Nipa Parikh's Blog

Indian Railways, is a departmental undertaking of Government of India, which owns and operates most of India’s rail transport. It is overseen by the Ministry of Railways of the Government of India.

The Railway Budget deals with planned infrastructure expenditure on the railways as well as with the operating revenue and expenditure for the upcoming fiscal years, the public elements of which are usually the induction and improvement of existing trains and routes, planned investment in new and existing infrastructure elements, and the tariff for freight and passenger travel.

Rail travel is set to become costlier in the new fiscal (2012 -13). Price Hike in Rail Tickets are as under:

• 2 paise per km for suburban and ordinary second class
• 3 paise per km for mail express second class
• 5 paise per km for sleeper class
• 10 paise per km for AC Chair Car, AC 3 tier & First Class
• 15 paise per km for AC 2 Tier
• 30 paise per km for AC I
• Platform Ticket Increase from Rs 3 to Rs 5

Happy Journey…

Young Harshvardhan (a King in ancient India) was imprisoned and sentenced to death by a neighboring King. Instead of killing him, however, the King, moved by Harsh’s youth and ideals, offered him freedom in exchange for answering a difficult question. He was given a year to find out the answer, If he still had no answer, he would be put to death.
The question was: “What do women really want?”

This question had perplexed even the most knowledgeable people since ages and to Harsh, it seemed an impossible query. As it was better than instant death, he accepted the proposition to have an answer by year’s end.

He went out and started asking everybody – the royals, the common man, the priests, the wise men and women, teachers, court jester etc. He asked everybody, but nobody could give him a satisfactory answer. However, there was an old witch and many people advised him to consult her as only she would know the answer.

The witch was famous for the exorbitant prices she charged. The final day of the year arrived and Harsh had no alternative but to talk to the witch. The witch agreed to answer his question but he’d have to accept her price first – Marriage with Siddhraj, the most noble of ministers in the kingdom and Harsh’s closest friend!

Young Harsh was horrified as witch was hunchback, hideous, had only a tooth, smelled very bad, ugly and unpleasant. He refused to force his friend to marry her and have to endure such unbearable burden. Siddhraj, upon hearing of the condition, spoke to Harsh and persuaded him that nothing was too big a sacrifice compared to Harsh’s life and preservation of the Kingdom. Hence, their wedding was proclaimed.

The witch then answered Harsh’s question and it was: “What women really want is to be in charge of their own life.” Everyone instantly knew that the witch had disclosed a great truth and Harsh’s life would be spared. And so it was. The neighboring King kept his promise and granted Harsh total freedom.

What a wedding Siddharaj and the witch had! Harsh was torn between relief and anguish. Siddhraj was proper as always, gentle and courteous. The old witch put her worst manners on display and made everyone very uncomfortable. After wedding, home settlement hour approached. Siddhraj steeling himself for a horrific experience entered the home. But what a sight awaited him! The most beautiful woman he had ever seen sat before him! The astounded Siddhraj asked what had happened. The beauty replied that since he had been so kind to her when she had appeared as a witch, she would henceforth be horrible, deformed self half the time, and the other half, she would be her beautiful maiden self. Which would he want her to be during the day, and which during the night?

What a cruel question? Siddhraj pondered on his predicament: during the day a beautiful woman to show off to his relatives and friends, but at night an old witch? Or would he prefer having by day a hideous witch, but by night a beautiful woman?

Dear reader, what would you do? What Siddhraj chose follows, but don’t read until you’ve made your own choice.

The noble Siddhraj replied that he would let her choose for herself. Upon hearing this, she announced that she would be beautiful all the time, because he had respected her enough to let her be in-charge of her own life.

It’s always better to be sensitive, empathetic, encouraging and supportive towards women in their cause of being in-charge of their own life. One is surely to get more respect, liking/affection/love, support, care and strong relationship in return.

Sugar is a free desktop environment designed with the goal of being used by children for learning. It is developed as part of the nonprofit One Laptop per Child (OLPC, a low-cost educational laptop project) which is released under the GNU GPL. Whereas most other desktop environments are written in a compiled language (e.g., the GNOME desktop environment, Microsoft Windows XP and Vista were all written mostly in C), Sugar is written in the interpreted Python programming language which allows easier modification and customization of Sugar by its users.

Sugar is still in development. In May 2006, its creators described it as primarily a “tool for expression,” thus plans are in place to include multimedia and social networking features. Like other desktop environments, Sugar does not use the “desktop”, “folder” and “window” metaphors. Instead, Sugar’s default full-screen activities require users to focus on only one program at a time.

Sugar implements journal, which automatically record each student’s activities and allows them to later use, an interface to pull up their past works by date, activity used or file type. Thus acting as a reflection and assessment of progress—a portfolio that can be shared with teachers, parents, and the student as they progress through grade levels. For teachers, students will enjoy learning more and they will improve in regard to traditional metrics such as reading comprehension. And you will enjoy mentoring them and learning along side them. The Sugar interface always shows a students connected friends. Students chat with each other, support each other, critique each other, and share ideas. Activities such as peer editing are just one “mouse-click” away. Sugar also provides access to internet learning resources.

If you are a frequent traveler in India and your major mode of transport is the Indian Railways than first and foremost problem is getting a confirmed ticket on the pick routes. In order to have a confirmed seat you would have to get the ticket before a month and a half almost. If you are getting an e-ticket than there is no issue of getting lost as you can get the print of the ticket any day any time.

But what if you are not going to issue an e-ticket? The first problem is standing in long queues for getting the ticket and after having got a ticket than it’s your responsibility to keep it to safe place so that it doesn’t get lost till your journey is happily ended.
By any chance you lost the ticket than you have to follow the process of getting a new one defined by the railways which I would like you to brief upon.

Things you should know are

• The name of the persons who are travelling on that ticket
• The other details of that individual (gender and age)

Things you should carry along with you

• A photo-id proof of all or any one person who is/are travelling on that ticket.
• Take the zerox copy of the photo id proof also.
• An application specifying issue of lost ticket which contains full details of the person(s) who are travelling on that ticket, the train name and number and date of journey. Be sure that you are not making the mistake on train name and date of journey.
• Don’t forget to write your permanent address on the application.

You will have to go to the main reservation counter near your place and there would a window which will accept this kind of request. Generally in my knowledge these issues are taken on window number 1.

Give your application form and the zerox copy of photo id proof to the in-charge over there. After that he would either verify it from the database that it’s the valid ticket. If found valid, he would give you another form for filling. and which would be signed and stamped by him. Than you have to take the signature of the railway station manger and return it back to him. After all these procedure he would be making an entry in his books of accounts for the lost ticket and than would give you a fresh one.

But do remember that for all these procedure he will prompt you regularly that the reissued ticket is confirmed or not. I don’t know why they are asking this and what’s the procedure for waiting seat lost ticket. And, main thing, the cost of the ticket would be Rs. 20/- for each passenger travelling on that ticket (as dated today).

More over, if you lost the e-ticket just before your journey, its bit simple as you just have to show your photo id proof and pay Rs. 50/-

Happy Journey.

Vidya Balan

Vidya Balan present at the Mumbai Marathon 2010 supporting her charity Nanhi Kali.

I am new to PC BSD but not to Linux. By reading between lines in the documentation guide and experiencing it practically I would like to share talk on PC BSD.

PC-BSD is basically FreeBSD with a nice installer, some pre-configuration, PBI package management, a couple pre-selected packages and some handy (GUI) utilities to make PC-BSD suitable for desktop use. As a user of PC-BSD, you don’t have to worry about configuring your system, but rather to simply install it and start working and/or playing with it.

PC-BSD is NOT a Linux distribution. Both FreeBSD and Linux are Unix-like systems, but PC-BSD is based on FreeBSD and NOT on Linux. But there is minor difference between PC-BSD and FreeBSD, PC-BSD is geared towards desktop use, while FreeBSD has been created with server use in mind.

PC-BSD is a different kind of operating system compared to Microsoft Windows. FreeBSD (the base of PC-BSD) has been built with stability and security in mind, and these properties don’t particularly spring in mind when thinking of Windows.

PC-BSD is essentially a customized installation of FreeBSD, and not a forked-derivative. (**From documentation)

• PC-BSD is based on FreeBSD (currently 7.0) and the KDE desktop environment (currently 4.1.1), etc.

• PC-BSD is installed by a graphical installer

• PC-BSD doesn’t have a registry database where all the operating system’s settings are stored, so your computer won’t get slow after a few months’ of use

• PC-BSD is not affected by viruses, spyware and other malware that plague Windows systems.

As I said in my previous blog I am a learner, so if you like to share more about PC-BSD let me know…

Linux always gives more and interesting options to work upon. Whenever I get time, I try to dig out new release, might not be the latest one in this vast universe of Linux, but like to share few things on Enlightenment. This time I get on road with window manager.

The Enlightenment Window Manager was first released in 1997 by Carsten Rasterman Haitzler. Now let me get you with this feature-full window manager more:

• The Enlightenment DR16 Window Manager is a robust, flexible, highly configurable, graphically rich desktop environment for the X11 windowing system.
• It is fully theme-able and easily configured.
• DR16 provides an innovative way of managing applications found no where else, allowing for not only virtual desktops, but also multiple desktops (a separate set of virtual desktops).
• A unique snapshoting pager allows for easy management of application placement and even will zoom on mouse-over of a window in the pager for easily locating applications.
• Support exists for up to 32 multiple desktops, and virtual desktops up to 8×8 in size! (That’s 2048 possible desktops!).
• Several different types of move and resize effects exist, including Opaque, Technical, Box, Shaded, Semi-solid, and Translucent, depending on your preference and CPU requirements.
• The menu system is flexible, providing easy access to applications, theme selection, documentation, settings, and background selection.
• DR16 uniquely allows background selection to be done from the main menu system using thumbnail views of the background providing a quick and easy way to change wallpaper.
• In addition, desktop exist that can add a ripple effect at the base of your desktop.
• A simple group of flat text files allow for easy editing of user application menus, including the ability to create hierarchical user menus to suite your various needs.
• A built in help system called “eDox” provides an excellent resource for learning the wide variety of different methods of interaction and configuration. Graphical Tool Tips can also be enabled to assist normal usage.
• Enlightenment DR16 integrates well with both GNOME and KDE.

Here is a list of various desktop environments I’ve heard about.

* LXDE: The Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment is especially designed for computers with low hardware specifications like netbooks and mobile devices.
* EDE: The Equinox Desktop Environment is small Desktop Environment built to be simple and fast. It is based on a modified FLTK library.
* Athene Desktop: A Commercial desktop with its own graphics server , although it can also display X11 applications for compatibility.
* Metisse: An experimental X desktop which uses a virtual X server, a special version of Fvwm, and Open GL support to implement various window effects, including rotation, scaling and blending.
* JD4X: The Java Desktop for X aims to provide a Java based desktop that can run both Java and native applications. It is initially only available for Linux x86 platforms.
* 3D-Desktop: an OpenGL program for switching virtual desktops in a seamless 3-dimensional manner on Linux.
* XD640: A simple graphical desktop environment for X designed for small screens and slow processors.
* XPde: A Windows XP-like desktop environment designed for Windows users migrating to Linux.
* ROX: An attempt to bring some of the good features from RISC OS to Unix and Linux. It Includes a desktop environment based around a file manager.
* 5dwm: The Indigo Magic Desktop for Linux.
* UDE: Unix Desktop Environment- early stages of a new window manager written using only XLib, rather than special GUI libraries.
* CDE: The Common Desktop environment is a commercial graphical user interface for UNIX in its various flavors (AIX, Digital UNIX, HP/UX, Solaris, UnixWare, etc.).The CDE incorporates the down window manager.
* KDE: It is modern network transport desktop environment. It contains a base set of applications such as a window manager ( called Kwm), web browser, instant manager and integrated help system, all with a consistent look and feel, and translations over 50 languages.
* GNOME: (pronounced “ Gah-NOME) project’s aim is to build a complete, user friendly desktop based entirely on free software. It is not a window manager, and in fact has to be run in conjunction with a window manager.
* Xfce: Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX platforms. It is similar to the commercial CDE, and is now based on the GTK + toolkit.

If you know of any others, or think I should feature any of them in more detail, please let me know.

The term “free software” is prone to misinterpretation: an unintended meaning, “software you can get for zero price,” fits the term just as well as the intended meaning, “software which gives the user certain freedoms.” We address this problem by publishing the definition of free software, and by saying “Think of ‘free speech,’ not ‘free thing/asset.’” This is not a perfect solution; it cannot completely eliminate the problem. An unambiguous and correct term would be better, if it didn’t present other problems.

Unfortunately, all the alternatives in English have problems of their own. I have looked at many that people have suggested, but none is so clearly “right” that switching to it would be a good idea.  Every proposed replacement for “free software” has some kind of semantic problem—and this includes “open source software.”

The official definition of “open source software” (which is published by the Open Source Initiative and is too long to include here) was derived indirectly from our criteria for free software. It is not the same; it is a little looser in some respects, so open source supporters have accepted a few licenses that we consider unacceptably restrictive of the users. Nonetheless, it is fairly close to our definition in practice.

However, the obvious meaning for the expression “open source software”—and the one most people seem to think it means—is “You can look at the source code.” That criterion is much weaker than the free software definition, much weaker also than the official definition of open source. It includes many programs that are neither free nor open source.

Since that obvious meaning for “open source” is not the meaning that its advocates intend, the result is that most people misunderstand the term. According to writer Neal Stephenson, “Linux is ‘open source’ software meaning, simply, that anyone can get copies of its source code files.” I don’t think he deliberately sought to reject or dispute the “official” definition. I think he simply applied the conventions of the English language to come up with a meaning for the term.

Open source supporters try to deal with this by pointing to their official definition, but that corrective approach is less effective for them than it is for us. The term “free software” has two natural meanings, one of which is the intended meaning, so a person who has grasped the idea of “free speech, not free things/asset” will not get it wrong again. But the term “open source” has only one natural meaning, which is different from the meaning of what people thinks. So there is no explanatory way to explain and justify its official definition. That makes for worse confusion.

Another misunderstanding of “open source” is the idea that it means “not using the GNU GPL.” This tends to accompany another misunderstanding that “free software” means “GPL-covered software.” These are equally mistaken, since the GNU GPL is accepted as an open source license and most of the open source licenses qualify as free software licenses.