Pain_Man

He was credited with helping to convince the Australian federal gov't not to legalize croc hunting for rich hunters (mostly foreign tourists). Plus he was damned fun to watch. He visited my home town (San Diego, CA) once. It was a strange sight to see the Crocodile Hunter saving a rattlesnake that had fallen into a small aqueduct. He showboated at times, but he also saved a lot of animals--especially crocs that would have most certainly been shot if he hadn't relocated them. The thing with his son & feeding the croc--and, truthfully, looking at the video, the kid didn't appear to be in danger, imo and Austrailian CPS--was a momentary lapse in judgement, but what parent hasn't screwed up? I pulled the car away from the curb once without having strapped the kid into her carseat. I only noticed when she'd climbed out of the thing. Natch, I had to pull over and properly restrain her. If a cop had seen it, it would have cost me $400 American and I would have had CPS* up my ass over it. As I'm typing this, Animal Planet is running a tribute to him. "My...reason for being put on this planet is saving wildlife. Thank you for coming with me." --Steve Irwin I keep thinking about his kids. His wife, not to diminsh her grief, but she's young and will probably remarry (as I'm sure he want her to be happy). But kids can't replace a father. *CPS=Child Protective Services

NY Times story said between 3 & 17 people a year are killed by stingrays. You're waaaaay more likely to win the lottery than buy it from a stingray. The worst of bad luck. He will be missed. He's another of your country's great contributions to the world. Looking at him, it's no wonder Aussies make such great soldiers.

Queensland, according to the state's premiere, is going to give him a state funeral. No funeral plans were announced but [Queensland] state Premier Peter Beattie said Irwin would be afforded a state funeral if his family agreed. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/09/05/i...=20060905110000 Yeah. According to an AP story, his manager said that he and Steve had always said that if [steve] were to be killed, it would almost certainly be underwater. On land he could move and maneuver his way out of danger (or, fuck it, just run!). Water's, what, 800 times denser than air? Besides, even on land, you can't avoid what you don't see. It just bad goddamned luck, swimming over the stingray and ZAP! He was a good guy. Why is it never someone who's death has absolutely no consequences, say, Ben Affleck?

Accidental duplicate.

@blu Thanks for the explanation. I'm not sure I'll ever be a fan--if for no other than reason than that there's almost no opportunity to see it here (unlike soccer where one can, on cable, by "packages" to watch Manchester United games--no preference expressed, crule, so don't throw things at me --or there's other packages that given you a variety of English games (only English, at least that I've seen for the obvious linguistic reason). As for cricket, I'm sure ESPN 2 shows a match (correct?) occasionally, perhaps once in blue moon. Other than that, nothing. I also appreciate the lack of an attack on baseball. Most of the time when I've asked about cricket, I've been treated to a condescending attack on baseball (not by anyone on the ol' IBF to be clear). It was quite pleasant to read yours. It seems that there are some strong similarities between the two games. The hitter vs. the pitcher and 8 defensive players. The "pitching duels" when two of the greatest throw fire, fanning (striking out) hitter after hitter after hitter. Despite the often very low score (1-0, 2-1) in such games, they are usually the shortest. Or watching one of the great hitters, such as Tony Gwynn (mentioned below) dig a hit out an absolutely unhittable ball off of some of the best pitchers ever to play. He was never a "slugger", he succeeded with finesse and exceptional eye sight; the latter was so good that he could see the position of the pitcher's fingers on the ball and usually guess what kind of pitch was coming. And, to answer your question, yes there are fantastic catches made in both the infield and outfield--in addition to throws. Tony Gwynn--a player for my hometown team--had one of the greatest arms for an outfield ever. (he was also one of the best batters, winning the National League batting championchip a record 8 seasons in a row). Ozzy Smith--another player who played a few years for my hometown team--was the greatest shortstop (the position between second and third base if one doesn't know) in the game's history. He did things on the field that simply defied belief. Absolutely impossible catches and then throws, as tho he could defy gravity at will. Sadly, steroids have taken much of the fun out the game these last years (this is a universe problem plauguing nearly every kind of sport). Barry Bonds will soon surpass the record for the highest number of home runs (715) in a career. Unfortunately, his use of steroids essentially negates the achievement. A couple of years ago when he surpassed another homerun record, when he rounded the bases, he was greeted with silence--in his home park! so detested is he. Probably the best part of the game though was going with the old man, just me and my brother and him. Even sitting in the nosebleeds, we still had a blast. There's something about watching baseball in April or May that is magical. Can't really be explained--just experienced. The ball can, and does, arrive at 90-100mph That's the standard speed range for a fast ball. At 10 yrs old my "little" brother (now 6'3!) could throw in the 90s. He could have had, if not a professional career, certainly a college scholarship. But we both made mistakes and opportunities were gone as quickly, as the Bruce Springsteen song "Glory Days" puts it, "like the wink of a young girl's eye."

Never seen a TY02 disc before, I'd avoid them.

Given the near ubiquity of java scripts in web pages its not a terribly ptractical suggestoin. Just a thought.

Did you actually bust people for having fireworks beyond the 48 hr period? That's almost as dumb as Indiana's law. Buy 'em, sell 'em, don't use 'em. One Fourth, when I was living in the Hoosier State, kicking back at a friends house for the usual stuff--beers, bar-b-que, etc. Time came to fire off the fireworks. Roman candles. Sparklers, you name it. My friends would set them off in the middle of the quiet, up-scale residential neighborhood's street in front of the house. Everytime we saw headlight's coming, it was, "Quick, back in the garage!"

But they also comment that effectiveness of the "blue pill" may have something to do with Pacifica design flaws, right? I infered that Intel chips might not be as susceptible. Or may be they are. The article could have used better editing. If you are talking about the part that states; "AMD's SVM/Pacifica virtualization technology to create an ultra-thin hypervisor that takes complete control of the underlying operating system." I didn't take that as it not affecting Intel systems. I took it as they are using a technology developed by AMD to make this piece of malware.

The Sony +Rs (purple label) are Yuden000T02s. My pharmacy had them on sale for several months in a row along with the -Rs (yellow label) which are Sony 08D1s. I didn't realize that the +Rs were Yuden000T02s or I would have bought 100 of them instead of 100 of the 08D1s. But I still managed to get 50. They were selling 25 packs for US$ 7.99. Yuden000T02s seem to be the same as TYG02s. At least they scan as well as TYG02s. I also have about 60 left of a 100 pack spindle, rebranded as Fuji +R 8xers. Of Fuji is a huge crapshoot these days. I once got a spindle of Prodiscs instead of TYs. Sadly, we even have to be wary of Verbatim--at least CDs. I bought a 100 pack of CDRs which turned out to be CMCs. Which wasn't so bad because they were 9.99 American. And I like to have pack of scut CDRs around, for running off quickie cds: e.g. mix discs, discs my wife needs for work (gave her all 1200 fonts of my font collection) that sort of thing. Less chance of my $2/pop Verb 32x CDRWs getting left in the car in the Vegas heat or scratched or what have you. But still. Verbatim and CMCs! I hope they don't rebrand any CMC DVD+/-Rs!

Price, my friend. Price!

@Blu Two topics, two answers. 1. Maybe I was being to general, blu. What does it mean to you? What is the attraction to you? 2. When the World Series began around the turn of the 20th Century, there were no baseball teams in other countries. Had there been, the criticism would be on point. Since there weren't, the winner of the Woild Serious could rightly proclaim to be the best team in the world at baseball. Today, more and more countries are taking the game up. "Latin" America, Japan, and Korea are producing some great players. So the day when the World Series actually is a global event may not be too far distant. But it may have to be something like the World Cup for Soccer. You can't exactly have the Yankees flying to Seoul or Kyoto to play a four game stand and flying back to play three in Boston. I saw Charlie Hussle* get his 3,000 hit. Watching one of the greatest players in the game hit one of its major milestones is a thrill I'll never forget. Right up the with Mary Lou Retton's 10s. With the Miracle of Ice. Except I was there, not 50 yards from Pete Rose when he got that hit. Amazing. *(Pete Rose's nickname was "Charlie Hussle" because he was always gave 110% on the field.)

Sadly, anarchy replaces the subtler forms of the exploitation of the weak by the strong, the simple by the clever with mere brute force. And it always leads to dictatorship. One need only look at Republican Rome before Augustus. Revolutionary France before Napoleon. There is another, more recent, Teutonic example that comes to mind. But the organized anarchy that brought was far worse than any dark age. (Yeah, I'm in a contemplative mood.

"I give you Fifteen--oh shit--ten, I give you Ten Commandments!" If Christianity had given nothing else to the world but this: Do unto others as you would have done unto you. Then it would have been the greatest religion of all. But it never works out that way, does it. Hard as it is to believe, Bill Maher has actually said an intelligent thing in his life: "Religion is the bureaucracy that gets in the way of spirituality." (The rest of career can be summed up thusly: "I hate George W. Bush. A lot.")

You guys are catching up with us in the anti-religion bullshit department. A girl here gave the Valdectorian speech at a high school not far from my home. When she thanked Jesus and mentioned what an inspiration He was in her life--the school officials cut her mike! She continued on without the mike. A football coach joined in the traditional pre-game prayer and was fired (!) for doing so. Unbelievable. You can pray anywhere you want--except inside a public school. Then we've got this asshole atheist (I'm not saying all atheists are assholes, but this dude is!) who's trying to get "God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance (which school kids say every morning--but it's not required). "One nation under God--" One of our appellate courts--whose nickname is the "Nutty Ninth"--has already agreed with this bonehead. The Supreme Court dodged the case because the guy doesn't have custody of his daughter. Naturally, he's found some other dipshits to represent. We can't hardly teach the kids to bloody read and the schools are obsessed with making God is completely utterly eradicated from the schools. But this crap happens all the time. The Supreme Court has decided that the Ten Commandments cannot be hung in public school class rooms (no matter the context, even if its a class on religious history!). Guess what's on the wall of the Supreme Court's chambers? The Ten Comandments! I'm relieved in one sense: this idiocy isn't confined only to us.

Seriously, what exactly is the attraction of a game named after a bug? OK, my bad. Seems the spellings are coincidental. Cricket the game comes from a Middle Dutch word for stick--logically enough. I have enough trouble understanding the attraction of watching a bunch of guys in 50s basketball shorts chasing, sometimes kicking, a ball about a field for 90 mins where scoring is less likely to happen than it wa to me in a bar when I was single. But cricket has me totally flumoxed. It's like watching grass grow. Some foreign sports I understand, Australian Rules Football. Now there's a fun game to watch!. Large guys kicking the crap out of each other to score points. And that thing the refs do when a goal's made. Very cool. Used to watch on ESPN with my dad when I was a kid. Sumo. That's actually quite fascinating to watch. But cricket? Batting--there's not a bat to be seen. Bowling? Not a bowling ball, let alone a pin, to be seen. I'm being facetious there. But can someone help me here? Can one of my Commonwealth cousins explain it to me (not the rules, dear God!) Just the attraction of it. I just don't understand.

@blu Thanks for the tip. I'm an ellipsis addict, I admit. I'll keep it in mind.

Thanks MJ. Checked Amazon, price is up to 25.98. I was hoping the 20.99 was going to be the new, permanent price. Oh well, hope is the thing with feathers. And I've got thirty in the digital larder. Hopefully, by the time I need more, they'll be back down to $20 again. Good part is that this price gets you the free shipping. And you only have to buy one 10 pack. Other places for Americans to try that usually have good to great pricing supermediastore.com & mertiline.com.

Like a new model of car, best give Vista at least a year before installing it. By then most of the major fuck ups should be fixed (which'll create new ones, natch). By then the security companies will surely have developed ways to detect and defeat this "Blue Pill" rootkit. The article isn't clear--or maybe I just don't know enough--but it seems to imply that Intel-based systems wouldn't be effected Did I read it incorrectly?

Thanks for all the answers. Fireworks are regulated by state here. In California, due to the danger of brush & forest fires, they are completely illegal. Only those little "popper" things that shoot out confetti--with the tiniest charge in the bottom-- are legal. When I lived in Indiana, they were legal sell, legal to buy, legal to possess but illegal[/i] to set off! (If you think that's goofy, Cali used to have a law where you had to be 18 to buy cigarettes but 16 & 17 yrs olds could possess them. Also, my first year of high school, 10th grade* we had a smoking section--*have no idea what that corresponds to in our various fraternal countries, but it's the 11th year of public education and the last one required in the US. Until one of those officious little girls that run for ASB [student Council, etc] got it banned the next year.) Here in Nevada, certain types are legal. The places one can set them off are restricted. For brush fire reasons, ya can't set 'em off in the desert. Our schools are doing such a wonderful job that 17% of high school seniors can't find this country on a map. Fortunately, my daughter's going to a very good school. Homework in kindergarten. I didn't see homework until fifth grade.

Lightning says it has something to do with certain combination of letters or symbols that are unacceptable to the Invision program. This is what the page returned says: Forbidden You don't have permission to access /index.php on this server. Apache/2.0.54 (Fedora) Server at forum.imgburn.com Port 80 Christ. It did it again! Looking at this message I can't see anything any different from thousands of other messages I've posted on various sites that use this program. I still don't know exactly which letters or symbols trigger the error msg. When I deleted the last paragraph--which contained only ASCII type letters, the post was accepted. Basically, it seems luck of the draw. Or maybe I'm just lucky an the only person that's ever got this message.

The only time I've seen that is when trying access the folder is question from a "limited user" account. The Administrators account will give you full access to everything. It's been a long time since I used XP Pro so I don't remember if "Power Users" have access to system folders.

Personally, I perfer the DD Model. But tastes vary.

This is kinda going 'round the mountain to piss next door... but try using Zone Alarm to block java script. In the Privacy module, on the Options pop menu--Mobile Code tab. Knowing you, I'm sure you've already tried this, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway. I haven't experience the issues you have. In fact, FF is running better than ever, both on the Desktop and the laptop. it's not perfect, of course, but it's better than IE. Microsoft's concept of security is akin to putting the code to the burglar alarm on the outside of the keypad--in Roman numerals.

Fucking-A, Grain! And that's AFTER paying a bloody grand for the player!? They can kiss my entire ass. Besides, looking at a display at BestBuy, the picture is better, but it ain't that much better. And until is , I ain't buying shit. DVD-Video has the market right now and for the forseeable future. Some might point to the 8-track's quick demise at the hands of the cassette, but the cassette tape was invented before the 8-track hit the market. And, besides, the 8-track was a pain in the ass, always cutting out in the middle of a song you liked, only to fade back in when it kicked to the next "track." And they were rather fragile. My Dad actually had a car with an 8-track deck in it. Needless to say, no one ever even tried to steal it.