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BytesForAll
INDIA AT THE LINUX COUNTER
Linux Counter has a total of 138,722 people registered.
1,407 users have been registered by friends. There are 124,367 machines registered.
This network guesstimates that between 0.2 percent and 5 percent of all Linux
users have registered with the Linux Counter. So the total number of Linux users
is probably between 2,774,440 and 69,361,000 people.
Among the country ratings, India is ranked 137th overall,
when judged by GNU/Linux uers per million population. But in terms of overall
number of GNU/Linux users registered, India with 2,843 registered users is only
behind the US (28,514 registered users), Germany (11,307), Brazil (9,785), France
(6,479), Spain (5,558), Great Britain (5,307), Canada (4,600), Italy (4,517),
the Netherlands (3,595), Sweden (3,300) and Finland (3,137). India is ahead
of Russia, Mexico and China. Probably improved connectivity to the Net here
would make more people aware of the Linux Counter, and give users a better chance
to register.
COMMUNITY CENTRES
Community learning tech centres are coming up in Andhra Pradesh,
according to media reports. Bridges to the Future Initiative (BFI), a technology-based
education programme that aims at reaching out to teachers, students, out-of-school
youth and adults, has been formally launched in Andhra Pradesh. See http://www.business-standard.com/today/story.asp?Menu=23&story=25213
OPEN CONTENT
MIT, the prestigious US university, is giving out courseware
for free. MIT’s OpenCourseWare is described as a free and open educational
resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. OCW says
it supports ‘MIT’s mission to advance knowledge and education, and
serve the world in the 21st century’. Subjects covered, or planned to be
covered, range from aeronautics and astronautics, to anthropology, architecture,
women’s studies and writing. There’s dozens of choices. This venture
offers MIT course material, and doesn’t require any registration. But it
does not provide access to the MIT faculty, and is not a degree-granting or
certificate-grating activity. See http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
SANOG MEET
South Asian Network Operators Group. (SANOG) will organise
its meet from January 15-22, 2004 at Bangalore. Called SANOG III, this will
be co-located with the South Asian IPv6 Summit. The SANOG programme will feature
workshops, tutorials and presentations on operational areas of interest to the
South Asian Internet community. The meeting will be hosted by the IPv6 Forum
India. It will include workshops, tutorials, and the SANOG meeting/IPv6 Summit.
More details from gaurab@lahai.com or www.sanog.org
TOUCH THE COURTS
The Bombay High Court has had its next day’s cause list,
as the schedule of hearings is called, put out on its website. But since everyone
doesn’t have access to the Net, it went ahead with a touch screen e-kiosk
on the ground floor of the court in Mumbai, offering details about cases and
other court-related information.
AMKUR BANGLA LIVE!
Sayamindu Dasgupta <sayamindu@clai.net> announces
that Jamil Ahmed has managed to upload the ISO image of a slightly modified
version of Ankur Bangla Live! (beta2). Ankur Bangla Live! is a LiveCD running
GNOME 2.4 localised to Bengali. The ISO can be downloaded from sourceforge.net
See sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3D43331
Release notes are available at sourceforge.net /project/shownotes.php?release_id=3D189157
This CD fails to boot with certain machines. This problem
is being fixed. In 99 percent of cases the CD is expected to run properly. Bugs
should be submitted at the mailing list for discussion on the distro, which
is lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bengalinux-distro
India Computes! is presented by Frederick Noronha,
a freelance journalist based in Goa. He is the co-founder of BytesForAll, a
voluntary unfunded venture focusing on how IT and the Internet can benefit the
common man, particularly in South Asia. To join the Bytesforall mailing list
send a blank e-mail to bytesforall_readers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Website: www.bytesforall.org
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