Geography 's gonna be History

There is much to read in the Linux For You, March 2007 - An exclusive coverage on Linux Asia: Making Geography History. It talks about the new trends, India and open source, Linux for the blind - ADRIANE Knoppix demo, the CXO Summit, Gandhigiri and open source and lots more.

Click here to read the report!

And then the biggest wonder: Microsoft debut in a Linux Asia.

On reading the reports, I found this interesting, their 1st theme in keynote - Challenge the Indian OSS community to innovate.

"Thought-leaders from the industry, academia, government and the community will challenge the Indian Linux/OSS community to develop innovative ICT solutions that can empower developing nations like India."

Too long, isn't it? Well this is copied from the LINUX ASIA website.

India, as we see, is demographically diverse, economic differences existing in its widest form, from overcrowded Hi tech Metros to Villages still in blackout.

Can the OSS community help to bridge the gap? The challenges are not only technical, of course the social, educational conditions and infrastructure - everything has to be made better, and there is always a limit for what technology can deliver.

Can the Information and Communication Technology(ICT) solutions be used to bring the north east or the Ladak on par with Bangalore? What is the scope? Have not we read about the people who are far beyond the reach of information technology - those who go marginalized in near future due to lack of knowledge in operating and managing the information in the hi-tech form? Designing devices, tools, computers, web pages for the masses are going to be the challenges.

Will we be able to push the geography to history?
Let's wait and see.

All about (over)playing

This is an "unlock" routine in action, if there was a blogger's bLOCK.

I am deliberately changing the topic, which I first thought of writing. I simply hated the way the media overplayed things those are least important for most of Indians, and hype that had been given to the cricketers of the country. I am a cricket lover, and of course even from my school days I used enjoy those golden moments - whether it is Rhodes taking a nearly impossible catch, or Tendulkar punishing Warne for a big six over the mid on or whatever. Yes, these are great, and there are even greater moments - But, let us take the world cup match between India and Bangladesh. It was a stunning defeat for India, and in cricket such things happens. That's the beauty of the game. Well, let me not analyse the match, we have specialists to do that.

I remember the headline of one popular newspaper about how much the organizers and sponsors will lose if India does not make it to the Super Eight. Don't understand how can this be a front page main headline when there are many other burning issues. It was just a day before, I (happened to) read in a prominent Malayalam daily about a young bowling "phenomenon" who has proved his skills by showing his arrogance in the fields..."the young new brave face of India!"..still, what is the point in giving over coverage to his family and all..

Reactions and responses on India's defeat was "promptly" covered by all news channels. Some went on by spending more than 70% of the news time.. And in between the "informative and fact-full" news flashes, vow!! the nice colorful ads - where our cricketers are continuously improving their acting talents!!

Another headline - Bollywood tells team India, get the cup!! - Bol Diya to Bol Diya!! And Reactions from various parts of the country, that too on an hourly basis .."yes, tell us how do you feel about India's deafeat!!", that is okay if you dont have water to drink, you have Cola.

Smart reporting, eh ?

Oh.. Does our national game Hockey get at least one tenth this kind of hype? Who cares about Nandigram, or Iran's reactions when you have such burning issues ....

Anyways, here is the core dumped.
and now
return 0;