Publicity, Productivity, Profits, Politics and the Public

Publicity, Productivity, Profits, Politics and the Public

I may be able to write a dissertation on each of the items mentioned above but the intentions are brief and entirely different.

I have made few resolutions after the last general election.

1. One was not to tune in to local TV including not watching Cricket unless of course our one and only Mahela is on song.

2. Two was to stop buying national papers including Sunday Editions.

3. Three was to stop engaged in political discussion of any kind.

4. Take my public profile and publicity to the lowest possible level, down to the email level, where I was only a digital entity with no worth at all and lot of guys/girls except my close friends will delete any electronic message of mine in a flash, without even reading the heading.

Mind you, email has taken even the little privacy we had and with the common courtesy.

5. Five was to increase my productivity leaps and bounds and post a blog everyday if possible related to Linux, its derivatives, utilities, its goodies, baddies and the uglies and if I cannot find a topic in Linux to post some of my bizarre dreams if not some scientific stuff.

Like the five precepts I have not broken any one of them except the number TWO.

My productivity had been exponential and come November even before our short vacation I was on mental vacation preoccupied with the Wonder Budget 2012.

I had only one irritation for the entire year which was uncalled from one of my nasty colleagues (I wonder could I call him a colleague now that this event did happen without any provocation?) and since I was almost on top of the world I could manage that episode with three days of Metta Meditation.

When one has free time bad habits creep in. that was also accidentally.

I want to fix a new Air Pump to the fish tank in which the old one was malfunctioning (thanks to our Electricity Board’s not so constant voltage this was not the only gadget I lost this year). I had everything but two steel nails long enough and strong enough to support the Air Pump.

Mind you I got up at 11.30 A.M. I wanted to make some tea and my wife told me there is no sugar for tea but lunch was almost ready.

Then we had visitors and I jumped into their car and told them if I do not get to his hardware shop by 12 P.M, I have to hold this pump in that position till Monday. He was almost closing and I collected what I wanted except the double sided stickers to stick the telephone splitter on the wall now ready for free fall.

Bought some pastries and walk up to catch a three wheeler and in a flash of bad judgment I walked into the newspaper stall to see a large pile of Sunday English papers, not sold. I bought two publications which I decline to make public here because it will give bad publicity (what I am going to write is bad anyway) to them but suffice is to say not Sunday Observer. I wanted some critical analysis of the budget not some Yes, Sir entries from the Yes Men.

Came home first thing first cup of tea first.

Fixed the air pump and filled the tank with water to the required water pressure to see everything was OK.

Treat for my dog and sat to read the paper.

First the cartoons and Andy Capp, Wizard of Os and the others and then to the pictures of the young lassies and bogged down to reading about the budget.

There were so many advertisement and feature sets or supplements it took half an hour to find the pages with budgetary analysis.

What did I get for 100 Rupees?

Good dose of budgettorrhoeal (new Sri-Lankan word coined by me joining budget and diarrhoea) analysis.

It sickened me.

There were panel discussions and everybody who is somebody is hiding behind another.

It was we go round the mulberry bush scenario.

It was like collective responsibility of the cabinet of ministers.

I was none the wiser.

I can say lot about the budget but that is I am wasting my time.

I raise few question and get into the rel reason for this writing.

1. In the year we had the elections there was no proper budget.

Is it proper?

The common knowledge was that most of the money was spent on irregular activities except paying the salaries.

2. Was there a proper assessment of the budgetary forecast for 2011, objectively?

At least retrospectively did they analyze it before stepping into new budget.

3. Do we need a Central Bank?

4. Do we need a Treasury and a Treasury Secretary?

5. Do we need a huge public service now that like what was done to Central Bank we can streamline or stream role any institution with Executive Power including the Universities?

6. Have anybody analyzed the debt crisis that is slowly creeping into our hand to mouth economy?

7. Do we need to debate this White Paper / White Elephant any length of time in the parliament?

I am not asking this with any bad taste but only with thinking about my grandchildren.

Advertisement Supplements

Real reason I am writing this was to highlight that lot of people depend on the Sunday Paper for lot of publicity and to get their voice heard and get rid of bad goodies and bad debts.

Is the money spent by majority of them is going to the coffers of the paper magnets without any help to the advertiser.

Has anybody done any research on the effectiveness of this mega advertisement strategy?

Is the money well spent?

Can we do it in a better way?

I call it the Amazon Way.

Why not going for digital methods?

The Sunday Paper is thrown away the very next day and it is a huge waste of money and paper (along with rain forest).

The digital stuff remains in the Server.

Are we still carrying the Hana Miti (Bundles of Jute)?

If one has some good, goodies to sell one should go beyond the local boundaries (at least South East Asia) and start selling digitally.

That is my advice.

It might have some teething problems and might have to take “head on’ the initial inertia but given time an cloud computing coming to existence that is the way forward.

Sinhala Linux-Hanthana Linux Included-Debian Update

Reproduction from Distrowatch

(by Dr.Asoka Dissanayake (Medical)

on 2011-02-22 22:52:30 GMT from Sri Lanka)

I have to confess now I support Light Weight Distributions and PCLinux is my my favourite,

But I love its Gorilla (dearly) Edition PClinuxfullmonty too.

I use it (PCLinux) as a Gold standard (not bench mark) for 32 bit hardware and Texstar is about to release the 64 bit version but he is keeping it close to his heart.

Coming back to Sinhala Linux Debian is the winner by neck and half length (horse racing terminology). I downloaded all of the CD and DVD and had a trial run of them and they are pretty good and elegant especially the KDE.

Again I confess I am a KDE fan especially because of its looks and the K3B burner which does not harm the hardware. Before I started using it I used to lose a CD/DVD writers almost every two to three months.

Both PClinucx and SuSe are KDE based. Suse is damn slow like windows but PCLinux is pretty fast.

Unlike you guts I have about 8 distributions in my laptop and I use them in rotation to get best out of them.

I have Debian also and I will tell you now why I use Debian.

It is the only distribution which can cohabit with all the others distributions and arrange the partition table so nicely in the GRUB and boot all the others.

Unlike Windows and Ubuntu, Debian does not fear other distributions.

SuSe cannot read more than 15 partitions and in the beginning they used to have over 60 (I stand to correction) partitions. PClinux some time cannot read FAT partitions and its partition formats are limited.

So I install Debian one before the last distribution and to get a nice boot flash I use PCLinux the last.

Debian make it easy for the PCLinusx to read the partition table.

There are many other strong points about the Debian that is why we use it in the Server Level in the University.

Regarding the downloading of Hanthana Linux I just checked it a few minutes ago with only two seeders it takes 3 days plus.

Fedora 13 (the 6 CDs) version with many seeders it takes little over one day. I will download Hanthana Linux after the Cricket World Cup which is my preoccupation currently.

Following is a summary of download times for your perusal.

Last there (3 days)
1. Bodhi 3 hours
2. Kubuntu 7 hours
3. EB4 9 hours
4. Pinguy 4 and a half days
5. Monty 2 days
and fastest was ArtistX one day and probably Fedora 13 too (also little over one day (according to estimate).
These are facts and not gut feelings,
I am struggling with pixie which has taken one day but still not finished.

Toilet Paper Catching Fire

There is a story circulating in Colombo Diplomatic Circles that a certain UNO Officer investigating or perhaps observing war crimes being enacted in his subjective presence was given a hot meal of Nai Miris (Cobra Chillies) as his taste.

The entree went like this.

He was told it was a Sri-Lankan top class delicacy that war heroes on both sides of the divide partake before their final assault.

Once you partake a little, then do not feel any other pain even due to gross injuries and it is also a mood elevating and quite similar to Onions for Indians.

He was quite take up by the introduction, instead of tasting a little he avail himself of a liberal quantity as it were a Dhana Festival in a temple and had to rush to the toilet.

Whatever, he did in the toilet did not allay his misery and he decided to pull a fag inside the toilet.

Moment he triggered the lighter there was a big bang and accidentally he lit the toilet roll too.

The flash of fire, smoke and the big bang alerted the security thinking that there was a bomb.

Surprisingly the young diplomat emerged without any significant injury or burns and in his flight and fright the burning sensation due to Nai Miris disappeared, instantaneously.

But he started running towards the back entrance and the fire exit.

The security officer thought he was a terrorist and followed suit.

He shouted stop.

I am UNO and BunKi Moon Man he said in his flight.

Eventually the security caught up with him.

When inquired he said there is a bomb in the toilet.

By that time one of the environmentalist emerged from the crowd and said his capsule worked wonders!

Everybody was puzzled.

Then he said he put a capsule of biogas making strain into the toilet before the meeting to test whether UNO officers consuming enormous natural resources of the friendly countries could produce biogas during a meeting.

And their shit or the scat can produce enough was his test finding with one capsule.

Now he is trying to patent his discovery to solve the energy crisis of today.

 

U.N.O

Well we tend to be very reflective in old age and lament on the past.

Instead of the obituaries we should look at the birthdays.

Dead are gone perhaps leaving behind good memories, perhaps not.

Living in the past is not the way forward.

Past unfortunately tend to harbour all the thoughts of ill will and hate.

Digging into the past of miseries, war and death has made this nation to be very negative.

It is unfortunate even the United Nations Organization is also live in the past.

They cannot see the present devastation in the East with floods and they are good at counting the number of dead of the war past.

They are not making any attempt to make the life meaningful for the survivors of the ruthless war.

The survivors have water up to their neck but UNO is not ready to give a lifeboat or a raft to them but ready to spend countless dollars in counting the ruthless dead bodies of hate , violence and ill will.

They perpetuate ill will and difference instead of uniting and bridging the gaps. They are trapped in the vicious propaganda not knowing how to wade off or avoid conflict of interests.

How can they be called astute negotiators if they are trapped to the neck with propaganda of ill will?

When is UNO going to learn lessons from the past and prevent future catastrophes, I wonder?

When are they going to live in the present moment?

It is better to look at the present moment of truth.

It is far better to look at the present moment instead of the past or the future.

People who are in the present moment and reflective are the ones who makes companionship meaningful, even at the death bed.

We must make the present moment infectious even to the young and those going to be born.

That’s all we are sure of having.

That is the only way for reconciliation.

We need to learn how to forget the past, make amends and make the present moment beautiful.

They are trying hard to make even the present moment very miserable and are paid for that effort.

The are a very depressive lot!

The money spent by UNO is an utter waste and loss.

They do not know how to move forward.

They have put themselves shackles around their feet and grumble instead of releasing them of their bondage to evil.

 



Addiction

There are many addiction in our lives.

An that addiction varies from person to person and my addiction is if not computers it is certainly Linux.

It is based on innovation and knowledge.

It is also has strong political an social motives.

It is the copyright and exploitation. If I say I am not politically motivated it is not true. Any social activity has political roots, so is mine.

It used to be an addiction (not me) of our voters to go and vote and upset the apple cart of power brokers. It is no more.

The area basis and proportional representation has changed the electoral system and body politics upside down..

Almost 48% did not vote at the last general election.

Any many more won’t  turn up this time around allowing the people who manipulate voting system to have a field day including the counters doing the counting.

Even we have and electronic system of voting the followers of the powerful parties will find a way to engineer something marvelous to get the result they anticipate well in advance of the day of the elections.

Even the polling of surveys could be engineered the way one asks the question and present the data.

With all these facts the voters are beginning to ask the question it it worth the exercise?

The answer is in the negative.

Then who is addicted with polling and elections?

There is a very simple answer.

It is the one who is elected,

It is he/she who gets the image bloated.

Voter get deflated soon after and the promises disappear into thin air,

The vicious cycles begins another round.

This time it has come to spoil the Cricket World Cup.

Average voter want some escape route. I am pretty sure it won’t be acceded by the powerful and the one who wields the clout.

It is another “Merry Go Round” in this country in which people have lost humour and ability to laugh at the selfish self- i.e; oneself.

 

Small is beautiful



This country is going through what I called the Mega Mania Memorabilia (3M) Syndrome or the 3 M syndrome.

It reminds me of a a famous American company who markets little medical equipment and utilities including steristrips and steritapes (sterile material that could be taken from a pack and used directly (wrapped cleanly) without any fear of contamination) which I used to bring from abroad and introduce them here some years back.

One cannot find them even in a good pharmacy in this country now.

In actual fact one cannot find a sterilized dab (swab) of cotton wool leave alone a sanitary towel (sterilization can be easily accomplished by UV light) for females for a reasonable price.

This company in addition to doing small things right produce an array of stethoscopes for doctors.

I should remind you that doctors are a minority in any country but doing small things right this company makes healthy profit year round.

We can presently do the proper sterilization only in a major hospital and send the packs to the periphery in unhygienic condition and by the time they reach the user it probably needs re-sterilization.

Come this country we cannot find any good product (except coconut coir) with coconuts or rubber (it used to be Ceyesta, the combination of coconut coir and rubber that was almost number one in the world) but – fiesta should be its revival name for researching back to the roots of our inventions in the past.

We seem to be not doing small things right.

When we fell a tree 4 trees should be planted to take its place.

What we do is we fell 10,000 trees a day and plant one tree a day on a tree planting day and never look after the sapling till the next important birthday comes and then clean the same pot hole and replant another.

This is country known for looking after a Bo Tree for over 2500 years (last 100 years by putting milk on a Poya day we destroy the roots of that Bo Tree very well looked after for  over2500 years) and cannot care for a sapling for one year and that is also left to school children who study for a competitive examination (to beat a fellow friend is the name of the game ) and come back on a particular day to water it,  not on a daily basis like when we did these things in the yesteryear as kids.

We used to grow with the tree and that metaphor was with us in our entire life that is why I am still a naturalist and an environmentalist to the bone marrows of my thinking.

It is not like that in our children and politicians.

They are good at rhetoric!

I can go on and on but suffice is to say we have to do small things right before we do things of Mega mania.

We must stop becoming 3 Ms but look at how the 3M company come to stay and remain there ever since.

It may be one’s spouse or head master or the all powerful boss at work place but the companion /worker/cohort should shed his or her fear of the boss and do little thing to make the others life happy.

Equally the all powerful boss should stop dishing out rhetoric and do at least little thing to make one’s subordinate happy.

This is what we call in business management keep one’s internal customers happy, then the external customers get a good deal for money.

This is a country where in the private sector did not increase the minimum wage for over a decade under the pretext of on going war.

We talk of sympathy and empathy but it is all bunkum!

Hate

There were and are waves of hate (philosophy) in this small country.

The first wave was related to the ethnic issue.

The second wave was related to the party politics.

The third wave is against the international community.

And the fourth wave is going to be the imaginary aliens, I guess.

This was a country when Atomic bomb was dropped on Japan and then late J.R.J uttered a verse in Dhammapada for record.

But when JRJ left, this country was beset with hate in all directions.

It was an irony!

Once I had the rare distinction of taking to a young Japanese gentleman who had done a lot to this country.

I asked him why he was so devoted to Sri-Lanka.
Without hesitation he said when he was a kid he could only remember the Japanese translation of the Dhammapada Verse and one day when grown up he will visit Sri-Lanka and pay his dues.

Which he did in abundance.

I told him that he should change roles and become an ambassador to which he only smiled and said one does not need to be an ambassador to do good.

That was an emphatic statement.

From that point onward when we refer to Dhammapada it was only for reference value and not for any concrete actions of compassion or empathy.

Why?

I do not know.

But I have only one theory.

When one studies only one language and specially the books dished out from the government without true educational philosophy, the Creative part of the Brain is permanently stunted and deranged.

There is no lateral or creative thinking capability.

Even the erasing of a word called Ceylon from memory is a symptom of this malady.

One cannot erase history or dictionary value of a coined word simply with rhetoric.

In time to come this country will be famous for its rhetoric with no actions.

NATO-C

The No Action Talk Only Country.

I hope in the New Year true senses should come to our body politics and restore us to ancient Eastern values.

Power and Party Politics is a Western creation to institute divide and rule philosophy.

We have become slaves of that creation and forgotten our ancient roots.

I think the presidential advisers who can read and write English should read Prof. De Bono’s books on Beautiful Mind and Lateral Thinking.

For a start we should get him (Prof. De Bono) for a Guest Lecture in honour of late Laxman Kadiragarman.

He is very expensive to hire and very busy but if given the needs and proper objectives he would oblige.

I believe he was one (LK) who had the courage and the charisma to have a beautiful mind in the face of adversity.

May we remember him for that character.

We do not want Lion Foxes, and for that matter any foxes to come to this country.

Advertisement that gets you the Business

For an advertisement to have an impact on the intended audience and get one the business, the message has to be as brief as three words.

The advertisement has to carry only 3 words apart from the product name.

Nothing more or nothing less.

Why do I say so?

The impact it creates is

Either it is,

I love it

Or

I hate it,

with some superlative starting with letter F….

Otherwise what one pays the advertising agency  is a waste (money and time) and goes down the gutter!

That is why people hate internet advertising and why internet is not contributing to productivity in a sustainable way.

Think about it in the coming year.

Internet has lot of traps and I have discovered many daring omissions and (this piece is the beginning) has made me to focus on few more aspects in the coming days and weeks, if there is time I can spare and write.

In this country (Ceylon, for that matter any country) we have practitioners who are employed by the government do private practice after hours,

They are banned by professional conduct issues and ethics to advertise except their qualifications and name.

But most of them have lucrative practice.

How do they survive?

Simple Logic.

I am good (for the money)

Not I am not bad.

One of the successful practitioner of yesteryear told us when we were students, even the bad publicity  is good in private practice.

At that time it did not dawn on me that what he said was true.

I hated bad publicity.

The proof of the pudding is here in this country.

We sent only the bad (guys / girls) ones to the parliament and good ones like me do not either do private or go to the parliament as a member and remain poor in our entire life materially but rich in ideas and disgust (corruption is rampant).

That is the choice one has to make and you better do that fast.

Paradox-01

In democracy
It is the voter
That matters.

But not so
In our democracy.

It is the elected
That matters.

That also the highest!

The lowest of all
The House of
Not so commoners
Does matter
As mouth pieces
Of democracy
But subservient
To the dictates
Of the party boss