271 lines
9.8 KiB
HTML
271 lines
9.8 KiB
HTML
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<!-- *** BEGIN HTML header *** -->
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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
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<HTML><HEAD>
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<title>Easter Eggs LG #89</title>
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</HEAD>
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<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#0000AF"
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ALINK="#FF0000">
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<TABLE BORDER><TR><TD WIDTH="200">
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<A HREF="http://www.linuxgazette.com/">
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<IMG ALT="LINUX GAZETTE" SRC="../gx/2002/lglogo_200x41.png"
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WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="41" border="0"></A>
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<BR CLEAR="all">
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<SMALL>...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I></SMALL>
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</TD><TD WIDTH="380">
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<CENTER>
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<BIG><BIG><STRONG><FONT COLOR="maroon">Easter Eggs</FONT></STRONG></BIG></BIG>
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<BR>
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<STRONG>By <A HREF="../authors/vinayak.html">Vinayak Hegde</A></STRONG>
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</CENTER>
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</TD></TR>
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</TABLE>
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<P>
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"Easter eggs"
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are small tricks or "hidden features" that are embedded in software by the developer.
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They get activated when a certain sequence of keys are pressed or some settings are
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changed. You may have heard of chip designers embedding graffiti and cartoons onto
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the chips. Software developers embed easter eggs into software so that users can have
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fun finding them and playing around with them. Also in most proprietary companies, the
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software is owned by the company with the software developer getting little or no
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credit. Many easter eggs contain a scrolling list of the developers who developed
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the software. Other easter eggs are embedded just for fun, such as a
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flight simulator in a popular spreadsheet software.
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</p>
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<p>
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Most programmers find it a creative way of communicating with the users of
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the software. It can also be seen as a reward for ardent users of a software who
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obviously take pride in the fact that they know subtle nuances of using the software.
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The joy comes from the sense of discovery (after you have found a hidden easter egg)
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and making the program to do what it wasn't intended to do. Another view is that
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easter eggs can also be used (by small companies) as marketing tool. Users discover
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easter eggs and ask another to check out the program. The user downloads the software
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and finds it really useful for doing his daily work. He then ends up buying the program.
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</p>
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<p>
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Some people are of the view that easter eggs owe their origins to backdoors in software
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and are harmful for the security of the program. This is also the view taken by most big
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corporations and software quality assurance departments. They believe that
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easter eggs waste memory and CPU time. Also avid gamers might find the concept of
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easter eggs to be similar to cheat-codes in most popular games. Cheat-codes are such a
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rage that most popular games have backdoors (cheat-codes) to help the user cheat and
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get an unfair advantage. The amount of easter eggs in open source software is much less
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as compared to closed source software. In the article that follows I have presented some
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easter eggs which can be found in open source software.
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</p>
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<h2> Easter Egg # 1 (Hidden Quote in Mozilla)</h2>
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<p>
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<a href="about:mozilla"> Click here </a> for a surprise if Mozilla (or Galeon) is your browser. <br>
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You might get a different effect if you try this out in another popular browser.
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Mozilla is a strange name you may wonder. Actually Mozilla is a combination of two words
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Mosaic and GodZilla. Back in the early days of the world wide web, NCSA's Mosaic was the
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dominant browser. It was at this time, Netscape Inc. came up with the Mozilla browser
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which competed with Mosaic. Hence it was named as "Mosaic Killer" by it's developers.
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The above easter egg should work even with a Galeon. Mozilla and Galeon use a common
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engine called gecko.
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</p>
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<p>
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If you are not reading this using Mozilla (or Galeon). Select <b> text from here... </b>
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<br>
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<font color=#FFFFFF>
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<div>
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And the beast shall be made <span>legion</span>. Its numbers shall
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be increased a <span>thousand thousand</span> fold. The din of a
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million keyboards like unto a great <span>storm</span> shall cover
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the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall <span>tremble</span>.
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</div>
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<div>
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<span>from <b>The Book of Mozilla,</b> 3:31</span> <br>
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(Red Letter Edition)
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</div>
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</font> <br>
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<b> ...till here </b> to see the <i> hidden text </i>
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</p>
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<h2> Easter Egg # 2 (ddate command) </h2>
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<p>
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use the ddate command to get some wierd information about the date in the calender.
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<pre>
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$ ddate 1 4 2003
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Sweetmorn, Discord 18, 3169 YOLD
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$ ddate 1 1 0000
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Sweetmorn, Chaos 1, 1166 YOLD
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$ ddate 13 2 2003
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Prickle-Prickle, Chaos 44, 3169 YOLD
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$ ddate 14 7 1980
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Setting Orange, Confusion 49, 3146 YOLD
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$ ddate 18 11 1969
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Boomtime, The Aftermath 30, 3135 YOLD
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</pre>
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You can have a lot of fun with this command. Also check out your birth date and what it says ;).
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</p>
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<h2> Easter Egg # 3 (Credit Listing in VIM)</h2>
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<p>
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This is a easter egg I recently discovered in the popular editor VIM. Follow the steps
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and you are in for a surprise.
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<ol>
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<li> On the command line edit a file programmers.txt </li>
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<li> Get into insert mode by pressing i </li>
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<li> Press enter 11 times </li>
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<li> Now that you are on the 12th line, type the name <i> Bram Moolenaar </i> </li>
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<li> Open a new buffer using the key sequence <i> CTRL+W </i> followed by <i> N </i> </li>
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<li> In the new buffer you will see the names of all the people who have contributed to VIM </li>
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</ol>
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If you see nothing probably you are not using the latest version of VIM. You can download it from
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<a href="http://www.vim.org"> here </a>
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</p>
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<h2> Easter Egg # 4 (Flight Simulator in OpenOffice calc)</h2>
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<p>
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This easter egg is embedded in the spreadsheet software Calc (from the OpenOffice suite).
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In case you don't have it you can download it from <a href="http://www.openoffice.org"> here </a>
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This easter egg is a beautiful flight simulator embedded in the software. To see it follow the
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steps given below
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<ol>
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<li> Start Openoffice calc from the Menu or from the command line by giving the command oocalc </li>
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<li> Click on sheet 3 to go to the third sheet. </li>
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<li> In the range drop-down box type A2000:L2000. This will select the 2000 th row. </li>
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<li> Now while pressing the key combination <i> CTRL+ALT+P </i> click on the background colour icon. </li>
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<li> Keep <i> CTRL+ALT+P </i> pressed for about 45 seconds. </li>
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</ol>
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After going through all this steps a screen will popup and start a flight simulator game.
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Follow the instructions and enjoy the game. If nothing has happened after all this time,
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either you have not followed instructions properly or have missed something. Follow the steps
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again and you are likely to succeed this time round.
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</p>
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<h2> Easter Egg # 5 (Animation in Anjuta IDE) </h2>
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<p align =justify>
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This Easter Egg is a cartoon animation in the latest version of
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<a href="http://anjuta.sourceforge.net">Anjuta IDE. </a> To get this
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animation, do the following.
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<ol>
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<li> Start a new project using file menu in Anjuta </li>
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<li> When prompted to select a project select generic/terminal project </li>
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<li> Change the project name to "Animation" and the project author name to "Horse" </li>
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<li> In the Description box that follows in the next screen. Type "ShOw Me ThE AnImATiON now" ;).
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the case is important here.</li>
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<li> Don't change the additional options and let Anjuta builds the project for you </li>
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<li> When this is finished. Goto the terminal and change to the src directory and type make. </li>
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<li> Now run the executable named as animation. You should see a animation of horse running across
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the screen </li>
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</ol>
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This is a really good animation hidden by the programmers of Anjuta IDE.
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</p>
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<h2> Disclaimer </h2>
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<p>
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I am not responsible if after trying out the easter eggs, your dog bites your mother-in-law
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or your sound card caught fire while trying out the key sequences. What is more likely is
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that you have got a hand sprain while trying out the key sequences while waiting for
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something to pop up on screen. By the way these were not supposed to be easter eggs planted
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by programmers :). The first two easter eggs were real to con you into believing that all
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the other easter eggs listed in this article existed. So how was it to be sent on a wild
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goose chase? I know you feel like a complete moron ;). Happy April Fools day!!!
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</p>
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<h2> Resources </h2>
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<p>
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These are for real :) ...
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<ul>
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<li> <a href="http://www.eeggs.com"> Easter Egg Archive </a> </li>
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<li> <a href="http://www.eggheaven2000.com"> Another Easter Egg Archive </a> </li>
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</ul>
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<!-- *** BEGIN author bio *** -->
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<P>
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<P>
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<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
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<P>
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<img ALIGN="LEFT" ALT="[BIO]" SRC="../gx/2002/note.png">
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<em>
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Vinayak is currently pursuing the APGDST course
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at NCST. His areas of interest are networking, parallel
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computing systems and programming languages. He
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believes that Linux will do to the software industry
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what the invention of printing press did to the world
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of science and literature. In his non-existent free
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time he likes listening to music and reading books. He
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is currently working on Project LIberatioN-UX where he
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makes affordable computing on Linux accessible for
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academia/corporates by configuring remote boot stations
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(Thin Clients).
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</em>
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<br CLEAR="all">
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<!-- *** END bio *** -->
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<!-- *** END author bio *** -->
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<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
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<hr>
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<CENTER><SMALL><STRONG>
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Copyright © 2003, Vinayak Hegde.
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Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
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Published in Issue 89 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, April 2003
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</STRONG></SMALL></CENTER>
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