Firefox 5th Anniversary Celebrations at Pantnagar

“Happy Birthday dear Firefox!!!”

Firefox lovers from College of Technology, Pantnagar gathered for the 5^th Anniversary Celebrations of world’s favourite browser – Firefox outside the old college building and sang these lines in the glory of Firefox! It was a fun filled celebration with lots of prizes and goodies for the well wishers of Firefox.

I was excited already seeing the quality of cake baked by the local shopkeeper and, for a change, was at the event venue a minute in advence, that is, at 3:59pm! I was shortly joined by Sumit Sati and very soon about 15 other enthusiasts joined the party. The young girls from first year (although they didn’t have a hunch what this Firefox was) had designed an excellent Firefox banner which was a piece of attraction throughout the celebrations. After the cake cutting and subsequent customary eating, everyone present shared their Firefox Experiences. The guys discussed how they got to know Firefox, what they liked in Firefox which made it better than ’some other browsers’, and of course, their favourite add-ons! Video Download Helper, Echofon, Download Them All, Firebug and AdBlock Plus were the clear favourites of those present there.

Then was the time for some quizzing and goodies! Me and Sumit Sati put up a number of questions which the young guns of the college smartly answered to take away all what we had – Firefox wrist bands, stickers and lanyards (which we had carefully preserved from Mozilla Camp Delhi). Due to various competitive examinations and other factors, the attendance was quite low but it was lots of fun, all the same!

Pics and videos from the party.

Payback Time: Celebrating 5th Birth Anniversary of Firefox

Ever since the Tim Berners Lee gave us the world wide web, we have seen numerous technologies and innovations on this platform. For me, and i am sure for millions others, Mozilla Firefox is one of the best out of them. The web was sick of the monopolistic attitude of some bullying ‘explorers’ and deserved a change. This welcome change was brought about with the initiation of the Mozilla project which gave us this cute li’l baby called Firefox. Now this baby is 5 years young and is revolutionizing the experience of the web for the users every minute. I personally rediscovered the web using Firefox over IE.

My introduction to Firefox is an interesting story. It was the year 2006 and i was on my home PC, searching for some stuff or the other put in it by the computer salesperson from whom my father had bought it. Doing so, i stumbled upon a .exe setup of something called a Firefox! I instantly loved the name and installed it just for the sake of satisfying my curiosity. When it got installed (it was a 1.x version and it took only a few seconds in installation!), i found out that it was a web browser. At that time, i had a dial-up 33.6 kbps connection on which IE used to give me 1.0kbps to 1.5kbps of download ’speed’. I tried downloading with Firefox and voila, on the same connection, it gave me speed of 3kbps! I was jubiliated and since that day, i have never used IE (except for cases when i don’t have any option ).

Mozilla celebrated the 5th birth anniversary of Firefox on 9th November, 2009. There have been several Firefox 5th Birth Anniversary celebrations around the world in the past week and two. So me, along with my batchmates and fellow members of Open Source User Group, Pantnagar are organising a party in our college to celebrate the 5th birth anniversary of Firefox! We would be having a small cake cutting ceremony followed by a quiz on Firefox. There are exciting prizes to be won! The details of the party are as under:
Date : Sunday, 22 November 2009

Time : 4:00 pm onwards

Venue: PCT Lawns
Everyone associated with the college (students, professors, workers, everyone) is cordially invited to be a part of this fun! It’s payback time for every one to whom Firefox has given so very much in the past 5 years.

Spread the word: http://3.ly/5p7

Spread Firefox: http://www.spreadfirefox.com

Firefox 5th Anniversary Celebrations

 

Fight FOSS Ignorance

One of the major factors which help proprietary software vendors keep a grip on the market is ignorance on the part of the consumers. Newspapers, one of the key sources of information to the common man, to aren’t playing their part and in their state of ignorance, helping such organizations.

Recently, on twitter, i pointed out the proprietary bias shown by Times of India vs Open Mindedness shown by The Hindu “#timesofindia vs #thehindu Clear proprietary bias shown by #timesofindia http://3.ly/bvh
and http://3.ly/MQk #opensource #linux “.

I also came across many internet related news articles in the local paper Amar Ujala which uses the logo of Internet Explorer in all their web-related articles. It gives a wrong notion to the ignorant masses that the Internet and Internet Explorer are synonymous. So i pointed out this to the Editor, Amar Ujala through a letter, a copy of which I am pasting below. My motive is to inspire every reader to fight FOSS ignorance in whatever best way s/he can and spread the spirit of Open Source.

All the best to all.

The Letter
—————-
Hello sir,

I am a regular reader of your newspaper an am highly appreciative of
the content matter and the quality of unbiased journalism of the
daily.

I would like to point your kind attention to a regular feature of the
web related articles published in Amar Ujala. Most of such articles
contain the logo of Microsoft’s proprietary web browser – Internet
Explorer.

Apart from being a free publicity for the browser and the company, it
gives a wrong notion to the lakhs of readers of the newspaper that the
Internet and Internet Explorer are synonymous. The role of a newspaper
is to create a better, an aware society. Using Microsoft Internet
Explorer’s logo in your articles gives the ignorant readers a notion
that Internet Explorer is what the Internet is all about, which is
totally wrong. A newspaper of your reputation should instead promote
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) which gives the users the freedom
to use them, without being under the restrictions of copyright laws.
Mozilla Firefox is one of the most popular Open Source browsers
available. Another Open Source browser, Google Chrome is doing well in
the browser market. Opera and Apple’s Safari, though not Open Source,
are still options available to the users.

My only concern is that the newspaper should not mislead the readers.

Hence I request you to kindly look into the matter and do something in
this regard as early as possible. I would like to get an
acknowledgment of this letter to you.

I would be highly obliged.

Thanking you

Yours sincerely,

–
Tanay Mathpal
Final Yr, Computer Engineering
College of Technology
Pantnagar

HTML 5

On 23rd October, 2009, i delivered a seminar presentation on HTML 5 as a part of the requirements for the fulfillment of my B.Tech. degree program. Both designing and delivering the presentation was a tremendous learning experience.
I have uploaded the presentation and am posting the link for all of you.

http://www.slideshare.net/tanamania/html5-2364872

HTML 5 by Tanay Mathpal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 India License

The Cosmic Web

Every day, every moment, someone or the other wishes for something, prays for something; or someone. The individual feels elated when his/her wish or prayer is heeded and, quite understandably, is surrounded by an air of disappointment if his desire is not fulfilled. But the point is, where all these wishes and prayers go? A widely accepted spiritual notion is that all these wishes diffuse into energy and become a part of the never ending cosmos. All of us know and agree upon the fact that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed. So all these wishes and prayers, in the form of energy, remain in the cosmos, waiting to be listened to, sometime or the other. The cosmos is a limitless reservoir in which these endless wishes wobble around.

There is always a set of rational thinkers who tend to disagree with such spiritual notions. Many of them might be reading this piece at the moment. Through this article, the author is not trying to convince those souls about the validity of this notion. Rather, the idea is to establish an analogy between the Cosmos and the World Wide Web.

The web, especially after the advent of Web 2.0, is a totally different playground. It is no longer a place where one checks in to get some information, data and records, send some emails, and then checks out. It’s a much different; a much better mesh today. It is now a place where you and i can contribute – through blogs, microblogs like twitter, social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Orkut – and that too in a number of ways. A means of contribution is our wishes and prayers. Readers who are regular users of the above mentioned services would have come across such wishful ‘updates’ from other users many times. To quote an example, in the recent past, the author, in his pursuit of an invite to join Google Wave, has expressed his wishes on his twitter page many times as in I want #google #wave. Can anyone plz send me an invite. Also, there are personal as well as more general prayers posted by users. Some are like Pray for my brother. Today he tested positive for H1N1. God help him. while some others sound like Pray for ManU. Arsenal is posing a big threat to them tonight.

These wishes and prayers, emerging from the thoughts of users, transform to words and finally to chunks of electrical energy in the form of 0s and 1s before becoming a part of the Cloud, called the Internet. Then they float about in the web, uninterrupted, before someone interested stumbles upon them. Then it is up to the stumbler to either reply or simply ignore them.

When the author receives comments on his blog post published months back, his conviction in this analogy, that someday his wishes, floating about in the cosmos, will be heeded, is further strengthened. That’s what he believes is the power of the Cosmic Web.

Software Freedom Day Celebrations at College of Technology, Pantnagar

It was August the 15^th all over again for the Open Source User Group (OSUG) / Sun Club / OSScamp Community, Pantnagar as Software Freedom Day was celebrated by the community in the college. The community organised an unconference for the interested students of the college. The event was planned on a short notice and hence adequate publicity could not be done but still a lot of more than 50 students attended and discussed Open Source inside out and upside down at the event. We managed to get permission from 2-5 in the evening which was certainly not enough considering the number of talks proposed by the students. Computer Engineering students from the II and III yrs of the college delivered numerous talks on a wide variety of topics.

The attendees after the SFD celebrations.

Some initial hitches were caused by some electricity issues but the time was utilised in some social sandboxing by the students. Students were peeked by the author (forgive me for that ) discussing technologies like Scala, Grails, Ogg, Svg, Netbeans, PHP……………………… and more (I’m sorry, I can recall only a few ). Once the systems were setup, it was time for us to go-go-go! The students enthusiastically demanded Vikash Pandey to begin his talk on Setting up a website, DNS and related issue. Vikash explained the minor details of setting up a website on a local Apahe server which were well grasped by the students. Once he finished, Nishant Singhal and Varun Agarwal were up front explaining the technical know-hows of System and Network Security. Sumit Sati initiated an interesting discussion during the talk: Ethical Hacking – does it really exist?! The bad weather outside was causing power cuts quite frequently so live demos related to System and Network Security were postponed for later. Meanwhile, Vigya Sharma came up with his lucid discussion on PHP, appropriately titled Introduction to PHP. It was basically a doubt clearing session regarding installation issues in LAMP and XAMPP and some bit of coding in PHP. The numerous questions raised by the students were handled well by Vigya. Following this server side scripting, was some Shell Scripting by Ankush Chander and Akshat Pokhriyal. The young lads started with “Why Unix?” and moved on with their talk explaining the powers of the shell.

Nishant and Varun facing volleys of questions during demonstration of System and Network Security.

We were running short of time and still had 6-7 more talks on queue! Going by the community vote, Aduait Pokhriyal was tossed up on the stage for an Introduction to Routing Protocols. After his talk, Nishant and Varun were ready with the demonstration of System and Network Security. They introduced the students to utilities like Netcat.

The clock had already ticked past 5 but we still had many openSolaris and Netbeans DVDs from Sun Microsystems to give away. Then Tanay Mathpal and Sumit Sati came up with an interesting way to do so; through an Open Source quiz! Simple Open Source trivia questions were answered by the students to take away everything we had in store for them!

The community then discussed the prospects of organising yet another OSScamp Pantnagar either in the campus of the university or in Nainital. The name OSScamp Nainital was exiting enough and the level of enthusiasm shown by the students showed that very soon the OSScamp Pantnagar community will take its first steps in this direction.

More pics from the event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/42419766@N02/

Chrome OS – David to face the Goliath?

David vs Goliath

With Google finally announcing its very own Operating System – the Chrome OS on 7th of July, the IT industry is all set to witness yet another attack on Microsoft’s monopolistic fortified empire. Initially, Google plans to launch it for netbooks before moving on to the larger desktop PC and laptop market which is dominated by Microsoft’s Windows Operating Systems.

It is not the first time that Microsoft is facing competition in the Operating System market. Various flavours of Linux have been around for a while and are doing pretty good in the server domain. With the advent of the Mac OS for i386 environments, it was believed by many of those typical ‘Mac lovers’ that now Microsoft would surely have a run for its money. But neither Linux, nor the Mac have been really able to topple the Windows reign. This phenomenal success of Windows should not, in any case, be attributed to the R&D teams at MS, definitely not (how many BSODs have you faced!). It is the sales and marketing policy of Microsoft that keeps its Windows operating system at the pinnacle of this industry.

But this time, the game is a li’l different. On the other side of the court is not Linux, nor Apple; it’s Google – the behemoth who has proved itself time and again. Google revolutionised the web with its innovations at Google search. JavaScript and Ajax implementations of Gmail propelled yet another success story of Google. Google Docs are already a preferred choice of many netizens over the heavily priced MS Office suite. Orkut, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, Google Earth, Apps, and many many more applications and services have redefined our entire web experience. So can we say that David has finally arrived confronting the long standing Goliath of the Operating System industry?

I have my set of doubts. Google’s domination of the web has been in all those areas which were earlier dominated either by Yahoo! (search, mail) or some other player; but not Microsoft. Even after about nine months of the launch of Google Chrome browser, it has not been able to challenge the market domination of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or even the second place Firefox. We have also seen that Google’s services like Orkut have been vanquished by rivals like Facebook and MySpace.

Apart from this, my other doubt arises from the history of Google’s antagonist. Microsoft is known to be a fighter. Since its inception, it has fought and won bitter battles against big names like Apple, Netscape and even the mighty IBM. So Google and its Chrome OS have a tough opponent up front.

It’s not that my doubts arise only from these historical aspects of the two companies. There are certain technical aspects where Microsoft seems to have an edge over Google. Chrome is purely based on Cloud Computing which leaves me with a good for nothing rectangular piece of keys and screen which i may deter to call a ‘netbook’ in case of unavailability of a hi-speed broadband connection to the Internet, which is not such an uncommon scenario in most parts of the world! Although many Paul Buchheits may remind me of the famous “Don’t be Evil” quote of Google, i can never accept my prized possession – my personal data to be at the mercy of the Google Cloud and its ‘Privacy Policy’. For the developers, Google says that “the web is the platform”. Keeping in mind the huge numbers of application developers already working on the available platforms, does this insight look viable! Not in the near future for me!

And what about hardware and software support?! Being based on the Linux Kernel and Cloud Computing, i doubt Chrome OS to support my printer, scanner, camera, flash drives and memory cards as smoothly as Windows does after being 100% sure that it will not be able to run my trusted software and games! (Don’t remind me of WINE, plz!)

Then they tell me that Chrome OS will be based on the Linux Kernel with a new “windowing system”. Quoting the official Google Blog “….and we’re definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision.” All this sounds familiar, isn’t it? Why not! Isn’t Chrome a Cloud implementation of Linux?! So what difference does it make to Microsoft when what actually it is facing is nothing but yet another Linux, only this time, it has a Cloud to back it up and is labelled Google!

But this one fact can ultimately bring all the difference to the equation. It is labelled Google and in the IT industry, when it’s Google, it’s got to be something big and surely something to contend with. Both Microsoft and Google have been leaders of two different playing fields as of now. This confrontation was surely on the cards and when now both of them find each other on their faces, mind my words, “there will be blood!”

Will the Google David bring down Microsoft or will the Goliath annihilate yet another adversary? It’s going to be really big this time!

What Happens Next

Tick. Tick.. Tick..

In life, sometimes keen observation of everyday events and activities make them seem so very strange and sometimes even mysterious. Since childhood one of the most basic activities that everyone of us does several times, everyday, has always left me bemused – gazing at the clock on the wall! While staring at the ever-moving second’s hand of the clock, i have always wondered that isn’t it enigmatically strange that by no means whatsoever, can i know what would happen when this second’s hand crosses the number 9 on the left or for that matter, the number 3 on the right! And when it does cross, the mystery unfolds! But right then, as the hand keeps moving, another mystery, awaits me. The subtle second’s hand of the unadorned clock makes me wonder about the uncertainty of life; all over again!

Life’s beautiful, it surely is! But no wonder that it is truly mysterious. The biggest mystery is that dimension of life in which all of us float about – time. No one of us can predict the future, at least there’s no scientific means of doing so. Sometimes, looking at that second’s hand, i also wonder – is there a future? Because as soon as that moment arrives, which we call the future, it becomes the present. It makes me presume that future is surely the most volatile of all elements of life. It dissipates in a zippy and the next moment i step into the present. But again, staring at that second’s hand, i wonder, that after future, if there’s something that is as volatile, it is the present. The moment the second’s hand makes another tick forward, the present becomes the past and time moves on…

All this makes me wonder, is there something in life that is not volatile? The second’s hand stares at my face and tells me that yes there is something that is persistent and that is – change. Then for me, the innocuous second’s hand becomes so ferocious that it sends tremors down my spine making me too anxious about the yet uncertain future. But as i move my eyes away from that ferocious monster and close my eyes, i find yet another non-volatile ingredient of this life – the past. The reminiscences of the sweet past, embedded down my memory lane make me forget all my anxiety and smile remembering the good times!

It surely is a momentary satisfaction but the moment i open my eyes i see the second’s hand still moving along, unchallenged, only this time it has pulled the minute’s hand a few steps with it. Life moves on, unpredicted…

Ayodhya – the road to ‘move on’

The Shameful Day

They say, “It’s better late than never.” They thus justify the 48 extensions and 17 long years Justice Liberhan’s Commision took to present its report on one of the most shameful incidents of independent India – the demolition of the Babri Masjid which was standing tall on the “disputed land” before December 6, 1992. It seems that everything in Ayodhya is disputed – the disputed land, the disputed structure, the disputed demolition, the disputed history and more recently, the disputed report. The aam aadmi ka budget delayed the tabling of this report dealing with ‘not-so-aam’ Hindus and Muslims in the Parliament but now it’s only a matter of time when the communal stalwarts of the country jump into the political ring for yet another round of increasing TRPs for the ‘breaking’ news channels.

Every school and college goer, who has burnt midnight oil for 2-3 months to submit his/her project report before the deadline would agree would me that Justice Liberhan would surely have completed his homework conscientiously and the report would bring out the real culprits behind the demolition and the bloody riots that followed (Amen!). But the point which i want to raise is “What next?”

Yes, the question is What Next??? Will this report do any good to the debates over the disputed land, disputed…………………………., allow me to skip the reiteration. The obvious answer which every Indian knows is a simple ‘No’! But concluding these debates is definitely of prime importance for our country, or in contemporary words – rashtrahit.

There are many theories behind the disputed land. The most common one and which is also accepted by the ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) is that before the Mughal Rule, there stood a temple of Lord Rama at Ayodhya to commemorate his birthplace, that is, janmbhoomi. When the first Mughal Emperor Babur invaded India, his general Mir Baqi ordered razing of the temple and building of a mosque which was originally referred to as masjid-e-janmsthaan. This theory is based on historical texts and evidences found by the ASI. There are numerous opposition to this theory with some Muslim organisations and even some historians like Prof. Ram Sharan Sharma claiming that a temple never existed at the site. The Jain school of thought claims that before the construction of the mosque, a Jain temple existed at the site.

Ok ok ok!!! Agreed! I believe that no more scientific or historical research can bring out the real truth behind the disputed………………………….. so i find it better to agree (or disagree!) with every theory because in modern India, it doesn’t actually matter! I don’t find any necessity of any study or research (or maybe another commission to maybe enquire what took Justice Liberhan 17 years!) as howsoever exhaustive the study maybe and howsoever befitting be its report, there will be some or the other group of insatiable people who would register their protest against it. At a time when India has to compete with the global economies and mark it’s presence as a global superpower, the government has to bring an end to such staling political games and focus its attention on more significant aspects of rashtrahit. In other words, we need to ‘move on’!

Governments will come and governments will go. Generations will come and generations will go. Going by the current trends, the disputed site would always remain disputed until we do something for it and that something is something very simple. I suggest the Home Ministry to bring about a proposal of construction of an All Religion Community Prayer Centre for the masses at the site. After consultations with the cabinet, state government, various religious bodies like the VHP, RSS and All India Muslim Personal Law Board, a law should be passed in the Parliament for the construction of the Prayer Centre. Needless to say, it will not be an easy road to trudge but considering the message it would send out to the world about India’s true secular status is again, needless to mention. In a country whose image is frequently tarnished at the world stage by Godhras and Kandhmals, such an initiative by the Central Government would a small step towards achieving communal harmony all over the country.

For those doubting the feasibility of this plan, let me quote historian P. Carnegy, “………. up to that time (the Revolt of 1857) the Hindus and Mohamedans alike used to worship in the mosque temple (at Ayodhya).” Sources from the British Government records also confirm this fact. The bitterness that crept in, or rather made to creep in by the British Government, between Hindus and Muslims after the Revolt of 1857 saw them fighting over claim to the structure. Times have surely changes, and they have changed for the good. If you think they have not, then we have to make them change for the good. Lingering issues like these need to be solved by our country for ensuring a sustained development. Anybody listening…….

P.S.: 1. The government is advised to refrain from naming this Centre as yet another ‘Rajiv Gandhi Community Centre………………….’

2. I request the Home Ministry to act fast, before Behen Kumari Mayawati inaugurates yet another statue of hers; this time at the disputed site!!!

Mozilla Camp Delhi

It has been a hectic new semester for me in the college… but at the same time, a very interesting one too. The semester began with a very first in college from the Science & Literary Bureau of the college – Litrosphere – the first ever college Literary Fest. It was followed by the college cultural fest.

After the cultural fest, i went ahead and enjoyed another first time in Pantnagar – OSScamp Pantnagar. OSScamp Pantnagar was a huge success and everyone of us enjoyed every bit of it. Now after the OSScamp, i am here at Mozilla Camp Delhi to enjoy the glory of Mozilla Firefox – my favourite browser!

Mozilla Camp Delhi is being organised at Indian Social Institute at Lodhi Road, Delhi. It is Delhi’s first unconference dedicated to Mozilla Firefox and is sure a revolutionary concept as Firefox is the single most popular and loved Open Source Software in the world! Even the people who are not very much inclined to use Open Source Operating Systems like Linux use Firefox over Microsoft’s blunderous  – Internet Explorer. The increasing market share of Firefox over IE bears a testimonial to it.

The ‘unorganiser’ at the camp – Mohak Prince just began the session out here with an introduction to Firefox and a detailed description of the poster and gfx designed specially for the camp. I expect to gain a lot and enjoy the glory of Firefox here!