From World News: World Bank bans Satyam from providing software services

I am shocked to read this news, not just Satyam bribed World Bank Employees but they have also faced aligations that Satyam installed Spywares and caused continues security breaches for at-least one year. 

Read ful story here

Providing Fedora for little bandwidth expense of users

I am sharing my views here with not much prior check on current trends with Fedora cult, so I can be wrong for my thoughts in this post, feel free to comment.

Though Fedora Free Media program is very much in action with its volunteers and sponsors actively helping getting Fedora to masses, Fedora is yet an expensive to use OS for daily basis. In my view need to take a look on Fedora usage cost for end customer.

Free media gets a user free copy of Fedora to install from, but following are some cons in my opinion that can be cut down further:

•  Request and shipping time of Free Media

•  Initial updates of newly installed Fedora system, costs bandwidth what an ordinary user might not like to expense on and should also be a reason to save bandwidth

•  Subsequent updates, costs bandwidth in similar way as of Initial updates

•  more ....?

I think few enhancements are possible to infrastructure and Fedora that can cover above listed cons of use-cases, and quiet much of it is in progress but the overall effort might be required to populate as an agenda rather than feature code names here and there. So here are few things in progress and what more can be done:

•  Delta RPMS (Presto) support in Fedora Infrastructure, in 82% completion as per its status page on wiki

•  Marketing & advocacy agenda for Institutional Private mirrors of Fedora, perhaps with some sort of association of a save-bandwidth organization/group (this should have lot of other concerns and care to have in mind and should be another small blog post I feel, where I also want to suggest how this can also get better cost vs profit results for ISPs with lot of Fedora users in their network)

•  Enhancements within Feodra (installer & config-tools) to allow users to choose to configure "Persistent updates, Local mirror, LiveUSB/CD image creator/re-spins station etc." during installation or post-install. 

•  Enhancements to populate local private repos, mirrors etc to other systems on local network

Bottom line of my suggestions is that vision on all collective problems should have one umbrella agenda, various teams will have to put in their work. More peer feedback and suggestions are required, maybe I have put in some not required thinking in this post :-)

Desirable stuff: BSNL EVDO Internet Access

I've been planing to get a EVDO connection for last 3-4months, since I am aware of BSNL coming up with their EVDO service. One of my co-worker already got EVDO enabled so I could quickly test the same. Following is quick summary:

Service:
• From BSNL only
• fixed to device MAC, no-roaming
• said to be backed by WLL
• though falls back to CDMA when out of EVDO cell
• needs clarification on BSNL EVDO being a WLL based service

Device:
• ZTE USB Modem works with Fedora 9
• run modprobe after plugin of device 'modprobe usbserial vendor=0x05c6 product=0x3197'
• Use device node '/dev/ttyUSB0' to configure connection using system-config-network or other tools.

Pros:
• Good 'average' speed of 200-300kpbs at my location when tested in Pune, India
• Unlimited package of Rs. 500/- per month

Cons:
• Only USB device available as of now
• No roaming out of city of purchase (or State, anyhow no national roaming - sucks)

Recommendation:
Should be a cost effective option for Fedora Users & Contributors in semi-urban or rural India, as BSNL appears to be at good pace to extend national coverage of its EVDO or at-least CDMA service. From my experience of CDMA service 3-4 years back in hometown I'll know even VoIP performs well on CDMA. (No Benchmarks provided by me as of now)

Links:
- http://bsnl.co.in
- http://kevinverma.fedorapeople.org/misc/bsnl_evdo_application_form.pdf
- http://bsnlevdoclub.com
- http://www.bsnlevdo.com
- http://www.bsnldatacard.com

Something fishy at TRAI India ?

I was curious to read back official words about TRAI's proposal on opening of VoIP for within India usage by public.

But I see lot of 404 "Not Found Pages".

Seriously Technology Freedom Lovers want to visit TRAI homepage, they really have been making lot of interesting regulations and proposals lately all seems interesting to read from but sadly most interesting ones are showing 404's.

Do notice the applet on the very top under top-horizontal website navigation menubar. I have a vague feeling maybe TRAI's website is compromised or handled by some crazy web monkeys.

http://www.trai.gov.in/Default.asp
http://www.trai.gov.in/PressReleases_content.asp

I hope Indian TELCO lobby will really take this proposal in good spirit.

At-last "Net telephony freed (in India), call rates set to plunge further" !

This is the news I've been waiting for nearly 3months, and I am so happy its here now. But there is a reason to keep fingers crossed because TRAI has only gives proposal and "Lobby of Telcos in India"  are against making VoIP freed within India.

I hope readers from India will take a point to standby and make sure to pick their side and figure how important cheap & freed VoIP is for the nation in economic shift and political mess as always.



More Coverage of News

Google Reader integration with Liferea on Fedora 9

I just figured the correct way to add my Google Reader account to Liferea and I hope I'll be able to keep in sync of my reading of blog subscriptions from all devices including my Laptop now. Also I hope Liferea will also work its magic of hiding duplicate posts. I'll get back to test this further, if you want to read more see http://liferea.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-reader-sync-support-progress.html

Howto:

1. Move mouse to left-pane of Liferea window
2. Right-click and click "New" -> "New Source"
3. Select "Google Reader" as a source and enter your Google Account & its password

Patiently wait for Liferea to load your subscription data, if that does nothing simply quit and launch Liferea again. 

Re: Fedora 9, KVM GuestOS PXE boot

In response to my previous post of same subject, I figured out how one does not require to have any configuration added to /etc/rc.local

Only change the name ifcfg-br0 to ifcfg-xbridge, then restart network service. Network interfaces will be broughtup in lexicographical order so br0 will always come up after eth0 as needed.

I yet have to understand requirement of module "tun" for my setup.