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Er... Sorry, that's $129 after the rebate. I think you can buy from fry's online at outpost.com (but why would you do that when you can go to the store and enjoy the pleasant holiday experience?)

The smoking remains of Outpost.com (the gerbil ad guys) are also in the process of being bought up by Fry's. The same thing will happen to your personal data if you ever bought anything from Outpost.

Outpost.com - what's left of the once proud e-tailer.

And here's a story by EcommerceTimes that says that some guy at Forrester says that the only reason Fry's wants Outpost is the customer list. I believe it, there's not much else worth anything left there.

1. 900 MHz
2. 15 inch TFT
3. Ethernet + Modem built-in
4. nVIDIA GeForce2Go (16 MB ...so you can't have everything... yet)
5. 20 gig HDD
6. DVD
7. 1394/i.Link/Firewire
8. $1999, or $1899 after rebate.

Well, I'm calling you on that. Here's an Outpost link that lists an iceBook (G3 500MHz / 256MB / 10GB / 4.9 lbs / 5 hrs battery) for $1795.00 (and no tax or shipping). Show me a comparable laptop at a comparable price, and then tell me how Apple has "priced itself out of the market"...

Heck, it's hard to find another 21"+ LCD at all. For example, Outpost has an NEC 20" that only gets 1280x1024 and costs $3279. Mysimon and cNet Shopper both list exactly one LCD larger than 18" ... care to guess?

Also, Slashdot previously discussed the Samsung 240T. It costs over twice as much, and came from the drool-flows-continuously dept. Apple's 15" is a bit over the average LCD price (about $500), and the 17" is dead on ($999), but the Cinema Display is an amazing deal (if you can afford it).

I'll admit, you might have me on cutsey UI, if you're just thinking about stock OS X. But with the option to run Linux and windows, and the likely flexibility of the OS X UI, I can have any UI I want.

Firewire. USB. PCMCIA. Up to 1 gig of ram. The only things I can't upgrade are the CPU and the video card... It's a damn sight better than Audrey, and a lot more portable than my desktop systems. With my 1.3" thick Cannon scanner, Tascam US-428 and a digital video camera, I can produce a [insert creative endeavor] anywhere that there's enough oxygen for me to run the devices.

I know, you were just joking... but even I'm overwhelmed by the versatility and usefulness of this gadget. It's the 200 lb. gorilla of swiss-army-knives-that-we-call-general-purpose-com puters in a one-inch-thin sack (to blend my metaphors).

I would definitely love to get an HDTV system, but right now I find the cost prohibatively high for the amount of broadcast service available in most areas. For example, a good sized high resolution television would set you back about US $3K, and a set top receiver would be about $1K.

What are the estimates for when those systems will be comparable in price to a nice 32" Sony Wega of today ($1.4K with free home delivery at Outpost)?

-the packet man

Hi,

I've found my home LAN to be relatively secure. I started with these two things:

One) Purchase a WatchGuard SOHO Firewall/Gateway device. Only $350 at Outpost.com (free overnight shipping!). This little beauty does DCHP and NATs your LAN as well. You can plug 5 machines directly into it, or extend it with a hub. There is also a VPN option if you want it. It is configurable via a web interface, and can basically upgrade itself from their website.

Two) Start running iptables on the 2.4 Linux boxes, and ipchains on the 2.2 boxes. Here is a version of the firewall.sh script that I run to configure iptables to keep the box reasonably safe, without going overboard.

I took an NT machine, used partition magic to move NT over and installed 6.2 without incident. Trivial. Both boot flawlessly. This was a scsi system too.

Wow, that sounds great. It's too bad that PartitionMagic costs $60! But I see that Caldera comes with Partition Magic for $29.95 on Outpost. Tempting!

-Waldo

I took an NT machine, used partition magic to move NT over and installed 6.2 without incident. Trivial. Both boot flawlessly. This was a scsi system too.

Wow, that sounds great. It's too bad that PartitionMagic costs $60! But I see that Caldera comes with Partition Magic for $29.95 on Outpost. Tempting!

-Waldo

If you are looking for CHEAP CD-R's, have I got a deal for you. Not me, but Outpost.com. A 50 pack 8x CD-R spindle for $12.95 w/ free overnight shipping. That's $0.24 per CD:

Kingston H (CD-R Media):

CD-R 8X 74min 650MB 50 Spindle Pack

8X 74MIN 650MB 50 Spindle Pack is the Best Choice of Storage Media.

In stock, ships by free overnight delivery

Outpost # 84352 $ 12.95

50 pack 8x CD-R spindle for $12.95 w/ free overnight shipping

--

Any reason you can't use something like this? I use something very similar for my DSL service at home. If you wanna open up a port such as http, ftp, ssh, etc. just configure the router to do port forwarding. Voila!

I want to upgrade a 3 year old tower that requires very non-standard RAM. Ordering direct from a vendor or manufacturer would cost about $200. Searches on meta-store engines didn't do much better. When I checked most auction sites and meta-auction engines, I got zero hits. The sellers just aren't there.

But at eBay, I find a half-dozen new listings of them every goddam week, selling around $130. All of the other sites put together can't touch eBay's volume of sellers.

So what would eBay have to gain from allowing meta engines to spider them? Nothing! They dominate the auction market. If you really want to find something at the lowest price, you have to include eBay in your search. And if you already have to go to eBay, why bother with the meta engines or the other smaller auction sites at all?

Back in September, Pine announced their MP3/CD player (link). It seemed pretty cool at the time. I thouht it was a Slashdot story, in fact, that brought this to my attention. They listed a pretty reasonable price, too, $280, and you can pre-order it at Outpost.com.

The Aviator cards from WebGear are very good. And fairly inexpensive as well. You can get a 2-station kit here. I use them at home and can take my laptop to a friends house and walk right into their network by bouncing dhcpcd. I get about 1.5Mbit inside my house too, which isn't bad considering my internet connection (also wireless) is only 256K.

Do you have any proof of this? Point out exactly where in the bill it says this, please.

Besides, I think that you (like many other people) don't really understand the tech behind digital signatures. Under PGP, for instance, the use of a digital signature (creation, etc.) goes roughly as follows:

1. Creating a hash of the document. A hash is a method of taking all the bytes of the document and creating a checksum of sorts. Change the document (even one byte) and you change the hash.
2. Encode the hash with your private key.
3. Send the document to the recipient.
4. They will then encode the signature with your public key. Public keys and private keys are designed so that if you encode something with both of them, you get the original document back, regardless of what order you do the double-encoding. Also, it is mathematically impossible to figure out the private key from the public key without brute forcing it. (This may change, and is the biggest risk.)
5. They then compute their own hash of the document and compare it with the encoded hash. If they are the same, it is a valid signature.

You do not know my private key. If you modify a document I have signed, you will not be able to re-sign it with my private key, and it will appear as an invalid signature.

Furthermore, if you hack into Outpost.com and steal the signature I used on my last order with them... SO WHAT? You have my signature. Big deal. You cannot use that signature to forge other documents so as to appear as if they have come from me. You can't even figure out what the order was from the signature (though the order and signature will probably be kept together). In short, my signature is useless to you.

NECX's Outlet Center has 400MHZ Digital Server 3300's still in stock. Ignore the fact that they are the "UK" model. It takes exactly 5 seconds to convert it to "US" -- i.e. flip the power supply input voltage to 110 instead of 220 and plug in any US type IBM power cord. The UK model keyboard is a little weird by US standards, but you can use whatever PS/2 keyboard you want.

Of course, it's sans disk and RAM :-( Adequate SCSI hard drives are not expensive (4G is more than enough.) RAM, being 3.3V ECC EDO DRAM DIMMs, is a small problem. I ordered mine from The Outpost.

Several online retailers have stock of the G4s including:
Outpost.com
MacMall.com
MacWarehou se.com
-- and there are others I'm sure . . .

Why use Appleworks? There are many other choices.

Also: Since many of the same companies that make PC educational software ALSO make it for the Mac, their same site-license terms will apply. Heck, you can even get cross-platform site-licenses from them in most instances.

Just can't find Mac edu software? Here's a few places to check:

Smart Kids Software

MacConnection (educational software section)

Outpost.com

MacZone (educational software section)

And don't get me started on the need to run Norton Utilities (or at least Disk First Aid) on a regular basis, as well as "rebuilding the desktop" and "zapping the PRAM".

Regular maintenance, just like PCs, or anything else. Though not quite as often as you seem to think.

School wants to get some DVD-based encyclopedias, out of luck there, unless you want to spend a small fortune on USB-based drives, but heck, it's a Mac, school outta be used to spending large amounts of money by now.

Just how much greasy-fingered-kid handling do you think DVDs can handle? Any self-respecting institution is going to have these things on the server, not being tossed about the lab.

--
Kyosuke, who wouldn't be AC if /. would e-mail the dang password.

So did Computec just commission this study so that they could justify continuing to produce the same old male-oriented action/adventure games? Why didn't they ask the casual/non-players why they don't play the games that are out there? Or focus on the non-white-male-well-educated-$$$-makin' demographic and see what suggestions those other folks could come up with?

I'll give you game manufacturers a few pointers, free of charge:

1. Make skins and characters that aren't a big hulking white (male) marine.
2. Educate those little boys out there who constantly say that girls can't play games. I try and teach them a lesson whenever possible, but maybe profiling some non-male-college-educated-etc. players might help show that these games aren't just for PFY's. All the press that Killcreek got a few years ago comes to mind.
3. Stop requiring the latest and greatest machines in order to play your silly game. Not everyone can upgrade that fast, or wants to.
4. Finally: stop giving all the female characters huge breasts and unrealistic Barbie-meets-Jessica Rabbit figures! Very unrealistic, and a turn-off (in more than one sense) for many potential players who might have otherwise purchased your game.

Granted, I might not make as much money as a lot of people out there, and don't spend my entire paycheck at Outpost.com but I almost certainly spend at least as much as those casual gamers, yet I know that the game companies will most certainly keep gearing their games to those 25 year old guys, and ignoring a huge potential market.

And since I know you're wondering: yes, I can rocket jump with the best of them. ; )

Posted by lnc:

MS is allowed, by law, to have a monopoly in a particular business. Companies with monopolies have to play be different rules because the anti-trust laws prohibit the use of one monopoly to create another. The crux of the governments case is that MS used its monopoly position in operating systems to create a monopoly position in Internet browsers. This behaviour is illegal if MS is found to have a monopoly in operating systems. Historically a company is considered to have a monopoly when they own more than 40% market share. Yes, that low, but it is the historical standard. MS meets this standard in spades. I've asked this question before. What if Dell, Compaq, Gateway and others start to ship Linux? How will that change things? Why would it change what consumers want? By the way, you can purchase a really nice Linux compatible system from eMachines for $399 at outpost.com. Here's a direct link