OH-GOD-Linux-112

If you a Christian newbie this is for you.

Now that I have secured an iso for myself and the full copyright of that iso's name as Go.Go-F.O.F. Linux I am thankful to God and all Linux Developers for providing me with the download facility of AOGOS Linux.

This is a Christian Slackware Linux which is fantastic to learn Linux Tricks.

It is a version that you can carry your Linux Distribution and the Bible in a Pendrive or a DVD.

I was bit unhappy that this was a zip image especially thinking that I have to learn the Bible to perform Linux tricks.

Being a Buddhist I was more than irritated.

Even though it was three (3 AM) in the morning I did not want to go to sleep without burning an iso.

I am safe doing this since all the other Buddhists are fast asleep now.


I went to Softpedia.

Looked at the page description.

This is a good web page and I could find the way to do it / make an iso.

1. Extract the zip file to a folder named AOGOS.

2. Then go to the boot folder and open it.

3. Find the make-iso.sh file.

4. Open a terminal window in Linux

5. Drop the make-iso.sh into the terminal window and hit enter.

6. Find the iso and make a boot CD in K3B.

Presto!
It writes an image in the download folder as a boot.iso.
It gives an option for you to give a name for the iso.

Please do not do that. just for now.

It took ages for me to find the name of the new iso (name is boot.iso) but I knew it was there since my download folder was almost full.

Eventually I booted up the DVD.

It is good as gold.

It is new NFlux box.

right click not writeclique and go to Firefox and then you are at FreeBible web site.

Well done Boys and Girls (Good Christians) who developed this iso.

Only downside is even the Christians in this country are poor in money affairs but not in virtues, they cannot afford a DVD drive and DVD (twice the price of CD).

I hope a CD iso can be made since nFlux is not heavy in its armaments (sorry, for my terminology this is a post military country now, habits are too ingrained and diehard).

Now let me tell you why I did not want you to name the iso file.

I renamed it as the Oh-GoD-Linux and saved it in my archives for any Christian friend of mine who asks for it will have it free if he or she gives me a blank DVD.

Or I can rename it as Do-Do Linux and give it to any friend of mine.

The most interesting part of this CD/DVD is that it has Laminin as a logo (in its desktop image ) that binds all the cells to basement membrane as an anchor) which is almost a replica of the Cross.

Unlike Buddhists who are deeply divided with all the Laminins broken this DVD and the Laminin will bind all the Christians of this country together.

It is a good Christmas Gift for kids.

P.S. (5-11-20100)
Sorry for the glaring mistakes in English which I think were corrected today (5th November).
Who cares for Queen's English in this country especially 3 A.M in the morning, me half awake and trying to burn an iso and run it to see its virtues.
Even the Telecom and the kids who say I am Sri-Lanka would be proud of my English.
When we begin to say "We are Sri-Lankans" but not "I am Sri-Lankan"

God save the Queen and her English!

Clockwork Precision

Clockwork precision is something lacking in this country in workman's skills as well as in time management.

I leaned it from my father and the colleague principal who taught me the basics of it and the value of it which I perfected it in the Western World.

In the Labour Era (not the current one that ended recently) which ended with Mr. Arther Scargill, Mr. Tony Ben, Mr.Ken Livingston and many other names that I forget workers were well organized and down to earth and work to precision in London and suburbs (with the inflow foreign migrants including Eastern Block this tradition of working according to clock and round the clock has slowly and surely disappeared, with conservative's sweeping role of market reforms and greed instead of welfare society eroded to an extent that I decided coming back home was better option than of becoming a Senior Citizen there shivering in cold winter expecting the summer to sooner than late) and maintained the British economy vibrant.

It is no better here for a Senior Citizen except for politicians with clout.
The time and time management was ingrained in the minds of workers then.

Then came the goals, finishing targets and profits that ended up in stock market crisis.

Strangely now Americans are talking about social welfare and they cannot achieve the targets of their choice in time frame before elderly succumbs in ill fate.

What I am writing is not about the time management mentioned above but about the clock itself.

That itself is not the grandfather clock but the tiny digital wrist watch of mine which I used for the the last 16 years.

Before that I must write a few of the stupidest things I have done.

The things I did before going abroad was more ridiculous.

When ever I go abroad the first thing I used to do is to buy the most expensive wrist watch I could afford somewhat like a status symbol (I once lost one of them but was able to claim insurance-that was the only time I had claimed insurance in spite of heavy premiums I paid) and when I leave again buy something bit expensive.

This has become a liability when I come home.

I used to hire a taxi from Kandy to Colombo for Rupees 600 those days and I had several favorite and good drivers to take me all round the country (I was true tourist not the stingy white skinned ones that come here for boys now) and when ever I leave the drivers ask me,

"Sir Mata Oya Wage Orolosuwak Denna Badida; Sir Can you give me a wristwatch like what you have".

One fine day I was in a good mood I gave it to the driver and told him it is expensive and take care.

This is the guy who used to take a famous films star around the country and he never got any presents for the film star guy.

He was happy and I was bit unhappy, to tell you the truth but overcame that attachment in good time.

When I came the next time he was very unhappy. the reason being his lodging was ransacked within a few months and he lost most of the valuables including the wrist watch I gave him.

This incident changed my outlook completely and from then onwards I used to buy the most inexpensive (sometimes children's ones) for daily use and disposed all my other comparatively expensive wrist watches whoever who had some liking for them (mostly relatives).

This change (buying the cheapest and not looking at it) was consolidated when Ms. Chandrika was the President and her clock work activity was in direct competition with that of mine for 11 years.

The story about my clock is very simple.

One of my cheap (not the cheapest -I had brought from abroad) watches stopped working.

I went to a watchmaker in Kandy who was very good and showed him the watch.

He looked at it and said nothing can be done.

I walked in, to buy a new one and he called me back and said he can put a circuit for Rupees 240.

I asked him how long will it last and does it keep the time correct.

Ten years without a problem and it is Korean one he said.

I obliged and it was working for the last 16 years except for the brief period of one month.

I was busy and yesterday I went to another shop to change the battery.

The inexperienced girl there checked the battery and said it is OK but the circuit was faulty.

I could not believe it.

I asked her to check it with a new battery.

Result was the same.

She fiddled with the contact points then called an older lady to help and she fiddled with it some more and put some anti-corrosion oil and said, nothing doing.

After all this I told them for 16 years this worked all right and I paid only rupees 240 and I cannot find my favorite watchmaker and I left saying that my eyesight is weak, otherwise I would have found what was wrong.
All in all I now made my own diagnosis.

It is mechanical and nothing but.

I came home late and I left the watch in the drawer but only after a little fiddling and thinking that I would attend to it sometime later.

So. did I find the time and fiddled with it and it is working now perfectly.

This how Sri-Lanka operates.

Either the workman / work woman was / were not properly trained or they were trained to cheat.

I will not pass the judgment on this issue but only state that honesty has no place in this country.

The man who ran the shop with the honest watchmaker vanished within five years.

The owner raised the rental and I never so him after that not even in the pavement.

This is the status of life in this Serendib.

I am almost in my retirement I want the clock to stop lest I get older than now.

Tea and Cookies

It is time for me talk and Tea and Cookies, now that I am well above my target of 100 Linux derivatives with lot of cookies in them.
This is not about the cookies that are behind one's browser or cookies that Linux developers put out almost everyday but real cookies we love at tea time.

But unfortunately Sri-Lankan cookies are getting expensive by the day with American flour is up roosting on top of the roof and coconuts are hitting the ceiling in prices, I am bound by duty to talk about cookies the kids love.

If not my grandpa role is of no use.

If I talk about baby rusks it is beyond the reach of our average citizen mother and father.

The ordinary cookies are also expensive and their quality is getting poorer. If a packet is above rupees fifty (which is the price of bread now) we Sri-Lankan prefer bread and sambol to American cookies.
The reason for the cookies getting poor in quality is probably due to the companies cutting corners with all the ingredients making cookies going up in price to save expenses and maintaining the profit margins within their target range.

I am now down two or three varieties that maintain the quality but with the price well above what it used to be. If the price keeps going up perhaps I have to give up eating them.

As regard to tea, it actually sky rocketed well before the budget and with milk is up in price we have to cut down our habit of drinking tea.
In the office now it is black tea and I have stopped drinking it by default.

With this all gloom, there is a silver lining in the sky.
Reason for writing this is to highlight that fact.

One of our Sri-Lankan companies just celebrated its 20 years in existence.

It produces an excellent ice tea priced little above Coca Cola.
Coca Cola is the number one company in America and this Sri-Lankan company can beat it if they do a good market adventure and aggressively promote the tea here in Sri-Lanka and abroad in Middle east and then slowly hit the markets in America.

Coca Cola is junk.
Nescafe is bad for your heart.

Sri-Lankan Tea is healthy and protects our hearts should be the motto.

FeatherLinux-111

Strangely enough this is 111 in my Linux List.

Like Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux the Feather Linux is a Beauty.

I always believed the concept "Small is Beautiful".
This is and example in addition to DSL.

I was DSL fan to begin with.

When I was new to Linux and when I first bought the Linux Bible by Christopher Naegus (I have three different editions now, latest one I bought few months ago after a 6 year Gap), and in those boot from Floppy Disk days, there were only a few Live CDs (Knoppix was there but I did not know about Puppy then-Puppy is one of my favorites now with over 25 varieties in my possession) that I copied form one of the CD/DVDs that came with the book.

I booted up live and enjoyed Linux and its utilities.

Just little over 100 MiB can do wonders which 1000 MiBs or GBs cannot.
It is a Knoppix derivative by the way!

One thing they did best was if you are unable to get to the Internet they did it in double quick time (with a router easily but with with Sri-Lankan Telecom modems with some difficulty).

Today I used Dillo and I could not sign up with Google (that was basic test based browser without cookies) and bit fiddly with my keyboard too but I managed to post this in Firefox (that I did not see at first glance).

Abiword is there xPDF is there, Xmms is there and many more.

Pretty fast to boot too.

Today just for testing downloaded 700 MiB of STUX (which STUCK) after half an hour of struggling it could not configure my NV Graphic Card and configured non existent devs and I was scared it will bust my Graphic Card all because it was trying to mount all its compressed files into RAM.

It could not give me a console (or consolation prize) to exit or a killall command.

I had to switch off the computer by getting into a null state (I call it null state) a non existent command in Linux (just wait a while and switch off the computer with the hand on your chest with gospel words in my mouth-but beware the graphic card and RAM-which I burnt those days and also mid night oil learning Linux all by myself with no Guru to help).

Thanks a lot the Guys and Girls at Feather Linux.
Keep up the good work.

It is long time since I booted Feather Linux.
You will have lot of feathers in your caps.
Thanks again!

Biophysics-02 and Biodiversity

Biological live agents has the capacity to duplicate themselves either by sexual or asexual means. In mathematical sense this is easy to comprehend but what goes behind the scene is very complex.

Man is very good at converting and producing by products from animal material and it is emerging there are over 184 pig products in the market.

This is same for cow too but cell division and its organization into about 600 to 1000 cell derivatives has taken billions of years of duplications and organizations. That is where the biophysics operate and man can never duplicate that sequence however much he tries.

Biophysics unlike simple physics and chemistry works at a rigid thermal atmosphere since bio-molecules especially proteins cannot stand high temperature.

High temperature and curing that include tanning make these biological materials commercially useful. Gelatin and fibrin are two of them used for making texture of food attractive but have no food value at all.

This short article highlight some of the mathematical concepts involved in biophysics and not their modifications in the commercial world.

It is binary mathematics of duplication somewhat similar to binary computer mathematics. How 256 characters and 0 and 1 are used for modules in computing, in the biological world about 2500 to 25.000 large biological molecules (not-nanoparticles) give the diversity around biological structure.

It is said that genetic code doubles itself every 3 to 5 million year cycles and this event why it happens we do not know but heralds new species on this planet.

For example the change that occurred from chimpanzee to human occurred when this cycle of duplication occurred last time on this planet.

In about 65 million years ago we so dinosaurs disappeared but the cockroaches who remained would have told us the story in detail if they had computerized brains in their possession.

But we have to surmise what went on and what went wrong then.

This is written in the same conceptual framework what we know is little what we do not is enormous.

What will become of this planet we do not know in way the biodiversity is changing in every nick and corner of this planet from deep sea to mount Everest.

Coming back to my mathematics 2 is the base.

The other base is 10 the log base and log normal.

In biology there is a tendency for log normal behaviour in time scale.

Put these figures together I derive 20..

The figure 20 is my figure for looking at the available species and make some deductions.

For example take a plant (an animal) from a site (area should be defined) and see whether there are 20 similar pants not interbreeding (definition of species difference) at the same site.

If we see a site with that number it is a biological hotspot.

I wonder whether we have any to fit this description or anybody has done this calculation before. (we can argue about the veracity of the number 20 till the cows come home with a pipe and arm chair critics) in an observational manner but the point I am arriving at is that we look at a whole country and say (for example Sri-Lanka) we a re bio-rich is a total misconception.

I have arrive at a figure by simple observation of my neighbourhood for every three plants I see in my garden we have lost another 17 in the last 100 years or so.

It is said that the anaconda (Ana conda is a Sri-Lankan name) type of snake had been sited in Sri-lanka by foreign invaders about 200 years ago.

Where are they now?

The corollary to my argument is that if we can collect 20 similar species in an environment that environment is conducive for biodiversity.

I can give two examples of my childhood.

We could have identified at least 10 varieties of tortoises and 100 varieties of butterflies less than 50 years ago.

Bizarre use of insecticides in agriculture and DDT in particular (thanks to WHO - Sinhalen who) by ill conceived pundits in the health sector has done irrevocable damage to our biodiversity.

Final nail will come when the two Coal Power plants are operational.

Problem in my argument is that there are no true scientist left in this country to take my argument forward with observational data in spite of 40 years of free education in mother tongue.

We have not produced a single biological scientist that we can say were nominated for Nobel Prize in 40 years of free education,.leave alone winning it.

By producing private universities this cannot be remedied since they are profit oriented.

We lack Think Tanks in power and also in opposition..

Think tanks are there when they are in opposition!

We have thin tanks how to get to power and remain there for ever.

We need to produce outstanding thinkers.

We are sadly lacking in that endeavour.!

WiFiWay-2-01-110

Very beautiful KDE 3.5 Linux distribution that comes from Spain is cute, functional and fast boot up.
I am not sure it has English version but with or without English it an amazing Little distribution.
The server connection broke at least 10 times and i had to download many a times without a success but the wait and my perseverance was worth the trouble.

I hope English version should come sooner than late.
Good one!.
Thanks guys and girls at WiFIWay.

ZeveonOs-Neptune-Final-109

New generation new concept with science students (with Eclipse) in mind is a USB stick installed and persistent Linux distribution to carry as a Pendrive.
It has brand new KDE and very attractive front face.

This is something we should give Sri-Lankan students who carry a lorry load of books in their back. It has multimedia capability and In proper hand carry all the science books in e-format.

Even though I talk much about Linux, Pendrive Linux is my future and in retirement.
I do not carry much to my grave apart from few Flash drives with some information for grave diggers to identify me.
I could not get it to install in the hard rive but that is a miner matter.
It comes from Germany with English as a second language.
I hope this will spawn a new wave of Pendrive Linux.
That is my ultimate dream.
In 10 years time I may not be able to buy a computer from the paltry subsistence I will have.
I hope by then the Flash drive will have some music capability with Radio stations live too with ear phones attached since I may need hearing aids too if I live that long.

Another Trick Exposed!

Richard Stallman is right, moment the market forces are introduced to Linux distributions, there is hardly any difference from Microsoft, Apple or Oracle and for that mater XandroS, Freespire, Mandriva, SuSe or ArtistX.

After many days of downloading what is said to be free distribution I am unable to keep a copy of Mandriva, Suse or ArtistX in my USB hard disk for safe keeping.

Thank god I did not bother to download DVDs in the first instance.

I was happy with CDs,

I have no intention of selling them.

I am interested in testing them and saying something good about them generally and expose some of their weaknesses as I see from a customer perspective so that next version can avoid minor irritations.

Customer is the best judge and Linux guys are not trained to be good salesmen any way.

That is why the Linux guys with commercial interest fail.

That is true for Mandriva and SuSe.

The have hidden tricks up their sleeves.

They do not let you keep a copy for reference.

This scenario can be overcome by following methods.

1. Burn several copies of the CD and do not bother about the Iso Image like me.

2. Use K3B and make a image without burning a CD /DVD. K3B makes a temporary Image in tmp and rename it. That is what I did with ArtistX. And then copy it to a CD/DVD or to a USB hard drive (but remember its temporary name).

3. Forget about using that distribution and select one out of the 100 and one distributions I have listed in this blogsopt.

4. Once you are comfortable with Linux avoid all commercial Linux.

5. Best solution is to have couple of Live CDs that have the applications you need.

When you try to copy, in the final few seconds they disrupt the coping process with a little script at the end that says it cannot be copied.

If they say it should not be copied it is a different matter.

Even if I sell a few copies I cannot become a millionaire.

This is absurd in the true spirit of FOSS.

They are no better.
Wolves in sheep clothing.
Take hard working Developers for granted.

Mandriva has the way of disrupting the last few MiB which does not tally with total MiB so that the would be newbie has to go and buy a copy.

If you are lazy it is far better to buy rather than download a Iso with missing files.

Like a good salesmen one must state the facts but not like an insurance agents or dealers who have hidden clause/s.

A clever customer can catch you and detect the faults unlike the gullible guy with lot of money and spare wallets.

It is like a bad dream or joke!

Partitioning with Magic Tools in Linux

 It is a commercial version now!
Gone are the days when I had to install Win98 and then Partition Magic and then partitioning which took ages and then install Redhat or Mandriva or Debian with dual booting and in spite of Linux installed Nero was my writing tool.

Suffice is to say Nero had done enough damage to my CD/DVD ROMs and Graphic Cards.

Then there was no K3B.

Beauty of K3B is it diagnoses the defective CD / DVD and reject them after examination without damaging the RAM or the CD/DVD ROMs.

Next stage is Live CDs starting with PCLinux-2007.

The transmigration and single booting with multiple Linux distributions in my computer network and liberation from proprietary components has given me opportunity to investigate partition tools in Linux.

My favorite partition tool is and was Partition tool in SuSe which is excellent and gave me lot of freedom and opportunities.

But then again I have to have SuSe installed to get full use of the partition tool.
Now SuSe Studio has spawned a KDE Partition Magic it is rightful I should mention about the others for newbies.

1. R.I.P (Recovery Is Possible) is one of my favorite Live CD which I use for partitioning.

2. Damn Small Linux and gparted is the first of my choices those days.

3. Gparted live CD.

4. Partition Magic CD in zip format only a Linux distribution can decipher is the latest of my utilities.

5. PC Linux, Mandriva were my old friends but PCLinux has dropped dos partitions (which I keep for spare storage) which is a bit of pain.

My only grouse now is most of the partition tools including SuSe limits partitions to 15 which is absurd with hard disks over 500 GB are on the market and guys like me who want to have several Linux distributions in one box.

If one distribution has failed in a trick I mount another and do the job.

For example SuSe gives limited space for Thrash and it cannot delete a large (for example an image of 4GB) file.

Then I mount PCLinux and do the job of deleting the large file with its help.

Do not get fixed to one Linux distribution (especially Ububtu) since there are hundreds of out there with many utilities like blender, gamabse, audio video (Media Box) and many more to have fun with.

To have fun and have many distributions you need a partitioning tool and one has to master partitioning.

It is as chicken feed now unlike the days I was struggling to get everything right at least once a year in December before i recess for some holiday and relaxing.

Fortunately because my 100 Linux adventure (111 now) I can have a long holiday well before December.

Enjoy all partitioning tools they do not hurt the hard disks unlike Microsoft utilities.

Priorities? Whats Gone Wrong?

Have we got our priorities right?

Is hygiene a matter for concern?

Is home science taught to children especially girls?

Is dengue the biggest problem?

Can pure politicians decide on health issues?

Are our doctors trained sufficiently in Public Health?

Are our hospitals (both Public and Private) disease factories?

I can answer the last question easily.
Yes our hospitals are disease factories, there is no doubt about it.
If a patient is taken to a hospital he invariably acquires a new disease if he stays more than 48 hours.
That is why our mothers are discharged as soon as possible after child birth.

I am not going to get involved in any political arguments except saying that 30.000 (may be 40 thousand) children die every day due to poor hygiene and improper education worldwide.
One of the first lessons we have to teach undergraduates is hand hygiene when they enter university. But within 4 weeks they go back to bad habits and the cycle perpetuates itself
Majority of them have studied in tutories and not in school and the tutors never teach hygiene in their cramped up classes.

Below is some relevant samples and I have no editorial control over them or any connections.

Science Daily (Mar. 24, 2010)
A new study suggests that hand sanitizers containing ethanol are much more effective at removing rhinovirus from hands than washing with soap and water. Sanitizers containing both ethanol and organic acids significantly reduced recovery of the virus from hands and rhinovirus infection up to 4 hours following application.
The researchers from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville and Dial Corporation, Scottsdale, Arizona detail their findings in the March 2010 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
Rhinovirus is the known cause of approximately 30 to 35% of common cold cases in adults. Hand-to-hand contact is one of the main avenues of transmission contributing to the spread of rhinovirus infections. In the study researchers compared the effects of hand washing with soap and water and an ethanol-based hand sanitizer by contaminating the fingers of healthy volunteers with rhinovirus and then randomly grouping them and administering one of six hand treatments.
The experiments ranged from a control group who had no treatment, several groups who washed their hands for differing amounts of time (some with soap, some without), and several who used varying amounts of hand sanitizer. Results showed that the ethanol hand sanitizer removed approximately 80% of detectable rhinovirus from hands and was much more effective than no treatment, water alone, or soap and water. Soap and water removed rhinovirus from 31% of hands.

ScienceDaily (July 10, 2008)
Washing hands with soap and water before delivering a newborn infant is associated with a lower rate of neonatal deaths in developing countries, according to a report in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
"Although major achievements have been made in reducing mortality in children younger than 5 years, less progress has been made in reducing neonatal mortality," according to background information in the article. It is estimated that there are approximately 4 million neonatal (newborn) deaths each year, with more than 99 percent occurring in low- and middle-income countries. "About half of these deaths occur at home where mothers receive little or no perinatal care. These neonatal deaths are attributable primarily to infections, prematurity and birth asphyxia [suffocation]."
Victor Rhee, M.H.S., of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and colleagues obtained data in an observational study of 23,662 newborns through 28 days of life in rural southern Nepal from 2002 to 2006. Mothers of the infants were given questionnaires the day after delivery and two weeks later to identify maternal and birth attendant hand-washing practices.
More than 90 percent of births occurred at home or outdoors while the mother was being transported to a facility. Birth attendants washed their hands before the delivery of 59.2 percent of live births, while only 14.8 percent of mothers washed their hands with soap and water or antiseptic before handling their newborn. The overall mortality rate was 32.1 per 1,000 live births.

ScienceDaily (May 29, 2005)
The most accurate estimates of the causes of child deaths to date, published in the March 26, 2005 of THE LANCET, reveal that worldwide more than 70% of the 10.6 million child deaths that occur annually are attributable to six causes: pneumonia (19%), diarrhoea (18%), malaria (8%), neonatal sepsis or pneumonia (10%), preterm delivery (10%), and asphyxia at birth (8%).

Robert Black (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA) and colleagues in an independent group on child health epidemiology, along with those from the World Health Organisation (WHO), analysed available data from publications and ongoing studies in 2000 to 2003 to obtain new estimates for mortality by cause in children younger than age 5 years. They found the four communicable disease categories account more than half (54%) of all child deaths. Infection of the blood or pneumonia in newborn babies and pneumonia in older children constitute 29% of all deaths. Undernutrition is an underlying cause of 53% of all deaths in children aged younger than 5 years. The investigators also calculated the total numbers and proportional distributions of deaths in children younger than age 5 years by cause for the six WHO-defined regions. Among deaths in children, 42% occur in the WHO Africa region, and an additional 29% occur in the south-east Asia region.

For many years, Chief physician Birger Forsberg has been working with international health issues, and has a particular interest in diarrhoea diseases children in low and middle-income countries. Although diarrhoea-related death amongst children has declined in the past thirty years, diarrhoea is still thought to be the cause of several million child deaths every year.
"Research shows that around 1.5 million children suffering from diarrhoea can be saved every year with the right treatment," says Dr Forsberg.
Back in the 1980s the WHO started a special programme to reduce diarrhoea-related child mortality. The organisation estimated that about two thirds of all deaths from diarrhoeal diseases were attributable to violent, watery diarrhoea and acute dehydration. It therefore promoted the greater use of rehydration solutions with sugar and salt additives and increased fluid intake. The recommendations were incorporated in most countries' national health programmes and active information campaigns were run through the WHO, UNICEF and national authorities. The use of the recommended treatments (rehydration or increased fluid intake) has increased but not as much as desired.


The review, led by Regina Ejemot of the University of Caliber, in Nigeria, shows that teaching people about hand washing can reduce the incidence of diarrhea by up to 30 percent and might have as great an affect as providing access to clean water.
“Our review specifically assessed the effects of interventions to promote hand washing and not the effectiveness of improving sanitation,” Ejemot said. “However, common sense would suggest that there has to be water for hand washing to happen, regardless of community awareness of benefits or willingness to wash hands.”


WHO estimates that diarrhea is responsible for over 2.2 million deaths annually, especially in children under the age of five. It is an important cause of malnutrition in resource-poor countries and, if persistent, can contribute to decreased resistance to infection and hamper children’s growth and development.

PartitionManager-108

It is a commercial version now.

First Class!
SuSe Studio has spawned many of its community derivatives and many of them are heavy to boot up but this one has caught my eye by accident.
YAST is one of the best graphic utility and its partition manger is the best graphic partiton tool.
YAST-Yet Another Setup Tool but I call it Yet Another Teaching Tool Linux Guru can use for teaching newbies.
It is a live CD that can be installed.
Only 366 MiB.
Excellent approach moving away from heavily Loaed Linux.
This a classic example where one can assemble the utilities with purpose.
Then one can download the other packages.
Connection to internet is slow but I love this derivative.
This is not for newbie.
One should have some understanding how suSe operates.
I will write about other partition tools which Linux offer later.
Good one.

Linux100-Mandrake-Update

After 4 days and bit of time I manged to download Mandrake (free) DVD and booted it to see its features and unfortunately it is install only.

Why they cannot include a live script in the 4.3 MiB of DVD puzzles me enough!

Similarly 2 MiB of Gentoo Live DVD did not have an install script!

These simple exclusions put me off and lot many of newbies too.

With Mandriva I went up to the partition tool and up to that point it has all the impressive graphic protocols which I really loved in the past.

Well, now I have installed Mandriva Free in a second hand spare computer (dissembled in Singapore) I bought to upgrade the systems to Sata hard and CD/ DVD ROMs in case IDE Hard disks and ROM Sri-Lankan market.
It has two ports for SATA and I may be able to fix my IDEs there if any one of my old computers pack up.

Sure will not as long as I use Linux.

As I have already stated elsewhere cutting edge utilities are carefully excluded and it took nearly one hour to update the installed packages.
My wife and daughter were using there computers and and I know they were not downloading anything serious.
So my judgement, about Mandriva has not changed significantly even after installing,

Installation went ahead without a hitch.

So go ahead and buy from them instead of downloading the free DVD.has not changed.

No wine, no blender, no food for thought.

If I make a mistake and delete everything in my hard disk while testing live CDs or my system breaks down (it never happens) or over loaded with array of different images and come to a stop one day, I will run it through all the way to full install.

Till then you have to do it yourself and feel its impressive collection of utilities.

Sir-Lankan English

This is what I heard through a S.M.S. (Subbe Manasgatha Settum) in the Buddhist tradition of Venerable Ananda..

I only relate without any distortion or without Atuwa Tika for the enlightenment of the Subbe Satta (Bavanthu Suki Thatha-Except ex-Army Generals) of Sr-Lanka.

It is common practice now for some to go abroad frequently at the drop of a hat like an annual pilgrimage to Mecca and unlike us who cannot afford it now remain restrained due to common curtsies and upbringing (When I first went to England one way ticket was only three thousand nine hundred odd Rupees).

But they carry all the trademarks of Sir-Lanka when on travel abroad and sometime demand the other passengers to change the booked ticket on wish and fancies of political stalwarts.

But this story is not about the ones who went to USA but one who was left behind.

He was left behind deliberately due to request from our one and only Mr. Bun Ki Moon (Munn Bath Kawada Bun is his nick name).

When retinue arrived home he was waiting enraged for an audience with the tour leader.

The tour leader was a veteran politician and who felt the pulse of his close associate if not the pulse of the nation knew something was amiss.

He approached the role master and asked Malli Kohomada Dan (How are you my comrade)?

He did not give a reply and instead put a big Kheels Meat ball in his mouth and pretended that his mouth was full and could not speak (By the way, this is the tactic our foreign Minister applies when he is abroad and is asked a difficult question).

Tour leader in turn put a finger in one of the big meat balls and crushed it with a fine twist and put the tip of the finger in his mouth and sucked a bit and said Mal Wedi Wage Sarayi ne Malli (Hot and Spicy like fire works).

Then went onto say this foreign fellows do not know how to prepare spicy foods and they only add salt and pepper in their food and nothing else.

In the same breath and tone continued in his utterance and said that he received an invitation for a party with foreign delegates from EU.

Malli Oyata Yanne Barida Ekata / Brother can you attend it on my behalf?

So he gave the re-delegated invitation protocol to this national hero with antics.

The day came this guy went there half an hour before the schedule and when the French chef was arranging the tables and giving the final touches.

The chef identified the our guy and asked him Are you a vegetarian?

The guy had a grin in his face and said, I am a Mustarian, you know.

The French chef was poor in his English and thought Mustarian is an English word but could be moucheron (a type of fly that swarm near water or mouton (sheepskin).

He went to the kitchen ordered his colleague to take a sheepskin ans pickle it and turned round to see a sheepskin swamped by house flies in the bin.

He wanted to be sure and impressive and told his friend to pickle it with Sri-Lankan house flies in the dish.

His colleague of course marinated it and made the first Sri-Lankan lightly made Mouton-Moucheron with French wine and served our distinguished guest.

This fellow did not realize that there were flies in his meal since he was very high with the French wine.

He had Chinese food for his lunch with Ajina Moto and the combination French Wine, house flies and sheep skin (in any case he is a wolf under the sheep skin anyway) caused a little aberration in his thinking capacity and asking us to not to eat American flour.

Little he remember the last time they banned bread the left was swept away.

I hope that there could be a second innings or a repetition of the scenario in this god forsaken country.

Evam Mesuthum!