Longstanding readers of my diary will recall my mentioning my friend Jaikishan who, along with his family, was responsible for straightening out a very screwed up young man (me) back in the late 70s and early 80s. Apart from just being fantastic friends, and a real family to me, I learnt many things from Kishan, [...]

For those of you still speculating about this (and hoping that it isn’t so), here’s some bad news: I got someone very influential to get BSNL to go on record about the current status of billing, and the answer is: BSNL *has* started charging for traffic over your subscribed limit from July 1st. And in [...]

In October 2000, we were getting ready for Bangalore IT.COM 2000 – India’s largest IT-related expo. As in 1999, the community had got together to put up a big show at the Linux Pavillion of IT.COM, and lots of plans were in the air. One of the highlights of the previous year was our network [...]

Am I the only one who finds this statement interesting? It should go straight into India’s IT chronicles, to be reflected upon as often as possible, never to be forgotten. Remember N.Vittal’s comment many years ago that India should not buy software from foreign countries, because we don’t know what’s in it? Was that man [...]

This morning, I attended friend Samyeer Metrani’s daughter’s naming ceremony, which happened at the Ashraya International Hotel on Infantry Road in Bangalore. Great food, and it was good to meet a lot of old friends whom one had not seen for many years. At some point, I found myself in the hall down there, right [...]

This afternoon, I did something seriously scary. After half a decade of doing our annual event at one place, I today shook hands with the venue manager of the place where our event will be held from now on. “Change” is a dreaded word, but I hope that this will work out well. The FOSS [...]

From here: But Abbott says Brazil currently enjoys the most generous pricing agreement of any country outside Africa. It argues that if patents are broken, pharmaceutical companies may be deterred from investing in further research. Just for saying that, I think Abbot should be punished with Brazil breaking the patents on HIV medication. Because this [...]

If you are interested in this year’s FOSS event, read this. One could really use your inputs right now – especially if you are interested in FOSS in any way.

It’s been a few years (like maybe 20) since I have been to a play, and usually I am not much inclined to go to one, either. But tomorrow will find me at the Ranga Shankara theatre at 7:30pm, to watch Romeo and Juliet. Why this sudden change of heart? Well, apart from the fact [...]

The guys at Phenom are getting some unexpected publicity all over the place all of a sudden. Right up front is a really long and detailed interview with “bassy” Gaurav, in the InfinityMag – I *love* that huge photo of Gaurav’s there! And it is nice to see Gaurav competently tackle difficult questions about the [...]