Orkut says Iceweasel is not supported
The new Joke from the buggy Orkut- The most ugly product from google. It says Iceweasel, a rebranding of firefox as a not supported browser
They are recommending the use of Firefox 1.5 or IE6.0 while using Iceweasel 2.0.0.6 . It seems their check depending only on useragents
Shame on you google.
(Iceweasel is a rebranding of Firefox by Debian to make it compatible with Debain Free software guidelines.)
India Vots No to OOXML with Comments
Dr. Nagarjuna Writes in FSF-Friends List
India votes against ooxml unanimously. the decision of the committee was to disapprove ooxml with comments. The final meeting took place today after 3pm for about an hour and half, and no voting took place.
Venkitesh Hariharan also reports it.
Todays Economic Times & business standard picked up the story.
ET report says
“We unanimously agree on the disapproval of OOXML with comments. The same will be submitted to ISO,” National Informatics Centre head and BIS technical committee chairperson Nita Verma said after a marathon meeting that lasted over six hours. There was no need for a voting as only Infosys Technologies and CSI supported Microsoft.
Some quick links on Background of this campaign:
aper By Dr. NagarjunaUpdate:
Brazil also Decided No to OOXML yesterday:-)
Whose Freedom…? Whose Country…? -Some thoughts on India at 60
Yesterday Indian Republic marked its 60th anniversary (an average Indian’s life time) of its independence. yet another Independence Day for the people of India to openly talk of secession.
About the secession of the Indian state from the citizens it is supposed to serve.
The secession of Indian politicians from the people they are supposed to represent.
The secession of the Indian rich from the fate of their fellow Indians.
The secession of India’s educated from the basic values of their own education (with values replaced by the price of their souls)
The secession of the idea of development from the real needs of the Indian people leaving only a trail of destruction and displacement.
As Independent India approaches the age of sixty- that magical sum of five cycles of 12 years each – it is time to tell the truth about our country.
The ODF vs. OOXML numbers
Bob Sutor’s Open Blog Points to Ben Langhinrichs‘ s Post on some interesting stats via Google on the relative number of ODF vs. OOXML documents on the web. His numbers show that there are 162,700 ODF documents vs. 1993 OOXML documents, and 26% of the OOXML documents are on microsoft.com
Bergmanbits : a p2p memmorial to life and the films of Ingmar Bergman
As a tribute to Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish peer-to-peer activists who created the Pirate Bay (a Bittorrent tracker web site) have set up a tracker site called Bergman Bits to help people download Bergman’s films via Bittorrent:
Bergman Bits says
With the death of Ingmar Bergman, one of the last great film creators, an era has passed away. An era where cinema was the supreme medium, dominating the cultural landscape and powerful men could direct and dictate our inner most feelings and desires with mass media.
For good or worse, we now live in the time of the great distributed networks where all of us have the powers of communication and creation at our hands. Despite Bergman, lets not wish the time of mass media back, but let it silently pass away with a final gasp.
As big fans of Bergmans work, we decided to make a tribute site to the films he created and we all love. We want to help people share these works and hope that even though Ingmar is no longer with us more people will experience the films and enjoy them as much as we have.
His 54 Films are available to download (Hets Frenzy/Torment (1944) to Saraband (2003)) in Bittorrent format from
New LX installer for Debian GNU/Hurd
GNU/Hurd aka Complete GNU system is a futuristic project. It was started by the end of 80′s . But was stagnant due to the architectural problems and lack of contributers after the arrival of Linux Kernel & GNU/LInux system. It is way forward from the monolithic kernel Linux to Micro kernel based systems. The Hurd is a set of servers running on top of the GNU Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux). Together they build the basefor the GNU operating system. Debian have a GNU/Hurd distribution on Development for a long time (It reached K14 now) . Some students from MES college of Engineering Kuttippuram under the leadership of C.K raju decided to created a new installer (installation is the biggest problem for people to use GNU/Hurd.) . Kiranchand and Team Created a wonderful Installer for Debian GNU/hurd. It is named as Debian GNU/Hurd LX installer as the successor of K series that boot Directly into X. wonderful development Kiran & team. Kiran also participated in in Our discussion on “Smart city & changing Kerala society” in Eranakulam on may and presented his experience as a case study on on how one can take part in Software Dev elopement project without and Exclusive smart cities or Technoparks.
Harry Potter and The Seeds of Torrent
When the manuscript of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”– the seventh and final novel in the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling–was carried by hand from London to New York, the attorney for Scholastic, the book’s American publisher, sat on it throughout the flight. When it was bound and printed, the factory workers who oversaw its production were reportedly forced to work in near-darkness to prevent them from reading it. And when it was shipped to retailers, the vehicles carrying it were tracked by satellite to ensure that they did not deviate from their intended route.So what next?
Just after the book is released It appeared on Torrent servers. The versions include Photographed pages, Properly Compiled PDF, audio book etc. Thousands of people are sharing it See the below Picture for the number of seeds for The Torrent. A Simple search on Torrentz.com will be helpful to find the torrents.
Defeat M$ efforts to push Ecma OOXML in Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)
M$ is lobbying heavily in Bureau of Indian Standards(BIS) for valued Vote (India is a P-Member in ISO) in ISO/IEC JTC1 which is the International Standardization body of Information Technology standards. Dr. Nagarjuna is active in the campaign representing ODFAlliance & Free Software Foundation of India. The history of Discussion is archived at ODF aliance.
Why we are Opposing ECMA Office Open XML. a A lot of a lot of answers are in front of us. Technical, Political & More Technical...
Free Software community Suceeded in setting up Vendor independent De-codable Interoperable Public Standard called Open Document format. It is also approved by ISO26300 as an ISO standard (May 2006) .Microsoft denied to become a part of the OASIS Open document team and created a new 6000 page specification named ECMA Open XML , which is open Only on Name and applied for ISO recognition.It is now under the Fast Track Process & all standardization Bodies need to Vote on It. You can see a File format Timeline here. Common Interoperable Decodable Public standards ( called as Free Standards/ Open standards)always created a revolution in The history of Digital age. Look at the examples of HTML, Unicode etc. A dual standard adds costs, uncertainty and confusion to industry, government and citizens and deny the growth.
One of the Strongest Argument Raised By G.Nagrjuna in his paper, submitted to Working Committee, Board of Indian Standards on Wordprocessing is as Follows
In Ecma’s response document the truth of the matter comes out very vividly:
OpenXML is designed to represent the existing corpus of documents faithfully, even if that means preserving idiosyncrasies that one might not choose given the luxury of starting from a clean slate. In the ODF design, compatibility with and preservation of existing Office documents were not goals. Each set of goals is valuable; sacrificing either at the expense of the other may not be in the best interest of users. (p.6 Ecma Response)
This is the fact of the matter. This clearly shows that one of them is trying to preserve the existing data created by a single vendor, while the other is to provide a generic encoding standard for office documents. It is true therefore that their purposes are different. Since there is a difference in purpose despite the overlapping with ODF, Ecma argues, OOXML can also exist with ODF.
But the issue is: providing a way of preserving a vendor’s old documents is the service that a vendor is expected to do. This must happen. This can happen by converting the documents into ODF. Ecma did not prove that this is impossible.
We therefore think, that Ecma has the burden to prove that proprietary documents made by them cannot be converted into ODF. It is very likely that there can be a few elements that cannot be translated, since ODF was not made to serve a particular vendor’s requirements. Once such elements are identified, Ecma can propose a model of extending ODF so that the possible problems are sorted out. This is the desirable way.
The Technical Problems of OOXML are Very High I request you to Go Through G.Nagarjuna’s paper Titled Why Ecma OOXML cannot be regarded as a free/open document standard?
Action Alert: Release Saroj Mohanty
URGENT APPEAL FROM KASHIPUR SOLIDARITY GROUP
Saroj Mohanty, poet and long-time activist with Prakrutik Sampad Surakhya Parishad (PSSP), which has over 15 years been opposing the entry of large bauxite mining companies in Kashipur, has been arrested. Saroj was picked up at a railway station in Rayagada District, on Saturday, 14 July. He is currently in judicial custody in Rayagada district jail.
The charges against him are completely fabricated but serious. These charges include section 395 of the IPC (Dacoity), section 397 (Robbery or dacoity, with attempt to cause death or grevious hurt), and section 450 (House tresspass with intention to commit offence that is punishable with imprisonment for life).
These absurd charges against Saroj stem from attempts in late 2004 by the mining company UAIL and the Orissa government hell-bent on pushing the project for bauxite mining through to undermine the resistance to the project by slapping false cases on the leadership and mass base of PSSP. The intense protests by the people was met by severe repression, harassment and arrests, which continues to this day. As part of the continuing repression carried out at the time, a number of PSSP activists and ordinary people were falsely charged. Among them was Saroj Mohanty.
OpenDNS shortcuts: Bookmarked web at DNS level
Yesterday I amazed to see the OpenDNS‘s new feature called Shortcuts. Shortcuts are very simple, similar to bookmarks in your browser. OpenDNS shortcuts let you pair a word with a URL so that when you type that word in your address bar, you’re taken to that website. These shortcuts work regardless of your OS or browser – they are dependent upon your OpenDNS-enabled network. Simply login to your account and setup the shortcuts.
