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Hardware

Quest for Cases Continues 88

Posted by CmdrTaco from the will-we-ever-find-an-end? dept.
Rick Crain writes "I've seen a lot of articles on /. about alternate and custom case designs. People who like that sort of thing should check out Luddite Industries. " This page also wins my newly instantiated award for "Most Obnoxious use of Layers". I wish they had better pictures, but a mahogany case might be kinda cool.
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Quest for Cases Continues More

Quest for Cases Continues

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  • I just went to the page with my trusty browser (Lynx), saw a pleasant "Welcome to Luddite Industries" header, and nothing else. No distracting layers, no distressing content. It was a quite pleasant experience, actually.
  • How do they expect people to read that page? The Layers hurt my brain %-/
  • Those big *things* floating across the page really remind me of some sort of weird ghosts that have come to take over my computer :) Interestingly, the major slowdown experienced due to those nice floating pictures isn't due to netscape, but actually the bottleneck is X itself. I checked with a process listing, and watched X consume 90% CPU while netscape consumed a mere 25% CPU (yes, I know that adds up to more than 100%, I'm on an SMP system :)

    Singlethreaded, monolithic X servers can really suck sometimes.
  • Posted by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Music For Your Eyes!:

    i just dont understand why they use those weird graphics in their layering, maybe i should have stayed longer than 3 seconds and i would have found out.
  • Posted by majestic1:

    Wouldn't happened to have been Will and Grace would it? I think Will had one on that show.
  • Posted by Mephie:

    Hmmm, wood cases, hmmm wood is flamable, there are hard drives called FIREball. Hmmm, maybe this isnt such a cool idea...
    Anyway, I'd get splinters when I went to a box party or just felt like hugging my computer. No Thank You.
    --Mephie

  • FAKE! (Score:1)

    by jpatters ( 883 )
    There is at least one company selling rackmount Macs, they take off the shelf Apple equipment and put them in their own cases.
  • "Will" of "Will and Grace" has the wooden computer in his office. You are right, sitcom characters have a disturbing lack of cash flow problems. There are very few exceptions, "Rosanne" comes to mind.
  • If you read this less superficially, it's clear that Luddite Industries [luddite.com] is an elaborate gag. (See for example the comments about the "Wooden Auto Company".) A quick check of whois reveals that the domain name is owned by Prophet Communications [prophetcomm.com], a subsidiary of the industrial design firm frog design [frogdesign.com].
  • When a product has evolved into it's final form and there's no new technological evolution for it to undergo, producers start re-releasing them in things like "designer colors" or "ergonomic designs" or "glow in the dark cases" etc. Telephones are another good example. Cars too (how old is the internal combustion engine?). For the first time in a long time PC hardware performance is waaay ahead of software demand such that even cheap PCs can run pretty much everything most users want to run. So here comes the senseless bells and whistles.

    Just keep my PC in a regular rectangular box. I don't wants no steenking rounded windswept case designs. Just a full tower with lots of bays for CDroms, tape drives, pull out HD trays, the ol' 5.25in floppy, and room for all their cables. I hate modern cramped PC cases.
  • I happen to be sitting at a AMD-K6-2-3D(333MHz) with 128M RAM, a 4M MilleniumII video card, and 15" Sony 100ES monitor. Now, normally, w/ gimp or something, I never have any problems, and the box handles things well. Little did I know that a IDIOTICLY designed web page would peg my load, and render this box completely useless. I couldn't even get to the damb "back" button in Netscape!

    index.html was ok, I find it anoying to redirect to home.html, because it makes going "back" a tad more difficult, but then some crap blocked me from reading the home.html, so I clicked some button I didn't even know what was, and ended up in "products." Fine, it's a mess, but it looked like the product might be interesting. I started reading it, and all of a sudden I couldn't see anything, and my load was spiked, graphics were dumped all over the place in the browser window, slowly moving, and MY POINTER started "jumping" when I tried to get to the "back" button! I can run scripts in gimp, two or three at a time on several images, and have NEVER seen that happen!

    This site should DEFINATELY be linked on a "what not to do" page about html design.

  • This is the dumbest fake I have ever seen? When the html is soo anoying you cna't even read the text because of the layers, how are most people suppose to figure out it's a fake?

    Wooden cases ARE made, by a few people, including IE NET [cyberg8t.com], and I find them a fairly cool thing, in thier own way. So, I don't see the humor in spoofing something that is real. I mean, it's not a stupid idea, it's a cool idea. And it's out there.

    Someone might have to explain what is suppose to be funny about this to me... Like, would it be funny if I put up a site that said I was building and selling MIPS servers, and did elaborate html, with photos and details, but I didn't really make or sell them? I don't think it's funny, I just don't get it. It's stupid.

  • Actually, I wasn't thinking about an SGI case, but I was thinking of a single case Beowulf cluster idea.


    Take the biggest Full Tower case you can find, and gut out all the bracketing, and make custom brackets to put in as many PC104's as you can fit (like this one [advantech.com.tw]). Then, use something like a 16M solid state IDE drive [advantech.com.tw] for each of the PC104's to put like /boot and what was needed on, and NFS mount a drive from each of them somewhere else in the case. Then put in maybe ONE bigger system (like maybe a PII?) to run as controller/terminal control(running X), and also stick the hubs in there.

    You might be able to squeze in like 10/20 full computers into one case with this idea, and use 100baseT to connect them, NFS to a few big SCSI drives in the case, and have it completely self contained! You probably would be limited to 300MHz socket 7 CPU's, but, w/ 10-20 of them in one case, working together the Beowulf way, it might totally rock.

    Problems? Sure, money, custom case, and cooling!

  • Which SGI case can you think of that is huge enought, and avaliable cheap? I am thinking Personal Iris, they should be damn cheap, but do you think it's big enough?
  • If you put them into cases, why not just circumvent the bottlenecks, and just make the damn thing SMP?

    I could be wrong, but I believe that it would be very difficult to get a SMP board that does over 4 CPU's, but using PC104's or SlotPC's, you can probably fit around 20 full systems in one case if you really tried.

    100BaseT would be the bottleneck, your right, and you would want at least 100baseT and a good hub IN the case also. It's tight, but it's not a bad idea. I would LOVE to actually see one (love to build one even more, but I lack the financial resources to do such a thing).

  • Thanks for the info, I now understand why I can set the read level to 1 insted of 0. Heh... Yea, sure, history.... Learn... Uh, and your IQ and educational level is? Funny? it's NOT, it's stupid. Chris Farly was famous for playing a moron and was funnier.

    You do realize that doing ALL that html on a subject of cool cases, when wooden cases do exist, is idiotic, when the only thing that even HINTS at a joke is the URL? Man, if you think it's funny, I have a joke for you... "Jefferson and Hamlton walked into a pub, Jefferson said free the slaves, and no one said a word.... They were all in the army..." (if you don't get it, read some history).

  • Sure every thing is fun and games till your computer goes up in a deadly fireball of flames causing the monitor to explode and embed shards of thin sharp glass into your eyes while you gasp for air from the toxic burning stain and polyurethane finish.

    :-P

  • hmmm (Score:1)

    by ksheff ( 2406 )

    I don't know about you, but I haven't been a college sophmore in about 10 years.

  • The idea is unbelieveably cool. Maybe I'll try building a woodwn case sometime (the problem, of course, is ventilation). The site itself is most likely a hoax, but I do like the idea.

    But whoever designed that Website should be shot.
  • Egads! I did my best to see that sort of products
    they had, but their web page made that totally
    impossible!
  • It's a joke, a JOKE, j-o-k-e.
    Did anyone else but me watch the movie?
    He had a pillow stuffed in his sweater! :-)
    Does anyone but me know what a 'Luddite' is?
    A 'Luddite' is a person wjo is against technological progess.

    Obviously the /. readers aren't as well educated
    as they'd like to think because it's pretty obvious that with a name like 'Luddite' that it has to be a joke.
  • I like the way that the first few posters on an article suddenly become a means for measuring "the /. readers" - a good majority of slashdot readers never even read the comments on the articles, and even if you're just speaking of the minority that do post (which would be the /. posters or similar) you can't expect to judge that entire group by the first few posts to an article!
  • anyone else read william gibson's book virtual light and get weirded out by how truth imitates fiction?

    the story includes a little thing about the sandbenders, a cult/organization in oregon that puts together computers out of natural materials like wood, piano ivory, etc.

    the other thing is, you can definitely tell its a hoax, but wouldnt you want a case/keyboard/mouse made out of wood or natural material? i definitely would if i could afford it.

    170-270 dollars for the CASE seems a bit much though.
  • ...this site gets my Style Sheets Stupidity award hands down. I had to disable them just so I could view the damn thing! The floating images prevented me from clicking on any links.

    ---
  • Solution: Build your own in a full tower: the 4 foot tall towers are imposing, roomy, and not so much more expensive than the smaller ones.
  • To begin with, couldn't see much of the site, KDM doesn't show it... but my vote for the best cases has to go to the new G3's appke is coming out with... I stumbled on to ZDtv while flipping (I was looking for the mating habits of the Brazilian house fly, really), and I saw the coolest case design. The side panel where the MotherBoard is attached, opened up, and provided access to everything. Memory, cards, drives and cables were all accessable while the machine was running... You could change cards and settings, and power up to see those changes without having to re-assemble the whole thing, just to find that you IDE cable had pulled slightly loose... :) I'm not usually an Apple fan, but I was very impressed... I've never been very impressed with the G3's graphics speed either, but this system had an ATI board, and was supposed to be a huge boost in performance.... This in my opinion is a much better choice than a freakin' iMac, and could become a serious contender.
    Did I mention I was impressed with the case design... Oh well, I guess I driffted off topic lately, but the functionallity of this case IMHO outways the mahogany. :)

    Ryan
    Time flies like an arrow;
  • I never said I liked the color/handle/feet/etc. What apealed to me was the functionallity of an opening door that exposed the internals of the PC even while it is running. My machine as we speak has no cover because I am always getting into it to do something (my most current project is adding TOSLink connectors to my AudioPCI... MP3's -> MD and vice versa is going to be a reality for me very soon :) ), and an opening door would allow me to gain access very easily without leaving it open... the only advantage to which is ventalation, but then again, that's what my two extra fans are for... :/ I'm just saying I'd like to see an ATX case with a simular feature... I don't really want to use my hack saw... :)

    Ryan
    Time flies like an arrow;
  • The last thing I need is for my computers to be mistaken for firewood.
  • The brain-dead javascript checks for Netscape 4.0, so 4.5 doesn't get through. To go direct to the CSS-enabled page, with all its annoyances, click here [luddite.com]
  • I have to agree. I'm on a 233mhz Cyrix with lots of RAM and an ISDN line and that stupid website ground my computer to a halt. (And yes, I use a real OS) I'd be happy to do the shooting, but in order to save time, I recommend we have them dig their own graves first.
  • I'm looking at it on a 21 inch, fixed frequency monitor, ofcorse, it's darker then normal monitors (my mom's using my linux box (brighter monitor)) but it's hard as hell to read, the background color is offensive, personaly, they schould loose there artistic lisence, be shot, and not aloud to reproduce.

    ofcorse, if the background were to be changed to something that was pleasing, a light blue perhaps, or white, both work, and the images changed, then the sight might be decent.

    btw, i wasent able to go far into the site simpaly because i was unable to read it.
  • Does anyone know of a company selling just
    the case (+screen) for a "lunchbox" format
    ATX2 ?

    I've seen lots of systems with them, but
    no-one will sell me just the case ! I need
    a high power luggable system built around
    components which I already have.

    Thanks

    Asmo
  • What the hell is that all about too? An elaborate government coverup of people getting mad at their computers and throwing them off of 4 story buildings? Hehe...I know that it's must be spreading because it seems like one out of four customers I talk to think about commiting such an act at least once. There are SICK people out there and they need help...
  • Unfortunatly the new G3 cases aren't so sturdy, a local apple retailer managed to break their display model in one day.

  • heh...maybe the notebooks come specially packed in balsa wood?

    DON'T DROP IT!!!
  • my general opinion of their new cases is negative...i mean they are trying to make a point of being different and all, but those things are just UGLY...i wouldn't want that sitting in my living room...it wouldn't go with anything else...a NORMAL beige box is inconspicuous and can be hidden...i guess if you stare at your CPU all day it would be cool.:.
  • Whoever designed that "Let's through slow moving graphics IN FRONT of our text" page should be shot, several times, in different places of the body. How do people do that in good conscience?
  • I just hit /. to ask for advice for building a machine, and I see this, and I think, well, wood's a lousy material for a case, but what the hell, I'll look, but the site's a joke and it would be more funny if the site didn't take so long to load, and then I thought to come back to /. and ask:

    Where can one get PMac motherboards? I want to build a machine, but no one seems to want to sell just a motherboard.

    -Little Nickie Telsa
  • This site made me laugh hard. My favorite quote: Our expert craftsmen form a uniquely specialized team that brings you the finest in custom wooden computing.
  • I mean, I've got 4.5, why should I have to go download it again.

    They get my award for javascript stupidity of the day.

  • Yeah, I know.

    That's why I give 'em a 'javascript stupidity' award.

    Now if only I had a piece of hardware everytime I'd seen javascript stupidity...

  • I am amazed at the amount of Slashdot readers that took the site seriously. It was very obvious that it was a fake site.
  • Of course this is fake. Only the most gullible of humans would believe there are wooden computer cases. It is OBVIOUSLY a made-up picture, otherwise there would be links to more information, or even an email address.
  • Luddites were a group of people during the industrial revolution that did not agree that progressed encompassed the acceptance and utilization of technology and machines, most notably mechanical clumsy ones. If I am not mistaken, the Luddites were violently disinclined to the usage of machinery; against the mechanized and 'soulless' looms of the early textile industry in England and Europe, among others. Funny to see that a altavista search for Luddite brings up this site for the first few hits...
    -Twink
  • DAmn this page REALLY sucks. I mean, sure cases are nice, but there is no way in hell I'm gonna order from them. I bookmarked it because it sucks so bad and I can laugh at it with friends.

    I think a better idea is just get an SGI case, and put a beowulf cluster in it.

    -m-

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