Things can only get better...
It doesn't really get any better (or worse) than this. The recent insert in Outlook talks about the mock funeral of Sourav Ganguly organised by the Raj (?) Thackeray led BVS. They alleged that the 'Bengali Bhadrolok' denied the 'Little Master' Sachin Tendulkar a well deserved double hundred in the Multan Test (of the 'Jeet lo Dil' series). Bengalis vs Maharashtrians - deep national intrigue, deeper shades of conspiracy and deepest hues of schism. What a lark !! The original little master - Sunny Gavaskar and the incident and Eden (involving the only known example of Kapil Dev missing a test) is a case worth noting. And how come Ganguly is to blame ? He was not even the captain for the test !

Divisive politics has for long been the surplus of colonial rule in the country. Makes for good newsprint and jazzed up publicity. Each person is entitled to his opinion. Come to think of it, even Ricky Ponting was asked for his take on an issue that is limited to the Indian cricket team and India as a whole. Did anyone wonder when was the last time, Australian media asked for and blazed across comments from former or current Indian players ? But holding the funeral of a living person is disgraceful. People indulged in such violent and wanton acts during the last ICC World Cup in focussed media glare and were roundly lashed at. Holding a funeral is a ritual for the dead ! How would Raj feel if someone held the same for the Shiv Sena supremo right in front of his home ? Actions speak louder than words, it is time that parties matured and evolved to take recourse to 'democratic' measures to talk about issues that are relevant.

Speaking of relevance - take a look at AsianAge using a non Internet Explorer (IE) web browser. I used the Mozilla Firebird. Galling and appalling is it not ? When will web designers understand that W3C compliance is not a glamour tag, but something that goes deeper into usability of sites ? Strict IE compliance will slowly but surely rule out a number of visitors to the site - that is something that the AsianAge does not desire. Perhaps they could well do with putting in a Content Management System which would make the site more responsive, end-user oriented and dynamic while maintaining the refreshed nature of content. And mate get a site look that is browse-able through text browsers - a lot of us still use them to store content that do not lend themselves to storage otherwise.
- posted by sankarshan @ 4/09/2004 09:10:00 AM 0 comments

 
Peace, love and a little bit of Bach
Discovery Channel is billing is as the 'birth'. Taller than the Taj Mahal, longer than the Eiffel Tower and heavier than the Golden Gate Bridge - this one promises to be quite something. Have to catch it on the 16th of April 2004. If I get the TV that is...Was reading Runa's blog and jumped on to this blog, providing an interesting insight into slices of life. Peace, love and a little bit of Bach on this strangely rainy night makes for some magical moments spent in solitude.

Time keeps moving through my hands like slipping sand. Had planned to review the book 'War on Terror' by Ninan Koshi (Leftword) by this weekend and then jump onto the short monograph on Vande Mataram published by Rupa. Fat chance! Media reports are all alight with the capitulation of IIM-Calcutta (or is it IIM-Kolkata ?) and its chairman Y C Deveshwar on the 'fee question' with the MHRD. Coming on the heels of the elusive Nobel medallion of R N Tagore, the status of West Bengal as a 'thinking and progressive state' is being seriously challenged. Watch this space for conspiracy theories that will interest Mel and Julia to hitch up once again.

For those who are inclined to know more about the epistemology of science, here's a gripping read - The Scientific Edge by J Narliker (Rupa)
- posted by sankarshan @ 4/08/2004 10:40:00 PM 0 comments

 
iLUG-Cal@ITWB.

4, Camac Street is the new destination of the Ministry of IT, GoWB (www.itwb.org) and iLUG-Cal was there on 5th April 2004 at 1000 hours to present its view on the 'GNU/Linux Paradigm'. In a 60 minutes session presided over by Dr G D Gautama, Principal Secy - IT and attended by various officials from the said ministry, Indranil Das Gupta and Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay talked on behalf of the iLUG on the various issues surrounding F/LOSS implementation.

The GoWB has for sometime actively exploring areas where full or part migration can take place. Thus, various interested stakeholders present their perspectives on the issue. The iLUG-Cal participated as the Special Interest Group involved directly during interfacing with the community-industry-government. The scope and extent of the session was fixed beforehand through discussions with Dr G D Gautama. These were:

[1] Why F/LOSS ?
[2] Where to deploy F/LOSS ?
[3] How to deploy F/LOSS ?
[4] The comparison of F/LOSS based systems vis-a-vis proprietary systems
[5] Value addition through F/LOSS - case study of L10n at www.bengalinux.org
[6] The common (mis)conceptions about F/LOSS
[7] The myths about GNU/Linux

The slide(s) used for the presentation are being made available for download from here. The slide notes however are not available for perusal right now.

The session also included an interactive portion where the participants voiced various views about the F/LOSS ecosystems as well as their personal experiences with GNU/Linux. This also led to an elaborate explanation ( and certainly one that both of us would someday like to put in print) about the nature of industry-community participation, the aims of UGs and the like.

The possibility of a future seminar was also discussed.

The Indian GNU/Linux Users Group - Kolkata would like to record its thanks and appreciation for Dr G D Gautama and Mr Tamal Sen (IT Promotion Cell) for making this landmark event possible.

- posted by sankarshan @ 4/07/2004 06:08:00 AM 0 comments

 
Red Hat India Pvt Ltd has conceived a scholarship program - the Red Hat Open Source Challenge. More details on RHIPL's pages.

- posted by sankarshan @ 4/07/2004 06:06:00 AM 0 comments

 
Sometimes it is just too much
Sometimes it is just too much

The callous fashion in which companies treat service requests is an area of concern which could well determine the last man standing.

Take these small examples. Around 2 issues back ACI ran a full page advertisement in Express Computers about the recent models of laptop available. Coupled as it was with Via's Ravi Pradhan's optimism about the market-sense of such an offering, I sent an e-mail to the address provided sales at aci-asia dot com. For added measure, a brief perusal of the site provided another address amit at aci-asia dot com and the same mail was re-sent. It is to be noted that my contact GSM # was provided. That was sometime back - No Response. Now for an organisation in the service industry, such a lack of basic rules of Customer-Managed Relationship protocols is really frightening. The question thus is - are these organisations ready to break into the big league ?

At the same time, we could talk about Computer Bookshop India. Having ordered a few books and paid through credit card, was awaiting the delivery of the books. I went to the site (which could do with a better UI though) and checked that the 'books had been delivered to me on 31st Mar'04'. Clarifying this ambiguity through e-mail resulted in the most prompt response that addressed the send date as well as talked about measures to contact channels if required for further queries. That is what I call good response.

Suffice to say that even Rediff or Indiatimes are not capable of being that responsive. The latter, for sometime had an object on the Shopping page which it no longer carried in its inventory - now that was some experience.

- posted by sankarshan @ 4/07/2004 06:06:00 AM 0 comments