Battles are won or lost at the tactical level and having well trained, seasoned warriors makes all the difference in the world - watch the older Kurt Russel movie 'Soldier', in particular towards the beginning when the Soldiers are in combat (some war, I forget) running through the city streets as a unit and shooting on the move. The ability to remain focused, work as a team, effectively communicate, recognize and eliminate threats, not shoot your buddy by mistake, and not freak out when you are getting shot at, and not panic and flee or surrender - that is what wins a battle. Helps to be able to hit what you are shooting at too. With the exception of actual rifle accuracy, a good sim will slowly build up those skills in a soldier.
Damn thanks for pointing that out - they are going to base this on some anime'esque game (There) ? Oh fsck me - somehow I was sort of hoping for either CounterStrike or maybe use the UT2004 engine but put in real weapon ballistics (the voice comms in UT2004 would have been a nice touch.)
Or you could figure out a way to put the data file from your email application out on the web somewhere and tell whatever email app you run to find it there. If you can find a machine with that application on it, just point it at your data files and you are all set.
Now where could we find an email application that lets us put the data files out on another computer's hard drive and allows us to point to that data over TCP/IP?
(It is an honest question, cause Outlook sure as hell won't let me do that. Maybe it will, I never tried designating the location of the data files in a share on an IP address.)
Never stick around once you have another offer in writing. You were unhappy enough to look around, unhappy enough to go interview, unhappy enough to go buy a nice suit so you could interview, and good enough to convince another company to hire you for more money.
Your old boss may counter with a better offer, but you are going to be on his shit list forever and the first chance he gets to shaft you, you are going to get shafted.
Sure would suck to have them keep you on long enough to transfer all your knowledge out and wait for the other company to fill the slot, then have you be included in the group of people being layed off. Would suck bad.
Negotiate in good faith first with your employeer. If he won't give you what you think you need or deserve, then go looking elsewhere and when you find it, don't look back.
He lives in California, so knock 50% right off the top for all the taxes (federal and state.) That means he has $22.5k left over after taxes, not $30k Take away the $12k for rent and that leaves right at $200 a week for a family of four to exist on...
Wireless handheld solid state device running Linux. Cost the city $7,000 apiece, secured to a steel pipe by a three dollar MasterLock.
Why didn't they just make the damn things out of gold? Probably be cheaper and less likely to get stolen - hell I am nowhere near there and I am tempted so I can only envision the local haxors just salivating, waiting for these things to roll out in mass quantities.
I can't wait for the online tutorials describing how to format the drives and reinstall a fresh copy of the OS for home use. Actually what I am waiting for is the list of off the shelf components that these things are comprised of, only to find out that they use about $300 in parts and get sold to the government for $7,000 the next day.
Peer level support would be a small group of people similar to myself getting together in real life, all sitting around in the same area installing and basically dicking around on a few computers, sharing insight, experience, knowledge, and ideas. Perhaps I used the wrong term, but envision the small study groups that got together a few times a week in college doing exactly that for Calculus, Physics, Statistics, various parts of Engineering, different programming languages, etc.
I used the term peer to indciate a group of people that have a bit of a connect, enough that each member has a positive influence - sort of like the green-lighted members here (your friend/fan list.)
Also, I used the word peer to imply guys that were there because they wanted to be there, not because the were charging you $150 an hour (see below.)
Actually you hit the nail on the head - this highlights the one thing standing between Linux the obscure 'haxor leet' operating system, and Linux the mainstream operating system : peer level support, and a learning environment where you can have problems and get shown the answers without the insults from the debian IRC script kiddiez.
I hear a lot of people asking what they can do to contribute to Linux / the open source movement. Hold cheap one on one or one on a few classes and bring people up to speed, make yourself available to answer these 'silly' questions and whatever you do don't be malicious or demeaning... it only takes one CFO being told as a joke to type rm -rf or whatever to pretty much poison the well at any company he does business with - the first time you use anything it isn't intuitive, people are not going to figure it out without being shown first at least once. Go out, show them.
Try anyways. Actually most states get all pissy about you NOT getting their drivers license after you have been there 90 days or so - you have a legit excuse not to because you are only there as a student living in the dorms but if you wanted to get a NY DL something tells me they would be more than happy to give you one.
While you are at it, look into the residency requirements and how much cheaper your college expenses would be if you were to establish a NY residence. In some states it is a LOT cheaper.
I actually ended up using DFWI-IM as a standard code documentation notifier for some of the more wicked stuff I did in whatever code I was doing. It stands for 'Don't fuck with it, it's magic' and I generally reserved it for some of the more evil things like recursive routines and self modifying code.
Word on the street is that my name still gets used in vain from time to time by the guys still maintaining that code.
Not you swordboy, but everybody. If you install a plugin into your browser, it is tracking where you go and what you do, sending that data back to some server somewhere for processing.
Not just Amazon. You can pretty much be sure if you have any browser bar plug-in where you type stuff and it does stuff - you are being tracked. If the one you have isn't doing it yet, the programmers are adding it for the next release.
Man if you can't find a way to do it on Google, it probably can't be done.
As I regularly tell one of my friends : you have used too many pronouns / variables in that sentence in order to come to a conclusion / make any sense. That said, describe in tight detail what exactly you want to do and maybe we can help you figure out a way to do it.
I want to make something something and have it use some power to do something something and it will be cool if I can figure this part out. Surprisingly, given all those facts Google was not much use - how about you guys, how do I transmit an unknown amount of unknown voltage for unknown purpose and unknown duration over 2 to 4 inches?
The 64kb was actually a limitation of early compilers that needed to keep the entire address space of a program inside of 64k. It was called the small memory model, I believe, and all the code and pre-allocated memory for variables needed to sit inside that 64k (but dynamic allocated variables could reside on the heap in excess of that 64k.)
Actually that's a cool idea. Hey venture cap guys looking to start a company : here is your killer idea.
How about a company, a call center that simply has a bunch of people with computers hooked up to the Internet all starting at Google. That way a guy like you or I could call up and ask any question he needed to ask (be it directions, where am I, what is the weight of an unladen swallow... whatever) and the guy in the call center uses Google / MapQuest / whatever to figure it out and hook him up.
Net investment in technology : whatever it takes to put up a similar tech support center and fill it with articulate, lucid people. Time to market : less than a month.
Similar to OnStar but not limited to your vehicle in nature.
I think that as represented this (the original post) is about the stupidest idea I have heard all day(1). Here's a better idea - given that any phone with a camera already has GPS'esque tracking capabilities, why not just use that signal to get a map from MapQuest show up on his photo-quality-display (also on any phone with a camera.) Even if you had to piggyback a bluetooth device on your belt that did whatever is keeping today's phones from doing this it would still be a better idea.
Try and identify where someone (that has a GPS in his hand) is by looking at a picture of a building - while they are at it the company might as well invent subliminal messages that make men horny and figure a way to include them in pornographic movies.
(1) - yes I know the day is still early but I'm giving 3:1 odds that this idea holds the title all day.
If you have one 'super duper' master password that you use for everything and never change it - you are already screwed. In fact the more 'super duper' it is the more you are screwed because you trust it with everything because you think nobody can guess it or hack it. When someone figures it out (and it happens) you are screwed across the board and the damage isn't sectioned off to just one thing like your college network.
Work up a scheme of passwords for different layers of security: - one set of passwords for web sites like this - message boards under an alias, no financial damage if compromised. - a different set for your eBay / Visa web sites - a different set for your secure boxes at home with your porn and warez - a different set for use on other people's secure boxes / networks (like work or school.)
Change them from time to time. Use a different password for administrative access to your 'secure' systems than you use as a day to day user.
It is no longer a question of whether or not someone is going to get your password, it is a question of how much damage will they do when they get it, and how long they can use it without you knowing they have it. Which is worse, to have someone get your password and do something malicious the same day (and thus you find out about it and have to clean up whatever he did) or have someone know your password and silently shadow you for the next three years - reading every email, downloading and archiving every file, and monitoring your every online move?
Somewhere between 'hacking the data' and 'posting it on the web page' or doing whatever he was going to do with it (expose a massive security flaw, perhaps?) a college kid at UT got caught doing exactly this. He hadn't even done anything with them yet except possess the information.
Best quote of that article : "If convicted, he could face a maximum term of eight years in a federal prison and up to $500,000 in fines."
This sounds a lot like that college kid that decided to 'test' airport security a few months ago by sneaking a knife onto a commercial flight. Made it past security, got onto the plane, then announced his amazing feat of stealth and cunning to the crew. Ha Ha your security still sucks - I tested it and I am better than you - hey wait, it was only a test - hey who are these stormtrooper guys - ouch.
Oddly neither the airport nor the government found his 'test' very enlighting. No, in fact I think he was facing several years in Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison.
Original poster : you are approaching this like a child in an adult world. It is obvious that you desire peer level attention and recognition for your 'accomplishments'. Trust me, as someone that was 'recognized' and 'acknowledged' by the university administration for 'hacking' his college computers (possibly before you were even born)... recognition is highly overrated. That you even suggested collecting the list of passwords and placing them on a webpage at school shows incredible immaturity. Not because you said it, but because doing so is even a remotely viable consideration in your mind.
You want to blow the whistle, then blow the whistle. If you see a serious breach of security and you feel the need to get it fixed, go to https://tips.fbi.gov and fill out that form, hit submit. I pretty much 100% guarantee that they will take you serious. You can call them at 202-324-3000 if you want.
Understand, however, that once you invite the government into any aspect of your life or business it is impossible to put that genie back in the bottle. This goes with any cute little pranks you enumerated like sniffing passwords or listing them on a web page at school.
There is a fine line between helper and terrorist in today's environment and you really don't want to screw away your lifetime potential because you were being 'gifted and talented' in college. Not only do you not want to cross the line, you don't even want to be under evaulation as to which side of the line you are at - all it takes is one bureaucrat to misinterpret anything you have said and you are royally fscked.
If you are here because you are genuinely concerned about massive lapses in the security as implemented at your university then consider whether or not you are ready to be a martyr for that security - because once you blow the whistle you can pretty much kiss goodbye any chances at graduation from that college. But the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and we are ok with sacrificing you as a pawn in the name of the overall good.
If you are here to impress us with your 1337 haxor skillz - what you did wasn't 1337, it was merely a rite of passage for every systems guy worth his salt. About like programming a bubble sort in visual basic - everybody is proud the first time they do it, but it really isn't that big a deal.
You want to impress us, do something none of has done yet: Find Osama bin Laden, hell I think there is still a $25M reward for the information leading to his capture. Figure out a way to actually get the administration to fix their security. Do that and you will be our hero. Find a way to bring back the tech sector jobs that are being outsourced overseas. Do that and you will be our hero and we will rename Linux in your honor.
Instead of making stupid comments regarding VMWare or laptops
Wow - I don't know you so I'm going to play the Hanlon card and not attribute that to malice.
That said, if I was dead set on going with rack mount gear I would consider a Blade Server. I had a hardon for these a year or two ago when they first hit the scene but there was no way I could justify the price - but this discussion has prompted me to check eBay for Blade Servers The second hand market has picked up a little and the individual Blades are actually fairly cheap - under $500 for new in the package old stock with some running under $350. You will also need a Blade enclosure to stick them in. Sounds about exactly like what the OP was interested in... in fact I may consider some for myself.
I guess if you are going to put in a rack, might as well do it up right and get some of the toys like a Blade Server and what have you. Hell, throw a Gig of memory in each of these and run VMware on them, get the best of both worlds.
Rack mounted hardware is hideously expensive to begin with, not to mention fairly ugly. If you honestly need discrete hardware for testing the system I would suggest considering used laptops (or even new laptops), get several identical units. Benefits of laptops over rack mounted hardware: Built in battery backup. Discrete hardware so you can use it like a regular computer. Very quiet, low power consumption. Reasonably priced compared to 19" rack mount machines. Get a spare hard drive and carrier and the laptop serves double duty as a personal laptop simply by swapping out the drive. Stacks easily.
You can get new Dell laptops for under a grand apiece including upgraded hard drives and memory.
That said, I suggest you give VMware a serious look. It has a 30 day shareware trial version (full feature) and will let you run multiple virtual machines on the same computer - memory limited to 1G across all the VMs on one physical machine (ie you could run four 256M machines or two 512M machines or eight 128M machines at the same time, or mix and match.) Networking is emulated very well, as far as the virtual machines are concerned they are all real machines on your network, in fact all the real machines on your net will treat them like real machines also.
Total cost for VMware = $300 for the software and enough to fill your existing computer with another Gig of memory. If you are doing prototyping or experimental work it is really something worth looking into.
Slashdot Mirror
Battles are won or lost at the tactical level and having well trained, seasoned warriors makes all the difference in the world - watch the older Kurt Russel movie 'Soldier', in particular towards the beginning when the Soldiers are in combat (some war, I forget) running through the city streets as a unit and shooting on the move. The ability to remain focused, work as a team, effectively communicate, recognize and eliminate threats, not shoot your buddy by mistake, and not freak out when you are getting shot at, and not panic and flee or surrender - that is what wins a battle. Helps to be able to hit what you are shooting at too. With the exception of actual rifle accuracy, a good sim will slowly build up those skills in a soldier.
Damn thanks for pointing that out - they are going to base this on some anime'esque game (There) ? Oh fsck me - somehow I was sort of hoping for either CounterStrike or maybe use the UT2004 engine but put in real weapon ballistics (the voice comms in UT2004 would have been a nice touch.)
Damn! They picked a language that Babblefish chokes on.
Or you could figure out a way to put the data file from your email application out on the web somewhere and tell whatever email app you run to find it there. If you can find a machine with that application on it, just point it at your data files and you are all set.
Now where could we find an email application that lets us put the data files out on another computer's hard drive and allows us to point to that data over TCP/IP?
(It is an honest question, cause Outlook sure as hell won't let me do that. Maybe it will, I never tried designating the location of the data files in a share on an IP address.)
Never stick around once you have another offer in writing. You were unhappy enough to look around, unhappy enough to go interview, unhappy enough to go buy a nice suit so you could interview, and good enough to convince another company to hire you for more money.
Your old boss may counter with a better offer, but you are going to be on his shit list forever and the first chance he gets to shaft you, you are going to get shafted.
Sure would suck to have them keep you on long enough to transfer all your knowledge out and wait for the other company to fill the slot, then have you be included in the group of people being layed off. Would suck bad.
Negotiate in good faith first with your employeer. If he won't give you what you think you need or deserve, then go looking elsewhere and when you find it, don't look back.
"// you're new here, aren't you? drj"
--Half-Life SDK, doors.cpp, line 745
He lives in California, so knock 50% right off the top for all the taxes (federal and state.) That means he has $22.5k left over after taxes, not $30k Take away the $12k for rent and that leaves right at $200 a week for a family of four to exist on ...
But you are right, very little wiggle room.
Wireless handheld solid state device running Linux. Cost the city $7,000 apiece, secured to a steel pipe by a three dollar MasterLock.
Why didn't they just make the damn things out of gold? Probably be cheaper and less likely to get stolen - hell I am nowhere near there and I am tempted so I can only envision the local haxors just salivating, waiting for these things to roll out in mass quantities.
I can't wait for the online tutorials describing how to format the drives and reinstall a fresh copy of the OS for home use. Actually what I am waiting for is the list of off the shelf components that these things are comprised of, only to find out that they use about $300 in parts and get sold to the government for $7,000 the next day.
Peer level support would be a small group of people similar to myself getting together in real life, all sitting around in the same area installing and basically dicking around on a few computers, sharing insight, experience, knowledge, and ideas. Perhaps I used the wrong term, but envision the small study groups that got together a few times a week in college doing exactly that for Calculus, Physics, Statistics, various parts of Engineering, different programming languages, etc.
I used the term peer to indciate a group of people that have a bit of a connect, enough that each member has a positive influence - sort of like the green-lighted members here (your friend/fan list.)
Also, I used the word peer to imply guys that were there because they wanted to be there, not because the were charging you $150 an hour (see below.)
Actually you hit the nail on the head - this highlights the one thing standing between Linux the obscure 'haxor leet' operating system, and Linux the mainstream operating system : peer level support, and a learning environment where you can have problems and get shown the answers without the insults from the debian IRC script kiddiez.
... it only takes one CFO being told as a joke to type rm -rf or whatever to pretty much poison the well at any company he does business with - the first time you use anything it isn't intuitive, people are not going to figure it out without being shown first at least once. Go out, show them.
I hear a lot of people asking what they can do to contribute to Linux / the open source movement. Hold cheap one on one or one on a few classes and bring people up to speed, make yourself available to answer these 'silly' questions and whatever you do don't be malicious or demeaning
Try anyways. Actually most states get all pissy about you NOT getting their drivers license after you have been there 90 days or so - you have a legit excuse not to because you are only there as a student living in the dorms but if you wanted to get a NY DL something tells me they would be more than happy to give you one.
While you are at it, look into the residency requirements and how much cheaper your college expenses would be if you were to establish a NY residence. In some states it is a LOT cheaper.
I actually ended up using DFWI-IM as a standard code documentation notifier for some of the more wicked stuff I did in whatever code I was doing. It stands for 'Don't fuck with it, it's magic' and I generally reserved it for some of the more evil things like recursive routines and self modifying code.
Word on the street is that my name still gets used in vain from time to time by the guys still maintaining that code.
Not you swordboy, but everybody.
If you install a plugin into your browser, it is tracking where you go and what you do, sending that data back to some server somewhere for processing.
Not just Amazon. You can pretty much be sure if you have any browser bar plug-in where you type stuff and it does stuff - you are being tracked. If the one you have isn't doing it yet, the programmers are adding it for the next release.
That is all, carry on.
Actually I was assuming he would find the one that I wrote in and amongst the other 170 hits found on Google.
Man if you can't find a way to do it on Google, it probably can't be done.
As I regularly tell one of my friends : you have used too many pronouns / variables in that sentence in order to come to a conclusion / make any sense. That said, describe in tight detail what exactly you want to do and maybe we can help you figure out a way to do it.
I want to make something something and have it use some power to do something something and it will be cool if I can figure this part out. Surprisingly, given all those facts Google was not much use - how about you guys, how do I transmit an unknown amount of unknown voltage for unknown purpose and unknown duration over 2 to 4 inches?
What do you want to do?
Taxes are for little people - Leona Helmsley.
The 64kb was actually a limitation of early compilers that needed to keep the entire address space of a program inside of 64k. It was called the small memory model, I believe, and all the code and pre-allocated memory for variables needed to sit inside that 64k (but dynamic allocated variables could reside on the heap in excess of that 64k.)
Actually that's a cool idea. Hey venture cap guys looking to start a company : here is your killer idea.
... whatever) and the guy in the call center uses Google / MapQuest / whatever to figure it out and hook him up.
How about a company, a call center that simply has a bunch of people with computers hooked up to the Internet all starting at Google. That way a guy like you or I could call up and ask any question he needed to ask (be it directions, where am I, what is the weight of an unladen swallow
Net investment in technology : whatever it takes to put up a similar tech support center and fill it with articulate, lucid people. Time to market : less than a month.
Similar to OnStar but not limited to your vehicle in nature.
I think that as represented this (the original post) is about the stupidest idea I have heard all day(1). Here's a better idea - given that any phone with a camera already has GPS'esque tracking capabilities, why not just use that signal to get a map from MapQuest show up on his photo-quality-display (also on any phone with a camera.) Even if you had to piggyback a bluetooth device on your belt that did whatever is keeping today's phones from doing this it would still be a better idea.
Try and identify where someone (that has a GPS in his hand) is by looking at a picture of a building - while they are at it the company might as well invent subliminal messages that make men horny and figure a way to include them in pornographic movies.
(1) - yes I know the day is still early but I'm giving 3:1 odds that this idea holds the title all day.
If you have one 'super duper' master password that you use for everything and never change it - you are already screwed. In fact the more 'super duper' it is the more you are screwed because you trust it with everything because you think nobody can guess it or hack it. When someone figures it out (and it happens) you are screwed across the board and the damage isn't sectioned off to just one thing like your college network.
:
Work up a scheme of passwords for different layers of security
- one set of passwords for web sites like this - message boards under an alias, no financial damage if compromised.
- a different set for your eBay / Visa web sites
- a different set for your secure boxes at home with your porn and warez
- a different set for use on other people's secure boxes / networks (like work or school.)
Change them from time to time. Use a different password for administrative access to your 'secure' systems than you use as a day to day user.
It is no longer a question of whether or not someone is going to get your password, it is a question of how much damage will they do when they get it, and how long they can use it without you knowing they have it. Which is worse, to have someone get your password and do something malicious the same day (and thus you find out about it and have to clean up whatever he did) or have someone know your password and silently shadow you for the next three years - reading every email, downloading and archiving every file, and monitoring your every online move?
http://boston.internet.com/news/article.php/211044 1
Somewhere between 'hacking the data' and 'posting it on the web page' or doing whatever he was going to do with it (expose a massive security flaw, perhaps?) a college kid at UT got caught doing exactly this. He hadn't even done anything with them yet except possess the information.
Best quote of that article : "If convicted, he could face a maximum term of eight years in a federal prison and up to $500,000 in fines."
This sounds a lot like that college kid that decided to 'test' airport security a few months ago by sneaking a knife onto a commercial flight. Made it past security, got onto the plane, then announced his amazing feat of stealth and cunning to the crew. Ha Ha your security still sucks - I tested it and I am better than you - hey wait, it was only a test - hey who are these stormtrooper guys - ouch.
... recognition is highly overrated. That you even suggested collecting the list of passwords and placing them on a webpage at school shows incredible immaturity. Not because you said it, but because doing so is even a remotely viable consideration in your mind.
:
Oddly neither the airport nor the government found his 'test' very enlighting. No, in fact I think he was facing several years in Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison.
Original poster : you are approaching this like a child in an adult world. It is obvious that you desire peer level attention and recognition for your 'accomplishments'. Trust me, as someone that was 'recognized' and 'acknowledged' by the university administration for 'hacking' his college computers (possibly before you were even born)
You want to blow the whistle, then blow the whistle. If you see a serious breach of security and you feel the need to get it fixed, go to https://tips.fbi.gov and fill out that form, hit submit. I pretty much 100% guarantee that they will take you serious. You can call them at 202-324-3000 if you want.
Understand, however, that once you invite the government into any aspect of your life or business it is impossible to put that genie back in the bottle. This goes with any cute little pranks you enumerated like sniffing passwords or listing them on a web page at school.
There is a fine line between helper and terrorist in today's environment and you really don't want to screw away your lifetime potential because you were being 'gifted and talented' in college. Not only do you not want to cross the line, you don't even want to be under evaulation as to which side of the line you are at - all it takes is one bureaucrat to misinterpret anything you have said and you are royally fscked.
If you are here because you are genuinely concerned about massive lapses in the security as implemented at your university then consider whether or not you are ready to be a martyr for that security - because once you blow the whistle you can pretty much kiss goodbye any chances at graduation from that college. But the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and we are ok with sacrificing you as a pawn in the name of the overall good.
If you are here to impress us with your 1337 haxor skillz - what you did wasn't 1337, it was merely a rite of passage for every systems guy worth his salt. About like programming a bubble sort in visual basic - everybody is proud the first time they do it, but it really isn't that big a deal.
You want to impress us, do something none of has done yet
Find Osama bin Laden, hell I think there is still a $25M reward for the information leading to his capture.
Figure out a way to actually get the administration to fix their security. Do that and you will be our hero.
Find a way to bring back the tech sector jobs that are being outsourced overseas. Do that and you will be our hero and we will rename Linux in your honor.
Holy shit - I don't know what clown modded this down but I almost missed it. This is amazing news - consider this a meta-mod back up.
Instead of making stupid comments regarding VMWare or laptops
... in fact I may consider some for myself.
Wow - I don't know you so I'm going to play the Hanlon card and not attribute that to malice.
That said, if I was dead set on going with rack mount gear I would consider a Blade Server. I had a hardon for these a year or two ago when they first hit the scene but there was no way I could justify the price - but this discussion has prompted me to check eBay for Blade Servers The second hand market has picked up a little and the individual Blades are actually fairly cheap - under $500 for new in the package old stock with some running under $350. You will also need a Blade enclosure to stick them in. Sounds about exactly like what the OP was interested in
I guess if you are going to put in a rack, might as well do it up right and get some of the toys like a Blade Server and what have you. Hell, throw a Gig of memory in each of these and run VMware on them, get the best of both worlds.
Rack mounted hardware is hideously expensive to begin with, not to mention fairly ugly. If you honestly need discrete hardware for testing the system I would suggest considering used laptops (or even new laptops), get several identical units. Benefits of laptops over rack mounted hardware :
Built in battery backup.
Discrete hardware so you can use it like a regular computer.
Very quiet, low power consumption.
Reasonably priced compared to 19" rack mount machines.
Get a spare hard drive and carrier and the laptop serves double duty as a personal laptop simply by swapping out the drive.
Stacks easily.
You can get new Dell laptops for under a grand apiece including upgraded hard drives and memory.
That said, I suggest you give VMware a serious look. It has a 30 day shareware trial version (full feature) and will let you run multiple virtual machines on the same computer - memory limited to 1G across all the VMs on one physical machine (ie you could run four 256M machines or two 512M machines or eight 128M machines at the same time, or mix and match.) Networking is emulated very well, as far as the virtual machines are concerned they are all real machines on your network, in fact all the real machines on your net will treat them like real machines also.
Total cost for VMware = $300 for the software and enough to fill your existing computer with another Gig of memory. If you are doing prototyping or experimental work it is really something worth looking into.