Black & Decker EM100B Energy Saver Series Power Monitor.
This has a meter reader gizmo powered by a couple of AA batteries that attaches to your electrical meter and then sends data wirelessly to a small portable lcd display.
The meter reading gizmo does not interfere with the ability of your power company to read the meter when they stop by periodically.
Amazon sells them for $99.
I have had one for about 2 weeks now and it is really interesting to see what my hourly usage is when various household appliances kick on/off.
Bananatree3 says: "Show me a current ebook reader that you can go to a website and download your book/pdf/news story."
Well... the Kindle can do exactly that.
The Kindle has a built-in web browser that allows you to well...use the web. I can go to Project Gutenberg or mobipocket.com and download a book that is either in txt, prc or mobi format directly to the Kindle. I can read an html file via the browser.
The Kindle browser sucks when you go to a sucky web site that was not designed with much regard for accessibility but most sites are at least usable. And perhaps somewhat surprisingly I find the browser in default mode frequently renders sites more usefully than when in advanced mode.
I can use the browser to check my gmail which I find quite useful and for me this is where the Kindle's use of EVDO works out better for me than having built-in Wifi as in my community the free Wifi cloud is not very dense (and I am not about to go buy a $5 coffee in order to glom onto their Wifi) whereas I can get cellular coverage in every corner of my city/region.
With the browser in default mode slashdot is quite usable on the Kindle and I could have even posted this reply to the site via the Kindle but since I am sitting right in front of my pc right now I went the easy way.
The Kindle won't natively read a pdf which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I have tried reading pdf's on my PDA's for years with mixed success - some reflow ok some don't. You can convert a pdf to use on the Kindle in a couple of ways - DIY or send it to amazon to convert.
I like my Kindle and am glad I bought it. It's not perfect but I know that future hardware iterations will only get better and better
A couple of other folks have already mentioned Canvas which is a great program that never seemed to get the attention and wider audience it deserves.
Another great vector program is the CAD program Microstation but that is a high-end app that is probably outside the intent of your list (and right-offhand I don't know if it spits out SVG files).
As poetic works of art how can copyright be denied to "source code"?
I think most of the/. crowd would agree that good code is easily the equivalent of poetry.
Most laypersons might even mistake "source code" for the works of e.e. cummings
Re:CD's are really a bargain when you put it this
on
The Way the Music Died
·
· Score: 1
While I despise the RIAA I do have to agree with their argument about the price of CD's.
The first CD I bought, way back in 1984 cost $15. It was a Deutsche Grammophone import so it cost a few dollars more than most CD's on the shelf at the time. The most recent CD I bought (last week) cost $13.
Put CD pricing into an inflation adjusted historical context and $13 for a CD today doesn't seem like such a big deal. Granted I would prefer that CD's were less expensive but I'm not going to whine about it. I used to buy 10-20 CD's a month (my CD collection is above 1200 now plus about 1000 vinyl lp's) but in recent years I usually buy just 1-2/month - not because of pricing issues (or P2P which I don't participate in) but mainly because most contemporary music doesn't interest me much and more of my money goes towards other entertainment diversion such as video games/dvd's/geek gear/etc.
Same thing goes for gas prices - I am tired of hearing people whine about the high price of gas when the simple fact is that if gas prices had kept in line with inflation we would normally be paying close to $3/gallon. So everyone just chill...
There are lots of good reasons to loath RIAA/MPAA/BIG OIL but the current pricing of their products shouldn't be the main reason.
The.gov domain was not, until fairly recently, available to non-US federal government agencies/entities.
Back in the day, cities usually would have a site such as "http://www.cityname.statenameabbreviation.us". As such they would frequently be very cumbersome to tell citizens over the phone - the chances were very good that they (the citizen) would hear/write something incorrectly and then not be able to get to the site which would cause them to call back to try and get the URL again...and again...and again...
Many cities (mine included) then decided to skip that and just get a.com domain so they could tell folks to just go to "city.com". Plus it was easier to fit on the bumper stickers we put on all our city vehicles.
Had.gov been available at the time most cities might have preferred that to.com. However, for many cities that made the jump to.com that is the branding stuck in peoples minds now and it would be too much trouble/expense to change. My city was "clever" - they selected a site name in the form "citygov.com" (is it a government site or a commercial site - or both?)
I give it three thumbs up. Not cheap (about $140US) but extremely well made and easily handles all the crap I carry with me each day. It also comes with a separate laptop "briefcase" ( a bag within a bag as it were)for those times when you don't need to take the "mother ship" with you and may just need to take your laptop to a meeting or such.
I bought mine from ebags a couple of years ago but I am sure they are available elsewhere.
My daughter has had a pc in her room since she was 10 years old. Prior to her getting one in her room she would just have to wait her turn at one of the other pc's on our network. This led to too many conflicts with other users in the house so we decided to add a pc to the network for her and the only place we really had room to put it was in her room. She also wanted a TV in her room but there I drew a line - TV is just plain evil.
As part of that arrangement we set out a few simple rules - never tell people you don't already know your real name or exactly where you live or exactly which school you go to. We also talked about the dangers of strangers and wackos on the net (and stressed that they are not really any different than wackos in "real life")and what to do if she found herself in a situation where the conversation made her uncomfortable, etc. We also forbid her from entering chat rooms without our permission.
Her main use apart from hitting Sailor Moon websites was chatting with school friends via AIM. One of the rules for her AIM use was that whatever screen names she created she had to add my screen name to her buddy list so I could tell when she was on AIM. This has also come in handy when I need to call her down for dinner and she has her stereo cranked up and wouldn't be able to hear me yelling for her.
I also let her know that I had installed software on all our pc's and not just hers that would allow me to view everything she may be doing. I also told her that while I would not be monitoring everything she does on a daily basis - who has that much free time - but I will on occasion be reading thru the logs to see if any of the basic rules had been broken.
My daughter is now 13 and over the course of the past three years a couple of the rules have been broken a couple of times and each time we discussed it and dealt with it appropriately. I have also on a few occasions blocked her pc from the net at our network router for other non-pc related disciplinary matters (when I was a kid being grounded meant no TV - now it means no net access).
We also make a point of discussing with her the occasional news stories that involve child predators on the net so she can be reminded that this is a real problem and not just something her parents make up just to scare her. We also try to stress that there is not a boogeyman around every corner and to just be aware if people start trying to ask or tell her certain things to let us know.
There are a lot of software tools available that make monitoring this activity very easy. Simple keystroke loggers can be found for free or you can install apps that cost a hundred bucks or more.
The only drawback to keystroke loggers is that they only record her side of the conversation/activity. I have found, however, that is reall enough to let me know the tenor of a conversation.
Originally I installed a commercial app on her pc that would record both sides of IM messages and email and web activities, and also take periodic screenshots of what is going on. That all seemed very useful at first but again, I think that a simple free keystroke logger is really sufficient for the ability to see the general thrust of a conversation.
I think the most important thing we do is to also frequently ask her what she is doing and who she is talking to and what they are talking about and to share with us any cool websites she finds. We don't do this in any kind of "Spanish Inquisition" mode (nobody expects the Spanish Inquistion...)but more of a just generally curious mode so she doesn't feel spied upon - the same as we have always done when asking what she and her "real world" friends are up to/doing.
The only negative thing in this whole experience to date is that she is spending (IMHO) too much time on AIM. On the other hand she doesn't yak on the phone ever and she watches very little TV (X-Play on TechTV is about all she watches on a daily basis when she gets home from school) so I can't complain too much.
So far I don't regret allowing her to have a pc in her room and I don't think any parent that is otherwise normally engaged with their children should be too concerned about a pc in a kids room.
I think yur (/. spelling variant) missing the point.
LivePhish.com is probably going after the more casual fan base - people like me.
I am not really into the whole live show swapping thing. Occasionally if a band gives a show that was a really exceptional or noteworthy performance and if I can get a good quality copy of that show it is well worth $10 just to save me the time/trouble of having to track down (heh-heh)a good quality copy.
LivePhish will in know (/. spelling variant)way hamper the community that makes/trades recordings of Phish concerts. That segment of their audience is free to continue to make/trade their recordings with the bands blessings. All Phish is asking is that if you buy one of their shows from liveophish.com that you don't distribute that version - which is much the same thing as not making copies of a store-bought CD and distributing that.
If a person is really into the whole show swapping thing whether livephish.com (or the equivalent for other bands)exists or not is irrelevant doncha (/. spelling variant) think?
Kind of ironic since there is a PBS FM station in Salisbury (WSCL) that is on the same frequency (89.5) as WHRV (one of the two PBS FM stations in Hampton Roads, VA) that on many Spring and Fall mornings wipes out my reception of WHRV for a few hours in the mornings when the propogation conditions are just right.
Perhaps I should file a suit against WSCL for the pain and suffering I experience when they prevent me from hearing The Morning Edition a fe days each year.
-- maybe a time signal could be broadcast over the power cables?
I think it already is - the last couple of VCR's I've bought set their clocks themselves once you have plugged them into the electrical outlet. I thought they did this via a signal sent across the power grid. Am I mistaken about that?
For anybody that uses a digital camera to take snaps of your whiteboards I heartily reccomend a piece of software called (imaginatively enough) "Whiteboard Photo". This specialized piece of software massages your snaps such that the print you get is perspective corrected and the background is cleaned up. When you download your snaps from the camera you can either batch process the photos or you can handle them individually. If you handle them individually you can define the area of the board a bit better - the software usually does a good job of recognizing the corners of the whiteboard but sometimes you need to reposition the corners (which is a simple click-drag). Overall it does a pretty impressive job and is easily worth the money and now no unlucky person has to be picked to frantically try to trascribe the boards manually.
One of our conference rooms always seems to end up with the old dried up markers - the ones that are hard to read even when you're sitting right in front of the board - the software even does a pretty good job converting those into usable prints.
We also use it to take snaps of flip charts with equally good results.
It costs $100 US direct from the Pixid web site and comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. We bought our copy thru an online vendor (whose name escapes me at the moment) for $79 US but a search should turn up other vendors.
P.S. - one word above was intentionally misspelled to give the anal-retentives among us something to whine about.
No....the service is available 24 hours a day. The highly elliptical orbit of the sats means that when a sat is over the US it will be so for a 16 hour period.
One thing I am curious about is how the receiver discriminates between satellite signals when more than one bird is in view - does it receive both (with the possibility of hearing a slight echo?)or does it lock one out somehow? Anybody know?
My employer's Head WebMaster recently released the newly revised web policy manual that all of the various department webmonkeys have to abide by.
In that manual under the section titled "Linking Policy" is this paragraph:
Links may be made to the City of Virginia Beach Web site with the express written (hard copy or
email) permission of the City Webmaster. Persons wishing to link to the City Web site may
contact the City Webmaster for permission and linking procedures. When permission is received to link to the City's Web site, all hypertext links should be pointed to the City's
homepage, http://VBgov.com.
I haven't yet inquired as to exactly what the intent of such an absurd statement is or how that would be enforced or how the world at large would even be aware of a policy that is (AFAIK)only referenced in a purely internal document posted on our intranet.
Just how many companies have such silly policies?
Perhaps I'll start "linkriot.com" whose sole purpose is to collect the URL's of and link to the sites of such misguided entities.
Slashdot Mirror
Black & Decker EM100B Energy Saver Series Power Monitor.
This has a meter reader gizmo powered by a couple of AA batteries that attaches to your electrical meter and then sends data wirelessly to a small portable lcd display.
The meter reading gizmo does not interfere with the ability of your power company to read the meter when they stop by periodically.
Amazon sells them for $99.
I have had one for about 2 weeks now and it is really interesting to see what my hourly usage is when various household appliances kick on/off.
Bananatree3 says:
"Show me a current ebook reader that you can go to a website and download your book/pdf/news story."
Well... the Kindle can do exactly that.
The Kindle has a built-in web browser that allows you to well...use the web. I can go to Project Gutenberg or mobipocket.com and download a book that is either in txt, prc or mobi format directly to the Kindle. I can read an html file via the browser.
The Kindle browser sucks when you go to a sucky web site that was not designed with much regard for accessibility but most sites are at least usable. And perhaps somewhat surprisingly I find the browser in default mode frequently renders sites more usefully than when in advanced mode.
I can use the browser to check my gmail which I find quite useful and for me this is where the Kindle's use of EVDO works out better for me than having built-in Wifi as in my community the free Wifi cloud is not very dense (and I am not about to go buy a $5 coffee in order to glom onto their Wifi) whereas I can get cellular coverage in every corner of my city/region.
With the browser in default mode slashdot is quite usable on the Kindle and I could have even posted this reply to the site via the Kindle but since I am sitting right in front of my pc right now I went the easy way.
The Kindle won't natively read a pdf which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I have tried reading pdf's on my PDA's for years with mixed success - some reflow ok some don't. You can convert a pdf to use on the Kindle in a couple of ways - DIY or send it to amazon to convert.
I like my Kindle and am glad I bought it. It's not perfect but I know that future hardware iterations will only get better and better
A couple of other folks have already mentioned Canvas which is a great program that never seemed to get the attention and wider audience it deserves.
Another great vector program is the CAD program Microstation but that is a high-end app that is probably outside the intent of your list (and right-offhand I don't know if it spits out SVG files).
As poetic works of art how can copyright be denied to "source code"?
I think most of the /. crowd would agree that good code is easily the equivalent of poetry.
Most laypersons might even mistake "source code" for the works of e.e. cummings
While I despise the RIAA I do have to agree with their argument about the price of CD's.
The first CD I bought, way back in 1984 cost $15. It was a Deutsche Grammophone import so it cost a few dollars more than most CD's on the shelf at the time. The most recent CD I bought (last week) cost $13.
Put CD pricing into an inflation adjusted historical context and $13 for a CD today doesn't seem like such a big deal. Granted I would prefer that CD's were less expensive but I'm not going to whine about it. I used to buy 10-20 CD's a month (my CD collection is above 1200 now plus about 1000 vinyl lp's) but in recent years I usually buy just 1-2/month - not because of pricing issues (or P2P which I don't participate in) but mainly because most contemporary music doesn't interest me much and more of my money goes towards other entertainment diversion such as video games/dvd's/geek gear/etc.
Same thing goes for gas prices - I am tired of hearing people whine about the high price of gas when the simple fact is that if gas prices had kept in line with inflation we would normally be paying close to $3/gallon. So everyone just chill...
There are lots of good reasons to loath RIAA/MPAA/BIG OIL but the current pricing of their products shouldn't be the main reason.
My Rio Karma can do that and much more - check out the "Rio DJ" feature of the Karma. Hellakool!
The .gov domain was not, until fairly recently, available to non-US federal government agencies/entities.
.com domain so they could tell folks to just go to "city.com". Plus it was easier to fit on the bumper stickers we put on all our city vehicles.
.gov been available at the time most cities might have preferred that to .com. However, for many cities that made the jump to .com that is the branding stuck in peoples minds now and it would be too much trouble/expense to change. My city was "clever" - they selected a site name in the form "citygov.com" (is it a government site or a commercial site - or both?)
Back in the day, cities usually would have a site such as "http://www.cityname.statenameabbreviation.us". As such they would frequently be very cumbersome to tell citizens over the phone - the chances were very good that they (the citizen) would hear/write something incorrectly and then not be able to get to the site which would cause them to call back to try and get the URL again...and again...and again...
Many cities (mine included) then decided to skip that and just get a
Had
So...if you want to blame someone blame the feds
I give it three thumbs up. Not cheap (about $140US) but extremely well made and easily handles all the crap I carry with me each day. It also comes with a separate laptop "briefcase" ( a bag within a bag as it were)for those times when you don't need to take the "mother ship" with you and may just need to take your laptop to a meeting or such.
I bought mine from ebags a couple of years ago but I am sure they are available elsewhere.
They might be worried that the Linux penguin is related to that penguin in the "Wallace & Gromit" feature...
or at least let them think you will be doing so.
.
My daughter has had a pc in her room since she was 10 years old. Prior to her getting one in her room she would just have to wait her turn at one of the other pc's on our network. This led to too many conflicts with other users in the house so we decided to add a pc to the network for her and the only place we really had room to put it was in her room. She also wanted a TV in her room but there I drew a line - TV is just plain evil.
As part of that arrangement we set out a few simple rules - never tell people you don't already know your real name or exactly where you live or exactly which school you go to. We also talked about the dangers of strangers and wackos on the net (and stressed that they are not really any different than wackos in "real life")and what to do if she found herself in a situation where the conversation made her uncomfortable, etc. We also forbid her from entering chat rooms without our permission.
Her main use apart from hitting Sailor Moon websites was chatting with school friends via AIM. One of the rules for her AIM use was that whatever screen names she created she had to add my screen name to her buddy list so I could tell when she was on AIM. This has also come in handy when I need to call her down for dinner and she has her stereo cranked up and wouldn't be able to hear me yelling for her
I also let her know that I had installed software on all our pc's and not just hers that would allow me to view everything she may be doing. I also told her that while I would not be monitoring everything she does on a daily basis - who has that much free time - but I will on occasion be reading thru the logs to see if any of the basic rules had been broken.
My daughter is now 13 and over the course of the past three years a couple of the rules have been broken a couple of times and each time we discussed it and dealt with it appropriately. I have also on a few occasions blocked her pc from the net at our network router for other non-pc related disciplinary matters (when I was a kid being grounded meant no TV - now it means no net access).
We also make a point of discussing with her the occasional news stories that involve child predators on the net so she can be reminded that this is a real problem and not just something her parents make up just to scare her. We also try to stress that there is not a boogeyman around every corner and to just be aware if people start trying to ask or tell her certain things to let us know.
There are a lot of software tools available that make monitoring this activity very easy. Simple keystroke loggers can be found for free or you can install apps that cost a hundred bucks or more.
The only drawback to keystroke loggers is that they only record her side of the conversation/activity. I have found, however, that
is reall enough to let me know the tenor of a conversation.
Originally I installed a commercial app on her pc that would record both sides of IM messages and email and web activities, and also take periodic screenshots of what is going on. That all seemed very useful at first but again, I think that a simple free keystroke logger is really sufficient for the ability to see the general thrust of a conversation.
I think the most important thing we do is to also frequently ask her what she is doing and who she is talking to and what they are talking about and to share with us any cool websites she finds. We don't do this in any kind of "Spanish Inquisition" mode (nobody expects the Spanish Inquistion...)but more of a just generally curious mode so she doesn't feel spied upon - the same as we have always done when asking what she and her "real world" friends are up to/doing.
The only negative thing in this whole experience to date is that she is spending (IMHO) too much time on AIM. On the other hand she doesn't yak on the phone ever and she watches very little TV (X-Play on TechTV is about all she watches on a daily basis when she gets home from school) so I can't complain too much.
So far I don't regret allowing her to have a pc in her room and I don't think any parent that is otherwise normally engaged with their children should be too concerned about a pc in a kids room.
According to The Globe and Mail the US Copyright Office has just ruled against Lexmark in the printer cartridge chip controversy.
Boo-yah!!!
Hams have been doing packet radio for decades.
Yowza !
I knew I should have patented my anti-anti-oveclocking technology some years ago...
It's not just you - I have been experiencing the same problem for the past few days.
Learn how to read...they made a profit of $305,000 during their latest quarter.
I think yur (/. spelling variant) missing the point.
LivePhish.com is probably going after the more casual fan base - people like me.
I am not really into the whole live show swapping thing. Occasionally if a band gives a show that was a really exceptional or noteworthy performance and if I can get a good quality copy of that show it is well worth $10 just to save me the time/trouble of having to track down (heh-heh)a good quality copy.
LivePhish will in know (/. spelling variant)way hamper the community that makes/trades recordings of Phish concerts. That segment of their audience is free to continue to make/trade their recordings with the bands blessings. All Phish is asking is that if you buy one of their shows from liveophish.com that you don't distribute that version - which is much the same thing as not making copies of a store-bought CD and distributing that.
If a person is really into the whole show swapping thing whether livephish.com (or the equivalent for other bands)exists or not is irrelevant doncha (/. spelling variant) think?
Kind of ironic since there is a PBS FM station in Salisbury (WSCL) that is on the same frequency (89.5) as WHRV (one of the two PBS FM stations in Hampton Roads, VA) that on many Spring and Fall mornings wipes out my reception of WHRV for a few hours in the mornings when the propogation conditions are just right.
Perhaps I should file a suit against WSCL for the pain and suffering I experience when they prevent me from hearing The Morning Edition a fe days each year.
I trust you asked them whether it was a European or African swallow !!
"tax office employees have been entering the tax information in two personal computers."
How many errors do you think the employees will introduce into the data as they enter the data into the pc's?
-- maybe a time signal could be broadcast over the power cables?
I think it already is - the last couple of VCR's I've bought set their clocks themselves once you have plugged them into the electrical outlet. I thought they did this via a signal sent across the power grid. Am I mistaken about that?
a string of characters as a password how am I going to remember exactly which points and which sequence of points/graphics to click???
I don't get it - call me flummoxed.
For anybody that uses a digital camera to take snaps of your whiteboards I heartily reccomend a piece of software called (imaginatively enough) "Whiteboard Photo". This specialized piece of software massages your snaps such that the print you get is perspective corrected and the background is cleaned up. When you download your snaps from the camera you can either batch process the photos or you can handle them individually. If you handle them individually you can define the area of the board a bit better - the software usually does a good job of recognizing the corners of the whiteboard but sometimes you need to reposition the corners (which is a simple click-drag). Overall it does a pretty impressive job and is easily worth the money and now no unlucky person has to be picked to frantically try to trascribe the boards manually.
One of our conference rooms always seems to end up with the old dried up markers - the ones that are hard to read even when you're sitting right in front of the board - the software even does a pretty good job converting those into usable prints.
We also use it to take snaps of flip charts with equally good results.
Here's a site that has a review.It costs $100 US direct from the Pixid web site and comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. We bought our copy thru an online vendor (whose name escapes me at the moment) for $79 US but a search should turn up other vendors.
P.S. - one word above was intentionally misspelled to give the anal-retentives among us something to whine about.
No....the service is available 24 hours a day. The highly elliptical orbit of the sats means that when a sat is over the US it will be so for a 16 hour period.
One thing I am curious about is how the receiver discriminates between satellite signals when more than one bird is in view - does it receive both (with the possibility of hearing a slight echo?)or does it lock one out somehow? Anybody know?
My employer's Head WebMaster recently released the newly revised web policy manual that all of the various department webmonkeys have to abide by.
In that manual under the section titled "Linking Policy" is this paragraph:
I haven't yet inquired as to exactly what the intent of such an absurd statement is or how that would be enforced or how the world at large would even be aware of a policy that is (AFAIK)only referenced in a purely internal document posted on our intranet.
Just how many companies have such silly policies?
Perhaps I'll start "linkriot.com" whose sole purpose is to collect the URL's of and link to the sites of such misguided entities.