Free schools of proprietry software

Richard M Stallman gave a small speech at The University of Pavia, in Italy, in which he focused on the importance of having free software at schools.

Transcript here

I had to study Microsoft Access in my DBMS course at college. It was too late when I released that it
was the worst example !!

Yet another great news..

"In the largest such simultaneous deployment of ‘free-and-open’ software in India, over 15 lakh Kerala schoolchildren on Friday start taking their quarterly practical tests in Information Technology on personal computers using a special Linux version."

Read more

Hats off to all unsung heroes behind the effort.

Its software freedom day !!

Its software freedom day.

Once again let us remember those people who have worked to give us
better and free softwares.
I had registered a team for celebrating software freedom day here.
I did get three t-shirts from them - but was not able to organize anything.
But I did upload OpenCD in our company's local repository. Hope that will
let people taste freedom this software freedom day.
Next year I am sure, we will organize something.

Meanwhile - read up V SasiKumar's story on Freedom Movement in Kerala.

They fear the truth !

CIA and M$ has been editing Wikipedia ! Yes, they fear the Truth.

News about CIA editing Wikipedia
News about M$ Editing Wikipedia

Diff of M$ edited Wiki page

A myth called the Indian programmer

" They are the poster boys of matrimonial classifieds. They are paid handsomely, perceived to be intelligent and travel abroad frequently. Single-handedly, they brought purpose to the otherwise sleepy city of Bangalore. "

Read more...

Liberated from mp3 !

Today I converted all my mp3 files to ogg !
Ogg is an audio format which is superior to mp3 in quality and compression, and most importantly it is open.Visit http://playogg.org for more details on ogg format.

Wrote a small script for doing that :

MP3=$1
OGG=`dirname $MP3`/`basename $MP3 mp3`ogg

if [ $# -lt 1 ]
then
echo "usage: mp3toogg input.mp3";
else
mpg123 -w - $MP3 | oggenc -o $OGG -
fi

though it took a whole day to convert 10 Gb of my music, I saved 2 GB of space when it was finally done.

A song of despair

Stumbled upon this beautiful poem once again --

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Pablo Neruda

Reluctant rain...

It goes something like this:
aey barish, itna na baras ki woh aa na sake.
jab woh aa jaye,toh itna baras ki woh ja na sake.

Who paid for my education?

So who paid for my education? It is the poor rural children, thousands of them, who paid for my education by losing their opportunity to become semi-literate. The system is tilted against them and unless there is a radical change in the way that education is funded, they will continue to pay the price for subsidizing the US for decades to come.

read more..

My First Post

This is my first post on blogspot.

cheers!!

Now, what am i going to scribble down here?
Lets see....