This has *got* to be the most hilarious backfire *ever*! As you must have probably heard, Microsoft has commissioned Parikrama to write a song on an emergency basis, to be pubicised and performed during the Microsoft-hijacked MAIT event on the 9th of December at Bangalore Palace, in the august presence of Sir Bill Gates. You [...]

We are 7 days away from FOSS.IN/2005. Preparations are at fever pitch, and I am all about ready to collapse. Registrations are pouring in (we crossed 1000 sometime last week), and the number of hits on the FOSS.IN website are staggering. I am sitting here wearing the conference T-Shirt, which is very nice, and for [...]

In what amounts to an endorsement of FOSS, the Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka’s main technology education university, to which almost all technical colleges in Karnataka are affiliated, issued a letter today to all principals and HODs of almost 120 engineering colleges, urging them to encourage their students to attend FOSS.IN/2005. You can see the letter [...]

Ten years after first attempting to get Linux out to the public, one has had one’s failures and one’s victories. Today was one of the victory days. The newspaper announces the official Indian National Portal, put together by the Government of India with the NIC and the Department of Information Technology. It works really well, [...]

Bah! For years, I have had problems with LCD projectors and my notebook. My notebook’s native resolution is 1400×1050 (like many high-end notebooks manufactured after 2002), and putting it into a non-native resolution upsets the notebook’s belief in good and evil. Changing my resolution to 1024×768 simply doesnt work – the projector just won’t accept [...]

We opened up delegate registrations for FOSS.IN/2005 yesterday, and if anyone had any doubts about interest in the event, he may now put those doubts to rest. This year’s event is going to have the largest audiences ever. In case you missed the second list of talks, go have a look. This is the highest [...]

In 1999, we were battling to get recognition for the Linux and FOSS community in business circles. Repeated attempts at getting the community included in various industry events had not met with any success. At a party at a friend’s place a year earlier, I met Sanjoy Das Gupta, who a little while later became [...]

If you are a user of BSNL’s DataOne Broadband service, run (don’t walk) to http://dobs.sourceforge.net Download, configure, be amazed, be very amazed. In short, this is a script to capture and calculate your Dataone Usage from Dataone’s unhelpful Usage site. Lots of options, well written. And excellent documentation included as well. Kudos to Aravind SV [...]

Some of the international speakers coming to FOSS.IN/2005 can be found here. I am in Mumbai on Tuesday, and New Delhi on the 27th, speaking at this event. If you are there, do drop by and say hello.

I think Bangalore has finally managed to achieve a new level of badness – complete incompatibility with me. I have noticed, over the past few years, that everytime I travel out of Bangalore, my allergies, sinusitis and frequent attacks of the sniffles just disappear. But as soon as I land back here, I am sneezing [...]