Don't you mean "delivered by Jews"? Jews are always hitting children over the head with hammers, don't you know.

I've been shopping for old computer crap on eBay lately (for nostalgia rather than collectibility), and I suspect your 1983 NIB Atari 5200 trackball would bring ten, maybe fifteen bucks (but I haven't been shopping for Atari game gear, so I'm really guessing). If ten or fifteen bucks, and reclaiming the space it takes up in your house, is worth more than the trackball to you, you should sell it. Part of the fun of these old machines and things is that they are dramatically cheaper than when we were kids. We couldn't have every cool peripheral and game back then, because it would have been cost prohibitive. Today, with stuff going for tens of dollars, even things that were very expensive back then, we can pick up just about anything we like and satisfy those old lingering curiosities. And, then, when we get bored with it...pass it on to someone else at about the same low price.

I just bought a Koala and a Commodore 64 on eBay this week. I've been feeling nostalgic of late, and started making chiptunes using VICE and GoatTracker (a SID composition tool for Linux and Windows), and got to thinking that I'd enjoy tinkering with the real thing. Saw the Koala going for like eight bucks on eBay and couldn't resist.

Sorry the term pisses you off so. I view it as nothing more than a convenient term to cover a set of concepts. I don't think we're in agreement on what it means, however, and I can see how you'd find it irritating to use a new term for something that seems like an old concept to you.

I promise I'll never force you to use the term "cloud computing". But, to say that it's the same as "remote computing" is to say, "I don't know what one of these two terms means". Cloud computing (or whatever you want to call it) brings along with it certain expectations that never existed with "remote computing" of old--things like ssh, VNC, remote desktop, X11, provide none of the qualities that make something a "cloud" service...except possibly, "available everywhere", by some very limited definitions of "available" and "everywhere".