PC Case For Hamsters, EZ Bake Oven in a Drive Bay

ResQuad noted that Slashdot's OSDN Sister site ThinkGeek is selling some exciting new products including a PC Case for Hamsters and an EZ Bake Oven that fits in a 5.25 drive bay. They also have a limited run T-Shirt with a s3kr1t message on it. Lots of other fun stuff too.

Comments

Bad Marketing

[American AC in Paris]

They're both neat little toys, but ThinkGeek won't have much success selling them side-by-side.

It's hard enough fitting a hamster into an empty 5.25 drive bay, after all...

Re:Bad Marketing

[b12arr0]

They're low-carb hamsters. Atkins lists them at .2 carbs. I'm sure they'll fit.

Re:Bad Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

Only breaded hamsters have carbs. When you saute them in WD40 they are carb free.

Re:Bad Marketing

[b12arr0]

I was unsure about the hair, bones, teeth, and eyes. Well, I guess you could filet the little guy before you slide him in.

Re:Bad Marketing

[manavendra]

Till it was found one of the dead hamsters was grossly overweight...

Oh, then they started complaining about a certain heart condition the hamster had...ah well, bad marketing after all.

Re:Bad Marketing

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Yes, and their product demo page is especially unhelpful. There's not a single photo of the actual case, just a bunch of animated figures. I wonder if they even have the product ready, or if this is just a cheap attempt to sell pre-ordered vaporware.

Re:Bad Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

or it could be april fools day

Re:Bad Marketing

[Stephen Samuel]

Well, I guess you could filet the little guy before you slide him in.

Then put him in the oven... No need for the hamster cage.

Finally, something funny on April 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, it may have been six months since the last Slashback, but today as we buckle
under the strain of another stream of unfunny April Fools "jokes", let's take a
moment to thank Slashdot's monthly meta publication Trollback
for putting out a fantastic 4/1 issue.

Way to go, guys.

Re:Finally, something funny on April 1

[DarkOx]

Figures this is an AC post. Who are you 544159? Troll back is the worst example of everything it frequently complains about. This guy, 544159, makes all sorts of blanket statements about how other posters are wrong and expects us to buy into his crap just because he is at Harvard. He has even on occasion poket fun and people and told them they should leave Harvard for Community College. Let me tell you I know lots of people in Community college who could best almost anyone in just about any acedemic contest, and I would stake my saveings they could beat this guy. Troll back is no more valid then anyother post and unless 544159 is willing to dig some evidence before he calls other peoples claims baisless. I will happly cite his own publications for my evidence.

Good...

[snakattak]

Now I can cook my hamster in my ez-bake drive bay. Finally!

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

The PC Ez-Bake oven can even be used to cook your Pop Tarts, Bagel Bites, or any tiny or flat food. YUM!

wow, you flattened a hamster? COOL!

Re:Good...

[cshark]

Is this a joke?
What happens if I buy one?
Do I get an invoice that say "april fools?"
What about Gordy?
Can fish really talk?
What about Rabbits?
Or system admins?
Do you think that there will be six more weeks of winter of the sysadmin doesn't see his shadow?

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think that there will be six more weeks of winter of the sysadmin doesn't see his shadow?

You are thinking of the groundhog version. Slightly larger and only works underground.

Re:Good...

[aoe2bug]

you cant buy one.. try it.

Re:Good...

[DustMagnet]

I don't know if the link was broken before, but it worked fine for me. I hope it's worth the $150, just to find out if they'll send something.

Re:Good...

[jhoffoss]

And from what I can tell, the shirt is real. At least, it has a price. I didn't bother trying to order one though. Alright, I did. The hamster PC case has a price too, but calls you a silly monkey when you try to order one. Apparently the shirt is popular too, as they have order deadline stuff updated, stricken out, and in red.

What I want though is a computer virus starter collection. Melissa was so cute, and Nimda, who could forget Nimda!

Terrible!

[Chuck Bucket]

must, not reload slashdot again today! come on April 2nd!

CVBS

Re:Terrible!

[Hoch]

You think thats bad, /. gave me mod points last night. Must, not moderate today! Must save. NOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Re:Terrible!

[shadowbearer]

You're hooked and you know it.

Oh, fuck...

SB

Re:Terrible!

[UnassumingLocalGuy]

Heh... my mod points expire today. I MUST BLOW THEM ALL ON CRAPPY COMMENTS!

/me runs off to mod up first posts

EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Shakrai]

Back when I was a little kid I pulled a Tim Allen stunt and decided that my sisters EZ-Bake oven needed more power. After all who wants to wait a whole 10 minutes for their peanut-butter cookie? I considered various ways of doing this (my parents caught me trying to take the propane tank off our grill -- so that option was ruled out) and finally settled on wiring the battery terminals directly into 120v AC power.

Unfortunately the Oven didn't last very long and I got a nice electric shock for my efforts. My sister never did figure out why her EZ-Bake stopped working though. And my Dad never did figure out where his good extension cord and 3/4 of a brand new roll of electricans tape disappeared to either :)

To this day I still think there's a market for a more powerful version of the EZ-Bake oven. Any venture capitalists out there reading this comment? It'll be the biggest thing since Google and sliced bread -- which incidentally we'll be able to toast in less then 10 seconds with the new model!

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[You Been Rob-ed!]

There is a more powerful version of the EZBake. It's called a microwave. It's been out a good long time now.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called a sense of humor you fucking troll.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Shakrai]

There is a more powerful version of the EZBake. It's called a microwave. It's been out a good long time now.

Ah, but Microwaves won't make my bread golden brown when I toast it. We need something that works with heat not EM. I need to reinvestigate the feasibility of the gas powered EZ-Bake oven. You could even take it camping where there's no AC power!

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Anonymous Coward]

You could use a toaster oven.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Shakrai]

You could use a toaster oven.

Some people are just a humorless lot of bastards. Can't the ACs get into the spirit of April 1st like the rest of /.?

BTW: The original story is true :)

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[SandSpider]

In fact, you aren't the first person to think of this. I present to you: GE's Advantium oven.

The people who claim Microwave Ovens are the successors are Fools! Fools! The reason being that the EZ Bake works off of light bulbs. (Incidentally, you would have wanted to rig a better lightbulb into the EZ Bake Oven to make it more powerful - I suggest Halogen.) The Advantium cooks with, you guessed it, Light.

But, sadly, your joke has, in fact, been brought to, um, light. Sorry.

=Brian

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people are just a humorless lot of bastards. Can't the ACs get into the spirit of April 1st like the rest of /.?

You only say that because you can't see the smile behind my hand. ;-)

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Shakrai]

In fact, you aren't the first person to think of this. I present to you: GE's Advantium oven.

THOSE RAT BASTARDS!!!! I had prior art! Goddamn them!

There's only one thing to do now. If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em!

But, sadly, your joke has, in fact, been brought to, um, light. Sorry.

Everybody is a critic :) I was just trying to get into the apparent /. spirit of Apr 1st. I've been ridiculed in almost every reply. Oh well :)

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Eccles]

The reason being that the EZ Bake works off of light bulbs.

I wonder why my mod to use compact florescents didn't work?

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[ballpoint]

As a four-year old the batteries in my electro game (where you have to link the contacts of question and answer with two probes to get a buzzing sound) died.

Somehow I noticed the wall socket...

A flash, a bang but I'm still alive. Close call though since there were no differential interruptors installed at that time.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[tcs]

I suspect an incandescent bulb is a more efficient heat source for baking, because part of halogen's claim to fame is more light for the watt (and whiter light, of course) which implies that fewer watts end up being dissipated as heat.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[plugger]

Halogen headlights certainly feel hot if you put your hand just in front of them. The brighter light is absorbed by the skin, heating it up, or maybe those bulbs are throwing out more infra-red along with the extra white light.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[plugger]

That page says "stuffed peppers, 15 minutes". I'd suggest it's their image server that's stuffed, not the peppers.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Anonymous Coward]

... and finally settled on wiring the battery terminals directly into 120v AC power.

Uh, there's a serious flaw with your funny.

An EZ-bake is already hooked directly to the 120 VAC power line. It uses a 120 volt bulb. It's just wired directly to the wall. There are no "battery" terminals.

You should've just replaced the bulb with a HID unit. Watch out for melting plastic.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Shakrai]

An EZ-bake is already hooked directly to the 120 VAC power line. It uses a 120 volt bulb. It's just wired directly to the wall. There are no "battery" terminals.

Umm what EZ-bake would you be refering to? The one my sister had used two AA batts. That looks like the same one they are offering to this day. I've never personally seen a 120 VAC model.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[jargonCCNA]

Halogen lights are banned in a number of university residences because they burn ridiculously hot. We're talking fire hazard here. Yeah, it's more light for the wattage, but it's a lot more heat too.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Goldsmith]

You may laugh, but I kid you not:

In my lab, our "rapid thermal annealler" is basically an EZ bake oven. We use a high voltage source and a special halogen bulb mounted in a vacuum chamber to bring the surface of just about whatever we want to 1200 C from room temperature in 50 seconds.

We call it the EZ bake oven from hell.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[tcs]

I'll grant that my post was speculation, but it sounds to me like your post involves a violation of thermodynamics. Where's the extra energy coming from? You can't have more light _and_ more heat, can you? There must be some reasonable explanation in terms of the smear of the electromagnetic spectrum you get from each type of light bulb, but I don't know just what it is.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[jargonCCNA]

-shrugs- I don't know how it's done... all I know is a 15- or 25-watt halogen bulb can produce as much light as a 100-watt incandescent, if not more, but gets the entire lamp very hot to the touch. Probably not as hot as a light socket, but then again, we don't worry about those tipping over onto your bed and lighting your sheets aflame, now do we?

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Shakrai]

-shrugs- I don't know how it's done... all I know is a 15- or 25-watt halogen bulb can produce as much light as a 100-watt incandescent, if not more, but gets the entire lamp very hot to the touch. Probably not as hot as a light socket, but then again, we don't worry about those tipping over onto your bed and lighting your sheets aflame, now do we?

Our friends over at Howstuffworks have an interesting summary:

A halogen lamp also uses a tungsten filament, but it is encased inside a much smaller quartz envelope. Because the envelope is so close to the filament, it would melt if it were made from glass. The gas inside the envelope is also different -- it consists of a gas from the halogen group. These gases have a very interesting property: They combine with tungsten vapor! If the temperature is high enough, the halogen gas will combine with tungsten atoms as they evaporate and redeposit them on the filament. This recycling process lets the filament last a lot longer. In addition, it is now possible to run the filament hotter, meaning you get more light per unit of energy. You still get a lot of heat, though; and because the quartz envelope is so close to the filament, it is EXTREMELY hot compared to a normal light bulb.

Personally I'd rather use florescents. They use less energy then either solution and don't run hot to the touch. Of course I suppose they aren't ideal for all applications and if you get cheap ballasts in your fixtures they are a royal pain in the ass because the blubs keep blowing and you have no idea why.

Back in my drunk and stupid college days we used to melt floppy disks with halogen lights. Never saw one ingite sheets but it doesn't seem like a leap of faith to assume that if it can melt plastic it would ingite fabric. If I was anymore of a geek I'd look up the temperatures involved but I think I've used up my geek quota for the day :)

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[netringer]

I considered various ways of doing this (my parents caught me trying to take the propane tank off our grill -- so that option was ruled out) and finally settled on wiring the battery terminals directly into 120v AC power.

Nice story, but E-Z Bake Ovens use 2 100 watt household light bulbs. You can't get a lot of heat out batteries.

If you couild get them to fit, all you'd have to do is put in 200 or 250 watters. They ship with a couple dozen warning cards telling you not to do that (among other things,like the cakes will be hot.)

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[netringer]

Umm what EZ-bake would you be refering to? The one my sister had used two AA batts.

This one. Requires one 100-watt lightbulb.

The first generation original one my sister had in the olden days had two 100-watt bulbs - top and bottom....AND WE LIKED IT!
We also had a similar 25 watt 120 volt light bulb in the original first-generation Lite Brite.

Kids don't have many line power toys these days. Too many lawsuits.

Let me tell you about my Vac-U-Form which was a plastic heat pack machine (WARNING! Electric toy! Gets Hot!) and my neighbor's Kenner plastic injection molding machine (WARNING! Electric toy! Gets Hot!) that made plastic pellets (WARNING! Choking hazard!) into smaller versions (WARNING! Choking hazard!) of those little toy soldiers you see in "Toy Story."

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Trey Waters]

Hah, that reminds me of a story a salesman at an appliance store told me....

He was at a trade show, where some GE rep was demoing the Advantium oven. As part of the demo, he was cooking chocolate chip cookies and touting "With the Advantium oven from GE, you can cook 6 cookies in 3 minutes!"

At one point, a lady in the crowd piped up "Yeah, well with my Dacor range, I can cook 125 cookies in 12 minutes!"

The GE rep gave her a few coupons and politely asked her to move on. :)

For those not in the know, Dacor is one of your high-end "pro-sumer" (I hate that term) brands. Think Viking.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Grab]

I think you'll find that's a *hamster* bastard. Oh, wrong one, sorry...

Grab.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Slick_Snake]

Look for something called a flashbake oven.

Flashbake(R) ovens - Flashbake(R) ovens use a combination of intense visible light from halogen bulbs and infrared energy to cook food. It produces the browning effect of conventional ovens but it cooks almost twice as fast. Unlike conventional ovens, it isn't necessary to leave these ovens on during non cooking times to maintain oven temperature. They only operate when actual cooking is taking place - no preheating is needed. Because of these advantages, Flashbake(R) ovens are being used in commercial kitchens to increase productivity.-Flashbake

Nice idea!

[SphericalCrusher]

w00t! No more runs to the kitchen for a quick snack! Technology is awesome!

Re:Nice idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! And what do you say about the EZ bake oven?

Re:Nice idea!

[DrWhizBang]

yes!

mmmmm.... roast HAMPSTER!

I dont need an easy bake oven!

[nevek]

My overclocked p4 could cook a steak!

http://www.mnsi.net/~nevek/3601.JPG

Re:I dont need an easy bake oven!

[madfgurtbn]

My overclocked p4 could cook a steak!

My water cooled p4 could chill wine!

Re:I dont need an easy bake oven!

[NeoThermic]

phfft! 3.6Ghz?! is that ALL you could get? From a p4?

Try this one on for size:
http://82.34.77.49/Images/GIF/6.58ghz.gif

And if you think thats not enough, have a look at the attempts to go ten times higher...
http://82.34.77.49/Images/GIF/ReportBug 1.gif

All from a 1.2Ghz Pentium 3 Celeron

NeoThermic

Re:I dont need an easy bake oven!

[dasmegabyte]

Shit, I'm starving.

Let's have a LAN party!

EZ Roast Case

[zubernerd]

Just wait until you put an {AMD|P4} processor in it, then that case will be an EZ Roast oven for hamsters...

Listen up!

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new Hamster overlords!

Re:Listen up!

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, Hamster cooks YOU!

The EZ bake oven

[Anonymous Coward]

Is heated using the latest generation of Intel 64 bit chips.

But for some...

[ForestGrump]

EZ bake is considered cooking, and should be left to the women in their lives.

now if i can convince my exwife to bake me a cake....

-Grump

Re:But for some...

[harrkev]

Well, Hasbro is trying to appeal to boys too. Check this out.

And this is NOT a joke. Well, OK. Maybe it is. But this is a joke that you can buy in stores. The first time that I saw one in a store, I thought "That is just SOOOOOOO COOOL! It appeals to my baser instincts.

Um... Toasty Hamsters

[Anonymous Coward]

My case is 40c....
Slow cooked hamsters =D

They STOLE my idea!

[mr. phantastik]

I had the idea for an easy bake oven a LONG time ago! Linkie

Re:They STOLE my idea!

[Sexual Ass Gerbil]

Looks like you should have patented it. You can patent just about anything these days, you know.

Re:They STOLE my idea!

[Shakrai]

I had the idea for an easy bake oven a LONG time ago! Linkie

I suggest you contact our good friend Darl and find out what law firms he is using. Sounds like you have a case :)

Re:They STOLE my idea!

[Rude Turnip]

With a nick like that, it sounds like you could use one of those cases! If you can't afford it, then I think everyone here has a moral obligation to chip in :)

Almost useful...

[b1t r0t]

The EZ-Bake drive bay got me to thinking about something useful... I wouldn't mind one that was an EPROM eraser. That would actually be pretty spiffy.

So how many people are going to take them up on their offer of the "binary T-shirt"?

Re:Almost useful...

[thelenm]

So how many people are going to take them up on their offer of the "binary T-shirt"?

I am. The T-shirt offer is real, as far as I can tell. I just submitted an order, and the shipping and handling with the T-shirt was more than it was without, so it had better be real!

Re:Almost useful...

[idontgno]

The EZ-Bake drive bay got me to thinking about something useful... I wouldn't mind one that was an EPROM eraser. That would actually be pretty spiffy.

And a damn-sight better use for cold-cathode fluorescents than most uber-l33t casemods.

Re:Almost useful...

[Sepper]

Hope you read the 'text' on it :)

I would've bought one, but i'm kinda broke :(

Re:Almost useful...

[Anonymous Coward]

$ while read -n 8 binary; do echo -ne `printf "\\\\\x%x" $((2#${binary}))`; done <<< '0100100100100000011100110110100001101111011100000 11100000110010101100100001000000110000101110100001 00000010101000110100001101001011011100110101101000 11101100101011001010110101100100000011011110110111 00010000001000001011100000111001001101001011011000 01000000100011001101111011011110110110001110011001 00000010001000110000101111001001011000010000001100 00101101110011001000010000001100001011011000110110 00010000001001001001000000110011101101111011101000 01000000111011101100001011100110010000001110100011 01000011010010111001100100000011011000110111101110 10101110011011110010010000001110011011010000110100 1011100100111010000100001'

ph33r my m4d bash sk1llZzzzz
I shopped at ThinkGeek on April Fools Day, and all I got was this lousy shirt!

Re:Almost useful...

[filledwithloathing]

It says, "Be sure to drink you're Ovaltine!"

Sigh

[atari2600]

This is getting boring now. These AF jokes really suck big big time. I mean cmon guys - one AF after another - are there so many morons out there?

*thinks*

Never mind.

Re:Sigh

[nebaz]

I predict these stories will end...In about 8 hours.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Modded flamebait? I think a majority of the moderators on slashdot are fucking morons. A majority of the fucking morons are college kids and school kids who don't have a fucking clue about what they are posting. A majority of slashdotters are fucking morons as well. Hoorah for tomorrow and American college kids. It is getting annoying as heck to read /. today.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

i predict that most /. users have no sense of humor at all.

Re:Sigh

[MarkGriz]

On the plus side, there wll be twice as many real stories posted tomorrow.

You have to wonder, what happens if a big news story breaks today (SCO drops suit, says "Nevermind"). Do the editors post it, or wait until tomorrow so it isn't just dismissed out of hand as an AF joke?

Re:Sigh

[Fjord]

If that happened and they reported it today, would you believe it?

I also think we can wait a day to find out that SCO dropped the suits. It's not life or death.

Re:Sigh

[Artifakt]

I hate to say this, but don't we owe Cmdr. Taco a spot of gratitude for not including a SCO story in the fakes? You have to admit, slashdot didn't sink as low as the theoretical nadir for AF this year.

T-shirt super secret message

[thelenm]

By the way, the super secret message on the T-shirt says, "I shopped at ThinkGeek on April Fools Day, and all I got was this lousy shirt!"

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[dougmc]

By the way, the super secret message on the T-shirt says

Yes, we know. More interesting would have been how to decode it. Here's the program I wrote to do it --

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
{
local $/ ;
$d = <> ;
}

foreach (split //, $d) {
next if ! /^\d/ ;
$b = $b * 2 ;
$b++ if ($_) ;

$c++ ;
if ($c > 7) {
print chr($b) ;
$b = 0 ; $c = 0 ;
}
}

Not meant to be short or pretty, just to decode the message. I'm sure somebody will show how they did it in 2 or 1 lines soon enough. In fact, I'm surprised it hasn't happened already :)

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[BrewerDude]

Even easier, use emacs. Just type in the message and then use:

M-x rot13-other-window

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Plutor]

Holy crap, man.

perl -e 'print unpack("a78", pack("B624", "0100100... (etc.) ...100001")) . "\n"'

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[VenTatsu]

perl -e "while ($d .= <>) {$d =~ s/[^01]//g; $r .= pack('B8', $1) while $d =~ s/^([01]{8})//;} print $r"

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[rehannan]

Well, I just copied the binary into MacASCII Display X. Took all of about 6 seconds. Fear my l33t skills. :P

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Plutor]

Ah, just for the record, I do realize that this would have been sufficient:

perl -e 'print unpack("a*", pack("B*", "0100100... (etc.) ...100001")) . "\n"'

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Anonymous Cowpart]

I don't have Perl, you insensitive clod !

#include "cstdio"

void bindecode(char const* psz)
{
while(*psz)
{
for(char i = 0, ch = 0; i < 8; ++i)
ch = ch * 2 + *psz++ - '0';
printf("%c", ch);
}
}

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Jonboy X]

Nifty cross-platform Java implementation:

public class DecodeMessage {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
StringReader sr=new StringReader(data);
StringBuffer message=new StringBuffer();
while(true) {
char[] binaryDigits=new char[8];
int bitsRead=sr.read(binaryDigits,0,8);
if(bitsRead==-1) {break;}
byte b=Byte.parseByte(new String(binaryDigits),2);
message.append((char)b);
}
System.out.println(message.toString());
}
static String data=
"010010010010000001110011011010000110111101 1100000 11100000110010101100100001000000110000101110100001 00000010101000110100001101001011011100110101101000 11101100101011001010110101100100000011011110110111 00010000001000001011100000111001001101001011011000 01000000100011001101111011011110110110001110011001 00000010001000110000101111001001011000010000001100 00101101110011001000010000001100001011011000110110 00010000001001001001000000110011101101111011101000 01000000111011101100001011100110010000001110100011 01000011010010111001100100000011011000110111101110 10101110011011110010010000001110011011010000110100 1011100100111010000100001";
}

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[wawannem]

I don't even see the encoding anymore, I just see blond, brunette, redhead...

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[erichbox]

Try this:

perl -e'local $/;print pack "B*", '

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[erichbox]

Or, rather:

perl -e'local $/;print pack "B*", <>'

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[SuperChuck69]

Just don't create a file called -rf. --Larry Wall

rm '-rf' Don't ask why I know.

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[johnlcallaway]

Bah .. using program to do it is not l33t. I did it in vi by hand w/o an ASCII chart. The comma was a pain though, I couldn't understand why a quote mark went there for the longest time.

OK .. I did use an ASCII chart for the comma.....and I am 44 years old and have had a lot of experience with memory dumps.

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[spanklin]

Dammit! I thought you were lying! Imagine my disappointment when I decoded it and found out that you gave away the punchline. Oh well. I guess I'll go do some work now.

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[scheme]

You fell for it. It wouldn't be a secret message if any average programmer could figure it out in 5 minutes or less. The message is actually encrypted using a one-time pad. The real message is .... actually you should figure it out on your own.

A little warning though, some incorrect one-time keys will give you grammatically correct english messages. Those messages won't be correct however.

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[thelenm]

Oh. In that case, here's what I used:

#!/usr/bin/perl -ln0
s/\n//g;
print pack "B*", $_;

with the binary code piped in on STDIN, of course.

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Loozrboy]

Jeez, I just did it by hand. I'm not sure if that makes me more or less "hardcore". Or just stupider.

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. You should learn the ins and outs of pack and unpack. They are the functions in perl that are intended for this kind of binary bit-fiddling. Here's my (VERY dirty) one-liner:

cat monkeycode | perl -e 'while(){@B=split/(\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d)/,$_;} foreach $byte (@B){ $bytestr = pack "B8", $byte; print"$bytestr";} print "\n";'

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Plutor]

You are the winner.

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[thelenm]

That won't get rid of a file called '-rf', though. This will:

rm -- -rf

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[loren]

Umm... I'm surprised nobody did this in the shell.. I saw lots of perl, but no bash... Here's what I used:

( (echo obase=8 ; echo ibase=2 ; echo "010010010010000001110011011010000110111
10111000 0011100000110010101100100001000
00011000010111010 0001000000101010001101
00001101001011011100110101 1010001110110
01010110010101101011001000000110111 1011
011100010000001000001011100000111001001
101 001011011000010000001000110011011110
110111101101 100011100110010000001000100
011000010111100100101 100001000000110000
101101110011001000010000001100 001011011
000110110000100000010010010010000001100
111011011110111010000100000011101110110
0001011 10011001000000111010001101000011
0100101110011001 00000011011000110111101
1101010111001101111001001 00000011100110
1101000011010010111001001110100001 00001" | tr -d ' \012' | sed -e 's/\([01][01][01][01][01][01][01][01]\)/\1,/g' | tr ',' '\012') | bc | sed -e 's/^/\\\\0/' | sed -e 's/0\([0123][01234567][01234567]\)/\1/g'| tr -d '\012' ; echo) | xargs echo -e

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[RLW]

Weak, just read it. It's only binary. I bet you use a compiler to write your device drivers.
Real geeks key it in with cat con > driver! phf33r m3!
please? pretty please, at least a little fear? Just so the kids don't laugh at me?

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[smurd]

Or Tcl:

#!/usr/bin/tclsh
set fd [open bin r]
set bin [string trim [read $fd]]
close $fd
for {set i 0} {$i < [string length $bin]} {incr i 8} {
puts -nonewline [binary format B* [string range $bin $i [expr $i+7]]]
}
puts ""

Add you favorite language, 99 bottles of beer?

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[SuperChuck69]

Heh. I remember I once gave a file a bad filename (I want to say it was ., but that would overwrite .) and I had to put it in quotes... Guess the same doesn't apply to files starting in -...

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Bigtimes]

01010100011010000110111101110011011001010010000001 10011101110101011110010111001100100000011000010111 01000010000001010100011010000110100101101110011010 11011001110110010101100101011010110010000001100001 01110010011001010010000001101000011010010110110001 10000101110010011010010110111101110101011100110010 1110

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Penumbra]

I like C++ better:

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;

int main(){
fstream in("/root/bin",ios_base::in);
int i;
string f="";
char s[9];
while(in.getline(s,9)){
i=0;
for(int x=0;x<8;x++)
(s[x]=='1')?i+=pow(2.0,7-x):i+=0;
f+=char(i);
}
cout<<f<<endl;
return 0;
}

Of course, i formated the binary to one byte per line, i guess that might be cheeting a little

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[daeley]

Bah .. using program to do it is not l33t. I did it in vi

And since vi is a program, you are not l33t. Boy, the syllogistic jokes just write themselves sometimes, don't they? ;)

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Anonymous Coward]

#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main () {
char foo;
char r=0;
int i=0;
int m;
while(fread(&foo,sizeof(char),1,stdin)) {
if(foo == '\n') continue;
if(foo%2) r |= 1<<(7-i);
if(i==7) {putchar(r);r=0;i=0;} else i++;
}
putchar('\n');
return 1;
}

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[johnlcallaway]

I see how you were confused ... vi is my pet hamster, I keep him in my EZ-Bake PC

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[dougmc]

and I am 44 years old and have had a lot of experience with memory dumps.

And I'm 35 and have plenty of experience with memory dumps as well. What were we talking about again? Do I know you? Where are my pants?

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Chembal]

You forgot your imports, you insensitive clod!

import java.io.*;

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[John Starks]

UNIX/ASCII C:

#define r(d) read(0,&(d),1)
#define w(d) write(1,&(d),1)
main() {
char d,c=0;int i=0;
while(r(d)) if(!((d-=0x30)&0xFE)) i++,c+=c+d,i==8&&(w(c),c=0,i=0);
c=10;w(c);
}

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[FireballFreddy]

Why do people keep bothering with that ridiculous double-dash crap? Take the route that doesn't rely on an option flag being interpreted correctly:

rm ./-rf

Show me a solution more portable than that.

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[drewhearle]

For all you Windows people who can't run a C/C++/Perl/PHP/whatever program, I wrote a nice little binary-to-text converter with a [gasp] GUI written in [gasp] Visual Basic .NET . Needs the .NET framework installed (stupid .NET exe...).

You won't be able to just click the link with IE - you'll have to right-click the link, "save target as..." and put it on your desktop or something.

Not like I really needed a binary-to-text converter, especially a .NET one, but I was bored.

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[radish]

Can anyone beat 4 words? I put "binary to ascii converter" into google and hit I'm Feeling Lucky.

Right tool for the job guys ;)

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Anonymous Coward]

-----b2a.pl-----

#!/usr/bin/perl -ln
print unpack "A*", pack "B*", $_;

-----EOF--------

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[CityZen]

I did it with even less code using my browser:

It was a given that the solution would appear.

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Anonymous Coward]

if you google with binaries translator...

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[forkazoo]

Mine is even worse. Can't have too much white space or repetition that is a shame, I hate slashdot, it is evil, mary's very excellent mother just served up nine pizza sauces. (can't forget sedna, now!) I like the girl who worked at the pizzeria by me. she was hot. maybe she is legal now...

#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <cstring>

char text[] = "0100100100100000011100110110100001101111011100000 11100000110010101100100001000000110000101110100001 00000010101000110100001101001011011100110101101000 11101100101011001010110101100100000011011110110111 00010000001000001011100000111001001101001011011000 01000000100011001101111011011110110110001110011001 00000010001000110000101111001001011000010000001100 00101101110011001000010000001100001011011000110110 00010000001001001001000000110011101101111011101000 01000000111011101100001011100110010000001110100011 01000011010010111001100100000011011000110111101110 10101110011011110010010000001110011011010000110100 1011100100111010000100001";

int main (int argc, const char * argv[]) {
// insert code here...
std::cout << "Hello, World!\n";
int length = strlen(text);
for(int i=0; i<(length/8); i++) {
unsigned char letter=0;
for (int j=0; j<8; j++) {
char digit[] = "1";
int binval;
digit[0] = text[8*i+j];
binval = atoi( digit );
letter = (letter << 1) + binval;
}
std::cout << letter;
}
return 0;
}

iostream *and* cstring. It may be horrible, but it made perfect sense at the time... :) And, it worked on first compile! Apparently, I need less white space or less repetition. Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted. Cheese Fish is Moose, Poop Madoogly Schmap. Gurp Broodle.

The postercomment compression filter is completely evil. I hate it, it makes me ramble, just so I can share a tiny snippet of horrible C++, that wishes it was C. I couldn't have rewritten this program thrice in the amount of time I've spent adding babble, and the re-previewing this comment in an effor to get around the filter.

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[forkazoo]

I tried that, too, but it didn't seem to be EBCDIC, so I just wrote a program on one of my ASCII boxen. Really, it should have been EBCDIC if it was supposed to be cool.

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Loozrboy]

On the assumption that less legible -> more geeky, I present my solution in Befunge:
z>80:p0>#@~'0-:v
z, $ 1
#$ ^ w :!#v_
z|!:-1gj#:0+*2\< <
z>0:p 2^

(God, I think it took longer to get that to display semi-properly than it did to write it :P)

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[JeremyALogan]

Nifty "cross-platform" C# implementation:

public class DecodeMessage {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
StringReader sr=new StringReader(data);
StringBuffer message=new StringBuffer();
while(true) {
char[] binaryDigits=new char[8];
int bitsRead=sr.read(binaryDigits,0,8);
if(bitsRead==-1) {break;}
byte b=Byte.parseByte(new String(binaryDigits),2);
message.append((char)b);
}
System.out.println(message.toString());
}
static String data=
"010010010010000001110011011010000110111101 110000
011100000110010101100100001000000110000101 110100
001000000101010001101000011010010110111001 101011
010001110110010101100101011010110010000001 101111
011011100010000001000001011100000111001001 101001
011011000010000001000110011011110110111101 101100
011100110010000001000100011000010111100100 101100
001000000110000101101110011001000010000001 100001
011011000110110000100000010010010010000001 100111
011011110111010000100000011101110110000101 110011
001000000111010001101000011010010111001100 100000
011011000110111101110101011100110111100100 100000
011100110110100001101001011100100111010000 100001";
}

Just kidding :)

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing is that I am supposed to be an perl expert, but after tyoing around for ten minutes with combinations of pack unpack, "B", "h", "C" etc I just gave up and used some internet page to convert it. Convert::Binary anyone?

Cheers,

Tels

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[manavendra]

java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "0 111000"
at java.lang.NumberFormatException.forInputString(Num berFormatException.java:48)
at java.lang.Integer.parseInt(Integer.java:477)
at java.lang.Byte.parseByte(Byte.java:122) at DecodeMessage.main(DecodeMessage.java:25)
Exception in thread "main"

Geez, i hate those who spoil my only fun in the whole day!

How To Get A Story Accepted Tip #1

[Sparky77]

noted that Slashdot's OSDN Sister site ThinkGeek

Now I know how to reliably get a story accepted: put in references to Slashdot affiliates.

Re:How To Get A Story Accepted Tip #1

[akeyes]

Just don't /. them, oh wait, too late.

Having a good time today?

[hlh_nospam]

I'm guessing that the PC hamster cage was suggested by this news article: Fat Hamster in Printer Sparks Rescue

Apr 1, 7:45 am ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - A hamster called "Teddy" sparked a police rescue mission after he climbed inside a computer printer and got stuck because he was too fat to get out again, authorities said Wednesday. (rest of article can be found on www.iwon.com)

Given the date, I gotta wonder if either is for real.

Re:Having a good time today?

[momerath2003]

The rest of us don't.

Re:Having a good time today?

[pjt33]

I definitely saw that article mid-Wednesday GMT.

so slashdot is now getting comissions???

[Anonymous Coward]

How come are we seeing this kind of ads?

EZ Bake Oven Idea

[Stu Catz]

even though its a hoax its a pretty nifty idea, i would imagine mattel to add this into one of their barbie computers

What I REALLY want . . .

[dgrgich]

. . . is a combo 'EZ-Bake Hamster Oven'. Imagine the possibilities!

PARTYGOER : "Drew, this dish is wonderiffic!!! I must have the recipe!"

DREW: "Why, those are hamster tarts I made with my computer!"

PARTYGOER: "Mmmmmmmm - that's great hamster!"

Now for printers

[kilbo]

Apparently this hamster thought the printer was equiped with such a device

T-Shirt says:

[Cliffm]

I shopped at ThinkGeek on April Fools Day, and all I got was this lousy shirt!

Clue train...

[SulliedTech]

Next stop: You! Thinkgeek did the same thing last year on AFD. It's a joke.

MJ

[DR SoB]

In other news Micheal Jackson has been nominated father of the year by Stewart Living.

Bad site design

[RevDobbs]

...bastards forgot to make a link for the "Buy Doom 3" graphic in the left column... if there's one thing I want more than an easy-baked ham[p]ster, it's next-generation giblets.

Re:Bad site design

[Sepper]

And a link to those HTTPanties' which are FOR REAL...

With Customer Action Shot!... I still can't believe they... with a camera.. to... %/%!T2E$"/"/!% BUFFER OVERFLOW

Don't need the oven

[whovian]

I would cook right from the hard drive. Jiffy Pop popcorn anyone?

meeaniiees!!

[yuudoku]

those bastard almost had me fooled for a while :-( this is by far the MEANEST april fools joke i've seen: http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/other/loo flirpa/nowshipping.gif located in the bottom left corner.

whoa..

[ashot]

is thinkgeek really slashdotted? is that possible?

Meta April Fool

[iCat]

Pity the poor souls who have to meta moderate all the April 1st threads that will show up in a day or two.

Re:Meta April Fool

[Tin Foil Hat]

Now you tell me. I burnt up all my mod points today, and now I realize I'm about to get pounded in metamoderation. I guess the jokes on me. Thanks a lot.

Re:Meta April Fool

[Skuld-Chan]

Have to?

Hamster case

[nizo]

My friend said this case is just what he needs, as long as his pet python can fit through all the bends to chase the hamster/mouse/gerbil. Should make for a pretty active rodent too.

Rejected Stories

[millahtime]

I wonder how many legitimate rejected stories there were today????

Come on April 2nd.

Re:Rejected Stories

[Endive4Ever]

Based on practical observation, I would say that not a lot of legitimate stories were rejected. This, however, is crowding the usual anti-Microsoft and trumped up 'Your Rights On Line' drivel off the main page.

Re:Rejected Stories

[Catbeller]

Based on practical observation, I would say that not a lot of legitimate stories were rejected. This, however, is crowding the usual anti-Microsoft and trumped up 'Your Rights On Line' drivel off the main page.

Ashcroft? Izzat you?

Re:Rejected Stories

[Endive4Ever]

Shouldn't you be trolling Lucianne.com at this time in the afternoon?

Re:Rejected Stories

[dthree]

Today would be a good day for 3d realms to announce the release of DNF.

I call bullshit.

[FIRESTORM_v1]

It doesn't look like that is an ACTUAL case.
1: Why would you put a side panel on it, then have something non-flexible poke through it? Any attempt to slide off the side panel would cause the plastic tube on the front of the case to break or, slice the hamster like a guillotine.

2: The U bend at the top is right on top of where the power supply goes. That's not right.

3: How is one to access their CDROM/floppy/Zip100/insert favorite media drive here if the hamster ball on the front of the case BLOCKS ALL THREE BAYS?

4: click on 'Add to wish list ad prove my point'...

Re:I call bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, duh!

It's meant to be used as a thin client, without any CD drives, or with an external drive.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an April Fools joke. Chill out, dipshit.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

umm... duh?

Re:I call bullshit.

[Short Circuit]

Notice the number of geek points if you buy it...

Re:I call bullshit.

[74nova]

haha, your post is way funnier than the stories could ever be. still gullible at this late in the day? :-)

Re:I call bullshit.

[Fjord]

Well, duh.

But also, add on the fact that PETA endorses it. PETA doesn't even endorse having pets.

Re:I call bullshit.

[spood]

Wouldn't that be more applicable to the oven?

MMMMMMMM, pi(e).

Disappointed....

[MajorDick]

I am horribly disappointed, not at the bad AF joke but for some reason when I try to add it to my cart it says...."Gotcha! April Fools, silly monkey! "

I was hping to buy both and turn it into a sort of concentration camp for rodents, kill them in the case , cook em in the oven. I even had my label maker ready to print an Arbeit Macht Frei label over the drive bay, Oh well, back to using the microwave..

Re:Disappointed....

[xonos]

oh, i get it. holocaust humour is hillarious. do you have any good AIDS jokes or anything about the slaughtered people of Rwanda? child molestation jokes are also good for a laugh or two.

Re:Disappointed....

[MajorDick]

In a word, maybe, if you dont find it funny, well go stuff it. I am so sick of "politically correct" asswipes that tell people what they can and cant say. You forgot Hiroshima victims, ...mmmm....extra crispy....

Re:Disappointed....

[xonos]

i never said you couldn't say it. i never said it should censored. please show my where i make an allusions to controlling what you can and can't say. you posted something on a public space and i responded to it.

perhaps if you do not want people responding to your posts, than perhaps you should "stuff it". i am so sick of "unfunny jackasses" that can not take any criticism or cry when someone makes a response that does not agree with them.

Re:Disappointed....

[Rageon]

Haven't you heard, it's cool to joke about anything once 22.3 years have passed. (Sorry, there's no Simpsons reference, so South Park will have to do.)

Caffeinated meatloaf?!

[Short Circuit]

I'm not sure I'd want to make that one. Even within the comfort of my bed (where my computer is located). I get the shakes bad enough, know that I'm trying to reduce the dosage of my antipsychotic.

Hmm, can we connect 'em?

[graveyhead]

Possibly some kind of automated abattoir between the cage and the oven.

Then, I just do a quick ./lunch.sh, and voila... 5 minutes later lunch is served!

I'd be interested in collaborating on an open-source project for building the drivers, if anyone's interested.

:P

Hamster Havoc

[leroybrown]

I once had a hamster named Forest that would hours and hours running in his little habitrail wheel. He loved that wheel so much that he drug some of his bedding into it to sleep there. Then he decided to start using it as his bathroom, too. So when he'd start running, there would literally be a shit storm in his wheel. Hamster poop and bedding flying everywhere. And, of course, all the flying debris would make its way out thru the airholes and onto my desk. I had to clean my desk of hamster shit at least once a day.

Can you imagine the havoc this would've caused inside a computer case? Little poop pellets landing on the cpu and causing quite a stink from the heat, or hitting the cpu fan and being thrown everywhere... no thanks, I like my cat who is scared of my computers.

Re:Hamster Havoc

[mark-t]

Our hamster did that too... she had a smaller wheel inside her cage, but she really liked the new big wheel that we got her that we had mounted on the exterior of her habitrail, so she started sleeping in there and putting bedding, etc....

Every day, I had to clean around it because it made such a mess outside the cage, but I eventually got tired of it, so I took the whole darn wheel off, and left it off for a few days, putting a little plastic window at the end of the tube where the wheel had been connected so she wouldn't be able to suddenly get out. She did not seem impressed. A week later I put the wheel back on.

We haven't had a problem with her doing that since... and she still excercises in the wheel as much as she ever did.

Re:Hamster Havoc

[Dawnfeather]

I just don't like the fact that two of the features are "Cozy home for your small rodent pet" and "Accommodates any ATX12V power supply". Just doesn't seem like a good combo for some reason. Small cute furry things and electricity shouldn't ever mix. I stand firm on this.

I gotta stop...

[b12arr0]

clicking refresh on slashdot for today. Too many AF stories. I'm starting to think that Google job on the moon might not be so bad.

Getting /.'ed is

[twigles]

*very* good for business.

My system is already at 400W

[cptgrudge]

How much more could my power supply take before blowing? I imagine that some sort of heating element, even if it is in a 5.25 in drive bay, would be too much.

Although, imagine a beowulf cluster of those! I'd give the bakery down the street a run for their money, if only I could pay the resulting electric bill. And, of course, if I could only cook.

ROT13 the T-shirt super secret message

[mr_don't]

Hey! Don't post it in plaintext! Use ROT13!

V fubccrq ng GuvaxTrrx ba Ncevy Sbbyf Qnl, naq nyy V tbg jnf guvf ybhfl fuveg!

Huh

[stratjakt]

This is probably an April Fools joke, though I had the exact same idea for the hamster-case/cage product a few years ago when modding became all-the-rage.

This could be a real product, but the picture looks photoshopped. The tubes would interfere with the drives and heatsink, etc..

Also, could they not get in trouble for this:
Endorsed by PETA as an ethical way to reintegrate your pets back into your hearts after the birth of the Internet.

I know that's just tongue-in-cheek silliness, but PETA doesn't endorse owning animals as pets in any form. Hell, those guys are protesting the "terrible living conditions" of honeybees. Which, btw, as a previous amateur apiculturalist (beekeeper), I can say is a complete crock. Domestic bee's have it much better than wild ones (No swarming, more than ample storage room for honey..) Hell, domestic hives have lived for decades, a wild hive is lucky to go a full year.

Anyhow.

Fuck slashdot.

Real Hamster Case

[Phosphor3k]

A guy already did the hamster case. Lots of pics, be warned - the hard forums are slow as hell. http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadi d=742432&perpage=15&pagenumber=1

nice, but i'd like

[whovian]

a self-cleaning oven for the hamster besmirchment.

PC's and Rodents

[juniorkindergarten]

Back a few years a go I had a contract to service computers in a pizza chain. I got a call to come look at a store's computer that had developed some problems.
I got there and and was told one of the remotes wasn't working. I opened the case up and inside it all the cards were covered in mouse turd.
I traced out which remote wasn't working and pulled out the make table to discover a mouse had chewed the cables and died. It had died long enough ago that it had liquified and left a permanent "chalk line" around the corpse.
And yes they were eventually shut down.

Karen, that wasn't you!

[The I Shing]

Oh, my god, that PC habitrail reminds me of that underground compound I lived in back in the 1970s.

They would round us up at the age of 30 and make us rotate around this floating thing until our bodies exploded.

Thank God Michael York stood up on the balcony of the arcade with that woman and showed us his clear palm and told us it was all a lie and took us all outside to meet Peter Ustinov!

Re:Karen, that wasn't you!

[benchbri]

Wow. I've been lurking on /. for a year or two now, and this is the first refrence to Logan's Run I've seen.

Pat yourself on the back, o king of the nerds.

almost

[AnonymousCowheart]

Almost as good as 2001's USB George Foremans iGrill
The grill is still up at think geeks website

A better mod

[OmegaGeek]

Use the hamster to power the fans in your case. The best part is that the mod will become more efficient over time as the hamster learns that it can make its "house" cooler by running in the wheel!

Phooey

[GillBates0]

I'm waiting for my T-shirt with goatse on the front and back. I hope they come out with it before Christmas. I hope you're listing thinkgeek people!

Fucking N00b

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a P4 to play Counterstrike. L33t Fuc|0r you!

mnsi.net:
Managed Network Systems, Inc.
#344 - 300 Tecumseh Road East
Windsor, ON N8X 5E8
CA

Anyone work for these guys, can cut this wallhacking sunofabitch off?

I hate March 32nd

[Anonymous Coward]

Beware the jibes of March.

The s3kr1t T-Shirt

[belgar]

010010010010000001110011011010000110111 101110000011100000110010101100100001000 000110000101110100001000000101010001101 000011010010110111001101011010001110110 010101100101011010110010000001101111011 011100010000001000001011100000111001001 101001011011000010000001000110011011110 110111101101100011100110010000001000100 011000010111100100101100001000000110000 101101110011001000010000001100001011011 000110110000100000010010010010000001100 111011011110111010000100000011101110110 000101110011001000000111010001101000011 010010111001100100000011011000110111101 110101011100110111100100100000011100110 110100001101001011100100111010000100001 converts to:

I shopped at ThinkGeek on April Fools Day, and all I got was this lousy shirt!

ROT52 it to avoid DMCA violations.

[yecrom2]

Since I have a patent on ROT52, I'll be sending each one of you a $699 licence fee for reading it.

I actually DO use my computer as an oven

[HomerJ]

I like to bake my own bread using those Rhodes frozen bread dough loaves. The heat given off by the case makes it rise pretty well. Don't think I couldn't actually shove it into a drive bay...

In true geek fashion

[JediTrainer]

The EZ-Bake oven uses LEDs. When cooking your hamster, it'll take a while.

Unless, of course, your processor is an AMD.

I am actually building the hamster cage

[xThinkx]

OK, so no lie, I have made several (failed) attempts to build, and will one day successfully build a similar hamster case.

For everyone who's wondering why there are several attempts consider the following.

• Habitrail tubes aren't solid, they have holes for ventilation (which will be addressed later). Hamsters urinate alot, and not in the same place, which led to the first case with junk parts smelling like hot piss in almost no time. Also urine corrodes things quickly.
• Hamsters need bedding, which gets everywhere, they chew it up or scratch it into minute pieces that will clog fan intakes, etc. Bad stuff
• Hamsters need some sort of open air ventilation to survive (and breathe). If this ventilation isn't above where they can reach they'll throw bedding/poop out of it somehow. If the ventilation is too high, it won't work and the hamster is done for. If you use even a low cfm fan to add to the ventilation, hamster will avoid it like the plague, causing general health and discomfort to the hamster
• Hamsters chew...A LOT. One nearly unfortunate hamster chewed a hole big enough for him to get out into the case, he was working on the insulation of a 12V line when I cought him.

So, there's the trials and tribulations of the Hamster case. Can't belive someone stole my idea...

Re:I am actually building the hamster cage

[phorm]

Of course, you can't buy it as it comes up with an "April Fool" page if you try

But how about this:

a) Holes on the top of the tubes... it would keep the hampsters from peeing through them at least... not sure about dust issues depending on size
b) Maybe make the tubes difficult to access for sod-carrying hampsters - and put a special fan nearby to carry out their shavings
c) Have the tubes go through the case, but have the actual tubed-areas cordoned off from any sensitive electronics (you'd need a biggercase)

Just a few thoughts. Hampstercase is a cute idea but in practice hampsters are messy little creatures best left away from electronics

Re:I am actually building the hamster cage

[rzbx]

I believe I had a similar idea as well. Didn't really put much thought into it though, and I would have probably used a gerbil or mouse. Thanks for the info though, just incase I really do get the urge to make a living place for a future rodent. Now that I think about it, why not make a huge network of space for a rodent to move about. One could use many clear tubes moving from place to place around a room with a few large places such as a computer case or tank on top of a dresser or even another compartment on a shelf. As long as the right materials are used, and all scenarios are thought through, then it shouldn't be too much trouble. I would love to see how a few mice would live in such an environment.

Re:I am actually building the hamster cage

[MoneyT]

Even though this story is a joke this guy actualy succeeded in building one.

Re:I am actually building the hamster cage

[IntergalacticWalrus]

...but it's made to be a Hamster cage ONLY, ie. there won't be a computer living co-ed with the hamster in this baby.

Re:I am actually building the hamster cage

[WTFRUDOINBiotch]

Dude... You're not the first.

Check out the "Hammy" Series:
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~wlknier/pics/hammy1.jpg
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~wlknier/pics/hammy2.jpg
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~wlknier/pics/hammy3.jpg
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~wlknier/pics/hammy4.jpg
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~wlknier/pics/hammy5.jpg
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~wlknier/pics/hammy6.jpg
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~wlknier/pics/hammy7.jpg

Re:I am actually building the hamster cage

[zipwow]

Could you double-tube the tubes that actually go through the case? First put larger, solid, no-hole tubes through the case, attachted to the case itself. Then set the perforated hamster-tubes inside those.

To clean, remove and clean the hamster-tubes as normal, and use rag-on-a-string to clean the regular pipes. Or make them removable too, whichever.

Actually, it would be really amusing to do this in a fishtank.

-Zipwow

Re:I am actually building the hamster cage

[Anonymous Coward]

AHAHAHAHA!

"it shouldn't get too hot in there, if it does, ill buy a new hampster...anyways..."

and

"I'm getting the feeling that this is going to be way cool up untill there is an actual rodent living in it."

That's fucking funny!

Re:I am actually building the hamster cage

[Sacarino]

Holy shit! He actually put a damn system in there!

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~wlknier/pics/hammy3.jpg

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~wlknier/pics/hammy4.jpg

The Binary T-Shirt...

[Tuxedo Jack]

Is indeed a legitimate item. Buy anything with a total (before shipping) of over $10 USD, and you'll get the shirt free if you add it to your cart.

You'll also get one Geek Point.

Warning

[LostCluster]

Some of the gag items will actually give you negative Geek Points, so don't try too hard to buy them.

Caffeinated Meatloaf

[MajorDick]

For thos of you that didnt real the included mixes for the EzBake oven the last one is ...Caffeinated Meatloaf .....mmmmmmmmm

And with the 2.6 kernel...

[DrWhizBang]

no need for scsi emulation! Bake your disks as God intended!

the good news is

[geekoid]

it wouldn't live long.

Good Lord!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't 4/1 over YET?!!!!

So far, you guys are like 0 for 37!

PHP Implementation

[PlazMatiC]

$i = 0;
$str = "";

while ($bc = substr($_REQUEST['data'], ($i++)*8, 8))
$str .= chr(base_convert($bc, 2, 10));

print $str;

My impression of a fatwallet reader

[ted_nugent]

Shipping kill the deal

Re:My impression of a fatwallet reader

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the vietnamese accent.

Hamster printer

[AndroidCat]

'Help - my hamster's stuck in my printer' Just what we need: Hamsters with laser printers on their frikken heads.

Look at the Ads too

[Alan]

The banner ad on the bottom left that says "halflife 2, doom3, halo 2 - now shipping"

Those bastards, that just isn't funny!

Now saying that Duke Nuke'm Forever is shipping, that'd be funny!

Only 8 hours left...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hurry up, guies!

Soon it will be April 02, you'll have to find real news!

I shopped at ThinkGeek on April Fools Day, and all

[diesel_jackass]

01001001001000000111001101101000011011110111000001 11000001100101011001000010000001100001011101000010 00000101010001101000011010010110111001101011010001 11011001010110010101101011001000000110111101101110 00100000010000010111000001110010011010010110110000 10000001000110011011110110111101101100011100110010 00000100010001100001011110010010110000100000011000 01011011100110010000100000011000010110110001101100 00100000010010010010000001100111011011110111010000 10000001110111011000010111001100100000011101000110 10000110100101110011001000000110110001101111011101 01011100110111100100100000011100110110100001101001 011100100111010000100001

???
I shopped at ThinkGeek on April Fools Day, and all I got was this lousy shirt!

Hamsters and ovens OH MY!

[dleidlein]

ROFL!!! Wow...I wish I had the money to buy everything on that web site!!! BTW, did anyone else decode the s3kr1t m355@g3? or the "link" to purchase Doom III???

Should have ordered sooner

[John3]

I saw this stuff on Think Geek earlier today and was going to order the shirt. Now the site is slashdotted. :-(

A case-mod to do WHAT?!

[ediron2]

Did anyone else misread that as a combined case mod: hamster cage and ez-bake oven? I mean, normally I'd know it was wrong. But this is April 1, and I kept staring at the text, thinking 'uh, guys, that's reachin' a bit far to find funny.'

(shudders) Oh, Ick.

Endorsed by PETA

[phamNewan]

Last time I checked that only animal PETA allows to be kept as pets was men, and only if they were fixed, painfully if I recall correctly.

and what about the liquids?

[simonharvey]

i know that liquids and semiconductors dont match but what i think that would be really cool would be to have the front of the tower to swing open to reveal a small fridge, just big enough for can of beer/wine/fanta.

i would get one

Re:and what about the liquids?

[randyest]

A can of wine? ew.

That's almost as gross as Fanta.

Halogen?

[Anonymous Coward]

I recommend high pressure sodium lamps.

Oh wait, that's a different kind of baking.

Carry on.

Hotel Hell 23 : Grandpa Stretches His Pension.

[Thud457]

You bitches better buckle down and hit the books. You need to get good paying jobs to pay for my social security.

If you don't, I'm going to indulge in canniblism before being reduced to eating catfood.

Consider this your warning.

Damn shame

[Jahf]

Funny thing is I actually would have bought the EZ-Bake ... my wife always says "I never got to have one of those" when we're in a toy department and pass one of those ... and she's about to get a new Microtel PC to replace her iMac ... it would have been the perfect convergence.

Except for the heat, but that's what fans are for.

Insensitive Clod

[shadowbearer]

Load this story, and what do I see?

Have you Meta Moderated recently? Regular Meta Moderators are more likely to get mod points.

Bah.

SB

EZ-Bake ovens and Geek adulthood

[Anonymous Coward]

More powerful EZ-Bake = microwave. Not that I'm dissing the original, I'd keep one in my cube and cook up little afternoon snakie cakes if the fire wardens would let me.

Weak...

[Anonymous Coward]

Note the image URLs:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/ot her/loo flirpa/front/pc-ez-bake.jpg
http://www.thinkgeek. com/images/products/other/loo flirpa/front/habicase.jpg

looflirpa is what spelled backwards? At least they could have *tried* to hide it.

Endorsed by PETA?

[AndroidCat]

I guess that would be People Eating Tasty Animals, right?

Ez-Bake oven...

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Do they have a Pentium-4 without a heat sink?

Anyways, here's a story I know.
Long time ago, back in the original Pentium divide bug days, some guy had a Pentium machine with the bug, and wanted to replace the CPU. Since the CPU was hundreds of dollars, he had to send in the bad one before he could get the new one. No problem, since they just came out with the new Zero Insertion Force sockets. He tries to pull it out, but he can't. Turns out the manufacturer had glued it in. Seems that people in the loading dock found out that Zero Insertion Force meant also Zero Removal Force and stole the chips, necessitating the glue. What to do, what to do...
Then he remembers, "Hey, this is a Pentium isn't it". He removes the heatsink, and runs his computer. CPU gets so hot it melts the glue, and he pulls it out. Don't have to worry about thermal failure anyway, since it's destined for the scrap heap. Sends it back, gets his CPU.

Important Question

[TheGrimace]

Is it hot swapable?

hey thinkgeek!

[holzp]

you want to see something funny? here is a slashdotting.

"ha-ha"

Heat issues?

[infochuck]

From the hamster-case page:

"Heat from your CPU ensures your rodent will be warm and comfortable in a climate controlled environment."

But what about my 5x10,000 rpm drives? They get pretty hot... I'd sure to cook Fluffy the Vampire Slayer.

Translation of the T-Shirt

[Anonymous Coward]

01001001 00100000 01110011 01101000 01101111
01110000 01110000 01100101 01100100 00100000
01100001 01110100 00100000 01010100 01101000
01101001 01101110 01101011 01000111 01100101
01100101 01101011 00100000 01101111 01101110
00100000 01000001 01110000 01110010 01101001
01101100 00100000 01000110 01101111 01101111
01101100 01110011 00100000 01000100 01100001
01111001 00101100 00100000 01100001 01101110
01100100 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100
00100000 01001001 00100000 01100111 01101111
01110100 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110011
00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011
00100000 01101100 01101111 01110101 01110011
01111001 00100000 01110011 01101000 01101001
01110010 01110100 00100001

I shopped at ThinkGeek on April Fools Day, and all I got was this lousy shirt!

l337 modders = research scientists?

[Anonymous Coward]

just the thing to test the effects of prolonged uv cathode light exposure on small furry animals...
+ while you're there bung a hamster wheel in there attached to a hsf just for that extra mhz?

Obligated

[Anonymous Coward]

i for one welcome our new hamstercase overlords ...

I want a 5.25 fountain drink dispenser

[Revek]

just imagine never having to get up to get your caffine again. Of course my wife would kill me.

Took long enough...

[wyluli]

Wow, Took long enough, and its even there sister site...

/. sucks as bad as Windows ME now...

And still no talk about Homestar Runner loosing his domain.

Seriously, this could give a geek ideas...

[Tandoori Haggis]

A warm PC case, soft silicon lined apertures, a throbbing hard drive, a stimulating mpeg...

Yes!!!!

You could use your case as a...

Coffee dispenser and watch the latest X-prize space video!

Caveat: I'm not a Geek.

apple's april fools joke

[big daddy kane]

its right on the front page of their website, claiming the g5 is the fastest prossesor.

Re:apple's april fools joke

[green pizza]

its right on the front page of their website, claiming the g5 is the fastest prossesor.

I hate it just as much as you do, but sadly those are merely quotes by other people.

Also, it seems Apple has stopped using the "fastest processor" claim, or at least that's what they said when Dell sigged the BBB after them last week.

READ PARENT

[74nova]

junk parts smelling like hot [hamster] piss

this alone makes parent's post worth at least a few giggles. i realize you are serious and that hamster piss sux, is corrosive, and smells, but nice work in the humor dept.

It's not a hramster!

[Bender Unit 22]

"It is not a hamster, it's a rat!"

"no rat, hramster!"

other animals:

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Python
Pros:
Likes heat (P4/Athlon safe)
Likes Rodentia (Hamster safe)

Cons:
Makes future upgrades hazardous to your health

Your girlfriend will keep wondering why her pet hamsters are continuously "finding ways to escape the cage".

Do snakes poop? I'm sure they do... but I've never seen "snake poop"

2. Pirahna
Benefits:
Likes heat (P4/Athlon safe) -- this is coming from a "tropical water" assumption
Likes Rodentia (Hamster safe)
1 drop of blood = excitement! =)

Cons:
Watertight seal needed
PH balance needed

spoiler

[Anonymous Coward]

in case anyone was wondering what the t-shirt says, but was too lazy to decode it, here is a quicky php script to do the work for you.

they've crossed the line!

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah look at all the funny little products you can bye hahahahahaa... I laughed at them.. I saw the funny side...

THE AD BANNER SAYING "DOOM 3 RELEASED CLICK TO ORDER" ON THE OTHER HAND WAS *NOT* FUNNY!

my poor bleeding fingers... clicking and clicking but it just wouldnt load... I thought this was it.. finally after all this time.. but no those bastards steal it away from me disguising this down right evil scheme as some sort of funny april fools prank.

I'm not laughing.

Why? I don't know.

[AyeRoxor!]

But I did.

As if...

[MelodicMotives]

the concept wasn't silly enough, you can earn 3.14159...geek points. Let's see their database handle pi on checkout. ;D

Oh wow!

[Ziviyr]

"I shopped at ThinkGeek on April Fools Day, and all I got was this lousy!shirt!"

Score +0, Informative and Redundant

How about this instead?

[jlockard]

An easy bake oven for cooking hamsters in a PC drive bay.

Teacher: What's the difference between a hamster and a gerbil?
Bobcat: Ummmm, there's more dark meat on a hamster?
Bobcat: What?!?! You can eat 'em. You just can't use the radar range. You need a crock pot!

New definition 4 computer mouse

[tiger_omega]

Just be careful when u told to click the left mouse button that u get the right mouse. Don't think "Squeebles" will take be poked in the eye very well. ;)

EZ-bake? Technology is moving backwards

[ahunter]

Back in 1996, there was a computer with a working pizza oven. And a sink, of course. (I was at the show where that was being demoed: no, not on April 1, and it really did cook pizza). I can't remember what the other slices did, though.

It's 1995 predecessor was smaller, and lacked the kitchen sink.

RC Gastron...

[BW_Nuprin]

You know, thats really not such a terrible idea. Sure, a simple implementation of it would be likely to lodge itself in some important stomach parts, but I know I've heard about people inserting inflated balloons into their stomachs to be 'more full' all the time. Perhaps a few years down the road, today's April Fool's joke will be tommorrow's Atkins.

Actually, I'm pretty sure Atkin's diet originated as an April Fool's joke back in '68.

GEEK POINTS

[DRUNK_BEAR]

I like the number of Geek points you earn when purchasing the hamster pc case : Buy this and earn 3.14159 Geek Points!

Re:GEEK POINTS

[tonsofpcs]

Yea, its nice, but you can't cook that pi because the oven is negative geek points.

Hamster case - Nothing New

[Deathlizard]

see

Fake Ad

[May Kasahara]

Am I the only one who noticed the HL2/Doom 3/Halo 2 "Now Shipping/Click to Order" notice on the left hand side of the page? It's a pretty subtle joke compared to the others on ThinkGeek's site...

Re:Fake Ad

[SiegeTank]

Yeah, even with all the other jokes on the site, doesn't it make you feel that much better that ThinkGeek is able to sell you the most long awaited FPS games just to make up for it! ;-)

Re:Fake Ad

[Bri3D]

Plus, if you buy the case, you get 3.14159 Geek Points!

too bad they are not real

[bokmann]

I know they are an april fools joke, but I would buy both of those things!

I mean, come on... thinkgeek really does sell a cigarette lighter in a 5 1/4 drive bay... why not an ez-bake oven?

Maybe Yoshi on the screen savers will take on that PC case for real.

-db

Dear ThinkGeek ...

[merdaccia]

Dear ThinkGeek,

Your little ploy was rather clever! We are very gullible here at Slashdot, and we all clicked on those links to see your lovely Hamster Case and EZ Bake oven. So, we humbly admit that you got the better of us toda...

...wait...

... we all clicked it?? The millions upon millions of us?!? Ummmm, you did host these pages and pictures on a different webserver than the one you use for commercial purposes, didn't you? You know, the one you use to sell stuff? Otherwise, your just obliterated your own ...

You idiots

Love, Slashdot

Secret binary message?

[brejc8]

main()
{
char *binstring ="010010010010000001110011011010000110111101110000 01110000011001010110010000100000011000010111010000 10000001010100011010000110100101101110011010110100 01110110010101100101011010110010000001101111011011 10001000000100000101110000011100100110100101101100 00100000010001100110111101101111011011000111001100 10000001000100011000010111100100101100001000000110 00010110111001100100001000000110000101101100011011 00001000000100100100100000011001110110111101110100 00100000011101110110000101110011001000000111010001 10100001101001011100110010000001101100011011110111 01010111001101111001001000000111001101101000011010 01011100100111010000100001"
char *ptr=binstring;
int got=0;
char c=0;
while (*ptr){
c=c1;
if ('1' == *ptr) c|=1;
if(8 = ++got) {
printf("%c", c);
got=0;
c=0;
}
ptr++;
}
printf("\n");
}

"I shopped at ThinkGeek on April Fools Day, and all I got was this lousy shirt!"

Now I know I feel safer getting one.

Re:Secret binary message?

[sarahbau]

I believe there is actually a typo on the T-Shirt. I didn't scroll down to see that they had the binary in plain text for me to copy, so I read off the shirt, and converted that to ascii. The shirt actually says "I shopped at ThinkGek on April Fools Day, and all I got was this lousy shirt!" I don't know if it was intentional, or if they just did that to make room on the shirt. At first I thought maybe I made a mistake while inputting the data, but I don't think I would have missed 8 consecutive digits. I read 616 characters from the shirt, but the correctly spelled version would be 624 (what they have on the page).

Endorsed by PeTA...my ass...

[thelizman]

...it has to be 4/1 when you see a tagline at thinkgeek on this product that states "endorsed by PeTA". It's got to be a joke. If it's not, it's a pathetic statement about PeTA who would lend their name to the commercialization of something which is clearly not an ethical treatment of hamsters. Think of all the heat. A hamster would die in days if it were in my box. Even without that heat, the noise (95 dBA inside the box) is horrendous, and sure to drive the little rat nuts.

The mind boggles...

Pizza oven in a PC

[TonyJohn]

Forget the April fool. Acorn Computers (the ahead-of-its-time UK computer manufacturer that created the ARM architecture) put a toaster into one the their demo machines years ago. Then the following year they put a sink and a pizza oven in!

The computer, the oven and the sink all worked of course.

RC Gastron

[commonchaos]

Yes, April Fools Day.

Funny thing about the RC Gastron is that I would actually buy this.

Problem with something like this is that, at some point, you would have to eat something, I've passed out because I didn't eat anything in a 24 hour period. I start to get really tired, dizzy and disoriented after about 10 hours of not eating anything.

Hmmmm...

[Newer Guy]

This begs the ques

fps sweetness

[!splut]

Sweet, now I can bake myself a celebratory EZ hamster cake, because it looks like HL2, Halo 2, and Doom3 are shipping!!!

Woohoo!

Short solution without using pack

[John Starks]

Ignoring the easy pack answers (various spaces added to keep Slashdot happy):

perl -F// -ane'/[01]/&&($b<<=1,$b+=$_, ++$c>7&&($d.=chr($b),$b=0,$c=0))for@F;END{print$d, "\n"}'

Put the data through your pipe and smoke it.

Rodents hear flybacks coils, high speed motors ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Very cute April Fools ...

If people do want a PC Habitrail... Please don't use it for real PC use. And don't place it near real computers.

Rodents have sensitive hearing to high and very high audio frequencies. It is recommended to NOT keep them in the vicinity of TV's, stereos, Computers, etc. Beside the higher audio we can hear ... those little guys can go deaf (or crazy from Tinnitus) when exposed to constant very high audio, like that of flyback coils, high speed motors, metal scrapping, etc.

Tinnitus sucks... look it up. People commit suicide over it.

http://www.ata.org/about_tinnitus/consumer/faq.h tm l

Don't hurt the little guys. And be sure to use some olive oil on their exercise wheels if those grind.

Thanks.

I've got another home for my pet Gerbil

[Anonymous Coward]

Richard Gere style

How to decode it in zero lines of code

[jone_stone]

Why go to the bother of writing code when someone else has already done it for you? I translated the binary with zero lines of code.

thats a great idea, underwater hampsters

[Anonymous Coward]

even better would be to have a small freshwater shark so you can recreate the jaws scene where jaws attacks the underwater observatory tube.

youd need to cut the sides of the tank and then silicon in the tubing the habitrail tubing fits into or just have some slighly wider tubing go through the tank and meet the habitrail tubing outside the tank.

Modern EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[nonameisgood]

It appears that there are at least three current models, some of which must be 120 VAC, since they will bake real cookies - I doubt that a dry cell has the requisite power to do this. (www.easybake.com)

The real problem is, though, that there is no 120 VAC inside your computer, and putting it there would seriously interrupt your system (spurious bits of EM).

The trick will be fitting the Easy Bake (not EZ) onto the power supply. Most of us don't have that kind of extra wattage. Now, if they piped the CPU heat into the bay, we'd be in business: a 40 watt oven.

Re:Modern EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Shakrai]

The trick will be fitting the Easy Bake (not EZ) onto the power supply. Most of us don't have that kind of extra wattage. Now, if they piped the CPU heat into the bay, we'd be in business: a 40 watt oven.

Actually that's what I was going to point out but I went down the other route to get my +5 funny (plus it's actually a true story beilive it or not ;) How cool would it be to capture the waste heat off the CPU and use it for productive means? I bet it wouldn't be that hard to do either -- but probably not worth the effort.

April fools

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how i got this Thinkgeek update on April 1st...

Not so- we used them as lighters!

[mekkab]

We used to light our cigarettes off of our halogen torchier lamps. Of course, we took off the safety glass first.

The joke's on them

[Trejkaz]

Our timezone isn't even April 1 anymore, and GMT is about to tick over as well. Not to mention it's a common belief that people who play April Fools pranks after midday are considered to be fools themselves.

Combination of the two...

[Anonymous Coward]

When you put them together, you get an extremely convenient way of raising your food, and then cooking it. This is a sort of modern approach to raising a turkey, and having it for thanksgiving. those looking for a "barbecue" style can use the heat-sink from their piping hot 3.0ghz machine! Just about the perfect size for Rack-O'-Hampster.

EZ bake oven for hamsters

[srhoades]

Didn't I see Ron Popeil market one of those already?

I am SSSOOOOO disappointed!

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss you, mr. EZ bake.....

Halogen EZ-Bakes

[Stephen Samuel]

The real problem is, though, that there is no 120 VAC inside your computer,

No big deal.. use a 12V halogen bulb.. Those things burn HOT . I built a handful of 12V halogen flashlights (ran off of jell cells or car accessory plugs). They'd burn pretty hot. I accidently left one on, partially wrapped in a sleeping bag on my bed. Luckily my roommate noticed the smoke smell before we had a full-fledged house fire on our hands, but I still ended up with 3rd degree splash burns on my hand from molten plastic that went flying when I yanked the flashlight out of the hole it had burned in my bed (it was a foam matress).

After that, I started building thermal switches into the flashlights.

Halogen bulbs also have the advantage of being small.. They'd fit real nice in a 5" enclosure. a couple milimetres of shuttle tile material as insulation and you've got a nice, high-tech EZ-Bake oven in a drive bay.

For sure

[fran_m87yahoo.com.br]

EZ Bake was designed to work optimally with AMD processors

i beat you

[ianmorris]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF -8&q=binary+ascii&btnG=Google+Search
"binary ascii"
beat that

Already have one

[myov]

... Removable drive rack + Athlon = mini pizza oven!

ThinkGeek points

[Mr. Spleen]

Anyone else notice that if you buy the hamster case, you get 3.14159 ThinkGeek points? Or negative points for the PC EZ-Bake 5.25" thingamajig?

Actually, I'm going to answer that. Yes, someone noticed that, and they probably already posted it, but I'm too damned lazy to read all the preceding comments and find it. So there.

Mr. Spleen

hot dog cookers

[zogger]

you ever make a hot dog cooker when you were a kid? Easy instructions. Take a clean board (a 1 x 4 is handy size), pound two 16 penny nails through it, distance separating them approximately 3/4ths the length of a hot dog (check fridge meat drawer, hotdogs vary). Leave a 1/4 inch of nail and head showing. Snag (dad's) extension cord, cut off the female end, separate the wirez. Strip them a half inch or so, wrap one end to one nailhead, one to the other, then finish pounding the nails in. Get vice grips, bend nails parallel to board about halfway up the nails, pointing towards each other. Impale hotdog onto nails, making your circuit. Plug it in, cook to your specs. If you leave them on too long, reality will remind you of the fact....

Binary to Text converter:

[Anonymous Coward]

http://nickciske.com/tools/binary.php

-Fox www.foxcub.net

Can I use it with my grill?

[randomErr]

I was wondering if it will work with my USB iGrill.

Finding the solution in Mathematica

[Geurilla]

A little (but not much!) longer than the perl versions. I think it's fair to exclude the initial step from the program length and assume we start with the data in a list, perhaps built using the following:

data = Characters["010...01"] /. {"0" -> 0, "1" -> 1};

To descramble, evaluate this:

StringJoin[FromCharacterCode /@ (FromDigits[#, 2] & /@ Partition[data, 8])]

I love Mathematica.

Do NOT do this if you care for your hamster

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers emit electromagnetic fields. These fields disrupt biological cell functioning for as long as the body is within the field. If your little hamster is living inside your computer 24/7, the poor thing is receiving maximum blast. At best it'll ruin its health, at worst it won't live very long.

The moral of the story is please stop this hamster-computer-case fad now before a hamster dies.

Thinkgeek lost me as customer...

[mrselfdestrukt]

I used to buy from Thinkgeek at least once a month. I have so many of their toys already and there's still so much that I want to buy.
But unfortunately they don't issue geek points to non-US or Canadian residents. The 1st couple of times they gave me geek points but they pointed it out to me with my last purchase and revoked all my geekpoints.I was unaware! It's very expensive for me to order stuff from the US since I live in South Africa and the redeemable geekpoints just made it a bit more worthwhile. So, unfortunately I have to do my geek shopping somewhere else now.Not sure where yet, because we don't get that kind of stuff around here, so I'll probably have to order from the UK or Australia. I'm still upset about it. Oh, how I wish I had a PC hamster case. *wipes tears from eyes*

python's turn - Re:T-shirt super secret message

[tordia]

python -c "import sys; print ''.join([chr(z) for z in map(lambda y: int(y,2), [sys.argv[1][8*x:8*x + 8] for x in range(len(sys.argv[1])/8)])])" 010010...100001

I think there's probably a better way to do the [sys.argv[1][8*x:8*x + 8] for x in range(len(sys.argv[1])/8)] part, but it was my first try.

Re:python's turn - Re:T-shirt super secret message

[tordia]

crap, I got a little overzealous with the list comprehensions...

python -c "import sys; print ''.join(map(lambda y: chr(int(y,2)), [sys.argv[1][8*x:8*x + 8] for x in range(len(sys.argv[1])/8)]))" 010010...100001

Re:python's turn - Re:T-shirt super secret message

[tordia]

Man, that was bugging me...

python -c "import sys, re; print ''.join(map(lambda y: chr(int(y,2)), re.findall('[01]{8}', sys.argv[1])))" 01001001...00100001

Ok, I'm done now.

funny how...

[JeremyALogan]

noone seemed to notice the ad that says:
NOW SHIPPING
Half-Life 2
Doom 3
Halo 2
Click To Order

OBVIOUSLY an AF joke.