New Delhi R User Group and other thoughts

  1. The New Delhi R User group co-founded by me in 2011 now has 111 members , 5 organizers (including the now Canada exiled me) and two sponsors including Revolution Analytics (meetup fees) and Mimir Technologies (location ,office and refreshments) with almost 7-8 successful meetups.
  2. Despite the high fees of Meetup.com (converted in Indian rupees) , New Delhi continues to stick to it, thanks to Revolution’s generous support.
  3. UseRs continue to be of wide diversity including expatriate Americans, Doctors, Researchers, Analysts, IT people
  4. I am hoping more people in India create local R groups in other cities
  5. I hope someone comes up with a non-spam, non expensive option to Meetup.com which is not really an open platform (not really FOAS)
  6. The quality of technology and speed at which New Delhi users continue to pick and spread R amazes me.
  7. Fun Fact- India has largest number of analytics professionals certified in SAS language a fact that has been noticed by SAS clone WPS which is the option of choice for third party training institutes undercutting the SAS Institute itself on pricing while teaching SAS language.
  8. Funny Facts- I have kickstarted R language programs for two institutes in India- but am still searching for a better and cheaper alternative to Coursera (hands off) training, and Online (paid and support) training. Is there any FOAS training in R which offers tutoring as well? I have tried SageBourse- again with mixed results. It worked better for SAS language queries. I am loath to open my own training business as it takes time away from my writing.

Happy July the 4th

To the ideals that established democracy, liberty and freedom- Happy Birthday America

Hope you still find some way to redeem the ideals you were based on this day.

Happy July the 4th, Ed Snowden.

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NSA Interference in Open Source Projects #rstats #python

One key result of NSA’s influence in open source projects is the usage of sneakware in compliant packages, and frequent changes in dependencies (including huge amount of packages )to disrupt non-compliant packages. Basically this is of note to both Python and R communities as there is reason to believe that deprecations in packages due to changes in famous APIs like Twitter and Google are not without undue legalistic influence.

 

Do open source analytical tools represent a threat to the hegemony of Anglo Saxon Governments in text mining? Is there any evidence of anything here or are we just tin hat data scientists blogging to get extra views?

 

If Google can bend over, can Canonical, Microsoft, Red Hat be far behind?

Movie Review- Man of Steel

Any comic book reader knows Superman was the original super-hero. So here we are presented with a radical Chris Nolan’ish take on Super-Man. For the first time, Super Man is presented as someone with parental issues ( Steve Jobs?), a stubble , and there is way too much Krypton in this movie. This is way entertaining- but only if you have a geeky imagination. For non-geeks, it is best ignored, except Zack Snyder finally shows us his tech wizadry which we saw in 300 and Watchmen. Super Boy had ADHD, Super Teen has issues, Super Young Man drifts like Rambo 1. Finally Super Man emerges . This time the fortress of solitude is inside his brain.

If you like the new genre of damaged men rising above personal battles to turn Super Men. Watch it!