This squirming creation was designed to help better understand how the human tongue works and thus improve speech recognition software. See for yourself:
Sometimes it’s fun to just make people think “WTF?” when they see your computer. That’s “WTF?” in a good way. It’s not hard on Linux to make people say “woah,”, but it’s even easier, if you know the command line, to make people look at you typing away on your laptop and think you’re some kind of crazy hacker having a go at the Gibson.
The first step is to ditch GNOME or KDE. Get a nice, minimalist window manager. I recommend a window manager over a regular tty for two reasons. The first is that even with screen in a tty, it’s inconvenient. The text is huge unless you sit there rebooting over and over trying to get the right framebuffer settings. The second is so you can have a nice wallpaper. I prefer Fluxbox for this. It’s just like Openbox or Blackbox, except it’s got tabbed windows like pwm and a toolbar. Other possibilities include tiling window managers like Xmonad. Ion2 is a tiling, tabbed window manager, based on pwm. I don’t know about the others, but as a Fluxbox user, I can tell you that there is no really useful menu configured by default. Your Fluxbox menu configuration is in ~/.fluxbox/menu and uses a syntax like this, and no the indentation doesn’t matter:
Watching The Bucket List movie a few weeks back really moved me to consider writing my own list. In case you haven’t watched this very funny movie yourself, it’s about two terminally ill men (played by Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson) who decide to make a list of all the things they want to do in their life before they die (kick the bucket). This includes driving fast cars, climbing mountains, staying in nice hotels….you get the idea. They then set out and do it all. Then they die happy and satisfied.
This feature in Esquire magazine, 75 Things Every Man Should Do Before He Dies, has definately sealed the deal, and I have now already started writing my list. I think some of the ones in Esquire are pretty lame though. Repair a household appliance? Are you kidding me? Then they go from that straight to flying an aeroplane! I’ll take the plane but leave the washing machine if you don’t mind thanks.
I’m sure some of you will accuse me of being morbid talking of death, but death should not be a taboo subject. You live and you die, end of story. So there’s nothing wrong with planning what you want to achieve with your life. You’ll find as you progress with your list that it’s a project you will get deeply involved in and you may end up even getting relatives and friends involved in what goes in and what goes out.
Have you made a Bucket List? If so, what have you put on it? If you haven’t made a list, what would be number one on your theoretical list? My number one is flying a Cessna plane. It’ll be tough since I am epileptic, but I’ll get up there. Just you watch me – then I’ll put the video on Geeks Are Sexy for you all to see.
Clean, green energy is the way of the future, and of course one of the leaders of the renewable energy scene is solar power. Early forms of it were first developed in the 1860s, and it long took a backseat to polluting energy sources like coal, but solar power is now enjoying a renaissance. Solar power’s future is looking undeniably bright, and some investors and businessmen who jumped on the solar bandwagon early are already swimming in pools of money. Here are three lucky men whose billions came courtesy of their efforts in the solar energy industry.
Shi Zhengrong, Suntech Power
Dr. Zhengrong is the wealthiest person in China with a personal net worth of $2.5 billion US dollars, all earned through his solar energy company Suntech Power. He’s been dubbed ‘The Sun King’ and ‘China’s Sunshine Boy’, and was the first person ever to reach billionaire status via solar power. His success is an inspiration to many, but Dr. Zhengrong never expected to make so much money. He told an AP reporter, “I never thought this solar business could take off or become commercially viable. I thought I just needed to concentrate on my research and publish papers to do my job as a scientist.”
Suntech started in 2001 with 20 workers and its workforce has now expanded to 3,500. Its solar panels are used in a broad variety of applications including military, transportation, housing and communications.
Frank Asbeck, SolarWorld
The chairman and founder of Germany’s SolarWorld holds a stake in his highly successful business estimated to be about €1 billion euros, or nearly $1.6 billion US dollars. Asbeck credits the success of SolarWorld partially to the fact that it’s family-owned, saying “In family owned companies decisions are quicker to be made. This is an advantage in business, where a quick decision can generate lots of money for the company. Boards that are discussing too long fail to gain opportunities.”
SolarWorld has delivered a return of more than 10,000% to shareholders in the last five years, and the business is expected to continue growing at a rate of 25% per year.
Xiao Peng, LDK Solar
Xiao Peng’s journey to billionaire status began only three years ago, when he decided that solar energy was the way of the future. Peng’s company, LDK Solar, has had its share of controversy in the past year as it was accused of accounting fraud, though an audit cleared them of any wrongdoing. Investors expect LDK Solar to quickly become the world’s most successful solar company, partially due to the low manufacturing costs it enjoys as a result of operating out of JiangXi, China.
As the solar energy industry continues to expand, we can undoubtedly expect the list of solar billionaires to grow. It’s considered one of the most promising forms of renewable energy, and it’s constantly being improved upon. While the high cost of the materials used to create solar panels have limited its success in the past, engineers are making breakthroughs almost daily as more funds are being poured into the industry’s research efforts.
Would you like a laptop with that? India’s getting ready to debut a notebook computer at near-McDonald’s-level prices.
The laptop, now under development in Bangalore, will sell for $10 US currency. It’ll be marketed toward “higher education applications” — college students, we assume. Government officials revealed the plans for the product at a conference this week but did not elaborate on what kind of features the computer might have (let’s hope it’s not running on a 486 chipset).
India is also working on offering free broadband access for everyone, limited to only usage related to “educational purposes.” Hey, learning about the birds and the bees is part of a complete education, right?
A man who saw his whole life laid out in a fake Facebook profile has won his libel case against a former friend in the High Court in London.
Mathew Firsht was awarded a total of 22,000 pounds ($43,500) after a judge ruled that Grant Raphael had libelled Firsht by setting up the fake Facebook profile to settle a grudge, and then putting in Firsht’s life information, accompanied by blatant lies.
Those lies included implying he was homosexual, changing his political views, saying he and his business were in serious debt and that he and his company were not to be trusted, amongst others.
Luckily though, Mr Firsht’s brother spotted the profile after 16 days and it was swiftly taken down.
Raphael claimed that the profile was made by friends at a party at his home but that defence was rejected.
This case could set an important legal precedent as social networking profiles become even more widespread in our lives. More and more personal information is being included in these profiles so the potential for abuse is rife. Therefore the next libel trial is probably not that far off.
I wouldn’t be surprised therefore if this judgment isn’t quoted as a precedent in another courtroom either in Britain or another part of the world soon and many more times to come.
On Saturday night, I went to see the new Batman movie and it was absolutely sensational – in fact, I am already planning a repeat visit to the cinema to see it again. I can’t remember the last time I went back to the cinema to see a movie a second time, so that goes to show you how good the Dark Knight really was. It was so good in fact that I spilt my Ben and Jerrys right down my nice T-shirt when the Joker did his disappearing pencil trick.
But as we were leaving at the end of the movie, everyone was already discussing (what with Heath Ledger’s untimely demise), who the next bad guy (or girl) will be in the inevitable sequel. There was also a fierce debate as to whether Robin should be introduced into the movie.
This page here has a nice roundup of possible villains who could face the caped crusader next time around. I have to say though I am not too keen on the Penguin or Catwoman (Danny DeVito and Halle Berry have kind of spoilt it don’t you think?). I like the idea of Hugo Strange or Black Mask. What about you? Who do you want to see going up against Batman next time?
As for Robin, I think that would be the worst possible move to put him in the movie. I think keeping him out of the last two movies has been an extremely good move by Christopher Nolan and the box office takings prove that. Once you start putting in Robin, it’s my opinion that the movies will start going downhill to the point where they will be no better than the Michael Keaton and George Clooney versions of Batman.
The Sphere, a new product from Microsoft Research, has all the same feature as a traditional multi-touch screen, but mapped across a sphere. The device uses algorithms to round images before displaying them, because obviously, they just wouldn’t look right without this. Be sure to check out the cool “earth” mode and also the fun-looking pong-like game.
Some new mobile technology is aiming to turn your cell phone into a health machine.
It’s a refreshing change from the fear-inducing reports circulating once again of the cell phone’s potential to cause cancer. A Pittsburgh cancer research doctor sent out a new warning last week asking his staff to limit its cell use because of the possibility.
“We shouldn’t wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later,” the New York Times quoted him as saying.
Now, though, Japanese carriers are coming up with ways to give phones positive power — at least, a little of it. KDDI’s Au unit has launched a new Smart Sports program for its customers. Its phones can now use GPS and motion sensors to measure steps taken during the day (either in running or walking). The devices can then calculate distance and calories burned and keep a running record, even transmitting the data wirelessly to PCs for further analysis. The program also has a music option that’ll pick tunes to match the intensity of your workout.
Japan’s NTT DoCoMo is getting ready to launch cell-linked blood pressure monitoring and even mobile-based weight checks. The goal, PC World explains, is to get hospitals and even health clubs to start linking up their own offerings with the technology.
Is it just me, or does all this exercise talk make you want to kick back and play some good old-fashioned cell phone PacMan? Now that’s what I call a workout.
Would you like a laptop with that? India’s getting ready to debut a notebook computer at near-McDonald’s-level prices.
A man who saw his whole life laid out in a fake Facebook profile has won his libel case against a former friend in the High Court in London.
On Saturday night, I went to see the 
Some new mobile technology is aiming to turn your cell phone into a health machine.