Comment Re:Okay, this has officially gone too far. (Score 1) 276
>I can handle a PDA running Linux. I can even >handle a calculator running Linux. But a watch? >What's next, a Linux powered hearing aid?
Umm yes that would actually be quite useful to me. I'm profoundly deaf and have to use state-of-the-art hearing aids that amplify by about 120 decibels, maintain high sound quality, and still fit into the space behind my ear. Quite a lot of processing power there. (the ones i currently have are analogue and come from a converted Israeli missile-tech factory - an actual example of the 'peace dividend!)
The next set I buy will be digital and needs to sample sound in thousands of channels, with different modifiable responses for each channel (like most deaf people, I hear better at some frequences than others - typically lower ones), and also be able to transpose higher pitched speech sounds (silibants - 's', 'f', etc) into lower channels, distinguish between different auditory environments, cancel noise, detect and auto-cancel feedback (a major problem for very high powered aids), and various other DSP wonders, all of which needs to be individually tuned for the wearer.
Programming and tuning these things require several months of frequent visits to the audiologists and their computers.
So yes, there's probably already enough power there to run linux. and I'd love to be able to hack my own aids without having to go to the audiologist. Not to mention running foreign lanuage speech reconition and Babelfish....
Umm yes that would actually be quite useful to me. I'm profoundly deaf and have to use state-of-the-art hearing aids that amplify by about 120 decibels, maintain high sound quality, and still fit into the space behind my ear. Quite a lot of processing power there. (the ones i currently have are analogue and come from a converted Israeli missile-tech factory - an actual example of the 'peace dividend!)
The next set I buy will be digital and needs to sample sound in thousands of channels, with different modifiable responses for each channel (like most deaf people, I hear better at some frequences than others - typically lower ones), and also be able to transpose higher pitched speech sounds (silibants - 's', 'f', etc) into lower channels, distinguish between different auditory environments, cancel noise, detect and auto-cancel feedback (a major problem for very high powered aids), and various other DSP wonders, all of which needs to be individually tuned for the wearer.
Programming and tuning these things require several months of frequent visits to the audiologists and their computers.
So yes, there's probably already enough power there to run linux. and I'd love to be able to hack my own aids without having to go to the audiologist. Not to mention running foreign lanuage speech reconition and Babelfish....
