Mind Soup

MIND SOUP :  India's Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal unveiled on Thursday a prototype tablet computer which is expected to revolutionize the computer industry. Indian minister holding the device. (Photo Credits: AFP) Five years in development, this prototype was produced by a student project with a bill of material adding up to $47, a price that the minister wants to bring down to $35. This device may have primitive features, but for a price like that, it promises to increase the competition on computer production between the major companies. This prototype promises a Linux -based operating system with an internet browser, PDF reader, wi-fi, 2GB RAM, USB slots, video conferencing, Open Office (the free version of Microsoft 's Office) and multimedia content viewers and interfaces. However, this device does not include a hard disk or a storage system. Files will be stored on removable memory cards, just like mobile phones and digital...

I definitely admit to being somewhat of a computer geek. While I don't use Linux on a daily basis, I know that it's a pretty cool operating system with way more benefits and less problems than the standard Windows OS. When I got super-excited after seeing this blog posting from OMG! Ubuntu! (that I've reposted below), I realized that my geekiness just increased exponentially. "Linux powers 91% of the world's top supercomputers With the biannual list of the top 500 supercomputers the world over released , the following screenshot of a graph showing the operating systems used in those 500 peta-flop crunching machines, and produced by the University of California Berkeley, makes for an impressive visual glance at Linux’s dominance in Super Computing. Check it out in its full interactive form @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10187248.stm to get down and dirty with the stats behind it. Sadly Ubuntu doesn’t feature in the list breakdown, but given these rigs ar...

Total credit goes to The Oatmeal for coming up with this hilarious image!

So simple, yet so useful!

From the king of pop to the queen of reality TV, from swine flu to MPs' expenses, these are among the year's most-read stories. There are goodbyes and near-misses, extremes in the weather, and a few light-hearted moments alongside more serious tales. JANUARY Two near misses and a certain Time Lord grabbed the headlines in January. It was new year, new Doctor, as  Matt Smith was named  as the actor to take over from David Tennant in Doctor Who. At 27, he will be the youngest to take on the role when he appears on TV in 2010. A pilot ditched an Airbus A320 in the Hudson River after a double bird strike Attention turned to Manchester United winger Cristiano Ronaldo, who  wrote off his Ferrari  in a crash near Manchester Airport but walked away unscathed. Another lucky escape attracted plenty of attention when  a pilot crash-landed an airliner  in New York's Hudson River after birds disabled its engines. All 155 passengers and crew were rescued....

Yahoo Inc. is closing down for a week over the holidays to save money, but experts said the shutdown is par for the course in Silicon Valley. The Internet company is mandating that most of its employees worldwide, except for those responsible for “essential functions” such as customer service, take off work from Dec. 25 through Jan. 1. In the U.S., employees can either use vacation time for nonholiday dates or take unpaid leave. Workers outside the country will be paid according to local standards, said spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo told its staff about the break in April, and has recommended employees to take the week off in the past, Lengkeek said. “This is nothing new, just formalized a little more,” she said. “It’s fairly standard in the industry, closing down during a traditionally slow week and giving employees time to recharge. A lot of employees tend to take that week off anyway.” In addition to reducing operations, Yahoo will be turning lights and co...