Ten or More Things Apple Mac won’t tell its customers

 Posted on October 21, 2011

Ten or More Things Apple Mac won’t tell its customers
Posted on October 21, 2011 

1. It is a Unix derivative i.e. BSD (Berkeley Systems Distribution) which form the basis for both Mac OS X and the iOS that powers the iPhone.

2. It was hooked to a O.E.M platform (Power PC) till recently.
 

3. BSD is what Darwin is based on.
 

4. Darwin is Apple’s Open Source Unix operating system foundation.
Somebody should revive this, now that Steve Job is no more.
The Darwin kernel is equivalent to the Mac OS X kernel plus the BSD libraries and commands essential to the BSD Commands environment.
 

5  It uses Open Source OpenGL – Standard 3D graphics library
 

6. jEdit  4.3
 

7. Perl  5.10  Accessible through Terminal under Utilities
 

8. Python  2.6.1  Accessible through Terminal under Utilities
 

9. Python  3.3  Accessible through Terminal under Utilities
 

10. Ruby  1.8.7  Accessible through Terminal under Utilities
Items 6 to 10  are programming languages (now mostly platform independent) which made the backbone of  Linux.
 

11. Audacity   is a Linux derivative

12. Thunderbird is a Linux derivative

13. VLC    Media Player is a Linux derivative

14. Geogebra  is a Linux derivative

15.TeX
 

No operating system is Pure and I have not used OpenOffice or LibreOffice since they originated from Sun Solaris system and until they all became Open Source.

American Politics, British Diplomacy and Buddha’s Intelligent Inquiry

 Posted on February 8, 2012

 Reproduction

 American Politics, British Diplomacy and Buddha’s Intelligent Inquiry

Kalama Sutta
Posted on February 8, 2012

American Politics, British Diplomacy and Buddha’s Intelligent Inquiry

Kalama Sutta
 

If I have not read Kalama Sutta by the age of 16 years, I  may have, to begin with, would have been caught up and swallowed by the rationalist (almost nonfunctional today in this irrational country called Ceylon) deliberates.
There are 13 qualifications, one has to apply if one is an open inquirer.
So read Kalama Sutta before reading this.
I ended up as an independent thinker, never believing anything what the white man said.
We were under 500 years of foreign invader influence, it is probably inbuilt in my system not to believe them and probably many Ceylonese of today have lost that inbuilt defense we had, especially the politicians and political refuges who leave and become prisoners of conscience.
I can dispense with British easily.
In about 6 months in Britain, I realized that what they say is not what they mean.
That included medical men, too.
This is at ground zero (level) where most of us end up in Britain.
In diplomatic level they do it in a professional manner and unlike the ordinary British who survive on a meager salary, they are paid very well.
How better or brazenly one can lie while blazing a blue-collar and tie is the standard of British Diplomacy, at all levels.
They do not mean what they say.
 

Only people who can beat them in the game are Americans.

Compare the relationship President Bush to PM Blair as an academic exercise.

I have had limited association with the Americans (IMMI in Digana) and it took many years of rational and independent analysis, only after leaving them though, to get the correct  assessment and true picture of what they really meant.

See how Obama came into power with full-scale liberal views and end up as a stubborn personality and not listening to people power but continuing what Bush did better than what Bush would have figured it out but pretends to the whole world he is different.

Unlike British there are some genuine and stupid Americans, too.
Otherwise they would not have elected him in the first place.
If they elect him for second time my above genuine analysis would be confirmed without any doubt or contention.
Polls as at present prove that I am right at this point of time.
Unlike British they pay well for your services.
I do not know how one is paid under President Obama.
I am not interested who should become the next American President, let the stupid and brilliant Americans decide it.
 

But they are well advised by me to read the Kalama Sutta before voting next time round.
Coming back to America and American politics, they are not a benevolent society. Obama pretended to be benevolent to the masses but he is truly benevolent  to the rich.

Chrysler bail out is one object lesson.
They have the capitalist mentality at all levels and success depends on how much one is prepared to get returns for initial investment.
Good examples are Microsoft and Speculators.
Now that Microsoft is having a nose dive, Apple is trying to get into that niche.
I-pads and educational material that they are planning to copyright are trying to swallow the stupid Americans in one stroke.
They propagate the universal truth which a myth by all standards, more educated one is and more one spends on education, more productive one is when employed.
But no education standards were necessary to get the bail outs.
The standard is how bad an American fails in his or her business. 
What ever the voters may say they always win and many a small Americans will have to foot the bill. 
In this context, Amazon did an amazing and wonderful thing by introducing Kindle Fire (selling below cost price) and creating http://www.createspace.com, in this big business world of Education and the hold that the publishers have on writers.
They are all out to kill this experiment.
Amazon is a successful business empire.
There is nothing wrong with it.
But at least in education Amazon’s vision is somewhat benevolent.
American politics who ever who becomes the next president will kill this endeavour  in its budding stage.
I hope I have not jumped or triggered the America gun mentality.
Time will tell what I say now will be right or wrong.
It is tilted towards ipad and Big Apple and not towards Amazon’s effort.
If Apple wins it is a disaster for the entire world of education.

Myths Spread by Psychologists

Monday, August 12, 2019

Myths Spread by Psychologists

This was an old idea of mine 

There are a lot of Myths Spread by Psychologists.

This is an attempt to bring some sense and reality into day to day life.

I may dispute many a myths but my attempts are also not infallible in each and every situation one may encounter. Making right or correct decision at a given moment is a knack which many of us lack.

If we delay acting on a given (it may be right or it may be wrong) problem even for a fraction of a second, the most destructive procrastination sets in.

Then any given solution is the base for next round of further procrastination.

 

But if we keep an open mind and believe in what we intend to do given a difficult problem or a preposition, then solving the problem may come naturally, to anyone.

This is not easy though.

Lot of training actually hinder this ability.

 

That is what we call common sense.

 

Lot of experience also may be a hindrance.

Basically we have several approaches to a given problem.

 

Just think of a Video Game in Play.

One’s approach may be (not comprehensive here)

1. Offensive

2. Defensive

3. Neutral

4. Random

5. Cool (not procrastination)

The best approach is the last which has all the above components assessed in a fraction of a second. 

Only a few has that cool talent.

They are ones who become successful.

 

The COOL people are actually very observant.

But many of us use the useless procrastination approach (usual approach of a politician).

What it does is to kill the attempt at solving a given problem from the very beginning.

Unfortunately many of us use this method since we do not believe that some problems can be addressed, if we care to divert from the common approach.

 

This is what Professor De Bono calls Lateral Thinking.

 

It is not vertical or analytical or direct thinking.

Side track a bit,

Focus on the problem,

Leave behind the past experiences for a moment,

Give attention to the present moment of time

Then in a FLASH

 

A new found solution springs up.

 

Then if we have few others with equal interest and talent get involved in the same problem we get endless stream of solutions which we have never thought of because of the redundant past experience.

 

We call it brain storming and it really works.

 

If one does not use common sense what I say here is superfluous.

We use our past experience to solve a given problem.

Sometime past experience is useful.

Sometimes past experience is a hindrance.

Past experience is sometimes a hindrance to creative and pragmatic solutions.

 

Good example can be taken from politicians.

 

When somebody is opposition for a long period of time and then come to power, he / she makes many mistakes due to past misfortunes.

 

This is what has happened in Ceylon, today with NPP/JVP Combo.

 

They have lost the ability for creative thinking.

Unfortunately this happens when one is power too, and they do not realize what a wonderful thing to be in opposition.

The people in the opposition see the problem realistically but they do not have the muscle to power the solution through.

 

It is the malady of the democracy.

Proliferation of a Desktop Types

 

Friday, December 19, 2025

Proliferation of  a Desktop Types

It is a Big Ask?

Selecting a Desktop, is it a Big Ask?

I have missed 3 big but interesting desktops.

Elive with Enlightenment desktop which is beautiful and customizable. One should contribute some money to this project to keep it running for many more years.

IceWM which Debian Edu uses.

Enlightenment Organization which is a non profitable Organization.

We run as an open source project. People may contribute because they like to or because they are paid - but no one gets more preferred access than anyone else. The intent is to release everything under liberal open source licenses with no restrictions on those using such works except the usual “share alike” clauses found in LGPLv2, BSD etc.

We also receive other types of contributions. Our community files bug reports, does translations, as well as simply providing feedback.

This entire website runs on a machine bought with donations from developers and the community. Donations  are highly appreciated. We have a non-profit Enlightenment foundation based in France, which acts as custodian of such funds until they're needed.

I am not talking about Compiz, Wayland and Tiling Window Managers. 

They are not at all my interests.

Yes selecting is a desktop may be a big ask, due to many reasons. 

Desktop is a Desktop and there is nothing more in it. 

It has no applications and can be compared to a dress one wears. A dress one can wear as one pleases but Desktop is Fixed one cannot change but its front end appearance.

There is a caveat here, each desktop by default has a bundle of applications that goes with it except one big application, LibreOffice which everybody try to bundle.

I prefer desktops that does not bundle LibreOffice.

REBORN OS

On that specification, I really like REBORN OS and its Gnome Desktop.

It is minimal and out of 18.5GB /root partition it leaves me 10GB to add any application I need and 4 in particular.

VLC does to take much space but number of plug in are staggering

Audacity has almost every audio format.

GIMP is fantastic for photo editing.

Blender and blender takes the most space up to 1GB in total. 

LibreOffice is a low priority for me since I use AbiWord for my book writing for ages, in fact from Microsoft Windows era.

 Let me finish with Reborn OS, I installed all of the above and a few more and like Kdenlive and KODI and I have 2.5GB left of my root partition. This is because i have also used big /var and /opt partitions.

Desktops

I have been using Gnome of Debian for ages and I have had no problems at all and i stick with it.

Out of the lot below i only like Cutefish.

I have Plasma Desktop for comparison but rarely use it. The simple reason it takes a lot of time booting. 

I want the start up brisk with line of text telling me what is going on behind before booting. Only Debian Gnome does it.

Gnome distribution is out and it has no Synaptic package manager.

The most beautiful KDE Desktop belongs to ARCH based BlueStar Linux and I have it installed in my NUC.

KDE desktop guys are still struggling and it is still RAW package stage and one cannot install it. 

I found a ARCH based KDE desktop which was sleek like Trinity Desktop but it ruined by hard disk including EFI partition. 

It is called KaOS. 

Please do not use it.

1. Plasma desktop consumed about 500MB.

2. Cutefish which I really like consumed 300MB

3. Cosmic desktop about 500MB

4. KODI about 100 to 200MB

5. Kdenlive may be 500MB or more on top of Dolphin. 

6. Cinnamon only about 50MB since it is built on top of Gnome

I did not try Budgie and MATE

7. DeepIn from China was a pain.

8.  Anduino which is Microsoft emulation of course from China and I hate the most.

Web Surveillance (Paranoia)

 

Thursday, February 12, 2026

Web  Surveillance (Paranoia)

Web Paranoia

Here, I have reproduced a read me file of Pearl Linux since I could not find the user name and password.

It is an Ubuntu Derivative which has a macOS appearance and is 1.5GB.

At the login screen please type "custom" as the user name hit enter then for password leave that field blank and hit enter.

Found a small issue with the fonts not looking correct and I thought I deleted the Iso but I guess not.
 

All you have to do, if you already downloaded Pearl is go into system settings and change the font from Veranda 9 to Ubuntu 10 and this is important,

I think Ubuntu One and few others give concern for a good password management. 

Naming others would be improper since they are not Open Source based. 

What goes behind them and whether they share them with the NSA or a corrupt regimes is open for debate.

I have personnel reason to believe they do and my own experience with institutions specially corrupt or vested interests, is on the affirmative.

They are hell bent to breach any privacy one may have.
The reason being that they do not want to be exposed of their sordid acts.

 
They are paranoid and it is a disease.

Fact that this blog post exists is due to the interference with my blog post elsewhere and a site that lacked good security protocol.

They were dysfunctional over more than a year and I do not use the site anymore.
My writings were very docile innocent and not politically involved.
 

They were bit humorous and the basic ingredients were satire.

I must say this was run by British Council Library in Kandy which is now defunct.

Unfortunately for me, out of the top ten, my writings (I was involved in initial setup) filled the top eight and the administrator got paranoid and blocked my name.

I still continued to write (very little traffic) in spite of noticing the administrators handiwork, since my idea was not to reach the top ten.

They used my birthday as a discriminator.

Who says there is no discrimination in web hosting and social media.
But my writings were there for anybody to read in spite of blocking the rating.
I have collated them and recently deleted 75% of the original writings from that site.
 

Some of them are now in digital output for posterity, in a book form.

This preamble is necessary since when one opens one’s heart and not the mind in the web, one has to be prepared for insults and discrimination.

Sadly now governments and secret agencies are doing things that one would not suspect 30 years ago.

Technocrats and not the real hard working guys who fill these posts and operating from air conditioned cubicles and are scared to be on the beat and foot.
 
Invariably paranoia develops.

So I think it is necessary to have a bit of paranoia when one enters the web with email to begin with.