I have a bunch of period (ha!) 5.25" disks, from DOS 3.1, and a bunch of utilities, plus games, games, games -- if you get the machine working we can talk about those (see previous post). I haven't taken a formal inventory, just going from memory, but 'm happy to donate them, but not wanting the quantity and quality of spam posting my email address here can get me, let me know if you're interested and we can see how to get them to you without more 'influx' than this is worth. Obvious caveat: they haven't been in a computer in at least 15 years. Now if I only had the cycles to boot that old Encore Multimax (2100 watts!), and could find a home for those PDP-11 parts I'd go to computing karma heaven for sure. 8^)

Yes, it does -- with any GSM provider, but AT&T wants to keep you locked in; they paid for a 5 year exclusive (don't take my word for it, google away). I'm about to *finally* dump T-Mobile, when I told them I was doing it because I have an iPhone, they told me (and I quote), "No problem moving it over here" and I was immediately put in-touch with a 3rd-tier support guy, who told me he helps customers do this all the time, just walking them through installing an application -- Cydia. Yes, Cydia. TMobile is going to walk me through Jailbreaking my iPhone. I stopped him and said, "it's not TMobile's App" he said, "yes." I said, "I'll bet you can't even use the word "Jailbreak" -- he said "that is also correct." I wonder if AT&T knows their competition is helping steal users by violating the manufacturer's warranty (-- rhetorical). FWIW, the claim is you keep Edge and WiFi connectivity, but loose 3G access when you move to TMobile, and that's not Apple's doing either, TMobile doesn't support AT&T's 3G frequency. Yes, another nasty hardware thing, those evil Hardware guys, designing hardware specific to it's purpose and business model. Thank God Microsoft isn't in charge of any phone hardware (also rhetorical, also sincere -- can you say "feb29th bug", and even a bit sarcastic with no intent to offend any specific parties).

Depending on it's accuracy, I'll bet it's a lot like the James Bond series -- the book form, that is. Fleming knew quite a bit about what actual Secret Service life is like -- it's about as exciting as tracking down a network intruder, except the intensity of a "chase gone bad" is probably a bit more all-or-nothing.

I learned COBOL way back when (1984 to be precise, then used it for a few years and it eventually rotted out of my brain). I was thinking of coming out of COBOL Retirement back when I heard what huge demand Y2K was putting on the lack of COBOL knowledge. What happened to the Y2K COBOL team -- did they help the state of CA then? I'm guessing if CA didn't find a replacement in 10 years (which is not-so-suspiciously just before everyone starting fretting over Y2K), I don't really see it happening now, or I'd dig out my old COBOL disks, dirty up my resume (re)writing a few more COBOL programs, send out a resume, and move to sunny CA and $clean $up -- but anyone whose been a contractor has already thought like this.