Freedom of Expression, suppressed.

So, what is an objectionable content? How are we going to define the word "objectionable" A search on google gave out "Arousing distaste or opposition; unpleasant or offensive" as meaning. Was that objectionable to post meaning of this particular word since people(kids, adults alike and irrespective of gender) would know about it and start debating.

I have never used that particular word this much in my past. I am now seeing it and hearing it everywhere. They tell we should stop "users" from posting objectionable content about other "users" and ofcourse, the government. Now, what or who is "government" Government consists of the "users" and their representatives who are themselves once again, users .

It is like the hedge is trying to gobble up the farm. The reps are elected to see to it that the freedom of the "users" are intact and in fact, taken to the next level. Not bringing it to an inferior level. When the goverment is talking about objetionable content or "A" user is talking about objectionable content, what is the percentage of the entire population of the world which are asking this?

The governments "represent" the users but are not "all" the users. People form governments and in reality they are users. In this context they are "users" of the public network. The public network is entirely based on "complete and un-adulterated democracy" which is impossible to visualize in the physical world. We users have to stand up to protect this deomcracy. The virtual world crosses all boundaries and unites the whole world as one "monster user base".

Google and related public service providers would not like this because, their model thrives on this philosophy of democracy of the virtual world crossing the frontiers of countries and continents, united by purpose, education, hobbies and many other things which are beyond my comprehension. The public network is based on the true principle of democracy "Of the people, by the people and for the people"

Let us see the stakeholders in this hue and cry about objectionable content

1. Large enterprises
2. Governments run by the large enterprises
3. One particular insatance of  large enterprises consisting of Media conglomerates.

1. Why do large enterprises objet to "objectionable" content.
   The answer lies in the open standards adopted in the public networks. People can cross the strongest firewalls and circumvent them if they are that much interested in coming out with the truth. And does it travel at speed over the public network. In no time, the value of the enterprise changes. If it is a positive news it will escalate otherwise ........  So, if they are given rights of filtering objectionable content, it will be removed in the first instance and the world will never know about it.

2. Goverments run by large enterprises are pawns of the humongous enterprises with more cash than all the money collected if all people pay their taxes properly. The explanation of the previous paragraph holds good. The goverments are PROs for these enterprises. They find it difficult to adjust to the changing times and technology. They are in no mood of learning. They will decide what the public will learn. With the public network enabling knowledge to the general public at their finger tips, they are now face to face with an educated public.

3. The way the public accesses media has changed the time napster clicked with the general public. The democratic network showed the media companies, the model in which they would like the media to be served. The public is bored of putting a CD into the reader just to listen to 7 songs. We dont want to go to the stores and rumagage to come out with our favorite music or movie or books. We still love our movies to be king size(Theatres will never go out of style). But if we want entertainment in our house we want it in the digital form served over the pubbic network, searchable, indexable and what not. Do we want it on CD/DVD/Blue ray/.../.../... NO. We want it served as a media file. But wait, serving movies would work only in the developed countries where the public is not happy with "4G". It will not work in countries where network speeds are pathetic. How do we like it there? We would like it to be provided with bit-torrent tech, so that we donload it and then watch it. Do we want it to be DRM'd, NO. We want it to share with our friends, my sister, my brother, my neighbour, my watchman etc.. Do we want to arrange and index the physical discs, NO. We want u to do it for us. Will we pay for the content, YES. But if u charge exhorbitantly then the public will find means to circumvent this also. With this attitude we are back to square one.

THERE IS NO OBJECTIONABLE CONTENT ON THE PUBLIC NETWORK. THE CONTENT IS WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS. IT IS DEMOCRATIC AND PEOPLE HAVE THE FREEDOM TO "COMMENT". WE REQUEST ALL OUR REPS THROUGHT THE WORLD TO ALLOW THE PUBLIC NETWORK FREE OF "CENSORSHIP"

nvidia driver and GNOME 3 on Debian GNU/Linux

So, U have taken the dive and installed G3 on Debian GNU/Linux Testing. We all know that Testing is a moving distributions which is continously updated. but we have a lil trouble with this approach when it comes to running G3. Every time critical G3 components or libraries are updated, the nvidia module fails to load and composting is disabled and u are dropped to the G2.3 ish mode.

The work around is very simple. Just re-install the nvidia driver.


P.s-> Dont forget to install synapse. It is a god send for users who had got used to Gnome-do. synapse is a must for all G3 users. It will save all the users moving the mouse cursor to the hot right corner or one super key click on the key board. Try synapse and you will never repent it.

Wikipedia and freedom

This topic is very close to my heart. Why? One, it is about freedom and two it is sharing. These two are the basic aspects of human existence and will continue to do so. I know, I will be ridiculed and this post will be vandalised over the public network. On what basis am i making this statement? There are posts on google plus where users(I think they are humans and not bots,

Are we continuing to be human?)have expressed their displeasure at the photograph of jimmy wales appearing on the top of the first page visited in the session. There were posts that they would not contribute to the project since they did not like his face.(OMG, height of being inhuman) Now, to request the users of wikipedia to donate, my face is not one of the best and definitely not better than jimmy wales, so I cannot appeal to the users to help this noble venture to be out for future users. Good looking and famous faces may not have the time and the understanding to appreciate the project. One more reason there is no celebrity involved is, the celebrities will are ready to take up project which is going to put them in the limelight and improve their existing mileage. You can get a celebrity for a cool drink or do a semi-nude pic for PETA. This is the same attitude displayed by the present generation w.r.t the available resources. They are not thinking of saving anything to the future gen. Just for eg, we have used fossil fuels in the last 50 yrs as much as been used in the years beyond those fifty years. That is indifference to the sustainability or dissolving of all human ethics.


Coming back to freedom, wikipedia's software is revolutionay in the fact that every user can have a say. It is ultimately a battle between good and bad, right and wrong, true and false and the good thing is people are free to express any of these attributes and there is no moderator to check for and vouch for either attributes. In a world where ethics are being ridiculed, day in day out, The wiki concept has stood the test of time and has killed all the static sources of encyclopedic knowledge. The dynamic nature of wikipedia assures that both the sides are given equal opportunities and ethically the bad, wrong and false shall lose.


Wikipedia is freedom personfied with basis in democracy and sharing as the main pillar. Please do support the project. Not for wales, not for me, not for "any body" but for "everybody". Keep knowledge free and accesible to all classes of people.

Jimmy wales, your project is based on good ethics. All the best with your project. Let us give something good to the community at large and make an example for the future generation.

Please contribute.

Gnome3 extensions on Debian GNU/Linux testing

People running Debian GNU/Linux testing with Gnome 3.0 and want to customize it with the G3 extensions, read on. The locations from where I collected the extensions are

1. http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/index.html

2. http://linuxmaniac.torreviejawireless.org/debian/gnome-shell-extensions/

3. http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/?content=146113
 
4. http://pkgs.org/fedora-15/fedora-updates-i386/gnome-shell-extension-places-menu-3.0.2-3.20110630git939994d0.fc15.noarch.rpm/download/

From all these sources just take the folder with the extension_name@something.com and paste them in /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions and logout. But remember doing so activates the extensions immediately.

If you want to disable any extension, U should install the gnome-tweak tool available in the Debian repos. The tweak tool has other options which you would love to play with. Just remember u have to download the packages for 3.0.* There will be the same packages for 3.2.* And they may break when G3 is update to 3.2. U have been warned. G3 is shiny and beatiful. Thanx to the G3 devs.

GNOME 3 on Debian GNU/Linux testing.

Kudos to the Debian GNU/Linux team. They have proved their "release when ready" philosophy once again with GNOME 3.*.

I loved the way my desktop was seamlessly and gradually updated with components from the latest G3 DE. I like the implementation of G3 on Debian GNU/Linux testing. The basic issues have been sorted out with the inclusion of GNOME tweak tool. Especially taking back the control of the desktop area, with icons allowed and right clicking in the desktop allowed.

In terms of the design philosophy of G3, I have liked whatever I have seen as of today. I have easily carried out all the regular tasks on my laptop without much issues. My tip for new users, that is people migrating from G2, is press the super key(windows key) and start typing the name of the program you want to run or to search the file you want to open. Way to go G3 team.


Ur DE is shiny and radical in terms of the design philosophy. My request to the G3 team is just one ie, See to it that you maintain compatibilty of mostly used addons/extensions with ur future releases. This will keep the addons/extensions/customizers interested.

---Proud to be a Debian GNU/Linux user. Will post any other customizations I do later.

RMS on the "Jailer" steve jobs

RMS wrote on his personal blog thus "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.

Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective."

Now, Let us study what the hue and cry is about this posting.

The first sentence

Is just perfect. It just sums up jobs's entire lifetime of work. "Jail made cool" tells us about the way steve used the fantastic engineers at work in his company. I believe the engineers were first making a product with a positive outing. But later or along during its development the marketing genius put his stamp on all the products, by locking out the users and spreading "individualism" among the "status" friendly computing newbies. He made it such a way that a person who knew nothing about computing would look cool with his device. In fact he "told" people what is cool. After all this I heard RMS was anti-social. LOL

"I am glad he's gone" tells too many things. The same line would be apt if steve had completely retired from his influence on the way computing devices are designed. But that, was never going to happen. Because the brand which apple had built over the years was not "apple" but "Jobs". In fact, this is the right time for RMS to be harsh on him. This would definitely bring about the truth about the marketing genius. I for one, am sure that this conversations b/w "fools who dont know what is freedom" and people who live and swear by freedom. People buy jailed devices if they themselves like to stay in a prison designed by picassa and of course marketed by steve.

"But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing"

I think there is no need to elaborate on this statement. Anybody requiring clarification can head to www.gnu.org and www.fsf.org or use any of the GNU/Linux distros to "feel" it.

So, There is nothing wrong in RMS's post. He is completely sane and the post is carefully worded. As for the last sentence can Apple change the way ios5 will be distributed. Will it be under GNU GPL v3 or at a minimal, any "open source" license(That, would not be acceptable to RMS but .... let it start here). Naa ....................

steve jobs and Marketing of FLOSS products

Before I comment anything on steve jobs, I salute the marketing genius of a man who would be a perfect example in majority of the examples in philip kotler's book. If he is not he will be in the next edition.

So, what did steve jobs do to make front page of a leading Indian newspaper? He cared a damn about India, why? He never thought India as a lucrative "Market". 1 billion people and counting, is it not a market ..... This, is the only mistake I could recognise made by this marketing genius.

So, what did steve jobs do to make front page of a leading Indian newspaper? Sorry, that is monotonous, let us do it with bullets.

1. Did he have anything to do, technically with the first apple(1976), No. He arranged funding and handled the marketing part of it.
2. Did Apple II have any inputs from jobs, No. Again, only "Marketing"
3. Lisa, Macintosh ..... Marketing
4. NeXT ..... Marketing
5. iMac .... Marketing
6. By this time, Apple recognised that jobs had himself become a commodity. They sold jobs to the bedazzled audience and they lapped him up completely.
7. iPod ..... Marketing. There were a plethora of mp3 players in the market but, the marketing blitz assured that they all were dead within a matter of days.
8. iTunes ..... The greatest innovation which took Apple's revenues to the highest. This was the beginning of the lockdown of the devices in terms of software. This introduced the concept of "ownership" or DRM. You are not supposed to share the music u buy, or for that matter anything u buy from the itunes market. That is again "marketing"

9. iphone .... Revolutionised the mobile phone market. oh, that market word again. He showed that users are ready for premium hardware which dumb users would like to use it blindly and flaunt it too.

10. ipad ... Tapped the same dumb phone market and gave it one more premium symbol to show off.

The one thing common to the latest devices on the market.... is FLOSS. All the devices run FLOSS core. The core runs freebsd on a MACH kernel. Both developed over generations by FLOSS enthusiasts. The bindings are propreitory. The extensions in terms of apps(the itunes app market) are propreitory. Though, the hardware/software combo is ready to run FLOSS apps, I have come across very few people who go beyond what is available in the bundle, except for *nix enthusiasts who "open" the system to be their dream machine. With this they have something to flaunt as well as be working on their favorite *nix aspects. That just shows why apple devices turn up in huge numbers in majority of FLOSS programs/presentations.

In reality he has jailed the users and the FLOSS core in propreitory casing(propreitory UI). Sheer marketing genius. This will be perfect for people who really dont care about the central human principle, sharing. Or they just dont have anything to share.

kudos to the marketing genius for running such a long marathon, always in the lead. For me, steve jobs is "the" tech marketing guru.