RBBS!
PCBoard!
Wildcat!!

PC Pursuit!

*Three* entire .GIF pr0n images in a *single night* of 2400 baud wondrousness!

The Cloud!

Vaporize *your* data *today*!!!

It is stark evidence of regression mentality that IRC got included in this 'list' in the first place.

Those who use it, in channels that are useful to them, know and understand that IRC remains wheel-like in terms of usefulness that need not be reinvented.

Freenode is an excellent example.

I suspect that those who disparage IRC haven't even the wherewithal to buy clues to understand how so much of the infrastructure and applications built using it, and upon which they depend in the same way that we depend upon breathable air, rely upon IRC channels to develop and maintain those underpinnings.

See my reply to 'IBM Model M'. You might be interested. ... and nano rules

I do this too.

Some of them actually do have use, for example, if I add a NIC or three and put ClearOS on them to make an actual gateway/firewall/etc so I can put the client's compromised, obsolete, data-theft-oriented, crippled, piece of crap, 'free' end user 'router' (i.e., router-like device in the same sense as a Chicken McNugget bears relation to an actual Chicken) in Bridged Ethernet mode and protect them from an incredible percentage of malware.

It doesn't matter that they 'run like crap'. It isn't possible for the overwhelming majority of end users to ever make those old PCs even break a sweat when the PCs are replacing their 'routers'.

This solution becomes problematic basically in three cases: (1) physical space is at a premium; (2) noise is a problem in living space; and/or (3) power consumption is a huge issue.

Mine certainly will. I have thirteen of them, and ten still work.

That said, and as a former typesetter (you may know what that is, but most here won't) who cruised at 120 wpm on a 16-character LED 'display' on typesetting machines, and who loved the Model M as the most perfect approximation of industry-level typesetting keyboard feel and responsiveness... ... try a Logitech K800.

It's a completely different kettle of fish. But I haven't been this pleased with a single component since ... well, I don't remember. The Fractal Design cases are a recent competitor in this category, but before that I can't remember a component that elicited 'pry it loose from my cold dead fingers' lust like the K800 keyboard.

The Cloud! Vaporize *your* data *today*!!!

I didn't realize I was signed out -- damn you, incessant firefox crashes -- but I posted the above as AC and that was not my intention.

You could do worse than take a look at http://www.clearfoundation.com/ and the community edition of ClearOS.

In my opinion it provides Cisco-like capability on any old PC you have lying around. That old PC almost certainly has more power and capability than any typical end-user-grade router in the $30 to $120 market.

Disclaimer: I have no relationship with ClearFoundation except that of a user since 2003.

I used to be a (mostly newspaper) typesetter, back when dedicated 'cold type' typesetting machines were required, namely, pre-PC. The keyboards on those machines were amazingly good, albeit usually all grey and twice as wide as a simple qwerty board, so if you got off the home keys you would hear horrible clunking sounds as their positioning mechanics attempted to execute gibberish commands. I was able to cruise along at 120 words per minute on those, with vanishingly few errors despite having only a 16-character horizontally scrolling LED bar to show me what I was keying. The laborious process of pasting in corrections definitely encouraged accuracy.

Racing deadlines and with typical news stories which rarely contain complex words, I could manage sustained bursts of nearly 140 wpm with very few errors.

Today, at 59, I have been seduced by the ease with which errors are corrected on PCs, as well as the wonders of GUI environments, and my raw typing speed not only has fallen to 80-85 wpm, I also make a lot more errors requiring the backspace key. You have to practice just as you do with music to maintain very high typing speeds, and today's environments simply do not require or reward such effort for most people.

The best typesetter I knew was an accomplished classical pianist. He could typeset 140 wpm for hours at a time, while carrying on casual conversations with passersby and editors, with almost no errors whatsoever, including while setting *classified ads* with all their cryptic abbreviations. The proofreaders -- yes, young whippersnappers, there used to be actual people who proofread copy before it was published! -- loathed and despised him, because few things are as boring as proofreading and never finding any errors.

Note that while such speeds may be impressive without context, there is a vast difference between the cognitive dissociation from content almost required of a typesetter or transcriber, contrasted with the very different mind-to-motor-skill requirements of *composing* while typing.

As for keyboards themselves, few PC keyboards in my experience rise above the level of execrable. The IBM Model M was an exception, while more recently and of a completely different type, the Logitech K800's (backlit!) keyswitches have finally made notebook-style keyboards a joy to use. The overwhelmingly vast majority of PC keyboards available today, however, still suck donkey butt with a vengeance.