Food for Thought

I may have to put this idea  in a point form instead of a long narrative lest I forget to post it.

1. With global warming and attendant natural catastrophes we are going to have famines and food shortages.

2. Question is can we make digestible food utensils?

3. If we can make biodegradable plastics (microbes have to do the job) the next futuristic trend would be to make utensils that we can eat up at the end of the meal.

4. If our microbes (Ecoli) cannot do the job we have to swallow a capsule or two containing microbes  before of after the meal like medicine.

5. Or even think of introducing a biogas producing microbe with the meal or after the meal or  drop  the capsule into the commode.

6. When we empty the contents of the bowel they should be there ready to spring into full action.

7. Each man producing his own quota of energy would be the first anti-capitalistic version of eco-energy principle of mine.

8. We should not think of tagging energy and digestible  food pathways to our own Ecoli due to ethical issues.

9. First of all we must make ourselves to eat the digestible food utensils.

10. It will be fun when these cutlery are made with pleasing colours and sweet taste that cleaning up job is done instantly after meal without servants.

There is one probable hitch with this plausible adventure.

Will the children eat the utensils and leave the food items for the caretaker or the parent to eat and ultimately he or she become unfashionably fat?

This is food for thought for you in the coming year, if you think of developing this idea  or improving it without telling or help of the WHO or the WFO.

Skype for Linux- Is it Pain in the Neck?

I was looking for Skype for Linux on a Live CD and I did not find any.

Then I went to the Skype site and after many hours of reading of fed up Linux users and no help at hand I tried the D.I.Y to install Skype on SuSe.

SuSe did mot have required libraries and mixer connections.

Then I tried Fedora 10 version on SuSe that also did not work with missing libraries.

Now fed up tried Ubuntu 10.10 (obtained from Skype site). it mounted Skype well but the sound mixer was defective (mike not properly configured).

Fed up already then I went for a DVD.

Tried Fusion Linux with Fedora 14 and it did not boot well or install it properly.

Unlike previous editions had a bug in the Grub file.

Now irritated enough I thought of finding a distribution with Skype from over 100 I downloaded recently and found PC/OS Webstation.

It was the only one that had reasonable performance but it also lacked many of the feature found in Windows 5 version(that is what my daughter says-I do not use windows now).

 

Ultimately I went back to PCLinux-2010-10 which I temporarily suspended using except Live booting due to script bug introduced to two of my (Windows hacker I believe, preventing me getting to web sites with iso images of Linux saying that the site is not trusted. This was an immature script but I was going behind it for some time, originated from India probably but lost interest temporarily) computers. 

Winner at the end is PCLinux.

This is why I take it as the Gold Standard.

 

I have decided to increase the points in the point scheme I have designed for Skype included Linux distributions to 250 from 100 with working Skype, which should be automatic if the distribution can boast its capability.

Even, in PCLinux the Skype was static.

 

Why it is not updated with many in USA and Europe will be skipping the air travel due to stock market crisis and delays in airports in Christmas is beyond my comprehension.

I think Santa should bring a new version of Skype Linux with Christmas and Santa should do the air travel on his own cost and deliver Skype without delay for the Holidays and New Year!.

 

Interestingly new Ubuntu derivative that comes from Chekoslovia has Skype but it is a DVD version (1-6 GiB). It looks attractive.

Speed Tests

It is possible to test the speed of upload and download of data over the internet now.

It is fortunate that the one internet company provides instant speed test and offer faster web browsers for guys who a using Microsoft.

 

I have been checking download speed almost every day for the last one (1) year with my Linux machine and I have discovered it is not worth even considering downloading anything more than 50 MiB in the day time.
Over best download speed is 1/2 (half) MiB per second at best (usually after mid night) but I cannot understand how they offer 2MiB in the day time.
It is only a commercial gimmick and lot of our young guys / girls have fallen pray to this propaganda.
Our Telecoms is much better than most of the south Asian countries.
We do not have a dedicated satellite of our own. in spite of fighting a war for nearly 30 years.
Now it is time of us to re-think our strategies since there is no conflicting parties except Indian Merchants who spending lot of money in Telecoms and betting industry.
We are going to have the cricket World Cup and we are not ready to serve the waiting masses.
It is time for the Telecoms to go for it with Chinese help within this decade.
I do not believe

Downloading and Uploading Linux Distributions and Packages

Linux newbie and Linux savvy of this country should be aware of our limitations in the IT world.
Now that I have downloaded over 150 CD versions (Live CD to be precise) of Linux CDs, I am now doing some brief survey of their installation capabilities.
I have now down to top 5 (Five) of my liking (100 is for Live) for installations.
When I select the top five I have many considerations.

1. Light weight and fit into a CD

2. Should have a nice file system that even detect my spare Dos partitions(no windows in them for the past 3 or 4 years not even Wine in them)

3. Good partition tool

4. Good PDF and Word program

5. Image program and a Video program to watch clips before installing

6. Good set of Drivers for old and new computers including laptops.

7. No need for internet connection at the time of installation

8. Set of boxed CDs, if it is a commercial version

9. One year cycle (if possible) stability. Six month was ideal for me to see whether developers are listening to my vocal and almost interactive commentaries in the web

10. Preferably a repository to download Skype, Open Office, Flash and few other nice Goodies.

11. Last but not least ” root” and “user” capability instead of sudo.

12. Good Grub file and compatibility with other Linux distributions.

Most of the Top 20 to 30 distributions have at least 8 out of 12 of my specifications and nothing in between them to choose except personal interest and likings.

So rating according to a number scale is redundant. All are pretty good their own ways, robust, stable and free of viruses.

 

The biggest problem is needing internet to install. Not only this slows down the whole process and sometimes freezes at the last moment without a boot or grub file at the end and sometime changing the BIOS due to freezing. This is unacceptable in the third world where download facility is painfully slow.
The other serious problem is incompatibility of Ubuntu versions to detect other Linux versions and giving priority to Windows instead. This is appalling. 

I had this problem yesterday and today. I have at least two working distribution 9one for day to day working and one for an emergency- my emergency one is PCLinux first and Puppy second).

One of my old computer has a SATA hard disk and IDE hard disk. When they configure the hard disks a and b comenclature (not for Master and Slave) was at random and there were no two distributions that did the same thing the exact the same way. I had to give up after 24 hours.
I tried changing the boot file and the fstab and i could never configure the distributions exactly the same.
This was piece of cake in the early days when the distributions were handful.
Each one had an understanding of the other. It is not so now with so many distributions out there.

We need to formalize this like normalizing in tables, otherwise there going to chaos in time to come.

I have been talking about Sri-Lankan Standards ( we do not have any-Selfish and First come First basis, everybody beat everybody at the winning tape and their are only one winner and all the others are losers) elsewhere.
It is time we redesign our wheels and engines.

Country without Standards

Country without Standards

We are a nation without Standards to go by.

If I enumerate all of them, they will stretch longer than the Thripitakas in entirety.

 

For posterity, when the Sri–Lankan history is written in correct perspective, this little note should be a forerunner for many thesis to come.

I will start with a Buddhist perspective, since we care for Dhamma as the supreme embodiment of all truths and with majority of them Buddhists in this country, the understanding would be much clearer. 

All Non-Buddhists should bear with me the toil but I will guarantee that you will understand it much better and clearer than most of the so called Buddhists. 

Buddhism is in essence is “an Ekayana Magga“- One Way Street and there are no Left or Right signposts in the pathway.

One got to be in the dead center and focused.

There is no Mahayana and only Hinayana with Theravada Buddhism in prominence.

There is only one way- and that is Meditation.

If I take them as the pole bearers and the standards the rest in this country is without standards.

1. For example to dispense this knowledge we have 4 Nikays in this country not one.

2. The Meditation is the most difficult to categorize

There is Hinayana tradition

There is Mahayana tradition

There is Lay tradition-This is in front and under the Bo Trees usually.

There is Christian tradition

There is Hindu tradition

There is Political Tradition ( there is no democracy and only one man holds the right to congregate and disperse the abiding meditators who want to become future leaders, hand picked from a bunch of goons)

 

Then there is the new Business Tradition where some experts dispense Dyana Certificates after 2 weeks to 3 moths workshops in various destinations- a very lucrative business to lure the foreigners who are now coming here in tens of thousands to see the war ruins and how we reconciles our differences in real Meditative (not mediation please) Terms and Practices. 

Moment one steps out of the door one can see how organized Sri–Lankans are.

Walking on the road is a death trap.

There are no Traffic Control. Each one has his or her own rule.

Each cop interprets the rules as his her own rules with one exception. That is the interpretation of the cop has an overrule when applied to government MPs.

Some time ago a son of a Minister who had broken all the traffic rules is an example and a golden rule for the cop to stay in office.

Some of our cops do not know how to file a case.

The defendant / accused sometimes becomes the witness and the original witness or complainant is sent to goal or heaven.

In private preschools as long as the fee is paid at the end of the month discipline is not necessary or imposed.

When they enter a government school, first golden rule is taught (till they go to parliament this rule is enacted by default including any violence necessary to impose it) and that is how to lie at the interview and get a place (even bribing the principal) in a Royal School (when they get to the school only, that they will come to know even in a Royal School nothing is taught except how to lie in English- 90% of the students who attend these schools attend Private Tutories and that is how they come to the University).

Then they get to the Private Tutories and I have heard some children kill each other for a seat on the front row bench.

This is where the future professors are made and the dropouts if they cannot go abroad become budding politicians.

There is total anarchy in these institutes and real standards of life, that is how to break every known standard to get to the top is learned.

By the time one is 18 one has learnt all the low standards they do not know the meaning of good governance or rule of law or the expectations and aspirations of other religions, races and even animals and the environment and the other animals and people who live with them.

Even the dogs are trained to defaecate on the neighbour’s land (this is the only rule broken in the West by the foreigners including Indians-except when they go to Singapore- Bun Ky Moon will certify this at an International Court of Law).

I believe the dog should be punished for trusting the human race!

This is getting long and I have given the basic lay out for in depth research into standards (What the heck- 5 S is taken over by 5 Fs in this country now- new standards in implementation of rule of law would come into effect in 10 years fro now, if we survive that long with poll going up and there is nobody to climb poll trees-(coconut)).

I will tell you how the Government institutes keep the standards.

1. Number one is Water Board .

They just pump water and the quality of water is no concern with all the dog shit in them.

2. Number 2 is Electricity Board- They never maintain the Voltage- always drop or surge in Voltage but the charges are best in the world.

3. Telecoms is Number 3- They never provide the download speed they promise in day time. My estimate it peaks only when all Sri-Lankans are asleep-except me- I know it because of Linux-100).

By the way our schools tops the list but I have excluded them because they cannot be reformed until the Government’s free book service is halted for good and teachers are trained to teach without political influence.

Unlike schools the above three should be rehabilitated since they charge us through our noses.

Until we stop free education (free Medicine too) we cannot think of rehabilitating them, certainly not in my life time, since we are not stake holders only the government hold the stake of majority rights.

Poisoning the nation!

This was something I wanted to write but kept postponing for more than 5 years after my first entry into minor scientific and environmentally friendly writing. 

However the ideas dates back to my medical students days.

I was convinced the Mahavali River Water was contaminated from its origin not only from biological agents but form pesticides that originate form tea plantation.

The amount of dog’s shit that get washed away to the river is colossal and that alone is enough to prove my point but amount man’s shit goes parallel and almost doubled or trebled that since the rough ratio of dog to man in Sri-Lanka is 1 to 7.

This is not about dog shit but how over agrarians poison us almost daily.
There is no food in the market which is not contaminated but there is no machinery to monitor the extent of this man made disaster since our legislation is too weak to regulate the use of artificial in gradients.

The biggest culprit was WHO who for three to four decades sprayed the enter country with DDT to fatten the coffers of American Companies which produce (they blame only Iraq and did not find a trace) all the nasty chemicals to test on the poor countries.

That menace is gone to some extent but our Agriculture Ministry has taken over the responsibility of poisoning our masses by default of not monitoring or regulating the use of poisons.

My friend in the University and almost my name sake was able to prove that cadmium was the cause of renal diseases prevalent in the North and North Central but both the WHO experts and the local medical experts failed to see this since renal disease is big money since a Kidney is priced at half to one million now.

If one take two kidneys from an innocent refugee it is almost two millions.

This probably happened during the war time.

The kidneys were not a problem then but it is a problem now.

One of my friends who was abroad tells me doctors there removed his normal kidney leaving his half normal kidney to survive.

I can remember in my internship my consultant removed the Normal Kidney of a woman and went on for one week holiday and I had to look after her till her death.

Since I was an intern I could not do anything.

Bound by golden ethics.

That is one reason, I did not take up Surgery which I loved as a medical student but ended up as a pathologist to see what went wrong after the event.

The poisons in our food is too numerous to list but at least it is my responsibility to make people aware.

I should end up with a little note of our drug industry.

The number one poison in the list is alcohol.

For many reasons.

1. It is a universal cell poison.

2. It is a good solvent and dissolve all other poisons and act as a vehicle for poison.

3. Third is that alcohol is adulterer with methyl alcohol to a large extent which causes blindness.

4. Most of our children’s syrups and vitamins are not water based but alcohol based.

5. There is no way to regulate consumption of illicit (almost legal in this country) alcohol.

Just today I went to buy some vitamin syrup for an adult.

This particular one needed alcohol free syrup.

Having checked over 20 I could not find a single bottle that had a label (to display) to say what is the solvent used.

They should label them as alcohol based or water based.

I had to buy (just guess work) two and at home opened and tasted them to see which had alcohol.

One was alcohol based other was not alcohol based but expensive.

This is a primitive experiment in a country where we have not produced a Nobel Prize winning scientist.

That is why I drink only wine now even though they are very expensive.



What is the hell the Health Department doing to regulate that issue?

They have one priority.

That is dengue.

The have no priority to check all the poisons and the labels in food and drugs industry (that are imported to this country).

This include our chille powder.
One Brand I tasted was totally poisoned may be with Gadol.

Anybody who has money and connection can import anything in this liberal and liberated society.

God save the masses.

Service Providers or Consumers?

I am writing this under a tube (fluorescence) light which is flickering incessantly (with a small diode light illuminating my keyboard, without which I cannot vent my feelings-which I bought in Singapore -two for the price of one).

It takes twice (may be thrice) the time to type this since, like the flickering light I am making spelling mistakes one after the other.

This is a typical day in my life quiet frustrated but letting my anger disappear with the touch of the key board buttons.

I am not a touch typist (I was never) so with very poor light my eye not focusing on the keys I am making mistakes after mistakes. Thank god the spell checker is there with the touch of the button, even then I type tenants for tenet and price for prize, career for carrier and vice versa (One day, I will post one without correcting any keyboard mistakes for posterity and I am sure I will be nominated for a writing prize by the English experts brought in from India to teach our teachers English).

I am one who was brought up with the zero error /defect principle, strictly by the old code of conduct, these irritations would have made me neurotic by the minute.

I am sane now and always (with or without elections and with or without Kings and Queens-Card Pack- Buruwa- Mentality) because I practice this moment meditation (nothing to do with Buddhist meditation) and attend to the task at hand not one before or not one that has not yet come from my young age (without me consciously knowing the scenario then but quiet cognizant of the fact with advancing age and the practice of insight meditation).

So nothing disturbs my inner peace or joy but overtly presenting myself to all and sundry, boring, ignorant and man without substance for my own safety-THIS IS ALSO FOR MY INNER PEACE-mediocre questions drives me nuts though).

The flickering low voltage luminance for me is the driving energy to put some thoughts into words. I should have done / written this ages ago but never too late should be the guiding principle and the angles’ message (that disappeared from this land of opportunities).

Weekends heralds disaster for me.

That is because the IT industry (Telecoms) keeps me up in the night.

Even now I am keeping my eye on the flicker / blinker of the router to see whether it is shaking hand with the server or not.

1. IT and Telecoms

Now I will start with the Telecoms, then go to Water Board, Electricity Board, Highway and the Municipality to illustrate how the zero defect principle should operate in this country.

Even though, Telecoms promises so many KBs or Mega Bites for a second, the throughput is never what they promise, it is way below the mark.

Often 10 or 15 instead of 50 or 200 they promise.

The Microsoft computers cannot measure the throughput but my Linux box does accurate measure of downloads and their speeds.

Currently it is 25 KB per second and below and almost two thirds of the country is in deep sleep now and / or not using a computer.

How come?

Who is responsible for it?

Not only that it goes to zero after midnight.

The guys / girls working in the night are very nice and moment I give them a call they put me on line.

Problem is the directors and top managers who have no understanding of IT are taking the perks from the coffers but doing nothing to run a zero defect industry.

They do not have a business plan or management skills.

They are all political appointees!

No wetting no appraisal or scrutiny!

2. Water Board

To me the most corrupt institution from President Premadasa’s time.

I will not talk about late Mr. Premadasa.

I have more respect for him now than then except highlighting his blemishes in the Water Management in Kandy,

Only after his demise (I was away abroad but fully involved) I got involved with few of my friends who were engineers and got the Nilambe Project come into existence with the help of President Wijetunge.

Now what happens?

The guys who came after the Project was commissioned are having a whale of a time.

They divert the water to Kandy meant for the people of the project to please the politicians who frequent Kandy to invoke blessing for themselves (not the voters who voted them in).

Water Board is fully politicized!

3. Electricity Board

Flickering lights is not the only manifestation. I have to get up many a times to switch on / off the computer.

Mind you I have downloaded over 200 Linux distributions in spite this handicap.

Since, I am intending to write a review on hundred (after seen the 2010 updates) distributions I still have to download many.

Watching the flicker of the router has become a hobby (not watching any more of Sir-Lankan Cricket).

Just browse the BBC sports for Indian scores though!

Our Electricity Board cannot provide standard constant voltage supply 24 hours a day and I have lost so many valuable equipments worth millions in current value including computers and microwave ovens over the last two decades and I have stopped buying new ones any more.

If this happened abroad I would have sued.

A lady in UK won millions of worth of compensation for a faulty milk bottle with pieces of glasses or something similar.

What about Sir-Lanka ?

Yes Sir Lanka

A bottled mineral water with a condom inside was hushed up!

4. Kandy Municipal (Kunu Mawana / Kawana) Council

It cannot provide safe breathing air (see my writing on Warning Inland Fish Eaters) and come Perehara cats and dogs are provided as delicacies.

5. Highway!

Come and see for yourselves during the Perehara to see the side roads where politicians with power never travel!

Whats the point in writing this?

There is something for you.

If you look at the statistics nearly 40% did not vote.

Nearly 25% voted against.

If we let the 35% to run the country nothing will change.

It is time for the Citizen’s Bureaus to be formed (not new political parties) and Consumer Protection Societies to be formed and take people doing wrong things to task in courts of law.

Whether our Judiciary System is ready I am not sure but it is worth investing our frustrations and energy.

Our political system (both in power and out of power) are too corrupt to respond to the needs of the consumer.

We all are consumers.

Why not take the plunge?

Asoka with Vision!
18th July, 2010
PS.
The Flash bulb flicker never stopped!
The download speed never went up above 25!