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Then you people pull another nugget of Balmer's shit out of your Microsoft'en assholes saying, again, the Alpha is too expensive. Go visit eBay: you can still buy that 4 year old 164LX / 164UX / AlphaServer for... $500.00.

GADZOOKS! For being 4 years old, maybe you're right!

Maybe that explains why so many people are relunctant to upgrade...it's already faster than a Pentium 4 or Athlon rated at 2,000MHz. Alpha is such a well-designed architecture and Processor.

Someone's selling a CS20 oh wow!

EBay has them. I suspect that any mass produced computer or peripheral from the 1970s onward will usually be around for 30-40 years in attics and can be found if people need it desparately enough.

Check out the low-tech Acorn deals to be had everyday.

I wonder if they deliver via UPS - I'd hate to wait 16 years to receive my item. : )

I was disappointed with the depth of this article. I expected lots of little hints and tricks that I didn't know about but instead found most of the material was common sense stuff for anyone who had been around computers for any amount of time.

If you *really* want to get deep inside the guts of optimizing a Windows box I can think of no better guide than O'reilly's.

Optimizing Windows for Games, Graphics and Multimedia by David L. Farquhar

This book is currently out of print and is getting a little long in the tooth (published in 1999) but the internals for Windows doesn't really change that radically from a tuner's perspective. This book isn't a mere collection of little tricks but gives you a more fundamental understanding of Windows and how to trim the fat. The Amazon user rating system gives it 5 stars and rightfully so. To top it off you can pick up a used copy for about $8 or so at half.com among other places.

This is really a great book for anyone looking to get the most out of their Windows machine or just trying to understand the black box that is Windows. I used some of the tricks mentioned in this book on my wife's old p233 laptop w/96MBs RAM. Her Win98SE box has been going for almost two years now w/o any serious stability or performance problems. Granted, she's not a niddler and only does a certain set number of tasks on this laptop but I think that's pretty darn good for a Windows 98 box.

Considering how quickly computer technology is advancing, how likely are we to predict how it will affect us even 20 years from now, let alone thousands? I think taking computers and robotics out of the picture was a shrewd move to get the story somewhere he could frame it. Look at how laughable the computers in ST:TOS are.

While reading the series, I admit I was bothered by that as well, but now the backstory is being filled in by Herbert's son. I just finished the first book in a trilogy that will describe that revolution, in year Dune - 10,000.

Why bother with x68 [sic] Solaris when you can run real Solaris on real Sun hardware? You get:
network booting
OpenBoot
native serial console
fairly standard upgradeable components
It Just Works

While getting training on Solaris is invaluable for any *nix sysadmin worth his/her salt, it's my belief that when it comes to experience helping secure a job getting that experience on x86 hardware lies somewhere between "next to useless" and "better than nothing" on the usefulness scale. Anyone that wants Solaris software experience will also want Sparc hardware experience (disk arrays, remote mgmt cards, sbus legacy stuff, etc -- things you don't normally see on commodity PCs). They'll probably want someone who knows enough "Sun" to know what the difference beween an E420 and a SunBlade is and won't get surprised to discover that one of them doesn't have anything more than a console attached to it.

If you want Solaris experience for a job, then you'd be better off buying an old Ultra 5 for 80 bucks than paying for beta x86 software. You'll at least be able to say during your interview that although you don't have any "real world" Sun experience, you have been playing with an old Ultra in your spare time in order to get up to speed or round out your professional experience. I've seen a few people get jobs this way in fact.

You have a much better chance if you get an old Sparc, stick it in the corner, hook up a serial cable to it and run BIND on it for internal DNS or something than playing with x86 Solaris on a PC.

-B

SPARCStation 10 MP (Dual SM-51 CPUs)

I, for one, look forward to the advent of ping music. Ludwig van's been rendered on some pretty fancy instuments, none so expensive as an OC-192.

Maybe it would be a good idea for them to sell the content they've downloaded on eBay to raise funds for paying the bills or hiring a lawyer... Yeah, I'm sure that'd solve all their problems.

My understanding from surfing RadioShack Sucks is that their salesdroids would actually be penalized financially, or even fired altogether, for failing to obtain some arbitrary percentage of customer names and addresses. Seems like the quota was something on the order of 80-90% "compliance."

Between local stores like Active Electronics, the utterly-amazing variety of electronic parts on eBay and topnotch mail-order houses like Digi-Key, Jameco, and Mouser, it's pretty darned rare for me to set foot in a RatShit store these days. Their 1/4-watt resistor assortments are still a killer deal, though.

While searching eBay to see how much they sell for, I found this and couldn't resist posting it.

Wouldn't it make more economic and performance sense to cut the number of PCs by a third and take the $50k and invest in a more high-performance and space-conservative disk subsystem?

Something like this.

Would give you far better disk performance and scalability than trying to add another 200 PCs with IDE disks.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2074058774

At least, that's what I hope AliceBOT can make up for in lack of a feature of a website. Wouldn't that be cool?

I got a Virtual Boy about 3 years ago, going cheap as you might expect. If you are trying for comercial success a equipment that causes damage to its users is kind of dangerous. I remember the manual warning of excess use of the machine may damage your vision. That linked with most of the games forcing eye breaks every 20 minutes or so, I expect, did not instill confidence in the users. Shame more people have not played or seen the system as Red Alarm is a fantastic game. Its good to live dangerously. Ofcourse eBay always has a good number going cheap.

--------------

Human Experimentation, musical experiments gone wrong.

BOI-OI-OING

3D hentai made posible from 3rd-party software influenced or certified by SGI.

Thankyou, first post? Damn...Frosty piss...

I have one of those Dell Keyboards in my spare parts pile, and I see someone has them at 5 for $1 on ebay.

5 DELL AT101W Keyboards on Ebay

Problem #1: iDVD issues.
You can't buy iDVD without buying a new Mac either. So your friend probably pirated iDVD.

Apple sells Macs. That's how they make money. As an incentive to buy a high-end Mac, Apple throws iDVD in as a free pack-in with systems that have a DVD burner. Apple doesn't include iDVD with every Mac, just the ones with DVD burners. iDVD(unlike the rest of the i-apps) is not free. Apple didn't invest their money in developing iDVD just to have a thousand other companies give it away with DVD drives that take sales away from Apple's bottom line.

If you want a DVD burner, get one from Pioneer($400). If you want encoding software, Apple is more than happy to sell you DVD Studio Pro, which works with any DVD burner($1000). If you want DVD burning software, Roxio has a kickin' version of Toast 5($100). Just don't expect to get freebies when you haven't paid your dues. The above solution will only cost you $1500. A new Mac with DVD burning capability can cost as little as $1000(check ebay or smalldog for an old G4/733 system with a SuperDrive).

Problem #2: Editing video.
You don't need iDVD to edit digital video.

What you really needed was iMovie, which is included for free with every Mac. It's also available for download from Apple.

Then you can burn VCD's with Toast or dump the video back to the PC and burn with whatever PC burning software you like.

Problem #3: Replacement parts.
Apple sells replacement parts, including SuperDrives.

If you wanted one that badly, and wanted it to work with your questionable copy of iDVD, then you should've gotten a "replacement" SuperDrive.

Of course, this wouldn't be cheap, but at least it would work. And you'd have to pay Apple for their product. What a concept.

Problem #4: Entitlement.
You assume Apple owes you something. They don't.

Apple makes the whole widget. If it breaks, get a replacement part. If you just want to upgrade, well, go buy a new widget. It's their business, and it seems to pay rather well. Get over it. They don't owe you a damn thing. Especially not when you're expecting them to give their livelihood away for free.

Problem #5: The DMCA.
The DMCA is a problem.

Of course, in this instance, the DMCA was doing exactly what it was supposed to do - protect a copyrighted work. Software is a copyrighted work, iDVD included. If Apple(who owns the copyright) says that you can't use it that way, then you can't use it that way! It's their decision. There was a validity check in the software. To bypass that without permission from the copyright holder is wrong. (This applies to DVDs too, since you can make a bit-for-bit copy as a backup, and you can still use it on your PC. You can even make a disk image. You just can't break CSS.)

The End...
I'm sorry if this sounds a bit harsh, but it's rather irritating to see all these jackals leeching off of one of the few companies that's actually trying to do something right(or at least different). Support them with your dollars if you want to use their product. If you don't want to pay, don't use it.

Matt

This following URL is a link to an eBay auction, of an OEM or competing product, maybe a scam judging by availability of "fossil's" product.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =801889618

That's a paddle! A pretty cool looking USB paddle, but a paddle nonetheless.

I love amazon as much as the next nerd, but as ever, eBay & half.com are your better friends.

At half.com, you can get a copy of Stan Lee's Mutants, Monsters, and Marvels at half.com for about 12 bucks and some change (sorry, I snapped up the 9.99 copy for myself), as opposed to Amazon's $22 copies. Plus at 2002.11.13 10:15 EST Amazon only had two copies in stock.

look what i just bought. im gonna kick yo ass.

Damn, that's worse than Half.com. At least Half.com used to be called Halfway.

I ask you - "would you buy a used aircraft from this man"?

The cool thing would be that all your expense goes into ambience -- go for that classy old Pam Am style, and maybe have the maitre 'd wear a leather jacket. If the food sucks, hey, so what, your customers will be expecting that anyway -- as long as they're being charged less than a hundred bucks for the experience of getting out alive with a full stomach, they'll leave happy.

Dammit it could work, all you need to do is find places in or near major cities & you could start a chain to rival Hard Rock Cafe or Planet Hollywood. Zoning laws could be an issue, but hey in that case just stay out of New England at first -- I know of placed in Smyrna Tennessee & Florence South Carolina that would be happy to help get you started...

tee hee :)

And before anyone goes knocking these people for being crackpots to sell airplane homes (hey, I think it's a fun idea but I know damn well I could never talk my fiance into it :), check out their last auction: 2.1 million dollars to sell an ICBM silo home. Yow!

As to missile silo home - it's interesting whether Russians took notice that it's now someone's home and removed this place from their SS-20s target list.

Just couldn't resist...

To be honest, if I had that kind of money, I might be more inclined to buy a functioning MIG 21 ;-)

There are at least two of them for sale on ebay right now - here and here Too bad the missle silo home is already sold.

Guess I'll have to settle for a double-wide.

There are at least two of them for sale on ebay right now - here and here Too bad the missle silo home is already sold.

Guess I'll have to settle for a double-wide.

There are at least two of them for sale on ebay right now - here and here Too bad the missle silo home is already sold.

Guess I'll have to settle for a double-wide.

You can get them on eBay for $10 or so. Same ones they sell at EB and QVC. Pitfall's the only game on there worth getting. Also, be warned, these things break like crazy. I've gone through two in less than 2 hours gaming. One would require about 30 "resets" before I could play after turning it on, the other plays for about 5-10 min, then the screen starts going nutty.

And on ebay as well, this one includes the light-gun for Duck Hunt!

Click here

Rama the game http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =1395571219

Sorry could find a direct link in a store.

Oops, I meant Skeletor!

Like these here and here.

Oops, I meant Skeletor!

Like these here and here.

Ah youth... After working on Win2000 all day, I still love to old skool it when I get home and pop in an old game and futz with old Amiga hardware. To me playing with toasters and toccatas is still a phun way to pass the tiem. NT is work. But Amiga is play.

Will I check into the new hardware? Maybe. I'd have to think about that one. But really what's in it for me in this time and place except for the nostalgia I feel for the days when computing was truly new and (okay, I have to be honest with myself here) exciting?

Ah youth... After working on Win2000 all day, I still love to old skool it when I get home and pop in an old game and futz with old Amiga hardware. To me playing with toasters and toccatas is still a phun way to pass the tiem. NT is work. But Amiga is play.

Will I check into the new hardware? Maybe. I'd have to think about that one. But really what's in it for me in this time and place except for the nostalgia I feel for the days when computing was truly new and (okay, I have to be honest with myself here) exciting?

Ah youth... After working on Win2000 all day, I still love to old skool it when I get home and pop in an old game and futz with old Amiga hardware. To me playing with toasters and toccatas is still a phun way to pass the tiem. NT is work. But Amiga is play.

Will I check into the new hardware? Maybe. I'd have to think about that one. But really what's in it for me in this time and place except for the nostalgia I feel for the days when computing was truly new and (okay, I have to be honest with myself here) exciting?

You can always get a Nokia 9000 Communicator for $40.

Then sign up for T-Mobile or Cingular with "PCS data Connect" service for about $40/mo total.

Features web, telnet, ssh, VNC, pop/smtp, Fax, SMS. Plus all the standard PDA features.

I have a sony in car cd player, the one that can play mp3s but not copy protected cds. I was a little annoyed until I found that my old pioneer 6 disc scsi cdrom drive drm624x that I used to run on my amiga (its 4.4x not 24x speed btw) could rip copy protected cds flawlessly when used with cdparanoia (linux cd ripper utill made by the same people as ogg vorbis). Ebay has these units for $15 each. They can be got elsewhere I suspect that Google may be able to help there.

Stop watching DVDs on your computer and go out and buy a modded region-free DVD player.

--Mike

this what you want?

It was for sale on ebay. That's all i could find, though. Google didn't have much, sorry.

New:
Amazon: $27.00 [referral]
Amazon: $27.00
B&N: $36.00 [referral]
B&N: $36.00
Bookpool: $27.50

Used:
Amazon: $26.99 [referral]
Half.com: $29.25

Decent review, but definitely could have been longer - I'm left wanting to know more about the book.

Half.Com

Try Ebay they have 533Mhz boards from DEC. I bought a system for $150 or so a year ago. They can be installed in a normal ATX box just remove the backplate with the I/O ports etc. You will need ECC SDRAM but they can be gotten cheaply and the system is quite fast.

Since about April of this year, Ebay has been running on IBM's Websphere. (Google Search to find the related press releases.) Of course, this does not mean Yahoo made a bad choice going with PHP, which I love, just that it is possible to make speedy sites using J2EE.

... but I'm typing this reply on a Mac that I pieced together for less than $250 all figured. I run OS 9.1 currently, but another $100 worth of parts and I can put OS X on here.

Basically, I started with an old PowerCenter 120 (a PowerPC Mac Clone) with 32MB of RAM. Total cost? $47 from Ebay

Next up, I added 128MB of RAM from Computer Renaissance... it's fussy about is RAM (5V DIMMs). Total cost: $30

Next... I added an old SCSI drive I had knocking around (4Gb drive from an old server of mine). Total cost: $0

THEN I added a Powerlogix G3-400 upgrade card, $85 from Other World Computing. Finally, added a $49 copy of OS9.1 and OSX 10.1 (a bundled special also from OWC).

So what can I do with it? Well, I love the fact that I now have a machine that's relatively trouble-free, runs the applications I use most often with aplomb (word processing, email, Mozilla etc.) and provides me a REAL upgrade path to OSX. Yeah, OSX isn't strictly compatible with my hardware, but the only piece that's truly critical is the video; to be fixed by the addition of a Radeon 7000 in the next few weeks. Everything else can be worked around using XPostFacto.

Worth a thought if you REALLY want to play with OS X but don't want to outlay on the hardware. FYI, this thing runs OS 9.1 faster than my neighbor's 400Mhz Imac... still remains to be seen how X will run.

Total cost for the project: $300 or so
Value of knowing my 5-year old Mac is more reliable and stable than anything with Microsoft OS's on it: priceless!

E is for E-Bay, that's good enough for me...

(Sing to the tune of C is for Cookie, Copyright 1998-2002 Sesame Workshop)