Arbit Scratchpad

First day at FOSS.in was good - its a 4 day event this time. Today's topics included the inauguration by Atul Chitnis and then a talk by Alan Cox (Linux kernel maintainer). Later talks went on among other topics, related to interrupt handling, USB on embedded linux, H/W and S/W aspects of industrial embedded systems, Linux scheduling and NetBSD, Kernel hacking using kernel loadable modules and counter hacks was a very interesting talk. Will go tomorrow - as I got a permission only for first two days from work ...

We had as part of our Annual Day celebrations a group song competition last Friday called 'Sargam', consisting of two separate rounds - first one the Karaoke round with humourous twisted lyrics called 'Bappi Copy' and the second the instrumental round called 'The Band' round. We did well, but since we were doing it for the first time; the team came 5th and 6th in these 2 rounds respectively, out of a total of 8 houses based on which all employees of the organisation were split. First time - so it was a great experience to be on stage performing as a group. The first round we did parody (about PMs and performance appraisals) with 4 good singers (including yours truly ;-)), with lyrics of the Kishore-Asha duet 'Maine Kasam Li'. The second round was accompanied by an amazing guitarist from our house in which I did Kishore's 'Jaana Jaan ...' from the movie 'Jawani Diwani' and 'Dum Maro Dum' by another female team member; along wit...

Neat looks and rock solid stablility - only my sound card doesnt work yet ... First time using Suse Linux on my system. The Knights (GNU Chess) package with all the chess pieces/board themes, that the stupid Fedora installation never comes with, made my day. The updater also works fine (YAST). Again for the dial-up wvdial did the trick ( More here ).

Here is a short story based on partly a brainwave, and partly inspired by Chekov: 'The Song'

Indian Express has exposed the Congress involvement and Natwar Singh's kickbacks and links in the Iraq Oil Scam. The Volcker report on ‘oil for food’ scandal has come as a shocker to the Congress and they in a ridiculous move, want to sue the UN on the findings . Isnt this laughable. The modus operandi and Complete coverage. Watched the movie 'Encounter, The Killing' on DD. The movie though not great in terms of screenplay or having the commercial movie slickness; has a very interesting story as it unfolds. Some of the acting is very amateurish, and the masala songs thrown in are just that, mindless entertainment. But the acting by Naseeruddin Shah as the sincere, humane yet professional Parsee police inspector is just amazing. He is able to mould into any character and handle all the diverse emotions, with so much ease, that he actually seems genuinely living the role he portrays. The movie shows the human side of a few police staff. Some of the actors are from Marathi...

A heavy shadow, the misty plain A bunch of men with a fresh plan, again The steaming cups of tea, sound of prayers A scheme gets resolved in the mind of the slayers. Read more of the poem: A mistaken prayer, a false offering

The controversy that just seems to have spilled over. (Was busy with Durga Puja at that time and missed out on this) IIPM vs a few bloggers ( Gaurav Sabnis and Rashmi Bansal ) & JAM Online Mag's article . Gaurav had to actually leave resigned from his job at IBM - similar to incidents at Microsoft and Google in the US where bloggers were made to leave, maybe this time more an individual's decision rather than the company giving marching orders . . . A gist of the issue from NDTV Read an indepth detail of the legal saga HERE . Also more details HERE . My opinion on this: If IIPM did have a reason to go after JAM Mag which did an expose on its false claims of infrastucture and the MBA degree awarded by them (the IIPM and the degree are unrecognised by AICTE and any other official body in India) then they should have probably done it in a less dramatic and less defiling manner. The hyper-reaction shows that they are indeed guilty of malpractice and mis-advertisi...