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I've got a very simple setup. Instead of trying to get multiple sound cards in one machine and running audio cables all over the house (or going with wireless speakers which really suck) I decided to have a central file server with all the mp3's on it, and small old notebook computers (pentium 1's) which I got cheap off ebay. Make sure you do some research before you bid, and get ones with good built in sound output, otherwise you'll have to buy some PCMCIA (or USB if they even have USB!) sound cards, etc... I've had problems with a few being too noisy, so pick and chose carefully.

In a couple of rooms, they're hooked up to good external speakers. I can additionally surf the web, read email, and ssh into other machines from them, though it's limited... 640x480 displays and low ram keep the fancy web pages from working well. But they're perfect for mp3 playback.

A word of advice - remove their batteries. They're going to be plugged into the mains all the time, so they'll be constantly charging their old batteries, and thus wear them out. Not that you'd care much either way unless you'd want to occasionally grab one and go outside in the back yard and get some sun (add a WiFi card of course.)

In my living room, I have a somewhat decent, but cheap PC hooked up to my surround sound stero and big screen TV. I've got a wireless keyboard/mouse and game pad for it, and also use it as a DVD player and game system (instead of buying a Playstation2). One of these days I'll replace it with one powerful enough to run MythTV and get rid of the TiVo.

This setup has worked very well for me, and the cheap notebooks are usually cheaper than special set top boxes that playback mp3's that you have to fiddle with crappy one line LCD screens scrolling through hundreds if not thousands of songs, etc.

YMMV, but the above works for me.

A little different from what you're asking, but here's what I did for a similar setup...

I picked up a discontinued Audrey from 3com and put that in my kitchen, networked through the powerlines using Seimens Powerline ethernet adapters. It mounts a SMB share from my Windows box (can also mount NFS shares) and plays my music through it's built-in speakers, or through attached computer speakers. There's a headphone jack on the device for external speakers.

It runs QNX with a full root shell, along with a web browser and other fun doodads. The mp3s play flawlessly (and there's a plugin for OGG) while taking up very little real estate on my counter. Anywhere I go in the apartment with a powerjack I can get to my Windows box. Wireless is also an option using a Linksys WEP11.

Best of all, my girlfriend loved it and wants me to get a couple more for the apartment. When not in [musical] use, it doubles as a digital picture frame.

Some sites to look over...

Audrey's on Ebay

AudreyHacking.com

www.linux-hacker.net Audrey Forum

Infinity flash image

Sorry, but if you buy an HP 5550 from Ebay for $400, and it comes with 128MB memory, 802.11B AND Bluetooth, then you're talking $620:
PDA $500
Extra Battery $50
Battery Charger $50
Carrying Case $20
TOTAL: $620

And that doesn't include the opportunity cost spent on the hours it takes to get the thing to sync with Linux!

*I* am really tired of people spewing who have never even used what they're bitching about.

I'm sure you can plug a little corded earphone into the Treo.

I actually use an old Visor with a Sprint phone module (got mine for $12. I don't mind holding it up to talk, but 90% of the time I use the corded earphone, talking during my daily commute. That said, I would prefer the smaller footprint of a Treo.

Whose API charges beacoup fees, and makes it pretty much impossible to, say, write an open source shopping cart that'll sync with Ebay auctions (for the 10-50,000 people that sell on ebay and our own sites and might want to keep track of stock).

They (meaning idiot analysts for the most part) always say the real battle is between Ebay and Amazon for the future of online commerce. Amazon's got the right idea here, at least when it comes to getting their brand out free. Too bad it costs so much to list...

Here's an example of what I'm talking about: A Dell server, 650Mhz P3, 256 megs RAM, 18 gigs RAID. The thing is only $399 with 12 hours left to go in the bidding. And if you need it, you can even add another processor later. But I doubt that you will need it soon.

I just purchased an almost new copy on Half.com for under $15 including shipping. There are still a few left at prices far lower than amazon.com or bn.com. Here is the half/ebay link.

Looking at the manufacturers of the games in question -
Dig Dug - Atari/Infogrames
Donkey Kong - Nintendo
Frogger - Konami
Mario - Nintendo
Pac Man - Midway
SWAT - Sega
Tron 2.0 (game)
Okay I think I may understand the Tron 2.0 given that a new PC game is soon to be released. The only other game that is still "current" with successful sequels is Mario. I can understand protecting all rights with those two. Frogger? Every sequel has sucked monkey nuts (Swampy's revenge anyone?). Dig Dug Deeper? The other games have found their way to the Best of Arcade CD's that retail for 9.95 at walmart and they don't even play as well as the cabinets.

In all reality they're going for the arcade game manuals though.. Not even the ROMs, so they're not even allowing the lawful owners of cabinets to get manuals without having to pay $9.95 to buy reproduction for a damn Frogger manual. I don't get it.

Has anyone tried to buy an original manual and then sue the IDSA for the difference between official/out-of-print price and the retail price? I'm tired of the "corp/little people" thing. I'm tired of the corporate squeeze on the most asinine stuff.
-B

It's only a model.

Shhhhhh....

Another way to get a realy fine scan like this would be to mount your digicam on one of these, or a lathe.

That's enough activity for me. Good night.

No troll or flame here, but isn't it about time that Apple offered a Mac for less than $1000 that isn't completely ancient (ie, no 600 MHz iMac please). Why do they still completely forsake the low end?

I don't see how the $999 eMac counts as "ancient", with a 1 GHz G4, monitor included.

Besides, you can get a pretty decent used Mac on eBay for less than $1000. Check out these completed auctions as proof:

G4 733/512M/60G - $951
G4 733/1.5G/40G - $999
iMac 800/256M/60G - $999 (15" flat panel)

But I think the best quote I ever heard on the subject was: "Macs are only more expensive if your time has no value."

No troll or flame here, but isn't it about time that Apple offered a Mac for less than $1000 that isn't completely ancient (ie, no 600 MHz iMac please). Why do they still completely forsake the low end?

I don't see how the $999 eMac counts as "ancient", with a 1 GHz G4, monitor included.

Besides, you can get a pretty decent used Mac on eBay for less than $1000. Check out these completed auctions as proof:

G4 733/512M/60G - $951
G4 733/1.5G/40G - $999
iMac 800/256M/60G - $999 (15" flat panel)

But I think the best quote I ever heard on the subject was: "Macs are only more expensive if your time has no value."

No troll or flame here, but isn't it about time that Apple offered a Mac for less than $1000 that isn't completely ancient (ie, no 600 MHz iMac please). Why do they still completely forsake the low end?

I don't see how the $999 eMac counts as "ancient", with a 1 GHz G4, monitor included.

Besides, you can get a pretty decent used Mac on eBay for less than $1000. Check out these completed auctions as proof:

G4 733/512M/60G - $951
G4 733/1.5G/40G - $999
iMac 800/256M/60G - $999 (15" flat panel)

But I think the best quote I ever heard on the subject was: "Macs are only more expensive if your time has no value."

at least his work bench is cleaner than the NES PC guy's.

Here's a light, now go find the rest.

Nix. Microsoft Bob is still going for $15, less than its original list price.

Man am I desperate

Man am I desperate

I am lame, and yes, this desperate.

There really is no better survey of jazz up 'til the 70s than The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz . It's 5 CDs of extraordinary choices, and it took the editors a long time to work out the permissions from the various record companies to include them all. And it's got 46 pps of liner notes (that's w/ the LP set - I assume the CD set has the same notes on more pages) that will clue you in to further listening. When it was in print, it cost $175, and it was a bargain; currently it's (shamefully) out of print, but you can pick up a copy for as low as $10 on eBay. Hie thee hence, anonce!

What you should really listen to, though, rather than anyone else's opinions, is the musicians. Pay attention to who plays what instrument on the recordings you really like, and keep an eye out for them on other recordings. Google them and you're bound to come up with discographies for almost anyone that catches your ear. A nice survey book like Jazz: The Rough Guide will highlight the cream of the crop for any particular musician, and will point out any particularly fertile collaborations they may have had. Survey books, like anthologies and textbooks, tend to be expensive, though - see what you can find at your local used book store, or take advantage of the local MegaBookBarn's liberal browsing policies.

If you get into jazz pianists, a great book is Len Lyons's The Great Jazz Pianists , a collection of interviews with keyboard players ranging from Mary Lou Williams to Horace Silver to Dave Brubeck to Bill Evans to Chick Corea to Sun Ra and even further out. Find out who they like to listen to, how they approach music, and who they like to play with. And find out that almost every single one of them is a fan of the French Impressionist composer Maurice Ravel (yes, the Bolero guy), and now you've got two genres of music to spend the rest of your life listening to. ;)

I would list some of my favorite recordings, but some of them have already shown up here, and what I like isn't really relevant - it's what you like, and only your ears can tell you that. Oh, and, as others have said, hit the library - in the age of Instant Internet Information Gratificationâ, I think a lot of us have forgotten what a fabulous and improbable institution the local lending library is. Plus, you can telnet into my local library, for an old-skool thrill!

Evan Evanson

i have ran into this problem before in 2000... some of these problems have been solved now. there are a few ways.

just buy a camera that can handle CDRWs... like the sony CD mavica:
Sony Mavica CD 300 or any other of these series. the media is not the standard but carrying 10 of them won't be much of a problem. mailing will be simple too. since it's a smaller CD, whenever you run into civilization, you can back up onto something else (the internet, bigger CDR, DVD, etc.) without needing non-standard parts.
(note: smaller camera would be better, but if you're travelling for that long, you will want zoom...)

if you want something else that can handle PC card (all memory types has PC card adapters) like a digital wallet from minds@work (who are out of business... XD ) but there are some out that are previously posted. here's one on ebay: here

that would have kicked ass when i was travelling. shoot until have no battery instead of wasting time dumping pictures...

another would be to get one of these: VAIO C1 note. a picture book. that way, when you have dead time on the train, plane, etc, you can blog on it. adding more details to your pictures, etc. definitely worth thinking about. C1s can be had pretty cheap since they've come out with a few versions already... you gotta hunt on Ebay for a good deal. there are lots here in japan.

email me if you want some more suggestions/tips. i'm not a pro, but i have been on the road with consumer digital camera without a padded wallet and know what it's like.

PDA's give you the ability to read most, if not all book formats. If price is the only reason to avoid them, then I would suggest searching EBay for an older model.
Heres the current EBay listing for Palms IIIc (a nice unit i've used for this in the past.) Currently there are many that are 90$ and less for the 8mb color units. :-)

After a false start with Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days *shudder* I got into programming with Beginning Programming for Dummies (Wallace Wang - 1999 Edition).

The book introduces a lot of great programming topics using QBasic - mainly because QBasic was freely available with every Windows 98 distribution. It's the lowest common denominator of MS programming. Not sure if this is the case with Windows XP (seeing as XP isn't DOS, probably not).

The best part about the book is that the author places snippets of C and Java code throughout the book - so you can get an idea of where you're headed.

Of course, what it doesn't do is teach you how to program anything more than example programs - no "serious" applications. But why would you want to in QBasic? On the other hand, there seems to be a small but active community of QBasic programmers on the Net.

Anyway, you can pick up a used copy real cheep at half.com (I'm keeping mine tho :)

Not the first pink computer

Don't know if it legit or not but here is one on Ebay now :) Hurry and get your own 65535 addresses!

I don't know how easy it would be to find an old computer for this type of thing today

Ridiculously easy.

I got my first TI-99/4A when I was 11...but then that was back in 1983. :-) I ended up leaving it behind in Germany in 1988 (we had gotten an Apple IIe three years earlier and that was getting the most use), but I picked up another one a year or two ago...and got a bunch of stuff for it I never had back in the day. My first system had just 16K and a tape recorder...the system I have now has 48K, Extended BASIC, a floppy drive, and some other goodies that used to cost a fortune. I think I have no more than $100 in it now, which is what parents today would spend on a couple of mind-numbing video games for their kids. (Games are OK as an occasional diversion, but every time I walk by a demo machine in a store, there's some slack-jawed zombie of a kid staring into it, mashing buttons in a pseudo-random pattern.)

mnmn wrote:

I tired to look for an IBM S/360 or S/390 mainframe (will start mortgage to get it) but theyre too rare a commodity. Just needed something fancy to run Quake and impress the snottiest of geeks. I think I'll go with the AS/400.

Well, apparently there's an S/390 on eBay right now if you are interested. Don't know if it's complete, since I haven't played with S/390 hardware at all, but if I remember correctly, the drives would be in the next rack over, so you might have some more shopping to do. At a $5,000 starting bid, you can't beat the price tho.

Actually, Novell used to put out WordPerfect, before they sold it to Corel. You can even buy yourself a copy on ebay of good old Novell WordPerfect 6.1.

I guess everyone's not as old (school) as me. =p

Yeah, what kind of poor bastard doesn't have 5 laptops and 10 spare HDDs lying around.

Apparently, the same kind of poor bastard that doesn't have any spare question marks lying around.

What kind of cheap Scot doesn't have a spare fucking helicopter in the back yard in case the roads are a bit busy.

Used Helicopter: $150,000 and up (+ maintenance)
Used 3.2gig hard drive: $9

Yeah, that's a real fair analogy.

Remember Fresh Prince?

No. I never watched that. Nor have I watched Moesha, The Hughleys, Roc, or Family Matters. They are aimed at a different demographic than mine.

BTW I'm assuming you're female here, because, "I'm a published author," is the kind of false attempt to justify the sound of one's own whine that I usually only hear from women.

No, I am male. I've never been mistaken for a woman before. Have you ever been mistaken for a man?

P.S. When someone says "learn to read", replying "I'm a published author" is not a "justification" for anything. It's a reasonable counter to an obviously false implication.

How about the red Manolo patent leather pumps? They fit both the "shiny" and "patent" part of your request...

"Anyone got ideas for what to do with an old GBA?"

Boy, one would think the Slashdot editors had never heard of eBay. :P

Who wants to buy me a nice shiny patent?

I wonder, will this show up on eBay like so many other patents?

Dublin Dr. Pepper is the only Dr. Pepper I drink. The bottles you are starting to see in grocery stores in Austin and Dallas are the 8oz non-returnable type.

The 10oz variety are returnable, but unfortunately there is a limited supply of bottles because they are no longer mass produced; therefore some morons out there consider them collector's items. You have to return the empties to Dublin for refilling and if you want to buy a case of 10oz bottles, they won't sell them to you unless you give them a case of empties plus $15. Fortunately, I know someone at work who hooks me up.

Check them out online.

How the fuck is this modded of topic?
If you shit head moderators would read the fucking title of the article you would see that this device RUNS Netbsd and it is of the same arch as the titled device!!!!
Yet I go further and give you a place to get the preinstalled device then give you a site that one is running..
Fuck you mods!!! Get you head out of your asses!!!

In my case a 256cf and NetBSD took my IBM z50 from a completely unsupported and worthless POS running on chip WinCE 2.11 to a fully functional Unix laptop that will run for 16hours on one battery.
I can run X11 native and remote, dillo, wardriving tools, and apache.

You can do the same thing with Linux you can do with BSDs.
It is how they do it that is different I have found that once you know how a bsd system works I can quickly cut out a system that does what I want and nothing that I dont.
For me BSDs a cleaner simpler and just as powerful as any free or commercial Unix out there on a few processors.
I have a IBM z50 running NetBSD and X11 and a webserver on a 265mg CF!!! and I know every process that executes and why.

Here is an IBM z50 with 265mg cf preloaded with NetBSD!!! Instant WarDriving!!!

A link on the page leads to the z50 serving a stats site under apache!!!!

The Apple ][ was my first computer and I still have it. It's kind of sad to see them on ebay now for a lousy $26 bucks.

Wanna tick these people off?

Order this one today!!

...How to run an ebay business selling your company's items
Oh come on, who would do that?

--

Another MMO from Garriott -- I can hardly wait! I was an early beta user of Ultima Online, and a junkie of the game for 2 years after it's retail release. I was so excited about the game, that when it went retail I bought TWO copies of the special Charter Edition ... I kept one shrink-wrapped and in the original shipped packaging. It went into my basement which I just cleared out this past weekend. This story has prompted me to pass it on.

You can get this copy of the Ultima Online Charter Edition!

One of these popped up on eBay recently.

no shit!

Right now, about $102.50, USD.

Visit eBay and submit your bid for the Constitution of the United States of America, before the crowning achievement of the Enlightenment era, modern democracy, disappears.......forever......

Right now, about $102.50, USD.

Visit eBay and submit your bid for the Constitution of the United States of America, before the crowning achievement of the Enlightenment era, modern democracy, disappears.......forever......

Want to develop applications on KDE 3.2 ?
Get the GTK license on eBay dirt cheap

FreeBSD 5.1 CDs on eBay !!!

The latest nVidia cards with driver optimization are available for cheap on eBay

Star Wars III on eBay

An excerpt from the listing:
"....Unfortunately, its creators were unable to forsee the events of September 11, 2001, and this crowning achievement of the Enlightenment was placed in an undeclared, de facto state of suspension - where it has remained to this day...."