Beagle is a hog

Alright this blog entry is aimed as a suggestion to the openSUSE project chaps, I don't want to get into any holy wars here. The first thing we do every time we deploy or update to the latest version of openSUSE in our lab is get rid of beagle desktop top search tool. Any failure to do so results in shrieks of agony and hair pulling (mine, not theirs;-). I mean why do you ship a tool that grinds the computer to halt at least you can try tone down the search ranges a little or something, should the tool be such a resource hog. I have used tracker on Ubuntu I don't have trouble with it, perhaps there is someone out there who'll read this post and try fix this issue in next release.

Bangalore Say No To Software Patents Protest Report

The Say No To Software Patent protest outside the Bangalore Town hall found favourable mention in the press. The event saw quite a gathering from various walks of life, scientists, teachers, students, IT professionals and activists joined in to show their support. Sujith Haridasan captures the event with his digital camera for all of us.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

National Do Not Disturb

Update (Jan 03, 2010) : Vodafone IN Kerala is another bad apple, enable DND service by sending SMS with 'START DND' to 1909 or call 1909 for more information

Update (July 17, 2009) : !dea kerala is perhaps the most disgusting mobile service providers. It overwhelms its subscribers with pre-recorded voice calls and SMS about latest offers. To request DND service give a call 1909.

Update (Sep 26, 2008) : Airtel users in AP can enable this feature by using service commands too. Call "*121#' and reply with number '4' to select Do Not Disturb feature and then reply with '1' or '2' for start or stop the Do Not Disturb settings. Also you can get your registration number which is need in case you would like to file a complaint.

Somewhere between Wordsworth and Browning my cellphone starts to ring, I answer the call and hear yet another recorded voice tempting me to try their Airtel hello tunes service or some lame duck offers. I think I had enough of this, I called the 198 customer care number and registered for the Do Not Disturb option. The Airtel Bharthi Andhra Pradesh call center guy assures me that it will take effect in next 45 days(duh!).

I understand that businesses need to sell but not at the cost of your time and privacy. What irks me most is that people's apathy towards the National Do Not Disturb scheme. I guess its more lack of awareness or just laziness ?. It takes only few minutes to call and add your number to listing , you send SMS or register online as well and put end to at least some of these stupid calls. It may be yet another policy that may not work, but how will you know if you don't try it? .

Say No To Software Patents Protest In Bangalore

After their last protest against the OOXML earlier this year the free software activists in IT city of Bangalore are planning to meet outside the city Town Hall to protest against the software patents on 23rd August, 2008 evening at 5:30 PM. I request you to distribute the press release of the event widely and be there to show your support.

• See the Press Release at http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Say_No_To_Software_Patents/PressRelease
• PDF Version: http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Image:Bangaloreans_Say_No_to_Software_Patents.pdf
• Event Posters http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Say_No_To_Software_Patents#Candle_Light_Vigil
• Digg it http://digg.com/tech_news/Bangaloreans_Say_No_to_Software_Patents
• Vote for it : http://www.fsdaily.com/Community/Bangaloreans_Say_No_to_Software_Patents

Using Wordpress plugins safely

Most often people tend to try out a lot of plugins while customizing their Wordpress CMS. While they keep some most of them are disabled from plugin management panel in wordpress dashboard or just deleted from the wordpress plugins directory forgetting that it has been included it the template files. Sometimes plugins break between upgrades too. If you are customizing wordpress for a client you don't want him breathing down your neck about the pages not loading properly. Better be safe than sorry, always call the wordpress plugins the right way. if (function_exists('some-wp-plugin')) { some-wp-plugin(); }

You got it right Tom!

I've explained that some very good Open-Source people probably skipped college and got a job programming immediately. The people listen to me and I can see that they have started coming around and seeing the picture. Instead of writing a typical HR recruiting ad, I expect a simple one to appear.
Looking for Python Programmers to Change the World
You got it right Tom, that's me alright :).

Kerala Adopts Koha

Update (Sep 26, 2008): New Delhi based OpenLx now provides Koha support in India

The Government of Kerala has recently made a decision in principle (huh?) to make Koha Integrated Library System as its official software for computerization of libraries under Government control.

Elsewhere Vimal mentions others who use Koha here in India.
In West Bengal, 100 college libraries and one university library is using Koha according to Dr. Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay, Department of Library and Information Science, University of Burdwan.
Another good news from Delhi Public Library, they implemented Koha for its OPAC.OPAC is accessible from here. DPL is the first library in South Asia using latest version of Koha (version-3). The persons behind this effort are Mr. Amit and Mr. Sudhir (Indserve infotech Pvt. Ltd). Contact email of Amit is amitddng135 at gmail.com

HYSEA Seminar on Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing Emerging paradigms for software products/solutions August 23, 2008, 10am, @ Google, Hyderabad Experts from Hyderabad, Bangalore, and US will share their perspectives and experiences with Virtualization, SaaS and PaaS. Sessions will include cloud evolution, infrastructure & tools, design patterns and case studies.

Cloud Evolution

An overview of SaaS Infrastructure, Platforms, applications and tools options

Infrastructure & tools An introduction to infrastructures on which cloud computing runs: Google Application Engine, Process Factory, and Microsoft Live Mesh.

Design Patterns An introduction to frameworks which provide tools to create and deploy applications: SQL abstraction on Web-based SaaS solutions.

Case Studies A presentation on the business applications used for the personal or business productivity: Case Study on re-engineering a financial solution for SaaS.
More Info

Legal milestone for open source

Advocates of open source software have hailed a court ruling protecting its use even though it is given away free.
The US federal appeals court move overturned a lower court decision involving free software used in model trains that a hobbyist put online.
The court has now said conditions of an agreement called the Artistic Licence were enforceable under copyright law.

Lttoolbox on RHEL4

Had to build lttoolbox on a box running an older verion of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a demo. I am glad to report that the stable release of lttoolbox builds on Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4 once the libxml2 packages are upgraded. Currently lttoolbox needs libxml2 => 2.6.17. RHEL4 ships with slightly older version of this library.
Grab these rpm files from the XMLSoft.org sources directory (or elsewhere) and do a upgrade with 'rpm -U ' command.

• libxml2-2.6.17-1.i386.rpm
• libxml2-devel-2.6.17-1.i386.rpm
• libxml2-python-2.6.17-1.i386.rpm

OpenSuSe 11 crashes on AMD64

Here is something you got to watch out for if you plan to install OpenSuSe 11 on a AMD 64 machine using the i386 DVD image (insert your reason for doing *that* here). Everything works out fine with the install, but the microcode package (microcode_ctl-1.17-78.1.i586.rpm) which gets started in runlevel 5 wiki will cause your machine to crash and reboot automatically. Other runlevels including failsafe mode will however work, so select those and disable this service from starting or remove the package with 'rpm -e' altogether.