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Here are a couple of facts to check:

The patent being defended in this case was filed November 7, 1995. (see the patent application)

eBay went into business in September 1995. (see company overview)

Yet, somehow, the jury found no evidence of prior art, and that the company that was in business before the patent was filed violated the patent?

Moreover, eBay "does not allow an avenue to allow participants to speculate on the price of collectable[sic] or used goods in an electronic market place." This was one of the items that establishes the process being patented; thus, by not providing this avenue, the patent application itself states that eBay's system is covered by prior art. Where are the barcodes that the patent demands that eBay affix to each item being offered for sale?

Further, the patent describes the system as providing a "trusted network of consignment nodes that act as brokers." The system described is for a network of consignment stores. It does not describe nor provide for any use by individuals as sellers.

This is a perfect example of a frivolous lawsuit and lawyers run amok.

However, in this particular case it sounds like the carnage was limited to newbie areas where it was unlikely that characters had much in the way of equipment or experience. In addition, they can just roll back the servers for 24 hours and get most everyone's stuff back.

>However, I cannot recall anything like this ever happening in any other MMRPG

I guess you haven't played Diablo II then.

Modern games do lack creativity, that's why I like emulators. Before graphics were the rage, you had great games like metroid, legend of zelda, dragon warrior, etc. Now there are great graphics but no originality. I did enjoy Counter-Strike's realism, that was originality from the standpoint that it was a game without the extreme cartoonish nature. Fast paced first person shooter games just don't appeal to me anymore on the PC, and I have not purchased an entertainment system since the Nintendo. I don't think I ever will, especially since you can get a cheap laptop or build a cheap PC and play all of the older, really good games without ever having to upgrade again.

Anonymous Coward: Working? Honestly, where then?

Only listing at ebay is a used model for $530.00 (Buy it Now for $630).

At that point, I guess you're into a semantic argument over the nature of the phrase "a few."

was it this one?

Course, you want some real iron, in which case, you can always use ebay if I weren't so broke meself, I'd probably just be crazy enough to bid on that big piece of iron.

You are bidding on a The Segway HT i167, Human Transporter!! No reserve and ready to ship IMMEDIATELY!!!! Not "available soon" or "on order" no nonsense here! Just a BRAND NEW never stepped on, Never used at all segway! No waiting till August or September, no scheduling training 2-4 hours away or more! Buy here now and I'll ship right away! You can ride right away!

I have possession of a Segway:

RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!!

Sounds desperate enough to be the thief...

Buy it now for only $5,500!

Believe it or not, there's one which has just arrived ...
for sale
</virgin Marry kind of innocent>

It could be this, this, or this one.

If you're like me, you would have to guess this is his.

It could be this, this, or this one.

If you're like me, you would have to guess this is his.

It could be this, this, or this one.

If you're like me, you would have to guess this is his.

It could be this, this, or this one.

If you're like me, you would have to guess this is his.

the bluebrain wrote:

> You've got an Oric? Gimme!

I won't sell it for anything in the world :-) But if you really want one, you might want to check out some of the old stuff at eBay from time to time... If you have a few bucks spare, you might want to take a look at this one, perfect condition -- but hurry, only 10 hours left! :-)

But seriously, eBay is a great spot for buying old computers.

Well, especially if you're a fanatic nostalgic like me. :)

the bluebrain wrote:

> You've got an Oric? Gimme!

I won't sell it for anything in the world :-) But if you really want one, you might want to check out some of the old stuff at eBay from time to time... If you have a few bucks spare, you might want to take a look at this one, perfect condition -- but hurry, only 10 hours left! :-)

But seriously, eBay is a great spot for buying old computers.

Well, especially if you're a fanatic nostalgic like me. :)

the bluebrain wrote:

> You've got an Oric? Gimme!

I won't sell it for anything in the world :-) But if you really want one, you might want to check out some of the old stuff at eBay from time to time... If you have a few bucks spare, you might want to take a look at this one, perfect condition -- but hurry, only 10 hours left! :-)

But seriously, eBay is a great spot for buying old computers.

Well, especially if you're a fanatic nostalgic like me. :)

the bluebrain wrote:

> You've got an Oric? Gimme!

I won't sell it for anything in the world :-) But if you really want one, you might want to check out some of the old stuff at eBay from time to time... If you have a few bucks spare, you might want to take a look at this one, perfect condition -- but hurry, only 10 hours left! :-)

But seriously, eBay is a great spot for buying old computers.

Well, especially if you're a fanatic nostalgic like me. :)

Pelican cases, eg this one, etc.

Only rated to -10F, but the failure mode is probably
the O-rings loosing getting stiff.

Hrm, why the space in my ebay link? Try this one:

IBM Netvisat case

M.B.

Have some sympathy.

No! It's not gonna happen, so quit whining about it! If you can't afford one now, then start saving your money until you can.

What people like you keep forgetting about an x86 version of Mac OS X is, even if Apple ported it, no applications would run on it and it wouldn't run on your PC anyway. There is an x86 version of Darwin, the UNIX core of Mac OS X. Take a look at the system requirements. Among other things, AMD processors are not currently supported, and it's only been tested with Intel 440BX motherboards and Intel 8255x ethernet cards.

Still, you can make an external battery pack that takes AAs for about $7, or get one on ebay for between eight and ten bucks. I can get about 11 hours with the initial charge + 4 AAs.

I went to the the ebay page where the Lego Mac is currently for sale and the owner recently posted that he's now using the Lego Mac to host a web page!

I'm sure they'd find a bidder. If someone will pay 44 US dollars for a Instant Girlfriend Kit and 102 dollars for an 'RADIONICS PSYCHOTRONIC INVISIBILITY MACHINE', who knows what NASA could get?

I'm sure they'd find a bidder. If someone will pay 44 US dollars for a Instant Girlfriend Kit and 102 dollars for an 'RADIONICS PSYCHOTRONIC INVISIBILITY MACHINE', who knows what NASA could get?

Apparently this little mac is currently working as a web server, right there:

http://lego.apple-juice.co.uk/index.html

Let all go visit it and see how the winning bidder reacts when he receives a melted pile of legos.

The owner is auctioning this off on eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2729209921&category=171

oh, and thanks for the nice picture on the school's website ;)

oh, and thanks for the nice picture on the school's website ;)

I just got this puppy w/1GB ECC memory and it is doing a fine job even with the high demand for college party pics you owe it to yuorself to checkout the elevated horizontal body shot and the wet-fun-fountain photos :-)

Offtopic -2, Lovely Ladies +5

An anecdotal comparison: I own an item that's been out of print for quite a while and is rather rare. Being a broke college student, I naturally was looking into selling it. A little searching showed that the item sells on ebay regularly for around $80-100; on amazon (where people go who don't know how to use ebay or are afraid to) it goes for $170-200.

Simple choice, right? Well get this, ebay's fees (in my case) are $0.93 plus 2.75%. Amazon charges $0.99 plus 15%! I really hate paying huge fees when they're doing hardly any work, but the visibility is what they're selling.

Sell on ebay: $90 minus $3.40 fees = $86.60 NET PROFIT

Sell on amazon: $170 minus $26.49 fees = $143.51 NET PROFIT

Would you give up $56.91 purely to avoid supporting an "evil" company and their stupid patents? For most people, it's just not worth it. I hate his guts but Bezos is smart as hell.

Get one of these and then try not to spill stuff on it. At least you can do quite a bit without a keyboard or mouse, 'cause it's touchscreen. I use mine with a web server containing recipes, home automation scripts, personal contacts, etc. Just making a bookmark to my.yahoo.com is pretty indispensible too, for checking TV and movie showtimes, weather etc. But, I mounted it on a pull-down shelf that was intended for knife storage; it's perfect - hangs down below the cabinets when I want it, folds back up when I don't, and I was able to attach the ethernet adapter to the underside - and the Audrey stays booted all the time while not consuming much power with the screen off, so no wait time. Even for quick web lookups I don't really need access to in the kitchen, it's quicker than going to my main workstation, waiting for the dual monitors to power up, waiting for that slow monstrosity Mozilla to finally load, and mousing around. So I find myself using it now and then, and my wife does too. I also wrote a caller ID application for it, but it still has a bug I haven't fixed yet.

I have one of these and its pretty nice for Linux. The base config is 233 mghz 32 ram 4 gig HD. 2.5 video RAM. The thing weighs about 2.9 pounds and I am constantly asked how much it costs because it looks expensive. Has 2 PCMCIA slots for wirelress/network cards. Here's a current action and here's a past one. This thing is cheap and will definitely run your ssh, etc. I am running Slack 9 on it and its very nice. APM is supported so sleep/wake is almost instantenous. You can do some graphic stuff too, fvwm2 and opera and gaim run great on it for web browsing/emailing/IMing.

I have one of these and its pretty nice for Linux. The base config is 233 mghz 32 ram 4 gig HD. 2.5 video RAM. The thing weighs about 2.9 pounds and I am constantly asked how much it costs because it looks expensive. Has 2 PCMCIA slots for wirelress/network cards. Here's a current action and here's a past one. This thing is cheap and will definitely run your ssh, etc. I am running Slack 9 on it and its very nice. APM is supported so sleep/wake is almost instantenous. You can do some graphic stuff too, fvwm2 and opera and gaim run great on it for web browsing/emailing/IMing.

Still available! I can't believe that people can still be ham radio dorks in 2003...God bless geeks and their intractibility!

For all the hippy Trailer Trashers,
who needs trailers now?

Trash with some style, get yourself a 40,000 lbs.
Vintage M&O Subway Train Car for only $5000!

This baby has been selling at Best Buy for $550 after rebates, which means that a lot of those items would be popping up on eBay brand new and sealed. It's a subnotebook from Sotec, a good Japanese brand, that's apparently trying to wage a price war on the US market.

I was able to boot up Knoppix CD with no problems, brought networking up and was capable of playing MP3 and MPEG video files. Have not tried installing Linux on it, but the assumption is it would go fine, since everything worked in bootable-CD version of Knoppix.

While those are very cool, and I want one just for that reason, there is no keyboard on that toy.

Since the poster specifically mentioned:
All I really need is a linux command line to run SSH, links, and a few other things.

Then I'll wager no-keyboard is a deal breaker.

If you really want to run a command line comfortably, I'd suggest you bump up to the "small notebook, of previous generation processors" category. I just sold my Armada M700 series laptop, and I think it's lesser brothers might be a good match for your needs. The M700 was a true platform in that they had a large range of processors and ram that fit it. So compatible accessories abound on ebay.

Since they were targeted at the corporate types they have good docking station integration, and most importantly although there are an abundance of modern slip in peripherals (like a DVD/CDRW combo drive) the ones with the 400Mhz processors run XP like slugs so the corporate types are getting off them quick. This gives you a rare combination of "older laptop prices" but modern laptop battery and peripheral capability.

This one here. Will probably sell for $270. It's PII 400Mhz processor will run a LowProfile Linux very well, and then you get multiple xterms per screen (which is always cool when your admin-ing). Cooler still you can slip out that nearly useless DVD drive and slip an additional battery in, and get excellent run times. Which you'll need for 1500 .ogg files you'll still have space for.

Can be had on Ebay for $100-200. This is the solution that I went with for a WiFi subnote to test our network.

In this modern world, $5000 buys you either a second-hand subway or a DIY cruise missile.

Hmm.... tough choice.

--
Rune

Not only that, but for your kitchen you could also get a "Zurn Industries - Grease Trap - Never Used" also from Radio Shack. This is one stop shopping for your whole house complex! I never thought that Radio Shack would be *this* useful.

See, for example, this.

is here on the new Ebay Tech News.

Is availble from, bizarely enough, Ebay

And we scratch on nifty Technics turntables like these.

A little work searching EBay can do wonders for your pocket book asshole. Why don't you get with the times and start researching things fully on the internet before you blather on about shit you don't comprehend you stupid ape. Fuck off donkeyboy.

So, it's a G4/800 tower, for $775 plus extra hardware (hard drive, etc.) plus software (Mac OS X, applications). In contrast, the eMac is a G4/800 for $799 and includes a 17" monitor, 40GB hard drive, CD-ROM, Mac OS X, and a handful of software (AppleWorks, Quicken, World Book Encyclopedia, etc.). Oh, and a full 1-yr warranty from Apple.

Of course, the eMac isn't expandable (you can upgrade the RAM and add an AirPort card; everything else has to be external, and you can't run a split desktop on dual monitors). Still, compare to eBay...

eBay already seems to have done a bang-up job in this area. There is a huge community of small businesses that have an online presence within eBay, many of which do better online than they do in their retail storefront (in particular antique and collectibles shops). This guy is hardly breaking new ground...

eBay is not legally responsible for the remarks that users post on its site, even if those remarks are defamatory

maybe

I've built a PC for use as a VCR which uses a ATI Radeon 8500DV video card. This card is nice for a varitey of reasons, but one of the main strenghts (for me) is that it comes with a connector supporting a variety of inputs and outputs.

By the way, you could basically do this with any decent/modern/1Ghz+ system & the aforementioned video card -Or one similar to it (The ATI 7500's a reputable alternative). But anyway...

In my case I've got a variety of peripherals tied into my 8500 via a Video Switcher (example: $50 ), and I run the output of this switcher through a signal enhancer (example: $50) before it's ran into the 8500's S-Video input.

One of the things connected via the switcher is a nice 4-head stereo VCR. By running the VCR through the enhancer, I can get quite good copies of video tapes.

Similarly, by running Showshifter (or another PVR / recording package -But Showshifter has some really nice DivX capabilities built in), I'm able to automatically encode the VCR's output as a stereo, high-quality DivX file in real time.

Or you could use any other video codec really. If it was something you wanted to edit, or preserve at high quality, you could record in a non-lossy codec, edit as needed in a video editor (Virtual Dub's a good place to start), and then encode down to a DivX (or again... Any codec. AVI, Mpeg, DivX, or even... Windows Media Format).

A side bonus of running the video switch through the enhancer is that a DVD player's output can be piped through and recorded as the enhancer removes the copy-protection. Not that I'd ever hook a DVD player up to my video switch to find this out (or to record a few rented DVD's for that matter), but one could do so if one wanted too.

Either way, the resulting video files can either be converted to VCD or SVCD (These both are burned onto regular CD's, with the former fitting slightly more, lower-resolution video on the CD than the latter. Both are also playable in the majority of modern DVD players), or DVD (self-explanatory) formats via programs such as Nero . I'm not an expert on the lifetime degredation of either CD or DVD media, but both are arguably going to be around and in good shape longer than some old VHS tapes.

Another option is to burn them as data files onto any of the aforementioned media, and set them up with an autorun software package so that your intended viewers can just pop it in a PC and go (another up and coming option here). Doing it this way offers the capability to save higher resolution video, but it also requires that your viewers view it either on a PC, or on a TV connected to a PC. There's some other pros and cons as well, but that's the basics from my point of view.

For archiving old VHS footage, I would reccomend recording the video via a method similar to what I've described above, and then outputting the footage as a regular old DVD. DVD's can support... what is it? 704x480 or something like that, and that's way higher than the 320x200 or whatever that standard TV broadcasts at (and this is likely the resolution you'd have on VHS tapes, I'm guessin'). This would ensure you wouldn't have to lose much if any quality, and the resulting footage will be viewable either on a consumer DVD player, or on a PC via a DVD drive, which are more or less standard these days.

Similarly, with 4x DVD burners hitting the "below $300" market, it's a good investment as you can back up your other data and videos when you're done archiving tapes. If that's not enough, you'll also be able to sample the