National Conference on Free Software and protest against Novell Microsoft tie-ups

The natinal conference on free software was venue for a turmoil today when renowned Free Software activist Anivar Aravind and few other activists were man handled out of the venue by the organisers and police.

Anivar being dragged by the Security personnel

The cause, as I came to know, were the posters made by Anivar and colleagues against the Novell-Microsoft deal, by which Novell pays for distributing copies of GPL-licensed software and Microsoft gives the customers of Novell a limited patent licence which is conditional of them not exercising many of the rights that GPL gives them.


View the following links for more pictures and enhanced details on MICROVELL ( Microsoft-Novell)
Visit following links for more information:

• http://playingwithsid.blogspot.com/
• http://boycottnovell.com/

Google Chrome Launched?! For Linux?

Google launched Google Chrome, the new face of Browsers, Today. Adhering to their policies of keeping the most powerful tools look the simplest( eg: Google.com). I downloaded it today evening. And yup, must say, its good!

Google Chrome has a new look with no menu bars on top. All the options condensed to two icons on the top right corner. Chrome has provisions for multiple tabs in the same window, similar to Opera or Mozilla Firefox, but the striking feature is the incognito window- a window that leaves no trace of cookies or history on your system of the sites that you visited. A hitch, however, that I found was that there is no facility for a master password in it. That is, I could see all the saved passwords on my personal computer without any trouble. I guess that was probably because I was logged in as Admin. Anyways its kinda creepy!

The simplicity of appearance and easiness to use is what I felt to be the most adoring aspect of Chrome. Ctrl+T opens new Tab and Ctrl+Shift+N opens the incognito window!

All in all, , Firefox and IE is in for a tough competition with the coming of Chrome,that comes from the workshops of Google, a trusted giant in the Industry!

Click here to download the Windows version here. Linux and Mac Os versions are still under construction! :)

Insignia '08, Hackerdom

...And thus began Insignia '08, Hackerdom.

Day: 28th of August, 2008
Time: 10.45 p.m
Location: Room No. C1, Govt. Engineering College Men's Hostel, Thrissur

Scene1:
The work on video editing progresses as the darker hours of night close in. Midhun, eyes swollen with lack of sleep, continues into what seems to be his eleventh straight hour in front of the system. Sailesh, assisting and intermittently performing the job of waking him up from brief accidental siesta, looked as alert and enthu-filled as ever. The job was getting on my nerves. It was our fourth day with the process of preparing a trailer video for Insignia 08, Hackerdom, yet it was where we had left it last evening. The mixing was taking helluva lot time, what with the format conversion of video files, cutting out clips for back ground music etc.

Scene2:
It was 1a.m. The video files and picture slides have been successfully blended in. BGM yet to be added. Midhun on the verge of calling it a day or calling it quit, two others(Sethu and Arun Rushdie) and me peacefully sleeping at one corner of the room, satisfied that our job of filming scenes for the video was completed in time. Krishnanunni, Convenor, Insignia 08, Hackerdom, walks in to view our progress. Anxiety was evident on his face, as he inquired the sleepy workers about the status.
Seeing that there needs to be another two or three hours of work needed on the video to get it completely done, manipulations happen ( :P) , an offer of Puttu and Kadala from Double-X the only hotel open at night in Thrissur. We ( the words Puttu and Kadala woke me up from the slumber instantaneously!) agreed and a half hour later, there it was, steaming hot Puttu and Kadala. Another two hours and lights off....

Scene3:
around 6.45 a.m, 29th.
I was the first one to rise( quite an unusual thing). Woke up the editors and mixers and blah blah and went about my chores. Two hours of sleep taking its toll, as they moved like zombies to begin where it had been halted.

Scene4:
10.45a.m, Seminar Hall, Govt. Engineering College
The Chief guest and other people presiding over the function- Curtain Raiser of Insignia 08, Hackerdom seated on the podium. The official welcome speech, followed by all the other speeches..


Scene5:
12a.m
Time to launch the theme music for the event, prepared by Jain. That was some music! A melodious mix of keyboard, saxo and drums, and many more that I couldn't comprehend.
Our video followed. Cheers from crowd....

Scene5 re-take:
Time to launch the theme music for the event prepared by Jain. Wait! what's happening? a sudden commotion in the rear end of the hall, and there drifts out a large mass of third years.
Reason: Results of Third semester exams announced. Memories drift back to last March-April, the time when we wrote it. Adam's Apple stuck half-way in my throat. The results couldn't have come at a better time than this. Tense faces all around. People scurrying around, searching for internet access. Dubious emotions settling around temples. Eyes glittering, water in them ready to pour out given the green signal...

I hate results!!

Firefox and Funds

I finally downloaded FireFox 2.0 from Mozilla website on 19Th night.Frankly, it seems very much like the FireFox 1.5 that I was using earlier.I did find a new option in the History tab- "recently closed tabs".It lists, as the name says, all the webpages the user visited in that session.

Its practically unnecessary to include such a tab as we do have the list of all the visited tabs available right on top of this option.May be these inclusions are what they call "updates" :).


My classmates ,Raman and Rohit came home for a night stay.We watched some movies and when everyone of us started feeling sleepy, we switched over to the all time classic comic saga- "Friends".And there goes all the sleep.We watched it till 2 in the morning and then went to bed all the time discussing things in college and debating on topics like forming a class fund.I hope some of you readers have an idea as to what this means.And i request your opinion on how to implement this.
Started downloading Quicktime 7(19.2MB).My Gprs connection could do that in under an hour which is, as my experience says, a good time.:)