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.