Friday, April 28, 2006

Red Hat ! !

http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?article_id=72757&cat_id=580

Red Hat and IIT Mumbai have announced that they will be working together to support and spread open source programming skills among engineering colleges, MCA programs, and other institutions.

Through the Red Hat Scholarships Program and the new collaborative learning program, the duo intend to open-up newer avenues for Indian students to acquire the open source experience.

The Red Hat Scholarships Program 2006-07 will operate under the aegis of the eKALAVYA program set-up by the Kanwal Rekhi School of IT, IIT Mumbai. In its third year of operation, the Red Hat Scholarships program is designed to prove handy to students looking for guidance on software development projects that form part of their annual submissions.

The collaborative program set up by the two organizations is geared to allow students to sign-up online for open source projects, seek advice from mentors in the open source community, find projects they can participate in, download open source software and get information on programming standards and guidelines. The collaborative program generally aims at equipping engineering students with the necessary open source skills.

Prizes worth Rs 20 lakhs will be awarded to students and mentors participating in the program. In addition, special recognition awards including best participation from a women's team, best participation from a rural college, etc, have been instituted. The college bagging the largest number of project submissions will receive a Red Hat Academic Bundle.

Javed Tapia, president, Red Hat Indian Subcontinent, said, "The National Knowledge Commission, a premiere body constituted by the Prime Minister that advises on how India can promote excellence in the education system, has recently recommended that India must use open source software in education to meet the knowledge challenges of the 21st century. Open source will play a huge part in building India's IT infrastructure, and we have to ensure that the next generation is ready for this. The Red Hat Scholarship program's primary objective is to ensure that Indian students are familiar
with the open source philosophy, development model and software tools. We are happy to work with IIT Mumbai in this initiative."

Prof D B Phatak and Subharao M Nilekani, chair professor and head - KreSIT, IIT Mumbai, said, "Today, in several parts of India, students and teachers often struggle to keep pace with the latest developments in technology. Though talented, they lack resources, experience and exposure, and competent guidance. We are thrilled to team with Red Hat, and ensure that Indian students are exposed to open source technology."

Visit http://www.in.redhat.com/community/rhscholarship.php
for additional information.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Howard Roark

From the Fountain Head,
From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction,
from the wheel to the skycraper, everything we are and everything we have
comes from a single attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.

Friday, April 21, 2006

The Final Year Project ! !

Huh ! !

Was such an EXPERIENCE working on the Final Year Bachelor of Engineering Project !
We, i.e
Chinmay A Limaye - THE person ( people who know him very well know that there in no word to describe this person )
Niranjan Hasabnis - Again another THE i guess :-)
Nikhil Firke - NO WORDS ! !
and myself worked at Persistent Systems Private Ltd. on Feature Enhancement of Asterisk PBX, and did some intresting ( meaning : Whatever , but not really the expected meaning ) work on IP based Private Branch Exchange..
i wont go into the technical details ( was there anything that we did technically ??? -- better ask my partners because i do not think we did any ! )
ok ok.. so the journey began way back in January 2005... all set to form groups for the final year ! first i was gonna do project with Adish - Mwanko Mbuki
Saket - Jester
Amar - Infinity ! ( sister of Trinity ../ He is a guy )
but then things turn out that we get selected for interviews at GS labs.. but unfortunately do not clear it...
i get selected for Persistent .. and then we 4 do the so called project !
Meanwhile we did get selected at different places for interviews like Codito, Concepts... but then we decided to work at PSPL..
What an experience it was ! ???
After the event Impetus & Concepts we do regret to an extent for working at PSPL.
Not that we did not get recognition for the project.. but the overall experience was not as rewarding as it was for our fellowmates...
we ( Nikhil , me and Nirya ) did try for projects on N/W and O.S. related stuff.. but ... Neway...
We would have very well liked to be getting some offers from SMALL companies.. Remember we did get recognition... but not the way we wanted ...
We learned a LOT in terms of working on a project and some issues of dealing with THE MAN ( Chinmay ) but . .. at the back of mind there still is that unsatsfied self .
( i do plan to put my words together and then write about THE MAN soon.... )

Hope i continue it from here..

always i try to continue posting on this regularly but some how i cannot ! !

too lazy... i guess.. or not too committed to writing...
anyway.. i think i will certainly try to be more regular on this stuff !


Cheers !!