Cellphone, Technology, Linux, Cryptocurrency, Politics and Global Warming
This is not a gossip column like, Facebook, Twitter and Freedom Platform.
One might not see the connections, if one does not understand the basic physics.
If you do not understand how physics works in real world, do not read this beyond this point.
This is a scientific exegesis not a bizarre meditation session with delusion and illusion revisited.
First of all thanks to Donald Trump and his extreme Ultra Right Wing for using Freedom OS which is a derivative of Lineage OS.
I supported the Lineage OS, Linux Magazine and Linux Voice but stopped subscribing to the Magazine (reading scientific stuff is in my genes) due to poor supply of Dollars from abroad.
To dispense with money matters and currency first, I hate single currency of EU for a very good reason.
It comes from a small city called (Equivalent of Singapore in Europe ) Belgium where the King plundered West Africa for centuries and was helpful in spreading AIDS (equivalent of bat fever or Coronavirus of mainland China) globally.
AIDS came from a tiny tree monkey in Africa whom they used for animal experimentation.
We have not discovered a treatment for AIDS or for that matter Malaria from which millions of Children still die every year in Africa.
The simple reason for objecting to single currency is:
It would dilute the stupidity of all our Finance Ministers after independence.
Mind you, British left us surplus of money in our coffers and the Air Ceylon to fly (for the politicians to plunder later).
This even Victor Ivan understands.
Mind you, I have a chapter on Victor in my book Politics Revisited at Amazon for young ones to read how we plundered money and freedom and we have now geared for a military government which is failing by the day.
I prudently, stopped writing my Political Vision dead at 2010.
This vision, Ma Ra and Si Ra combination erased from our history.
Any opportunity for recovery in a sensible redirection was lost.
I think, "The Third Force" can emerge from the proverbial ashes of Phoenix.
A victory path from the prison.
Mr. Ranjan Ramanayake should steer it from the prison cell provided a bright guy writes a book on his behalf and in his name (one should get ideas from him and put in legible Sinhala and not in Amu Sinhala or Kunu Harupa).
All good revolutions started from long incarceration, in the history of mankind.
Longer he stays in prison better for him because more and more blunders will accumulate like the way Coronavirus spreads, in spite of so called robust vaccination programs.
Mandela is a good example but White South Africans by covert design muted it.
Coming to Linux and cryptocurrency.
The Alt Right is based in Austria where cryptocurrency has one of it's bases where illegal money is invested globally, with robust farm of computers.
These computers need graphic cards, the reason I do not understand but guess they use PDF photo-proof for blockchain transactions which are invisible to the banking systems.
I now know unlike the CPU, the Graphic Card layout which is in multiples can do trillions of calculations per second.
However they consume lot of energy and need a robust heat sink to cool the system.
PDF means portable document Format.
These computers consume large amounts of electricity which even Nuclear Energy cannot cope with.
Electricity does not come cheap.
All digital gadgets needs electricity and the rechargeable batteries need electricity for recharging.
They need compact circuits and every circuit including your cellphone contributes to the Global Warming which is the bottom line.
That is my bone of contention.
So only way to mitigate is to stop using Internet, me posting here (soon be terminated, could not keep that promise but would be soon) a blog post included and every email adds to the global warming and there is no end in sight.
You switching to CFL Lights and LED won't mitigate it.
The game box or the cellphone off the hook running on batteries may not contribute to much heat but the uploading, downloading and playing games over the Internet, Yes the Internet is driving the World to Global Warming.
With 3G and 4G upgraded to 5 G every living soul (including grannies and grand dads) playing video games, video conferencing and video on demand or virtual class rooms popping up everywhere (due to Coronavirus) may encourage global warming as the final end product.
The photosynthesis converts only 1 to 3% of light energy to biological energy.
The plants leaves by transpiration cools the planet (this is kids science which the current president does not understand).
The trees contribute to cloud formation and rain.
The the Tank, the Dagaba (where the soil was mounted and there is no religious connotation here) and Forest were our ancient concepts of self preservation and not done by borrowed money from China.
China has to learn lot more from our history than us learning from them and they are the leaders in pollution and global warming.
India only comes second in contribution to global.warming, population dynamics and emerging economics of the world today.
We importing cheap cellphones and even rice in 1952 are classic examples of our impotence in real politics.
Coming to chip production I think Taiwan comes first not the mainland China.
1. Taiwan
2. Korea
3. Japan for old American and the new Apple type industry.
4. China fourth
India nowhere and Ceylon with (rubber industry in doldrum) all the rare metals and pure sand available, which China is mining secretly (in the camouflage hotel industry operation concept) in the East and in the West Coast of Ceylon.
We cannot make a simple chip or circuit here but import large discarded computers from the West which need Water Cooling Systems to run them in a 24/7 cycle.
We become suckers to Communist China and they started with only erecting a massive Auditorium in Colombo to utter empty rhetorics which "Nelum Pokuna" can never match in spite of its height or the elevation.
Our aspirations have vanished to thin air.
But our debt is mounting.
What a paradox?
We do not have even Nalum Ala (the rhizome) with poisons in them to eat, now.
I will finish this with the Steam OS.
Now all game boxes including Steam OS contribute directly and indirectly to Global Warming.
Linux was way behind the XBox of Microsoft in games.
Microsoft killed the innovations by enticing young with imaginary games in the trend of Star Wars and Visual Basics and no line of Code for creative work, while Linux has grown into 128 million lines in Code in current Linux 15 Kernel.
Steam OS probably has used this kernel for Steam Deck and Dock outsmarting Microsoft (would not win the never ending battle of Wits and Wisdom or even a rematch).
It is cheap and under $400/=.
ASUS Tablet with more punch is $3000/=
ACER is little below $1500/=
Mind you, this is a Standalone PC with a Game Pack.
Incredible price and I hope the RDNA GPU supplies come good by December, if not the ZEN CPU.
I would recommend you to buy the next level of $500/= odd version for connectivity to NVMe external drives instead of SATA, SSD and eMMC disks.
SATA stands for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment which is relatively slow.
All serial as opposed to parallel devices are slow by nature and draw power from the computer (no power jack is necessary).
All my external devices which I paid a fortune including to Imation needed separate power supply.
Companies that produce them are:
1. Western Digital
2. Seagate
3. Samsung
4. Toshiba
5. Adata
6. Sandisk
7. Imation (gone bust I believe)
8. Hitachi
All my hard disks are working (having used many a times, to boot Linux and for Data and erased many a times in that process using Gparted of Linux) except one portable Sandisk which I paid a lot. Sandisk's internal connection to USB 3 broke. There was bad metal connection inside it (with all my portable data Lost), that connects to the USB 3 connection wire (and then to the PC).
I do not recommend it.
SSD stands for Solid Sate Device with no moving parts for flash memory.
NVMe stands for Non Volatile Memory Express only for PC with PCIe slot in the mother board.
I think MMe means multimedia multiplexing environment and not a hard disk type.
This slot in the motherboard is used in earlier designs of computers for graphic cards to support faster data transfer but now is used by NVMe.
In old computers the RAM was limited to 1 GB RAM (32 bit computers) and graphic was dedicated to a graphic cards to save RAM memory and did not heat up when running.
Please do not accept a 32 bit computer even, if it is given free.
They are Energy Vultures and consume lot of electricity.
GPU means Graphic Processing Unit.
In old computers only the CPU was running hot and needed a heat sink and fans running, all the time to cool the computer.
When I was running 13 computers (32 bit) in our home network, three of them caught fire when the temperature was hovering around 85 to 90 Fahrenheight.
Of course few of the Cathode Ray Tubes of TVs caught fire,too.
When these things happened, I started using thermometers for my pet fish tanks outside and they die at 84 Fahrenheight.
I stopped keeping fish in fish tanks altogether.
Wild fires in Canada and Australia are natural outcomes which Oil Ministers all over the globe ignored for over 70 years.
The new CPUs and GPUs are all integrated in thin wafer circuits all into one motherboard and they consume more energy than old PCs and without heat sinking measures, they are too hot to handle.
In cold countries with heating bills going up playing a game in a box is a quick way to go to sleep with warmth (heat) to cushion you.
My PC has only PCI slots.
eMMC means embedded Multi Media Card and the controller system.
All the gadgets in this world contribute to global warming from production line to the user base at home.
Blaming only cars and vehicles is barking at the wrong tree.
The vehicles at least deliver goods.
What is the contribution of computers to the alleviation of hunger and poverty in the Globe (that Coronavirus has exposed us)?
Coming to Steam Deck and Dock.
I have to make a few early observations to counteract, mostly negative remarks.
I played my first game withy kids with Atari.
Coming from a generation where children's toys were baby dolls and motorized cars with hard to manipulate remote controllers, DOS video games were master stroke in history of children games.
I must say I and my adult friends played them more than the kids.
For kids the games were passing stage of their childhood development.
But Disney Game on Lion King had a lasting impact.
Lion king was a classic film for kids and adults.
Playing golf was painful in.Atari.
Myself a good snooker and billiard player playing a billiard game on cellphone is very painful to say the least.
One needs applied mathematics brain to workout the game strategy and lot of skill and practice to go with it, to pot a billiard ball (not pools).
I used to beat British guys in UK and they see this little guy from Ceylon humble them in billiards and snooker (mind you I did not play with professional guys or in clubs).
Actually I win my post (out of 60 odd candidates) in a selection interview by asking the interview board, is there a snooker table in the hospital.
If they ask why, my ready made answer is I could practice playing snooker while I wait for a patient to arrive from a distance or kill my time practising alone till midnight.
Waking up from sleep to answer a call is very annoying and miserable thing.
But I was good at cat naps.
Watching TV or sipping beer was not my way and I never sip a drink when on call and absolute concentration is necessary in critical care.
With that background playing games with PlayStation with only two games with the first buy was sucking dollars and pounds from poor parents.
My son stop playing PlayStation in less than two months.
My daughter loved reading and that also fiction.
Me a reader in Science and Technology.
I cannot find four partners to play Bridge now but I play Bridge using a cellphone.
I try to improve my game.
Bottom line is boys love playing video games but only a few girls play video games.
The Coronavirus has made girls to join the Band Wagon of video games.
That is a good thing but ignore their comments about Steam Deck and Dock.
Mind you, these guys come from Windows and Apple background and does not know what is Linux.
The current Linux 15 Kernel can handle many graphic cards, if the OEM guys volunteer their specifications to the Linux developers.
Equally they have some game boxes from childhood that they have Pathological Attachment (term pathology has disease connotation here) to those devices.They are all biased in their opinions and they are not comparative or balanced.
I see Steam Deck 2 coming in the future since old guys like me have visual problems to counter and I prefer a very BIG Display.
Coronavirus has added lot of grannies and grand dads playing Steam Games.
The joystick and touch pads will improve coordination problems, especially after mild form of stroke and if, I am one of the directors of the hospital, I would order some Steam Deck and Dock items for both children and geriatric patients.
So if you are philanthropist please keep my above observation as a reference point.
Steam should focus the global nature of games.
If we can cut down on the pills and if Steam contributes to that goal, even a little childhood fancy game played by a sick adult is a bonus to recovery.
It is very big thing!
Back to home for recuperation.
It has a relatively big display screen which is touch sensitive.
This display is not BIG enough for my age.
It has both touch pad and two joysticks.
It has SD card ports to upgrade capacity but playing with SD card is not an option.
SD card slows the system.
It has Linux OS (Steam OS 3) and probably latest KDE plasma, I guess.
Mind you it is coming in December and book now.
There is no crowd sourcing and it has got capital from Steam Machine sales in the years gone by.
Steam Valve is the operating company.
It is a standalone PC for a work desk.
Since it is a PC one can install
1. Windows 10 or 11 with Steam running on top of Windows.
2. It can run on any Linux distribution that supports Steam (since Steam is Linux almost all Linux distributions support it but one has to purchase Steam games).
3. Why not run on its own Steam OS 3 and enjoy 50,000 games you will never finish in a life time?
It has Photon which is modified Wine that runs Windows games on Linux box.
It is a Three In One Game Box.
It has AMD CPU Zen and AMD RDNA GPU.
What a nice combination to beat Intel architecture owned by Lenova in China.
It beats, IBM based of Lenova in China by a big margin.
It has ports in the dock for all the connectivity and WiFi connection off the dock.
No need of PS5 of Sony and XBox of Microsoft.
Linux is the winner after all.
The best buy in the market today.
I have a Console of a Cheap Chinese made Copycat in which I could not not play a single game. I paid a big sum in Rupees.
It's keyboard could not type my 18 digit alpha numeric password for WiFi connectivity to download new games.
I tried even in French Keyboard but failed.
So do not buy cheap Chinese stuff.
Chinese alphabet is a graphic design not alphanumeric like the English Keyboard.
Luckily the computer software and hardware are based on the English keyboard for instructions.
It can be hacked but not easily duplicated in China.
That is why they are developing Kline OP in China.
The Chinese are very bad in typing English and Linux Code.
If not for American's base in Taiwan and British in Honk Kong Chinese ambition to go to Mars bypassing the Van Allen Belt is only a daydream.
They are number one Copycats on this planet.
