Alston Grove

The desktop of the future will be running Linux. Each successive wave of development improves and pushes open source software further. The increasing momentum from developers around the world makes widespread adoption of Linux inevitable. I remember telling people this in 1995 and they laughed me out of the room. I suppose those people are running MacOS X now, or they are looking forward to Windows Vista… So, can your desktop do this?

Click through the screenshot to watch a video of a Linux box running Xgl and Compiz. You might not want to watch the whole thing if you get motion sickness easily.

You can patent just about anything these days, and the Federal Court of Appeals just made it harder for anyone to challenge your obvious patent. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is asking for a different opinion from the US Supreme Court. In the meantime, Really Magazine keeps a running list of the most ridiculous patents achieving registration. Here are some of my favorites this year:

• Headband
• Game of Etiquette
• Pillow
• Bottlecap Necktie
• Tea Bag
• Cucumber Sandwich
• Beach Blanket

Just remember to record your innovative 3-legged chair design in your Moleskine notebook and you should have no problem in court. Don’t forget to save some money for the lawyer fees.

Here’s a fun little puzzle called the Leap Frog IQ Test. Supposedly, this test is given to second grade children in China, and should be solvable in 3 minutes by someone with an IQ above 50. I’m not sure about that, but I did have fun solving it.

It’s an interactive Flash-based puzzle, but I’ll explain how it works just for edification. You start with green frogs on the left and brown frogs on the right. The goal is to perform a switcheroo of green and brown frogs. The rules are:

• Green frogs can only move to the right and brown frogs to the left.
• Only one frog is allowed on a rock at a time.
• A frog can move to the open rock or jump over one other frog to reach it.

It reminds me a little bit of the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. I’m not sure if the Frog puzzle is also recursive, but my solution is algorithmic with two steps.