I use the Scientech LS-30 which is a device supporting several types of wireless sensors including PIR (infra-red), reed switch, glass breakage detector, smoke detector, medical alert button and wireless outdoor alarm.

The alarm system can report a break-in, fire or medical emergency via PSTN or SMS. It's very programmable, with support for lots of different zones, X10 home automation switches, day-of-week and time-of-day mode setting, doorbell and so on.

The LS-30 has accessories including a GSM module (for sending alerts via SMS) USB interface and also ethernet interface.

I wrote the LS30 project to allow me to control and monitor the device from linux. There's a daemon which connects to the alarm's ethernet port; it proxies commands (from clients on my machine) and events (alerts / status updates) from the device.

I have daemons to watch for particular events (e.g. door open/close), logging the activity rates of PIR sensors (movement detection is reported by the unit even when disarmed) and burglaries (so the computer knows and can react accordingly e.g. by sending SMS messages or twitter).

Looks like 1987 for me. That's not an exhaustive search, only looking through my homedir, and I'm ignoring files with obviously bogus mtimes (like Jan 1, 1980).

Files I converted from the TRS-80 would have preserved the timestamp and I think it was limited to the years 1980-1987 (due to using only 3 bits to represent the year number).

When does the system become sentient? Looking forward to the day.

So, yeah, information like this can be useful.

Not to me.

It's like parking my car and coming back to find friends of the ice-cream vendor making out in the back seat and they want me to drive them somewhere.

... why, in order to buy music, I have to agree to let Apple sell my location to unknown businesses? What exactly is it about the music transaction that has anything at all to do with my location and some other company that have no relationship with?

It's like going to the shop to buy an ice-cream and coming back to find some squatter living in your house.

Thanks for the information. I can't confirm that from my own experience, but I'll be wary.

I have had some bad experiences with Strathfield however ... they are definitely a shop-of-last-resort.

JB's not bad, but I have learned to never pay their ticket price on electronics. I always ask for, and get, a discount.

Sorry but I patented that idea^H^H^H^Hbusiness method.

... runs to submit patent application for switching legal strategies with a period of between 0.5 to 4 seconds ...

Probably not a wiki; we should be using git repositories for working on laws.

Anybody can commit their suggested changes, but getting them merged will be really difficult.

I thought the same thing. Clearly software incompatibility is a nuisance only when it's somebody else's software. If it's my flash crap, being asked to upgrade or install is a feature.

This looks like a job for geekmyride.org.

I think they should do it annually. Or maybe monthly. It's important to keep showing how silly these Islamic preachers are, with their medieval worldview. We have one in Australia too; Sheikh Hilali, former (?) Mufti of Australia and speaker of the quote comparing immodestly dressed women to raw meat left out in the sun. He wasn't talking about their suntan.

Can we devote like every Sunday to BoobQuake day?

I know, I know ... with the acres of flesh on display during the summer months in most enlightened countries, it's surprising that the cities haven't all come tumbling down with the resulting quakes.

Of course people are complaining about the abuses too. This is an organisation which holds itself up as a source of morality and virtue, not to mention divine revelation, infallibility (the Pope!), control, retribution and forgiveness.

The purpose of the Confession is to forgive a person for their sins, yes? The priest has some power delegated by jesus, so they claim, to forgive sins before death.

The commission of such appalling acts by members in good standing of the Catholic Church really brings into disrepute the whole concept of Catholicism :- it doesn't give you an improved morality; the Pope is clearly as fallible as the next guy; how can they dictate how people should live their lives if the priests themselves are sometimes such disgraces to humanity?

I'd think that priests, being professional god-botherers, would be expected to have a deeper connection to the deity than you or I. If god doesn't punish paedophile priests and instead allows the Catholic Church to hide their abuse and move them around to rape some more, finally allowing them to die of old age in comfort and avoid earthly punishment, that really (a) calls into question the existence of a loving, caring god, and (b) indicates that said priests do not believe that god exists any more than I do.

The Pope deserves to be worried. As far as I can tell, backlash against the Catholic Church is very much mainstream now. Big changes are coming, and nobody knows what they will be.

Does the Pope dare to enter Britain later this year? He may be arrested or at least subpoenaed. Will he hide in the Vatican, effectively becoming an exiled spiritual leader of millions? Or will he fall on his sword for the good of the "Holy Mother Church" (his words)?