Platonic

Video clip : Times Of INDIA’s “Lead INDIA” campaign

Keep moving INDIA

तुं चलॊ तो हिंदूस्तान् चले

Proprietary software companies seem to behave as though they rule the world. Here is an another instance where a free software faces threat from the propritory world.

ClamAV antivirus is one of the famous platform independent free software. You find this software on most of the email servers today. Barracuda Networks, the worldwide leader in providing websecurity solutions is now facing a serious threat for using this tool on its hardware product lines. Trend micro has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Barracuda, primarily targetting ClamAV free software.

ScriptumLibre Foundation, which belives in creating awareness about the economic and social meaning of free knowledge and culture for our society calls free software community to join hands in boycotting Trend micro for its actions worldwide.

Read more here : FSF Community blog

Press release by ScriptumLibre.org Foundation

Join us and the ScriptumLibre.org Foundation in boycotting all products and services sold by Trend Micro.

In this never ending fight for “FREEDOM“, join hands in boycotting all Trend micro products.

Image source : www.scriptumlibre.org

World is so colorful isn’t it? I was talking about learning to create such a thing on my own by taking some lessons from the “Creator” in one of my article earlier. Today there were second thoughts about that in my mind. Hey, there are so many people on this earth who haven’t seen how beautiful this world is. We are still in search of the origin of universe and why try to be a copycat. Just give back the world what you have got from the creator and fill in the color in others lives.

I would like to live even after my death. Don’t be afraid. I’m not talking about death here. I’m just thinking to be of some help to others after completing my duties here in this life. One easiest way to do that is to give “Vision” to those blind people who’re around us and who’re really capable of doing more than what they do today. Yes, your eyes can give sight to those who can see only one color today “Black”.

To be frank they are not blind any more.They know how to read and write and communicate with others using beryl and many other technologies. They have required confidence to do a ‘lot’. “Open Source India Week” did highlight how technology is holding hands of such people. I could see the enthusiasm and brightness they had in their faces while attending the technical event which is well known for “techie’s”. You would have heard them asking sharp questions on technologies just like anyone else. And I would like to give an another helping hand to them by gifting my eyes, so that at least one of them could see and do things better and enjoy rest of his/her life.

I have pledged my eyes today. I’m sure that others can look through my eyes after my death and let me live much longer than I can.

Reference Links :

Read some facts on why donate eyes ?

Are you in Bangalore and thinking of donating your eyes? Contact “Narayana Netralaya” or visit their website.

Bharat Eye bank

Check our your eye world

Oh yes, Drupal new version is out. Now you can build your community faster than ever and there are lot more reasons to choose Drupal as your CMS.

I’m planning to test it right away to check what all I can use from this new version.

“After one year of development we are ready to release Drupal 6.0 to the world. Thanks to the tireless work of the Drupal community, over 1,600 issues have been resolved during the Drupal 6.0 release cycle. These changes are evident in Drupal 6’s major usability improvements, security and maintainability advancements, friendlier installer, and expanded development framework. Further, from bug fix to feature request, these issues follow-through on the Drupal project’s continued commitment to deliver flexibility and power to themers and developers.”

Read more from here. Don’t forget to view the VideoCast.

Hey, don’t you think you need a tool to test your internet speed?

I need this tool in almost all the system I use to ensure that I won’t get affected by the internet. It is also required to trouble shoot ISP issues. They do provide us with the link to test but I never trusted them as my ISP’s tools were not found to be showing acurate results.

Have a look at this website called www.speedtest.com. It’s just amazing, it’s cool and it’s easy to use. Find my test results here.

At last I got my MMC Card reader working on my Dell M1210 which is running on Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10.

MMC Devices found on my laptop:

03:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
03:01.1 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
03:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a)
03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05)

Following lines made the trick to get these MMC hardware working:

sudo setpci -s 03:01.1 0xCA=0×57
sudo setpci -s 03:01.1 0xCB=0×02
sudo setpci -s 03:01.1 0xCA=0×00

They above lines are associating the hardware device_id with the vendor_id to get it working.

If you’re not sure about the device id you better use the following script :

#!/bin/bash
modprobe -r sdhci
setpci -s `lspci | grep "SD\/SDIO\/MMC\/MS\/MSPro" | awk '{print $1}'` 0xCA=0x57
setpci -s `lspci | grep "SD\/SDIO\/MMC\/MS\/MSPro" | awk '{print $1}'` 0xCB=0x02
setpci -s `lspci | grep "SD\/SDIO\/MMC\/MS\/MSPro" | awk '{print $1}'` 0xCA=0x00
modprobe sdhci

I have all my hardware active. Now all I need is an Express Card device. They have already replaced PCMCIA cards on laptops. So far I haven’t got to use one.

Learning is a continuous process. Survival is the biggest question in this fastest growing world. You will be competitive in this world only if you have domain knowledge. i.e., You got to know more about almost anything which exists or doesn’t exist on this world. “Jack of All” can really make his way into any field very easily. You might be wondering why I’m not talking about mastering a single stuff in life. Okay, I’m a master in a business or technology, do I have any backup if something goes wrong? I prefer to be a jack of many things than becoming a master of one. It takes one more step ahead to become a “Master” and I’m damn sure that I will be able to reach that level if my work really needs that much of attention and efforts from me. If you’re not from management or financial background let me show you how you can learn to make money in share market by learning few trade secrets. I shall show you how simulators come in picture to teach more.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was able to peep into this event on 11th and 12th here in IISc Bangalore. I was wondering what Microsoft has got to say about its OpenSource initiatives. Also it Sundip Menon from Novel made it clear why Novell really joined its hands with Microsoft in CTOSummit. “OSIW-2008″ its just awesome! I got to learn whats really happening out there in the world of OpenSource in India.

OSIW is just a new name adopted by “LinuxAsia” - India’s biggest OpenSource Event. I think it really made lot more sense. Its being held across three cities New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore till 15th FEB. It was really needed to show off what Indians are contributing to OpenSource community and how Indians can do lot more with it.

Read this Deccan Herald News which updates you on “OpenSource Breaking Barriers“. Two business models coming up together to bring in new innovations lol, yes OpenSource has got lot in it. You will explore it when you read through this news. Co-existence of Microsoft’s Proprietary model and OpenSource model have brought healthy competition in the world.

WorkShops, CTOSummit, Talks about technopreneurship, Expo, IT Admin and IT Developer tracks did help people from different streams to explore new advancements and event was really very interesting. It would have been better if it was conducted during the weekends.

I got benefited by Mysql session conducted by David Axmer (Co-Founder Mysql) and Brian Arker and Panel talk on Virtualization at CTOSummit. Collabnet, Mysql, Knoppix founders really brought in their real stories to tell us what made them “billion dollar babies”

Cheers… World will see us growing big every day, Come on India you too can make more money with OpenSource

OSIWeek Website

The entire world seem to be on the run. It’s longer than marathon and there does not seem to be an end for this. Alas! its already 9th Feb 2008. I might submit this post on 10th ;). Are we in a “Time Machine“? H.G Wells took us to the future with his book and I really want it to happen here in real life. Check these lines and they have caught my attention from few days. From the song “Imagine” by John lennon

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one

Life is ain’t no funny. Its fun to live and let others live. Its real and its just not the dream. When there is a lot to achieve and explore no one bothers to slow down and look back. At least, its true in my case. Oh yes, I’m a workaholic. Its not work that I do its my hobby. I love the work which I do and hence I never get tired. When there is fun in work why not enjoy and live happily for few more hours with what we do.

This week the time I spent analyzing what I have been doing and what I have got to do did teach me a lot. I did learn where I got to slow down and organize myself to take the right path and optimize the possible results. Looks like the training which I have been conducting is ending with a good result. There are few more who need to be deployed into work but they can work on Linux with little or no help. There is a lot to be done in order to manage the work flow and its high time for me to reach up to the next level and there are many more reasons to think on these lines.

My company is going to celebrate its 5th birthday very soon and preparations are underway. And I’m also growing old day by day and there is one more year which will be added to my profile. Yes, I’m entering into the prime time of my life. Turning 25 in an another 3 days time. Its time for me and my company both to do lots of planning to see a rapid growth in the near future. There are lots and lots of challenges ahead. It’s not at all difficult to set the milestones, targets and achieve them. All it takes is kicking our targets far away from us and set new ones far away to keep going. Life is a never ending journey and we should be adding spice to it all the time.

What milestones I have to set? What is my real target? Where I’m heading to? How much I need to prepare and plan for future? Am I gambling with options? How I can organize my self much better? Where I’m going wrong and why?

If I can get answers for these in a couple of days time, thats going to be my birthday present for myself. I think it’s necessary for every one to slow down and check the checklist to avoid crash landing.

“On the run, apply breaks when you see some humps else you might get hurt. Drive safe and live longer”

Grammar is important…it’s the vessel that carries your ideas.

Many of us depend on various tools to correct the errors in our write ups because we fail to identify the silliest mistakes which we keep repeating every now and then. Its very much important to read and re-read our letters, memos, reports, responses etc in corporate words to ensure that we are conveying the right message to every we deal with. Any ignorance towards spellings and grammar can result in helpless situations and we make fools of ourselves in front of customers.

It was hard to find a good tool in Linux to make corrections to my documents so far. I have been searching for some tool which can help me with this task for years now. Yes, Firefox does come with good spell checker now but we are talking about “Grammar” which more important than spellings. While reading text, we just ignore the spelling mistakes many times. I have come across various novels in which I found many spelling mistakes but I couldn’t give much attention towards it to report back to the writer or publisher just because some of those novels were very interesting and I was unable to put them down.

OpenSource language checker found at LanguageTool dot Org is just great and it proves that FOSS community is not far behind any other proprietary software developers in anything. You won’t believe this tool is available for free and you can even go ahead and plug it into any application you want. LanguageTool is a tool which can detect errors that a simple spell checker cannot detect. So far this tool supports 11 language. If you have OpenOffice you can integrate this tool into it.

Try LanguageTool via Java WebStart: I found this stand alone application very much useful for my needs at home and also for my office work.
Start LanguageTool (9 MB)

Download:
LanguageTool 0.9.1, 9 MB, requires Java 5.0 or later

Online Demo (If you don’t want to take pain of trying it): Click here

License: LanguageTool is freely available under the LGPL.

Brain behind this tool: LanguageTool was originally written by Daniel Naber and is now maintained by Daniel Naber and Marcin Miłkowski. To contact him, subscribe to the mailing list or visit his homepage at www.danielnaber.de.

Software requirements: Make sure Java 5.0 or later from Sun Microsystems is installed on your system. Java versions which are not from Sun Microsystems may not work. Then make sure this version of Java is selected in OpenOffice.org (under Tools -> Options -> Java).

For hackers: The source is available at Sourceforge

Few Screen Shots: available here.

Presentation by Daniel: Integrated Tools for Spelling, Style, and Grammar Checking

You rock when you make no mistakes, when you make one no one will buy it.