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Submission + - Internet Controllable Halloween Decorations still going strong

An anonymous reader writes: The Controllable Halloween Decorations for Celiac Disease have allowed Internet Users to view and control (for real!) Alek Komarnitsky's house for a decade.

While the Halloween decorations have evolved over the years (every house should have an 8 foot inflatable Homer Simpson — D'OH!), the website is still Web0.0 complete with Javascript pop-ups and flashing GIF's — although it is W3C compliant. But the underlying Perl code (can you find the Camel book in the Haunted Office?) running on Linux/Apache continues to provide entertainment for the Internet masses plus raise over $80,000 for charity.

Surf on by this evening (MDT) to view three live webcams and use X10 controls to turn 10,000 lights ON & OFF plus inflate/deflate the giant Frankenstein, Pumpkins, Grim Reaper, Skull, Headless Horseman, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Homer Simpson. It's a high-tech trick-or-treat!

Comment Yea....right (Score 3, Interesting) 720

Quote from headline -- " It will take the stress out of ordering (lines) at fast food restaurants..."

Yea, right. Just another place where we will be standing for 10 minutes behind some clueless ID10T trying to figure out how to use the kiosk, just like at the Walmarts with the self service checkouts.

If you know how to use the kiosks, they are fast and easy. But you always get someone who is clueless and cannot comprehend simple instructions on the screen holding you up in line.

Comment Whats Up (Score 1) 137

Our company uses 'Whats Up' by Ipswitch. Currently monitoring over 2500 devices such as servers, routers, temperature sensors. You can ping devices, monitor for SNMP events, logged events in Windows, AIX, Linux, WMI monitoring, services, tasks.... You can script custom monitors either via VBscript, Powershell, or JavaScript. You can script custom actions for Whats Up to take upon detecting a condition. Can restart services on either *nix or Windows boxes if they go down. Can launch applications if needed if a condition is detected. Can create audio, visual, and email alerts, as well as SMS. They license on a per-device basis as opposed to a per-port basis like SolarWinds. Only thing I don't care for on this software is you can only run Microsoft SQL for a database. Can't use any open source solutions. The default install uses MS-SQL desktop version, but the db size is limited. If you need to go bigger, you have to install a full install of SQL on the server, or connect to a remote SQL server on your network to host your database (as we are). My .02 cents...

Comment Re:Scale? (Score 1) 170

syphilis kills and cripples more people annually [...] "What's all the hubbub, bub?"

compare slow progressing sexually treatable disease with ~80% mortality fast bleed-out disaster? get back in the womb, critter your brain is not fully developed yet

Or their mother's basement, whichever is more convenient....

Comment Re:Free market economy (Score 4, Insightful) 529

Well, we paid for all that with $17 trillion of debt, and a behavior/thought process that it was ok, starting with Reagan and continuing to this day.

Other countries are just waiting for it all to collapse and pick our bones.

When Reagan took office federal debt was a little over 2T and went up to a little over 4T when he left office. Clinton took it from a around 6 to around 7. The current administration has seen it go from around 9 to around 17. Maybe you haven't kept up on current events but there hasn't been much union busting, new free trade treaties, or deregulation of wall street in the last 6 years.

You skipped a prez, hoss......GWB, the president who ran up that 8 trillion to bail out his Wall Street Buddies.....

Comment Re:ooh ive played this game before. (Score 1) 170

other things that are known to happen in american democracy with seemingly little if any recourse: Oil company dupes community groups into fighting EPA regulations Major food company dupes citizens into fighting a tax on soda Cigarette company dupes consumers into thinking smoking is a right, not a crippling addiction President dupes country into fighting country with no WMD's

No kidding......it looks like there would be some kind of FRAUD statute being violated with this nonsense (i.e. astroturfing)...

Submission + - CNN auto-play violates their own advertising standards

xmas2003 writes: I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I have CNN on my news' bookmarks, since while they offer a quick look at the current news, their increasingly sensationalistic reporting leaves a bit to be desired. I almost exclusively would just look at print stories as their videos reporting is long-winded fluff ... a very low bandwidth way of consuming news. Plus hosts such as Piers Morgan and Jeanne Moos are just grating to listen to.

A few months ago, I noticed that CNN's videos (and audio!) were auto-playing at the top of their print stories. ironically, this violates their own advertising guidelines which says "Must be user initiated by click ...No host-initiated audio is permitted ...... Audio must be user initiated by click ... Audio must be user-initiated by clicking within the banner"

The power of the mighty (advertising) buck accelerates their downhill slide! ;-)

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