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theGoodWitch writes "Since Egghead.com went bankrupt (that new 'powered by Amazon.com' site they have not is not the same thing), I'm having trouble finding good deals on used/refurbished/end-of-stock PCs, servers, hard drives, tape drives, and such. Ubid has some, but not nearly the selection. eBay has too much, and it's too hard to sort out who the sellers are. I don't want to buy from individuals, only from commercial suppliers with (at least limited) warranties and minimal guarantees. Egghead.com was perfect, but now they're gone. What happened to all the stuff they were getting? Who is selling it now?"

An anonymous reader says: "I bought some things from onsale.com, which then became egghead.com. Somewhere in that time, their credit card database got jacked, for which they sent me a nice e-mail saying everything was ok. Now I've got a mail that I don't like at all, with the subject 'IMPORTANT MESSAGE REGARDING THE TRANSFER OF YOUR CUSTOMER INFORMATION.' Well. that's pretty much it. egghead.com info will go to Fry's Electronics, unless the customer explicitly requests that it not. How often does it happen that when a company goes under that they just sell their customer info and just not tell anyone?" Here are links to the Egghead info page and privacy and security policy.

An anonymous reader says: "I bought some things from onsale.com, which then became egghead.com. Somewhere in that time, their credit card database got jacked, for which they sent me a nice e-mail saying everything was ok. Now I've got a mail that I don't like at all, with the subject 'IMPORTANT MESSAGE REGARDING THE TRANSFER OF YOUR CUSTOMER INFORMATION.' Well. that's pretty much it. egghead.com info will go to Fry's Electronics, unless the customer explicitly requests that it not. How often does it happen that when a company goes under that they just sell their customer info and just not tell anyone?" Here are links to the Egghead info page and privacy and security policy.

Richie asks: "For the third time in as many months, I have had a rebate request rejected after having followed the instructions on the rebate form to the letter. This time it was a $35 rebate from Intuit for buying Quicken and Turbotax. I received a a letter from Intuit's rebate fulfillment company stating that my rebate is being rejected as I purchased the product directly from Intuit. This is after submitting the appropriate proof a purchase along with a receipt showing that product was clearly purchased from Egghead. After a call to the fulfillment company they apologize and ask that I re-submit the request. I'm still awaiting the rebate check." First it was Microsoft with their stubbornness to live up to the wording in their own EULA's regarding refunds. Now this. Why do software companies feel they are entitled to keep consumers' money after every sale, even though they may have promised to give some back?

"A month earlier, I bought a 128MB Kingston DIMM from buy.com and once again submit the rebate as instructed. A few weeks later I receive a postcard saying that my request was denied as I didn't submit the original purchase receipt showing the price of the item. After sending an e-mail to the fulfillment company stating that I submitted the only receipt that I had from buy.com which is the print out of the Web page after you complete your order, I receive a response stating that my rebate has been approved. This particuliar rebate was an offer only valid through buy.com and Kingston which makes it difficult for me to believe that the fulfillment company wouldn't know what a receipt from buy.com looks like. I'm also still awaiting the rebate check.

I'm beginning to wonder if this is just a case of bad luck or whether these rebates are only a scam by companies to get people to buy the products due to the advertised after-rebate prices, and then they figure that most people won't submit the rebate requests to begin with and for those that do, they will make it as difficult as possible to receive the promised rebate money."

zCyl asks: "When I went to purchase a SCSI card online a while back, I went to a dealer that I had heard was reputable. Then a little later they were purchased by Egghead, and I was added to the Egghead database and I unwittingly became one of the millions of customers who were notified that the Egghead database containing their information had been compromised. How are those of us who do understand computer security and could evaluate the security of an e-commerce site supposed to determine the security of the sites we purchase products from? Are there any existing e-commerce sites that openly publish the precautions and security measures they take to ensure the safety of the information I entrust to them while making a purchase?"

Welcome to another dose of updates and trivia, which tonight means: some more on the large glob of egg on the face of Egghead.com; how to connect to the satellite world a little cheaper, and an unlikely (or maybe not unlikely) source of interest in NetBSD on the Dreamcast.

Well, there is just one other little thing ... jmorse writes: "In light of the recent attack on Egghead.com, the company is sending this email to its registered customers, claiming that "...Egghead.com's existing security systems interrupted the intrusion while it was in progress, and that customer data has not been compromised." Yet, later in the same email, they admit that "...In addition, reports from the credit card companies with whom we work suggest that fewer than 7,500 credit card accounts registered with us have shown possible fraudulent activity. This is a very small fraction -- less than two tenths of one percent -- of the approximately three million credit cards registered with Egghead.com. " Now, if their security systems stopped the intruders cold, why were 7500 credit cards then used fraudulently? I think Egghead has some more explaining to do..."

I think we understand each other, Mr. Bond An unnamed correspondent writes: "This e-mail showed up on the NETBSD/Dreamcast mailing list. Interesting eh?"

Interesting, that is, because it comes (seems to come? can never be too careful these days ... ) from John Byrd, manager of the Developer Technical Support department at Sega of America, who expresses interest in the recent work on Net("runs on 2-stroke oil")BSD for the Sega Dreamcast. Here's the recent Slashdot story on that port.

In it, Byrd says: "Although I can't yet release proprietary technical information publicly, there are other ways we might be able to help out with this sort of project. For example, we may be able to help with testing or verification of compatibility with various revisions of Dreamcast hardware."

Nice to hear, eh?

Mr. Walker played by Jim Carrey Finally, thanks go out to the heroic Starband installer Winston Walker. Regarding the recent story on using Starband's two-way satellite service under Linux and other OSes, Winston expresses himself thusly: "USB to serial for starband is NOT needed. You can use a 9pin to 25pin modem cable. Get rid of ALL the usb stuff on the starband No point in paying 40-50 bucks for that stupid cable (grin)."

Must tend to agree; can anyone else confirm this? Things are looking good for the move to Alpine, Texas, which seems to have some southern sky to spare.

Lest we forget The latest in our series of reprints and reactions to Jon Katz' Hellmouth columns is up.

Ever more information for you, the loyal photographic memory-blessed reader. That is to say, more on Linux on Macs -- and not just the sexy new ones. Evolving attitudes in Kansas. Misinformation about Survivor. And cheap, cheap boxes for your node-in-every-room home network.

Pardon me sir, are you going to finish that Apple? Marco van de Voort writes: "MkLinux now has official support for these much sold first Nubus based PowerMac generation, that is rotting away in basements. These machines make excellent X-Terms." And the same models can naturally run NetBSD, too. [Updated 6:26GMT by timothy] Reader vkulkarn corrects me here. Mea culpa, you're right -- only some of the old Nubus PowerMac models actually run NetBSD. But I bet someone, somewhere is plotting to change that.

Garage sales can now support Linux.GigsVT writes "Coollogic has released a new set-top box, this one with Linux already installed. Sounds like ripe hacking material to me. Blurb: The Internet Ready 7200 uses a National Semiconductor MediaGX processor, 16MB of flash memory instead of a hard disk, 32MB of RAM and has the ability to connect to the Internet via DSL, Ethernet or a modem. It uses a TV instead of a monitor and comes with Netscape's Web browser." And MrRobahtsu writes "Want a 64MB diskless 200MHz Linux box cheap? Try egghead. With IDE, USB, 10/100 ethernet, and Linux and Netscape in flash ram, it looks pretty cool. Even says "can be upgraded to a pc." Not bad for $129."

Toto, I don't think we're in the Pleistocene anymore! Claudius writes: "This cnn.com article reports that Kansas voters now support the teaching of evolution in their public schools, as evidenced by recent election results. They have voted to remove two incumbents to the Kansas Board of Education who have supported standards diminishing the importance of evolution, and a third, anti-evolution candidate was unable to defeat an opponent who opposes the current standards. The issue is still far from settled, however, since five of the ten seats on the board remain to be filled in November." For a refresher on the sticky state of evolution in Kansas education, see Hemos' story on it from a while ago.

Ha ha fooled ya good. TeacherReviews.com writes "Gervase just got voted off the Survivor island, meaning that RealWorldBlows discussed in a past story produced a false result and the actual winner of Survivor is still unknown." True enough. What was going through the collective CBS head when they failed to follow the directive of their own Web site?!

Still horrifying after all these days. chaidawg writes: "According to this article in the New York Times (free registration req.), author Stephen King's experiment with payment for e-publishing seems to be working. After the first of three promised chapters he has made back all but $10,000 of the more than $100,000 he spent on advertising." This still doesn't mean Jamie is wrong -- yet.

coug_ writes "Yesterday it was CD-Now and Columbia House. Today, it's Egghead and Onsale. CNet is carrying more details. " So, this is the fourth incarnation of Egghead-flee brick and mortar, then head online, then auctions, now merging.

The venerable Egghead, one of the computer stores that didn't make it in the late 90s, has decided to close its 80 remaining stores, and go strictly with business over the Internet, at Egghead.com. This change is a wonderful illustration of what the Internet is slowly doing to physical store ideas, and the sheer convience of the Internet. Hey, have any of you ordered groceries online? I would be interested to hear whether you thoght they were cheaper or not.