Sony KV32DS60 IDO 100Hz TV. I couldn't afford 36", but got the best 32" around. Integrated digital TV decoder (not sure how relevent this is in the US, but it's great to have crystal-clear broadcast terrestrial TV in the UK), 100Hz refresh, etc etc etc. Back-projection stuff's field of view didn't impress me, plasma was waaaaay too expensive, and video projection is pretty unwatchable if you (or your family) ever want to have a decent level of light in the same room.
Sony STR-DB930 home cinema amp. Full dolby 5.1 / mpeg / ac3 / pcm / blah blah decoding, tuner, loads of inputs, switches video as well as audio if you want it to, loads of outputs, EG you can have 2 sets of front speakers and switch between A, B, or A+B, and there's an output for a "slave amp" in another room, which I've been meaning to use. At the time, this was the "best amp you could get for under 1000UKP", even though it was actually less than UKP500. It's now been superceeded by the STR-DB940, I think.
Sony DVP-CX850D, 200 disc CD / DVD audio/visual jukebox. It's cool to be able to select anything from your entire CD / DVD collection without getting off the couch. If 200 isn't enough, there's now a 300-disc version, and/or you can daisy-chain more 200 or 300 CD, or CD+DVD carousels.
Sony SLV-SF90 VHS VCR. Yes, VHS is crap, but if you're going to use it, you could at least use it in a really cool way. This VCR has "SmartFile", which means you slap a special (though expensive) label on the spine of the tape, and it'll record programme details on a chip in the label. Record something with VidepPlus+, manual timer, or even just pressing "REC", and it'll get the name of the programme off of teletext, and store it on the chip. Later, when you're hunting for a particular programme, you wave the tape in front of the machine, and it pops up a list of what's on that tape. Wrong tape? wave another one at it. Found the programme? pop the tape in, select it off the menu, and it'll FF/RW to the right place on the tape for you. It's about as good as you can get with VHS, the only real alternative being something like TiVO, I guess.
Mission Cinema "6-pack" of speakers. Just about the only thing I've got that's not Sony, because sony's speakers don't exactly win (m)any awards. The Mission set are very nice speakers, again basically "best you could get for under UKP1000", again actually less than UKP500. Handles the whole audio spectrum very nicely, and the sub is fantastic - you just gotta have respect for a speaker that needs it's own mains supply! I never used to appreciate bass very much, but this has definitely converted me!
Cables - the digital interconnects are just co-ax, because I spare cables around... anyway, if you've already got 0% error rate, anyone who tells you that "fibre digital interconnects sound better" is kidding you, or an idiot, or both.
The speaker cable, I can't tell the difference between "oxygen-free" and all that expensive lark, but on the other hand, I'm not going to use "Bell wire" either. I bought a reel of fairly good, well-made, unbranded 49-strand stuff.
Phono, RGB, etc, I've gone for fairly well screened stuff, and tried to go with gold-plated connectors if/when I can afford them, and where they're realistic. VHS is dreadfully low-quality anyway, so I've probably got my cheapest SCART lead there, probably the one that came with it... though at least I'm not going to ruin it any more by going via UHF.
Think that's it. Buying all one brand helps with the remote control compatibility, though eventually you might opt for something like a Pronto remote anyway. Having access to a Sony staff discount helps a lot, too, though to be honest I'd probably have brought the same, or very similar kit anyway, just paid a lot more for it.
... and yes, I'm very happy with the above setup - delighted, in fact. I'll probably wait until that strange new micro-mirror technology matures before upgrading the telly, and I'll see what other technologies come along, but at the moment I feel it's a great setup that'll last me a long time.
Now, how are they going to moderate all the "this is what I've got and it's cool" posts?:-)
A lot of Amiga users are looking for a path to "upgrade" to Linux. None of them are particularly happy about it, but it's seen as "the only other vaguely-sensible alternative OS out there", for a bunch of people who don't want to go anywhere near Windoze, and (often) preferably nowhere near Intel architechture either.
At the moment, there are pretty much 2 realistic alternatives... 68k linux for those who were still using 68k Amigas, or "Linux APUS" for those with PPC-based Amigas.
Is LinuxPPC just for Macs? How seriously do you treat other PPC-based machines?
Why do SO many people pretend "I (used to) play with legos" - it's WRONG WRONG WRONG. The plural of LEGO is LEGO. "I have lots of lego". If you INSIST on adding an "s", try "I have a lot of lego bricks"
For a start, this GLV technology basically produces one long thin column (Personally I'm surprised they chose to implement a column rather than a row, but whatever...) of light, and then a moving mirror effectively drags this column back and forth across your screen. Any speckle that you DID have is thus blurred by being dragged horizontally across your screen. Try spotting speckle in your laser pointer when you're swinging it really fast left and right. (or try spotting speckle in a laser light-show, for that matter).
Secondly, they don't have to use completely coherent light. They can merge multiple lasers of similar but not identical wavelength. This is a bit like overlaying multiple different speckle patterns on top of each other, again blurring the effect.
Thirdly, they can use non-polarised light, and I'll admit I haven't got the foggiest idea what they're saying there, but apparently they can thus use "novel speckle reduction means", whatever that might mean! Even if this is bull$#!+, points 1 and 2 sound pretty convincing to me.
What I find particularly amusing...
The first ever John Logie Baird televisions used a big circular disk with holes or lenses appropriately placed to scan a spot of light as the disk was spun. Each hole or lens scanned a single column of the screen, then dropped off the bottom just as the next hole/lens was about to appear at the top of the next column.
The second generation of TVs (this is still before CRT took off) used all kinds of moving mirror magic to basically do the same thing - optically scan a spot of light across the screen. Some used a mirror drum with about 30 or 40 carefully angled mirrors, each of which would scan one column of the screen, again each mirror's reflected spot of light dropping off the bottom of one column of the screen just as the next mirror was about to take over at the top of the next column. Others used 2 synchronised drums - one spinning fast, and turning a spot into a vertical column of light, which was then reflected off the next (slower, but still quite fast) mirror drum which swept this column left-to-right.
This brand new GLV technology is doing almost exactly the same thing, except it's using a clever microchip with thousands of tiny moving reflective ribons to produce the initial "column" of light, which is then swept across the screen by a horizontally-scanning mirror.
Isn't it funny how history repeats itself?:-)
Why did we bother with all that expensive, heavy, dangerous CRT stuff in between, eh? All that mucking about with thick glass, phosphorescent chemicals, and stupendously high voltages?:-)
> It is the ham's problem if their equipment is cheap and unshielded.
If the ham's equipment is unshielded and/or has other problems that make it bleed all over the radio spectrum, then yes, you're right, it's their problem.
It's very rare for the ham's equipment to be cheap though:-)
Most ham equipment is stupidly expensive, because:
It's got quite a large development cost and fairly small market, but also:
It has to undergo stupendous ammounts of interference testing before it can be sold.
> Just wait till the FCC van starts driving around the neighborhood.
> There are limits on broadcasting, especially if they interfere
> with people a few houses away.
Again, yes, BUT the ham's equipment has already undergone stupendous ammounts of expensive testing to make sure that it DOES NOT bleed all over the rest of the radio spectrum, and the ham has to pass some quite nasty exams to make sure they understand all the technical issues, and their license also states that they'll basically keep their equipment well maintained, and regularly perform tests to make sure it's not leaking into bands they're not licensed for.
On the other hand, anyone with just a little bit of the right knowledge can make cheap speakers, a cheap hifi, a cheap TV, or a cheap answering machine, and as long as it passes tests proving it doesn't EMIT more than it's allowed to, they're allowed to sell it. No exams and licenses needed by the manufacturer, let alone the end user.
... and therein lies the problem. In 99% of cases of ham radio interference, you'll find that the ham is broadcasting well within his/her tightly-controlled bands and power levels. They know they'd lose their license and their expensive equipment if they didn't... however, your cheap or badly-made telly/whatever will quite often ACCIDENTALLY recieve rubbish on bands that are well outside whatever it's SUPPOSED to be listenning to... and because your local ham tends to be closer than your local TV broadcaster, these signals, well outside what the cheap telly is supposed to be tuned to, will upset it.
... and perhaps surprisingly, the same DOES apply to simple hifis, answering-machines, telephones, and inter-coms, even though they don't "tune" to anything.
... that said... Yes, you'll usually find that if you can locate the ham operator in question (or even just another local ham / ham club), they'll be very friendly about it (when you're trying to talk to thousands of people from all parts of the world, you've got to be friendly!), and they ought to be able to do a bit of testing to find out what's going on, and supply and fit external or internal versions of the appropriate filters that probably SHOULD have been fitted by the manufacturer of your equipment in the first place (but weren't, usually as a cost-cutting measure).
In many cases, the ham/club will even cover the costs, even when it's not technically their problem. They'll do this just because they're generally friendly people, and also because it's far easier to cheer up a concerned neighbour by spending a few quid fixing their badly-made hifi, rather than getting into any messy, complicated, and often expensive disputes.
It's pretty obvious your answering machine isn't SUPPOSED to recieve the ham's tightly-controlled radio emissions, but if it does, the ham will usually be delighted to fix it for you, especialy if you can be friendly and reasonable about it.
... and in the seriously unlikely event that you found it WAS actually the amateur's fault for bleeding into bands they're not licensed for, they'll still be delighted, and fix it ASAP - they'll be seriusly glad that you found the problem (and let them fix it) before the FCC did!:-)
Can you make out words in the messages, by the way? Can you get a callsign? They'll usually say "CQ, CQ, CQ, this is " repeatedly. Make a note of the callsign, ask your local ham radio club, and they'll be glad to help.
In England, you can get married (with parental consent, or by popping up to Scotland) at age 16. You can have sex, and children. You can buy a video camera, and film yourselves having sex, but YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO WATCH THE VIDEO!:-)
When given a set of cdrom documentation, what do most of us do?
Fire up "nutscrape/cdrom/docs/index.html" obviously! DOH!
Print it out of course.
Seriously? You can't "grep" or even "Edit / Find" then. What's the point in spraying it onto dead tree?
Documentation ultimately ends up in paper form because staring at a screen is too stressful for the eyes.
No way. I can quite hapilly stare at a screen all day at work, then find it difficult to read a "dead tree" book on the train on my way home, but once I get there, I wake up the box at home and read more email, or my own code or something... Or watch TV of course. No, sorry, you're wrong. Try turning up the refresh rate on your monitor if it makes your eyes tired.
One can still manage to decode a book that has been through a flood, where most data media will be gone for good
Download it off the net again... or if it was private business or personal data, go to your offsite backup. Don't pretend books are immune to distruction [petrol, match, oops!].
no matter what new technology comes along, it will not nor can it ever completely replace the paper book
"This new papyrus stuff won't catch on", said ug the caveman, "It will never completely replace the stone tablet. You can still decode a good old chiselled stone slab if it's been through flood or fire, whereas that papyrus stuff just falls apart".
Would you be content an ISP employee viewing this perfectly well encrypted message as it passes through their servers?
Yup. Any ISP employee who's able to read the headers is probably also quite capable of proving that gaspowereddildoes.com is a nonexistent domain... and probably REALISES that you're just trying to wind up the carnivore box;-)
Re:The tech culture DOES remember its roots
on
Technoromanticism
·
· Score: 1
I thought it was Douglas Adams who coined the "Global Village" idea? No?
There's been a fair bit of talk about "us geeks" being more open to DISCUSSING these things rather than blindly BELIEVING in what they were told to believe in... Well... One day, myself and some other geeky-types ended up talking about religious stuff, specifically reincarnation, and came up with a brilliant philosophy... It goes something like this...
Reincarnation... PAH! The living outnumber the dead (or allegedly did at the time), so reincarnation is a screwed philosophy unless there's a big "store" of unused souls out there waiting to be born. There's CLEARLY an increasing number of "souls" out there, and if the living really outnumber the dead, then there's obviously over 50% of us who are here for the FIRST TIME...
... UNLESS (and we get geeky and scientific here)... what if souls aren't constrained by the normal limits of time? what if you don't have to be reincarnated AFTER you die, but maybe when you die, you can be re-incarnated back in time a bit, maybe even live in the same era for a number of lifetimes? We could have several of "us" wandering around in different bodies, here, in this world, NOW. We could bump into ourself in another life, and probably not even realise it.
Now, take this to it's (il)logical extreme... What if we're ALL re-incarnations of exactly the same "soul"? I am YOU in another life, or if you prefer, YOU are ME in another life. If you hurt someone, you're only hurting yourself in another life. If you're nice to someone, you're really just being nice to yourself. "What goes around, comes around" and "do unto others..." make a whole lot more sense. We all agreed that this was a great philosophy, even if it WAS pure undilluted idle speculation.
This theory also means that all sex is just masturbation, but we all knew that anyway;-)
Quite frankly, if this cable is tough enough to keep 144,000km of itself in orbit and attached to the earth, then it's going to take a pretty damned impressive terrorist bomb to damage it anyway.
(hmm, do they make 200-disc DVD changers or anything like that?)
Yes. Sony DVP-CX850. 200 CD/DVD changer, nice on-screen catalogue, loads of different outputs on the back, very good quality audio and video playback, PC keyboard input (though it's not clear if you can CONTROL it like this, or just use it to enter names of tracks and discs)
As far as I know, it's the only DVD changer that manages anything like that number of discs.
Lovely-looking beastie - I have one on order through staff sales!:-)
Remember you definitely CAN'T rely on the "From:" or even "Sender:" headers to be correct. They're trivial to fake.
See SpamCop.net - it's one of the most sensible ones I've seen, checking back "recieved:" headers until it finds the break in the chain, spotting faked headers, etc etc. It also checks websites and email addresses mentionned in the body of the spam. It checks IP addresses with ORBS and MAPS and things, it does various whois lookups and things... Once you're done, it lets you tick the boxes to decide which sysadmins to report the spam to, and whether to submit to SRC, ORBS, etc etc. It keeps track of sysadmins who have already done something about it, and refuses to re-complain after the problem's fixed, etc etc... all in all, it's quite a competent spam complaint thingy.
... and no, you don't need to pay for the full commercial version, just register for the free service and put up with a 5-second nag screen between each complaint.
Also, where is the mouse wheel on notebooks. Still waiting for the obvious there
Most of the newish Sony VAIOs have one. They have the standard mouse-pad, with LBM and RMB below the keyboard, and a kind of clickable jog-dial thingy on the right-hand edge of the machine. If you're sitting reading long documents on the train, this is a fairly convenient place to put it. By defualt, you're running 'doze, and the dial runs a special click-dial menu system thing, but it can be configured as a "normal" mousewheel if you prefer.
Having said that... the right-hand and bottom edges of the mouse-pad can be used for scrolling anyway, and the top-left can be used for things like iconising and close-gadgets.
No... the REAL "still waiting for the obvious" is a volume-control for the mother-in-law;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh! You meant one of those old-fasioned kilogram things? ;-)
miSSHapen?
- Sony KV32DS60 IDO 100Hz TV. I couldn't afford 36", but got the best 32" around. Integrated digital TV decoder (not sure how relevent this is in the US, but it's great to have crystal-clear broadcast terrestrial TV in the UK), 100Hz refresh, etc etc etc. Back-projection stuff's field of view didn't impress me, plasma was waaaaay too expensive, and video projection is pretty unwatchable if you (or your family) ever want to have a decent level of light in the same room.
- Sony STR-DB930 home cinema amp. Full dolby 5.1 / mpeg / ac3 / pcm / blah blah decoding, tuner, loads of inputs, switches video as well as audio if you want it to, loads of outputs, EG you can have 2 sets of front speakers and switch between A, B, or A+B, and there's an output for a "slave amp" in another room, which I've been meaning to use. At the time, this was the "best amp you could get for under 1000UKP", even though it was actually less than UKP500. It's now been superceeded by the STR-DB940, I think.
- Sony DVP-CX850D, 200 disc CD / DVD audio/visual jukebox. It's cool to be able to select anything from your entire CD / DVD collection without getting off the couch. If 200 isn't enough, there's now a 300-disc version, and/or you can daisy-chain more 200 or 300 CD, or CD+DVD carousels.
- Sony SLV-SF90 VHS VCR. Yes, VHS is crap, but if you're going to use it, you could at least use it in a really cool way. This VCR has "SmartFile", which means you slap a special (though expensive) label on the spine of the tape, and it'll record programme details on a chip in the label. Record something with VidepPlus+, manual timer, or even just pressing "REC", and it'll get the name of the programme off of teletext, and store it on the chip. Later, when you're hunting for a particular programme, you wave the tape in front of the machine, and it pops up a list of what's on that tape. Wrong tape? wave another one at it. Found the programme? pop the tape in, select it off the menu, and it'll FF/RW to the right place on the tape for you. It's about as good as you can get with VHS, the only real alternative being something like TiVO, I guess.
- Mission Cinema "6-pack" of speakers. Just about the only thing I've got that's not Sony, because sony's speakers don't exactly win (m)any awards. The Mission set are very nice speakers, again basically "best you could get for under UKP1000", again actually less than UKP500. Handles the whole audio spectrum very nicely, and the sub is fantastic - you just gotta have respect for a speaker that needs it's own mains supply! I never used to appreciate bass very much, but this has definitely converted me!
- Cables - the digital interconnects are just co-ax, because I spare cables around... anyway, if you've already got 0% error rate, anyone who tells you that "fibre digital interconnects sound better" is kidding you, or an idiot, or both.
- The speaker cable, I can't tell the difference between "oxygen-free" and all that expensive lark, but on the other hand, I'm not going to use "Bell wire" either. I bought a reel of fairly good, well-made, unbranded 49-strand stuff.
- Phono, RGB, etc, I've gone for fairly well screened stuff, and tried to go with gold-plated connectors if/when I can afford them, and where they're realistic. VHS is dreadfully low-quality anyway, so I've probably got my cheapest SCART lead there, probably the one that came with it... though at least I'm not going to ruin it any more by going via UHF.
Think that's it. Buying all one brand helps with the remote control compatibility, though eventually you might opt for something like a Pronto remote anyway. Having access to a Sony staff discount helps a lot, too, though to be honest I'd probably have brought the same, or very similar kit anyway, just paid a lot more for it.Now, how are they going to moderate all the "this is what I've got and it's cool" posts? :-)
More like if you decided to drive an unsafe car on the road. And no, you don't have that right
Another bad analogy.
You need to pass a test to drive a car.
At the moment, there are pretty much 2 realistic alternatives... 68k linux for those who were still using 68k Amigas, or "Linux APUS" for those with PPC-based Amigas.
Is LinuxPPC just for Macs? How seriously do you treat other PPC-based machines?
sorry, pet peeve.
What I find particularly amusing...
The first ever John Logie Baird televisions used a big circular disk with holes or lenses appropriately placed to scan a spot of light as the disk was spun. Each hole or lens scanned a single column of the screen, then dropped off the bottom just as the next hole/lens was about to appear at the top of the next column.
The second generation of TVs (this is still before CRT took off) used all kinds of moving mirror magic to basically do the same thing - optically scan a spot of light across the screen. Some used a mirror drum with about 30 or 40 carefully angled mirrors, each of which would scan one column of the screen, again each mirror's reflected spot of light dropping off the bottom of one column of the screen just as the next mirror was about to take over at the top of the next column. Others used 2 synchronised drums - one spinning fast, and turning a spot into a vertical column of light, which was then reflected off the next (slower, but still quite fast) mirror drum which swept this column left-to-right.
This brand new GLV technology is doing almost exactly the same thing, except it's using a clever microchip with thousands of tiny moving reflective ribons to produce the initial "column" of light, which is then swept across the screen by a horizontally-scanning mirror.
Isn't it funny how history repeats itself? :-)
Why did we bother with all that expensive, heavy, dangerous CRT stuff in between, eh? All that mucking about with thick glass, phosphorescent chemicals, and stupendously high voltages? :-)
If the ham's equipment is unshielded and/or has other problems that make it bleed all over the radio spectrum, then yes, you're right, it's their problem.
It's very rare for the ham's equipment to be cheap though :-)
Most ham equipment is stupidly expensive, because:
> Just wait till the FCC van starts driving around the neighborhood.
> There are limits on broadcasting, especially if they interfere
> with people a few houses away.
Again, yes, BUT the ham's equipment has already undergone stupendous ammounts of expensive testing to make sure that it DOES NOT bleed all over the rest of the radio spectrum, and the ham has to pass some quite nasty exams to make sure they understand all the technical issues, and their license also states that they'll basically keep their equipment well maintained, and regularly perform tests to make sure it's not leaking into bands they're not licensed for.
On the other hand, anyone with just a little bit of the right knowledge can make cheap speakers, a cheap hifi, a cheap TV, or a cheap answering machine, and as long as it passes tests proving it doesn't EMIT more than it's allowed to, they're allowed to sell it. No exams and licenses needed by the manufacturer, let alone the end user.
In many cases, the ham/club will even cover the costs, even when it's not technically their problem. They'll do this just because they're generally friendly people, and also because it's far easier to cheer up a concerned neighbour by spending a few quid fixing their badly-made hifi, rather than getting into any messy, complicated, and often expensive disputes.
It's pretty obvious your answering machine isn't SUPPOSED to recieve the ham's tightly-controlled radio emissions, but if it does, the ham will usually be delighted to fix it for you, especialy if you can be friendly and reasonable about it.
Can you make out words in the messages, by the way? Can you get a callsign? They'll usually say "CQ, CQ, CQ, this is " repeatedly. Make a note of the callsign, ask your local ham radio club, and they'll be glad to help.
Can we get a REFUND? I don't want to pay no steenkin' scientologist even a fraction of a peny of my money.
Come to think of it, I wasn't intending to pay MS a peny of my money either, so that's probably OK :-)
I hear amazon's lawyers warming up already. :-)
And there's possibly 450 valid entries?
Each perhaps winning $22 for their work?
Hope they enjoyed it. They obviously didn't do it for the money :-)
Oh no, sorry, the steam irons were transparent and blue BEFORE the imac.
http://www.nilex.co.uk/~nick/fi les /imac-iron.jpg
Fire up "nutscrape /cdrom/docs/index.html" obviously! DOH!
Print it out of course.
Seriously? You can't "grep" or even "Edit / Find" then. What's the point in spraying it onto dead tree?
Documentation ultimately ends up in paper form because staring at a screen is too stressful for the eyes.
No way. I can quite hapilly stare at a screen all day at work, then find it difficult to read a "dead tree" book on the train on my way home, but once I get there, I wake up the box at home and read more email, or my own code or something... Or watch TV of course. No, sorry, you're wrong. Try turning up the refresh rate on your monitor if it makes your eyes tired.
One can still manage to decode a book that has been through a flood, where most data media will be gone for good
Download it off the net again... or if it was private business or personal data, go to your offsite backup. Don't pretend books are immune to distruction [petrol, match, oops!].
no matter what new technology comes along, it will not nor can it ever completely replace the paper book
"This new papyrus stuff won't catch on", said ug the caveman, "It will never completely replace the stone tablet. You can still decode a good old chiselled stone slab if it's been through flood or fire, whereas that papyrus stuff just falls apart".
Yup. Any ISP employee who's able to read the headers is probably also quite capable of proving that gaspowereddildoes.com is a nonexistent domain... and probably REALISES that you're just trying to wind up the carnivore box ;-)
dig @138.195.138.195 goret.org. axfr|perl -e 'for(sort <>){if(/^c...(.*).gr/){print pack("H32",$1)}}'|zcat
saves a few bits of external sorting/cutting/grepping. Could do the dig and the zcat in perl too, but that's actually longer.
Another alternative is:
dig @138.195.138.195 goret.org. axfr|sort|perl -ne 'if(/^c...(.*).gr/){print pack("H32",$1)}'|zcat
Ummmm... yes, I'm a sony sysadmin telling you other ways to get the decss code.
Reincarnation... PAH! The living outnumber the dead (or allegedly did at the time), so reincarnation is a screwed philosophy unless there's a big "store" of unused souls out there waiting to be born. There's CLEARLY an increasing number of "souls" out there, and if the living really outnumber the dead, then there's obviously over 50% of us who are here for the FIRST TIME...
Now, take this to it's (il)logical extreme... What if we're ALL re-incarnations of exactly the same "soul"? I am YOU in another life, or if you prefer, YOU are ME in another life. If you hurt someone, you're only hurting yourself in another life. If you're nice to someone, you're really just being nice to yourself. "What goes around, comes around" and "do unto others..." make a whole lot more sense. We all agreed that this was a great philosophy, even if it WAS pure undilluted idle speculation.
This theory also means that all sex is just masturbation, but we all knew that anyway ;-)
I hope you wiped it off ;-)
<snigger>
Yes. Sony DVP-CX850. 200 CD/DVD changer, nice on-screen catalogue, loads of different outputs on the back, very good quality audio and video playback, PC keyboard input (though it's not clear if you can CONTROL it like this, or just use it to enter names of tracks and discs)
As far as I know, it's the only DVD changer that manages anything like that number of discs.
Lovely-looking beastie - I have one on order through staff sales! :-)
See SpamCop.net - it's one of the most sensible ones I've seen, checking back "recieved:" headers until it finds the break in the chain, spotting faked headers, etc etc. It also checks websites and email addresses mentionned in the body of the spam. It checks IP addresses with ORBS and MAPS and things, it does various whois lookups and things... Once you're done, it lets you tick the boxes to decide which sysadmins to report the spam to, and whether to submit to SRC, ORBS, etc etc. It keeps track of sysadmins who have already done something about it, and refuses to re-complain after the problem's fixed, etc etc... all in all, it's quite a competent spam complaint thingy.
Most of the newish Sony VAIOs have one. They have the standard mouse-pad, with LBM and RMB below the keyboard, and a kind of clickable jog-dial thingy on the right-hand edge of the machine. If you're sitting reading long documents on the train, this is a fairly convenient place to put it. By defualt, you're running 'doze, and the dial runs a special click-dial menu system thing, but it can be configured as a "normal" mousewheel if you prefer.
Having said that... the right-hand and bottom edges of the mouse-pad can be used for scrolling anyway, and the top-left can be used for things like iconising and close-gadgets.
No... the REAL "still waiting for the obvious" is a volume-control for the mother-in-law ;-)