Ye Olde World Charm

The Solitaire brings us a link to Datamancer, where Richard R. Nagy shows off his Steampunk Laptop. The attention to detail and the creative style, which includes a copper-plated keyboard and speakers shaped like violin f-holes, make this an impressive case mod. From Datamancer: "This may look like a Victorian music box, but inside this intricately hand-crafted wooden case lives a Hewlett-Packard ZT1000 laptop that runs both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. It features an elaborate display of clockworks under glass, engraved brass accents, claw feet, an antiqued copper keyboard and mouse, leather wrist pads, and customized wireless network card. The machine turns on with an antique clock-winding key by way of a custom-built ratcheting switch made from old clock parts."

Re:A wooden laptop... what next?

[Sorcha Payne]

It kinda looks like an old box that might be worth something, so thieves don't even need to know its a computer.

Re:HOAX

[Anonymous Coward]

Get raped, spammer.

He'll get some of my cash

[dada21]

Here's an artist worth supporting, not for the work he's done, but for the work he's going to do.

Is it frivolous? Yes, but most art can be called that. Is it useful? Probably not, but we all need entertainment.

As a "jackass-of-all-trades" myself, my biggest wish was to be able to make my dreams into reality in a physical aspect, but I don't have the drive to work on a project as long as this guy does. Heck, even complicated LEGO designs lose my interest less than half-way through.

If you have a little bit of wealth, don't forget to support the arts -- it's the job of the wealthy to bring the unmarketable to the masses.

Re:The Fossil Computer

[QuickFox]

Who gives a flying fuck what YOU think?

Just in case you didn't notice, I would like to point out that you are not being entirely polite.

Furthermore, please note that this is a discussion site. This means that it is intended as a place where people may voice their thoughts and opinions, just like the grandparent did.

You might consider bearing this in mind in the future, should you wish to give a less stupid impression.

Re:The Fossil Computer

[tubegeek]

Nixies. The technology that died too soon. R.I.P. -j

Re:The Fossil Computer

[Anonymous Coward]

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

(Yes - I am aware of the irony of AC talking about first-rate intelligence.)

what do you call a person who insists that his own worldview is correct, flying in the face of reality which says otherwise?

I call you a fool for having blind faith in reason. :-P

Start reading up on Zen philosophy. [catb.org]

The worlds of Belief and Reason are Orthagonal

[beer_maker]

Nice description of your position ... from a reasoning point of view. As anyone who has attempted to understand the feminine mind can attest, reason isn't everything.

I will happily agree that science (the world of Reason, or Rational thought) cannot be made compatible with any scheme of religion or belief, because they do not intersect to any great degree. Science is a wonderful tool for explaining how things work, but it cannot do diddly to explain the 2AM question "Why are we here?" (And the mere existence of the Creationist Museum proves the converse.)

My question is why people keep dragging out this moldy old conflict? We all hold mutually exclusive thoughts in our heads ('All politicians are crooked' vs 'My senator fights the good fight', for example) so why can't we just drop this disagreement? If you fervently believe that Science holds all the answers and your neighbor fevently believes the FSM hold them instead, what have you lost?

As for myself, for matters pertaining to materials, speeds, and distances, and all things that can be measured, I choose Science and Reason as my tools. I believe that the scientists who do that stuff have a method that gives a very accurate result, a very good picture and explanation of the way the world works. For matters unmeasurable, I have found no such system or method that can explain them nearly so well ... but I'm not so arrogant that I assume there can be no such system. I believe that many religious laws make excellent interpersonal 'Rules to Live By' even if they can never be "proved" to have come from their purported source.

Re:Too bad about the cover

[Goaway]

Anybody who knows how a gear or ratchet works?

What is this, a defence of the lowest common denominator?

Re:The Fossil Computer

[Falladir]

I doubt that faith is often billed this way in the unenlightened circles where it is most successful. If your religious leader, whom your society reveres, tells you something, you'll be inclined to believe it not because you "have faith," but because it's the most reasonable explanation you've been given. Put another way, you can't have faith that's the antithesis of science unless you've been trained in science. Faith, then, does not have as long and illustrious a history as the faithful would make it out to have.

Re:The Fossil Computer

[aurispector]

Meh. I was cranky and inarticulate.

What irritates me is people's offhanded dismissal of a nice piece of art that obviously took a great deal of effort to create.

Dismissing this as having "jumped the shark" sounds like it came from a spoiled, whining child with a picosecond attention span, incapable of delaying gratification for even a moment who is constantly demanding more, more, more. Is that the prerequisite for being an arbiter of style? Or is it simply the the pose of someone wishing to sound like one?

If there's something better out there then SHOW me, because it's easier to destroy than create.