Commodore, Amiga, Atari ST and TRS

Commodore, Amiga, Atari ST and TRS

I had Commodore 64 and Atari ST but never got a chance to lay hands on Amiga and TRS.

In fact, I did not know that TRS is a computer.

I am basically coming back to the concept of fixing NUC motherboard underneath a Keyboard and fix another circuit with liquid crystal display and make it a fully fledged computer not needing a separate monitor.

 

It would satisfy the One Laptop per Child concept (I.L.P.S.).

 

It should have a programing language, so that children can write a program and graduate to a game developer later.

16 colour mode and low memory make the program stick to original basic program with minor enhancement for audio and video outputs.

 

I do not like the Rastberry Pie or Ardino approach as the main vision for teaching computing to children. It is like reinvesting the wheel again.

Chip Industry in moving so rapid with mini PCs coming thick and fast learning of computer technology is mandatory.

 

Unless China will dominate the game and chip industry.

 

Commodore is American but Atari was Taiwanese. 

 

Very same trends still exists to the next decade.

Qualcomm and Snapdragon 

Apple Mac and Apple 

Xiaomi and Redmi 

Nvidia and Cuda

Baracuda is a predatory fish.

1000 Dollar Beelink and Minisforum Mini PCs

AI370 vs SER9

Cinematic 24 fps to Fast Action PC Game of 80 to 100 fps.

Bottom line is you get what you pay for.

It is a cardinal business principle.

Waiting till the new model comes and previous unsold model are discounted was my principle after retirement.

It was not when I was working with lot of money in hand.

Save some money for a rainy day holds true.

Good things about both of them.

Compact

Stylish

Quiet 

Outperform an old Laptop with good.

graphic card.

Mini PC with ITX frames instead of ATX are coming thick and fast. They are upgradable but expensive.

These units are Upgradable chips demands that graphic cards are soldered to the IC, term is IGPs.

External graphic card with eGPU DOCK is the solution.

Bad is RAM soldered to the mother board.

Integrated Graphic Card and need external GPU for high performance gaming but both perform well as a gaming Mini PC.

No qualms at all.

IT and Silicon Chips are improving at a tremendous pace one cannot grumble.

They have overtaken the Morse Law by an unbelievable level, I cannot believe a guy coming from the age of RadioShack and Texas Instruments, I cannot believe my eyes of human ingenuity and innovation.

Well done.

Hope we would not be overcome by AI technology.

AI370 vs SER7

These are not over kills but Game PCs.

Read this in conjunction with "Physiology of Motion".

All games are Visual Ilusions.

Meditative Jhanas is also is a Visual Illusion.

If I am given the option I would chose a game against to Meditation.

Both processes use Endogenous Enchephalins for happy states.

Morphine is an Enchephalin derivative.

In some of my books I have given some account of these physiological pathways which were not taught during our medical education.

Items are almost the same but Minisforum has a Vesa Mount. Vesa Mount is industry specified standard mounts, to mount on the back of the TV for saving space.

Wall Power supply one is 100 watts and the other 120. Minisforum does not need a power brick. More cords better it is. Minisforum wins there.

Beelink is sturdy and heavy with aluminum cover. I prefer the aluminum cover.

Minisforum is light weight and travel friendly while Beelink is heavy. I do not carry these gadgets but only a fee USB stick with Linux in them. I want it to be permanently on my desktop and won't break if my kids drop it on the flow accidentally.

Ports I won't make any comments.

It is like looking at the back or front of a nicely dressed lady.

I will leave it at that.

Unscrewing the box is easy.

Minisforum heat dissipation is bit dicey.

Beelink has a dust cover which is a plus point.

Beelink has two speaker but audio quality is poor. But NUV has nothing, audio jacks or speakers which I prefer when working on a book. I need total silence. I even hate ear phones that they dish out in airplanes.

Being a doctor who used stethoscopes of high quality to listen to heart murmurs, loudspeaker is an antithesis to me.

Beelink is cooler, quieter and sturdy and that is my choice.

Problem is I do not have 1000 dollars to spare. I hate second hand stuff. I once bought a second hand audio amplifier and it pieces including knobs in the front came off. That is the only second hand stuff I bought all my life. I could not find an alternative. It is on the attic now.

That is a subtle earning for guys who buy second hand stuff.

Who wants a girl friend of second hand.

I would stick with my bare bone NUC.

It is in perfectly in was taking order since I use Linux and not bulky Windows or expensive Apple.

It is a matter of choice.

Automatic Data Processing

Data Process

1. Analyse

2. Organize

3. Stores

4. Retrieve 

5. Manipulate

6. Report the results

For capital investment and less (output) work but more profits 

5S Principle

Physical Process with an expected outcome which is Quality ( product or service)

1. Sort

2. Set

3. Shine

4. Standardize

5. Sustain 

Why one should use DuckduckGO

 December 26, 2011

Why one should use DuckduckGO

Bodhi Supports it.
DuckduckGO has a trendy support of the Linux community.
With cloud computing in full swing soon, the emergence of DuckDuckGO is a healthy attribute.
Bodhi and lot of  Debian derivatives which port light weight Midori as a browser by default support DuckDuckGO including Puppy Linux.
By the way Bodhi enlightenment desktop has produced and excellent distribution come this Christmas.
It is light weight and has beautiful desktop effects.
Bodhi supports Sinhala too.

Bodhi has enlightenment desktop.

Below is the information reproduced directly from DuckDuckGO home page.
It has a strong Privacy Policy.
DuckDuckGo is a search engine that is based in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania and uses information from crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia) with the aim of augmenting traditional results and improving relevance.  

The search engine philosophy emphasizes privacy and does not record user information.
At other search engines, when you do a search and then click on a link, your search terms are sent to that site you clicked on (in the HTTP referer header). 

We call this sharing of personal information “search leakage.”
 

For example, when you search for something private, you are sharing that private search not only with your search engine, but also with all the sites that you clicked on (for that search).
In addition, when you visit any site, your computer automatically sends information about it to that site (including your User agent and IP address).

This information can often be used to identify you directly.
So when you do that private search, not only can those other sites know your search terms, but they can also know that you searched it. It is this combination of available information about you that raises privacy concerns.
DuckDuckGo prevents search leakage by default. 

Instead, when you click on a link on our site, we route (redirect) that request in such a way so that it does not send your search terms to other sites. The other sites will still know that you visited them, but they will not know what search you entered beforehand.
At some other search engines (including us), you can also use an encrypted version (HTTPS), which as a byproduct doesn’t usually send your search terms to sites. However, it is slower to connect to these versions and if you click on a site that also uses HTTPS then your search is sent. Nevertheless, the encrypted version does protect your search from being leaked onto the computers it travels on between you and us.
At DuckDuckGo, our encrypted version goes even further and automatically changes links from a number of major Web sites to point to the encrypted versions of those sites. It is modeled after (and uses code from) the HTTPS Everywhere FireFox add-on. 

These sites include Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon to name a few.
Another way to prevent search leakage is by using something called a POST request, which has the effect of not showing your search in your browser and, as a consequence, does not send it to other sites. You can turn on POST requests on our settings page, but it has its own issues. POST requests usually break browser back buttons, and they make it impossible for you to easily share your search by copying and pasting it out of your Web browser’s address bar.
Finally, if you want to prevent sites from knowing you visited them at all, you can use a proxy like Tor. 

DuckDuckGo actually operates a Tor exit enclave, which means you can get end to end anonymous and encrypted searching using Tor & DDG together.
You can enter !proxy domain into DuckDuckGo as well, and we will route you through a proxy, e.g. !proxy breadpig.com. This feature is part of our !bang syntax. Unfortunately, proxies can also be slow, and free proxies (like the one we use) are funded by arguably excessive advertising.
Because of these drawbacks in HTTPS, POST and proxies we decided to take the redirect approach to combat search leakage. However, we leave the choice up to you. 

You can deviate from the default on our settings page by toggling the redirect or address bar settings. 

You can also use our encrypted version.

Other search engines save your search history. 

Usually your searches are saved along with the date and time of the search, some information about your computer (e.g. your IP address, User agent and often a unique identifier stored in a browser cookie), and if you are logged in, your account information (e.g. name and email address).
With only the timestamp and computer information, your searches can often be traced directly to you. With the additional account information, they are associated directly with you.
Also, note that with this information your searches can be tied together. This means someone can see everything you’ve been searching, not just one isolated search. You can usually find out a lot about a person from their search history.
It’s sort of creepy that people at search engines can see all this info about you, but that is not the main concern. The main concern is when they either a) release it to the public or b) give it to law enforcement.
Why would they release it to the public? 

AOL famously released supposedly anonymous search terms for research purposes, except they didn’t do a good job of making them completely anonymous, and they were ultimately sued over it. 

In fact, almost every attempt to anonymize data has similarly been later found out to be much less anonymous than initially thought.
 

The other way to release it to the public is by accident. Search engines could lose data, or get hacked, or accidentally expose data due to security holes or incompetence, all of which has happened with personal information on the Internet.
 

Why would search engines give your search history to law enforcement? 

Simply because law enforcement asked for it, usually as part of a legal investigation. 

If you read privacy policies and terms of service carefully you will notice that they say they can give your information on court order.
 

This makes sense because they may be legally obligated to do so. However, search engines are not legally obligated to collect personal information in the first place. They do it on their own volition.
The bottom line is if search engines have your information, it could get out, even if they have the best intentions. And this information (your search history) can be pretty personal.

For these reasons, DuckDuckGo takes the approach to not collect any personal information. 

The decisions of whether and how to comply with law enforcement requests, whether and how to anonymize data, and how to best protect your information from hackers are out of our hands. Your search history is safe with us because it cannot be tied to you in any way.

Linux is it Convergence or Divergence?

 September 17, 2010

Linux is it Convergence or Divergence?
While Linux had been going on diverse and diverging pathways over the last decade there are significant converging strategies developing in the World Wide Web.
More and more people are using it everyday it has come to stay with the trends of the time.

Telecom’s innovations are coming to its peak that less and less people (except the young) are willing to invest and pay for everything they use or partake.

Ordinary people are more conscious of the price since everything else is going up in prices.

This is where V.O.I.P will take a center stage in couple of years since it is cost effective and one does not have to pay twice for the same article or service.

Similarly Television channels are offered through the pulse line of telephone and slowly but surely everything is becoming digitalized.

Analog years are numbered just as the music turntables of the past.

Similarly Video formats would change.

This is where Linux will and can steam role and go forward faster than our imagination can take us.

In the third world we are not yet ready for this scenario changing but billions of consumers are there in the East in Asia and China.

That is where the profits are going to be.

In time come everything is going to be computer generated and only Linux can penetrate all these markets.

Linux have to move in different directions while converging on the desktop market, Server market and Netbooks (rather O.E.Ms).

Live CDs showed the convergence pathway but what about the divergent pathway.

1. V.O.I.P is one pathway.

2. Video Generation (New Fast and reliable web format) and its different formats.

3. TV and Web TV is another pathway.

4. Education and Multimedia is another pathway.

5. Cloud Computing is yet another.

6. Business packages and MySQL is another pathway.

7. Science. Technology and Mathematics is another.

8. Web Utilities (like Google’s Chrome) is another and sports is another.

9. Venture into Government and Universities is another.

10. Sports and Entertainment (Music and Films) is another

11. Web Storage is another since Linux will work tirelessly without breaking the system or the hardware.

There are many more avenues for Linux enthusiasts.

Linux also should have a market philosophy.

Merging with big companies and committing harakiri is not the way forward.

Linux should generate reasonable income to its developers and community.

Just like medical service operates the vaccination and community health should be free but people who get sick with indulgence (alcohol and cigarettes and unconventional life style should pay or should have a reasonable health insurance).

In other words people who can afford it should pay reasonable price for the service.

If one gives something free its market value will go down. 

 

This is seen in our country very well. 

We give free education and after 11 years of teaching English they cannot utter a sentence with 10 words clearly. 

This is true for Mathematics and Science and there is no training in IT.

Do not follow this stupid idea in the name cheap socialism.

For Linux workers (like labour laws) there should be some sort of compensation for the time and effort of the community and the developers. This can take the form of cooperative movement at internet level.

If one’s idea is quoted and referred there should be a way of paying some royalty value through a cooperative fund. 

The fund should be developed from donations and charities. This has to be formulated with some strong checks and balances otherwise one rogue (we have our Sakwithies, here) will drain it overnight.

Then only it will go from strength to strength.

If we have repeated episodes of economic crisis one after another crisis the community will strangle itself and quietly dwindle it’s human resources (which is natural with the present day youth) and the big companies will jump in for the kill.

We should not let this happen. 

We should be mindful.

Asus Transformer PRIME and Android (Google’s) Ice Cream Sandwich

 December 12, 2011

 Asus Transformer PRIME and Android (Google’s) Ice Cream Sandwich

Everybody is talking about Kindle Fire but what will take off with cool guys?

It would be ASUS Transformer PRIME.
I have no doubt about it.

Kindle Fire is the beginning and ASUS Transformer is the FUTURE.
Kindle is for education and GLOBAL CLASSROOM.
With its price tag it will become a GLOBAL DEVICE.
 

On the other hand cool guys and people like me who talk about software freedom will like to have hackable TABLETS.
Either DUAL booting with Kindle or Barnes Noble or run on its own with developers adding new features (that is what is happening in the Linux Community).
Already guy name STEVEN has hacked the Kindle bypassing the root-kit with Ice Cream Sandwich 4.
That is very good news!
I think Amazon should work with this guy and produce a Kindle (I want to name it as Kindle MORE) with MORE Hardware and SOFTWARE features which can happily dual boot without a root-kit.
 

Guys and Girls watch for year 2012 with innovations and C.E.Os who would embrace the hacking features and work with COOL guys/girls will win the trade WAR on TABLETS.
 

Don’t be like HP. 

I hear they are going to decide on the WebOS.
 

I hope it is made available OPEN SOURCE.

For a starter one should leave Kindle Fire to establish first in the CLASSROOM.
Who knows even kids will learn how to hack it to COOL, COOL effects.

Physiology of Motion

Cinematic of 24 fps vs Fast Action PC Game of 60 to 100 fps.

Physiology of Motion
FPS means frames per second, Medical Terminology, the brain can see individual frames if the are moving slow. If my memory of undergraduate physiology is right anything above 36 frames per second, the brain interpret as a motion .
There is also lag of election transfer from eye to the brain and back to the eye to see the picture of image. This is about milli seconds that depends on the length of the never. An impulse from toe of the toe takes longer than from the tip of the finger.
This called latency and these films guys have taken this word from medical terminology, I believe.
This comes from reeled motion pictures. The reel has to run at least 36 per second to emulate motion but there is latency of the film projector, too. When we take all these factors into consideration 24 frames per minute has no strain for the eye (brain does not feel pain but the eye does)
Even though one need 36 frames for motion for practical purposes for videos 24 frames per minute is barely enough considering the latency factor. Even though, light travel in space without scatter there is an element of scatter and that is why we see the sky as blue not white.
There is something called spectrum of energy, too and the eye uses certain part of the spectrum for (analog vs physiology) for visualization and we can distinguish only about 16 to 24 colours, whereas the computer can distinguish million colour shades. I am guy with colour blindness which I realized playing billiards on dim light (not in natural light) at night which is getting worse with age.
By the way, we had worse medical teachers of that time, who were learning physiology and anatomy with us. They had gone abroad had got PhDs and they were meant to train them in methodology in a science and not teaching. Our teachers came from Carlo Fonseka Era but Osmund Jayaratne was my fovourite with his brilliant exposition of matters about clouds and lightening and many other topics in physics.
I loved physics and hated medicine.
Let me come to digital facts.
Digital technology of current era exploits human physiological facts and human weaknesses and use high frame rates of video games to entice people including an old guy like me.
It is an illusion of motion.
I will leave at that.

Prof. Osmund Jayaratne -A lifetime of teaching

Prof. Osmund Jayaratne -A lifetime of teaching

He live a life of a relative destitute in latter years of his life but his wife Joyce looked after him well. Died in September 2006

In 2006 I was evicted (a scheme that backfired) after 6 year probationary period from the University of Peradniya. 

My thesis which was presented within 3 years was not send for scrutiny (even though a guy in Pathology with PhD was appointed). 

I originally planed to stay only 5 years. I fought back and stayed over 15 years until my retirement. The end result was I have over 40 books to my credit at Amazon's and currently working on 6 books one of them is on Linux.

 

Prof. Osmund Jayaratne retired from the Physics Department, University of Colombo and Peradeniya, after a long and distinguished career spanning 44 years. His primary research interest was terrestrial a cloud physics. In his teaching, Prof. Jayaratne mentored more than a thousand students. He also served Sri Lanka in the area of policy related to higher education.
He was contemporaneity of Professor Senaka Bible who was one of my teachers.
This letter is an attempt to inform his former students that Prof. Jayaratne lost his sight as a result of infections in his eyes. We encourage students and well wishers to visit Prof. Jayaratne in his residence; he will appreciate your effort. The University of Colombo, Dept. of Physics has also established a supporting fund for anyone wishing to contribute.

A students perspective

A new batch of freshman undergraduates files into a hallowed lecture hall at the University of Colombo Physics Department. As others in the past, they too are captivated by the contagious enthusiasm of a lecturer who expounds on the physics of clouds. The teacher delivers a vivid example on the beauty of Physics in the context of natural phenomenon. Inanimate textbooks are given life.

Prof. Osmund Jayaratne, is engaged in an old tradition — providing the university freshman with a link to previous generations of scholars that wove the fabric of physics. The methods of analytical reasoning, logic and experimentation — the foundations of physics — are personified in his image.

The perpetually young teacher validates the students’ youthful passion for learning and understanding the natural world. These students will carry with them the archetype of a physicist’s reasoning, as they in turn become professors, academics and researchers at Sri Lankan and international institutions. Indeed, many students will migrate to different fields: engineering, computers, business and other industry. However, they will all have benefited from Dr. Jayaratne’s commitment to a lifetime of learning and teaching. They too would have learned to approach their study with childlike gusto in addition to a discipline of critical reasoning.

School years

Osmund Jayaratne showed promise from his childhood with a brilliant career at Royal College winning the Turnour Prize. He obtained the first position in the school at the Cambridge Senior Certificate Exam as well as the London Matriculation. Garnering eight distinctions in each exam, he was second in the island on both occasions.

Early teaching & research

He entered the University of Ceylon in 1942 — a year of historical significance since the University was born from the former University College in that year. Whereas the University College prepared undergraduates for the degree of the London University, the University of Ceylon began to award its own degrees. In the first year-end exam, Osmund Jayaratne was placed first in order of merit from about 150 students of Physical Science. Specializing in physics, he obtained a 2nd class honours degree in 1947.

After 10 years of teaching A/Level Physics in two private schools, he was appointed as an assistant lecturer in the Colombo University Physics Department in 1959.

In 1961, at the expense of the Colombo University, he was sent to the Cloud Physics Dept. of Imperial College, which was part of the University of London. He distinguished himself by conducting research into

the nature of coalescence processes, which create rain in warmer climates of the world. He had the distinction of having his experimental arrangement prominently displayed at a public exhibition of the Physical Society of London. This experiment is discussed in British scientific journals.

In 1964, Osmund Jayaratne was awarded a Ph.D. from the London University as well as the D.I.C. of Imperial College. One of his Ph.D. supervisors, Prof. B. J. Mason (F.R.S.), in later years became the Director General of Meteorology in Britain.

Returning to Sri Lanka in 1964, Dr. Jayaratne was transferred to the Physics Dept. of the University of Peradeniya. Here he spent a very happy time lecturing to students reading for both the Generai degree and the special degree in physics. He engaged himself in many other academic activities of this university. For instance, he was one of those who organized a very popular series of weekly lectures in science, social sciences and humanities. Attended by hundreds of students and staff, these lectures were later opened to the senior students of nearby secondary schools.

Dr. Jayaratne delivered the first lecture in the series on the subject of lightning and thunder accompanied by many demonstrations which created electrical sparks from end to end of the lecture theatre.

Policy & later research

The Hon. Minister of Education, in 1970, after reading an article written by Dr. Jayaratne in a popular local magazine, requested him to constitute a committee of academics to study the existing university system and propose possible reforms. Dr. Jayaratne was the chairman of this committee. As a result of the report, Act No 1 was passed by the Parliament and a single University of Sri Lanka was created; existing Universities becoming campuses (the system of independent universities was re-established later). The main university had its own Vice Chancellor, whilst the campuses were headed by Presidents supported by campus senates and councils as in the past. In the same year, Dr. Jayaratne was invited by the Government to become the President of the Colombo Campus. After many refusals, purely on account of the appeal of the Colombo students, Dr. Jayaratne finally accepted the position.

In 1974, after heading the Colombo Campus for two years, Dr. Jayaratne requested to be released from the post and to be returned to academic duties in the Physics Dept. at the Colombo Campus. By this time, Colombo Campus was also offering physics courses in both English and Sinhala. As an associate Professor in the Physics Dept., Dr. Jayaratne continued to teach at the Colombo Campus (University of Colombo later) through his retirement in 1991. Just prior to retirement, he was made Emeritus Professor of the University of Colombo. Later, he was also awarded the GSc Hon. Clausa of both the Universities of Colombo and of Sri Jayawardenapura. In recognition of his contributions to University teaching, he was awarded the title of ‘Vishwa Prasadini’ by the Hon Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike on the occasion of her 80th Birthday.

In addition to teaching, Dr. Jayaratne also conducted research on the lightning patterns of Sri Lanka in collaboration with Prof. Lakshman Kannangara.

Impact as a teacher

Prof. Jayaratne has probably mentored more than a thousand general science students and in excess of 100 honours students. As students, we were touched by Dr. Jayaratne’s passion for teaching; his ever-youthful enthusiasm and commitment also had a profound influence in our careers. Today, his students are dispersed nationally and internationally at prestigious institutions. They carry the flames that were kindled by Dr. Osmund Jayaratne.

Loss of sight

A few years after retirement, Prof. Jayaratne’s eyes developed cataracts. Lens implants, a new procedure in Sri Lanka at that time, were attempted. An infection occurred in one eye and spread to the other. Despite repeated surgical interventions, Prof. Jayaratne suffered complete loss of sight in both eyes — confining him to his home in a nearby suburb of Colombo. His wife, Joyce, is his eyes to the world. She reads to him the latest scientific developments reported in newspapers and magazines.

Memoirs

Prof. Jayaratne in spite of his disability is currently dictating his memoirs, which will be published soon. We wish our dear teacher the very best in the years to come. We also strongly encourage former students to visit him and keep him informed. As a person who was completely immersed in scientific and other literature for mental stimulation, Prof. Jayaratne’s world is now severely limited. Hence our plea for former students to consider visiting and sharing your experiences in your fields and give him the intellectual company he badly needs. Prof. Jayaratne’s phone number is (Sri Lanka) 074-833317 and home address: 25 Morawatta Road, Nagoda, Kandana.

This letter is an attempt to inform his former students that Prof. Jayaratne lost his sight as the result of infections in his eyes. We encourage students and well wishes to visit Prof. Jayaratne in his residence:

No. 25, Morawatta Road,

Nagoda,

Kandana

(Phone: 074-833317)

Students and well wishers may contribute to the below supporting fund graciously administered by the faculty in the Physics Department, University of Colombo.

The purpose of this fund is to provide some financial support to Prof. Jayaratne since medical expenses have exhausted his savings.

Bank drafts in favour of: Dr. W. M. K. P. (Kanishka) Wijayaratne and Dr. S. R. D. Rosa.

Saving a/c number: 0331-207-027347-7 Postal address for drafts:

The manager, Peoples Bank, Lucky Plaza Branch, Kollupitiya, Colombo 3 Sri Lanka.