MishMash

Agile development in UK research

Agile development techniques have made it into funded UK research.

Listen to Project Gutenberg texts

Sean McGrath notices that project Gutenberg texts are being made available in speech synthesised MP3.

Given a choice you would listen to a real human reading this stuff but in the abence of such a thing, computer generated speech is better than nothing at all.

True indeed, and the synthesis is somewhat intelligent, if rather hard to listen to; different characters (narrator, and any involved in dialog) are synthesised in different ways. The provincial mayor in the Time Machine has an implausibly low voice in this case, but the idea is there.

The question is, does this stuff need to be on the web as 30-40Mb of MP3 files per book? Couldn't it be synthesised on the fly?

[Project Gutenberg, by the way, is converting "famous and important texts" into electronic form so that they can be "freely available to everyone in the world".]

Keep 'em in the dark, it's only fair

There's something deeply depressing about the fact that arguments like this one don't get laughed out of court (or kangaroo court, in the case of the WTO):

EU farm ministers agreed last month to move from a blanket ban to a stringent system of labelling when GM ingredients are used either in foodstuffs for human consumption or in animal feed.

But the US says that will still discriminate against its farmers, given the much more widespread use of GMOs in US agriculture.

So, you're saying that for the general population to know what they are eating puts you at a competitive disadvantage, so the general population should be kept in the dark. Nice.

Remind me again, is it the individual who needs protection against the corporation, or the corporation who needs protecting from the individual?

Desperate measures

Desperate times, desperate measures. Take an eyeful of animation.

The background: on 1st September, the European Parliament is due to vote on changes to patent legislation.

Patent law is often lumped together with trademark and copyright law and referred to collectively as "Intellectual Property" law. This lumping is misleading -- the three types of law are quite separate, being linked only in the sense that they each grant a person or organisation a limited (time and scope) monopoly on something. The name is even more misleading, however, as these pieces of law have nothing whatsoever to do with property.

Easy exams

So, the annual flurry of discussion about the general and increasing uselessness of exam results as measures of [whatever it is we think we are measuring] continues. Too many people are getting A grades at A level, we need a better discriminator.

Well, far be it from me to excuse the general dropping of exam "hardness" (be quiet at the back, and don't try to tell those who sat a mixture of old and new exams (in Scotland) that standards aren't dropping), but it does seem that Universities and employers are managing to discriminate quite well, albeit to an inevitable chorus of complaint one way or another.

The BBC quotes Geoff Lucas, secretary of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, as saying,

Fix your own printer

A while ago the fuser kit in the colour laser printer at work scattered scraps of plastic liberally round the inside of the printer, giving us the impression that it had had enough of this life, so we replaced it. Not a couple of months later, the printer started complaining that its fuser kit was nearly at the end of its life. Obviously replacing the fuser didn't reset the maintenance counter -- whether it should have done I have no idea -- and today it decided it had had enough, and wasn't going to print any more until someone pandered to its whim.

The ever helpful Google found me fixyourownprinter.com with helpful details on how to get rid of messages on HP printers.

Perfect.

Power again

Funny, so soon after the North American power cuts, for something similar to happen over here.

The BBC's transport correspondent Tom Symonds said: "It showed the vulnerability of London."

It does, and again the vulnerability of highly centralised power generation/distribution systems.

Waiting up

I wondered if this sort of thing would happen. I'd have liked to have seen it, although the BBC reports make it sounds rather nondescript.

Perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise.

Yet another PIM effort: Haystack

Ted Leung points to another PIM effort similar in intent to Chandler. This one is Haystack, and I have the latest test version downloading as I write. Judging from the screenshots, this is very much in line with what I am looking for, and is more real than Chandler so far.

Piping leads to hearing loss, RSI, alcoholism, and marital breakdown

From BBC News, the principal of the College of Piping has dismissed the claims.

They were intended to be frightening from the next hill, so it would hardly be surprising if they were dangerous at close range ...