World Cup 2011- Who will be the Champions?

First of all let me congratulate England for winning rather retaining the Ashes down under..This should have happened long time ago when Macgreth and Warne (sorry if I got the spelling wrong Glen) left the field and credit goes to Australia also for holding on until now.

The era of Australian domination is over just like the West Indian domination in seventies. However, I cannot forget Sir Botham's contribution in mid eighties but this time it is the team work that lead to the victory and credit goes to Flower behind the scene and Strauss for workman like leadership. I knew he had all the credentials to lead a victorious team but do not be complacent the Australian team by all its worth and standard was very poor outfit.

Like Australian politics and not being able to stand up for their man of Wickileaks Australia has shown it is still under the Queen's Grip but not a Republic of People who can be proud of their history and achievements as a nation.

Coming back to World Cup, who will win?
In cricket it is hard to predict but I go for South Africa and with the shrewed leadership of Smith, they can do it.
South Africa did a good thing by appointing him as the captain when young. He has matured to be the best standing captain and with stature and amiable smile, like our smiling assassin Muththiah come World Cup he should (without injuries of course) be able stand to the rigours of one day cricket and raise the World Cup.
Their only weakness is spin (slow) balling department in both facing the spin ballers and using spinners to compliment the army of pacies they have.
The wickets and weather are going to be their spoiler enemies and Smith should be able to smell the weather as well as dirty politics well in advance of the World Cup.
Please do not be corrupt like Gilchrist and play the game by the spirit of the game.
Unlike football (it is a corrupt game, anyway) in South Africa they are not under pressure and when one is not under pressure one achieves better results.

Good Luck Southies!.

Mind you umpires can be spoilers especially Australian and English!

Now why I did not fancy any of the South East countries.
In this part of the world the cricket is corrupt like politics. Good example is Sri-Lanka and my gut feeling is that they will not even pass the Round Robin Stage (unless they use some undercover political maneuvering).

India got the Mega Star image like Indian celluloid's and Pakistan is still struggling to emerge from Military to civilian life with terrorist holding the country transom and unfortunately religion has become a curse to neighboring countries (it is so in Sri-Lanka too, it does not matter in what form it comes with monks in the parliament doing sweet nothing).

To the players I have one warning.
Cricket is stronger than a religion in this part of the world.
Do not play dirty or politics with the game.
Win or lose enjoy the sunshine and the game.
Good workman like players we will remember to our twilight years.

What matters is the game not the individuals and one should be able to say "I did it my way" and "it worked" and a smile for the waiting cameras.

If you play by the rules we will be with you when you are under the weather and the press.

One example would suffice.
When Shrawag was denied a century, a few of us were behind you.
You have a point to prove and when you play against Sri-Lanka but do not make it spoil your excellent performance.
You can be the " player of the series" if you have a simple game plan and play one ball at time.
Your balling will be a secret weapon and practice that too to win.

It Is Christmas and Linux Spirit is High

I woke to the the sound of Knoppix CD booting and Happy Christmas and Happy Birthday (10th Anniversary) to Knoppix.

It is beautiful and that was the first Christmas (I am a Buddhist by the way-perhaps not Orthodox) gift I gave away.

Thanks Guys and Girls and all the vast Linux Community.

All of you are doing a wonderful stuff.

It looks as if Jesus as come again.

Their is little Jesus in every one of you who share his vision in you.

It feels wonderful and in spite of the stock market crisis you still can smile and give the Christmas its real meaning.

To my surprise even KORORAA has come alive.

Reincarnation, I believe.

PCLinux is on the heal and there is no Achilles Tendon problem.

I cannot cope up with the downloads with the download speed that has come to a grounding halt, in this country.

Happy New Year 2011 too

10 things your Counselor won't tell you and 50 ways to Leave your Counselor

Come Christmas with everybody in elevated spirits (both in spiritual and blood alcohol content) counselors are wee bit hard pressed to find customers and I was hard pressed to find a topic to keep my web friends in highly elevated Mode / Mood and with a Beautiful Mind.

If for some reason people who read this and exchange this with others, increase by exponential proportions, quite a number of counselors might lose their jobs or find their income drop drastically during Christmas and I have a way out for them to redeem themselves.

Become an instant Buddhist (like instant noodles) and start preaching and practicing meditation (it is a lucrative industry in this part of the world where Dhayana Stage Certificates are offered to Primary School Children to pass their competitive examinations disregarding their childhood fantasies, dreams and spontaneous fun and games).

Coming to the first part of the discussion that psychiatrists do not tell you in advance.

1. They are more depressed than average person who comes for counseling

2. They commit suicide more often than an averagely stressed doctor in practice.

3. Their rate of consumption of alcohol is higher than an average doctor (that the doctor's consumption is higher in proportion to an average simple man's consumption>

It is 10 times or more depending on the income and the status of the doctor.

4. That many of them cannot start a session without a good tot to boost their ego above that of the one who is counseled (patient gives a wrong connotation to the victim- they are not patients but bit stupid in the first place not been able to manage their own simple affairs).

5. Many of them take up this post since they get a free license to indulge in mood elevating drugs themselves apart from making others addicted to them.You must have got the hang of it by now do you want me to continue and bore you or continue with the common sense approach?

6. Many of the theories (they are still theories and waiting to be fixed or implanted to an unsuspecting victim of theirs) are never proven in practice but are found only in old textbooks.

7. Their vocabulary is far in excess of physics, mathematics and philosophy all put together and none of them have a proper definition or ( true or false) truth and validity concept of philosophy.

8. A psychiatrist never discusses his or her own problem (with nobody in fact) with another psychiatrist lest both of them end up diagnosing opposing conditions and they cannot agree who is a counselor and who is being counseled.

They live with this handicap throughout their life unless of course they commit suicide or become clever and change their profession to some other mundane one.

9. They never want any patient to recover fully and also pray that god should not come back to heal them in one go, lock stock and barrel!

10. They never believe in incarnation or reincarnation since they are so confused whether they themselves are in this birth or past birth or next birth or what ever the birth it may or could be.

I can add a few more but if I do so any further and by strange coincidence, if any one of them reads this, he or she might think I am gone bonkers and incarcerate me for life.

Now how to leave a counselor.This is very easy, elementary and you must come out of the very same door you went in but not the door he opens for you.
Otherwise you are in deep trouble.
You are hooked and he is more hooked to you than you may be (that is a professional hazard)

In Buddhism we say "let go" and "focus" but in psychiatry the opposite happens permanent attachment and fixation to a abstract psychological tenet and eventual slow but sure self destruction of mind.Most of them are very simple ploys even a kindergarten kid should be able to play and pratice them with their parents!

1. When you go to him remain deaf and dumb (or pretend you to be blind).
Without you opening your mouth he cannot enter into your mind (not even with Magnetic resonance) or and fix a bizarre concept and or make a diagnosis.

2. Always think of what he feels in the session than what you feel (whether he is broke or whether he is under the influence a drug or alcohol) and outsmart him in every nick and corner.

In other words you become the counselor and he becomes the reciprocate.With these two ammunitions majority can come out unscathed and unharmed.

Please do not break the poor souls composure mentally.

3. Ask him some money to settle an outstanding loan and promise him that you will settle it in good time.

4. Ask him for drink (at least a beer) before you start the counseling.

5. Ask him to open the windows for a healthy draft.

6. If the room is well lit asked him him for a dark room ( most are scarred of darkness).

7. If the room is large ask for a smaller one and if the room is small ask him for larger one.

They cannot do this because they have a fixed way of doing things.

8. If he asks you to write something say you prefer electronic mail to save the trees and the planet.

9. If he asks you to fill an electronic form say either you do not trust computers or make a vehement protest by stating that it violates Microsoft's Piracy Act and you are not willing to pay a fine.

10. If he still insist on counseling, you have to have an exit strategy preplanned.

This is very a simple ploy an average Sri-Lankan employs.

When you are in a busy meeting and you are getting cornered or fixed, then you get somebody to give you a call stating that your only great great great grandma died of a car accident (she was driving the car- even a healthy male cannot drive in this country).

So take your cell phone with you and just send a S.M.S to the guy or girl who gives the call, just in time for the exit door.Please do not use the story I mentioned above since all the psychiatrists I knew hated their grandmas (unlike us) and they do not still know how to slip out their hands even as an adult leave alone as a brat.

Moment you say grandma they soil their pants.

All these tricks have worked for me and I do not need to hinder your creativity, imagination and reciprocation (give as much as you take principle).

If any one of you need more than 12 strategies, you perhaps may need to go to a psychiatrist but before that you better contact me for help (not consultation).

If you are a Linux Addict or visit this blog at least once a year, it is free.

Otherwise the chargers I have increased by 100 folds since I cannot survive with 5% salary increase and I cannot go home without few Bombay Onions in my hand.

My wife will cut me into Onion Rings and fry me live, if I go home without onions!

God Help Me, if you have time!

Merry Christmas and Happy New year 2011.

Do we think when we upload or download?

This is the time of the year when messages fly across the web in millions of little pieces.

If my download (my payment subscription) is 56 bytes at least 4-6 bytes are taken by the header and we do not get 100% efficiency.

Up time is even worse.

I find only the twitter restricting its characters to 140 (out of 256 alphanumerical code) and the keyboard has about 36 keys to play with.

Pali has many and Sinhala has little less since our phonetics are as close as to the nature since human dialogue is as old as its existence and the English keyboard cannot accommodate our language characters used for phonetics with 36 keys.

My question is our intelligence restricted by our keyboard or touchpad for that matter?

Touchpad is very innovative and S.M.S may be fast in the character transfer in the web but does not fit into our analog way of life.

We cannot transfer our thinking and creativity over the web.

I saw one of my friend's grandson playing with an electronic "kitty" at a function where everybody was there and the kids were the ones. a vee bit neglected (adults were fully occupied and preoccupied) lot.

To my amazement the kid's use of the binocular vision was affected by the little electronic "kitty".

I did a bit of testing of his eyes (I have befriended him on earlier occasion) and after 20 minutes of testing I was not sure what was going on.

Is his eyesight defective?

Is the game too fast or difficult?

The kiddy could not figure out how to win.

He was so engrossed that I could not get a word out of his mouth.

The next morning we had early morning chat with the guys of my age who had not returned to their bases. This was a rare occasion I decided to stay back to attend the next day's function (many others did not).

One grandad told me that his grandchild had his earphones fixed to his ears from Colombo to Matara and never bothered to listen to anything outside let alone a bird's song.

I told him if his grandson becomes a doctor one day he want be able to hear a soft heart sounds or a crackles in the lung and get it fixed / (corrected) now, not before it is too late.

On a slightly more frightful context radiation from the cell phones might end up with an epidemic of soft brain tumours in a decade or so especially in our girls, and that would be covered up like coconut saga (disputed heart attacks) by the big powerful companies until they shift to another venture.

Eyes, Ears and Brain can be affected.

What next?

Fingers too with touchpad.

But none of these gadgets will help creative thinking.

All these gadgets when excessively used hamper children's creativity!

We cannot transfer our thinking and creativity over the web.

Only connectivity.

Thinking has to be done (fast too) before touching the pads or keys but most of these actions are reflex actions and nobody seems to be reflective in their approach.

Think at least once what the benefits the kid get (age appropriate games) out of the gadget and what hidden harmful effects are there before you buy it, including choking with the battery.

That is the point I am driving at in this short piece.

Going back to up-time and down-time we need to educate the users, what ever the material they transfer across the web make them very light (quality does not matter) as possible to get the maximum throughput (MP3 or 4 instead of the fully featured family video) so the friend who downloads it will benefit and bystander users will also have enough bandwidth for their work and a very fast internet for everybody.

Follow the trend of twitter which sends millions of messages across with only 140 characters.

In that sense this blogging is on the Gorilla (sized) side but my intention is not to send a message but to make creative thinking possible even in this electronic age.

What we enjoy is analyzing the facts of the message.
That is the food for thought toady.

Not Cricket-Selections

I have faith in Gutsy Aravinda De Silva, if he takes the following points to consideration but I believe the ruins set in by the previous Chief Selector by his Political Wheeler Dealer (not cricket) selection of players to the National Team cannot be rectified for a decade and not less.

1. Fitness of the player to stand the rigors of the World Cup for the entire period (dashing and slowly wasting away-good example is Sanath)

2. Fielding Ability (nobody fits the cap for this characteristic now)

3. The neat fitting of the player to his role (the position he plays, coordination of senior player with the junior player, not to run out the junior player-Dilshan type)

4. Shear Determination to win (Mahanama type-nobody now) and withstand and bear pain

5. Quiet Achiever (Gurusinghe Model)

6. Dasher in Crisis (nobody better than Aravinda himself)

7. Ability to fit anywhere from 1 to 6 and the ability to wicket keep (Kaluvtharana Model-nobody now) wickets

8.Supportive type to the chief wicket taker (Kumar Dharmasena type)

9. Kangavena Type but Accurate (We have two Dilhara and Malinga) in wickets helping pacies like in Perth

10 Gritty Smart Psychological Type (The Arjuna (typical) the Greatest- not as irresponsible like Kumar Sangakkara) take as much as ONE can give back and a proactive thinker

11. Good knowledge of the opposition players (weaknesses and strength-SWOT Analysis)

12. Who can have a little snooze at the time of a major crisis and when given the ball or bat delivers the goods-they are the match winners

Avoid Please if you may

1. We do not want a Chatterbox behind the stumps

2. Un-gentlemenly Type (depriving Shawag a century)

3. No cheating (Gilchrist type with extra gear) but do not be too gentlemanly like (if the umpire makes the mistake unless obvious let the Umpire bites the dust)

4. Political Stooges

5. Pure Sinhala Buddhist Type Team

6. No extroverts

7. No introverts

8. Whimpering type

9. Paper Tigers (journalists who seem to know better-Arm Chair Type)

10. Annunkeli Type ( who promote their celluloid image at the expense of National Team, and players)

11. Who thinks cricket is an individual game and do not want to share all the spoils

12. Pissa (idiots) type of cheering spectator/s or underworld Gangs who have their own agenda - do the act for the TV and the Gallery- You may call it the Dr.Mervin Type

I have decided to sleep during the entire tournament when Sri-Lankans bat but wake only when they field to see the balling and fielding and perhaps other teams better performance!

SLAX-ReMix

SLAX_ReMix has done a beautiful Live KDE CD / LXDE CD,
I am going to drop it in my DropBox soon.
Join the pack.
Still no install.
They should do that soon in the coming year.

Like Puppy Linux (TeenPup) it should grow up.
Good Work. Guys and Girls.
Keep it UP.

I am not playing Cricket Now

This a note I posted at Dropbox-Blog.

I am new to Dropbox but found it by accident when I was testing Live Linux (recent ones) CDs.

I used to write a short comment on each Live CD and when I see a new feature would allocate somewhat arbitrary (my marking scale) points as a plus feature.

When I saw Dropbox in several of the Live CDs (Fedora, Ubuntu) in the internet section, I was curious but left it for another day to investigate.

Then, finally I investigated it (they were promoting for school kids) and being myself a teacher in the University, the question why not for me and my students.

Presto!

I am hooked to the Dropbox now as an Educational Tool.

Thank you for that and another reason.

I am depositing Linux Live CDs (unfortunately not DVDs- I advocate light version of OS instead of the Gorilla Versions) in the box for my Linux friends to test and try.

All in all it is a Linux Depository for Testing and Trying not a Repository..

The download spread are awfully slow in this part of the world and this is a simple remedy.

You do the synchronizing I do the depositing (Eggs -not Easter yet) on the Nest.

We have a bird in this country who deposits eggs on another type of bird's nest.

I am a lazy bird who does not want to look after (intellectual property of mine) my laid eggs!

I am trying to collect enough MiB (at least 4 GiB for me to deposit a Linux Big Image once in a while-for example games DVD) by promoting Dropbox.

I sent a virtual spam (to all my contacts) and some of them thought somebody has hacked my email. Never done that before!

Most of them are afraid of Dropbox (I have lost my sanity, they think in my old age) but I keep brainwashing (with coconut oil which is very expensive-we use it in anointing in our New Year ) them (at least I get all my friends together and some Mibs in the process) and with my humour, it seems to be working especially with younger counterparts.

I have found one problem that is unique to me.

I have up to 5 operating systems in the same Linux Box with different home partitions (with the same name-and same password) and they do not seem to synchronize the Dropbox which is in my home partition.

Linux distributions are finicky when it comes to sharing unless I ROOT Myself (which is not healthy at my age) every time I BOOT.

Apart from that Dropbox makes me lighter at the dinner parties.

Happy Christmas and New Year to all of you.

If you have some spare bones or MiBs please drop at my box (not the Cricket Box-I am not playing Cricket now).

Thanks.

K-Torrents

I was wondering how to speed up my downloads but could not find a solution yet.

The point to point downloads are painfully slow and only in early hours of the day the download speed recovers its speed to what we pay by the minute.

Guys / Girls working at the Telcoms are nice but due to not upgrading the infrastructure for decades and by consistently increasing (without increasing the loops and servers) the number of paid users without increasing the throughput, the Telecom as an industry is failing in its duty and also in efficiency.

In no time it will become like the Electricity Board or Water Board.
All the signs of impending crisis is there.

Electricity Board has failed on two counts.
1. The Cost of Electricity way beyond an average user.
2. The Power outages are frequent (both high and low) and recently our switch board caught fire. The cost of repair was over Rs. 15,000/=.
All we have to do it ourselves (private) no compensation or help from the Electricity Board.

Water Board is worse.
1. Water purification is questionable (one has to drop into a Service Station and see what I mean).

2. Again payment structure is badly streamlined.

3. When an important guy visits Kandy, water is diverted from elsewhere and never restored even day after the guy leaves the city.

4. Wastage is enormous.

5. Corruption is rampant (including illegal tapping of water).

Why I stated above is not as a diversion but in spite of its giant strides in another 5 years Telecoms will be very similar to above two.

Why?

Mismanagement?

Like flood gates opened, they are increasing the connections without increasing the throughput (both uploading and downloading).

One has to go and look at the www.speednet.com site and verify the speed.

It is easy.
Anyone can do that.

The testing is free.

I went for K-torrents.
Even that is a failure.

Bit torrents cannot help us if the services (Telecoms) are poor.

Since we cannot expect the Government to do anything about it, I have a few suggestions for those using Torrent Services (what ever the client side may be).

Mind you, institutions block torrent downloads due to various reasons including the Universities.

Like Open Software Community, Torrent is a Community Service.

Services should be open 24/7.

This is how you do it.

1. There are Seeders and Leechers in the Torrent Community.

Like politicians do not become only the Leechers (bleeding the country-with war or otherwise).

2. I want go into technicalities but please follow my leads.

3. If you download a file after it is finished do not Switch Off the computer. Let it run for few hours (connected to the Internet) after the download for the Tracker to establish seeding of computers.

4. Keep the upload speed to 90% of your service speed. That is, give as much as you take from others.

5. If you download 700 MiB make sure you give back at least 500 (better 700) MiB.

All what you have to do is to keep your computer running and leave the downloaded file in the same directory (do not remove or change the directory) for seeding to occur.

That is it.

6. You can copy the file at your wish and fancy but leave it there as a copy for others to access it.
Tracker knows how to do that.
Only time you remove it is when you run short of memory in your hard drive.

Then also remove in stages.
Oldest one to go first and the newest one the last.
In the mean time one believes that at least several other seedings have been established.

This is how the community exists.

7. More you give back more you get.
Just keep your computer running connected to the Internet while doing other tasks.

8. Keep off days not doing downloading so others can use the limited services.

9. More seeders are there in the community the more the download speed will be.

10. So leech less and seed more but not excessively to a bleeding point (like our politicians).

11. Give what you have to the community.

After all this is Christmas time.

I know lot of our guys / girls are downloading films / songs and not letting other people have them (to sell sometimes as pirated copies for a profit-if it is a pirated copy you are selling you aught to be ashamed of yourself.

Buying pirated copies keep these guys in practice (I want call it a business) and we need to wean them off this society for good.

Understanding in the web is that you download for your personal use and not for selling.

Sharing with friends is a different story.

Pirating is illegal especially if we call this a Buddhist Country.

Even Dhamma is sold in CDs.
I cannot believe it.

Because of a few bad leechers in the community even my Linux downloading comes to a standstill.
There are no seeders.
I leave some of the Linux images in my Dropbox and they are for sharing.

Cloud Computing at its best-Share my folders with Linux distributions

My Dropbox share folder has two (2) light weight Linux distributions to share with you.
All what you have to do is to Register (cloud platform) with Dropbox and send me your email stating that you wish to share Linux Distributions.

It will certainly save your download time and cloud computing will look after the service!

Mind you I will get some extra space as bonus in MiBs (only a little) and then I can deposit bigger images!

This is cloud computing at its best.
Happy Christmas and enjoy your holidays with Linux Games.

WordPress

WordPress is a Open Source Content Management System (C.M.S) that provides a simple web application platform for web hosting.

If you a Linux geek you can download it and tweak it to satisfy your needs but the open license prevents you from developing new themes other than what is already agreed and known as the standard.

It probably developed from Ubuntu Turnkey applications and has a significant market share of web hosting for smaller companies.

My intention here is to let you know that there is www.wordpress.org that gives you a blog space like here in Google's blogspot that can be your personal web site before you mature into a Web Wizard.

Other reason for me to highlight it here is that it has support for Sinhala fonts and Tamil fonts for your web writings.

Do not wait till Government provides you with necessary infrastructure in IT including fonts, go and become a Web Star (not a Mega Star) by learning the basics with WordPress.

It is easy as a word processing program and you will ascend to greater heights once you master the Codes.

A glossary of the Codecs are published elsewhere free for access.

It is free but once you are mature you can pay a nominal fee and upgrade your blog site which for me is almost a complimentary website without annoying advertisements that hide your creativity.

I downloaded WordPress some months ago but failed to write something about it since I was obsessed with Linux 100 Live CDs.

Now I am quietly delving into inner strengths of Linux and Open Source talking about WordPress is appropriate here.

The omission was a serious lapse on my part and my apologies for that.

WordPress is as important as Dropbox for new wave of web activity with cloud computing on the horizon.

WiKiLeaks and Sri-Lankan Diplomacy and Cricket

It is obvious international diplomacy is a job paid to do the undesirables and the nature of some of the operations if classified properly undermine the very nature of United Nations Charter and human dignity.

Less is said about current wave of diplomacy is better but Governments should be accountable to the subjects of their territory (citizens) before they consider themselves to the international audience and conditions.

If also looks like "likes of feather flock together" nature of operations where medium and in between countries get together to program an agenda and dictate terms to smaller countries like us.

It was very evident in the role what Norway and Sweden played in our conflict, pretending to be neutral but very partisan in the dealings and impotent to arrest the trends of destruction.

The role UK played "using cats paws to deliver the clout-using facilitators to do their undermining job- was / is evident from the recent events unfolding.

If UK police cannot manage and secure a small compound housing the prestigious University how can they play the role of international policeman in Iraq and Afghanistan or Somalia.

Is the police in UK also politicized one has to ask the begging question?

We could manage the World Cup in 1996 in spite of heavy odds.

When the English cricketers come for the World Cup 2011 not only they will get a thumping in the field but they may have to hide behind policeman of the Indian Subcontinent or perhaps bring a contingent of British Police with them who seem unable to control a band of placard holders.


Is this the way diplomacy in acted in broad day light (not under cover)?

We have a case of ex-president granting ex-gratia to a diplomat.

It looks like history will repeat itself come next Cricket World Cup.

But coming back to WiKiLeaks if they leaked the diplomatic correspondences during Mr,Dixits tenure how Mrs, Gandhi blatantly violated code of conduct would be obvious but let bygone be bygones!

Big brother played a nasty role, even perhaps now.

Have we got friends?

Yes.

Enemies of enemies are our best friends whom we can love.

That comes from British philosopher Bertram Russel.

If he was alive today he would have written a nice code of conduct for British Police and Diplomats.

He was one who loved free speech.

That is why he had to hide in China a century ago.

Let me say China is a true friend and granting a Nobel peace price to a dissident in prison is a real violation of national integrity of any country big or small.

I cannot find a big difference between a home grown terrorist or a corrupt political dissident.

Let us rally with China who will be the next big power player not the corrupt Western diplomats and the peace (worth only the paper) certificate selectors.

In this context Cricket World Cup will be an Acid Test for Indian Subcontinent Police Force.

Let us show the British Police how we manage crowd control and enjoy our cricket too.

Unfortunately cricket officials are corrupt and police too is corrupt but come cricket it is a big time leveler of the spirit of the nations in this subcontinent.

Let us not spoil the fun with a bunch of undesirable diplomats lingering in air conditioned containers (Safe houses or Councils).

Google, Chrome, Cloud Conputing and the Future of Communication

It is fitting to post the 200th and end my blogging exercise with some note on Cloud Computing.

I was one who was always concerned with the bulk we carry to school and work.

Light weight and agility with nimble footing was something I liked to treasure when young and in old age.

When I see Sri-Lankan children carry gunny loads of books on their back. I pause to think of the wisdom of our Educationalists who do not understand the physical and physiological mechanics and making of a young child.

They also do not understand how the world is changing from factual world to interactive IT world and web utilities.

Big books bring fear in children and adults.

I can remember tearing off the big medicine book into its chapters and making it small and light weight (this was an advice I got from a senior medical student).

Like one step at a time on chapter at a time makes it easier to read.

This I stretched further in the final year (now the big books are coming in pocket editions and and data and evidence medicine are carried in palmtops) and I only carried smallest possible note in my hand (rest in the head) and only noted down the few things that I did not comprehend fully to revise (I do this to present day- come across a new word, in ENGLISH or MEDICINE, refer that in a dictionary and master the use of it, better still find a simple alternative word which simple people understand).

When you take the computer world operating systems are getting bloated by the day.

Even, the Linux derivatives are bloated in size and the KDE 4, I fondly call the Gorilla of Linux to drive my point.

Linux started with 4 to 32 MiB of code but now fills a DVD (42, 000 packages in Debian and not even itemized yet) without an effort.

They come neck and neck with Microsoft.

The bloating period is coming to an end with the entry of Chrome Browser and Chrome OS from Google.

Now chills are running down the spine of Microsoft and if this takes the center stage software era and profit making are going to be thing of the past.

Utilities and Services will count like Water, Electricity and Payphone.

In future it is Cloud Service and Google will carry the load.

Already cloudusb (a company name) and dropbox are established and they are platform independent.

Quoted from a web page published elsewhere!

"Google has said that Android is optimized for touchscreen interfaces, while Chrome is optimized for keyboards. It might be just as accurate to say that Android is optimized for consumption first, content creation second, while Chrome will be optimized for both consumption and content creation".

For some of us, the crucial difference is "play" and "work."

I am one who wants to outsmart even Google by carrying my operating system in a Pendrive (Flash drive). into my grave if that is allowed by the government.

This is what I want the education department to give serious thought.
The Jolicloud Manifesto

At Jolicloud we believe a movement has started. A movement that will change the computer industry forever: a world where computers are inexpensive, where operating systems are free and software is online. This is the world we dreamed of when we first discovered computers and the Internet. And this is why we wanted to build an operating system (OS) around a platform that gives everyone the opportunity to be part of this movement and access a whole new range of possibilities.

Jolicloud is an Internet operating system. It combines the two driving forces of the modern computing industry: the open source and the open web.

Jolicloud transforms your netbook into a sophisticated web device that taps into the cloud to expand your computing possibilities. The web already hosts a significant part of our lives: mails, photos, videos, and friends are already somewhere online. Jolicloud was built to make the computer and web part of the same experience.

The online world is taking processing power away from our computers, so we won't need expensive machines in the future. The web improves itself, so we don't need to replace machines all the time to be able to run newer versions of operating systems or office suites.

But the real catalyst of change has been the arrival of the netbooks: they started as an experimental low cost laptop for kids and they now radically change our views on how much we are willing to pay for personal computers. Think about it: computers are now becoming cheaper than mobile phones and MP3 players.

We feel privileged to witness this rebirth of the computer culture and are very excited about the world changes it can foster: More affordable means more people around the world connecting with knowledge, more communication between people and more balanced access to computing power with less cost, format or geographical limitations.

We come from the web, so we built our user interface mostly using its core technologies (HTML, javascript, CSS). We have integrated our web DNA into the OS to make it modular, social and personal. Our developer platform relies on the web and will let anyone or any service join in no time. With our API, developers will have the ability to let their website communicate with the computer directly with no need to code specific native applications.

Of course it's just the beginning. Netbooks are very new. They are still bulky, but they are making progress with better keyboards, better screens and battery time.

No one has yet entirely switched his or her life online, but everyday larger parts of our personal and business lives are relayed and stored via the web. Online connectivity is still expensive but prices are dropping as operators can't resist the global needs of the "always on" generation.

Legendary computer inventor Alan Kay once said, the best way to predict the future is to invent it. This is why we created Jolicloud. Like every project we can't do it by ourselves. We need your help and support to make this project a success. Together let's change the status quo and build the coolest OS for netbooks.



The future lies in the IT industry and not in heavy textbooks.

Less textbooks is environmentally friendly too.

We do not have to chop more and more trees to produce paper and textbooks which are getting outdated by the minute.

Cloud of computers can carry all the education material online.

Children should carry a Pendrive and few workbooks.

That is the future and it is next evolution of mankind.

Tiny Buddha in you?

It is nice to start with a quote form Ajahn Chah

If you let go a little you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace." ~Ajahn Chah

If I may describe Ajahn Chah as one who can inspire and let little pieces of wisdom at a time (in simple English) to enter ( instill) into your mind that would suffice in my penultimate entry.

Each one of us has Tiny Buddha in oneself if the thoughts of that is let in without any attachment to the thought itself.

Tiny Buddha.com that originates from UK, let you have that little freedom of thought inspire you.

Please visit that site.

I should let go my attachment to Linux from now onwards for a while and enjoy the freedom of being myself.

This is the penultimate entry before 200.

I am wondering what it going to be?

What inspiration I get when I am totally free from attachment I do not know?

Let it inspire me for the next goal to perfection.

P.S.
Please do not confuse with Little Buddha; It is a different Kettle of Fish altogether but you are free to visit that site too.

I end with wishing beautiful thoughts to every one who visit parafox.
I let myself and my mind go total anarchy while making entries to this blogsopt but meant no harm to anybody including Microsoft!

Dropbox in Linux-Fusion Linux included

I have decided I should stop writing on this blogspot after the 200th entry.

But before that I should write something about the dropbox.

I saw dropbox accidentally in Ubuntu 10.10 and was curious but never bothered to find out what it was.

Quite by accident I went to the site of cloudusb.net looking for a USB bootable iso and I was not getting into cloud computing anyway as a way forward (not knowing they are hosting dropbox as a type of Linux clone of cloud-not really).

Anyway I got caught myself in the web since it is promoting young kids to get registered as an educational opening to store their school files (Windows, Mac and Linux) and guess what, I immediately got registered wanting more information.

I am already using Google's space for my lectures and carry on files (not carry on doctor series) there was no need for me to to duplicate things but since it is a Linux derivative I could not resist the temptation.
Then I have to use Ubuntu (which was not my Linux armory even though it is a very good Linux distribution).

Then I remembered loading Fusion Linux-Fedora 14 derivative (this feature is enough for one to use Ubuntu and Fusion Linux) in a spare partition in my old IBM box fo testing.

Quickly rebooted into Fusion Linux and clicked the dropbox and I was directly at the site dropbox and I am downloading dropbox currently.

Before I could finish typing this it installed drop box in my home.

So guys and girls thanks for the offer, I got 2 GiB (enormous for me-I myself is light weight category now) space free and if I introduce this to another I get another bonus space which I may never fill up with data anyway.

You are free to try this offer especially if you are a school kid who forget to take tit bits to school and become light weight like me.

When I see Sri-Lankan kids carrying gunny loads of books in their back my dream to see our kids will go to school carrying nothing but a Pendrive may be a distant dream but might become a reality, if I was made the Minister of Education without any other bonuses.

Unfortunately I am not a registered voter for the time being and that dream will never come true.

Skype for Linux- Is it Pain in the Neck?

I was looking for Skype for Linux on a Live CD and I did not find any.

Then I went to the Skype site and after many hours of reading of fed up Linux users and no help at hand I tried the D.I.Y to install Skype on SuSe.

SuSe did mot have required libraries and mixer connections.

Then I tried Fedora 10 version on SuSe that also did not work with missing libraries.

Now fed up tried Ubuntu 10.10 (obtained from Skype site). it mounted Skype well but the sound mixer was defective (mike not properly configured).

Fed up already then I went for a DVD.

Tried Fusion Linux with Fedora 14 and it did not boot well or install it properly.

Unlike previous editions had a bug in the Grub file.

Now irritated enough I thought of finding a distribution with Skype from over 100 I downloaded recently and found PC/OS Webstation.

It was the only one that had reasonable performance but it also lacked many of the feature found in Windows 5 version(that is what my daughter says-I do not use windows now).

Ultimately I went back to PCLinux-2010-10 which I temporarily suspended using except Live booting due to script bug introduced to two of my (Windows hacker I believe, preventing me getting to web sites with iso images of Linux saying that the site is not trusted. This was an immature script but I was going behind it for some time, originated from India probably but lost interest temporarily) computers.

Winner at the end is PCLinux.

This is why I take it as the Gold Standard.

I have decided to increase the points in the point scheme I have designed for Skype included Linux distributions to 250 from 100 with working Skype, which should be automatic if the distribution can boast its capability.

Even, in PCLinux the Skype was static.

Why it is not updated with many in USA and Europe will be skipping the air travel due to stock market crisis and delays in airports in Christmas is beyond my comprehension.

I think Santa should bring a new version of Skype Linux with Christmas and Santa should do the air travel on his own cost and deliver Skype without delay for the Holidays and New Year!.

Interestingly new Ubuntu derivative that comes from Chekoslovia has Skype but it is a DVD version (1-6 GiB). It looks attractive.

Linux-100-Update on Linuxconsolebuild147-2010

This is one of the few but very good Multimedia capable Live (Install) CD for an old computer (as well as new) in the attic to play video and DVD.

Make the computer a Multimedia Player.

It has TV capability but I did not tested it since our TV channels are not set to any standard (anybody can buy a space in channel frequencies-not international standard anyway) and do not register with any monitoring agency of frequencies so that Linux can detect it.

This gentleman from France has done a wonderful job and everybody should support his efforts and future developments such as ipod capability.

Only weakness for a Live CD of 200 odd MiB which is fantastic is that I could not configure the internet to listen to internet music.

This is a development release and it has windows executable file too.

Newbies and savvy should use it and give him constructive feed backs.

It has 4 GB DVD which I could not download up till now due to slow pace of our internet service.

I am going to download it during the Christmas Holidays.

Good work and thanks for the Guys and Girls of www.consolelinux.org.

Speed Tests

It is possible to test the speed of upload and download of data over the internet now.

It is fortunate that the one internet company provides instant speed test and offer faster web browsers for guys who a using Microsoft.

I have been checking download speed almost every day for the last one (1) year with my Linux machine and I have discovered it is not worth even considering downloading anything more than 50 MiB in the day time.
Over best download speed is 1/2 (half) MiB per second at best (usually after mid night) but I cannot understand how they offer 2MiB in the day time.
It is only a commercial gimmick and lot of our young guys / girls have fallen pray to this propaganda.
Our Telecoms is much better than most of the south Asian countries.
We do not have a dedicated satellite of our own. in spite of fighting a war for nearly 30 years.
Now it is time of us to re-think our strategies since there is no conflicting parties except Indian Merchants who spending lot of money in Telecoms and betting industry.
We are going to have the cricket World Cup and we are not ready to serve the waiting masses.
It is time for the Telecoms to go for it with Chinese help within this decade.
I do not believe

Downloading and Uploading Linux Distributions and Packages

Linux newbie and Linux savvy of this country should be aware of our limitations in the IT world.
Now that I have downloaded over 150 CD versions (Live CD to be precise) of Linux CDs, I am now doing some brief survey of their installation capabilities.
I have now down to top 5 (Five) of my liking (100 is for Live) for installations.
When I select the top five I have many considerations.

1. Light weight and fit into a CD

2. Should have a nice file system that even detect my spare Dos partitions(no windows in them for the past 3 or 4 years not even Wine in them)

3. Good partition tool

4. Good PDF and Word program

5. Image program and a Video program to watch clips before installing

6. Good set of Drivers for old and new computers including laptops.

7. No need for internet connection at the time of installation

8. Set of boxed CDs, if it is a commercial version

9. One year cycle (if possible) stability. Six month was ideal for me to see whether developers are listening to my vocal and almost interactive commentaries in the web

10. Preferably a repository to download Skype, Open Office, Flash and few other nice Goodies.

11. Last but not least " root" and "user" capability instead of sudo.

12. Good Grub file and compatibility with other Linux distributions.

Most of the Top 20 to 30 distributions have at least 8 out of 12 of my specifications and nothing in between them to choose except personal interest and likings.

So rating according to a number scale is redundant. All are pretty good their own ways, robust, stable and free of viruses.

The biggest problem is needing internet to install. Not only this slows down the whole process and sometimes freezes at the last moment without a boot or grub file at the end and sometime changing the BIOS due to freezing. This is unacceptable in the third world where download facility is painfully slow.
The other serious problem is incompatibility of Ubuntu versions to detect other Linux versions and giving priority to Windows instead. This is appalling.

I had this problem yesterday and today. I have at least two working distribution 9one for day to day working and one for an emergency- my emergency one is PCLinux first and Puppy second).

One of my old computer has a SATA hard disk and IDE hard disk. When they configure the hard disks a and b comenclature (not for Master and Slave) was at random and there were no two distributions that did the same thing the exact the same way. I had to give up after 24 hours.
I tried changing the boot file and the fstab and i could never configure the distributions exactly the same.
This was piece of cake in the early days when the distributions were handful.
Each one had an understanding of the other. It is not so now with so many distributions out there.

We need to formalize this like normalizing in tables, otherwise there going to chaos in time to come.

I have been talking about Sri-Lankan Standards ( we do not have any-Selfish and First come First basis, everybody beat everybody at the winning tape and their are only one winner and all the others are losers) elsewhere.
It is time we redesign our wheels and engines.

E-Reader and E-Books

It is sad we lost over 30 year a futile war and we are still spending more for defense budget. In the process we cutting our budget for education. If that is not enough we got a Minister who instills fear on students who tend to disagree with his views.

All this is enough for young ones to go abroad and see how education is done in the rest of the world.

If we take Singapore they have developed their own e-reader and over 900,000 books in the Library are converted to e-books and could be accessed free on the e-reader.

They do not boast that they give free textbooks but make available all the resources for young people to learn.

One can see young Singaporeans studying in the University (their accommodations are not as spacious like in our country) do their home work at the airport lounge.

The e-readers available there include Kinder 2 which is driven by Linux kernel (Amazon device). That is the very reason I wanted to write about it. It is black and white and has wireless connectivity and a browser.

I believe all the other devices are also using Linux kernel.

Then there is another called Nook which is available in both colour and black and white.
I would like to see our kids also get a chance to use them.
This in only a wishful thinking.
Our educators go on holiday just before their retirement wasting out resources.
I wonder how many of them have at least seen a e-reader at least in the airport.
Mind you one need not go there, just browsing the web is enough to see an array of devices.