Going Wireless

Going Wireless
Let me state first that "Going Wireless" is an option freely promoted but never achieved or maintained in this country due to the divisive nature of our politics and interference from India and China.
The range of wireless coverage is poor and not inclusive, in spite of being a island nation.
We should have made satellite communication a goal but India and China are interested due to our strategic nature of our Geo-Position or location.
Quiet accidentally in nineteen eighties, I happen to be protecting a satellite due to be launched by organization spearheaded by 42 countries in the name of I.M.M.I (later became IWMA).
It was sabotaged by India using D.J.V (in the South) as proxy, just like it sabotaged Tamil community (in the North) in this country using L.T.T.E.
I advise President Donald Trump not to believe Indian politicians just like he does not believe in Chinese politicians.

My solution is satellite communication (mind you space is supposed to be non politicized) not wired communication with few heavy duty wireless towers.

Coming to wireless suppliers we have two good local commercial institutes, namely Dialog and Lanka Bell.
I must say I hate Telecoms and Mobitel which was ruined by M.S. and his brother D.S.
They could not provide us rice without contamination of five or more  varieties of chemical poisons.
So how come they advance solid trusted technology service?

Lanka Bell started with CDMA and it provides a good service for the needy. 
It also has a new broadband and mobile router with a rechargeable battery.
The Mobile routers is only Rs.2000/= higher (if you consider the inflation it is cheaper) less than my first solid wireless router I used as a battery charger for my phones with a Ethernet card jacked in with an appropriate (I collected these items when I go to Singapore. They are piled up like our limes and lemons in the market place) plug in jack.

Dialog has a big broadband which is pretty good but do not have a battery and needs to be plugged in to an electricity socket (no wireless connection when electricity is down).
In need 24/7 service and in that sense Lanka Bell tops the list of mobility and 24/7 service.
Peo TV costs four times the Dialog bottom line service.
Lanka Bell is even cheaper and one pays for the data one uses without "Time Constriction" which all prepaid services charge you.
I use a Mobitel SIM ( I was one of its original customers, until Sira came in to ruin it) to link with my bank both by wired and wireless connection.
In fact, I lost my bank card lately, and that day I could not ring the services in Colombo (later found that the telephone wire was savaged by the local road developers and Telecoms failed to repair it in spite of informing disconnection) to deactivate my accounts.
The Mobitel router is a cheap Chinese duplicate with Ethernet wires get glued to the set and difficult to dislodge.

Now I will wind up saying that I upgraded my tablet and Android game console using Dialog broad band and Wingle wireless services.
I will use Lanka Bell on the move.
We do not need Indian or Chines or Middle East suppliers in this country if we support Lanka Bell and Dialog from resources wasted by Telecoms and Mobitel.
Hang Telecoms and Mobitel which are political institutions.

Free Inquiry at a time of faked(lies) news

Nealy 90 (ninety) years ago, Moncure D Conway, the author of "My pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East", I visited Colombo.
He was a friend of Sir Ponnambalam Ramachandra (then Solicitor General of Ceylon) and together with him Conway went to Vidyodaya Pirivena (destroyed by converting to a university) to learn something of the Buddha's teachings from Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala Nayaka Thero, the founder of the institution.
The Nayaka There explained to them the principles contained in the Kalama Sutta and at the end of the conversation Ramachandra whispered to Conway " Is it not strange that you and I who come from different religions and regions, should together listen to a sermon from the Buddha in favour of free thought, that independence of traditional and fashionable doctrines, which is still the vital principle of Human Development?
Conway;
" Yes and we with (Kalama) princes the doctrine of goodwill"!

Free Inquiry at a time of faked(lies) news

Nealy 90 (ninety) years ago, Moncure D Conway, the author of "My pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East", I visited Colombo.
He was a friend of Sir Ponnambalam Ramachandra (then Solicitor General of Ceylon) and together with him Conway went to Vidyodaya Pirivena(destroyed by converting to a university) to learn something of the Buddha's teachings from Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala Nayaka There, the founder of the institution.
The Nayaka There explained to them the principles contained in the Kalama Sutta and at the end of the conversation Ramachandra whispered to Conway " Is it not strange that you and I who come from different religion
s and regions, should together listen to a sermon from the Buddha in favour of free thought, that independence of traditional and fashionable doctrines, which is still the vital principle of Human Development?
Conway;
" Yes and we with (Kalama) princes the doctrine of goodwill"!

Pencil Sketch of Twitter Nest

It is hard to reproduce nature!

Update on Linux

Reproduction Update on Linux SparkyLinux 2020.02 The SparkyLinux team has published a new snapshot of the distribution's rolling release platform. The new media is based on Debian's Testing branch and features several key package updates. "Sparky 2020.02 'Po Tolo' of the (semi-)rolling line is out. It is based on the testing branch of Debian 'Bullseye'. Changes: system upgraded from Debian Testing 'Bullseye' repos as of February 9, 2020. Calamares installer 3.2.18. Linux kernel 5.4.13 as default (5.5.2 & 5.6-rc1 in Sparky unstable repos). Firefox 72.0.2. Thunderbird 68.4.2. LibreOffice 6.4.0. VLC 3.0.8. Exaile 4.0.2. Added the new Sparky public key." The release announcement warns that the distribution's Calamares installer may fail in some situations: " Calamares installer fails if you install Sparky in full auto mode with full disk encryption and a swap partiton; it works fine without a swap partition." Ubuntu 18.04.4 The Ubuntu team has published updated media for the distribution's 18.04 LTS series. Version 18.04.4 of the distribution, along with its Community Editions, provide optional updated hardware support and security updates for supported packages. "The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS (Long-Term Support) for its Desktop, Server, and Cloud products, as well as other flavours of Ubuntu with long-term support. Like previous LTS series, 18.04.4 includes hardware enablement stacks for use on newer hardware. This support is offered on all architectures and is installed by default when using one of the desktop images. Ubuntu Server defaults to installing the GA kernel; however you may select the HWE kernel from the installer bootloader.Kubuntu 18.04.4 LTS, Ubuntu Budgie 18.04.4 LTS, Ubuntu MATE 18.04.4 LTS, Lubuntu 18.04.4 LTS, Ubuntu Kylin 18.04.4 LTS, and Xubuntu 18.04.4 LTS are also now available." Further information can be found in the release announcement and in the release notes. Project Trident 20.02 Project Trident has completed its initial move from being based on TrueOS to adopting the Void Linux distribution as its foundation. The Project Trident team have published their first stable version, 20.02: "Project Trident is pleased to announce the first official release image based on Void Linux, available on the Project Trident download page. Please note the Project Trident installer supports four different installation levels: Void: Only the base-system from Void Linux and ZFS-related bootloader packages are installed. Server: A CLI-based system with additional services and utilities installed from Project Trident (firewall, cron, autofs, wireguard, additional shells) Lite Desktop: Everything needed for a graphical desktop install using Lumina. No extra fluff. Full Desktop: The Lite install with quite a few additional end-user utilities (office suite, Telegram, multimedia apps). Note: These installation levels provide pre-defined lists of packages to install for user convenience. The installed system can be easily be changed afterwards using the built-in package system." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement. NetBSD 9.0 The developers of NetBSD, a highly portable operating system that runs across over two dozen CPU architectures, have published a new release. The new version, NetBSD 9.0, improves support for 64-bit ARM processors, introduces kernel ASLR, and improves ZFS support. "Sixth months after the start of the release engineering process, NetBSD 9.0 is now available. Since the start of the release process a lot of improvements went into the branch - over 700 pullups were processed! This includes usbnet (a common framework for USB Ethernet drivers), aarch64 stability enhancements and lots of new hardware support, installer/sysinst fixes and changes to the NVMM (hardware virtualization) interface. We hope this will lead to the best NetBSD release ever (only to be topped by NetBSD 10 - hopefully later this year). Here are a few highlights of the new release: Support for Arm AArch64 (64-bit Armv8-A) machines, including "Arm ServerReady" compliant machines (SBBR+SBSA). Enhanced hardware support for Armv7-A. Updated GPU drivers (e.g. support for Intel Kabylake). Enhanced virtualization support." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement. MX Linux 19.1 MX Linux, an increasingly popular desktop Linux distribution based on Debian and antiX, has been updated to version 19.1. Besides standard bug fixes and package updates, this version features a special build designed for current hardware: "MX Linux 19.1 now available. MX Linux 19.1 is a refresh of our MX 19 release, consisting of bug fixes and application updates since our original release of MX 19. If you are already running MX 19, there is no need to reinstall. Packages are all available thru the regular update channel. Due to the increasing presence of users with newer hardware (particularly newer AMD or Intel hardware), with this release, in addition to the standard 32-bit and 64-bit ISO images with 4.19 LTS kernels, we have produced a third ISO image that we call 'Advanced Hardware Support' or AHS (pronounced Oz) for short. AHS is 64-bit and ships with a Debian 5.4 kernel, MESA 19.2 as well as newer X.Org drivers and various recompiled applications that will use the newer graphics stack." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details. Tails 4.3 A new version of Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) has been released. This Debian-based distribution strives to help users communicate securely and browse the web anonymously. The project's latest release, Tails 4.3, includes several key package upgrades along with fixes to the upgrade process interface. "Tails 4.3 is out. This release fixes many security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible. New features: we included the trezor package, which provides a command line tool to use a Trezor hardware wallet for cryptocurrencies. Changes and updates: update Tor Browser to 9.0.5; update Thunderbird to 68.4.1; update Linux kernel to 5.4.13 - this should improve the support for newer hardware (graphics, Wi-Fi); update Tor to 0.4.2.6; update VirtualBox Guest Additions to 6.1.2. Fixed problems: fix the progress bar and prevent closing the window while an upgrade is being applied. Known issues: None specific to this release. Automatic upgrades are available from 4.2 and 4.2.2 to 4.3. Tails 4.4 is scheduled for March 10." Additional details can be found in the distribution's release announcement.

E-Phone

Reproduction An /e/ phone in 2020 One of the projects I have been watching with curiosity over the past year is /e/ (formerly Eelo), a mobile operating system that is based on Android, but with the pieces associated with Google's software and services removed. The project is described as follows: /e/ is a complete, fully 'unGoogled', mobile ecosystem. We could have just focused on an OS, but apps and on-line services are critical components of a smartphone experience, too. /e/ consists in a mobile operating system (OS) and carefully selected applications, together forming a privacy-enabled internal environment for mobile phones. Combined with on-line services, such as a search engine, e-mail, storage and other on-line tools, it creates a unique environment: privacy-in, privacy-out. One of the big challenges any open source mobile platform faces these days is competing with the vast application stores of Android and iOS. The /e/ operating system side-steps this issue by providing what is essentially the Android operating system, but with open source technologies replacing Google apps and services. This allows /e/ to run most Android apps and therefore benefit from the Android ecosystem while providing a more open platform, less dependent on advertisements and data harvesting for revenue. The /e/ Foundation was kind enough to send me a demo phone which arrived in a nondescript brown box. Inside the box was the product's box itself which declares brightly on the front: "your data is your data". The back of the box lets us know it contains a smart phone with a one-year warranty that has been unlocked and is compatible with Android apps. Inside the box I found a little booklet which explains how to set up the phone. (Charge it, insert the SIM card and follow on-screen instructions.) The directions, while brief, are printed in five languages: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The /e/ phones, while they can be run anywhere in the world, are sold only in Europe presently. The box also contains the phone, a Samsung Galaxy S9 in my case, a set of earphones, a European outlet-to-USB adaptor, a USB cable, and a little pin that can be used to pop open the Samsung's SIM port. For people who do not live in Europe, you can buy a supported model of Android phone, download /e/ and flash it to your device. In the future, the /e/ Foundation plans to make a service available where people can mail in their devices and /e/ will install their operating system on it and ship back the phone. Getting set up In the booklet which came with the /e/ phone there is a recommendation for visiting a website to sign up for an /e/ account. This account gives us 5GB of on-line storage (with the option to upgrade), an e-mail account, and the ability to automatically synchronize files, settings, tasks, and contacts from our phone. The on-line account appears to mostly be implemented using Nextcloud and I will talk about that later. For now I will say the on-line registration process worked smoothly and I was up and running with a new account quickly. The phone I received arrived mostly charged and I let it sit plugged in for a while to top it off. I like that there is a light on the phone that changes colour, depending on whether it is charging, fully charged, or has a notification waiting to be read. This makes it easier to check the device's status without activating the display. There are four buttons on the phone I received. Volume Up, Volume Down, Power, and one which does not appear to do anything. Turning on the phone brings up a mostly white logo screen. We are then walked through a few configuration steps, beginning with selecting our preferred language from a list. Before moving onto the next screen, a warning popped up and told me "calendar has stopped". This was perhaps the only error I saw during my trial, but its timing (at the beginning of the test run) was not a great early impression. The phone's wizard continues to walk us through selecting our time zone, optionally connecting to a wi-fi network, and (again optionally) enabling location services for permitted apps. We can then choose to enable fingerprint unlocking and protecting the phone with a PIN. Finally, we have the option of putting in our on-line /e/ account credentials to synchronize the phone with our cloud account. So far things were going fairly smoothly. First impressions Once the setup process was complete, /e/ displays a user interface that is made up of two screens and we can use a swipe gesture to move between them. The main screen has launcher icons for installed applications. Toward the bottom of this screen are four icons set aside (fixed in place) which provide access to the Phone app, a texting application, the camera, and the web browser. The second screen featured two widgets, one showing the local weather and another which showed recommended (typically recently used) applications I might want to launch again. Along the top of both screens is a status bar that can be pulled down to see notifications and access some settings. At the very bottom of the display are three buttons which should be familiar to Android users, the Back, Home, and Open Windows buttons. The default wallpaper for /e/ is bright and mostly orange, which reminds me of a close-up view of the Firefox logo. Included software The /e/ phone arrived with several apps already installed for me. The line-up included a calculator, calendar, the Chromium browser (re-branded as the /e/ browser). The device also features a clock, file manager, photo gallery, camera, mail client, music player, and note taking app. There is an audio recorder, a task tracker, the Magic Earth GPS/maps application, and a weather application. There is also a phone call making application and texting app to round out the experience. Playing around with the included software, I generally found things worked well and as expected. It has been about three years since I last used an Android phone for any extended period of time, but it was fairly easy for me to get back into the habit of using the Android-style applications. The phone running /e/ was very responsive and I liked how snappy it was and how smoothly the user interface performed. One of the few problems I had when using the Samsung phone was getting accurate location information. For instance, when I was using the Maps app, at first my perceived location was off by several kilometres. After a reboot, the GPS managed to place my position closer, but still off by several blocks. I tried the Maps app a few times and it never got more accurate than a few blocks away from my actual position. If I manually entered my current location, the GPS functions would work and provide directions to where I wanted to go, but it did require that I tell the phone where it was and prepare to slightly adjust my expectations of the directions given. The other GPS-related quirk I ran into came from the Weather app. There is a default widget on the second screen which shows the current weather forecast and, as far as I could tell, it accurately displayed both my location and the local weather. Tapping the weather widget opened the full Weather app. By default the Weather app showed my position as being in London, England rather than Canada. I went into the app's settings and tried to enable location data, but this failed with an error reporting I needed to grant the app permission to access the GPS data. This seemed like a good idea, but it was not immediately clear if I could do this from within the app. I found that clicking the app's Update Location button did bring up a prompt to get access to location data, but the lookup failed. I had to close the app and re-open it before it would update its position. Then it did show weather data for a town in my province in Canada, just not the town I was in. I chalked this up to being "close enough" for all practical purposes. Hardware specifications Though the phone's hardware was not my focus during my trial, the platform always plays a role in how well an operating system works. The detailed specifications of the Samsung device list it has having an octa-core CPU running at up to 3GHz. My device shipped with 64GB of storage, 8.3GB of which was used for the operating system. The phone offered 3.5GB of RAM and I generally used about 1.9GB of memory when the phone first booted. The Samsung offers two cameras, a 12 megapixel camera in the back and an 8 megapixel view in the front. The interface was very responsive and smooth during my trial. Apps opened quickly and gestures responded immediately to my touch. The phone's hardware all worked smoothly, including wireless networking, the microphone, camera, and (with some quirks) GPS. I did not have any cause to test Bluetooth connections, but the phone enables Bluetooth by default. Adding new apps Downloading new applications on /e/ is quite straight forward. There is an icon labelled Apps on the main screen and tapping it opens the phone's software centre. The centre is arranged much the same way as the Google Play store or the Linux Mint software centre. The front page of the store shows popular items we can scroll through and new programs can be installed with the tap of a button. Tabs at the bottom of the store's page allow us to browse through categories of software or search for apps by name. The store can also handle updates to programs we have already installed. My experience with the Apps store was entirely painless and I found it easy to navigate. The interface was snappy and smooth. If I had any complaint it might be that the store's main page looks a little crowded on the Samsung's screen, but it is a small concern. Functionally and visually the store is quite good and I had no problems hunting down new applications. I went looking for quite a few programs and found lots of popular Android apps, including Spotify, Firefox, Telegram, WhatsApp Messenger, the F-Droid open software centre, Facebook, Plants vs Zombies 2, KDE Connect, and so on. In short, there seems to be no shortage of applications. However, not all programs available in Google's Play store are available through the /e/ store. If you need an application which is currently missing there is an option in the Apps store to request the app be added. The one issue I did have was at one point the /e/ phone popped up a notification that let me know there was an app update waiting to be installed. Tapping the notification opened the Apps store and I tapped the Updates tab. The Updates tab showed there were no new downloads available. The next day I checked back and there was one update listed (for KDE Connect), which updated without any problems. On-line services Earlier I mentioned signing up for an account which provides on-line storage and synchronization options. There is an on-line portal we can sign into that is basically Nextcloud with modules set up for handling e-mail, contacts, tasks, and a calendar. The web-based service is quite useful and I think its ability to sync data, especially calendar appointments and contacts, will do nicely to fill in for Google's equivalents. The only problem I potentially see is sharing these features with other users. I know several families who coordinate through Google Calendar and I don't think most people are going to be prepared to switch or coordinate with someone who insists on using the Nextcloud calendar instead. That being said, the on-line storage works very well. Photos, appointments, and contacts all sync automatically when we enable our account on the /e/ phone. Sometimes it takes a while for items to sync and it looks like the on-line Documents folder does not sync down to the phone, but the other folders do sync in both directions and it all works transparently. Observations and other features The /e/ phone allows users to apply permissions or restrictions dealing with a wide variety of access for each app. We can adjust access to contacts, our calendar, local storage, the microphone, and so on. Things tend to be pretty locked down by default. This is good for security, though sometimes inconvenient. For example, I had to grant the web browser permission to save files to my phone, then grant permission to open the file I had just saved. This sort of fine-grained permission is a careful balancing act between providing safe defaults and not inadvertently training the user to simply tap through permission prompts. For the most part I think /e/ does a good job in this arena, keeping things locked down, but usually not too much. It took me a while to find software updates for the base operating system. These updates can be found in the Settings panel, under the "About phone" screen. Specifically, the item we need to look at is called "LineageOS Updates". When I began using the phone there were two updates available. I installed the latest, which rebooted my phone, installed the update cleanly and caused the older update to be hidden. The update, which was 719MB in size, went smoothly. However, when I installed the update, I discovered vibration feedback (when typing) was turned on. I had disabled vibration feedback when I first started using the phone. The setting was still off under the vibrations and notifications settings so I had to spend a while hunting down where else I had to disable the physical feedback. I eventually found it tucked away under Settings->System->Languages & Input-> Keyboard & Inputs->Virtual Keyboard. It was a long dig down, but it allowed me to keep my phone from vibrating whenever I was typing. Earlier I mentioned updates to the /e/ operating system can be found under a section of the Settings panel under the heading of LineageOS Updates. This highlights an interesting issue of identification I kept seeing. On the surface everything is branded as "e" or "/e/".  But scratch the surface and we see the phone refer to itself as being "Powered by Android", or as running LineageOS, or running Linux. For example, the "About phone" screen identifies the phone as Android 8.1.0 and LineageOS 0.7, running Linux 4.9.133 with SELinux enabled. The on-line cloud storage, on the surface, refers to itself as "e" and copyrighted by the "e Foundation", but digging into some screens causes the portal to refer to itself as Nextcloud. For people who never peek beneath the surface, these quirks of identity probably don't matter. However, it is one of those little things that can confuse people when they are poking around or trying to get support. Hopefully the rebranding will become more complete over time. On a separate topic, I could not get my desktop computer, running GNU/Linux, to talk over USB with the /e/ phone. Even after confirming the phone's MTP protocol was enabled, and after trying multiple file managers on the desktop (including Dolphin and Thunar) I was unable to directly access pictures or files on the phone from my desktop. Luckily, the /e/ phone's software centre includes the KDE Connect service. This allows the phone to share files, notifications, and some other features with a desktop computer. KDE Connect is probably the one important tool I miss when I'm not running Android on my phone, and it was nice to see this service is available. Conclusions One of the tricky aspects of evaluating /e/, especially at this early stage, was trying to decide on what my perspective should be going into this review. Should I view /e/ from the point of view of a UBports user looking at alternatives? A former Android user interested in an un-Googled alternative? A relative novice to technology looking at phone options and comparing /e/ against iOS and Android? A privacy enthusiastic looking for a more locked down device? A person can try to wear a lot of different hats when looking at a new piece of technology and I was not sure the best angle to use when approaching /e/. For the most part I tried to view /e/ through two lenses: 1. Would it function as a good alternative for me personally when compared to UBports? 2. Could I hand this phone over to non-technology enthusiasts (like a parent or friend) and have them use it instead of iOS or Android? Looking at /e/ as an alternative to UBports, I see some immediate benefits to /e/. It has a much larger and more mainstream application ecosystem. The /e/ platform runs more programs other people are likely to be using and this makes it easier to coordinate with other people. The /e/ phone has more settings and fine-tuning options. This makes for a much more cluttered Settings panel, but it also offers more control. Perhaps the best feature though is the on-line storage and sync options. UBports doesn't really have a competitor to Google services, like calendar and contact synchronization, and it is a feature I miss. The Nextcloud web interface is quite good and I see it as not only better than anything in the UBports ecosystem, I'd argue that it beats Google's services in terms of friendliness and accessibility. The only problem is getting people you coordinate with on-line to use Nextcloud instead of Google Calendar or Google Docs. Personally, I think UBports does have a few benefits. It offers a full GNU/Linux platform, compared to Android's (or /e/'s) somewhat bare bones underpinnings. UBports also streamlines its settings more and has a much more flexible and powerful status bar compared to /e/. On the whole, I feel UBports provides the better base operating system while /e/ is providing a better and more powerful ecosystem around the phone. The apps and services /e/ offers are far and away richer than anything UBports supplies, but I like the UBports interface and low-level features better. As to whether I could hand this phone over to a non-technical user, I experimented by doing just that. I met with a current iOS/iPhone user and asked her to play around with my new phone. She had no trouble setting up tasks, appointments, browsing the web, and installing and accessing Spotify. While the interface was slightly unfamiliar, as it was from the Android family rather than the Apple family of operating systems, she had no trouble getting used to the experience. In fact, since she was accustomed to tapping buttons instead of swiping (which is the common interaction on UBports) she adjusted faster to the new phone than I did. The /e/ phone does not offer all the apps Android does, and it might not be entirely polished yet in the re-branding experience. However, it does provide a very solid, mostly Android compatible experience without the Google bits. The /e/ team offers a wider range of hardware support than most other iOS and Android competitors, it offers most of the popular Android apps people will probably want to use (I only discovered a few missing items I wanted), and the on-line cloud services are better than those of any other phone I've used (including Ubuntu One and Google). I'd certainly recommend /e/ for more technical users who can work around minor rough edges and who won't get confused by the unusual branding and semi-frequent permission prompts. I'm not sure if I'd hand one of these phones over to an Android power-user who uses a lot of niche apps, but this phone would certainly do well in the hands of, for instance, my parents or other users who tend to interact with their phones for texting, phone calls, and the calendar without using many exotic applications. This phone feels like a good first version from the /e/ team and, as the web portal firms up and more Android apps are imported into the project's software centre, I feel I will be comfortable recommending this platform to just about anyone who doesn't specifically need (or want) Google services. 1. Sometimes the phone identified itself as a Galaxy S8, though usually as an S9, depending on the screen or service I was using. Memory was also reported differently in various areas. The command line reports 3.5GB of RAM, the "About phone" screen lists 3.3GB, and the on-line specifications claim the phone offers 4GB of RAM. There is no practical difference in either case, but I find the little variations interesting. As I still have the /e/ phone and am continuing to play with it, I will be happy to answer questions about the device's software and services. Should you have a question about the /e/ phone, please leave a comment below or e-mail me. I will publish my answers in a future issue of DistroWatch Weekly.

Old Chap!

I am older than you think.

High Up

Kandyan Dancers

Chameleon

I need lot of sleep in my twilight years.

He is now probably in heaven!

I am lonely!

I have no play mates.

Bul Bul Nest

The young ones have gone.

Nest of the Bul Bul

This is not the nest of the Munia, the Twitter.
It is too big.
Judging by the visitor birds, it is probably a Bul Bul Nest.
Twitter makes a nest from a single leaf folded.
I have a picture of twitter Nest in this blog site.

American Brain Waves

Reproduction

American Brain Waves

I have chosen the above title to show how we follow the American Hegemony.
The Current need is alternative Energy Sources! 
We are not investing on Solar Power.
Why I do not know?

Below are two my old pieces reproduced.
They are in a private domain and not visible in public domain.

Human Destiny 

It looks likes human needs take paramount importance. 
The needs of other living beings on this planet is no concern.
Human needs are not measured by bare existence but by uncontrolled desire, greed and exploitation of the very environment he lives in.

He is not very responsible but very erratic in behaviour.
He explores and expands both in numbers and the spheres of influence.
 
When the going is good he expands and when the going is bad he perseveres at the expense of all other beings.

Human is the only species known to eats its own beings and all the other edible beings.

He does not spare anything that this earth can offer,
 
When the going is good it is Lancashire hotpot with lamb but when the going is bad it is only potato hotpot.

His culinary desires which includes cannibalism speaks of his destructive nature.

How can we say he is a rational being?

Only rationality is his own existence at the expense of sometimes his own fellow beings.

Rat race and nothing but rat race.

That is the virtue of all powerful capitalism, power and wealth.

There is something wrong in this simple equation.

Expand, exploit and try to gain control at every advantage point.

He does not learn lessons from the past,
 
40 years ago in 1973, when oil price hike followed after the Middle est conflict he was ill prepared.

I saw what that meant for our children.

Thousands and thousand of children died of starvation and illness.

We are not ready for its repetition.

This time it is the global warming which is going to precipitate it.

40 years ago it was oil and energy and thereafter the food crisis.

When there is scarcity we tend to invest more on the same resource instead of changing to alternative resources.

In fact after the last oil crisis we had being using oil at a rate far more energetic than before.

We were not ready for the global warming.

In fact we did all to precipitate it.

Then there will be a Youth Bubble.
 
The rich dictators were not receptive to the needs of the poor while piling up money for their own fantasies.

How can we say man is rational.

His greed dictates the front line.
The ones who are behind the line or sitting on the bench have no say.

Unfortunately this equation is going to change.

Be prepared the human, the stupid exploiter.
 
Forest Harvesting
I was bit inquisitive why there are so many tornadoes and hurricanes in America.

I just went to Google Earth and had a little peep from above of North America’s, the West and the East.

There is hardly any difference in tree cover over the land, East or West.

Mostly farmland and build up areas.

That did not give me any clue to the state of the forest cover.

Then I went and searched deforestation.

Americans harvested 90% of the land in 70 years from 1850 to 1920.
Entire East was covered with Forest and fair proportion of the West was covered with primary forest. 
The deforestation continued to this century and America now has mainly secondary forest covering 10% of the land.
American knew that the CO2 problem started around 1920 and continues even today due to their exploitation of fossil fuel.

Did they tell the truth to the world?

Big No.

In Sri-Lanka we had 90% forest cover until around 1850 and British started deforestation for coffee and tea cultivation. 

By the time they left in 1948 forest cover was over 60% but before they left they pass a law prohibiting encroachment of the Crown Land.

From 1948 to 2000 we have decimated another 40 percent especially after 1970.

We are now below the minimal threshold of 25% to maintain our rivers.

This land now can be called the People’s Land instead of the Crown Land and the tree felling and the development go on.

When the thermal power plant is operational we will be approaching 10% level which is the cut off point for desert classification.

Acid rain will do the rest even we stop cutting to Zero.

Then we can say we are better than America in case of deforestation and go for an IMF loan.
Very soon we will be no different from Dubai.

Regards to American tornadoes and hurricanes trees act as a wind breaks and control the water cycle better. 
They should reforest America back to 1920 or continue to have this cycle every year.

Problem is there is no country rich American can go to avoid hurricanes since rest of the world is no better including China.

This is what I call the development of the Earth Crisis.

The prediction that world ends in 2012 should be rephrased that "The irreversible loss of biodiversity is in full swing from now onward with the global warming well established and irreversible."

We Sri-Lanksn will be drilling oil with Indian help till sun goes down.

Lessons for Ceylon from President Trump’s Impeachment

Lessons for Ceylon from President Trump’s Impeachment

I will make a strategic install for future reference for political analysis later but let me say what will happen in America (my gut feelings).

In America, there are three institutions, the Senate, The House and the Judiciary.

Currently Executive Presidency is above two of those institutions except the Judiciary.

The judiciary is independent and see what is happening to former FBI director and the whistle -blowers.

Outcome

1. Republican party will win a working majority both in Senate and House in 2020. They do not need 2/3rd majority.

2. President Trump will keep his promises to the masses who voted for him and will vote for him.

3.Democratic party will try to pull the rug under and maintain a low status quo (no quit for pro at all) to stop him in vain.

4. President Trump will sail through the obstacles in his second term much more vigorously than in his first term.

5. He will leave white house for good not leaving his children or in laws as heir to the "Throne".

6. Mrs. Nacncy Pelosi and Mr. Joe Biden will bite the dust blown by the impeachment fiasco.

In Ceylon we have only one whistle blower with credible recordings unlike in US.

He is called Mr. Ranjan Ramanayake and he is in Prison for whistling a bit of data.

1. In Ceylon S.L.P.P might come into power well short of two third majority (thanks to RR=Raja) in parliament in 2020. 

The S.L.F.P will be on course for a natural and slow death under M.S.

Thanks to using National ID that rigging is impossible but intimidation of military style will happen in the North and the East.

2. Winning S.L.P.P. will not keep it promises after the election due to the Debt Trap of their own creation.

3. Losing U.N.P. and J.V.P. cannot pull the rug under due to military style discipline by those in power and media moguls.

4. MR won’t be able to sail through the Debt Trap.

China and India will exploit the Ceylon Predicament and own valuable assets (airports, ports and sea) and will compete with USA for strategic exploitation of our weaknesses.

The I.M.F. will look the other way due to L.T.T.E. inputs.

5. MR and his exclusive family members want to ascend to the heir and owners of the throne. 
 

5. Buddhist monks will encroach on civil liberty like in Myanmar and want to keep this family on the throne and all other religions will have to be subservient (no freedom for worship, no freedom to speak, and no ability to escape from poverty). 
But these monks will become fat both in size and political pull.
The bottom line scenario is for the average voter to be so poor with only hand to mouth existence, so that the rich can acquire more merits by giving them crumbs and leftovers after they place this family on the throne for ever.
Prosperity for a limited few and absolute poverty for the rest.

Now my "Strategic Install" or input for budding politicians!

1. Form a coalition for abolishing the Post of Presidency and sending all culprits of Auditor General report to prison just like they sent R.R. to prison for listening to private data.

Getting the 50% is chicken feed; the disadvantages and lack of checks and balances of the constitution (unlike in America) has been evaluated in detail for over 20 years.

Judiciary is not (R.Rs assertion) independent but thorn (not a jewel) in the flesh of democracy (according to Victor Ivan only the Podians (4% of the total convictions go to prison) go to the jail and Bond Scams and Auditor General’s independent report will gather dust.

This happens, the moment the parliament is dissolved.

I believe L.T.T.E came into existence due to J.R.J’s stupid constitution.

2. We do not need 2/3rd majority now that the L.T.T.E and J.V.P. are no more a threat.

3. Only threat is going back to J.R.J’s constitution or making a much more worse constitution to please Buddhist Monks and installing a new king with Dasa Raja Dhamma (failed J.R.J exercise).

I do not know where Victor Ivan stands politically on these issues, now.

Dirty Tricks by Default (Gossip)

Bar room gossip has caused Time, Money and Resources of American Tax Payers Money.

This reproduction is for me to keep track of the forerunner of Impeachment of President Donald Trump!

He stands tall now for his forbearance, that he may have learned not in politics BUT in business!

Reproduction 

In its initial 2016 FISA warrant application, the FBI flatly called Page "an agent of a foreign power." 

Sources told Fox News last month that U.S. Attorney John Durham's separate, ongoing probe into potential FBI and Justice Department misconduct in the run-up to the 2016 election through the spring of 2017 has transitioned into a full-fledged criminal investigation -- and that Horowitz's report will shed light on why Durham's probe has become a criminal inquiry.

FBI AGENTS MANIPULATED FLYNN FILE, AS CLAPPER ORDERED 'KILL SHOT,' FILING SAYS
Durham has reportedly taken up Horowitz's findings concerning the falsified FISA document, meaning the ex-FBI lawyer who made the changes is now under criminal investigation. The Post indicated, however, that the document was not central to the legality of the FISA warrant obtained against Page.
Republicans have long argued that the FBI's alleged FISA abuses, which came as the bureau aggressively pursued ultimately unsubstantiated claims of criminal links between the Trump team and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign, were politically motivated. 
In recent months, a series of unearthed documents has strengthened those claims.
Just nine days before the FBI applied for its first FISA warrant to surveil Page, bureau officials were battling with a senior Justice Department official who had "continued concerns" about the "possible bias" of a source pivotal to the application, according to internal text messages previously obtained by Fox News.

FBI email chain may provide most damning evidence of FISA abuses yet

By John Solomon Opinion Contributor
Just before Thanksgiving, House Republicans amended the list of documents they’d like President Trump to declassify in the Russia investigation. With little fanfare or explanation, the lawmakers, led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), added a string of emails between the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to their wish list.
Sources tell me the targeted documents may provide the most damning evidence to date of potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), evidence that has been kept from the majority of members of Congress for more than two years.
The email exchanges included then-FBI Director James Comey, key FBI investigators in the Russia probe and lawyers in the DOJ’s national security division, and they occurred in early to mid-October, before the FBI successfully secured a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The email exchanges show the FBI was aware — before it secured the now-infamous warrant — that there were intelligence community concerns about the reliability of the main evidence used to support it: the Christopher Steele dossier.
The exchanges also indicate FBI officials were aware that Steele, the former MI6 British intelligence operative then working as a confidential human source for the bureau, had contacts with news media reporters before the FISA warrant was secured.
The FBI fired Steele on Nov. 1, 2016 — two weeks after securing the warrant — on the grounds that he had unauthorized contacts with the news media.
But the FBI withheld from the American public and Congress, until months later, that Steele had been paid to find his dirt on Trump by a firm doing political opposition research for the Democratic Party and for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and that Steele himself harbored hatred for Trump.
If the FBI knew of his media contacts and the concerns about the reliability of his dossier before seeking the warrant, it would constitute a serious breach of FISA regulations and the trust that the FISA court places in the FBI.
That’s because the FBI has an obligation to certify to the court before it approves FISA warrants that its evidence is verified, and to alert the judges to any flaws in its evidence or information that suggest the target might be innocent.
We now know the FBI used an article from Yahoo News as independent corroboration for the Steele dossier when, in fact, Steele had talked to the news outlet.
If the FBI knew Steele had that media contact before it submitted the article, it likely would be guilty of circular intelligence reporting, a forbidden tactic in which two pieces of evidence are portrayed as independent corroboration when, in fact, they originated from the same source.
These issues are why the FBI email chain, kept from most members of Congress for the past two years, suddenly landed on the declassification list.
The addition to the list also comes at a sensitive time, as House Republicans prepare on Friday to question Comey, who signed off on the FISA warrant while remaining an outlier in the intelligence community about the Steele dossier.
Most intelligence officials, such as former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, have embraced the concerns laid out in the Steele dossier of possible — but still unproven — collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Yet, 10 months after the probe started and a month after Robert Mueller was named special counsel in the Russia probe, Comey cast doubt on the the Steele dossier, calling it “unverified” and “salacious” in sworn testimony before Congress.
Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page further corroborated Comey’s concerns in recent testimony before House lawmakers, revealing that the FBI had not corroborated the collusion charges by May 2017, despite nine months of exhaustive counterintelligence investigation.
Lawmakers now want to question Comey about whether the information in the October email string contributed to the former FBI director’s assessment.
The question long has lingered about when the doubts inside the FBI first surfaced about the allegations in the Steele dossier.
Sources tell me the email chain provides the most direct evidence that the bureau, and possibly the DOJ, had reasons to doubt the Steele dossier before the FISA warrant was secured.
Sources say the specifics of the email chain remain classified, but its general sentiments about the Steele dossier and the media contacts have been discussed in nonclassified settings.
“If these documents are released, the American public will have clear and convincing evidence to see the FISA warrant that escalated the Russia probe just before Election Day was flawed and the judges [were] misled,” one knowledgeable source told me.
Congressional investigators also have growing evidence that some evidence inserted into the fourth and final application for the FISA — a document signed by current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — was suspect.
Nunes hinted as much himself in comments he made on Sean Hannity’s Fox News TV show on Nov. 20, when he disclosed the FBI email string was added to the declassification request. The release of the documents will “give finality to everyone who wants to know what their government did to a political campaign” and verify that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia during the election, Nunes said.
As more of the secret evidence used to justify the Russia probe becomes public, an increasingly dark portrait of the FBI’s conduct emerges.
The bureau, under a Democratic-controlled Justice Department, sought a warrant to spy on the duly nominated GOP candidate for president in the final weeks of the 2016 election, based on evidence that was generated under a contract paid by his political opponent.
That evidence, the Steele dossier, was not fully vetted by the bureau and was deemed unverified months after the warrant was issued.
At least one news article was used in the FISA warrant to bolster the dossier as independent corroboration when, it fact, it was traced to a news organization that had been in contact with Steele, creating a high likelihood it was circular intelligence reporting.
And the entire warrant, the FBI’s own document shows, was being rushed to approval by two agents who hated Trump and stated in their own texts that they wanted to “stop” the Republican from becoming president.
If ever there were grounds to investigate the investigators, these facts provide the justification.
Director Comey and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein likely hold the answers, as do the still-classified documents.
It’s time all three be put under a public microscope.
 
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments and numerous cases of political corruption. 

He is The Hill’s executive vice president for video.

Escape from Wisdom

Escape from Wisdom

This does not come from Dhamma Pada but as a creative opinion of no authorship (perhaps life experience).

It is a crime to make a temple (any denomination) a political institution instead of “Bedrock of Emancipation”.

Monks (applies to political guys garbed in saffron cloth) and priests who device these instruments are enigmatic and sordid souls!

Then the Saffron cloth (becomes) is no different from guys and girls who sport political colour in public places.

I think they should wear blue, green or red garbs instead.