Submission + - Homebrewed Industrial Process Monitor?
pionzypher writes: I work at a glass plant for a major beer company. My job for the most part entails monitoring the furnaces that melt the glass. I have been working on a project on the side, collecting data from various sources and compiling it into an easily used form for the higher ups. I've finished two of our three furnaces, but one remains. This furnace uses technology from the early nineties. There is no networking, the hardware is completely closed and unavailable for any screen scraping.
Two of the items I'm looking to monitor (and would appear to be the easiest starting point) are two valves for a gas and oxygen line which will provide data on a portion of our energy usage. I was thinking of a microcontroller board or something similar tied in to monitor the positions of the valves. I'm unsure where to begin though.
What books, microcontroller boards or alternatives would you recommend for someone new to this? Do's and Don't's?
Two of the items I'm looking to monitor (and would appear to be the easiest starting point) are two valves for a gas and oxygen line which will provide data on a portion of our energy usage. I was thinking of a microcontroller board or something similar tied in to monitor the positions of the valves. I'm unsure where to begin though.
What books, microcontroller boards or alternatives would you recommend for someone new to this? Do's and Don't's?
Feed Banking on Babies' Cord Blood (wired.com)
Submission + - Should sites like Wikipedia be blocked at schools?
Londovir writes: Recently our school board made the decision to block Wikipedia from our school district's WAN system. This was a complete block — there aren't even provisions in place for teachers or administrators to input a password to bypass the restriction.
The reason given was that Wikipedia (being user created and edited) did not represent a credible or reliable source of reference for schools.
My question is: should we block sites such as Wikipedia because students may be exposed to misinformation, or should we encourage sites such as Wikipedia as an outlet for students to investigate and determine validity of information? What's your opinion?
Submission + - Ballmer repeats threats against Linux
daria42 writes: Steve Ballmer has reissued Microsoft's patent threat against Linux, warning open-source vendors that they must respect his company's intellectual property. In a no-nonsense presentation to New York financial analysts last week, Microsoft's chief executive said the company's partnership with Novell, which it signed in November 2006, "demonstrated clearly the value of intellectual property, even in the open-source world."
Comment Spreading the love... (Score 2, Interesting) 75
Anyone who wants to spread video game music to others should check out OcRemix. They have good mixes, and have created full albums of certain games, like Metroid and Chrono Trigger, and Doom.
http://www.ocremix.org/
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Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write in BASIC after reaching puberty.
