Linux how to: LimeWire installation in Bayanihan Linux 4

I have just recently installed LimeWire 4.14 on my Bayanihan Linux 4 platform. I installed limewire so I can download a good torrent client since I could not find any workable torrent clients on the internet. Here are a few steps to follow in installing LimeWire on Linux.

Step 1. Download LimeWire

At the limewire home page, click on the "download" button at the top menu. Click the "basic" button as it allows you to download limewire for free. In the next page, be honest enough to click "I will not use limewire for copyright infringement." At the lower part of the next page, click the link to download "Other systems ()S/2, Solaris, Linux)" to begin downloading "LimeWireOther.zip".

Step 2. Extract LimeWire

Extract the zip file on to a folder where you wish to share LimeWire. It will create a folder named "LimeWire." Inside that folder is a shell script, "runLime.sh" to run lime wire.


Step 3. Set path

Edit the shell script using a text editor. In the first portion of the script type:

PATH=$PATH:/
export PATH

An example the path is " /home/user/java/jdk1.5.0_02/bin". Your java must be 1.5 or higher. LimeWire will use the bin files of java to function properly. Java 1.5 or higher comes with the Java Runtime Environment during installation. How to install this is another topic. You can download your java installer from here.

Step 3. Start LimeWire

To run limewire, open a terminal window and go to the folder /~/LimeWire then type:

$sh runLime.sh

And your limewire loads and you can begin downloading multimedia including torrents.

NOTE: Do not close the terminal or your limewire will close as well.

Customer service hotline

A popular client assistance operation of companies today is the customer assistance hotline. As the name implies, the line and the company phone ear piece is always hot due to constant flow of electricity for the former and constant contact with the ear for the latter.

Our broadband service provider has one. We can call them up if we encounter problems with our internet connection. Being a bundle of phone line and broadband DSL, we can also call them up if we have phone problems. But only during their regular working hours.

So, when you loose broadband or phone service during the night and it unfortunately happens during the time when you needed those service the most, tough luck. Their answering machine will tell you to call them up during their regular operating hours from 7:00am to 8:30pm Mondays through Fridays and up to 6:00pm only during weekends and holidays. To remedy this, well, sulk and hope that 7:00am comes earlier than usual.

Home cooking - pasta sauce with spanish style sardines

Here is the recipe for something I came up with.

Ingredients
1 small can Spanish style sardines
1/2 a can of sliced mushrooms
5 cloves garlic
1 bulb onion
2 tomatoes
2 tablespoons butter
500 grams pasta
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
2 tablespoons vegetable or coconut oil
pepper

Sauce
1. Sautee minced garlic, and onion and tomato strips in butter. Add oil from Spanish style sardine can when tomato is well cooked.
2. Add pepper, soy sauce, and oyster sauce. Add mushrooms.
3. Add sardines and grate cheese over mixture.
4. Simmer

Pasta
1. Bring water to a boil.
2. Add oil.
3. Add pasta and boil till white in center is gone while the pasta is still firm -- al dente as the French call it.
4. Put pasta in drainer and add 1 tablespoon of oil. Mix

Serve
Put pasta in plate, add the sauce, grate some cheese and voila! Pastarrific!

U.S.-bound trip fiasco

Many U.S.-bound passengers were not able to leave Manila airports because of an October 30 letter from the U.S. Embassy in Manila to all airlines with flights bound for the U.S.A. The letter instructed the airlines to ask their passengers with green cards that do not bear expiration dates to go to the embassy and get a new one with expiration dates before allowing them to leave. This letter came from an embassy official working under the Department of Homeland Security.

My uncle came home to see my grandmother about two weeks ago. Early morning just this Wednesday, I accompanied him to the airport for his return flight. We gave farewells and went our separate ways at the departure are of the airport.

While I was relaxing at home, he called me up and told me that he was held from leaving because he failed to comply with the aforementioned requirement to get a new green card. He had to carry his luggage back to my aunt's condo in Taguig where we stayed. He went to the embassy that same morning.

When we met again in the evening, he told me that he was not the only one who got held back. There is a long line of unfortunate balik-bayans who were also held back. Some old and have no other place to stay in Manila.

Since October 30, only a few US-based Filipinos knew about the regulation resulting in cancelled or re-booked flights, waste of time and money, and the feeling that you have been let down by the airline.

My uncle pointed out that he gave all available information to the airline from his mobile numbers, our home number in the Province of Iloilo, and his email address. For the last two weeks since the embassy letter, he never received any advise from the airline. Although he was fortunate to be given a booking for the following day and was able to process his papers within the one day, what about those who were not so lucky?

Businesses like the airline business earn income from their clients. No client, no money. Why did they not take care of their clients? Are they comfortable enough that they have other clients elsewhere? Or is this racial in nature?

Racism aside, if you do not take care of your source of income, you will run dry. And when you run dry, to go out of business.

May be they are complacent because they can take the risk of aggravating a minor percentage of their clients. May be it is because their services are better than others that they are sure their clients will come back to them.

This is business, but where is honest business?

Pasig ferry ride

Just today, I once more took a ride in the Pasig Ferry operated by the Nautical Transport Services Incorporated based in Manila, Philippines.

I noticed that the ferry took longer than usual to ply its route. It appears to me that it has been moving at a slower pace that what I have previously experience. What I noticed even more is the gas guzzling made when the ferry docks in and departs a station. At one station, it has to make a 180 degree turn to dock and do a reverse 180 to leave and move on to the next station. In another station, the ferry has to make a 90 degree turn to dock and also make a reverse 90 to leave.

I have heard that the ferry consumes about two thousand five hundred pesos worth of diesel fuel for a complete one way trip. And now I understand why.

Every time the ferry sets its engines to full reverse or use it to maneuver, I hear it rev up and I deduced that this eats up a lot of its diesel supply.

I have thought of the following cost effective means of running that service. I am not sure if it will work as I expect. But no pain, no gain so here it goes:

1. Change the hull from catamaran to a surface effect hull like the m-hull featured by the M Shipping Company located in San Diego, California. This will allow the ferry to increase speed at a shorter period of time and drop speed just as fast. Surface effect hulls "raise" the ship from the water when it increases speed due to its hydrodynamic feature. When the ship cuts power to its propellers, the loss of forward thrust degrades the "lifting" capacity of the hull that lowers it in water. The design of the hull uses the density of water as its brakes. So, let's say a ship can increase speed to 10 knots in 3 seconds, it can stop to 0 in just about the same time with this type of hull.

2. Locate stations away from obstructions like bridges and other docks. This will not require the ferries to maneuver too much. All it has to do is slow down, move to the side, and dock. No more turnings. No more backings. No more twists.

This will make the service more fuel efficient and cover its route much faster.

A child's death in exchange for social support

The government has been created to provide basic and important services to the people. When the government fails to deliver such services, the government needs to answer for that failure.

Early this November, a grade 6 pupil from Davao City in the Philippines committed suicide due to poverty. In the girl's diary, she wrote that she could not stand their situation anymore. She is one of the youngest among 7 children -- she has a younger brother.

On November 1, Marianette asked her father for 100 pesos for her school project. Unable to give the money to his child, he asked her to ask her mother instead adding that maybe she has some money. Unfortunately, her mother does not have money available.

A father that he is, the following day the girl's father went to the construction site where he works to get some advance payment. He got a thousand pesos. Sadly, when he got home, he found out that his little girl is already dead, she hanged herself.

Her four other siblings were not with them because they already have families of their own. Her mother is a part time clothes washer and her father is a seasonal construction worker.

The national government, in a press statement, assumed responsibility for the girl's death.

Being a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, it has a daunting task of ensuring the welfare of the people it serves. But who really is to blame?

There are several other issues that came up based on newspaper reports. The girl was known to have been taunted by her classmates for "being poor." She had been absent from school for three days according to her mother that the little girl have thought to have been four months as stated in her diary. Her absence was because they do not have any money for allowance. She even asked permission from her mother to work but was dissuaded to do so. These are a lot of factors already.

Taunting is a painful thing to happen. Being young as they are, children tend to brag about what they have. And in the process, some even put down others who are not as well off as they are.

I never got wind of what else happened to the girl before she died. My friends and I have discussed what happened and we came up with several reasons or factors that lead to her committing suicide at a young age.

1. Value for Education - we could never comprehend how at such a young age the girl thought of committing suicide. Is it because of her hunger for education that her absence deeply affected her? You do not find a lot of children who truly value education. In our discussions, we share that during elementary school days, we did aspire to excel in class but we also look forward to reasons to be absent. We believe that she may have given her education greater value than we did.

2. Television - she may have watched several soap operas in their neighbors television that bore so much drama on life's challenges. She may have witnessed several scenes where actors say they want to die because of the suffering they endured. And this may have prompted her to think of suicide. Again, my group thought that at those times, what we thought of doing was to get adopted by rich families, not take our lives.

3. Depression - the taunting may have pushed her on the edge. Children taunt others without regard to what those other children feel because it is "fun." We even assumed that some kids may have told her to just die because they are so poor. And we all know that children say what they want. At such a young age, we believe that they do not have the capacity to ascertain that what they say may be taken seriously. Take a kid being scolded for example. They will even challenge their parents' authority until they get a gentle slap on the cheek or a piece of leather on their behinds. Children are brave but they are careless or rather care free.

And most far fetched of our theories is: Drama. Taking everything into consideration, the little girl may have thought that to get attention, she must do something big. And she may have believed that death is the biggest attention getter of all. Where she may have learned this, we can only guess. She had long wanted to have her family's life be given some comfort. She wished for school supplies and jobs for both her parents.

And her wish came true. Help came pouring in just this week to the bereaved. But it is too late for her. She may have thought that a sacrifice is needed so that her younger brother could have a better life. And that sacrifice is her own life.

So who's to blame? I believe we all are. We have taken our kids for granted. We have immersed ourselves in our work to give them better lives that we forgot that what they need most is our presence. The opposing sides of the government is intense in their struggle to take each other down that they have forgotten about the little ones who should have been the reason they are where they are now. The people elected by the people lost sight of who they work for. They lost sight of their collective goals. They are lost in their individual battles. And so we lost a promising little girl.

How many more little ones have to do such horrible acts for us to wake up? How many more should we lose to start working together.

Someone once told me that for a country to really achieve real change and realize that something is wrong, it must pay the price of loosing 2/3 of its citizens in a civil war.

We do not need war to change. All we need is commitment and intent to change.

War

I have viewed this video from Yahoo! it has nice music and cute "critters"



War, what is it good for?

The song answers: "absolutely nothing"

Sun Tzu said: "to maintain peace, prepare for war"

It was said that war is a prerequisite for peace and that to achieve true peace we must go to war. Well, it may be true on one side and not on the other.

Peace can be reached by talking or going to war. To talk to achieve peace, people should keep their cool and be patient as it takes time to get the other side to understand the need for peace. It takes long but it involves less damage and death.

On the other hand, you need to go to war to eliminate the threat to peace completely. But collateral damage affects this concept. People will want "justice." Justice for the death and suffering they got from the war. Each death or destruction creates a disheartened or disgruntled individual who will one day pose a threat.

Between fighting and talking, I go for talking but I will take heed of the advise of the old and still prepare to fight.