08.21.09
The Next in Line
It’s no secret that professors come and go in an engineering college. In XIE, it’s rare to find profs in the Computers and IT departments who choose to stay for more than a year.
The EXTC department on the other hand has almost no changes which is pretty good not just for the obvious reasons, but because the profs cooperate a lot better and work for the betterment of the students. You can notice this from the staggering 6th semester results of EXTC where almost everyone has a 1st class or above and students with a single ATKT or more form a group of a number easily less than 10 (maybe even 5). Not just that, their experiments for practicals are recorded in printed journals and students studying for their CAT/GRE/GMAT/OTHR/LAME/XAMS are permitted to bunk college for a couple of weeks (this provision is obviously unofficial). Isn’t that effin’ awesome?
In contrast, the situation in computers and IT is an interesting spectacle and uhh…I digress.
Let me cut right to the chase. XIE is looking for a new principal.
![advt%20aug%2009[1]](http://vrsexie.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/advt20aug20091.jpg "advt%20aug%2009[1]")
I find this really absurd and full of WTFs as I heard that Dr. Kirloskar was very enthusiastic about teaching environmental science for the next couple of batches. Even I was interested in attending his lecture just to experience how a Ph.D in Environmental Engineering from IIT approaches the subject.
I have no further information about when he plans to quit but I can only hope that the new principal doesn’t screw around with me for my blog posts. I think I’ve had enough of that for one lifetime.
08.05.09
What The Tux?
I entered the computer lab a couple of days back for the first time this semester. It felt great to be back in the lab, watching Gauri Ma’am and Nandesh sir trying their level best to ensure that nobody fucks around in the computer lab as well as Manuel Sir Uncle (that’s how his name is mentioned officially on a notice with phone numbers of the staff LOL) who watches calmly unlike Anand sir who is totally blatant that he finds every student annoying to say the least.
After dealing with the usual crap which Anand sir throws at me for wearing shorts to college, which is now a commonplace activity for me, I entered one of the labs and I booted the machine.
My reaction to what I saw in the next 10 seconds was a clearly audible WTF ????
Red Hat Linux Enterprise Edition? WTF? Why? WTF could have possibly possessed those guys to have done this? WTF was wrong with Fedora? WTF are they upto? WTF happened to their reasons to choose Linux in the first place? Simply, WTF????
For the technology n00bs (i.e. those who have a life), Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a PAID SOFTWARE and is NOT FREE like Ubuntu or Fedora Linux which our computers ran earlier.
This reminded me of a day two years ago when Fr. John had given me a hard copy of his Linux Research Lab project idea, whose aim in a nutshell was to convert every computer in college from running Windows to Linux to save thousands of bucks in licensing fees. The document stressed heavily on the fact that Linux was completely free and was more secure than Windows and leveraged these points to convert our labs to Linux.
I’ve attached a portion of the document below. Click the picture to view an enlarged version.
And after all that crap about the advantages of free software, they’ve decided to use Red Hat Enterprise Edition which is 4000 rupees (minimum) per year for EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER THAT RUNS IT. What’s ironic is that this operating system is almost as expensive as the retail version of Windows XP Home edition which costs a little more than 4000 rupees. (CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL RED HAT ENTERPRISE EDITION PRICING OPTIONS)
I don’t know if they pirated the OS and downloaded it for free (notice the irony in the document) or if they actually paid 8 lakhs for the 200 computers (I’m assuming that the actual number of computers XIE has is close to 200. This isn’t the actual figure) this year but to be honest, I don’t really care.
Irrespective of what option they chose, it still contradicts the very arguments that got them permission to install Linux on every machine. Although I support the idea of learning to use an OS which isn’t Windows, this is blasphemy.
I wonder what made them choose this option in the first place? What was wrong with Fedora anyway?
My constant wtf’s are preventing me from writing anything without using profanities so I’ll just close this post with another WTF.
Let me know your thoughts on the issue. Comment away!
08.01.09
Ask me ‘bout XIE
An anonymous reader suggested that I answer a couple of questions that might be useful to the freshers and students from S.E. and T.E. Instead of just letting him/her ask the questions, I’m inviting you to throw in your set of queries about XIE.
So if you’ve got something on your mind that hasn’t been answered by the college authorities to your satisfaction, just fill in the form below and I’ll do my best to answer them.
Just be aware that I’m not authorized to make any statement on behalf of the college so whatever I say is totally unofficial and is not to be used as evidence to strengthen your doubts when you deal with the college authorities. I’m just a student who will answer your questions from my point of view. Since I spend more time in the classroom and the college authorities in the office, remember that they are a more definitive source of information.
Now that we’re clear on that, just fill in a simple form that’ll take less than a minute to fill.
Fire away your questions!!!
If you can’t see the form, fill it up by CLICKING HERE.
