Warm Greetings to the FOSS Community,
The meeting for the month of May was
conducted successfully. There were about 23 people who attended the
meeting, which gave way to great interactive sessions.
Meeting details :
Date: 25/05/2008
Time: 2:00PM ? 5:30PM
Venue: Internet Club, IInd floor, AMI
trust building, Broadway enclave, Broadway, Ernakulam.
As the attendees were arriving, a video
of a talk on ?Free
Software in Ethics and Society? given by Richard Stallman at
Manchester on 1st May 2008 was played back.
The meeting started of with the
customary introduction after which the discussion started with
Moderator giving a brief idea on DRM. Why the usage 'Digital
Restrictions Management' was more prompt instead of ?Digital Rights
Management? was explained
Since DRM was a new concept for some of
the audience, Moderator with the help of others explained about DRM
citing some practical examples. Some of the companies that supported
DRM and made DRM enabled products and their real motive behind it
was discussed.
The real dangers lurking behind DRM was
discussed by the attendees giving some real time experiences they
have faced while using DRM enabled Software/ Hardware. Various
examples about products that were DRM enabled like the Apple ipod,
Microsoft Zune etc. was discussed. The Sony rootkit issue was also
discussed in the light of ?how DRM can turn fatal?.
Several attendees who were convinced of
the after effects of DRM criticized the invasion of end-user's
privacy by the big media and software companies who supported and
made DRM enabled products.
The discussion moved on to talk about
the FSF campaign against DRM called ?defectivebydesign.org? .
The moderator specifically focussed on the importance of the campaign
and how it will help the Free Software community.
There was also a brief discussion on
how the GPL v3 handled the DRM threat and how acts like the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act turn good citizens into criminals. Some of
attendees also expressed concern on the weak and non existent cyber
laws in India( to protect users ).
The next vital topic was about
Operating Systems like Microsoft Vista implementing DRM and
controlling users. The intention of the topic was to awaken the
attendees of the real threat that lay below. The moderator drew their
attention to the ongoing campaign in this regard ?badvista.org?.
The discussion was wound up by
moderator asking the audiences to boycott DRM enabled products and to
take part in the campaign against DRM by registering in www.badvista.org and
www.defectivebydesign.org and spreading the message to others.
After the discussion, members moved on
to have tea and snacks.
After the discussion, it was time for
the technical presentation ? A tour of the Gnome Desktop ? by
Sudeep S
The Objective of the session was to
give the attendees an idea of the real power of the gnome desktop.
The presentation was done using the gNewSense GNU/Linux Distribution
which has Gnome 2.22.
The following aspects of the Gnome
Desktop were covered during the session:
- Introduction to Menus, Panels,
Notification Areas
- Changing Fonts and Keymap
- Configuring Keyboard shortcuts
-
Decorating Gnome
- Configuring the Display
- Nautilus File
Manager
- File associations
- Changing the time and date
-
Running administrative applications
- System monitoring
-
Controlling processes
- Customizing menus
- Changing file owner
and permissions
- Configuring sound notifications
- Configuring
the startup
- Synaptic Package manager
-
Configuring GDM
The Q&A session was next. Few of
the attendees asked a couple of questions relating to configuring
specific hardware. Some others who had a solution, volunteered to
help.. It was a brief session.
The concluding session discussed talked
about the activities of the group. The attendees were encouraged to
boycott DRM products and most importantly educate the general public,
on the evils of DRM. Few Anti DRM material from defectivebydesign.org
was handed out.
A few ILUG Meeting posters were also
handed out. A vote of thanks was proposed to all the people who made
the meeting possible. Feedback about the meeting was collected from
all the members. The meeting concluded at 5:30pm.
Further details on the meeting and
photos will be available on the website in a few days.
We thank all the attendees for coming.
All the attendees are requested to provide their feedback on the
mailing list so that we can think of ways to improve.
And we hope the next meeting be bigger
and better.
Attendees:
Mahesh Aravind
Thomas VV
Binny VA
M Jayadev
Vineeth TV
Sen Dhilkumar
Shibin K Reeny
Joby C Xavier
Sreenadh H
Sanjai
Ajith C
Sudeep S
Sharafudheen
Ajeya Anand
Raju Ramdas
Vineeth K Varma
Tinu Thomas
Rathin R
Cyriac Thomas
Kurian Mathew
Bilal MK
G Venkata Subramanian
Sameer M Thahir
Thank you.
Sameer Mohamed Thahir
Co-ordinator (Indian Linux Users Group - Cochin / Kochi Chapter(ILUG-Cochin))
sameer.thahir at gmail.com
Website : www.ilug-cochin.org
IRC : #ilugkochi on irc..freenode.net
ML : mailinglist at ilug-cochin.org
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