How to change file upload size in phpmyadmin!

For lesser mortals in the universe of databases, who still inadvertently use lot of MySql, a tool like PHPMyadmin is the holy grail!

This web browser based, php querier accesses MySql tables and also gives tremendous functionalities to tinker with the databases. While most of it is intuitive, sometimes a small feature requirement needs the options beyond the defaults.

Before I delve into these non-default configurations, just for the record, here is how you get your phpmyadmin to access your mysql tables on your Debian based machines.

fsmk@gnu:~$ sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

Once, you have installed, as a dependency Apache also gets installed. To access phpmyadmin, open your favourite web browser and type on "http://localhost/phpmyadmin"

Now, that settled let me get into the issue of the post.
SQL backup, taken from different servers or simply for the purpose of backing up data are the most precious files on my computer, at least. Now, to move in and out of different machines with the mysql data, phpmyadmin offers a cool import/export option.

While export is flawless, import has a default option which restricts the maximum file upload size to 2M. Once you encounter sql's which are more than 2M you know you are handling quite a lot of data, and in such cases how to restore these >2M files?

The configuration file for the phpmyadmin which checks this option is a php.ini file, which resides in the /etc/php5/apache2/ directory.

Get hold of this file, and search for "upload_max_filesize" in the php.ini file. After you've got it change it to whatever that your maximum file size might be.
Restart your apache service to upload those massive sqls into your database.

The Internet Censorship debate

Freedom of expression takes a new dimension altogether when placed in the context of the digital channels like blogs, social networks or microblogs in the Internet. While there is no absolutism associated with any freedom, the applicability or the non applicability of restrictions and laws between the real world and the digital space needs clear understanding and a distinction based on this understanding.

The stand of Free Software Movement, has always been to sustain and perpetuate the freedom of computer users and information technology benefactors. When the Government of India today has proposed severe but unsubstantiated endorsement of censorship, leading to the curbing of fundamental rights of expression, we would want to reiterate our stand to Free Software supporters by presenting the the threat this move would pose to the essence of neutrality in the Internet and democracy in the country.

Expressing oneself in the conventional media like press, books, television and radio are entirely different, than when an individual is expressing via digital vents on the Internet. The accessibility to the media itself, and the broadcast range of the channels in both the realms are fundamentally different.

In conventional media, not everyone has a say, and the chances of rebutting to the opinions of the 'media privileged' people expressing them is seriously restricted; In the Internet it is quite the opposite. By design the Internet provides equal footing to everyone to express their own views. Anyone can express their views, or counter an expressed view without having to depend on 'media partners' to attach a voice to their opinions. Hence, it could be said that the Internet is self conditioned, and does not require external regulators.

Secondly, the views presented in newspapers, books and television, or any other form of conventional media are in a sense 'imposed', wherein except from unsubscribing to those services there is little of resentment one can demonstrate. Moreover the conventional media vents have percolated deep into the society in a country like India, where it is not the Internet but newspapers and television which build opinions of people. In contrast, the content put up on the Internet operates and caters to a relatively small portion of the population. The sensibilities of the information on the Internet makes sense to the communities of people on that particular service or platform alone, and does not spill over to the streets. It is the user who seeks content on the Interent and nothing is imposed, in comparison with the conventional media.

Further the current stand of the Government to curb and hone down the views expressed on the Internet comes as a shock. Authorities headed by Mr Kapil Sibal, whose lack of comprehension of the problem at hand is being debated heavily on all platforms, well beyond the online platforms. 

http://www.labnol.org/india/censorship-in-india/20527/

It seems he has suddenly gotten aware of the censorship trick. Mr. Sibal and the rest of the Government have been projecting that “religious blasphemy” is what they are trying to counter in the Internet – which is far from the whole truth.

There has been a lot of active propaganda on the net about the plethora of scams that the current UPA Government has been involved in. The facts being circulated might not be audited, and very just but the essence these streams online have been carrying have certainly put the Government at guard and now are using a masquerade of “religious blasphemy” to curb the freedom of expression in the Internet.

The extreme interest Mr. Sibal has been taking in this regard comes as a bigger surprise, for, the issues pertaining to the infrastructural problems of e-Governance in India, the security issues related to the Aadhaar Unique Identification project and the secretive NATGRID are not being given the same importance. These issues about Internet and technology which have been growing steadily for sometime now have to be addressed firstly, which neither Mr. Sibal nor his instigators have bothered about.

The enthusiastic involvement which Mr. Sibal, representing the Government of India has demonstrated, to curb the freedom of expression in the digital sphere manifests the unreasonable apprehensions of our current governors. If implemented, this censorship would beyond curbing the freedom of expression, cripple the democracy, or the little of it which remains.

Free Software Movement with this clear understanding, urges Internet users and activists to take up online campaigns, propagate the nuances of the issue at hand and stand up for the freedom in the Internet. 

Rendezvous with a Debian Developer

Just about an hour ago is when I dropped of Jonas Smedegaard on his way to the Bangalore International airport after his week's stay here.

courtesy vigneshwar shankar

Although I haven't been writing about any person in specific even in my personal blog, in this post I only intend to reflect upon the paradigms of Jonas in comparison to my own. I won't repeat all the technicalities discussed through the week, but will try to project my perception of this hacker, who is more than a mere geek.

Now, why Jonas, and not compare myself to someone I've already known?
I believe our perceptions, and hence our deep principles heavily depend on the circumstances we are faced with, and it cannot be universal - will be relative.
Me and Jonas, as I did very well realize are from different societies, and hence have different mental worlds.

In Jonas' own terms, he comes from a different world and many a times we from this world (as many of us kept proving it through the week) here get duped into just looking at the surface, and not the details of them.
"Surface is narcotics", as he said, is so apt.

I have had a different perception of westernization. I would never be a hypocrite, or a dumb emulator of people from different societies. I must have exhibited some tendencies towards some "unreasonable" emulation, and this week long interaction with Jonas has help me sort out my prerogative in my realms.

Another important aspect which got me all inspired was, the way he correlates his work, its impact to the grand scenario. I think I fail to recognize (at least for now), the ramifications of my own small contributions to the big picture. Being inert about an issue is equivalent to encouraging it, is another point he reiterated many a times.

Leaders need to inspire, and make space for the team to grow and express themselves : A nice notion about leadership I heard Jonas say, and I, like him too have been trying to get closer to this ideal.


All said and done, respecting differences between people and each taking the better of the paths for oneself is what is the ultimate path to harmony and cooperation, both in dissimilar communities of similar individuals, and similar communities of dissimilar individuals.

PS: If you missed the technicalities, here are some reports of the events in Bangalore
http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/karnataka/article2601600.ece
http://fossphosis.blogspot.com/2011/11/jonas-smedegaard-in-bangalore.html
https://alieniscogitationibus.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/debian-pureblends-and-the-freedom-box/
http://sreejithsblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/freedom-debian-pure-blends-and-jonaas.html

Over to Oneiric Ocelot

Ubuntu 11.10 aka Oneiric Ocelot made a silent appearance yesterday in the Operating system arena. Although it has come silently, it does make quite a bit of noise with whatever it has brought along.

After Natty Narhwal and the controversial Unity, Oneiric Ocelot comes somewhat as a pacifier, with improvements on Unity (yes, Unity is here to stay) and official support to Gnome3.


Here are some salient features of Oneiric.

• Linux kernel 3.0! 

Of all the reviews I had read, no one seemed to have noticed that Ubuntu 11.10 ships with the Linux 3 series kernel. That is certainly worth a mention. Although the Linux3.0 by itself has had no major changes except for the notation and rumors about power regression. Will keep an eye on the battery on my machine.

• Unity revamped

As all other reviews have been posting, Unity does get a revamp and seems more stable. It responds quickly, no lag whatsoever. And the aesthetics are more pleasing than in Natty. When I am going to get Oneiric as my production OS, I will certainly want to have picked up all the keyboard shortcuts for Unity.
super+s, super+a, super+f and super+m are for now really handy to view the workspaces, browse applications, files and music respectively.

Another important aspect about the feel of Unity is the dash itself. The new dash is gorgeous which acquires a tinge correlating the backdrop of the other windows/the desktop itself.

• Login screen is sleeker

Another small but pleasing change is on the Login screen itself. It looks simple, yet futuristic. There is also something about the new asterisk while typing the password which grabs one's attention :-)

• No Me menu

The elaborate Me menu has been removed and a less elaborate dock with access to most performance options like Power, hardware, etc.. has been added. Unclear of the intent of this change though.

• Evolution gives way to Thunderbird

Evolution the  long associate as the default mail client has been replaced with Mozilla Thunderbird. Having used only Evolution and not Thunderbird I'm not in  a position to comment on it. From Mozilla must be good. 

• Software Centre is bigger, better

I haven't been a big fan of Software Center. Nonetheless, it has a more professional look and will be of certain use to new users. First thing, I am getting Synaptic, just for sentimental reasons ;-) 

• Missing applications

After removing GIMP from the default install in Maverick, there's no Synaptic Package Manager and Pitivi video editor. Nonetheless, still very much supported by Ubuntu.

• Miscellaneous: Default font all across is the Ubuntu font. Looks a little weird on the terminal though. The default set of wallpapers are amazing, except for the Oneiric one.

• Installation took about 7 minutes and that is still the best in Industry!

• Multitouch support still there; One point touch is left click, Two point touch is right click and the accelerometer simulation kind of an effect with the track pad are still thriving.

• Booting takes about 10-12 seconds on a fresh install; Will see if it slows down as Natty did when I had loaded with hundreds of startup applications. 

 Of all the current OS'es, Oneiric, if not for everything, just for its aesthetics takes a far leap ahead!

Wavelab with GNU Octave

GNU Octave is the Free Software used for mathematical computation. With an extensive support for versatile library functions, and code compatibility with Matlab, GNU Octave is a sweet treat to every engineer and researcher.

Apart from the officially supported libraries and application toolboxes, GNU Octave also has abundant support and addons from extraneous efforts.

The Signal processing toolboxes, are exhaustive enough and consist of speech processing, image processing and video processing functionalities, which provide a common, stable and evolving platform for any of these domain specific applications.


Taking signal processing to the next level, when one is looking for some advanced signal processing functions, rendezvous with Wavelet Transforms is assured.


While GNU Octave does not officially, as yet , support a Wavelet Transform toolbox, the Wavelab toolbox from the Stanford University project works like a charm. With this extensive background to the toolbox itself, I present the procedure for incorporating this Wavelab toolbox with GNU Octave.

• Download the Wavelab toolbox  http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~wavelab/Wavelab_850/WAVELAB850.ZIP

• Unzip the archive; A folder Wavelab850 will be created with the contents of the toolbox

• Create a directory /usr/toolbox to dump the Wavelab toolbox

sudo mkdir /usr/toolbox

• Copy the unzipped contents to the location /usr/toolbox 

sudo cp -r Wavelab850 /usr/toolbox

• To link the Wavelab library to GNU Octave, open the GNU Octave interpreter in the GNU/Linux terminal, and add the path of the previously added Wavelab850 directory, so that GNU Octave can fetch the Wavelab library files when the function call is made 

octave:2> addpath /usr/toolbox/Wavelab850

• Now, invoke the functions from Wavelab by running the Wavelab file WavePath.m in the octave terminal, by just typing WavePath in the interpreter.

octave:2> WavePath

• If the WaveLab has been invoked a welcome message as shown below would appear  

• Now all the amazing Wavelab functions are available in GNU Octave! 

• To take a stroll into WaveLab, type WTBrowser. "Chapter 2 Fourier Kingdom" is something every science enthusiast must look into and understand! 

• Further one particluar example code I was deeply impressed with is the 2-D analysis of synthetic objects ( like images). Type in toon0231 in the interpreter to have some pleasing revelations of Wavelet Transforms

octave:2> toon0231

 Happy Hacking, Happy Learning !
PS: In subsequent posts I will try to regress and give some more fundamental features of GNU Octave. 

i-freesoftware: My eulogy to Steve Jobs

Well, it might sound abusive to add the i-tag to Free Software, I suppose.

After the demise of Steve Jobs, and the initial outpour of adulation of Steve Jobs and few trickles of criticism, I am late in getting this post up.


Steve Jobs' demise, personally to me has been the loss of an individual who showed people how to fight the odds. Like the many of you, even I too was deeply moved and inspired by his Stanford Speech. There is no denying that he was a man to look up to, and learn from at various levels.

But, when it comes to the perception of the entreprenuer Steve Jobs, there lies a deep disdain for some really important reasons I shall try to putforth in this post.

Steve Jobs: The Entreprenuer is not someone I would really be missing (I wrote this before RMS could say something on these lines); Given the fact that I am at awe with the aesthetics embedded in sleek pieces of Apple hardware, the point of contention is Steve Jobs being the grandest mascot of "Closed, Proprietary Technology" and  in this process Jobs has driven his customers into the most dreadful of the proprietary shackles.

Before a couple of years, while I was in an offline discussion with Eben Moglen, he had expressed serious bitterness towards Steve Jobs and Apple. I later realized it was about the BSD code of the UNIX which all Apple products embed, and also of the initial free software projects which today reside behind Apple's closed doors. And today, carrying on with that legacy, there is virtually nothing that ain't super proprietary and really closed when it comes to Apple.

Further, Apple products apart from being the zenith of closed source software, they are also the certain baton holders of highly closed hardware, and now into the Digital Restricted Media realms, ultimately rendering the users with zero freedom.


And as the brain behind most of the Apple decisions, these are certain moves by Steve Jobs which have made the technological world a really bad place! It might be good for technology, it certainly is not for people!

Although a person who showed courage in battling his life through odds will be missed, a ruthless entrepreneuer and mascot of unfreedom will certainly become oblivous.

People, and their freedom first, is what we believe in the Free Software Movement. 

Right Click, Refresh Desktop in Debian/Ubuntu

Windoze users when switching to Debian/Ubuntu or any other flavours of GNU/Linux seem to have a hangover of some futile actions, that one would get used to while being desperate on the Windoze environments :D

And if you seriously are missing the "refresh desktop" options on the GNU/Linux environments, just to demonstrate the power of Free and Open Source Software, and the freedom they provide the users with, here's a small tweak which gives the "Refresh Desktop" option.

By the way, F5 on Debian/Ubuntu still perform the Refresh blink. This tweak is to add the Right Click -> Refresh Desktop option.

1.Open terminal (ctrl+alt+t)
2. Install the the nautilus (default file browser) menu configuration tool and the lineakd is the daemon that runs in the background of an X session and listens to incoming events from multimedia buttons

sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions lineakd

3. Create a directory to dump this and anymore future tweaks you might be performing to nautilus

mkdir nautilus-scripts

4. Enter the new directory,

cd nautilus-scripts

5. Create the script file,

gedit refresh-desktop

6. Copy these contents in the file (this will perform toggling of F5, and hence the refresh !)

#!/bin/bash
xsendkeycode 71 1
xsendkeycode 71 0

Save and close.

7. Make the script executable using chmod.

sudo chmod u+x refresh-desktop

8. Now, the script is ready, we need to link it to the action. And to add the right-click -> Refresh Desktop short cut, go to System -> Preferences -> Nautilus Actions configuration,

9. Create a new action

10. Change the context label to "Refresh Desktop", or "Mimic Windoze", or anything that pleases you :P

11. Check all the "Display Item options"

12. In the command tab, click on the browse option of Path, and link the refresh-desktop file in the directory "nautilus-scripts" created in step 5

13. In the conditions tab, select "Both"
14. Record all changes, or Save
15. Logout and login
16. And there you go! No more missing a futile action :P

War of the social networks

After the long standing browser wars and the still continuing Operating Systems war , we are now at an epochal internet phase where the Social Networks are competing vigorously with each other.

From the Myspace days of celebrity social networks, to the now almost oblivious Orkut, social networking has had its course of metamorphosis. But, the credit of making Social networking a global phenomenon undoubtedly rests with The Social Network- Facebook. With all its flaws and contentions, Facebook boasts of a humungous user base, and stands third in the global population index, only after China and India!

When such is the reach of social networks, the crucial nuances pertaining to the fangs of the Internet like privacy, security and freedom for the users are little spoken about by the mass of the users, or are at least kept obscure to the users by the major players.

Privacy and Centralised Social Networks:

Prof.Eben Moglen calls monopoly networks, or the centralised social networks like Facebook, and the recent Google Plus, as large spying machines, and so, for valid reasons. Users have voluntarily surrendered intimate and delicate data to corporations like Facebook and Google, respectively. With the increase of the un-freedom in the internet, there are high chances of misuse of this data by the corporations either for profit or for information gathering, without the full consent or understanding of the users using their services.

Looking back at the initial days of the Internet, when conceived it was an autonomous conglomeration of end user machines present at the edge of the network. It was decentralized, free (as in freedom) and neutral (as in unbiased). But this fundamental trait of the Internet has eroded substantially, rendering the Internet vulnerable to severe censorship and manipulation by the big players of the Web.

Social Networks, give a comprehensive case study of all that the Internet was supposed to do, and is somewhere failing to do.

Diaspora : The Distributed and contextual social networking, mode of online socializing has been unleashed by the Free Software community. This will hopefully try to emancipate the Social Networking aspect of the Internet.

Knowing the perils of the devils:

1. Privacy: The privacy terms of be it Facebook or Google Plus are apart from being obscure, ultimately end up conveying the fact that the users' data will be not be given the discretion it deserves, on the contrary will be traded with third parties.
2. Security: The fiascoes of account crackings, floods of spams and unsafe content on these networks is certainly worth severe scrutiny.
3. Data ownership: Even when the users have deleted their account, there is no guarantee that the users' data is off the servers, and in many cases it still resides there.
4. Mandates: Users are at the mercy of the corporations for the features and applications which flock the users' profiles, with little or no role to the users in setting up the framework of their social network. Ex: The recent chat application updation in Facebook has created a lot of disgruntle amongst the users, but there is little that the users can do about it. 
   
    Google Plus and its privacy policy

5. Mad Ads: Personalized marketing of products and services using the personal data handed over by the users is a nuisance which has certainly annoyed lots of users.

An instance of a friend's personalized ad on FB!

Getting to know Diaspora:

Diaspora is the social network that puts you in control of your information. You decide what you’d like to share, and with whom. You retain full ownership of all your information, including friend lists, messages, photos, and profile details. Diaspora was kick started by four talented programmers from NYU Courant Institute, after having heard Professor Eben Moglen talk about “lack of privacy and free spying in the cloud”.

Diaspora doesn’t expose your information to advertisers, or to the games you play, or to other websites you visit. It’s inherently private.

Diaspora is not a single site — it’s a collection of different sites, with different URLs, run by different people. But they all run the same software, and they all talk to each other. Each server is called a “pod.” As the service grows, lots of these pods will join the Diaspora network.

The official pod, run by the project’s founders, is http://joindiaspora.com. Because Diaspora is a Free (as in freedom) Software, these 'Pods' can be installed and run even on a personal computer, and be made available to users on a small network for online socializing, like they would on any other centralized social networks. Also, as the source is available the users are free to tinker aroud with the features and share the modified updates!

Diaspora, by the virtue of being a Distributed Social Network, ensures privacy while still keeping the users connected and, not connectedness at the cost of privacy like in the major centralized social networks. With Diaspora, users will be reclaiming all their data, get connected on secure social connections, while sharing the data at their own terms.

Future of the Social Network Wars:

With the arrival of Google Plus, and the previous experience of failures with Google Buzz and Google Wave, Google seems to have hit the right chord this time around. Facebook-ers have been looking for an alternative and Google Plus might offer that respite.

Diaspora, although is the right antidote to the centralization of social networks, it might not well the replacement to the centralized mammoths like Facebook and the growing Google Plus. To envisage the future of Diaspora, I might concur with a Diaspora friend-Peter Rock-Lacroix, who on his blog writes the following:

“Putting aside social pull and the goal of market power, I think the success of Diaspora should be measured similarly to the goals of the GNU Project. While advocates of software like the GNU/Linux operating system enjoy hearing news of market success, they see the existence of free software itself as the most important success, rather than growing popularity. Maybe there will only ever be enough capital behind Diaspora to sustain a niche market or perhaps, it will come to the mass market. Regardless of that, even if a small network of users exist who can run their own privacy-aware, free personal web server, that’s a success too.”

In the next article, a feature wise comparison between these social networks, along with the steps to install a Diaspora Pod will be presented.

Raghavendra S

(raghuarr@joindiaspora.com)

References:

http://blog.diaspora.com/

http://gnuosphere.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/will-diaspora-succeed/

(My article published in the August 2011 edition of the FSMK newsletter
http://www.fsmk.org/newsletter9 )

FSMK Newsletter Revamped and back!

FSMK Newsletter is back, and will get better.


Please share and spread this Newsletter to as many people as possible.
For, Sharing is Growing :)

Do send in your articles for the coming editions...

http://www.fsmk.org/node/79

http://fsmk.org/sites/default/files/FSMK_Issue8_July_2011.pdf

Reinstating freedom in the Internet

The Internet when conceived was an autonomous conglomeration of end user machines present at the edge of the network. These terminal machines were talking to each other using the infrastructure provided by the Internet Service Providers (ISP's). The only arbitrators in the Internet were the standards organization (like ISO, IEEE), which made the nodes on the Internet to follow universal protocols for intercommunication.
The Internet was simply 'decentralized'.

P2P networks

The Internet has been the grandest manifestation of democracy of the users. It has been free (free as in freedom ) and neutral (as in unbiased) until the late 1990's. Starting  then, the Governments, primarily of the developed countries, in the name of making the Internet safer and secure have tagged with some of the big profit seeking corporations in the world wide web to monitor and influence the way the Internet works. The Internet today is no longer neutral and/or free; From being decentralized it is steadily converging to become a Centralized infrastructure with little or no freedom to the end users.

Centralised Server based networks

The closest to what the Internet should be resembling in the current scenarios is the Peer-to-Peer mode of networking. In this architecture, every end user apart from being a client, is also a server.  This is in contrast with the rest of the services in the Internet where we have the Single Server- Multiple Client model. This model is called the Centralized model, where the online transactions occur between the mandating, giant servers and the helpless end users. This deterioration of the democracy in the Internet reflects a major invasion into the privacy of the users and more importantly infringement of the political freedom of the users as well. The case when the Internet services for Wikileaks was withdrawn by the corporations succumbing to the pressure of their Government is a direct manifestation of the impact that Centralization of the Internet can have.

As users, the point we need to be concerned about is the safety of the data we entrust to the biggies in the Internet. Every time we are online, there is almost a certain chance that either we are being spied, or our data is being used for increasing the business on the Internet.

One prospective solution to reinstate freedom in the Internet is, by the decentralization of servers, and giving the full control back to users. Decentralized Internet will comprise of not few servers where all the users will have to mortgage their data, but when fully decentralized, every user will end up having a small, cell phone charger sized Open Plug servers like the FreedomBox.
The FreedomBox again has been an initiative instigated by Prof.Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Centre and now the Debian Community of Free Software developers have kick started the project to set the Internet free.

To visualize it better, consider the current model of online Social Networking: About 500 million users on one famous Centralized Social Networking site have handed over all of their data to a single bunch of servers, after endorsing heavily privacy invading terms and conditions. Statuses, chats, pictures and the private interaction between users on the network is all under the scanner of on single Corporation.

To tackle such hegemony in the Internet, a new model of social networking is being tested. Distributed or Federated Social Networks, like Diaspora will decentralize the way online social networking will happen. Instead of all the users handing over their data to a server farm belonging to a single corporation, users can now put their data on smaller, independent servers like campus servers (called Pods) and get networked with other pods. In this way, the centralization can be reduced from a single hegemonic server cluster to decentralized, independent servers. The best part of this decentralization is that this decentralization can trickle down to the last of the users.

Using the Plug servers such as FreedomBox, individual users can run their own Diaspora Pods, with all the data residing in their personal mobile servers, which will communicate with other pods. Users will have total control over the data, and the extent of its availability to other users and even to the Internet.

This model of decentralization using FreedomBox like open plug servers will not only increase the privacy and security in social networking, but in near future will be applicable to mails, voice-over-internet phone calls, making the Internet neutral and democratic, reinstating freedom back to the users.

PS: The initial writeup for the recently published article in The Hindu , which was later optimized to concentrate mainly on Diaspora*.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Bangalore/article2132236.ece

Swecha Free Software Workshop

Swecha does it all in the big way.

 The ongoing 15 days Free Software Summer Camp in Hyderabad is by itself the first of its kind in India. The workshop is targeting students pursuing technical education and to enable them with the gamut of Free Software technologies which are in use in Industry.  Swecha team claims to have a modest number of about 600  students gathered for the 15 days Free Software Workshop happening in CBIT-MGIT, Hyderabad.

Swecha is the senior counterpart of the Free Software Movement - Karnataka (FSMK); both being part of the Free Software Movement India(FSMI), have everything but the regional geography in common.

Free Software in the air by alone was sufficient to draw someone like me into the ambiance of the workshop, but adding to it was Swecha as the host. I did pull one of our budding activists along this time, and I'm hoping he did get motivated further to carry on his work. The warm and amicable team with my fellow activists there is always an occasion not to be missed. And it proved right yet again. By the way, the experience of organizing an event of this scale is by itself a huge learning experience.












 Comprehensive theory sessions to start the day, followed by marathon lab sessions in about 20 labs all running Debian has been the routine everyday. Although the network has been something less than an adequate one, machines have been arranged for evey participant to work on.

The fifteen days are divided into five three-day modules to enhance the focussed exposure students would be getting on the technologies.

• Making of a Computer Suite  
• Programming using Software Carpentry aspects 
• Mobile Computing 
• Multimedia 
• Content Management Systems      

Each of the days, after the regular sessions and labs,some important complimentary sessions have been organised to enable students on the non-technical aspects of the gamut of technologies they were handling in the evening. Sessions on the philosophy, policies, licensing and social ramifications of the technology are being held on a daily basis, which are equally important when compared to the technologies.

 

On these lines, I handled a session on Distributed Social Networking, taking Diaspora as an example. The importance of Internet to become decentralised and for the users to have control over their data in the current context of Internet technologies were touched upon in my talk. The overall reception of the talk was good, and there was some good interaction about the same all through the day.

Click to download the slides of the talk

 

Apart from serious tech sessions, labs and talks, a bunch of team-events and culturals are also in the line up for the days to come. There have already been a couple of team events which got all the participants enthusiastically engaged.

My stay at the camp was for less than 48 hours, nonetheless was a very good experience. There are better and more exciting sessions,talks and interactions in the days to come. Speakers of the likes of Prabhir Purkayastha, P Sainath will be participating in the camp, and I so did not want to miss them.

Now that I'm back in Bangalore, FSMK is working on a scaled down version of a workshop of this kind. Will keep you all posted about the updates from FSMK.

FSMK General Body Meeting

The first annual General Body meeting of Free Software Movement-Karnataka was convened at the FSMK office on the 7th of May,2011.
It was presided over by Dr.Chidananda Gowda, eminent Kannada literary figure, former Vice Chancellor of Mysore University who also formally inaugurated the new FSMK Office in Wilson Garden, Bangalore.

As the host for the event Senthil mentioned, of all the guests we've had for our FSMK events, Dr.Chidananda Gowda spoke the most fitting to the context of Free Software, with his experiences in the domain of Free Software and Governance.


With the formal inauguration done, followed by the
culture of lighting of the lamp, indicating the conquest of photons (knowledge) over darkenss (ignorance), the General Body Meeting had begun on the 7th of May,2011.



The FSMK General Body comprises of 50 members, and has Free Software activists from varied backgrounds:Students, teachers, scientists, researchers, IT professionals, slum computing centre kids and writers. This mixed diaspora of Free Software enthusiasts gives the much needed multi-facetedness to take Free Software into the different realms of lives.

During the course of the three hour meeting, Prof.Chidananda Gowda's address comprised of him sharing with us the Proposal he had presented to the Government of Karnataka, to include and implement Free Software in the functioning of the State Government, as implemented by the Kerala Government. He very well understands the dynamics and importance of Free Software, upto the level that he had proposed individual Free Software alternatives to the most widely used proprietary utilities.

Senthil presented the activities conducted by FSMK post the National Conference in 2010, until the latest State Level Convention for Academicians by asking the respective coordinators from the GB to talk about the events for a couple of minutes. St.Jospeh's college Free Software course, IISc Open Day, NCAR in Hyderabad, numerous other talks and technical sessions through the year were briefly chronicled.

This was followed by the presenting of the accouts of FSMK to the General Body by Jayakumar.

The most important aspect of the GB was to give a structure to the adhocism to the functioning of FSMK without mellowing down the spirit of the team.
In this regard, an advisory panel for FSMK comprising of Prof.Chidananda Gowda, Baraguru Ramachandrappa and Chandrashekhara Kambara was proposed and was welcomed by the General Body.  A fourteen member Executive from the General Body was proposed and was wholeheartedly endorsed  by the GB.
Prof.Gopinath from IISc has been elected the President,FSMK activists Rameez and Surendra as the Vice-President, Jayakumar as the General Secretary, Naveen and Karthik as Joint Secretaries and Senthil as Treasurer were the chosen Office Bearers.

Seven committees directed at specific Free Software activities have been proposed for the systematic functioning of FSMK as an organization to build the Free Software Movement in Karnataka.

Students committee, Academicians committe, Localisation committee, Journal and Website committee, Slum Computing Centre committee, Schools committee and the Office Maintainance Committee are being formed to channelize efforts and coordinate the resources for better efficacy in the functioning of FSMK. Each of these committees will have a member from the Executive to keep the action going.

Finally, the GB meeting was concluded with a talk from Dr.Chatterjee which was an aspirational one for FSMK,talking about certain implementations we might want to take up in future, and then a talk by me on an upcoming campaign by FSMK on Web Democracy and Wikileaks.




Free Software is more than just community produced software; It is the arsenal of digital implements, using which freedom in the Internet and digital world will have to be sustained and perpetuated.

RMS does an MJ!

Boot It!

(This filk uses the tune of "Beat it". RMS wrote it in 2001.)

When your computer doesn't do what you type,
And half the screen is covered with a big white stripe,
The vendor won't pay any mind to your gripe,
So boot it. Just boot it.

When you discover that a process won't die,
If kill -9 won't work there's nothing else to try.
Your jobs are dead meat, so kiss 'em goodbye
And boot it. 50 hours of work,
Just boot it, boot it.
And if you can't boot it, shoot it!

When you reboot it, work will be lost.
It doesn't matter what this will cost.
Just boot it. Just boot it.
Just boot it. Just boot it.

When all the characters are coming out weird,
And won't come back right even when the screen is cleared,
You can't fix such things by tugging your beard
So boot it. Just boot it.

If your computer still is running Windows,
And every time it crashes your frustration grows.
When the system's not free, you will always be hosed.
Just boot it. Put a GNU system on,
And boot it, boot it.
Or put it in your horn, and toot it!

It doesn't matter what was to blame.
Till you reboot it, your machine's lame.
Just boot it. Just boot it.
Just boot it. Just boot it.
It doesn't matter what you did wrong.
Till you reboot it, your machine's gone.
Just boot it. Just boot it.
Just boot it. Just boot it.

http://stallman.org/doggerel.html#BootIt
Copyright (c) 2001 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire page are permitted provided this notice is preserved. 

Day 2: FSMK and Reva State Convention for Academicians

The State Convention for Academicians on Free Software in Research and Teaching, hit a new high on the second and final day. Today being Saturday, as expected we had wider range of audience with a bunch of Industry enthusiasts making it to the venue.

The undercurrent and the motive behind this State Convention has been to float a long overdue Free Software Academicians Chapter,and today it did take shape. With a briefing about the Academicians Chapter, we started off with the parallel sessions for the day.

Saket Srivatsav did an encore of his Android Application Development talk from the Open Day at IISc. Unable to provide him with internet connectivity, we had to reach a compromise on his demonstration. With the enticing term such as "Android", and with a relevant speaker like Saket, the session was well received.This was the CSE track session.

Parallelly, we had the ECE track session, which took off 15 minutes late. Rangeen Basu, Fedora ambassador handled the session on Fedora Electronics Lab. It was, like most other sessions,very useful talk for everyone in the audience, mainly from Electronics background. Personally, a bunch of these utilities have got me all excited, and have to start working them.


While these two parallel sessions concluded, we had the elaboration of the need for an Academicians Chapter by Karthikeyan from FSMK. He touched upon the importance of the role the Academicians have to play in a country like India, where the Economics worked out with Free Software as a solution is more convincing than any other perspective of it. He also accentuated the synergy that comes so naturally with the interaction of Free Software with Academicians.


Mr.Thiruvaazhi from SSN Institutions, Chennai delivered his talk on Information Security and Challenges, within the constraints of time and a missing internet connectivity. Nevertheless, he had impressed the audience with the tools and technology he discussed through the talk. The tools like webgoat which he demonstrated were simple and superb, to manifest the nuances of network security. Other basic tools like Wireshark, SSH were also demonstrated.


Post lunch, one of my favorite talk of the State Convention was scheduled. Hemanth handled an excellent talk, bringing out the contrasts and contradictions in the Cloud and the role Free Software has played and would be playing in future. He very aptly converged the talk to the kick-start of the FreedomBox which the community is all excited about. His hard hitting on public cloud services like Google, Gmail, Facebook, etc... from a well influenced point of view from RMS and Eben must have churned some friction in the audience ( as intended).

In the same session, Bhavani Shankar spoke about contributing to Free Software, using his own experience and expertise as the resource. That must have instigated at least a bunch of them from the audience to take their usage of Free Software one step further.


Ultimately, the coveted Panel Discussion about Including Free Software in Engineering curriculum turned out to be a very good debate. The panel comprised of Prof.K Gopinath from IISc, Dr.Rajanikanth, Principal,MSRIT (also the Chariman for CSE, Board of Education,VTU), Dr. C. R. Venugopal,Prof. & Head, Dept of ECE,( also the Chairman for ECE, Board of Education,VTU) and Dr.S Sunil Manvi, Dean R and D, Reva ITM. The discussion was moderated by Senthil from FSMK.

Although three out of the four panelists took an almost absolute stand for inclusion of Free and Open Source software in the curriculum, Dr. Rajanikanth maintained throughout that a 'blend' between proprietary software and FOSS must be maintained to 'equip and prepare' students for the market environment. This point was revisited multiple times, when other panelists and the audience raised queries.
Prof Gopinath went on to say "If I am a teacher, and I ask students to do research on proprietary software, my head must be examined!" , and also, "Free Software provides an infrastructure, upon which we can dream and build whatever we would want to".

With such phenomenal convergence of opinions in favor of inclusion of Free Software in curriculum, there is now a major responsibility for the Academicians Chapter which has taken shape today, to get this response translated to a policy as well.

All of this wouldn't have been possible without the support of all the resource persons, participants, Reva ITM and FSMK. Kudos to the efforts and Cheers to all.

Thus, the two days of the convention came to an ecstatic end.

Day 1: FSMK and Reva State Convention

Karnataka's first State Level Convention for Academicians on Free Software in Research and Teaching has taken off in Bangalore on the 11th March, 2011, organized by the Free Software Movement-Karnataka (FSMK) and Reva Institute of Technology and Management.

The State Convention which will go on for another day, on the 12th of March is aiming at bringing awareness about the use of Free Software utilities in teaching and learning.

In this regard, Prof.K Gopinath, from the Indian Institute of Science correlated the manner Science has grown by hypothesis, falsification and verification, and how Freee Software takes this iteration one step futher, and allows sharing of the such refined work in the digital domain.

Jayakumar HS, Joint Secretary of Free Software Movement-India, projected this Convention to be the first step in creating a mass movement amongst the teaching and researching faculties. Dr. S Sunil Manvi, Dean R&D of Reva ITM emphasized on the roles such conventions would be playing in enabling the teachers to pursue further research and facilitate students in their academics.

The luke warm response in numbers for the Convention was compensated by the interest all the attendees exhibited while the sessions were in progress.

Mr.Vikram Vincent started off the proceedings with an exhilarating talk, giving the insight into the importance of Free Software in Education, by teasing 'the broken education  system', with stats and figures which supported his points. The demonstration of the MOODLE implementation of Christ University, did get the audience excited. In the same session, Mr.Prabodh introduced other ubiquitously used Free Software utilities for the Engineering curriculum, like Codeblocks, Scilab and others.

The second talk had Prof.Gopinath talk about Pursuing Research in correlation to Free Software, and how Free Software is the most obvious choice for all researchers to endorse.

After the audience grabbed a quick lunch, we did get back on track for the sessions, but with some confusion. Time crunch did manifest itself in an awkward manner.

In the interest of the audience, we decided to make the parallel sessions, sequential, and now I realize it should have been otherwise. In anycase, the first two sessions post lunch went on in haste, but not without impacting the audience.

Bhuvan Krishna from Swecha did an encore of his session at IISc's Open day: Spinning one's own GNU/Linux distribution using Debian Live Helper. This session again got the audience interested, and hope some of them take up some responsible tasks on the lines of localization.

Electric:The VLSI CAD design tool, was demonstrated by Mr.Ravikumar and Mr.Kamal, from NXG Semiconductors. While this tool is a great utility for Electronics engineers, we did sense the obvious mismatch with the non Electronics audience. Nevertheless, this session requires an elaborate revist.





The final session by our own Balaji Kutty, turned out to be undoubtedly the best session of the day with some effective demonstration and very alive interaction with the audience, in his session on GCC/GDB based Programming and Debugging. A no-coding person like myself, was thoroughly enjoying all the tricks he was playing with coding and debugging.


Overall, few flaws ( will certainly work upon); Nevertheless, the vibe of Swatantra energy has been surfacing up amongst the participants. We will amplify the same in tomorrow's sessions!

The talks through the day, spanning from the role of Free Software in Teaching and Learning, Making custom GNU/Linux distibutions to specific utilities pertaining to Electronics and Computer Science were well received amongst the cream of the faculty members who had turned up for the Convention. With more exciting talks scheduled for day two with an important Panel discussion about incorporating Free Software into the curriculum, day two is also going to be of heavy dosage.