Tasque

Heard about this wonderful little GNOME app called Tasque from nixternal’s blog post today, checked it out (mean the web site) and found it useful. May be I will try it out soon, not now because I am not having much tasks to do and whatever I have is reminded by ReminderFox in ThunderBird. Good thing is it is available for both Hardy and Gutsy (thanks to nixternal) from tasque-packagers’ PPA.

Bangalorians from ILUGChennai

Following lawgon’s mail to the Chennai LUG mailing list a few days back, stating that there is no single point of contact for FOSS patrol in Bangalore, especially those belonging to ILUGC, have started a new Google Group named “Bangalorians from ILUGChennai“. Though this group is mainly for Chennai LUGies who have now settled down in Bangalore, it is also open to Bangalorians and Non-Bangalorians who would like to participate along with us.

Where is my title ?

Was checking my RSS feeds after a couple of days when I discovered that all my posts from 29th October have been shown in Planet FLOSS India with a title “technofreak” rather than the actual ones in the post slug. I wonder how and why only mine got changed this way when other feeds are pretty normal. Have poked sayamindu who manages the planet, hope it gets alright soon

Read Today - 2nd November

Today, I read two interesting articles which I would like pointing out to my friends.

First is an Open Letter to Steve Ballmer from the lead of Mandriva. I too had my comments to this but as am running back home, will add it later. Nigerian Government has decided that they will replace Mandriva Linux,, which was actually customized for the Classmate PC going to be used, with M$ Windows though they will be paying for the Mandriva. Its not just a 100 or 1000 PCs but 17000 machines, which could have been otherwise running a GNU/Linux OS and the Nigerian kids would have got a chance to learn about Freedom in Software. Damn!

Second is a wiki page pointed out by Onkar Shinde on OLPC in India. I was really impressed by their work and success. Hope more of such success stories follows

Want a Graphics Designer?

If any of you or your contacts are looking for a Graphics Designer (Full-time as well as Freelancing), I have a guy for you. My friend Dushyant Basson, who was working as a Graphics Designer till some time ago (freelancing before) is looking for a suitable job anywhere in India. You can check out his portfolio at ONIZU if you are interested in hiring a graphics designer Hope he gets a nice job soon

Note: If you are interested and want to contact him personally, feel free to ping me on #linux-india @ irc.freenode.net to get his mobile number.

Ubuntu Tutorials by Christer Edwards

Those who are watching over Planet Ubuntu might have not missed Edwards Ubuntu Tutorial posts, especially dealing with things to make our Ubuntu experience a lot better. I have always been reading his posts and trying to implement a few things which I had not known before.

Today Edwards, through his blog, had asked his readers to link his Ubuntu Tutorial Blog in their blog/web sites so that more people start making use of his tutorials. I felt it was a good thing to do and help more people know about such awesome tutorials. Hence I added it to my Blogroll as well as made this post so it appears in those planets which am in too. Hope I can get him at least one routine reader to utilize his tutorials

RBC TCConfig is now in Google Code

When I joined Comat this August, the project which I had to start contributing was RBC TCConfig. Though this was started as a internal project for telecenters that comat was operating all over rural Karnataka, soon it had the potential to become a separate product with indivual value. Thus a couple of days ago, jace moved a part of the project code to Google Code. Now it stands as an Open Source project.

RBC TCConfig stands for Rural Business Center - Telecenter Computer Configurator. This was initiated to configure and manage the rural telecenters which are at a minimum of 4 kilometers from an urban area, where it could get technical support, which happens to be places having frequent power outrages and system meltdowns, connected by intermittent or low bandwidth networks. Thus managing these remote rural centers becomes a vital task for some one operating these RBCs. RBCs are places where technology is used to serve the rural people, especially in providing basic government services like issue of birth/death certificates, IRCTC booking services, Bus ticket booking services, land record document service and many more. If not the RBCs, the rural people have to spend a lot of time in the government offices in their local taluk head quarters which needs a lot of patience and most time proves to be a bit unnecessarily expensive too.

Thus, we were working on a management framework to configure and administrate these remote computers which are very far from our physical reach. We basically developed this framework to work on a GNU/Linux machine as the base operating system, if required there is a provision to run M$’s proprietary operating system on top of a virtual machine. The main features of this management system are remote monitoring, remote updates and installs, and remote administration of the computers. We have been facing many challenges during this project, which is still in its early ages with a lot of things to be improved from their current state.

The Google Code project for the same is an endeavor to share this experiences and make it open so others can pick it up, tweak it to their needs and implement as a solution to similar requirements of remote management of computers. We hope this will open up more suggestions, interesting ideas to improve our current framework and some free contribution as well.

Though I am a member of this project, the right person to contact for knowing more specific and technical information about this project is Kiran Jace. But you are most welcome to put your comments to this post if you have anything to say about our project. He had indeed plans to speak about this during the foss.in 2007 schedules to happen this December, but unfortunately his talk got rejected stating it is not yet an FOSS project. Hope we will soon be able to get a recognition of ours as a FOSS project,of value, considering the need to take technology to the rural parts of India.

chroot is not a security gate!

Happen to see a /. article about popular misconception of chroot being a security tool. I have heard a lot about chroot and how people generally use it as jail environments for security, but this article really contradicts that idea. The one who says is Alan Cox, so we need to get our eyes and ears a bit wide open

The Comparison

The hot news I heard from Digg today was about the new “Compare” site from M$ as a replacement of its famous “Linus Hate Site”. I was curious enough to look at the fresh load of charges on Linux under a new cover.

In contrast to the older version, now there is not direct tabular comparison at all. Each category is filled with case studies from firms who have turned up to using M$. But looking at the stories in many of the case studies I tried reading,

I feel that the stories are too ancient. One of them talked about moving to Microsoft from using Red Hat 9 servers and another one talked about trying to use Staroffice. It reads ” using a Linux/open-source solution would have necessitated an “unmanageable migration expense,” especially because individual Microsoft Office documents and solutions would not have been convertible“. Eh!? Which world are they living in?

There is no mention of Debian servers as far as I read. There is no mention of other Open Source softwares like Blender, not even OpenOffice anywhere. The reason for the new comparison site is stated in a corresponding article as “It turns out people wanted 3rd party validation in addition to people’s experiences making OS purchasing decisions so in addition to customer case studies, research reports that compare platforms the site will also offer guidance around best practices, web casts, etc.“

Should I stop and laugh, or keep my ass moving along not minding these poor jokes ?

Got my own - technofreak.in

I always envied my buddies who had their own websites in their own names (or nicks). Though having own web sites are no more big things in the world which is more and more becoming web oriented, there were few things which held me back in getting one for myself.

First, it was still a luxury to me; spending for the space, registering the domain name once in a mail, etc.

Second, I did not find a real need to have one. I had a blog in wordpress.com and that was enough for me to have my presence online. What ever I wished to let others know were done with the weblogs I had. I did not have much to host online, such as codes or documents. For photos, flickr was enough for me and that too with a pro account, it was all I could wish to have.

Off late, I have been again lured to the idea of having my own web site, mainly due to a lot of people I know coming up with their websites. Whenever I went for a seminar or workshop, all I had was my blog and email to show as my presence in the internet / web world.

A couple of days ago, tazz was setting up his web site and he was making #ubuntu-in lively with all discussions going about domain name selecting, hosting provider, etc. etc. I too wished I could get one up, but enquiring tuxmaniac let me know that it will cost me around 3000 INR over all for a decent web space. For my current situation, it was too much to spend on a web site.

The next day tazz introduced me to argo.nipl.net (NIPL), and in the next few hours with the help of tazz, grub and prudhvi (you can find us all at #nipl @ freenode.net) I got technofreak.in up and alive. As not to deviate too much from the focus of NIPL, I plan to host only contents and information pertaining to FOSS and GNU/Linux in my web site. This is much like a container for hosting documents, codes, presentations, files and other information I would like to share. This will also help me, from next time I go to seminars and workshops, to share my presentations with the audience. I also plan to host the examples and tutorial codes for python ( DIP examples are already there), pyqt4 and a few others.

As of now, technofreak.in is a very simple, bare bone HTML site with some CSS trying to improve the look. Am working on improving the CSS and make it look more better. Hope to make it happen in another few days to come. I am also open up to host stuff from others, mainly presentations, codes and documents, provided they fit into the scope of FOSS , GNU/Linux or Programming (mainly Python, Qt, GTK, Perl, Ruby and Scheme).

A guide to deal with us

Its been a fact that rules are bit different in the FOSS world, than the commercial/corporate world that people are used to. This has been one of the reasons that newcomers take time to get accustomed with, and if there is some acrimonious experiences in the way, they walk off. Even the press media had been not able to fully understand our way of life, our jargons, our ideologies, and as a result we have always have the probability of mis-interpreted.

This has made Troy Unrau, a well known writer for KDE, to come with “An Informal Guide to Dealing with Open Source Culture (for writers)“ whose first draft has been posted in his blog. I happen to read it through KDE Planet and thought of sharing it in my blog as well. He has addressed a few important points for others to understand us better.

Will the leader answer ?

The latest hot talk in the FOSS world has been about the latest deal between M$ and Linspire. Many had expected it, especially after the bashing of GPLv3 by the Linspire lead. This follows similar deals with Novel and M$ which had provoked large scale debate over the actual intentions of M$ with respect to its publicly proclaimed enemy, GNU/Linux.

Though the new deal has similarly kicked on another round of debate, I was a bit excited to find a number of posts in the Ubuntu planet, from some of the top bloggers there. It was started by Aaron Toponce, followed by Richard Johnson, Jonathan Carter and Christopher Denter. The one common thing with all these 3 active Ubuntu guys is that they all wanted to know what Mark Shuttleworth thinks. Its because Ubuntu project is being financially supported by Canonical Ltd. and the same nightmare can be created by them too.

But we Ubunteros have our hopes, mainly at the bug #1 filed by Mark. We all believe that Canonical and Ubuntu are committed to solve that bug and we will not fall prey to lure of $$ by M$. Also, we have Mark’s comments in the past in which he had been certain that there won’t be an Ubuntu-M$ deal. But nothing is impossible in this world.

Hence, the Ubuntu community is looking ahead to hear from its leader, a reassurance that we will also be not embarrassed with a similar deal. And, many of the Ubunteros who had commented to one of the posts in the Planet had mentioned that if some thing like that ever happens, they will not have a second thought in walking away from Ubuntu. With respect to the passion we have within the Ubuntu community and think of the past years since we joined our hands, we hope that day won’t come.

/me joins the Ubuntu community and waits to hear from our leader.

Promising Projects - Brainwave and Returnable

In the past two days, I happen to see two mails regarding two new projects. Though both did not attract the best of my interests that I jump out and dig my hands into it. Rather I felt I can write about them. Here I go with a brief introduction to both of them.

Brainwave

Brainwave is said to be a Software Development Kit which comes along with a very different database engine, a rich API widgets library and a deployment server. I came to know through a mail sent to Bangypy mailing list. Though the question whether this product is Open Source is yet to be answered, there is an interesting component in this product which is told as a pending-patent technology.

The main components of this SDK are

• Iris, the Application server
• Aphrodite, the User Interface
• Poseidon, the Database
• Cerberus, the Security component

Iris is the application server (or the deployment server) which is actually built over the very popular CherryPy Python-based web server. Aphrodite is a XSLT based standard templating system, which renders the templates as HTML 4.0 Transitional compliant code for IE5+ and FF1.0+ (but it is said for Windows and Mac, urgh!).

Poisedon is said to be the core of Brainwave, being the database system with a difference. It is an non relational DBMS with no requirement of schema. Instead of tables and columns, data is stored as ‘memes’ and ‘links’ which are types of neurons. While memes are fundamental units of data, links are relationships between neurons. Links have a subject (origin), an object (target) and a verb (modifier). Thus data is stores as neurons linked to one another by the links defined by the verbs. This model imposes no constrain on the type of data that can be handled. This is a very new idea which is yet to hit the masses.

Cerberus is the security manager for Poisedon and it acts based on capabilities and policies.

Brainwave is a promising product indeed, but until the question of FOSS gets answered let me wait to dig my hands into it.

Returnable

Returnable serves as an open platform architectural guide to advance the URL as a DSL for specifying 3 traits - the content, its delivery and its behavior on the web through the use of Returnable elements embedded within the web pages.

This is not a big endeavor such as Brainwave, but rather a personal project from Bhasker Kode (who had mailed the ilugc mailing list about this). It involves a bit of JS, PHP, url rewrtie, regext and CSS. This is just a way to create events using HTML as the API, provided that the initial script was added to the DOM.

He claims it to be a great utility for bloggers, for an easy way to create tool-tips. The following are some links associated with this project.

• Official Returnable Web site
• Sourceforge Project

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Second foot in the web space

Am not rich enough to get a web space for me and hence been calling this blog as my home page. Happened to see googlepages today through one of my friends and checked it out. Thought of creating a page to see how good it is and it came out not so bad, though some complained that it has a blog-like look. Here it is, my second foot in the web space.

Incubator at Kongu Engineering College

We landed at the campus of Kongu Engineering College on the afternoon of 6th April 2007, being driven in a Tempo traveler which was big enough for 4 of us. On our way, we interacted with the two students who had come to pick us up from Coimbatore and tried to get as much information as possible about the college and the students. As we were to be there only for a couple of hours, we decided to present about LTSP and Linux High Availability.

When we went to the campus, we were really amazed to see that it was almost a township within. We had our lunch at the guest house and was accompanied by the H.O.D of I.T department to the seminar Hall. CSE and IT departments shares the huge building called as IT park. We had our talk in the Seminar Hall 2, which was enough to seat a 100. After we closed our session and had an hour of personal interaction with a few people, we were taken for a tour around the campus. We visited the labs, all equipped with latest computers and facilities, and to the server room which was otherwise “administrators only” area.

After finishing the initial tour around the IT Park, there was something more interesting in the same building. Located on the basement of the IT park is the Technology Business Incubator, known as TBI. TBI is a joint venture of Kongu Engineering College and Department of Science and Technology, Govt of India. This projects enjoys a funding of Rs.4 crores for providing infrastructural support for budding entrepreneurs.

What’s there in TBI is technical/hardware infrastructure for manufacturing products in the domains such as Embedded Systems, Digital Signal Processing and Electronic Card Design, Assembly, Testing and Repair. These facilities are available for students and entrepreneurs under a nominal fee. This includes access to state-of-the-art tools and computers to design, manufacture, test and research products in the above said domains.

The idea is like this, any entrepreneur having a requirement for an industrially demanded product can make use of this facility. He can bring in his own workforce or make use of the student resources in the college. Similarly, students who have brilliant ideas can make use of the facility to bring out their own products and make business. The end product which gets developed using the facility will lie with the original creator to whom the idea belongs. Thus, the TBI will not claim any right over the products that gets developed using it, rather will support every passionate entrepreneur by rendering him all possible infrastructure and resources.

Thus it gives an opportunity for students to get exposure to industry and the industry to interact and make use of the student resource. the following products have successfully been developer in the TBI, Power electronic controllers, temperature controllers, electronic tagging of book-like objects, electronic control panel for scrubber drier machines, Universal power regulator for DC Motor, controller for automatic bell ringing system and last but not the least, bus ticket vending machine.

This is a wonderful endeavor by Dept of Science and Technology by funding a project which is the very requirement in an academic environment. This also sound similar to the purpose of NRCFOSS, which is also a Govt of India funded project. We also aim to create entrepreneurs rather individual developers and contributors in the software and IT industry.

Any young and passionate entrepreneurs looking for infrastructure facilities for developing their first product can approach the TBI-KEC. Visit them at TBI-KEC.