Re: [Ilugc] [Job] Openings for Desktop Administrator

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2015 21:46:13 +0530
>From: shanmuga sundar 
>Subject: Re: [Ilugc] [Job] Openings for Desktop Administrator
>To: ILUG-C 
>Message-ID:

>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

>hai bro,
>i am a final year student and i am doing my project in
>cloud image retrieving  using spark platform
>i have to know about the basics of cloud and cluster with spark did any one
>has the idea and if any one know about it please share with me .

Please create a new thread of discussion instead of hijacking a thread.
What I mean is: Do not reply to an exiting discussion with a completely
unrelated post while keeping the same subject. Create a new post with a
new relevant subject.

Why? Because it helps those who are following the discussion.

Thank you,
Prem Kurian Philip



>On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 7:58 PM, aneesh reghu 
>wrote:

>>  We are looking Experience must be from 1 year  to 3 years.
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 7:32 PM, aneesh reghu 
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>>
> > "Sokrati Technologies PVT LTD"
> > http://www.sokrati.com/
> >
> > We have opening  for Desktop Administrator  in Pune. Interested candidate
> > please send your resume to aneesh.re...@gmail.com
> >
> >
> >
> > Thanks & Regards
> > Aneesh Reghu
> > MOB:+919789982220
> >
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[Ilugc] JOB: Because I love to Code (BILTC)

[Prem Kurian Philip]

We at Xerago.com are looking for people who are truly passionate about
computer science and programming.

Please do get in touch with me on p...@xerago.com and also h...@xerago.com if:
- You think good code is like a work of art
- You find poorly written code infuriating
- You are constantly looking at improving your programming skills
- You love good software design and you breathe design patterns
- You love to take on challenging assignments in computer programming
- You are interested in advancing the field of computer programming
- You love working on open source projects
- Your role models are great engineers like Dennis Ritchie, Rob Pike,
Linus Torvalds, Fabrice Bellard etc.
- You love learning new programming languages and technologies and you
already know at least one language really well
- You have an active account on Stackoverflow.com or similar site and you
are actively answering questions there.
- You are open to learning new technologies and languages and willing to
explore new frontiers

The ideal candidate should have a strong interest in working on open
source products and should demonstrate this interest by current and active
involvement in at least one such project.

However, if you aren't already involved in such a project but if you are 
interested in getting involved actively in one or more open source
projects, please do email us.

We are primarily interesting in Java/J2EE, LAMP or Android developers, but
if you have other skills, we would still love to hear from you
nonetheless. If you are willing to learn other technologies and you are a
quick learner, we would love to have you in our team.

What we are are primarily interested in seeing is your passion for the
field because the work we do involves working across a wide range of
technologies. Part of your work will involve active engagement in any open
source project of your choice.

Best Regards,
Prem Kurian Philip
Head of Technology,
Xerago.com

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Re: [Ilugc] Insightful obituary of Doug Engelbart

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> From: Manokaran K 
> Subject: Re: [Ilugc] Insightful obituary of Doug Engelbart
> To: ILUG-C 
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Prem Kurian Philip
> wrote:
>
>>
>> "Boosting our collective IQ" which is a collection of papers by Doug
>> Engelbart is well worth reading:
>> http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-133150.html
>
>
>
> It asks to login. But there is no sign up / register link on the site!!
>
>

Try this link:
http://dougengelbart.org/pubs/books/augment-133150.pdf

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Re: [Ilugc] Insightful obituary of Doug Engelbart

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2013 10:05:11 +0530
> From: Manokaran K 

>>From the inimitable Bret Victor:
>
> "The least important question you can ask about Engelbart is, "What did he
> build?" By asking that question, you put yourself in a position to admire
> him, to stand in awe his achievements, to worship him as a hero. But
> worship isn't useful to anyone. Not you, not him.
> The most important question you can ask about Engelbart is, "What world
> was
> he trying to create?" By asking that question, you put yourself in a
> position to create that world yourself."
>
> More here:
> http://worrydream.com/Engelbart/
>

Engelbart is one of my heroes. Sorry to see him pass on.

Doug Engelbart's mother of all demos will, very likely, never be surpassed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfIgzSoTMOs

In a single live demo in 1968 he demonstrated: (From Wikipedia)
a) Mouse
b) Windowing user interface
c) Video conferencing
d) Teleconferencing
e) Hypertext
f) Word processing
g) Hypermedia
h) Object addressing
i) Dynamic file linking
j) Collaborative real time editor

But like Brett Victor points out, Engelbart's thinking on things like
video conferencing was broader in scope and deeper in meaning than what we
have nowadays.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

Doug Engelbart's greatest contribution was in how he propagated the notion
of very high performance teams - teams which pool together the IQ of
individuals, and which rely on open collaboration using technology as a
key ingredient in their quest for high quality research.

"Boosting our collective IQ" which is a collection of papers by Doug
Engelbart is well worth reading:
http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-133150.html

Regards,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] PDF XL and HTML reporting

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> From: Ashwin Dixit 
> Subject: Re: [Ilugc] PDF XL and HTML reporting
>> If you guys want to have it out, please find another venue to do this so
>> that our inboxes are not filled with the litany of your squabbles.
>>
>
> Dear Prem,
>
> I would love to improve the signal to noise ratio on this list.
> For this purpose, I have raised objections about Girish's postings, which
> are pretty high in noise, IMHO.
> Now, you have lumped my objections together with his noise.
>
> If we allow Girish to keep posting his technically inaccurate rants on
> this
> list, then we also have to allow people to correct the inaccuracies, to
> prevent misinformation.
> There are better forums for Girish to accomplish his worthy aim of
> knowledge-sharing. He has already been told this several times.
>
> You choices are:
> 1. tolerate Girish, and tolerate those who correct him.
> 2. ask the list moderator to ban Girish, and anybody else you don't like
> to
> hear from.
> 3. use email filters, and improve the signal to noise ratio for yourself,
> and not for the list.
>
> I am here to exchange knowledge about GNU/Linux and FOSS.
> Yet this list seems to lack the will to self-govern.
>
> Please let's get administrative issues out of the way, to keep the
> discussion technical and interesting.

I agree with many of your points. I am sorely disappointed with the fact
that the moderators here seem to have gone on permanent vacation. Also,
yes, the members of the mailing list themselves don't seem to police the
discussion as rigorously as was the case earlier when people like KG were
around.

Having said that, your emails don't paint a flattering picture of your
ability to hold a discussion online. If you feel that Girish's emails are
not helpful, please don't add to our woes by following up with long,
pointless sarcasm - not one person is going to be reformed by that, and it
adds to the noise already present.

Respond with a single line, if need be.

Girish - it is sad that you have brought ilugc to this point.

Moderators - are any of you checking the emails on this list? Please respond.

Thanks,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] PDF XL and HTML reporting

[Prem Kurian Philip]

I am saddened to see that the signal to noise ratio on this list is
getting worse and worse.

Ashwin and Girish - neither of you are helping. Sick and tired of the lame
posts.

It is the internet equivalent of a couple of guys getting up during a show
and having a go at each other without the slightest thought to anyone else
present.

If you guys want to have it out, please find another venue to do this so
that our inboxes are not filled with the litany of your squabbles.

Thanks,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] jQuery and HTML forms

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 16:38:31 +0530
> From: Narendiran 
>>
>> If most of the content is going to be on HTML, Javascript and so on,
>> those
>> who are interested in linux content will go elsewhere and the list will
>> become a place where web developers hang out.
>
> I don't think there is anything wrong about what Girish is trying to
> do here. This is LUG but that does not mean we have to close our minds
> to other technical concepts. Only rarely do we some truly 'Linux only'
> posts, and most of the them are about people asking for simple noob
> stuff without even googling, or people asking about software
> installations etc ... oh and even obituaries. Most of these rarely add
> value to the knowledge of the community. And what was it about this
> being for web developers? For those of you who don't know,  javascript
> is now a firstclass citizen in the gnome community. You can develop
> full fledged GTK3 and gnome DESKTOP applications using javascript. You
> may find it usefull to learn.
>
> Who are the people using linux anyway? Right now, only people willing
> to experiment with cool new stuff (mostly programmers) and your
> average Joe who uses it only because its installed in their work
> machine. I doubt the later will join a mailing list like this. And I
> don't see why we should not discuss the programming languages (even
> web). Girish and few others here take time to type long mails to share
> their knowledge with us. When people with long experience and strong
> industry background have something to say, its better to listen
> instead of trying to find faults.
>
> Its true that we are LUG, but by bashing anything and everything
> nonlinux (including windows stuff), we are not behaving any better
> than those apple and windows fanboys. We have to be more open to FOSS
> stuff in general and discuss anything of interest. We can gain
> something just be seeing two people discuss BSD instead of chasing
> them away in the name of linux. I hope we see more posts like this in
> the future.
> --

I don't disagree that javascript is useful or for that matter any web
technology is useful. The problem is if it is decided that ALL any ANY
technology should be discussed on ilugc merely because some of these
technologies may be deployed on linux, then we can might as well entertain
discussions on how to do 3D modelling in Blender, how to use Hadoop, how
to programme in PHP, MySQL query optimisation, Node.js programming, Java,
Boost libraries in C/C++, Android development etc.

Again, not that any of those technologies aren't useful. But then we would
have made ilugc so generic that pretty much any software can be discussed
here. If that is what the moderators want, then so be it.

About who is using Linux - Linux is heavily used in various industries
now. Linux is no longer the niche OS that it used to be. I use it pretty
much exclusively and so also a lot of people who work with me. Some of the
larger firms even here in India use Linux for hosting their servers, and
quite a few of the organisations even have their desktops running on
Linux.

When people like me come to ilugc we come with the expectation that there
will be content here which is closely related to linux and not just
tangentially related.

Examples:
Linux installation and setup
Linux kernel
Core applications - eg: X, Gnone, KDE, Unity, Wayland, ..
File systems
Discussions about drivers and issues with drivers (example, how to get
Airtel/Aircel/Whatever 2G/3G Dongles working with Linux)
Upgrade issues
Security issues and alerts for Linux and core services such as Apache,
Bind, etc
Linux networking
Package manager and related updates
FOSS Conferences
News on organisations, colleges etc requiring help with Linux
Tips on unusual linux commands
News about any government initiative related to Linux or opensource

And of course obituaries. All the people whose obituaries were listed here
were stalwarts in FOSS circles in India - Kg, Chitnis etc. Many of us have
dealt with these people personally.

I have been involved in Linux since at least 1995 and I subscribed to
ilugc around 1997-1998 or so, I think. (I don't have the old posts with me
anymore).

It will be sad if ilugc loses focus. In my humble opinion, it would be
better to concentrate on a few areas and have a clearer focus for ilugc
even if the volume of discussion reduces rather than opening up the
discussion to any subject however tangentially related to Linux.

But of course, this is just my opinion. The moderators will need to decide
the direction.

Thank you,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] jQuery and HTML forms

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 08:53:49 +0530
> From: Thyagarajan ??  
> Subject: Re: [Ilugc] jQuery and HTML forms
>
> Hi,
>
> My take on this discussion.
>
> ilugc is a Linux user group and supports all foss tools.

I do not frequently post on ilugc, but I do read quite a few of the posts
that come in and I am really sorry to say that the quality of the lug has
gone down considerably since some of the stalwarts left the list (Kg).

Now ilugc is now more of a web developer's user group with random
discussions about Adobe Dreamweaver alternatives, jquery, html and so on.

All of those are interesting discussions, no doubt, but they are offtopic
on this list.

If most of the content is going to be on HTML, Javascript and so on, those
who are interested in linux content will go elsewhere and the list will
become a place where web developers hang out.

I request the moderators to take note of this.

Also, I request those people like Girish to please find another place to
post content totally unrelated to linux.

Girish - like Thyagarajan pointed out, it may be better to post the
tutorial/tip type of content that you are writing to a blog or a wiki. I
am sure it will be useful to those who are interested in that sort of
thing and in any case a mailing list isn't the best format for doing
tutorials.

Girish, if you create such a blog, I will be happy to both visit the blog
on occasion and perhaps even contribute content.

I thank you for your understanding.

Regards,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] jQuery and HTML forms

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> From: Girish Venkatachalam 
> Subject: [Ilugc] jQuery and HTML forms

Girish,

Pardon me but why are you posting javascript and html related information
on a linux user group? There are excellent mailing lists which deal with
those subjects - wouldn't it be better to post there instead?

Thanks,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] It's hard to monetize free open source software

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> From: satyaakam goswami 
> Subject: Re: [Ilugc] It?s hard to monetize free open source software
>> BTW, the name of my company - Songbird Technologies, has nothing
>> whatsoever to do with the Songbird music player. We were established in
>> 2003 - well before the Songbird player came on the scene.
>>
>
> Hi Prem,
>can you repost your reply to the thread properly , looks like
> you added a  ? to the subject and it became a new thread , thanks for your
> inputs .
>
> -Satya
> Satyaakam.net | fossevents.in | fossacademy.org

Apologies for taking this long to reply. My earlier post is given below:

>
> On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 7:33 AM, Mohan Sundaram 
> wrote:
>
>> One needs to deliver something to make money. If software is free, just
>> giving software does not deliver any value and this no business can be
>> transacted.
>
>
>> If free shows is used as a bar and deep knowledge of the software,
>> domain
>> and integration is packaged and sold as training, configuration
>> services,
>> customisation, integration with other packages, there is able money to
>> be
>> made.
>>
>
> in both the above cases you are talking about software as a service , the
> point most of the youngsters miss is , there is no tangible direct benefit
> from the Free software you write in most of the cases ,  There is one very
> big intangible benefit which most of us ignore is the skill development in
> the process .This is what makes this person special who is valued in top
> dollars by thousands of companies across the world . This is a big market
> place in its own and will need a different thread to talk about . so to
> not
> to confuse much the first stop if youngsters can cater to this market
> place
> with skills , once they are employed and once there basic needs and
> necessities are taken care of then they can think of taking the next step
> towards whatever next big or whatever IMHO.

>From my experience with open source development, there is money to be made
IF the software being developed is more applicable for enterprises rather
than for end consumers.

If you are the author/contributor of an open source product, library or
framework or even if you are not the author but an expert in that product,
companies are willing to pay to have you *consult* with them on the
implementation of that product.

That is where the money is made - in consulting. When I refer to
consulting, I mean:

a) Modifications to the software to meet a specific set of requirements
unique to a client.

b) Implementing the software for the client

c) Rebranding the software with the client's logo, corporate colours. This
can often be charged at a very high rate.

d) Support post implementation

e) Training

Other avenues for revenue generation:

f)  The authors/experts can make money on selling books, guides, and other
sorts of documentation.

g) Some classes of software are dual licensed - open source licensed for
non-commercial use, and commercially licensed for everything else.

h) In the case of software like Mozilla, there may be option to default to
a specific search engine / site. For this the search engine or site will
pony up the funds.

Examples of opensource software which is making a lot of money:

Redhat/JBOSS, Springsource, Eclipse, Joomla, Drupal, Typo3, Liferay,
Alfresco, PostgreSQL, Apache Hadoop.. and most Apache products

In the case of Mozilla,

However, it is unlikely that an end consumer - a retail customer, is going
to pay to receive support or consulting from you.

That was the problem with the Songbird music player. It was a product
intended for individuals to use in their homes. There was a small niche
segment of enterprises who may have been willing to use Songbird for their
own products - example: Philips for the Mp3 players etc, but the value
proposition wasn't strong enough. Someone at Philips can easily download
the source code, make a few changes and brand it as the Philips player.
There wasn't a lot of scope for consulting.

BTW, the name of my company - Songbird Technologies, has nothing
whatsoever to do with the Songbird music player. We were established in
2003 - well before the Songbird player came on the scene.

Regards,
Prem Kurian Philip

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Re: [Ilugc] It?s hard to monetize free open source software

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 7:33 AM, Mohan Sundaram 
> wrote:
>
>> One needs to deliver something to make money. If software is free, just
>> giving software does not deliver any value and this no business can be
>> transacted.
>
>
>> If free shows is used as a bar and deep knowledge of the software,
>> domain
>> and integration is packaged and sold as training, configuration
>> services,
>> customisation, integration with other packages, there is able money to
>> be
>> made.
>>
>
> in both the above cases you are talking about software as a service , the
> point most of the youngsters miss is , there is no tangible direct benefit
> from the Free software you write in most of the cases ,  There is one very
> big intangible benefit which most of us ignore is the skill development in
> the process .This is what makes this person special who is valued in top
> dollars by thousands of companies across the world . This is a big market
> place in its own and will need a different thread to talk about . so to
> not
> to confuse much the first stop if youngsters can cater to this market
> place
> with skills , once they are employed and once there basic needs and
> necessities are taken care of then they can think of taking the next step
> towards whatever next big or whatever IMHO.

>From my experience with open source development, there is money to be made
IF the software being developed is more applicable for enterprises rather
than for end consumers.

If you are the author/contributor of an open source product, library or
framework or even if you are not the author but an expert in that product,
companies are willing to pay to have you *consult* with them on the
implementation of that product.

That is where the money is made - in consulting. When I refer to
consulting, I mean:

a) Modifications to the software to meet a specific set of requirements
unique to a client.

b) Implementing the software for the client

c) Rebranding the software with the client's logo, corporate colours. This
can often be charged at a very high rate.

d) Support post implementation

e) Training

Other avenues for revenue generation:

f)  The authors/experts can make money on selling books, guides, and other
sorts of documentation.

g) Some classes of software are dual licensed - open source licensed for
non-commercial use, and commercially licensed for everything else.

h) In the case of software like Mozilla, there may be option to default to
a specific search engine / site. For this the search engine or site will
pony up the funds.

Examples of opensource software which is making a lot of money:

Redhat/JBOSS, Springsource, Eclipse, Joomla, Drupal, Typo3, Liferay,
Alfresco, PostgreSQL, Apache Hadoop.. and most Apache products

In the case of Mozilla,

However, it is unlikely that an end consumer - a retail customer, is going
to pay to receive support or consulting from you.

That was the problem with the Songbird music player. It was a product
intended for individuals to use in their homes. There was a small niche
segment of enterprises who may have been willing to use Songbird for their
own products - example: Philips for the Mp3 players etc, but the value
proposition wasn't strong enough. Someone at Philips can easily download
the source code, make a few changes and brand it as the Philips player.
There wasn't a lot of scope for consulting.

BTW, the name of my company - Songbird Technologies, has nothing
whatsoever to do with the Songbird music player. We were established in
2003 - well before the Songbird player came on the scene.

Regards,
Prem Kurian Philip

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Re: [Ilugc] [KDE-India] RIP Atul Chitnis

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> Date: 03-Jun-2013 12:28 PM
> Subject: [KDE-India] RIP Atul Chitnis
> To: "KDE-India List" 
> Cc:
>
> Dear All,
>
> With a lot of sadness, I have to tell you all that Atul Chitnis is no
> more. I can write a lot but for now I think the following is enough.
>
> Without him there would have been no FOSS.IN without which there would
> be no KDE-India and this list. I know many contributors on this list
> who started out at one of the FOSS.IN editions. Please do pray for his
> soul and his family and friends.
>
> RIP Atul Chitnis (toolz). Thank you for everything.
>
> Pradeepto
> --
> Pradeepto Kumar Bhattacharya
> A *Proud* Member of The KDE Project.
> The KDE Project : http://www.kde.org

Really sorry to hear this. FOSS in India has lost many stalwarts recently.
I still recall reading the first article ever published in PC Quest about
Linux and I recall Mr.Chitnis' contributions to open source.

Again, another person who will be hard to replace.

Regards,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] Software from Kenneth Gonsalves

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2013 16:06:20 +0530
> From: satyaakam goswami 
> Subject: Re: [Ilugc] Software from Kenneth Gonsalves
> To: ILUG-C 
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>>
>> Apart from the software development work, considerable work needs to go
>> into getting content and keeping it current. All software that needs to
>> be
>> developed should be developed as open source and so yes, something like
>> a
>> hackathon by FOSS enthusiasts would definitely help.
>>
>
> why when we have a platform like data.gov.in , also the software is
> available https://github.com/opengovplatform/opengovplatform-beta, can you
> repost your mail on to http://datameet.org/discussions/ , we can talk more
> over there , there are people from govt also on that list.
>
>
> -Satya
> fossevents.in

Ah! good. Thank you for sending this link. I wasn't really aware of the
opengovplatform. I don't recall reviewing that software in 2010.

Seems pretty neat, but yes, I have some ideas as to how it could be
improved. Will continue the discussion at http://datameet.org/discussions.

Regards,
Prem Kurian Philip

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Re: [Ilugc] Software from Kenneth Gonsalves

[Prem Kurian Philip]

tting content and keeping it current. All software that needs to be
developed should be developed as open source and so yes, something like a
hackathon by FOSS enthusiasts would definitely help.

Regards,
Prem Kurian Philip

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Re: [Ilugc] Software from Kenneth Gonsalves

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> From: satyaakam goswami 
> Subject: Re: [Ilugc] Software from Kenneth Gonsalves
> To: ILUG-C 
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>>
>> > "I did start a project for an address database for India. That is
>> village->> > taluk-district-town-city-state information that all can
use - the
>> software
>> > is practically ready, but some how I forgot about it. Maybe you could
>> be
>> > willing to help out in this?"
>> >
>> > Would any of you have access to this software?
>> >
>>
>> I am not sure whether he got it(i.e, derived) from OpenStreetMap..taking
>> a
>> wild guess.
>>
>
> if it's not here https://bitbucket.org/lawgon/ , i doubt  it to be there.

Satya, yes, that is a useful link.


Thank you to everyone for your replies.


Regards,
Prem

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[Ilugc] Software from Kenneth Gonsalves

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Dear friends,

Kenneth Gonsalves had written to me in 2010 about a software he had
developed for an address database in India:

>From his email to me:

"I did start a project for an address database for India. That is village-
taluk-district-town-city-state information that all can use - the software
is practically ready, but some how I forgot about it. Maybe you could be
willing to help out in this?"

Would any of you have access to this software?


Regards,
Prem Kurian Philip



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Re: [Ilugc] [OT] A short bio of Kenneth Gonsalves

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> Hi All
>
> I just compiled a short bio of Kenneth and posted it in ILUG-CBE wiki.
> What ever may be I know about his work is put here.
> http://ilugcbe.org.in/index.php?title=Kenneth_Gonsalvas

Not to be pedantic, but it is "Gonsalves" and not "Gonsalvas".

Thank you for writing the bio.

Thanks,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] Sad demise of our dear KG (Keneth Gonsalves)

[Prem Kurian Philip]

I wonder if this is the last message on ilugc from KG?

--->
Message: 7
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2012 17:57:13 +0530
From: kenneth gonsalves 
Subject: Re: [Ilugc] [opinion]Dear Gnome devs: Please stop trashing
Gnome!
To: ilugc@ae.iitm.ac.in
Message-ID: <1343824033.12441.25.ca...@xlquest.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

On Wed, 2012-08-01 at 17:46 +0530, Balachandran Sivakumar wrote:
> ** It is just my opinion that Gnome3 is better than Unity.

I like this new [opinion] tag - hopefully it will get wider usage and
reduce flame wars and jingoistic statements that cause them. Congrats to
the person who introduced the tag.
-- 
regards
Kenneth Gonsalves

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Re: [Ilugc] Sad demise of our dear KG (Keneth Gonsalves)

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Really sad to hear this news - comes as quite a shock since I have been
reading his messages on ilugc. I have had the pleasure of meeting with him
personally. My condolences to the family.

Regards,
Prem Kurian Philip

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[Ilugc] [Commerical][Job] - PHP developers required

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Songbird Technologies is looking for LAMP developers. Candidates should
have a minimum of 6 months of experience in developing using the LAMP
stack.

Please respond with your resumes to p...@songbirdtech.com.

Thank you and regards,
Prem Kurian Philip
Songbird Technologies







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[Ilugc] [Commerical][Job] - C++ developers required

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Songbird Technologies is looking for qualified C++ developers to work on
Linux and Qt technologies. The correct candidate will have good to
exceptional understanding of C++. Experienced candidates will be
preferred, but we are also looking for talented freshers.

Qt knowledge is not mandatory but those with this knowledge will be
preferred.

Please respond with your resumes to p...@songbirdtech.com.

Thank you and regards,
Prem Kurian Philip
Songbird Technologies



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Re: [Ilugc] Formatting USB stick as a CD

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> From: Girish Venkatachalam 

>> I would appreciate some help with formatting a USB memory stick on Linux
>> such that it appears as a CD drive.
>>
>> Please note that this is an ordinary USB memory stick - not a U3 device.
>> The formatting should allow the USB stick to appear as a CD drive on
>> Windows as well.

>
> Could you be more specific? What you are asking lies in my area of
>  knowledge and experience though I dunno about Linux.
>
> But the ideas are the same.
>
> The boot record in the USB/hard disk are fundamentally different from
>  that found on CD/DVD. Moreover only ISO can be burnt on CD.
>
> What do you really want?
>
> Why don't you dump an ISO image to a USB stick? But it would not boot...

It is possible to write an ISO image to a USB disk. I have done that
before and it does boot.

However, what I am trying to do is to format a USB disk such that it
appears as a CD drive on Windows and Linux.

For instance, if you use a Tata Indicom wireless lan USB stick, it will
show up as a CD drive on windows as well as Linux. This allows windows to
run the "autorun.inf" files on the USB.

Thank you,
Prem


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[Ilugc] Formatting USB stick as a CD

[Prem Kurian Philip]

I would appreciate some help with formatting a USB memory stick on Linux
such that it appears as a CD drive.

Please note that this is an ordinary USB memory stick - not a U3 device.
The formatting should allow the USB stick to appear as a CD drive on
Windows as well.

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you,
Prem



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Re: [Ilugc] [JOB] Ruby on Rails freshers

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>> It is not the degree that matters. It is the interest
>> towards
>> coding/programming and IT. But IMHO Ethics is dead and
>> there are no
>> passionate IT developer in the industry today.

>You are absolutely right.
> On the other hand today's requirement in Indian software industry is such
> that you don't need any great software skills or brains. The work that
the > westerners hate to do is outsourced to india due to cheap labour.
which is
> unfortunately hyped up by the software giants. You can use a 10th or 12th
> std qualified student for nearly 75% of the tasks that is being done by a
> BE in big software companies in india.

It is not just engineering which is poorly taught in India. Every single
degree is very poorly taught.

Very few of the students in any professional field have any interest in
the subject - let alone a love for it and this is made worse by the way
the subject is taught and exams are handled in Indian universities.

I have been told by a person who works part-time as a lecturer (for
architecture) that the college where he teaches as a visiting faculty
forbids him from ever giving any student less than 75% marks in an
internal exam - and this is for a professional degree like architecture.
Also almost all projects and assignments are fudged.

So pretty much anyone who gets into an engineering college will get a
degree even if they don't have the slightest interest or inclination for
the field they have entered.

This is true of even the IT field with most software professionals having
absolutely no interest in CS and related subjects.

Actually, this is the primary reason I read ilugc because I get to read
comments from other software professionals, academicians and students who
seem to share a love for CS. So even though I may not agree with
everything which is said on this list, I learn a lot.

Thanks,
PK

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[Ilugc] [Commercial][Job] - Developers required

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Xerago.com is looking for the following set of developers.

a) PHP and LAMP Technologies (Experience with Drupal and/or Joomla will be
preferred) - 2 years of experience

b) Perl / Python - 1 to 3 years of experience

c) Java and J2EE technologies - 2+ years experience

d) HTML and Javascript - Freshers and experienced people

Please send your resumes to kish...@xerago.com as soon as possible.

Thank you,
Prem Kurian Philip



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Re: [Ilugc] Recovering data from a partially dead hard disk

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> I have a hard disk almost dead.
> It is recognized in bios some times.
>
> When booted with that harddisk with a ubuntu live cd,
> sudo fdisk -l
>
> is showing nothing.

If you are unable to detect the harddisk in BIOS or if it is detected only
sporadically, the problem is most likely with the PCB and not your
harddisk media. That is good news because if the media is ok, then you can
save the harddisk contents.

Try the following:
1. Try accessing the harddisk from another computer. The problem could be
with your SATA/IDE cable or the SATA/IDE chipset on your motherboard.

2. If you are unable to detect the hard disk even from another computer,
then you will need to take it to one of the harddisk recovery chaps who
may be able to swap out your PCB on your harddisk for a working PCB and
you may be able to recover the data.

Regards,
Prem


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Re: [Ilugc] How to protect an idea from getting patented by someone?

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>> How can I give my thoughts, ideas, knowledge to public for free with
>> all freedom, with a protection from patent from someone?

>There are multiple forms of prior art that prevents a particular process
>from being patented.  If you have ideas, publish them publicly.  This is
>called defensive publication

I believe that this mechanism works in the US but there are legal problems
with this approach in EU member states. The patent laws in the US and EU
differ in how they approach subjects which have been published - in the EU
states, for some classes of products/processes, publishing the idea could
prevent the process/product from being patentable.

But I am not entirely sure about this. So it is best to check with a
patent lawyer. Also now software patents are unenforceable in some
countries in the world.

Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] News: Umashankar of Elcot laptop fame in trouble

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> From: Sivasankar Chander 
>  Some disturbing news - former Elcot MD Umashankar, who has also
> given a talk at ILUG-C some years ago, seems to be in a spot of
> trouble:
>
> http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_ias-officer-suspended-by-tamil-nadu-government_1413048
>
> There were some earlier reports of lobbying by interested parties
> to shunt him out of Elcot some years ago. He's perhaps one of the
> few IAS officers around who is comfortable with tech and can
> even program competently.

Sad. From what I gather, he lost his scheduled caste status because of
his/family's conversion to Christianity and so lost the eligibility to the
scheduled caste quota.

Also, he made the mistake of going after Maran's TV networks.

Regards,
PK



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Re: [Ilugc] Light weight Graphics library for embedded system

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> Don't make people mad in the name of mailing etiquette.

Any why exactly should anyone take your opinion seriously especially?

PK

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[Ilugc] Spam on list

[Prem Kurian Philip]

I request the moderator to please block Victor Johnson so that he can go
and be very clever elsewhere.

Thanks,
PK

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[Ilugc] (no subject)

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> From: "sivaji j.g" 
> Subject: Re: [Ilugc] [Tamil] ???   ???
> To: ILUG-C 
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> 2010/7/19 Kenneth Gonsalves 
>
>>
>> tamil are correct. For example if you look at fsm.co.in - which is a
>> business
>> website run by the 'Tamil heroes' on this list, you will understand how
>> much
>> love they have for Tamil. I will continue to post in Tamil lists.
>>
>>
> I usually ignore your mails because they are often impatient, immature and
> aggressive, this one is not an exception.
>
> FSM is run by a well known person in this list, often recognized for his
> FOSS Tamil computing contribution, you can't deny that of course he is a
> hero in that context.
>
> I request you not to mess up personal interest with business.
>
> In short you seem to lack the maturity of expressing thougths in a right
> way. Your earlier post confirms the same.

Please avoid insulting people on this list. If you are so worked up about
this, please do communicate with Kg directly. Your opinion on Kg isn't so
important that the entire world needs to know.

Regards,
PK



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[Ilugc] victor.li...@gmail.com - Please stop spamming

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Victor,

Please stop spamming the list.

Regards,
PK


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Re: [Ilugc] Linux in CGHS

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Shakthi Kannan 
>Just wanted to add that Dr. Mehta's hospital in Chetpet, Chennai also
>uses a *nix distro:

>  http://www.mehtahospital.com/feeds/location.html

McRennet uses a linux-based Point-Of-Sale software.

Regards,
Prem


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[Ilugc] [Commercial][Job] Positions open in Songbird Technologies

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Songbird Technologies is currently looking for the following:

PHP developers (Full LAMP stack)
Java developers
Web and graphic designers (1+ years experience)
Client Servicing Professionals (1+ years experience)

We are looking for both freshers as well as experienced staff. Please
email your resumes to care...@songbirdtech.com

Regards,
Prem Kurian Philip
Songbird Technologies
http://www.songbirdtech.com

Phone : +91-44-42032814
Cell  : +91-98400-83398


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Re: [Ilugc] Breaking blocked access in my office

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Girish Venkatachalam
>  wrote:
>> Rule? What rule? Why should you care about it? You can get around
>> every such rule if you are clever and know the big picture. And of
>> course you should have access to the right tool and have lot of
>> perseverance.
>
> Stop misleading others.  Encouraging someone to break the rules
> is immature and irresponsible.
>
> Organizations don't arbitrarily create rules.  They are made because
> of 1) govt compliance regulations, 2) IT security policies enforced
> by their customers, and 3) industry best practices.
>
> It may be a prank for you, but breaking company security policies also
> harms the entire organization as the company's reputation and business
> is at stake.  Eg. would you trust your money with a bank that has a poor
> security policy?

Good point.

To the original poster - please refrain from doing this. You can always go
home and check your emails what not.

If you want to learn how to hack, please do it on your own infrastructure
or get a clearance in writing from your boss to test the corporate
network's security.

If you are trying to bypass your companies security without written
permission, please be forewarned that these sorts of hack attempts are
usually logged and it will be very easy to trace the hack back to you.

If an hack attempt is detected (especially originating from within the
company's network), it can be very expensive for the company to determine
if the hack was successful, if any computers have been compromised, what
data has been stolen/manipulated etc, to close all loop holes etc.. So you
will be in a LOT of trouble if you are seen as the perpetrator and you
could easily face jail time and stiff fines.

NO ONE is going to be believe you when you say that you went to all that
effort to just check email and chat. The assumption will always be that
your hack was to steal or manipulate sensitive information and that you
may very well have accomplices both within and outside the organization.

Regards,
Prem




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Re: Re: [Ilugc] why GNU should not be added to linux

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Kenneth Gonsalves 
>> > just curious - did linus use gcc when he first wrote his kernel?
>> > --
>>
>> I think he did. My memory of this is a little vague but the first time I
>> used Linux sometime in 1992/1993 or so, it required gcc. But Linus did
>> start developing Linux on Minix (I think he used Gcc 1.37 initially and
>> then 1.4) and only later on removed Minix apps and replaced then with
>> GPL
>> apps. Actually one of the first things he ported over when Linux became
>> self-hosting was gcc and bash.
>>
>
> that is confirmed by the link given by steve.

Oh ok. Sorry didn't read it. Other things - it was actually Linus who
ported gcc 1.4 over to minix.

Prem

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Re: Re: [Ilugc] why GNU should not be added to linux

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> From: Kenneth Gonsalves 
> On Sunday 06 June 2010 02:34:37 Prem Kurian Philip wrote:
>> By the way, most GNU projects will compile quite happily using ICC. Even
>> the Linux kernel could conceivably be modified to NOT use GCC extensions
>> -
>> thus allowing it to be easily compiled by other compilers.
>>
>
> just curious - did linus use gcc when he first wrote his kernel?
> --

I think he did. My memory of this is a little vague but the first time I
used Linux sometime in 1992/1993 or so, it required gcc. But Linus did
start developing Linux on Minix (I think he used Gcc 1.37 initially and
then 1.4) and only later on removed Minix apps and replaced then with GPL
apps. Actually one of the first things he ported over when Linux became
self-hosting was gcc and bash.

I think 386BSD etc continued to use their own compilers.

Regards,
Prem



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Re: [Ilugc] why GNU should not be added to linux

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> From: praveen chandrahas 
> Subject: Re: [Ilugc] why GNU should not be added to linux
> To: ILUG-C 

> +1
>
> Compile the kernel without gcc, debug without gdb and basically, don't use
> the gnu toolchain.
> Then call it linux os.
> I'd say, we need to respect all those who contributed to the gnu "project"
> and that can be done
> by using its name in conjunction with linux.

Actually there is really no good reason for NOT being able to compile
Linux using compilers other than GCC if it weren't for the fact that they
have used GCC extensions in the Linux code base.

There have been a number of compilers which have been used to compile
Linux before - IBM's C compiler, Intel C compiler, the new LLVM compilers
etc.

Actually, there are very good reasons to change the Linux code base to
allow other compilers apart from GCC - performance being one of them.

Take a look at the Linux DNA project:
http://www.linuxdna.com/

Also see this (they are claiming as much as 40% performance improvements
in parts of the kernel simply because of using Intel C compiler and an
average of 8-9% performance improvement throughout):
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linuxdna-supercharges-linux-intel-cc-compiler

There are other compilers besides GCC. Example: LLVM Clang which is BSD
licensed:
http://clang.llvm.org

>
>> > > Tell me, What if there is no GNU, No RMS ? No Linux right?
> The replies given to this state that he was not an active developer or
> something.
> Its not just the technical input that matters. Who would have thought of
> something
> as radical as the GPL and then who would have spurred the development of
> so
> many free software
> packages? Had the GPL been not there when Linus wrote the kernel, can you
> imagine what would
> have happened? I'd say it would have remained as just another student
> project.

Yes, if GCC wasn't around, it would have hampered Linus's attempts
considerably. But he may still have found a way - after all, GCC wasn't
the only free compiler in town even then. I don't think Tannenbaum used
the GNU tool chain to write Minix or Amoeba.

By the way, most GNU projects will compile quite happily using ICC. Even
the Linux kernel could conceivably be modified to NOT use GCC extensions -
thus allowing it to be easily compiled by other compilers.

Regards,
Prem

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[Ilugc] Re: why GNU should not be added to linux [was] Google drops Windows in their workplace

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>Or if you really want to further the cause of GNU, please make hurd
usable >and use arch for version control.

Ouch!!

Regards,
Prem

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[Ilugc] Re: Google drops Windows in their workplace

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: bhuvanesh kumar 

> THAT IS NOT EXACTLY THE REASON FOR THE NAMING BEHIND GNU/Linux. I suggest
> you people to see the film "Revolution OS" , or read some good books on
> the
> history of free software.He wanted to call linux systems GNU/Linux because
> linux is only a kernel and is not a complete operating system. A complete
> os
> is a bundle of kernel and userland tools which is developed by GNU
> project.
> Therefore he wants to call these combination GNU/Linux there is NOTHING
> WRONG in people taking credit for their own work.

Did you really read KG's reply before posting this? He addressed the exact
point you are raising.

Prem


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Re: [Ilugc] Linux usage statistics

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> Happy to see so many views on this topic.  I just shared my experiences
> over
> the past few years.  the reality is that most MNC's have a centralised
> authentication system, which unfortunately is MS AD.  the intranet sites
> may
> be powered by Linux, and in such case, there is the necessity that Linux
> server has to integrate with windows domain.

Senthil, the parts which I disagree with you on is that MNC's universally
use MS AD. That hasn't been true in my experience. I am not disagreeing
that many MNC's do use MS AD, but not all do. What is true is that pretty
much all MNC's have a large number of servers running the new MS Server
OSs which are  actually quite good.

>
> If that is possible, then i am sure, much of the intranet sites will be
> powered using Linux rather than Windows, as it would greatly reduce
> their Project and Account Cost for each manager.

Creating an intranet which works across multiple operating systems is a
solved problem. There are a number of solutions to this problem from
Oracle, Novell, CA, IBM/Tivoli, Quest etc, however, the reason non-MS
solutions haven't been as successful is because it requires these
companies to buy solutions from a number of vendors and pay these vendors
(a LOT) to integrate these solutions across a number of different
products. In the case of MS, the solution is delivered along with the OS -
example: Sharepoint services with the MS Server OSs.. similarly SQL Server
+ IIS + Sharepoint + OS bundles.

That level of integration is simply not available on Linux or any other
platform. Oracle tried some of this with Solaris + Oracle bundles (costs a
bomb) and IBM with AIX + Lotus Notes + DB2 bundles (again costs a bomb),
Sun with their bundles (Solaris + Oracle + Glassfish + Sun ONE directory
services etc) but in all my years of running a company, I am yet to
receive a single call from  any company offering me to sell me these
non-MS bundles - while I receive a sales call from MS partners very often.

If you are looking for collaboration suites, there are products such as
Lotus Notes (shudder!!) which work across OSes but it is a real PAIN to
work with.. I hear that Sharepoint is rapidly approaching Lotus Notes' as
yet unreachable levels of horrible mess.

Talking about project management - there isn't a single Linux-based
solution which compares to MS Project. Also, there is simply no
alternative to MS Office on Linux - no, openoffice does NOT count. Also
for stuff such as graphic design (photoshop) or engineering design
(CAD/CAM), the Linux offerings pale in comparison to what is available on
Windows. That is another reason why people prefer working on Windows in
the enterprise.

But if you look at enterprises where access to MS Office, MS Project,
Autocad, Photoshop etc isn't needed for the staff, you will see a whole
plethora of OSes being used - Macs, Solaris boxes, Linux the odd SGI box
etc. Linux is very commonly used in simulations, defense establishments,
movie studios, labs etc.

>
> There are few open source apache modules like mod_NTLM, mod_auth_kerb..
> but
> there is hell lot of problem in implementing those..

But the administrator needs to set this up only once but they feel that
they don't need to bother with that because MS already offers stuff with
everything pre-configured.

And as stated previously, the lack of products on Linux (office, project
management software) of comparable quality will impede the deployment of
linux in those enterprises where such products are required.
>
> In my view, this should be a best case for taking it up as research
> project
> by ME students, who really want to do programming at system level
> involving
> cryptography etc..
>
> Infact i used to say this to those students who ask me about final year
> project..

Actually, the technology already exists.

I would say that if these trainers were able to provide a single
integrated linux-based solution for download using the best of breed
products out there, it would help tremendously.
>
> On Linux as Desktop, we have to accept the reality that, how far linux has
> evolved through ubuntu, it still lack the finesse of windows, which
> inspite
> of its crashes, is ruling the roost..  what is that special thing that
> windows has as edge over linux..

I believe Linux is pretty solid and stable. I don't think that is what is
causing any problems with its adoption. I think the problem is with the
lack of apps and the integration of these apps as stated earlier.

>
> Is it possible for us to find it without locking ourseves to FOSS
> ideology..  in my view, more than ideology, the purpose is important..
> and
> here our purpose is NOT to uphold FOSS, but to improve FOSS to match the
> microsoft's feature set..  many of the FOSS softwares exceed microsoft
> based
> products, but there are key areas where FOSS is really lacking..  Desktop
> is
> one such thing..  we need to understand the strengths and weakness of FOSS
> vs MS to give MS a tough fight

Good po

[Ilugc] Re: Linux usage statistics

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Girish Venkatachalam 
Subject: Re: [Ilugc] Linux usage statistics
To: ILUG-C 

>> You mean MS-ADS? ? SSO (LDAP + Kerberso) was there much before MS-ADS
>> came out in Windows 2000. ?Windows NT domain controller on paper looks
>> like NIS concepts. ? MS-ADS is LDAP + Kerberos plus their
>> **proprietary** extensions to *open* standards which makes MS-ADS a
>> non standard. ? ?To implement the proprietary extensions one has to
>> sign a NDA with MS - which means any FOSS solution will not be able to
>> implement them because of it's own licensing terms. ?Samba4 is making
>> progress in implementing a clean room version of MS-ADS features but
>> it is not yet ready ?for production use.

>Samba4?

>Yeah it is slowly and surely getting stable.

>In fact Samba is an incredibly well funded open source initiative. It
>is unfortunate it is GPL.

Why is this unfortunate?

>As to single sign on I am sure LDAP existed for a very long time
>though a good implementation is lacking.

>SSO never took on in the UNIX for some reason. Even NIS does not seem
>very popular.

>People love Windows shares and Samba.

Please take a look at Apache Directory Server.
http://directory.apache.org/

Some documentation on interoperability on Windows, Linux etc with
documentation on how to set it up:
https://cwiki.apache.org/DIRxINTEROP/

If you prefer a more "enterprisy" (read as expensive), try out the Oracle
Identity Management solutions.
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/id_mgmt/index.html

Or Novell:
http://www.novell.com/products/identitymanager/

Or Quest:
http://www.quest.com/identity-management/

I will be very surprised if none of these solutions can address your
requirement.

To the person who posted this question originally senthilraja P
:

The only reason your company is able to move to Sharepoint wholesale is
perhaps because your company has a homogeneous computing environment using
just windows. If you had sufficient numbers of Solaris servers, IBM
mainframes, Apple Macs etc, then you would have to consider a solution
which is based on more open standards.

With the new gadgets such as iphone, android phones, blackberry etc all
with wifi capabilities, you will really need to look at a solution which
isn't so tied down to windows.

There are some really good reason why Linux isn't taking off more on the
desktop, but SSO and identity management isn't the killer feature missing
on Linux which is causing Linux not to grow in the enterprise as much as
it should.

Thank you,
Prem Kurian Philip
Songbird Technologies

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[Ilugc] RE: Need Help :To take printout in Hp Plotter which is connected in windows from ubuntu via samba

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>
> They are taking many image printouts everyday from windows xp machine
> which
> is connected to HP Plotter via USB port.
> HP Plotter Model is HpDesignJet500ps. [4] & [5]
>
> I connected the ubuntu machine and windows machine via local network. The
> plotter is shared from windows to local network.
> I installed samba and cups in ubuntu. So that i can found the network
> printer via windows samba.
>
> If i give the print from ubuntu, it says printing process is sent and
> completed the job successfully.
> But the plotter does not printing the image. i.e the windows machine does
> not forward the printing job to HpPlotter .

HP Designjet 500 (42") is supported on Linux. You can print to it using
Ghostscript drivers.

However, this printer only comes with USB 1.1 and parallel port
interfaces. Would you be able to connect your computer to this printer
directly via USB to see if it works?

If that doesn't work, you may have to print it out as PDF or some other
format and then send that file to the XP machine and print from there. I
have read somewhere that this printer does give issues with SAMBA.

Regards,
Prem

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Subject: Re: [Ilugc] An FTP user with two passwords

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Jithin k wrote:

>Hai Abgishek k,

>I just want to know that, will it possible.

>Regards

>Jithin k

As far as I know, it is not possible in any FTP server software I have
looked at. The user name is mapped to a single password.

What you can do is to have multiple users with different access rights to
the same folder. You could give your clients one username with the lower
access rights and give your developers separate usernames with greater
levels of access to those directories. It is not hard to do.

>>  Why not have just two usernames instead with full-rights and partial
>> rights? I think it is a better solution and more secure than what you are
>> trying to achieve.
>>
>> (Never heard of a user having two passwords. That's a first ;-) ;-) )

Regards,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] any one can tell which is better php vs java or ruby on rails ?

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> development and application oriented ?
>
> can any one tell please?
>
> php or java or ruby on rails ?
>
> which one is best ?


More information needed on what exactly you want to achieve. If you are
looking at hosting cheaply and you are writing yet-another-blog-component,
you are better off doing this in PHP.

If you are writing an app to be deployed in a windows environment and has
to integrate with other windows apps, then your choice could very well be
.NET.

If you are writing an app to be massively scalable, then the choice of
language is actually a minor decision - what you should be considering is
all the other aspects of the solution such as the caching architecture,
clustering etc.

If you are looking at millisecond response times, you may be looking at
writing the entire web app in C/C++ like the solution LSE is currently
using.

My advice is to select a suitable framework first - and then use the
language that works best with that framework.

Of course some frameworks allow you to program using multiple languages -
example: you could use the python syntax (groovy) or the ruby syntax
(jruby) and still deploy on the jvm.

Regards,
Prem



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[Ilugc] [COMMERCIAL][JOB] - PHP developers

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Songbird Technologies is looking for talented programmers in the following
disciplines:

PHP with Apache and MySQL
Java and J2EE

Candidates must possess a minimum of 8 months of experience. The salary
will be as per industry norms.

If you are interested, please forward your resumes to
care...@songbirdtech.com.

Thank you and regards,
Prem Kurian Philip

Songbird Technologies
http://www.songbirdtech.com

Phone : +91-44-42032814
Cell  : +91-98400-83398
---
AE-10, Sections C and E,
7th Street, Anna Nagar,
Chennai - 600 040,
Tamil Nadu, India.


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[Ilugc] [Commercial][Job]

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Songbird Technologies is looking for qualified developers with experience
in C/C++ and Objective C for the Apple MacOSX and Linux development.

If you are interested, please email me at p...@songbirdtech.com.

Thank you and regards,
Prem Kurian Philip
Songbird Technologies


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[Ilugc] Re: nightly test tools

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>Iam writing an application in java. I would like to schedule running tests
>(junit, custom test scripts,  etc) against this application each night.
>looking for an application which can checkout the sources(subversion) ,
>build,  run the tests and  send out an email alert if anything goes wrong.
>Before i start  to write  my own, would like to know if there are any tools
>that can do this ?  I will be happy to contribute to an existing project in
>case it cannot do all the above, but trying to solve such a problem.

Check out CruiseControl.

http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/

Prem



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[Ilugc] RE: I Want to Learn MySQL and Php

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>I have 7 days of holidays
>I wanted to Learn MySql and Php
>My objective is to query a database with php

>Give me the best web link and video tutorials link

No offence intended. Have you already searched for this on the web?

Regards,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] Open source climate research

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Srikanth Lakshmanan 

>> I posted this once before but I didn't see it appear on ilugc. In case it
>> did appear, please do excuse this duplicate
>> post.


>It did. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.user-groups.linux.ilugc/57823

Thanks a lot for the link. For some reason I couldn't find it when I
search Gmane.

Regards,
Prem

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[Ilugc] [Commercial][Job] PHP programmers and QA staff

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Songbird Technologies is now looking for the following resources:

1. Experienced PHP programmers (LAMP and related technologies, knowledge
of subversion/git, good communication skills in English. Excellent logical
and analytical capabilities. Experience in e-commerce, SEO and related
technologies)

2. Experienced QA staff (Experience in developing QA and test plans.
Experience in automated and manual testing. Good to excellent
communication skills. Experience in working on Linux)

3. Business development staff (Experience in marketing and business
development in software services. Excellent communication skills in
English and experience in developing proposals)

Exceptionally talented freshers will be considered.

Please do get in touch with me by email p...@songbirdtech.com.

Thank you and regards,
Prem Kurian Philip
Songbird Technologies

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[Ilugc] Open source climate research

[Prem Kurian Philip]

I posted this once before but I didn't see it appear on ilugc. In case it
did appear, please do excuse this duplicate post.

With the recent and ongoing controversy over the "climategate" affairs,
there has been a call for open sourcing the data and the programs used for
climate research.

I believe some of this data is already out. A few questions:

1) Is anyone on this list involved in climate research? and have they
looked at this code and data?

2) Is it possible for this to be done with data obtained locally from
Indian Meteorological centres?

I think this is a research any sufficiently motivated person can handle.
After all this is basically a question of plotting a time series
(temperature vs dates) to arrive at a possible trend.

Regards,
Prem


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[Ilugc] Open source climate research

[Prem Kurian Philip]

With the recent and ongoing controversy over the "climategate" affairs,
there has been a call for open sourcing the data and the programs used for
climate research.

I believe some of this data is already out. A few questions:

1) Is anyone on this list involved in climate research? and have they
looked at this code and data?

2) Is it possible for this to be done with data obtained locally from
Indian Meteorological centres?

I think this is a research any sufficiently motivated person can handle.
After all this is basically a question of plotting a time series
(temperature vs dates) to arrive at a possible trend.

Regards,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] Compiling XIIth standard State Board code on Linux

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>>  wrote:
>> > my daughter is in the same boat - I gave up, she went to the local
>> > browsing centre, got a copy of turbo C and installed it on an old doze
>> > machine in my wife's office (which she keeps because her printer is not
>> > linux compatible). One cannot torture kids with one's own principles.
>> > Anyway she is quite happy with linux for the past 8 years or so -
>> > except for this one thing. btw, I surprised your younger brother
>> >listens to you - mine never did ;-)
>>
>> Doesn't Turbo C work on linux under dosbox?
>>

>I frankly do not want to get my hands dirty with pirated software - the
>kid  is under legal age anyway and it is just a few months more ...

Why don't you use Codeblocks or Dev C++? Both are free software and far
easier to use that Turbo C.

I am using Codeblocks and Dev C++ for teaching community college teachers
at IIDA and they both work very well. Dev C++ is a bit clunky but
CodeBlocks is pretty good.

-Prem



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Re: [Ilugc] command completion

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Kenneth Gonsalves 

> If you're using bash, hit ctrl+r and start typing the first few chars,
> hit enter once to copy the command, again to execute.

Some more CLI tricks with shell history
http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/114148

Regards,
Prem



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Re: [Ilugc] Re: How powerful gambas is ??

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Balachandar 

>> I think it is more of a toy - try dabo if you like. It has much wider
>> support.

>Then what is the use of it.Is there any applications built using
>gambas.Can one build application using it or not??where it lags..

Yes, it is possible to build reasonable size applications using Gambas.

This information is available on the Gambas website:
http://gambasdoc.org/help/app?en&view

Between Gambas and Lazarus, I prefer Lazarus. The reason being that
Lazarus allows you to use a lot of the Delphi components which are
available. Also, I prefer object pascal to basic, but that is just a
personal preference.

Just one of the sites with loads of Delphi source code and components:
http://delphi.icm.edu.pl/

Note that since Lazarus does not exactly match Delphi line to line, there
may be changes needed to get some of these components working.

Other options:

1. Monodevelop
http://monodevelop.com/

2. Also, may I know why you don't favour using Java? IDEs like Netbeans
and Eclipse can be used to develop swing apps. Also, these IDEs have good
tools for working with databases. If you prefer, you could use JavaFX to
create some nifty GUIs and it is all fully supported within Netbeans and
Eclipse.

If you feel so inclined, you could build your application to use the 
Netbeans or Eclipse application frameworks and so you will get a lot of
functionality for free. It is actually quite easy to do:

For netbeans:
http://www.javalobby.org/eps/netbeans_platform/

There are literally 1000s of programs using the Netbeans / Eclipse
frameworks.

3. If you don't mind working with C++, you could use the QT, WxWidgets or
the Gtk framework.

4. Ofcourse, if you prefer dynamic languages and you don't need an IDE for
development, you could use Shoes for Ruby or the innumerable options
available for Python.

Regards,
Prem






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Re: Re: [Ilugc] Whitehouse.gov switch to Drupal

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: steve 
>
> http://goidirectory.nic.in/welcome.asp
>
> ...and I cringed a bit on visiting each of those websites. Why do our
> government
> websites look like something created in the early '90s by a teenager who
> just
> learned to code html ? ...complete with the Indian tricolor as bullet
> icons and
> the  tag ??

I feel your pain!

To make things worse, I just noticed that the following  minor
 ministries aren't even linked to from the GoI Directory
website.

# Ministry of Agriculture
# Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers
# Ministry of Commerce and Industry
# Ministry of Communications and Information Technology 
# Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises

Regards,
Prem


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Re: Re: Subject: Re: Subject: Re: [Ilugc] [TAMTRANS]

[Prem Kurian Philip]

WARNING: LONG EMAIL AHEAD!

From: Kapil Hari Paranjape 

>
> On Sat, 24 Oct 2009, Prem Kurian Philip wrote:
>> However, the reality is that those who are going to be using a
>> computer will at some point or the other have to invent new words
>^^
>> for disk, internet and so on because there are no words for this in
>> Tamil/any other indian language.
>
> I thought your point is that such words should _not_ be invented and
> the existing English words used instead.

That is right. I don't necessarily believe that NO words should be
invented but there are a number of very frequently used words (internet,
disk etc) which can be used as is - that is, we can continue to use the
English terms but transliterated phonetically into the
Tamil/Malayalam/Hindi whatever language.

There may be other words which aren't this frequently used which may be
better understood if it is *translated* into regional languages rather
than transliterated.

> This is a sentiment that I wholly support. A language often borrows word
> from other languages for concepts that it is borrowing.

That is right. It also keeps the language dynamic and flexible. As more
people use a language, it will necessarily need to expand - both in terms
of vocabulary as well as in terms of different types of usage.

If completely new terms are to be invented in Tamil each time a new word
appears in English, then we will have a situation where even a Tamil
speaker cannot understand the word.

Also, this whole mindset that a language is diminished in some way if it
directly absorbs words (even proper nouns) from other languages is not
right and the extent to which some people go to translate words from other
languages is absurd.

Let me illustrate with an example in the opposite direction - the dish
"iddy appam" is sometimes referred to as "thunder cakes" by Anglo-Indians.
I have also heard it referred to as "Rice fritters" (or something
similar).

Thunder cakes is a direct translation word to word without considering
context - iddy is the same term used for thunder but in this case iddy is
also the malayalam word for pounding using a pestle. Iddy appam refers to
the cake made using rice pounded on a pestle. Cake is a direct translation
of "appam".

Rice fritters is a better translation but it is more of a redefinition of
the term - similar to saying oven-cooked-spicy-chicken as the word for
Tandoori Chicken. The problem with these types of translation is that it
does not take into consideration that "iddy appam" is actually a proper
noun. It would be absurd if my name (Prem) is translated as "love" by
someone abroad.

So while we do the translation, it would also be good to keep in mind that
proper nouns cannot be translated - they have to be transliterated.

Example: When I was young, we used to refer to trains as "Thee vandi" (in
Malayalam). Here "thee" means fire and "vandi" means vehicle. It made more
sense when we had steam engines - but now with electric trains becoming
the norm, this translation does not make much sense anymore.

That is the problem with translating names using detailed descriptions -
if I come up with a term for a bus in tamil/malayalam (example:
6-wheeled-people-carrying-big-vandi) and have a long winded name which is
actually a description of the bus, then it will quickly become outdated as
the technology changes. Also, long winded names are difficult to use and
will get truncated in common usage very quickly.. or not get used at all.

Also, even the English word "train" itself isn't a description of the
vehicle. At best, the word train only refers to the fact that multiple
compartments "train" each other.

If instead of using the tamil translation of
6-wheeled-people-carrying-big-vandi, I come up with a new shorter word in
tamil - example: buvandi :) (or something like that), then even tamilians
won't know what the devil I am referring to if I say I am going in a
buvandi.. then I will have to go to the trouble of expanding the tamil
dictionary to say buvandi = 6-wheeled-people-carrying-big-vandi = bus. The
common man would want to know why I didn't say bus in the first place
instead of confusing them. :)

So my suggestion is that we just use some of the more frequently used
words in English instead of:

a) Coming with long winded descriptive words in tamil/malayalam/whatever
which will quickly get outdated, be too verbose for common usage and will
therefore not be used

or

b) Invent new words which people won't recognize anyway.

>
> Later on as new concepts (about computers) are invented by people
> who speak Tamil (or other Indian languages) they will use concepts
> from these languages to make words for these new inventions and we
> will be only too happy to see th

Subject: Re: Subject: Re: [Ilugc] [TAMTRANS]

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Kenneth Gonsalves 

>> Example: Byte, bit, computer, file, folder, directory, mouse, keyboard,
>> disc, trackpad, plug, USB, laptop, internet, network, switch, bus etc..
>> but these could be transliterated into Tamil instead of being written in
>> English.

>depends on what problem you are trying to solve. A person who understands
>all these terms is going to use english interface anyway. I recall
reading >a wikipedia entry in Hindi and came to the conclusion that only
a person >who knows English will understand it. The problem I am trying
to solve is >that a person who knows no English should be able to
understand what is >written. This is especially important for the user
interface of >applications that the common man uses - as far as the
computer >professional is concerned, one can coin esoteric words which he
will have >to master.

I see your point. However, the reality is that those who are going to be
using a computer will at some point or the other have to invent new words
for disk, internet and so on because there are no words for this in
Tamil/any other indian language. The other reality is that people are
actually far more flexible than we think and are quite willing to use
terms which are not native to the language - a crude example: we don't
have equivalent terms in Tamil for "Tandoori Chicken" but pretty much
anyone will understand what it means.. other examples: how many tamilians
actually use the Tamil equivalent for bus, cycle, computer etc?


>> I think that would allow an Indian language speaker to directly relate to
>> terms which are now ubiquitous across the world without having to invent
>> an absolutely bizarre sounding term (example for a network, computer etc)
>> because of some vain desire to remain linguistically "pure"

>unfortunately we also have to live with the fact that Tamil (and French)
>are two languages where the desire to remain linguistically "pure" is
very >strong.

That is true. But yet, like I stated earlier, the common man on the street
is quite willing to borrow words from other languages. Some arm chair
pundits and others with parochial ambitions/thoughts will object, but the
average person on the street is far more pragmatic.

Regards,
Prem


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Re: [Ilugc] [TAMTRANS] discussions on tamil translation

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Kenneth Gonsalves 

>> Also, have you seen this?
>> http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/intl/locale.doc.html

>I do not see Tamil - only devnagiri seems to be mentioned.

Yes, I did see that as well. But I was able to get Tamil to display within
a Java swing app. But this was on Windows not Linux.

It was actually pretty straightforward - just put a unicode tamil font in
the windows\font folder and be sure to select this font in the java app.
The unicode tamil characters display without any problems.

Regards,
Prem


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Subject: Re: [Ilugc] [TAMTRANS]

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>> I believe download means to "bring here" rather than "bring down". Would
>> right word be "inge konduvara"?

>no - it means bring down (implies that the internet is somewhere 'up there')

Ethai inge podonama? :)

Colloquial yes, and I know that is similar to "Should this be placed here?".

If we aren't able to give you the translation in Tamil, perhaps we can
volunteer the text transliterated into English? That way, some more of us
may be able to participate.

Out of curiosity, what is "file" in Tamil? I would appreciate the answer
transliterated into English, if you don't mind. Also, would anyone have an
issue with using "file" itself as the word in Tamil?

English has absorbed a number of words from other languages - so it may be
better if the Indian languages absorbed many of the computer terms
directly from English.

Example: Byte, bit, computer, file, folder, directory, mouse, keyboard,
disc, trackpad, plug, USB, laptop, internet, network, switch, bus etc..
but these could be transliterated into Tamil instead of being written in
English.

I think that would allow an Indian language speaker to directly relate to
terms which are now ubiquitous across the world without having to invent
an absolutely bizarre sounding term (example for a network, computer etc)
because of some vain desire to remain linguistically "pure"

Also, it would allow for different indian languages to share some of the
same terms instead of adding to confusion.

I am not sure if these common terms are already transliterated in Indian
languages - if they are, please pardon me.

Thoughts?

Regards,
Prem




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Re: [Ilugc] [TAMTRANS] discussions on tamil translation

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Ramanathan Muthaiah 

>Sorry for the digression. Wanted to share with you and rest of the group
>an(other) online English-Tamil dictionary.

>http://www.tamildict.com

>This is suggested as is, I do not have any special connection / inclination
>to the organization or the people managing this service.

Funny that they spell English as "Englisch" on the site :)

http://www.tamildict.com/english.php?alphabet=search&by=C

Regards,
Prem


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Re: [Ilugc] [TAMTRANS] discussions on tamil translation

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>> I haven't tried doing that and, I have no idea (the limited knowledge
>> of java and i18n that I have just indicates that i18n has been one of
>> the strong points of java for a while) . I could ask around to see if
>> someone has pointers or, perhaps the JOSM developers could provide
>> some inputs if asked. The observation that it does show up properly
>> indicates that the storage of the input is happening correctly, as to
>> why the display/rendering within the application itself does not
>> happen is something I don't have an idea about.

>no java guys in ILUGC?

If you have a tamil language translation file with the content in the format:

s2=\u3053\u3093\u306b\u3061\u306f

etc, please do let me know. I can try it and let you know.

The locale for tamil is ta_IN. Is that what you are using?

Also, have you seen this?
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/intl/locale.doc.html

Regards,
Prem


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[Ilugc] Regarding only linux kernel installation

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>I have a processor with ARM11 architecture, I have to port linux  kernel so
>that I can build entire mobile os on top of it.It is absolutly waste of
>memory and speed to me if I port entire operating system with
applications.

This is pretty dated, but it may give you a starting point as to what to
do next. This is about cross compiling for ARM 11.

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/misc/66149-gnu-crosscompiler-tools-arm11.html

By the way, Linux has already been ported over to ARM 11. Android 1.5 runs
on this quite well.
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Shenzen-State-Micro-Technology/

As stated by another poster earlier, it would be a good idea to install
busybox on the hardware first. It will simplify the software setup of the
device considerably.

Debugging for the ARM platform:
http://www.dspdesignline.com/howto/218101448

By the way, Slackware does have an ARM port - but please note that I have
never tried it. Neither have I tried Debian's port.

Regards,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] GNU/Linux based laptops

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Mano 

>
>I did not buy it in Tata Croma. I bought it in a shop in Phase 1 of
>spencers, near KFC. I forget the name. They also have a branch at Shanthi
>Colony at anna nagar.

Dotcom computers?

Prem

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RE: [Ilugc] [OT]Java Programmer needed

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>My student, who is working on a server based environment , needed a Java
>Programmer

>The job is Get data from MsAccess and feed it to Fire Bird He should work
>through VPN

I came across this posting on Ilugc. I have worked with both Firebird as
well as MS Access. I would appreciate additional details about this
project so that I can give you the approximate costing for the same.

Thank you and regards,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] Is there any Tally tool in Open Source

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>So, I'm just curious. Is there any accounting package that can
'read/write' >or 'import/export' tally files ?

I found this on the web:
http://www.rtslink.com/

Regards,
Prem




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Re: [Ilugc] create multiple clients

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Navaneethan wrote:
> Hi luggies,
>
> I am going to create a distributed applications and also i
> need to show the high performance of my application,in this case i
> need to have more clients
> how it is possible to create more no of clients for apache server in
> same host?
>
> also i ll use the high performance erlang web server yaws(may
> be) or another one
> how to create multiple clients for erlang web server? what is the tool
> available?
> any idea?

Have you tried Apache Jmeter?

Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] .a-tip-a-day (patch - apply diffs and act as inverse of diff)

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Rahul Sundaram 

>> Ultimately, yes, it does come down to the number of instructions which are
>> executed by a platform for performing a single function. No one in their
>> right mind will argue that a program written in C wouldn't be faster than
>> the equivalent program written in any other high level language - unless
>> the algorithm was implemented poorly.

>Never say never. There has been quite a few demonstrations otherwise
>available on the web. Feel free to look them up.

Again, it comes down to the algorithm used. If the algorithm used in C is
poor, then it is likely to be slower than the same functionality
implemented in a higher level language using a better algorithm.

Ultimately, a language has to be decomposed down to a bunch of
instructions in machine code.

The number and nature of these instructions in machine code and the number
of machine cycles that it would take to execute will determine the speed
of the operation. Ofcourse, you can optimize this further by executing
multiple instructions in parallel (if your architecture supports it).

Since C is just a very thin abstraction over assembly language, it will
tend to be quicker than pretty much anything else out there. Which also
explains why the Linux kernel is implemented in it. The only thing quicker
would be to get the compiler to output the code in assembly language and
then hand optimize the code before running it through an assembler.

Regards,
Prem





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Re: [Ilugc] .a-tip-a-day (patch - apply diffs and act as inverse of diff)

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: steve 

>>If you *really* want to go that way and do a 'relevant' one-to-one
>>comparison, you have to include the number of syscalls being made by
gcc >>when compiling your code to binary ...which is essentially what
the perl >>interpreter is doing for  you for 'free'.

> the C programs does the same job with 23 system calls
>*plus* the number of syscalls it would take for gcc to convert text to
>executable code, which is what perl does on your behalf. So, comparing
>number of syscalls of the final executable is not a valid measure of
>appropriateness of a langauage.

How do you think the python/perl/whatever-interpreted-language works? The
interpreter first reads in the script, parses the code, checks for errors,
compiles it down to byte-code etc and then starts executing the statements
line by line. How is this "free"?

A compiler is required to create the machine code just once - while an
interpreter will need to do this every time a script is done - unless you
are using pre-compilation.

Ultimately, yes, it does come down to the number of instructions which are
executed by a platform for performing a single function. No one in their
right mind will argue that a program written in C wouldn't be faster than
the equivalent program written in any other high level language - unless
the algorithm was implemented poorly.

And yes, the platform you use to run your app on has a pretty drastic
impact on cost - the cost of software, the servers, electricity etc all
add up if you are going to be adding servers.

From: Kenneth Gonsalves 

>for that matter facebook handles more than that a day - so does youtube -
>they use python servers. I believe that they are getting bang for their
>buck. As are google, yahoo, livejournal ... none of them use C. As some
>one remarked, programmer's time is more expensive than memory, servers,
>RAM and bandwidth.

Having developed some large enterprise banking apps in python - this is my
feedback.

There is a significant performance penalty in using python or for that
matter any of the other *trendy* languages these days - ruby, groovy,
jruby etc. Scala, on the other hand, is pretty fast (almost as fast as
java on the jvm) but I find it pretty difficult to learn.

And whatever one may say about java, I can verify that java is much
quicker than python, php, groovy, ruby and jruby. And now with really
simple frameworks (see Click for java), java development doesn't take much
more time than python development.

Just look at the performance difference between the different languages -
it is pretty astounding.
http://blog.dhananjaynene.com/2008/07/performance-comparison-c-java-python-ruby-jython-jruby-groovy/

I am guessing that Youtube, Facebook etc would have saved a lot of money
on infrastructure and incurred a minor increase in development cost if
they had used java rather than python.

About developing in C/C++ - the vast majority of desktop apps are still
written in C/C++ due to the vast difference in performance between C/C++
and interpreted languages.

The reason C/C++ isn't heavily used on the web is because:

1) There aren't that many good frameworks for web development using C/C++.

2) Memory management is complex (when compared to interpreted languages).
So it requires a more skilled developer. Skilled C/C++ developers aren't
that easy to find.

3. .NET/Mono is pretty fast though not as fast as C++. And since this
platform has garbage collection etc, it is far easier to develop in than
C/C++. So it is a reasonable tradeoff.

If you are interested in web development using C++, try this framework:
http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt#/

Regards,
Prem





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Re: [Ilugc] goodbye apache, hello nginx and tornado

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> 2009/9/29 Kenneth Gonsalves 
>
> > http://demo.ilugc.org.in
>
>
> "Powered by linux apache postgresql python and django "

Mr. Kenneth,

Great job with the site! yes, it is much quicker than before. How much
time did it take you to migrate to tornado?

Also, any gotchas or was this a pretty trivial migration?

I wonder if this is perhaps the first non-facebook tornado implementation
out there.

Regards,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] Server configurations

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>> Planning to store musics,video files similar to youtube,
>>
>> To run youtube.com kind of web server, what kind of server hardware setup
>> needed ??
>>
>> Kindly give suggestions on hardwares spec for the above kind of server
>> setup.

Start small. Setup a server on Amazon EC2 or a similar cloud service.
Setup your application on that and see what type of load your server will
be facing. As your website gets popular, you will need to add more server
instances, setup load balancing, setup multiple database servers etc.

Store your files on S3 (if you are using Amazon EC2).

Regards,
Prem

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Re: Re: [Ilugc] Fwd: Proprietary Tender by NIC for SC

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>> > The tender issued by NIC (NIC/TPS/2009/18) for the purchase of laptops
>> > with preloaded software for the Supreme Court is unfair. It relates to
>> > purchase of proprietary brands of laptops (Apple) and the software
>> > installed (Windows XP) in it.
>> >
>> > Links:
>> > http://tenders.gov.in/details.asp?tempid=1&tid=del242328&work=1&cno=0
>> > http://www.allahabadhighcourt.in/faq.htm
>> > http://www.swecha.org/content/petition-cancel-proprietary-tender-nic
>> >
>> Nice catch!   I wonder which weirdo decided they need Macs running Windows
>> XP.
>>
>> Roshan Mathews

This is really funny. First buy hardware which is overpriced and which
always comes with the OS preloaded (and therefore paid for) and then
replace this good OS with a crappy one - that is quite a plan! Someone in
the government is on dangerous mind-altering drugs.

About the petition - the point about XP doesn't make any sense. I quote
here "This and other similar products from proprietary suppliers provide
vendor lock-in as their data and files can read by only their software."

I could have understood this statement if this was about using MS Office
and therefore the Office proprietary formats - but how does this apply to
using just an OS ?

If I was using Linux and a proprietary office product on top of Linux,
this assertion of possible vendor-lockin would still be true.

The petition should have stressed on the usage of open office formats
rather than talking about XP.

Regards,
Prem





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[Ilugc] Re: Re: undefined reference to OPENSSL_add_all_algorithms

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Have you looked at this?

http://marc.info/?l=mysql&m=103249377620375&w=2

It explains what you need to do:

a) Check to see if you have included  openssl/evp.h header file.

b) If (a) has been checked and it is alright, then the problem could be
that the version of your OpenSSL libraries is wrong.

Regards,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] [OT]AWS experiences?

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Mano 

>Anyone here has used Amazon Web Services? Any idea how much it costs per
>month to run a simple application which might have about 1000 users (50
>concurrent at any given time) and generates about a GB of data per month? I
>went through their website. It gives me a headache :-). Would be grateful if
>someone can translate it in plain english - like, how much it'll cost per
>month at a minimum!!

>And how does it compare with slices from Linode or Slicehost?

I haven't used Linode or Slicehost so I cannot comment on them. However,
we have deployed multiple apps on Amazon EC2. You are right - the pricing
system is very complicated.

For the type of usage you are looking at (50 concurrent users), you will
most likely have to go for what is known as High-CPU Medium (c1.medium)
 instance type. That is Amazon speak for the type and nature of the 
machine image instance.  The type of instance determines how much RAM and
CPU is available to your instance.

For your usage, the pricing will be around USD 170 - USD 200/- or so a month.

This is a very rough ballpark figure which takes into account that you
will have just one instance running and that you will use some space
(approx 100 GB) in Amazon S3 for persistent storage. If you are looking at
hosting the database on a separate instance and replicating the database
onto yet another instance and so on, the cost will grow drastically.

Regards,
Prem


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[Ilugc] Re: ilugc Digest, Vol 64, Issue 74

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Nishant Prakash Kashyap 

>Chennai LUG is a crap, full of unwanted things SK always tries to prove
>he is king of Open Source and TN-LUG, but her forgets to recall that its
>community
>and there are only 7-8 active member in entire TN.
>there are some follwers ( i mean beggers) ,... thay just follow...  afterall
>madarasi means ravans, the devils,
>i dont think devils have minds,.. excuse me... rahu kethu, are
>exceptions
>
>bad luck to all tamils, may god distroy you like it did for Prabhakaran,
>your god father..
>i like rajive gandhi

This was most entertaining! Moderators/Admins - can we show this gentleman
the door please?

Seriously - Nishant, I don't know what got into you to take off on a
completely unprovoked personal attack on someone on this list or what
happened to you for you to to harbour such hatred towards Tamils. But
whatever be the reason, let me say this to you.

This email from you will be archived. Multiple search engines will index
it. Any of your future employers trying to determine something about your
interests will find this message.

This one message will be enough to indicate to them that you are totally
incapable of civilized discourse, have minimal to non-existent common
sense, that you are completely bigoted and prejudiced, that you have have
mediocre logical reasoning capabilities, that you are prone to childish
tantrums etc.

That should affect their appraisal of your employability. I hope you are
happy.

I speak as an employer myself.

Thanks,
Prem


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[Ilugc] Re: Re: Useless Discussions and Fights

[Prem Kurian Philip]

I fully agree that a lot of discussion on this list is pretty much
useless. Now the latest thing going around on ilugc is this - people have
taken it upon themselves to teach job posters how to post job offers. It
is not sufficient that they put [job] or whatever in the subject, but now
they must also word their posts very carefully, recite the correct
incantation in the right order and so on.

But as far as lively debates go, I think that is fine. That is one of the
reasons people view a mailing list in anycase. It adds some drama to an
otherwise staid list.

Regards,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] Job Oppurtunity - Open Source -Linux System professionals - Yahoo! Bangalore

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>gah ! ...for double standards, from tolerating empty subject lines just
>because the poster is not a n00b, to this rap on the knuckles.

>cheers,
>- steve

I am assuming that you are referring to the thread I started where I
didn't put in a subject line. A poster pointed out my error an I
apologized! do you want me to walk on my knees, roll on the ground,
grovel? :)

Regards,
Prem


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Re: [Ilugc] (no subject) Prem Kurian Pls have some meaningfull subject line

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Selvakumar Rajeswaran 

>Pls have some meaningfull subject line instead of "(no subject)".

Apologies. It was actually a mistake. I noticed that I hadn't filled in
the subject only after I had already sent the email.

Regards,
Prem



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Re: Re: [Ilugc] (no subject)

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Kenneth Gonsalves 

>> Cobra seems to have just those things I miss in Python.
>> Hope it gets as popular as Python.
>> Go Cobra!

>what about batteries? does it have the number of batteries built in and
>third party modules that python has?

Unfortunately no. No batteries are provided and it has to be hand cranked
for now :)

The language is still quite young - but because it runs on .NET/Mono (and
is being ported to JVM), it should be possible to use the .NET or the Java
libraries.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: This is just a guess. I haven't actually used Cobra yet.
What I like about Cobra is the fact that it is very similar to python but
really fast, has built-in unit testing support, does not have the awful
"self" parameter needed in python, catches typos at compile time rather
than run time etc.

By the way, Scala can use any java library - Spring framework, hibernate
etc. Scala is quite similar to Cobra.

Regards,
Prem


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Re: Re: [Ilugc] (no subject)

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Kenneth Gonsalves 

>stunning - 10 holes in 4 years as compared to 63 in drupal for 2009
alone. >And looking at the 'holes' in plone, I do not see anything
mission critical

Actually, Drupal's bug reporting system accepts bug reports even for third
party modules. Many of those modules are absolutely not needed for the
default install of Drupal and are needed only for some specialised
functionality.

Also, note that those 10 holes are only for plone - if you include bugs in
zope, zopedb etc into the equation, the number grows. If you also include
third party modules, the number becomes even larger.

Regards,
Prem

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[Ilugc] (no subject)

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Kg,

Since we are on the topic of frameworks, have you looked at Scala and the
Lift Framework? What I find amazing is the performance - it is on par or
slightly faster than plain Java on many benchmarks. To put that in
perspective, it is several times faster than groovy, ruby and python. This
is because scala runs directly on the JVM.

Take a look:
http://liftweb.net/

By the way, I have done considerable programming on python and have used
plone. Fact is, I have used plone to run our own intranet here at
Songbird. I think it is an excellent framework - but a bit complicated to
customize.

If you prefer using Python and like more speed, you can look at the
upcoming Cobra language.
http://cobra-language.com/docs/python/

They are porting this to work over the jvm as well. May be interesting to
port Django over to use Cobra. Cobra and python are similar enough and so
it may not be that difficult.

Regards,
Prem



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[Ilugc] (no subject)

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>> As these CMSs are more frequently used, attacks against these CMSs will
>> also be higher and also also the people working on fixing these holes -
>> which is why you see lot more security patches in the more popular CMSs.

>plone is a very widely used CMS - where are the security patches? I do not
>think their site even has a security page, feed or mailing list. So the
>logic is flawed

There is no such thing as a software without vulnerability. Even OpenBSD
has had a few vulnerabilities over the years.

Anyway, here is plone's page:
http://dev.plone.org/plone/search?q=vulnerability&noquickjump=1&ticket=on&changeset=on&milestone=on&wiki=on

I have given "vulnerability" as the search word. Please try using any of
the others such as "security" etc.

Also, since Plone is based on Zope, zope's vulnerabilities affect plone as
well. Finding zope's bug reporting page for security vulnerabilities is
left as an exercise for the reader :)

Regards,
Prem



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Re: Re: [Ilugc] do you need a CMS

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>Take the case of Apache, for example when was the last time you had to
>upgrade because of a security issue?

I see your point but Apache has been around a lot longer than WP. In
anycase, there was a vulnerability a few weeks ago:

http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2009-August/016066.html

Also, I upgraded a Apache Tomcat a few weeks ago due to a vulnerability.

Consider the Centos Security Update Announce list for the past 10 days in
September.
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2009-September/thread.html

The link above will indicate why I would consider using CentOS instead of
other distros which don't get these frequent security bug fixes.

If the turn around time for publishing bug fixes from the time when a
vulnerability is listed is too high, it counts against the project. And
that is a better metric of project quality rather than the number of
listed vulnerabilities. That and, of course, the severity of the
vulnerability.

I have used Joomla, WP etc before and I have upgraded due to security
issues a number of times. But then, I have done the same with my OS,
webserver, database, browser etc. If you turn on automatic updates even on
your linux desktop, you will see how often security fixes flow in.

My point is essentially just this - between setting up a website from
ground up using custom developed code and using a popular, frequently
update CMS, my vote goes towards the second option - that is, using a
popular CMS.

Thank you,
Prem


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Re: Re: [Ilugc] do you need a CMS

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Vamsee Kanakala 

>Please read the reasons for the upgrade. Do you seriously think they
>release wordpress updates with new features every two weeks? Check the
>Changelog, please:

>http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Versions

>Two of the last three releases are security releases. Do you see how
>closely they are released? Exactly two weeks. Please show me a blog
>system written in any other language that does 'security releases' so
>often. Please proceed to read up the past release schedule, this pattern
>will be self-evident.

There are 100s of open source CMSs out there. This is because some
developer or other decided that ALL of the existing open source CMSs
didn't meet his expectation and so he/she wrote one more. Very few of
these CMSs see widespread usage - Drupal, Joomla, Typo3, Wordpress etc are
exceptions and not the rule.

As these CMSs are more frequently used, attacks against these CMSs will
also be higher and also also the people working on fixing these holes -
which is why you see lot more security patches in the more popular CMSs.

If you go for a completely static site, it would be only a matter of time
before you start adding dynamic elements to the site. It may start with a
signup form, a news ticker and soon before you know it, you will have your
own mini CMS.

If you decide to develop a CMS from scratch, the chances are that many
security holes will remain in your solution because not too many people
will check for them. Therefore superficially it may seem that your
software is more secure - that is until someone decides to exploit some
hole.

The best approach is to choose any of the popular CMSs (they are all
mostly similar in terms of features) and then use it for the site instead
of developing one from scratch or assuming that you are going to remain
content with a purely static site. If the CMS sees good usage, you will
also receive timely fixes which you can apply to the site.

Thanks,
Prem



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Re: Re: Re: [Ilugc] do you need a CMS?

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Srinivasan Sundararajan 

> thanks for sharing your thoughts. may i infer that it is easier for the
>user(developer) to set up a drupal / joomla based CMS -- thus a typical FOSS
>community contributor group can use this platform. Plone possibly needs a
>"resource-rich" service provider.

That is right.

Regards,
Prem


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Re: Re: [Ilugc] do you need a CMS?

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Srinivasan Sundararajan 

>I understand that the shift to plone (from mambo) was because of the better
>(portal)user - friendly features.

>without making it a php-based vs python-based argument, can some of us do a
>comparative study of a few select CMS (say Drupal, Jhoomla, Plone) :
>highlight their specialities, give some guidelines as to which groups could
>effectively use which system, etc. It might also give a chance for
>developers to add the missing features (provided they gel with the overall
>architecture).

My experience with Drupal, Joomla and Plone:

Drupal is a general framework for websites. It also functions as a CMS but
it can go way beyond being just a CMS. It can be hosted on shared hosting
accounts without any problems. Lots and lots of plugins, templates etc.
Very flexible.

Joomla is an excellent CMS. It is primarily a CMS but can also be modified
to do other things. Again, loads of components and modules. Very easy to
setup and maintain. Slightly less flexible than Drupal.

Both Joomla and Drupal have vibrant user communities and lot of resources
on the web. Both are easy to learn and use.

Many shared hosting services provide security updates to Drupal and Joomla
installations on their servers as and added service at no cost.

Plone - Plone is python based and will require a VPS or a dedicated
server. It requires quite a bit of memory to run properly. By default uses
a ZopeDB database, but can be configured to use some other standard
compliant RDBMSs as well. Very powerful. Very flexible. Not easy to learn
and configure. Customization requires a fairly steep learning curve. Quite
a few resources on the web but not nearly as much as for Drupal or Joomla.
Also, you won't find as many developers comfortable with Plone.

There are other solutions which can be used as well - Confluence is one
example. It is available free of charge for open source websites.
MuleSource, Spring framework, Open Symphony etc use Confluence. Very
powerful and flexible solution.

Regards,
Prem


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Re: Re: [Ilugc] do you need a CMS?

[Prem Kurian Philip]

From: Thyagarajan 

>Wait wait wait, the list goes far far and faar long, please go to list of
>groups at http://www.linux.org/groups/ and find how many of them in CMS,
>nice to see lot of PHP based CMS.

This was discussed at great lengths when the ilugc website
revamp/alternative was first considered. A number of members on this list
were against using a CMS for the site for various reasons.

Regards,
Prem


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Re: [Ilugc] face as password

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>
>> A group of german hackers published the fingerprints of the German Home
>> Secretary and also published tips on how to make a copy of the fingerprint
>> for use on fingerprint readers.
>>

>Today's fingerprint readers have something called LFD. ( Live finger
>Detection) It measures the temperature of the object first and accepts
the > >image only if it is within 97 +/- 7 degree F. ( body temperature)

These have already been busted. They use a thin film (with the finger
print image) which covers the finger and the heat from the hand goes right
through.

Regards,
PK



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Re: [Ilugc] face as password

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Eknath Venkataramani  wrote:

>Is it then that finger print scanners and/or iris scanners are going to be
>used for the UID project?

I hope not. The problem with all biometric mechanisms such as finger
prints, iris prints etc is that it gives an illusion of security but the
truth is that these systems are quite easily compromised.

A group of german hackers published the fingerprints of the German Home
Secretary and also published tips on how to make a copy of the fingerprint
for use on fingerprint readers.
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/105728

It is trivially easy to obtain the iris print or a finger print of most
people. If I can get someone to look closely at something within a
showcase and if I hide a high precision camera within the case, then I can
get the person's iris print. Similarly, finger prints can be easily lifted
from cups, phones etc.

If your entire ID mechanism relies on this compromised biometric code,
then the person will have to be locked out of the system - because the
person cannot change their finger / iris print once they become public
knowledge.

So most biometric systems utilize not just the finger print but also an
additional keyboard entry system for entering a numeric code. But even
this can be easily determined by photographing the person while making the
entry.

Facial recognition is yet another area where there are lots of problems.
The systems are pretty easy to fool or there will be a lot of false
negatives which makes the usage of these systems quite cumbersome.

Thanks,
PK



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Re: Re: [Ilugc] 40th anniversary of Unix approaches...

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Kapil Hari Paranjape wrote:

>Hello,

>On Mon, 10 Aug 2009, Mohan Sundaram wrote:
>> I'd written a mail on this earlier in a thread where NASSCOM rejecting
>> FOSS standards was discussed. I see the reasons as being less
>> sociological than pragmatic. My views are as under:

>The reasons you have given are reasonable for:
> (a) Organisations/people who were newbies in the 90's
> (b) Business organisations/people (who _must_ follow the market).

>This still does not explain why the organisations that had competence
>in Unix allowed this competence to lapse (for example, by "forgetting"
>to pass it on to the younger generation). Moreover, it looks like
>academic organisations are following business trends rather than
>leading businesses to future trends.

A few things that happened in the 80s and the 90s that have contributed to
the current state:

1. Good UNIX programmers have always been far more expensive to recruit,
train and keep.

2. Oracle forms 4 came out and there was a shift away from terminals to
desktop environment. Simultaneously GUI tools such as Visual Basic became
very popular. For C++ development, companies preferred Visual C++.

This was the point when our students went from being command line warriors
to mouse clickers. There was no longer a need to be competent in UNIX -
one could easily land a job in VB/VC etc.

So the number of UNIX programmers dropped heavily. This made the situation
mentioned in point 1 even more acute.

3. The specialist UNIX platforms such as SGI Irix, HP UX, SCO etc all met
their demise when the UNIX workstations started getting replaced by
Intergraph or other workstations running Windows NT 3.5/4. It was now
possible to setup entire render farms, do computer aided design and also
do scientific computing calculations without leaving the GUI. Most UNIX
application vendors ported their apps over to work on Windows NT around
this time. So the market for UNIX programmers dropped yet again.

As a result of this, the domain that UNIX occupied was restricted to
verticals such as telecom (where it is still pretty dominant), niche
scientific computing, mainframes (for very large corps) etc.

It is now over the past few years that UNIX (or rather Linux) is seeing a
resurgence primarily because of the cost advantages of Linux. But I am
very doubtful that UNIX would reach the heights that it reached during the
1970s and the early 80s.

NASSCOM's board has people from non-programming and non-computer
engineering backgrounds. Even those who are from computer backgrounds
probably cut their teeth on MS software and not on UNIX. Many of them
probably still have the image of UNIX as blinking green terminals.

Therefore I am not surprised that they have a low opinion of UNIX/Linux
and are pushing MS's case... with some encouragement from MS (of course).

Thanks,
Prem

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Re: [Ilugc] [Commercial] Linux VPS and Reseller @ Indian Datacenter

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>On Friday 24 Jul 2009 10:32:38 am Aanjhan R wrote:
>> > it is still non-free and has no place on this list
>>
>> There is a [Commercial] tag.

>even commercial tag does not help if the software is non-free
>--
>regards
>kg

It does not relate to any software per se - only to web hosting.

I think this was posted here because it relates to Linux hosting. She was
careful enough to only link to the Linux VPS plans in her email though
they also have Windows VPS plans.

Thanks,
Prem



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RE: [Ilugc] [Commercial] Linux VPS and Reseller @ Indian Datacenter

[Prem Kurian Philip]

> For Linux fans we have launched our most saught Linux VPS Plans at
> Indian Datacenter. We utilize worldclass Parallels' virtuozzo
> technology.

> URL : http://www.odishahosting.in/VpsLin.php

> Why should you host at Indian Datacenter ( Not USA ) ?

This seems pretty interesting. Just a few questions though:

a) Where is your Indian datacenter located?

b) Why are your US plans so much better than the Indian plans at half the
cost?

By the way, I am very glad to see such an initiative based out of Orissa.

My best wishes,
Prem

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[Ilugc] RE: GPU-based h.264 decoding in Linux

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>Does anyone know if it is possible to get hardware-accelerated h.264
>decoding in Linux with Nvidia hardware? I have a friend's 7200 GS and
>before I buy a motherboard that will accept it, I'd like to know if it
is >possible to use it under Linux to decode h.264. I know the hardware
is >capable of it.

Found this as well:
http://gxben.wordpress.com/2008/11/16/nvidia-brought-purevideo-to-mplayerlinux/

and this:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_180_vdpau&num=1

But it looks like only Nvidia 8xxx series of cards are supported, but I
could be wrong.

Regards,
Prem





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[Ilugc] RE: GPU-based h.264 decoding in Linux

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>Does anyone know if it is possible to get hardware-accelerated h.264
>decoding in Linux with Nvidia hardware? I have a friend's 7200 GS and
>before I buy a motherboard that will accept it, I'd like to know if it
>is possible to use it under Linux to decode h.264. I know the hardware
>is capable of it.

My experience with H264 decoding on Linux using hardware acceleration has
been pretty bad.

But I came across this and it sounds interesting. You have probably seen
this already:
http://blog.mymediasystem.net/avchd/nvidias-vdpau-driver-version-18016-hardware-acceleration-for-hd-content-h264-with-major-improvements/

There have been some attempts to get CoreAvc running under linux, but I am
not sure how successful the attempts were at getting hardware acceleration
going.

Regards,
Prem



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Re: [Ilugc] chennailug.org / ilugc.in - what do you need?

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>
>> Why is a static site considered a good idea in this time and age? If your
>> concern is that a CMS-managed site can be hacked while a static site can't
>> be - well, yes, it is more difficult to attack a pure static site.


>I believe static pages in *our case* would be a good idea because we can get
>around the problems of one person being the gatekeeper for all the
>changes/updates that need to be done.

What exactly is the workflow you have in mind for how the static website
is going to be updated? Whether you use an SCM or not you are going to
have a person who finally takes a call on a "release" to the production
server.

Consider the steps required for a SCM repository idea to work:

Naturally, I am assuming that you are not providing commit privileges to
everyone.

Random user:

Step 1 - Random user installs subversion on his desktop and then proceeds
to checkout the html files and the other content files from the
repository. This includes checking out the *entire* content from the
branch.
Step 2 - Random user sets up the files on his local machine. This involves
downloading and installing a version of Apache.
Step 3 - Random user makes changes in the html files. Adds files, removes
files etc. Changes stylesheets (common across all files)
Step 4 - Sends a patch to the webmaster? Carefully sends the list of new
files he has added so that he does not break anything.

(NOTE: I know we are speaking of techies here, but really - how many of
even these techies will know how to send patches properly and will be
diligent enough to include any additional files and so on?)

Webmaster:

Step 5 - Webmaster receives the patch and determine if the patch can be
applied to the code.
Step 6 - He will need to actually apply the patch to determine if it is
breaking anything. Since stylesheets may have changed, he will need to
review a lot of files.
Step 7 - He will need to make changes if the patch breaks anything
Step 8 - If there are multiple patches, do steps 5 to 7 and also consider
the case when one patch causes problem with another patch
Step 9 - Applies the patch to a branch.
Step 10 - Asks someone else (review board) to download the version and
review it and decide if the version can go online.
Step 11 - Wait around and repeat steps 8 and 9 if there are multiple
people on the board.
Step 12 - Apply the patches / changes sent in by the people on the review
board.
Step 13 - Merge all the changes to the head (optional)
Step 14 - Export the changes to the production server. This may involve
deleting the files from the production server. You could do a checkout if
you prefer having .svn files all over the webserver directory.

>Also, it's also a case of not
>complicating things unless we really, really need it - It's not just
>security I'm talking about - Drupal will need a database, and somebody has
>to backup all that data separately. It has to be transferred off-server so
>that a disk failure won't take out all the old data. Ergo, considerable
>amount of admin time. As SK mentioned, it becomes a chore for any one
>person when he has a day job.

Consider the steps given above. One poor soul will be entrusted with the
task of doing this - there is a lot of possibility of error.

>Static pages are simple and get the job done - all the data is in the svn
>repo. And everybody who has the latest checkout will have all the data of
>the site. Any one of us can restore it. Also, there is also the issue of
>flexibility - using simple html pages and bunch of css files is so much
>easier than managing 'themes' and 'modules' and somesuch.

What exactly is so difficult about these "themes" and "modules"? There are
kids who are setting up their own websites using these CMSs - a theme is
mostly html with some additional markup and some css.

Have you tried putting in a large binary file into subversion? consider
something like 20 video files of 50 mb each. Try checking them out of
subversion. Just consider that the users who want to modify html files and
send it to the webmaster will need to checkout these files on their
desktops over a pathetic 1mbps DSL connection.

Consider the workflow for a CMS driven site:

Step 1. Web master obtains requests for changes over email or over ilugc.
Another approach would be to allow a moderated comment system against on
each page and the users can submit their comments directly.
Step 2. Web master logs in from anywhere in the world (does not need
access to subversion etc)
Step 3. Web master makes the change in the content, uploads files etc. On
some CMSs, this will generate a new version of the content. The older
version will remain published.
Step 4. If the software supports a workflow, those responsible for
reviewing the changes will be automatically notified over email.
Step 5. Reviewers place their comments or add/remove changes
Step 6. Web master incorporates the changes.
Step 7. Web master publishes the changes.

The CMS will itself handle auto-archiving and auto-expiry of conten

Re: [Ilugc] chennailug.org / ilugc.in - what do you need?

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>| But are we saying that we have no
>| one in this list who is capable of securing a simple dynamic site?
>\--

>... with time to promptly respond to queries and maintain it, because
>they are busy with a day-job?

What do you propose as the plan of action for tracking apache
vulnerabilities, OS vulnerabilities and so on? Are you saying that there
is going to be NO vulnerabilities in the system if you remove MySQL and
PHP (if you are using a LAMP stack and running a PHP-based opensource
CMS)?

If you aren't willing to get someone to at least look at the website
occasionally, then you shouldn't be getting into hosting anything - static
or not.

Also, what makes you think it is dramatically less time consuming to
maintain a static html website where you have to edit links manually,
archive content manually and so on?

Do you think it takes a lot less effort to track changes in subversion,
deciding what is moved over to the production site, managing branches,
managing merges, managing user rights to different parts of the website,
applying patches and then deciding on what content is moved *manually* to
archives and so on?

And at the end of the day you will have a website which does not even
support searches? If you think that is an advancement, I don't know what
else to say.

>... provided you have a *dedicated* list of people who can maintain
>it? There has been many a time when I couldn't show the URL of ILUG-C
>when talking to students because the website has been filled with
>spam, or the site itself has been down.

>We can do better!

How is this a fault of the software?

What is preventing the maintainers from setting up basic moderation for
comments? Would that require huge effort?

Regards,
Prem

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Re: Re: [Ilugc] chennailug.org / ilugc.in - what do you need? Re: [Ilugc] chennailug.org / ilugc.in - what do you need?

[Prem Kurian Philip]

>> I think the benefits of using a dynamic CMS environment far outweigh the
>> benefits of using a static html website.

>Though you make these two assertions, your e-mail contains no mention
>of the benefits of a dynamic web site. Instead your e-mail contains
>examples of by-passing known difficulties with dynamic web sites.

Do I really need to list these benefits - even with the 100s of 1000s of
websites out there - sites such as wikipedia, sourceforge, linux.com,
linuxtoday.com etc all running off CMSs? Isn't Google Code itself a
dynamic site?

In anycase, I will take the bite. Here are list some of the benefits:
Ability to include additional interactive components - example: conference
slide shows, conference / event listings and calendar, community generated
documentation, subject specific forums (besides the mailing lists),
conference registration modules, podcasts registrations, single
sign-on

> As we are working on updating our web services at IMSc as well, I
> would really like to know the benefits of dynamic web sites for a site
> that is very infrequently edited by humans (some pages may be generated
> by cron jobs).

Having a dynamic CMS website does not in anyway prevent you from having
portions of the website coming from other automated sources - cron jobs
etc.

To state what you will already know - there are some very capable CMSs out
there - from large "enterprise-class" ones such as Liferay, Plone etc to
the smaller ones such as Joomla. Some of these products content
versioning, separate staging and production environments, workflow for
managing content (including approvals) etc.

Are we saying that not one of these environments is suitable for our use?
I find that to be very bold and unsubstantiated claim.

Thanks,
Prem Kurian Philip


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Re: [Ilugc] chennailug.org / ilugc.in - what do you need?

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Vamsee Kanakala writes:

>1. The site with static pages, with code available as an svn repo on a
>google code project.

Why is a static site considered a good idea in this time and age? If your
concern is that a CMS-managed site can be hacked while a static site can't
be - well, yes, it is more difficult to attack a pure static site.
However, please do bear in mind that a subversion server can be
compromised. After all haven't we have had the situation in multiple open
source projects where the code repository has been compromised?

I think there is a tremendous benefit to using a CMS-managed site - the
website has to be secured, of course. But are we saying that we have no
one in this list who is capable of securing a simple dynamic site?

If your problem is that there is no staging facility and that all the
changes are being done directly to the production site, then there are
other ways of solving the problem - one would be to use software which
allows for separate staging and production environments.

Coming to the subject of backups - we can setup a cron job to
automatically backup the db and the content directories on a daily and
weekly basis. Thousands of websites are doing this already.

I think the benefits of using a dynamic CMS environment far outweigh the
benefits of using a static html website.

Thank you,
Prem Kurian Philip


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Re: [Ilugc] Embedded Linux web server help needed

[Prem Kurian Philip]

Have you looked at the following:
http://www.embedthis.com/

Or this?
http://www.acme.com/software/mini_httpd/

Regards,
Prem Kurian Philip
Songbird Technologies

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