Keeping up with my promise of not being an extensively technical blog, this one will give a small story that I heard from the person in the title. First, let's get a background check.
My home-village, is nothing short of a cultural calamity in many aspects. The major reason for this as I see is that until recently, despite being well in the proximity of Colombo, roughly twenty (20) kilometers, the transport facilities were not that good. Neither were the infrastructural facilities in most regions in the village. So the 'outsiders' were reluctant to buy the land to settle here. As a result, until about seven or so years ago, the village was semi-rural. There were lush green lands, not used for any sort of housing or agriculture, and even the rubber plantations were more closer to forests. I remember I spent a good portion of my childhood running around in those bushes and the wild. Especially with the two boys who were to become Buddhist monks and lived in the village temple at that time. Indika and Sampath ( now, rev Rahula and Sujatha respectively). All three of us have been caught and punished many a time for our mischief. ( Dammit... Kids nowadays know about Twilight... What the hell did humans do wrong? )
Well, this story, happened in the same background. One day, a balloon-man, who was called Siripaala, who used to live and serve as a helper in the Old Temple of the village (Kahathuduwa Nandanarama Viharaya), came to our house. He was just on one of his routine balloon-sales-trips in our street. And since one of my cousins with their then little daughter were at our place, my mother called Siripaala in. They were all sitting in the veranda when I took an interest in the conversation.
Siripaala was a short man, about 4'8'' with an average Sinhalese complexion. He was very thin, and his face was sort of deformed. One of his eyelids covered half that eye.He wore a simple three-quarter short with a moldy, dirty shirt which was a complete different color than the real color of it. Despite this appearance, it didn't take long for us to realize that he was a very pleasant man.And he didn't hold a lot of his life back on the newly met friends. He literally described what books he had read, what musical shows and where he had been to. What sort of dances he has performed there. And he also shared a bit of his knowledge on Buddhism: How lord Buddha 'summoned a great fire and destroyed Alavaka' (For those wondering, Alavaka was taught a witty lesson in bullying people by Lord Buddha, but he never summoned a fire or any gimmick like that. Not as far as I know at least). And how Lord Buddha wrangled Muchalinda the great Cobra ( again, check this out on the internet or something if you haven't already heard it. That's not how it happened... ). But all too well, we went on listening to his innocent misconceptions(supposedly).
Among the stories that he shared with us, this one is best told in his narrative.
'When I was younger, I was living in the Dehiwala Temple. Our Chief Monk was a good person. He gave me permission to visit my mother once. And I went home (...Siripala's home was in Weediyagoda),and on my way back, in the public ground of Bandaragama ( now this ground is in ruins actually ...pretty sad) there was a musical show there. I took my time and spent the night dancing on the ground and it was a nice show. But in my absence, something weird has happened. I didn't know then.
'I went to Dehivala temple, and just as I did, the Cheif Monk widened his eyes and asked how I am there. This was surprising for me, because, well, why couldn't I be there? And when I asked what's wrong, he said , "never mind. I thought you were dead". I just ignored this remark because he was a good humored person.
'A couple of months later, I thought of going home again.This time, I took something for my mother and went. And as I walked past the fence of my house, I saw my mother sitting on the porch, nibbling on a piece of bread. But just as she saw me she gave a loud shriek, threw everything away, and ran out of the house through the back door.
'I was lost. I then tried my neighbor's house. This time, my neighbor-a woman- gave a loud shriek and fainted.
'Now I realized something was definitely wrong. So I tried going to the small boutique near my house. As I went there, the vendor in the store grabbed the Yanthra on his neck, and started mumbling 'ithi pi so bhagawa..' (this is a pali phrase Buddhist use as a remedy for fear, crudely put). And then a woman who just came to the shop stood there, dumbfounded, and wide-eyed. I asked her, since she was the first person who didn't either faint or ran away from me, what is wrong. She barely managed to say 'oh brother... you died.. you died' before she too dropped her bag and ran away giving a loud shriek. This sound however, brought me to the attention of the young three wheeler drivers in the park right next to the boutique.
But then when they came, they started throwing me rocks and poking me with pieces of wood and so on. So I ran away from there to the temple. And the reaction of the chief monk of my villages' temple was the same as my mothers'-he ran away.
I realized that something led them to believe that I died. I didn't have a penny left to go back to Dehivala, so I had to stick around. I stayed two weeks, in the cemetery. Just ate scraps of food left in the boutique. No one gave me a glass of water to drink.'
This story, seemed to be a stupid one. Because it was difficult for me to imagine a whole village of people, buying into a ghost-story, even when the ghost appears in broad daylight. But then again, this is a small village, so there is enough reason for this to be true.
After that, the Police had picked him up, and literally begged him not to harm them in return they'd let him go to Dehivala.
Somehow, he had managed to go to Dehivala and ask the chief monk of that temple what happened.
Here's the story then. During that day that he spent at the musical show, someone who was wearing pretty much the same clothing as he does, a plain moldy teeshirt with shorts, had met with an accident. This was right near the Dehivala temple. And the people who saw him, had thought it was Siripala. The body was not properly identified because his head had been smashed in the accident. How ever, within the matter of couple of hours, the chief Monk of the Dehivala temple had gone to the kalubowila hospital where the body was kept. And since he couldn't give Siripala's body in this poor condition to his mother, his only family, he had given consent to do the burial(or cremation) by the Hospital, and sent a telegram to his mother. When Siripala came next day, he had written a letter to Siripala's mother about it, but it never got to her, and even if it did, she couldn't read. He didn't want to upset Siripala again, so he didn't tell it to him first time.
Now, realizing it was his discretion that led to this fiasco, he had taken up the responsibility in clarifying the whole thing in a public gathering in Weediagoda.
Siripala still sells balloons, plastic flutes, toy carts and planes etc. in the Friday fair in the Kahathuduwa Junction. In the weediagoda area, how ever, he is still known as 'Siripala the dead'.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
I ain't no pirate... But stay outta my face...
With the recent events that unfolded including the SOPA and PIPA and Anonymous hacking some very important US Govt sites, even the average surfer has become conscious about their online anonymity and its legal complications. Now, I'm no expert in either of them, and as the title says, I am not encouraging illegal actions of any sort. But I think that revealing your online identity for every single service you request from a site, and letting someone monitor all your online activities is like, going to the bathroom at a stranger's house at the expense of letting him monitor what you do in it. Of course, it is his house and his rules, but it's best to avoid such encounters at all possible circumstances (for both users of the bathroom and the world wide web).
Your Online Identity
When you're connecting to the internet, use the world wide web particularly, you're revealing a lot of information.
A simple and crude way to demonstrate this will be to go to the following link to 'Stay Invisible'. As you will see, they can have a whole lot of information about you, from the screen resolution and the system fonts of your computer, to a reasonable lead on your location.
The solution? Well, there are many, but one of the most frequently used is to use a proxy server.
Now, I have used a crude proxy for this demonstration purpose. As you can see, after enabling the 'remove scripts' and ' no cookies' options, I have made the site stop at 'Gathering Information'.
Proxy Server
I am sure there are many online resources you can access to get a clear enough picture of what a proxy server is. In this case, I will give a small contextual explanation so that you can save a bit of your time. The World Wide Web usually deploys (still) a client-server model. Where you and I, the average web users are clients and the web servers are, well, the servers. Now, when you want some resource, a web page, or a video or something, you're asking the server to send you the data. In this case, you must submit information about your IP address. And giving an IP address means, you are giving out your current location, because even with DHCP( Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol-where you are assigned a random IP address at the time of connection) your ISP and DHCP Server should ( I'm not 100% on this, but they should) hold information that needs to find your whereabouts.
What a proxy server does is, it acts as an intermediary. In short, you tell the proxy to get the resource for you. And you only provide your information to the proxy, and they don't mess with that, at least not as much as the other side of the game would. The proxy will fetch the data you need ( some may even temporarily hold the data to serve other user requests- a.k.a. cache it) and forward it to your host. Such a proxy server is known as a 'forward' proxy. And if the server allows users of WWW to connect it from anywhere in the world, it is also known as an 'open proxy'.
So now you can see why they haven't been able to track the IP address, my location, time zone, ISP when I used the Proxy Server. Next, let's look into why they couldn't find out the other information about me such as the colordepth and resolution of my monitor, my fonts, and so on.
JavaScript Tracking
Suppose there is a certain page in a certain website that you visit. If the service providers/site owners want to track where that page goes, who visits them, what they do with it, they can add a JavaScript code to the page that acts as a tracker. When you go to the page, the page is loaded to your web browser and run. And that means the Script also runs. And there is a third party server that collects information from your web browser and statistics. Usually, this is used for simply hit generation which is a harmless purpose. But there is the risk of them being used for other malicious/undesired purposes.
Note that when I enabled 'Remove Scripts' , I have essentially removed the code that needs to execute to get the information from your browser. So now we can also see that it's the browser that holds the information for your screen and your System.
Please be noted that there are other purposes that the proxy server can be used for, more often than not, that are illegal. I am not prompting any of you guys to go ahead and break the laws. (if you really want to, properly conceal yourself and don't get caught... ) :D
Your Online Identity
When you're connecting to the internet, use the world wide web particularly, you're revealing a lot of information.
A simple and crude way to demonstrate this will be to go to the following link to 'Stay Invisible'. As you will see, they can have a whole lot of information about you, from the screen resolution and the system fonts of your computer, to a reasonable lead on your location.
The solution? Well, there are many, but one of the most frequently used is to use a proxy server.
Now, I have used a crude proxy for this demonstration purpose. As you can see, after enabling the 'remove scripts' and ' no cookies' options, I have made the site stop at 'Gathering Information'.
Proxy Server
I am sure there are many online resources you can access to get a clear enough picture of what a proxy server is. In this case, I will give a small contextual explanation so that you can save a bit of your time. The World Wide Web usually deploys (still) a client-server model. Where you and I, the average web users are clients and the web servers are, well, the servers. Now, when you want some resource, a web page, or a video or something, you're asking the server to send you the data. In this case, you must submit information about your IP address. And giving an IP address means, you are giving out your current location, because even with DHCP( Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol-where you are assigned a random IP address at the time of connection) your ISP and DHCP Server should ( I'm not 100% on this, but they should) hold information that needs to find your whereabouts.
What a proxy server does is, it acts as an intermediary. In short, you tell the proxy to get the resource for you. And you only provide your information to the proxy, and they don't mess with that, at least not as much as the other side of the game would. The proxy will fetch the data you need ( some may even temporarily hold the data to serve other user requests- a.k.a. cache it) and forward it to your host. Such a proxy server is known as a 'forward' proxy. And if the server allows users of WWW to connect it from anywhere in the world, it is also known as an 'open proxy'.
So now you can see why they haven't been able to track the IP address, my location, time zone, ISP when I used the Proxy Server. Next, let's look into why they couldn't find out the other information about me such as the colordepth and resolution of my monitor, my fonts, and so on.
JavaScript Tracking
Suppose there is a certain page in a certain website that you visit. If the service providers/site owners want to track where that page goes, who visits them, what they do with it, they can add a JavaScript code to the page that acts as a tracker. When you go to the page, the page is loaded to your web browser and run. And that means the Script also runs. And there is a third party server that collects information from your web browser and statistics. Usually, this is used for simply hit generation which is a harmless purpose. But there is the risk of them being used for other malicious/undesired purposes.
Note that when I enabled 'Remove Scripts' , I have essentially removed the code that needs to execute to get the information from your browser. So now we can also see that it's the browser that holds the information for your screen and your System.
Please be noted that there are other purposes that the proxy server can be used for, more often than not, that are illegal. I am not prompting any of you guys to go ahead and break the laws. (if you really want to, properly conceal yourself and don't get caught... ) :D
Sunday, February 19, 2012
හිංගලෙන් දාන පළමු වෙනි මෙව්වා එක
මේ බ්ලොග් එක මුලින්ම මම ලියන්න බලාපොරොත්තුවෙන් හිටියේ අපේ මවු බාසාවෙන්( කඩ්ඩෙන්) විතරයි. ඒ උනත් ඉතින් කොච්චර කලත් අයින් කොරන්න බැරි මොකද්ද මෙව්වා එකක් හින්ද සිංහලෙනුත් දාන එක හොඳයි කියල මට හිතෙන්න පටන් ගත්තේ ලියන්න පටන් අරන් ටික වෙලාවක් ගියහම. ඔන්න ඉතින් හා හා පුරා කියල මෙන්න ලියනවා පලවෙනි සිංහල ලිපිය.
මේ බ්ලොග් ඒකෙන් අම්බානෙක ටෙක්නිකල් එව්වා වත් , අම්බානෙක පොලිටිකල් එව්වා වත්, අම්බානෙක ජෝක් කෑලිවත් දාන්න මට බැරි වේවි. සරලවම මගේ නොහැකියාව නිසා තමයි ආයිබෝං... හැබැයි ඉතින් පොඩ්ඩක් මනුස්පයෙක්ට කියවල හිතන්න දෙයක්, එදිනෙදා ජිවිතයට වැදගත් වෙන කොම්පුටරේ බටන් දෙකක් තුනක් ඔබාගන්න, එක එක මිනිස්සු එක්ක ඉන්නකොට මරාගන්නේ නැතිව, ඇරගන්නේ නැතිව ආතල් එකේ ඉන්න, නිකන් ඔහේ ලියන්නන් වාලේ වල්පල් නෙමෙයි, පොඩි ආතල් එකක් සහිත ටිකක් විතර වැඩකට ඇති යමක් අරන් යන්න පුළුවන් විදිහේ සරල බ්ලොග් එකක් කරගන්න තමයි මගේ උවමනාව.
අනේ අපේ අයියල තරහ වෙන්න කාරී නැතුවා, හැබැයි සිංහලෙන් නං මහා ගොඩක් පොස්ට් ලියවෙන්නේ නැති වේවි. මොකද කියනවා නං මගේ යාලුවෝ සමහරක් ඉන්නවා සිංහල හොඳට කතා කලාට එච්චර හොඳට කියවන්න තේරෙන්නේ නැති උදවිය( දෙමල උදවිය තමයි බොහොමයක්...). එයාලට අසාධාරණයක් නොවෙන්න, ඉංගිලිසි වලින් මම ගොඩක් ඒවා ලියන්නේ. පුළු පුළුවන් හැටියට පරිවර්තන සපයන්නත් බලාපොරොත්තුවක් තියෙනවා.
එහෙනං ඉතින් කට්ටිය මේක කියවපු එකේ, දකුණු අත පැත්තේ තියෙන 'ෆොලෝ' බටන් එක ඔබල සයින් ඉන් හරි ලොගින් හරි මොකින් හරි වෙමුකෝ... :)
ප.ලි.: යාලත්ත කියන්නේ 'සින්ක්' එක නෙමෙයි බව දන්නවා... කුස්සි බක්කිය කියන නමට වඩා කුස්සි යාලත්ත ලස්සනයි නේ? :)
Anterograde Amnesia and 'error 0xc0000034'
Now, you remember that I have been having trouble with using both Ubuntu and Windows, and never more so than during the story that I'm about to tell.
Well, with the Narwhal touchpad working, now I went to sleep happily hoping to wake up the next morning and start my slow transition from windows to Ubuntu. Guess what happened, the next morning, it took me 5mins and 27secs to load and log into my Windows user account. A black screen just after the welcome screen with only my mousepointer visible ( that didn't come out right... uh... never mind!) for 4 mins and 38 secs, and ironically, just the third time I tried logging in, I did all the timing mentioned here.
I don't keep the drivers for my laptop in a separate disk, but keep them all in the backup and recovery disk (I learnt that this was the wrong thing to do, the hard way). And the normal XP user knows one solution for all the bugs: Reinstall windows in partition C and all will be right as rain.
Doesn't help with Seven though. If you try reinstalling with the wrong package (I tried with the Ultimate, whereas I should've tried with Home Premium) and you're prompted to do a factory reset. Which I did. And next came the parade.
Amnesia, is the term used for loss of memory. And Anterograde Amnesia is the loss of long term memory. I'm not talking about the complete erase of memory, not by any means. Usually, the patients of Anterograde Amnesia regain their memory with the help of refreshing references. You know, just like Jason Bourne did after three movies, and Jackie Chan did in that one movie (Jackie Chan kicks Jason Bourne's butt even in regaining memory). It simply is just like losing a pointer to a variable. If you replace the reference or relocate , then you're good to go.
After the factory reset, what came to be was similar to amnesia. Windows can simply not find where to begin booting!!!
At first, me and my brother thought that this was something wrong with the hard ware and we had to bid farewell to the hard disk drive. But Gamlath (again, came to the rescue) had other ideas, and the next day, we consulted the oracle that is Google.
And here we came to know what had happened. Windows, has simply lost its reference to its 'Boot Configuration Data' or 'BCD'. The fixing of this, is pretty straightforward, once you figure out a way to get a command prompt open. For that, what we did was insert another Windows 7 CD(... What??? it was not pirated! we're in the MSDNAA... *wink* ) and asked for a 'Repair' and chose the startup repair. There, the best way is to go for the 'Automatic repair' but it didn't work for us. And then , Gamlath found these instructions in the net (using his computer of course) and what followed was success.
Simply, following this link will help you sort out the issue.
Oh, by the way, pardon me for being so Socratic. I am not a holder of that much of 'Original' knowledge in this regard , and then again, who among us are? :D
Well, with the Narwhal touchpad working, now I went to sleep happily hoping to wake up the next morning and start my slow transition from windows to Ubuntu. Guess what happened, the next morning, it took me 5mins and 27secs to load and log into my Windows user account. A black screen just after the welcome screen with only my mousepointer visible ( that didn't come out right... uh... never mind!) for 4 mins and 38 secs, and ironically, just the third time I tried logging in, I did all the timing mentioned here.
I don't keep the drivers for my laptop in a separate disk, but keep them all in the backup and recovery disk (I learnt that this was the wrong thing to do, the hard way). And the normal XP user knows one solution for all the bugs: Reinstall windows in partition C and all will be right as rain.
Doesn't help with Seven though. If you try reinstalling with the wrong package (I tried with the Ultimate, whereas I should've tried with Home Premium) and you're prompted to do a factory reset. Which I did. And next came the parade.
Amnesia, is the term used for loss of memory. And Anterograde Amnesia is the loss of long term memory. I'm not talking about the complete erase of memory, not by any means. Usually, the patients of Anterograde Amnesia regain their memory with the help of refreshing references. You know, just like Jason Bourne did after three movies, and Jackie Chan did in that one movie (Jackie Chan kicks Jason Bourne's butt even in regaining memory). It simply is just like losing a pointer to a variable. If you replace the reference or relocate , then you're good to go.
After the factory reset, what came to be was similar to amnesia. Windows can simply not find where to begin booting!!!
At first, me and my brother thought that this was something wrong with the hard ware and we had to bid farewell to the hard disk drive. But Gamlath (again, came to the rescue) had other ideas, and the next day, we consulted the oracle that is Google.
And here we came to know what had happened. Windows, has simply lost its reference to its 'Boot Configuration Data' or 'BCD'. The fixing of this, is pretty straightforward, once you figure out a way to get a command prompt open. For that, what we did was insert another Windows 7 CD(... What??? it was not pirated! we're in the MSDNAA... *wink* ) and asked for a 'Repair' and chose the startup repair. There, the best way is to go for the 'Automatic repair' but it didn't work for us. And then , Gamlath found these instructions in the net (using his computer of course) and what followed was success.
Simply, following this link will help you sort out the issue.
Oh, by the way, pardon me for being so Socratic. I am not a holder of that much of 'Original' knowledge in this regard , and then again, who among us are? :D
Inspiring the touchpad and dealing with the Narwhal...
We all are secretly in love with Ubuntu. For several reasons, including the fact that we have heard it to be open-source (although few of us possess the prowess to make use of this) and that it is open for customization( again, the same fate as the previous reason). How ever, it is still a daunting task when it comes to installing and configuring Ubuntu, or any other Linux system; it still is, the average windows users' nightmare.
One of the best releases of Ubuntu is undoubtedly the Nutty Narwhal release (11.04). Let's face it, it's flashy, it's nice-looking, and it is , well, still not that friendly... One of problems I had (yes, I had more than one, I'll come to that in a separate post. ) is configuring the touchpad. I am using Dell Inspiron N5110 with factory set Windows 7 and it simply doesn't register to Ubuntu as a laptop. (Pun intended). You can't turn it off, you can't type because it doesn't turn itself off automatically when typing. So went about the web to find some stuff for this. Here's what I found.
The Alps touchpad in this type, is not directly supported at the installation. But then there was a DKMS package (Dynamic Kernel Module Support Package) which included the new drivers. Installing it using the Synaptic manager, and restarting the machine, should solve the problem. But there are some interesting points we need to think about here. Please do someone answer me these questions.
My friend, RH641 ( nothing short of an expert user of Linux, among other talents of course) pointed out that Linux does not really 'Shut down' but 'log out'. In this spirit, we tried logging out and logging in to the account to see if the changes are applied. Needless to say, it didn't work, however, restarting the machine did the charm.
Next, I tried installing restricted extras, and this rendered my machine slow as snail, both in linux, and Windows. Now I was under the impression that Linux was less prone to errors like this, but it came to be a wrong assumption.
However, I am sure that replacements most of the buggy hardware drivers, for both the Narwhal and Ocelot releases are there in the form of DKMS packages, and just a small amount of Googling around should put you right across the right ones. This link, however, should provide the relevant dkms package.
One of the best releases of Ubuntu is undoubtedly the Nutty Narwhal release (11.04). Let's face it, it's flashy, it's nice-looking, and it is , well, still not that friendly... One of problems I had (yes, I had more than one, I'll come to that in a separate post. ) is configuring the touchpad. I am using Dell Inspiron N5110 with factory set Windows 7 and it simply doesn't register to Ubuntu as a laptop. (Pun intended). You can't turn it off, you can't type because it doesn't turn itself off automatically when typing. So went about the web to find some stuff for this. Here's what I found.
The Alps touchpad in this type, is not directly supported at the installation. But then there was a DKMS package (Dynamic Kernel Module Support Package) which included the new drivers. Installing it using the Synaptic manager, and restarting the machine, should solve the problem. But there are some interesting points we need to think about here. Please do someone answer me these questions.
My friend, RH641 ( nothing short of an expert user of Linux, among other talents of course) pointed out that Linux does not really 'Shut down' but 'log out'. In this spirit, we tried logging out and logging in to the account to see if the changes are applied. Needless to say, it didn't work, however, restarting the machine did the charm.
Next, I tried installing restricted extras, and this rendered my machine slow as snail, both in linux, and Windows. Now I was under the impression that Linux was less prone to errors like this, but it came to be a wrong assumption.
However, I am sure that replacements most of the buggy hardware drivers, for both the Narwhal and Ocelot releases are there in the form of DKMS packages, and just a small amount of Googling around should put you right across the right ones. This link, however, should provide the relevant dkms package.
Post Zero
Here goes...
A blog, has been in my mind for a while now, in fact, ever since I was introduced to blogging. As is the case for most of us, there has been an umpteen and one hindrances to writing one. Well, why bore you with what is passed, here we are, and that's all that matters.
A short introduction to my blog:
This blog is not about computers, it's not about philosophy or politics... But it's best to say that this blog is about all of it. This will not be the day to day blog of computer tech trivia, or some deep discussion about the philosophical aspects of life and world. But simply, this is just a dumb guy's view on the environment he occupies, which has a LOT to do with computers...
Confusing, I know. But bear with me. Stick around, think a bit, and be ... well... you won't be surprised...
A blog, has been in my mind for a while now, in fact, ever since I was introduced to blogging. As is the case for most of us, there has been an umpteen and one hindrances to writing one. Well, why bore you with what is passed, here we are, and that's all that matters.
A short introduction to my blog:
This blog is not about computers, it's not about philosophy or politics... But it's best to say that this blog is about all of it. This will not be the day to day blog of computer tech trivia, or some deep discussion about the philosophical aspects of life and world. But simply, this is just a dumb guy's view on the environment he occupies, which has a LOT to do with computers...
Confusing, I know. But bear with me. Stick around, think a bit, and be ... well... you won't be surprised...
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