Proud of my Grandfather

Proud of my Grandfather!
Quoting an EMail from Shri Gurbir Singh to my cousin sis - Rita Mahapatra and brother-in-law Brajendra Mahapatra. Thanks to the diaries preserved by my uncle Shri N Gantayat!

====EMAIL From Shri Gurbir Singh==

Paralakhemundi.

22.3.11

Smt. & Sri Mahapatraji,

         

Thank you very much for writing that wonderful E-mail to me, which was very much intrinsically imbued on with feelings of great understanding, love and admiration for a family patriarch and great soul, who had contributed so much to the making of a great familial lineage by being a great human being with so much of a sensitive side to him ( I personally treasure this aspect more than anything in a human being), of course, besides his enormous contributions to the royal household of Paralakhemundi and to the latter cause of  including the PKD Zamindari to the approved boundary of the Orissan State. 

This I feel inclined to write because when I first met Sri N. Gantayet Babu, I was overwhelmed with his dedication and love for his father; to find him having preserved the old diaries (even of the very young days of his father that described his hostel life and high school days) with so much care and devotion was like seeing a small sensitive, adorable, spiritual charisma. This I admired much; this I find in this E-mail itself. The diaries which I read with so much interest, the diaries which allowed me a journey into the mind of a sensitive young man that was filled with enormous dreams and concern for the society he lived in, the sensitivity I found in him, I found dominant in the successive family trees as well. He must be a happy man in heaven to see this intellectually sensitive side predominantly running in his family.

I am no scholar, no researcher, no publication craving contributor. I wrote what I meant and I meant what I strongly felt. There was so much to write; the diaries had so much in them, maybe the haste of writing the piece to keep the deadline did make me leave out some other aspects of this unacknowledged, great man of Orissa. I am sorry for that. At a personal level, I found it highly satisfying to read the entries in the diaries, and it was also quite energizing to write that piece. Mentally I have been enriched by the mind of the young man who felt so much, whose feelings unfortunately remained unknown, so much like his valued scribbles which have remained obscure till date, though very well preserved and read by a small inner circle of family acquaintance.  

I strongly feel that he could have become a chronicler par excellence, besides contributing politically to the state and the nation post independence, if he had not been God’s favourite in dying young.  But as you have rightly affirmed in your E-mail that he had left behind a legacy of quiet dignity, perseverance and high moral conduct as the goal for all of us to strive and achieve, I am sure that the throbs that still beat in the hearts of those diaries will definitely make many more readers like me rededicate themselves to strive to become better human beings. One day, he surely will get his due mention as one of the architect in shaping the minds of those were acknowledgedly at the helms of affairs in carrying forward the struggle of independent statehood of Orissa.

Thank you once again for writing.

With warm regards!

Gurbir Singh

Internet Security - Parental control setup

With the easy access to the Internet Broadband to everyone in the family, the need for parental controls has never been felt more. 

There is a need to prevent access to dangerous sites at which family members unwittingly land up with, or to control the usage hours etc. 

Check out these useful websites (rated safe!) for setting up parental controls easily.

For Windows 7 user: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/10524/how-to-use-parental-controls-in-windows-7/

For Ubuntu/Mint Linux Users: http://productivegeek.com/articles/how-to-create-a-family-friendly-ubuntu-setup/

NASA Open Source summit

Well, just to show that Open Source is something to reckon with, 

NASA is going to host an Open Source summit on 29-30 March

http://www.nasa.gov/open/source/
"This event will bring together engineers and policy makers across NASA and respected members of the open source community to discuss the challenges with the existing open source policy framework, and propose modifications that would make it easier for NASA to develop, release, and use open source software"

Wish someone sponsors my trip there ;-)

Jokes apart, its high time our Govt (or its parts like the services) convene a similar summit - 'coz I see a lot of decisions taken based on personality and experiences and not on a collective thinking or future implications. 

"Open source brings numerous benefits to NASA software projects, including increased software quality, reduced development costs, faster development cycles, and reduced barriers to public-private collaboration through new opportunities to commercialize NASA technology. This inherently transparent, participatory, and collaborative approach is revolutionizing the way software is created, improved, and used.

Although open source release has already provided numerous benefits to NASA, the full benefits of open source can only be realized if NASA is able to establish the processes, policies, and culture needed to encourage and support open source development. This will require expanding open source activities beyond releasing software only after completion and finding new ways to support two-way collaboration with an open development community throughout the entire software lifecycle."

Open Source and Linux Economics

The usual question that many ask and suspect - 'How come Linux is given away free? And how do these companies - like Ubuntu - survive?'

I always have a difficult time answering that - and most of the time can make out that the audience is not convinced. Those in the government and decision making chain instead of being thankful that we have a great software available free of cost - do tend to feel there is some ulterior motives (who gives away things for free now-a-days??) or just don't believe it!

Came across a great blog by Mark Shuttleworth - the Owner/Creator of Ubuntu (his company is called Canonical) - wherein he explains some of the free and Open Source Economics. Check it out here
(of course - make it a point to check out the fair comments at the blog site too! Pretty interesting debate!!)

Mark is a 'billionaire' by the way, and the second 'self-funded' space tourist - check his Wikipedia site here

Extract from his blog:

The bulk of the direct cost in creating the audience of Ubuntu users is carried by Canonical. There are many, many indirect costs and contributions that are carried by others, both inside the Ubuntu community and in other communities, without which Ubuntu would not be possible. But that doesn’t diminish the substantial investment made by Canonical in a product that is in turn made available free of charge to millions of users and developers.

The business model which justifies this investment, and which we hope will ultimately sustain that effort for the desktop without dependence on me, is that fee-generating services which are optional for users provide revenue to Canonical. This enables us to make the desktop available in a high quality, fully maintained form, without any royalties or license fees. By contrast, every other commercial Linux desktop is a licensed product – you can’t legally use it for free, the terms for binaries are similar to those for Windows or the MacOS. They’re entitled to do it their way, we think it’s good in the world that we choose to do it our way too.