Matt Groening's 1989 Macintosh ad.

I may have a copy of that at my mom's house

So I'm teaming up with my folks to get my niece a new laptop for her college graduation gift. She's going to Spain for the next year, so I think a smaller laptop would be best. I was looking at something in the $600 range, like one of the larger netbooks maybe. I don't think she needs anything high-powered, she's not going to be gaming, but she will want to run Skype and stream video and so forth, as well as email and probably do grad-school applications on it.

Anyone have any recommendations? Any particular issues I should be aware of? She mentioned wanting a dual-core processor so she would be able to stream video.

Matt Groening's 1989 Macintosh ad.

Aren't those just re-purposed Life in Hell cartoons?

Yes, I think so Jon, which is why, a the time, I picked up one or three.

My new Thinkpad isn't here yet unfortunately so I can't really give opinions on it, but the 14" model might fit the bill. It starts at $550 (webcam is a $30 options when customizing so call it $580) and has a Core i3 processor (dual-core) so it should be able to handle pretty much anything she's talking about.

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From Lifehacker, How to Connect Your Computer to Your TV

A nice guide. Covers different types of analog and digital connectors, what to do in Windows and OS X, etc.

I just created my first table through the MySQL command line. I feel ridiculously chuffed.

The Dumb Terminal lets you put it all together. (Apr, 1978)

With the new, lower-priced Dumb Terminal™ Kit, that is. Pick one up and escape, once and for all, the headaches of scavenged teletypes and jury-rigged TV sets. With just a little time and aptitude, you can have a live and working Dumb Terminal right in your own home, garage, or business One that lets you get it all out of your system — or into it.

Forget the cheap imitations, with their overblown price tags and interminable lists of options. With the Kit, you can build yourself the same, old basic Dumb Terminal that’s been selling over 1500 units a month. With basic, sensible features like a bright 12″ diagonal screen. Fifty-nine data entry keys. 1920 characters displayed in 24 rows of 80 letters. Plus 33 positive action switches that let you activate functions like 1 of 11 different baud rates, an RS232C interface, or a 20mA current-loop. And more Not bad for Dumb All you need, besides the Kit, is some initiative, and a few basic tools — a good soldering iron, wire cutters, needle-nose pliers, and one or two trusty screwdrivers. The Dumb Terminal Kit provides you with everything else. Including an attractive cabinet, CRT screen, keyboard, PC board, and all essential electronic components. Naturally, you also get illustrated, step-by-step assembly instructions, not to mention an easy-to-understand operator’s manual.

Revealed: How Citigroup hackers broke in 'through the front door' using bank's website

Hackers who stole the personal details of more than 200,000 Citigroup customers 'broke in through the front door' using an extremely simple technique.

It has been called 'one of the most brazen bank hacking attacks' in recent years.

And for the first time it has been revealed how the sophisticated cyber criminals made off with the staggering bounty of names, account numbers, email addresses and transaction histories.

They simply logged on to the part of the group's site reserved for credit card customers - and substituted their account numbers which appeared in the browser's address bar with other numbers.

It allowed them to leapfrog into the accounts of other customers - with an automatic computer programme letting them repeat the trick tens of thousands of times.

Damn, that's such an obvious vulnerability I'm amazed a big financial institution like Citigroup had it on their website.

eta: That'd be like if the URL of this post (http://buffistas.org/showthread.php?thread_id=178&post_id=16963) had a user_id parameter that I could change to, say, become logged in as ita.

as a citicard user, I was pretty pissed off when I heard this. I'm not quite sure what to do.