Slashdot Mirror
Stephen Hawking Looking For Personal Techie
kaptink writes "One of the great grandmasters of space, time and the history of our existence is seeking an assistant to help develop and maintain the electronic speech system that allows him to communicate his vision of the universe. An informal job ad posted on Stephen's website said the assistant should be computer literate, ready to travel and able to repair electronic devices 'with no instruction manual or technical support.' He lost his real voice in a tracheotomy in 1985, but has something based on NeoSpeech's VoiceText speech synthesizer mounted on his wheelchair that helps synthesize speech by interpreting the twitches of his face. The synthesizer's robotic monotone has become nearly as famous as Hawking himself, but the computer — powered by batteries fastened to the back of Hawking's wheelchair — isn't just for speaking. It can connect to the internet over mobile phone networks and a universal infrared remote enables the physicist to switch on the lights, watch television, or open doors either at home or at the office. It's a complicated, tailor-made system, as the ad makes clear. A photograph of the back of Hawking's wheelchair, loaded with coiled wires and electronic equipment, is pictured under the words: 'Could you maintain this? If your answer is "yes", we'd like to hear from you!'. Hawking's website says that the job's salary is expected to be about $38,500 a year."
also he will steal your girlfriend if you have one.
If you make a mistake the world will say you broke Stephen Hawking.
As if he wants to have hours long conversations with his personal gadget repairman.
most likely goes like this:
- some genius put that original backpack computer together
- he barely made it work, but he was not sure why it worked and he never bothered to write any documentation
- he left as soon as it was up and running, out of fear that it might break any moment and he had no idea what to do then
- now it is breaking apart and the genius is gone.
- it is your job to fix it, good luck
Which might explain why he's got a totally undocumented piece of shit to begin with.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's only temporary until you learn to make it say to give you a pay increase...
When I was a teenager, my beloved pet frog Fred leaped out of his bowl and escaped. He jumped on the radioactive box in my backyard, which turned him into a giant mutant frog, then he lept down the bottomless pit in my backyard and disappeared.
I followed him into the hole, falling down a thousand feet and landing on my ass next to this car that also kinda looked like a tank. The keys were left in the ignition, so I drove it around and used its ability to fly and climb walls to blow shit up. I finally found Fred, but he wasn't looking or acting the same as he used to (he was trying to kill me), so that made me so sad I had to kill him in self-defense -- once in level 4 and again in level 7.
I lost everything in that hell. I had to kill the frog I loved, twice, and now my car broke down on me so I'm sitting on a hilltop in this strange underword wondering what the fuck I'm gonna do. There, you happy?
However, gets this Job needs to change the voice to glaDOS!!!!!!
I'd settle for a patch to the speech system that ends each sentence with "puny human".