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The local Borders is getting free wifi today.
Sorry about the infrequent blogging. I like to do my electronic stuff and blogging from a easy chair in the living room. Unfortunately, that is the time my cats decide it is their time to have my complete and undivided attention. This means I then must lean back in my chair, putting the laptop or project out of reach.
Then we have work around the house or whatever.
Things seem to be good with the baby so far.
Filed under: Electronics and Computers
Bill would give president emergency control of Internet | Politics and Law – CNET News.
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
Filed under: Electronics and Computers
I have a problem, is that Google video, is no longer accepting uploads. YouTube, only allows videos up to ten minutes in length, and only uploading ten videos at a time. Considering most of the videos I tape is several hours long, it becomes a lot of work. I prefer free solutions.
Highbeamer board
Highbeamer results
Some of the areas I like to spend my time is in electronics and computers. I’ve fancied myself as a manufacturer of sorts of products/electronic items. Nothing really major, but small things that major manufactures wouldn’t touch. The problem is it costs a lot. In order to reduce costs, you have to buy parts in lots of thousands. I don’t have the money to buy anything in lots of thousands, except resistors, and only because they would be a penny each.
So along comes Gadget Gangster, where all I have to do is design a project, the help file, add photos, and bill of materials. No more worrying about inventory, or handling money. I just have cost of material to design the project, and time spent.
My first project is a simple white LED light project. I love LED’s and wanted to have more of their light around the house. It was then I realized there was none of these projects on Gadget Gangster. I fretted a bit, on how I wanted to do it, then settled on two things I wanted. I wanted it to have a large DC voltage input, accomplished by using a voltage regulator. Input range is six to thirty volts, though more voltage, the more energy is wasted, and you will need to add a heat sink for those higher voltages. I wanted it to be easy to fix when an LED goes out. I did that by putting them in parallel. Thus when one goes out, they don’t all go out. I wanted it to be cheap. It bugs me to have new energy/money saving tech be so expensive.
Now it is a kit, so you will need a soldering iron, solder, and a DC power supply/battery.
The highbeamer kit is here has five LEDs that come with it, regular price of $15.00 /on sale now for $12.99, and expansion kit is here adds an additional five LEDs, regular price of $4.99/ on sale for $3.99. You can add three expansion kits to the basic kit, for a total of twenty LEDs.
The reasoning behind the expansion kit, is that I wanted people to be able to choose how much light they wanted, and how much they wanted to spend.
Highbeamer kit, shown with three expansion kits installed.
Filed under: Electronics and Computers
ASCAP Wants To Be Paid When Your Phone Rings | Electronic Frontier Foundation.
ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire) appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you’re violating copyright law by “publicly performing” it without a license. At least that’s the import of a brief [2.5mb PDF] it filed in ASCAP’s court battle with mobile phone giant AT&T.
Filed under: Electronics and Computers
Groklaw – Linux on Netbooks: The Smoking Gun.
Later, at a press conference sponsored by TAITRA, the Taiwan trade authority, I asked executive director Walter Yeh (third from left in this picture) about where the Linux went.
He passed the question to Li Chang (to the right in the picture), vice president of the Taipei Computer Association.
Chang mentioned a press conference yesterday where Google announced an Android phone to be made by Acer. But then he put it to me straight.
“In our association we operate as a consortium, like the open source consortium. They want to promote open source and Linux. But if you begin from the PC you are afraid of Microsoft. They try to go to the smart phone or PDA to start again.”
Taiwanese OEMs would love an alternative to Windows, but the sale comes first, before production. The chicken comes first. And since the chicken belongs to Microsoft, the penguin is helpless here.
Filed under: Electronics and Computers, Eureka, Humboldt | Tags: ham radio
Well I got to enjoy being on the only working landing craft. It is based in Humboldt County. It is one of sixty museum ships.
Right now Humboldt Amateur Radio Club, is having a special event for D-day. The HARC are on it, attempting to contacting as many other Hams as possible. Tey started at noon on Sat, and will end on Noon Sun. In order to contact them via radio, you have to have your general class amateur radio license. The are using the eighty-meter band. They offered to allow me to operate the controls, but I didn’t feel comfortable having only received my license last week.
The farthest contacts I know of is in British Columbia to the north and San Diego to the south. Transmitting with forty watts. Interesting enough one contact in Eugene, OR was only transmitting with five watts.
Oh the revisionist part, the less told part of D-Day, is the allied forces weren’t always welcomed. Understanding there were mistakes, lots of property loss, then disturbingly enough looting, and rapes committed by allied forces. By the article there was 3,500 rapes committed by American forces from June 1944 to the end of the war in France. Worse yet was the inequality of the punishment.
“It also shows that black soldiers convicted of such awful acts received very severe punishments, while white soldiers received lighter sentences.”
Of 29 soldiers executed for rape by the US military authorities, 25 were black – though African-Americans did not represent nearly so high a proportion of convictions.
Filed under: Electronics and Computers
Due to causing substantial emotional distress through “severe, repeated, and hostile” speech?’
At least that is the fear that a new bill by Rep. Sanchez and colleagues want to pass. Who will determine that is classified as what by this bill? Probably won’t survive court challenge. Bill’s name, is The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act
Thanks /. for the via.
Text, and blogging examples from The Volokh Conspiracy
Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both….
["Communication"] means the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user’s choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received; …
["Electronic means"] means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.
1. I try to coerce a politician into voting a particular way, by repeatedly blogging (using a hostile tone) about what a hypocrite / campaign promise breaker / fool / etc. he would be if he voted the other way. I am transmitting in interstate commerce a communication with the intent to coerce using electronic means (a blog) “to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior” — unless, of course, my statements aren’t seen as “severe,” a term that is entirely undefined and unclear. Result: I am a felon, unless somehow my “behavior” isn’t “severe.”
2. A newspaper reporter or editorialist tries to do the same, in columns that are posted on the newspaper’s Web site. Result: Felony, unless somehow my “behavior” isn’t severe.
3. The politician votes the wrong way. I think that’s an evil, tyrannical vote, so I repeatedly and harshly condemn the politician on my blog, hoping that he’ll get very upset (and rightly so, since I think he deserves to feel ashamed of himself, and loathed by others). I am transmitting a communication with the the intent to cause substantial emotional distress, using electronic means (a blog) “to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.” (I might also be said to be intending to “harass” — who knows, given how vague the term is? — but the result is the same even if we set that aside.) Result: I am a felon, subject to the usual utter uncertainty about what “severe” means.
Filed under: Electronics and Computers
WordPress has enabled reply via email for us bloggers. Instructions here. This seems to be only for blog authors. Though others can subscribe to comments of posts via email.
It took me a few emails to figure it out, nice thing is the replies end up nested/threaded under the replied to comment if you enabled that feature. The other nice thing is I can comment back quicker. So many of you have been so kind in your comments, I greatly appreciate it. The bad about this is no spell check. The key seems to be to reply back, with your comment on top, but don’t delete anything. WordPress will delete the rest.
The only other way was to log in via web interface. The iPhone/iPod app doesn’t yet allow replies to comments.
