Stylesen.org is up and running :)

Now I have my own web site http://www.stylesen.org with all the information about me gathered together in a single place. I ll no longer update blogs in my blogger or wordpress account. Having my own website was a dream for me from my college days, and it came true today :) So if you want to read my blogs go here http://blog.stylesen.org

GPL'ing stuff out from my brain from GPLv3 Conference

Yesterday I attended GPLv3 conference at IIM Bangalore, which is the fourth international conference. It is a great news to fellow Indian's that India is catching up in pace with the Free Software philosophy. I make the above statement because, some time back when I saw a movie named "The Code" in that one of the press person from India asked a question about "Involvement of developers in India for free software development" to Linus Torvalds. His reply was "Not much contrbution from Indians". But today I would rather say that Indians have convinced the Free Software community to make them understand that Indians are really contributing a _lot_ to this community. Though it is bad to introduce Linus Torvalds when I want to explain about GPLv3, this was the first thing came into my mind when I heard that 4th International Conference of GPLv3 is gonna be hosted in India.
Being a Free software geek/enthusiast/et.al., I felt really great to hear Free Software philosophy from the man who gave the philosophy.
It was around 8:30 am in the morning when myself and Arun Ponniah (Sap) left our room from Koramangala to attend the GPLv3 conference in Sap's Pulsar. We managed Bangalore traffic and reached IIMB at around 9:15 am. Then in the gate we were asked to show our id card and tick against our name in a sheet, which consisted of only _registered_ participants.
When we entered the auditorium a guy (Chineese/Japaneese not sure) was displaying his hardware which had a small electronic display and scrolled information about GPLv3. He said it is his creation and it is GPLed.
At around 9:50 the hero of the event Richard M Stallman (RMS) popped into the auditorium. Dr. Nagarjuna, who is the chairman of Free Software Foundation India gave the schedule of the days events. Then RMS took over and he appeared slightly upset on the crowd which turned up. The first thing he told was "There are so many seats unoccupied, dont ever say people not to attend since we have less number of seats", and he asked the people who were there, to message to their friends whom they know to invite them to the event.
Then he went into the topic GPLv3. When he started he forgot two important terms "Propagate and Convey" which the key terms for GPLv3. He jokingly remarked "See I ve forgot the terms which I shouldn have, which shows am getting old". He started explaining the some of the most important changes in GPLv3 from GPLv2.
RMS says that Digital Rights Management (DRM) is an evil and it can pose a very big threat in the future. He uses the term Digital Restriction Management to refer DRM. Refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Rights_Management to get an insight about DRM. When somebody raised a question about whats your opinion about Linus not supporting GPLv3 he responded that Linus had never supported Free Software Movement in the past and he wont in the future too. There is something known as "Tivolization" which is the part which Linus is against. Tivolizing is a process in which a box (an hardware entity) captures all the TV programs and makes it available to the user, whenever he wants to use it. Some vedors makes such kinds of boxes and most of them have GNU/Linux inside it, on top which they run their applications. The problem here is most of the companies which provide these hardware put some checksum on these boxes which restricts the user from modifying the underlying software's source code and run it again. They will allow particular copies of software which the company provides and not the modified ones by the user to run, though it is technically feasible on the hardware which is a violation according to GPL. RMS says that if the vendor wants the user not to change it then let him burn it in a ROM or flash memory and give the box, at which point it becomes a hardware and GPL has nothing to do with that. But those companies dont burn it in ROM but only put these nasty checksum at the software level and keep the right to modify the software with them, which violates the principles of Free Software philosophy (refer http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html).
Another thing which GPLv3 wants to insist is minimize the threat by imposing software patents. The painful part in the conference is most of the people who attended considered it as a local Glug meeting and posted silly questions, but RMS who is a straight forward person just pointed out that your question is not worth to be asked in this conference. RMS answered to a lot of questions. RMS was very careful in using the words he spoke. The thing which I admired a lot was whenever a person said Linux OS he said it is GNU/Linux system, it is true and required to make people understand that it is GNU who gave us all these facilities which we leverage today and shouldn put a wrapper and say Linux. Also RMS gave a huge explanation why we shouldn call it as Linux and call the Operating system as GNU/Linux, I was very proud to say that the same explanation I ve given n number of times to people to whom I ve preached GNU philosophy.
RMS said in India, Kerala is the only state which has accepted and adopted Free Software for school education and gradually implying it to students of grade 8 and extending it to the upper grade students too.
I was unable to attend the afternoon session due to some personal reasons. Anyway had a nice time there :)
After returning I had a lot of discussions about Free software with my friends and room mates. I was a bit worried about why people are not accepting Free Software philosopy and say we are speaking communism if we speak Free Software? and to get cleared I consulted my guru who preached and GPLed my brain, he said once in near future when people lose their Freedom to use software then they realize the need for this philosophy, and again start joining the community, which will take another 30 years if they lost this feeling of Free Software. My guru quoted a phrase which was the one even I was thinking for a long time,
"If speaking of freedom is communism., so be it., I'll be a communist"
This feeling of Freedom should be in everyone's mind and we need to get our freedom, for which we need to sync with Free Software Philosophy and be a part of the "Real Movement" :)
"Free the Code, Free the user"

Travelling is a pain now :(

Today morning I returned from Arupukkotai. I came in a nice air bus, but before getting tickets for that gosh!!! Last week also the same thing happened. I ve never booked or reserved tickets in advance for bus before. The same way I thoguht I can travel from Blore to Trichy easily last week without booking, but that was the end and I got to the peaks before I could make the trip. The return journey from Trichy was a bit painful, I had to switch two buses one from Trichy to Salem and then from Salem to Blore. I was there in Salem bus stand at around 12:00 am and I missed 3 buses since I was unable to get on any of them since there was so much rush (this is the scenario on all weekends I suppose). The more worst thing was nearly three people lost their mobile in the rush before getting a seat in the bus. Even when I got into the bus after stamping on so many people toes I could feel soem idiots keeping their hands in my pocket and trying to take my mobile or whatver they find profitable. Thank gawd!! I usually put very tight trousers (my girl friend use to scold me for that :)) so before those idiots could get my purse or mobile I got in :) Yesterday even a worse thing happened before getting a ticket back to blore from Arupukkotai. I think things are getting worse day by day, for getting a token for a seat in the bus I was forced to bribe a private agent. A pathetic thing I noticed is today black marketting has crept even in travel agencies. Even when they have tickets for the trips, these travel agents are refusing to sell those unless they are paid more, also they are very confident that all the tickets will sell if it is a weekend. This applies even for some big head guys in this industry. Then some how I got a ticket and came to Blore :) and blogging.

Joined SpikeSource India!!!

I joined SpikeSource Software on June 19th 2006. Its an open source based company and its really cool to work here. I got a laptop (HP compaq nx6110). Am in Bangalore and getting adapted to the people an the custom here. But I don't find much difference here. Last weekend I went to Trichy and had a nice time :)

Got my final sem results

I got my final semester results. Not bad this time and this is the highest score I ve got in the college. GPA is 8.93. Subject External Internal Total Grade Parallel Processing 44 18 62 C Multimedia 60 22 82 A Operating System 59 24 83 A Engineering Economics 59 25 84 A Advanced Networking 69 25 94 S Wireless Technology 53 25 78 B Project 146 50 196 S Hmmm. With this I ve completed my UG :)

My Bike is back to Trichy!

Hmmm, I brought my bike back to Trichy from Madurai yesterday. Yesterday I drove my bike all the way from Madurai to Trichy (This is the eight time am doing it :)). I was accompanied by my junior Praveen, he gave a nice company. I took the bike at 6:00am from my room after watching a nice and interesting movie and then reached Trichy at 10:00am sharp (to my home). It took nearly 45 minutes for me to cross Matuthavani because we had the Algar Thiruvizha which I didn anticipated and a lot of Traffic jams, road redirections,etc. But we were fortunate enough to reach home before the hot sun came above our head and start burning us (Yeah!!! its too hot both in Madurai and Trichy :( ). This was time I was extemely fast on the roads and I drove at the speed of 80-85kmph continuously for more than fifteen minutes and enjoyed it. I thought of even increasing the speed but unfortunately my bike cried to me not to pain it toooooo much :)(so my average speed was about 65kmph). I stopped at Kottampatti and Viralimalai for half an hour each to allow my bike to take a breath and also I needed a break in between. Today I gave my bike for a complete service in a TVS service station and got it back just now (its cool and my bike runs smooth, and takes back to the time when I first touched it three years back). Have to start studying for Wireless Technologies :(.

Busy with exams :(

Yeah this is my final semester and am doing well. Still one more exam to go and the final review of my project (viva voce) is pending. Hope everything goes fine. Already people got the mood of going to jobs and so do I :) Waiting to join the company. Shall blog regularly after my exams :)