Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out
from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms
towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom,
My Father
Let my country awake.

– From Rabindranath Tagore’s “Geetanjali”

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
–Upton Sinclair

If you are looking for a position as a Linux System/Network administrator, then you may want to have a look at this:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-jobs/message/807

These are *NOT* 9-5 positions – working in the Geodesic IT Services team is as challenging as it is rewarding. Positions open in both Bangalore and Mumbai.

Every now and then, you hear a piece of news that makes you smile broadly. And today’s news that Harald had been awarded the Award for the Advancement of Free Software was one of these welcome news items.

The press release says that “The awards committee honored both Welte’s technical contributions to projects like the Linux kernel and the OpenMoko mobile platform project, and his community leadership in safeguarding the freedom of free software users by successfully enforcing the GNU General Public License in over one hundred cases since the gpl-violations.org project began in 2004.” – meaning that Harald in effect has won the award twice over! And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy!

Congratulations, Harald, you certainly deserved this award!

Dear all,

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been flooded with invitations from various colleges and organizations, to speak at events taking place in March and early April. I have to state that I am absolutely honoured by these invitations, and I am thrilled at the amount of interest shown in FOSS and Mobile Computing (the two topics that I focus on the most).

Unfortunately, real life makes it impossible for me to attend most (if not all) of them, and since there are so many requests flowing in, I thought I’d post this entry to clarify things:

Read the rest of this entry…

On the 23rd of February, Shubha and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary. And to mark the occasion, I took her to the Taj Mahal in Agra.

The photograph above was specifically taken with my camera phone (a Nokia e51) to allow me to upload it via GPRS instantly, to mark the moment. Yes, the quality is low, but you wouldn’t be able to buy the moment for a million bucks And of course, I have high-res pictures as well, like this one. More to come, along with a trip report, once I get back to Bangalore (am in Mumbai right now).

(For those in the know, this completes item 71 on The List

Let’s dance in style, lets dance for a while
Heaven can wait we’re only watching the skies
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst
Are you going to drop the bomb or not?

Let us die young or let us live forever
We don’t have the power but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The music’s for the sad men

Can you imagine when this race is won
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders we’re getting in tune
The music’s played by the mad men

Read the rest of this entry…

Heads up! It’s FREED.IN time! North India’s best known FOSS community event, this year with a special focus on knowledge.

After a heart-to-heart talk with Mr.Murphy, who has been screwing up my plans for the past few months, I *will* be at freed.in. Yay!

The initial speaker list has some *brilliant* talks lined up! I look forward to hearing Sankarshan’s talk on communities. And Venky’s talk on Open Standards and Open Society. And I finally get to hear Sayamindu speaking about the OLPC. And Shreyas is doing a talk on the Independent Music Ecosystem that we address with RadioVeRVe.

I will be giving a talk that combines both my passions – Mobility and FOSS. I will be speaking on “Open Mobility“. I hope you will find it entertaining – more gadgets per minute than you can throw a stylus at. And *all* of them running FOSS technology.

You *are* going to be there, right? Go register as a delegate RIGHT NOW!

See you in Delhi – 22-24 Feb!