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[Fwd: [Ilugc] One Day One Command] watch
by Ramanraj K 14 Jan '05

14 Jan '05

watch - a useful command. Communities too need to "watch" out and sometimes act quickly. "hue and cry" has semantic traces back to watching out for seasonal fish from the shores, then actually evolved into a legal practice in England, where neighbours were obliged to come in aid of felony alarms until the practice was repealed in 1827. Watching for dangers, raising alarms, and rushing aid are part and parcel of community life, and being able to delegate some of these activities to commands like watch, could make life a little easier. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-hue1.htm http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/08/02/pol.play.amber.alert/ -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Ilugc] One Day One Command Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 17:21:47 +0530 (IST) From: Bharathi S <sbharathi(a)MidasComm.Com> To: Indian Linux Users Group - Chennai <ilugc(a)ae.iitm.ac.in> One Day One Command :- --------------------- watch - Periodically run and show the output of a program Summary: Watch runs command repeatedly, displaying its output This allows you to monitor the program output change over time. Examples :- $ watch ls -- Every 2sec(default time) 'ls' is executed and output is showed on the screen. $ watch -n 6 who -- Every 6Sec 'who' run and list the current users $ watch -d date -- Highlight the difference b/w successive updates Press Ctrl+C to stop the Watch Command. Read: man watch Wish you happy Pongal & Bye :) -- Bharathi S

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FLOSS meet at NIT Calicut
by Praveen A 13 Jan '05

13 Jan '05

Hi All, We are happy to announce the one day FLOSS meet at National Institute of Technology Calicut (formerly Regional Engineering College, REC) on 29th JAnuary 2005. For more details log on to http://glugc.nitc.ac.in/floss/index.html FLOSS@NITC Free/Libre Open Source Software Movement (FLOSS) which emphasis on the Freedom of using different softwares. FLOSS meet is a one day seminar/workshop focusing on Free/libre and open Source technologies on 29th January, 2004.The event is jointly organized by the IEEE Student branch, CSI Calicut Chapter and GNU/Linux Users group at Calicut. The Seminar is also intended to provoke the student community. The event will bring together academicians, students and the industry people who are involved in the Movement. The event will comprise of two session, in the morning and afternoon. The morning sessions will be more concentrated on the floss philosophy, how students can involve and get benefit out of the floss community etc. There will be talks related to the security issues rising in the computer world. The afternoon session will be a workshop type. The workshop will be live demonstration type about the favorite floss language Python. SPEAKERS The one day FLOSS conference will be managed by the industry people who are involved in the movement. The eminent speakers are MORNING SESSION 1.Atul Chitnis -- He is one of India's best known technologists. He has been at the forefront of India's technology evolution. He was the chief organiser for Linux Bangalore 2004. 2. Shanker Balan -- Systems engineer, Yahoo! Bangalore. He is the part of the team which takes care of Yahoo! Mail related operations all over the world. AFTERNOON SESSION 1. Swaroop C H -- Software engineer in Yahoo! , His book A Byte of Python has been downloaded more than 24,000 times. 2. Pradeep Kishore Gowda -- Senior Software engineer in ZeOmega infotech Bangalore. He has worked with/for Asea Brown Boveri(ABB), Ingersoll-Rand, Deeproot Linux, Business Intelligence and Newer Technologies (BIGANTS) Regards Praveen A -- A proud GNU user http://www.gnu.org http://www.edathanattukara.com My Weblog at http://www.livejournal.com/users/pravi Visit me at http://www.pravi.tk Rediscover the web ! Get firefox at http://www.getfirefox.com Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

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Free Software magazine Issue 1: out! (fwd)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 12 Jan '05

12 Jan '05

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Hello people, (my apologies if you receive this email more than once!) I sent this email to people who proposed articles or advertising for Free Software Magazine. Well, Free Software Magazine (issue 1) is out! Please go and check it out: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com It is absolutely crucial, at this point, that we all: * Spread the word. Talk about Free Software Magazine to your LUG's mailing lists, your geek and non-geek friends, and anybody who you think could be interested in subscribing * Subscribe yourself! (if you can afford it). In the (hopefully near) future, writers and arvertisers will get a free subscription. Until then, please support us! * Tell Slashdot/Freshmeat/anybody about us! Here is a possibile announcement: "The first issue of Free Software Magazine (http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com) is out! Free Software Magazine is a new magazine entirely dedicated to free software. It contains quality articles relating to both technical and non-technical issues; all published articles are released under a free license after their publication. The magazine obviously needs subscribers - the more the better. Have a look at it: if you feel like supporting an exciting project, please subscribe! * Put a link to http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com on your web site. Even better, publish one of these banners on your web site: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/banners/banner-square.gif http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/banners/fsm_banner_01.gif http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/banners/text_banner.txt * Do whatever you think could help the magazine - as long as it's ethical Well, that's it. Please let me know what you think about Free Software Magazine. And... thanks a lot for your help! Bye, Merc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony Mobily Author of "Hardening Apache" (Apress) "...this book can save you pain, humiliation, and hair loss" -- Mitchell Pirtle, PHP Magazine 05/2004

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[Fsf-friends] Do you know anything about GRDSS... (developed at IISc, Bangalore)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 12 Jan '05

12 Jan '05

GRDSS is a GRASS (Geographic Resource Analysis Support System, http://wgbis.ces.iisc.ernet.in/grass) based GIS. GRASS is an open source GIS that works on the GNU/Linux platform, but most of the applications are in command line arguments. The command line syntax for GRASS was time consuming for individuals with limited programming skills. In order to overcome this, a user-friendly graphical interface GRDSS (Geographical REsources Decision Support System) was developed with all functionality of GIS and image processing. It aids decision makers and planners at a decision support system to visualise the decisions with spatial and temporal decisions along with capabilities to capture, store, process, display, organise, and prioritize spatial and temporal data. -- From GIS@development, August 2004 p 20. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia Freelance Journalist P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436 http://fn.swiki.net http://fn-floss.notlong.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://goabooks.swiki.net * Reviews of books on Goa... and more

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Debunking Wine Myths
by Praveen A 12 Jan '05

12 Jan '05

Here are some common Wine "myths" that are either completely wrong or not very correct: * "Wine is slow because it is an emulator" * "Wine is bad for Linux" * "Emulators like VMWare are better" * "You need Windows anyway" * "Wine is bad, Winelib is better" * "Wine will always be playing catch up to Windows and can't possibly succeed at running new applications" * "Because Wine only implements a small percentage of the Windows APIs, it's always going to suck" * "Wine is only for Windows 3.1 / Wine will never support Win64" * "Wine is for Linux only" * "Wine is for Intel x86 only" * "My game has copy protection that doesn't work with Wine" * Myth 1: "Wine is slow because it is an emulator" Some people mean by that that Wine must emulate each processor instruction of the Windows application. This is plain wrong. As Wine's name says: "Wine Is Not an Emulator": Wine does not emulate the Intel x86 processor. It will thus not be as slow as Wabi which, since it is not running on a x86 Intel processor, also has to emulate the processor. Windows applications that do not make system calls will run just as fast as on Windows (no more no less). Read full storey at http://www.winehq.com/site/myths Regards Praveen A -- A proud GNU user http://www.gnu.org http://www.edathanattukara.com My Weblog at http://www.livejournal.com/users/pravi Visit me at http://www.pravi.tk Rediscover the web ! Get firefox at http://www.getfirefox.com Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

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Debian ports to BSD
by Vivek Varghese Cherian 11 Jan '05

11 Jan '05

Looks like Debian is now also porting itself to the BSD Kernels apart from the Linux Kernel. http://www.nl.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ http://www.nl.debian.org/ports/netbsd/ Regards, Vivek Varghese Cherian

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Preliminary software patent FAQ
by Raj Mathur 11 Jan '05

11 Jan '05

[Cross-posted] I've started work on a software patent FAQ with an Indian viewpoint. Please take a moment to read and: 1. Provide feedback (or better, enhancements) on style and facts. 2. Put it in an easily-editable Wiki so it's easier for people to contribute. Please do NOT choose a Wiki that has a complex registration process. 3. Fill in the portions that are incomplete and suggest new topics and/or facts that can go into the FAQ. I'm hoping that the FAQ can serve as a starting document for any action we take against software patents in India. The FAQ is available at: http://kandalaya.org/Docs/patent-faq.sgml -- SGML source http://kandalaya.org/Docs/patent-faq.html -- One big HTML file http://kandalaya.org/Docs/html/patent-faq.html -- Multiple HTML files Regards, -- Raju -- Raj Mathur raju(a)kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F It is the mind that moves

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Edupage: BSA calls for stronger copyright legislation
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 10 Jan '05

10 Jan '05

BSA CALLS FOR STRONGER COPYRIGHT LEGISLATION The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has released a white paper calling on government to strengthen laws meant to protect copyright holders from digital piracy. Fearing a situation like the one that record companies are grappling with, the BSA--which includes such companies as Microsoft, Intuit, and Symantec--urged lawmakers to take appropriate steps to ensure the enforceability of software copyrights and patents. An attorney for the group, Emery Simon, said the goal of the paper was not to encourage specific action but simply to identify a "problem that needs attention." The paper contends that a series of court rulings regarding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have resulted in an "impediment to effective enforcement," but the group did not specifically call on lawmakers to revise that law. CNET, 7 January 2005 http://news.com.com//2100-1030_3-5516568.html MICROSOFT LAUNCHES ANTISPYWARE TOOL Microsoft this week began offering a test version of an antispyware application for download. The company had been promising such a tool for some time, and it will debut an antivirus tool next week for cleaning viruses and other malware from computers. A spokesperson for Microsoft also said it will begin offering a service called "A1" that will provide users with updates to these tools. Microsoft has been working to improve the security standards of its products, and the company's new tools represent its extension of those efforts into the software security market currently led by companies including McAfee and Symantec. Shares of both of those companies' stock fell sharply on the news of Microsoft's new security tools. Reuters, 6 January 2005 http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=7260250 ***************************************************** EDUPAGE INFORMATION To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your settings, or access the Edupage archive, visit http://www.educause.edu/Edupage/639

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[RMS Events] Swatantra - Info
by Arun M 10 Jan '05

10 Jan '05

Swatantra is a conference focusing on Free and open Source technologies. Its the first of its kind event being organized in south India. The symposium will have food for thought for all genre of people may it be from the academic circles or the big time Industrial arena. The symposium is being organized by the Department of Information Technology, Vellore Institute of Technology ,Deemed University. The symposium will be held on 6th and 7th of February, 2005 and will be divided into various sessions. The event will also witness the inauguration of the Tamil Nadu Chapter of the Free Software Foundation of India by Richard M. Stallman, Founder GNU. RMS will deliver the keynote on 6th Feb, 9.30 is the timing of his speech. Prof. Nagarjuna will be the chief guest and inaugurate the event. Please visit the site http://www.swatantra.info for more details. The whole event is open to all including workng professionals and general public.

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[Fsf-friends] Invitation: FOSS brain-storming session with Min. of IT
by Sridharan Anand 10 Jan '05

10 Jan '05

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Dear Free/Libre Open Source Software Enthusiast, There is a committee of the Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India, that is visiting the AU-KBC Research Centre (http://www.au-kbc.org), MIT Campus of Anna University, Chromepet, Chennai, on Thursday, January 13, 2005, in connection with launching a programme on `HRD for FOSS Capable IT Professionals.' The committee would like to have a brain-storming session with all persons interested in FOSS from 10:30 AM -- 1:00 PM on the following issues: - - -- Status of current usage of FOSS in Industry, Government, Education and Research, worldwide and in India. - - -- Human resources needs in the FOSS sector in India and abroad. - - -- Available FOSS human resources development programmes in the formal and informal sectors (in the world and in India). - - -- Government's possible role in promoting FOSS in India. - - -- Any other steps needed to promote FOSS in India. Kindly make it convenient to attend this meeting and give your valuable inputs so that the Ministry of Information Technology can formulate the necessary plans and schemes to further the cause of FOSS which you have been serving individually and collectively in a voluntary manner. Enclosed please find a note on the theme of `HRD for FOSS Capable IT Professionals' from the Free Software Foundation (India) for your information and comments. In case you would also like to circulate any note to the participants in this connection, please send the same to us. The meeting will end at 1.00PM with lunch. Please e-mail confirmation of your participlation to me (Mob.: 98410 26505) or Anand Sridharan (Ph. 2223 4885/2711/1034). Additional information on how to reach here etc. will be supplied to you on geting your confirmation of participation. Look forward to seeing you here on the 13th. Regards, Prof. C. N. Krishnan. Director. AU-KBC Research Centre MIT Campus of Anna University Chromepet, Chennai-44. (http://www.au-kbc.org) - - -------- Comments sent by Professor Nagarjuna, Chairman, FSF (Free Software Foundation), India on the subject `HRD for FOSS Capable IT Professionals.' 1. What are the focus areas that need to be addressed by Govt. at national & international levels? Localization: Most urgent focus area should be to identify, encourage and support the already ongoing groups that are striving to localize (private IT solutions in Indian languages) the GNU/Linux operating system. How urgent this is becomes clear if we take into account the fact that currently only 4% people (based on the approximate english literacy) are capable of using computers, while our country has about 65% literacy. So far IT is enabling only the upper strata of the country. If we want our people to participate in this information age, making content available to Indian languages should be a top priority. In this regard, another serious matter: most of the already localized and digitized content in Indian languages is done in an unethical and inappropriate way, because the documents are encoded in proprietary standards (both at the level of font and data encoding). This is serious becomes clear if we know that this is not allowed in any other country except in India. Govt. must enforce all the industries who are presently in this market (including Govt's CDAC) to develop filters to covert all such documents in ISCII, TISCI and Unicode formats. (please see below our proposals on Encoding policy) Conversion of schools to FOSS: We should work towards the target of 100% FOSS use in schools 5 years from now, and before 2020. Starting now, we shouldn't install any new machines in schools/colleges and public institutions with non-free software. This will eventually solve not only HRD related issues for FOSS but also to nurture a good ethos within the learning institutes that shape future societies. Content Development: While this might seem not a related issue of FOSS, but FOSS practiced and demonstrated a unique model where people can generate and maintain content that they require on their own if they follow the wikipedia model (http://www.wikipedia.org) and other such community portals. We should not only create a mirror of sites like wikipedia in our country, but also should make efforts to create and translate the existing public content in Indian languages. This will also encourage a large number of Indians to contribute in such portals worldwide. Mirrors of Free Software: Indian mirrors (repositories that keep upto date versions of the software developed) must be created and located within the country for faster and sustained access. Internet: Internet is the nurturing media of swatantra software. It is difficult to visualize the success of free software without Internet. Providing faster and economical access to this facility particularly for public institutions will help support and sustain the movement further. Though not related to FOSS directly, we must have the network work within the country independent of the international backbone. Seriousness of this becomes clearer if we look at the fact that when our up front ISP's are disconnected to the international backbone, two people within a city in India may not be able to communicate with each other despite the fact that they are completely wired. This could be due to the non-availability of root DNS servers, and not a very clean routing of packets within the country.] Not having such an independent network may cause serious problems in case of international pressures. Having such a facility is crucial for a good bargaining power of a developing nation. China, I was told, has such a network which works independent of the international backbone. At the international level we should protect our freedom in matters related to imposing software patents. The current stand by India on this very important issue should be held strongly and no modification is required. We should withstand and stand on our feet and defend our independence in this matter without yeilding to the pressures of the so called developed countries and bigger financial powers to enforce software patents in our country too. 2. What policies / guidelines should be evolved to create a strong HRD in FOSS in India? Digital Encoding: A very important issue is to drive industry and all govt and other public bodies to encode all their documents in open standards (non-proprietary). E.g., exchanging and storing documents in MS Word should not be allowed, since these documents being binary not only propogate viruses with them making them vulnerable, but since the encoding method is not a standard and the companies change them in every next version merely (without any technical reason) to keep their users locked and continue to use their upgraded software. If we encourage such usage, then govt. is actually supporting a monopoly practice to flourish within the country. Alternatively, the document encodings be done in text, html, xml, pdf, rtf, in that order of preference. A similar policy for encoding spreadsheets, databases, audio, video etc. All digital encodings of public documents as a policy cannot be done in propreitary standards. FSF India wishes that we work towards enforcing this by bringing in other stakeholders and confederations like NASSCOM, FICCI, CII, MAIT etc should be alerted to take up this issue in the national interest. This will encourage good business ethos within the industry. We wish that Govt. take this initiative and lead. FSF India will provide any help to Govt. in this regard in arriving at a policy document. Curriculum: Second major issue for human resource development within the country is to plan in a major way to restructure the technical curriculum of schools and colleges within the country. What is happening now is no less than a crime: e.g., existence of brand names within the curriculum/syllabi at all levels (schools, colleges and universities). This is a direct endorsement of a particular company and a specific application. This is a serious issue and should be considered very urgent. We need to alert and bring together the policy makers of technical education immediately and ask them to remove all mentions of brand names in the syllabi. For example, eliminate Oracle and replace it by RDBMS, eliminate Exell and replace it by spreadsheet etc. This kind of secular syllabi will provide enough freedom also to the instructors to use what is available. When we went to schools and organizations to promote free software we were astonished to find such glaring omissions. We request that Govt. must look in to this matter. Keeping in mind that schools and colleges are the places where the trained technical persons are getting generated, it is here that we need to concentrate to create a secular technical curriculum. Please keep in mind that a large number or private IT training colleges are directly funded by major software companies to provide education only in a specific technology. If technical training is entirely left to private interests bigger companies will dictate what is good for the country and not the Govt. We should also monitor this area also, since many people opt for getting trained in such institutes. Swatantra Software Consortium: By inviting all the stake holders and confederations a consortium (similar to the W3C) should be formed to make informed decisions on technical and policy issues related to software and technical matters. Standards to be followed by Websites: Access to content available on the Internet depends on the delivery method followed by the content publishers. Most content publishers unknowingly support some specific encodings again proprietary, which will enforce the users to use a particular technology, again promoting certain business interests. A much bigger and broader issue is to drive towards a policy where no technology is allowed to be distributed (marketed) in a proprietary mode of delivery. Just as we seek our automobiles come with nuts and bolts we should demand that every software that is marketed must carry the source code along with the right to modify and distribute the software. This is going to encourage a lot of innovation, as is already evident within the FOSS world, within the country. This is the best way to achieve the self-reliance enshrined in our Constitution, and is the main focus of the 2020 vision of our Honarable President Kalam. Let people participate in shaping the technology of our society. Law mandating use of Free and Open Software and Standards in public affairs is necessary to enable wider and stronger use and adoption of FOSS. Just as the GNU Manifesto, and the GPL together laid a firm foundation for growth of free software, a clear statement of objects and reasons for using FOSS for Computerisation, with enunciation of it as legislation alone will enable use, adoption and evolution of workable solutions. A 'Computerisation [FOSS] Act' may help establishing public networks to handle routine transactions, using FOSS, with transparency at every level, for productivity and growth. Without this, there would be wastage of resources resulting in poor implementations not usable or workable. It is also necessary to have laws that compel hardware and software manufacturers to disclose technical specifications and details about their products to buyers, to enable interoperability and portability. For example, new AGP cards like NVIDIA are getting far more complex than the CPU, and it may become increasingly difficult to reverse engineer such complex hardware to make such devices accessible to free software. Selective disclosures to non-free software entities alone promote monopolies, and therefore harmful. Manufacturers should disclose full information about their products, which will also enable independent checking, testing and verification of product integrity and security. All research projects funded by the state should be made free and open to the public. FSF India has already elaborated the necessity for this in its recent memorandum addressed to CSIR. Software Patents Policy to be arrived at as mentioned in response to the first point. Keep reverse engineering legal. This is required till all the technology is not free. India should reject US pressure to prohibit free software to play a DVD, etc. Any attempt by other bodies that try to create policies that would limit what can the FOSS community can do should be resisted. One way is to play an active role in WIPO to block any proposed treaties that would limit what people are allowed to do with FOSS. For instance, the proposed WIPO Broadcast Treaty would do this. 3. Any other suggestions on the subject `HRD for FOSS capable IT Professionals'. If the above mentioned basic issues are addressed most of the ground work for creating FOSS professionals get created. Contests, Events, Festivals and awareness camps may be organized to enthuse the community to develop Swatantra software solutions. FSF India will help organizations that come forward to organize such events. Special projects for developing Swatantra software may be given to qualified professionals to develop the required software. Nagarjuna G. Chairman Free Software Foundation of India. http://www.gnu.org.in - ---------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQFB4jjjpd4Kqg0tCGoRAjzHAJ9/Vn0PyLAS4usajhy+7hInLgrtSACg842g xOO6GfT6HPZtbR0u+Wbukww= =Gfgh -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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