dbminter

Over at WeirdAl.com's front page: "White & Nerdy" hits #9 on the Billboard hot singles chart this week, making it Al's first Top 10 single, as well as his highest charting single of all time!

NO! Why should I?! I need the money, and, others have lived on far more delusional hopes than that! Besides, I need a reason to live. Cash, repeatedly burning useless shit on useless discs (An interesting metaphore for my life, perhaps?) and an endless supply of drives to burn them with sounds like a pretty good life.

Was burning an image for an MP3 CD made by another application, of course, with ImgBurn. (Actually, it was an image made by another app that I used UltraISO to inject files into.) It burned fine, buy, the verify came back with several dialogues. I 07:34:28 Image File File System(s): ISO9660, Joliet, UDF (1.02) I 07:34:32 Verifying Sectors... W 07:35:01 Miscompare at LBA: 20, Offset: 14 W 07:35:01 Device: 0x20 W 07:35:01 Image File: 0x19 W 07:35:01 Total Errors in Sector: 37 W 07:35:01 Note: The drive probably corrected the Sync/Header because it's wrong in the image file. Then, it would ask if I wanted to keep verifying. For kicks, I decided to see how many of these verify dialogs would come up. As a beta tester, one has to keep testing, right? 55 more such dialogues followed one right after the other. So, I got to thinking, what if someone needed to see a Verify through to the end to get whatever sectors were being returned. Thus, should there be a Yes To All included in this dialog for that reason?

Even if they don't, who cares? CMC is still paying me, so, I could buy a replacement.

Oh, I don't know. If they paid me to use CMC's, I would. Because, all I need to do is pocket their money and then burn some useless shit to the discs to keep my part of the bargain.

Well, quality tends to be something that builds brand loyalty. And, that doesn't make profits. The market seems to be focused in this area on its impending replacements on the horizon, so, they're trying to make as much as they can in a short period. Brand loyalty over time, then, has no place in such a paradigm.

That's a good question. Macs, supposedly, have good reputations for being machines to be able to make movies with. i.e. they were early adopters of it. Maybe the Mac version of Toast is okay. Or maybe Roxio/Sonic bought it from someone who made it work. Just give it time to suck, then, like how Easy Media died a slow death after Version 5's laborious trek to XP compatibility.

And, to revisit an ancient topic, I actually had this in some Post It notes to get around to doing. And, I FINALLY did! Anyway, found the record in question. It was called Shangri-La. http://shopping.yahoo.com/p:Shangri-La:192...2VjA2FydHByb2Q-

You can also take a kind of short cut, depending on what you want to do. If you know what you're doing and don't need to test menus, etc. you can take a shortcut and load many images directly into DVD Shrink. Then, you can play in the preview window, though it's small, and navigate with some basic controls. Absolutely avoid Roxio/Sonic products. Easy Media 9 is just as messed up as 8... because it's just Version 8 with all the updates applied and a few regressions, like button menus taken out of some views where they used to belong, crashes occurring on the same data that version 8's apps were fine with, changes in overlays to menus to give them different colors and appear to be new and updated, etc. It's hard to imagine Sonic carrying on the Roxio tradition, but, they have. Each version is worse than the last. Sonic apparently decided, instead, rather than replace Easy Media with RecordNow, they just decided to toss both into a blender. So that parts of Easy Media get called when you want X done, and parts of RecordNow get called when you run Y app! An absolute mess!

For some more (possible) information on the invalid field, see this thread as to what it may mean. http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=2300&hl=

It also seemed to be a Region issue. Here, the G05's didn't seem problematic. I've encountered few burn problems and future reads a year afterwards. But, R2 reported nothing but issues with them. Go figure.

Yeah, the simple answer is this: CMC can make the good Verbatims because Verb pays for the better and thus more expensive dye. CMC doesn't give a damn as long as someone else fits the materials bill. They're just farmed out to make it, so, every dime Verb gives them is profit. When CMC has to make them themselves, though, the sad fact is they're doing it on the cheap on purpose. To make a higher profit margin by reducing their production costs. And, they know they can get away with it because it's a closely guarded secret. Well, not as much as it used to be but we've all been tricked by CMC before. I got screwed over royally by Optodisc switching to CMC, making me think, because I was not aware for even something CALLED an MID, since I was just a few months into DVD burning, that the hardware was going bad. So, I first replaced a then $500 drive with a $200 drive and everything seemed okay... only BECAUSE Optodisc fucked me again by switching BACK over when I got a new cake stack AT THE SAME TIME. So, they switched BACK, of course, after I replaced the Panasonic LF-D311s, that piece of shit to start with with the good ol' workhorse Sony DRU-500a. Then, it made me think the Panasonic DMR-E20 was broken, so, I replaced the $999 E20 with the E50, got another cake stack and that's when I came across the dreaded letters CMC for the first time in a post. I checked for the MID on these discs that had been tested with before and, sure enough, CMC was on them. So, as you can see, I was duped royally to the tune of a couple thousand dollars, probably. I could really use them now that I don't have them when I did then.

No, that happens in a parallel universe called D. Leusion. And, as the Doctor said, entering parallel universes is a one way trip... unless it's convenient for Jon Pertwee to do it.

TDK used to make a fantastic VHS. Now, they're absolute Wal-Mart junk. I fell out with TDK when I found some CD-RW's of theirs that were CMC! As for CMC, strangely, they seem to be able to make good DVD+ material. The only CMC's I've found that worked were DVD+ format. But, they're too fickle. Too much junk to trust the actual good stuff with.

I... never expected... to ever win this prestigious award! I'd like to thank me, without whom, I wouldn't be possible. I'd like to thank all the little people I stepped over to get where I am today. I'd like to thank the Prince Of Darkness for being there when I needed him most.

Now, see how much easier that was for me? No need to click on a link, wait for a browser to open, wait for scripts and plugins to crawl and fail, no need to wait for the HD to stop thrashing, no need to wait to be told the site is inaccessible or my ISP is down, no need to discover that the link is out of date. Actually, in all honesty, I didn't watch the links. I was relatively sure if I had, then, there would have been no start date info. Forcing me to ask anyway. And, if I hadn't clicked, the info would be there. Heisenberg by way of god.

And, there's also this one: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/14/florida.bodies/index.html Bodies found along highway were of family, sheriff says Evidence at the crime scene could help determine whether more than one gun was used, he added. (Gallery) Residents living at a golf club near the scene of the shooting reported hearing gunshots between 1 a.m. and 3:30 a.m., Mascara said. Now, we know what they mean by club in this case, but, I immediately also thought of just people living without a home and huddled around a 9 Iron outside in the rain.

They are absolute garbage. My experiences were even unfinished burns or verifies. I still lobby that the only use for CMC's is to use them as bikini tops. That they even were useful immediately after burning was a surprise. I absolutely despise those manufactuers who make cheap ass discs that FINSIH burning, verifying, reading, and re-imaging to test readablity and then, a year later, are unreadable. Stuff that the fuckers trick you with into thinking is good. Like how Optodisc used to make a decent DVD-R, then, switched to CMC, then to CMC quality BUT used a generic OPTODISCK label so you weren't certain if they decent Optodiscs or CMC Optodiscs. After they tricked me once, shame on them, and no more profit from me for them. And, others like Vanguard and that ANS01 or whatever stuff. Princo, too. I received a "professional" DVD release that was obviously a burned DVD writable disc... AND it was a Princo! Copied that sucker right away.

Is there a set airing date?

Incredibly poor choice of words over at CNN leads to hilarity, possible sitcom and 3 picture deal! http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/10/14/reservat...t.ap/index.html Feds arrest fake-cop rapist suspect FORT APACHE INDIAN RESERVATION, Arizona (AP) -- Federal officials arrested a man Friday who they believe was posing as a police officer and raping young girls on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. A task force with the Bureau of Indian Affairs took 29-year-old Jimi Aday into custody on charges of kidnapping and aggravated sexual contact, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of the Interior. Officials planned to take Aday to Flagstaff for a court appearance Saturday. Since March, a man posing as a police officer has raped at least 12 girls and a 20-year-old woman, authorities have said. The man told the girls they were under arrest, handcuffed them and then raped them. The most recent attack was September 6. (Watch how the rapist terrorizes reservation -- 2:41 Video) Did you get that last bit, folks?! WATCH how the rapist terrorizes reservation!? So, what, they actually took a camera along with the guy and filmed him raping people all across the reservation?! And did NOTHING about it?! I thought we had already had that in this country in the early 1980's in the form of the Atari 2600 video game, Custer's Revenge! Of course, they are, naturally, implying, instead: "Click here to see a video archive of our past coverage news item on this story." BUT, the way they had worded it there, though, is just hilarious!

Reminds me of my parody version: Chewingtobacco. He was a giant, humanoid shaped wad of chewing tobacco. And, Hank William's Solo would periodically take bites out of him, forcing him to roar: "ARRRRRRRRRUR!" Uh... chewy... what exactly ARE you doing... or having done to you... in your avatar...

Eh, usual Microsoft shit. New version of Windows comes out, and, the first thing they do is merely tout the GUI changes and how nicer the inferface looks. Big fucking deal. Just more drivers, etc. that get loaded, eat up resources, and crash EXPLORER.EXE.

Laugh it up, fuzzball!

A lightning strike is well enough to kill a device, like a modem, in particular, in the days of dial up. I'd be more likely to expect a lightning strike not frying a PC but one particular part of it that with it down, it could prevent the machine from working correctly. Of course, I'm the kind who has had what turned out to be fried hard drives BUT APPEAR to WORK and work JUST ENOUGH to appear to be working. Fucking universe and its higher forces.

http://ttokarnak.home.att.net/BusAtCentral1.jpg Why are there apparently an army of kangaroo on that bus abducting two children? Some weird allegory to those silly stories of wallabies snatching babies from campers and raising them as feral monsters?