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Working with IOTA, ILUG-Cal.ORG delivers FOSS-based Desktop Computing training to high school teachers
by Indranil Das Gupta 09 Oct '08

09 Oct '08

Dear all, Last year, we - the Indian GNU/Linux Users' Group - Kolkata Chapter, had conducted the highly successful [1] 2-month long weekend program on GCC programming workshops and tutorials at the Rajabazar Science College[2], University of Calcutta. Recently there was a call for support and collaboration from the Institute of Open Technology and Applications (IOTA), an autonomous society that has been recently set up under the aegis of Dept of Information Technology, Govt of West Bengal. IOTA's mandate, afaik, is to identify cases and espouse the use and adoption of FOSS in the state of West Bengal. Towards that end, training in FOSS based technologies of high school teachers across the state, has been identified by the society as one of the courses for immediate action. Several training programs are in the offing. The teachers' training program at West Bengal State University (WBSUB), Barasat was a part of that. Between 2nd and 4th October, 2008, 51 high school teachers belonging to 42 different schools from across the district of North 24 Parganas [3] attended the workshop. A team of six ILUG-CAL.ORG members gathered in Barasat (North 24 Parganas) from 4 different districts of WB, worked nearly against time to plan, execute and successfully deliver the program, with less that 20 hours of head-start before the event took off. It was the first time that ILUG-CAL has been involved in directly training the high school teachers in using FOSS. For the detailed report and the associated data please go to http://indradg.randomink.org/blog/archives/124 . cheers -indra References: [1] http://list.ilug-cal.org/pipermail/ilug-cal-discuss/2007-June/001363.html [2] http://santanu-sinha.blogspot.com/2007/06/workshop-on-gcc-at-rajabazar-scie… [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_24_Parganas

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Science progresses only if knowledge is shared - says US dept of energy ( Office of Scientific and Technical Information)
by renuka prasad 09 Oct '08

09 Oct '08

An interesting message --- To make great discoveries, researchers need scientific information, and they need it fast. Through a suite of innovative tools and resources<http://www.osti.gov/collections>, OSTI works to ensure scientists and the American public can readily find and share research so that science can advance. This requires expertise and innovation in both knowledge management and knowledge diffusion, critical components of the nation's science cyberinfrastructure<http://www.osti.gov/innovation/research/cyberinfrastructure> . to read more ---check the link below http://www.osti.gov/innovation/

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A Brief Report on National Public meeting on Software Patents
by Anivar Aravind 08 Oct '08

08 Oct '08

See http://cis-india.org/advocacy/floss/software-patents/blog/the-national-publ… Anivar -- Any responsible politician should be encouraging a home grown Free Software industry because it creates the basis for future jobs. Learning Windows is like learning to eat every meal at McDonalds.

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Microsoft entry through ACM
by CK Raju 07 Oct '08

07 Oct '08

"..Microsoft has signed a licensing agreement with ACM providing all ACM Student Members with access, at no charge, to a variety (~ 100) of software packages through its Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance (MSDNAA). The goal of this program is to get these tools into the hands of current students. All active ACM Student Members are eligible to participate in the ACM/MSDNAA Program..." http://www.acm.org/membership/student/msdnaa-faq CK Raju

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Re: [Fsf-friends] International Centre
by shirish 07 Oct '08

07 Oct '08

Hi all, I think Mr. Sreekumar was talking about this . http://english.mathrubhumi.com/news.php?id=4099&cat=1&sub=14&subit=0 Just have to say looking forward for the same :) -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal This email is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ 065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17

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International Centre
by Sreekumar R 06 Oct '08

06 Oct '08

What more regarding the new "International Centre for Free and Open source software" which I came to know from todays news paper.sreekumar

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(R)e-Governance in Kochi Corporation !!
by CK Raju 06 Oct '08

06 Oct '08

"...The capital and initial costs, including those for hardware with software system cost, application software, creation of web portal, data digitisation and training and capacity building of personnel for the first two years of the commission, will be available from the Central government. The cost of the land and building, site preparation, civil infrastructure, employee cost, power and communication cost shall be borne by the State government or the urban local body. Wipro, one of the IT majors, is in the process of preparation of the detailed project report for the e-governance programme for Kochi. The agency is expected to complete the work within two months, Ms. Antony said. The Kochi Corporation had earlier made some attempts to computerise the office with the support of the Information Kerala Mission. A portion of the data in the possession of the Corporation was converted into electronic format earlier. .." Full story at http://www.thehindu.com/pp/2008/10/04/stories/2008100450510100.htm --------------- Are our activists in government aware of this new development ? Why aren't the platforms, mode of storage of public information, types of standards being deployed not mentioned here ? Is it another Microsoft back-door ? CK Raju

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Software Patenting
by Praveen A 06 Oct '08

06 Oct '08

"If formulaic Hindi films were protected by patent laws, we would be able to make only one film," joked Abraham. The system of software patenting wipes out smaller businesses and innovation, he said. "Software, like poetry and literary works, is already protected by copyright. After all, Bill Gates made his fortunes from copyright and not patents. But many software companies are trying to get additional protection." Copyright and patents are both part of intellectual property rights, but copyright restricts the expression of an idea while patents restrict the idea itself, according to Abraham. Under a patenting regime, even before a kid writes one line of code he has to read many patents." Full Coverage http://www.timeoutbengaluru.com/aroundtown/aroundtown_feature_details.asp?c… Another story by Hindu http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/05/stories/2008100559810400.htm Vote for it at FS Daily http://www.fsdaily.com/Legal/Software_patenting_will_harm_industry_consumer -- പ്രവീണ്‍ അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില്‍ <GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call! <DRM> What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak? (as seen on /.) Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

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Software freedom? Why? (Derek Cordeiro's blog)
by Frederick Noronha [फ़र ेदरिक नोर ोनया] 04 Oct '08

04 Oct '08

01 October 2008 Software Freedom<http://www.derekcordeiro.com/2008/10/software-freedom.html> Software Freedom day is celebrated worldwide on the 3rd Saturday of September 1 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software%20Freedom%20Day>. But in Goa, it was celebrated at BITS Pilani, Goa Campus<http://www.bits-goa.ac.in/>on the 27th(or was it a 2 day event?). I have heard people define Free/Open Source Software time and again. There are endless discussions about which Open Source license is the best. One thing that should be known to all: Open Source Software is here to stay. Open Source even mentioned in textbooks e.g. Software Engineering books like Object-Oriented and Classical Software Engineering by Steven Schach. But what is the easiest way to adopt Free Software on your Desktop PC? If you already use GNU/Linux or *BSD or Solaris, you already have a whole lot of free software already installed. You probably have very little non-free software. The only thing you can do to contribute is to help others(could be help new users, or help developers, etc). If you use Microsoft Windows or Mac, follow some easy steps. Use Free Software as much as possible. 1. Firefox <http://getfirefox.com/> /Chrome/Flock <http://flock.com/> for browsing. 2. OpenOffice <http://openoffice.org/> for good quality formatted text documents/spreadsheets/presentations.(at the time of writing, OpenOffice 3.0 RC3 is available) extra: Check out the openoffice extensions like the template packs I and II 3. Pidgin <http://pidgin.im/> for Instant Messaging. 4. Thunderbird <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/> for email. 5. Free Developer tools like Eclipse <http://eclipse.org/> , Netbeans<http://netbeans.org/>together with MinGW <http://www.mingw.org/> /MSYS <http://www.mingw.org/wiki/msys> and free libraries like wxWidgets <http://wxwidgets.org/> (If you know MFC, it is an excellent choice). 6. Java <http://java.sun.com/> is mostly Free software, use it. The most important thing though is not to discourage others from using it.(This goes out especially to fanboys who are pretty narrow minded). Sometimes I've heard people say that Linux sucks. I cannot disagree or agree -- Linux is far from perfect, but nothing really is perfect.(The same people say that Vista is awesome--I think Microsoft will not completely agree with that). Buzz up!<http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/pub/http%253A%252F%252Fwww.derekcordeiro.com%…> ShareThis <http://www.derekcordeiro.com/#> Posted by Derek J C at 3:15:00 PM<http://www.derekcordeiro.com/2008/10/software-freedom.html> in freedom <http://www.derekcordeiro.com/search/label/freedom> 2 comments<http://www.derekcordeiro.com/2008/10/software-freedom.html#comment-form> <http://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=2174257787047055345&postID=25716…> http://www.derekcordeiro.com -- FN * Independent Journalist http://fn.goa-india.org Blog: http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com Tech links from South Asia: http://twitter.com/fn M: +91-9822122436 P: +91-832-2409490

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Freedom Walk started - Walking the Walk
by Praveen A 04 Oct '08

04 Oct '08

Hi, Freedom Walk organised by Zyxware and many Free Software communities have started on October 2nd as planned. I request everyone to try find some time to join this or at least talk about it with your friends and write about it if you maintain a blog. You can keep yourself updated with the latest happenings at http://www.freedomwalk.in/ Some photos of the walk started appearing on the website http://www.freedomwalk.in/content/17/freedom-walk-day-0-photos-departure-at… http://www.freedomwalk.in/content/15/freedom-walk-day-1-photos http://www.freedomwalk.in/content/16/freedom-walk-day-2-photos Cheers Praveen -- പ്രവീണ്‍ അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില്‍ <GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call! <DRM> What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak? (as seen on /.) Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

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