Grid @ MindSay

Last week, i was witness to a great event which could change the face of higher education in India. For a teacher, this is a remarkable milestone. Last week, my institute, IIITMK, situated in Trivandrum, the south west-tip of india was connected through a "virtual private network" to Nagaland University in Dimapur, Nagaland. Dimapur is on the north east tip of India, some 3800 kilometres away. The idea of this link is to teach students in Dimapur by conducting lecture sessions in Trivandrum. We will use material provided by the National Programme for technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). NPTEL is a joint programme of all the Indian Instt. of Technology and the Indian Instt. of Science (these are the best and the most advanced schools of engineering in india). Thus, students in Nagaland will get to learn from the best teachers in India, without having to leave their homes.

This technologically profound project, the brainchild of Prof. Srivathsan, the Director of IIITMK, is the first of its kind in India. It has the potential of bringing education to everyone in India, at an affordable cost. It will help us to avoid all the corruption, mismanagement and apathy with which the current University system in India is suffering. And, like Prof. Srivathsan says, it will transform the current examination oriented system to a learning oriented system. If that happens, ours will soon become a great country. It will in fact be the first time when Rabindranath Tagore's dream will come true -- "Where knowledge is free and the head is held high"

There is hope for the education system in India.

partha

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Thanks,

 

JR

But I don't know how I'll pull it off this time
I think I'm going to drown...

I find myself having one of those days where I have a need to write, but I am finding it extremely difficult to do so. There are too many thoughts that are swirling about within my head to concentrate on one topic long enough to write about it. There are so many things that I need to say that I haven't already wrote about, but I'm not sure where I need to start or what I should begin this monologue that I allow everyone to be a part of...

I suppose the one thought today that seems to be in the forefront of my thoughts is that I feel it is my responsibility to save mankind. I know I wrote a couple of entries already on this subject and my dream that St. Matthew came to me and told me it was my job, but it goes further than that. So I think I will use this entry to promote my favourite cause - the World Community Grid...

I discovered grid computing years ago when I ran across a reference to it in a trade publication. Grid computing was going to be the next big thing in the Internet universe. For those who do not know, grid computing is a means by which a large number of computers can be linked together so that they can work on complex problems thereby providing far more computational power than even today's supercomputers at a fraction of the cost. This computational power is only limited to the number of computers one can have working on a problem. At my previous job I enjoyed writing proposals that I knew would never be understood or would they be implemented (I was but a peon, so what did I know about anything). I turned a suggestion that the grid computer concept could be used to tie all the computers together so that complex engineering problems could be worked on in a cost effective manner (BTW for reference, I later found the suggestion in a garbage can with others I had made)...

In the course of my research, I stumbled upon the seti@home project, which continues to be the best search for extraterrestrial life there is, but it wasn't for me. I know many people would differ with me, but I feel that there are many things on this planet that require a solution, life outside this solar system is not one of them. And if a signal is found, what will it prove if the civilization that produced it could have died off hundreds of thousands of years ago? To me finding an intelligent signal will in no way prove that we, at this moment, are not alone in this universe...

It is amazing that once you find one project the number of additional projects you'll find. So I found a great many projects that I could help out and decided on Grid.org and the work they were doing with medical research and signed up. After five or so years that I donated computer time, they withdrew from nonprofit work and I needed to find a new home so I found World Community Grid, which was doing many of the same projects and there I found a home...

What could be a better way to save mankind than to find cures for many of the diseases that plague this planet? All one has to do is install the software, and it just goes about its business using one's unused processing power...

So that is my sermon for today, go ye now in peace...

This is the Word of the AntiCrust...

Praise be ye who Read the Word for ye are Blessed amongst human...