....FORMAT command on the first day of Xmas holidays in 1983. First computer in town [8" floppy drives!] and no manual at hand, so just happy to discover how things went through trial and error. After that there were another 13 days left, just staring at the silly screen where the bleep went into oblivion.

Might be true, but I know the story to have happened close to the GPO on the corner of Bourke Str., Melbourne, with a jar of sandwich spread involved. Google comes up with an amazing variety of versions!

Had a bar code and my citizens number tattooed some 20 years ago. Easy ID if ever I'd not return from one of my expeditions to the higher regions on this earth.

I decline to asvverr!

Hate to say this..... but we've been doing this for quite some time now at the MoJ. HP has been doing this for years.
We just toss them out. Don't need to replace them cartridges no more; just hook up a new printer. And you're done...

slashdot.org, www.k2climb.net, www.ebay.com.au, en.wikipedia.org and news.google.com.au

a.k.a. Big Brother Government. Worldwide.

Getting these things up and running is no surprise to me. It seems that they used quality stuff in them days. I have loads of these oldies that haven't been booted for 10+ years and upon plugging them in they start off as if nothing ever happened. Drives with a ST-506 interface in particular seem to be of an indistructible kind of quality-make. Feel free to contact me for disks, or as stated; check eBay of contact Bruce Damer of the DigiBarn [http://www.digibarn.com/].

Is there any life after news:alt.slack and news:alt.binaries.slack? Hardly!

My default page has a banner that will direct visitors to the International Campaign for Tibet. A hidden folder serves as storage for the imagery of all stuff from my inheritance that I'm selling off on eBay - again - for the support of Tibet.

Thanks... You just made my day ;-)

US$ 2 billion is a tag, that's LESS than ONE day of war in Iraq and Afghanistan..... An easy choice, I'd say.