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.

A Smart Grid is an often loosely used term that refers to intelligent distribution and generation of electricity. What this means is that utilities would have systems that control the flow of electricity autonomously and meters that provide remote data gathering capabilities as well as control over the airwaves for the customer and the utility. Today’s at home energy management is limited to flipping a switch when lights are not in use or programming a thermostat. These devices (thermostat, range, water heater, pool pump, TV’s) would all have a built-in HAN (Home Area Network) module that would interface with the electronic meter to relay information via the chosen network. This will provide the utility with almost real time electric demand information, the ability to disconnect non-paying customers remotely, automated feeder switching, and better load management. Consumers would benefit because they would be able to take advantage of using electricity when it is most efficient, their meters would have the capability to meter electricity produced at home (solar, wind, etc), better management of electric use via remote access, and more reliable electricity.

The recent push from the Administration and Congress has provided incentives for utilities and other companies to find ways to reduce their carbon footprint all the while providing consumers with more choices in managing their electricity consumption. Florida Power & Light (FPL) & Pacific Gas and Electric (PGE) are among the leading contenders working with vendors like General Electric, Silver Spring Networks, and Cisco to bring energy management to your home. FPL has approximately 100,000 of these meters installed in Florida with plans to expand deployment to the approximate 4.3 million customers it services. On the other hand PGE has deployed over 350,000 meters and will expand the deployment to include its remaining customers. So if you live in one of these states (Florida or California) it is very likely that you will see one of these meters attached to your home within the next 5 years.

VIA [ Silverspring Networks ]

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.

A few days ago, a hacker at the Doom9 forums published a string of numbers (a hexadecimal string, to be exact) that represents the master AACS key used in encrypting HD-DVD discs. While this number alone does not give anyone the ability to copy encrypted discs, it can be used to build software that does just that. Understandably, people got excited. Someone posted an initial story on Digg and it hit the front page in minutes… but was then deleted, presumably by Digg administrators. So, someone posted a second story that went on to pick up an unprecedented 15,000 votes before also being deleted. By now, it was clear that Digg was being pressured into censoring any story related to this. Users were being banned, stories deleted and censored… and sure enough some resentful articles started appearing. But things were about to get much worse.

Sometime last night, it surfaced that Digg’s vidcast, DiggNation, is partly sponsored by the HD DVD Promotion Group. Well, dudes and dudettes, at this point, all hell broke loose. Users started submitting thousands upon thousands of stories that featured the AACS string in one way or another, either in the title, or on a picture of a cute kitten, or on a random Blogger account. And all of them started hitting the front page. At once. As you can see from the above picture, nearly every single story is related to this.

So, what does this all mean? Well, Digg’s popularity grew on its democratic aspect. It was founded on the idea that the wisdom of the masses was better able to determine what’s interesting than the autocratic editor. But, like any democracy, it is prone to revolt and the very system that allows it to usually thrive can evidently be turned against itself. Of course this was always a possibility but it wasn’t until it happened that the consequences of a revolt became real. And believe me, there’s a bunch of consequences.

In this case, there’s no putting the cat back in the bag. The AACS encryption key is now public knowledge, and no reasonable effort at censorship will make it go away. How the AACS Licensing Authority will deal with this will be interesting to see, but in my opinion, there’s very little they can do. Someone, somewhere, is working on software that will allow us to copy HDDVDs as I write this. And it will be freely distributed on P2P networks, and that’s that.

But the damage done is likely to run deeper. Digg’s reputation both among its users and among its advertisers is likely to take a hit. Users, feeling treason, are likely to hold back from the site, at least for a while. Advertisers, on the other hand, may fear being associated with a site that has the potential to do things such as this, and this in turn may affect Digg’s ability to run its business. (Of course, I say this with a grain of salt, since websites like YouTube continue to thrive on essentially pirated content.) This is not to mention the very likely lawsuits that are about to hit Digg.

The real consequence however, at least in my mind, is that a bit of innocence has been lost. I know this sounds cliché, but it’s never been more true. The Web 2.0 world is a social world. What has changed on the internet over the last couple of years is the social revolution underway; sites like YouTube, FaceBook, Digg, Reddit, and others are all built around this new paradigm. But until now, the picture has been pretty much rosy. The Digg Mutiny is exposing the darker side of social media, and its disruptive potential; it’s hard not to wonder “What next?”. When users can so easily take control of the home page and break the law (yeah, I know, it’s an unpopular law, and a stupid law and one that I believe will be obsolete eventually. But it’s still a law), you have to wonder just what they can do next, and whether there’s anything that anyone can do about it.

[Update: A few minutes after posting this, I've noticed that Digg is offline.]

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?