Raspberry Pi - A $35 credit card sized computer

Recently, a good friend of ours asked us to look into a computer that was the size of a credit card and costs around $35. As expected, we took it with a pinch of salt.

So what is it?

It's basically a basic Linux PC that is not only designed to help encourage children to code but also is powerful enough to handle everyday tasks such as spreadsheets and word processing.

It is a well known fact that IT education today means IT literacy, not computer science - that is, teaching children how to use applications rather than how to make them.

According to The Royal Society, "we appear to have succeeded in making many people comfortable with using the technology that we find around us, but this seems to have been at the expense of failing to provide a deeper understanding of the rigorous academic subject of computer science." The Pi hopes to help promote that understanding.

The Raspberry Pi processor is a 700MHz Broadcomm system on a chip with a Videocore 4 GPU. That provides OpenGL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG and 1080p HD video. There's 256MB of on-board RAM and sockets for HDMI, USB 2.0, RCA video, USB 2.0 and 3.5mm audio jacks, and power comes via a MicroUSB connector. The  OS is Linux (Fedora) and it supports programming languages including Python, BBC Basic, C and Perl.And the best part is it price of $35 for model B.

But like any potential 'NEXT BIG THING', the Pi too has its share of bad luck.The $35 credit card-sized computer was built with the wrong jack, Raspberry Pi said in a Thursday.For existing models, Raspberry Pi claimed it's a "very minor problem to fix." It must desolder the wrong jack and attach the correct one. The production plant is almost done fixing the first round of computers, it said.

But given it's noble intention of helping the children of the world progress, we wish it the best and hope it does what many giants in the past have failed to do..

Is your computer “male” or “female”?

1. Open Notepad

2. Type the following line in notepad:
CreateObject("SAPI.SpVoice").Speak"I love you"

3. Save file as computer_gender.vbs

4. Run the file. .

If you hear a male voice, your pc is a boy
If you hear a female voice, your pc is a girl

Nursery admissions cost as much as an engineering degree in Delhi

After successfully clearing the rigorous process of securing the elusive nursery seat for their tiny tots, parents in the capital city of New Delhi in India are gearing up for the last big hurdle - fees that range between Rs 75,000 and Rs 1.25 lakh in almost all sought-after schools.

Some schools are even demanding three to four lakh rupees to ensure a child's admission under their 'highly- manipulative' management quota, parents and experts alleged.

"We have lost all hope of our son's admission as the schools where he was shortlisted have asked us more than Rs one lakh to secure our child's name in the final list," said Arti Sharma, a south Delhi resident.

"I have applied to more than 10 schools, but none of them have selected my child. And where he was shortlisted, they are asking so much money which I cannot afford. His chances of getting admission this year looks very slim," Sharma told.

Ranjit Arora, a resident of Pitampura who had applied to more than 20 schools, also has a similar story.

"My son didn't get selected in any school. A few good schools offered my child a nursery seat but for a hefty amount," Arora said. Sumit Vohra, founder of admissionsnursery.com, said such complaints are a regular feature on his forum.

"A look at our website shows you hundreds of such donation-related complaints posted by parents this year," Vohra said.

"It seems as if some schools have converted their general seats into paid seats under the highly-manipulative management quota which is a very disturbing phenomenon," he said.

Unhappy with the Directorate of Education (DoE) for not taking adequate steps to prevent such 'corruption', parents are now venting their anger on the online forum.

Parents have alleged how some schools have turned nursery admission into a money-minting business. Educationists also pointed out that fees in top schools are going to leave a big hole in the pockets of parents.

According to the fees structure available on the websites of some schools, one has to pay Rs 95,220 towards tuition fees of a year, Rs 14,283 as development charges and Rs 14283 as annual charges, besides other minor charges.

According to experts, the nursery season also saw two disturbing trends such as advance booking and the policy of first-come-first-serve.

Ishwar Natrajan, a resident of Anand Vihar, says he is a victim of the these policies that spoilt his daughter's chances of getting admission in a neighbourhood school of which he himself is an alumnus.

"My daughter's name appeared in the list of selected candidates in the school, but when I went to the school, they told me the admission are over and they had adopted a first-come-first-serve policy," he said.

When contacted by media, Shashi Kausal, Additional Director of DoE, declined to comment.

AT&T's Releases New Data Policy for Heavy Users

Under a new policy announced Thursday, AT&T has established clear thresholds for unlimited data subscribers – those who exceed 3GB a month and 4G LTE smartphone owners who surpass 5GB.

Some heavy users – whom AT&T has said are the top 5 percent of data users in its networks – feel that AT&T was pushing them to sign up for one of its newer tiered plans instead of the unlimited plan, which is no longer available to new customers.

AT&T sent heavy data users text warnings before slowing their network speed.

Now, under AT&T’s new policy, those who have the unlimited data plan will receive a text message if their usage approaches 3GB. “Each time you use 3GB or more in a billing cycle, your data speeds will be reduced for the rest of that billing cycle and then go back to normal,” AT&T said.

The same process applies to unlimited data plan subscribers at 5GB of data use with the 4G LTE smartphone.

But the next time subscribers exceed their use level, speeds will be reduced without another text warning, AT&T said. Users can text *data# on their mobile phones to see how much they have used in a billing cycle.

Japan invents speech-jamming gun that silences people mid-sentence

According to a recent article by newsgroup, Japanese researchers have invented a speech-jamming gadget that painlessly forces people into silence.

Kazutaka Kurihara of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and Koji Tsukada of Ochanomizu University, developed a portable "SpeechJammer" gun that can silence people more than 30 meters away.

The device works by recording its target's speech then firing their words back at them with a 0.2-second delay, which affects the brain's cognitive processes and causes speakers to stutter before silencing them completely.

Describing the device in their research paper, Kurihara and Tsukada wrote, "In general, human speech is jammed by giving back to the speakers their own utterances at a delay of a few hundred milliseconds. This effect can disturb people without any physical discomfort, and disappears immediately by stopping speaking."

They found that the device works better on people who were reading aloud than engaged in "spontaneous speech" and it cannot stop people making meaningless sounds, such as "ahhh," that are uttered over a long time period.

Kurihara and Tsukada suggested the speech-jamming gun could be used to hush noisy speakers in public libraries or to silence people in group discussions who interrupt other people's speeches.

"There are still many cases in which the negative aspects of speech become a barrier to the peaceful resolution of conflicts," the authors said.