Fsf-friends March 2010

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Stop a nuclear disaster
by ipmurali＠gmail.com 17 Mar '10

17 Mar '10

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ICE FOSS @ FISAT'10
by jijo thomas 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

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.

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Hindu report on AC3 run up activity of the conference
by Nidhin Sasi 15 Mar '10

15 Mar '10

http://beta.thehindu.com/news/cities/Bangalore/article245413.ece

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Run up event to the National Conference on Free Software:Of the people, by the people, for the people.
by Raghavendra S 10 Mar '10

10 Mar '10

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/

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National Conference on Free Software in Bangalore on March 20, 21
by Roopesh P Raj 06 Mar '10

06 Mar '10

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

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IOTA invites interested members of the community to aid / assist in the PoC of FOSS based CBT-development
by Indranil Das Gupta 06 Mar '10

06 Mar '10

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 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other format is acceptable. Support Open Standards. To get a free editor supporting ODF, please visit http://www.openoffice.org/

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Fwd: [Conferencecommittee] National Confernce on free software - Inviting Prentations on accesbility
by Raghavendra S 05 Mar '10

05 Mar '10

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/

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Update - clarifications from the multimedia expert in the IOTA CBT workflow case
by Indranil Das Gupta 05 Mar '10

05 Mar '10

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 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other format is acceptable. Support Open Standards. To get a free editor supporting ODF, please visit http://www.openoffice.org/

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Sharing a Win/Mac based multimedia developer's views on FOSS tools
by Indranil Das Gupta 03 Mar '10

03 Mar '10

[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. To get a free editor supporting ODF, please visit http://www.openoffice.org/

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Fsf-friends March 2010