IBM Software TTS On Ubuntu 6

I had earlier reported the IBM TTS engine segfaulting on my home Ubuntu 6 machine; I'm still to fix that problem. Surprizingly though, I tried it on a different Ubuntu 6 machine, and there, installing

sudo apt-get install libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2

on top of the regular Ubuntu install was enough to get the TTS working. The segfault on my home machine occurs inside libc, and as best I can tell the two machines have identical libc installs. So on the positive front, it's only my home machine that appears broken; on the negative side, the fact that the breakage is hard to explain and hence fix doesn't inspire confidence in upgrading. Others have reported not having any problems on Edgy -- so the problem is hopefully transitory.

Web Command Line Tool For Google Patent Search

From the every new Google search tool gets a corresponding Emacspeak wizard dept:

Google just introduced Patent Search an easy to use search interface for US patents. In the spirit of the Web Command Line, Emacspeak now sports a Patent Search From Google smart URL like other smart URLs on the Emacspeak Audio Desktop, this places executing patent searches just a few keystrokes away. To use this new wizard, do the following:

• Update your working copy of Emacspeak from SVN. The patent search wizard will be part of the next official Emacspeak release slated for May 2007.
• Invoke the Smart URL tool by pressing C-e u
• Type the first few characters of the phrase patent search from Google and hit tab to complete the name of the smart URL.
• Hit enter, specify what you're searching for and hit enter again.

happy inventing ---