IT Pros Turn to Music for Charity

They come from various companies and working in a sector which is deemed as highly paid one. Yet, these young lot are not content with the routine job and looking for fulfilling their social responsibility. To fulfil their aim, they have turned to music. Formed as ‘K-SARA...MusicallYours’, the group is holding a musical event to help mentally retarded adults on 30 August.

About ten IT professionals will present a musical show on with the help of some professional artists. This is the first event by the group and has been compiled without any formal participation from their respective employers. In the context of talk regarding stress in the IT sector, the social cause seems the way out for them.

Saurabh Navangul, who is behind the group said, “I was a part of a musical group before called Octave. The group did some programs to help the earthquake victims in Gujrat in 2001. After I joined the IT sector, I felt a need to come forward to help unlucky ones in the society. Fortunately enough, people with similar thinking came along and the group got bigger.”

At present, the group consists of Abhijit Patil, Anjali Navangul, Bharamanna D. Chavan, Abhay Krishan Rastogi, Amruta Chaka, Roopa Iyer, Asmita Patil, Arpita Agarwal, Ramesh Raman, Dipti Dhote, Smita Tikekar, Kuhoo Gupta and Priyanaka Rawal. Their program, to be held at Ramkrishna More Auditorium in Chinchwad will consist of music ranging from classical Indian to Rock spread over three hours.

The proceeds of the event will go to Navkshitij, an organising dedicated to the work for mentally retarded adults. “We have done similar shows for other oganisinations in the past. But as a group this is our first show. As we are doing this on individual level, we like not to show our company’s names in it,” said the members of the group. To spice up the event, help from professional musicians have been sought.

When asked about the recent events indicating stress level in IT companies, the members said, “Stress exists in every field. By doing this work, we have found a way to overcame the stress level. It takes us at least two months to prepare us for the event. Even our weekends are spent in it. When people ask us how you find time to do so, we say time has to be kept aside.”

(K-SARA can be contacted at saurabhnavangul@wipro.com)

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Ganga Flows in Marathi

Ganga-a book written after the twenty years of toil is coming in Marathi now. The authentic work, created after he carried out research for radio documentaries, is translated by senior journalist Prakash Akolkar. The Marathi translation was released on Saturday by Ulhas Latkar of Ameya Prakashan by the hands of union Power minister Sushilkumar Shinde.

Julian Crandall Hollick, the France born radio journalist works with Independent Broadcasting Associates Inc, US. When asked how Ganga came about, he replied through email, “Ganga is the culmination of more than twenty years of living in India. Ganga brings together so many different aspects that go to make up India - her history, mythology, culture, the environment. And it brings them together in an uniquely Indian manner of paradox and contradictions; a goddess both in mythological and liquid form.”

The writer is too excited about the Marathi translation and relived his days in Mumbai and Pune on this occasion. “I'm tickled pink it's appearing in Marathi. I have spent several years in Mumbai and a bit of time in Pune, but I have no real idea about Marathi readers. I will be extremely interested to read and hear their reaction. I lived and worked in Mumbai for several years in the 1990s with pavement dwellers and street kids in Byculla and I want to write a book about them because by chance I happened to stumble on them the week they made their first stab at organising themselves in October 1986. Ever since I've been a sort of unofficial chronicler. And it's a fabulously rich story that few Indians know.” Julian was to Pune several times in the 1980s. He had spent his first Diwali here.

Ganga, the book, was extremely well received in India last year. Julian is more pleased because ‘the critics who reviewed it invariably looked at what it said and not at the nationality of the person who was writing about Ganga.’ He says, “In most cases the greatest surprise for all readers has been the chapter on the extraordinary purifying powers of Ganga - The Mysterious Factor X. A river that purifies not just human souls but its own pollution! Now that really impresses the non-Indian reader. And I thought it was the weakest of all the chapters when I was writing the book. Did I get that one wrong!”

Interestingly, Ganga first appeared in radio documentary. “Someone suggested a book after all the recordings were finished in late 2005. Because all the tapes are transcribed and saved it was relatively easy to make the transition between electronic media and the written word. The printed form allows me to add so many explanations, to expand on what on the radio may be just a few seconds,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Akolkar, deputy editor of Maharashtra Times said, “When I first read Ganga, I realised it is a serious book. It is not a travelogue or a novel. It is an issue and the question is not about Ganga but pollution of each and every river of Ganga. Then I decided to translate it. This was a different book altogether and I had to ask help to many experts for the work. The translation was completed in just eight months.”

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The LinuxChix : Spread the word

They are young, they are learning the tricks of the trade but they certainly have a mission. Charmed by the security and easiness, the girls have joined the open source movement. Pune has just woken up to the feminine branch of the Linux Users Group and as there counterparts all over the world, the girl volunteers here also have come together under the banner of LinuxChix.

Linux enthusiastic all over the world carry out their activities under the banner of Linux Users Group. Here in Pune, the group is called Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG). However to spread the message of Linux movement among women and girl students, the LinuxChix was born. Though it is about two decades old in the rest of the world, the Pune Chapter of the organization came into reality just last December. Since then, the group has conducted some four meetings and has managed to attract at least 30 members.

Still in its infancy, the group has most of the members from Symbiosis Institute of Computer Sciences and Research. Smriti Garg, Rashmi Lakhotia, Shweta Rani and Janki Purohit, four students from second year M. Sc. (CA) are the volunteers for the LinuxChix Pune Chapter. Currently they are working on the Fedora project. Besides having regular meets, of which the next is scheduled on next Sunday, they have also given lectures in other colleges.

Smriti said, “The Linux offers a more secure platform because it is very hard to penetrate. Also, there far too less viruses in the system. Therefore it has became a preferred operating system for the students as well as professionals alike. In fact, many large organizations are going for the Linux. So we also wanted to be a part of the movement.”

Curriculum Vitae

When asked why these girls were attracted to LinuxChix, Rashmi said, “Our institute, SICSR itself encourages the open source movement. We are taught about the subject in line with our regular studies. In fact, it has become a kind of a part of our curriculum.”

According to these volunteers, not many people are aware as how Linux offers more facilities and that it is secure. With most of the users still attracted to an established brand, it is their duty to teach others about the system and their movement. Helping them in their goal is PLUG which also offers technical advice as well as act as a support group.

The volunteers have taken the movement seriously and are working on the Fedora project along with Runa Bhattacharjee, who also volunteers for Fedora-India, KDE-India, Gnome-India, ilug-cal and Ankur Bangla. Fedora is a ?Linux-based operating system that provides users with access to the latest Free and Open Source Softwares (FOSS.)

Reaching to Others

As to the need of forming a separate group of the women, the girls said that it is mainly because Linux has not reached to the majority of girls and women. Citing one of their demonstration experience, they said, “We had a session in Abeda Inamdar College where almost all of the attendees were girls. They will rarely go to any male dominated place for learning about Linux. But when we conducted the session, we got a tremendous response.”

These volunteers are also quick to refuse that they cater only to female audience. “When we conduct meetings or lectures, a part of the audience is men also. In fact, we are witness to some sessions where the male attendees have outnumbered the female audience. Our sessions are open to all and to limit them will defeat our main purpose,” said the volunteers.

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The Chick Organisation

LinuxChix is a community for women who like Linux and for anyone who wants to support women in computing. This is an international group of Free Software users and developers, founded in 1999 by Deb Richardson with the aim of "supporting women in Linux." Richardson described it as an alternative to the "locker room atmosphere" found in some online technical forums and gave LinuxChix two core rules: "be polite" and "be helpful". LinuxChix is now primarily a group for supporting women in computing, specifically in Open Source/Free Software/Software Libre computing.

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Login the Krishna Way

They are from different companies and different backgrounds. Even their credentials does not seem in tune with their inclinations. But some 300 Information Technology professionals have come forward to contribute to what they call their spiritual cause. These IT professionals are coming forward to the construction of a new ISKCON temple in Pune.

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) movement is constructing a new temple at Katraj-Kondhwa road. While the religious organisation is trying to collect the money for the same through various projects, it has tapped a new and different genre : the college students and IT professionals. These people are not only contributing by monetary means but also giving different types of services without discarding their professional duties.

According to the claims of the organisation, some 300 people are helping in the temple construction project while the ISKCON centre in Camp has regular 150 attendees from the IT field. Pune Mirror managed to talk a group of the professionals.

Amol Katkar, development manager in Symatec Systems, said "The spiritual inclination and practise is rather helping us to do well in the professional life. Instead of wasting our time on partying or going to cinema, we devote that time to meditation. As Arjun was a good warrior and Krishna tought him to be same, we can also be good professionals through the teachings of the Bhagvad Gita."

Incidentally, as a unique drive, ISKCON Pune centre runs several programs foucussing on students and professionals. According to Chaitanya Charan Das, spokesman of the organisation, the centre conducts seminars and courses in IIT Kharagpur as well as other higher education institutes. Students from these institutes are attached to Pune centre which is a reason behind the contributors. Chandru Amarnani, Project Manager, Tech Mahindra, said, "Even our senior accept that being spiritual helps bettering our performance. Therefore they are also advocating conducting seminars and discourses for others in the industry." Uday Saundhankar and his wife not only gave their one month salary each for the construction but also pursued other to do tha same which helped to collect Rs 5 lakhs in donation."

As these professionals profess their devotion to their belief, they also try to spread it, even enduring taunts from others. Nitin Lavhe, Senior Engineer, Patni Coputer Systems said, "Yes, others who are not exposed to the spirituality do make fun of us at times. But ultimately, they have to admit the way we are so it never becomes an issue."

These professionals also ridiculed the idea of leaving their professional duties for the sake of the spiritual calling. "Instead, we are prepared to bear the stress and tension associated with our profession on account of this," was their definite response.

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.pune Very Soon

Very soon, you will be able to log in a site which won’t have a domain name like .com or .in. Instead, the domain name of the site, which is the electronic address of the site, will be ‘.pune’. The international body which controls internet domain names has issued new guidelines which allow locality specific domain names. Though the move has created new questions, it has also some good news for industry and businesses.

The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted on June 26 to allow more generic top-level domain names beyond the 21 currently approved names such as .com and .biz and the country domain names such as .in and .uk. A final version of the implementation plan must be approved by the ICANN Board before the new process is launched. It is intended that the final version will be published in early 2009.

This has opened doors also for the .pune domain name. When contacted, Jason Keenan, Media Adviser, ICANN told Pune Mirror, “The new top level domains could include .pune. It's important to understand that the new TLDs will be ideas that come forward to ICANN. We are not suggesting what should be applied for. What has to happen is someone needs to put together an application that meets the conditions of the yet-to-be-finalised application process. The application period is expected to open in the second quarter of 2009.”

This will be a boom for the businesses in Pune as a top level domain name will give the city specific identity to the businesses and sites. According to Deepak Shikarpur, Chairman, IT committee, Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture, “With the growth of internet and eCommerce existing domain names are in short supply and hence .com alone was not sufficient. We started with .biz. Some countries like Singapore insist on .com.sg extension. In the same spirit we have an option of .in (India specific). Now a welcome step for Pune specific businesses is to get .pune domain name. This will boost ePresnece of Pune specific businesses. However, if one wants a national or global image then such businesses won’t gain by .pune domain name change and hence these businesses wont bother to change.”

The Double Boananza

The city specific top level domain name is not the only boon given by ICANN. It has also decided to allow these domain names in local languages. Termed Internationalised Domain Names in the cyber parlance, these will allow people to access websites and emails in their local languages. Indian languages were considered for IDNs in the conference held in January these year in New Delhi. ICANN has finally decided to give go ahead for the same.

According to Keenan, “As for Internationalized Domain Names, ICANN's goal is to have them available at the same time as the application for new top-level domains, so people will be able to apply for TLDs in characters from the language of the world.” Dengate Thrush, ICANN's Board Chairman, was reported as saying, "New generic Top Level Domains and Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) will open up the Internet and make it look as diverse as the people who use it," added.

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What is ICANN

To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer - a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world.

It was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interpretable.
ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet. It is responsible for managing and coordinating the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that every address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. It does this by overseeing the distribution of unique IP addresses and domain names. It also ensures that each domain name maps to the correct IP address.

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Sanjay Satolekar, chairman, Regional Advertising and Marketing Association

The new .pune domain name will definitely help the city business as they will get new identity. We had earlier the attraction for .com but later .in was accepted vehemently. As the businesses are getting more localised, the new top level domain name will create affinity between the businesses and customers. As an advertising professional, it is also a welcome move as the advertisers tend to go for the more localised content and new local domain name will help them in maximizing their returns.

Deepak Shikarpur, Chairman, IT committee, MCCIA

“With the growth of internet and eCommerce existing domain names are in short supply and hence .com alone was not sufficient. Now a welcome step for Pune specific businesses is to get .pune domain name. This will boost ePresnece of Pune specific businesses. However, if one wants a national or global image then such businesses won’t gain by .pune domain
name change and hence these businesses wont bother to change.”

Amit Tripathi, MD, ID8Labs

All the domain names, whether they are top level or not, cater to particular geography. Their role is to create an identity for the company. With internet services penetrating to city and zonal level, these is a great opportunity. The new domain names will create a great revenue platform for the most of the companies as there are loads of services which are necessarily city specific. Also, it will also facilitate the easy names for companies in particular sector like calendar.pune will refer all the events taking place in city. However, the new domain name should be first promoted in the city first. After the model becomes successful, outside businesses should acquire it and thereafter only, big business should spread this domain name to outside world.

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EKA...The Story Continues

When I did the supercomputer EKA story last month, which was published on 30 June, I had no inkling that the affair will take me to places. But that has happened.

It so happened that I stubmled upon the new list of fastest 500 supercomputers in the world somewhere in June. I followed the matter because EKA, created by Computational Research Laboratory in Pune, had slided in the new list to the eighth place while it had stood at fourth place just six months ago. After communicating with the company, I managed to get some quoters. Based upon that, I gave the news report which appeared in the 30 June issue of Pune Mirror. The story run something like this :

Some generous help from US government and the theoretical calculations has taken EKA down in the world list. But the lab is determined to regain the position.

The International Supercomputing Conference held recently at Dresden, Germany unveiled new list of top 500 fastest supercomputer in the world. Though EKA has given a performance of 132.8 Teraflops, it has been ranked at the 8th position in the new list.EKA, developed by the city based CRL, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd., was ranked fourth supercomputer in November 2007 in SC07, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis at Reno, Nevada, USA.

EKA uses nearly 1800 computing nodes. Last year, it had a peak performance of 170 Teraflops (TFlops or Trillion Floating Point Operations per Second) and a sustained performance of 120 Teraflops based on the LINPACK benchmarks which are used by the world-wide community to rank supercomputers based on performance.

Reacting on this development, Harsha Ramchandra, spokesperson for CRL said, “We have improved our rating to 132.8 Teraflops solely through software upgrade. This means that our system performance has grown practically but it has not grown theoretically. We are planning to build a bigger system which will improve our ranking. While ranking is important, it is not our end-all.”

She told Pune Mirrror, “In fact, our main emphasis is on scaling applications which will effectively utilise the computing power of EKA. This is a difficult problem but we will be able to tackle it because of our proven expertise in software and our domain knowledge of a range of applications. Once we do this scaling, we will be able to solve several "grand challenge" problems in various application domains. It is this activity which will benefit users of HPC and so this is what we will focus on.”

EKA includes nodes and racks built by Hewlett Packard (HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c system) which uses high speed quad-core Clovertown processors from Intel Corp. and Dual Data Rate Infiniband switches from Mellanox Corp. and Voltaire Corp.

Meanwhile, industry sources attributed this slide down of the supercomputer to the active support given by US government. While all the supercomputers in the US have come from the government funded labs, EKA was a product of privatley funded lab. After scientists in the US demanded to increase the funding from government, they got it. It has resulted in the top five slots being occupied by the US supercomputer with fastest supercomputer achieving a performance of 1.026 petaflop/s.

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Now, yesterday I, alongwith other media persons of course, got an invitation that C. Ramadorai, chairman of CRL will address a media meet. It was really a very lerning meet. We got to see complicated and large structure of EKA. I again reported on that which runs like this :

The fastest super computer in Asia and eighth fastest in the world, EKA, runs on the Linux operating system. That is keeping in with the procedure followed by most of the supercomputers all over the world, including top 500 supercomputers. Officials of the Computation Research Laboratory, which has developed EKA say that this system offers more stability hence it is an obvious choice.

C. Ramadorai, chairman of CRL, who was in Pune to give an update on EKA, informed that CRL's performance was enhanced from 117.6 teraflops in November 2007 to 132 teraflops at present on the basis of software upgradation. This has been done on the basis of Linux operating system which offers more stability for complicated computations, which are necessary for a supercomputers. At present, CRL has ported various applications like Computer Aided Engineering, Computational Finance, Information Security, Atmospheric Sciences, Animation and Rendering, Seismic information. Linux offers most reliability for such types of applications.

N. Seetha Rama Krishna, another high official from CRL said that most of the supercomputers all over the world use Linux for their operations. All MPI enabled applications are run on this platform. There are 14,400 cores in 1800 blades in the laboratory and there are dual quad-core Intel processors in each blade. Therefore keeping with the world practise, CRL is using Linux. The management software stack of the EKA is a mix of open source and commercial software.

Giving information about the EKA cluster, Krishna said it is housed in octagonal structure which facilitates easy cooling for the super computer. It has 65 racks and server floor area is 4000 sq. ft. The air conditioning capacity is 350 ton and in terms of power consumption, EKA is 10 to 15 percent more efficient than other super computers in the world.

Animation Within Hours

CRL is also eyeing animation sector for the applications on EKA. Giving details about the move, Dr. Rajesh Lagu said, "At present, animation movies are sequence of images rendered from computer models. They are set in motion through series of frames. Using EKA, the time for processing such images can be substantially reduced. It can also be used for Rendering which means process of calculating effects in a video editing file to produce final video output. Softwares like Maya and Renderman can be used effectively for this purpose. By doing so, we can make an animation film within a month which otherwise could take one year."

Ranking Doesn't Matter

Speaking on the subject of sliding down in world ranking of super computers, C. Ramadorai said CRL is not really interested in the ranking but to put EKA for more and more into use by developing various applications. "The power of the system is not in ranking but in applications," he said.

He said that CRL did not expect that EKA will stand fourth fastest in the world. "After that, governemnt labs in US approached government and got their fundings increased. But for us, this is a private corporate enterprise. Therefore without partaking in any race for the numbers, we are focusing on applications."

EKA in a Nutshell

Peak Performance : 172 Terabytes

Sustained Performance : 132.8 Teraflops

Total Memory : 28 Terabytes

Storage : 80 Terabytes with 5.2 GB per second throughput

Interconnect : 20 GBPS Infiniband DDR

Cabling : 45 Kms (10 Km electrical, 15 Km Infiniband, 10 Km Ethernet)

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A two million Euro question

When one of the two 612 Scagliettis was going under hammer at the Fiorano Circuit in Maranello, Italy on 18 May, a city based Non-Governmental Organisation had little inkling that it will reap the widfall. But the car sold for EUR 220,000 which from that auction will be donated to the Centre for Learning Resources, run by Dr. John Kurien and to top it all, the donation has come on the recommendation from Tata Trust. Surprisingly, the NGO is tightlipped about the proceeds and does not want to react on the honour.

Ferrari had conducted a Magic India Tour of two 612 Scagliettis, the company’s flagship GT model cars which lasted from 25 February to 8 May. One of those two cars were sold in the auction conducted by RM auctions and Sothbey’s in Italy. The auction was noted for the world record it created by selling Ferrari California Spyder 1961, which belonged to actor James Coburn, for the surprising amount of 7.04 billion euros (11 million dollars). The 612 Scagliettis was at the third position and received EUR 2,20,000 (Rs. 1,48,76,868.896) as price.

When the reports of the donation surfaced, Pune Mirror had contacted CLR for the reaction. But the NGO said that they have not received any official communique from the auction house or Ferrari and as such they were unable to say anything on the subject.

When asked about the confusion, Mariella Mengozzi, spokesperson for Ferrari told Pune Mirror, "Yes, there was some miscommunication on account of which this confusion has been created. RM auctions has sold the car in auction. They are waiting for the payment from the buyer and as soon as the payment is received, the money will be given to CLR."

Giving further details, Mengozzi said, "As the trusted partner of Ferrari in India, the company had asked Tata Trust for the worthy organisations in India to donate the money. CLR was chosen on the recommendation from Tata Trust, which is headed by chairman Ratan Tata."

Mengozzi also forwarded the correspondence between CLR head Dr. Kurien and Ferrari Communication department officer Gabriel Lalli in which it is explicitly stated that CLR is to get the money definitely. Even after this correspondence, Dr. Kurien preferred to not to comment saying that they will come with official statement only after getting the money.
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About CLR
According to CLR website, the CLR is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation (NGO). It is working in early childhood care and development and elementary education since 1984 in Maharashtra and other states in India.
As a technical support organisation in the field of Early Childhood Care and Development and Elementary Education, we are committed to working in collaboration with all those engaged in understanding and meeting this challenge.
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(Published on 5 July)

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