raseel's blog

I recently ended up landing on pluGGd.in.
This blog , hosted by Ashish Sinha, keeps track of the goings on in the Indian Web 2.0 startup scenario.
The one great thing about this blog, unlike other ones, is that there is SO MUCH interesting content on it.
There are these amazing podcasts with the actual co-founders of some very intriguing Startups.
My personal favorite was Toufee

Yesterday Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, accused Linux of Patent Infringement in an interview with Fortune Magazine.
Wow !!!
There are many who are speculating why MS has suddenly got berserk.
Groklaw however has other fascinating counter-points about why MS's strategy to spread FUD(Fear, Uncertainity & Doubt) will fail.

I had written a blog about Google's "gene-catalogue" project some time ago.
In the blog I had mentioned about the Google Compute Project with its defunct website (as of the time of writing).
I found today that the Google Compute Project has taken inspiration from the Folding@Home project undertaken at Stanford University.

I have already updated a blog entry regarding this weeks significant news items from the world of Open Source software, here, so I'll not cross-post( Look Maa!! I'm learning netiquettes!!)

Firstly, I must apologize for the morbid Title. I'll think of a better one for my next blog.
My endeavor henceforth will be to extrapolate relevant articles from the crazy world of Open Source Software (primarily on Linux), by which I mean, I'll just post my favorite reads here :-D

Two good articles that came to my notice were :
--> Greg Kroah Hartman writes a good articles about the Myths, Lies and Truth about the Linux Kernel. I must say, this is a must read for all the Windows fanboys and Linux newbies. Also, ignorant Linux evangelists might have lots of things to boast about.

Even as Kumar reports of a successful Kick-off of Linux Asia 2007, sheer pandemonium has broken loose in the LUGD (Linux User Group, Delhi).
Why , you ask, is there noise for a Linux event by a Linux User group ? If you followed the above Linux Asia 2007 link, you probably wouldn't have asked this question.

I have been an active member of ITVidya.com for the past one month or so. So maybe when I make the allegations I'm about to make I might receive a lot of flame and rebukes. But heck !!! thats exactly what I want to do.

For the past few days, I have been regularly visiting this site and found that some members have some excellent technical/industry blogs which are updated on a daily basis.

The content of these Blogs is so informative that I cannot help but visit all the related site, come back and comment on them. This, I feel, should be the essence of what ITVidya.com stands for ( as can be clearly discerned from the Vision Statements)

I am an electronics engineer. So basically everytime I hear the software industry making phenomenal progress, albiet the fact that I'm professionally an embedded software developer, I cringe !! Something inside me wants the Hardware side of IT to be as successful and as much in the news as the Software and Embedded aspects.

So, when the idea of open source software first started to sink in me, my first reaction was : If this can be applied to software , why not hardware ?

Being a Embedded Linux engineer, when the time finally came for me to switch to another cell (is it that time of the year already ? :-D), I obviously decided to do a quick survey for my options on Linux-based phones.

It turns out that the only vendor in India shipping Linux phones is Motorola. And that too, I have to be limited to a handful of options in the "white" market. That apart, the reviews of the other models has not been too great (Motorola E895, ROKKR E2)

"Water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink " Although the state of Linux Desktops.. or for that matter ANY free software, will seldom be akin to Coleridge's drowning man, it may well happen that with hundreds of Distributions to choose from, the right one may be left out.

Today Linux can boast of the maximum number of Distributions compared to any OS. Distributions are basically environments created around the core Linux Kernel. This environment consisting of libraries, utilities and application software is customized by various software vendors and enthusiast groups to make a complete OS.

Before you answer this seemingly rhetoric question , ask yourself this : Do you understand the meaning of the word "FREE" in context with the term "Free Software" ?

From an unsatisfying personal experience I can tell you that most software engineers don't.

In brief, the "FREE" in software stands for "FREEDOM" and not for "free of cost". What this means is that, you have the Freedom to look at the source code of the software, modify it if you think you can enhance it any way, redistribute it to whoever your little heart desires. This redistribution can be free of cost OR...... YOU CAN CHARGE ANY AMOUNT YOU LIKE.