The story of a student.

[M K Saravanan <mksarav@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Note: lengthy mail. 

want to convey a small incident that changed a student life to enter into
computer field because of the book titled "silicon sillu puratchi" (one of the
reason).
 
   That student was very much interested in learning about computers. While he
was studying Bsc Physics (at Madurai, his native place). he gone to a
book-expo and find a book called "Silicon sillu puratchi" written by a author
called sujatha (His real name is Rangarajan; sujatha is the alias).  At that
time the student don't know anything about sujatha.  he know only that the
zeno character in "En iniya iyanthira" (tamil drama) was created by him.  
That, the student read the whole book and was very much excited about the
things explained in that book.  There was a note in that book about a language
called BASIC and it was said that anybody can learn it by themselves.  so that
student decided to buy some BASIC book and the very next day he again gone to
that expo and bought a BASIC book by Subramanian.  Because of his enthu', he
gone through thebook for a week and completed.  The poor student family was
doing bleaching & yarn dyeing coolie work at their residence.  His brother
spent a lot of time to calculate the daily wages for the other employees
worked in their small scale dyeing unit.  So that student decided to write a
BASIC code to automate all the processes. He wrote the program but didn't find
any computer to test it.  Later he found a unused computer in his college and
fed the program. For his surprise it worked without a error and he showed the
output to his brother and enjoyed very much.  Soon days gone and his interest
about computers started growing. He joined Msc Physiscs and after a year he
discontinued thecourse and joined MIT B.tech. electronics.  By God's grace he
delivered a series of talks (more than a dozen) in All INdia Radio on
Internet.  he also decided to spread about internet to common people and gone
to various high schools and towns to take seminars in tamil about internet and
its applications.  Later he got selected in TCS during final year placement at
MIT.  But he didn't joined it.  and he is current working at AU-KBC Centre.  
It is none other than myself.

During my final year in B.Tech at MIT, i read OS paper as a core subject.  I
read Tanenbaum's OS-Design & Implementation (& Modern OS). In the preface he
talked about a finnish student and how he wrote a new kernel called linux with
the help of hundreds of hackers from Internet.  Till that incident i had a
fear to touch unix family of OSes because of its complexity and non-user
friendliness (at that time).  But tanenbaum preface made me to try linux.  
Soon One day fortunately i saw some website for the first time called
www.gnu.org.  There i read the story of a person called Richard M Stallman.  
I thought myself about that person great for changing the entire history.  
That's the first time I came to know about Free Software Foundation and
started loving that.  But during my B.Tech. days i did n't get enough time to
experiment with computers due to heavy academic work.  So the first day I
joined AU-KBC Centre (21st Jun 1999) i bought a linux (slackware 3.1) book and
that night i started installing linux in a pentium machine. I successfully
installed following the instructions given in that book, but to my hell the
X-windows was not working (SiS card).  I was searching to make it work all
around the net but found none other than something called linux-india out
there to help such guys.  Then i saw ILUGC (chennai lug) and immd. join their
mailing list.  But feared to post any doubt thinking that my doubt may be a
silly one.  and it took me nearly 3 weeks to finally start it working. During
those hard times, almost i tried to read whatever HOWTO and man pages that i
can.  that created lot of interest to me in exploring linux
further.  Fortunately that year RMS delivered at Lecture at IISc JRD Tata
Auditorium and i attended his speech and came out with bubbling enthusiasm to
experiment various thing with GNU/Linux.

	Now it's almost one and a half year after i started using
GNU/Linux and learned reasonable amount of tricks thanks to my parent LUG
(ILUGC).  But still had a fear to touch and modify the kernel till i saw a
post on gnu-india list about the possibility of such things in GNU/Hurd.  So I
decided to do that also and joined their mailing list.  THis is how i came to
know all you people.

Thanks for listening my small life history ;-)

-- mks --

********************************************************************
M K Saravanan, 
Design Engineer,
The AU-KBC Centre for Internet & Telecom Technologies,
Madras Institute of Technology, Anna University,
Chrompet, Chennai 600 044.
Tamilnadu, INDIA

email: mksarav@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ph & FAX (Off):  (091) (044) 2402711
*******************************************************************



-- 
********************************************************************
M K Saravanan, 
Member Research Staff,
The AU-KBC Centre for Internet & Telecom Technologies,
Madras Institute of Technology, Anna University,
Chromepet, Chennai 600 044.
Tamilnadu, INDIA

Tel     (O): 91 44 2417885         Email: mksarav@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Telefax (O): 91 44 2402711         URL  : http://mksarav.tripod.com
*******************************************************************



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