Problem with বাংলা font in Firefox 4

I was excited when Firefox 4 was released. I have used three of their released candidates and found lots of bugs. However, they did a great job of fixing all the bugs before the release. But one thing disappointed me a lot: improper display of বাংলা script. I frequently visit sites like প্রথম আলো, সচলায়তন etc. and write বাংলা in Gmail and Facebook. বাংলা script appeared in distorted form everywhere. The problem was partially solved when I downloaded the SolaimanLipi font from here. বাংলা in প্রথম আলো immediately began to be displayed correctly. However, problems with the rest of the sites were unresolved. Then I solved the problem by changing the default font to SolaimanLipi by going to Options -> Content -> Fonts & Colors -> Advanced. I selected "Bengali" in the "Fonts for" drop-down box. I selected SolaimanLipi for both Serif and Sans-serif. I hope this might solve problems faced by others too.

A quiz

Quiz: which processor overheats and shuts down the whole machine when a processor intensive program runs?

Ans: AMD (what else can it be?)

Previously, I could not play videos long enough because my AMD laptop would shut itself down because of overheating. Yesterday, I found that I cannot even do format conversion of videos. Both the task has one thing in common: intensive computation by CPU and that is what a process is supposed to do and be good at. But I learnt now that an AMD processor is no good at these tasks. It generates so much heat that I felt an egg can be boiled easily. I bought a lapinator one month ago but it is not helping at all. I guess I have to buy a portable A/C to be permanently attached to the processor and then only I can do something other than word processing with this machine. I am waiting for the day when I would be able to replace this laptop.

Dissatisfied with AMD laptop

My laptop has an Intel Core Duo and my wife's one has an AMDTK55 1.8 GHz with 512K cache. My wife's laptop frequently overheats and shuts down unexpectedly. It has more memory than mine (2.25 GB vs 2 GB) yet it runs slower. I can easily run multiple heavy weight applications in parallel in the Intel laptop whereas the AMD one almost crawls to a halt in a similar situation. This is my first AMD purchase. The only person I know who had an AMD is a friend who had it back when we were in school. He was not happy with his machine and neither are we with ours now. I wanted to see what others are saying and found here that indeed AMD is not a match with Intel. The only advantage it provides is the low price. But I think the price difference is more than offset by its poor performance. So I would advise everyone to research thoroughly before picking one of the brands. As this article says, we don't have to be fan of any brand because we don't get anything from them in return. We have to pick the best one for our need, regardless of the moniker it has on it.

A potential game changer medicine

This is really an exciting news for people having problems with cholesterol. And that group now includes me :-).

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Next-big-thing-Big-apf-1591521974.html?x=0

Homosexual Saudi Prince get life sentence for murder

Here is the news. I am not surprised at all.

How two horses plotted history

I first read this in an email but found it really interesting to share with people. It is a fascinating story of how we came up with moder railroad gauge. The story has something more interesting. Click here to read the interesting piece of history.

Equinox GTK theme with Faenza icons

Recently, I came across this blog: http://www.techdrivein.com/2010/08/equinox-gtk-theme-faenza-icon-theme.html and installed the Equinox GTK theme with Faenza icon theme. It changed the look of my Gnome desktop completely and it looks awesome now. Anyone looking for a cool new theme for his Gnome can have a try.

Halal status of lamb steak at Outback Steakhouse in the U.S.

Recently, I learned from Zabihah.com's San Jose, CA page that the lamb steak served in Outback Steakhouse all over the U.S. is halal. I was long looking for a source of halal steaks and was excited to learn this. I decided to investigate more and inquired Outback Steakhouse of the halal status of their lamb steak. I got a long reply from one of their reps. I am listing the key points from the email below:

1. Outback Steakhouse lamb meat is imported from New Zealand which has received certification of Halal Accreditation from The Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand.

2. The grills for preparing steaks at Outback Steakhouse are used for all kinds of meats i.e. beef, chicken, pork, lamb. So, special request has to be made to prepare the lamb steak in a separate sauté pan. This special preparation will take more time than normal.

3. The lamb has to be served without Cabernet sauce.

4. The steamed vegetables has to be prepared without the "seasoned butter" which contains a bit of bacon in the seasoning.

These special requests has to be made to the Manager on duty while placing the order.

Is Wind Power Green?

http://news.discovery.com/tech/is-wind-power-green.html

I did not know wind power is so abundant and that it can solve the renewable energy issue so easily. Though densely populated countries like Bangladesh might not be able to utilize it, countries having enough land to have them installed should go ahead and start exporting if they have redundant power. It would be a nice way to get rid of dependency on fossil fuel and will eventually bring more peace to the world :-).

Good Bye Modhupur Forest

I came across this nice write-up on Modhupur Sal forest of Bangladesh. It is indeed a sad story. Is there any real patriot politician who will step forward and save this precious asset of Bangladesh? We all know the answer.

প্রথম আলো - রোহিঙ্গা অনুপ্রবেশ ঠেকানো যাচ্ছে না

প্রথম আলো - রোহিঙ্গা অনুপ্রবেশ ঠেকানো যাচ্ছে না

এই সমস্যার সমাধান কি?

Referees should be accountable

This report on Yahoo! sports sums up the frustration on the way refereeing is being done in this world cup. I think it is time to stop pampering the referees and introduce video replay to the world's most popular sport.

My Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop

Canonical has done a great job on Ubuntu 10.04. I love the theme and the start up time is really as short as they have touted. Here is my Ubuntu desktop with the default wallpaper:

How to see the developer info of Bijoy

Vrapper

Back in 2003 I had to write code in Linux for the first time in my life. For some reason I could not get the GUI running so I had to find an editor which works in text user interface. Immediately, I found the two most famous editors for Unix: Emacs and Vi. Vi seemed to be hard to grasp at that time. I did not get the idea of having two modes: the command mode and the insert mode. So I quickly decided to use Emacs which was much easier to learn. However, last summer I decided to give Vim a try. After using it for couple of days I started to like it and eventually it became my most favorite editor for coding. I was so habituated to using Vim that while working in Eclipse I subconsciously tried to use the Vim commands. Recently, I thought that given the huge number of Vim fans in the software developer community, there must be one or two projects on combining the power of Eclipse and Vim together and yes, I was right. I found several projects working on the idea:

1. VimPlugin
2. Eclim
3. Vrapper

I tried VimPlugin. You need to have gVim installed in your system to make it work. It provides a fully working Vim editor in Eclipse. However, it misses the powerful auto-completion feature and other features on the context menu of Eclipse's default editor and so I was not satisfied with it. I did not try Eclim because the main focus of that project is to run Eclipse inside Vim instead of the other way around. Then I installed Vrapper plugin and found it to be the one I was looking for. As the name suggests, it wraps the default editor to provide Vim-like functionality. The feature list it provides is still a subset of that of Vim and they are working on providing more features. However, the plugin has the basic features for which people love Vim and I think I like it too. Features like search with regular expression and search and replace are marked for future versions. But I can live without them for the time being. Those who like both Eclipse and Vim can certainly give it a try.

South Talpatti lost for good

The disputed South Talpatti is no more :-). We could never take possession of it. Thanks to nature for taking caring of it. However, the news is not funny at all. It reminded me of the bleak future of Bangladesh in the face of global warming. It is predicted that 18 percent of our coastal area will be submerged and 20 million people will be displaced. Are our political parties aware of these issues? Or are they still busy figuring out who declared the independence?

RanksTel caught for illegal VoIP

RanksTel is found guilty of doing illegal VoIP business. I thought it was already a profitable organization with its land phone business. What led them to this illegal venture? Is it the greed they could not avoid? It is good to see that BTRC is active again catching the illegal VoIP operations. Big names are also coming up. I thought their activity has ended as soon as the elected government came to power. I am eager to see what proof BNP, the opposition party, provides to support their claim of Mr. Sajib Wazed Joy being involved in this business. It will be interesting to see what government does if BNP can provide some concrete evidences.

Getting openRDF Sesame 2.3.1 installation with Tomcat 6 to work

After deploying the war files: openrdf-sesame.war and openrdf-workbench.war by Tomcat's web-admin interface, I encountered the following problem while trying to access http://localhost:8080/openrdf-sesame/:

java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.util.PropertyPermission info.aduna.platform.appdata.basedir read)

I found a discussion about it here. Eventually I solved the problem in the following way:

1. Create and assign the home directory "/home/tomcat6" to tomcat6 user.
2. Create the directory "/home/tomcat6/.aduna".
3. Add the property "-Dinfo.aduna.platform.appdata.basedir=/home/tomcat6/.aduna/" in JAVA_OPTS in the /etc/default/tomcat6 file.
4. Restart Tomcat.

But this did not solve the problem. Then I had to turn off the security entirely which I am sure is not the recommended way. Here is what I did:

1. Set TOMCAT6_SECURITY=no in /etc/default/tomcat6 file.
2. Restart Tomcat.

Problem solved! But in an inelegant way. Does anyone have a better solution?

N.B.: lucene-2.9.2 must be in the classpath in order to get BigOWLIM-3.2.6 working properly.

Floor mat problem sparked 2000 Toyota recall in U.K.

Toyota identified the floor mat problem back in 2000 and recalled vehicles in U.K. But it hid it from the U.S. authorities. This kind of things were least expected from Toyota for a long time but things have changed I guess.

NEPAL IN SEARCH OF LOST IDENTITY

BY: PREM RAJ

INTRODUCTION

South Asia is injured and bleeding due to the chicaneries of India using her intelligence agencies as the tools of governance within and without the frontiers of her country to make its dream of expansionism realize by grabbing the land, sucking the resources and placing its own stooges in the parliaments of neighbouring countries. Whether it's Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan, Srilanka, Myanmar, Tibet or Nepal, the water resources are being ceased by India while making barrages and dams all along to turn the neighbour's land barren and this aqua bombing has since long been pounding but it is an apathy on the part of suffering countries who are keeping silent on this criminal quagmire thus making it more mournful and lugubrious. All the intelligence agencies of India, especially the "RAW" are following the philosophy of "Chankya"alias Kautilya (literal meaning 'crooked'). 'Chankya' advocates deceit, guile, hypocrisy, machination, killing and gore are nearly 2500 years old lessons adopted by 'RAW' truly following her God Father (Chankya). With a friend like you (India) who needs a foe. Indian doctrine to display friendly gesture towards any country means becoming parasite and thus making it weaker by sucking its resources. 'Chankya' teaches that to whom you want to kill, first make him a thick friend and cut his main artery when offers you his neck and then let every one know of this truth but no one would believe rather they all would become sympathetic that you have lost the senses when confessing the guilt. The inbuilt geographical weakness of Nepal has been blessed with the cactus called land locked country fully being cashed by India through her 'RAW' the RASCAL. Name anything and there one finds the impure hands of 'RAW' scratching Nepal's proud & rich civilization having its roots since time immemorial. Whether it's a parliament or drafting of constitution, eviction of monarchy or driving out Maoists from the government, according of citizenship to an unauthorized Indians or the matter of electricity, the massacre of king's family or grabbing the precious land of Nepal, every where there hangs a logo of India enameled with intrigue set by the 'RAW'. What a comic tragedy, if one asks a common citizen that who is the Prime Minister of Nepal, he would simply reply that 'Swine Sood' is the Premier of Nepal.

GREATER NEPAL

 "GREATER NEPAL" is a concept or a dream yet to be realized. The existing Nepal is not the real picture of Nepal depicting its bonafide land as that had been shrinked due to the mischief of India getting in to intrigue with some of the Nepalese leaders at the helm of an affair at that point of time when the Britishers were leaving this subcontinent. India kept folding the precious land and the leaders of Nepal kept grabbing the benefits or the bones thrown by India. This selling of their motherland is still continuing by the politicians to be purchased by India on a much lesser rate than the prostitute who sells her chastity. The book written by "Jasoosi ko Jaalo" by Saroj Adhikari" a well renowned journalist has mentioned until the time of publishing of the book, it has been revealed there are an estimated 70,000 people working in 'RAW' including 30,000 permanent secret agents, part timers and agents. Likewise, it is assumed that there are about 15,000 'RAW' agents deployed in countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Srilanka, Maldives, Afghanistan, Bhutan, China & Nepal. The activities of 'RAW' in all its neighbouring countries clearly expose its intention. Another famous writer Wang Khangwe Jo, a Professor of Beijing Institute of Asian Pacific Studies, has said, "Bharat wants to make Nepal a second Sikkim or Bhutan". Further he said, that the leaders of Nepal who are always complaining of foreign intervention in the country, when they get to the power, they are the ones dancing to the tunes of the foreigners in order to remain in power.

These politicians do not mind even the drifting of border pillars today when India trying to encroach the land of Nepal because making objection means loosing the seat or position in the parliament due to the prevailing hegemonic influence of India on Nepal. Where as the UNNF (United Nepal National Front) and other nationalist organizations in Nepal are demanding for the lawful return of Nepal's extended territories beyond present boundaries that were ceded by the British East India Company after the Saugauli treaty. At the public meeting organized in Ratnapark, the president of UNNF, Mr. Phanindra Nepal a flag bearer of the concept of 'Greater Nepal' demanded that the idea of 'Greater Nepal' must be included in the new constitution that is to be drafted by the Constituent Assembly in Nepal. "In the year 1960, The UN Security Council had passed a resolution against Colonization, in such a scenario India can no longer occupy Nepal's legitimate territories", Mr. Phanindra Nepal said. As per the International Laws, in the absence of the British East India Company with which the Nepal Government had signed the treaty in 1816, that automatically becomes null and void and the ceded lands must be handed over to Nepal as in no way India has any right to illegally possess the same. In addition, the clause 8 of the 1950 treaty of Peace and Friendship with India clearly advocates that "with this treaty in force, the past treaties signed by Nepal become obsolete" which mean that the territories lost by Nepal under the Saugauli treaty automatically should fall back to Nepal. But who will bell the cat as India is alien to the decent and friendly language. Will this be done by the parliamentarians to include the stance in the new constitution which looks to be impossible or by the UN Security Council to implement the resolution but who will agitate the point when annoying Bharat Mata who is sitting like a serpent in Nepal in the shape of 'RAW' and the only course left for the Nationalist Groups is to launch a public awareness to create momentum in the movement against India for the rightful cause of taking the land back from the mouth of this 'Alligator' called India.

NEPAL'S CONSTITUTION

The preparation of constitution of Nepal is still in dole drum. It is a daunting task to complete the constitution by May 28th, 2010, as it has yet to be clothed in the first draft which is long awaited. All the major parties almost get in to the rifts whenever it sets forth its direction. If the parties are sincere to give constitution to the nation then they have to change their working style while paying no heed to the Indian dictation. The tragedy is there are some who always look towards the Indian ambassador 'Rakesh Sood' to score the point rather than keeping in mind the interest of the country. They always have an idea that their blessings begin and end in Delhi. This is the vital reason of the constitution not getting in to shape. There are many challenges the constitution is facing like confrontational position amongst the political parties and the prevalent situation deprived of peace process in the country. These both forms are the outcome of Indian doctrine so to create unrest and unhealthy atmosphere for the constitution to breathe in Nepal. This must be remembered that any nation without constitution is no nation and there is always the constitution which brings people at par with the world at large and thus describe their character, justice and moral philosophies of life. There is lot to be done in context of the constitution within six months but every time obstructions being created by those who are dancing like puppets in the hands of an unseen forces primarily keeping the strings obviously lead by the "RAW" are the real culprits whiling away the precious time of this poor nation. It is rumoured that draft of Constitution of Nepal by the Constituent Assembly is a humbug as the same has already been prepared by India, if so the parliamentarians will always remain answerable to the people of Nepal who had bestowed trust on them to draft a 'New Constitution of Nepal' and not the one imported from Delhi having written on its face, 'The Constitution of Nepal, (Made in India)'.

INDIA STRETCHING LEGS IN NEPAL & TARGETING TERAI

How doleful it is that India through its illegitimate son 'RAW the Rascal' is bent upon mounting on to the back bone of Nepal called Terai region which is the precious economic belt of the country. It is continuously changing the demographic complexion of 'Terai". 'RAW' is mostly pushing the criminals and the offenders across the independent border existing between Nepal and India. These criminals are ruthlessly on behest of this very monstrous 'RAW' are involved in the heinous offences like raping women, killing innocent civilians and looting villages adjacent to the border areas, thus forcing people to flee. Since its independence in 1947, India has been settling the outlawed in the jungles and various parts of Terai especially in the border areas that have been stealing the precious wood from the jungles of Terai and then moving it to India. Now this sizeable force of Indian origin works as eyes and ears of the 'RAW' against Nepal and China to safeguard the interest of India. They are fully armed and can explode violence in Terai region as and when asked by the 'RAW'. Not only this hundreds and thousands of Indians have contracted forcible marriages with the Nepalese women, hence during the period of last Interim Government, the Indians managed to get the Citizenship Act passed, by virtue of which all those Indians related to Nepalese by marriage and their offspring, were given Nepalese Citizenship. The aim is to have Indian population ascendancy to outnumber the real Nepalese origin people to make them elect as MPs in the parliament, thus in turn to safeguard Indian interests.

But interestingly a dangerous kind of contraband item is in use called FICN (Fake Indian Currency Notes) floating mostly by the Indian agents of the' RAW' infiltrating in to Nepal. The Indian fake currency is being sent across the border for the purpose of collapsing the economy of Nepal. Not only had this in all the major sectors Indian hegemony is exposed seriously thus causing alarm in the society as well.

'RAW' has sent its agents in Nepal, in the guise of journalists who are mainly working in the Himalayan Times and also in Kantipur whereas the editorial staff belongs to India, for the purpose of propagation and justifying the India's hegemonic designs. Most of the Indian agents have got married in Nepal which provides them the natural cover for conducting subversive acts.

All the outfits and the criminals are being provided weapons in Terai by agents of the 'RAW". The main aim is to cut Terai morally, physically and isolate it from rest of Nepal. And after doing so capture it like Sikkim & Bangladesh while making hue and cry in the world that this adventurism has been done only to save the people of Terai from the aggression of Nepal's Army. Man Mohan Singh must not fall prey to 'RAW's" scheme of intelligence because these buffoons lack intelligence and so untrustworthy they are that always tries to stab their benefactors like got killed Mrs. Indira Gandhi and same way the 'RAW' wrote the fate of her son (Rajiv Gandhi) to bring him to a point where the suicide bomber was there to embrace him for death. The 'RAW' did all this massacre of Nehru family because it could not digest the popularity of this elite family who had devoted their lives in the politics of their country and more so had spent billions of rupees on up-bringing of this illegitimate spoilt son of India. But what a price they had to pay for the kind gestures displayed by the family of Nehru and the reward paid by the 'RAW' to drive them one by one to an altar to get slaughtered. So if the 'RAW' is pampering Mr. Man Mohan Singh to chop off Terai from rest of Nepal and annex it with India to mount on the back bone of Nepal may turn out to be a nightmare like Hitler who tried to go on to Ukraine to satisfy its lust for wealth. The people of Nepal will never allow this misadventure of India committing a folly on behest of 'RAW the Rascal'. India has to shed away the hypocritical style of hegemonic designs like her going in to Sri Lanka with the motive of capturing it but failed miserably, moving in to Bangladesh with the aim of making it her colony but her aim went in vain, spending billions of rupees on subversive activities of 'RAW' to disturb peace of Pakistan but since long hitting her head with a strong wall, India is leaving no stone unturned to create fuss in Tibet to stand against China and not allowing Nepal to construct 16 miles shingle road adjoining Nepal with China to form hurdles to restrict trade & commerce between the two countries.

After giving illegally the right of Citizenship to almost 80,000 Indians, having well settled on the grabbed Land of Nepal fully loaded with weapons and making Hindi as an official language would force Nepalese to hibernate in the refugee camps that too in their own country exactly on the lines of Bhutanese, hence before 'RAW' tries to inject this menace, the nation has to strike against thugs of the 'RAW" mostly working under the umbrella of 'Rubbish Swine'.

UNBECOMING OF AN AMBASSADOR

In Nepal, Rakesh Sood is popularly known as 'Rubbish Swine' who mostly displays the conduct 'Unbecoming of an Ambassador' and is mostly remembered as a miscreant, a rake and a rogue. There are so many spy net works working under-cover of diplomatic mission in Nepal but still no action has been taken against the 'RAW'. 'RAW' was responsible for the Royal massacre through its agent named 'Devyani Rana' and it was done so to destabilize the country. The same tradition is being followed by the Unbecoming of an Ambassador the one and the only 'Rubbish Swine' who in all the sectors of Nepal have planted agents of the 'RAW' to disturb peace in the country. Is there any country in the world where rules the unelected members who sit in a parliament except in Nepal and wear the caps of a Foreign Minister to the Premier, solely by the 'Rubbish Swine' having blessings of the Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh. Rubbish Swine is a 'Vulture of Fortune' who draws the luck lines on the palm of politicians for the ultimate gains of India. The impression outside the world is given as if Nepal is not a sovereign state but is one of the states of India. India through 'RAW' was the one which provided weapons to the Maoists to make the country crawl on its knees and after making her weak brought Maoists in to power, the group called as the terrorist that too none other than the India herself. And when the Maoists looked towards China to break the iron curtain of Land Locked Country and Mr. Parchanda had all the plans to visit China for the second time but was forced by Delhi through 'Rubbish Swine' to step down and that too once for all. At that point of time the extra ordinary jumping of 'Rubbish Swine' like a monkey was a worthwhile show to witness his maestro gutsy gestures of withering one elected government and shoe polishing the members on the other who had lost miserably in the elections but yet being garlanded as victorious to rule the country. Unbecoming of an Ambassador displays hateful debonair and is in a habit of summoning the parliamentarians to Indian embassy as to mark their presence in the school of faithfulness like the kindergarten students are counted in the class. But here these buffoons of parliamentarians of Nepal are baptized by the 'RAW' to do all those acts where India stands like pylon and Nepal as Pygmalion. Rakesh Sood will always be remembered like the character of a 'SHYLOCK' as in Shakespeare's drama.

Rakesh Sood is a real 'Rubbish Swine' an active agent of the 'RAW' & an Unbecoming of an Ambassador, the character of a Shylock in the history of Nepal and the one who turned Indian embassy in Nepal, in to a den of spies.

CONCLUSION

India has all along been intoxicated to drive South Asian states to concur with an idea of designing hegemony which has never hesitated to culture economic strangulation, political blackmailing and even carrying out naked aggression against the neighbouring countries. But Nepal has suffered a lot due to the treacherous tentacles spread by the 'RAW' which almost sits on the wealth of the country. Nepal's traditional pride of having to be ruled by the king was abolished due to the massacre in the palace hatched by the 'RAW" to kneel down the country for its ulterior motive. India, compelling Deputy President of Nepal to announce 'Hindi' as an official language which had met the major opposition from the public sector. Awarding citizenship of Nepal to those who were hardened criminals and were mainly settled by the 'RAW' in the border areas. Most of the land comprising of thousands of hectors area was grabbed by India. And the most hateful personality, an unbecoming of an ambassador, the persona non gratis, and the only 'RUBBISH SWINE" enjoys facilities like the ruler of Nepal.

There are so many pitfalls made by India, which have compelled Nepal to search for her lost identity and yet voicing 'Nepal as my friend'.

"I DESTROY MY ENEMIES WHEN I MAKE THEM MY FRIENDS"

Abraham Lincoln

Source: http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2010/01/15/nepal-in-search-of-lost-identity/