Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Internet Controllable Halloween Decorations still going strong

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
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!

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

Submitted by xmas2003
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! ;-)

Comment Complete article on one ad-free page (Score 4, Informative) 107

by xmas2003 (#45709357) Attached to: Inside the Massive 2014 Winter Olympics WiFi Network
Here's the 3 page article on one ad-free page.

They are claiming it will handle 54 Tbps of network traffic ... up from the Vancouver games four years ago that was only 4 Tbps. One interesting tidbit is the ratio of wired to wireless traffic was 4-to-1 back then ... they expect that ratio to be reversed this time ... with 2,000 802.11n access points!

That a bit more bandwidth than this Christmas website has ... HO-HO-HO! ;-)

Comment Typhoons are ranked my pressure, not winds (Score 5, Informative) 160

From the article:

It's estimated central pressure is 899 mb but it could be lower. The lower the pressure the stronger the storm. Since 1987, there have been only four storms in the western Pacific with a central pressure below 899 mb (Megi in 2010, 885 mb; Flo in 1990 890 mb; Ruth in 1991 895 mb; and Yuri in 1991 895 mb)

Submission + - Webcam-Equipped Remote-Controllable Halloween Haunt

Submitted by xmas2003
xmas2003 writes: Timothy asked yesterday what /.'ers are doing for Halloween and said "Maybe one year Alek Komarnitsky will switch to Hallowe'en instead of Christmas, and offer a webcam-equipped remote-controllable haunt." Turns out he actually has been doing that since 2005 ... and his Controllable Halloween Decorations allow you to turn 10,000 lights ON & OFF plus inflate/deflate the giant Frankenstein, Pumpkins, Grim Reaper, Skull, Headless Horseman, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Homer Simpson — D'OH! ;-)

Submission + - Before/After Javascript depicts Colorado Flooding (komar.org)

Submitted by xmas2003
xmas2003 writes: Everyone has seen pictures/video of the Flooding in Colorado which was caused by 17" of rain in less than a week — a 1,000-year precipitation event. Using the JQuery Before/After Plugin, a simple overlay of post-deluge Digital Globe Satellite Imagery shows the massive flooding compared to Google Satellite Maps.

Google put together a Memories of the Future webpage showing Japan before/after the Earthquake/Tsunami — something like this for the Colorado Flooding would be of great benefit to hydrologists in understanding how the water flowed and minimize future flooding.

Slashdot Top Deals

1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1.

Close