Pain_Man

Actually, he was a comte or count (earl is the English equivalent for those of you in Rio Linda). Sorry, but restraining the urge to be a wiseass for me would be like finding a naked Salma Hayek in my hotel room and then walking out. NOT!!! Are you kidding? I'd pull a Kung Pow: Enter The Fist! I'd use salt, lemon juice, and mercury on the wound! I would then legally change my name to Mark K. Desaad.

Shamus: Where do you get these gnarley images for your "avatars"?

People using music subcription services might be interested in this as a protection against the service being cancelled, company going bankrupt, etc. Check this out.

There's an improved, GUI'd version out. Unfortunately, one has to have .Net 2.0 installed to use it. My programmer brother has warned me about .Net. Since I rarely buy music on line (only the odd single I can't find anywhere else without buying a CD full of crapola filler I don't wanna hear). There certainly is. http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35315

Fireworks have been banned in the People's Republic of California (where I was born and lived for 25 yrs) since long before I was born (1970). The reason's obvious. I don't know how much of a problem fires are in NZ. But it seems to me it's probably a pretty wet place. But each state does it differently. As 'wheel can tell you, in Indiana (where I've also lived), it's legal to buy 'em, it's legal to sell 'em (that should probably be reversed), and it's legal to possess them. But it's illegal to set them off. I remember on New Years, we had to set them in the middle of the street, light 'em, and run back to the drive way , all the time keeping an eye out at the end of the street to see if Lafayette's finest were pulling up the street to investigate the deafening explosions in the rather upscale neighborhood where we held our celebrations. In Nevada, where I presently live, you can only buy certain kinds and can only set them off in certain areas. This despite the fact that Nevada has even worse fire "seasons" than the People's Republic to the west. Go figure. On the other hand, prostitution legal here (in any country with a population under 400,000; there's only one country that fits that criterion: Clark, where the Strip is and where 27M tourists leave $9 billion dollars in gambling losses--not counting "non-gaming" revenue--every year).

Somebody had their head so far up their ass they were looking at the back of their teeth. Jay-sus. And Moses is the one with Alzheimer's! They better check the editor. As for the director:

Buy.com has 25 pk spindle of Memorex DVD+R DLs for $34.94 American. Saving 60 cents seems worth the 9% difference in quality. If I wasn't already surfeited with optical media of nearly all types, I'd buy one. My experience with Memorex +R DLs has been good. I bought a three pack and they all burned with no problems and are still working today. Interestingly, the avg rating from customers on the site is 5 Stars. Nothing but glowing praise. Perhaps Ritek is improving their quality. As can be seen, my Ritek's go back a year and a half. Anyway, at US$ 1.40 each, one might want to grab a spindle. I'm putting up the VSO Inspector burn data for the RITEKs (Memorex's brand--?--for DLs). The stats are for discs burned with CopytoDVD, an excellent, low-price alternative to the bloated Leviathan of Nero or the unreliability of Roxio. I've been using it for yrs and highly recommend it. CopytoDVD Website Inspector is freeware but, as of a few months back, you have to have CopytoDVD installed to access the reliability statistics. For comparison, here's the "standard" that most of us measure ought else by, Verbatim. These are home videos, bien sur. As they are of an extremely private nature ( ), I cannot display the titles. Both DLs were burned on my Benq DW1655. The one thing I'm going to miss about going SATA II is the quality of the Benq's burns. It's an excellent drive. Unfortunately, Benq doesn't make any SATA drives. I've done business with Buy.com three times in the past. I just bought a 2GB SD flash card for $32; it's for the digital camera. It'll hold 24,400 pictures in the 50 to 75KB range. In the 700KB to 1MB range it holds 1600+. (Not even my wife can take that many pictures; tho' my grandmother might.) With a $10 "pocket drive"--the SD card fits in the end of it--I now have a 2GB jump drive for less than $50. I just ordered a Western Dig 320GB HDD SATA II; by signing up their Visa, I got the 320GB SATA II for $85 for my new Gateway that's on the way. They also have a 250GB model for $89. If you're interested in the HDDs here are the URLs: WD Caviar SE16 250GB SATA/300 7200RPM 16MB Buffer - WD2500KS Western Digital Caviar SE16 Hard Drive - 320GB - 7200rpm - 300MBps Serial ATA - II - Serial ATA/300 - Serial ATA - Internal - WD3200KS Western Digital Caviar SE16 Hard Drive - 500GB- 7200rpm - 300MBps Serial ATA - II - Serial ATA/300 - Serial ATA - Internal - WD3200KS

Along with "Never throw shit at an armed man." There's, "never get into a slap fest with a Russian." It's a sport over there. Two guys take turns slapping each other silly until one of them passes out. Of course, they did invent Russian Roulette. Please note: that if you feel I've insulted your country, I have ancestors from every country on Earth, every religion, ethnic group, sexual orientation, creed and color.

Just rub salt in the wound, Minty. Salt in the wound.

It came across that way? I didn't mean it that way--as I know you know. Just rubbed me the wrong way. it's one thing to say, "I love living in "Fill in the Blank." Imagine if I said, "Thank God I don't live in New Zealand"--that guy would have gone apopolectic. I don't even have a problem if people criticize our government--who doesn't criticize their own government? If you live in China, I can understand singing the party line--doing otherwise could land your ass in the Chicom GULAG. But I just do NOT like it when people from countries for which we've spilled blood to protect to dis us. It just ain't cool. It was like that Canadian junior minister, bureaucrat, or whatever, called the Prez, "stupid." And then didn't have the class to apologize. It's one thing for a private citizen to say shit like that. But to insult the leader of your ally and closest trading partner? It was like that goddamn Natalie Mains. It's one thing to dis the Prez in Texas, Washington State or Attu (one of the Aleutian Islands for those of you in Rio Linda). It's another thing to go to a foreign country and then do it. It was the same as when the Former-Rapist-in-Chief went to Moscow--during the Cold War and marched in an anti-Vietnam war rally. When one is outside the borders of one's country, be patriotic or shut the fuck up. But I don't really have strong feelings about it or anything. You just gratuitously slapped 3 countries there Pain Man

...it would be more useful if Microsoft stuck to it's own definitions. but the author of this applet can't be blamed for that. And it has helped me with error msgs in the past. Here's the url to download it: Windows Error Messages It's freeware.

I installed the last two betas onto my laptop and I've been pleasantly surprised with v. 11. I've got v 10 on the desktop and I've used it quite a bit to view video clips. For music I mostly use quinessential music player. Well, I did 'til I got my iPod 80gig. I never buy music with Microsoft Rights Destruction Technology in it. Apple's FairPlay2 is enough of a pain in the ass. Fortunately, there's a way

You're talking about the CD/DVD encryption and the service it installs, aren't you? We've talked about that before. It also installs and activates a service to track laptops, even if your machine isn't one. So you have to disable that one.

Thanks for the tip Shamus. I'd also like to hear your opinion of the quote if you have the time. I have several software packages, Intervideo's CopyDVD 4 &5, and an ImTOO product that say they can convert home videos into iPod-compliant format. H263 or H264? Can't remember exactly which. On the other hand, I didn't really buy it for the video capability. I bought it for the music. Apple's lossless codec--hopefully they'll soon port it to other media players--is an excellent one. And MP4 is a much better lossy encoder than MP3. (To my ears, anyway.) I don't understand why Apple hasn't ported OGG Vorbis to the iPod. It's absolutely free and it's a great codec. Since it costs nothing and the license isn't nearly as strict as that for Monkey's Audio or WavPack (both great codecs as well; for storing large quantities of music, Monkey's Audio work's great; with it, I was able to get 13 CDs onto 1 DVD5). I would put this remark by Apple down to delirium brought about by chronic and excessive masturbation. Try the CucuSoft package. They even have free trials. http://www.cucusoft.com/

Hmmm , thats some ipod you have there guv'ner iPod? I got the 80Gigger for my birthday. "Great gear." I've already got almost 5000 songs (and pieces of art music, mistakenly called "classical" music by some). Drawback: video. It doesn't work well with video not bought from the iTune store. I tried converting a couple of MPEG-1s of my kid and while the video converted, the sound did not. Apple tech support told me that this was "to be expected". for the above reason. If you're going to buy the iPod, buy it from Apple direct. They'll engrave the back of it for you--which can help you get it back if stolen. And they warranty upgrade is excellent.

If you have version 8.0.6 or older DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES INSTALL THE NEW UPDATE 8.08. It majorly hosed up my system. I was unable to access Window Explorer. Dr. Watson kept trying to launch (which ZoneAlarm kindly informed me). Fortunately, I was able to uninstall 8.08 and reinstall 8.0.6. Emails I've gotten from Steganos TS acknowledge--as vaugley as possible, of course--the major fuck up they've unleashed and they are "working on it." They have a "special" version of 8.0.6 that's supposed to fix the problems if you have already installed that disastrous update. Does quality control mean anything to any software company anywhere anymore? (Steganos is German.)

One thing I learned today, Minty: Your home town is the home of the International Bluegrass Hall of Fame. Pete Seeger (that old Stalinist) is donating his banjo. Granted, that's a big who gives a shit, unless you're currently hugging a tree, but it's interesting that the Bluegrass Hall of Fame is there. Also, Limbaugh talked to your senior Senator today who was also in O-------o. Don't know what good ol' Mitch was doing there (one of my favorite Senators); maybe he lives there.

Dude! What's with the gratuitous slap at the country which protects yours? Attacking NZ is the same as attacking the US under the ANZUS treaty. We've also been Allies in two World Wars plus (most of) the Cold War. I've never heard an American speak ill of NZ; I see no reason for your doing the reverse. Perhaps I misunderstand you? Perhaps what you mean is, "I really love New Zealand, wouldn't live in anywhere else." And that's cool. I'm not keen on living anywhere but the US and a patriot myself. All that socialism--could never hang with that. (However, millions of New Zealanders, Australians and Canadians can't wait to move to this country and give up their former citizenships; my wife works with two Canadians who are working toward their US citizenship.) A lot of American boys are at the bottom of the Pacific because they fought to keep the Japanese from turning your grandparents into slaves. New Zealanders are excellent soldiers (if not, as Sir John Keegan put it, as good as they are in their own minds). But you're a tiny, tiny country. Without Peter Jackson and Sir Edmund Hillary (sp?) where would you be? A side-trip on Australian vacations.

What if you drop your pill on the floor--as I just did--and need another one. This sounds like a joke. Surely someone's going to try to open the bottle again, get 3rd degree burns from their clothes catching on fire and the company will be sued out of existence and the executives sent to Club Fed for negligence. But ya never know. Who would have figured anyone would have invaded Russia in 1940 when two of the three previous attempts had ended in utter disaster--but that didn't stop 'Dolph baby, did it? (Charles XII in 1709 and Napoleon in 1812; only Kaiser Wilhelm II managed to invade, defeat and conquer large stretches of Russia--only to be forced to give it all up when his armies collapses on the Western Front).

The 800MHz memory is a serious bitch to find. In fact, nearly all the off the shelf machines had only 533MHz DDR2. I only found one machine that had even 667 and that was by a company I'd never heard of: Velocity. It was a nice machine. They had the extra memory and I could have picked up an X1900 512MB Video card, as well as a Plextor burner (I'm accumulating a lot of burners!). But the machine was a demo--strike one. Plus it had a DIMM stolen out of it. And something called the Intel Image something or other had a yellow ! next to it. Sorry--I don't buy demos, especially ones that have been broken into and are missing drivers or have some kind of hard/software conflict. I didn't find anything at either place I went (Fry's or BestBuy). There are almost no high end machines on the shelf. Two Sony VAIOs--one a demo, the other had a 200 CD/DVD player as part of the package(!). Guess I'll be ordering on line. The warranties are better anyway (and cheaper).

Thanks, Lightning, for the tip on the memory.

I realize this LOOKS long, but PLEASE take a look: most of it taken up by a product quote at the bottom. So pls take a gander even if you normally skip long posts on site. Thx. I'm finally going to be getting a new machine. (Please forgive the goddamned dyslexia; I only wish I were kidding.) I have a US$3000 to $3500 budget. I'm looking for a machine that can handle demanding FPS games (e.g. Quake IV, Halo, Doom3 etc) as well as handling DVD editing, processing (all of home movies, of course). As well as handling music (tho, I know one doesn't need a super high end machine to process music files, unless, I supposed, you're actually mixing new tracks; which I won't be doing). I've always been a "Pentium Man" (I know it's kind of the like the Ford vs. Chevy thing) but I don't have anything against AMD. They've come a long way. I very much would appreciate any suggestions or PC-makers I have not heard of. I know I have the skills to do the grunt work of building a PC myself, pop this in here, snap this in here, screw this screw there, etc). It's not really technical, but it it is time consuming--the labor of assembling everything. I don't have anything against it. And it would have the advantage, a DIY PC that is, of NOT being stuffed with a bunch of bullshit software I don't want and NOT have to deal with a bloody Recovery disk instead of a regular XP CD (on the other hand, Vista comes free when it's released, IF it's released next yr. If anyone knows of a site that's helpful for people building PC's themselves, pls let me know. PC makers the Forum Gods think I should consider, should be US based (or have facilities in the US; shipping from UK or AUS is rather preventitive). Sites for help with DIY, I don't suppose the location of those really matter. We're all basically using the same components whether we're in Nevada--me--, UK, Australia or Lapland. I know I'm one of the less knowledgeable people in "The Firm" (if I've got my Brit slang correct); but given the high level of knowledge of people like Lightning, Minter, Shamus, lfcrule and everyone else I don't have room to mention, I know I'll get some good advice. To give an example of what I'm looking for, here's a quote I created on Gateway's site: I'm going to be hitting one of the best stocked PC component retailers in the area tomorrow, so I'd appreciate as much help as possible. Got to get to bed. Kid has school tomorrow. Suggestions about particular components are very welcome. Obviously I'll be buying a new DVD burner, a SATA Plextor (yee-haw!). And I haven't chosen an LCD monitor. Not sure about what I should be looking for in a monitor. I'm gather that the lower the response time in milliseconds, the better the monitor. And with contrast, the high the number, e.g. 1000:1 is better than 700:1. Since I love FPS I won't be buying a widescreen. The specs: (it's a bit of a mess to read, but I can't get text to copy over with the format screwing up the look). System Name: Gateway FX530XG Unit Price:* $2499.99 Config Price:* $3089.96 Quantity: 1 Total Price:* $3089.96 Operating System: Genuine Microsoft? Windows? XP Media Center Edition 2005 (Update Rollup 2) w/ XP Media Center Backup Processor: Intel? Core?2 Duo E6700 (2.66GHz 1066MHz FSB 4MB cache, non-HT) Memory: 4096MB PC5300 dual-channel DDR2 667MHz SDRAM (4-1024MB modules) ........[ +US$220.00] Video: Dual ATI Radeon? X1950 CrossFire" Edition with 512MB DDR3 (per card), Dual DVI, Video out, and VGA Support Application Software: Microsoft? Office Basic Edition 2003 (Includes Word, Excel and Outlook) ........[ +US$129.99] Hard Drive: 300GB 10,000RPM Serial ATA hard drive w/ Raid 0 16MB Cache (2-150GB hard drives) Optical Drive: 16x Double-Layer Multi-Format DVD Writer (DVD?/R?RW/CD-R/RW) and 48x/32x/48x CD-RW/DVD combo drive PCI Multimedia Card 1: ATI Theater? 550 Pro TV Tuner with Wireless Remote Control (Requires Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005) ........[ +US$20.99] Color: FX Logo Accent Black Steel Extended Service Plan Including Limited Warranty: Desktop Value Plus Service Plan -- 4 year parts/labor/on-site/4 year technical support ........[ +US$169.99] Accidental Damage Plan: Four year accidental damage plan ........[ +US$49.00] Monitors: No Monitor Selected Keyboard and Mouse: Gateway Elite Multimedia Keyboard and Soft-touch USB optical wheel mouse Speakers: Speakers not selected Security Software: No Security Subscription Selected Answers by Gateway Support Cards: Answers by Gateway Per Incident support card Chipset: Intel? 975X chipset with DDR2 and Intel? Core? Duo support Floppy Drive: 9-in-1 media card reader Case: 7-bay BTX tower case Controller: Integrated Serial ATA controller Expansion Slots: (3) PCI expansion slots, (1) PCI-E x4 expansion slot, (1) PCI-E x16 expansion slot External Ports: (6) USB 2.0 (2 front, 4 rear), (3) IEEE 1394 firewire (2 front, 1 rear), audio ports and (2) PS/2 Certification: Energy Star? compliant Internet Service Provider: Six months America Online? Internet access Part Number: 1009173 Additional Software: Adobe? Acrobat Reader? 7.0 and Google Toolbar Network: Integrated Intel? 10/100/1000 (Gigabit) Ethernet Desktop Technology: Intel? Viiv? Technology Integrated Audio: Integrated Intel? 7.1 High Definition audio Standard Software: Napster Trial Subscription Personal Productivity: Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0

The Pioneer 110D 1.41 came thru with my last -R DL. No more of those! I've got plenty of +R DLs anyway. 92.4% Quality Rating. Not bad. The +R DLs usually scan between 94-95%.

Lightning: For some damned reason, my machine refuses to update the firmware for the Benq. The 'Qsuite' software also won't function. I have no idea why and neither does Benq's TS (it's a good drive, but their support sucks balls). They wouldn't take it back because the error, according to them, wasn't with the burner but my machine. Nice, hunh? I could send it in, but if there was nothing wrong with it, I'd have to pay return shipping and a labor charge that would have been more than the damned thing cost (perhaps the only negative of the fall in burner prices). A new machine's out of the picture this fiscal year, probable next year. When I get around to it, I'm probably going to take the Benq out of my main machine and pop it into my older desktop and see if I can upgrade the FW and then reinstall her in the main machine. An ugly solution, but if it works, it's works. blutach: Lesson learned, my friend, lesson learned. And to think the buzz was that -R DL was going to more compatible than it's competitor. Shit. But I want to do something with them. They're just sitting 'round gathering dust. Like crule says, it's been hard to find something to use them for since DVD-Video is not an option. Oh well, I've got one more. Gonna try again with the Pioneer 110. It burned the first one correctly. If it flails, so be it.

I just paid VAT on a DVD I ordered from Amazon UK. The price was 14.14 pounds, incl. shipping. By the time they added the VAT, it was over 20 pounds. My $28 dollar disk ended up costing me $40. (roughly). What pissed me off, is that the check out screen for Amazon UK didn't tell what the VAT was going to be. So I had no chance to turned it down. NOT cool. Limbaugh's got a $30M estate in Palm Beach, if memory serves. If you mean the most expensive zip code in the US in terms of average house price, that's probably in Manhattan. Apartments in places like Trump tower routine sell for eight figures. If you mean the zip code with the highest avg income, that's probably Fairbanks Ranch (yep, named after the famous movie star Douglas Fairbanks, Sr). The average house price is not much less than those Manhattan apartment. My mother's boss lives there. His house was worth $7 million ten years ago. It's more than double that now. As for counties I believe either San Diego or San Franciso have Palm Beach beat cold. San Diego's avg house price at least $500 to $600,000 (the last place my parents lived, a suburb of San Diego, the avg house price was over $1 million); their 1000 s.f. condo sold for $365,000. Had they sold it about six months before they did, they would have probably gotten $420K for it. For a one bedroom, 2 bath 1000 s.f. condo with no garage!! The same kind of unit was renting for $1800 to $2000 a month. The market's definitely cooled off, more so than Vegas.