Science, Technology, and Politics

The National Conference on Free Software is scheduled on the 15 th & 16 th of November, 2008 at the campus of Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kochi. The theme of the conference is "Free Software, Free Knowledge, Free Humanity". The organisers of the conferences are, Cochin University of Science & Technology (CUSAT) the premier University in Kerala dedicated to Science & Technology. Open Software Solutions Industrial Co-operative Society Ltd (OSSICS) which owns one of the largest client base in Kerala in the Free Software sector. Appropriate Technology Promotion Society (ATPS), a social organisation registered under Charitable Societies Act which has been functioning for the demystification of IT through publications and workshops. IT @ School Govt of Kerala project which personifies a committed State policy and has drawn wide appreciation world wide for use of Free Software in education. Conference will be a milestone in the history

The BSNL has launched EV-DO based wireless broadband all over India and become the first EVDO service provider in India. I have successfully connected GNU/Linux system to Internet using this service. The system used is a laptop Acer Aspire 5573 with Fedora core -8. The procedure is described below. The procedure given is very brief, I will expand it once time permits. Ensure your EVDO connection is activated by BSNL. You will be provided with a user name of 10 integer size and a password of 4 integer size. Connect the EVDO data-card to one of the USB port of your system. You can ensure the device availability by the command $ lsusb The EV-DO USB data card provided by BSNL is manufactured by ZTE Corporation. However when this device is probed using lsusb command, the device vendor will be shown as Qualcomm. The device file of this card will be ttyUSB0. It this device is not created automatically, you can create it with following command with root