Category: Computation

FB has advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages

• See old postings as Memories.
• Provides opportunities to get back in touch with old friends.
• Share knowledge and experience with others.

Disadvantages

FB does not remove “wrong” tags in photos.
It does not provide “untag photo”.
A mistake by a FB user gets propagated.

FB has its own algorithms to display the pages.
If you like a post, save it; otherwise, you might not be able to find it easily again.

Sometimes, FB might not be able to close sessions properly.
You might have to “log out” those open sessions.

Feedback by Khin Maung Zaw

They are not very high on content synchronization.
If you keep hitting “home”, you would see the contents change drastically.

(It is probable the request hit a different server, most of these gargantuan sites have many geo-locations with hundreds of front end servers on each locations).

Understandably, the nature of the app itself doesn’t need to be up to the second synchronized. It’s very expensive feature and needs specialized service providers to accomplish it.

The down side is that it is hard at times to back trace the previous page/content once you page forward or so.

Well, beggars can’t choose, I presume.

Numeral

• Hindu-Arabic numeral : 6
• Roman numeral : VI

Six Hindrances

• Kammacchanda
  Sense-desire
• Vyapada
  Ill-will
• Thina-middha
  Sloth and torpor
• Udhhacca-kukkucca
  Restlessness and brooding or worry
• Vicikiccha
  Skeptical doubt or perplexity
• Avijja
  Ignorance

Six Kinds of Craving

• Rupa tanha
  Craving for visible objects
• Sadda tanha
  Craving for sounds
• Gandha tanha
  Craving for smells or odors
• Rasa tanha
  Craving for tastes
• Photthabha tanha
  Craving for bodily impressions
• Dhamma tanha
  Craving for mental impressions

Six Roots

• Loba
  Greed; Attachment; Avarice
• Dosa
  Ill-will; Anger; Hatred
• Moha
  Ignorance; Delusion
• Alobha
  Non-attachment; Charity
• Adosa
  Good-will; Loving kindness
• Amoha
  Wisdom

Six Types of Nature

• Raga carita
  Greedy natured
• Dosa carita
  Hate natured
• Moha carita
  Stupid or dull natured
• Saddha carita
  Faithful natured; Confidence in the Triple Gem
• Buddha carita
  Intelligent natured; Rely on reason
• Vitakka carita
  Ruminating natured; “Think” but do not accomplish much

Miscellaneous

• Six Buddhist Councils (Synods)
  in the Theravada Tradition
• Six Deva Planes
• Six Sense Doors
• Hexagon
  Six sided figure
• Volleyball
  Six players on each side
• June
  Sixth month of the Gregorian Calendar

နည်းပညာတိုးတက်မှုကြောင့် — အသုံးဝင်မှု လျော့နည်း

Credit for Photo — Dr V ညွန့်ဝေ (VNW – Vi

လက်နှိပ်စက် — Typewriter

အင်္ဂလိပ်လက်နှိပ်စက် — English Typewriter

• Remington
• Olympia

မြန်မာလက်နှိပ်စက် — Burmese Typewriter

• Olympia
• Tipitaka Sayadaw တိပိဋက ဆရာတော် — ကျမ်းပြု

Carbon paper — မိတ်တူ copy

4 copies ထင်အောင်ရိုက် ဘို့ သိပ်မလွယ်

ခဲဖျက် — eraser

အမှား ကို ဖျက်ပြီးမှ — အမှန်ထပ်ရိုက်ရ

Later improvements (နောက်)

• Correcting fluid
• Selectric + golf balls (for character sets)
  by IBM (International Business Machines)
• Word processor

ဖယောင်းစက္ကူ Stencil

• စာရိုက် — လက်နှိပ်စက် နဲ့
• ပုံဆွဲ + လက်ရေး — ကညစ် နဲ့
• ဖယောင်းစက္ကူ ရိုက်စက်

Gestener

General အထွေထွေ

• Standard / Office Typewriter လက်နှိပ်စက် (ကြီး)
• Portable Typewriter လက်နှိပ်စက် (သေး)
• Touch Typing
  Manuals and Training schools
• wpm — words per minute
  အမှားမပါ typing speed (speed corrected for typing errors)
• Tricks for မြန်မာလက်နှိပ်စက်
  Burmese characters have ascenders and descenders
  ပတ်ဆင့်
  proportional spacing

Numeral

• HIndu-Arabic numeral : 10
• Roam numeral : X

Bases of Meritorious Action

• Dana / Giving
• Sila / Morality
• Bhavana / Mediation
• Apacayana / Reverence
• Veyyavacca / Service
• Pattidana / Sharing of one’s merit
• Pattanumodana / Rejoicing in others’ merit
• Dhamma desana / Teaching or preaching the dhamma
• Dhamma savana / Listening to the dhamma
• Ditthijukamma / Straightening one’s right view

Kasinas

• Earth kasina
• Water kasina
• Fire kasina
• Air kasina
• Blue kasina
• Yellow kasina
• Red kasina
• White kasina
• Space kasina or limited-space kasina
• Light kasina

Anusati / Kinds of Recollections

The recollection of

• the Buddha
• the Dhamma
• the Sangh
• Morality
• Generosity
• Devas or deities
• Peace
• Death
• the mindfulness of the body
• the mindfulness of breathing

Dasa Bala / Wisdom-Powers of the Buddha

Understanding as it truly is

• the possible as possible and the impossible as impossible
• the results of actions (kammas) undertaken, past, present, and future, with ssibilities and with causes
• the ways leading to all destinations (all the states of existence and nibbana)
• the world with its many and different elements
• how beings have different inclinations
• the disposition of the faculty of other beings, other persons
• the defilement, the cleaning and the emergence of the jhanas, liberations, concentrations, and attainments

Pu-Di-Ah (three kinds of “special” knowledge)

• Recollecting His manifold past lives
• With the divine eye seeing the beings passing away and reappearing, inferior and superior, fair and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate (understanding how beings pass on according to kammas)
• By realizing for Himself with direct knowledge, here and now entering upon and abiding in the deliverance of mind and deliverance of wisdom that are taintless with the destruction of the taints

Miscellaneous

• Decimal digits : 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
• Decade : ten years
• Decad : group of ten elements
• Ten Commandments
• Ten Paramis / perfections
• Ten evil or bad actions
• Ten good actions
• Last ten lives of the Bodhisatta (Jataka tales)
• Ten precepts of a novice
• Ten directions

0 (Zero)

Zero has no value when it stands by itself. When a zero is placed to the right of a number, it increases the value N-fold (where N, say 10, is the Base or Radix of the Number System.

10 (Ten)

Ten stands for the number of fingers on our hands. It is used as the Base of the Decimal Number System. 10/10 (Ten out of Ten) is a perfect score in some contests (e.g. gymnastics, diving).

20 (Twenty)

Twenty is known as a “Score”. Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address starts with “Four scores and seven years ago”. In French and Pali, the number 80 is expressed as four 20s (instead of eight tens). A card name is known as Vingt-e-un (Twenty One).

Per Dr. Kyaw Tint] : Maybe because we have 10 fingers and 10 toes, altogether adding up to score.

60 (Sixty)

Sixty has many factors : 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 …
It is used as a Base for Time and Angles.
e.g 1 minute = 60 seconds
1 hour = 60 minutes

Powers of 2

Two is used as a Base for the Binary Number System.
Digital computers extensively use the system.

Four, Eight and Sixteen are used as Bases (in Computer Science).

Rationale

• In the early days, it was expensive to store and/or transmit data (e.g. text, sound, picture) in raw form.
• Compression techniques were developed and used to reduce the size of the data.
• “Lossless Compression” requires that the original data can be recovered without any loss.
• “Lossy Compression” techniques are used to reduce the size of the data as much as possible (e.g. by stripping off minor details). The original data cannot be recovered fully. The recovered data would have some loss (e.g. in quality).

Messages

Telegraph messages (and subsequently SMS messages) have limits on the number of words (or characters). So, it makes sense to compress a message by

• leaving out some letters in a word
• combining words into a phrase
• using abbreviations and acronyms.

For example, the following were first used by the military to report situations:
SNAFU (Situation Normal. All Fouled Up.)
FUBAR (Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition)

Examples of Data Compression

• Run Length Encoding (RLE) is a simple and straight forward way to encode characters. A string of repeated characters can be represented by a pair (Character, Number of consecutive occurrences).
• JPEG and MPEG (e.g. MP3, MP4) are commonly used to compress video and audio files.

• Sadly, compression of Burmese words — for smart phones and messaging — had been taken to such an extreme that some no longer know or care about the correct spelling and usage.

U Khin Maung Zaw (KMZ) wrote:
Our good friend Htay Lwin Nyo (EP74, UCC – GBNF), told me when I met him after he moved to SJSU, San Jose State University, that he made some killings either selling or licensing the data compression algorithm. Neither did he elaborate nor did I ask him more details at the time.

Classification

There are several ways to classify data.

• Structured Data
• Semi-structured Data
• Unstructured Data

Data Types

• Private
• Public
• Personal
• Shared
• Internal
• External
• Secret
• Confidential
• Classified
• Top-secret
• Streaming Audio
• Streaming Video
• Image
• Raw
• Processed
• Information
• Knowledge
• Encrypted
• Statistical
• Census
• Metadata
• Mark up
• Abstract Data Type (ADT)
• Object
• Big Data

U Khin Maung Zaw (EC76) wrote :

Couple of most sensitive data categorization are ‘Top Secret Ultra’ and SCI, ‘Sensitive Compartmented Information’ as defined in government/intelligent services.

In the business world, one of the most critical category is PII, Personally Identifiable Information. According to the NIST, National Institute of Standards and Technology, listed quite a few data as PII and possible PII, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personally_identifiable_information.

People should be careful not to expose his/her as well as anyone’s PII data on Social Media.

In our younger days, Opal was a decent car. But, when one jokingly calls someone “Opal” (or “O Pei“), then one is obsolete (good to be ignored for getting old).

There is T.O. (Technical Obsolescence).
Some artifacts can be found only in museums, antique fairs (by die-hard collectors).

Some technologies are disruptive.
Many automobile workers lost their jobs when robotics gradually displaced them. Those, who did not have alternate skills, were hit hard.
Secretaries (experts in shorthand and typing) found that their skills have been marginalized by the word processors, voice-activated systems and similar advanced tools.

On the flip side, I would not have a reasonably good memory and a hobby of “connecting the dots” of seemingly diverse topics if I had early access to the wonderful world of Internet, AI, and Gaming.
Slates, Chalk & Talk, Logarithm tables, Slide rules, Multiplication tables (up to 16), Grammar books, Pronouncing Dictionaries, and most now hard-to-find artifacts trained us to remember (not rote learning per se, but using visualization and tricks).

Many people thought that I am either “brain damaged” or have an “unusual brain”.
One said, “You can write backwards faster than most of us can write forward”.

A few were not impressed.
A professor said, “You cannot earn money by being an expert in History in general, and History of Computing in particular.”
A manager said, “What is the use of knowing the Trivia (e.g. hobbies, awards) of your fellow workers?”

T.O. required me to unlearn some old skills, and to learn new “latest and the greatest” skills.

For me, it’s easy to remember and too hard to forget. I know thousands of names.
After procrastinating for several decades, I had a wake up call to dump my Trivia.
I have posted 3000+ articles and 220+ videos in the past few years.
There will be few Oldies who remember and appreciate the good old days before the T.O.

Information is data which is

• accurate
• precise
• timely
• and preferably concise.

“Raw data” is processed to transform it into information.

The processes typically include

• validation / verification
• collection
• organization
• analysis
• summary
• presentation

Technical papers are subject to reviews.

On the contrary, there are

• misinformation
• disinformation
• fake news
• deep fake videos
• unreliable reports
• rumors
  which can spread like viruses on the Internet and the Social Media.

Red Ribbon Campaigns are not effective against authorities who do not treasure Metta (Unbounded love), Karuna (Compassion) and Mudita (Altruistic Joy).

Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) is much more effective, but it requires the participants not to get distracted by fake news and false hopes.

The tactics to dishearten people vary from

• psychological warfare
• turning the Internet on and off
• forcing employees to resign
• coercing people to sign false reports
• brutal crushing of protestors

During the design phase, the product manager and the developers categorize the requirements as

• Must have
• Nice to have.

During extensive testing and often much later, bugs (of varying severity) show up. Some subtle errors are dubbed “features”.

In group photos with Yours Truly, Facebook would tag me as my brother. The error might be due to the

• Imperfect facial recognition system
• Unintentional tagging by some user hitting the wrong key when asked to tag
• Guesstimate (“guess estimate”) algorithm to “match” faces and names (in the post)

I would often get friend requests from questionable Facebook users.

• There are several who belong to 50+ groups.
  Not sure whether they are Robots, Spammers or People with lots of free time
• The meaning of a friend (e.g. A friend in need is a friend indeed) has been “downgraded”.
• Some have no photos and bare info on their timeline / profile.

The “View As” feature contributed to an opportunity for data miners, hackers and crackers.