(one more time, but logged in) I came to the same conclusion last spring. I'm on arch linux and my desktop is as follows: Window Manager: Compiz (though this could easily be openbox if you don't want the shiny... I keep it for the window management plugins) Panel: tint2 (when I last looked it didn't really support multiple viewports in compiz well so I patched in the support (they're hesitant to officially add support)) Launcher: Kupfer (I don't really like menus) System Info: conky File Browser: pcmanfm Editor: vim I use xautolock to lock my screen (via slock), and suspend my PC. I don't currently use a login manager, as it is easy enough to "startx" when I want a graphical session. Switching between viewports (compiz only has one "workspace") is done in the normal way. I also use the put and grid plugins to rearrange windows via the keyboard. The system was originally based on a lxde desktop so lxsession manages auto-starting programs. The nice thing about rolling your own desktop environment is that you can switch out parts as you like. I've specifically chosen these apps to avoid installing a majority of the gnome/kde subsystems. This keeps my system quick to boot even on four year old hardware. Finally: if you don't want your panels breaking then stay off of the unstable branch.

I recommend call information, web history, and keystrokes. For more information check out CarrierIQ
(this time I'm logged in)

Designer discovers basic properties of the prime numbers (and confuses 1 for a prime).

No, Shor solved the discrete logarithm problem in quantum-polynomial time too.

And then let said 67 year old clueless dad on the internet for 30 minutes and see if it still runs.

When I used to play America's Army, which was created by the US Army as a recruiting tool, they had all of the multi-player game types written from both sides. I dug up an IGN article describing how this worked:

That way everyone could play for the "good guys". Everyone could fight for the cause they thought was right, which is usually how war works anyway. There wasn't any controversy about you shooting at people who thought they were playing as "America", because while you played they looked like "terrorists".

The system was clever, and probably appropriate for this application (I don't think the US Army wants to encourage people to shoot at them), but as we have games based around modern conflicts, people have to play both sides. It is "just a game". Cops and robbers would be pretty boring with no robbers. Should we not watch heist movies because it encourages people to steal money? Modern Warfare 2's No Russian mission (in which the player is undercover as a terrorist and has the option to massacre civilians with no penalty) created controversy in the US, but the overriding opinion was that it right to include it in the game. How is this any different?

Oh right, this time we're shooting Americans.

What you want is dictation software. I just (last week) spent significant time looking in to this.

For open source you have two main options: CMU Sphinx and Julius/Julian. Both options are just back-ends, you'll have to write a front-end. However, it shouldn't be too hard to do that (the source for the CMU Sphinx demos show how to get input from a mic/wav file (if you've got something other than PCM you'll just need to convert it) and set up various engines.

CMU Sphinx appears to be mainly for research purposes. You can run it in a few different modes: one with a fixed grammar (for command systems, Gnome's voice control uses sphinx in this mode), one (what you'd be looking for) uses a weighted dictionary. I didn't train it to my voice (and you wont be able to train it for transcriptions) and I was getting fairly lousy recognition rates with my $20 Logitech USB Microphone. It might work better with a high quality headset, but I imagine you wont both be wearing one.

Julius/Julian lacks a good acoustic model for English. VoxForge is working on one, but it isn't anywhere near complete.

Here is a good article that sums up the current projects

I hope it is a little sturdier than demon drop.

It is a great ride but every time I ride it I feel like its about to fall apart (probably because it is 24 years old).