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With TiVo's release of the much anticipated Home Media Option (anticipated by me, anyway), I renewed my quest to find a way to integrate my computer's media files with my TV. TiVo's solution is not an option for me, because I don't have a Series2, and even if I did, the TiVo solution doesn't work with DirecTV units (for now, anyway). So I looked into something I saw a few months ago on ThinkGeek: QCast Tuner for PlayStation 2. QCast Tuner is software that plays audio, video, and image files from your computer to your network adapter-equipped PS2. There are two pieces to the software, the PS2 DVD and the computer software (on a separate CD), for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. I used the Mac OS X version, of course. There's a configuration utility to set up what you will share, and to what users/IP addresses. Then a separate program launches the server, which serves up the files and playlists. It's all written in Java, which means the UI stinks, but it seems to work well.

It can handle many media formats; to me, the most important are MPEG-1, MP3, and JPEG. But it also handles DivX, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, Ogg Vorbis, and PNG, and can be updated to handle other formats. But it doesn't handle the majority of my movie file archive, which are QuickTime, and that's a shame. And if you try to open a file it can't read (I changed some .mov files to .mpg, as it filters by name), it seems to hang.

I got the PS2 Network Adapter installed first, popped it onto the back of the machine, and ran the setup disk to configure it. Then I played a game of Madden 2003 online. I scored a touchdown on a tight end slant on the first play, then got one more play at the end of the half (a 30-yard reception to Troy Brown), and then didn't take another snap. Stupid 1-minute quarters. I lost 14-7.

Then I remembered I had this QCast Tuner thing, and I installed it on my PowerBook G3/500, where I keep my images, my MP3s, and my EyeTV recordings. It didn't take much to set it up, same as with the initial setup: I manually entered my IP address, router address, etc. and the IP address of the PowerBook G3. The software on the PowerBook updated and configured the PS2 software, and restarted it, and I was ready to go.

From the main screen you can elect to view pictures, or play music and video. I tried music first, where I had shared my iTunes directory, which has one directory per artist (except for compilations, which are in a separate directory). I have 293 directories in this directory, and there is no good way to skip to the bottom of the list; you can go one screen at a time, but that takes a little while. So I picked Ben Folds to start out with.

The user interface, apart from not handling long lists well, has several usability problems. To go up a directory, you select the ".." directory, which is something that Unix geeks know, but most PS2 users would expect to use the triangle button or something.

You cannot play songs from these lists, either; you need to add them to the playlist, then hit L1 to switch to the playlist, and then play from there. To get the ID3 tags to show up, you have to hit L1 again, and select that option (along with the shuffle and repeat options). And if you leave the playing screens (which makes the music stop, so you can't manage playlists while playing music) and come back, those options get reset.

You cannot get the time remaining of a song, and the UI doesn't show the full track name -- or track number -- if it is too large for the available space (it has trouble even with track "1/10", though "1/9" fits). And you can't scan forward or backward in a song or movie (which is often the case with streaming software), you can only pause, play, stop, and skip to another file.

To make it easier to find what you want to play, you can make playlists. Select the files you want to play in the interface, and save the playlist, which is stored on the server. I didn't want to do this for all my MP3s, but I had an easier solution: I wrote a small Perl script to create symlinks to my MP3 artist directories in other directories beginning with the first letter of the artist; and I share that directory of directories of symlinks instead. So instead of going down a list of 390 artists to get to Wesley Willis, I just select W, and he's right there.

My problem with EyeTV was greater: as noted in my review of EyeTV, the filenames bear no resemblance to the contents of the files, unlike the MP3s. But the solution I wrote for EyeTV was easily modified to serve me here, too. The playlists are just text files with the path (relative to the share point) on one line, and just the filename on the next line.

I thought I could change the filename line to be any arbitrary text (like "McLaughlin Group 2003.04.11") and have one playlist for all my EyeTV recordings, but that didn't have any effect; the display still showed the filename. So instead, I created multiple playlists, one for each program. So the playlist "EyeTV: McLaughlin Group" has paths for each McLaughlin Group recording I've got saved. It would have been nice to have an EyeTV playlist directory, instead of naming the playlists "EyeTV: ", but I could find no way to make nested playlists. If a playlist is not in the root playlist directory, it is not recognized as a playlist.

I can now watch the shows I used to have to watch on the computer, on the TV. It makes me feel kinda dirty, like it should have been on the TV all along. Oh well. And any changes to my music and TV recordings are regularly updated, as the two programs run via cron every half hour (and I can even begin watching a program that is currently recording).

QCast is bitten by the iTunes ID3 comment bug whereby data is stored with a frame header of "COM ", which is illegal. So QCast doesn't recognize any of the ID3 tag at all. I can't blame QCast for Apple's bug, especially since it bit my code too; this was the final straw that made me convert all my tags to ID3v2.2.0 (only v2.3.0 and v2.4.0 are affected). Maybe the QCast people can fix that problem when they add QuickTime support (he says hopefully).

The final issue I have is how to integrate it into my TV "experience." I don't want to have to turn on the PS2 and wait for it to boot every time I want to listen to music, so do I leave it on whenever I am around? And my system isn't set up to easily switch between PS2 and TiVo and DVD; my switch box has no remote, but does switch to a device that is turned on, which is nice for DVDs, but useless for when you leave the PS2 on all the time. I could plug the PS2 into the spare inputs on the VCR (which is on a separate input to the amplifier, and has its own button on the remote control), but that is kinda sloppy. And do I buy an IR remote control for the PS2? Is there an IR remote that can turn the PS2 off and on? These are problems mostly inherent in the design of using PS2 for multimedia, and there's not a lot I can do except to try to figure out ways to do things that work for me.

Basically, QCast Tuner is a nice idea, and it works well despite its UI and design flaws (some of which can be fixed on subsequent updates, I imagine), if you can fit it into your setup (or change your setup to suit it). I'm still undecided on using it long-term, but I am going to keep trying it out for awhile and see how it goes.

With TiVo's release of the much anticipated Home Media Option (anticipated by me, anyway), I renewed my quest to find a way to integrate my computer's media files with my TV. TiVo's solution is not an option for me, because I don't have a Series2, and even if I did, the TiVo solution doesn't work with DirecTV units (for now, anyway). So I looked into something I saw a few months ago on ThinkGeek: QCast Tuner for PlayStation 2. QCast Tuner is software that plays audio, video, and image files from your computer to your network adapter-equipped PS2. There are two pieces to the software, the PS2 DVD and the computer software (on a separate CD), for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. I used the Mac OS X version, of course. There's a configuration utility to set up what you will share, and to what users/IP addresses. Then a separate program launches the server, which serves up the files and playlists. It's all written in Java, which means the UI stinks, but it seems to work well.

It can handle many media formats; to me, the most important are MPEG-1, MP3, and JPEG. But it also handles DivX, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, Ogg Vorbis, and PNG, and can be updated to handle other formats. But it doesn't handle the majority of my movie file archive, which are QuickTime, and that's a shame. And if you try to open a file it can't read (I changed some .mov files to .mpg, as it filters by name), it seems to hang.

I got the PS2 Network Adapter installed first, popped it onto the back of the machine, and ran the setup disk to configure it. Then I played a game of Madden 2003 online. I scored a touchdown on a tight end slant on the first play, then got one more play at the end of the half (a 30-yard reception to Troy Brown), and then didn't take another snap. Stupid 1-minute quarters. I lost 14-7.

Then I remembered I had this QCast Tuner thing, and I installed it on my PowerBook G3/500, where I keep my images, my MP3s, and my EyeTV recordings. It didn't take much to set it up, same as with the initial setup: I manually entered my IP address, router address, etc. and the IP address of the PowerBook G3. The software on the PowerBook updated and configured the PS2 software, and restarted it, and I was ready to go.

From the main screen you can elect to view pictures, or play music and video. I tried music first, where I had shared my iTunes directory, which has one directory per artist (except for compilations, which are in a separate directory). I have 293 directories in this directory, and there is no good way to skip to the bottom of the list; you can go one screen at a time, but that takes a little while. So I picked Ben Folds to start out with.

The user interface, apart from not handling long lists well, has several usability problems. To go up a directory, you select the ".." directory, which is something that Unix geeks know, but most PS2 users would expect to use the triangle button or something.

You cannot play songs from these lists, either; you need to add them to the playlist, then hit L1 to switch to the playlist, and then play from there. To get the ID3 tags to show up, you have to hit L1 again, and select that option (along with the shuffle and repeat options). And if you leave the playing screens (which makes the music stop, so you can't manage playlists while playing music) and come back, those options get reset.

You cannot get the time remaining of a song, and the UI doesn't show the full track name -- or track number -- if it is too large for the available space (it has trouble even with track "1/10", though "1/9" fits). And you can't scan forward or backward in a song or movie (which is often the case with streaming software), you can only pause, play, stop, and skip to another file.

To make it easier to find what you want to play, you can make playlists. Select the files you want to play in the interface, and save the playlist, which is stored on the server. I didn't want to do this for all my MP3s, but I had an easier solution: I wrote a small Perl script to create symlinks to my MP3 artist directories in other directories beginning with the first letter of the artist; and I share that directory of directories of symlinks instead. So instead of going down a list of 390 artists to get to Wesley Willis, I just select W, and he's right there.

My problem with EyeTV was greater: as noted in my review of EyeTV, the filenames bear no resemblance to the contents of the files, unlike the MP3s. But the solution I wrote for EyeTV was easily modified to serve me here, too. The playlists are just text files with the path (relative to the share point) on one line, and just the filename on the next line.

I thought I could change the filename line to be any arbitrary text (like "McLaughlin Group 2003.04.11") and have one playlist for all my EyeTV recordings, but that didn't have any effect; the display still showed the filename. So instead, I created multiple playlists, one for each program. So the playlist "EyeTV: McLaughlin Group" has paths for each McLaughlin Group recording I've got saved. It would have been nice to have an EyeTV playlist directory, instead of naming the playlists "EyeTV: ", but I could find no way to make nested playlists. If a playlist is not in the root playlist directory, it is not recognized as a playlist.

I can now watch the shows I used to have to watch on the computer, on the TV. It makes me feel kinda dirty, like it should have been on the TV all along. Oh well. And any changes to my music and TV recordings are regularly updated, as the two programs run via cron every half hour (and I can even begin watching a program that is currently recording).

QCast is bitten by the iTunes ID3 comment bug whereby data is stored with a frame header of "COM ", which is illegal. So QCast doesn't recognize any of the ID3 tag at all. I can't blame QCast for Apple's bug, especially since it bit my code too; this was the final straw that made me convert all my tags to ID3v2.2.0 (only v2.3.0 and v2.4.0 are affected). Maybe the QCast people can fix that problem when they add QuickTime support (he says hopefully).

The final issue I have is how to integrate it into my TV "experience." I don't want to have to turn on the PS2 and wait for it to boot every time I want to listen to music, so do I leave it on whenever I am around? And my system isn't set up to easily switch between PS2 and TiVo and DVD; my switch box has no remote, but does switch to a device that is turned on, which is nice for DVDs, but useless for when you leave the PS2 on all the time. I could plug the PS2 into the spare inputs on the VCR (which is on a separate input to the amplifier, and has its own button on the remote control), but that is kinda sloppy. And do I buy an IR remote control for the PS2? Is there an IR remote that can turn the PS2 off and on? These are problems mostly inherent in the design of using PS2 for multimedia, and there's not a lot I can do except to try to figure out ways to do things that work for me.

Basically, QCast Tuner is a nice idea, and it works well despite its UI and design flaws (some of which can be fixed on subsequent updates, I imagine), if you can fit it into your setup (or change your setup to suit it). I'm still undecided on using it long-term, but I am going to keep trying it out for awhile and see how it goes.

luciusism writes "ThinkGeek.com is now selling the new George Foreman USB iGrill This grill is computer controlled, accesible over the internet, and is powered by USB. I couldn't wait till Christmas so I clicked on the "Add to Cart" button as soon as possible. I recommend you do the same before this gets sold out!"

luciusism writes "ThinkGeek.com is now selling the new George Foreman USB iGrill This grill is computer controlled, accesible over the internet, and is powered by USB. I couldn't wait till Christmas so I clicked on the "Add to Cart" button as soon as possible. I recommend you do the same before this gets sold out!"

krezel asks: "So I've been drooling over the Ambient Orb, a cool little gadget 'glowing ball' that you changes colors based the 'health' of things you specify. It can do stuff like fade from red to yellow to green as your stock portfolio improves. However, being a poor college student I can't afford its $200 price tag. I've found lots of sources for super bright multi-color LED's. Cast a couple of them in some translucent resin, hook them up to a power source, and you've got yourself a cheap glowing ball. But I've yet to find any good information on how to build hardware that will let me control relays for devices like this through my serial or parallel port. Basically I'm looking for a cheap way to build a board that will let me control 4-8 relays (for each color) over my serial port, and some info on how to write the software for it. This could be a very cool project, and I plan on making the plans available, and the code Open Source, when I'm done with it. Any ideas?"

Chromose asks: "Being a system administrator by day, and coder/artist/gamer by night, my hands and wrists get their fair share of exercise around the clock. I've had lumps on the back of my hands off and on for a couple years now and just recently discovered they are ganglion cysts. And although pain and stress has been minimum up to now, I worry of what continuing everyday keyboard and mouse stress will lead to. Introducing FingerWorks. I stumbled across their iGesture Pad on ThinkGeek the other day and started digging for reviews. What reviews I have found exclaim how remarkable the products work, but not many reviews could be found. It sounds like the answer to my search for relief, and it sounds too good to be true. So I'm asking, who out there has used these things and are they truly a revolution in the making?" Yes, ThinkGeek is part of the Sinister VA Software Kieretsu, but if you aren't worried about it, then neither am I.

Chromose asks: "Being a system administrator by day, and coder/artist/gamer by night, my hands and wrists get their fair share of exercise around the clock. I've had lumps on the back of my hands off and on for a couple years now and just recently discovered they are ganglion cysts. And although pain and stress has been minimum up to now, I worry of what continuing everyday keyboard and mouse stress will lead to. Introducing FingerWorks. I stumbled across their iGesture Pad on ThinkGeek the other day and started digging for reviews. What reviews I have found exclaim how remarkable the products work, but not many reviews could be found. It sounds like the answer to my search for relief, and it sounds too good to be true. So I'm asking, who out there has used these things and are they truly a revolution in the making?" Yes, ThinkGeek is part of the Sinister VA Software Kieretsu, but if you aren't worried about it, then neither am I.

Steve0987 writes "Scientific American has a list of suggested Christmas presents for the those technical people on your shopping list. There are a couple I might add to my letter to Santa." Um, I'd also like to add some wireless speakers, but the the coal from the Titanic seems a bit macabre.

RyuMaou asks: "I just started a job today and noticed I was the only guy wearing a golf shirt. Everyone else had long-sleeve button-downs on. So, I got home and went right to ThinkGeek to buy some Tux button-down collar shirts. But, horror of horrors, they were gone! Where can I get them, or others like them? I'd settle for the Geek.com propeller-head logo, but I'd really like Linux logo gear of all kinds. Anyone?"

airrage writes "RC cars are nothing new. But apparently, ZipZaps, now being sold at RadioShack, are pocket-sized, modifiable, and can be tricked out with body kits and other accessories. Even more impressive, "A 16,000-RPM performance motor is included with all starter kits". The story at extremetech here is." Kinda like the Thinkgeek cars. Yes, TG is part of OSDN - obligatory disclosure.

MartyJG writes "Freg Gallagher certainly has a talent for announcing things with a maximum of words - the summary of his latest rant on Megatokyo however, is that his webcomic is about to get a dead-tree hardcopy version produced by some nice people at Studio Ironcat. The first volume is going to be 120 pages, with additional off-line-only content. The announcement also includes a new webserver on order, and new merchandise soon to be available with the help of ThinkGeek. All the background on the announcement is in the current MT Piro rant and their very official-looking Press Release."

zpengo asks: "Anyone who has owned a game console for more than a month knows that sofas (or couches, or whatever you call them) are out of the question. The floor is truly the only place to go when you need serious gaming focus. But what's the best floor furniture to use? A pillow? A bean bag? The venerable Fat Guy Pillow? Or, if the ideal doesn't exist commercially, has anyone hacked together their own?"

PhaseBurn writes "In all my findings, I've yet to see things like Bawls or Jolt in a soda machine. Even bottled water is hard to come by... Working in a call center for an ISP, we don't have to worry too much about what's popular with the rest of the world, and so, I'm tasked with finding a vending machine replete for geeks. While Jolt can come out of any normal soda machine that supports plastic bottles, the glass Bawls bottles woultn't fare so well. Do they make a soda machine that would work for this? What's around your office... And what's popular among the geeks today, as I want it to appeal to the vast majority of our staff?" Why use a vending machine when a community cooler would work just as well. With that aside, what kind of beverages would you like to see more of in vending machines?

PhaseBurn writes "In all my findings, I've yet to see things like Bawls or Jolt in a soda machine. Even bottled water is hard to come by... Working in a call center for an ISP, we don't have to worry too much about what's popular with the rest of the world, and so, I'm tasked with finding a vending machine replete for geeks. While Jolt can come out of any normal soda machine that supports plastic bottles, the glass Bawls bottles woultn't fare so well. Do they make a soda machine that would work for this? What's around your office... And what's popular among the geeks today, as I want it to appeal to the vast majority of our staff?" Why use a vending machine when a community cooler would work just as well. With that aside, what kind of beverages would you like to see more of in vending machines?

PhaseBurn writes "In all my findings, I've yet to see things like Bawls or Jolt in a soda machine. Even bottled water is hard to come by... Working in a call center for an ISP, we don't have to worry too much about what's popular with the rest of the world, and so, I'm tasked with finding a vending machine replete for geeks. While Jolt can come out of any normal soda machine that supports plastic bottles, the glass Bawls bottles woultn't fare so well. Do they make a soda machine that would work for this? What's around your office... And what's popular among the geeks today, as I want it to appeal to the vast majority of our staff?" Why use a vending machine when a community cooler would work just as well. With that aside, what kind of beverages would you like to see more of in vending machines?

Phillip31337 asks: "I've been looking online for places to buy t-shirts related to computers and gaming. The only websites I have found so far are ThinkGeek , Game-Skins , and ErrorWear. Does anyone else in the Slashdot community know of any other sites that sell game and nerd/geek related t-shirts?" Just about every online comic has some form of merchandising going on these days, and if they sell T-shirts (most do), said shirts would fit nicely into this category. What other online vendors have unique shirts that would please your average (or the discriminating) Slashdot reader?

Chuck Chunder asks: "I've recently been looking at getting some wireless headphones of the RF rather than infra-red variety. After looking around for a bit it struck me that I don't actually want a whole new set of headphones. I already have a nice pair of headphones as well as earphones. What I really want is an RF transmitter and a small clip on receiver that I can plug my existing headphones/earphones into. The problem is, I can't find anyone selling what I am describing, even geeky places don't quite have what I'm looking for. Does anyone know/have experience of such a product?"

"I see several advantages to this:

• Adaptability: I can then use earphones/headphones as appropriate for the activity, or possibly use it as an RF link between hardware in different rooms
• Replacability: If I damage the headphones I only have to replace them, not the whole headphone/receiver unit; this bit will hopefully lead to...
• Lower costs

Has anyone seen something like this, before?"

In response to increased advertiser demand, we have decided that we will post one story a day paid for directly by our advertisers. These paid "Slashvertisements" will appear daily amidst the normal stories you read here. Our first Slashvertisement is for our sister site, ThinkGeek , stuff for smart masses. From Linus' Autobiography to 42" Plasma Screens and Caffeine Products Galore, ThinkGeek has everything you need, except love. But enough of their gift certificates could bribe your way to that too! And check out their current exciting specials!. Also at the request of our advertisers, anonymous posting has been disabled. If you are interested in reaching quality demographics using Slashvertisements for your company, or just have questions about the new ad policy, email Hemos.

In response to increased advertiser demand, we have decided that we will post one story a day paid for directly by our advertisers. These paid "Slashvertisements" will appear daily amidst the normal stories you read here. Our first Slashvertisement is for our sister site, ThinkGeek , stuff for smart masses. From Linus' Autobiography to 42" Plasma Screens and Caffeine Products Galore, ThinkGeek has everything you need, except love. But enough of their gift certificates could bribe your way to that too! And check out their current exciting specials!. Also at the request of our advertisers, anonymous posting has been disabled. If you are interested in reaching quality demographics using Slashvertisements for your company, or just have questions about the new ad policy, email Hemos.

In response to increased advertiser demand, we have decided that we will post one story a day paid for directly by our advertisers. These paid "Slashvertisements" will appear daily amidst the normal stories you read here. Our first Slashvertisement is for our sister site, ThinkGeek , stuff for smart masses. From Linus' Autobiography to 42" Plasma Screens and Caffeine Products Galore, ThinkGeek has everything you need, except love. But enough of their gift certificates could bribe your way to that too! And check out their current exciting specials!. Also at the request of our advertisers, anonymous posting has been disabled. If you are interested in reaching quality demographics using Slashvertisements for your company, or just have questions about the new ad policy, email Hemos.

In response to increased advertiser demand, we have decided that we will post one story a day paid for directly by our advertisers. These paid "Slashvertisements" will appear daily amidst the normal stories you read here. Our first Slashvertisement is for our sister site, ThinkGeek , stuff for smart masses. From Linus' Autobiography to 42" Plasma Screens and Caffeine Products Galore, ThinkGeek has everything you need, except love. But enough of their gift certificates could bribe your way to that too! And check out their current exciting specials!. Also at the request of our advertisers, anonymous posting has been disabled. If you are interested in reaching quality demographics using Slashvertisements for your company, or just have questions about the new ad policy, email Hemos.

In response to increased advertiser demand, we have decided that we will post one story a day paid for directly by our advertisers. These paid "Slashvertisements" will appear daily amidst the normal stories you read here. Our first Slashvertisement is for our sister site, ThinkGeek , stuff for smart masses. From Linus' Autobiography to 42" Plasma Screens and Caffeine Products Galore, ThinkGeek has everything you need, except love. But enough of their gift certificates could bribe your way to that too! And check out their current exciting specials!. Also at the request of our advertisers, anonymous posting has been disabled. If you are interested in reaching quality demographics using Slashvertisements for your company, or just have questions about the new ad policy, email Hemos.

Brett Profitt writes "No, it's not entirely like the clear pc case, and it's much, much cooler than a simple windowed case, but it would still look great with a hard drive window. This, my friends, is The Invisible Case ! " Truly a labor of love. This may be the nicest case I've ever seen. To bad you can't buy them like this! Check out the details (Transparent rubber feet, fans, and hard drive window). It absorbs envy beams from miles around.

MX pointed us to a story about a new buttonless mouse. It's visually quite unique, but they say it's not the ideal gaming device for you real-time-gaming folks. But hey, points for style. I've been using this optical cordless logitech (Blatant ThinkGeek linkage) on my desktop for awhile, although I'm not sure how well it'd work for gaming. When I play, I still use a MS Optical mouse. Whatever anyone thinks about their business practices and operating systems, they sure seem to always sell good mice.

the_radix asks: "I'm not a great coder, but I love computers and especially programming. Those professional programmers that I know often complain of their managers not understanding the coding process and having unrealistic expectations of programmers. As such, I am considering a new career path: management. Since middle management is all about balancing, I'm looking for pointers before I start looking for positions. What do you, as coders and programmers, want from your immediate manager? If there are any geeks out there in upper management, what do you want from your lower-level managers who keep the techs in line? I'm not asking for the basic 'stand-up-for-your-subordinates' advice, but rather requests from a coder's standpoint. Geeks have special needs, and accommodating those needs (and 'odd' behaviors) is a good idea all around, for both employee morale and department output." I think many of us would rather like one who listened or who would at least take advice from the technical staff to heart. Many times managers will not consult their coders when they make plans, they'll make the plans first and tell their coding staff later, and this causes all kinds of problems. Generally, a superior with less "pointy hair" is something we'd all appreciate, but I'm sure the rest of you can expand what I'm trying to say here, or even say it better than I can.

Baloo Ursidae writes "In the spirit of the case window kit and the clear PC case, there are people who have made hard drive windows, and apparently they're not alone." That ladies and gentlemen, takes balls.

TechnoLust asks: "Ok, we all know how popular case modding has become. Just visit Thinkgeek for proof. But what about laptops? I can't impress that hot geek-girl with my ultra-tricked-out PC if it is sitting at home. But pull out a modded laptop at the airport and she may delay her flight. So my question is this: What places have /.ers found to get modded laptop parts and options? I know we've covered building your own laptop here and here, but I'm not really concerned with building my own, just modding a "mass manufactured" laptop. Of course, this brings a new element into modding (i.e. you don't want to run your neons when on battery.) I am also interested in knowing what manufacturer's laptops you guys think would be easiest to mod. I've had very good luck out of Toshiba laptops. The perfect laptop for me would be a clear cased Toshiba with neons around the edges. I know it will be expensive, but it's something I use everyday, so I can justify treating myself."

As the search for the perfect computer desk continues, singularity adds in another chapter: "I just bought a desk for my home computer. The problem that I have is that I have a dual monitor set-up, and I would like to be able to add on another computer to the set-up (laptop with full docking station with additional monitor). Most desks I have found tend to be set up exclusively for single monitor set-ups. The other two limitations were size and budget. As the desk was going to have to go into my (already crowded) bedroom, I did not want it to take over. In addition, I did not want to put down a grand on a computer desk. That is currently worth more than my main computer!" What solutions for multi-monitor desks have you found?

"I looked into Anthro Desks and Biomorph Desks and decided that they were out of my price range. I finally settled on Ikea's Jerker workstation (no picture available online that I have seen). Some of the things I like about it is that the height is adjustable (granted you have to take the desk apart to change that) and that I can add shelves on the side capable of holding up a 17" monitor.

I have had it a couple of weeks and like it, but wondered what solutions other people found.

In addition, what solution have Slashdot readers come up with for the hundreds of cables that currently reside under and behind computer desks everywhere?

I was also reading the article about quiet PCs and saw the reference to APC UPS's. I have been looking at them, and found that Tripp Lite UPS's tend to be cheaper and work better with the Mac OS. What experiences do Slashdot people have with different UPS's?"

jspectre writes "HP announced their new de100c "digital entertainment center." Containing a 40g drive and a built in CDRW drive it will store "up to 750 CDs of music" or 9000 tracks. You can make your own playlists and burn them out to CDR/CDRW's. All of this for $999.99. No mention of any digital management controls on the device." I totally need a review model! I saw this thing at the last LinuxWorld and it looked good, but only really playing with it for a few weeks will let me know if it's better then the audiotron that I've been using in my home system.

Over the last few months, I've had a number of AskSlashdot questions about quiet computers, what hardware to get, and other items for assembling a mega-machine that won't knock the roof off. I've put the finishing touches on my own mega machine -- if you're looking at doing the same thing, or are just curious about the hardware involved, you can find out about what I built.

My first priority was the speed and scale of the machine. I knew that I wanted to build a machine that would be able to play games very well, and look nice, but since I didn't want to totally break the bank on doing it, I decided to go with some lower-cost components in part. So, without further ado:

• The Case: This was the easiest decision to make. Thinkgeek has by far the the cooler and easiest case around to get. I went with the precut window, and put in the window, as well as ordered the blue neon light to put inside of the machine. This case frickin' rocks. Thumbscrews for everything, the drive bays, motherboard array and everything else slides out intelligently - this is the first case I've ever had where I'm *happy* to be working on the internals of the machine. However, I did replace the fans.

• The Fans: Rather then use the stock fans, I ordered the Silencer Fan from PC Power and Cooling. Three of them to be exact -- and they are as quiet as the Stereophile comment implies. Very very quiet (20 Db), and does a great job of keeping the internals cool. The fans are the standard size for an ATX case, so swapping was a breeze.
• Power Supply: In keeping with the keep-it-quiet theme, I went with the Ultraquiet 400 ATX. It's got ample power, and is incredibly quiet. Very, very nicely done.
• The Processor: Being that I was trying to be at least somewhat budget conscious, I went with the AMD Athlon. I got the 1.2 Ghz variety, as the cost difference, at the time, between that and the 1.4 were considerable, for what I saw to be very little extra additional speed. It was also at this point that I made the choice to go with a single processor machine, rather then a dual. Since I was going to be a lot of gaming on here this machine, in addition to work, and the gaming would be in a Windows 98 environment (Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, The Sims) there was very little reason to go with a dual processor machine. So, with that in mind, I ordered my single Athlon 1.2 Ghz.

• Processor Heatsink/Fan: I replaced the stock processor heatsink, and went with the ultraquiet one from PC Power and Cooling -- replacing it was no problem, and while when the case is closed, the noise difference is inaudible; when the case is open, you can definitely hear the difference between the two fans. Plus, on average, the new fan keeps the processor an average of 4 degrees Celsius cooler - from 69 C to 65 C, when running full tilt - e.g. Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, and my little contribution to Team Slashdot, that's the temp. Running with just the OS is about 58 C. I just used the heat-sink compound that came along with the new fan to wipe down the CPU.
• The Motherboard: Originally, I was planning on going with the MSI-6380 motherboard. Tom's Hardware recommend it -- but what I quickly found out was that there was a nationwide shortage on those boards -- or at least that's what multiple vendors told me. Luckily, the folks at Teacco, who I had ended up ordering through recommend the Asus A7A266. This uses the ALi Magik 1 chipset, versus the Via KT266 Pro chipset, which the MSI board used. My assumption is that the Via chipset was in short supply. I still think the MSI was a better board, but sometimes you have to deal with shortfalls - and frankly, the Asus supported the 266 FSB, and the RAM that I wanted to use. Availability won -- and I've veen happy with the A7A266.
• The DDR RAM: Obviously, if speed is the goal, you want to get good, and a goodly amount, of RAM. Having talked the various RAM manufacturers over with ChrisD, I finally settled on the Corsair Micro CM73SD256R-2100. It had a 266 Mhz bus, and Corsair makes a good RAM chip.
• Hard Drive: My last machine had two hard drives, one SCSI and one IDE. Since the motherboard I had purchased had two ATA-100 boards onboard, I decided that rather then go through and purchase a SCSI controller, and get a SCSI drive, I would just get a ATA-100 IDE hard drive. Also based on past experiences, and knowing other people who had the same problem, I decided to go with a 5400 RPM drive, rather then 7200. Most of the 7200 RPM drives I've had, or others have had, regardless of manufacturer, or type of drive, have died after nine month or so. I also wanted to get a drive that was quiet, and reliable -- and I had been very happy with my last IBM drive, so I got the Deskstar 40GV. Heh -- good thing I didn't get the 75 GXP. With ATA 100, I'm getting around the same practical throughput as SCSI, without having an additional controller. Also, with the Deskstar, I can use my SilentDrive sleeves. More on that in a moment. But, with 40 gigs, I was making a choice not to have this be a MP3 box or anything. That's alright, because the other machine has a crapload of space, and can handle that role, easily.

• The Silent Drive: In sticking with my goal of trying to be as fast and quiet as possible, I picked up some Silent Drives from New England Digital Computer. The SilentDrive is made by Molex; it's pretty cheap, and really cuts down on hard drive noise -- and since I've used them in my other machine, I don't have much concern about them cutting the drive's life. Besides, the aim of this machine is not to be a server, but more of a gamebox, so I'm willing to live with a slight risk anyhow.
• CD-RW: Obviously, a machine is going to need some sort of CD/DVD format input device. I had already decided to forgo a floppy drive, because the motherboard will support booting from CD-ROM, and I wanted to see if it can be done. Yes, it can be done, easily. Moving files around is much easier with scp than with floppies anyway. *grin* I debated between the DVD or CD-RW, but decided to go with the latter, because I'm going to hold out for a while, and then purchase a DVD-RW for the machine. No sense in getting a DVD Drive and decoder board now, when the DVD-RW is only a few months away. I also wanted to be able to burn and rip CDs fairly fast, so I went with the Yamaha CRW2100EZ. It's a very nice, very fast drive, but has a major problem for the quiet machine: it's loud. When it's got a drive it's working on, this thing makes a huge ton of noise. So, my solution is that I don't have disks in there, and when I'm doing something with it, I just put up with the noise. Nonetheless, in the long run, this will be replaced with the DVD-RW, and thus, I'm not too concerned about it.
• Cabling: With all of these parts coming in, I had to start wiring it all up, right? The rounded EIDE cables were great. I've got two, and am happy as a clam.
• Video Card: Since this rig was being designed for gaming, my choice was pretty simple on this one -- the The GeForce 3. For all the hype out there about this card, this thing is totally worth it. I got the AGP version, of course, but one nice thing about the change in motherboards was that the Asus can handle AGP Pro, so when a good AGP Pro videocard comes out, I'll switch over, and eBay my old video card.
• Sound card: As above, with gaming in mind, as well ultimately hoping to do some home movie editing for burning to the yet-unpurchased DVD-RW drive, I went with the consumer top of the line sound card, the Creative Labs Soundblaster Platinum. This thing was a SOB to get installed, because you have to not only insert the normal sound card into the PCI slot, but also fit into the 5 & .25" drive slot the external control slot. It's pretty cool, because it comes along with a remote so that you can use the computer as a movie watching system, if you want. The front slot is also where you can a lot more inputs and outputs, versus the normal 4 inputs on the soundcard. It even has an optical in and optical out, so that you can do some PS2 gaming on the computer if you want. Very very impressive -- but getting the cable running from the external control slot to the sound card wasn't very fine, because: 1. I had a hard time getting the cables fitting together and 2. The flat grey ribbon cable ruined my esthetic of the black EDIE rounded cable. I know, an artistic argument, but dammit, this is my mega system.
• The Network Card: Nothing really exciting here -- I reused a Intel EEpro 100. Good network card; I don't use any of the remote management stuff, but it sends and receives packets. That's enough for me.
• The Mouse: CowboyNeal had been singing the praises of the Logitech Mouseman Wireless. system for a while, and I decided to take the leap. It's a remote system, but probably the first remote system that I've used that truly works. The latency between mouse and display is remarkably low, and that latency has been my major complaint of other remote keyboards/mice. I'm not sure that the mouse is appropriate for a FPS or other instant-reaction game which might expose problems at the finest levels, but it does just fine for games like BG2/The Sims. Slightly sluggish for Diablo II, but not lethally so. I recommend it, with the above reservation about FPS/faster paced games.
• Keyboard: This was one of two instances that I simply reused components from before. The keyboard that I'm using is the Microsoft Internet Keyboard. Yeah, yeah -- it's a M$ product. Whatever. The reality is that the keyboard has a good tactile feedback, comes with two built-in USB ports on the keyboard itself, supports PS/2 and USB for output, and is a full keyboard. Oh, I got it free through some promotion at CDW.
• Monitor: This is the second instance of reusing old components. In this case, I had purchased the Sony Trinitron G400 about eighteen months ago, for use on my first gaming machine. It's a great monitor -- 19", so it fits into almost any desk space, has a flat screen, and great color depth. It's been a very dependable monitor, and while other monitors have come out, I saw no reason to spend the several hundred dollars on getting a new monitor. So, I've decided to just stick with this. Maybe if flat screens or something get really cheap over the next year, I'll upgrade, but for right now, I see no compelling reason to do so.
• UPS System: We wouldn't want to be crashing in the midst of our gaming or working, now would we? I actually set up two UPS systems -- the system is on a APC BackOffice UPS, and the monitor is on a USB. I've used the BackOffice UPS's output to plug into COM2 on the system. Powerchute is APC's software hook-in. I've got the Windows version that came along with the software, and am also playing with getting the Linux version working, although it seems to be compiled against RH -- at least the version I have is.

The machine came together fairly well -- by reusing a couple components, I was able to keep the price under $2000 -- and the same system should be even cheaper now, since RAM is so cheap that we should throw away hard drives and just have RAM *grin*. Of course, then you'd better hope your UPS system works.

The point of this machine was really to create a platform for gaming and it serves that "need" admirably -- it's been a pleasure to play games on. With the prices on CPUs continuing to drop, I'll probably upgrade this to a 1.4 Athlon in the next six months, and throw in another half gig of RAM, but for the time being, I've happily created a nice, fast -- and quiet machine. Really, this thing is incredibly quiet: I don't have my decibel measuring device anymore, but my old Vaio laptop's fan is louder then this machine. Louder, and with 1/4 the computing power, and 1/4 the RAM. I consider this an improvement.

Over the last few months, I've had a number of AskSlashdot questions about quiet computers, what hardware to get, and other items for assembling a mega-machine that won't knock the roof off. I've put the finishing touches on my own mega machine -- if you're looking at doing the same thing, or are just curious about the hardware involved, you can find out about what I built.

My first priority was the speed and scale of the machine. I knew that I wanted to build a machine that would be able to play games very well, and look nice, but since I didn't want to totally break the bank on doing it, I decided to go with some lower-cost components in part. So, without further ado:

• The Case: This was the easiest decision to make. Thinkgeek has by far the the cooler and easiest case around to get. I went with the precut window, and put in the window, as well as ordered the blue neon light to put inside of the machine. This case frickin' rocks. Thumbscrews for everything, the drive bays, motherboard array and everything else slides out intelligently - this is the first case I've ever had where I'm *happy* to be working on the internals of the machine. However, I did replace the fans.

• The Fans: Rather then use the stock fans, I ordered the Silencer Fan from PC Power and Cooling. Three of them to be exact -- and they are as quiet as the Stereophile comment implies. Very very quiet (20 Db), and does a great job of keeping the internals cool. The fans are the standard size for an ATX case, so swapping was a breeze.
• Power Supply: In keeping with the keep-it-quiet theme, I went with the Ultraquiet 400 ATX. It's got ample power, and is incredibly quiet. Very, very nicely done.
• The Processor: Being that I was trying to be at least somewhat budget conscious, I went with the AMD Athlon. I got the 1.2 Ghz variety, as the cost difference, at the time, between that and the 1.4 were considerable, for what I saw to be very little extra additional speed. It was also at this point that I made the choice to go with a single processor machine, rather then a dual. Since I was going to be a lot of gaming on here this machine, in addition to work, and the gaming would be in a Windows 98 environment (Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, The Sims) there was very little reason to go with a dual processor machine. So, with that in mind, I ordered my single Athlon 1.2 Ghz.

• Processor Heatsink/Fan: I replaced the stock processor heatsink, and went with the ultraquiet one from PC Power and Cooling -- replacing it was no problem, and while when the case is closed, the noise difference is inaudible; when the case is open, you can definitely hear the difference between the two fans. Plus, on average, the new fan keeps the processor an average of 4 degrees Celsius cooler - from 69 C to 65 C, when running full tilt - e.g. Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, and my little contribution to Team Slashdot, that's the temp. Running with just the OS is about 58 C. I just used the heat-sink compound that came along with the new fan to wipe down the CPU.
• The Motherboard: Originally, I was planning on going with the MSI-6380 motherboard. Tom's Hardware recommend it -- but what I quickly found out was that there was a nationwide shortage on those boards -- or at least that's what multiple vendors told me. Luckily, the folks at Teacco, who I had ended up ordering through recommend the Asus A7A266. This uses the ALi Magik 1 chipset, versus the Via KT266 Pro chipset, which the MSI board used. My assumption is that the Via chipset was in short supply. I still think the MSI was a better board, but sometimes you have to deal with shortfalls - and frankly, the Asus supported the 266 FSB, and the RAM that I wanted to use. Availability won -- and I've veen happy with the A7A266.
• The DDR RAM: Obviously, if speed is the goal, you want to get good, and a goodly amount, of RAM. Having talked the various RAM manufacturers over with ChrisD, I finally settled on the Corsair Micro CM73SD256R-2100. It had a 266 Mhz bus, and Corsair makes a good RAM chip.
• Hard Drive: My last machine had two hard drives, one SCSI and one IDE. Since the motherboard I had purchased had two ATA-100 boards onboard, I decided that rather then go through and purchase a SCSI controller, and get a SCSI drive, I would just get a ATA-100 IDE hard drive. Also based on past experiences, and knowing other people who had the same problem, I decided to go with a 5400 RPM drive, rather then 7200. Most of the 7200 RPM drives I've had, or others have had, regardless of manufacturer, or type of drive, have died after nine month or so. I also wanted to get a drive that was quiet, and reliable -- and I had been very happy with my last IBM drive, so I got the Deskstar 40GV. Heh -- good thing I didn't get the 75 GXP. With ATA 100, I'm getting around the same practical throughput as SCSI, without having an additional controller. Also, with the Deskstar, I can use my SilentDrive sleeves. More on that in a moment. But, with 40 gigs, I was making a choice not to have this be a MP3 box or anything. That's alright, because the other machine has a crapload of space, and can handle that role, easily.

• The Silent Drive: In sticking with my goal of trying to be as fast and quiet as possible, I picked up some Silent Drives from New England Digital Computer. The SilentDrive is made by Molex; it's pretty cheap, and really cuts down on hard drive noise -- and since I've used them in my other machine, I don't have much concern about them cutting the drive's life. Besides, the aim of this machine is not to be a server, but more of a gamebox, so I'm willing to live with a slight risk anyhow.
• CD-RW: Obviously, a machine is going to need some sort of CD/DVD format input device. I had already decided to forgo a floppy drive, because the motherboard will support booting from CD-ROM, and I wanted to see if it can be done. Yes, it can be done, easily. Moving files around is much easier with scp than with floppies anyway. *grin* I debated between the DVD or CD-RW, but decided to go with the latter, because I'm going to hold out for a while, and then purchase a DVD-RW for the machine. No sense in getting a DVD Drive and decoder board now, when the DVD-RW is only a few months away. I also wanted to be able to burn and rip CDs fairly fast, so I went with the Yamaha CRW2100EZ. It's a very nice, very fast drive, but has a major problem for the quiet machine: it's loud. When it's got a drive it's working on, this thing makes a huge ton of noise. So, my solution is that I don't have disks in there, and when I'm doing something with it, I just put up with the noise. Nonetheless, in the long run, this will be replaced with the DVD-RW, and thus, I'm not too concerned about it.
• Cabling: With all of these parts coming in, I had to start wiring it all up, right? The rounded EIDE cables were great. I've got two, and am happy as a clam.
• Video Card: Since this rig was being designed for gaming, my choice was pretty simple on this one -- the The GeForce 3. For all the hype out there about this card, this thing is totally worth it. I got the AGP version, of course, but one nice thing about the change in motherboards was that the Asus can handle AGP Pro, so when a good AGP Pro videocard comes out, I'll switch over, and eBay my old video card.
• Sound card: As above, with gaming in mind, as well ultimately hoping to do some home movie editing for burning to the yet-unpurchased DVD-RW drive, I went with the consumer top of the line sound card, the Creative Labs Soundblaster Platinum. This thing was a SOB to get installed, because you have to not only insert the normal sound card into the PCI slot, but also fit into the 5 & .25" drive slot the external control slot. It's pretty cool, because it comes along with a remote so that you can use the computer as a movie watching system, if you want. The front slot is also where you can a lot more inputs and outputs, versus the normal 4 inputs on the soundcard. It even has an optical in and optical out, so that you can do some PS2 gaming on the computer if you want. Very very impressive -- but getting the cable running from the external control slot to the sound card wasn't very fine, because: 1. I had a hard time getting the cables fitting together and 2. The flat grey ribbon cable ruined my esthetic of the black EDIE rounded cable. I know, an artistic argument, but dammit, this is my mega system.
• The Network Card: Nothing really exciting here -- I reused a Intel EEpro 100. Good network card; I don't use any of the remote management stuff, but it sends and receives packets. That's enough for me.
• The Mouse: CowboyNeal had been singing the praises of the Logitech Mouseman Wireless. system for a while, and I decided to take the leap. It's a remote system, but probably the first remote system that I've used that truly works. The latency between mouse and display is remarkably low, and that latency has been my major complaint of other remote keyboards/mice. I'm not sure that the mouse is appropriate for a FPS or other instant-reaction game which might expose problems at the finest levels, but it does just fine for games like BG2/The Sims. Slightly sluggish for Diablo II, but not lethally so. I recommend it, with the above reservation about FPS/faster paced games.
• Keyboard: This was one of two instances that I simply reused components from before. The keyboard that I'm using is the Microsoft Internet Keyboard. Yeah, yeah -- it's a M$ product. Whatever. The reality is that the keyboard has a good tactile feedback, comes with two built-in USB ports on the keyboard itself, supports PS/2 and USB for output, and is a full keyboard. Oh, I got it free through some promotion at CDW.
• Monitor: This is the second instance of reusing old components. In this case, I had purchased the Sony Trinitron G400 about eighteen months ago, for use on my first gaming machine. It's a great monitor -- 19", so it fits into almost any desk space, has a flat screen, and great color depth. It's been a very dependable monitor, and while other monitors have come out, I saw no reason to spend the several hundred dollars on getting a new monitor. So, I've decided to just stick with this. Maybe if flat screens or something get really cheap over the next year, I'll upgrade, but for right now, I see no compelling reason to do so.
• UPS System: We wouldn't want to be crashing in the midst of our gaming or working, now would we? I actually set up two UPS systems -- the system is on a APC BackOffice UPS, and the monitor is on a USB. I've used the BackOffice UPS's output to plug into COM2 on the system. Powerchute is APC's software hook-in. I've got the Windows version that came along with the software, and am also playing with getting the Linux version working, although it seems to be compiled against RH -- at least the version I have is.

The machine came together fairly well -- by reusing a couple components, I was able to keep the price under $2000 -- and the same system should be even cheaper now, since RAM is so cheap that we should throw away hard drives and just have RAM *grin*. Of course, then you'd better hope your UPS system works.

The point of this machine was really to create a platform for gaming and it serves that "need" admirably -- it's been a pleasure to play games on. With the prices on CPUs continuing to drop, I'll probably upgrade this to a 1.4 Athlon in the next six months, and throw in another half gig of RAM, but for the time being, I've happily created a nice, fast -- and quiet machine. Really, this thing is incredibly quiet: I don't have my decibel measuring device anymore, but my old Vaio laptop's fan is louder then this machine. Louder, and with 1/4 the computing power, and 1/4 the RAM. I consider this an improvement.

Over the last few months, I've had a number of AskSlashdot questions about quiet computers, what hardware to get, and other items for assembling a mega-machine that won't knock the roof off. I've put the finishing touches on my own mega machine -- if you're looking at doing the same thing, or are just curious about the hardware involved, you can find out about what I built.

My first priority was the speed and scale of the machine. I knew that I wanted to build a machine that would be able to play games very well, and look nice, but since I didn't want to totally break the bank on doing it, I decided to go with some lower-cost components in part. So, without further ado:

• The Case: This was the easiest decision to make. Thinkgeek has by far the the cooler and easiest case around to get. I went with the precut window, and put in the window, as well as ordered the blue neon light to put inside of the machine. This case frickin' rocks. Thumbscrews for everything, the drive bays, motherboard array and everything else slides out intelligently - this is the first case I've ever had where I'm *happy* to be working on the internals of the machine. However, I did replace the fans.

• The Fans: Rather then use the stock fans, I ordered the Silencer Fan from PC Power and Cooling. Three of them to be exact -- and they are as quiet as the Stereophile comment implies. Very very quiet (20 Db), and does a great job of keeping the internals cool. The fans are the standard size for an ATX case, so swapping was a breeze.
• Power Supply: In keeping with the keep-it-quiet theme, I went with the Ultraquiet 400 ATX. It's got ample power, and is incredibly quiet. Very, very nicely done.
• The Processor: Being that I was trying to be at least somewhat budget conscious, I went with the AMD Athlon. I got the 1.2 Ghz variety, as the cost difference, at the time, between that and the 1.4 were considerable, for what I saw to be very little extra additional speed. It was also at this point that I made the choice to go with a single processor machine, rather then a dual. Since I was going to be a lot of gaming on here this machine, in addition to work, and the gaming would be in a Windows 98 environment (Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, The Sims) there was very little reason to go with a dual processor machine. So, with that in mind, I ordered my single Athlon 1.2 Ghz.

• Processor Heatsink/Fan: I replaced the stock processor heatsink, and went with the ultraquiet one from PC Power and Cooling -- replacing it was no problem, and while when the case is closed, the noise difference is inaudible; when the case is open, you can definitely hear the difference between the two fans. Plus, on average, the new fan keeps the processor an average of 4 degrees Celsius cooler - from 69 C to 65 C, when running full tilt - e.g. Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, and my little contribution to Team Slashdot, that's the temp. Running with just the OS is about 58 C. I just used the heat-sink compound that came along with the new fan to wipe down the CPU.
• The Motherboard: Originally, I was planning on going with the MSI-6380 motherboard. Tom's Hardware recommend it -- but what I quickly found out was that there was a nationwide shortage on those boards -- or at least that's what multiple vendors told me. Luckily, the folks at Teacco, who I had ended up ordering through recommend the Asus A7A266. This uses the ALi Magik 1 chipset, versus the Via KT266 Pro chipset, which the MSI board used. My assumption is that the Via chipset was in short supply. I still think the MSI was a better board, but sometimes you have to deal with shortfalls - and frankly, the Asus supported the 266 FSB, and the RAM that I wanted to use. Availability won -- and I've veen happy with the A7A266.
• The DDR RAM: Obviously, if speed is the goal, you want to get good, and a goodly amount, of RAM. Having talked the various RAM manufacturers over with ChrisD, I finally settled on the Corsair Micro CM73SD256R-2100. It had a 266 Mhz bus, and Corsair makes a good RAM chip.
• Hard Drive: My last machine had two hard drives, one SCSI and one IDE. Since the motherboard I had purchased had two ATA-100 boards onboard, I decided that rather then go through and purchase a SCSI controller, and get a SCSI drive, I would just get a ATA-100 IDE hard drive. Also based on past experiences, and knowing other people who had the same problem, I decided to go with a 5400 RPM drive, rather then 7200. Most of the 7200 RPM drives I've had, or others have had, regardless of manufacturer, or type of drive, have died after nine month or so. I also wanted to get a drive that was quiet, and reliable -- and I had been very happy with my last IBM drive, so I got the Deskstar 40GV. Heh -- good thing I didn't get the 75 GXP. With ATA 100, I'm getting around the same practical throughput as SCSI, without having an additional controller. Also, with the Deskstar, I can use my SilentDrive sleeves. More on that in a moment. But, with 40 gigs, I was making a choice not to have this be a MP3 box or anything. That's alright, because the other machine has a crapload of space, and can handle that role, easily.

• The Silent Drive: In sticking with my goal of trying to be as fast and quiet as possible, I picked up some Silent Drives from New England Digital Computer. The SilentDrive is made by Molex; it's pretty cheap, and really cuts down on hard drive noise -- and since I've used them in my other machine, I don't have much concern about them cutting the drive's life. Besides, the aim of this machine is not to be a server, but more of a gamebox, so I'm willing to live with a slight risk anyhow.
• CD-RW: Obviously, a machine is going to need some sort of CD/DVD format input device. I had already decided to forgo a floppy drive, because the motherboard will support booting from CD-ROM, and I wanted to see if it can be done. Yes, it can be done, easily. Moving files around is much easier with scp than with floppies anyway. *grin* I debated between the DVD or CD-RW, but decided to go with the latter, because I'm going to hold out for a while, and then purchase a DVD-RW for the machine. No sense in getting a DVD Drive and decoder board now, when the DVD-RW is only a few months away. I also wanted to be able to burn and rip CDs fairly fast, so I went with the Yamaha CRW2100EZ. It's a very nice, very fast drive, but has a major problem for the quiet machine: it's loud. When it's got a drive it's working on, this thing makes a huge ton of noise. So, my solution is that I don't have disks in there, and when I'm doing something with it, I just put up with the noise. Nonetheless, in the long run, this will be replaced with the DVD-RW, and thus, I'm not too concerned about it.
• Cabling: With all of these parts coming in, I had to start wiring it all up, right? The rounded EIDE cables were great. I've got two, and am happy as a clam.
• Video Card: Since this rig was being designed for gaming, my choice was pretty simple on this one -- the The GeForce 3. For all the hype out there about this card, this thing is totally worth it. I got the AGP version, of course, but one nice thing about the change in motherboards was that the Asus can handle AGP Pro, so when a good AGP Pro videocard comes out, I'll switch over, and eBay my old video card.
• Sound card: As above, with gaming in mind, as well ultimately hoping to do some home movie editing for burning to the yet-unpurchased DVD-RW drive, I went with the consumer top of the line sound card, the Creative Labs Soundblaster Platinum. This thing was a SOB to get installed, because you have to not only insert the normal sound card into the PCI slot, but also fit into the 5 & .25" drive slot the external control slot. It's pretty cool, because it comes along with a remote so that you can use the computer as a movie watching system, if you want. The front slot is also where you can a lot more inputs and outputs, versus the normal 4 inputs on the soundcard. It even has an optical in and optical out, so that you can do some PS2 gaming on the computer if you want. Very very impressive -- but getting the cable running from the external control slot to the sound card wasn't very fine, because: 1. I had a hard time getting the cables fitting together and 2. The flat grey ribbon cable ruined my esthetic of the black EDIE rounded cable. I know, an artistic argument, but dammit, this is my mega system.
• The Network Card: Nothing really exciting here -- I reused a Intel EEpro 100. Good network card; I don't use any of the remote management stuff, but it sends and receives packets. That's enough for me.
• The Mouse: CowboyNeal had been singing the praises of the Logitech Mouseman Wireless. system for a while, and I decided to take the leap. It's a remote system, but probably the first remote system that I've used that truly works. The latency between mouse and display is remarkably low, and that latency has been my major complaint of other remote keyboards/mice. I'm not sure that the mouse is appropriate for a FPS or other instant-reaction game which might expose problems at the finest levels, but it does just fine for games like BG2/The Sims. Slightly sluggish for Diablo II, but not lethally so. I recommend it, with the above reservation about FPS/faster paced games.
• Keyboard: This was one of two instances that I simply reused components from before. The keyboard that I'm using is the Microsoft Internet Keyboard. Yeah, yeah -- it's a M$ product. Whatever. The reality is that the keyboard has a good tactile feedback, comes with two built-in USB ports on the keyboard itself, supports PS/2 and USB for output, and is a full keyboard. Oh, I got it free through some promotion at CDW.
• Monitor: This is the second instance of reusing old components. In this case, I had purchased the Sony Trinitron G400 about eighteen months ago, for use on my first gaming machine. It's a great monitor -- 19", so it fits into almost any desk space, has a flat screen, and great color depth. It's been a very dependable monitor, and while other monitors have come out, I saw no reason to spend the several hundred dollars on getting a new monitor. So, I've decided to just stick with this. Maybe if flat screens or something get really cheap over the next year, I'll upgrade, but for right now, I see no compelling reason to do so.
• UPS System: We wouldn't want to be crashing in the midst of our gaming or working, now would we? I actually set up two UPS systems -- the system is on a APC BackOffice UPS, and the monitor is on a USB. I've used the BackOffice UPS's output to plug into COM2 on the system. Powerchute is APC's software hook-in. I've got the Windows version that came along with the software, and am also playing with getting the Linux version working, although it seems to be compiled against RH -- at least the version I have is.

The machine came together fairly well -- by reusing a couple components, I was able to keep the price under $2000 -- and the same system should be even cheaper now, since RAM is so cheap that we should throw away hard drives and just have RAM *grin*. Of course, then you'd better hope your UPS system works.

The point of this machine was really to create a platform for gaming and it serves that "need" admirably -- it's been a pleasure to play games on. With the prices on CPUs continuing to drop, I'll probably upgrade this to a 1.4 Athlon in the next six months, and throw in another half gig of RAM, but for the time being, I've happily created a nice, fast -- and quiet machine. Really, this thing is incredibly quiet: I don't have my decibel measuring device anymore, but my old Vaio laptop's fan is louder then this machine. Louder, and with 1/4 the computing power, and 1/4 the RAM. I consider this an improvement.

Over the last few months, I've had a number of AskSlashdot questions about quiet computers, what hardware to get, and other items for assembling a mega-machine that won't knock the roof off. I've put the finishing touches on my own mega machine -- if you're looking at doing the same thing, or are just curious about the hardware involved, you can find out about what I built.

My first priority was the speed and scale of the machine. I knew that I wanted to build a machine that would be able to play games very well, and look nice, but since I didn't want to totally break the bank on doing it, I decided to go with some lower-cost components in part. So, without further ado:

• The Case: This was the easiest decision to make. Thinkgeek has by far the the cooler and easiest case around to get. I went with the precut window, and put in the window, as well as ordered the blue neon light to put inside of the machine. This case frickin' rocks. Thumbscrews for everything, the drive bays, motherboard array and everything else slides out intelligently - this is the first case I've ever had where I'm *happy* to be working on the internals of the machine. However, I did replace the fans.

• The Fans: Rather then use the stock fans, I ordered the Silencer Fan from PC Power and Cooling. Three of them to be exact -- and they are as quiet as the Stereophile comment implies. Very very quiet (20 Db), and does a great job of keeping the internals cool. The fans are the standard size for an ATX case, so swapping was a breeze.
• Power Supply: In keeping with the keep-it-quiet theme, I went with the Ultraquiet 400 ATX. It's got ample power, and is incredibly quiet. Very, very nicely done.
• The Processor: Being that I was trying to be at least somewhat budget conscious, I went with the AMD Athlon. I got the 1.2 Ghz variety, as the cost difference, at the time, between that and the 1.4 were considerable, for what I saw to be very little extra additional speed. It was also at this point that I made the choice to go with a single processor machine, rather then a dual. Since I was going to be a lot of gaming on here this machine, in addition to work, and the gaming would be in a Windows 98 environment (Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, The Sims) there was very little reason to go with a dual processor machine. So, with that in mind, I ordered my single Athlon 1.2 Ghz.

• Processor Heatsink/Fan: I replaced the stock processor heatsink, and went with the ultraquiet one from PC Power and Cooling -- replacing it was no problem, and while when the case is closed, the noise difference is inaudible; when the case is open, you can definitely hear the difference between the two fans. Plus, on average, the new fan keeps the processor an average of 4 degrees Celsius cooler - from 69 C to 65 C, when running full tilt - e.g. Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, and my little contribution to Team Slashdot, that's the temp. Running with just the OS is about 58 C. I just used the heat-sink compound that came along with the new fan to wipe down the CPU.
• The Motherboard: Originally, I was planning on going with the MSI-6380 motherboard. Tom's Hardware recommend it -- but what I quickly found out was that there was a nationwide shortage on those boards -- or at least that's what multiple vendors told me. Luckily, the folks at Teacco, who I had ended up ordering through recommend the Asus A7A266. This uses the ALi Magik 1 chipset, versus the Via KT266 Pro chipset, which the MSI board used. My assumption is that the Via chipset was in short supply. I still think the MSI was a better board, but sometimes you have to deal with shortfalls - and frankly, the Asus supported the 266 FSB, and the RAM that I wanted to use. Availability won -- and I've veen happy with the A7A266.
• The DDR RAM: Obviously, if speed is the goal, you want to get good, and a goodly amount, of RAM. Having talked the various RAM manufacturers over with ChrisD, I finally settled on the Corsair Micro CM73SD256R-2100. It had a 266 Mhz bus, and Corsair makes a good RAM chip.
• Hard Drive: My last machine had two hard drives, one SCSI and one IDE. Since the motherboard I had purchased had two ATA-100 boards onboard, I decided that rather then go through and purchase a SCSI controller, and get a SCSI drive, I would just get a ATA-100 IDE hard drive. Also based on past experiences, and knowing other people who had the same problem, I decided to go with a 5400 RPM drive, rather then 7200. Most of the 7200 RPM drives I've had, or others have had, regardless of manufacturer, or type of drive, have died after nine month or so. I also wanted to get a drive that was quiet, and reliable -- and I had been very happy with my last IBM drive, so I got the Deskstar 40GV. Heh -- good thing I didn't get the 75 GXP. With ATA 100, I'm getting around the same practical throughput as SCSI, without having an additional controller. Also, with the Deskstar, I can use my SilentDrive sleeves. More on that in a moment. But, with 40 gigs, I was making a choice not to have this be a MP3 box or anything. That's alright, because the other machine has a crapload of space, and can handle that role, easily.

• The Silent Drive: In sticking with my goal of trying to be as fast and quiet as possible, I picked up some Silent Drives from New England Digital Computer. The SilentDrive is made by Molex; it's pretty cheap, and really cuts down on hard drive noise -- and since I've used them in my other machine, I don't have much concern about them cutting the drive's life. Besides, the aim of this machine is not to be a server, but more of a gamebox, so I'm willing to live with a slight risk anyhow.
• CD-RW: Obviously, a machine is going to need some sort of CD/DVD format input device. I had already decided to forgo a floppy drive, because the motherboard will support booting from CD-ROM, and I wanted to see if it can be done. Yes, it can be done, easily. Moving files around is much easier with scp than with floppies anyway. *grin* I debated between the DVD or CD-RW, but decided to go with the latter, because I'm going to hold out for a while, and then purchase a DVD-RW for the machine. No sense in getting a DVD Drive and decoder board now, when the DVD-RW is only a few months away. I also wanted to be able to burn and rip CDs fairly fast, so I went with the Yamaha CRW2100EZ. It's a very nice, very fast drive, but has a major problem for the quiet machine: it's loud. When it's got a drive it's working on, this thing makes a huge ton of noise. So, my solution is that I don't have disks in there, and when I'm doing something with it, I just put up with the noise. Nonetheless, in the long run, this will be replaced with the DVD-RW, and thus, I'm not too concerned about it.
• Cabling: With all of these parts coming in, I had to start wiring it all up, right? The rounded EIDE cables were great. I've got two, and am happy as a clam.
• Video Card: Since this rig was being designed for gaming, my choice was pretty simple on this one -- the The GeForce 3. For all the hype out there about this card, this thing is totally worth it. I got the AGP version, of course, but one nice thing about the change in motherboards was that the Asus can handle AGP Pro, so when a good AGP Pro videocard comes out, I'll switch over, and eBay my old video card.
• Sound card: As above, with gaming in mind, as well ultimately hoping to do some home movie editing for burning to the yet-unpurchased DVD-RW drive, I went with the consumer top of the line sound card, the Creative Labs Soundblaster Platinum. This thing was a SOB to get installed, because you have to not only insert the normal sound card into the PCI slot, but also fit into the 5 & .25" drive slot the external control slot. It's pretty cool, because it comes along with a remote so that you can use the computer as a movie watching system, if you want. The front slot is also where you can a lot more inputs and outputs, versus the normal 4 inputs on the soundcard. It even has an optical in and optical out, so that you can do some PS2 gaming on the computer if you want. Very very impressive -- but getting the cable running from the external control slot to the sound card wasn't very fine, because: 1. I had a hard time getting the cables fitting together and 2. The flat grey ribbon cable ruined my esthetic of the black EDIE rounded cable. I know, an artistic argument, but dammit, this is my mega system.
• The Network Card: Nothing really exciting here -- I reused a Intel EEpro 100. Good network card; I don't use any of the remote management stuff, but it sends and receives packets. That's enough for me.
• The Mouse: CowboyNeal had been singing the praises of the Logitech Mouseman Wireless. system for a while, and I decided to take the leap. It's a remote system, but probably the first remote system that I've used that truly works. The latency between mouse and display is remarkably low, and that latency has been my major complaint of other remote keyboards/mice. I'm not sure that the mouse is appropriate for a FPS or other instant-reaction game which might expose problems at the finest levels, but it does just fine for games like BG2/The Sims. Slightly sluggish for Diablo II, but not lethally so. I recommend it, with the above reservation about FPS/faster paced games.
• Keyboard: This was one of two instances that I simply reused components from before. The keyboard that I'm using is the Microsoft Internet Keyboard. Yeah, yeah -- it's a M$ product. Whatever. The reality is that the keyboard has a good tactile feedback, comes with two built-in USB ports on the keyboard itself, supports PS/2 and USB for output, and is a full keyboard. Oh, I got it free through some promotion at CDW.
• Monitor: This is the second instance of reusing old components. In this case, I had purchased the Sony Trinitron G400 about eighteen months ago, for use on my first gaming machine. It's a great monitor -- 19", so it fits into almost any desk space, has a flat screen, and great color depth. It's been a very dependable monitor, and while other monitors have come out, I saw no reason to spend the several hundred dollars on getting a new monitor. So, I've decided to just stick with this. Maybe if flat screens or something get really cheap over the next year, I'll upgrade, but for right now, I see no compelling reason to do so.
• UPS System: We wouldn't want to be crashing in the midst of our gaming or working, now would we? I actually set up two UPS systems -- the system is on a APC BackOffice UPS, and the monitor is on a USB. I've used the BackOffice UPS's output to plug into COM2 on the system. Powerchute is APC's software hook-in. I've got the Windows version that came along with the software, and am also playing with getting the Linux version working, although it seems to be compiled against RH -- at least the version I have is.

The machine came together fairly well -- by reusing a couple components, I was able to keep the price under $2000 -- and the same system should be even cheaper now, since RAM is so cheap that we should throw away hard drives and just have RAM *grin*. Of course, then you'd better hope your UPS system works.

The point of this machine was really to create a platform for gaming and it serves that "need" admirably -- it's been a pleasure to play games on. With the prices on CPUs continuing to drop, I'll probably upgrade this to a 1.4 Athlon in the next six months, and throw in another half gig of RAM, but for the time being, I've happily created a nice, fast -- and quiet machine. Really, this thing is incredibly quiet: I don't have my decibel measuring device anymore, but my old Vaio laptop's fan is louder then this machine. Louder, and with 1/4 the computing power, and 1/4 the RAM. I consider this an improvement.

Over the last few months, I've had a number of AskSlashdot questions about quiet computers, what hardware to get, and other items for assembling a mega-machine that won't knock the roof off. I've put the finishing touches on my own mega machine -- if you're looking at doing the same thing, or are just curious about the hardware involved, you can find out about what I built.

My first priority was the speed and scale of the machine. I knew that I wanted to build a machine that would be able to play games very well, and look nice, but since I didn't want to totally break the bank on doing it, I decided to go with some lower-cost components in part. So, without further ado:

• The Case: This was the easiest decision to make. Thinkgeek has by far the the cooler and easiest case around to get. I went with the precut window, and put in the window, as well as ordered the blue neon light to put inside of the machine. This case frickin' rocks. Thumbscrews for everything, the drive bays, motherboard array and everything else slides out intelligently - this is the first case I've ever had where I'm *happy* to be working on the internals of the machine. However, I did replace the fans.

• The Fans: Rather then use the stock fans, I ordered the Silencer Fan from PC Power and Cooling. Three of them to be exact -- and they are as quiet as the Stereophile comment implies. Very very quiet (20 Db), and does a great job of keeping the internals cool. The fans are the standard size for an ATX case, so swapping was a breeze.
• Power Supply: In keeping with the keep-it-quiet theme, I went with the Ultraquiet 400 ATX. It's got ample power, and is incredibly quiet. Very, very nicely done.
• The Processor: Being that I was trying to be at least somewhat budget conscious, I went with the AMD Athlon. I got the 1.2 Ghz variety, as the cost difference, at the time, between that and the 1.4 were considerable, for what I saw to be very little extra additional speed. It was also at this point that I made the choice to go with a single processor machine, rather then a dual. Since I was going to be a lot of gaming on here this machine, in addition to work, and the gaming would be in a Windows 98 environment (Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, The Sims) there was very little reason to go with a dual processor machine. So, with that in mind, I ordered my single Athlon 1.2 Ghz.

• Processor Heatsink/Fan: I replaced the stock processor heatsink, and went with the ultraquiet one from PC Power and Cooling -- replacing it was no problem, and while when the case is closed, the noise difference is inaudible; when the case is open, you can definitely hear the difference between the two fans. Plus, on average, the new fan keeps the processor an average of 4 degrees Celsius cooler - from 69 C to 65 C, when running full tilt - e.g. Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, and my little contribution to Team Slashdot, that's the temp. Running with just the OS is about 58 C. I just used the heat-sink compound that came along with the new fan to wipe down the CPU.
• The Motherboard: Originally, I was planning on going with the MSI-6380 motherboard. Tom's Hardware recommend it -- but what I quickly found out was that there was a nationwide shortage on those boards -- or at least that's what multiple vendors told me. Luckily, the folks at Teacco, who I had ended up ordering through recommend the Asus A7A266. This uses the ALi Magik 1 chipset, versus the Via KT266 Pro chipset, which the MSI board used. My assumption is that the Via chipset was in short supply. I still think the MSI was a better board, but sometimes you have to deal with shortfalls - and frankly, the Asus supported the 266 FSB, and the RAM that I wanted to use. Availability won -- and I've veen happy with the A7A266.
• The DDR RAM: Obviously, if speed is the goal, you want to get good, and a goodly amount, of RAM. Having talked the various RAM manufacturers over with ChrisD, I finally settled on the Corsair Micro CM73SD256R-2100. It had a 266 Mhz bus, and Corsair makes a good RAM chip.
• Hard Drive: My last machine had two hard drives, one SCSI and one IDE. Since the motherboard I had purchased had two ATA-100 boards onboard, I decided that rather then go through and purchase a SCSI controller, and get a SCSI drive, I would just get a ATA-100 IDE hard drive. Also based on past experiences, and knowing other people who had the same problem, I decided to go with a 5400 RPM drive, rather then 7200. Most of the 7200 RPM drives I've had, or others have had, regardless of manufacturer, or type of drive, have died after nine month or so. I also wanted to get a drive that was quiet, and reliable -- and I had been very happy with my last IBM drive, so I got the Deskstar 40GV. Heh -- good thing I didn't get the 75 GXP. With ATA 100, I'm getting around the same practical throughput as SCSI, without having an additional controller. Also, with the Deskstar, I can use my SilentDrive sleeves. More on that in a moment. But, with 40 gigs, I was making a choice not to have this be a MP3 box or anything. That's alright, because the other machine has a crapload of space, and can handle that role, easily.

• The Silent Drive: In sticking with my goal of trying to be as fast and quiet as possible, I picked up some Silent Drives from New England Digital Computer. The SilentDrive is made by Molex; it's pretty cheap, and really cuts down on hard drive noise -- and since I've used them in my other machine, I don't have much concern about them cutting the drive's life. Besides, the aim of this machine is not to be a server, but more of a gamebox, so I'm willing to live with a slight risk anyhow.
• CD-RW: Obviously, a machine is going to need some sort of CD/DVD format input device. I had already decided to forgo a floppy drive, because the motherboard will support booting from CD-ROM, and I wanted to see if it can be done. Yes, it can be done, easily. Moving files around is much easier with scp than with floppies anyway. *grin* I debated between the DVD or CD-RW, but decided to go with the latter, because I'm going to hold out for a while, and then purchase a DVD-RW for the machine. No sense in getting a DVD Drive and decoder board now, when the DVD-RW is only a few months away. I also wanted to be able to burn and rip CDs fairly fast, so I went with the Yamaha CRW2100EZ. It's a very nice, very fast drive, but has a major problem for the quiet machine: it's loud. When it's got a drive it's working on, this thing makes a huge ton of noise. So, my solution is that I don't have disks in there, and when I'm doing something with it, I just put up with the noise. Nonetheless, in the long run, this will be replaced with the DVD-RW, and thus, I'm not too concerned about it.
• Cabling: With all of these parts coming in, I had to start wiring it all up, right? The rounded EIDE cables were great. I've got two, and am happy as a clam.
• Video Card: Since this rig was being designed for gaming, my choice was pretty simple on this one -- the The GeForce 3. For all the hype out there about this card, this thing is totally worth it. I got the AGP version, of course, but one nice thing about the change in motherboards was that the Asus can handle AGP Pro, so when a good AGP Pro videocard comes out, I'll switch over, and eBay my old video card.
• Sound card: As above, with gaming in mind, as well ultimately hoping to do some home movie editing for burning to the yet-unpurchased DVD-RW drive, I went with the consumer top of the line sound card, the Creative Labs Soundblaster Platinum. This thing was a SOB to get installed, because you have to not only insert the normal sound card into the PCI slot, but also fit into the 5 & .25" drive slot the external control slot. It's pretty cool, because it comes along with a remote so that you can use the computer as a movie watching system, if you want. The front slot is also where you can a lot more inputs and outputs, versus the normal 4 inputs on the soundcard. It even has an optical in and optical out, so that you can do some PS2 gaming on the computer if you want. Very very impressive -- but getting the cable running from the external control slot to the sound card wasn't very fine, because: 1. I had a hard time getting the cables fitting together and 2. The flat grey ribbon cable ruined my esthetic of the black EDIE rounded cable. I know, an artistic argument, but dammit, this is my mega system.
• The Network Card: Nothing really exciting here -- I reused a Intel EEpro 100. Good network card; I don't use any of the remote management stuff, but it sends and receives packets. That's enough for me.
• The Mouse: CowboyNeal had been singing the praises of the Logitech Mouseman Wireless. system for a while, and I decided to take the leap. It's a remote system, but probably the first remote system that I've used that truly works. The latency between mouse and display is remarkably low, and that latency has been my major complaint of other remote keyboards/mice. I'm not sure that the mouse is appropriate for a FPS or other instant-reaction game which might expose problems at the finest levels, but it does just fine for games like BG2/The Sims. Slightly sluggish for Diablo II, but not lethally so. I recommend it, with the above reservation about FPS/faster paced games.
• Keyboard: This was one of two instances that I simply reused components from before. The keyboard that I'm using is the Microsoft Internet Keyboard. Yeah, yeah -- it's a M$ product. Whatever. The reality is that the keyboard has a good tactile feedback, comes with two built-in USB ports on the keyboard itself, supports PS/2 and USB for output, and is a full keyboard. Oh, I got it free through some promotion at CDW.
• Monitor: This is the second instance of reusing old components. In this case, I had purchased the Sony Trinitron G400 about eighteen months ago, for use on my first gaming machine. It's a great monitor -- 19", so it fits into almost any desk space, has a flat screen, and great color depth. It's been a very dependable monitor, and while other monitors have come out, I saw no reason to spend the several hundred dollars on getting a new monitor. So, I've decided to just stick with this. Maybe if flat screens or something get really cheap over the next year, I'll upgrade, but for right now, I see no compelling reason to do so.
• UPS System: We wouldn't want to be crashing in the midst of our gaming or working, now would we? I actually set up two UPS systems -- the system is on a APC BackOffice UPS, and the monitor is on a USB. I've used the BackOffice UPS's output to plug into COM2 on the system. Powerchute is APC's software hook-in. I've got the Windows version that came along with the software, and am also playing with getting the Linux version working, although it seems to be compiled against RH -- at least the version I have is.

The machine came together fairly well -- by reusing a couple components, I was able to keep the price under $2000 -- and the same system should be even cheaper now, since RAM is so cheap that we should throw away hard drives and just have RAM *grin*. Of course, then you'd better hope your UPS system works.

The point of this machine was really to create a platform for gaming and it serves that "need" admirably -- it's been a pleasure to play games on. With the prices on CPUs continuing to drop, I'll probably upgrade this to a 1.4 Athlon in the next six months, and throw in another half gig of RAM, but for the time being, I've happily created a nice, fast -- and quiet machine. Really, this thing is incredibly quiet: I don't have my decibel measuring device anymore, but my old Vaio laptop's fan is louder then this machine. Louder, and with 1/4 the computing power, and 1/4 the RAM. I consider this an improvement.

Here we go, answer to Your Questions from Wil Wheaton. Share and Enjoy! A big thanks to Wil for taking the time to answer so many of our questions. Those Silly Automatic Doors by wikki on 07:36 AM October 15th, 2001

When you were on the set of TNG did you ever find yourself running into the automatic doors when there was no one there to open them for you? How about at your house or other places? Was this a problem for any of the other cast members? Did you ever find yourself going to grocery stores and running in and out of the doors just to make you feel better?

This happened all the time. We'd get so used to those doors opening when we approached them, that we'd keep going right into them if they didn't. It was very embarrassing when I'd be taking some friends on a tour of the sets, and I'd expect the doors to open, and they wouldn't. Sometimes it would happen during work, because the FX guys wouldn't get their cue, or someone would decide to enter a scene early. One time, Jonathan was in the turbolift on the bridge, and decided that he'd come into the scene a little bit earlier than we'd rehearsed. So I'm sitting in my chair, Patrick is going on and on about the Prime Directive or something, and there is this loud CRASH! from the turbolift. We all turn around to look, and the doors slowly open (like the FX guy is scared to open the door), and Jonathan is on the floor. I think it was Michael Dorn who was in the turbolift with him, and he is standing over him, just pointing and laughing. We did a lot of that, on TNG. The pointing and laughing, I mean.

Those doors do have a legacy that cascades into my current work. They were loud, when they opened and closed, sort of like a sliding glass door. So the sound man would ask us to hold our dialogue until the doors were open or closed. Go watch TNG, and watch for it. We rarely speak when doors are opening or closing on screen, because we'd have to re-record the dialogue later in ADR. The thing is, even though I've been off the show for years, when I'm doing a movie today, I still don't talk when doors are opening or closing. Even if they're normal doors.

One time, I was at the grocery store, walking through the doors in a wistful attempt to recapture the magic, and I was attacked by some Girl Scouts. Apparently, they were trying to sell those damn cookies (which are Soylent Green, by the way. You heard it here, first), and I was scaring off the potential customers. Those Girl Scouts are very territorial, and they'll stab you in the neck if you don't watch it.

Wheres the parties, dude? by imrdkl on 07:48 AM October 15th, 2001

Seriously, how much time do you spend reading techie sites like slashdot, and keeping up with the issues? I see lots of nice links and banners on your webpage that seem to advocate. How would you "rate your geekness"? Is setting up your own server really fun for you, or just another way to score babes? :-)

Thanks, I enjoy alot of your work.

Well, here's my geek code:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GPA d--(---) s:- a- C++++ UL P>++ L+>++++ E-- W+++ N+ o- K- w++++>----
O-- M+ V-- PS++(+++) PE Y++ PGP++>+++ t++@($) 5 X+++ R++ tv-- b+++ DI+
D++
G++ e*>++++ h---- r+++ y+++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

I've been reading /. for a few years. It was my home page for awhile, even. I check in a few times a day, so I can keep up on what's going on, and complain that none of my submissions are ever taken. The issues that I am most passionate about are the Privacy issues, and YRO. Every chance I get, I bug these guys to publish a quarterly YRO journal. Unfortunately, every chance has been once.

Setting up my own server is still beyond my abilities, but it is something I will be able to do, someday. Often, when I'm in a "down cycle" or whatever the buzzword is for not working for months at a time, I think about getting a "fall back" job, so I could have a regular day job if I ever needed it. Recently, I've been thinking very seriously about pursuing a CCNA.

Born a geek, or did ST push you in that direction? by anvilmark on 12:27 PM October 15th, 2001

Did you have a technical inclination prior to STTNG? Did you become more/less interested in tech from your ST experience? If so, in what ways?

Ever since I was a kid, I've been interested in science and engineering. Unfortunately, my complete inability to do simple mathematics (when I got my SATs back, it said "3% of people who take this will score higher than you" in the verbal section. It said "95%" would score higher than me in math.) really interferes with my ability to take my interests further than just a hobby. I built one of those crystal radio kits when I was 8 though...that was pretty cool. And I *did* assimilate lots of other computers to make mine.

I've been a voracious reader my whole life, reading mostly non-fiction books, up until I was about 13 or 14, when I read Ringworld...something about reading that book...it was like a switch was turned on inside my head, and I suddenly couldn't get enough of Science Fiction. I read all of Niven's books, then nearly everything Asimov had ever penned, Ender's Game, Foundation, all of what are considered the classics, I guess. During that time, I developed this insatiable desire to understand the science behind the science fiction, so I read many of Asimov's non-fiction books, starting with his Guide to Earth and Space. I think that Asimov is truly one of the greatest authors of all time. For actors, his Guide to Shakespeare is required reading. Anyway, after reading some of his books, I read The Mind's Sky, A Brief History of Time, and, finally, Hyperspace. It was really cool to be reading about all that theory, and acting it out at the same time. I wonder if any of the other actors got it when there'd be a graphic in engineering labeled "Kalzua-Klein Field".

I spent hundreds of hours, over the years, hanging out with Rick Sternbach (in addition to all his great contributions to Trek, Rick also illustrated the cover of "Tales of Known Space", and autographed my copy, which was cool) and Mike Okuda, in the art department, asking them all about what made the ship go (because I look for things...things to make me go...), and making sure that I was touching the buttons in the correct sequence to do whatever I was supposed to be doing. Once, in 10th or 11th grade, I had to write a research paper, and I got permission from my teacher to do it on the fictional technology of Star Trek, focusing on propulsion. This was before Mike and Denise had written their books, so I actually had to interview the Techies on our show (oh, I guess they like to be called "Tech-ers". Sorry.)...anyway, I had to conduct interviews with them, and buy some of the fan-authored books...but the final project was really cool, and I was forever able to explain to tour groups exactly what each thing in the engine room did.

Wow. I am realizing what a super geek I am. But that makes me cool, right? Right?

I've just remembered something, that I haven't thought about in years. Sorry for the tangent. I know this is sort of off-topic, but you can't mod me down! *cackle* Ahh, the sweet, sweet elixir of corrupting power!

Once, I was at a Los Angeles area convention, not as a guest, but as a convention attendee, complete with badge and geeky T-shirt. I'm thinking it was LosCon, but I'm not sure. It's not important. The important thing is, I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time, and I walked into a room where there were lots of authors signing books. One of the authors there was Larry Niven. I just about gave birth. I had just finished reading Ringworld, and Ringworld Engineers, and I was in the middle of Tales of Known Space. I had even bought a copy of Ringworld while I was at this con, I think as a gift, or something, without knowing that Niven was there. So I ran up to him, and the exchange went something like this:

Me: Oh my god! You're Larry Niven!

Him: Oh my god! You're Wil Wheaton!

Me: I love your books so much! [Insert huge geekout here]

Him: I love you on Star Trek! [Insert minor geekout here]

Me: Really?!

Him: Really?!

Me: Yes!

Him: Yes!

Together: Can I have your autograph?!

No kidding. That really happened, and it was just amazing. I will never forget that. Stuff like that happens, sometimes, and I always love it when I meet someone who I admire, and they're just as excited to meet me. When I was working on Flubber, one of the other actors, I think it was Clancy Brown, came up to me on the first day, and said, "Wil. I have to come out of the closet." I thought it was weird that he was coming out to me, but I said, "Okay..?" And he says, "I am a huge Star Trek fan. I didn't want that to get in the way of our work."

I looked at him, and said, "Clancy, Robin Williams is a huge Star Trek fan, too...and THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!"

And I cut off his head.

Wesley Crusher jokes by DarkDust on 07:58 AM October 15th, 2001

As you mentioned on your FAQ page, the Wesley Crusher character from TNG was target of some not very complementary jokes. But are there any Wesley Crusher jokes that you liked ?

I can't recall any that I thought were very funny, actually. They are all pretty much just variations on the same theme, and I just don't find being sodomized by a Klingon to be the height of humor. Unless it's animated by Terry Gilliam.

There is a funny story that involves the whole "put Wesley in the airlock" phenomenon...I wrote about it at my site a few weeks ago, and I'll reprint it here:

It was my fanatical love of The Prisoner that allowed me to understand why anyone would want to wear a spacesuit and go to a convention. Because I used to have a lame little Number 6 pin, and I would wear it to game cons, back in the day.

Which reminds me of this one time I went to a huge game con, and some guy was selling "Put Wesley In The Airlock" buttons. I went up to his table, and he saw me coming, and tried to hide them, but I got there too fast, and I took one. While I was looking at it, I could see the huge drops of sweat falling off his Hutt-like visage, and I asked him, "How much?" He told me $2.50, or something like that, so I bought it, and wore it on my Batman t-shirt the rest of the day. That was cool.

Enterprise by abde on 08:00 AM October 15th, 2001
liked your brief appearance in the Sprite commercial :) My question is, have you thought about sticking with the Star Trek franchise? With Enterprise, the franchise is taking a new direction, in which the characters are more human and not ultra-competent Utopians. Have you considered trying for a part, recurring or otherwise?

I've thought about it, sure. I even made calls to Berman and Co. back in the day, with some cool ideas, which were never developed.

I really like Enterprise. I watch it every week in the hopes of seeing more Detox Gel, and I really like the direction they are taking that show. As much as I loved TNG, it did wear on me a bit that everyone was so damn perfect. I love that the new show has lots of conflict, and the crew seems to be in real danger each week. The cast is great, and, so far, they haven't completely ruined the continuity of the Trek universe. Also, the captain has a beagle. A beagle! And he talks to it!You have to love that.

However, I left Trek when I was 18 so I wouldn't be doing it for the rest of my career. Trying out for a regular role on the new show would be a step back, career-wise, and very unlikely, considering the treatment I've gotten at the hands of Berman and Company since I left. However, I would be open to guesting, and I'm really sad that I don't get to be in the movie. Especially if there's a wedding in the script. I think it'd give some nice closure to the character.

Are you worried about being typecast? by wrinkledshirt on 08:03 AM October 15th, 2001

Jason Alexander once said in an interview that every single episode he did as George on Seinfeld made it harder and harder for him to be marketable in showbiz as any other sort of character. Given that most people know you as Welsey Crusher, do you ever worry about it? If that's a problem, how does an actor break out of it?

When I was 18, I was beginning to have precisely those feelings that Jason talks about. I did an interview with AICN, where I got to talk about that. Success is a double-edged sword, you know? On one side, it's simply amazing to be associated with such a successful show, and play a character that so many people get to know. On the other side, that association can utterly kill any chance you have of having a career beyond that show.

I have no idea how an actor breaks out of that, because Hollywood works very hard to establish an actor as a "type" and then leaves that actor in that "type" because they know that the audience will tune in to see it. Bob Saget is a perfect example. Holy shit. He is one of the dirtiest, funniest, stand-up comedians I've ever seen...but Hollywood just won't cast him an an "edgy" role, because he's forever the guy from Full House.

Hollywood is all about insecurity. Studio heads know that their jobs are only temporary, and they know that when they make one mistake, they're gone. So they don't like to take chances. They don't like to take an actor who is good in action, and put that actor in a comedy, because the audience may not buy it, and the actor may not be able to handle the role.

I have a reputation in Hollywood as a very good dramatic actor, and I think I've earned that, and I'm proud of it. What's currently driving me crazy is this reluctance by the industry to let me show them that I'm funny. It's maddening, because I've been doing very funny sketch comedy, at the ACME Comedy Theatre, and improv with the Liquid Radio Players and Los Angeles Theatresports . I have a plan, though. I adapted one of my sketches into a screenplay, and if this thing I talk about in my next answer works out, I can just make it myself, and take over the WORLD! < /scheme >

NewTek and the Video Toaster
by suso on 08:11 AM October 15th, 2001
On your homepage you mention that you once worked for NewTek during their development or initial release of the Video Toaster.I've always been curious to know how you got the job there and what you exactly did for them? Did you ever own an Amiga prior to working at NewTek?

I was invited to NewTek's XXXmas party one year, when I was 19, and I was simply blown away by what they were doing out there.

For those not familiar, NewTek was the company that brought desktop video to the consumer market, while also re-defining the professional market. They made The Video Toaster, which was an amazing, affordable way to make television yourself, that looked as good as the stuff the networks made, with nifty effects, graphics, and what was probably the coolest 3D program, back then.

I firmly believe that the Video Toaster created the market for the iMovie, and the other rash of desktop video solutions.

While I worked there, I was part of the R&D team, working mostly on the Video Toaster 4000. I also spent LOTS of time traveling around the country giving demos and stuff for the launch of the 4000 when it was finished.

The year and a half I spent at NewTek was one of the best in my life, as far as personal growth goes. I learned that I _can_ make it in the Real World, but, more importantly, I learned that I am very unhappy if I'm not being an actor. I'm a pretty skeptical person, but I tell you this: I really believe that "do what you're supposed to do" stuff, and I learned, while I was there, that I am supposed to be an actor.

I had this plan, when I worked for NewTek, and, unfortunately, I never got to complete it. It went something like this: I can write, and I can write well. I have TONS of creative ideas, that would make cool short films, but none of them would ever make money, or be suitable for TV. In short, no network or studio would ever give me the money to make them. So I decided that I would make them myself, using a digital video camera, and the Video Toaster. I'd give the movies to NewTek, and they could use them in marketing, as an example of what the Toaster could do.

Good idea, right? We all thought so, and we were doing it, until NewTek fell apart, and the core group left to form Play Incorporated, in the mid-nineties. It's actually a good thing that NewTek exploded, because it gave me this kick in the ass to get back to LA, and do rededicate myself to acting. However, a few years went by, and I was feeling like I had started this thing, and never finished it, and that was bugging me. So I called up Paul Montgomery, my friend who left NewTek, and became the vision behind Play Inc. Paul thought it was a great idea, and we started working out the kinks. And there were some kinks, believe me. There were some people at Play who I just couldn't work with, and Paul and I were in the process of working all that out, when Paul had a heart attack and died, at age 31. Holy shit. Paul was the soul of NewTek, and the soul of Play, and, with him gone, Play completely fell apart. I tried to keep going with our idea, because that's what I thought he'd want, but the person who took over Play was just impossible. He treated me so badly, and so dishonored Paul's memory, that I told him to shove it, and walked away. Shortly after Paul died, they ran Play into the ground, too. Completely sucked, because Play had amazing potential.

Thing is, I still want to make my own movies, and I still think that people like you and me can do it, with great ease, using tools like the iMovie. Matter of fact, if anyone reading this knows people at Apple, have them get in touch with me. I'd still like to produce my own stuff, and I'm thinking iMovie is the way to go, now, as far as I can tell.

I never owned an Amiga before working at NewTek, but I loved them while I had them. They were always easy to use, and stable as hell. Too bad Commodore never "got" the Amiga. Yet another example of Corporate America failing to see the forest through the trees.

Usenet by Herbmaster on 08:16 AM October 15th, 2001

When did you first hear of the classic usenet group, alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die, and what was your reaction?

I first became aware of it while visiting the HAL labs in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January, 1992. I really didn't care about it, at first, because by that time I had gotten used to people hating not only Wesley, but me. Over the years, though, all that negativity, and the inability to separate me from a character I played has really wore on me. Since I launched my website, and had a presence on the internet, a lot of that crap has come crashing back down on me. Honestly, you'd think that people would grow up and move on, seeing as how it was so many years ago, but you'd be wrong. You know what's weird? It hurt, all that criticism. It hurt then, and it still hurts now. Sometimes it just makes me feel bad, and other times, it makes me mad. Once, after enduring a particularly vicious attack from someone, I wrote,

"Thank you for blaming ME for the writing of a fictional character, on a fictional tv show. That makes complete sense, considering all the input the writers would take from a 15 year old kid. Have you ever bothered to ask? Did it ever occur to you that I just said the lines I was given? Don't take it out on me. I'm just an actor, who did the best job he could with what he was given.

I don't care if you're "The Guy From TV" or if you're "The Kid From Math Class". Being personally attacked by people who don't know a thing about you hurts. It sucks. I wonder, do you spend a fifth of the time you spend dumping on me doing something constructive with your life? I certainly hope so. You people are just like the people in High School who never took the time to get to know me, and judged me before I even showed up.

Aren't we mostly geeks here, online? Didn't we all, at one time or another, get bullied by "the cool kids"? Don't any of you remember what that felt like? "

So, yeah. That's how I reacted when I was hurt, and mad. It's strange to me that I'm 29 now, and people are still giving me shit for a show that I did when I was 15. What's surprising to me, still, is that I even care, and that the criticism still hurts. If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...

Wil's job at NewTek's Lightwave by peter303 on 08:17 AM October 15th, 2001

You worked at the animation software shop NewTek
for a while. What did you do there? Do you thing you'll get back into tech again someday?

Well, I think I pretty much overed the NewTek stuff already, but as far as tech goes, the farthest I can go with my technical skill is what I've done with my website. I think I've come a long way from my first uberlame page that I built with Pagebuilder at Geocities. The problem that I run into constantly is that my aspirations constantly outpace my abilities. I have these dreams of doing all sorts of amazingly cool php things at my site, but that is months, maybe even a year off. Technology is moving so quickly these days, if you stop to look around, you get left in the dust, and it's pretty hard for me to keep up.

I have always loved technology, and when I can afford it, I will have all the cool tech toys that they sell at ThinkGeek. They will be mine. Oh yes. They will be mine.

Hollywood Activism by Dunkirk on 08:23 AM October 15th, 2001

Wil,

You have made comments to the effect of poo-poo'ing celebrity opinions about issues in general. Yet in your blogs, you spend a lot of time discussing politics, and you make no bones about which side of the isle you favor. As someone in the public spotlight - and especially as someone in the geek spotlight (being a celeb that has your own self-coded web site) - do you consider it a duty of sorts to be an activist? Does being a celeb[rity] bring any more responsibility over the common, first-amendment-empowered citizen in voicing your opinion? Also, do you feel that you have qualities above and beyond other Hollywood celebrities that makes it important that you share your feelings?

Thanks,
dk

One of my defining characteristics is that I can't keep my mouth shut. I can't stand idly by, and if somebody has to say it, it may as well be me. I am extremely passionate about virtually everything, and that passion drives me to discuss, argue, and learn about issues that have an effect on my life. I'm sure that it would just be easier to stay quiet, and live happily in McWorld, but I will not go gently into that good night.

I don't know if I have qualities above and beyond other celebrities that make it important to share my feelings. I don't know because I don't hang out with other celebrities, at all. But I do know that my passion is genuine, and I really do care about the issues I discuss. I don't know what the others do, but I carefully research issues before I get on one side of them. I evaluate both sides of an issue, apply my own filters, based on my knowledge and previous experiences. I draw a conclusion, I test the conclusion, I form an opinion, and then I post about it. I just write about the things that matter to me. I would be writing about this stuff, even if nobody came to my website to read about it. However, for better or for worse, in our culture we tend to give more attention to a celebrity than an equally educated non-celebrity. So if I can use my visibility to bring attention to the idiocy of the DMCA, or the things the MPAA and RIAA have been pulling the last 2 years, then I will do it, gladly. That falls under the heading of "Using the Power of Celebrity for Good". Of course, I'm sure it's fun to use it for Evil, but that opportunity hasn't presented itself to me yet.

I don't want people to listen to me because they think I'm a celebrity. I don't view myself as a "celebrity", at all. Matter of fact, one of the freakiest and most surprising things I've discovered since I launched my website is that way more people know my work than I ever imagined, so I guess that makes me a celebrity to some people, but not in my own mind, if that makes any sense.

Radio Free Burrito by webword on 08:42 AM October 15th, 2001

You seem to know a lot about music. How big is your collection? What are your favorite bands? What is Radio Free Burrito and what do you think of broadcasting live?

I am a total music weenie. I aspire to be like the guys in High Fidelity. Yeah, I'm that lame.

As I say on my music page, I think that you can learn a lot about a person through the music they listen to. The bands that I like, though they cross many genres, all have souls. What I mean by that is, all the bands I really like all say something with their music. It somehow affects me when I listen to it. The first time I listened to Kid A, for example, I had this visceral, emotional reaction to it, and I still get that when I hear it. When I hear the first "ping" of Echoes, I still get chills. I am so awed by the power of music to evoke emotion in people, and I admire the bands who take advantage of that power, and use it for Good. Pop music is so packaged, and over produced, and so clearly exists only to make money, that it just offends me. That's using the power of music for Evil. Unless you're Huey Lewis and The News. Then you use music for The Power of Love.

I have a real fondness in my heart for the Emo bands, and the indie rock. Some of my current listens are Radiohead, The Pixies, Tool, The Ataris, Coldplay, They Might Be Giants, Portishead, *Nsync, (just seeing if you're skimming or really listening. har.), Pink Floyd, The Rushmore soundtrack, fairview, Alkaline Trio, Hot Water Music, and The Get Up Kids.

Tangent, here: I think The Ataris are like a musical Linux, sort of. They publish all the lyrics for their songs, the guitar tabs, and make every single one of their songs available as an MP3, for free download. Yet they still make tons of money at MP3.com, and their records sell like crazy. I think it's a great analogy...you don't have to be closed source to be profitable.

Radio Free Burrito is my attempt to fulfill a childhood dream of being a DJ. I stream my MP3s through a Live365 server using shoutcast almost every day, and I do live broadcasts a few times a week, where I joke, do news "Letterman-style", run a chat room, and stuff like that. It's really fun, and I still get this giddy excitement when I check the station stats and see that there's 50 people listening. Broadcasting live is insanely fun, and gives me another chance to reach an audience directly, on my terms, rather than some producer or network's. I have a whole page devoted to the rfb, at my site, with a playlist and links to hi-fi and lo-fi streams. Come listen someday, you'll be glad you did! </shiteating grin>

My CD collection is HUGE. I think I have over 6000 CDs in various places around my house, and in the garage. I would have more, but when I moved out of my parent's house, my younger brother moved into my bedroom, and sold all of my Cure, Depeche, Bauhaus, Boingo, and other 80s alterna-rock at some used music store. I think he used the money to buy rugs. Not drugs, rugs. My brother has had a rug habit for years. Persians, throws, areas, even Berber carpets. Sad thing is, he can't admit he has a problem. He's probably at Carpeteria right now.

Wesley vs. Adric by wowbagger on 08:51 AM October 15th, 2001

Many people have compared Wesley Crusher to Adric on the Dr. Who. In both cases, the character was reviled because of the way the writers handled him. What are your thoughts on this? How would you recommend an actor handle this sort of situation in the future?

Okay, first let me put on my Asbestos suit.

Alright. I don't know who Adric is, so I can't address that.

*duck*

However, I can address the rest of your question. When I was on TNG, I had zero input into the character. The writers and producers never listened to me, and they shouldn't have. I was a teenager, and, contrary to what we all think at the time, teenagers know absolutely nothing. Of course, at the time, we as teenagers clearly know everything, so we get caught in an infinite loop of knowing everything and nothing at once, which should produce a wonderful, Zen-like existence, but never does....but I digress.

As an actor, I feel that it is my job to live up to the demands of the script, and perform what the writers are asking me to do. I did my best to fulfill that obligation, but I think the writers missed a huge part of Wesley, and I think that's why so many people didn't like him.

Wesley and I were very similar at the time: we were both teenagers who were pretty smart, and pretty skilled. Matter of fact, we were both smart enough and skilled enough to work alongside adults, and hold our own with them, professionally. At the same time, neither one of us had the grace, maturity, or wisdom to hold our own with them socially, or emotionally, and that created lots of conflicts. By not exploring that side of Wesley, beyond "Just tell me to shut up, Wesley, and I will.", the writers took a lot of his humanity away from him. It also didn't help that they gave me lines like, "We're from Starfleet! We don't lie!" and "You mean I'm drunk? I feel strange, but also good!"

The few episodes where Wesley was actually not a complete tool were, I think, "The First Duty", "Final Mission", and, one or two others. Those were the ones where Wesley was actually a fully developed, flawed, interesting person. If they'd given me more stories like those, and written my character more like that, it may have made it easier for me to miss the film opportunities that were passing me by, while I was saying "Aye, sir. Warp 4, sir."

Geekess or Valley Girl? by Dyrandia on 08:54 AM October 15th, 2001

As a lifelong geekess whose first crush was on Wesley Crusher, here's a question I'd love answered by Wil Wheaton, as well as the general male slashdot population. Which would Wesley Crusher, in character, prefer? An attractive, yet slightly braindead, clothes/hair/nails oriented girl, or her equally attractive, intelligent geekess identical twin sister? Someone who can't carry on a conversation unless it involves who was seen where, with whom, and what each was wearing, or somone who can argue the pros and cons of which programming language suits a certain task best? What about you as a person?

This is such a no-brainer. Geekess. Duh. Especially if she's a karma-whore. That is *so* sexy.

Dear Wil by sllort on 09:27 AM October 15th, 2001

Wil,
You mention in a LA Times interview that you dumped Linux for Windows because

"While I'm a champion of open source, I don't think Linux is there yet"

Was there a specific bug in Linux that prompted you to dump it, or was it just the entire operating system?

Thanks!

When I said "Not ready for primetime" I was not putting down Linux. "Not ready for primetime" means to me that it's not ready for The Masses. That's not necessarily a bad thing. SNL wasn't ready for primetime back when it started, and it was superior to virtually everything else on TV. Now that it's been processed for The Masses, I think it sucks more often than not. Except Will Farrell. That man is a genius.

I had Linux installed, and I dual-booted for quite sometime, but I was never able to actually *use* it to do anything. I have given O'Reilly LOTS of my money over the years, attempting to learn how to run it, but it's always *just* eluded my grasp. I had the hardest time just getting it to do things like find my sound card, or give me fonts in X-windows when I was running Netscape that didn't make my eyes bleed. It also didn't help that when I did my install, it never seemed to tell me exactly what dependencies I needed, so lots of stuff didn't work correctly, and I could never figure out where things were supposed to go, which was frustrating to me. I rely on computers for too much in my life to make my primary OS one that doesn't run in idiot (also known as Wil Wheaton) mode.

I completely support the Open Source and Free Software movements. Let's just say that I hate The Borg as much as you do. I aspire to a complete removal of The Borg from my life, and I would like nothing more than to be the number one ex-trek-actor Linux cheerleader, with the little suit and everything.

So have I just lost all of my cool points, or what?

Patrick Stewart's bald head by Genie1 on 09:40 AM October 15th, 2001

Have you (or any of the TNG cast) ever rubbed it for good luck?

Are you kidding me? We'd gather every Monday morning in the center of the bridge, cry havoc, and let slip the rubbing of Patrick's head. We always wanted to rub Shatner's bald head for luck, but he'd never take off his toupee. So we'd just rub his belly instead.

Fan Fixated Moment? by broody on 09:41 AM October 15th, 2001

While this may seem way off the wall, please give me a moment.

Kirk Russell, on the commentary to the Big Trouble in Little Chinia DVD, talks about how his trip down the elevator on the way to confront "the ultimate evil spirit" has generated more comments then any other. Fans are always quoting back lines from that scene, particularly in elevators.

Here is the question. Are there particlar lines from one of your roles that fans repeat back to you? Which role do people most often identify you with when they see you in the real world? If you could change this defining moment to an alternate scene or line, what would it be and why?

People seem to think that it's really funny to ask me if I really have the biggest one in 4 counties (I do, by the way. But the counties are all in the former Soviet Union, and none of them touch each other, for what it's worth).

Something that I've noticed myself doing is quoting some of my own things, because sometimes it's just too funny not to. Once, I was working on a movie in Kansas. We were driving from the set to the house where we were all staying, and it was close to a 40 minute drive. Now, 40 minutes in a city is nothing. But 40 minutes along a rural highway seems like an eternity. So we're driving along, and I ask my friend if we're there yet, and he says no, and I say, "Jesus. By the time we get there, the kid won't even be dead anymore." There is this pause in the car, and one of the other actors says, "Dude. Did you just quote your own movie?" I answered in the affirmative, and he says, "That was very cool."

I find myself saying that things are "goochers" all the time, too. Does that make me lame?

I guess that the thing people say to me all the time is, "Were the leeches real?" They then turn to their frat guy friends and snicker, like they're the first person to ever say that to me. I wait for a second, so they think they've really cut me down, and I say, "Yeah. Ask your mom about my scar."

Finding new and preferably disgusting ways to degrade a friend's mother was always held in high regard.

Industry insider? by Stavr0 on 10:47 AM October 15th, 2001

Since you're part of Hollywood and somewhat of a geek (if you really are 'CleverNickName') here's the thing:

Would you be interested in becoming a (scifi/hollywoood/?) contributor to Slashdot (a la Jon Katz)? I'm sure you could get lots of exclusives from Paramount, actor friends etc ...

.. assuming of course you're prepared to be a lightning rod for all the Katz-haters cum Wesley-haters ;-)

You know, I don't have a huge problem with Katz, and I don't really understand why some people do. But, as we've discovered during our little chat today, I am exceedingly lame, so maybe there's part of the joke that I don't get.

Sure, I'd contribute, but I don't see what I could bring to the discussion that isn't already covered here, because nobody ever gives me exclusives, or inside info on anything, which is exactly the type of blinkard, Philistine, pig ignorance I've come to expect from that non-creative garbage. They sit there, on their spotty behinds, picking blackheads, with their bleeding Hollywood Insider secret handshakes...I always wanted to be a Hollywood Insider, but they wouldn't let me!

How did you feel about being Slashdotted? by waffle zero on 10:51 AM October 15th, 2001

How did you feel about being Slashdotted? And did you expect this to happen?

Yeah, actually, we knew it was coming, and I got really nervous. I've endured some pretty horrible slings and arrows over the years, the most recent coming from MeFi and MemePool within 24 hours of my launch. This may sound totally lame to you, but I really cared what /.-ers thought about my site, and about me, because when you get right down to it, I am just an insecure geek, hoping to someday sit with the cool kids. The guys who host me were a little nervous, because we knew that it would kill all the sites on the server. By the way, if you're a weblogger, and want hosting for 5 bucks a month, you should check logjamming out. They're really cool guys.

I gotta say that the coolest thing so far was just being asked to do the interview, and all the positive feedback I've gotten from people who came to see my site. The whole reason I made my website was because my wife is always telling me that I could shake the Star Trek thing, and the Stand By Me thing, if people would just get to know me. I've always been frustrated that people, inside the industry and out, have this one dimensional preconception of me. Building and running my website has given me a chance to challenge that preconception, and hopefully change it.

This interview has been really fun to do, and I want to thank Chris for asking me, Rob for emailing me and telling me not to be afraid, and everyone who posted questions and comments.

Oh, and that guy who said, "Shut up, Wesley!". That was really funny. I've never heard that before.

FNORD.

--------------------------
WIL WHEATON DOT NET
May peace prevail on earth
--------------------------

My quest for the perfect MP3 player has been ongoing. A few weeks ago I decided to try out Turtle Beach's Audiotron. Unlike most other attempts, this one doesn't have any internal storage: instead it has an ethernet port and mounts a Samba (or I suppose windows) file share. Is it all I'd dreampt about? The short review is that for the price, and for what it sets out to do, this is an awesome box... with some caveats.

What it is An MP3 player. But instead of using its own internal storage, it uses Samba shares that you can easily set up on any windows or Linux box for all data storage. This means that you can spread your MP3 collection over your LAN, use an external NAS or file server, but most importantly, not be constrained by the limits of disk space that go with any device that comes with its own storage. IO

The inputs/outputs are simple. Your basic ethernet port (you can assign an IP, or use DHCP). A pair of phone jacks (for HPNA networking which I've never used, nor do I intend to try). Power (you can deduce for yourself what that does). A pair of RCA audio outputs to plug into any stereo system. Best of all is a TosLink optical output so if you have a receiver that can do it, you can have an optical connection.

Setup

Setting up the system was relatively easy. It took longer for me to set up Samba then the Audiotron. Just set a name and password, and make sure samba will let that guy in. Then make sure you have a folder named appropriately ("Music" will work. There is an option to search all folders but that is less then desirable). The atron boots up, uses DHCP to get an IP, scans your subnet, and if everything is configured, starts to get an index of MP3s from every server in your subnet set up to share MP3s. It was able to load all 6500 of my MP3s on my home network in just a few minutes. Note that if it loses power, it must reimport which on my lan took 5-6 minutes to import.

Upgrading the system is trivial . Download an image from the official website, and throw it in your music directory. and select the upgrade option. I did this almost immediately since the latest version has the web server interface that I desired to control the Audiotron from around the house.

I did manage to crash it several times after the upgrade. Once the crash was so severe that I had to restore to factory defaults. The only harm in this is that all of my favorites buttons were lost. I can blame this on the fact that I'm using a beta version of the code. I consider the crashes a tolerable short term problem, and worth it considering that the beta also gives me web control which is much easier then navigating using a knob.

Normal Use

After booting, The front panel LED is mostly used to navigate your collection and select songs. You can do so by artist, title, genre, playlist. Everything is really easy, but somewhat slow. I'm not saying you can do it much better given the restraint of a 2 line LED visual output device and a knob. I'm just saying that you really want to use the web interface to do anything more complicated then selecting an album or artist.

The remote provides a variety of functions that you would expect. And it has a spacious 20 buttons for assigning favorites to. A favorite can be an artist (The Who!) a genre (All my rap mixed up) or just a disc (Daft Punk's Discovery). You can also define playlists, which are actually m3u files stored in your share. You have to make sure that the m3u's have only relative paths, DOS text file cr/lf, and backwards slashes. This is important because creating relatively wacky playlists is kinda a pain through this interface. The remote also lets You can also skip around in your playlist, or even within the MP3.

Fidelity

The audio fidelity is really great, if by "Great" you really mean you want to show how bad MP3 encoding butchers audio. This is no criticism of the Audiotron, but you'll definitely here how MP3s just don't sound as good as the source CDs. I'll definitely be ripping CDs at a higher bit-rate.

Shortcomings

It's just not totally ready yet for a power user although the The recent versions of the system have come much closer. A small feature which would be greatly appreciated is the functionality of the xmms-crossfade plugin. Such technology could presumably be easily integrated into a future version without a hardware upgrade. It's a relatively minor thing but it really adds something to many playlists to simply transition between songs. Sure its not as good as DJ who actually knows the start and end points of songs for proper mixing, but it usually removes those annoying pauses between songs. Somewhat related would be the ability to normalize volume of songs.

I wish the web interface would be reworked by someone who understands html interfaces. The system should offer the ability to create playlists of "Similiar" types. I should be able to add just a few songs, and the box should generate a list of similiar songs based on artist or genre. Right now creating a playlist is fairly tedious. Plus loading a web page often causes skipping in the playback. This is further complicated by the fact that it's output is really slow. I was getting like 8k a second even tho there really isn't any other traffic on the LAN. It wouldn't be so bad if I was getting pages much faster, but if you make your playlist be 'All Songs', you're going to wait awhile for the web page that contains that list. This is bad form.

There are lots of things that just seem messed up: for example I tried to map a few favorites keys to albums but it didn't want to play the CD in order even tho "Random" was off. They are played in order if you select the disc directly with random mode off. I think the favorite might randomize at assignment time. I suspect this is just an artifact of the beta build I was using.

In dream world this box would have TV interace, and 802.11b wireless support instead of regular ethernet. Of course this would double the price. At under $300, it's well within the range of typical consumer electronic gizmos so I doubt we'll see these options.

What it does best

If you have several MP3 sources on your LAN, this is a great solution. Just set up samba shares on each box, and the audiotron will scan each of them and give you a single interface. Likewise, since it looks like a real stereo component, it means that you can let your PC just be a file server, and let this bad boy handle all MP3 playing chores. It won't stick out visually. And there aren't whirring fans to add more noise to your listening environment.

While the interface has rough edges, it's under three hundred bucks. And you can easily put one anywhere you have an ethernet drop. I doubt it would be worth placing one in a room where you already have a desktop PC to play songs directly on, but any room where you don't want a computer, have a stereo, and want access to your MP3s, this is simply a great way to do it. There are other ways you could do this, but this way is fairly elegant. And as a bonus, you can config the box via a web browser.

In short, I highly recommend this device. It fits right into the price performance functionality curve. And hopefully frequent releases will add more features and make it better. Now if only Turtle Beach would release the code under an open license... I'd love to see an XML/RPC interface so we could write front ends. Or tivo-style thumbs up/down controls for building more intelligent playlists.

So ThinkGeek sells these things if you're interested. I'm very pleased with mine. And I'll be more pleased when I get the 100 gig hard drive in my file server so I can rip the rest of my CDs.

My quest for the perfect MP3 player has been ongoing. A few weeks ago I decided to try out Turtle Beach's Audiotron. Unlike most other attempts, this one doesn't have any internal storage: instead it has an ethernet port and mounts a Samba (or I suppose windows) file share. Is it all I'd dreampt about? The short review is that for the price, and for what it sets out to do, this is an awesome box... with some caveats.

What it is An MP3 player. But instead of using its own internal storage, it uses Samba shares that you can easily set up on any windows or Linux box for all data storage. This means that you can spread your MP3 collection over your LAN, use an external NAS or file server, but most importantly, not be constrained by the limits of disk space that go with any device that comes with its own storage. IO

The inputs/outputs are simple. Your basic ethernet port (you can assign an IP, or use DHCP). A pair of phone jacks (for HPNA networking which I've never used, nor do I intend to try). Power (you can deduce for yourself what that does). A pair of RCA audio outputs to plug into any stereo system. Best of all is a TosLink optical output so if you have a receiver that can do it, you can have an optical connection.

Setup

Setting up the system was relatively easy. It took longer for me to set up Samba then the Audiotron. Just set a name and password, and make sure samba will let that guy in. Then make sure you have a folder named appropriately ("Music" will work. There is an option to search all folders but that is less then desirable). The atron boots up, uses DHCP to get an IP, scans your subnet, and if everything is configured, starts to get an index of MP3s from every server in your subnet set up to share MP3s. It was able to load all 6500 of my MP3s on my home network in just a few minutes. Note that if it loses power, it must reimport which on my lan took 5-6 minutes to import.

Upgrading the system is trivial . Download an image from the official website, and throw it in your music directory. and select the upgrade option. I did this almost immediately since the latest version has the web server interface that I desired to control the Audiotron from around the house.

I did manage to crash it several times after the upgrade. Once the crash was so severe that I had to restore to factory defaults. The only harm in this is that all of my favorites buttons were lost. I can blame this on the fact that I'm using a beta version of the code. I consider the crashes a tolerable short term problem, and worth it considering that the beta also gives me web control which is much easier then navigating using a knob.

Normal Use

After booting, The front panel LED is mostly used to navigate your collection and select songs. You can do so by artist, title, genre, playlist. Everything is really easy, but somewhat slow. I'm not saying you can do it much better given the restraint of a 2 line LED visual output device and a knob. I'm just saying that you really want to use the web interface to do anything more complicated then selecting an album or artist.

The remote provides a variety of functions that you would expect. And it has a spacious 20 buttons for assigning favorites to. A favorite can be an artist (The Who!) a genre (All my rap mixed up) or just a disc (Daft Punk's Discovery). You can also define playlists, which are actually m3u files stored in your share. You have to make sure that the m3u's have only relative paths, DOS text file cr/lf, and backwards slashes. This is important because creating relatively wacky playlists is kinda a pain through this interface. The remote also lets You can also skip around in your playlist, or even within the MP3.

Fidelity

The audio fidelity is really great, if by "Great" you really mean you want to show how bad MP3 encoding butchers audio. This is no criticism of the Audiotron, but you'll definitely here how MP3s just don't sound as good as the source CDs. I'll definitely be ripping CDs at a higher bit-rate.

Shortcomings

It's just not totally ready yet for a power user although the The recent versions of the system have come much closer. A small feature which would be greatly appreciated is the functionality of the xmms-crossfade plugin. Such technology could presumably be easily integrated into a future version without a hardware upgrade. It's a relatively minor thing but it really adds something to many playlists to simply transition between songs. Sure its not as good as DJ who actually knows the start and end points of songs for proper mixing, but it usually removes those annoying pauses between songs. Somewhat related would be the ability to normalize volume of songs.

I wish the web interface would be reworked by someone who understands html interfaces. The system should offer the ability to create playlists of "Similiar" types. I should be able to add just a few songs, and the box should generate a list of similiar songs based on artist or genre. Right now creating a playlist is fairly tedious. Plus loading a web page often causes skipping in the playback. This is further complicated by the fact that it's output is really slow. I was getting like 8k a second even tho there really isn't any other traffic on the LAN. It wouldn't be so bad if I was getting pages much faster, but if you make your playlist be 'All Songs', you're going to wait awhile for the web page that contains that list. This is bad form.

There are lots of things that just seem messed up: for example I tried to map a few favorites keys to albums but it didn't want to play the CD in order even tho "Random" was off. They are played in order if you select the disc directly with random mode off. I think the favorite might randomize at assignment time. I suspect this is just an artifact of the beta build I was using.

In dream world this box would have TV interace, and 802.11b wireless support instead of regular ethernet. Of course this would double the price. At under $300, it's well within the range of typical consumer electronic gizmos so I doubt we'll see these options.

What it does best

If you have several MP3 sources on your LAN, this is a great solution. Just set up samba shares on each box, and the audiotron will scan each of them and give you a single interface. Likewise, since it looks like a real stereo component, it means that you can let your PC just be a file server, and let this bad boy handle all MP3 playing chores. It won't stick out visually. And there aren't whirring fans to add more noise to your listening environment.

While the interface has rough edges, it's under three hundred bucks. And you can easily put one anywhere you have an ethernet drop. I doubt it would be worth placing one in a room where you already have a desktop PC to play songs directly on, but any room where you don't want a computer, have a stereo, and want access to your MP3s, this is simply a great way to do it. There are other ways you could do this, but this way is fairly elegant. And as a bonus, you can config the box via a web browser.

In short, I highly recommend this device. It fits right into the price performance functionality curve. And hopefully frequent releases will add more features and make it better. Now if only Turtle Beach would release the code under an open license... I'd love to see an XML/RPC interface so we could write front ends. Or tivo-style thumbs up/down controls for building more intelligent playlists.

So ThinkGeek sells these things if you're interested. I'm very pleased with mine. And I'll be more pleased when I get the 100 gig hard drive in my file server so I can rip the rest of my CDs.

hondaguy asks: "I'm thinking of purchasing a Lian Li case. Very nice case, but doesn't come with a power supply. Which after-market power supplies are the best for the ATX format, in terms of noise, output (lots of accessories) and longevity. Please post links if possible."

We've had a couple stories recently about DVD-RW and such. I'm wondering what ones out there people have used, how well they work, what's the support etc etc. I'm also still on my quest to build the ultimate quiet machine, so any comment on the amount of noise the drive generates would be great - I love my Yamaha Drive for burning - but it's a *loud* one.

NecroPuppy writes "Hewlett-Packard is introducing the first commercially available DVD recorder, according to this. According to the article, it will be on store shelves in September, and list for $599, and uses the DVD+RW standard." Well, now that I've just bought the supposed to be awesome CD burner from TG (end plug), it might be time to pick this up come September. It'll make backing up a lot easier - since I don't have the Linus method of backing-up.

At this moment, there's an office somewhere in Waggener Edstrom with its lights on and a fresh pot of coffee. Microsoft's PR firm is racking its brains working on strategy and tactics for their phone calls tomorrow. As of right now, hundreds of thousands of wormy Microsoft machines are throwing packets at the Bush White House (and missing -- see below). Bill Gates really, really doesn't want Sunday papers editorializing about how shoddy and dangerous his security flaws are. Will billg be the hero or the goat? Slashdot, in its fine tradition of laughing in the face of overworked netadmins, is running a contest. Walk a mile in Waggener Edstrom's shoes, predict the Times's headlines, and win yourself a T-shirt.

Waggener's goal is to minimize the PR damage that the worm will cause. This is potentially a very damaging story for them. Not so much because it underscores the dangers of an insecure, monocultural environment monopolizing our vital networks. Not even because of the embarrassing and ironic nature of the worm. More because it involves a hot button political topic -- Bush and, allegedly, China -- which the average reader will be interested in and might even almost understand.

So what's their battle plan?

Well, first Waggener will try to predict the yield. Our guesstimates as of right now, 11:36 PM EDT Thursday evening, are that it's a dud -- whitehouse.gov is still accessible and my IRC server hasn't gone down. This is probably because whitehouse.gov simply sidestepped its IP address (the stupid worm author hardcoded it instead of using DNS): White House dodges Web worm.

But at least 196,000 machines were infected. You'd think something would happen. Maybe a router will crash and Delaware will fall off the map. Who knows?

Second, Waggener will have an overall strategy. This might range from overhyping the potential danger ("turn off your computers! prepare for Armageddon! oh it didn't happen -- we saved you") to distraction with trivia ("we are pleased with the judges' verdict last week. look over there!"). How will the firm modify our reality?

Third, Waggener will use different approaches on different audiences. Reporters from different tech publications will talk to different handlers, and hear different things. Keep in mind which way these publications lean when you predict what their reactions will be.

Here's the contest. OSDN will be giving away four Slashdot T-shirts (or some other ThinkGeek shirt) to the four readers who most accurately predict newspaper headlines about the "Red Code" worm.

The newspapers of record we're using are the Washington Times and the New York Times. The categories are:

Headline on the Washington Times news story, Saturday morning
(label it: "WT News") Headline on the New York Times news story, Saturday morning
(label it: "NYT News") Title of the Washington Times editorial, Sunday morning
(label it: "WT Ed") Title of the New York Times editorial, Sunday morning
(label it: "NYT Ed")

Type up four guesses and submit them in a comment below. If your guess for any of the four is the closest in its category, you win a T-shirt!

For example, if our contest had been to predict headlines about global warming on July 19, and you'd said:

"WT News: Bush Visits Europe, Says Many Words Correctly
NYT News: Bush Promises Called Into Question
WT Ed: Good News on Global Warming
NYT Ed: Clueless on Global Warming"

...then you'd win, because you guessed the NYT editorial title correctly.

So put on your corporate-PR "spinning" caps, get out there and make us proud!

The Small Print:

1. Top headline only, you don't have to predict subheads or whatever.
2. In case of two stories/headlines, we pick the biggest one, our discretion.
3. Up to four guesses to a post, one for each headline (post early, post often, but slow down cowboy!).
4. One T-shirt to a person.
5. Ties go to the f1rst p0st.
6. No posts after the paper's out, of course (print or electronic, whichever's first) - first edition print is the goal.
7. No OSDN/VA Linux employees or relatives eligible.
8. You must either be logged in when you post or include one email address in your comment; email is how we'll contact you for your snail-mail address. Spamarmor it if you like, as long as we can read it.
9. If for some crazy, absurd reason one of the papers doesn't run a story/editorial about this at all, we'll go looking for a "similar" paper's story/editorial and pick its headline. We're thinking L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal, that kind of thing. If the papers actually run stories today (Friday), well, darnit that wasn't much of a contest was it? We'll still look for editorials on Sunday.
10. All judges' judgments are final.

EnnaH writes "An article on the Times web-site stated that the popular energy drink Red Bull is under investigation in Sweden, after three people died shortly after consuming the drink. I thought that this may interest the Slashdot community, as I'm sure many of us drink a lot of these hyper-caffinated products and Red Bull is available on the ThinkGeek site." From the article itself, it appears that the problem isn't so much the Red Bull as people overdrinking with it and such. Ah, the wonders of nanny states.Update: 07/14 11:36 PM by H :So, for those of you who didn't pick it out - my comment about nanny states isn't one about Sweden - it's about system that try too hard to protect people from themselves. By all accounts, Sweden's a very nice place. *grin*

Credit card numbers? Personal correspondence? Medical information? If you've ever sent anything you'd like kept private over the profligate and global Internet, be grateful there are good guys devoted to keeping private information private. The long-suffering RantyDave reviews here for your learning pleasure Eric Rescorla's SSL and TLS: Designing and Building Secure Systems; readers should also check out the amazingly prolific Danny Yee's review of the same book. Both reviewers indicate that this is a book whose learning curve is worth tackling. SSL and TLS: Designing and Building Secure Systems author Eric Rescorla pages 499 publisher AddisonWesley rating 9 reviewer RantyDave ISBN 0-201-61598-3 summary Eric Rescorla talks us through SSL, from firstconcepts thru protocol all the way to example code.

The Scoop Until recently SSL was the black art on the Internet. The (not incidental) details were passed around almost as word of mouth leaving only a few individuals actually able to implement secure services and the rest of us staring at ethereal in bewilderment. It stops right here. Eric Rescorla starts at the very beginning and takes us at breakneck pace through to full byte-by-byte implementation of SSL, HTTP over SSL and anything halfway relevant along the way. Written in the tradition of 'TCP/IP Illustrated' expect clear diagrams, copious code samples (OpenSSL and Java) and ruthless attention to detail. What's to Like? Two words: Horse's mouth. Rescorla is the author of RFC's 2659, 2660 and 2818 (HTTP over TLS). Also the Java PureTLS toolkit (free), ssldump (free), some commercial toolkits and parts of Nokia's SSL offload boxes. In short, he knows his stuff and it shows.

One way it shows is that you'll never be short of an explaination. Every third paragraph seems to be why it is that we do something, and for me at least this is almost as relevant as what. This leads naturally over to discussion of the historical perspective of SSL/TLS and a surprisingly neutral standpoint with even our friends in Redmond getting credit where it's due. The correctness also shows with the book being fully up-to-date with the patent and export situations, although obviously this may be subject to a sell by date.

The performance chapter gives actual figures on a variety of algorithms and platforms (mostly FreeBSD and OpenSSL) and is major slashdot fodder.

What's to not Like? Very little. I would have liked to have seen a brief mention of (/usr/ports/security/)stunnel as a quick'n'dirty SSL wrapper or offload box. I also found the line-by-line coverage of mod_ssl's session caching code (end of appendix A) a bizarre choice - or are we being given hints towards transparent failover? What's to Consider? This is a large, complex subject and although the writing is clear, you're looking at a long and fairly steep learning curve. If your hope is to get mod_ssl up and going on a cable modem, this is not what you need. If, OTOH, you were looking to contribute to mod_ssl, this would probably be a good starting point.

This is no quick fix or howto, it's about understanding. Be prepared to take a little while and let it all sink in.

The Summary Hard work, but worth it. Worth the price of admission just to use Chapter 1 as a companion to Cryptonomicon.

Table of Contents

Security Concepts

Introduction to SSL

Basic SSL

Advanced SSL

SSL Security

SSL Performance

Designing with SSL

Coding with SSL

HTTP over SSL

SMTP over TLS

Contrasting Approaches

1. Example Code
2. SSLv2

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Credit card numbers? Personal correspondence? Medical information? If you've ever sent anything you'd like kept private over the profligate and global Internet, be grateful there are good guys devoted to keeping private information private. The long-suffering RantyDave reviews here for your learning pleasure Eric Rescorla's SSL and TLS: Designing and Building Secure Systems; readers should also check out the amazingly prolific Danny Yee's review of the same book. Both reviewers indicate that this is a book whose learning curve is worth tackling. SSL and TLS: Designing and Building Secure Systems author Eric Rescorla pages 499 publisher AddisonWesley rating 9 reviewer RantyDave ISBN 0-201-61598-3 summary Eric Rescorla talks us through SSL, from firstconcepts thru protocol all the way to example code.

The Scoop Until recently SSL was the black art on the Internet. The (not incidental) details were passed around almost as word of mouth leaving only a few individuals actually able to implement secure services and the rest of us staring at ethereal in bewilderment. It stops right here. Eric Rescorla starts at the very beginning and takes us at breakneck pace through to full byte-by-byte implementation of SSL, HTTP over SSL and anything halfway relevant along the way. Written in the tradition of 'TCP/IP Illustrated' expect clear diagrams, copious code samples (OpenSSL and Java) and ruthless attention to detail. What's to Like? Two words: Horse's mouth. Rescorla is the author of RFC's 2659, 2660 and 2818 (HTTP over TLS). Also the Java PureTLS toolkit (free), ssldump (free), some commercial toolkits and parts of Nokia's SSL offload boxes. In short, he knows his stuff and it shows.

One way it shows is that you'll never be short of an explaination. Every third paragraph seems to be why it is that we do something, and for me at least this is almost as relevant as what. This leads naturally over to discussion of the historical perspective of SSL/TLS and a surprisingly neutral standpoint with even our friends in Redmond getting credit where it's due. The correctness also shows with the book being fully up-to-date with the patent and export situations, although obviously this may be subject to a sell by date.

The performance chapter gives actual figures on a variety of algorithms and platforms (mostly FreeBSD and OpenSSL) and is major slashdot fodder.

What's to not Like? Very little. I would have liked to have seen a brief mention of (/usr/ports/security/)stunnel as a quick'n'dirty SSL wrapper or offload box. I also found the line-by-line coverage of mod_ssl's session caching code (end of appendix A) a bizarre choice - or are we being given hints towards transparent failover? What's to Consider? This is a large, complex subject and although the writing is clear, you're looking at a long and fairly steep learning curve. If your hope is to get mod_ssl up and going on a cable modem, this is not what you need. If, OTOH, you were looking to contribute to mod_ssl, this would probably be a good starting point.

This is no quick fix or howto, it's about understanding. Be prepared to take a little while and let it all sink in.

The Summary Hard work, but worth it. Worth the price of admission just to use Chapter 1 as a companion to Cryptonomicon.

Table of Contents

Security Concepts

Introduction to SSL

Basic SSL

Advanced SSL

SSL Security

SSL Performance

Designing with SSL

Coding with SSL

HTTP over SSL

SMTP over TLS

Contrasting Approaches

1. Example Code
2. SSLv2

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Linus Torvalds (and David Diamond) wrote this book; chromatic wrote the review below. It may be hard to say much new about Linus and the results of his 1991 inspiration to loose his kernel on the world, but this book is historically informative, with copyrighted Torvalds humor to boot (I snorted in parts) and fun facts about growing up in Finland. And for a multimedia extravaganza, you can even listen to some conversation between Linus and co-author David Diamond.

Just For Fun author Linus Torvalds and David Diamond pages 249 publisher Harper Business rating 8 reviewer chromatic ISBN 0-06-662072-4 summary A matter of fact autobiography of Linus, long on his philosophy but somewhat short on technical detail.

The Scoop When Linux finally showed up on media radar screens, journalists scrambled to put a friendly face on the "burgeoning Open Source movement." The humble and affable Linus Torvalds became a posterboy. Curiously enough, at least to media types, he eschewed their attention in favor of fun things -- spending time with his family, drinking beer, and hacking.

Torvalds' coauthor, David Diamond of Red Herring, had to bribe him with fun activities like surfing and camping to produce this autobiography. They've produced an entertaining portrait of the man behind the kernel. It's an easy read aimed at the average non-geek type -- with plenty of apologetic philosophy mixed in for good measure.

What's to Like? The Torvalds story is engaging, and it's wittily told. The narrative has a genial, almost self-deprecating tone. From humble beginnings in Finland, the kind of drive and dedication and singlemindedness that makes so many hackers lock themselves away in dark rooms chasing obscure and interesting knowledge paid off. At least, it paid off eventually.

The central part of the book revolves around Linux's also-humble beginnings. This, again, involves a unique sort of focus requiring long, dark winters and unsocial (not anti-social) people. Torvalds is at his best in this section, capturing his excitement at technical achievement and surprise that other people are along for the ride. It ends with the release of Linux 1.0 and a surprising first date with Tove. (Yes, that sounds like a bad soap opera. No, it's not bad.)

From there, the book veers into the heady world of Success. Linus describes the increased media attention and the circumstances surrounding his move to the US and Transmeta. Corporate acceptance and the inevitable black-and-white Linux versus Microsoft debates come up, and the overall reaction is, "Who cares? I'm doing this for fun!" One might compare his thoughts on stock options to those of other hackers -- Torvalds even calls himself "the luckiest bastard alive." The success of his little project has changed him, but life is about that change.

A few chapters of philosophy round out the book. His vaunted neutrality is exposed as a case of not wanting to tell other people what to think. He takes on intellectual property abuses, citing cases near and dear to the hearts of Slashdot readers. Readers get a few short thoughts on the history of technology and an essay on why open source makes sense. Finally, Torvalds expounds again on his simple philosophy of life. People do things first for survival purposes, then for social purposes, and finally for recreation. (Hence the title.) For Linus, at least, Linux continues to meet the latter two needs nicely.

What's to Consider? Interwoven with the standard biography chapters are short vignettes about the writing of the book. Told from Diamond's point of view, these are intended to give a current portrait of the man. They give a sort of clinical observation feeling, like looking through a window on a test subject. On the other hand, they're consistent with Torvalds' presentation of himself. The different styles can be jarring -- Diamond has a snappy, clever new-media style of prose that occasionally obscures his point.

Technically-minded readers curious about the sort of geeky details only a kernel hacker could provide will be disappointed. A "jargon ahead" disclaimer forewarns readers before launching into brief descriptions of the fabled Sinclair computer. The book walks a narrow path between avoiding these details and requiring some knowledge -- readers unfamiliar with RMS, ESR, and even the Tanenbaum debates might have trouble catching up in spots. On the other hand, you know a book that explains what EEPROM is can't be too hard.

The Summary Written mostly in a conversational style, this is an entertaining little book. It's suitable for nearly all audiences, without too much in the way of jargon. Additionally, it's an interesting portrait of Linus himself, cutting through some of the myths. This is a book that might explain to parents and significant others the world over why we do what we do. Table of Contents

• Birth of a Nerd
• Birth of an Operating System
• King of the Ball
• • Intellectual Property
  • An End to Control
  • The Amusement Ride Ahead
  • Why Open Source Makes Sense
  • Fame and Fortune
  • The Meaning of Life II

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Linus Torvalds (and David Diamond) wrote this book; chromatic wrote the review below. It may be hard to say much new about Linus and the results of his 1991 inspiration to loose his kernel on the world, but this book is historically informative, with copyrighted Torvalds humor to boot (I snorted in parts) and fun facts about growing up in Finland. And for a multimedia extravaganza, you can even listen to some conversation between Linus and co-author David Diamond.

Just For Fun author Linus Torvalds and David Diamond pages 249 publisher Harper Business rating 8 reviewer chromatic ISBN 0-06-662072-4 summary A matter of fact autobiography of Linus, long on his philosophy but somewhat short on technical detail.

The Scoop When Linux finally showed up on media radar screens, journalists scrambled to put a friendly face on the "burgeoning Open Source movement." The humble and affable Linus Torvalds became a posterboy. Curiously enough, at least to media types, he eschewed their attention in favor of fun things -- spending time with his family, drinking beer, and hacking.

Torvalds' coauthor, David Diamond of Red Herring, had to bribe him with fun activities like surfing and camping to produce this autobiography. They've produced an entertaining portrait of the man behind the kernel. It's an easy read aimed at the average non-geek type -- with plenty of apologetic philosophy mixed in for good measure.

What's to Like? The Torvalds story is engaging, and it's wittily told. The narrative has a genial, almost self-deprecating tone. From humble beginnings in Finland, the kind of drive and dedication and singlemindedness that makes so many hackers lock themselves away in dark rooms chasing obscure and interesting knowledge paid off. At least, it paid off eventually.

The central part of the book revolves around Linux's also-humble beginnings. This, again, involves a unique sort of focus requiring long, dark winters and unsocial (not anti-social) people. Torvalds is at his best in this section, capturing his excitement at technical achievement and surprise that other people are along for the ride. It ends with the release of Linux 1.0 and a surprising first date with Tove. (Yes, that sounds like a bad soap opera. No, it's not bad.)

From there, the book veers into the heady world of Success. Linus describes the increased media attention and the circumstances surrounding his move to the US and Transmeta. Corporate acceptance and the inevitable black-and-white Linux versus Microsoft debates come up, and the overall reaction is, "Who cares? I'm doing this for fun!" One might compare his thoughts on stock options to those of other hackers -- Torvalds even calls himself "the luckiest bastard alive." The success of his little project has changed him, but life is about that change.

A few chapters of philosophy round out the book. His vaunted neutrality is exposed as a case of not wanting to tell other people what to think. He takes on intellectual property abuses, citing cases near and dear to the hearts of Slashdot readers. Readers get a few short thoughts on the history of technology and an essay on why open source makes sense. Finally, Torvalds expounds again on his simple philosophy of life. People do things first for survival purposes, then for social purposes, and finally for recreation. (Hence the title.) For Linus, at least, Linux continues to meet the latter two needs nicely.

What's to Consider? Interwoven with the standard biography chapters are short vignettes about the writing of the book. Told from Diamond's point of view, these are intended to give a current portrait of the man. They give a sort of clinical observation feeling, like looking through a window on a test subject. On the other hand, they're consistent with Torvalds' presentation of himself. The different styles can be jarring -- Diamond has a snappy, clever new-media style of prose that occasionally obscures his point.

Technically-minded readers curious about the sort of geeky details only a kernel hacker could provide will be disappointed. A "jargon ahead" disclaimer forewarns readers before launching into brief descriptions of the fabled Sinclair computer. The book walks a narrow path between avoiding these details and requiring some knowledge -- readers unfamiliar with RMS, ESR, and even the Tanenbaum debates might have trouble catching up in spots. On the other hand, you know a book that explains what EEPROM is can't be too hard.

The Summary Written mostly in a conversational style, this is an entertaining little book. It's suitable for nearly all audiences, without too much in the way of jargon. Additionally, it's an interesting portrait of Linus himself, cutting through some of the myths. This is a book that might explain to parents and significant others the world over why we do what we do. Table of Contents

• Birth of a Nerd
• Birth of an Operating System
• King of the Ball
• • Intellectual Property
  • An End to Control
  • The Amusement Ride Ahead
  • Why Open Source Makes Sense
  • Fame and Fortune
  • The Meaning of Life II

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

LightForce3 asks: "I've noticed that neon light kits are available for installation inside PC cases. Apparently, these lights are used in conjunction with window kits to create a viewable funky-looking effect inside one's computer. However, I am worried that these neon lights could be detrimental to PC performance because of the EMI and RFI (Electro-Magnetic Interference, and Radio Frequency Interference, respectively) that devices such as these often create. In other words, you could be sticking a device inside your PC case that could interfere with all the electrical signals and devices, much as how running a blender or other appliance can interfere with radio and television reception. Is this sort of situation possible? Could those of us who use these lights be degrading the performance of our computers? Or am I completely wrong?"

The below review was contributed by reader Lozzer, and deals with a book about one of the most fascinating figures in mathematics history (and cryptograhic history in particular). Nearly half a century after his suicide, Alan Turing is still fascinating and relevant on several levels.

Alan Turing: The Enigma author Andrew Hodges pages 587 publisher Walker & Company rating 8.5 reviewer Lozzer ISBN 0802775802 summary A wide-ranging look at one of the most important mathematical minds, before, during and after his role in breaking WWII codes.

I recently finished reading Andrew Hodge's excellent biography of Alan Turing. The second edition was printed in 1992. It included updates based on material declassified by the British Government (Amazon has a 2000 edition, I'm not sure if this is a rewrite or a reprint). Weighing in at nearly 600 pages the book is not for the faint hearted Geek.

For our younger Script Kiddies I'll give a brief overview of Turing's life and what he has to do with computing. He was born in London in 1912 and christened Alan Mathison Turing. After a public school up-bringing he studied maths at King's College, Cambridge from 1931. In 1935 he solved part of one of the great mathematical problems of the time: Hilbert's Second Problem. Godel had solved the first two parts. Turing solved the last part about deciding which mathematical statements were true. His construction for solving this problem was the Turing Machine. This model forms the basis for all modern day computers.

Between this breakthrough and the war, Turing spent a couple of years at Princeton, where he studied under Alonzo Church and John von Neumann, both of whom where pioneers in the computing field.

With the onset of war in 1939 Turing found himself employed as a code breaker at Bletchley Park (which is only a couple of miles from where I live). This is where Turing's theoretical knowledge began to take physical shape. By the end of the war the Colossus had been built. This is sometimes touted as the first computer, though I'll leave that to people with flame retartant underpants. Suffice it to say this "computer" could only be programmed by reconfiguring the hardware.

After the war Turing gravitated to the University of Manchester where he took a role in developing the first prototype computer that was "software" programmable. After that he became a programmer, using the computer to help with mathematical theories. He was convicted of Gross Indecency (Turing was a homosexual) in 1952, and had to suffer a year of oestrogen injections to "cure" him. He committed suicide in 1954.

After that potted history, back to the book. It draws on a lot of sources and manages to bring them together in a very coherent whole. As well as providing a British view of the history of computing it also gives an interesting perspective on the changes in society over the years. The book also conveys Turing's breadth of knowledge and vision well - while most computer users were thinking of mathematical problems he was into AI, chess and other abstract symbolism. He figured out the need for subroutines, was the first to use binary (he noted that routines could change the external notation for human consumption, but continued to use 32 bit numbers entered in reverse order himself). He considered hardware acceleration. The author does well in explaining the scientific portions of the book in a clear and correct fashion. From a Geek perspective the text is possibly a bit dense, with some less interesting chunks (the homosexual aspects of Turing's life, for example, have less impact now than when the book was first published).

I recommend the book if you are interested in some of the wider aspects of Turing's life. For me, being British, having a Cambridge maths degree (ooh shameless), and living near Bletchley brings a lot more of the book to life that it may for most. If you are only interested in Turing's impact on the world of computers there are good online resources for this. Maybe, however, you won't find out why Christopher Strachey was the world's first Hacker."

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

The below review was contributed by reader Lozzer, and deals with a book about one of the most fascinating figures in mathematics history (and cryptograhic history in particular). Nearly half a century after his suicide, Alan Turing is still fascinating and relevant on several levels.

Alan Turing: The Enigma author Andrew Hodges pages 587 publisher Walker & Company rating 8.5 reviewer Lozzer ISBN 0802775802 summary A wide-ranging look at one of the most important mathematical minds, before, during and after his role in breaking WWII codes.

I recently finished reading Andrew Hodge's excellent biography of Alan Turing. The second edition was printed in 1992. It included updates based on material declassified by the British Government (Amazon has a 2000 edition, I'm not sure if this is a rewrite or a reprint). Weighing in at nearly 600 pages the book is not for the faint hearted Geek.

For our younger Script Kiddies I'll give a brief overview of Turing's life and what he has to do with computing. He was born in London in 1912 and christened Alan Mathison Turing. After a public school up-bringing he studied maths at King's College, Cambridge from 1931. In 1935 he solved part of one of the great mathematical problems of the time: Hilbert's Second Problem. Godel had solved the first two parts. Turing solved the last part about deciding which mathematical statements were true. His construction for solving this problem was the Turing Machine. This model forms the basis for all modern day computers.

Between this breakthrough and the war, Turing spent a couple of years at Princeton, where he studied under Alonzo Church and John von Neumann, both of whom where pioneers in the computing field.

With the onset of war in 1939 Turing found himself employed as a code breaker at Bletchley Park (which is only a couple of miles from where I live). This is where Turing's theoretical knowledge began to take physical shape. By the end of the war the Colossus had been built. This is sometimes touted as the first computer, though I'll leave that to people with flame retartant underpants. Suffice it to say this "computer" could only be programmed by reconfiguring the hardware.

After the war Turing gravitated to the University of Manchester where he took a role in developing the first prototype computer that was "software" programmable. After that he became a programmer, using the computer to help with mathematical theories. He was convicted of Gross Indecency (Turing was a homosexual) in 1952, and had to suffer a year of oestrogen injections to "cure" him. He committed suicide in 1954.

After that potted history, back to the book. It draws on a lot of sources and manages to bring them together in a very coherent whole. As well as providing a British view of the history of computing it also gives an interesting perspective on the changes in society over the years. The book also conveys Turing's breadth of knowledge and vision well - while most computer users were thinking of mathematical problems he was into AI, chess and other abstract symbolism. He figured out the need for subroutines, was the first to use binary (he noted that routines could change the external notation for human consumption, but continued to use 32 bit numbers entered in reverse order himself). He considered hardware acceleration. The author does well in explaining the scientific portions of the book in a clear and correct fashion. From a Geek perspective the text is possibly a bit dense, with some less interesting chunks (the homosexual aspects of Turing's life, for example, have less impact now than when the book was first published).

I recommend the book if you are interested in some of the wider aspects of Turing's life. For me, being British, having a Cambridge maths degree (ooh shameless), and living near Bletchley brings a lot more of the book to life that it may for most. If you are only interested in Turing's impact on the world of computers there are good online resources for this. Maybe, however, you won't find out why Christopher Strachey was the world's first Hacker."

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

There's a raft of books about building online communities, but Amy Jo Kim's Community Building On The Web is one of the best. From Net Noir to Ultima Online, she goes a long way towards laying out what makes successful communities work. (Read more).

Community Building On the Web author Amy Jo Kim pages 352 publisher Peachpit Press rating 7/10 reviewer Jon Katz ISBN 0-201-87484-9 summary the nuts and bolts of building good community sites

I've read a raft of books on community-building on the Web in the past few years, and Amy Jo Kim's Community Building: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities may be the best one yet.

A long-time online community designer and founder of Naima, a design studio specializing in creating Web communities, Kim has worked for AOL, Adobe, eBay, iVillage, MTV, Sony, Yahoo, and Nickelodeon.

It's easy to see why. She writes clearly and authoritatively, and has culled valuable lessons about what works in building Web communities and what doesn't. As she rightly points out, community building is one of the toughest online tasks to pull off, from hostiles to competition to wary visitors, and there's some urgency about figuring out how to do it.

By 2010, she predicts, people won't even refer to "Web communities" anymore. The ubiquity and bandwidth of online communities and the standardization of Net protocols will make the Web as pervasive as the telephone or TV. Though I'm not sure I agree about bandwidth, which shows no sign yet of having the infrastructure to entice the mainstream population.

Online communities will be viewed less as isolated destinations, more as ways to meet people, stay in touch with families, do work, buy things, without doing anything more remarkable than making a phone call. This process is already underway, Kim says, as towns, schools, families, peers, and colleagues use the Web to stay in touch, do research, and share information. She points to gaming clubs as a model: communities first coalesce online, then share photos and videos, hear each other's voices, and make plans for face-to-face meetings.

Kim draws from some of the most effective websites -- Ultima Online, eBay, Slashdot (she cites the moderation systems here as a model way to control free-wheeling discussions, and to identify and promote leadership within communities), Women.com, GeoCities, MomsOnline, NetNoir, Third Age, The Motley Fool, Heat.neat, Mplayer, iVillage -- to make her case that there are three enduring principles to building successful communities:

Designing for growth and change.

Balancing the efforts of management with the ideas, suggestions and needs of members, giving members a progressively larger role to play in maintaining the culture and building the site.

Design for growth and change.

Kim is also tough on etiquette: lay down crystal clear rules of behavior, make sure people read them, and enforce them.

Every community faces a core issue, she points out: member freedom versus quality control. Balancing those sometimes competing values is one of the toughest tasks in community-building on the Web.

Kim also discusses the way successful communities develop and maintain unique personalities. Net Noir, for instance, highlights a different member on its home page each day to make it clear that the site is aimed at African-Americans (particularly singles). Other successful sites find their own ways to signal audiences what they're about.

Especially interesting and useful is the way in which Ultima Online turns each member's profile into a multi-faceted, ever-changing window into his or her online persona. (She reproduces a closeup of "Sosostris," whose clothes, skill levels and knapsack contents tell us that this character is a sophisticated player.

Convincingly organized, Community Building on the Web focuses on nine design strategies, from developing leadership programs to spawning member-run subgroups.

Community Building covers a ton of ground. In addition to being useful, the book is also a mirror into the culture and future -- even the anthropology -- of online communities.

However the Web does or doesn't evolve, the failure or success of these communities will shape the future of the Net and the Web. This book will help people who want to try.

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.