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Re:MP3 by jeffy210 · 2000-11-09 12:06 · Score: 1 · on The Docking Station Meets The MP3 Player

This one may help you out a bit, but i don't know if you can access it for use with a shoutcast server

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/t hin gs/364e.html

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Flexibility - It's a Good Thing by nellardo · 2000-11-09 03:12 · Score: 2 · on The Docking Station Meets The MP3 Player

I'm very happy to see someone coming out with such a flexible device - most consumer electronics companies prefer releasing several different "models", all with their own cryptic product number, rather than letting the consumer tinker with it herself.

I know why they do it - cheaper to deal with customer support when you know you have only a fixed set of things to deal with. But if you can do customer support for WinDoze, you ought to be able to handle swapping a few hard drives around :-)

Still prefer the portable Jukebox one ThinkGeek sells, but I live in Manhattan - no car. Very glad to see more hard-disk devices anyway - I remember telling Sony engineers to use hard disks for music download years ago, and the response was "We don't make hard disks. We make MD." :-(

Now THIS is ironic! by doctor_oktagon · 2000-11-05 15:53 · Score: 4 · on Quova Inc. Completes Trace of 4 billion IP Addresses

I just refreshed this story, and what banner advert should fill my screen?

Think Geek advertising poster depicting Map of the Internet!

So are we now boycotting Think Geek for commercially violating our address space? Or more to the point, isn't this actually an interesting visualisation of the virtual space we inhabit?

Call me a doctor! I think I'm gonna die laughing!!

Your argument is flawed, Mr. Gates by goat_attack · 2000-11-01 07:24 · Score: 1 · on Bill Gates's email - about Linux

Quote:

You can not get eight, let alone ten or twelve, hour days out of open source coders. No one has that sort of free time.

We can make time. Ever heard of caffeine?

Showstopper / Thinkgeek by Some+guy+named+Chris · 2000-10-30 08:52 · Score: 3 · on Slashback: Palmistry, Lecture, Quid Quo Pro

It is interesting that www.thinkgeek.com (another andover.net property) just proudly gave away three of these heavily Macromediaized Panasonic Showstoppers, as well as featuring it proudly on the front of their most recent mailing.

You would think they would be promoting and selling Tivo's since they run Linux, and are much more hacker friendly. Eh, a foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of little minds... or so says Ralph Waldo Emerson.

killer app? bah! by ph0rk · 2000-10-30 04:37 · Score: 1 · on Indrema vs Xbox vs PS2

Come off it, is this a game machine, or some crappy parlor widget?

is there anyone that a: has a bunch of mp3's and doesn't also already have b: something to play them on?

if i want a living room mp3 player, i'd buy one.

feh.

Re:Do they do a Left Handed version? by SamIIs · 2000-10-29 01:32 · Score: 2 · on Newest Quake 'Productivity Tool' -- The CLAW

It says in the article that they don't have aleft handed version, but are considering one.

Yeah, of course the're "considering one". If they manage to sell gobs and gobs of these things, they might make a left-handed one.

Leatherman's said the same thing about The Wave. The Wave's impossible to do the uber-sexy, one-handed draw with your left hand. I'm left-handed, but mouse with my right. Guess I get to use a Claw, but not the Wave.

(Well, I use a Wave, but as cool as I might. :) )

Too Late by Evil_Way · 2000-10-21 19:21 · Score: 2 · on Mapping The Net And Hunting Down Evil

I think they're a little too late. ThinkGeek created a map of the Internet last year. It can be found here .

Too Late by Evil_Way · 2000-10-21 19:21 · Score: 2 · on Mapping The Net And Hunting Down Evil

I think they're a little too late. ThinkGeek created a map of the Internet last year. It can be found here .

Yellow LEDs are better in this case by Gothmolly · 2000-10-19 18:54 · Score: 1 · on Displays That Harvest Light Instead Of Creating It

The human eye's sensitivity to light peaks in the yellow-green area of the visible spectrum. Coincidentally (?) this is the color of the sun. Using yellow or green LEDs, like these would consume less power for the same effect.

Has anyone bought an AudioRequest? by Paul+Carver · 2000-10-16 22:53 · Score: 2 · on Linux-Based Home Services Server

http://www.thinkgeek.com/brain/bazaar/mart/cart.cg i?action=view&type=item&itemid=364e appears to be a shipping product. Has anyone bought it? It doesn't do all the ZapStation claims it will do, but there's something to be said for a product you can actually buy. PS. Slashdot is mangling the url. Delete any spaces manually.

Re:high end sewing machines by Lahjik · 2000-10-12 02:57 · Score: 1 · on New Singer Sewing Machine Uses ... Game Boy

My mother-in-law recently got a $5k+ Singer embroidery machine, and I quite loved playing with it. The Tux image makes a nice embroidered image due to its simple 3 color design and large blocks. It took me about an hour of playing from downloading the .GIF to getting a nice Tux on a $2 hat. Ah, if only my wife had known about this before buying me a Tux tie.

As for the comment about photo-realistic embroidery, there are in fact something like 32 recognized colors of embroidery floss and the computer programs used to create the designs can control the direction, density, and frequency of the stiches. I created quite an impressive Union Jack embroidery for my mother-in-law's MG car club by having the different colored sections of the flag are all stiched in different directions. This causes the stiching to reflect the light quite nicely.

Online shopping outside the continent of America by henley · 2000-10-11 17:56 · Score: 4 · on Online Shopping Outside the US?

As a resident of the UK, I've been online shopping for 4 years or so - bought my first Slackware distribution from Walnut Creek in mid '96. I'd class myself as a moderate online shopper ,averaging 1-2 transactions per month. I can only offer my own experience but anyway...

The hassles have been covered already, and fall into the areas of:

Availability
Shipping
Delay
Taxes & Customs

Availability. There's a very marked difference here between companies that "get it" and those that don't. There are a *lot* of online vendors (both within the US and outside) that aren't aware of, or can't be bothered with shipping internationally. Smart companies will take business from anywhere; hey - they've gone to the trouble of setting up a mail order distribution business so adding the minor hassle of international distribution is trivial.An excellent example is Thinkgeek. Counter-examples I can't provide - whilst shopping for cheap GPSes a while back I came across a few (mainly US) shops that just couldn't deal with the concept of places other than US states. My response is to instantly forget all about them. The lesson should be obvious.

Shipping, by which I mainly refer to hassle and cost. For many reasons it's a lot cheaper to go with "local" companies. In the UK we're a fairly enlightened bunch so by preference I'd usually by from a local distributor - Amazon UK rather than Amazon US for example. However there's always something you can't get locally (such as ThinkGeek's Map of the Internet, for example) so it's a simple trade-off: Do you want it bad enough to pay shipping?.

In fairness, intercontinental shipping is usually not too bad - you guys in the States have things *so* cheap that can still be cheaper for me to buy (shippable) electronic goods from US stores, pay shipping, customs AND Tax, and come out ahead of the local offerings... Certainly for more esoteric gear (like GPSes).

This feeds into Delay. Generally if I buy from a UK store it gets to me within a week. Your Mileage May Vary. Shipping from the States is highly variable - my Inet map arrived 10 days after ordering, my last Walnut Creek order took 6 weeks. The simple answer is: Do you want it bad enough, can you afford to wait, is it cheap enough to go for it? (It's that whole time value of money / money value of time thing).

Lastly the whole area of the legal & fiscal obligations. For consumer goods, it's (nearly!) always going to be legal, but you can get hassle from local Customs folks trying to prove it. Given the amount of this trade going back and forth 'cross the Big Pond, however, I'd estimate that maybe 1 in 5 packages is actually inspected at all. This is a good thing, from a delay perspective. However you can view it as a downside - it's your responsibility to report incoming good for import duty so if the Customs folks don't do it for you that's one more hassle (or you can just ignore it...).

I sorta went off on a fuzzy one here, but hopefully brain-dumped some of the thought processes I go through when online ordering. In practice, as time goes by I'm doing far far less international shopping because the whole internet revolution is (slowly!) driving down costs in the UK as well as increasing availability. Hell, we can even do our groceries online here now.

Conclusion: Online Shopping is NOT an Americans-only thing, it's widely available throughout the Western world at least. Whether it's right for you depends on a range of factors, not least of which is your own circumstances - For instance, my job keeps me away from home during the week and I value my weekend time. Online shopping lets me use little dead spaces during the week to "batch up" stuff I need (or more commonly want) ready for quick weekend processing of the incoming parcels.

Oh, and one last comment. Online shops are *exactly* the same as high street ones. There are those I keep coming back to (see above), those I've tried once or twice and will never use again (no names, no packdrill) and those I just plain don't like the look of. Generally the ones I've had most success with have been big, recognisable web-only firms (Amazon, Thinkgeek) that got in early and/or know the business. Johnny-come-lately .COMs and high-street shops trying to get their heads around this "internet" thingy are generally... less satisfying :-).

Online shopping outside the continent of America by henley · 2000-10-11 17:56 · Score: 4 · on Online Shopping Outside the US?

As a resident of the UK, I've been online shopping for 4 years or so - bought my first Slackware distribution from Walnut Creek in mid '96. I'd class myself as a moderate online shopper ,averaging 1-2 transactions per month. I can only offer my own experience but anyway...

The hassles have been covered already, and fall into the areas of:

Availability
Shipping
Delay
Taxes & Customs