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Home security systems is a "problem" that has been completely solved in hardware. No DIY system, Linux or otherwise will compare in regards to available sensors, reliability, speed, battery backup, cellular backup, and more of a hardware panel. Many/most people want remote monitoring and thus pay for it. People ignore alarm sirens. What's the point of annoying your neighbors with noise while the crook takes his time packing your stuff into his van? You being on Slashdot means you'll want free, so I'll skip the subscription monitoring services.

DSC makes rock solid and inexpensive hardware systems. If you want to roll you own monitoring/alerting DSC systems can be integrated with other stuff including your own crappy and broken Linux implementable. You can also integrate a DCS panel with a home automation system like Vera or openHAB.

Home made security systems are not cost effective, reliable, effective, or worth the effort.

There's an outfit on amazon/ebay that sells 18v "Allpower" solar panels with an array of adapters to use with whatever brand laptop you have for reasonable prices. They just unfold, and then plug right in to your laptop. On a modern laptop, you could probably get away with running/charging a laptop on a 21w array for $90, but they make up to a 28w array for $130. Modern Haswell/Broadwell laptops run at about 15w with the display at full brightness. There's a 14w array too for $60, but if you're seriously considering buying a device like this you probably want the ability to run and charge at the same time, and it's unlikely you'll find a place that allows you to put the panel in full sun and comfortably work on the laptop. With 18v, you'll never fully charge the battery (you need 19-19.5v to do that) but it'll satisfactorily charge your laptop to about 93% very reliably.

Of course, if you're stuck in a rainstorm for three or four days and you wear down your laptop battery, you might have trouble getting it charged back up until the sun comes back out. But with modern 15 hour batteries in laptops you should be able to squeak by for a day or two of normal office work.

There's an outfit on amazon/ebay that sells 18v "Allpower" solar panels with an array of adapters to use with whatever brand laptop you have for reasonable prices. They just unfold, and then plug right in to your laptop. On a modern laptop, you could probably get away with running/charging a laptop on a 21w array for $90, but they make up to a 28w array for $130. Modern Haswell/Broadwell laptops run at about 15w with the display at full brightness. There's a 14w array too for $60, but if you're seriously considering buying a device like this you probably want the ability to run and charge at the same time, and it's unlikely you'll find a place that allows you to put the panel in full sun and comfortably work on the laptop. With 18v, you'll never fully charge the battery (you need 19-19.5v to do that) but it'll satisfactorily charge your laptop to about 93% very reliably.

Of course, if you're stuck in a rainstorm for three or four days and you wear down your laptop battery, you might have trouble getting it charged back up until the sun comes back out. But with modern 15 hour batteries in laptops you should be able to squeak by for a day or two of normal office work.

I use the F5 key all the goddamn time, mostly refresh/rerun/recompile
 
F5 is generally the left-most Function key of the second block, separated by a space from the F4 key. I use the F5 way, way more than I do the 6 key (which is over on the numpad).
 
I got a wireless Microsoft Sculpt ergo keyboard and while I love it, it's taken me a while to get used to the fact that the F5 key is not in the middle, I have to look for the F6 key, then go one to the left. After six months or so I'm used to it, but old habits die hard, and that visual cue between the F4 and F5 keys being gone was hard to get used to. To be fair Microsoft has the corresponding Function key above each number key, although that's dumb because anyone buying this keyboard is a touch-typist.

I have had decent luck with these cameras, PoE. Dahua 1.3MP Megapixel 720P HD Outdoor http://amzn.to/1MoOsQH Basically the same as the Q-See QCN7001B 720p http://amzn.to/1SCW5BG

I have had decent luck with these cameras, PoE. Dahua 1.3MP Megapixel 720P HD Outdoor http://amzn.to/1MoOsQH Basically the same as the Q-See QCN7001B 720p http://amzn.to/1SCW5BG

You must have forgotten about Samsung's own 2.5" 9.5mm 2tb HDD, which works in every laptop that I know of.

I've done a lot of research on this, and the Nokia Asha 501 is the best dumb phone I've found: http://amzn.to/1HncbcC

I purchased it because it was the most smartphone-like phone on which AT&T does not require a data plan (my definition of dumb phone, yours may vary). The battery lasts a few days when using it mostly for music and internet, or a couple weeks (!) when using it for calls only. It's small, but not too small to be useful. With it's built-in WiFi, it's the only dumbphone that I know that will do Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Email, and even a small number of games.

This is not going to touch any iPhone or Android phone by a long shot, but for the price it does pretty well.

Growing up, we had Commodore 64s, Atari 800s, and Tandy Color Computers to interest us.

This would be, by far, the best money you could spend.

http://amzn.to/1yREUVd

This single handedly made me fall in love with logic, design, and creative problem solving.

No, no particular technical difficulty, just another step in gradually falling prices. We have seen drives hit $0.39/GB as well with standard Amazon.com pricing. The Crucial M550 (a bit faster) is at $407 for 1TB model today, for example: http://amzn.to/1kBpIs1

An even better read and the greatest spy of them all:

http://amzn.to/1j1XrXx

Protip: Go look up ZigBee, Z-Wave, and Insteon.

The technology is out there, but it's a lot uglier than X-10 for DIYing. This was the first control system I found that offers your sort of power management, and claimed universal, vendor-agnostic compatibility.

How many of them are clear on the back? Normal style cases wouldn't do the trick for this phone.

There are a number of Nexus 5 cases that are clear on the back, and it doesn't even have a rear display: http://amzn.to/1cZ1rYN

well, they do have a 1080P 21" version, so it's unlikely bandwidth is the gating issue. DisplayLink has been doing this for a while with USB video adapters. I am not exactly sure how they implemented the link protocol, but it likely isn't pushing raw pixel data since it needs special drivers. It likely sends API calls for the chip at the other end to execute and only sends raw pixels for bitmap areas like photos or videos.

If you like this kind of investigation, you might be interested in hacks of the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man. The port from the arcade was notoriously bad, because the hardware of the Atari basically didn't map well onto the graphics needed for the game. As a result, everything is basically wrong: the pills are fat dashes, the elegant outline graphics of the original are blocky opaque colors, etc. But worst of all, since the Atari's two sprite registers are used to draw both Pac-Man and the ghosts, whenever there are more than 2 ghosts+PacMan on a horizonal scanline, they start flickering because the porters resorted to the horrible hack of round-robin rotating which sprites got to be drawn in the 2 sprite registers. (This looks slightly less horrible on a CRT with phosphor decay, but it still looks bad.) Anyway, if you want more on the details of why this port sucked, and how it can be traced to hardware mismatches, it's covered in detail in ch. 4 of the book Racing the Beam .

But on to the hacks: Rob Kudla discussed and did some work towards a better Atari 2600 port in the late 1990s, and there are now a number of attempts, though many of them do cheat by doing things like using an 8K ROM rather than the original 4K.

I'll take my guess at what the OP is asking. He refers to USB-powered displays, but complains that they are too low-res. They really are a great idea and I could see a bunch of uses for them.

Here is a 16" USB-powered display, which combines a DisplayLink USB display adapter with a flat-panel LCD display. The problem is that its pixel resolution is only 1366 x 768, which is pretty low density for that panel size. It's like a typical entry-level 15.6" laptop panel. If you look at 15.6" laptops, they start at 1366x768, then as you move up the model range, the pixel res goes up to 1600x900, then further up, 1920x1080 is about as high as it goes at this size.

I suspect that the OP would like a product just like this display, but with a 1600x900 or 1080P display panel like those used on higher-end laptops. This would totally make sense, but some quick searches didn't turn anything like this up on Amazon. So his real question is if anybody knows of one of these types of displays that has a higher-res panel. Personally, I'd consider one of these as well for on-site video editing.

There is a similar 21" USB-powered display which does run 1080P but it's up to the OP as to whether he still considers that portable or not.

I'll take my guess at what the OP is asking. He refers to USB-powered displays, but complains that they are too low-res. They really are a great idea and I could see a bunch of uses for them.

Here is a 16" USB-powered display, which combines a DisplayLink USB display adapter with a flat-panel LCD display. The problem is that its pixel resolution is only 1366 x 768, which is pretty low density for that panel size. It's like a typical entry-level 15.6" laptop panel. If you look at 15.6" laptops, they start at 1366x768, then as you move up the model range, the pixel res goes up to 1600x900, then further up, 1920x1080 is about as high as it goes at this size.

I suspect that the OP would like a product just like this display, but with a 1600x900 or 1080P display panel like those used on higher-end laptops. This would totally make sense, but some quick searches didn't turn anything like this up on Amazon. So his real question is if anybody knows of one of these types of displays that has a higher-res panel. Personally, I'd consider one of these as well for on-site video editing.

There is a similar 21" USB-powered display which does run 1080P but it's up to the OP as to whether he still considers that portable or not.

If you are buying a sound system for your house from scratch, go for Sonos. It is expensive but if you are replacing multiple existing systems and have the insurance $$ in your hand it shouldn't be too painful. I get my stuff through johnsoncorp on Amazon: http://amzn.to/sonos-au2

The Black Geary Books, as fans often refer to them, are "officially" known as the "Lost Fleet" books by Jack Campbell.

The first one is "The Lost Fleet: Dauntless." I believe there is a total of six in the series. He followed that series up with further Black Jack adventures in the now-ongoing series "The Lost Fleet: Beyond The Frontier."

The Amazon Link: http://amzn.to/R2vhfI

The neatest thing I found about the series (other than all the geometry), is that Black Jack -- a war hero revived after 100 years in stasis -- is the reverse-type to the trope of Ancient Badass Warrior Travels to Future and Kicks Soft Pasty-White Butts Living in Luxury Too Long. In Geary's "relative future," he is the Enlightened Man, using sophisticated naval tactics no longer taught at Academy because the peeps of that relative future are so angry and beaten down by a century of war that all they want to do is just ram their ships into the enemy and rip out their opponents' lungs with their teeth.

Well then id tell you that there is no way the barnes tablet will Match this one.....

So i saw This and couldnt agree more.

Are you fucking stupid? It's not a back light at all, it's a front light. The new Kindle Paperwhite uses a layer on top of the eInk screen to distribute light from side-mounted LEDs across the display. This is very similar to the NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight that has been on the market for months. It's also mentioned in the very first sentence of both TFA and TFS (emphasis added):

"Amazon used a Sept. 6 event in California to debut a range of products, including a frontlit Kindle e-reader with a higher-resolution screen, an updated Kindle Fire, and the new Kindle Fire HD in two screen sizes."

Or you could have simply read about it on Amazon: http://amzn.to/UwTOMk.

1. You may be able to do the same work, but in another country. I know a math major about your age who worked at a nuclear power plant and was sent to China last year to work as a consultant on a new nuclear plant being placed into operation. He's a black guy, not Asian. You often have to move within the US as a career develops, so why stop at the boarder. 2. For perspective and possible insight go to http://www.econlib.org/library/EconTalk.xml and listen to any of the podcasts that look interesting. All of the speakers are specialists and experts on topics related to economic matters and no topics are dry or uninteresting. And speaking about perspective is what this TED Talk is about, which may also help: http://bit.ly/LDbj8M 3. Buy a copy of "What Color Is Your Parachute" at http://amzn.to/OfdaAs or check a copy out of the library. That book has been around and reissued/revised for at least 20 years. It can help you learn about yourself and perhaps create a new job, even in your present organization. Perhaps you can get $1 million or two from Kickstarter.org! Someone here mentioned folks fighting over the same piece of pie which reminds me of a comment about finding a way to grow the pie larger. 4. More perspective and ideas may come from a reading of "Reflections on Bullough's Pond" at http://amzn.to/LTNpZl . It offers insights and explanations about New England's economic development over the last 400 years that apply today and may offer ideas about your organization and career. 5. Further into left field is this: the Conversations Network is looking for editors of podcasts it offers for free via the internet. It pays a nominal amount for each description submitted and at any given time there are about 100 podcasts in need of being so described. What's neat is that it makes you describe the interesting work of a variety of people, so you have to do some creative thinking, some creative writing, and use your internet skills while learning about work in other fields. This is a non-profit organization, so a career with it won't be your goal. However, the exercise might be useful. Other members of your family, etc. might also be interested. Here's the link with information about how to apply -- a small exercise in job hunting, too: http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/websiteEditorApplication/ Good Luck.

1. You may be able to do the same work, but in another country. I know a math major about your age who worked at a nuclear power plant and was sent to China last year to work as a consultant on a new nuclear plant being placed into operation. He's a black guy, not Asian. You often have to move within the US as a career develops, so why stop at the boarder. 2. For perspective and possible insight go to http://www.econlib.org/library/EconTalk.xml and listen to any of the podcasts that look interesting. All of the speakers are specialists and experts on topics related to economic matters and no topics are dry or uninteresting. And speaking about perspective is what this TED Talk is about, which may also help: http://bit.ly/LDbj8M 3. Buy a copy of "What Color Is Your Parachute" at http://amzn.to/OfdaAs or check a copy out of the library. That book has been around and reissued/revised for at least 20 years. It can help you learn about yourself and perhaps create a new job, even in your present organization. Perhaps you can get $1 million or two from Kickstarter.org! Someone here mentioned folks fighting over the same piece of pie which reminds me of a comment about finding a way to grow the pie larger. 4. More perspective and ideas may come from a reading of "Reflections on Bullough's Pond" at http://amzn.to/LTNpZl . It offers insights and explanations about New England's economic development over the last 400 years that apply today and may offer ideas about your organization and career. 5. Further into left field is this: the Conversations Network is looking for editors of podcasts it offers for free via the internet. It pays a nominal amount for each description submitted and at any given time there are about 100 podcasts in need of being so described. What's neat is that it makes you describe the interesting work of a variety of people, so you have to do some creative thinking, some creative writing, and use your internet skills while learning about work in other fields. This is a non-profit organization, so a career with it won't be your goal. However, the exercise might be useful. Other members of your family, etc. might also be interested. Here's the link with information about how to apply -- a small exercise in job hunting, too: http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/websiteEditorApplication/ Good Luck.

This sounds very much like the beginning of the saga in Hugh Howie's Wool/Silo series...

(slight spoilers ahead) ...humanity develops drugs that, in combination with stressful events, allow memories to be suppressed. Unpleasantness follows...

>The main difference between theism and science (to generalize this somewhat) with respect to point a) is the nature of the "sense data." Theism's has a flaw—it is not inherently replicable, something the diversity of religions (and the existence of atheism) is a testament to. In contrast, science's is replicable; the results of all properly done studies are theoretically capable of being reproduced. I assume, of course, that we are discarding solipsistic and brain-in-a-vat-type viewpoints. It follows, then, that science is a "belief system" of a different sort—it is based on many individuals' "sense data."

There is some fascinating data out there that appears to invalidate that interpretation, but the data is not widely known in the U.S.. The Tibetan Buddhist monks are able to create tulpas, or thoughtforms made solid. They can create objects, animals, people, biologically improbable deities from their pantheon and, according to their texts, "the elixir of immortality". Through about three months of seclusion and intense visualization, these things take on solid form and become perceptible to those around them. People and animal tulpas begin showing up unbidden, and acting on their own cognizance. A few westerners such as Alexandra David-Neel have learned to form tulpas themselves.

I hesitate to state that these tulpas have become "real", but they are as real as anything else around us. This makes an interesting case for the whole world being one giant tulpa itself, kept manifested into apparent solidity by the day-to-day beliefs and choices (acts of Will) of the population.

Additionally, David Hawkins has adapted a technique of applied kinesiology to tap into non-localized consciousness. The mechanism is theorized to work in the following way: Consciousness is non-localized, with the body's nervous system acting as an interpreter and actualizer, in addition to passing along sensory data back to it. Through muscle-resistance tests, the nervous system is queried for "strong" and "weak" responses. Unhealthy stimuli typically cause a "weak" response. These include saccharin, an apple grown with pesticides, and alcohol-based perfume. Healthy stimuli produce a "strong" response: sugar, an organically-grown apple, a smile, and even a kind and loving thought. Test subjects can successfully distinguish between a conventionally-grown apple and an organically-grown apple, despite not knowing which is which.

Interestingly, false statements also produce a "weak" response - even if the accuracy of the statement is not known to the subjects. Verifiably true or false statements were written on various 3x5 cards, sealed individually into envelopes, shuffled, and passed around a lecture room. A roomful of people would get the same responses, despite not even knowing which statement was in which envelope. This applied kinesiological technique has since been used to distinguish between original works of art and art forgeries, legitimate business offers and scam attempts, and even used to pare down potentially suitable fabrication materials by dividing the possible materials into two groups, checking for a "strong" response, and then repeating the process to pare down the possibilities. The R&D potential of this is amazing. The technique has since been used to narrow down the possible location of a number of items "20 Questions"-style, to check on the level of integrity within various ranks of the CIA remotely, and to research matters that had previously lacked scientifically-objective data; the levels of consciousness have apparently been calibrated, with higher levels possessing a stronger influence on the world around us than lower levels by orders of magnitude. I recommend Hawkins' book, Power vs. Force, which goes into better detail on this.

Taken in combination, these things present quite a non-st

Meanwhile I'm still reading my book and getting ready for the day that the government will end its reign of terror on us all....Click Here...

The best book that I've read in a long time is William Hertling's techno thriller Avogadro Corp. It's fast-paced, exciting, and chillingly thought-provoking. If you have a block of time, like a plane ride, it's perfect. If you have somewhere to be in a couple hours, you might consider waiting to start it because you won't be able to put it down.

Here's my "official" review of it:

William Hertling sets "Avogadro Corp" in modern day Portland, Oregon. Avogadro Corp is a thinly veiled fictional Google, with AvoMail as key aspect of the story. While "Avogadro Corp" is the first in a series of three (so far), it easily stands alone as a terrific, and stunningly believable, account of how the first sentient artificial intelligence might accidently arise. In a man vs. machine conflict, our protagonist David Ryan, as a contemporary Dr. Frankenstein, battles to destroy the thing he creates. A majority of the characters are well-developed and distinct; the ones that are a bit one-dimensional are minor characters. The pace of the book is quite fast with only a few tangential story arcs to mentally maintain. In fact, I made the "mistake" of starting the book at bedtime; I was finished by lunch the next day. I simply could not put it down.

David Ryan, a software engineer at Avogadro Corp, is working on a recommendation engine for their flagship product, AvoMail. The recommendation engine, Email Language Optimization Program (ELOPe), is designed to provide suggestions for better wording for your outgoing emails so that the recipient is more receptive. When the project is in jeopardy of being cancelled, David inserts a hidden self-preservation directive into ELOPe and allows it to autonomously rewrite outgoing emails related to the project. Once ELOPe begins redirecting corporate funds and arming itself in offshore floating data centers, David and coworker Mike set about trying to take down ELOPe with the help of I-trust-paper-not-computers internal auditor Gene.

One aspect of Hertling's novel that I found intriguing was that by never revealing the internal motivation of ELOPe, you too are brought on this journey of how to destroy the "ghost in the machine." Also, as a resident of Portland, I enjoyed that the book was set here and incorporates its coffee culture.

The problem with Casio is that they make ugly watches. The function is superb, and some of their faces are quite elegant (e.g. I like http://amzn.to/qaAH2l ) but the overall package doesn't really feel nice. Instead I greatly prefer Citizen - you pay twice the price, but their cases, bracelets and non-sports faces are far nicer.

There are several people like Ben Radford, Joe Nickell and others who have long experience doing proper, scientific investigations of paranormal phenomena like ghosts. I recommend you take advantage of their expertise. Ben Radford recently published a book called Scientific Paranormal Investigation last summer that covers alot of the territory. It is highly recommended, available as a paperback & ebook. An older book by Joe Nickell & Robert A. Baker is called Missing Pieces. It was published in 1992 but of course much of what it says is still totally valid.

There are several people like Ben Radford, Joe Nickell and others who have long experience doing proper, scientific investigations of paranormal phenomena like ghosts. I recommend you take advantage of their expertise. Ben Radford recently published a book called Scientific Paranormal Investigation last summer that covers alot of the territory. It is highly recommended, available as a paperback & ebook. An older book by Joe Nickell & Robert A. Baker is called Missing Pieces. It was published in 1992 but of course much of what it says is still totally valid.

My main computer is used by the entire family. It would get highly annoying to have to adjust it every time I wanted to use it, assuming others adjusted it as well. I'm a Mac user, but I've found the best mouse for my money has always been the Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer. It has always had a better contour (at least for right-handers) than any mouse from Apple, Logitech or any other I've tried, all for a much better price. The regular Intellimouse has buttons on both sides making it ambidextrous, but I find having both buttons on the thumb side is much more convenient & accessible.

Judging from the article and "50 Posts" web site, this group's definition of "Cyborg" is broad enough to be equivalent to Richard Dawkins' notion of the "Extended Phenotype" ( http://amzn.to/cbSmTo or many online hits ). Or perhaps to a second order recursion of the EP. The reach of our genes extends outside our somatic selves to the mechanisms we build with our tool-wielding hands. These mechanisms (perhaps themselves crypto-biological) are then candidates for tinkering within our soma - a prosthetic hand, for instance.

I prefer "particle swarm optimization" a la here.

My head hurts. I avoid looking at articles and now the summary is even longer. Good thing I bought 500 aspirins for $8. I am going to need a bunch.

500 aspirins. That is an awful lot.

My head hurts. I avoid looking at articles and now the summary is even longer. Good thing I bought 500 aspirins for $8. I am going to need a bunch.

I had this exact same problem, and I had the same worries about losing the keys if I kept them in a backpack or laptop bag. Eventually, the inconvenience overcame the fear. Office keys, house keys, server room keys, church keys... you name it. They add up quick! The keys were getting WAY out of control. Here's how I handled it.

1: Split the keys into two groups: ones you use constantly and ones you use occasionally. My first group is car keys, house key, library card, and shopping discount cards. My other key ring has everything else on it.

2: Toss the first group in your pocket.

3: Find an old laptop bag or buy a messenger bag (a.k.a. man-purse, a.k.a. murse), and make the extra key ring a permanent part of that bag.

4: Start carrying it with you everywhere.

Right now I'm just carrying an old laptop bag, but I like this one: http://amzn.to/bOBu5v (a la Jack Bauer) for several reasons. It comes in black and blends in like a laptop bag. Very rugged and versatile yet inexpensive. If you get a small, padded laptop case it can fit inside (depending on the size of your laptop).

Anyhow, I've used this setup for about two months now and I like it a TON better. The office is usually open by the time I get there, so I rarely even have to take my laptop bag out of the car unless I need something else in the bag. In fact, I only have to grab that extra key ring an average of once a week or so (YMMV). Very handy addition to my life with the exception of having to carry two bags around whenever I want to lug my laptop too (or consolidate). I like to draw and sketch, so I use the extra bag to hold my pencils, drawing pads, etc.