Diary for jayakumar
Older diary entries for jayakumar (starting at number 32):
Hehe. This one and this one. John Leach, I can't wait for the next one.Congratulation to the winners of Redhat India's Lord Of The Code program. I don't know about the first placed project. But the second place winners built an interesting project. It was a project to add GTK+ bindings to Octave. Nicely done. Congrats to Ramasamy C, Muthiah A, Hemant Kumar, and R Saravana Manickam.I like Nek Chand and others 40 acre rock and sculpture garden In Chandigarh. More about it here.Slashback:
An innovative enviromentally friendly method for building a ski lift in Manali, India. No wonder RMS refuses Coca-Cola. They're suing this photographer, Sharad Haksar for this image of coca cola above pots near a push pipe, a tire and a container of some chemicals. Maybe they thought it would remind too many customers of the alleged excessive pollution levels found in Coca-cola and watertable reduction issues. Manmohan Singh talks about India's relationship with Britain among other things. I found the following part interesting: At this meeting, the Mahatma was asked: 'How far would you cut India off from the Empire?' His reply was precise - 'From the Empire, entirely; from the British nation not at all, if I want India to gain and not to grieve.' He added, 'The British Empire is an Empire only because of India. The Emperorship must go and I should love to be an equal partner with Britain, sharing her joys and sorrows. But it must be a partnership on equal terms.' This remarkable statement by the Mahatma has defined the basis of our relationship with Britain.
Indian cheetahs went extinct in 1952. The last living cheetah apparently died in 1952 in Chitoor in Andhra. The Gir lion is down to 200. 3 species of Indian vulture are going to go extinct unless a better alternative to diclofenac is found. And meanwhile Iran says to India "No, you can't copy our cheetahs. Go ask Africa.". You know, if you want to keep your native species' alive, it's best to do it while they're still here rather than ask your neighbours to lend you their DNA once you've killed all of your own. Either we all fix something or we lose these creatures. I liked Dilip's essay about sharing. Here's a snippet: But there's another point here. My days in Orissa and Kutch taught me a lesson that I learned once more in Tamil Nadu: if that word patriotism means anything at all, it must mean the kind of selfless dedication I saw in people like PK. The simple urge to do something for your fellow human being, for no better reason than that he is your fellow human being.
I watched Danny the dog. I liked it. It's unique. It's interesting.It has two faces that are infamously familiar: Tamer Hassan, and Bob Hoskins. It was written by Luc Besson who happens to have also been the producer for Ong Bak. And yes, also the producer for Léon the professional. A couple of his other flicks are Kiss of the Dragon, The Messenger. It stars Morgan Freeman and Jet Li. I'll say no more.
New kernel is out.2.6.13-rc3. Looks like some relevant mtd and jffs2 fixes. Everyone's out for OLS next week.Gizmo, Michael Robertson's SIP based Skype equivalent seems to be today's hot topic. A lot of people were saying it's open source. No, Gizmo is not open source. It's closed source. Michael Robertson says:It's true the Gizmo software is not open source, there are licensing limitations which prevent that from happening, but to me that's the least important component of creating a well functioning VOIP world where consumers avoid lock-in. We are working with several open source initiatives to create GPL clients, so that will be an option in the future.
- MR
Linus just pushed out Linux 2.6.13-rc2. Just checked that arcfb still compiles. Changelog is here.Some things I noticed. The redundant tcp_current_mss calls were removed. A tcp tx performance regression was fixed.
I found this article about Chinese investment in Africa quite exciting. The rest of the world has pretty much ignored Africa as a location to sell products to and do serious business. It will be very interesting to see whether how China and Africa interact in the future. Here are some of the parts I found interesting:"Africa is a very good environment for investment, especially at the moment. Europe and the USA are too competitive. But it's not yet very competitive in Africa, and there are certain business opportunities for Chinese businessmen to embark on. That's why we entrepreneurs have come to Sierra Leone, to Africa." - Yany Zhao, Manager, Bintumani Hotel
In two decades China has lifted 400 million of its own people out of poverty - they haven't exactly made poverty history, but their success has not gone unnoticed in Africa. Compared to G8 countries and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, African leaders see China as dynamic and decisive, rather than full of empty promises. China's rapid penetration of Africa poses a challenge that G8 leaders meeting in Gleneagles do not appear to have factored in to their calculations.
A slashback style entry:
Congratulations to the USA on it's 229th year of independence. Your revolution was a radical and unique one. I think it's the only case of a nation succesfully being born purely for self-imposed rule of law for the benefit of it's citizens and not based on tribal/ethnic or political boundaries. We appreciate the good things you have created and hope that there will be more of those and less of the other things. Here's a key part of your declaration of independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humans are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among humans, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. And this article is worth a read.
I'm very disturbed by the events surrounding the SSCP project (Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project). This is a project to dredge a channel between the southern tip of Tamil Nadu and the Jaffna peninsula in order to create a shipping canal. The fact that the central government had to arrest 600 people is unacceptable. There appear to be significant enviromental concerns and I'd like to see these addressed. The enviromental impact of the dredging has to be fully understood. The belief that the canal could bring in a lot of wealth has to be balanced against the suspicion that the same shipping lane could have a serious and much more devestating long term enviromental impact. Historically, I feel that the land bridge under/between Rameshwaram and Jaffna has a great deal of significance. It would be unacceptable if that bridge was destroyed. These things have to be fully considered. Bush on Africa: (edited for brevity, full version here) PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, we've tripled the budget on direct aid to the countries in Africa since I've been the president - tripled it. We're saying, 'Now, for increased aid, you, the leaders of Africa, must have transparency in your government, you must fight corruption, you must invest in the health and education of your people.' In other words, we're not going to invest in governments that are corrupt. I think he's right on that. I think it's even more important than ever that all developing nations, especially India since it's the nation with the largest risk, fight corruption, and invest in the health and education of it's citizens. Hardware modding is becoming dangerous. I guess this guy was doing more than just modding and that's what got him into trouble. I hope it's clear that modding by itself should be perfectly legal and even better, should be something that's encouraged. So the following is reprehensible. "The modification of consoles is an activity that Elspa's anti-piracy team is prioritising. It is encouraging to see the UK courts do the same."
