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I had the same problem. Intentionally left a ShopVac outside, worked perfectly, cosmetic condition was A+ (sign said, 'works').... Just (maybe) needed a filter (Home Depot). They took the copper coils out of the motor, left the unit behind - useless unit now. That is why I did the 24 pair Cat 3 copper on top of the fiber... hopefully they broke their backs loading the spool on to the pick up truck.

It's hard to specify terms of use for items that you leave on the sidewalk. If you'd like a little more control over how your hand-me-downs get re-used, I recommend something like FreeCycle.org. I've had good results there.

Described by me here, but others had the idea before: http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html#Princeton_University_Freecycle_Transportation_Network_--_an_internet_of_physical_packages

From there, as a disclosure to make it harder to patent it all:
------
Princeton University Freecycle Transportation Network -- an internet of physical packages

Here is just one more example of changes to PU's infrastructure and operations from a Post-Scarcity point of view. These might take burning another billion dollars of the PU endowment or so, but you will see soon another reason why money is going out of style anyway, whether PU does this or someone else. :-) But, there may well be reasonable objections to it, so consider it first mainly as a thought experiment in understanding Post-Scarcity style issues. Maybe it is both possible and worth doing, maybe it is neither.

A big problem in a post-scarcity society is not so much how to make abundance, but how to get rid of it. :-) The Freecycle network mentioned at the start is an example of that:
http://www.freecycle.org/
Or, from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freecycle_Network

"The Freecycle Network (often abbreviated TFN or just known as Freecycle) is a non-profit organization ... that organizes a worldwide network of "gifting" groups, aiming to divert reusable goods from landfill. It provides a worldwide online registry, and coordinates the creation of local groups and forums for individuals and non-profits to offer and receive free items for reuse or recycling, promoting gift economics as a motivating cultural outlook. "Changing the world one gift at a time" is The Freecycle Network's official tagline. "

(Note that "Freecycle" is a trademark, so if PU used it, it would need permission.)

Obviously, long term the solution in a few decades might be general purpose nanotech 3D printers that can both "print" (or "compile") and "unprint" (or "decompile").
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age
Perhaps you don't believe that kind of 3D printing and unprinting is possible or even desirable (perhaps due to energy costs of disassembly). Or maybe you think 3D printing might be possible, but would take a long time. Or perhaps you expect much production and disposal may still be centralized at least at the neighborhood level. Or maybe you expect that people will still have sentimental attachments to specific items they wish to store and retrieve. So, until all those issues are resolved for 3D printing, how can PU handle the embarrasment of material riches it has now and will soon have more of? And how can it make it *easy* to do the same as "The Freecycle Network" does -- give away items to people who want them instead of sending them to a landfill?

Material transportation and storage systems (like Amazon uses) could play a big role here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos ('86)
As could interactive computer information systems on material goods (like eBay pioneered).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meg_Whitman ('77)

How might these be used together?

Princeton University could put in place a system of kiosks around campus which had what looked like Star Trek matter replicators. These would all be connected underground to one or more warehouses. Whenever anyone needed anything on campus, they would go to a kiosk and flip through

Buy one from where?

The flea-market I was at last week had laptops going for $300, and desktops going for $150 ($200 with a monitor). The local Salvation Army and Goodwill stores regularly sell components and sometimes complete systems. Then there are resources like Craigs List or kijiji. There's even Freecycle if you're really strapped for cash.

And if you're considering making the obvious silly crack about looking online for a computer, please, do yourself a favor and think, first. Or, alternately, refer back to my previous comment.

Then there are the unbudgeted consequences when your old, out-of-warranty second hand laptop suffers from a hardware fault...

So go even cheaper, and budget for a replacement. The sites I linked to list several laptops in the $175 and under bracket.

My aunt bought two laptops for about $350, almost two years ago. That's $350 for both, not each, so you can imagine the specs on them. I offered to find her a good deal on something more modern, but she insisted she didn't need anything fancy. Almost two years later, both laptops are still running fine. Their batteries last about 25 minutes, but they're still adequate for her and her husband. She checks her e-mail, composes documents in word, creates power-point presentations, and even does web-site design for her own small business. Oh, and she also has a 6-figure income. Maybe that's why poor people can't find these computers - the rich people keep buying them up!

The DVD player I think was $75, but might have been as high as $100. The VCR was a gift I think, in about 1995, and it might have been $300 - it was "stereo"!

You do have a valid point that the current costs are no too unreasonable, but the comparison is not really between the BR and 4 lattes, but rather between a BR player and (a DVD player and 4 lattes). For us, it currently is not, and we don't even drink lattes. If we were gifted with a BR player (with component outputs) we could certainly use it in place of our current DVD player, but it wouldn't actually add anything to our current viewing ability with our crappy TV video and audio, and would necessitate us disposing of the old DVD player (I suppose http://www.freecycle.org/ would find it a home, but even that is a bit of work). So going to a BR player really only has the advantages of being prepared for our eventual TV upgrade. That TV upgrade is currently off in the future, when likely the BR player will be even cheaper and possibly more useful, so for today there is virtually no reason to upgrade for us (and I suspect may others for similar reasons).

Good method of making sure that things that can be used are given a chance to be used.

Here in the US, and the UK as well it appears, there is a network called Freecycle http://www.freecycle.org/ where people can offer up stuff they have but don't need so it doesn't end up in the landfill. You can ask, for an item, as well although those that only take and never offer are frowned upon.

Patti Hauseman stuck with her five-year-old Apple computer until it started making odd whirring noises and occasionally malfunctioning before she bought a new computer for Christmas — actually, a refurbished one.

How many people here could have easily fixed Patti Hauseman's old Mac? How many people here even need to consider the symptoms for more than two seconds in order to think of all the probable causes? Now think of all that waste. Now think of all those extremely grateful people you could help by volunteering your services. What if the computer breaks down, and mom and can't even afford to buy a used one? These are common problems with easy solutions.

Whirring noise and occasional malfunctioning. When the machine still worked, the hard drive might have been failing. A fan might have become clogged, and eventually seized. Many of us even like fixing these things (as long as we're not overwhelmed by relatives' requests). Of course, there's also teaching, installing OSS, donating hardware, and so on.

So, how to start? A few ideas:

• Idealist.org is an international posting board for volunteer and job opportunities.
• Freecycle is an international clearinghouse for people requesting and/or offering gratis goods and services.
• Volunteer networks like VolunteerMatch (USA), Volunteering Australia, Volunteering England, and so on make it very easy to match your skills and interests to active projects
• Local computer volunteer centers, such as InterConnection in Seattle, Washington
• Post a bulletin at your local grocery market. Many supermarkets and most community markets have notice boards for such things.

I started thinking about this a year ago when I was in a charity shop in Los Angeles. A man was buying his grandson a used computer, and the boy was so excited. The grandfather didn't know anything about computers, and the boy was just beginning to learn. This shop has an employee just for the computer section, but that's rare. The grandfather asked the shop assistant lots of questions while the enthusiastic grandson tried the demo PCs. The assistant helped them to find something they could afford, although many of the displays for sale had major defects, and some of the PCs were unnecessarily noisy. I still wonder what kind of computing experience that boy and his family have now.

A useful resource in this regard (and, yes, this works.)

http://www.freecycle.org/

(Although flash drives aren't so much disposed of as, well, "misplaced.")

I would add if the stuff is working or even if it is not you might want to put in on Freecycle before sending it off to the dump or to be recycled, as you never know when someone else may have need of it. I often get P3 era PCs donated to me by SMBs and with Puppy Linux on them make a great Internet/Homework PC for those that do not have any.

Puppy is low enough resource that even with a P3 400MHz and 128Mb of RAM Puppy flies, and you'd be surprised how many poor folks don't have a PC that could use one. I also refurb them for charities like small churches, as I have found Puppy plus the OO.o Dbase wizard makes it really easy for even the most nontechnical secretary to make little databases for keeping up with donations, donor lists, etc.

So before you start chunking what you consider junk, put it on Freecycle for a day or two. You'd be surprised how many old greybeards like me use those parts to Frankenstein boxes to give away.

Don't always have to ship them so far: http://www.freecycle.org/

Places with huge problems also tend to have legacies of intervention by foreign governments and foreign corporations. The Earth has no resource limitation problems in the long term:
"Earth's carrying capacity and Catton"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004123.html

But, with robots on the way, it's easy to see why many think life is cheap because masses of human labor are no longer needed for the earlier exploitation:
"Robot videos and P2P implications (was Re: A thirty year future...)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html

That is the deeper problem we need to address as a society, how to move past the irony of having all these tools of abundance but people using them to make artificial scarcity. We need to stop using military robots to enforce a culture of work on humans and instead make robots to do the work. We need to stop building nuclear missiles to fight over oil wells on Earth and instead use the same basic technologies to produce power or make accessible resources in space (I'm a renewable energy fan more than nuclear though). Here are some other ways to move past that irony:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://www.michaeljournal.org/lesson1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
http://www.freecycle.org/
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/free_matter_economy?page=0%2C1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_printing
http://www.mel.nist.gov/programs/slim.htm
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.thevenusproject.com/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C (Surviving America's Depression Epidemic)
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.honestfoodguide.org/
http://www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery

There are lots of solutions rather than kill off people or prevent them from being born when there is so much abundance for everyone these days through modern technology. You want to stop suffering? Break the link between a right-to-consume and being able to sell your labor on a market where automation and better design is removing good jobs every day, like people said would be a problem even back in 1964:
http://educationanddemocra

http://www.freecycle.org/

all my old tech gets given away.

if you want a bit of cash for it try craigslist

I am waiting for the ability to run it ala VirtualBox or Vmware Player/Workstation.

That's what I want to do, run Snow Leopard, SN in a VM. I want to setup my Mac I'm typing this on to dual boot SN and Ubuntu. Then I'll use VirtualBox or another VM program to run Ubuntu in a VM. I'd also like to run SN in a VM in Ubuntu, that way I could boot into either OS and still run the other one. In the VirtualBox forums I read it was possible to run OS X as a guess but when I last searched I didn't find out how to.

I don't have any use for my Mac mini other than checking some web design comparability with Safari under OSX

I'll be using my Mac for development. With my Mac I can program and test them in Linux, OS X, and Windows.

I don't like having yet another piece of hardware I don't even need sitting around.

I know what you mean. I have a WinME PC with hardware problems I'm thinking of putting into storage for now and I have two other PCs, one dualboot with NT4.0 and Redhat and the other's a Linux PC. That is I bought it new with Linux preinstalled. Both are under my desk now. The NT4 box being more than 10 years old, and having a DEC Alpha CPU, I'm not sure what to do. That is other than gut the case and rebuild. Now I plan on doing that with the Linux PC, it was a low powered PC anyway, I paid $250 for it versus more than $5000 for the NT4 box. I have other PCs renters in my apartment building left behind as well. For those I was thinking of listing them, and maybe my old ones, on Freecycle for anyone willing to come and pick them up.

Maybe you can do the same, list your hardware on Freecycle.

Falcon

You would be better off getting people to recycle old electronics than trying and let the rockets remain disposables,

I do, but the way you have it it's either or when it can be both.

because the mass of the computers and other electronics thrown out is probably a hundred times that of the rockets each year.

When I find computers, monitors, and other electronics left out for trash I collect and save it. Now if I have to pay to recycle them I'll end up with a big bill. I've thought of posting what I have on Freecycle so that those who can use things can pick them up. I'm just concerned about whether what I have still works though, and I don't have the equipment to run tests myself.

highly inefficient things like 1970's era solar cells (which cost more fuel to make than they ever put out in energy)

I don't know about the solar PVs from much of the 1970s but I found this, Can Solar Cells Ever Recapture the Energy Invested in their Manufacture?" which says the Energy Return on Energy Invested or EROEI is a few to several years. It cites one study from 1977 that concludes the payback period is 6.4 years. The longest estimate is approximately 86 months whereas the shortest is "0.9 to 1.6 years."

However none of these include the energy used in launches.

Chemical rockets are too expensive, really. You need something cheaper, and I think that anyone who knows anything agrees that space elevators, or some other transformative solution, is required to do it.

I don't know the costs of chemical rocket launches but I agree with the rest of this.

Falcon

Well, if you have that many old rigs lying around, I bet you have some monitors too, don't you? Well set one up with DSL or Puppy and let them try for themselves. I had that same problem but I set up the machine with Puppy and said "why don't you just drop by and try it? All it takes is a little bit of your time." and after they see how easy it is to work(just make sure the start button is in the lower left. Nothing scares a Windows user like having the button at the top Ubuntu style) they will usually jump on it. There is also freecycle and bulletin boards at the local grocery stores and coffee shops. I also point out to them they will never have a BSOD, never need to worry about viruses or malware, and all the programs are free.

You know, I'm shocked that you didn't say that you're working as a DIY PC repair guy. Most of the old gear heads I know make good money running a little shop out of their homes(plus we get good access to boxes and parts!) and it isn't like you have to have a degree or anything. I've been doing it since the days of Win3.1 and just got around to getting a degree in 2005. While you won't get rich at it, it is a good way to earn a little extra scratch and put some of those old boxes to use. I either sell them cheap, don't ask me why but folks seem to think cheap is better than free a lot of times, or put DSL or Puppy on them and when someone asks about it I'll tell them it is free to a good home. A good example is that Compaq SFF Deskpro. I ended up with a dozen of those, ranging from 500MHz to 733MHz. I kept a couple and turned them into DVRs(you can buy analog Capture cards from places like here which had some for $7) and the rest I gave away. I maxed out the 733MHz with 384MB, kept the XP that was installed and added Win98. Makes a great box for playing MOH and Mechwarriror 3.

Now as to the P4, let da feet enlighten you as to why they die. It is the fans. They NEVER put the correct fans in a P4. Never. The trick with the P4(and I have several going back to 2GHz still running, so I've gotten this part down) is to NEVER go half ass with the fans. You should ALWAYS go overboard with the cooling of a P4. The Netburst Arch is wicked fast but it is also one hot arch so you really need to crank up the cooling. In mine I have a copper 80mm(always use copper) CPU cooler with a 120mm pulling the hot air out of the back, along with a 80mm blasting cool air in from the front. Yes it can sometimes sound like a F14 taking off, but even under full load with my Geforce 7600 512MB OC cranking out the pretty in Bioshock it never gets above 115f, and anything under 100% load it sits at 105f. I know they say that the P4 can take temps in the 150 range, but that is BS. If you want a P4 to last as long as a P3(and I have customers that are still using the first gen P4s thanks to my cooling) then you REALLY need to go overboard with the cooling. And NEVER use those stock Intel CPU coolers unless we are talking last gen Celeron. They are just crap. Always pick up a copper bottomed CPU cooler from Newegg or Tigerdirect. The difference in temps is huge. Foll da feet's advice and that P4 will last just as long as one of those P2s you have in your barn.

Well I hope I have given you some ideas on where to find good homes for your older machines. Any bulletin boards near the poor side of town is a good place to start, along with freecycle. And if you decide to make you a little extra cash fixing boxes you can always use those machines as a parts stash. It lets you undercut the competition since you don't have to actually buy parts like they do. Plus it lets you build up good contacts for finding PCs good homes. I have a heat and air guy that does a lot of work in older/poorer neighborhoods and anything over 200MHz he can find a good home for. I just set them up as a dual boot with whatever Windows CAL they came with and Puppy Linux. That way even if they bone the Windows side they still have a working PC. You

http://www.freecycle.org/

Things that are "stolen" from M$ usually show up on torrent sites just before the launch of a beta. This being an actual object, it might show up on freecycle lists :-)

On that note I've got an IBM eServer 325 which I bought and will probably never use. I guess I could just donate it, since nobody seems to want to buy it.

Have you tried Freecycle?

Falcon

... why not give them to somebody else who can use them? Why not sell them on Craigslist or eBay or, if you're in a really giving mood, give them away on a local freecycle group? You could also donate them to some charitable cause that needs some computing power, then take the donation as a tax write-off... which it sounds like you might be needing down the road a bit.

uhm, whut? It's somewhat trivial to recycle PC equipment. Following your first port of call, there are a number of schemes that will take those PC's for you. For components that are entirely defunct, the local council will take them off your hands and safely recycle the materials for you.

Throwing IT junk in the trash is not the best solution....

Try http://www.freecycle.org/ for that, maybe. Haven't used it much myself; have simply heard of it

That sort of resource sharing was pretty useful in the "village" days. Very limited resources, if not enough people were willing to work together, everyone was in big trouble.

If someone could work out a way to reduce the impact of assholes/crooks, it may well be that lot more people might be willing to share (lend) their massive trucks or other resources.

Currently there seems to be some progress in the "giving" of resources no longer used with stuff like: Freecycle- http://www.freecycle.org/

Lending seems a bit trickier.

Check out your local FreeCycle group. All sorts of 'Good Stuff' there...

The Freecycle Network
Network to promote waste reduction and help save landscape from being taken over by landfills.

http://www.freecycle.org/

freecycle is an grassroots idea that has spread across the world where people post stuff they want to get rid of and other people ask for it and go pick it up.

http://www.freecycle.org/ is a web page finder to find a local freecycle group. The groups are actually yahoo groups. They are the best way to get rid of useful to someone junk without actually throwing it out. It is where you can get rid of stuff that is still usable and / or get stuff that other people are getting rid of.

I agree, a great place to get rid of stuff that you don't want, but someone else might is Free Cycle

Dissenting opinion: I've seen Goodwill trucks pull up to our local transfer station (where stuff is dumped on its way to the landfill) and disgorge a huge load of stuff they couldn't sell in their stores quickly enough for them. I'm not saying it was all, or even mostly, tech items, but I know for a fact that a LOT of what gets sent to Goodwill ends up in the landfill. (And this is in Seattle, where there's lots of environmental consciousness and hugely high dumping rates).

Really, you're far better off putting it on Freecycle, on the Free section of Craigslist, or a local computer reuse non-profit. All of those get your stuff it in the hands of people who want and need it.

Some areas also have a Freecycle group for pretty much the same purpose. Check freecycle.org to see if there's one around you to post on.

You can also check out Freecycle in many major cities.

I was going to suggest this very thing, try FreeCycle, in the past I had a small computer repair shop and would always offer a home for old junk, assemble decent, yet old, systems with that old junk, load Linux and give it away to area shelters to further pass em along to the (computer) needy in the area. Hopefully somebody found a job with one of those old junkers and is no longer needy.

Find your local Freecycle chapter.
People will take anything you give them.

See http://www.freecycle.org/

Kriston

There are some good ideas on this page: http://www.heartsandminds.org/links/computers.htm or there is always: http://www.freecycle.org/

Actually, the Vancouver job market is getting pretty simple these days. Sod the recruiters, pretty much all the jobs show up here.

http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/

Seriously.

One other address you may find useful: This can be helpful with getting your place furnished while you're waiting to actually have money.

http://www.freecycle.org/group/CA/British%20Columbia/Vancouver

And ... hmm, well, actually, that's pretty much all you really need to get along fine in Vancouver. See ya soon, mate.

I've had some success at placing older equipment on my local freecycle mailing list (wiping the disk first natch). That way, it doesn't end up in landfill (immediately) and someone who wants it has the hassle of collecting. Take a look at http://www.freecycle.org/ While you're at it, count how many unused mobile phones you have lying around...

It doesn't need to be "poor people" necessarily. Sanitising and http://www.freecycle.org/ are good starts. Granted, I presume the poster didn't get them from CL or FC...

http://www.freecycle.org/

Yup. You can often get Dish network dishes from Freecycle, and worse comes to worse, I've seen them at yard sales for as little as $5 or so. Throw DD-WRT on a pair of Linksys routers, get the dishes and then follow these or similar instructions and there you go. The whole deal will cost you under $200.

The real solution would bet to get people out of the "need a new car every 2 years or i wont look cool" mindset.

Why haven't you done this with your Linux computer?

http://www.freecycle.org/

Donate your stuff.

• FreeCycle
• Computer Recycling Center
• Alameda County Computer Resource Center
• Goodwill
• Salvation Army

Also, check out your city's or county's website. They may have local programs for recycling old hardware.

Oh, yeah, you could also donate all your stuff to me.... :)

Freecycle has already been mentioned elsewhere.

Good idea, but is it cost-effective if you only have a few items to sell? Can I be certain that I won't end up paying listing fees and failing to get rid of the equipment? Not to mention the hassle arranging shipping for bulky items. No doubt a million people will post this but a good solution which gets the equipment to people in the local area is Freecycle.

One great way is just to give it away to anyone who wants it. Try this link to Freecycle, where there's a list of groups for areas within the US and around the world.

http://www.freecycle.org/ is a website promoting this. Drill down to your local area and sign up for the Yahoo Group.

Checked out Freecycle lately? I managed to score a couple of old T-Mobile phones - a Samsung R225 and a Nokia 3390 - last year on this, and these phones are pretty simple: they only do SMS, and the Samsung has an LED that can change colors.

Regardless of how well Vista is selling, every new box purchased with Vista pre-installed means the potential for GNUsters and Penguinistas to pick up a box from their neighbor and install GNU Linux on it and give it so someone who has never tried Free Open Source Software. How cool would it be if we could match FOSS installs one-for-one with XP cast-off boxes. Look for gifting opportunities through Craigslist, Freecycle, and DIYparts.org. I'm sure that there are about 300 sites that I have forgotten there, but you get the picture.

When you want to find a new home for something -- whether it's a chair, a fax machine, piano, or an old door -- you simply send an e-mail offering it to members of the local Freecycle group.

Or, maybe you're looking to acquire something yourself. Simply respond to a member's offer, and you just might get it. After that, it's up to the giver to decide who receives the gift and to set up a pickup time for passing on the treasure.

I think it is an absolutely horrid thing of current American society that so many people always run after new stuff and never even bother to think about others when dumping old stuff.

>Maybe your KVM switch is an old one or there's something wrong with it (more likely maybe?).

I've seen PS2 KVM's really confuse the XFree mouse driver. When I used one, GPM with a "reconnect" setting helped, but complicated the XFree config.

I don't have enough data from a significant number of kvm switch users to know or say which experience, your's or mine, is more typical, other than I have had a bunch of people say they use one and you are the first one where I've heard of any problems. Maybe you won't have a problem with the KVM I'm using, it's an IOGear 2 port PS2 KVM switch from RadShack. And because the cables are builtin you don't need cables for each computer. The one thing I didn't like was that it's only 2 port not a four port switch, I have three PCs. Two of them are old, one is 6 or 7 years old and the other is 9. Because they are old I've been thinking about either making them donaterware and give them to some organization that can use them or let someone at Freecycle take them.