Training Young Guys and Girls
Training Young in Ceylon is almost impossible.
Let me give credit to three academicians and J.I.C.A for giving me an opportunity work in the Faculty of Dental sciences, even though I was a Medical Guy.
1. Professor Ranjith Mendis whose career was destroyed by the present President who was rejected by the masses.
He was U.G.C. Chairman with a grand scheme for all the Universities.
Current President's Aim is to destroy all the universities and install Private Fee paying Institutes of very low standard.
2. Professor Asoka Ekanayake.
3. Professor Laxhman Wijayaweera
Sometimes, my own students (I was a teacher as a Seconded Officer, in the Medical Faculty) in Medical Faculty who ended up as academicians used to ask me have I made a right decision.
I can say, Yes because I helped several young guys to advance in their career, two of them ended up as head of their respective divisions.
These two actually helped me in my own Research Work. Strangely enough my own interest was computers and Linux and I could not train a single guy in Linux.
The guy who was maestro in Linux (15 years younger) coming from my same college left our University and formed a prestigious Institute in America.
Good on him!
I bought the first 3 computers to my college from UK and currently I believe the unit is dysfunctional. The Teacher In Charge (when I visited there 25 years ago) did not open the room.
It was closed for students.
I never set foot on this school.
I went there to donate a few more units and they were donated to a Private School in Kandy, where one of my uncles was teaching (he was only two years older to me).
Coming to J.I.C.A. and Dental School for our luck New Dental School was built outside the University and we had our own Telecom Unit.
With the help of the Engineering Faculty we had our own Samba Server.
The problem was selecting and training the guys.
With three of us, we started interviewing and recruiting.
First guy I recruited ended up in the Engineering Faculty.
The second guy we trained to start a small library ended up in the Medical faculty. A guy who was a graduate and a GP is UK donated 25 computers to the Medical Faculty and I did not have any antipathy since it was my alma mater, anyway.
The third technical guy who was already there was useless and he did not know how to even install windows.
I was looking a way out to transfer him out of the unit but on his own volition he moved out.
I do not know where he went.
The girl who came in as a replacement was no good and we finally closed the unit for good.
There was no need and the we have enough in the university to ask if we needed help.
By the way, the academic guy who was with me disappeared to a for far away island and he took the AppleMac donated to us by J.I.C.A.
I reported it as a missing item and the culprit was obvious.
On the same theme we sent 25 guys to J,I.C.A. for training on higher clinical disciplines and none of them returned and only one of them paid back his bond.
All the others were blacklisted.
Coming back to our Samba Server management we did not have a single technical guy.
Our telephone receptionist was a nice guy.
I found he was brainy.
In his free time with the help of the guys from the Engineering faculty, he managed to master the Vi terminal much better than me and the technical guy who left us.
He was an asset!
During the pandemic he was very useful in connecting me by wire to various sources, when our Telecom got almost busted.
Penetration Testing of Linux and Statistics
Nobody is sure how many are exactly using Linux worldwide but guesstimate is 1% of the computer users.
This is excluding Linux servers which is in the majority in all the spheres including Science.
This statement is related to desktop users.
I am urging all the people using Linux desktop to register at the www.distrowatch.com affiliated organization.
Global census is mandatory to see what the exact penetration is.
The fact of the matter is millions of users are out there but
getting them registered in one site is humanly impossible but if a cross
section of them register a reasonable guess work estimate can be
arrived at.
I use several machines and a laptop with Linux on board with
number of distributions (some for testing and some for my work) but I
registered once with my regular machine.
My wife uses another Linux machine which is not registered and my
daughter uses both Microsoft and Linux. My household is not a typical
one but I would rather reflect (not that it matters a lot
statistically) an average family where husband or wife uses Linux and
the other half uses Microsoft.
Current statistics is very interesting.
In a 20 million population of Sri-Lankans only 133 machines are registered currently (178 out of 224 countries).
In a 1.2 billion population 2340 Indian are registered from India (208 out of 224 countries).
Monaco with 1113 comes 5th out of 224 one of the richest private cities in the world.
Vatican city comes 6th with 26 Linux machines.
I won't talk about any any Buddhist international Institutions in Sri-Lanka.
I know of one Buddhist monk (who comes from Sweden) who is
involved in getting the Pali (Buddha's Language of use) Unicode into
Linux.
That's all.
What about Singapore?
119th with 150 machines.
No Country Pers Current Mach P/Mpop Mpop
US United States Of America 103 15555 133 21367 51.2 303 millions
Tanzania, North Korea, Myanmar, Ethiopia and Nigeria come last 5 (five) and Japan, Bangladesh and Pakistan behind them.
This is revealing.
That is a big puzzle for me where Indian institutes boast that
they produce lot of technocrats including Linux for India and for the
West.
That argument evaporate into thin air statistically.
Somebody from India should do a study on this.
I will talk about Sri-Lanka why we are way behind in this race.
I will start with a real story.
Way back in 1984 when I came back from England with Two computers
one Atari and the other Compact 128, I happened to visit the college
where I studied celebrating its 100th year in existence.
The principal was futuristic and asked me what we should do and I
promptly said we will establish a computer unit and I told him I will
get a few computers from England.
With the help of some of our old college guys in UK I manged to
get the first 3 computers myself. Then the ambassador of UK was from our
college and coordinating the thing was just a matter of few phone
calls.
This was done without any government help.
Some years later I visited the college and the principal was different and I met him and told him
I would like to see the computer unit.
I did not tell him that the early conceptual idea of starting the
computer unit was mine and I physically brought the first three
computers.
I just wanted see how those old computers were used and what new ones they have added (this was before windows 95).
I was sent from pillar to post.
First to Vice Principal, then to another teacher and another and
nobody was of any help and I could not get the room opened where the
computers were locked in.
In my mind I had decided I will not visit it again. This is the
type of teachers we have here and we did not have a computer course till
2 years ago.
That speaks volumes of the Education Ministers too.
Anyway I
joined a private hospital in Colombo where I worked with 6 programmers
and we got Unix from Singapore and used it there in dumb or black and
white terminals and got the network running for the first time in
Sri-Lanka.
Then within six months I joined the university and was very much
involved with computers (a new hospital was built with Japanese aid)
till, I stepped down to devote full time to Linux.
Why we are behind in Linux?
1. We use pirated copies even in Universities.
2. We teach them in Sinhala or Tamil and they cannot read a book on computers in English.
3. We have not trained teachers in English and IT (computer science) for over 30 years.
4. If somebody has a good idea all the other teachers come and destroy that somebody (person) first and then the idea.
5. Our administrators including principals takes bribes to admit students with the help of some powerful politicians.
6. Politicians use teachers for political work and sometimes even malpractices at polling stations.
7. Only corrupt teachers get promoted and stay in one station till life.
8. Most evident corrupt practice is to not to teach during school hours but to do private tuition after hours.
9. Even our professors are paid half what is paid in India.
10. Next round is to destroy the higher education and install private universities.
That is why we have only 133 guys using Linux Boxes in the entire country.
I am not at all surprised.
Very simple explanation.
We have got our priorities wrong.
Now few words about E-commerce in Sri-Lanka.
We have Electricity Board, Water Board and Telecoms fully
digitalized and none of them can give an accurate bill or balance sheet
on the last day of the month.
I have personal experience that computer programmers fiddle with the data and produce inaccurate reports.
There is some sort of racket going on with money matters and the
higher authorities neither have vigilance, know how and the necessary
apparatus to make investigations.
The programmers themselves do what the teachers do kill the person
first and the idea of check and balances that needs to be installed
next.
When I was in the private sector there were over 100 computer
mistakes, I manually detected daily including wrong blood groups and
wrong blood transfusions, out of over 1000 (over 10% error which is not
acceptable when working with computers) reports and my target was to
make zero defect (Quality Control).
This malady has now infiltrated the private sector, too.
That is why when I do shopping check every computer entry (which I ask every intelligent customer to do).
My final analysis is that we a mathematically stupid nation run by
mathematically stupid Central Bank who runs the affairs in a very
ordinary manner without check and balances and let the country taken to
ransom by speculators, hedgers and IMF and is equally very good at
printing various coloured notes with politicians face on them and cost
of printing is far in excess of the face value of the currency note.
If we wean off these malpractices we would be able pay economic
professors 3 to 4 times the current pay so that they are also not
involved in corrupt practices.
