Free as in free space !!

Please copy this as your status if you...

2011-08-05T09:46:00.000-07:00

Dear friends,

So you didn't have a laptop in your childhood. That was not because of how your parents raised you, but because it was not at all useful for you to have that prohibitively costly toy then, which can bring to a kid today the world's storehouse of knowledge, and a lot more.

The iPod wasn't invented, Blackberry is not meant for children to play with, some of you probably did have a Nintendo, and just didn't know it, and the Xboxes and PS3s were yet to be brought out in their current form.

And really, Wi-fi? What would you be doing with a Wifi again, if there was no internet backbone to connect it to?

You have possibly lost out on a lot more than you purportedly gained because you had a Contra instead of a Commodore, an Atari, an Apple II, or the likes back then.

I had a beautiful childhood too, not because I didn't have a lappie, a PS3 or whatever, but because of all the great things I did have, among them great family and friends.

It is good to appreciate what you have, but that does not entail begrudging others their benefits or differences.

Sharing lame statuses in an attempt to appear what ever you are trying to appear as, does not change the lameness of the initial premise.

GROW UP!

Yours sincerely,

Koushik Kumar Nundy.

P.S. This is in direct response to a facebook status meme about how beautiful some of my peers' childhoods were, and how cool they are courtesy their non-involvement in technical and democratic exercises in their tiny tot times. However it can be generalised to cover any such "Please copy this as your status if you.." incidents, because,

FB asks for what's on YOUR mind, G+ asks for what's NEW,... please, this is neither particularly in your mind, nor is it too new!
Twitter asks what's happening, if you post such status forwards, your childishness, if not your childhood is still happening.
If copying statuses would cure cancer and rid us of terrorism, corruption and a thousand other maladies, oncologists, radiologists, soldiers, political leaders would have all become "Social Media Experts" instead.
People who are on such platforms to keep in touch with old friends or develop bonds with new ones, are truly, madly, deeply getting irritated.
When people start getting tired of such stuff, they will write even more tiring blogposts as this.
Some people will get an irrepressible urge to post this as their status "Please copy this as your status if you don't like "Please copy this as your status ..." statuses."

openSUSE 11.4 - A new life

2011-03-10T14:20:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, and the rest, well they'll know by the end of this sentence, openSUSE 11.4 released yesterday, the 10th of March, 2011. It'll be the seventh straight release I use, and the 4th release since I became associated with the Project.

To download visit : http://software.opensuse.org/

Unfortunately, my old machine is still running on 11.3, and the all new Vostro I got today has, wait for it, Windows Vista, both of which I plan to amend tomorrow. Sadly, that was not possible today because seeding the ISO was, I felt, more important than selfishly enjoying Geeko glory. So, no donut, oh sorry, screenshot for you.

The journey to openSUSE 11.4 has been anything but smooth. [1] says well why.
But I'd like to add to that.

The initial rumours about Novell, openSUSE's primary being up for sale did not go down well with the community, as we have seen the last major sale of a Free Software leaning company, Stanford University Networks, as very unfavourable to the FOSS community, with important jobs axed, opensolaris dead, and Openoffice.org left to potentially rot, with Libreoffice being a bold step by the people who care, to infuse life into the best office suite in the world.

The sale to Attachmate that eventually followed, did not help cool matters, due to the following,
1. No one had ever heard of it.
2. The sale of those patents to a shady conglomerate!

However, Attachmate seems to be serious enough about the feasibility of SUSE to run it as a separate division. And THIS is what they have to say about openSUSE. May be lip service, or may not be.

Now to the many firsts. openSUSE 11.4 is the first major distribution release to have stable LibreOffice, has Firefox 4, GNOME 3 preview(optional), KDE 4.6 and loads of other new stuff like Scribus 1.4, KOffice 2.3.1, etc. Also new is the support for Tumbleweed, a rolling release.
A more detailed Product Highlights is available.

But these are not the only important changes. Many new faces in every team, marketing collaboration days, a great openSUSE Conference, attempts at clearly defined strategies and trademark guidelines, all this has worked to largely improve the cohesive co-operation that is the openSUSE project.

We have had our share of growing pains, with membership issues and policy being cause for heated debate. Stability has always been the strength of the openSUSE distribution. The openSUSE community has done well to learn that it has to show the same stability in every step, not just in the lines of code. We have come out of it, not just better, but cleverer. We are a community that has a worldwide spread, contributors and users alike. In our do-o-cracy, we are not judged by our race, sex, or politics, but by our actions. A great example would be our team of 125 Ambassadors, who come from a whooping 47 countries. Another new initiative to overcome the gender divide otherwise stark in FOSS is the Women of openSUSE Project.

We have been lucky to have partners like OMG!SUSE! at our side.

With a clearer sense of identity and purpose, we hope to march from strength to strength, so that we can continue to bring to you, openSUSE, all of it!
(Now, now I can't promise what the next release number will be, so hang on for the ride!)

Join us in making the world Greener (most puns intended)! http://www.opensuse.org

As we heard in Batman Begins, "It's not who you are underneath - it's what you do that defines you."

My views on openSUSE LTS

2010-12-06T16:05:00.001-08:00

There has been a lot of discussion recently on the viability of a Long Term Support release for openSUSE. Some have proposed a separate LTS version, some a rolling release called Tumbleweed. Some have shown support for both, suggesting they coexist as separate sub-projects. Yet others have suggested we create an openSLES, a "free as in free beer"(to think that this phrase even exists) version for SUSE Enterprise, much like what the CentOS people do with RedHat Enterprise Linux.

This discussion has spiralled into multiple threads on the opensuse-project list. The threads have been linked to at the end of this post.

My reply in regards to the discussion is summed up below:-

1. I have a feeling the two being analogised to CentOS is a bit unfair. openSUSE's relation with SLE has always been more the Fedora to RHEL kind. We, as a project, form a base, not a copy of SUSE's enterprise offerings, if typically more conservatively than competition.

2. openSUSE has the direct primary sponsorship of Novell. CentOS has no official affiliation with RH. An openSLES may antagonise Novell/SUSE/Attachmate's friendly approach.

3. Offering of an LTS version alternately with a couple of normal versions has not been discussed. I wonder why. Ubuntu does that quite appreciably, (though I have never personally encountered an Ubuntu-powered server).
From Wikipedia, "To date every fourth release, in the second quarter of even-numbered years, has been designated as a Long Term Support (LTS) release, indicating that it has updates for three years for desktop use and five years for server"

To say what that means, let's say we have 12.0 as LTS(5 release cycle support), then 12.1, 12.2 and 12.3 with normal 2.2 cycle support. Then again 13.0 as LTS, and so on. This will cause an LTS version to be perennially active, while having a "cutting edge" version for systems here stability is not primary.
This would help a only one extra already present older version needs to be maintained, reducing stress on the developers.

4. The point mooted in (3) can also help on standardising a versioning scheme, the need for which was discussed but never finalised some time earlier, probably on the marketing and project lists.

5. Nelson Marques has a point. Too many offerings would cause confusion. Normal openSUSE vs openSUSE LTS vs openSUSE Tumbleweed vs openSLES has already confused me to an extent.

6. Someone suggested binary compatibility with SLES would make people recommend SLES for paid-for-support Linux. While I appreciate Novell's roles in what openSUSE is today, I personally feel SLES sales figures are not supposed to be the concern of the openSUSE project.
Furthermore, even openSUSE can be paid-for-support Linux, considering people pay for 90 day support or something like that when they buy the box.

Threads
[1] Announcing openSUSE Tumbleweed project Nov '10 Dec'10
[2] openSUSE LTS Nov '10 Dec'10
[3] Packman for Tumbleweed

images for ilu logo

2010-10-24T11:50:00.000-07:00

Here are some images I created as possible logos for the newly created Indian GNU/Linux Users (ILU) on Facebook.

Do feel free to join the group.

References:

1. http://www.jamesward.com/2009/11/25/flex-builder-on-linux-update/

2. Wikipedia
3. http://reasonsoflife.wordpress.com/indian-flag-its-different-avataras/

Semantics is Restricting Linux Desktop Adaptation.

2010-06-19T13:07:00.001-07:00

This is a direct copy of a post on the Blog of HeliOS, a project based in Texas that I strongly feel for, who in their own words - "build computers for disadvantaged kids in the Austin-Metro area"
From : http://linuxlock.blogspot.com

Originally posted on Monday, May 31, 2010

Taken from Merriam-Websters Online Dictionary.

Semantics:

The meaning or relationship of meanings of a sign or set of signs; especially
: connotative meaning b
: the language used (as in advertising or political propaganda)
to achieve a desired effect on an audience especially through the use of words with novel or dual meanings (emphasis mine).

This has been gestating within me for over a year. An incident yesterday brought it to full term and I thought I would share some thoughts on this topic with you...maybe to complete derision...

Maybe not.

Regardless, I am going to broach the subject here.

Her name is Margie and she is the Grandmother to three small boys, ages 7, 9 and 11. I went there yesterday as part of our Twenty Computers in Twenty Days project and installed a desktop computer for these kids. The mother and father of these boys haven't been seen since mom dropped the kids off three years ago. She was "going out for the evening" and Grandma agreed to babysit.

It appears that her evening isn't over yet...She wrote once from Los Angeles and said that she was going to be sending for the boys as soon as she got her first paycheck. That was in 2008.

The boys are well-adapted though...outwardly you wouldn't know that the most important person in their world had betrayed them in the most insidious of ways. Their grades are good and they are all bilingual between Spanish and English.

Outwardly you wouldn't know...

They were thrilled that they were getting a computer. It took me only a few minutes to set it up and get it going. Margie had arranged for internet service prior to my arrival so when the machine came on, it was fully connected to the internet.

That's when the questions started.

Shortly after the Desktop was established, the obligatory popup appeared, stating that "Restricted Drivers" were available for installation.

Margie asked me then: "What does that mean?"

This has happened easily over 100 times in the five years we've been doing this. Most people never notice it but some do, and some are disturbed by it.

Margie was.

Even after I took the time to fully explain the whole proprietary driver thing to her, that word still lingered.

Restricted.

See, most people to my experience take words literally. When someone is faced with the term "Restricted" it forms in their mind that they are not to use whatever is deemed "Restricted". Even after my lengthy explanation and after telling her that some desktop functionality and most of the games wouldn't work right without the "Restricted" drivers, she still insisted that she did not want them installed.

Again, from Merriam-Webster:

Restricted
c : not intended for general circulation or release
And from Thesaurus.com - restricted:

Definition:
confine, limit situation or ability to participate

Synonyms:
bind, bottle up, bound, chain, check, circumscribe, come down on, constrict, contain, contract, cool down, cramp, curb, decrease, define, delimit, delimitate, demarcate, demark, diminish, encircle, enclose, hamper, handicap, hang up, hem in, hold back, hold down, impede, inclose, inhibit, keep within bounds, keep within limits, moderate, modify, narrow, pin down, prelimit, put away, put on ice, qualify, reduce, regulate, restrain, send up, shorten, shrink, shut in, surround, temper, tether, tie

To Margie, Restricted translated simply to illegal or forbidden. To her mind, if the system was telling her that something is "Restricted" then it should not be used. End of discussion.

Again, this isn't the first time this has happened. I personally do not see the harm in framing the popup in this manner.

Look...there are a number of reasons that Linux as a Desktop alternative hasn't gained more popularity...but to bottle ourselves off from mainstream use over a badly chosen word is goofy.

Yeah, and I know..."but that's the way it's done"... and "The majority of people understand"..."It's not that big of deal...blah blah blah.

To just over 10 percent of the people I've installed for, it is a big deal.

Think for a minute...think about how outsiders perceive the Linux infrastructure. It is foreign enough with the file system, not to mention the application names....to associate any application or data in Linux as "Restricted" isn't helping our cause. Of course, some of you could not care less.

Oh yeah...applications...let's get into that for a minute.

About six months ago, we did a long distance deal where CPS (Child Protective Services) asked us to provide a laptop to a 17 year old girl in San Antonio who needed one badly. I explained that these things never worked well as I could not physically go to San Antonio for the setup and familiarization session. Against my better judgment, I FEDEX'ed the laptop there. I was assured that this would not be a problem as someone there would be available to help her with a Linux Desktop.

Obviously there wasn't.

I started getting emails from her, complaining that she couldn't "download" anything. Remember that to the Windows user, "download" and "Install" have some definite blurred lines. The "run" option once the download is completed usually keeps the user in the dark as to where the actual download landed. They most times don't touch the EXE file...Windows does that for them.

Bless their hearts.

Hide the most basic of functions from your users in the name of convenience. That pretty much insures you propagate the Stupid User Syndrome. Can't see any obvious motive for that anywhere around...

So I explained to her that Linux handled the installation of software differently. I took over an hour to "familiarize" her with her desktop and the functions therein.

By the end of the call, I wanted to run red-hot knitting needles through my eyes.

Multiple times.

Chewing a rounded cup of shattered windshield glass was my second choice, given the scarcity of knitting needles.

To be fair, I have to admit that I suspect this child couldn't run her Windows computer with much more skill than a Linux machine. She is not a "computer user". She is what I describe as a "task-set mouse clicker". She's learned to do a limited set of tasks such as Facebook, MySpace, email and Pogo.com. Everything else pretty much mystifies her. Anything after that is mostly Voodoo.

But still...we could do better and we could start at the beginning.

Synaptic. What in the hell is "Synaptic"? Aside from a term used in describing or talking about the nervous system.

Sure...we know what it is, but what in the actual word "Synaptic" tells us that it is the system's primary software management system. Agreed, it is sometimes listed that way in the menu but to the uninitiated, the word "synaptic" has no mental match with "software installation".

Look, I am far from the first to bring this up. We've been talking about it since the early to mid 2000's and still not much has been done about it.

Gimp?

Wengo?

Kopete?

I'll leave the rest for comments. I could click my gnome menu and list a dozen cryptic application names but ya'll know them as well as I do. Again in the name of fairness, my distro of choice as well as Ubuntu has went a long way in putting side-tags on these names to better describe them.

But still "We" could do better. It's obvious that most Linux application authors don't put a lot of thought into their app naming or if they do, they do so to amuse their peers.

Whaddaya say we take the New Linux User into consideration.

They are your future and I have enough field experience with this to confidently tell you that they are confused. Sometimes to the point of shrugging off Linux and becoming just one more of the "Linux Sucks" crowd.

Again, some of you don't particualarly care about new users...I mean, you already know what you need to know about running your system. You rest assured of your geek superiority and glance over your glasses in condescending glances. To you, all is right with the world and the rest of them can eat cake.

All-Righty Then.

A long rant

2010-05-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

It is done, and it is past
How was it when it did last

Loved at times, hated it too
Too less time, a lot to do

I look back and I see it now
Why I dropped, and I see how

I went in from the grandest chair
Then suddenly there was no flair

What I dreamt of in older days
Had suddenly parted ways

My newer dreams were not of mine
I got them not, was I not trying

I just looked for the greater good
Ignoring some things more than I should

My spark had all but gone off then
I did not excel, don't know since when

But then I had to turn around
A rejenuvated flow I found

A hallucinating dream it was
It hit my head as such a thing does

I could now see the path ahead
I could not look on to old in dread

Losing this path would take me too far
I won't return from another scar

With conviction I turned away
The alternate price unwilling to pay

Today as I stand and look back down
I still call those steps my own

Some feelings then might have gotten hurt
Still for my own sake I was as curt

People look to their own good a lot
To do so too is no great blot

I care not much if for my sake
Anyone sad I did make

I did it not for malice please
Nor was it a matter of ease

It matters not now any more
I am too busy to the core

I wont waste more in useless fields
Now I must work till result yields

I am right back to olden days
I am on track in my own ways

Now I must go I will be back
Let me go down my beaten track

These lines are gonna draw me flak
Yet no reason to give it slack

Title inspired by : http://one-long-rant.blogspot.com/ found through Sayesha's blog.
P.S. title inspiration is independent of lyric inspiration. This is an independent work which shall have comments by some people. I want them to post their views on the comments section and not on my IM. If not for anything else then for GFDL's sake.

Back to blogs

2010-01-03T02:27:00.000-08:00

For the last year or so, I had seriously convinced myself that I had successfully consolidated my number of blogs to 2 places [1] [2]. So, I thought, now there will come a flurry of posts, each pre-empting the reader's expectation, and the number of interesting pieces will skyrocket. Yet, the result of 8 months of so-called structured blogging has produced little or no stuff worth reading twice.

    In fact, I had achieved atleast a bit more respectable results with my older blogs, meant for specific circles, which the few people that read them would often come back to. I feel that the dip in form is owed very greatly to a further loss in the creative streak I never had. This came about for many reasons, including but not limited to the increase in amount of work I did, especially in non-innovative lines, such as studying for exams, or repititive work. At first I thought you can not write if you work more than you are used to, but then I realised it could not possibly be so simple. The three things that made me understand this were :

1. Many people who are working much more than I do, are still creating pieces much more beautiful than I could ever imagine. Won't list examples, you'll get enough of them here.

2. I worked more in my sixth sem, but wrote less in my seventh.

3. I realised I was never that creative anyway.

    Then I somewhat comprehended what it took to write the best you can. You don't have to work or not work. You just have to choose something, anything, and feel strongly for it. You can love it or hate it, but it gives you a direction, a focus for your energies, that help in getting the author in you to flow. In fact one need not just write, any work of art, be it painting/singing or whatever else, one gets to start afresh and start well if one can define a purpose or inspiration.

    Today, as I sit and write this by wasting precious national resources, that of a governmental supercomputer, I can say I see two inspirational sources, that might give direction or coherence to my thoughts. Whether my assumptions of inspiration succeed in helping me out of written lulldom, only time, as they saqy, will tell. So let's see what this year brings about in my life, both in terms of inspiring events and the blogposts it brings along. Will revisit this blog on the other end of this year.

Signing off for now.

Analytics - Phase 2

2010-01-02T05:48:00.000-08:00

Now there is even more.

OS - 4

Browser - 6

Comination - 10

Epitaph

2010-01-01T05:44:00.000-08:00

Update : Another piece by Shourjya For our "SAKES"(click here to read)

This is a poem by Shourjya Sanyal, Founder Director, tHINKbIOsOLN.

A bit of blank verse. Not my style, but I liked it anyway.

The lonely Knight went up the stair,
the princess alone up the tower
He had been brave,
dragon he had slaughtered oft,
kingdoms vanquished many

Yet deep down he hold the (prin)cess and down he looks on the land,
on yonder there a shepherd stands amidst his flock,
like an epic god of orient stock.

Up the stairs the winner stand lonely with his prize,
yet he wants to be down
on the ground and look yonder at the beauty up,
a quick glance, a quick stare, and feel the beauty from down there.

A winner born , a curse is spelled,
no way can with his might he can repel.
He stands close yet so far,
and wishes to be far yet so close.

Meanings not the sentence make,
but understand once the riddle break.

Distance fades and might may whine,
the love stays on so do I.

Life

2009-12-08T10:23:00.000-08:00

My first poem on this blog. You can find some older ones here.

It is a war we come to fight
Some of us call it life
In it some get off light
Some face a deadening strife

Yet we want to live it all
Not leave it midway through
Sometimes we rise, at times we fall
It tiltillates us like a shrew.

It is fun at times to fight this war
Till we reach its sudden end
To live it well we hold no bar
Let's enjoy this God-send

War they say has no winners
In this case it isnt so
Here all win all become stars
Every dog has his day before we go.

Wind of Change

2009-11-21T03:07:00.000-08:00

As I was struggling to sleep today, I powered up my netbook to glimpse through the minds of a billion other countrymen through some of their blogs. I have always felt that any pilot survey can be more or less generalised if a respectable sample size is used. I thought of going through the blogs I have followed most diligently through the years.I was, however in for a surprise when I saw that any of those blogs(around 20 in number) had either been ignored completely or given little attention in the past few months. Starting from classmates to engineers to scientists to people in the literary field, I thought I had a reading pool that could never quite dry up.Guess I was pretty wrong out there.

Although I had picked up a few new and interesting weblogs along the way(Sayesha, Twisha, Knotty knight, Soham, among others) with the spattering of a few FOSS blogs(cyberorg, zonker, o-reilly, helios, ...) but familiarity is a feeling which is very difficult to compromise with. On a somewhat disappointed note, I caught up on my reading using Brief, another of those RSS readers the guys came up with for FF3.5(FOSS rocks, again). Although there were beautiful pieces(both tech and linguistic), I felt myself yearning for writings I had grown up with in my cyberlife.

As I swept through Jua's blog, I found a promise for more stories somewhat hollow given the fact that no posts had come up in over three months. Shrink's quips seemed missing, with 2 months of abyssmal emptiness. The FOSSmeister Debayan's post, rare as they were, had become too FOSSy for comfort, with his stories of college life lost in the misty travails of time. Roshan too, in this respect was too FOSSy, but thats what he's always done, so full marks for consistency, not to mention quality. The 'new bloggers' Shouvik , P*da & Jiten had self confessedly underfed blogs. Sherry never quite switched over from FOSS to VLSI, getting left strangled in between. That left me with the now defunct Abhi squared [Kelasis][Nash], who would find it difficult to remember when either last posted.

I dare not chastise any of the aforementioned people for their inactivity, for to be fair, they make better use of their time than I do, and I have myself blogged in grossly inadequate quantities over the course of this year. But the mind yearns for those eagerly awaited and diligently followed blogposts that never fail to bring a smile to my lips or a wrinkle of thoughtfulness to my forehead, as the situation might call for.

So, dear blogosphere of mine(both erstwhile and current), do not abandon me. Post for the sake of your readers, if not for your own.

P.S. The links/names included are suggestive, not exhaustive. Someday I will post a fuller list of what I read in cyberspace.

Analytics - Phase 1

2009-09-29T13:02:00.000-07:00

This was fun. Never thought so many combinations existed. [:P]

3 am

2009-09-09T03:00:00.000-07:00

Dear To-whom-it-may-or-may-not-concern,

I plan to write a short post today. This is not because I have nothing to write, but because I choose not to write them down. Their being archived in my mind is strenuous enough anyway. Today is an interesting date 09-09-09. But its harbringer, yesterday was hardly what one would call pleasant. To quote myself, "all semblance of order seems to be collapsing..." . This is due to a plethora of events over the last few days. It encompasses everything even remotely related to me. Someone told me last day that this world should be a much better place, where trust would be valued and moderate levels of success ensured. The first point is a major departure from a seemingly similar statement commonly made by people, that the world could be a better place. The difference lies in the inherent belief in the scope for salvation the former propagates. It says that goodness should not be choice and chance, but compulsory. Then all would be in peace.

I once shared similar beliefs to those stated above. Both the thoughts, that is. But the fight called life hardened me to such an extent, that such pleasantly optimistic ideas fail to pierce me now. Now all that happens around me either seems pointless or unfair. No longer do I, as in the old days, value an arguement or a person by its merit. Now the primary motivator is need. This is not as benign as it may seem. This kind of approach contrasts so greatly to my earlier self that I often fail to recognise my new self, especially when I recall my old. This is hardly something that should happen to a person no older than twenty. But now I no longer get pleasured by the little aspects of life that brought me boundless happiness not so long ago. I feel so disturbed by this that I even envy people who are free, with unfettered minds and undisturbed souls.

An estranged person called me stoic, even selfish not so long ago. This one sentence shows what's changed. Five years ago, I thought estranged was a concept restricted to literature for great heroes and villians. Feeling was easy to come by. My life was mostly about myself, but no one would dream of calling me selfish. See how we change. I know no longer what I feel. So overwhelmingly involved am I in others' lives that sometimes I lose track of my own. Yet people come and call me diplomatic, selfish and what not. I wonder who gave Cassius the idea that people do not change with time. Maybe the observation period was never quite long enough.

I know half of who started reading will never reach this point, but then today I write not for them, but for myself. This is not the time to write stuff anyway, what with an exam in 6 hours, that I haven't even started preparing for yet. But as I end I tell all who were there for me and for all who weren't, thank you for your roles in my lives. They might or might not have made be a better person, but nonetheless, they made me the person that I am.

---

Goodbye for now

Yours-

kknundy

P.S. Thanks to Aerosmith for these lines :

"Every time that I look in the mirror

All these lines on my face getting clearer

The past is gone

It went by like dust to dawn

Isn't that the way

Everybody's got their dues in life to pay"

P.P.S. I think I promised a short post.

Guess what, I lied!

Maturity

2009-07-26T11:17:00.001-07:00

Times change, people change is an oft repeated statement. Its inherent obviousness was not always so very clear to me. At one point of time, which now seems aeons ago, I believed myself to be invulnerable and unaffected by issues as petty as the attention of another person, or of things like public acclaim and acceptance. But those were days when my primary involvement lay in myself, with little or no concern for the world at large. But, mortal as I am, the craving for social acceptance sets in as slowly and quietly as a silent assassin. This can be attributed in part, at least, to the phenomenon of realisation that we are dependent on our fellow humans for our daily existence, and that without them or their support, life becomes arduous, if not downright impossible.

This feeling, or understanding and realisation as we would like to call it, is given an apt name, maturity, which is in its most basic definition, synonymous to aging. It is true that at some age we, more often than not, become dependent on fellow beings, but that comes at a much later time than the time when we want more attention and importance of others, in the name of maturity, in the name of need. But do we really need to have all that attention. Because all this attention and acceptannce comes at the cost of a lot of compromise on our parts. We have to follow the norms set down by God-knows-who, just because the rest of our “SOCIETY” is following it, and it expects us to do the same without question. We are denied rights as basic as the freedom of thought, with our brains getting stereotypically set into the same rut for ages, with plans of innovation and adventure actively discouraged as childish or even as plain madness. We are reduced to the very structures we despise as unfeeling, the machines.

It is true that adventure of the body suits not all, but that should not deny us the right to adventure of thought. We could then find, at least in part, happiness within ourselves, in our own actions, our own achievements and our own little world, devoid of the trappings of the social passport of blandness, we call maturity with mistaken pride. Maybe, on that day, we finally would, in the true sense of the term, stop existing and start living.

Why William wins?

2009-07-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

Over ten years have passed since I first encountered the marvel called Linux. My first experience of what parts of the world fight out to their graves to call either Free Software or Open Source. Frankly, although I personally use the former term I have never considered the people preferring the latter to be my mortal enemies. But this is not the only facet of what I am speaking about today, so more on this age old war a bit later.

Today was a day which passed to fast for my liking, but as it drew to a close, I came across a book on the life of Bill Gates. As I leafed through, I thought of why, despite all the roadblocks he faced, and with half the intellectual world turned against him as if he was the devil's cousin, he managed to build the largest ever personal fortune and one of the largest business empires in the world. Even that on a concept considered flawed at best and fascist at worst.
As a FOSS enthusiast, whatever that is supposed to mean(ever heard of people developing or popularising the use of ATMs being called ATM enthusiasts), I strived to understand why, despite the best efforts of some of the best minds of today, GNU/Linux never quite faced a formidable threat to the quintessential, albeit repressive, MS Windows.

GNU/Linux was the first great attempt at a free OS that I know of(no, I'll not humour certain people by explaining what free means), giving end users extreme usage flexibility and security, but with great power, as they say, comes great responsibility. I feel(repeat... I feel) that most contributors to free software have been found lacking in this respect.

The previous statement may sound blasphemous given my own humble status. But it is not a statement I am making without rhyme or reason. I had once attended a talk by Richard Stallman, the guy who started it all. At that time I was not aware of the so called factions in the Free Software community. I found his words on freedom and its moralistic aspect in software development very inspiring, and there was hardly a point one could disagree upon. However, since then I have come across several people putting forward the same views, but their words, instead of further convincing me, rubbed quite the wrong way.
This is because of two main reasons, one being that they spoke of issues like nomenclature, which any end-user would consider secondary, if at all, the other being that they offer arguements of RMS, never their own.

RMS, in his own right, can argue all he wants, followed by his infinite contributions, but people with no idea of what he means menacingly echo his words at grossly inappropriate places at even worse times. This in turn scares away potential new users and angers(pisses off, rather) developers who have much more pressing matters in their minds. If all this effort was spent at developing more software or going out and telling new people about this wonder, I think these ends would be much better served. If it was all about freedom, should people not be free to call stuff they have helped create, whatever they want to? Moreover, it would go easy on those people who are entering this world if instead of bickering within, someone bothered more about welcoming the newcomers. After all, isn't the whole idea pointless if everyone fights over it and no one uses or improves it. The humongous wastage of precious time and bandwidth recently on the openSUSE-marketing mailing list angered and saddened me to no end. But then, everybody's free to their all important opinion, even if it messes up the very things the perpetrators purportedly stand for.

In all that I said, Gates' success was attributed primarily to our failure as Free Software evangelists. But to say that this is the only reason would be unfair to both him and his detractors.
First: Bill's side:

His enterprise and vision are exemplary, but in his own words - "Vision is free, so it gives no competitive edge whatsoever". He worked hard, mostly because he wanted to make money, which I must say is not so great an incentive for Free Software people, but at least a bit for the love of it.

Also, his one track mind focussed at making his company huge, helped - "Microsoft looks at new ideas, they don’t evaluate whether the idea will move the industry forward, they ask, ‘how will it help us sell more copies of Windows?".
So did his egotist attitude, which helped him believe he was right, even if it meant that the rest were all wrong - "It's possible, you can never know, that the universe exists only for me. If so, it's sure going well for me, I must admit.".
This, though helpful to his bank balance and stock prices, is not necessarily a good way of looking at it, but it sure pays good. Bill Gates did what no one seems to do in what could have been a much better FOSSworld, got his priorities right, and minded his own business(all meanings intended)!

So, time for some introspection, I guess. It is in our hands that we have our future. Will we, in our blinded views, lose our way, or show the way to the 7 billion others, who look to us for deliverance from proprietarity(btw, is that a word?)

What?

2009-05-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

Life comes to us in many flavours at many moments. A dialogue in 'Hitch' went as "Measure life not by the number of timews you breathe, but by the moments which take your breath away".

I never noticed when this latest set of exciting breaths started, but i am not going to let them stop anytime soon, if I can do even the least about it. My planned trip to Mumbai, I realised in retrospection, was what speeded it all up inside my mind. Everything seemed to flow smoothly through my head without effort, as if someone else was advising me and guiding my course of action. It was as if I was running out of time, as if the shooting star that suddenly brightened my night sky would get dimmed from my view if I was late. It was not any particular emotion that guided me, nor any line of thought, at least back then. But as I looked at those thoughtful eyes full of questions and listened to the words of a well practised yet natural speaker, I knew I had struck gold. Here was this beautiful person I had such a good chance to know, to see so closely and understand. As the hours went by, I realised the fluidity in our interaction and the instant chemistry that had developed between us, which included a tacit understanding, that whatever the unnamed relationship we had was, it was destined for eternity.

My first pang of realisation where all this was going to was when I was reminded of the fact that no meeting in the next 4 weeks was a very real possibility. I was thrown into a tumultous exchange of opinion within my mind, of whether this simple yet beautiful thing would get off the worse if complicated things like emotions came into the picture. I got no answer but this, if it was truly meant to be special, so shall it be, no matter in what form it comes, and what name it takes. My belief was strengthened by the fact that my trip got postponed, as if another divine intervention has occured so one more weekend comes before all the others to follow, similar yet one of its kind. Only the test of time will tell me what is destined, but one thing I know beyond doubt, when I say what I have to, there shall be no guile and no hiding, only that which rings true in my heart will be said. Whether it is heard in its own right or just barely listened to is now in your hand, dear lean and hungry Cassius.

Suffrage

2009-05-13T05:57:00.000-07:00

When I woke up on Thursday, and looked out of the window, I was greeted by nature, not by its beauties, but by its extremity, what with the blazing sun beating down mercilessly upon the people of this land, who, despite their many great deeds, have been reduced to puny creatures, helpless in their plight from the Sol and its fiery self. Well, I knew I could do but nothing to ease the misery of myself and my fellow earthlings in this regard, but something was there which I had in my capacity to have a part in. This was the day I would exercise my right of adult suffrage for the first time. Cliched as it might sound, I can safely say that few days have come in my life when I was more excited than then. This exuberant excitement of mine, though, was not as obvious as it sounds, partly because I did not like the agenda of most parties in the fray, but more importantly because I knew nothing about the people who had registered themselves as candidates in my constituency. Well, there wasn't much I could do about the former, so I set down to correct the latter shortcoming. This, I thought was my chance to practise what I have preached for long, that for any election, vote for the candidate, not the party, since time has shown that who sits at the Centre matters much less to the common citizen than who sits at the local MP seat, since most issues which concern us in everyday life has less to do with things like foreign policy and more to do with things like local infrastructure and security and the like. So my decade long friend, the world wide web, no less, joined me in my quest for knowledge. First in the list was our sitting MP, Shri Rupchand Pal[CPI(M)]. On Googling him, I was pleasantly surprised to see a wikipedia entry. My happiness, was rather shortlived however, when the only information it seemed to offer was that he was a member of the 14th Lok Sabha. The other results of any relevance whatsoever seemed to point to various lists of candidates offered in sites by self appointed election evangelists(sounds raw, eughh, but who cares?). With luck worsening on two more candidates and their encouragingly informative search results, I lost all hope of making an intelligent decision and decided on voting for any damn guy who would catch my eye on the EVM panel. Thus ended my quest for proper and intelligent exercising of my democratic right, what with my delving into Gmail chat on one end and IRC on the other the moment I was done. Guess understanding politics and the way of politicians is not my cup of tea.
Fact remains however, that I was disappointed by the bleak online presence of our elected representatives(for example, Googling "kknundy" threw up 48 relevant results last time I checked, and I am nobody).

GNUSIM unscrewed...

2009-04-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, I was in an intensely FOSSible mood. I had just gotten rid of the Control systems paper and was struggling to get back control of my life, fighting for my MUKTI as one might very well say. Well, suddenly I realised how much I had lost touch with my once fabled programming skills, how even the best(albeit, only among schoolmates) can rust out in this blisteringly moving world and be swept away into oblivion. So, indulging in glorious self-pity, even more so when I discussed my dying C skills with Debayan <here>, I decided to move to the other end of the Free Software world, that of the user. So, I set off to find the most practical softwares an Electronics Engineer could possibly need, and start using them. Even then, I was under Debayan's tutelage, who introduced me to uclinux, which I didn't really get very enthusiastic about. So he recommended GNUSIM8085, an 8085 microprocessor simulator, which was of more immediate use to me. In these days of one click installs, no-one even miles close to me in LAZINESS likes to compile from source. In fact, when I was more into coding, many of my programs used to lie around uselessly for the simple reason that I was too lazy to debug them. People used to even say my coding was sub-par, with my football sized ego(back then) coming to my rescue, making me challenge them to stupid stuff like algo design. But although my ego has long left my side, unfortunately, or maybe not so unfortunately, my laziness hasn't. Still in the lack of other options I decided to do something I typically do once in like a quarter. So I set about the job. But it was not meant to be as easy a road as it could have been. First this dependency missing then another. Then somehow I managed to load a package already around because I wasn't paying attention. After all this when the magic word "done" appeared on my screen I wanted to jump up in ecstacy. Settling down, I rushed to /usr/bin to try it out. Then, I realised, that I had never even done make install. Routing myself back to the installation folder, I carried out my duties. Then, finally heaving a sigh of relief, I went back to the binaries when I was greeted by the best message of all : Display cannot be opened. :-( I seriously considered applying for euthanasia, but as it was already 5:15 am by then, and I had an exam the following Monday, the plans were overwhelmed by melatonin(for the uninitiated, it is our biological clock hormone!) and I dozed off. The next morning, or rather afternoon(my morning), I had a brainstorm of sorts and without rhyme or reason, delved back into the installation folder. There I noticed a copy of the binary resting in peace. For the lack of better things to do, I clicked it, and bingo! Here finally, was the first Free tronicate software, up and running in my teenie weenie little netbook. My entire effort was logged by the inimitable myself using CTRL+C CTRL+V, the greatest computer shortcut ever envisaged. It is as follows:

kkn@linux-vnz8:~/Desktop/gnusim8085-1.3.5> ./configure
checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
...
....
......
(gnusim8085:8374): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :0.0
linux-vnz8:/usr/bin #

Here's a shot of when I started:

And here is the working version:

What is life? part -1

2009-04-18T02:07:00.000-07:00

I have heard that people often look back at their lives and decide how well they have fared depending on the adulation they have received from other mortals. Several people have challenged this approach to measuring one's success through the eyes of others. They ask why it is so important to base your evaluation of your life on what other people have got to say about it. In fact, I am not an rigorous believer of either of the two philosophies. Being more of a moderate, I believe that what we have done with our lives, affects not only us, but also a myriad other people. So it should have atleast some consent on their parts. However, the final power of evaluation should lie within our personal domain. An interesting business practice which emulates this concept is self appraisal, which lets us decide for ourselves how good(or bad) we are. This approach, though it has it's critics and imperfectons, especially since we mostly over emphasise on our successes and miniaturize our failings, more so in a public forum, gives an interesting insight into the human thought process, that of realising how we consider ourselves as people, how judgemental we are about the same failings we would have grossly blasted someone else for doing, when we do the same ourselves. However, on the other end of the spectrum, we see another intriguing example. The objective evaluation, that of examinations, well how objective are they really. We have seen more than once that examinations turn out to be more of blackjack and less asbout knowledge. The objective questions that we see today, as opposed to the older style of subjective, essay like answers of yesteryears, might me much more examiner-independent, but do they really fulfil the purpose of evaluation of knowledge? Would it not be an infinitely better, albeit utopian approach, to have a question like, say in 2000 words what you know about this subject, or for the sake of uniformity, about this subtopic. Two questions of this sort could easily make up a three hour paper. But then people would start saying that the teacher didn't go into the trouble of setting a proper paper. In an utopian world, what they thought wouldn't have mattered, but then, welcome to this El-Dorado. The marking could be done in an interesting manner too, by making all the students check all the papers and averaging out the marks every student got from them.

Well, there was a power cut and all my thoughts got muddled up. Guess I'll finish this up some other time. Sorry for this discontinuity, but guess those who say you never know what is coming the next moment are not so wrong.

First IOTA Teachers FOSS Training Programme @ NIT Durgapur.

2009-04-15T05:14:00.000-07:00

I taught here, it was fun!
27/03/2009 to 29/03/2009
See the complete report here :-
http://sherry151.blogspot.com/2009/04/first-iota-teachers-foss-training-nit.html

GLUG, NIT Durgapur Annual General Meeting.

2009-04-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

This write up took a long time coming. My apologies to all concerned. Nevertheless, this AGM took a long time coming too. When it did come though, it had little if any scope for complaint. The Annual General Meeting, 2008-09 of GNU/Linux User's Group, NIT Durgapur took place on Wednesday, the 8^th of April, 2009 at the conference hall of the D.M.Sen Memorial building. It was finely attended, and the faculty was represented at the meeting by our very own S.Chowdhury sir, Sajal sir & S.Das sir, all from the I.T. Department. The meeting, scheduled for 6p.m. started in time. We were addressed by our teachers who shared a few kind words with us and assured us that their blessings and advise would always be with us. S.C. Sir told us that we should keep setting higher goals for ourselves, and be ready to overcome newer frontiers. He gave us examples of various people who had done pathbreaking work despite roadblocks and lack of support, including the illustrious work of S.Das sir. He also spoke of how our GLUG had, despite opposition from various quarters and a non-supportive administration, risen from a low to become a respected FOSS awareness hub, reaching new heights that had never been contemplated earlier, to become one of the best known GLUGs in the country. He praised the vision and tenacity of both the student members and the faculty advisors which had made this possible, specifically mentioning Debayan and Mayank among students. Sajal Sir encouraged us to turn our GLUG into an even larger entity, which would change the face of computer usage and the image of GNU/Linux as a geeky OS, at the least in our state, at the most...well, you know. He spoke of 4 things that had changed the recent world, namely Google, Wikipedia, MIT OpenCourseWare and Youtube! videos, and how we could very well be the fifth. He was followed by S.Das sir who spoke of the various opportunities we have and get and how we should go out and use them to our benefit.

This was followed by a presentation by Debayan, the outgoing head of our Software Development Unit. He spoke of the various shortcomings of GLUG in it's earlier avatar, which had caused it to partially collapse and how it had risen from that low, thanks to the undying enthusiasm and support of the concerned teachers and students. He spoke of the plethora of work done by GLUG, NITD in the past two years and of how this work can be carried on by it in the coming years. He spoke of the grand success of Mukti '09 in achieving it's primary goal, not that of pulling in huge crowds but of reaching out to the right places where spreading FOSS awareness mattered. Thanks to Mukti '09, new GLUGs have come up at several places like NIT Agartala, NIT Jamshedpur and KGEC, Kalyani. The working of GLUG, NITD has matured over its 5 year life, and it has grown to become a resource hub of sorts for the entire region, with other close-by GLUGs calling in for technical and logistic support. He spoke of the extremely helpful role of IOTA, Govt. Of West Bengal, in providing us with psychological and financial support when we were facing difficult times, and in its usefulness to the future plans and functioning of GLUG. He also gave us an idea and useful advice on the future tasks and responsibilities of GLUG, with plans like the FOSS helpline and Freedom toaster. We realised how much we had done recently and how much more needed to be done yet if what we did was really to bring about the change we wanted. Thanks to Varsha's efforts and survey, now 75 of 228 girls in our college used one distro or another of GNU/Linux, a positive tendency, to say the least, at the grassroots level. It was clear from his words that to make Free Software a true success, the basics were where we needed to go back to. The 3 mailing lists(well practically two,)received the much deserved attention in their role in popularising GNU/Linux, both in and outside the campus. The list of common interest would be groups.google.com/group/nitdgplu g .

Shreyank, or Shrink as he likes to be called, spoke of his 4yr tryst with GLUG, from its early days to its current state. Entwined though his words were in his characteristic PJs, his dedication and love for GNU/Linux and Free Software was hard to miss. It's people like him, with their delicate balance of sanity and dedication, that our GLUG would miss the most.

The Director shared a few kind words with us, about our future course of action and priorities.

Following this, the new GLUG committee was announced and the outgoing committee was issued certificates of appreciation.

The committees are as follows :

NEW: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgt7ftmz_32w522kgh&invite=692183710

OLD: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfxc9dkf_14dpv742zt&invite=293702772

The meeting was then concluded at around 8.

My bloglife makeover

2009-04-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

It was back in 1999 when I first heard about blogging. Well, to say the least, I was horrified by the concept. How and why would anyone, in a sane frame of mind, be willing to lay down his thoughts for the world to see. Back then, the web was a relatively small(miniscule by current standards) community of unknown people, and it is but natural for a 10 yr old, who's grown up watching computers to be nothing but stand-alone calculating behemoths, to feel insecure in his first steps into this world of strangers. Remember, that back then nearly no one I knew had any sort of access to the net, and the "Web revolution" had not yet hit my country in general, and my haunts in particular. Those were the days when even setting up a mail account was news, and 'Googling' wasn't yet a word. So I never bothered to even look for a blog on the net, when every minute spent online costed me a hefty INR 2.30, and my first look into this forbidden world came years later, in 2003, when blogging was in the news for some reason. The content I came across got me interested, as even as a child I have always enjoyed looking into the minds of others to try and realise how they work. Even then, my interest was purely academic in nature, and I never expected that some day I would have my own blogs to write in.

So when I created my first blog a couple of years back, I can safely say it meant little more to me than an escape route for some of my thoughts which I was getting grossly obsessed with. It was then a personal spot of seclusion and reclusion and I doubt if it had ever had any reader except myself to even gloss through it. It was around 3 months later, that, irritated at the stupidity of some of my posts, I deleted the blog in a huff, thinking that it had all been one fine trip into the world of blogging, but that my part in it was over for now.

How wrong I was! My true tryst with blogging was yet to start.

Jan-08:My roomie creates a blog and posts a couple of poems he's written. Everyone seems to be very excited about it. So for the lack of better things to do, I decide to show to the world that there is nothing so great or holy about either of the two, and "Life and Death" is born. It was what I could call my first true blog, but my first post didn't quite have the effect I had desired. I had named it "Goodbye in Advance", and several people thought I was actively contemplating suicide. Here's an insight:

Life has been short, so said a friend

Short it does seem, when we near its end

Remember me, second to none

After all has been said and done

When I am dead or I am lost

I won't return at any cost

It is not so easy to die

It pains so much to say goodbye

I like to live, I like so much

There is no one I hate as such

We like to think that life is long

It might yet end before this song

When life seems unpleasant or hard

Don't think it's played it's toughest card

Good things in life just look so bad

That when they pass you feel so sad

You didn't when you had the chance

Though now you may have changed your stance

But what has gone has gone away

Now I must go, I cannot stay

So farewell friends, one and all

I must answer a higher call

Thus began my foray into the blogosphere. I started to actively follow blogs, fill some of my own ones and discuss blogs and blogging on irc and stuff. It was then that kkn-lug.blogspot.com happened, in response to a diktat that everyone in GLUG core committee must have their own blogs to spread FOSS awareness. By then, my no. of posts were respectably high in what I then called my personal blogs. However, my blogs were so strewn with personally damnable data that I felt uncomfortable to advertise it to the world at large. My bloglife then had a personality spilt, between the personal and the professional.

08 April,2009:Life turns full cycle, they say. I was appointed JOURNALIST, GLUG, NIT-Dgp, whatever that is supposed to mean, earlier today. My responsibilities include settling and documenting the plethora of blogs the various lugcore people have set up through the year. What better day can there be, I ask myself, to merge my split cyberself back into a single entity. I fall back on my true friend, my tried and tested username : k k n u n d y . The transformation is complete. The journey, I guess, is far from over yet.

MUKTI '09

2008-11-13T06:31:00.000-08:00

Mukti '09 is a National Level Technical symposium on GNU/Linux and Free Software .
It is organised by GNU/Linux Users Group, NIT Durgapur.
The mukti site is up and running. Visit us at mukti09.in

Codecracker 2.0 Poster

2008-08-30T23:53:00.000-07:00