Shaastra 2008 (Second ENTRY to IITM)

IITM Shaastra 2008 was a good as well as bad experience to me. With out knowing the schedule ( was aware of FOSS conference ) and location of programs at 1 o clock , I entered in the IITM. But the programs were going on 2.5 km inside from IIT entrance gate. Walked through out the way, that had given chance to enjoy the beauty of IITM campus (even temples are there inside) .

Shaastra's beauty
Big big companies are sponsoring to this tech festival. L&T infotech,google,HSBC, GREDGE....etc. When I reached Elephant circle ( Gajendra circle), had seen big,big malls – one for Indian army, another for winergy ( wind to electric energy conversion) .
Talks, puzzles, conferences, workshops ( haven't seen ) all very standard programs.......

Shaastra's Bugs,
But I haven't seen the electronics, electrical,computer science or civil engineering IITM students projects or experiments exhibited in the ground. No project exhibition like mini projects or final year projects are less ( may because of first day ) or not there . Hardly you can see those stuffs. Then I understood, in that case GECT ECE's 'Quintessence ' or 'Insignia' (CS program) are giving more importance to exhibition of projects. In this particular thing the contribution of IITians to Shaatra was less. That is really really sad thing.

I think, IITians are more concentrating on entrepreneurship or business type stuffs... that also good . But IIT is famous because of technology, science and BRAIN.... not that much in business. But IIT can develop that too.... good. But only that, is bad.

Events participated.
Meanwhile got a chance to listen one RTI officer talk. That was really inspiring, as well as I wondered these type officers are there in Indian government. After having lunch and tea( very costly, don't know what the time was !!), wandered here and there without knowing what to do. Because, don't know the schedule... what program? which auditorium ? ...CLT,ICSR,DOMS.....etc. I enquired about the program schedule ... But I didn't get ( asked two places. First person direct me to registration people sitting place in IIT ground. Second person didn't care me that much). Really I feel bad.


FOSS Debian

Finally at the end of the day , I got FOSS Debian conference taken by Kapil ( http://www.imsc.res.in/~kapil/). Don't know more about his background. But he studied mathematics and now addicted in debian as well as in FOSS. He explained about patch and diff. I didn't get more( thats my problem).But he had started a Ubuntu vs Debian fight...funny moments.
The words that strike while listening.
1.ar xv /var/cache/..... / 20.4.somfile.db
2.flpsed -0.5
3.quilt push
4.quilt remove
5.fakerrout
6.dkpg -buildpackage
7.gpg

Packages overview for Kapil Hari Paranjape

http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=kapil@debian.org#par

And last when I looked into my watch, the time was 7.30pm. I knew that, “ I will miss the workshop on 'hacknight' in late night( 10.30pm to 'overnight' - no end time -) ' . No other way , have to return.