Category: Java

Spurthi 2007: Event At S.R.K.R. Engineering College

04 Feb
Raju Alluri Java, Other Opensource, Solaris/Unix, Technical

Since 2004, CSE Department of S.R.K.R. Engineering College is conducting the annual event called SPURTHI. I am a regular speaker (being alumni of this college) at this event, introducing latest Sun technologies to students. What started as a college level event in 2004 has morphed this year in to a mega event. More than 75% participants are from colleges outside this area, some from as far as 300kms. The event was conducted on 29th and 30th of January. Here is the website for this event.
This year, Sun is the sponsor for the event, as you can see here

Sponsor
and here.
Sponsor2
Me and Kishore are speakers from Sun.
Speakers
In addition, there is a Tech Talk from Charlene (Chia Ling Sung) from NetEnrich. The event included programs like Technical Paper Contest, C quiz, Programming Contest, Treasure Hunt, etc. About 120+ participants are from outside the Bhimavaram area and all of them unanimously appreciated the hospitality of the college and the town. At any point of time during our tech talks, the attendees are close to about 175, with few more people attending programs that run in parallel. Day1 was busy for me: I am keynote speaker, delivered a talk on Sun’s Innovations for the Participation Age and spoke to press people. Kishore arrived late on Day1 and delivered an excellent talk on OpenSolaris on Day2. I assisted him during a 45 minute long Q&A session.
Day1 events started a little late, due to trains to this area being late on that day. We had a very short opening ceremony
Opening
and then proceeded to my talk on Sun’s Innovations for the Participation Age. My presentation covered the following:

Talk01
Talk02
Talk03
While other expert talks are going on, I am asked to meet press (the only press reporter in the college that sends materials to 4 Telugu dailies in this area.) The questions started around the radiation effects of electronic equipment and the impact on consumers. I talked about the social responsibility of innovation companies like Sun and how we help reduce electricity consumption and heat generation using CoolThreads technology in Niagara chips. This technology further reduces the air conditioning needs and in toto, helps conserve the resources we have. This results in a cumulative positive effect on the society and shows the eco responsibility Sun has. We also talked about the fact that as more and more things are connected to the network (like cars) more consumers see the direct benefits of being on the network. Also, the entry level barrier for network access in India is very less (at Rs 10 per hour for Internet usage at kiosks, with no need for owning a computer.) This really helps students and researchers in India to be on par with other countries well known for innovation. This discussion is covered in press (local editions of the major 4 dailies) on the next day. I stayed around during lunch and dinner, to have brief chat sessions with the attendees.

Day2 started with a great presentation by Kishore on OpenSolaris. He left room for a 45 minute discussion hour. Thanks to Sumitha and IEC’s Solaris Team, I brought a bunch of OpenSolaris/NetBeans Combo DVDs and we gave them away to students who asked good questions. There is lot of interest from students on the Solaris technology in general. There were occassional questions on SunRay, Thumper and Blackbox too. I assisted Kishore by pitching in with some answers. This session became very informative and interactive and we enjoyed it very much.
I was there during prize distribution ceremony too. Thanks to Avinash, I could bring some Sun-ware (Sun logo T-Shirts and Caps) that are given out to winners. By that time, the event coordinator got the proceedings of the technical paper contest printed and ready. Good work!
This is a great two day event that helped us reach many students from many colleges in this area. Looking forward to more such events.

Vizag Trip Summary

16 Dec
Raju Alluri Java, Other Opensource, Solaris/Unix, Sun Management Center, Technical

On Monday and Tuesday I spent my time in Vizag, visiting Andhra University. We had a decent time given with Vice Chancellor, Principals of the colleges and Heads of some key departments. The entire discussion is centered around the benefits of using Open Source products and Sun’s key role in the opensource community. We talked about OpenSolaris, OpenOffice, OpenSparc, OpenJDK, NetBeans, etc. The preso is well received. However, we had only about 30-45 minutes to talk about the technologies. After that, we opened it up for Q&A and it is a very interesting and inquisitive discussion to some details.

After the meeting, Vardhini and myself spent some time with Prof. Apparao, Principal of College or Engineering. We took forward the previous discussion and talked about some key requirements of the college.

Then we went on to meet Prof. KVSVN Raju and Vallikumari of CS & E. We also met Ramprasad from SRKR engg. college. The discussion is centered around the recently introduced M.Tech. courses and how we can use opensource technologies in them.

Overall, it is a very good trip. Since the place is not well connected by flights, we spent an extra day during travel. Otherwise, it would have been a short and sweet one.

Slashdotters on Java Opensourcing

13 Nov
Raju Alluri 0 Comment Java, Other Opensource, Technical

Here is the thread on Slashdot regarding Sun’s Opensourcing of Java that makes a very interesting read. Some interesting quotes:

Wow.

This is a historical day.

That is all.

and

Wow! Despite all the rumours, I never really believed Sun would release Java under GPL instead of CDDL. Hats off to Sun.

and

This will remove, at a stroke, one of the largest issues of licence trouble in the *nix world.

and

Well, on a more practical note, this means that within a few months, I should be seeing a real, complete, working JRE sitting in the main repositories for Debian and Ubuntu. Sweet. We no longer have to go and fetch it ourselves or experiment with incomplete toolkits.

For the ideologues, knowing that there’s one less piece of non-free software on your system is a real comfort. For me, personally, all that apparently remains are ATI drivers and Flash Player.

Well, by the time I post it, there will be lot more interesting posts. Read the story on Slashdot!