<Eran_Chinthaka's_core_dump/>: November 2009

Divided We Fail and United We Prevail : Sri Lankan Politics and Our War Heroes

>> Friday, November 13, 2009

Yesterday heard the news that Sri Lankan army commander who led us to defeat LTTE got retired. It looked like a normal news, but once I looked at his resignation letter, it seemed lots of things had gone wrong for him.

Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka,President Mahinda Rajapaksha and Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksha

We ended a 30 year war which hindered the prosperity and progress of our country. Every Sri Lankan was happy and then I thought now Sri Lanka is safer than even US. This couldn't have been possible without our president Mahinda Rajapaksha, Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksha and our army commander Sarath Fonseka. Even with all the international pressure and various other forces, this trio proved the fact that we can win the war without any foreign support.

Sarath Fonseka, irrespective of his political intentions, if any, is still one of the heroes in the country. He fought for our country and on April 25, 2006 he even survived an assassination attempt when an LTTE suicide bomber attacked his motorcade (so did Gotabhaya Rajapaksha in December 2006).

But now it seems there is a friction between the president and the commander, making him even to resign and enter in to politics to compete with the president. This is very very bad for the unity of the country. Also I'm sure he still have death threats from LTTE supported and removing/reducing his security guards is not a prudent thing.

In some sense I liked Sarath Fonseka being the next presidential candidate from the opposition, because then we will see a real and heated election campaigns going on between the two parties (as you might probably know, the current opposition leader is way behind current president and must have lost more than 20 consecutive elections).

But the problem is

1. We will be divided once again. Every Sri Lankan loved our army commander and president for ending this war. But when these two are on two different sides what will happen to the people?

2. The opposition was trying to get in to power for a long time and this time they will take undue advantage of the commander, making Mr. Fonseka also become notorious for all the bad things they have done.

For once I thought everything is gonna be alright. But now I'm not feel good about that. Earlier we suffered because of the separatist terrorists. Now we will suffer because of our own people.

Getting Ubuntu 9.10 wireless working with HP laptop or Dell mini

>> Thursday, November 05, 2009

I was really excited to install Ubuntu 9.10 on my laptop to dual boot with Windows 7.

After the smooth installation, all the hardware components were installed except wireless. But this was (sort of) an easy fix. This fix worked for my HP dv5-1235dx laptop and Dell mini 10 netbook.

For laptops with CD/DVD drives,

Insert Ubuntu installation CD in to your CD drive.
Goto System -> Administration -> Software Sources and click on "Ubuntu Software" tab.
Under the Installable from DVD section, make sure you select "CDROM with Ubuntu 9.10 ....." option is selected. Also select all the options under "Downloadable from the internet" is also selected.
Then go to System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers. After the detection process, you should see "Broadcom STA wirless driver". Select that and press "Activate".
Once you are done, restart your computer. You should see your wireless working.

For laptops with no CD/DVD drives