IT Happens : November 2004
Monthly News Notice of IT Happenings
Issue - 41

LINUX FOR HOME APPLIANCES

Feature of the Month

LINUX Now Powers Super-Computers
Silicon Graphics is claiming the title of world's fastest supercomputer with a Linux system it built for NASA. Named Columbia, the supercomputer cluster is built with 10,240 Intel Itanium 2 processors and runs on 20 SGI Altrix server platforms, which accommodate 512 processors per box. The supercomputer, using only 16 of the 20 servers in the cluster, was able to achieve 42.7 trillion calculations per second, or teraflops; this surpassed the performance of the previous supercomputer champs, Japan's NEC-based Earth Simulator (35.8 teraflops) and IBM's Blue Gene/L (36 teraflops). 
Columbia supercomputer will allow the space agency's research arm to perform tasks much faster than in the past. For instance, computer models of space shuttle launches can be performed hundreds of times in a single week, as opposed to a month. These digital dry-runs are used to predict how launches will go and anticipate problems.
Weather modeling applications running on the system will be able to predict a hurricane's path up to three days earlier thanks to the Linux-and Intel-based horsepower; this will give NASA better information for launch timing, as well as let the agency warn people in                                  hurricane-prone areas. 


 SOURCE: ( www.cnn.com)

Quote - IT

“It's time for the United States to begin an era of economic sharing that will reduce resentment of the country and could mean a larger computer technology market for everyone” 

 - Matthew Szulik - 

Personality Of The Month

Our personality of this month is Red Hat Chief Executive Matthew Szulik. He has fired the Red Hat movement in India. On his visit to India he met President A.P.J. Kalam and spoke on issues relating to copywriters, shared software and also his fight in favour of open source software.

As per his views “Copyright holders should be required to disclose all copyrighted works in their entirety,. those who want copyrights but don't want to reveal proprietary software should be able to get federal trade-secret protection.”

Speaking about software patents he said that they also need critical scrutiny, to really inspire and create innovation. He also stressed on the need for sharing of technological advancements, without which United States will continue to spur 'resentment” and “alienation” in other countries.

IT Snippets 

Phone Makers Embrace Linux

With a leading-edge carrier like DoCoMo accepting open source as well as Symbian, Linux gets a huge boost. 
"The advantage is that there are no licensing restrictions, and time to market for new software is much faster”.
Open-source software is carving a larger niche in the mobile realm, with electronics firms NEC and Panasonic rolling out Linux-based handhelds.

Motorola has shown a keen interest in Linux as well, introducing Linux-Java handsets in Asia.


Source : (www.Linuxdevices.com)

Caretaker-Robots Now Powered With Linux

A 3.3 foot tall, 60 pound Linux-powered robot is described as the first human-size robot capable of providing companionship or functioning as a caretaker and house sitter. 

The battery-operated robot moves about on wheels and recharges itself when its batteries run low. 
Wakamaru is said to be capable of conducting simple conversation using a 10,000 word vocabulary, and finding (and following) faces and movements using face recognition technology. 

The following are a few of Wakamaru's concept and capabilities :

  • A robot that is friendly to people and useful for your life at home.
  • Lives with family members. Speaks spontaneously in accordance with family member's requirement. Has its own role in a family. 
  • Natural and enriched communication in accordance with life scenes. Recognizes approximately 10,000 words required for daily life and provides topics in accordance with life scenes and communicates in a friendly manner using gestures. 
  • Autonomous action in accordance with its own rhythm of life. The robot has its daily rhythm of life, moves in accordance with time and purpose, automatically charges its batteries and lives with family members. 

Source : (www.Linuxdevices.com)

Web Watch 

http://www.LinuxDevices.com 

This exclusive site LinuxDevices.com "quick reference guide" offers an interesting glimpse into of some Linux-powered robots currently available or near production, and provides an extensive reading list with further information on Linux in robotics. It also includes pointers to our coverage of Linux-based mobilephones, featurephones, and smartphones.

The site also provides information about the new Linux related products in market along with their detailed features. Popular journals pertaining to Linux can be read online on this site, it also gives links to other interesting sites of Linux products. Detailed of making Robots or other products is also available in Robotic Tutorials.

On the whole any information on Articles & white papers about Linux in embedded applications can be had from this site. This site is regularly updated with day to day events in the field of Linux for home devices like their news articles , reviews and price of the products. Don't miss the Great Gadget Smack Down fun available on this 

IT Humour 

A police officer sees a man driving around with a pickup truck full of penguins. He pulls the guy over and says, “You can't drive around with penguins in this town! take them to the zoo immediately. “the guy agrees to do so and drives away.

The next day, the officer sees the guy still driving around with the truck full of penguinsand they're all wearing sunglasses! he pulls the guy over and says, “I thought I told you to take these penguins to the zoo yesterday!”

The guy replies, “I did-they loved it, thanks. Today I'm taking them to the beach!”


IT Quiz 

  1. What is PHP?
  2. What does the term WINE stand for?

IT Quiz Solutions

  1. PHP is an interesting recursive acronym that stands for (PHP Hypertext Preprocessor). It is an open-source scripting language. You can create dynamic Web pages with the PHP scripting language. A dynamic Web page interacts with the user, so that each user visiting the page sees customized information. PHP can also be used to create dynamic Web pages that are generated from information accessed from a MySQL database. It offers excellent connectivity to most of the common databases.
  2. It is just another recursive acronym .WINE is not an Emulator, or WINdows Emulator; whichever you call it, Wine allows you to run programs compiled for MS Windows under Linux, FreeBSD, and NetBSD.