Hasta La Gadget!

Uh, wow. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison just released a statement in response to HP suing former CEO Mark Hurd for taking a position as Oracle’s co-president, and well, just read it:

Oracle has long viewed HP as an important partner,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “By filing this vindictive lawsuit against Oracle and Mark Hurd, the HP board is acting with utter disregard for that partnership, our joint customers, and their own shareholders and employees. The HP Board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace.

Yeah. Homeboy isn’t playing around. Of course, HP’s entire lawsuit hinges on the court agreeing that HP and Oracle are actually direct competitors in the enterprise space, and, as the lawsuit points out, Oracle itself has filed SEC reports saying its hardware and software products “compete directly” with HP and other companies, so perhaps this is all more sound than fury, but at this point we wouldn’t count on a quick settlement putting all this to bed anytime soon.

P.S.- We told you Larry Ellison would say something bonkers again.

Continue reading Larry Ellison on HP’s Mark Hurd lawsuit: ‘virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together’

Larry Ellison on HP’s Mark Hurd lawsuit: ‘virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Could T-Mobile be better served catering to the lower end of the spectrum, away from the super phones? pOriginally posted at a href=”http://www.cnet.com/8301-19736_1-20015745-251.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Android Atlas/a/p

A journalist captured in Afghanistan told the world he was still alive by tweeting with a prison guard’s cellphone.

This remarkable tale about a tweet kicks off a new meme here at Gadget Lab that we’re calling Tweet of the Day, where we’ll post our favorite tweets from just about anybody in our orbit: gadget customers, pundits, analysts, journalists, Silicon Valley bigwigs and so on. Each Tuesday and Thursday, we’ll be handpicking tweets that we find especially fascinating, enlightening, hilarious, moving or sad — anything that really gets us buzzing.

Today’s tweet comes from Kosuke Tsuneoka, a Japanese freelance journalist who was released from five months of captivity in Afghanistan over the weekend. Since he was captured April 1, no one had heard a single word from Tsuneoka, but on Sept. 3 he managed to send out a tweet: “i am still allive, but in jail.”

Speaking at a press conference today in Tokyo, Tsuneoka recounted the story of how he managed to trick his captors into allowing him to tweet. A low-ranking soldier had just gotten a new cellphone, a Nokia N70, and was asking Tsuneoka how to use it.

The guard had heard of the internet but didn’t know what it was, so Tsuneoka called customer care to activate the phone and configure it for internet access. He showed the guard how to perform a Google search of “Al Jazeera,” and then he talked about Twitter.

“But if you are going to do anything, you should use Twitter,” he said he told the guard. “They asked what that was. And I told them that if you write something on it, then you can reach many Japanese journalists. So they said, ‘Try it.’”

And just like that, Tsuneoka was able to communicate to the world that he was still alive. This is a truly amazing story originally reported by IDG News that underscores the power of a web-connected gadget and social networking while telling us a bit about the disconnected culture of Afghanistan.

A hat tip to Mary H.K. Choi (@choitotheworld) for spotting and sharing this story.

Seen any especially awesome tweets you’d like us to feature? Share them with Gadget Lab by Twitter.

In the early, chaotic, primordial years of the mobile phone era, you had to press real, actual “buttons” to get things done. Almost barbaric to think about now, isn’t it? As society advanced and we gradually became a more civilized species, buttons gave way to touchscreens and voice control, mercifully giving the atrophied sausages we call “arms” and “fingers” a bit of respite every time we needed to surf through cyberspace, place a phone call, or send a text message. Now, it seems the evolution of Homo sapiens is reaching its inevitable final stage with the release of the PLX XWave, headgear that plugs into your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad and — after a bit of training — lets you control the device with your mind alone. As you might expect, the headset makes use of the NeuroSky technology that we’ve seen several times through the years and will be made available with a number of apps upon its release next month including a game, dedicated training app, a music controller (which will let you compare brainwaves with other XWave users, interestingly), and an “Om Meditation Timer.” If none of those titles have captured your imagination, you’ll be able to write your own apps with the device’s SDK; needless to say, we’ll be patiently waiting for the levitation app depicted here. Orders are online now for $100 with delivery in October.

Continue reading XWave lets you control your iPhone with your noodle, levitate if you’re lucky

XWave lets you control your iPhone with your noodle, levitate if you’re lucky originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I was pretty sure that it wasn’t possible for me to love the Colorado-based Elephant 6 pop-psych group The Apples in Stereo any more than I already do. And then lead singer Robert Schneider has to come along and create something like this–a mind-controlled Moog synthesizer.

Not just a mind-controlled Moog synthesizer–a homemade mind-controlled Moog synthesizer (not that there are any other kind, I suppose). Schneider pulled apart Mattel’s awesome MindFlex brainwave-controlled board game and hooked it up to an analog synth to form the “Teletron.” Of course it’s named that. What else would it be named?

Judging by Schneider’s video demonstration, the Teletron doesn’t have a lot going for it musically, at the moment–the demo mostly involves the musician adjusting pitch up and down by thinking. Knowing Schneider, however, the instrument will no doubt be mastered in time to feature it on the next Apples in Stereo record.

Instructions for making the Teletron can be found here.