Skype Translations

The article I read is: Skype Can Now Do Spanish/English Translation in (Almost) Real Time.

Well, this isn't anything new to me, as I've read about the "alpha" testing earlier this year. Some other articles compares it with universal translator in the Star Trek series, and while it kind of is, at the same time, the universal translator is just a fictional device - which is what I actually wanted to talk about. I apologise ahead of time of ripping apart a device in the Star Trek universe, but it's the one that's not very logical to me, though I'm a "trekkie".

The universal translator supposedly works in real-time, in other words: as the other person speaks, the translator translates exactly what they're saying. The problem with this is that languages are not structured the same way, so for something to translate in real-time is impossible unless the two languages have the same structure. The only way real-time translation would be possible, is that something knows exactly what you're saying before you even finish saying it. Otherwise, there's going to be a delay between when the person speaks and when the translator starts translating.

If you "study" languages (not necessarily learning them), it eventually becomes obvious that the structures are much different and doesn't (usually) carry over to a different language. For this example, I will use Japanese and English.

私はご飯をたべています。 translates to "I am eating rice."
私 is "I", は tells the reader/listener that the noun/pronoun preceding it is the main subject, ご飯 is "rice", を tells the reader/listener that the noun/pronoun preceding it is related to the verb following it, 食べています is "eating" (simply put). The "am" in the English translation is inferred (though います can be considered the actual source of "am" and "ing"). So if we directly translate this without changing the language structure, it would become "I rice eating." which doesn't make much sense.

Some languages might have the same structure - while I'm not entirely sure about Korean compared with Japanese, I do know at least that Korean follows the same "noun-verb" structure.

 Though a real-time translation is impossible, what we have now is definitely is a step toward breaking the language barriers.

Samsung SSDs

The article I read is: Samsung Brings 3D NAND to Mainstream with 850 Evo SSD Line.

This is something that's pretty exciting for computer and/or storage enthusiasts, as solid-state drives have been sort of a mixed bag for a number of years, at least from my point of view. From what I remember seeing, SSDs with higher reliability or storage space has always been quite pricey, the cheaper ones are usually pretty decent in terms of reliability but not with space, and the cheapest ones are the ones that you would feel uneasy about buying.

I only own a couple of SSDs, and have only been using them to store video files; I've never really had the want or need to use SSDs in place of traditional HDDs mainly because of the price. Back then, I didn't really quite understand the reliability of SSDs, so I wanted to use them in such a way to keep the writes as low as possible, which is storage. However, things are different now that this article breaks down the reliability into something a lot easier to understand than "1,000,000 hours" for the mean time between failures.

The price points of the 850 Evo line seem about the same as other SSDs of the same capacity in terms of retail price, which will let the SSD line have a nice start once released.

I will still be doing what I have been doing with SSDs until the prices are low enough to where I can viably switch to SSD without being gouged in the wallet.

Tablets

The article I read is: Tablets Are Broken. Here's How to Fix Them.

While I've wanted a tablet for a while, the main thing that kept me away was my lack of money, but I suppose the other thing that kept me away was the interface itself (I didn't really realize it until I read the article).

The article makes very valid points about everything that is wrong with the interface with tablets, which I agree with - tablets are supposed to be the in-between device when we want something larger than our phones but handier than our laptops. And as the article said, the problem is that Android and iOS were designed for phones more than tablets, along with that tablets are mostly going to be used in a landscape orientation rather than portrait.

While a proper rendition of Android and iOS (and their applications) would improve the usage of tablets, there is another solution that the author is probably unaware of that would be the "quick fix": Linux. Both GNOME 3 and Unity were meant to support touchscreens, and would work well on a tablet, but there's a couple problems: it's not easy to install Linux on a tablet (I'm not entirely sure of this, as I've never looked, but I can't exactly figure out how it'd be done with the knowledge I have), and that ARM support really is iffy depending on the distribution. Some tablets use x86 or x86_64 architecture processors, which would have a higher compatibility with Linux distributions than ARM, and will be what I'm referencing to from now on.

Unity is really more geared toward touchscreen use, though it's easily used for a normal desktop environment (mouse and keyboard). One of the things I don't like about Unity is that it forces you to type the application you want to launch - it's faster in most cases, but there are some (like me) who would rather not have to.

GNOME 3 is geared a bit more towards touchscreens, but is a lot closer to the neutral point than Unity is. The applications are listed in a flow, which allows the user to scroll through it all to look for what they're looking for (assuming it's not in the recent applications list), and they're also able to click on the search box and type the application name if they wish to do so. What I'm not sure about is how the notification bar would work, as it was something I didn't test, but I'm assuming long-pressing the bottom of the screen would bring it up

While I haven't tried the other desktop interfaces with a touchscreen, the interfaces aren't much different than Windows, so it's usable, but probably awkward at times.

Assuming there's a way to install Linux onto a tablet, it'd still be pretty awkward because of the lack of keyboard - how would one type anything in during installation? Maybe it would detect the touchscreen and enable the on-screen keyboard?

While Linux is a viable alternative for tablets, it voids the warranty of a new device (or one within warranty), requiring you to restore the factory image onto the device before sending it in for repair. Once I get a hold of a tablet, I'll eventually tinker with installing openSUSE onto it (I may also try Ubuntu as well), but for now I can only really speculate on how well Linux is on a tablet as an alternative to Android and iOS.

openSUSE 13.2 Part 6

A few days ago, I initiated an install for h264enc on Triela to see if the dependency problem still existed, and I was surprised to see that it didn't, so I then canceled the install and went ahead with following caf4926's guide (of which they modified the 13.1 guide by changing "13.1" to "13.2") to completely install the multimedia and restricted formats packages. After installation, I immediately tested VLC with the MKV file that I always use for testing, and was able to watch the video; the day after, I upgraded both Mei-chan and Lie-chan.

I figured it would eventually be fixed and that I just had to wait it out to when it did. While the window shade feature no longer works properly (or was changed?), I've found a very viable alternative to replace it that I've partially adapted to - the "lower" option, which lowers the window beneath all the other windows.

With how much Firefox is crashing on Mei-chan, I may have to do a clean install, since I can't pinpoint the problem with what I've tried so far. Rhythmbox still randomly crashes when playing, though it actually just stops responding instead of closing itself, and perhaps it's just me, but it seems to be worse than it used to - maybe even more of a reason for a clean install. While I still need to get used to the new button placement on the dialogues, I still prefer 13.2 over 13.1, as GNOME 3 responds quicker after a cold boot.

Redoing Lie-chan

A few days ago, I thought about how much I actually used Lie-chan (which is hardly), and so I decided to remove Windows from her.

When I looked at the her partitioning scheme, I decided I should actually just completely redo the scheme, since it would be quicker to do so than to move/resize partitions. I also poked around the BIOS a lot, since I knew Lie-chan is technically able to boot from USB, but just never was able to successfully do it. I figured it out and was able to utilize the USB flash drive with Linux distributions for installation.

Once I got to the partitioner step in openSUSE (13.1) installation, I realized it wasn't going to be easy to change the partition map to GPT with YaST2's partitioner, so I decided to reboot into Parted Magic(though I should have just aborted the installation and used GParted, but I was cold and slightly tired). When trying to boot Parted Magic, it was unable to find the necessary file, so I tried MultiSystem Live instead, which worked.

After setting up a basic partition scheme and installing openSUSE 13.1, I was then met with the right side of the audio not outputting sound at all. I decided to wait after setting up the repositories, the distribution upgrade, and updating to see if it's a package glitch of some sort - which it wasn't.

I tried a couple things and decided to head to bed, since I was too cold and tired to want to continue to figure it out. After lunch the next day (I woke up a bit before lunch), I went to tinker around with it some more, first trying alsamixer before pavucontrol.

In pavucontrol, I found that the right side of the audio was muted, and just had to increase the volume until both sides were at maximum. After exiting, I went into the sound settings and tested the sounds, which worked normally (besides that it was a lot louder than I was expecting); I then adjusted the volume in YaST2's sound setting and finished setting everything to how it used to be.

Definitely was one of the weirder glitches that I've had happen, but luckily I didn't have to fix it with a reinstall (the openSUSE 13.1 DVD isn't supported in MultySystem Live yet).

Heating homes with clouds

The article I read is: Heat your house for free by storing this cloud company’s servers.

I like this idea quite a bit - the home-owner hosts the servers' physical location in exchange for the heat that can be used to heat the home, and internet service. Also, if you consider an entire neighbourhood doing this, it (essentially) improves the reliability and/or overall storage space (depending on how it's set up).

This article reminded me of a parody advertisement I made a few years ago, where there would be a program to use 100% of the CPU (such as a loop that can be broken) and would heat a room - turning the computer into a space-heater.

During the cold winter days, I prefer to spend time in my bedroom with Mei-chan, since she can heat up my bedroom to a more comfortable temperature than what the second floor usually is (I obviously have my door closed).

I don't really like space heaters, since they only have one function (heat an area), and can use around the same amount of power as a computer. Mei-chan's power supply is 500 watts (though I doubt she actually uses all 500 watts), and the two oil-filled space heaters in the basement (which aren't really used any more) have 3 modes: 600W, 900W, and 1500W.

Of course the only problem is that the computer is only going to be an effective space heater if it puts out enough heat. In Lie-chan's case, she doesn't put out enough heat to be able to heat my entertainment room as I found out the other day. I was redoing Lie-chan's partitioning scheme and removing Windows, finding out that Lie-chan didn't get over 25C from BIOS; the entire time I was working with her, I was cold. I'm sure Ziggy would've done a lot better job (LOL).

OS X Loses Third-party TRIM Support

The article I read is: Apple removes TRIM support for third-party SSDs with OS X update.

The article title says it all, and the article itself just gives further details. I'm not horribly surprised that Apple did this, but it's just another thing that makes my appreciation for Apple drop more than it already has.

I don't really have anything to say besides that another workaround option is to install Linux over OS X.