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3393 discussions

Ubuntu vs other Distributions
by Dilip V 02 Apr '05

02 Apr '05

Hi, I have just gone through the http://distrowatch.com/ where I could find that Ubuntu is second only to Mandrake in the distribution popularity, and the gap is narrowing fast. So I am sure that Ubuntu will reach the top of the ladder with in days.. Regards, - - Dilip V, My Life : http://www.dilpu.net/

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Workshop on TRIPS Treaty and Computer Programs at UoM
by Ramanraj K 01 Apr '05

01 Apr '05

Workshop on "TRIPS Treaty and Computer Programs" on 8th April, 2005 (Friday) at Hall No: S23, First Floor, Department of Legal Studies, University of Madras, Chepauk, Chennai - 600 005 Talks: Sivasankar Chander, B.Tech. (IIT), M.E. (IISc), Chief Architect, Qryptix Topic for Talk : Introduction to Computer Programs M. Murali, Business Practices Division, AU-KBC Research Centre, MIT, Chrompet. Topic for Talk : Business and Trading in Computer Programs Rohit Rai, Manager - Enterprise Sales, RedHat India. Topic for Talk : Legal Framework for Free and Open Source Software K. Ramanraj, M.L., Advocate, High Court, Madras Topic for Talk : TRIPS Treaty and Computer Programs Other Speakers: Dr. David Ambrose, Professor, Department of Legal Studies. Na. Vijayashankar, Cyber Law Solutions Ltd. S. Ravichandran, Advocate, (Surana & Surana), High Court, Madras Schedule: 9.30 AM - 10.00 AM : Tea and Registration 10.00 AM - 10.15 AM : Inauguration 10.15 AM - 1.00 PM : Talks by Experts 1.00 PM - 2.00 PM : Lunch 2.00 PM - 3.00 PM : Talks by Experts 3.00 PM - 3.45 PM : Open House & Discussion 3.45 PM - 4.30 PM : Valedictory About the Workshop: Recently, the Patents (Amendments) Ordinance, 2004, introduced patentability for "embedded software", but the change was dropped while passing the Patents (Amendments) Bill, 2005. This is an out reach programme for Software Professionals. The legal aspects of Computer Programs are governed by the TRIPS Treaty. Today, globalisation, governance, and almost every human activity hinges upon effective use of Computer Programs and its legal setting. The workshop will discuss the true nature of computer programs, and the character of rights surrounding them, in the light of the TRIPS Treaty, and the relevant Indian Law applicable to Computer Programs. The harm caused by mis-application of patent law to cover Computer Programs in some member states of the TRIPS Treaty, notably US and Japan, impeding free trade, and the possible remedies against such practices, would also be critically discussed. Participation: All participants would be presented with a Certificate of Attendance. Registration may be done at the Venue, or in advance at the Department of Legal Studies. More information at: http://www.chennailug.org/wiki/TRIPS_Treaty_and_Computer_Programs All are Welcome ===============

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Introducing: IndiaCyberMedi -- now on Mailman
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 31 Mar '05

31 Mar '05

--------- Forwarded message ---------- Welcome to the Indiacybermed(a)mailman.srv.ualberta.ca mailing list! Welcome to Indiacybermed! This E-mail discussion group is devoted to enhancing health uses of the Internet across all areas of medicine in India. An early aim of the group is the creation of an offshoot of the existing http://www.cyber-medicine.org site, which would be specifically devoted to sharing innovations among Indian Health web sites, thereby enhancing the quality of information presented across all disciplines. We anticipate that discussion will be focused on evaluation of current medical Internet resources in India and ways in which innovations and good ideas can be shared amongst these to increase the overall quality of medical Internet resources in India and encourage greater physician participation in Internet communications. Currently many Indian physicians have computers and Email addresses but fewer than 1% use them actively. One of our main purposes is to try to greatly increase that percentage, thus enhancing the quality of Indian health care. Although there are limitations of the use of the Internet and Email in our daily lives due to the infrastructure available, the benefits of the use are unlimited. These benefits frequently go unrecognized because of lack of utilization which then becomes a vicious cycle. We need to combine efforts to break this negative cycle and to make optimum use of technology in our day to day practice. The establishment of this group was an interesting partnership between two individuals who have never met face to face, Dr. Kim Solez in Edmonton, Canada, who directs the worldwide NKF cybernephrology initiative, the Informatics Commission of the International Society of Nephrology, and the cyberMedicine.org web site, and Naina Pandita who is a medical information specialist heading the Indian MEDLARS Centre at the National Informatics Centre in New Delhi, India. Our initiative was specifically stimulated by Dr. Aniket Joshi, an Indian internist with an interest in nephrology and informatics, who challenged us to create something like http://www.cyber-medicine.org specifically for India. The three of us expect that this group will evolve quite considerably over the years and we urge subscribers to play an active role in making this happen. The end result should be a substantial improvement in the quality of health web sites in India as well as greater awareness of the resources available and a substantial increase in physician participation in the use of Internet resources and E-mail communication for the betterment of the overall health of the Indian population. There are no limitations on membership to this group. Any interested party can play an active role in our discussions. We expect that further rules for participation will be developed as the size of the group grows. The technical details of the group are given below. We invite your active participation! Kim Solez, M.D. Kim.Solez(a)UAlberta.CA Naina Pandita naina(a)medlar0.delhi.nic.in Moderators - INDIACYBERMED To post to this list, send your email to: indiacybermed(a)mailman.srv.ualberta.ca General information about the mailing list is at: http://www.mailman.srv.ualberta.ca/mailman/listinfo/indiacybermed If you ever want to unsubscribe or change your options (eg, switch to or from digest mode, change your password, etc.), visit your subscription page at: http://www.mailman.srv.ualberta.ca/mailman/options/indiacybermed/fred%40byt… You can also make such adjustments via email by sending a message to: Indiacybermed-request(a)mailman.srv.ualberta.ca with the word `help' in the subject or body (don't include the quotes), and you will get back a message with instructions. You must know your password to change your options (including changing the password, itself) or to unsubscribe. It is: apsaeg Normally, Mailman will remind you of your mailman.srv.ualberta.ca mailing list passwords once every month, although you can disable this if you prefer. This reminder will also include instructions on how to unsubscribe or change your account options. There is also a button on your options page that will email your current password to you.

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Re: Free Software, Free Society
by balachandran c 31 Mar '05

31 Mar '05

Will it be possible to listen to the audio tracks (in May)? regards, bala.

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Free Software, Free Society
by Arun M 30 Mar '05

30 Mar '05

Dear Friends, FSF India along with Hipatia and SPACE, is organising an international conference on free software and related movements. Event supported by IT Dept, Govt of Kerala will be held from 28th - 30th May 2005. Expected speakers for the conference include: Minister Gilberto Gil - Minister for Culture, Brazil Prof Lawrence Lessig - Chairman, Creative Commons Prof Felipe Perez Marti - Prof of Economics and Former minister of Venezuela. Delegations are expected from Italy, Brazil and Venezuela. PDVSA, venezuela oil company is expected to send a business delegation to form linkages with free software support and service companies in India. Details of the conference will be posted at http://hipatia.info/fsfs/ Regards, arun.

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Meaning of Life
by Ramanraj K 30 Mar '05

30 Mar '05

A long post; for a very long term plan :) The following is a quote from the "Meaning of Life" by John Walker[1] <quote> The meaning of life is to live. To live is to expand the scope of life itself, by replicating, by adapting, by modifying the environment, and by evolving into other forms of life. We are the inheritors of more than three billion years of ceaseless global molecular experimentation, of competition among individuals and species, of a relentless expansion of life into new environments and emergence of new capabilities. How can we have the arrogance to believe, so recently evolved ourselves to a stage that we can truly be said to think, that we are unique--that no other intelligent beings see our Sun as a star in their sky and, as arrogantly, consider themselves unique? ... "If they existed, they would be here", says Fermi. So where are they? Nowhere in evidence. Intelligent beings with technologies millions of years beyond our own, spread to the far ends of the galaxy, should not be difficult to detect. We already possess the means to detect even primitive technological civilisations like our own at a distance of hundreds of light years. If they existed, they--the first intelligent species to expand outward among the stars--would be here. And since we look around and see nobody but ourselves, then it is only reasonable to conclude, "We are here, so we are them." We evolved here and we have not yet begun to sow the seeds of life among the stars, but surely we will. Three billion years ago, one planet, the Home Planet, came to life. Slowly life spread across the Home Planet, gaining complexity and diversity until it could think of going yet further. In a short time on the cosmic scale, beings throughout the galaxy will gaze at the friendly stars in their skies. They will look upward and see, not a hostile and lifeless galaxy, but one teeming with life--the legacy of the planet that came to life and then brought life to a galaxy. They will not be human, no more than we are australopithecus or fish or bacteria, yet they, in their number and diversity trillions of times beyond the scope of life on Earth, will be our children, heritors of our coming to understand the meaning of life and the rôle humans are to play in its grand pageant. I am sure there are many others who have the same views as above, but now, with free software, super computers, globalisation and our other resources, it is time to think seriously on the above lines. Cosmology is central to Indian traditions and many of our Gods are also symbols for the whole Cosmos, and having a "darshan/view" of the whole Cosmos is often the highest blessing. To have a rich experience of the cosmos is very fundamental to probably many cultures, and a very worthwhile goal. We do not seriously get started until the vision enters into the preambles of the constitutions of many key countries of the world, starting with US, Russia, China, UK, France, Germany, Brazil, India, etc. and the majority of the people at a global scale. Many of the present day constitutions have very narrower objectives: For eg, the US Constition begins this way: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America" These are certainly very ambitious goals for the 1780's but, today, they could be taken for granted, and need to be updated to setting goals that make the meaning of life more relevant. That would result in resources being spent on a global scale to build better space ships instead of wasting them on F-16's and a lot of other crap. The same equally applies to India: we too have a constitution that extolls justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. Now that the world has become a single global village, means to unify all the ambitious goals should take us closer to the true meaning of life. The free software movement, is a truly global organisation, that has already made life a lot more easier with free software, and is probably the only movement that could firmly lead in giving life more meaning, so that the tools that have been produced are productively and constructively used with optimum efficiency towards achieving the highest goal that we could ever dream and achieve. If the leader of the free software movement does get to lead US, probably "software patents" would be the first debris in this long quest for space :) Regards, Ramanraj. [1] The Home Planet Help file, available at http://fourmilab.ch HPLANET.HLP is a Windows help file, but it could be viewed using winhelpcgi=>http://www.herdsoft.com/ftp/winhelpcgi_1.0rc3-1.tar.gz that is available at http://www.herdsoft.com/ftp/downloads.html

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Open Source/Free Software: Political science
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 29 Mar '05

29 Mar '05

There's this course on FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) that is just getting underway in Sweden. See https://winner.informatik.gu.se/moodle/course/category.php?id=2 Its self-description: "The course will study the development of politics, policy and law in relation to the role of software in society. Subjects which will be treated in depth are the role of free software/open source in relation to property theory, the politics of technology, community governance and the economic foundations for the assessment of free software/open source development." It might be of interest to note that the course is pretty much 'open' and 'free'. In the many senses of those words. Students from across the globe can (maybe 'could', since the cut-off date for joining might be passed) join the course with just a simple email application. Best of all: no fees! It's also running on a FLOSS-based e-education platform called Moodle. Haven't used Moodle myself, but here's the self-description: OPENQUOTE: http://moodle.org/ Moodle is a course Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a software package designed to help educators create quality online courses. Such e-learning systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). One of the main advantages of Moodle over other systems is a strong grounding in social constructionist pedagogy. Moodle is Open Source software, which means you are free to download it, use it, modify it and even distribute it (under the terms of the GNU General Public License). Moodle runs without modification on Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Netware and any other system that supports PHP, including most webhost providers. Data is stored in a single database: MySQL and PostgreSQL are best supported, but it can also be used with Oracle, Access, Interbase, ODBC and others. Moodle has 50 language packs, including: Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (UK and US versions), Finnish, French (France and Canada versions), German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Maori, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai and Turkish. To find out more, see the features demo, try the demonstration courses on this site, or see the growing number of Moodle sites around the world. To meet other Moodle users, join us in the Using Moodle course. ENDQUOTE FN _____ _/ ____\____ Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa \ __\/ \ India T +91.832.2409490 M +919822 122436 | | | | \ http://fn.swiki.net http://goabooks.swiki.net |__| |___| / http://www.bytesforall.net http://www.bytesforall.org \/ ----------------------------------------------------- Sign up for low-volume, high-quality news summaries and updates from Goa at http://newsfromgoa.swiki.net * It's free and volunteer-driven.

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Free Software & Schools of Kerala
by Arun M 28 Mar '05

28 Mar '05

Dear Friends, Many of you would be aware of controversies relating to use of proprietary softwares in schools of Kerala. Teachers unions, free software community and political leaders in Kerala worked against government policies favoring proprietary software companies like MS in School IT Education. We saw public debates on initiatives like Microsoft Project Shiksha. Here in Kerala, Free software is no longer an issue of Software Developers and Users. Today Kerala Government seems to have decided not to provide training on proprietary software(with its resources). IT@School has started efforts to provide teacher training on GNU/Linux (IT@School is a small wing under Dept of Education, Govt of Kerala which is looking after IT Education in schools). First batch training is expected to start by 31st of this month. While IT@School is going forwards with their formal channels of operations in providing teacher training and support , we feel that it is necessary to have an informal network which will complement official efforts. This kind of formal and informal system is in tune with culture of free software movement. (GNU is a social project -- RMS) To establish informal network we are organising a state level meeting on 2nd of April in Cochin. Teachers and free software community volunteers from every district of Kerala are expected to participate in the meeting. District level action groups will be formed in the meeting. We would also like to chart out action plans to migrate all schools in Kerala to free software in next couple of years. Starting with 8th Standard this year. I would like to request all free software activists from Kerala to make yourself available for this meeting and contribute to the initiative. Thanking You, Arun. Venue: Shikshak Sadan, near Ernakulam South Railway station. Time : 10 am - 3.30 pm Please mail me offlist if you would like to join or need more information.

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[Fsf-friends] Patents (Amendments) Bill, 2005, passed in the Parliament
by Ramanraj K 28 Mar '05

28 Mar '05

The Patents (Amendments) Bill was passed in the Parliament, after dropping clauses 3(k) and 3(ka) relating to computer programs, restoring the status quo. Computer programs are outside the purview of patentability. http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=8096 <quote> It is proposed to omit the clarification relating to patenting of software related inventions introduced by the Ordinance as Section 3(k) and 3 (ka). The clarification was objected to on the ground that this may give rise to monopoly of multinationals. </quote> FSF India lead an active campaign against the Patents (Amendments) Ordinance that introduced patentability for embedded software, under the leadership of Richard Stallman, Nagarjuna, Arun and others here. Holger Blasum, Christian Beauprez, and others at ffii.org made a big difference in strengthening the campaign. It was finally the Left that saved the day! Our thanks are due the Members of Parliament for restoring the status quo in respect of computer programs.

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e-voting: secret ballot vs. open ballot
by Ramanraj K 28 Mar '05

28 Mar '05

There may be a need to keep a careful watch over the activities of the Election Commission that is planning to bring in e-voting. Already, the electronic voting machines have "security" through "obscurity". Those who developed the EVMs claim that the device is very secure, but we have to take their word for granted, and there has been no public disclosure about the technical aspects of its security. Internet based e-voting is more dangerous given the element of secrecy ingrained in the political process. The paper ballot is the only secure, workable and verifiable solution for a secret ballot. If people seriously desire to use Internet or other electronic devices for counting votes, then they should reform the electoral process so that the element of "secrecy" in voting is taken away, introducing the open ballot system. There is nothing wrong in voting openly. What does the voting electorate have to fear: that goons will wait over their shoulders and victimise if they don't vote in their favour? That cannot be a reason because political parties, and their agents openly declare their idealogies, and seem to be doing well in our country, and don't seem to be suffering any such dangers. Getting open about our voting preferences is needed to enable voting accountable though electronic means that work better with openness. The minute the voter declares his vote openly at the booth, the agents can count, and supervise the electronic registers. It will also do away with "invalid votes". Open ballot alone can bring in accountability for electronic voting methods - evm's, internet or anything else that cannot possibly leave a "secure" trail behind. If bringing in openness in voting is not liked, then there is point in using evms or internet to count votes. BTW, "e-vot-ing" in Tamil, means chasing away e's (flies :) in jobless idling, and e-voting is sure to be a pointless idle exercise in frustration, with none knowing how it helps. e-voting sometimes has a close connection with "e-mailing" also :)

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