surplus

The Black Hole: Los Alamos lab surplus store surprises

LOS ALAMOS, N.M.--I got sucked into a black hole and lived to tell the tale. Fortunately for me, the black hole is the Black Hole here in Los Alamos, a sprawling store full of old surplus equipment from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The lab's legacy The national laboratory was founded during World War II, giving it ample time to pile up a lot of equipment like oscilloscopes, Teletype machines, RadioShack computers, and cryogenic gear.

All that stuff has to go somewhere when it gets replaced by newer machines. For many years, the Black Hole welcomed this detritus with open arms.

The store's founder, Ed Grothus, passed away in 2009. The former laboratory employee and ardent peace activist collected and sold surplus from the lab. A former Piggly Wiggly convenience store was transformed into the Black Hole. It's still open today.… Read more

Read the fine print: Internet reseller switches lesser LG BD370 for BD390

Product reviewers at CNET generally don't cover disputes between customers and Internet resellers, but a recent case revealed a new sales policy we've never seen before.

On January 26, we received an e-mail from a reader complaining about the sales policy of online reseller Home and Garden Surplus. He had ordered the LG BD390, but received an LG BD370, a step-down model with a list price $100 cheaper. The reader stated that when he complained about the switch, Home and Garden Surplus explained that its policy allowed it to make a substitution.

We're not shocked that a company would switch a product with one of a lower value--we hear reports of it all the time--but we were surprised to see that Home and Garden Surplus was actually telling the truth about its policy. On the product page for the LG BD390, it does state that the company may switch a BD370 for a BD390, although it's buried at the end of a long list of specs and there's not even a line break to separate it from the previous bullet point.

Furthermore, when we looked at the company's privacy policy page, the company elaborated on the substitution policy:

This policy was also recently added to the FAQ page--we're not sure why it's on the privacy policy page to begin with--but it's worth pointing out that this shouldn't apply to the LG BD390 anyway, as the BD370 is clearly a product of lesser value.

The reader who contacted us isn't the only one who's taken issue with the policy. … Read more

Featured Freeware: SurplusMeter

SurplusMeter does precisely what we need it to: it watches your bandwidth traffic, keeping an eye on it like an eagle watching her brood. SurplusMeter gives users the capability to set a bandwidth limit, a start day of the month, and the connection type--PPP Modem or Network Card, for example.

SurplusMeter also calculates a daily allowance, and reconfigures that depending on how much you've actually used for the month. It lacks the not-quite-fancy graphs that many of its PC counterparts sport, but SurplusMeter also lacks something they have: an alarm or notification that would tell you when you were … Read more

Warning: Dan Rather may be unsafe

I finally got around to watching the recent episode of HDNet's Dan Rather Reports titled "Plastic Planes," about alleged safety problems with Boeing's new 787 "Dreamliner" passenger jet. I was interested in the story for two reasons. As I've said here before, I want to buy one of these planes someday-- and secondly, I've long been fascinated with composite materials.

Vince Weldon, a former Boeing engineer, alleges that the composites used in the 787-- principally forms of carbon-fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP)-- are brittle, insufficiently tested, dangerous in a fire, and vulnerable … Read more