Europa!

Congratulations to the awesome folks at Eclipse for releasing the 21-project strong Europa..17 million lines of code baby! On schedule even!

The Age of Astroboy is upon us...

Robots are wonderful, but I find this a bit disturbing when envisioned in the longer term...

A child-sized android with flexible joints and soft skin developed by the Japan Science and Technology Agency was unveiled Friday at Osaka University, where the agency's research and development team is based.

Being a father, I am not sure about having a child robot no matter how advance one can be. I'm not sure I'll be alive when one becomes so life-like. It surely won't answer falling birth rates in Japan though. But if it does, will you have him learn manners, religion, culture and anything else that makes you human, the real way or have it flashed in his memory? If he doesn't behave as expected will you have that certain attitude erased?

Scary or not? You decide....

The real value of the unemployment rate

Interestingly, I've found myself part of the unemployed labor force 2 days ago. And since I haven't done anything really productive at all, I've decided to look up some data regarding the topic of unemployment and learned that the rate here in the Philippines is around 8% against the total labor force.

I then remembered something that Cory Doctorow said in a public address some time ago, that for people, the real value of unemployment rate is not 8% but 100%.

Today, I actually felt that.

Toshiba's Global Warranty saves the day for a certified Ubuntu workhorse

So I have this Toshiba Tecra M2 named Pingu32 (because of the big Pingu sticker in front), which is originally part of the official LaptopTestingTeam machine and served for 3 releases, testing daily snapshots and development milestones. Boy was I pissed when the LCD display conked out just 2 months after Edgy was released.

Unfortunately, worked got in the way and I wasn't able to bring this unit to a Toshiba service station to have it checked and many times did I use the machine as a small server connected to an external display.

But since I am free lately and just staying at home, I had the chance to bring the machine to an authorized service station last week. I was hoping for the worse, primary of which is that the whole LCD panel would be replaced, and get to have a real cleanup done deep inside. I was informed that the unit is still under the global warranty of Toshiba till 2008! So even if the panel is going to be replaced, I would be paying only around $10 representing 3% of the shipment tax to be collected from the display.

So to make a long story short, the LCD will indeed be replaced, but the total amount I will have to pay is $8. Not bad! Who needs dual core anyways? Old hardware rules. A certified Ubuntu workhorse lives again!

Moral of the story: always check the fine print even if you got the laptop for free :)

Xubuntu goes Embedded

For some reason, my random surfing made me discover the Linutop system, a diskless computer powered by an AMD Geode processor (similar to what the XO-1 is using). I was surprised to know that the Linutop is powered by a customized version of Xubuntu (although stored in a separate 1GB USB stick). The target use of the Linutop is for web surfing, but I can see it being usable for POS and with enough hacking, even telematics.

Ah I wish i could get one but it seems to be only available for Europe now. Perhaps I should investigate on getting my own SBC kit in the future.