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This literally showed up less than a minute ago in the mail as I was reading this story.

Well then you are paying too much: here's one of a zillion on e-bay.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/391207...

You'll probably need some of these HDMI -> VGA adapters for those older monitors. Luckily they are pretty cheap these days:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1080P-...

Why not buy used laptops? If a Chromebook is sufficient for your work , any laptop from the last 5 years will also be sufficient.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html...

There's a few hundred under 20$ right there on eBay. Put in some work , install Xubuntu/Ubuntu-MATE and Libreoffice and you're good to go. Go to any large local corporation and ask if they will donate depreciated laptops. When corporations depreciate , they will give away their machines for free. Since you only need about 10 or so machines, this should not be a problem.

Try ebay. Go to ebay or another similar site and search for cheap used desktops. I don't know about 20 dollar overall, but 20 USD for a computer and another 20 for shipping will give you your cheapest computer....

Even with a free monitor, for the $80-ish a Pi will cost - not to mention the tech know how required, etc. then perhaps one of the cheap Android laptop devices would have a better cost/benefit ratio?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/10-Min...

I have an older version of this (wm8650 based) and it works fine...

Good that the Foundation has now released their own screen, but touchscreens for the rpi have been available for a long time, most of them looking more customized for the rpi than this one..

This model highly unlikely to have malware, though highly unlikely to connect to any towers. It is only $80 with buy-it-now. "These phones both have Very low used air time minutes on there life time counters." http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Old-...

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html...

Wouldn't this be a better link? http://www.ebay.com/sch/Cars-T...

Inverters can be made very inexpensively. These are an order of magnitude price difference from a solar inverter and with a material cost difference of $60.

The best single book I know to get started in the hobby is Dave Frary's "Pennsylvania Railroad, Middle Division" which you can buy as a downloadable PDF here http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pennsy...

There are good videos on YouTube. Dave Frary also has some good quality DVDs on his website, http://www.mrscenery.com/

There are multiple groups on Facebook, and also some discussion boards such as http://www.railroad-line.com/ (tends to be pretty serious) and http://www.modelersforum.com/ (a bit less serious).

Finally, don't buy a cheap locomotive! There's nothing more frustrating than getting everything set up and then having your loco break.

dave (in the hobby for almost 50 years...)

Funny enough, an ancient Dual G5 PowerMac ( 2004-ish ) still goes for at least $150... not bad for an 11-year-old box.

Look anywhere, here
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Huawei...

Heres a $44 USD phone, same one I bought here in Canada for $49 from walmart.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=s3&rt=nc&LH_BIN=1

$2.85 on ebay.

It's around USD$2.00 if you go with a "pro mini".

Your not coming remotely close to the limits of external hard drive enclosures. See http://www.promise.com/us/prod... and http://shop.promise.com/index....

GP said, "external raided enclosures get rather pricey", which you've proven. That Pegasus2 (promise) 4 bay, 4tb, raid array weighs in at $1,199.00. That thing actually has 4x 2tb drives, so I suspect it could be configured in RAID5 for ~6tb of usable space, but that's still over a grand for that.

The inexpensive way to go is to use a dumb enclosure. For example:
* $99 - 4 bay USB3.0 & eSATA by mediasonic: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
* $269 - 8 bay USB3.0 & eSATA : http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

Or go a bit more pro level but get it used. For example, a Dell MD1000 for $199 with 15 SAS/SATA bays: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-P... ... throw in a bunch of 3tb WD Red's at about $120 each, and come out far below the price of that promise stuff.

That same shirt costs $15 made on a power loom

Or $2.44 and you have to walk no farther than your front door.

It very well might. There's this one on eBay at the moment: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintag... So, is there no surgical fix for your ears or is it just too risky/expensive/insert-other-reason?

Just to counter that ridiculous size argument: Look at these things: 90W laptop power supply, 1.23V-30V buck converter (max 3A), 150W DC-DC Boost converter. Between these three items, you almost have everything I asked for: PSU for AC input (100V-240V), buck converter for going down to almost 1V, boost converter for going up from 12V. That stuff is neither as big as a car battery, nor does it get freaking hot or cost an arm and a leg. Yes, I am asking for a solution that's one to two orders of magnitude smaller, and I want it all in one and automatic, but that's not as outrageous as you make it appear.

Just to counter that ridiculous size argument: Look at these things: 90W laptop power supply, 1.23V-30V buck converter (max 3A), 150W DC-DC Boost converter. Between these three items, you almost have everything I asked for: PSU for AC input (100V-240V), buck converter for going down to almost 1V, boost converter for going up from 12V. That stuff is neither as big as a car battery, nor does it get freaking hot or cost an arm and a leg. Yes, I am asking for a solution that's one to two orders of magnitude smaller, and I want it all in one and automatic, but that's not as outrageous as you make it appear.

Just to counter that ridiculous size argument: Look at these things: 90W laptop power supply, 1.23V-30V buck converter (max 3A), 150W DC-DC Boost converter. Between these three items, you almost have everything I asked for: PSU for AC input (100V-240V), buck converter for going down to almost 1V, boost converter for going up from 12V. That stuff is neither as big as a car battery, nor does it get freaking hot or cost an arm and a leg. Yes, I am asking for a solution that's one to two orders of magnitude smaller, and I want it all in one and automatic, but that's not as outrageous as you make it appear.

"But, it is an accepted social structure"

Accepted by whom?

I'm not even going to attempt to guess what percentage of us refuse to accept it. But, there are those of us who simply DO NOT accept that we must watch meaningless advertisements before we can get to the page contents.

If the advertisers COULD successfully target my interests, I might actually look at an ad now and then - before I did a search for that product, to compare it to other similar products. Then, when I've compared them, I often go to Ebay to see if the item is available at some huge markdown. I'm in the market for a megger, for instance. I don't SEE advertisements for meggers, despite the fact that I've already done a number of searches. Let's SUPPOSE that an advertiser were shrewd enough to catch on to my megger searches. He starts serving up megger advertisements, starting with Fluke. The prices in the ads start at over $1000, because the vendors who pay for advertising need to recoup their advertising costs. More reasonable prices are available directly from Fluke and Fluke approved vendors around $500 to $600. But, suppose that I don't NEED new and/or calibrated equipment - I just need a semi-reliable meter. I can go to those vendors who aren't advertising, and sell the same equipment at less than $500. If I'm willing to settle for a used piece of equipment, I can find my fluke megger multi-meter for AS LITTLE AS $200.

Keep in mind that I've researched and purchased a number of meters over the past few years. Not one time have I ever seen an advertisement for electric/electronic testing equipment anywhere other than Ebay, and a very select number of industrial sales sites.

In short - the advertisers are utter failures. Despite all their attempts at "targeted advertising", they have completely FAILED to identify my interests and needs. Utter failures.

Now - why should I tolerate their in-your-face advertising bullshit, when they so completely fail to offer things that I actually need?

Notice that I'm not even really bitching here that the items advertised are to high. That's just a peripheral consideration to the fact that they've not merely missed the target. The damned fools aren't even hitting the range! They are standing at the east end of the range, the targets are on the west end, but their bullets are flying out north, east, south, and west.

We should reward such gross incompetence? Why?

And, no, meg testers are not the only items I've needed, and searched for. Try it yourself - do a search for industrial grade fuse pullers. There are a small number of different brands on the market, with Ideal being the standard. Do several searches over a few days, and sit back to see how many advertisements you get. I have Ideal fuse pullers in three different sizes in my toolboxes. A couple years ago, I purchased a lot-sale off of Ebay, and got 18 of the smallest for a couple dollars each. I gave them to my work-mates for Christmas. Despite the fact that I have an established history of searching for, and purchasing these things, I've NEVER SEEN AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR THEM!

Sample ebay sale, currently priced around ten bucks: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ideal-...

No, I assume it costs about as much to make a space suit LOOK new.

Are you replacing all the things in the suit that have undergone chemical changes over the years that will ensure that hte suit is not safe to take pressure again?

No you're not.

So when you say "restore" you mean you're making it look good. You're cleaning it, you're filling in the cracks in the dried rubber, and you're blowing some new car smell into it.

What else could you possibly do? First off, large portions of the suit are chemically stable. The helmet, the visor, the back pack, the various metal fittings... I mean that stuff is likely good as new or could be made so for a song. What has gone the way of the mummies is the flexible bits. And that's mostly old nylon and rubber.

Nylon might have been a space age material in the 60s but in 2014 its quite passe. We have it everywhere and its not hardly anything mysterious to us.

I shopped around for someone that was selling whole new museme quality replicas of the suit and they were quoting about 10 grand for the whole thing. Functional?... no... able to take pressure? I wouldn't chance it. But the damn thing looks as good as anything you're going to have when all is said and done.

What is your restoration accomplishing?

Now I cited the oil painting thing because i wanted to show what detailed restoration of something very complex would cost. That is someone sitting there and billing you by the square inch for cleaning a very sensitive delicate surface.

I then inflated their costs by a factor of FIVE. The cost of the oil painting was about 34 thousand if the suit were an oil painting. They said it was about 500 dollars per 80 square inches. I inflated that to 2500 per 80 square inches just to make it clear that even if it is harder per INCH to restore old rubber and nylon than it is to restore an oil painting... the costs still don't add up.

As to no one knowing how to restore nylon and rubber... The textiles industry actually knows how to do the nylon very well... and rubber has been restored by people for over a century.

WHat other mysterious materials are you using in this suit? Unobtainium?

Cite the material. do I need to do all the research? Apparently I am the only one that know how to use a search engine. You people all too busy tell me how much you know to actually do any kind of research.

Here's a fun one: Beta cloth...
I can buy it on ebay apparently
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Authen...

woven fiberglass coated in Teflon... I grant that's pretty unusual. I'd grant no one knows how to restore that given that apparently the stuff naturally tears itself apart unless the individual fibers are coated in the same stuff that keeps my eggs from sticking to the pan. that is besides the butter. Eggs. :)

This is very common and what FFTs are used for. One hypothetical example would be to attach a few hundred chip sized 3-d accelerometers and send back the values of each. Here's an example, the ADXL335 Say you have 1000 of these distributed throughout the vehicle. A breaking bolt would cause a small shockwave that would easily be visible as a blip in the frequency spectrum. Each blip has a timestamp and known position, so you just triangulate back to the origin.

You can buy the guidance system on ebay.

I found another Enigma for only USD$8.16 (as of this writing) here.

Can't most X11 window managers in Linux distros be configured to look similar enough to Windows to feel like "home"?

Yes. On a related matter you can buy a car that looks very similar to a Lamborghini for a fraction of the price. As for handling and performance I assume its just as good. I mean, it looks the same, so why shouldn't it be?

Much as a Fencing operation or a chop shop might occupy similar premises to legitimate businesses?

Bad analogy. A fencing operation or chop shop is taking possession of stolen property and re-selling it. It was more like Megaupload was a strip mall and they leased out space to legitimate businesses and a few chop shops.

eBay essentially gets away with the same thing (and takes 10% on each sale). You don't honestly think all these iPhones are from people who just forgot their iCloud password, do you?

Where did you find that? The lowest price I found is $176.97 for the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB.

For your reference:
NewEgg
Amazon
eBay

there are a lot of them for sale, they're very cheap. http://www.ebay.com/itm/221602... is the first one I spotted. They usually run on four AA. That one even has a light in it, that's a feature mine doesn't. (but hey, mine was free)

Th

that thing is $15-20 so I'm no surprised people haven't bought 6 of them.

The one sold by keurig is expensive and doesn't work right. The offbrand ones work much better and work with any machine. I bought a pack of 4 for $10. So they cost me $2.50 each which is slightly more than the price of a single k-cup. Here is a current listing on ebay for 4 for $8.50: http://www.ebay.com/itm/4pk-So... which is even less than what I paid. You can get them even cheaper on ebay if you are willing to wait on shipping from china.

(posting AC because mod points)

Hell, I'll shill all the way and point out that the very decent HP Stream 7 tablet is available for $80 at:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-HP...

I bought one for my wife a few months ago, and it's amazing at that price point. Google Chrome for Metro^H^H^HModernUI works great, and I have some of the less-demanding games from her Steam library working on its microSD card.

I'm actually looking for an Android tablet someday to replace my old and mostly decrepit Viewsonic G-Tablet (running VeganTab), and there aren't many great options any more now that Google dropped the ~$220 Nexus 7... it's like you have to spend real money on these things now just because everyone is trying to compete at the iPad's price point.

I can see me surrounding myself with an array of $80 Win8 tablets, each running a separate app/page (since supposedly they don't multitask well with "only" 1GB RAM). Or inevitably I'm sure someone will figure out how to bootstrap Debian on them eventually. Oh, look, eventually happened last month : http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/W...

No hardware or software requirements?

Perhaps this is more your speed:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wyse-W...

And it's cheap, too!

Try Laser Safety Goggles from eBay, about $2 each.

Otherwise I need a one to many socket multiplier first but those are bulky.

Are you a man or a mouse? Cut some holes in the panel if needed and install some extra sockets.

Get this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dual-S...

cut the plug off, and clamp the wires to the existing socket's cables with something like these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/25-Red...

Another generation, and kids will be calling an electrician to change a blown light bulb :( (Now get off my lawn.)

Otherwise I need a one to many socket multiplier first but those are bulky.

Are you a man or a mouse? Cut some holes in the panel if needed and install some extra sockets.

Get this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dual-S...

cut the plug off, and clamp the wires to the existing socket's cables with something like these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/25-Red...

Another generation, and kids will be calling an electrician to change a blown light bulb :( (Now get off my lawn.)

Pretty sure they are going to flip the things.

And this is what people are looking for

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-...

The 1st gen firewire ipods in mint are worth at least 3k GBP and up.

Don't think for a second hipsters give a shit about digital wrist watches. This isn't the 1980's and the vogons aren't about to attack

"Electric cars may seem like a niche product that only wealthy people can afford"

That's because it's exactly what they are

Bullshit. Look at the ebay listings for nissan leafs, 90% of them are under $20K with low mileage, well under. That's not something weirdly unique to ebay either, check any used car site like CarGurus you'll see the same thing.

The 8 was a great system but the 11 was far better.

Just checking ebay, this guy selling the 8E is smoking something. He thinks it's a mainframe.

However this PDP-11 can be had for a reasonable price.

The point being, you can run emulation software on commodity hardware but I guess as the TFA indicates he wanted the nostalgia look. He could have easily just mounted an LEDs behind the panel with small pattern generator circuit instead of using the Pi.

The 8 was a great system but the 11 was far better.

Just checking ebay, this guy selling the 8E is smoking something. He thinks it's a mainframe.

However this PDP-11 can be had for a reasonable price.

The point being, you can run emulation software on commodity hardware but I guess as the TFA indicates he wanted the nostalgia look. He could have easily just mounted an LEDs behind the panel with small pattern generator circuit instead of using the Pi.

Get a Matias Quiet Pro. It's a mechanical keyboard and it's pretty quiet. I have the Laptop Pro which uses the same keyswitches. It's so much better than a rubber dome keyboard.

I'm typing this on my favorite keyboard of all time -- the Apple Extended Keyboard II, but it would never be confused with "not bulky." Plus, you have to get an ADB-USB adapter and, at best, the keyboard will be about 20 years old. That said, they're the best keyboards ever made IMHO and, even at 20 years old, mine still types like new. Plus they're pretty quiet for a mechanical keyboard.

I also love the Model Ms from Unicomp, but those definitely aren't quiet.

But by ten years or twenty years from now, the Apple Watch will have a ridiculously high collector value when sold to a museum.

Not sure why you'd think that, what has Apple made... ever, that is valuable? Perhaps one of the original Apple 1 boards... but that's about it...

Everything else they have made has been in such qty that it is cheap and common.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-...

Apple IIc for less than $200 in working condition...

You really think no one wants or uses hundred year old Rolex watches?

here's just one example.

Last Halloween I got suckered into running a 13k in costume; since the only costume I own is a TNG uniform and one of my friends wore a TOS redshirt it wasn't much of a leap to get smashed afterwards on Romulan Ale. Alas, I found out the hard way that my Playmates Type II Phaser doesn't work on the bouncer at our local pub. He's a big guy, so maybe I just needed to bump it up to maximum stun....

Regarding this idea: a couple of years back I bought this universal hard drive adaptor,

same crap, 1/4 the price

I mean, it's different crap, but it does the same job. Note all the included stuff so you can plug in anything. 2.5" PATA runs power off the adaptor, all else get run off the included adaptor.

By using the LPT port and a special (but not too rare or expensive) cable, you can transfer at about 50Kb/s If you can at least copy/software from a diskette, you could try with Total Commander, which has a Win 3.1 version (1.5Mb), and which include that functionality, very easy to use.