How come Slashdot itself is never a victim of the 'slashdot effect', atleast on a regular basis as compared to the sites, it links to, considering the typical slashdotter does not read the article linked to.
This is a good article on linux in the sub-continent, on dawn - a pakistani newspaper, though it's long & not so new to us geeks. BTW,Frederick Noronha is a sort of Indian RMS, with less zealotry & is a free-lance journalist whose main area of concern is, no guesses, free software.
Your worst nightmare may be coming true. And remember that karnataka(of which bangalore is it's capital) has the largest no. of engineering colleges, that's a coup.
But most of the faculty in the top univ's & college's are atleast aware of linux & it is not entirely discouraging. And thanks to the LUG's it is being noticed, even if not extensively used. Heck, In my college, Me & one of my friends, both commerce graduates had more knowledge of linux than the CS guys. And in most colleges in my city, it is the vocal minority like us that has played a big role in popularising linux. Actually the crackdown on piracy will encourage the move to linux, since most of the educational institutes are using pirated stuff. I know some colleges which have started teaching Staroffice in bangalore. Maybe, if something like the dotcoms happened to linux, it would gain some attention, atleast among the 'where's the next big $ coming from?' kind of people.
Indian language computing on linux(atleast on gnome) will become a reality in about 3 to 5 years, provided the below problems are ironed out.
The problems faced are lack of free opentype fonts(preferred for handling numerous ligatures & glyphs & their substitution), support for opentype fonts at the X-level. No, indix(linked by another user) won't solve the issue atleast in the present form, since it breaks a lot of X-protocols.
Pango holds promise, but it is not being adopted by QT & it will take some time for rendering engines of all indic languages for Pango to be developed.
The plus side is serious efforts are being made to resolve the issue. OT Fonts are available for a few indic languages & existing ttf's are being converted into otf's,Gnome & KDE translation work is going on (some like my own mother tongue 'kannada' is being translated on WinXP) for some indic languages like hindi,kannada, tamil(one of the first indic languages to be translated), etc.,
The things that we should be alarmed is Microsoft's is on the upper hand:
It has OT font's for all indic languages besides input engines, OTF rendering support & BillG who is making his 3rd visit to India has already signalled the need for localisation. And if i am not wrong the fonts have been developed with the aid of the local govt. And they are not in public domain or atleast freely usable on linux.
Btw, here's another example of MS cosying upto the karnataka govt. The bhoomi s/w(up for this year's stockholmn tech award) may cost nearly 40 lakhs per taluk. A NGO, I currently am in touch with was successful in persuading the officials to look at the possibility of developing it on linux. And projects like this need indic support urgently.
I knew of one distribution(pcquest's) that added a few 'aliases' in a script to bring a dos feel to the command prompt. The distro, incidentally was redhat.I am not so sure about the prompt though.
Re:American Culture
on
The Last Place
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
American culture suceeds not becuase it is one of the greatest, but it's Corporations with their deep pockets have marketed it successfully. And what you are saying is very true.
The culture that get's exported out of america is not the best, but that which thrives on popular emotions & has a transnational appeal(coke, wwf, spiderman). The reason WWF succeeds, say, compared to Mark Twain maybe because WWF cuts across many barriers like language, the emotions conveyed are easily decipherable & more easily understood by a villager in bhutan than say, the meaning of songs by any US folk artist(Not that other cultural aspects like the writings of Mark Twain or David Thoreau may be unrelated to people across the globe, but it's just that they don't appeal to everyone & it is not marketable, esp the Corporations). But, not all american culture does suceed, rather, the host country's culture or it's presentation get's a make-over(Glocalisation anyone?).eg:Switch on MTV in any country- Most of the pop song videos (their packaging) look similar, where as the folk-music that you would get, say on their PBS, would reflect the country's national ethos.
Actually, people(including me, once upon a time) do underestimate the intelligence & pragmatism of rural-folk. I volunteered for an NGO(mahiti.org) last summer(still a volunteer), which basically provides tech solutions to other NGO's. The guy there, the person in charge took me to another NGO(http://www.azimpremjifoundation.org/), one of the richest in India, to do some linux advocacy for one of it's project(http://www.azimpremjifoundation.org/init-k ar-clc-init.htm). (The advocacy failed because of some tech-support issues), I was particularly impressed with the financing of the project. Here, unemployed youth were provided with PC's with license s/w like MS-office,etc., & the youth was provided with training. The amazing thing, was this was not a freebie, but the youth had to bear a part of the cost & anyone who wanted to learn had to pay. And another incentive for them(owner of the pc), was the increasing use of tech by the govt(for maintaining land records, weather, grain prices) would increase the value of his investment. BTW, how do you think the phone got popular here. In the beginning, only the rich could afford it. But , phone booths(http://www.spiritualguides.net/Indiastate/P ractical/phone.htm) started cropping up, which increased employment oppurtunities,et al. Besides, the tech here is an acutal investment. Think of the red tape it can cut, the middlemen it can cut, the corruption it can cut.
Sorry for the pasting the link, but it's nearing midnight here.
From the article:
But it is not quite true that they can walk on land, Schwaab said: "We would sort of characterize their mode of transport more along the lines of wallowing.".The national geographic has more info about similar alien species besides a better report on the same fish.Also, Check out the alien picture gallery, for photos of similar species.
Gmat powerprep software, freely available at Gmat.com(reg required,etc). It's a good beginning & the one advantage is it has most of the highschool math content in single package.
I was wondering why you didn't set up atleast a poll on the Cup, considering that the "US of A" had entered the Quarters. BTW, I *had* sent a poll suggestion.
Isn't it ironic, that china, a communist state(??), trusts it people to make economic decisions on their own, by way of adopting free-market policies, but does not trusts it people to make political decisions like electing a govt in a democratic manner?
Re:Comericalization of space. Started by the Russi
on
Window or Aisle?
·
· Score: 1
Not surprising, since russians are cash-starved & they do have a good space & military infrastructure. So, they are putting this infrastructure to any venture that fetches them the dough. BTW, I think uzbekistan allows you to fly a sukhoi for a hefty sum.
The media cannot be a substitute for human judgement & thought. Period. Most people, like the guy in sierra leone, are those, who think less & rather form an opinion by taking the face-value of what the media potrays.
And also, you only hear what you want to know. So, a guy in India (I am an indian too) hears only the negative side of Pakistan (though there are exceptions) like sectarian killings, it' dictators, their hatred for india, etc., Ditto for a guy in Pakistan. The media in pakistan (esp the state-run TV & films) potryas the indian muslim as living under shadow of the hindu majority, whereas the indian media (esp the state-run Tv & films) potrays muslims as having comfortable relations with the hindu-majority. Both instances are in tune with their national values, India's being guided by a secular one & pakistan's being guided by it's two-nation theory. Rather the truth is, there are stories, where hindus & muslims have lived under one roof, following their respective faiths & stories like the situation (communal riots) in gujarat. Basically, people tend to see things in black & white, which distorts the real situation.
Another example nearer home is, everytime a story on India comes up in slashdot, one does see a lot of trolls posting, why india doesn't spend it's money on it's poor rather analysing why it is spent & the long term benefits of such a thing.prosper till to date by spending on technology & for a country
..I can visualise these kids lined up near the wall And singing:
(with sincere apologies to Pink Floyd)
We don't need no BSOD.
We dont need no Microsoft.
Microsoft leave them kids alone,
Hey! Microsoft! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
First of all, v Aghanis thank you Americans for getting rid of stupid Talibani's & speshal thyanks to mister Kaatz for exploding (or is it exposing - fargive my english) us the pawar of the interanet, all with the mercy of out Lord, Americans, mister katz & my favaret commodore-64. Dearest mister katz, i would be grateful if you would thro this technology would stream in your delightfull voice about open-source, globalisation, more C-64's,etc., to us knaalege-hungry afghanis.
.the homer simpson way
Favourite Qoute:"Hello, this is Homer Simpson, a.k.a. Happy Dude. The court has ordered me to call every person in town to apologize for my telemarketing scam. I'm sorry. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, send one dollar to Sorry Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. You have the power."
All the articles below are written by the editor of economic times & it's very logical,practical & filled with real life examples. It's not a senseless pro-globalisation rant by an industrialist. It's india-centric but the logic can be applied to any developing countries. I have linked the articles that are most relevant to this discussion.
You can help the organisation either financially or by developing applications. Follow for more details including a mailing list for developers.
And do remember, it's target audience is farmers, small traders in developing countries. So, they require applications for these groups. For example, they are trying to developing financial applications that can give details about microcredit transactions of a villager in India, or one that gives details about land records, simple things else-where, but for which the bureaucracy has complicated procedures.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't stand that "K". You can always use the program description instead of the program name in the menu. Good for non-english users too.
The 'Reinstalling Windows' Song
How about a good ol' catfight between Super-Lois & Super-Lana.
You mean this or this.
How come Slashdot itself is never a victim of the 'slashdot effect', atleast on a regular basis as compared to the sites, it links to, considering the typical slashdotter does not read the article linked to.
This is a good article on linux in the sub-continent, on dawn - a pakistani newspaper, though it's long & not so new to us geeks. BTW,Frederick Noronha is a sort of Indian RMS, with less zealotry & is a free-lance journalist whose main area of concern is, no guesses, free software.
Your worst nightmare may be coming true. And remember that karnataka(of which bangalore is it's capital) has the largest no. of engineering colleges, that's a coup. But most of the faculty in the top univ's & college's are atleast aware of linux & it is not entirely discouraging. And thanks to the LUG's it is being noticed, even if not extensively used. Heck, In my college, Me & one of my friends, both commerce graduates had more knowledge of linux than the CS guys. And in most colleges in my city, it is the vocal minority like us that has played a big role in popularising linux. Actually the crackdown on piracy will encourage the move to linux, since most of the educational institutes are using pirated stuff. I know some colleges which have started teaching Staroffice in bangalore. Maybe, if something like the dotcoms happened to linux, it would gain some attention, atleast among the 'where's the next big $ coming from?' kind of people.
The problems faced are lack of free opentype fonts(preferred for handling numerous ligatures & glyphs & their substitution), support for opentype fonts at the X-level. No, indix(linked by another user) won't solve the issue atleast in the present form, since it breaks a lot of X-protocols. Pango holds promise, but it is not being adopted by QT & it will take some time for rendering engines of all indic languages for Pango to be developed.
The plus side is serious efforts are being made to resolve the issue. OT Fonts are available for a few indic languages & existing ttf's are being converted into otf's,Gnome & KDE translation work is going on (some like my own mother tongue 'kannada' is being translated on WinXP) for some indic languages like hindi,kannada, tamil(one of the first indic languages to be translated), etc.,
The things that we should be alarmed is Microsoft's is on the upper hand: It has OT font's for all indic languages besides input engines, OTF rendering support & BillG who is making his 3rd visit to India has already signalled the need for localisation. And if i am not wrong the fonts have been developed with the aid of the local govt. And they are not in public domain or atleast freely usable on linux.
For more details, see: Indic computing mailing lists-search the indic_computing_devel mailing list for extensive criticism of indix & also the kde 18n mailing list. indlinux,kannada mailing list
Btw, here's another example of MS cosying upto the karnataka govt. The bhoomi s/w(up for this year's stockholmn tech award) may cost nearly 40 lakhs per taluk. A NGO, I currently am in touch with was successful in persuading the officials to look at the possibility of developing it on linux. And projects like this need indic support urgently.
The above Bookmarklet or for that matter any bookmarlet could be used in Galeon.
I knew of one distribution(pcquest's) that added a few 'aliases' in a script to bring a dos feel to the command prompt. The distro, incidentally was redhat.I am not so sure about the prompt though.
The culture that get's exported out of america is not the best, but that which thrives on popular emotions & has a transnational appeal(coke, wwf, spiderman).
The reason WWF succeeds, say, compared to Mark Twain maybe because WWF cuts across many barriers like language, the emotions conveyed are easily decipherable & more easily understood by a villager in bhutan than say, the meaning of songs by any US folk artist(Not that other cultural aspects like the writings of Mark Twain or David Thoreau may be unrelated to people across the globe, but it's just that they don't appeal to everyone & it is not marketable, esp the Corporations).
But, not all american culture does suceed, rather, the host country's culture or it's presentation get's a make-over(Glocalisation anyone?).eg:Switch on MTV in any country- Most of the pop song videos (their packaging) look similar, where as the folk-music that you would get, say on their PBS, would reflect the country's national ethos.
Mandrake Forum also has an article with nice suggestions for lwn.net.
Sorry for the pasting the link, but it's nearing midnight here.
From the article: But it is not quite true that they can walk on land, Schwaab said: "We would sort of characterize their mode of transport more along the lines of wallowing." .The national geographic has more info about similar alien species besides a better report on the same fish.Also, Check out the alien picture gallery, for photos of similar species.
Gmat powerprep software, freely available at Gmat.com(reg required,etc). It's a good beginning & the one advantage is it has most of the highschool math content in single package.
Wondering what the world cup has to do with "news with nerds". Well the world cup requires "The largest converged voice and data network ever". Avaya, one of the partners, also has some more details on it's site. If you could find a decent article written by a 3rd party, post it. Until then you have to make do with this.
Isn't it ironic, that china, a communist state(??), trusts it people to make economic decisions on their own, by way of adopting free-market policies, but does not trusts it people to make political decisions like electing a govt in a democratic manner?
Not surprising, since russians are cash-starved & they do have a good space & military infrastructure. So, they are putting this infrastructure to any venture that fetches them the dough. BTW, I think uzbekistan allows you to fly a sukhoi for a hefty sum.
And also, you only hear what you want to know. So, a guy in India (I am an indian too) hears only the negative side of Pakistan (though there are exceptions) like sectarian killings, it' dictators, their hatred for india, etc., Ditto for a guy in Pakistan.
The media in pakistan (esp the state-run TV & films) potryas the indian muslim as living under shadow of the hindu majority, whereas the indian media (esp the state-run Tv & films) potrays muslims as having comfortable relations with the hindu-majority. Both instances are in tune with their national values, India's being guided by a secular one & pakistan's being guided by it's two-nation theory. Rather the truth is, there are stories, where hindus & muslims have lived under one roof, following their respective faiths & stories like the situation (communal riots) in gujarat. Basically, people tend to see things in black & white, which distorts the real situation.
Another example nearer home is, everytime a story on India comes up in slashdot, one does see a lot of trolls posting, why india doesn't spend it's money on it's poor rather analysing why it is spent & the long term benefits of such a thing.prosper till to date by spending on technology & for a country
We don't need no BSOD.
We dont need no Microsoft.
Microsoft leave them kids alone,
Hey! Microsoft! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
First of all, v Aghanis thank you Americans for getting rid of stupid Talibani's & speshal thyanks to mister Kaatz for exploding (or is it exposing - fargive my english) us the pawar of the interanet, all with the mercy of out Lord, Americans, mister katz & my favaret commodore-64. Dearest mister katz, i would be grateful if you would thro this technology would stream in your delightfull voice about open-source, globalisation, more C-64's,etc., to us knaalege-hungry afghanis.
.the homer simpson way Favourite Qoute:"Hello, this is Homer Simpson, a.k.a. Happy Dude. The court has ordered me to call every person in town to apologize for my telemarketing scam. I'm sorry. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, send one dollar to Sorry Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. You have the power."
India needs the WTO
Who's afraid of WTO
How Markets Protect The Environment
How not to tackle Poverty
Democratic Capitalism Cannot Be Laissez-Faire
You can help the organisation either financially or by developing applications. Follow for more details including a mailing list for developers.
And do remember, it's target audience is farmers, small traders in developing countries. So, they require applications for these groups. For example, they are trying to developing financial applications that can give details about microcredit transactions of a villager in India, or one that gives details about land records, simple things else-where, but for which the bureaucracy has complicated procedures.
It would have nice to have a poll here, since the said topic is not covered.