Rationalists, secularists, Humanists, Agnostics, Atheists and all the free thinking intellectuals and scholars of our time in Sri Lanka, seem to be hiding behind anonymity of internet and closed doors of “punchi theater” in Borella when they masturbate (alone or as a group) about their intelligence and the ability to comprehend things independent of religion and tribalism. They all seem to be afraid of the confrontations they may face if they speak in public.
They speak of Richard Dawkins, Mark Twain and all the western leaders of such intellectual circles; they speak of intellectuals from last generation of Sri Lanka, like Senaka Bibile and Osmond Jayaratne, but where are the intellectuals of this generation who go out there to speak to the public about this revolution that has to happen?
We need independence from tribalism, we need governance separated from religion, and we need to move forward from cultural dogma; but who’s taking this message to the masses? Does a blog that gets couple of thousand hits per day do that? While those Rationalists and Secularists hide behind blogs and forums, Likes of Kiribathgoda Gnanananda, Champika Ranawaka, T B Ekanayake and Mahinda Rajapaksha are among the masses, brain washing them to make the Sinhala Buddhist Taliban in Sri Lanka.
So I say it’s time you bunch stop masturbating and go out in public to have your orgy.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Strong name validation failed. on 64bit windows - 32bit Visual Studio
If you are running a 32bit version of Visual Studio on a 64bit Windows version, and want to add a strong name exception for a delay signed assembly, the usual methods of running
"sn -Vr *, [public key token]"
Example:
sn -Vr *,89845dcd8080cc91
or adding the registry key manually to
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification\"
Example:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification\*,89845dcd8080cc91]
would not work.
The reason being that the 64bit windows registry has a separate area for 32bit applications. And, the sn.exe is not updating that.
To work around it, you have to add your strong name exceptions to the following location of the windows registry.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification\
Example:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification\*,89845dcd8080cc91]
"sn -Vr *, [public key token]
or adding the registry key manually to
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification\"
Example:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification\*,89845dcd8080cc91]
would not work.
The reason being that the 64bit windows registry has a separate area for 32bit applications. And, the sn.exe is not updating that.
To work around it, you have to add your strong name exceptions to the following location of the windows registry.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification\
Example:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification\*,89845dcd8080cc91]
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Taking free education forward - Part 2
In my last post (almost a month back :(); I concluded that contributing factors for better standards in an educational institute are the financial capital, expectations of students and parents, and the commitment of faculty staff and the management.
So what do we need in the system to make things right? What can the government do? What are the successes and failures of other countries?
Government, no doubt, can put in a little more money. But is that money going to be enough? How much money do you think is required to take Moratuwa University to the level of Chicago State University? And what would be the cost of staffing and maintaining? If the government could put the 2008 war budget (166 billion rupees) to education, may be it would be sufficient to build one or two universities and few schools. But that’s not going to improve things immensely, would it? And could the country afford to allocate such funds every year on education?
What’s wrong with vice chancellors, professors, lecturers etc.? What’s wrong with principals and teachers? To start with, I think they aren’t being paid enough. Then, there aren’t any strong enough consequences for their actions; they can choose to work or idle. Thirdly, it seems they set their own standards, and have no competition.
Most parents, put aside students, don’t know what they are entitled to and what they should expect from an educational institute. They just go with the flow. Those few, who actually do care about the quality of education, don’t have much choice or voice to change things around.
How can we improve all this?
First of all, we need to bring in money to the system. Government can invest a large capital to uplift the standards for couple of years. But the running costs should be covered up within the system itself. There are enough people in Sri Lanka who can and will pay for quality education. And, if the university students had to pay for their education themselves, may be they would be more serious about it than now. So I think it is certainly an option for the government to start charging for the education - at all levels.
For primary and secondary education, the government could provide scholarships for the economically challenged families. But there’s no reason why university students can’t earn for their education themselves.
The second option is to bring private investors in to establish educational institutes and utilize the tax money on government schools and universities. There are private schools in existence even now but I don’t think they are generating enough revenue to fund government schools. Judging by that, establishing private universities - even though is a good step towards expanding capacity and creating competition - would not provide enough revenue to fund government universities.
So I believe, in order to provide quality education, we should provide it free only to those who actually deserve free education.
With money in the system and faculty staff being well paid, it is only a matter of setting up standards, regulations and strict discipline in place that is required to get the management right. With private schools and universities competing with government institutes for better educational facilities and lower course fees students would receive greater benefits.
So what do we need in the system to make things right? What can the government do? What are the successes and failures of other countries?
Government, no doubt, can put in a little more money. But is that money going to be enough? How much money do you think is required to take Moratuwa University to the level of Chicago State University? And what would be the cost of staffing and maintaining? If the government could put the 2008 war budget (166 billion rupees) to education, may be it would be sufficient to build one or two universities and few schools. But that’s not going to improve things immensely, would it? And could the country afford to allocate such funds every year on education?
What’s wrong with vice chancellors, professors, lecturers etc.? What’s wrong with principals and teachers? To start with, I think they aren’t being paid enough. Then, there aren’t any strong enough consequences for their actions; they can choose to work or idle. Thirdly, it seems they set their own standards, and have no competition.
Most parents, put aside students, don’t know what they are entitled to and what they should expect from an educational institute. They just go with the flow. Those few, who actually do care about the quality of education, don’t have much choice or voice to change things around.
How can we improve all this?
First of all, we need to bring in money to the system. Government can invest a large capital to uplift the standards for couple of years. But the running costs should be covered up within the system itself. There are enough people in Sri Lanka who can and will pay for quality education. And, if the university students had to pay for their education themselves, may be they would be more serious about it than now. So I think it is certainly an option for the government to start charging for the education - at all levels.
For primary and secondary education, the government could provide scholarships for the economically challenged families. But there’s no reason why university students can’t earn for their education themselves.
The second option is to bring private investors in to establish educational institutes and utilize the tax money on government schools and universities. There are private schools in existence even now but I don’t think they are generating enough revenue to fund government schools. Judging by that, establishing private universities - even though is a good step towards expanding capacity and creating competition - would not provide enough revenue to fund government universities.
So I believe, in order to provide quality education, we should provide it free only to those who actually deserve free education.
With money in the system and faculty staff being well paid, it is only a matter of setting up standards, regulations and strict discipline in place that is required to get the management right. With private schools and universities competing with government institutes for better educational facilities and lower course fees students would receive greater benefits.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Taking free education forward - Part 1
Sri Lanka is one of the few countries in the world offering free primary, secondary and tertiary education. The high literacy rate of 97.3% in the country shows that free education has worked out well.
The government, no doubt, is putting a lot of money every year in to the educational system to provide free education, but as it is evident, that money is not enough. Only 16% of eligible students get to enter the government universities. May be about 2~3% of the remaining get to obtain degrees from private institutes like IIT, SLIIT and APIIT. (Note almost all of them are providing IT degrees - leaving not much of a choice for students interested in other fields) Another 1~2% of students based on financial strength of their parents get to go abroad for their studies. Almost 80% of the students who qualify for tertiary education are deprived of their right.
Even though some students like the ones who are members of Inter-university student bullshit union do not appreciate the opportunity given to them for free education; depriving that from many others who would have embraced that opportunity; free education is still a good thing. It’s just that, if we can give that opportunity to only 16% of those who are eligible, selecting them through a competitive examination is not the best solution. That discourages the students in engaging in extra-curricular activities and essential personality building activities. From the 40 odd students who were in my advanced level class, those 2 or 3 who got through to the universities were the guys who had their heads buried in books 24X7 and didn’t had enough self-confidence to look someone in the eye when they were talking. That certainly is not the sample of academia we should have in a country.
Those who have seen class rooms and facilities available in international schools may attest for the difference in standards between them and an average school in north central province or central for that matter. Putting aside international schools, comparing leading schools in Colombo with schools in other parts of the country yields the same differences in available facilities and maintained standards. Moving on to universities; comparison between an average American university and the best universities of Sri Lanka shows greater difference in standards and available facilities than the above comparisons. Note that it is not money alone that has brought those institutes to the high standards; but also the will and expectations of the stakeholders involved, including pupils, faculty staff and of the government body.
So what do we have to do, in order to bring the standards of average schools to the same level as - say Ananda or Royal College of Colombo? And what do we have to do to get University of Moratuwa to the standards of Chicago state university - an average state university in America?
The government, no doubt, is putting a lot of money every year in to the educational system to provide free education, but as it is evident, that money is not enough. Only 16% of eligible students get to enter the government universities. May be about 2~3% of the remaining get to obtain degrees from private institutes like IIT, SLIIT and APIIT. (Note almost all of them are providing IT degrees - leaving not much of a choice for students interested in other fields) Another 1~2% of students based on financial strength of their parents get to go abroad for their studies. Almost 80% of the students who qualify for tertiary education are deprived of their right.
Even though some students like the ones who are members of Inter-university student bullshit union do not appreciate the opportunity given to them for free education; depriving that from many others who would have embraced that opportunity; free education is still a good thing. It’s just that, if we can give that opportunity to only 16% of those who are eligible, selecting them through a competitive examination is not the best solution. That discourages the students in engaging in extra-curricular activities and essential personality building activities. From the 40 odd students who were in my advanced level class, those 2 or 3 who got through to the universities were the guys who had their heads buried in books 24X7 and didn’t had enough self-confidence to look someone in the eye when they were talking. That certainly is not the sample of academia we should have in a country.
Those who have seen class rooms and facilities available in international schools may attest for the difference in standards between them and an average school in north central province or central for that matter. Putting aside international schools, comparing leading schools in Colombo with schools in other parts of the country yields the same differences in available facilities and maintained standards. Moving on to universities; comparison between an average American university and the best universities of Sri Lanka shows greater difference in standards and available facilities than the above comparisons. Note that it is not money alone that has brought those institutes to the high standards; but also the will and expectations of the stakeholders involved, including pupils, faculty staff and of the government body.
So what do we have to do, in order to bring the standards of average schools to the same level as - say Ananda or Royal College of Colombo? And what do we have to do to get University of Moratuwa to the standards of Chicago state university - an average state university in America?
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Prostitution and Porn
Bunch of jesters at the police women and children bureau and some court in Battaramulla or somewhere has published a set of photographs claiming to be of Sri Lankan “porn stars”; I saw them on gossip lanka website and I bet some of those photos are from 1980s and some are not even Sri Lankans - some of those Latin American porn stars even have Wikipedia pages dedicated to them. Yet; our police and the courts are searching for them and need public assistance in doing so...
Current situation and the stupidity of the law enforcers aside; I thought of writing down how I feel about the whole thing - prostitution and porn.
Sex sells. Just like liquor but with much more demand; it sells all over the world. And it’s been selling ever since mankind invented trading - in one form or another. Why? Because it’s in our genes to need sex; humans are a species that enjoy sex. No cultural bullshit can really suppress that need; there may be people who’ve suppressed it by some mean, but that’s not the natural state of humankind. And when sex is not available for free, there are always people who are willing to buy. And when it’s not available to be bought; there would always be those who’d just take it anyway. (Any females in here taking public transport, who’ve noticed a recent hike in molesters in buses?)
When there’s such a huge market available; there always would be people who are willing to supply to that market; legally or illegally. And when things go beyond the boundaries of law; the boundaries of imagination widens for those outlaws. Illegal sex would cost more for those who are willing to pay; and as there always is, there would be those who’d just get it themselves - since it’s illegal anyways. Those who’d run the businesses would find their own ways of recruiting and handling their “merchandise” and there would be no justice or guarantee of safety for those who would be traded - by their will or not.
The greatest tragedy in our society is that we fool ourselves over a culture that exists only on the surface and folktales. Underneath; we all have the same needs, lusts, obsessions and hatreds that any other human would possess; but we pretend to be saints outside. We make laws based on this nominal culture and break those very laws at the very moment we get to hide it away from others.
Even now; a lot of women and children are drawn in to prostitution in Sri Lanka; and most of their fate is ill-ridden. Much more innocent children and women would be victims of sex crimes in the coming years if we don’t legalize and control this. But I don’t see that coming in Sri Lanka... so suffering it is... Take good care of your children and women...
Current situation and the stupidity of the law enforcers aside; I thought of writing down how I feel about the whole thing - prostitution and porn.
Sex sells. Just like liquor but with much more demand; it sells all over the world. And it’s been selling ever since mankind invented trading - in one form or another. Why? Because it’s in our genes to need sex; humans are a species that enjoy sex. No cultural bullshit can really suppress that need; there may be people who’ve suppressed it by some mean, but that’s not the natural state of humankind. And when sex is not available for free, there are always people who are willing to buy. And when it’s not available to be bought; there would always be those who’d just take it anyway. (Any females in here taking public transport, who’ve noticed a recent hike in molesters in buses?)
When there’s such a huge market available; there always would be people who are willing to supply to that market; legally or illegally. And when things go beyond the boundaries of law; the boundaries of imagination widens for those outlaws. Illegal sex would cost more for those who are willing to pay; and as there always is, there would be those who’d just get it themselves - since it’s illegal anyways. Those who’d run the businesses would find their own ways of recruiting and handling their “merchandise” and there would be no justice or guarantee of safety for those who would be traded - by their will or not.
The greatest tragedy in our society is that we fool ourselves over a culture that exists only on the surface and folktales. Underneath; we all have the same needs, lusts, obsessions and hatreds that any other human would possess; but we pretend to be saints outside. We make laws based on this nominal culture and break those very laws at the very moment we get to hide it away from others.
Even now; a lot of women and children are drawn in to prostitution in Sri Lanka; and most of their fate is ill-ridden. Much more innocent children and women would be victims of sex crimes in the coming years if we don’t legalize and control this. But I don’t see that coming in Sri Lanka... so suffering it is... Take good care of your children and women...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)