Open Source Evangelism

The first time I installed Linux on my computer was right in the first week with my desktop. I was in standard VIII then. The installation was a failure, I had only one of the two installation disks required. But, the installation interface had enough charms that, today I am writing this post using an open source browser (Firefox 3) running on an open source OS (Ubuntu 8.04).

Earlier, if I ever told anyone that I used Linux, I would get comments about Linux not being user friendly. If I told them I use Red Hat or Mandrake/Mandriva I would just get blank stares as if I was talking French. But, that was 5 years ago.

The time has changed now. Today, we open source users no longer need to be on the defensive, we can directly go for the kill. Now, when someone asks me why I use Linux, I reply by asking them to state one reason to use Microsoft Windows. I do get a few feeble responses even today.

First one being the old cliche that Linux is not user friendly. I counter this by telling them to use Ubuntu for 5 minutes. Most people end up saying that 'Wow! This is similar to Windows!'. There are many words of appreciation too, like the system menus being better organized in Ubuntu. The power users find the concept of multiple workspaces awesome. Though you can practically have all of these in Windows too but it would take a lot of customization, and most people would rather not to do that. So, this usually ends the debate on which OS is more user friendly.

Next point which I normally get is about availability of softwares for Linux. I fire up the package manager and people are baffled by the sheer number of pacakages available. There are open source equivalents available for any proprietary software you can think of. I normally bind up the discussion with a demo of the Desktop Cube on Compiz.

The number of Ubuntu users around me is constantly increasing. But, I would like to see a day when people would use Linux as their primary and only OS, and not dual boot it.

The next open source software I am going to talk about is a clear winner around me. Firefox 3, has become the de facto web browser. Basically, the reason behind this is that the only competitor here is Internet Explorer 6.

Firefox has charmed people with its tabbed browsing, alas the first version of IE with tabs is IE7. The number of addons available to spice up Firefox is mindbaffling. There is a addon for almost anything you can think of. And, if you are hungry for power just keep Firefox light and addon free.

I feel lucky to be born in an age when the popularity of open and community based products is growing leaps and bounds, VLC, Wikipedia, Firefox, Fedora and Ubuntu are just a few examples. These have grown from small projects to become a significant part of our lives today.

A rendezvous with a SMT and Stars

Let me assure you in the beginning that,

I am not going to talk technical gibberish in this post.

If I say 'Diwali is the first that I'm celebrating outside his home' is makes some sense. 'This Diwali is the first that I'm celebrating outside his home' makes more sense. But, when I say that it is the translation of 'यह पहली दिवाली है जो मैं अपने घर से बाहर मना रहा हूँ।' then you would say that I have lost my mind.

So, let me introduce you to my partner and translator for the evening, Google Translate. I had been using it for quite some time. It is a really nice service and came to my rescue quite often, like when I tried to register a GMX email account.

Google Translate gave me a very sweet and nice translation of my last post on Deepawali. Have a look at the translation here, the original post is here. To not strain the translator let us not look at my poor poetry.

The first line of the post was a perfect translation.

यह दीपावली मेरे लिए नई है।

This Diwali is new for me.


Had it been the only criteria for judgment, then Google Translate would have been the perfect partner. But, as it is, it is not the only line it translated. The second line brings in some trouble, Google messed up with the person in this sentence. With the first half being in First Person, Google shifted to Third Person in the second half. It translated 'यह पहली दिवाली है जो मैं अपने घर से बाहर मना रहा हूँ।' to 'Diwali is the first that I'm celebrating outside his home'.

Rest of the translation was not a complete joke. Google Translate threw up marvels like 'unity in diversity' for 'अनेकता में भी एकता'. And, it is not the only one, 'festival of victory of good over evil' for 'बुराई पर अच्छाई के जीत का त्यौहार' is another example.

After, looking at the translation I realized how complex my mother tongue Hindi is. I am amazed at the fluency at which I(we) can understand it. Thank God I am not a computer. But, Google Translate is one! And, the chances that computer makes a mistake is almost zero. So, I was abashed when I read Diwali as the 'festival of lights and sanitation' appear in the translation. The moment I hovered my mouse on the text I got the reason, it was the literal translation of 'स्वच्छता व प्रकाश का पर्व'. Technically I can't blame Google. But, I would have liked 'festival of lights and purity' much better.

A little more exploration told me that Google does take context into account, it translated 'शुभ दीपावली' into 'Good illumination'. Now, where does that come from? It had been writing 'दीपावली' as 'Diwali'.

When I delved further I found out that Google Translate is based on STM or Statistical Machine Translation, a machine translation paradigm which was conceived as early as 1949.

I decided not research further and came back to Google Translate to experiment. Next I tried, English to Hindi translated search. Here, we can key in some words in a language and Google translates them in the language of our choice(the language has to be on the list) and searches for pages containing the translation. Google does not stop here but also displays the the translation of the search results in the original language keyed in.

Now, this was going to be fun. I fired up the search with keywords 'Amrita Rao' in English to be translated and searched in Hindi. Here are the search results.

Wow! The translation was perfect, and 1,44,000 Hindi search results! I should not have been surprised, after all she is a big star and Hindi is picking up space on the web. But, there were a few bloopers like this one.

Now, vanity started to creep in and I tried my name but Google could't even translate it. Poor me!!

Incidentally, what surprised me was that the search about Amrita Rao had relevant items even on page 19, but when I keyed in Shahrukh Khan then, though the number of results were more but, the second result on page one itself was out of context. It was not about Shahrukh Khan at all.

Moreover the first result showed that the web is not too friendly towards him.

Since, I will write only sweet truths here I wont discuss this any further on my blog.


So, my evening ended with writing this post and the idea for a new post.

नई दीपावली

इस दीपावली आप खुशियों के दीप जलाएं,
यह दिवाली आपके जीवन में नया प्रकाश लाये,
आप आगे बढे और अपनी मंज़िल को पायें,
ईश्वर से यही कामना करता हूँ की हर दीपावली आपके जीवन में नई उमंग लाये।

शुभ दीपावली

यह दीपावली मेरे लिए नई है। यह पहली दिवाली है जो मैं अपने घर से बाहर मना रहा हूँ। घर से दूर यहाँ BITS में सबकुछ थोड़ा अलग है पर ज्यादा अलग नहीं। भारत में यही खूबी है, यहाँ अनेकता में भी एकता है। फिर दिवाली तो राष्ट्रीय पर्व है।

इस दिवाली में जो अलग है वो हैं पटाखें। इस बार से मैं दिवाली पर पटाखें नहीं छोड़ूगां। यह कोई अचानक लिया गया निर्णय नहीं है। मैं काफी दिनों से यह करना चाहता था, पर पहले यह थोड़ा मुशकिल था।

दीपावली स्वच्छता व प्रकाश का पर्व है, इसपर प्रदुषण फैला कर क्यों इसकी स्वच्छता को भंग करें। दीपावली बुराई पर अच्छाई के जीत का त्यौहार है। इस पर हम ध्वनि और वायु प्रदुषण फैला कर बुराई क्यों करें। आख़िर इस शोर मैं रूपयें फूंक कर क्या मिलता है ? मुझे पटाखों के द्वारा फैलाएं जाने वाले प्रदुषण की हानियों के बारे मैं लिखने की ज़रूरत नही हैं। इन्हें हम सब जानते हैं, क्योंकि यह हमें स्कूलों में पढाया जाता है। हम जानते हैं यह हमारे और समाज के लिए कितने खतरनाक हैं।


सही दीपावली पटाखों में नहीं बल्कि अपने और दूसरों के जीवन को प्रकाशित करने मे हैं। खुश रहने और दूसरो को दुःख न देने मे हैं। आज समय नही है की हम दूसरों के बदलने का इंतजार करें। आज समय है की हम ख़ुद को बदल कर लोगों के लिए उदहारण प्रस्तुत करें।

आइये हम एक कोशिश तो करें । आशा है आप इस बारे में सोचेंगें ज़रूर ।

दीपावली पर्व है रोशनी का, प्रकाश का,
इसे शोर का प्रतिमान न बनायें।

आईये हम सब मिल,
एक नई शोर मुक्त उज्जवल दीपावली मनायें।

शुभ नई दीपावली

(कृपया मुझे मेरी वर्तनी की अशुद्धियों के लिए छमा करें।)

Finally!

Finally, this Deepawali my blog is up.

Starting this blog meant a lot of work. Work which was not difficult but very tiring. First things first, I had to choose a blogging service. Of a wide variety of available services I narrowed down to WordPress and Blogger. The choice until now was very easy, since I had a previous experiences with only these two services. But, now came the difficult one WordPress or Blogger. I tried to make my choice easier by looking for available blog URLs, but both proved to be equally oversubscribed. Of more than a score of choices I tried I didn't get any on either. But, I couldn't be more elated, since now I have a blog with a name which I can identify with myself, 'Sweet & Pure'. I will post why later.

Amongst WordPress and Blogger, I decided on Blogger because of the amount to customizations it offered to users for free. The Blogger template is completely customizable, moreover there are loads of free templates available on web.

Now, I had to choose the template. I made this choice easy by just choosing the most downloaded template. And, now came the part I had been dreading, customizing the template. But, Blogger is a lifesaver customizing the template was a cakewalk. I was done in half an hour. Though there is some work left to do, but this template is nice for the moment.

And, finally the real part, writing a post. What could be easier than writing about how I got my blog up. I had just finished the job.

Now, I hope to keep posting on my blog regularly! I have buckets full of things to talk about.

Right now, I have just dusted my room and am feeling dead tired. I will just write one more post and sleep. I have to wake up at 8:00 am today if I want to have breakfast! ;)

दीपावली स्वच्छता व प्रकाश का पर्व है

दीपावली पर्व है रोशनी का, प्रकाश का,
इसे शोर का प्रतिमान न बनायें |

आईये हम सब मिल,
एक नई शोर मुक्त उज्जवल दीपावली मनायें |

शुभ दीपावली

इस दीपावली आप खुशियों के दीप जलाएं,
यह दिवाली आपके जीवन में नया प्रकाश लाये,
आप आगे बढे और अपनी मंज़िल को पायें,
ईश्वर से यही कामना करता हूँ की हर दीपावली आपके जीवन में नई उमंग लाये |

My First Post!

Ah! Finally I have started off my blog! I have been planning this for days, but today seems to be the right day.

Happy Blogging to myself!!

About Me

I thought I can blab on endlessly about myself, but you won't have to endure much.

So in short,
I am a First Year student of M.Sc. (Hons) Mathematics at BITS, Pilani. I did my schooling from DAV Jawahar Vidya Mandir, Shyamali, Ranchi, yes Mahendra Singh Dhoni also completed his schooling here.

I like reading books, English and Hindi alike. I used to collect stamps, but emails put an end to it. I even used to draw well, but now that ability remains specifically for scientific diagrams and figures.

As, a person I think a thousand times before taking a decision but, when I take it I stick with my choices to the end. I either like things or do not like them, but when I like something I am dedicated to it. Every thing is black and white for me with no grey areas at all. Throughout my life I have lived on my values, and things which tried to interfere with them had to go out of my life.

I am very much into traditional Indian values and culture (including superstitions), but being a scientific man I do apply my rationale and sense on things. So, I am a nice blend of Science and Religion, notice the capitalization. When you will talk to me you will find me to be either an atheist or a pious man but not both at the same time. Even my mother is surprised by this. But, I personally know the reason. You will find me what you think you want me to be, I am always the same. The same logic applies for everyone, you believe a person is what you think he/she is not what he/she really is.

To not make it an overdose, let me stop. I will write a complete post about myself someday.