Hi all,
The Free Software Cell of FISAT Engineering College
(Angamaly,Cochin,Kerala), FFSC is organizing a national level FOSS
Conference "ICE-FOSS '10" on April 19th,20th and 21st 2010.*
About FISAT
*
Federal Institute of Science And Technology (FISAT) is a ISO 9001:2000
certified private self financing Engineering College in the city of Cochin,
Kerala. The College has always been a centre of excellence and believes in
not just producing graduates of technology but in producing valuable
professionals who can contribute to the community.Within a short span of 7
years the college has become one of the most sought after engineering
colleges.
*
About FFSC
*
Fisat Free Software Cell established in 2006 under the Computer science
Department of FISAT and is one of the most active Student Cells in the
College. It stands for a person's right to use, study, copy, modify, and
redistribute computer programs. FFSC undertakes various open source related
projects and Dakshina - A high performance Cluster Computer was one such
project. We also conduct regular classes on Linux, Web Design and
development. FFSC activities also include Conducting linux install fests,
seminars and conferences.
Following are the events which we are planning to conduct:
Talks:
- FOSS,GNU & Ethics
- FOSS and cyber security
- GIT Version Control Systems
- Free software in education and Beyond
Workshops
- Kernel Programming
- Qt Workshop (and Maemo Basics)
- Python and SciPy
Open Discussions
- Localization and Malayalam Community
- Open Source for the differently-abled (Focusing on Visually Challenged)
Kindly note the change in dates of the event.
Dear Friends,
*Of the people, by the people, for the people.*
------------------------------
----------------
A run up event for the National Conference on Free Software 2010
Date : Sunday 14th from 6 - 8pm
Venue: AC3, Sudarshan Layout, New Gurupanpalya, Behind IBM office(opposite
to Jalbhavan ) , a living place called slum.
Organised by : FSMK , Ambedkar Community Computing Center(AC3)
Agenda :
*********
Community Informatics :
-----------------------
Talks
-------
G Ramakrishna, Editor Hosatu : The question of Access in Informatics,
language : Kannada
Demos
--------
L Subramani, Deccan Herald : True Vision.
Release
--------
MAM Ismail , Prajavani
will release Ubuntu Kannada DVD followed by a demo.
He will talk on :: Community Computing Centers as cultural centers of
change, language : Kannada
Anchoring : The program is entirely organised by the Kids and youth from the
local community , there will also be songs and talks by local youth.
--
Raghavendra S
http://ideasareimmortal.blogspot.com/http://www.nc2010.fsmk.org/
Hi Folks,
We invite you to participate in the Free Software National Conference to be
held in Bangalore on the 20th and 21st of March, 2010. Please join in making
this Conference a huge success and the Free Software Movement stronger.
Strengthen the movement for abolition of private property in ideas. Please
spread the word, and bring your friends.
Program Schedule is here: http://www.nc2010.fsmk.org/content/program
Free Software is the Future, the Future is ours!
Thanks,
Roopesh
Hi,
Good news! The lobbying for use of FOSS tools by IOTA / Govt of WB for
CBT development has given some result. Late last evening Shri Tamal
Sen, writing in his capacity as the secretary of IOTA, sent out an
email that read as follows (the upper-casing is Shri Sen's signature
style) :
[quote]
LET US JOIN HANDS AND PREPARE
AT LEAST ONE CBT USING FOSS
TOOLS
Rgds
TAMAL SEN
[/quote]
So now we (the members of the FOSS community) have been called upon to
"prove" that alternative CBT development is possible using FOSS.
cheers,
--
Indranil Das Gupta
Phone : +91-98300-20971
Blog : http://indradg.randomink.org/blog
IRC : indradg on irc://irc.freenode.net
Twitter : indradg
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Dear All
http://www.nc2010.fsmk.org/
Session on Accessibility : Call for Experience Sharing
------------------------------ --------------------------
A special track on accessibility has been planned in the conference. The
objective is to build more awareness of accessibility, which is a growing
concern for the Web and computing in general, and to drive the development
work in this area effectively by experience sharing. We are inviting those
working in this area to share their experience using this forum. We would be
interested in those working with people with disabilities to understand
their perception of the needs in this area, and also those building
solutions to understand what is being done. CDAC Mumbai is running an
accessibility project as part of the national resource centre for FOSS
(nrcfoss.org.in) aimed at enhancing the accessibility of a FOSS desktop. The
project objective is to identify the needs and existing work in this area,
and consolidate them to build a more accessible desktop environment. The
session is motivated by this work. If you would like to present your work in
this forum, please send a mail to aparna(a)cdacmumbai.in
or sasi(a)cdacmumbai.in with a brief description of your work and your profile
[not more than one page]. We will short list a few from the submissions
received, for presentation. Please send your
writeup before 12th March, 2010.
thanks
Senthil,
Convenor - FSMK
--
Raghavendra S
+919986168349
http://ideasareimmortal.blogspot.com/http://fsmk.org/
Hi all,
Last night Dr Mandar Mitra (of ISI Kolkata and IOTA board member) - an
old friend and long-time FOSS user, sent out a rebuttal to the claims
of unfitness of Audacity as a audio rec / edit tool. In his email he
spoke about how he would do his recordings and what has been his
experience so far with it [1]. He also invited Shri Anindya Banerji,
the multimedia expert in question to further clarify his comments and
remarks about Audacity vs Audition.
A while back Sri Banerji, responded back with his clarifications. I've
put up his response on my blog -
http://indradg.randomink.org/blog/archives/155
Mr. Banerji's response makes for rather interesting reading and I
would request input from all, but particularly (based on my limited
knowledge) from Dr Nagarjuna, Niyam Bhushan, jtd and others who have
come in with specific inputs so far on this topic.
thanks
references :
[1] http://indradg.randomink.org/blog/archives/154
--
Indranil Das Gupta
Phone : +91-98300-20971
Blog : http://indradg.randomink.org/blog
IRC : indradg on irc://irc.freenode.net
Twitter : indradg
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[With apologies for X-posting]
Hi all,
Recently I had posted on my blog ("Making change happen - the case of
the IOTA job ad" - http://indradg.randomink.org/blog/archives/150) how
the Institute for Open Technology and Applications (IOTA - the
autonomous society setup by Dept of IT, Govt of WB) had originally
posted a job ad asking for multimedia developers for CBT development
with work experience on proprietary tools. Upon the intervention of
the Minister-In-Charge IT (Prof Debesh Das) this changed asking for
expertise in FOSS tools alone.
Today I received an email which puts an interesting twist and probably
runs the risk of jeopardising the above decision to move to FOSS for
CBT development.
A multimedia expert who's highly proficient in proprietary software
for multimedia authoring was asked to create a feasibility plan for
development of the CBT using FOSS tools, and his report is as follows.
I figured it would be interesting reading for a lot of people, so I’ve
shared it below.
=== THE REPORT ===
I have gone through the most recommended open source software in
Linux, to be used as substitutes of the commonly known graphics
related software. On basis of the requirement for CBT development
project, I have performed dry-run of some test cases. The results from
those trials can be stated below.
GIMP (as a substitute of Photoshop)
- No option for true resembling of bi-cubic to bilinear conversion
- Many of the layer comp option cannot be found
- Antialising is poor
- Many of the color correction tools are absent
- Cannot share GIMP comp with INKSCAPE comp and UIRA comp layer wise
- Smart object facility is not available
(There are several other problems are there in GIMP, but those are not
mentioned here, only some of the points very much linked with the work
procedure of CBT development are mentioned here)
INKSCAPE (as a substitute of Illustrator)
- EPS quality and standard of vector is not up to standard
- Cannot share INKSCAPE comp with GIMP maintaining vector property
- INKSCAPE drawing cannot be used properly to animate with UIRA
- Vector layers cannot be managed with UIRA
- Rasterization of Vector , maintaining transparency and
smooth edges cannot be done
(There are several other problems are there in INKSCAPE, but those are
not mentioned here, only some of the points very much linked with the
work procedure of CBT development are mentioned here)
F4L (as a substitute of Flash)
- F4L is no more
- It is now converted into UIRA with a blend of QFlash
- Both of them are not so professional
- Crashes anytime and almost every time
- Smart clip and nested movie clip system is unstable
- Symbol definition is not OK
- Action script is full of bugs
- File compatibility is not even good
- Authoring property is very bad
- Compatibility with running text in local language is very bad
(There are several other problems are there in F4L, but those are not
mentioned here, only some of the points very much linked with the work
procedure of CBT development are mentioned here)
KINO (as a substitute of Premiere)
- Codecs are very poor
- Conforming process frequently crashes
- Lightweight screen captured video cannot be edited properly
- Unsafe rendering
- Unwanted loss of project data in time of save and reopen
- Voice-over cannot be taken in form of dubbing
- A little bit long timeline often crashes
(There are several other problems are there in KINO, but those are not
mentioned here, only some of the points very much linked with the work
procedure of CBT development are mentioned here)
Audacity (as a substitute of Audition)
- Codecs are very poor
- Conforming process frequently crashes
- MP3 cannot be edited properly
- Unsafe rendering
- Cannot be converted into MP3 properly
- Too few tools to operate
- Recording in full duplex cannot done properly
- Dubbing facility is not available
(There are several other problems are there in Audacity, but those are
not mentioned here, only some of the points very much linked with the
work procedure of CBT development are mentioned here)
=== END OF REPORT ===
--
Indranil Das Gupta
Phone : +91-98300-20971
Blog : http://indradg.randomink.org/blog
IRC : indradg on irc://irc.freenode.net
Twitter : indradg
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other
format is acceptable. Support Open Standards.
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