So, this was going to be last weekend in US. So, me and Conley decided to do something interesting. We were thinking of a 2 day hike, but we couldn’t plan that. So finally we decided to make a video, and Conley came up with ‘Dragon Hunting’. And then, we decided that Conley will be the dragon hunter and I will be the cameraman. We roamed about Blacksburg and Cascades and asked people some dumb questions. No doubt, it was perfect fun for us. Some people gave real funny reactions to our questions. Some people were boring enough to speak any interesting thing. We tried talking to some shop keepers but most of them refused to come on camera. But anyways, it was a great hunt.
You can download the video using one of these torrents :
Conley did the editing of video and he did that very well. We have used “Steep”‘s songs which are under Creative Commons license. You can find Steep on jamendo.com. Our video is of course under Creative Commons License.
Enjoy the video :
part 1
part 2
part 3
So, I am finally back to India. I am in my school now. I stayed with my parents for 2 days and then I came here. I am eating a lot now a days, the reason is obvious. Now, I have different new things to face. Mainly B Tech Project and GRE. It seems no date of GRE is available for September and October. Which means I am in big trouble. Anyways, I am missing the fun I had in US, and the people I met there. I hope to meet them next year.
I usually can see any disgusting movie. And I enjoy them. Ocean 12 was a disappointment for me though I enjoyed it. The movie wasn’t as exciting as Ocean 11. This time in Ocean 13, since Al Pacino was there, I was expecting a good time seeing movie. Though it came out that Al Pacino had a small role, which was disaapointment and then his acting wasn’t upto the mark as well. They mentioned ‘Tes’ in the start of the movie, but never showed ‘Tes’. For those who havn’t seen Ocean 11 and 12, it would have been confusing. Role of the camera they put in Al Pacino’s office wasn’t much clear.
Overall the adventure wasn’t bad. Adventure before show and adventure in the show. I had properly planned for the show, though Alli didn’t show up till 10:30PM. The Show was at 10:40PM. But it came out that the movie was 10:54PM not 10:40PM. I didn’t miss anything.
So, my rating for the movie is : 7/10
If you want to know in one line why I use/prefer linux, the answer is that it gives me “freedom”. And if you will give me second line I will say because the ‘fight’ is against ”copyright”.
Freedom : Since linux is open source, I can use it the way I want. That means that my machine will do what I want it to do. (I don’t want to give control of my machine to someone else.) And then I will be able to save myself from these “proprietary rights”.
Copyright : Todays copyright laws are killing creativity. People develop stuffs and copyright it in a way that others can not develop upon it for long time. And this long means 100 years!!!!! So either you come up with another substitutable technology or you just use what they are developing. That means that if a technology A is made by some corporate B and if B is not able to develop A properly, people will have to make substitute technology. Not only that, if you have some idea that will enrich A, you can not implement that. So waste of time and resources. Overall development is restricted.
“Proprietary Rights” : Let us take an example. File formats. Microsoft has proprietary rights for “.doc”. That means if tomorrow, Microsoft will say that no software other than Microsoft Office is allowed to use this file format, users will have to shift to Microsoft Office. This vendor lock-in favors producers and restricts clients. In other way its a cheap way of controlling consumer. Propietary rights is a big concern today.
So, if you think you are a resposible person, you will use Linux. (Yeah, I agree its still not good enough for computer illiterates.)
So, this is how it works in IIT Kanpur. Most of the students use pirated softwares. That means the “MS windows” they use is pirated, “MS office” is pirated, “adobe professional” etc etc. There are plenty of pirated softwares available in IIT Kanpur LAN. Even if someone buys Windows or gets it with laptop, they use other pirated softwares. Name any software, it will be available in IITK LAN. Same is with movies and songs. And IITK administration doesn’t do anything against it. Its not that they don’t know about it, but its because they don’t wanna stop it. For example in IITK newsgroup people tell others that they have downloaded this pirated software/movie/song and have shared it here. Rather IIT Kanpur has made separate groups for sharing videos, music and softwares. Reason for this mass piracy being that 1 : IITK students are technically sound, 2: these software companies, they encourage piracy in developing countries and hence piracy is so common in India, 3: Indians, right now, don\’t want to spend money on softwares (why would they when pirated softwares are available so easily).
Whatever it is, it leads to wastage of time. Students who download these stuffs, spend days and nights searching for torrents and downloading them. And students waste time in watching these pirated movies and TV episodes. And some students spend hell lot of time in playing pirated games. Now this gaming is a big concern for administration. Because some students waste so much time in these things that they end up failing courses. Some students play games all night. Solution they have come up with is like this (you can see the original document here. ) : 1: No LAN (that means no internet as well) in night. 2 : no net for new students for 3 semesters. WTF!!! Do they want us to be technically dumb? I don\’t understand how can they think of life without internet today. Their fight is against missuse of internet, so fight against that. Why do you want to deprive the sincere students from internet. For example, those who want to chat with people in USA, what will they do? I like to work in night. What will I do? My gentoo takes 2 days to install, how will I install it? Institute Computer Center is not a convenient place to do these stuffs. Give freedom to students. Stop piracy in campus and all these problems will be solved. Those who are involved in downloading/gaming etc, will be discouraged greatly.