Linuxers January 2005

linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

120 participants
184 discussions

Re: [ILUG-BOM] Meeting - Jan 9 - suggested topic now quite OT
by sherlock＠vsnl.com 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 15:09, Rony Bill wrote: > On Tue, 2005-01-04 at 11:06, sherlock(a)vsnl.com wrote: > > Dear Jude, > > We are deviating from the original topic. This is, the ease of > installation and setup of M$ compared to Linux. We are not. The original topic was 1) is windows popular because it is easy / better / secure yak yak to use Ans. No windowss not easy, ( i still cant install my LICENSED win98 properly - it keeps crashing - and I do have the experience 24 yrs in the pc industry starting with z80 2 Mhz sbc, then the miracle - I assembled an 8088-4.77 that is 4770000 Hz 128KB ram with GW basic in 32k rom and 10MB hd, and a keyboard that would put a gladiator's shield to shame - sob jaane kahan gaye woh din. And the mouse came 4 months later without a driver i wrote an assembly lang driver hah ha) better, or even popular it is become so because of illegal bussiness practices. The long list of court cases shows why (but ofcourse u have to read and understand that link rather than click here and there randomly ) 2) Is it ok to use pirate software particularly by small bussinesses Ans. It is not and not just because u have a completely superior, orders of magnitude cheaper completely legal alternative. 3) Random points about providing service without ability to do so Ans. Dont do ANYTHING without ability particularly when u charge for the thing. 4) Stupid attempts to paper over piracy for personal gain Ans. Rebuttal of this and to show that the pirate needs no mercy at all. 5) Simplistic and totally wrong inference about kernel, distro, hardware, drivers, and applications. Ans: get informed before diving into the deep end. The rebuttal requires the reader have basic understanding of these issues. And finally why am i flogging this topic so much. Ans. because u and many others shifting from windows to GNU/linux just dont seem to understand the difference between fact and your version of it. Nor do you realise that u are doing nobody a favour in switching over to GNU/linux. And that lack of knowledge and skill can be easily corrected with only a little effort. And if u are doing bussiness the rules changed a few yrs ago. Amen

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Re: [ILUG-BOM] Meeting - Jan 9 - suggested topic
by sherlock＠vsnl.com 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 00:46, Rony Bill wrote: > On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 12:00, sherlock(a)vsnl.com wrote: > > In short M$ is widely used not because it's easy but because of a > > whole history of piracy and illegal practices. And they did not > > make the pc popular. It was the low cost Taiwanese manufacturer > > who provided a platform for software like dos, wordstar, > > wordperfect, lotus123, gemplus, dbase, Turbo pascal, etc. And > > they existed BEFORE msdos and windows3.0. > > They have existed but it is windows that became a household name. Did u bother to read that link. If not here it is once again. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041228040645419 Read it before u try to enter a debate. > Go to the various homes and small offices and ask them what is > windows and ask them the list of the above mentioned software. How > windows became popular, by begging, borrowing or stealing is > besides the point. That is the point. And the key argument on wether M$ became popular due to ease of use, innovative technology or plain old theving and skullduggery. > > I had faced a panic situation when I wiped out a client's partition > table in order to simply remove a partition virus. His tally, mail > and docs were in it. Luckily I recovered the files and saved my ass > and even got paid for it. I am not claiming that windows is the > best, I am only saying its the simplest to learn and get familiar > with. Give newbies linux to install, configure and use and do the > same experiment with windows. Newbies are not supposed to install and configure YOU are supposed to install and configure the system as per his requirements. > > Thats the whole issue Mr. Holmes. By the way my name is Jude Terrence D'souza (Terrence to most) > I don't need a REAL education in > computers and software to learn windows. Its simple to pick up and > easy to get around. I never went to any class to learn windows. That is why I said u need to educate yourself about computers and oses Windows is not an OS it is honey pot for worms and viruses. I would not ask my worst enemy to "educate" himself in windows. > > Egos and high pedestals will get us nowhere. But lack of knowledge and refusal to learn will get u somewhere - to the bottom of a very deep hole. > Programmers are very intelligent and smart and should be worshipped > as Gods. Like the > one for Amitabh Bachan, we can even build temples dedicated to > them. But we should not forget that the most endearing and popular > actors are those that became one with the masses, who felt the > pulse of the masses and gave the masses what they wanted. More nonsense. U place the real facts as they are. The masses will make a choice as opposed to hiding things and publishing ads on tv in Hindi about security of -oh-so-wormerful windows.Piracy has got nothing to do with civil disobdience. Since u are so woefully misinformed here is the difference. Piracy is when u take something which does not belong to you AND is explicitly prohibited by law AND u have an alternative for whatever it is u were pirating AND u hide the fact. Civil disobdience is protesting some law which takes away your right as given to you under the constitution AND u do so in the open AND u make it a point to inform the authorities about your protest. Now as a champion of piracy let's see u pirate a copy of windows at Churchgate (or Azad Maidan asumming u could get your other friendly pirates in sufficient numbers to participate), preceeded by a press release and letter to NASSCOM, M$, Cybercafe owners assoc., etc. That would qualify you in a few yrs time to be put on a pedestal. It also shows that u are all ready to greedily take what the FOSS community and programmer offers without wanting to acknowledge their contributions or making the slightest effort to learn and overcome your limited and incomplete understanding of computers, oses, and the history and politics behind the current state of affairs in the computing industry. I have only pity for the likes of u. When I started using FOSS I too was (almost) in the same boat as u but I took the effort and time to get my facts in place before offering opinions based on wrong information. rgds jtd

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Re: [ILUG-BOM] Meeting - Jan 9 - suggested topic
by sherlock＠vsnl.com 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

//Your message to Linuxers awaits moderator approval From: linuxers-bounces(a)mm.ilug-bom.org.in To: sherlock(a)vsnl.com Your mail to 'Linuxers' with the subject Re: [ILUG-BOM] Meeting - Jan 9 - suggested topic now quite OT Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval.// Moderator could u please release this to the list. The reason it is being held: Message body is too big: 9058 bytes with a limit of 7 KB On Wednesday 05 January 2005 18:56, Ashish Saboo wrote: Please do not cc me i am already on the list. > Terrence, > I for one certainly look forward for a " Real Education " & > this is the reason I am on this mailing list. Here I am > highlighting and not advocating the reason of why most opt for > Piracy. Great. > The Cyber cafe people are not alone in this piracy game > but over 70% of windows XP installation in India are not paid . Do > read this interesting article by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh > http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/ghosh/ > > While in USA it will cost a mere 0.19 times a common man's monthly > earning but in India it is 1.70 Months earning ! ie approx 9 times > costly . despite it The piracy rate is 25% in US v/s 70% in India. > Ever Wonder why 70% of people are ready to steal ? . > By taking the shortcut they may have ensured their survival but > have self restrained their progress. and when you seek redressal , > you need to obey the system, This one act has stopped many to be a > part of the main stream. The only way out for this is as you > suggest whack them well & the outcome is many are leaving this > opportunity . So what many more will see opportunity and come in with the right skills and without pirating. If any thing it will gett better for FOSS. > The ultimate loser may not be the small entrepreneur > but the whole IT Industry. How come??. More Foss users is going to improve the situation by retaining wealth within the area generating the service. > While a Home computer may at best > support 4 users. The Internet cafes offer the multiplier effect Yeah I am not disputing that > . FLOSS has its advantage , provided you > techies sieze the opportunity. Most already have. Welcome to the real world ;-). >. Let me know we have our wish list ready :) My mail addressing precisely this is in moderation due to size. Moderator could u please post it to the list rgds jtd

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Re: [ILUG-BOM] Meeting - Jan 9 - suggested topic now quite OT
by Vickram Crishna 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

At 12:06 PM +0530 1/5/05, sherlock(a)vsnl.com wrote: >On Tuesday 04 January 2005 15:09, Rony Bill wrote: >> On Tue, 2005-01-04 at 11:06, sherlock(a)vsnl.com wrote: > >> >> Dear Jude, >> >> We are deviating from the original topic. This is, the ease of >> installation and setup of M$ compared to Linux. > >We are not. The original topic was >1) is windows popular because it is easy / better / secure yak >yak to use >Ans. No windowss not easy, Although the subject line has now been added to with three magic words (incl one acronym), I beg to differ: the original topic was the suggested use of the LUG physical meets to interface with others who have what I defined was a very real need. Yes, windows is not easy, but when you are pirating, then if one pirate copy does not work for whatever reason, then you get another that does. We all have a fairly clear idea of how this pirate stuff began, but that is water under the bridge now. Is the legal alternative a practical alternative, will it maintain or lower the total cost of doing business? >2) Is it ok to use pirate software particularly by small bussinesses >Ans. It is not and not just because u have a completely superior, >orders of magnitude cheaper completely legal alternative. And here you have an opportunity, with the small businessperson coming forward to you, asking for help to get out of this uncomfortable situation. >3) Random points about providing service without ability to do so >Ans. Dont do ANYTHING without ability particularly when u charge >for the thing. But who is charging? Does anyone here think that the local service levels for any flavours of GNU/Linux OSes is satisfactory? (I don't include so-called Enterprise systems, because that is not aimed at this target group in the first place). I am suggesting this as one step for creating another layer of small businesspeople, those who can add value to the small businesspeople set of entrepreneurs (without, as someone caustically suggested a couple of days back, becoming super-techies themselves). Surely some people on this list are confident enough of their skills? Does everyone need to rise up to their level, even when that is not their main thing in life? >) Stupid attempts to paper over piracy for personal gain >Ans. Rebuttal of this and to show that the pirate needs no mercy >at all. What do you call personal gain? There must be some very rich cybercafe owners out there, but we aren't talking about them. We are talking about small businesspeople. They don't make a lot of money, they don't have a lot of money. But they will pay some real money to minimise the real costs they have to bear for being in business. >5) Simplistic and totally wrong inference about kernel, distro, >hardware, drivers, and applications. >Ans: get informed before diving into the deep end. The rebuttal >requires the reader have basic understanding of these issues. > >And finally why am i flogging this topic so much. >Ans. because u and many others shifting from windows to GNU/linux >just dont seem to understand the difference between fact and your >version of it. Nor do you realise that u are doing nobody a favour >in switching over to GNU/linux. And that lack of knowledge and >skill can be easily corrected with only a little effort. And if u >are doing bussiness the rules changed a few yrs ago. I think some of you may have read Ashish Saboo's mail a few days back. I don't think that his attempt to pull together a coalition of small businesspeople needed such a supercilious set of responses. Either everyone on this list has got some good well-paying secure jobs, or you have all forgotten what it takes to run a business in India from scratch. Although the history of cybercafes is quite recent (I believe they just celebrated the decade anniversary of the first one, in London), there are quite a few people who think that this innovation is at least as powerful and potentially far more powerful than the PCO. I am one of them, as you may have guessed. I see absolutely no reason that a business based on fairly inexpensive consumer devices should require a PhD in computer science at the entry level - and given a working life of three to four years for the average small businessperson - certainly there is no reason for the vast majority of them to acquire such indepth tech knowledge - unless the fundas of the business are genuinely too complex. Goodbye ICT, in that case, but maybe none of you here are interested in what that is. It irks me no end to read about the ham-handed way our government (both state and central) goes about frequently changing the rules of the game for cybercafe owners (for all users of ICT actually, but the main bloc of commercial users are cybercafes). Against such inevitable and wayward externalities, one simple solution is for persons with a little more tech knowledge to band together to offer - for a fee, no-one is suggesting anything else. What will the fees be, who will charge them, what is the service offering - are you waiting for NASSCOM or IMC or the Mumbai Police to define this for you, or are you willing to come together and work with a group of these small businesspeople - for all you know, some are your neighbours - and work this out for yourself? If not at a LUG, maybe this isn't the best time and place, then the alternative already suggested is CDAC at Nariman Point, on a suitable day. And if this list isn't a suitable place to discuss the real world, then perhaps anyone who does volunteer a little time and effort to kick this off can put together a different list where the right solution can emerge. -- Vickram

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Re: Re: [ILUG-BOM] linux device driver program.
by hemendra jain 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

>On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 sherlock(a)vsnl.com wrote : >But that still does not answer the quuestion a full fledged device driver for what?? >As the name suggests a device driver has to drive a device like >a jtag driver for in circuit emulation and debugging >usb modem driver for nokiaxyz phone >driver for mytimetravelcard No specific device. Anybody whose got knowledge in any specific device driver would be fine. The main motive is to understand the internal intracacies which are common to a lot of device drivers. >If u have a particular device in mind ppl can check the hardware resources available and join in. In this case, I think the person who's got exp. in this domain would be in a good position to suggest the hardware and related things. Rgds, Hemendra Jain On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 sherlock(a)vsnl.com wrote : >On Wednesday 05 January 2005 09:45, hemendra jain wrote: > > Yes Raseel, you are right. A full-fledged device driver is what I > > meant. I think people who are experienced/inexperienced can join in > > so that it is helpful for everyone. > >But that still does not answer the quuestion a full fledged device driver for what?? >As the name suggests a device driver has to drive a device like >a jtag driver for in circuit emulation and debugging >usb modem driver for nokiaxyz phone >driver for mytimetravelcard > >If u have a particular device in mind ppl can check the hardware resources available and join in. > >And mailing to the list is good enough. No need to cc anyone unless specifically requested. > >rgds >jtd > > > >-- >http://mm.ilug-bom.org.in/mailman/listinfo/linuxers

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Looking back at 2004.
by Amish Munshi 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

Hello All, Source : http://arstechnica.com/columns/linux/linux-20050102.ars/2 Development application of the year We judged ease of use, documentation, maturity of tools, and ease of deployment. Those magical programs facilitate the creativity flow from the hands of the programmers. A good development application or framework allows someone with an idea and some know-how to do his part to change how people interact with their data. *Winner*: Mono <http://www.go-mono.com> The Mono Project develops a common language runtime environment and development tools that aim to conform with Microsoft's .NET framework. The pace of Mono's development and maturation as a platform has been very rapid and has encouraged the creation of a plethora of tools and applications targeting the Mono runtime and built with the Mono development toolset. It has made the language C# increasingly popular for rapid application development <http://arstechnica.com/columns/linux/linux-20040715.ars> on Linux. Additionally, development tools such as MonoDevelop <http://arstechnica.com/columns/linux/linux-20040805.ars/1> have been written and continue to improve rapidly to provide the closest thing to an ideal RAD environment for Linux. Most improved in the community Sometimes it doesn't matter what you brought to the game to start with. There is always room for improvement and occasionally a group manages to pull together in such a significant way to make you completely forgive or at least forget any previous awfulness. *Winner*: Novell <http://www.novell.com> Novell has long been a fixture in the IT community, but this year they managed to dive headfirst into the Linux field and produced a lot of excitement. From their acquisition of SuSE, their managing of the Ximian project, and continued development on projects like iFolder, Novell has really turned on the awesome, and we look forward to seeing their continued progress in the year to come. Oh, and iFolder. Did I mention iFolder? iFolder. Amish.

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Re: [ILUG-BOM] linux device driver program.
by sherlock＠vsnl.com 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

On Wednesday 05 January 2005 09:45, hemendra jain wrote: > Yes Raseel, you are right. A full-fledged device driver is what I > meant. I think people who are experienced/inexperienced can join in > so that it is helpful for everyone. But that still does not answer the quuestion a full fledged device driver for what?? As the name suggests a device driver has to drive a device like a jtag driver for in circuit emulation and debugging usb modem driver for nokiaxyz phone driver for mytimetravelcard If u have a particular device in mind ppl can check the hardware resources available and join in. And mailing to the list is good enough. No need to cc anyone unless specifically requested. rgds jtd

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Re: [ILUG-BOM] Meeting - Jan 9 - suggested topic
by sherlock＠vsnl.com 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

On Saturday 01 January 2005 10:51, Saswata Banerjee wrote: > you seem to have lost the context here. Manoj is not talking of > large businesses but small players without tech skill. > Pricing is decided by competition and you do not have luxary of > adding up all costs. The cost has to be minimise. U are trying to compete with robbery. where does the question of size come into this. If the cafewalla (or a bank) could get away with it he would chain u to his office and make u work for free as his serf. The point here is that if someone decides that the risk in doing something illegal / immoral / unethical is low enough they will do it. So beat him with the legal stick. When that hurts he will look at alternates. Now GNU & friends can compete. This is exactly the position that M$ (and many other businesses) is in - working a broken system by shifting costs to the rest of society. This also (IMHO) is the difference between opensource and free software. Opensource more or less accepts the current broken state of affairs in society.GNU realises that the system is broken and needs to be fixed. Practical issues come later fixing the system comes first. > > Nor does it make sense to tell them that they cannot do business > without skills. They are doing it and making adequate profits. U dont. U walk away and let the havaldar do his bit. The bottomline will correct itself and if the guy can add he will compare your quote with M$ and figure it out. rgds jtd

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(INFO) Link to ebooks on php , mysql, etc..
by lawrence_d＠sifycorp.com 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

Hi, Cud be useful to some ppl .... http://www.computer-tutorials.org/ebooks.html

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linux device driver program.
by hemendra jain 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

Hi All, This is Hemendra. I am writing for the first time. I have a bit of knowledge in writing Linux Device Drivers. Would like to expand this area. In that regards,would like to form a team of enthusiasts who are interested in writing Linux Device Drivers. Thanx Hemendra Jain

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Linuxers January 2005