Oh! Gizmo

By Gilberto J Perera

This guest post was written by Gilberto who is the main article contributor for Laptoplogic.com, where you can find the latest laptop reviews.

How would you like to set your thermostat at home while you’re at the office? Wouldn’t it be nice if you forgot to turn off your water heater for a two week vacation and you were able to log on to an online portal and turn it off? How about using an energy management system for your home that charges when electricity is the cheapest and avoids the peaks where electric costs are higher? These are all scenarios that will be possible in the next 5-10 years as utilities move towards Smart Grids. The days of a mechanical meter and a visit from a meter reader are slowly approaching to an end.

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By Luke Anderson

Sometimes I wonder if the people from the RIAA and the MPAA ever sit down and fabricate new ways to pin poor sales of music and/or movies on today’s youth. Actually, after reading the latest announcement from the MPAA, I’m almost positive that they do just that. If you remember way back in 2005 they released a statement saying that 44% of their lost revenue comes from college students downloading pirated movies over the campus networks. According to their most recent study, that number was a complete fabrication (they call it human error).

Now they would likely argue the point and say that they weren’t making that number up at all However, when their latest reports show that the percentage of revenue lost may actually be closer to 3%, I have trouble believing it.

I actually did a little study just now, don’t ask where my figures come from, it’s not important. My study shows that the MPAA and RIAA would regain 110% of the lost revenue from piracy if they would stop spending so much money trying to sue their own customers. You’d be surprised at how many people still actually go to the movies when they’re actually good, and buy them when they come out on DVD.

If you’re still worried that my numbers may be a bit off, don’t fret. There’s a chance in a few years I’ll actually do the study and correct them. Until then, just go with it.

VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By David Ponce

It’s going on as I write this: users over at Digg are throwing a tantrum of unprecedented proportions and turning against the social bookmarking site they usually revere. They have effectively taken control of the home page and are bringing the servers to their knees, and this turn of events could very well cause some irreparable harm to the previously high-flying website. It’s all over HDDVD, AACS encryption, censorship and alleged bribery. Keep reading for the full story.

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By David Ponce

I’m sitting here, and for whatever reason, I’m taking a little walk down memory lane. If you’re not in the mood, please skip ahead.

I’m a child of the 80’s, and first started playing with computers around 1987. And you know something, I remember a bunch of stuff. And it’s crazy, just how much has gone down in the last 20 years. Here’s what’s stayed with me, for whatever reason, and anyone that has anything to add feel free to do it in the comments.

I remember DOS.
I remember 8 character filenames with three character extensions.
I remember my first 286 with 512kB of RAM.
I remember monochrome monitors.
I remember Commodore 64 and Lunar Landers.
I remember when Macs were used in schools.
I remember dot matrix printers.
I remember bauds.
I remember my first 7,200 baud modem.
I remember “Z Protocol”.
I remember BBSes and first hearing about this crazy thing called the Internet.
I remember waiting ten minutes to download a fuzzy picture of Cindy Crawford of a BBS.
And another two to get the system to display it.
I remember being fascinated at the idea of multitasking.
I remember Windows 3.11.
I remember Wolfenstein 3D.
I remember Doom.
I remember Duke Nukem 3D even more.
Anything 3D was cool in those days.
Why?
I remember wearing a heavy VR helmet.
And hating it.
I remember Hotmail before it belonged to Microsoft.
I remember Hotmail when it had 2MB of space.
Hey, that wasn’t even so long ago.
I remember Yahoo! before there were any graphics on it.

Eh, I’m bored with this. Anyone want to keep adding stuff?