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It's like the Ambient Orb, but inside the case. That is a patently obvious thing.

Ambient Orb. Your Mac would likely turn red when the stock market dives or when the National Weather Service has a warning in your area.

Programmable? It'd better be. I know that I'd likely pull apart a new Mac to figure out how to change the lights as I see fit.

There will probably be a Dashboard widget to control the lights or set a source like (NYSE or NWS) to change the lights according to those trends.

How about this? It may not do stripes but it pretty much does everything else we seem to be talking about - computing device, unlimited range of colours, programmable by software, entire outer surface changes, can be configured to represent various data sources...

At the very least, I would say this makes Apple's 'idea' a semi-obvious one, which might defeat its patent.

Is it like this?

Surely there is a computer inside that controls that case!

My mom got it for me as a joke, but I started wearing it to family reunions and it actually did help out quite a bit.

And sorry not to set my post above to display html, here's: the ThinkGeek link.

If it's the Belkin Nostromo pad, our friends at
I have one and love it. <sales pitch> It comes with software that allows any key/mouse button to be mapped to any key/gamepad direction/mousewheel function on the pad. It even allows keyboard/mouse macros to be mapped to any key. Combined with <a href="http://members.ij.net/anthonymathews/MacroMa ker.htm">MacroMaker</a> it can do anything. (Well almost anything, dynamic things are another story.) I use it for everything: Games (FPS mostly), CAD (2d/3d), and any other program that has many functions tied to keystrokes. The software it comes with even can associate specific layouts with different programs. (Ex. If you start a game, it automatically loads the function layout associated with the game.) </sales pitch>I love mine, I just wish the buttons were a bit more sensitive (they have to be pressed absolutely all the way down to register.) If only there were OSS drivers for it. (The OEM ones work fine for windows/mac, but some linux drivers would be nice.)

well that'd be cool if they also combine it with the "intelligent" glass which darkens depending on amount of lumination.
you would have a window, which can work as a tv, and you can sunbathe, and it genereates it's own power.
just add a soundbug and you'll get everything a flat surface can be =)

#!/bin/pseudoperl
#
# Replacement for average user
# v1.0b

use ICQ;
use email;
use browser;

while (1){
while ( period = "waking hours" ){
$input = browse( randsite() );
send_icq( To => randuser(),
Message => "$input ! hahaha!");

$input = read_mail();
send_email (forward_message());
);
sleep (8 hrs);
};

Do you think Bill Gates will buy an "I'm blogging this?" T-shirt?

http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/6de4/act ion/

They need more HTTPanties

Such as "403 : Forbidden" or "400 : Bad Request", although I'm curious as to what would happen with "405 : Method Not Allowed", "411 : Length Required" and "305 : Use Proxy"

HTTP/1.1 : Status Code Definitions

Hey, that's Soothing Green Light there! Interesting that they don't add the it. to the RSS feed though.

How can you mention the thinkgeek sysadmin section - and not mention their sysadmin pageant?!?

For a couple years now I've been one of two de-facto sysadmins in a small operation, and I've definitely come to appreciate sysadmins much more than I did before.

It's hard work and the vast majority of it is tedious. Of course a really good sysadmin doesn't have to do much of anything on a day-to-day basis (having scripted everything up nicely), but when something tricky needs doing it's soooo much better to have a real admin on hand to spend the day doing it.

Next time I have a sysadmin who's not me, I'm definitely buying him/her a t-shirt and a beer on S.A.A.D.

(...though it would be nice to have a happier acronym)

Thinkgeek has a special section just for SysAdmins as well as an interest store for it too.

Check it out.

Thinkgeek has a special section just for SysAdmins as well as an interest store for it too.

Check it out.

"...We are seeing a race to the bottom..."

Sounds familiar...

Every time I read the buggy whip analogy from someone that has a good-paying job I am reminded of Boston and tea for some reason. I'm one of those guys that realizes that a large part of the "white collar" workforce is pretty much daycare for adults.

Face it, high-paying jobs that are not manual labour-related are being eliminated by software (if not yours yet, just wait a bit) because 11 or 13 of the best thinkers sat down and figured out everything about your job and the best way to do it. Then they put all that stuff into software. Push buttons much?

Replacing manual labour is one thing; replacing your thought processes is another (after all, software designed by geniuses in your field can do a better job than you could ever do).

The sooner we come to terms with this the better. It's easier to ostritch though and assume that the displaced will all become rock stars or move onto the mythical future world where people can devote their energies towards inventing stuff and getting creative and get everyone else to make the stuff they imagineer.

I still don't know where I fit in in this new economy. Am I replaceable by a simple shell script as the T-shirt says, and if so, why am I working? To fulfill some antiquated. puritan-inspired notion of work ethic and keep my nose to the grindstone so that I please my masters?

Someone please enlighten me without referencing "want fries with that?" or saying that I (and millions of others) will just "move on to the idea economy". Everyone knows that there can only be so many idea people.

Bah, maybe I'm just being too pessimistic and should lighten-up.

= =
No sig, Pepsi.

Just slap a couple of stickers on it, paint a racing strip across it, or ad one of 'em cathode lights to it. Should increase your frame rate ten fold.

Just slap a couple of stickers on it, paint a racing strip across it, or ad one of 'em cathode lights to it. Should increase your frame rate ten fold.

Of course here on slashdot I should just say FUCK CREATIVE AND THEIR PATENTS, but seriously...

You don't have to have a dozen speakers, 5.1 can be enough, and some speakers are quite small and don't take up much sapce. A lot (if not the most) of stuff creative makes is of their own, the mp3 players you mention are of their own design, Nomad/Zen and flash-based players.
An Audigy 2 (wich I have) costs about $90, without the front panel. Why is it ok to shell out $500 for a video card, and not ok to buy a $90-100 sound card wich would outlive two or three video card?

I don't have a problem using Creative products, and this won't prevent me from buying other creative products.

Of course here on slashdot I should just say FUCK CREATIVE AND THEIR PATENTS, but seriously...

You don't have to have a dozen speakers, 5.1 can be enough, and some speakers are quite small and don't take up much sapce. A lot (if not the most) of stuff creative makes is of their own, the mp3 players you mention are of their own design, Nomad/Zen and flash-based players.
An Audigy 2 (wich I have) costs about $90, without the front panel. Why is it ok to shell out $500 for a video card, and not ok to buy a $90-100 sound card wich would outlive two or three video card?

I don't have a problem using Creative products, and this won't prevent me from buying other creative products.

My local LUG actually attached a modified laser pointer to a small shark's head -- the kind of shark you can keep in a fish tank... I don't recall its species name. We had quite a great time reciting Austin Powers lines for a few hours before we removed the water-proofed pointer from the confused shark's body. Unfortunately the only camera at the event met with an untimely death before the pictures could be recovered.

If you're in the Baltimore LUG and happened to have a camera at the event, please contact myself or Horatio -- we really regret not having any photos. If you managed to snap a photo, please, let us know!

Electronic forums like /. and K5 are, to some degree, the modern equivalent of the Green Dragon.

And so is the Caffeine section of ThinkGeek.

Why wait?

This "invention" reminds me a lot the soundbug, wich turned windows and flat surfaces into speakers. Info about soundbug at http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/audio/5a15/

They could of saved some time and ordered the sound bug.

Here's a nifty one-handed keyboard

I used to have a Cherry ML4100, which I really liked, but I just wore it out (letters wore off, unreliable action).

Now I switched to the really slick looking Blu Illuminated Keyboard. But I am not that happy with it: The feel is too hard and inconsistent, and worst of all, where I'd expect the left Ctrl key, is the "Fn" key (for alternate keys). Still, the looks make up for it.

Black Hat

the James Bond Stealth Camera.

I'll be more impressed when they figure out how to make this play MP3s.

USB Wireless Security Lock, if it can tell the difference between Bob and Tom, for example, would be ideal, for starters.
You haven't really asked an answerable question, however, since you didn't tell us what the exact security requirements are.
e.g., just don't secure the damn thing would be a legitimate response in some circumstances (probably not this one, granted).

Identifying a suitable solution depends on determining just how 'secure' the system needs to be; there are different requirements for securing, say, gas pumps, ATMs, cash registers, nukular-missile-launcher consoles, pr0n viewing consoles, etc. ... see my point? You are pretty clear that your users have a low tolerance for the barriers that security will put in place ... but you don't clearly tell us how "high" those barriers need to be. Not to be pointed, but it kinda concerns me that you didn't, because it suggests that you, yourself don't know ... and that is the very first thing you should determine

especially if this system could potentially have any of my personal/medical/financial information on it

A nice device, allows over-ride if you loose it, and instant unlock as need be.

wireless lock

This has already been discussed enough to have a t-shirt made.

I wish I could find a pick from their "You just don't get it" t-shirt.

Ah well, that'll do Donkey... that'll do...

Enron was way past the point of Shredders : they worked with shrinters

Knoppix with Mozilla ought to be fine for the software end of things, but the hardware could be compromised too. Someone could have a hardware keylogger such as the KeyKatcher . Building your own computer from scratch is the only way to really be sure. And by "from scratch" I mean from the raw ore.

Mount one of these. Years ago, all us neighborhood kids would put regular red lasers on Laser Challenge guns and played at night. We would have gone apeshit over the green ones, though obviously there's cost to take into consideration.

Ok, who the fuck modded this one Informative? It's a think geek plus toy for heaven's sake.

Mods, come on, common sense tells you to at least look at the damn URL.

Someday in the future, once people have stopped giggling about how all telephones once were wired to the wall, they'll still have trouble containing their laughter about laptop computers.

Computers keep shrinking and prices keep dropping. Why depend on a remote site to host your desktop when you could keep the same data in your watch, jackknife or wallet?

Someday in the future, once people have stopped giggling about how all telephones once were wired to the wall, they'll still have trouble containing their laughter about laptop computers.

Computers keep shrinking and prices keep dropping. Why depend on a remote site to host your desktop when you could keep the same data in your watch, jackknife or wallet?

Someday in the future, once people have stopped giggling about how all telephones once were wired to the wall, they'll still have trouble containing their laughter about laptop computers.

Computers keep shrinking and prices keep dropping. Why depend on a remote site to host your desktop when you could keep the same data in your watch, jackknife or wallet?

And here it is.

Something to go with my stuffed microbes!

#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) {
float num = 2.56;
int five;

five = num+num

printf("%d\n);

}

Come on, you can't accept cheap substitutes when it comes to your technological baking needs! Go for the real thing.

mono makes your throat sore. you get it from kissing girls.

Hey, you can also get it from thinkgeek.com.

Just kidding, just kidding...!

If I can get this device armed with an M80, I'll be set!

Do they get a white hat with the certificate?