chance that the headquarters of the
Free Software Foundation of India happened to be situated at
Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. The state is now …
[View More]poised to become the
first in the country to introduce exclusively Free Software for IT
education in high schools. We shall examine here how all this came
about....
The story apparently began with the introduction of TeX, the
typesetting program that was designed in the 1970s by Donald Knuth,
the author of The Art of Computer Programming, a four volume classic.
TeX was introduced into Kerala by Prof. K.S.S. Namburipad of the
Department of Mathematics in the University of Kerala. TeX could
typeset mathematical equations very neatly, which no other software
could do, especially in the 1980s when Prof. Namburipad brought TeX in
fourteen floppy disks from the United States. He could bring the
program and use it on a number of computers without any legal problem
because it had no licences-it was in the public domain. It was, in a
sense, the Grandmother of Free Software, as some people call it.
Prof. Namburipad encouraged his students to learn and use TeX,
especially for preparing their theses. One of his students was E.
Krishnan, now with the Mathematics Department of the University
College, Thiruvananthapuram, a leading exponent of TeX and one of the
auA thors of the very popular LaTeX primer2 published as an electronic
book by the Indian TeX User Group. Dr. Krishnan also played an
important role in establishing the Free Software Foundation of India.
Another person inspired by Prof. Namburipad was one C.V. Radhakrishnan
who used to run a small centre that prepared theses for the research
students of the Kariavattom campus of the University of Kerala.
--
Frederick Noronha Journalist http://fn.goa-india.org
In Hyderabad. Ph 040-23132176 SMS: 9822122436
[View Less]
Could anyone kindly pass on links of Free Software usage in Indian schools?
Tks, FN
IT practical tests on 'open' platform
Anand Parthasarathy
IT@School project of Kerala has developed an operating system based on the
Linux
Akshaya had raised popular expectations
Kerala, first State to use Edusat satellite channel
— Photo: Special Arrangement
IT WORKS: Students of the Government Girls High School, Ernakulam,
doing self-paced computer 'practicals.'
BANGALORE: In the largest such …
[View More]simultaneous deployment of
'free-and-open' software in India, over 15 lakh Kerala schoolchildren
on Friday start taking their quarterly practical tests in Information
Technology on personal computers using a special Linux version.
The IT@School project of the State Education Department has developed
an operating system based on the Linux version Ubuntu. Called
IT@School GNU Linux Version 3.0, it was distributed to 2,832 high
schools — over a thousand of them government schools, the rest aided
and unaided ones.
Between September 7 and 22, children of Classes 8, 9 and 10 will use
some 30,000 PCs to do their quarterly practical examinations in IT.
Test skills
In Class VIII, for example, the examination will test skills in the
use of the mouse; the 'Tux' paint software for drawing; word
processing and spreadsheets. A trained cadre of over 70,000 teachers
will help them.
The project has created a whole ecosystem of computer-aided tools for
self-paced learning, online testing, instant evaluation, marks
generation and so on. All this is done using royalty-free Open Source
software.
For example, the Open Source picture editing tool Gimp, rather than a
pricey proprietary option like Photoshop, is in use.
The State's path-breaking e-learning initiative Akshaya had raised
popular expectations, but the cost of proprietary software licences in
bulk was unaffordable. This led to the State emerging as a pioneer in
the use of Open Source resources in a host of education and
e-governance projects.
In July 2005, Kerala was the first State to use the Edusat satellite
channel to connect schools in all its 14 districts under the Virtual
Class Technology on Edusat for Rural Schools, or VICTERS, programme.
IT@School executive director K. Anvar Sadath, a veteran of the Akshaya
programme, said on Thursday that the Central Government had
underwritten almost the entire cost of the school computerisation
programme to the tune of Rs. 6.2 crores, while the State had spent Rs.
75 lakh this fiscal year.
Printer friendly page
http://www.hindu.com/2007/09/07/stories/2007090755131600.htm
--
Frederick Noronha Journalist http://fn.goa-india.org
In Hyderabad. Ph 040-23132176 SMS: 9822122436
[View Less]
"Please don't call GNU 'Linux'," says Richard Stallman, the founder of
the Free Software Foundation. In this interview, he also asks readers
whether they will fight for freedom or be too lazy to resist.
The full interview at
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;211669437;pp;1
Cheers
Praveen
--
പ്രവീണ് അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില്
Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now!
http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign
snippety snip
excellent points by nagarjuna, janani and gora.
nagarjuna: you're right about classical brahminism being an earlier
incarnation of a proprietary knowledge model. janani you mention what
appears to be a BSD-style attribution-style in some indic literature,
and then go on to mention pure folk knowledge without attribution,
that lives in the public domain.
well, as i said earlier, i have been privately researching all this
since about two years. have come across the approaches you …
[View More]mention,
and a few more not mentioned. knowledge as a secret never to be
revealed was one. authoring works on commission for kings and emperors
is well-known, too.
would like to share two asepcts i came across:
01. emperor akbar asks tansen how great would tansen's master be as a
singer, given that tansen himself is truly great? akbar expresses a
wish to listen to tansen's master. tansen cuttingly replies that his
master is a great musician, because he never sings for an emperor's
court or for crowds, but only for his own bliss, as well as not for
commerce. so if akbar wishes to listen to him, he must hide and wait
for whenever the master sings. thus it happened.
the point here is the age-old debate on traded goods and services,
versus 'work as worship'.
in our popular context: tansen will sing his music so it can be sold
for iPods, whether with drm or not is a minor issue.
tansen's master won't. in face he won't sing for anyone, except the divine.
similar anecdotes can be found across all cultures.
02. obfuscation: indian mystics discovered very early that knowledge
in the hands of the unrefined mind can be deadly. the same dilemma
that troubled einstien. those that believed the birth of the atomic
age would solve all of mankind's problems [energy, medicine, other
specific application at least], and would lead to a better world, must
be facing disillusionment at the chaos of the world.
thus, a lot of indian knowledge got obfuscated. hidden in plain view.
patanjali's yoga sutra is a prime example. here is a scripture so
misunderstood since the entire knowledge is expressed in allegories
that are obfuscating.
the sufi tradition of the world also expresses its knowledge in
obfuscated terms, with a book that has atleast 7 interpretations,
depending on the growing awareness of the disciple.
in today's example: we do impose self-censorship or state-sponsored
censorship on certain aspects of knowledge, such as on how to build
deadly dirty nuclear weapons.
i would not be suprised if in a few decades we discover between
proprietory knowledge, and freely-available-knowledge, emerges the
third: hidden in plain view knowledge. the how and why would also be
clear as time goes by....
gora, yes, i read the divine declaration of you as god. how come no
one else has discovered you ;-)
:-)
niyam
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Hi,
Swathanthra Malayalam Computing is celebrating Software Freedom day on
14 and 15th of this month at Chamber of commerce Hall,Thrissur,
Kerala. SMC will be showcasing the softwares it developed during the
last one year to public. Discussions on topics related to Free
softwares, Language computing, e-journalism etc are also planned.
All are invited........
http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/SFD/SMC
Thanks
Santhosh Thottingal
Friends,
A two day international conference (ICIST2007) is planned at Thrissur
during 14,15 December 2007 with Free Software as the principal theme.
RMS has agreed to engage the participants in a virtual session and
clarify online to any subsequent queries.
Papers are solicited for ICIST2007.
Details are at http://mesengg.ac.in/icist2007.htm
Rgds,
CK Raju,
Thrissur
-------------------
I am back.