Betamax Decision

25 years ago today, Sony Corporation of America v Universal City Studios, Inc was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, affirming that time-shifting is fair use and does not infringe on copyright. [flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoDr_04-CMs] [video link]

Random Friday: What We Tour 2

We had the opportunity to explore Las Vegas, New Mexico (not the other one). Old western towns along the rail line tended to have one fancy hotel to make a good impression on visitors, and the Plaza Hotel on the square of Las Vegas has been restored. We took a room, and can recommend a … Read more

Voyager 510 Headset USB Charger

We often use a Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth headset with our computer, so we can a) listen to streaming video/audio without inflicting our choices nearby innocents,  and b) remain untied by a corded headset when we jump up with sudden inspiration. A previous post explored building a USB charger for our cell phone, and we … Read more

OS Wars Film Festival

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noe3kR8KqJc] [video link] [flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDc9I3z7ab4] [video link] [flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9WP8Zwu260] [video link] [flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX8yrOAjfKM] [video link] Related Posts: Tech Support Film Festival, Theremoid FilmFest, Theremin Video Film Festival

Lurching Toward Digital

The USA DTV coupon program is out of money. The vouchers are intended to help purchase digital converter boxes for consumers with older televisions (and analog TV tuner cards) needed to convert digital broadcasts to the legacy format after the February 17, 2009 deadline for stopping analog broadcast TV. $1.34 billion was reserved for the … Read more

Solar 2: Mounting the Panel

[This is the second in a series of articles describing installation of a solar hot water system.] The solar panel was not in stock at AAASolar, so we had to wait a couple of weeks for it to be freighted to the shop. We have access to a truck, so we could pick up the … Read more

Solar 1

Sagebrush Systems “world headquarters” is fortunate to be located in a building with passive solar heating. A large expanse of south-facing windows direct sunlight onto adobe walls and bare brick floors for heat storage. The furnace hasn’t been turned on for over a decade, so we save a good deal on heating costs. (In full … Read more

Pro Birthday

RecAll-PRO version 1.0 was released ten years ago today. A spin-off from standard RecAll with many advanced features, PRO became our best-selling public software product within a few months, and has remained so to this day. Related Posts: Happy Birthday First Product

No Way

Noism: the practice of referring to oneself in the plural as “we”. “Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‘we’.” Mark Twain (image courtesy Wikimedia Commons) We do this a lot when blogging…