Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Linux

What do you want me to talk about?

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Update: Here is the presentation I made in HTML format and in Open Document format.

I will give a short technical presentation of Mac OS X this coming Saturday 13th at the LinkByNet office in the A1 building at Vacoas as from 10:00. This presentation will take place during the Linux User Group of Mauritius monthly meeting.

Now, I can talk a lot about the Mac and Mac OS X (both from an “envangelism” and from a technical point of view) but I don’t want to be too long and, hence, boring.

I’ve, with the help of some other people, identified the following topics:

  • History of the Mac and of Mac OS X
  • Apple, Mac OS X and Open Source Software
  • An overview of Mac OS X and common applications
  • An overview of digital life and iLife
  • An overview of some interesting third-party applications
  • Technical caracteristics of Mac OS X
  • Administering Mac OS X
  • Software development on the Mac
  • etc. etc. etc.

(PS: I’ve highlighted the most probable topics I’ll touch tomorrow…)

As I’ve said, I want to do a short presentation (1 hr max) and therefore I won’t be able to cover all those topics. Help me choose the 3 most interesting topics. Of course, you can propose new topics…

Be quick! I need to finalise everything tomorrow.

Thanks.

We are going to India

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I’m very happy to tell you all that Rajiv Perseedoss (CSE Year III), Yannick Catherine (also CSE Year III), Madhav Ramlugun (IS Year I) and I (as coach) are going to IIT Kanpur to participate in the ACM-ICPC Regional Programming Contest to be held on the 9th and 10th of December.

(By the way, here are some related previous posts: Un concours de programmation à l’Université de Maurice and Sponsors urgently needed!)

IIT Kanpur is one of the best universities in the world and our team of students will have to battle very hard as there will be teams from seven other countries (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Singapore, Taiwan and China). One important information is that they’ll use a 100% Linux environment during the contest…

This adventure has been made possible by Mr Ganesh Ramalingum, Managing Director of Data Communications Ltd. (DCL) who has agreed to finance ALL our expenses.

Thanks to DCL, Mauritius will, for the first time ever, participate in an ACM-ICPC Regional Programming Contest.

There will be a press-conference this coming Friday (1st December) at 16:00 at the University.

Once more, I would like to thank my three colleagues, Sudha Cheerkoot-Jalim, Anwar Chutoo and Pascal Grosset who worked day and night to make all this possible.

Good luck (et merde!) to Rajiv, Yannick and Madhav!

On being a Linux or Mac evangelist

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I was reading Money as a Social Barrier on Guy Kawasaki‘s blog and he wrote:

After all, evangelism is the process of selling dreams, and selling dreams doesn’t necessarily require monetization.

And this struck a chord with me… Being a Linux or a Mac evangelist is easy. Linux and Macintosh computers are so desirable and feature-packed that we can convince people without involving money in the equation.

But “Microsoft evangelism” can only be an oxymoron…

(Image courtesy of Apple)