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I worked for 3M around the time Imation was spun off into it's own business unit, and we used to get loads of superdisk drives and disks cheaply. They were supposed to be the real replacement to floppy disk drives when CDR-drives were insanely expensive (and cd-rom drives were still pretty rare).

120MB disks that were the same size as a floppy disk, and a drive that was the same physical size as a floppy drive, AND could read conventional floppies? Should have been the death knell of the 100MB Zip drive and the conventional floppy, given it was available as either a parallel or internal-ide drive. Both the disks and drives were cheaper than the Zip drives.

For some reason it never hit critical mass, and Zip drives ruled the roost until CD-ROM drives became commonplace and CD-R became a realistically priced option for physical storage. And conventional floppy drives still just won't DIE! (Stock windows installs still need floppies for SATA drive installs - in 2006 FFS)

Creative Labs released the 3d Blaster in 1995, which required a VL-BUS slot (anyone even remember that?). Around the same time, Diamond released its own 3d card which I believe was PCI.

Here's a link I found from Google that mentions it.

Last paragraph RAM section: (Can't find a better link quickly, sorry.)

One more thing: RAM is a commodity, the price of which can fluctuate widely depending on market conditions. In the summer of 1993, a plant that manufactured plastic resin for encapsulating RAM chips (one of only a few in the world) was put out of com-mission by a fire. Within days, the price of RAM shot up from a low of (C)$45.00 per MB before the 'crisis' to more than (C)$100.00 per MB. The price soon subsided to around (C)$75.00 per MB and, over the past year, finally came back down to around (C)$50.00 per MB again. Now, some industry observers are warning of a new RAM shortage 'crisis' this fall and winter as users rush to add more system memory to run their Windows 95 upgrades. However, as of press time for this issue, RAM remained stable at about (C)$50.00 per MB in the Ottawa-and-area market.

Dave does good work. He has a weekly column at @monitor.ca That is full of good Linux information. The column can be reached directly at volXissY/lnxstuff.html

Dave does good work. He has a weekly column at @monitor.ca That is full of good Linux information. The column can be reached directly at volXissY/lnxstuff.html

So what else is new. People can come out and say this all they want, but until a Sun, IBM, or HP step up and state the fact of what Microsoft is doing it will be disregarded.

Or what we need is a non-UNIX competitor to show that Microsoft XP to ... umm .. wait .. I said non-UNIX competitor ... nevermind.

E-Bay is perhaps the example of the changes that the web is making in society. E-bay enables individuals to trade items with other individuals.

I can buy items that fit my hobby, Alan Cox can get the weird hardware he needs to debug Linux problems, This guy can find Quilts, someone else can find a dashboard for a 57 Pontiac. This is either a new form of capitalism, or the end of Capitalism as it has previously been practiced. Look up the Bagel Effect Power is slowly moving to the edges of the system away from the centre. Folks like the RIAA, and the MPAA are fighting the web precisly because their business plan is based on their living in the center and colecting rents. No center, no business.

E-bay is at the center - but is very careful to only provide the minimal anount of glue that is needed to hold the system together. (Other services like payments are options) Once I find an item and bid on it - if I win, I deal with the seller, and e-bay is no longer involved. (although I am encouraged to contribute to the trust ranking of the seller).

The web has changed everything, but it is such a subtle change that it is hard to pinpoint.

I hosted one a couple of years back, check it out:

Ottawa Citizen Coverage of some local parties
and

My party... Ottawa Quakefest