I got a Palm m100 a couple of months ago, and I am 100% pleased with it. It's a refurb, it cost me $50 at the Bad Place, (otherwise known as Fry's) and it hasn't disappointed me yet.
Yeah, it's slow, yeah it's got a black-and-white screen. No worries...it does what I need it to. I've got my addresses and phone numbers in it, I take notes with it (tap, tap, tap that onscreen keyboard...faster than Graffiti for me)and I have a few free-as-in-beer timesink games that are great for killing time. (Look for Mahjongg at www.palm.com... it is just like KMahjongg and GNOME Mahjongg and just as addictive)
Basically the low-end Palm is like an old Mac Classic. Except this is a Mac Classic you can put in your pocket or your purse. Think Retro and you are in the right mindset to use a Palm.
One of these days when I'm in the chips I'll get a Zaurus, but until then my little Chibi-Palm-chan will do just fine for me.
Between Blue Laser and Holographic technology, one thing is definitely going to be part of any new storage technologies is DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT UP THE YING-YANG. This new storage system will have so many copy locks you are going to want to get out the bagels and cream cheese. The RIAA and the MPAA will not let this new technology out the door until and unless it is 100% locked down.
You will NOT be able to store your Warez collection in these new formats. You will not be able to create an MP3 collection to die for. You will prolly be able to store your pr0n provided it doesn't have digital watermarks all over it identifying that it's property of Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, Screw or whatever.
This is going to be the huge carrot the MPAA and the RIAA dangle over our heads to make us accept their draconian content control measures. "Want this spiffy new storage format? You're gonna have to accept Big Brother along for the ride too."
It's tragic...I would be excited about all this. Blue Laser technology in particular is a great step forward. But we will pay dearly for this step forward in loss of freedom to use content as we see fit. [sigh]
Anyway, the motherboard for the $299 PC is the MSI MS-6378X-L (MS-6378 V.3)
That's no slug of a motherboard. I was expecting PC Chips crap, like EliteGroup or Amptron, but MicroStar International is not a company that makes crappy motherboards.
I've had one exemplary experience in dealing with MSI. I was putting together a machine with an ancient 486 motherboard. It was a weird bugger too...it had PCI SLOTS and none of the VESA Local Bus slots you expect on a 486. Anyway, I needed the jumper diagrams and the support area of the web site had nothing.
What did those nice folks at MSI do for me? They scanned the whole Fine Manual for me to a series of.JPGs, then they emailed the.JPGs to me. I had my jumper settings, they had a happy customer.
These machines are BARGAINS, folks. And to have them preloaded with a DECENT Linux distro is a Very Good Thing (tm) indeed. Yeah, Wally-Mart is an evil place. But so are most of the other big discount store chains. And often, what Wally-Mart does, more palatable establishments like Target will follow.
Ha ha, Bill Gates! Just watch as the floodgates open, and there's a cascade of bargain PCs with Linux pre-installed rushing out over the country!! Did I hear a "Glub, glub" somewhere near Redmond, WA?
Slackware was my first distro too. It loaded beautifully on a freaky system...would you believe a 486 with PCI slots? I'm actually going to buy Slack 8.1...I have a couple of elderly machines for which Slack would be ideal. 486SLC IBM EduQuest 35 all in one with 16MB and an ancient NEC proprietary HD? Slack will probably work, even if I have to use ZipSlack to make it work.
I was a 100% green newbie when I used Slack the first time. I'm now a veteran of Mandrake/Red Hat/insert name of hand-holding distro here/ but I am actually very excited that a new Slackware is out.
Disney uses Mac all over the place, particularly in the Marketing division. I know of this because Manco, the company I take my Macs to for repairs, is the place Disney takes all their Macs to.
Disney also uses PCs running Windows, particularly up in the top echelons of the company. Eisner no doubt has a P4 running XP Pro on his desk.
Now that they are running Linux at Disney Animation, however, it looks like all those donations of Windozers to local schools will dry up. Eisner's tired of these boxen? Throw them in the render farm!
"ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some non- government organizations may fit here."
Certainly MsGeek.Org fits here. I dunno about Slashdot, but I know that MsGeek.Org earns me exactly nothing each year. Thanks to Hosting Matters I don't have to pay for the space, but it is not exactly a going concern financially.
And at $299 for the Duron 850mhz model, who can't afford one of these.
One little detail about that Duron (although it's probably not a big detail) is that they left out the floppy drive on that model.
With bootable CD-ROMs and networks not having a floppy is not a big problem, but for the first-timer this could be a big problem.
Oh yeah, Fry's is entering the $300 market soon...actually sub-$300. They will be putting out a Celeron 1GHz machine, preloaded with ThizLinux, whatever the fsck that is. They're just waiting on the shipment at this point. And this one *has* a floppy drive.
Actually it would be better if they all did preloads with Lycoris Linux but still, it is a good thing that Walmart has the guts to do this. So far, Microsoft hasn't complained. I think they realize that even an 800lb. Gorilla like MS has to pick their battles.
This happened 4 years ago to me. However, it all happened on a W95 box. McAfee fscked up my box so badly W95 wouldn't boot, unless in safe mode. Uninstalled McAfee while in safe mode, then went out, bought NAV, and never looked back.
The punchline to this story is that I kept my copy of McAfee Anti Virus until the next Spring Internet World. I brought the boxed software to the Network Associates booth, where I ceremoniously and with much indignation presented it to one of the NA people. I got emails for months after that from the McAfee division of NA making me offers to switch me back to their product from Norton. Bwahahaha!
I'm seriously looking at Kaspersky because Norton 2002 only gives you three months of free updates instead of a whole year like earlier versions. Lousy bastards.
Oh yeah: best anti-virus move of all? Get your email only on your Linux or MacOS box. Don't even touch email on a Windozer. Works for me.
And building your own computer is much cheaper than just buying a standard model from Gateway... yet most people don't bother.
Not true...not true at all.
"Beige Box" no-name PCs are still cheaper than the name-brands. And even when they aren't, you have the advantage of usually being able to "spec out" your PC before they build it for you. The big names like Gateway and Dell and HPaq usually look for the cheapest fsckn stuff you can buy as part of their specs for their machines. Who still uses NVidia TNT2 or ATI Rage Pro video chipsets in their machines? THEY do.
It's way better to have control over what you put into a computer. It's even better to build it yourself. But that's just me. Some people have time constraints which mean that they can't even think of taking time out to build. Some people don't have the confidence to do it. That's why the good Goddess made the Friendly Neighborhood Screwdriver Shop.
...jump on whatever you can get. At least with the counter-offer you know what to expect. Jumping ship for another company, you run the risk of entering a completely different corporate culture than what you are used to at your current job.
That's also a damn fine vote of confidence from your boss. I'd celebrate this weekend if I were you.
If jedi could levitate the Emporer could have saved himself in the last scene of RotJ. Or Luke could have kept from falling off the platform in tESB.
Plausible explanations:
1.) Emperor Palpatine drained his energy levels badly while he was zapping the kishkes out of Luke. This allowed Vader/Anakin to take Palpatine by surprise and throw down. (literally)
2.) Luke's training was far from complete in TESB. Remember how concerned Yoda was? Remember how both Yoda and the shade of Obi-Wan speculated at the end of TESB that Luke was bound for the Dark Side like his father before him? If he had been trained to the point he was in ROTJ he would have had more of a chance. Also, remember that Luke was suffering from shock...you get your hand lopped off, force or no force you are prolly in shock after the event.
It doesn't offend me at all that Yoda is able to fight like an Anime/HK martial arts character because of his intense connection to The Force. It offended me far more when Lucas stooped to a biological explanation of The Force in TPM. I had always envisioned The Force as completely numinous...100% supernatural. Sort of like the true, ineffable Dao of Lao Tze. All that talk about blood midichlorian count was a big bring-down. I didn't like Jar-Jar but I could live with his existance more than the midichlorians and a biological explanation of the Force.
No copy protection. That's why everyone I know still have Office 2K.
Actually certain versions of Office 2K has Activation...after 50 uses of the software, it will shut down and tell you to activate the software. From what I understand it is easier to fool this version of activation than Office XP's version, but it's activation nonetheless.
It's actually Office 97 that you don't have to activate. Funny, it's very hard to find that at the computer fairs nowadays...;-)
Microsoft made its monopoly on easy-to-pirate software. If anything, they should loosen, rather than tighten, their "security". Get them another raftload of more hooked users.
I am in the middle of Northridge, CA, 900 feet from California State University in Northridge. That's in the middle of the San Fernando Valley. I was told I could not get DSL.
Go for RoadRunner. You should thank your lucky stars you are in Time Warner territory rather than Adelphia territory. Adelphia cable modem in the East San Fernando Valley blows chunks.
What counts is distance between you and your Central Office. It doesn't matter whether you are 900 feet from CSUN or 900 feet from Vivid Video's world headquarters or 900 feet from wherever, if you are more than a few miles from your Central Office, you are screwed until SBC puts in a DSL repeater in your neighborhood. (nomenclature check: what's the real name of those little boxes the telco installs to enhance DSL range?)
Anyway, I'm sorry to hear that you can't get DSL at this moment. Again, RoadRunner is great, despite their moving to bandwidth caps. You will prolly get more speed from RoadRunner than from SBC DSL anyway.
That would be the perfect combo. The cell-tel thing I could live without. A little PDA with some decent gaming abilities. That would be cool. Maybe add a TV tuner and RCA jacks for connecting a game box. A dongle cable for that purpose would probably be necessary like those made for the old All-In-Wonder video cards, but that wouldn't be bad. And maybe the ability to use a CF modem and/or a CF 802.11b card and/or a CF wired Ethernet card.
Something like that would be swell for travel. If I could get onto chat, play games, keep my schedule and address book and whatnot together, and get my email that would rock.
Probably the Zaurus would be a good model for this, but a Zaurus with a bigger screen. Same OS...Linux would be ideal. Get all those cool emulators running.
Yes, I'm talking about a laptop replacement, pretty much. But smaller and lighter. Laptops are a PITA to take around at this point once you are used to a PDA.
ATI finally releases specs for their hardware DVD acceleration, if not out in the open, at least to this project. Their hardware DVD acceleration is GREAT in Windows. You can actually run a DVD-ROM on a Pentium 233MMX if you want to using one of their video cards if you don't mind not using the computer for anything else while the DVD plays.
ATI is to be commended for their relative openness compared to NVidia and Matrox. I think they have a ways to go on being cooperative, however since there are only a finite number of video card manufacturers they should be encouraged.
ATI should also be encouraged to find better coders for their Windows driver products, but that's another story for another place and time entirely.
This is more than fair, and actually makes sense from a realism perspective. Real armies have to obey rules of engagement, why not gamers playing a military FPS game? The more I hear about "America's Army" the more I like it. Good going, Uncle Sam.
No duh Adelphia is next. I'm packing up my stupid piece of crap Terayon TeraPro modem and giving it back to them as soon as DSLExtreme gives me the high-sign.
TeraPro is a kludge that allows cable companies without fiber plant to run cable modem over coax. It is notoriously unreliable. Here's details to wince over: Terayon: the TeraPro proprietary cable system
Adelphia saddled us with this setup because they were unwilling to string fiber and set things up the right way with DOCSIS. I look forward to seeing them run out of town on a rail.
Ralphs Supermarket here in Southern California had a generic line of groceries. They had blue stripes on the label and a very distinctive type face. In "Repo Man" they used the Ralphs generic stuff all over the place, including stuff like a can of "Food" and a six-pack of "Drink."
After "Repo Man" Ralphs put out merchandising with their generic design. You could buy a "Mug." You could buy a "T-Shirt" and/or a "Cap." From what I understand they sold pretty well.
Eventually Ralphs phased out generics along with just about everyone else. I think that Lucky was the last supermarket with generic products...yellow boxes with black writing on them. I think those went when Lucky was bought by Albertson's.
Agreed: everyone should see "Repo Man" at least once. For the MPAA conscientious objector, here's a link to how to get a used copy on Half.Com
HA!!! That's IT? That's watching a DVD at full-screen on a 17" monitor! What a fsckn joke!!!!
I don't know why George Lucas is so damn gung-ho about digital...it hardly sounds like a big improvement technologically. I'm sure for commercial reasons it's better (no more need for couriers to send around the big 35MM film cans, no more 35MM prints that cost Kilobucks a pop) but technically that's pretty damn lame.
You could take a $5,000 XGA computer projector and get that kind of resolution. To quote Johnny Rotten, "Ever get the feeling you're being swindled?"
I really do think Jon Postel would be tremendously upset by this. Yeah, he ran the predecessor to ICANN as a one-man dictatorship, but he believed strongly that any successor to his leadership would have to be completely democratic and open in nature.
I am pissed that otherwise incredibly intelligent people like Esther Dyson and Vint Cerf are not standing up and crying foul as ICANN becomes a corporate plaything. Maybe they are getting paid off. Who knows? Certainly they know what's going on with the tech sector and probably consider this their best shot at maintaining themselves in the style they have been accustomed to. I don't know.
If this continues, the Internet will become nothing more than computerized television in the hands of a few companies.
Perhaps it's time to look closely at alternative namespaces and maybe even an alternative, 100% open governing body for names and IP addresses. It would be a schism, true, but it would be infinitely more interesting than the direction the Internet proper is being hijacked towards.
Slashdot Mirror
I got a Palm m100 a couple of months ago, and I am 100% pleased with it. It's a refurb, it cost me $50 at the Bad Place, (otherwise known as Fry's) and it hasn't disappointed me yet.
... it is just like KMahjongg and GNOME Mahjongg and just as addictive)
Yeah, it's slow, yeah it's got a black-and-white screen. No worries...it does what I need it to. I've got my addresses and phone numbers in it, I take notes with it (tap, tap, tap that onscreen keyboard...faster than Graffiti for me)and I have a few free-as-in-beer timesink games that are great for killing time. (Look for Mahjongg at www.palm.com
Basically the low-end Palm is like an old Mac Classic. Except this is a Mac Classic you can put in your pocket or your purse. Think Retro and you are in the right mindset to use a Palm.
One of these days when I'm in the chips I'll get a Zaurus, but until then my little Chibi-Palm-chan will do just fine for me.
Between Blue Laser and Holographic technology, one thing is definitely going to be part of any new storage technologies is DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT UP THE YING-YANG. This new storage system will have so many copy locks you are going to want to get out the bagels and cream cheese. The RIAA and the MPAA will not let this new technology out the door until and unless it is 100% locked down.
You will NOT be able to store your Warez collection in these new formats. You will not be able to create an MP3 collection to die for. You will prolly be able to store your pr0n provided it doesn't have digital watermarks all over it identifying that it's property of Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, Screw or whatever.
This is going to be the huge carrot the MPAA and the RIAA dangle over our heads to make us accept their draconian content control measures. "Want this spiffy new storage format? You're gonna have to accept Big Brother along for the ride too."
It's tragic...I would be excited about all this. Blue Laser technology in particular is a great step forward. But we will pay dearly for this step forward in loss of freedom to use content as we see fit. [sigh]
It was originally designed to help Chinese Internet users get around the Great Firewall Of China.
Looks like the US and EU will be needing it too...[sigh]
That's no slug of a motherboard. I was expecting PC Chips crap, like EliteGroup or Amptron, but MicroStar International is not a company that makes crappy motherboards.
I've had one exemplary experience in dealing with MSI. I was putting together a machine with an ancient 486 motherboard. It was a weird bugger too...it had PCI SLOTS and none of the VESA Local Bus slots you expect on a 486. Anyway, I needed the jumper diagrams and the support area of the web site had nothing.
What did those nice folks at MSI do for me? They scanned the whole Fine Manual for me to a series of .JPGs, then they emailed the .JPGs to me. I had my jumper settings, they had a happy customer.
These machines are BARGAINS, folks. And to have them preloaded with a DECENT Linux distro is a Very Good Thing (tm) indeed. Yeah, Wally-Mart is an evil place. But so are most of the other big discount store chains. And often, what Wally-Mart does, more palatable establishments like Target will follow.
Ha ha, Bill Gates! Just watch as the floodgates open, and there's a cascade of bargain PCs with Linux pre-installed rushing out over the country!! Did I hear a "Glub, glub" somewhere near Redmond, WA?
PS: who makes their hard drives?
Slackware was my first distro too. It loaded beautifully on a freaky system...would you believe a 486 with PCI slots? I'm actually going to buy Slack 8.1...I have a couple of elderly machines for which Slack would be ideal. 486SLC IBM EduQuest 35 all in one with 16MB and an ancient NEC proprietary HD? Slack will probably work, even if I have to use ZipSlack to make it work.
I was a 100% green newbie when I used Slack the first time. I'm now a veteran of Mandrake/Red Hat/insert name of hand-holding distro here/ but I am actually very excited that a new Slackware is out.
The Subgenius must have SLACK! PraBob!
Disney uses Mac all over the place, particularly in the Marketing division. I know of this because Manco, the company I take my Macs to for repairs, is the place Disney takes all their Macs to.
Disney also uses PCs running Windows, particularly up in the top echelons of the company. Eisner no doubt has a P4 running XP Pro on his desk.
Now that they are running Linux at Disney Animation, however, it looks like all those donations of Windozers to local schools will dry up. Eisner's tired of these boxen? Throw them in the render farm!
Just so you know, Microsoft has had versions of Services for Unix (SFU) to go with every version of NT since the beginning. This isn't new.
"ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some non- government organizations may fit here."
Certainly MsGeek.Org fits here. I dunno about Slashdot, but I know that MsGeek.Org earns me exactly nothing each year. Thanks to Hosting Matters I don't have to pay for the space, but it is not exactly a going concern financially.
I spoke too soon...maybe those sub-$300 Linux Celerons at Fry's won't come with Lycoris, but you can pick up a copy there soon.
One little detail about that Duron (although it's probably not a big detail) is that they left out the floppy drive on that model.
With bootable CD-ROMs and networks not having a floppy is not a big problem, but for the first-timer this could be a big problem.
Oh yeah, Fry's is entering the $300 market soon...actually sub-$300. They will be putting out a Celeron 1GHz machine, preloaded with ThizLinux, whatever the fsck that is. They're just waiting on the shipment at this point. And this one *has* a floppy drive.
Actually it would be better if they all did preloads with Lycoris Linux but still, it is a good thing that Walmart has the guts to do this. So far, Microsoft hasn't complained. I think they realize that even an 800lb. Gorilla like MS has to pick their battles.
This happened 4 years ago to me. However, it all happened on a W95 box. McAfee fscked up my box so badly W95 wouldn't boot, unless in safe mode. Uninstalled McAfee while in safe mode, then went out, bought NAV, and never looked back.
The punchline to this story is that I kept my copy of McAfee Anti Virus until the next Spring Internet World. I brought the boxed software to the Network Associates booth, where I ceremoniously and with much indignation presented it to one of the NA people. I got emails for months after that from the McAfee division of NA making me offers to switch me back to their product from Norton. Bwahahaha!
I'm seriously looking at Kaspersky because Norton 2002 only gives you three months of free updates instead of a whole year like earlier versions. Lousy bastards.
Oh yeah: best anti-virus move of all? Get your email only on your Linux or MacOS box. Don't even touch email on a Windozer. Works for me.
Not true...not true at all.
"Beige Box" no-name PCs are still cheaper than the name-brands. And even when they aren't, you have the advantage of usually being able to "spec out" your PC before they build it for you. The big names like Gateway and Dell and HPaq usually look for the cheapest fsckn stuff you can buy as part of their specs for their machines. Who still uses NVidia TNT2 or ATI Rage Pro video chipsets in their machines? THEY do.
It's way better to have control over what you put into a computer. It's even better to build it yourself. But that's just me. Some people have time constraints which mean that they can't even think of taking time out to build. Some people don't have the confidence to do it. That's why the good Goddess made the Friendly Neighborhood Screwdriver Shop.
...jump on whatever you can get. At least with the counter-offer you know what to expect. Jumping ship for another company, you run the risk of entering a completely different corporate culture than what you are used to at your current job.
That's also a damn fine vote of confidence from your boss. I'd celebrate this weekend if I were you.
Plausible explanations:
1.) Emperor Palpatine drained his energy levels badly while he was zapping the kishkes out of Luke. This allowed Vader/Anakin to take Palpatine by surprise and throw down. (literally)
2.) Luke's training was far from complete in TESB. Remember how concerned Yoda was? Remember how both Yoda and the shade of Obi-Wan speculated at the end of TESB that Luke was bound for the Dark Side like his father before him? If he had been trained to the point he was in ROTJ he would have had more of a chance. Also, remember that Luke was suffering from shock...you get your hand lopped off, force or no force you are prolly in shock after the event.
It doesn't offend me at all that Yoda is able to fight like an Anime/HK martial arts character because of his intense connection to The Force. It offended me far more when Lucas stooped to a biological explanation of The Force in TPM. I had always envisioned The Force as completely numinous...100% supernatural. Sort of like the true, ineffable Dao of Lao Tze. All that talk about blood midichlorian count was a big bring-down. I didn't like Jar-Jar but I could live with his existance more than the midichlorians and a biological explanation of the Force.
Actually certain versions of Office 2K has Activation...after 50 uses of the software, it will shut down and tell you to activate the software. From what I understand it is easier to fool this version of activation than Office XP's version, but it's activation nonetheless.
It's actually Office 97 that you don't have to activate. Funny, it's very hard to find that at the computer fairs nowadays...;-)
Microsoft made its monopoly on easy-to-pirate software. If anything, they should loosen, rather than tighten, their "security". Get them another raftload of more hooked users.
set irony mode off.
Heh, funny...here's how we at Hass Manor deal with it.
My hubby's a music geek. I'm a computer geek.
He doesn't mess with my computers, I don't mess with his music equipment.
At this point, we are drowning in both computers and music equipment. But we are both very, very happy.
Go for RoadRunner. You should thank your lucky stars you are in Time Warner territory rather than Adelphia territory. Adelphia cable modem in the East San Fernando Valley blows chunks.
What counts is distance between you and your Central Office. It doesn't matter whether you are 900 feet from CSUN or 900 feet from Vivid Video's world headquarters or 900 feet from wherever, if you are more than a few miles from your Central Office, you are screwed until SBC puts in a DSL repeater in your neighborhood. (nomenclature check: what's the real name of those little boxes the telco installs to enhance DSL range?)
Anyway, I'm sorry to hear that you can't get DSL at this moment. Again, RoadRunner is great, despite their moving to bandwidth caps. You will prolly get more speed from RoadRunner than from SBC DSL anyway.
That would be the perfect combo. The cell-tel thing I could live without. A little PDA with some decent gaming abilities. That would be cool. Maybe add a TV tuner and RCA jacks for connecting a game box. A dongle cable for that purpose would probably be necessary like those made for the old All-In-Wonder video cards, but that wouldn't be bad. And maybe the ability to use a CF modem and/or a CF 802.11b card and/or a CF wired Ethernet card.
Something like that would be swell for travel. If I could get onto chat, play games, keep my schedule and address book and whatnot together, and get my email that would rock.
Probably the Zaurus would be a good model for this, but a Zaurus with a bigger screen. Same OS...Linux would be ideal. Get all those cool emulators running.
Yes, I'm talking about a laptop replacement, pretty much. But smaller and lighter. Laptops are a PITA to take around at this point once you are used to a PDA.
ATI finally releases specs for their hardware DVD acceleration, if not out in the open, at least to this project. Their hardware DVD acceleration is GREAT in Windows. You can actually run a DVD-ROM on a Pentium 233MMX if you want to using one of their video cards if you don't mind not using the computer for anything else while the DVD plays.
ATI is to be commended for their relative openness compared to NVidia and Matrox. I think they have a ways to go on being cooperative, however since there are only a finite number of video card manufacturers they should be encouraged.
ATI should also be encouraged to find better coders for their Windows driver products, but that's another story for another place and time entirely.
This is more than fair, and actually makes sense from a realism perspective. Real armies have to obey rules of engagement, why not gamers playing a military FPS game? The more I hear about "America's Army" the more I like it. Good going, Uncle Sam.
TeraPro is a kludge that allows cable companies without fiber plant to run cable modem over coax. It is notoriously unreliable. Here's details to wince over: Terayon: the TeraPro proprietary cable system
Adelphia saddled us with this setup because they were unwilling to string fiber and set things up the right way with DOCSIS. I look forward to seeing them run out of town on a rail.
Ralphs Supermarket here in Southern California had a generic line of groceries. They had blue stripes on the label and a very distinctive type face. In "Repo Man" they used the Ralphs generic stuff all over the place, including stuff like a can of "Food" and a six-pack of "Drink."
After "Repo Man" Ralphs put out merchandising with their generic design. You could buy a "Mug." You could buy a "T-Shirt" and/or a "Cap." From what I understand they sold pretty well.
Eventually Ralphs phased out generics along with just about everyone else. I think that Lucky was the last supermarket with generic products...yellow boxes with black writing on them. I think those went when Lucky was bought by Albertson's.
Agreed: everyone should see "Repo Man" at least once. For the MPAA conscientious objector, here's a link to how to get a used copy on Half.Com
Dude! You're getting a PENGUIN!
HA!!! That's IT? That's watching a DVD at full-screen on a 17" monitor! What a fsckn joke!!!!
I don't know why George Lucas is so damn gung-ho about digital...it hardly sounds like a big improvement technologically. I'm sure for commercial reasons it's better (no more need for couriers to send around the big 35MM film cans, no more 35MM prints that cost Kilobucks a pop) but technically that's pretty damn lame.
You could take a $5,000 XGA computer projector and get that kind of resolution. To quote Johnny Rotten, "Ever get the feeling you're being swindled?"
Damn, you beat me to it.
I really do think Jon Postel would be tremendously upset by this. Yeah, he ran the predecessor to ICANN as a one-man dictatorship, but he believed strongly that any successor to his leadership would have to be completely democratic and open in nature.
I am pissed that otherwise incredibly intelligent people like Esther Dyson and Vint Cerf are not standing up and crying foul as ICANN becomes a corporate plaything. Maybe they are getting paid off. Who knows? Certainly they know what's going on with the tech sector and probably consider this their best shot at maintaining themselves in the style they have been accustomed to. I don't know.
If this continues, the Internet will become nothing more than computerized television in the hands of a few companies.
Perhaps it's time to look closely at alternative namespaces and maybe even an alternative, 100% open governing body for names and IP addresses. It would be a schism, true, but it would be infinitely more interesting than the direction the Internet proper is being hijacked towards.