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Quickies

2 Scoops of Quickies 95

Posted by CmdrTaco from the brace-yourself-for-carnage dept.
Kris Kersey wrote in to mention that CompHardware.Com and running the Linux Hardware Database. Roast Beef wrote in to comment that AntiOnline's new AntiCode looks Strangely Familiar. Richard Finney sent us a nice picture of IO Transitioning Jupiter that has officially met Rob's First Law of Art (all art is better once it becomes my background image). Next up, a trio of Star Wars related stories: PhoneMonkey wrote in with proof that everyone has Star Wars fever over at The Onion. Danse writes wrote in to send us The Phantom Menace Revealed from the Brunching Shuttlecocks. Lars Westergren sent us Mr Cranky's top 10 reasons why you should be worried about the new "Star Wars" movie. [null] created the terribly flawed Slashdot Quota (he gives more points to quickee submittors than feature & book review writers, plus failed to give a million bonus points to anyone named CmdrTaco). An anonymous reader linked us to a suspended Linux server. Link wrote in to send us a little web slideshow that I can't explain, but its so odd that I had to share it. The Dude wrote in to tell us about the ideal use for that VAX 11/780 that you lying around. And finally for the paranoid, Cabby sent us a website which (I kid you not) is Everything Women need to know about Y2k. Sit in slack jawed amazement.
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2 Scoops of Quickies More

2 Scoops of Quickies

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  • Don't you know? ESR is the phantom menace. Run for your lives before he attacks us with essays!
  • Back in the days when the phones were owned by the phone company and it was bad news if you messed with the insides (still had to use acoustic couplers in 1974), my college roommates and I rented our first apartment and got our first phone of our own. We then proceeded to dismantle the thing completely. We traced the wires out, then mounted all the hardware on a board and rewired it. (Wall art.) It worked, but for one problem: the hook buttons on an original model 500 phone operated switch contacts via a lever mechanism that was pressed and released by the buttons, and the "wall phone" didn't have the levers. So, we got ahold of an obnoxiously large power supply and a multi-contact relay, and wired the relay into the circuitry. To answer the phone, we had to turn on the power supply. (And for those times of power failure, we had a toothpick on stand-by to jamb into the relay to make it pick up the phone.) When the lease was up and we had to give the phone back to the telco, we put the thing back together with pop-rivets and the phone clerks never knew the difference.

    That was tough. Motherboards today are just a handful of ribbon cables. (And we had to walk uphill both ways!)


    ...phil
  • Posted by LazarusLong:

    A friend of mine actually still runs his VAX for home automation (just get X-10...). But if anyone has one of these they want to get rid of, he could really use the parts and I could use it as a large but cool addition to my monster-sized dorm room for next year...
  • Posted by bodhidogma:

    There is actually a cool site with many photos like this:

    Astronomy picture of the day [nasa.gov]
  • Posted by pennacook:

    I was looking for the Y2k guide for dogs/cats really. This one says "if your owner goes in a mad panic, just sit back and laff!"
    evidently the media has hyped up another hairbrained idea that you have to complete this list of over 500 items! yeah i have 200 bibles that should last me 6 months right? heh... I also made sure to pack enough condoms for 20 years too -- oops they expire in a year or two. give me a break...
  • I'd like to take a bong hit for every time the words "Slashdot Effect", "Windoze", "BSOD", and "Libertarian" are mentioned, but I no longer have a bong.

    100 points if Slashdot is the home page for your browser
    It is, but I actually start with a blank page.

    500 points if you check Slashdot 11 or more times a day
    250 per non-Anonymous Coward comment you wrote that reached a score of 3
     Once, I think.

    100 per non-Anonymous Coward comment you wrote that reached a score of 2
     Three times, I think.

    subtract 100 if you had a comment demoted from its original score
     Twice, I think.

    My score, FWIW... 950

    --

  • That story made me long to log into a VAX again. Someday, when I have the room, I must get one.

    --
    Get your fresh, hot kernels right here [kernel.org]!
  • But I'd want to run VMS on the thing. I know...sick, but what can I tell ya?

    --
    Get your fresh, hot kernels right here [kernel.org]!
  • Charlton Heston [soundresource.net] in The Omega Man [imdb.com] will teach you everything you need to know to get ready for Y2K.


    Damn, someone should've done a remake for this year. They could have a line like "Keep your hands of my T1 you damn dirty mutants!"

  • A research center I once worked for had an "Espressigo" - an Espresso machine built into an SGI Indigo case. They had received it as a gift from SGI for being such a good client. This thing was way cool!

    Regards, Jochen

  • Re: Everything Women Need to Know... (Score:3)

    by MrgnPhnx ( 1985 ) on Thursday April 22, 1999 @06:39PM (#1920470)
    Yet another fear-mongerer. And insulting too, especially to a female geek. As if I'm this clueless.

    "Computers are all interconnected on a worldwide network." *All*? This computer is only connected when I choose it to be. My computer at work isn't connectable at all.

    "The grocery store may not have the diapers or formula your baby needs." I have two things to say to this. Cloth diapers, and breastfeed.

    Putting the soapbox away now...

    Les the Book
  • It sounds unhealthy. It's almost as if it were grinding away. I wonder what the server's uptime will be before it crashes to the floor.
  • Hey everybody, let's prepare for the millenium by wallowing in antiquated sterotypes!!!

    What a nutcase. I wonder if she really believes all the crap she's spewing, or if she's just trying to cash in (looking, no doubt, to capture the same audience as those Intel commercials that tell you getting a Pentium III will speed up the Internet).

    What will future sociologists make of this book? Incidentally, have any of you ever seen some of the hysteria surrounding the last fin de siecle? I bet this looks just as hilarious to our grandkids.

    Retro 1990s style Q
    Beer recipe: free! #Source
    Cold pints: $2 #Product

  • Uhm . . . MEEPT?
    Beer recipe: free! #Source
    Cold pints: $2 #Product
  • Really? Around here managerial types use it as a verb for changing from one software infrastructure to another. Damn! It's such a buzzy buzzword that I can describe it only by using other buzzwords, like "infrastructure".

    Leveraging my middleware assets,
    Beer recipe: free! #Source
    Cold pints: $2 #Product

  • How about sparing yourself the agony and giving me your tickets? That way, you can have all the fun of the event--dress up in Jedi garb, camp out overnight with your friends, get first-showing tickets at midnight--and then go home and get some sleep without ever having to face the disappointment! It'll be great for everyone. Just send the tickets by bike courier to my address:
    Quinn David Weaver 404 Hacker Dr., Apt T1 Chicago IL 65536

    Cheers, and have fun in the line!
    Beer recipe: free! #Source
    Cold pints: $2 #Product

  • So, by 'suspended server' does one mean that the system hangs or does it mean that the organization supplying the IP address has shut him down?

    I think in this case, it must mean both.
  • One question: Can you get the model name from the commad line, and if so, how? In OpenVMS 7.1, show CPU should give it to you. Don't know when show cpu was added, so your mileage on older OpenVMS versions may vary. Maybe I should change my VAXstation 2000 into a beer carrying case. - Chad
  • A while back I read Millennium III, Century XXI: A Retrospective on the Future, by Peter N. Stearns. I thought of writing a /. review of it, but decided it was too far afield to be worth it, since the bulk of the book is mostly historical analysis. The early chapters on calendrical history, and the reaction to the turn of the last millennium, are really interesting. Capsule review from my book diary:
    This book is a historical look at artificial calendrical times of transition such as the ends of centuries and millennia. The book starts off looking at how the perceived significance of such times arose, and its relation to Christian ideas of the apocalypse. Along the way Stearns debunks the mistaken idea of widespread panics among the European populace; at that time, the arrival of the year 1000 wasn't viewed as a momentous event, and most people used different calendars in which that year wasn't particularly special. The book then shifts forward to look at the last century transition in 1900, and forward again, to make informed guesses about the upcoming transition. (The book was written in 1996, so the transition was farther away.) The book finishes by considering the hazards of historical prediction, and presents some suggestions for distinguing valid predictions from unlikely ones. An interesting book whose prose, while it can never be called "lively", at least never slides into academic dullness.
  • I can get you an ETA 10 supercomputer (as fast as they came in 1989). Now that would make a great bar, big enough for a casino.

    It's at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology [tjhsst.edu]. We won it years ago, but it hasn't worked since my freshman year (I graduated last year). It's a bit big (it's got its own room), so if you want it you'll have to move it yourself...
  • Most of the current Y2K Web sites are written by men and (IMHO) tend to be focused on how to try and "fix" the problem -- they tend to be more analytical and emphasize the "big picture." Y2KWomen doesn't deal with the technical side of the Y2K problem; my goal is to focus on the practical side of the problem -- where the rubber meets the road -- and how this will impact our families and us.

    A generalization, thus stereotyping all men into the roll analytical engine, of a thinking robot which can only solve problems, rather than appreciating that something which is both ethereal and physical about each special problem (and about why it somehow meets the road, squishy like rubber).

    One of the questions I keep hearing over and over is, Where do I start? [y2kwomen.com]

    Oh. You want me to buy your book because you know What Every Woman Needs to Know and How to Keep Herself and Her Family Safe. Well, even though I'm not a woman, I feel that special comfort of wallet safety knowing, [you'll] also try and let [me] know when [I am] getting a really good price or when a higher price may be worth it because it will save [me] so much time.

    You go girl! But please don't put your business in jeopardy. You need to make money too! ":-)"

    I know that when there is a crisis, women are the first to help and encourage one another.

    It's really nice to feel that golden warmth of good after a group affirmation followed by a hug. Especially when you don't have any power. And your bank account shows a negative balance (if it doesn't normally already ^cough!^ ). And then all the robot people rise up to overthrow humanity (just because their clocks got confused). I tell ya, we're in for the shit.

    We need to pray and ask for God's strength to handle whatever happens together.

    Amen to that!

    Of course you could always learn some COBOL if you wanted to help stem the onslaught. Y2K is going to be one hairy ass ride. Kinda like Ken Kesey's "Furthur" bus, only with a mix of Stephen King gloom and a Charles Darwin-esq ride to extinction-ville, and the only thing that just might save us would be a groundswell of sympathetic and talented women COBOL PROGRAMMERS out there to protect us from Y2K anarchy. GO FOR IT!

    As a man I ask you with all the humble acceptance of one who just cannot bring himself to the task, that we need your help. SAVE US KAREN ANDERSEN!!!!!!!!! You ARE the one! Yeah! ^clap!^ ^clap!^ ^clap^
  • Okay okay, I'm revising it. I was halfway insane when I wrote it. I had to play it safe though because I didn't want to run into recursion (we all know someone would file a bug report on it and try to exploit the buffer overflow), or worse, CmdrTaco and his million points plus everything else goes over the unsigned long double or whatever (I'm not a programmer) and segfaults/coredumps and kills him. Oh, and thanks for the Slashdot effect. It a) proved Linux and Apache is a good system to my host/employer and b) got me out of my depression. I'm going to do some revision and maybe I'll write my first-ever from scratch Perl program for finding your /.Q. I'll submit it here when I get done.

    And please, send your suggestions in. I got like four e-mails. Is that the best you can do?

    Thanks again.

    James T. Lilithfair.org owner/admin/all-around wacky guy.
  • The VaxTap 2000 Pro instrument-monitoring hardware is connected through a serial port to our Web server--an Intel/Windows NT machine running IIS (Internet Information Server). We developed a Visual C++ program that listens to the serial port on the Web server. If an event occurs, such as the opening or closing of the tap, then the program logs an event description, along with the time of the event. No way, I don't want my keg running Windows NT... who knows what a Blue Screen of Death would cause...File BeerTap.vxd corrupted. Oh my... WINDOWS CRASHED MY BEER!
  • We've got the guy who chilled his computer down to -50C, and we've got the VaxBar and VaxTap. Why doesn't someone get a huge case, put a refrigeration system in it, stick their system in there, stick a keg in there, and have a custom setup that monitors beer level, temperature, etc. And why not create a servo mechanism to operate the tap and create a /dev/tap or /dev/beer. Heck, wire up more than one keg and create a dispense program. dispense -s -d . Hm. Symlink the taps to what is in the keg. [bartender@virtualbrew /bar]$ dispense --yard -d /dev/guiness. Let's revive the Unix to Unix Beer Protocal [nothing.org] and network these babies. Yeah, that's it right there! Somedays I have really dumb ideas. Somedays I have really good ideas. What kind of idea day is this? JT | LilithFair.org
  • Anybody else dislike the part about halfway down the page on "How Y2K Affects Women" about how, even if all computers you rely on directly or indirectly are fine, you should still worry because poor people on welfare will riot and attack you? "They've rioted over less, such as court decisions."

    Good God.
  • As far as I can tell it had. Though they tried to /. Slashdot it seems. I tried to access the page and ended up at Slashdot again. I tried Lynx, Netscape et cetera.

    Apparently since Slashdot was dragging them down they did a redirect to Slashdot. It actually seemed to make Slashdot sluggish as well.
  • Maybe they should be mentioned in the "script kiddy HOWTO". I'd add them to one other HOWTO, but I don't think there's a "Ripping off cool websites to provide lame content" HOWTO yet.
  • I work at a book printing company, and had the opportunity to browse through this book. Indeed, this basically states that we're all going to die, unless we prepare. And it's the woman's job to do so.

    On another note, the book does give some excellent pointers on food preservation, how to store water & food without it spoiling, and some other good stuff. But the book in itself is frightening.
  • Yeah, right.

    Apart from the Y2K FUD, I just love the assumption that all women have families, and only women care for their families. I'm particularly pleased with the assumption that "for women" is the same as "for technical ignoramuses".

    *vomit*
    love from the wench
  • You missed the relevent part of her web page:

    One of the questions I keep hearing over and over is, "Where do I start?" So I decided to put together a list of resources that I've checked out personally and feel comfortable recommending so you can understand the Y2K problem and the implications for us as women -- whether we're single women, wives, grandmothers, sisters or whatever role we happen to be in. (These include my own products as well, including my new book Y2K for Women: How to Protect Your Home and Family in the Coming Crisis.)

    Taken next to a picture of her book. Now you know what the web page is about.
    ~afniv
    "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
  • y2kwomen struck me as a site designed to scare the heck out of vunerable individuals. If it scared you, even a little, I recommend Lizard's take [mrlizard.com] as a much-needed antidote.

    I really wasn't going to comment on it - everyone else has done a fine job slashing it [uninteded pun?] to ribbons. But ...

    I found this [y2kwomen.com] to be a bit too much.

    D
    ----

  • I just realized this while reading the Y2K for Women site. We're all gonna die. Y2K is gonna kill us all. Not because our computers crash, not because the Nuclear Reactors blow up, not because the Russian Defense System declares war and blows us all to kingdom come...

    We're all gonna die because when it's all said and done, all of the idiots and fear-mongers like this one will be out of jobs, and rampaging in the streets. With the armed, and terrified maniacs that this woman is trying to create running around the streets, nobody will be safe. Did anybody else find that FAQ disturbing, and just a bit paranoid? (My Grandmother will tell you it's all the Postal Service's doing, that they're sneaking subliminal recordings into the author's radio and making her crazy. Of course, that's also why my Grandmother says she's compelled to put coconut in everything she cooks, even though she's severely allergic to it, so I'm not sure I'd trust that line of reasoning...)
  • I wonder how well the suspended server holds up during an earthquake. *grin*

    I guess it'd bang around a fair bit, and the hard disk thumping against the wall would probably be bad, but it occurred to me that something suspended from the ceiling may be subject to less of the shaking than something sitting on the ground.

    And the VAX Bar looks damn cool. I feel inspired.

    Andrew.

    --
    The Yautja
    "It was all so different before everything changed."

  • Thanks for the pointer to the VAX Bar. My first exposure to the VAX 11/780 was in the (Very) early '70s, when I was an observer at a benchmark conducted by DEC in their Marlboro Mass. facility. While the technical folks tried their programmes, DEC had set up to capture one of the local FM Radio stations, and also invited me to play theit "Lunar Lander Game on a nice 24" (monochrome in those days) terminal.

    About an hour in, things were going well with the benchmark, but I got bored with the game, so I took the lander about 100 miles up and turned it around and drove it full tilt into the moon.

    Crassh!! Yep that's right, I killed the whole VAX. Apparently there wasn't quite enough memory to fit the lander in, and the most violent crash of the lander ate the O/S for lunch.

    Despite all this being explained to the customer, and DEC's insistance that we now do the benchmark with me properly annointing the official observe chair, we did not buy a VAX for that requirement.
  • Be sure to go check out Patriarch Magazine's website [patriarch.com]. It's got both articles on the proper place of woman, important information your family must know to prepare for Y2K, and general prattling on the glory of patriarchy (I'm not against men taking responsibility and being good people, but it's possible to go too far).

    Have fun.

  • 4616! (Score:1)

    by jerodd ( 13818 )
    That's WAY too high. I really need to get a life.

    OTOH, I'm not sure if I really were slashdotted, as I was running Apache for OS/2 at the time which is not exactly a reference work on software that can handle high loads.

    Cheers, as always,
    Joshua.

  • Put this in your .xinitrc:

    xloadimage -onroot -fullscreen -border black /tmp/astro.jpg -display localhost:0

    And run this [julianhaight.com] daily in a cron, and you'll get the The Astronomy Picture of the Day [nasa.gov] everyday as your background automatically.

    Fun with perl!

    -=Julian=-

  • Along the way Stearns debunks the mistaken idea of widespread panics among the European populace; at that time, the arrival of the year 1000 wasn't viewed as a momentous event, and most people used different calendars in which that year wasn't particularly special.
    Richard Landes, a history professor at BU, debunks this debunking in his essay "Apocalyptic Expectations around the Year 1000" [mille.org]. Landes is the co-founder and director of the Center for Millenial Studies [mille.org] at Boston University. They have a lot of interesting stuff on their Web site, including an invitation to become an "associate archivist" of Y2K.
  • According to the Slashdot Quotient, if my site gets slashdotted and crashes, I get the same amount of points as gettting slashdotted and surviving? How do you play a game if everyone gets the same score?
  • Yeah, I guess I did leave that part of it out. I got so involved in the link of Frequently Asked Questions that I forgot about that part. It's kinda scary how much money they want you to spend on these books, reports, etc., when so much of the info is online. And, when you read the book, you're only getting one person's opinion (and a wrong one, in my opinion).
  • Well, that was certainly painful to read. Alot of the tips in there were things that are just good tips for life in general, and not Y2k specific. For instance, she said that if the power goes out, the kids can't play N64, so you should have some books and board games around. With all the recent talk on /. about people needing to be good parents, don't you think it makes sense that a good parent would have books and board games around for the kids anyway? There's nothing wrong with playing video games, of course.

    Many of the tips were useful in *ANY* disaster situation. Some of them were even totally irrelevant to Y2k. Some computers decide they can't understand what year it is, and so suddenly you need a hammer and screwdriver? What the heck?!

    What really bothered me is all the examples about "if there was an earthquake", or "if there was a flood". Yeah, ok, that involves actual physical things happening, like machines and buildings being destroyed, and nothing CAN work, even if it knows the correct year. People writing these things need to look at reality, do some research, and instead of pointing out all the worst things that could ever happen, look at *why* these things might happen, and what would happen as a result of them. Clueless FUDmeisters have this idea that the whole world will just stop at the stroke of midnight. The truth is that many Y2k problems have already been happening, with things like credit card expiration dates, and many things will not go wrong until well after January 1. But I us slashdotters already know all of this stuff.

    So, what's my point here. Well, I'm sick of the media blowing this stuff out of proportion. They all talk about stocking up on everything so you can survive the week or two when things might not work (if even that long). They claim everything in the stores will magically disappear. They may be right, but it won't be because of the y2k problem. It will be because of them telling everybody that everything will be gone. So the media is causing the very problem they are predicting.

    Well, I'm babbling now. Time to shut up.
  • Well, my quota came in at about 3000. Unfortunately, I can't tell for sure, because I can't check all my old postings to see their scores (the user profile page only lists the last 20), and I can't tell which ones were moderated to that score, and which started at a higher score (I was defaulting to 2 for a while).

    Oh well.

    This could be a very long thread...
  • My co-ed fraternity had a discussion of this site on its mailing list. This is, to put it politely, a stereotype-friendly web site.

    I'm looking forward to seeing "Y2K for transexuals," "Y2K for infants," and especially "Y2K for iguanas."

    Come on now, it's almost within 8 months. There has to be some way of hyping this that hasn't been done yet.
  • Yeah, the site is really a Y2K for people who react emotionally and are easily sucked into panic when things are hyped.

    I've finally realized what Y2K hysteria is all about. It's about superstition. It's not considered intelligent to be superstitious in this modern era of science, but the numerological implications of moving on to the last year of the millennium (or the first year of the third millennium, if you're a victim of the true millennium bug) is overwhelming people who are even slightly inclined to be superstitious. The Y2K bug gives these people a technologically-acceptable way of labeling their superstition.
  • If I recall correctly, the woman who runs that site wrote a book and sells audio versions of her reading the book for $80! And she has no qualifications, in either psych* or computer*
  • Yeah, all I have to say about that is f_ckingweird.jpg

    But the f_ckingmonkeyislandendingsucks.jpg too.

    --
  • My user account here at school is on a VAX!

    But you could probably tell from the VMS in my mail address... :-)

    No, I'm not giving you my password either.

    One question: Can you get the model name from the commad line, and if so, how?
  • VMSB, a VAX 7000-640
    Multiprocessing is ENABLED. Streamlined synchronization image loaded.

    PRIMARY CPU = 00
    Active CPUs: 00 01 02 03
    Configured CPUs: 00 01 02 03

    And yet sometimes it takes forever to respond to my login request...
  • If it isn't already there, has somebody formally proposed to add a Slashdot code to the Geek Code?
  • I especially like this:

    Then, just to add insult to injury, the data from a computer that's OK ("2000-compliant") can essentially get "infected" by the data from a computer that's got date problems (non-compliant). This means that if my business has its computers all brand new and 2000-compliant, and my computer "talks" to another computer by modem, my computer is at risk for getting major problems.

    Gosh, sounds pretty bad. I am, however, relieved to know that sleeping bags now come in attractive, bright colors.

  • "Yet, because the Y2K situation is so unusual, I think it requires looking at self-defense (and
    guns in particular) a little differently and more personally."

    Oh no! bad computer! *BANG*
  • Where can I buy one Vax Bar ?

    Are those for sale yet ?
  • The show was funny, but check out the names of the images... what the ****?!
  • A while ago while reading segfault I came across this article [segfault.org] which talks about small machines, and there is a follow up from someone in perth who is running a 486 suspended from the ceiling by fishing line...

    I guess that it predates this custom made objet d'art...

  • Not only is it a suspended server, is it also a Linux mobile server? (OK, he did not show if the support allows movement around the room...)
  • The VAXbar needs to get together with the VAXTap 2000 Pro [nwc.com]. It would be the perfect companion!
  • john vranesovic (sp?) WISHES his sites were as cool as /. or freshmeat.
  • Well here is a link to a website of a woman that really knows:

    http://www.sandismith.com/y2kindex.html
  • For those of you who are not lucky enough to live in a city that distributes the actual paper Onion, all I have to say is... NEENER NEENER NEENER. >:) As usual another hilarious piece. Hey, remember the "Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeros" issue? I had that one hung up at work, and a coworker looked at it and said "can they actually DO that?" First encounters with The Onion are always fun to observe. I know it is distributed in Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago. Anywhere else?

    BTW, the suspended linux server was cool. I've done something similar but it was fastened to the underside of my loft... and I've always *wanted* to make a bar out of a VAX. :-)

    Thad

  • And regardles of where you live, you can have a subscription delivered to your mailbox. At $50 a year it isn't bad, and you don't have to go out of your way to grab one.

    True, though it is nice having free copies of it available all over the city. Useful for those times when you are waiting to meet a friend at a bar and they are late showing up. It is usually available right next to the Shepherd Express, another free (but more serious) newspaper. Great publications, especially compared the *major* paper in the area... which you have to pay for even though it sucks more than a whitehouse intern.

    Thad


  • ( -500 - (2 x -500)/0 = +infinity

    I think all of the mathematicians in the room are wincing right now.

    And it's not because a parenthesis is missing. ;-)

  • Did anyone else look at that crap checklist on how to get prepaired for y2k? Come on, Y2K doesn't mean there is going to be a panty shortage and the food list looked like you should be feeding an army.

    Anyone who gets into this end of the world when the computers come a crashing deserves to be left in the dark ages.
  • This one [hurrah.com] seems to be working for quite a long time. Here's an excerpt from the page:

    "Magic is a Dual Pentium Pro running Linux (...) with 128MB RAM, 3.4GB of disk space and a shared T1 to the internet. (...) Originally was used as a small network computer in some big company, hen was sold for a song to Halted Specialties Co. where it was sold without hard drive and RAM for $99 to James Neal."

  • Is anyone keeping copies of all the y2k culture
    for museums? This will go down in history as
    the y2k year.
    It would be great if someone would collect all
    this stuff and make it available on a web site.

    This goes also for memorabilia for Dan Quayle's
    vice-presidential candidature. Where can I get the
    words for the "Indiana" parody now? Someone should
    keep all this stuff.

    Cheers.....
  • Um. All I can really say is that I am insulted by this website. I am female and an IT professional, but that is not the point. Any person of reasonable intelligence is capable of understanding the Y2K implications. They do not need to be talked down to or their inteligence insulted. This is in effect the same as cutting someone food up into peices and chewing it for them.

    I think that this website does a great disservice to women by perpetuating the stereotype of the helpless female. There is enough sexism still within our society without someone adding to it. I can understand if this site was done as a joke by someone making light of these kidns of issues, but the fact that it was created by a woman for women is insulting to say the least.

    This is exactly the kind of think I would have expected were I alive in the fifties. First off, a page like this should NOT exist and second off, women who want equal worth for equal pay should not expect to be treated like this.

    Isn't this kind of things why we burned our bras in the first place?



  • The word you want is "transit", dude. "Transition" are these eyeglass lenses that go from light to dark depending on whether you're inside or outside. Operators are standing by.

    ObJupiter: I picked up a copy of "2001: A Space Odyssey" on DVD today. Time to kick back with a few beers and watch Kubrick's meisterwerk.

  • ROFLMAO (Score:1)

    by cje ( 33931 )
    'Nuff said. :-)
  • "What about fighting back and using weapons to defend your house and family?"

    I know that as soon as Y2K hits and all the computers blow up, I'm going to want a gun for fighting off the evil rioters and looters in this rural town. But then, I'm just a little old house wife who is supposed to be scared and concerned enough to buy a bad book.
  • You can also pick up the Onion in Boulder, CO. Anyone a fan of Herbert Kornfeld?
  • days when the phones were owned by the phone company

    I have one of those. I've been tempted to take it a part, but it's box is pretty nice looking. (a box in a very traditional sense- the top is on a hinge, the receiver and buttons are inside).

    Anyway, at my last job, one of the hardware technicians had a dual-boot intel machine which had parts on the wall, and parts on the underside of the shelf that was above the motherboard (the disk drive here, the cd-rom drive there, etc....) also a bunch of spare cpu fans happily whirring away, and the audio system taken apart, souped up, and distributed around the room.

    I told a friend of mine I wanted one. She looked at me like I was nuts.


    --

  • Visit the chat [y2knews.com] and try to reason with them... they only want to hear about all the lights going out.....
  • This thing reads like an uniformed fluff magazine article. I will say one thing. As a switchgear technician, I can tell you that the mechanisms that control the flow of electricity are unaffected by the Y2K problem. The hardware in most cases is not computerized and in many cases was built over 40 years ago. I should know, I retrofit (upgrade) them for a living.

    This site is all FUD and crud.
  • When you go to the page, be sure to look at the source code. The meta keywords tag contains such gems as "The Martha Stewart of Y2K".
  • I've seen some talk about vaxlinux, but
    NetBSD already has VAX support and it
    supports about a dozen
    other platforms as well!

    And remember, NetBSD is *the* multiplatform OS!

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