Pain_Man

I hate it. I like my dentist as well the hygenist. (The two receptionists are quite cute, er, sheilas, isn't that an Aussie equivalent of "chick" or "bird"?) But ever since my avoidance of it cost me $5000 and lot of discomfort and pain, I no longer fight my wife about the bi-annual check up.

I go every 6 months which is whats required to stay on the NHS - it means my son's treatments free, under 18, and the cost of mine is subsidised. You mean one has to spend the gov't's money or they cut you off? You'd think they'd want you to save as much as possible to reduce the program's cost. Just out of curiosity--since I'm too busy to look it up at the mo'--when did the NHS start? Medicare (a kinda of similar program for those over 65 or the disable comme moi started in 1965. ("It will never cost more than $12 billion dollars," said LBJ. Last year it was nearly $90 billion. And the baby boomers are about to blow it out of the water. It'll be out of money--i.e. paying out more than the tax takes in--before 2012.) Sadly, there's always some scumbag doctor or dentist who takes advantage of a helpless woman. I can't imagine how a woman must feel after something like that. As a husband I'd want to snap his neck. But being in the joint for 25 to life wouldn't help one's wife. My dentist is a Mormon. But he never mentions it unless you ask him about it. Surprisingly, Las Vegas has one of the largest populations of Mormons of any US city. In fact, both of our senators are Mormons. In fact, they were the first American settlers of the Las Vegas Valley . Great irony, eh? Since the things Vegas is best known for, gambling, sexy shows and free booze are all off-limits for practicing Mormons. and telling them your a Satanist for a joke before treatment starts is probably a bad idea Yeah, I try to refrain from ennumerating the ways in which Mormonism resembles a cult. Not a good idea to insult a man whose going to have razor sharp instruments next to your carotid and jugular veins. It falls under science fiction writer Larry Nevin's tonge-in-cheek set of personal "laws", Niven's Law No. 1: Never throw shit at an armed man. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle...watch out if Rebecca DeMornay applies for your nanny position.

If you're a Trek fan there's good news: Amazon has dropped the price. It's also nearly 50% less than the price charged by Barnes and Noble & BestBuy. They're now going for $35.49 ea. So you can get the entire series for $116.47 (oddly enough, they're selling the entire series as a set for $175.98 Doesn't make much sense to me.) There is an HD-DVD/SD-DVD combo set but it's $96. For $10 bucks more you get the whole set and with the up-rezzer in my Toshiba AD-30 gets it close to HD. The soundtracks have been remixed to Dolby 5.1 (a DTS mix would have been nice). The interior and other live action shots look great, the colors rich, the images crisp. The space shots don't fair so well. At least we don't see any wires, but they still look grainy. The special efx, of course, look dated, but it's hardly fair to criticize that. Especially since Star Trek had the lowest budget of all of NBC dramas for that era. (Interestingly, according to Ron Moore--BSG impresario and long-time Star Trek writer and producer--if Nielsen had tabulated ratings back then they way they do today, the show would have been revealed for what it was: a massive hit. And this surely would have led to a much, much longer run.) Season 1 Season 2 Season 3 They've also dropped the prices on Voyager and Next Gen. (They are next on my list. It's a veritable Trekker--i.e. geek-fest). Checking Amazon UK, the price is 28 pounds, about $56 US. Don't know if that's a drop or not. (I assume the big price difference is probably due to the VAT tax??? If I'm wrong, pls correct.)

The India thing has happened here as well. A couple of especially sleazy HMOs have actually sent patients to India to get heart (and other organ) transplants. The cost is something like a tenth. Law & Order actually did an ep about it. A lot of Canadians come down here to surgeries they would other have to wait years for. Dentists seem to be expensive everywhere. I let my teeth go for years. I hate going to the dentist. It's always uncomfortable and painful; I have especially sensitive teeth so it's even worse than normal. And, frankly, I didn't have the money or any insurance for years. When I finally had everything lined up, I need several cavities, a cap as well as a root canal. The total was over $5000. The insurance covered a little less than 50%; we made payments to the dentist until the debt was settled. The same thing happened when my daughter was hospitalized for asthma a few years back. After all was said and done we owed the hospital about $2000. Once again, they took payments. Of course, like the dentist, they didn't have any choice. As long one makes what the law calls a "good faith" effort to pay, you can't be sued. Besides, as my grandma puts it, you can't get blood out of stone. Despite a lot of hassling from the hospitals collection agency (are there any bigger wankers than collection agency turds? Politicians maybe), we paid what we could. Some months it was $200, others it was $25. They tried to pressure us to sign a payment agreement. I told them flat-out, "You know as well as I do you can't force us to sign anything, so stop trying. You're getting what we can afford and no more." I mentioned the state AG's office, the FTC, and talking to the TV stations and they stopped fucking with us. And we paid off the debt.

Indeed, spin. Hope you have a good one!

Valve has a really cool new game called Audio Surf. Basically, you line blocks up in patterns on a racing-car like track. And you do it to your own music (in MP3, Ogg, MA4* and WAV formats). The game analyzes the song you pick and designs the game course based on the song. *AAC wrapped in a MPEG-4 container; the same one that Apple uses for iTunes.

Like Half-Life 2, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 4 even RPGs like Diablo 2? ...or just play war games.

Thanks. For a few minutes I got real scared. I don't know if my daughter simply didn't grasp the gravity of the situation or she just knew to be calm. But that's typical of my family. We're real calm during the crisis; we freak later. My Dad beat the ambulance by about 90 seconds. I'm sure he helped to keep her calm. If she'd been freaking out, I couldn't have done anything to comfort her. I couldn't get off the couch. If that pain was just pleurisy, I don't ever want to have a real heart attack. That shit HURT. I read (can't remember where) that one of the reasons British teeth are often, er, well I don't know exactly how to put this without being insulting. The gist of the story was that there are so few dentists in the UK, that most people can't access orthodontic care. And I recall the story of a woman with heart disease who died in a hospital hallway because there was no cardiac surgeon available to perform a bypass. And, to be fair, one could easily pull up a number of cases of patient "dumping" here in the US. That's when a private hospital either refuses to treat a patient without insurance, or gives them the least amount of care possible and transfers them to a county hospital as soon as possible (ER did an excellent episode about this). This is illegal and can lead to big lawsuits but if the patient should happen to die... And the offending hospital can always hire a battalion of $500/hr lawyers to bury some ambulance-chaser. During the "Hillarycare" debate, the problem with socialist medicine was summed by a bumpersticker that read: "You think Healthcare's expensive now, wait until it's free."

I hope my answer to grain answers you as well. The NRA does in fact offer gun-safety classes. If the stupid uses to which people put a tool is going to be the yardstick by which we measure its utility then we better ban cars ASAP. Your chances of being in auto accident in your lifetime is 100%. Your chances of getting shot are a tiny fraction of that. Sadly, there seem to be no limits to human stupidity. Here in Vegas, every year, a couple of people drive off the upper floors of casino parking garages; they are almost invariably elderly. Most of them don't get hurt, but still. If you can't see the difference between the "R" and the "D", should you really be driving? One of the funniest things I ever saw (on a show called America's Dumbest Criminals)was the guy who tried to rob a liquor/convenience store. He walked it, put his "mask" on, only he'd forgotten to cut eye holes in the mask. Watching him stumble about and trip over shit was hysterical. Even the cashier was laughing.

It's an infection/irritation of the lining of the lungs. Not quite. And especially not Canadian-style. But I don't really want to re-ignite the old socialist vs. market-oriented healthcare debate. Each system has serious problems; and I--by far--prefer ours to yours. I think we can leave it at that. And, in fact, I don't have a choice as to whether to be enrolled in Medicare. Should I drop out, I would (once I reached 67, retirement age for my generation) have to pay a 10% per year compounded for 28 years(!). So I'm stuck with it (and the $90/month premium out of my disability benefits) whether I want it or not. And the Social Security Disability "premiums" were deducted from my paychecks when I worked without my consent; there's no opt out. So I see no conflict with my conservative beliefs and getting back money I'll never see otherwise. No one who knows the condition of Social Security in this country seriously believes that people under 50 will ever see a dime they paid in. But practically, I am glad to have double-insurance. Our private insurance is really good. My wife's ER visit last year cost a total of $125 even though the charges were several thousand $$s. We'll just have to see how it shakes out.

Would have posted sooner, but I spent last Friday-Saturday in the hospital with what I thought was a heart-attack . The fact that my 8 yr old girl was home and I thought I might die in front of her did not help my blood pressure. Fortunately, it turned out to be a case of pleurisy. Still, for spending more than 24 hours in the hospital, the total bill is $22,000 ; or nearly a grand per hour. (One $8 pill is priced at $136!) I have two health insurance policies so I shouldn't have to pay anything. Or at least I hope so. (Curiously, the list fails to include either Eliot Spitzer or Kwame Kilpatrick... ) Without further ado... Eighth Place In Detroit , a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys. Seventh Place A 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who 'totally zoned when he ran,' accidentally jogged off a 100-foot high cliff on his daily run. Sixth Place While at the beach, Daniel Jones, 21, dug an 8 foot hole for protection from the wind and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand. People on the beach used their hands and shovels trying to get him out but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him. Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital. Fifth Place Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed when he fell through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth to keep his hands free rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor. Fourth Place Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed when he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger. Third Place After stepping around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door, a man walked into H&J Leather & Firearms intent on robbing the store. The shop was full of customers and a uniformed officer was standing at the counter. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, and several customers also drew their guns and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt. HONORABLE MENTION Paul Stiller, 47, and his wife Bonnie were bored just driving around at 2 A.M. so they lit a quarter stick of dynamite to toss out the window to see what would happen. Apparently they failed to notice the window was closed. RUNNER UP Kerry Bingham had been drinking with several friends when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from a local bridge in the middle of traffic. The conversation grew more heated and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30 AM. Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no one had brought a bungee rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking, volunteered and pointed out that a coil of lineman's cable, lay near by. They secured one end around Bingham's leg and the tied the other to the bridge. His fall lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and tore his foot off at the ankle. He miraculously survived his fall into the icy water and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. Bingham's foot was never located. AND THE WINNER IS... Zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt ( Paderborn , Germany ) fed his constipated elephant 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally got relief. Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded. The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck hishead on a rock as the elephant continued to evacuate 200 pounds of dung on top of him. It seems to be just one of those freak accidents that proves... 'Stuff happens'

Like the man said, if nothing else, it's a way to get a up-rezzer for your SD-DVDs for a real low-price. According to a quote on the Amazon page for the A-30 (weirdly enough, last week it was at $149; now it's at $354; weird): *That is, Monday.

It's already happening. I paid $278 for my Toshiba A-30 in early DEC 2007 from Amazon. I've seen them for as low as $149. yeah, I've got a pain alright. Waaay down south. The good news is the that the disc prices are falling. I got the "Ultimate" Matrix set for $49 when it had been going for $80. Many other HD discs have dropped from $5 to $15 dollars depending on the config (the ones with SD-DVDs as well as HDDVDs--the logic behind this is dubious in my opinion). So I'm grabbing them while they are around since Sony says it'll be 2009 before we see sub-$200 BR players. So I won't be going Blu-Ray (barring any unforeseen financial windfalls; not just wishful thinking, it '03 we had $35,000 in extra, unexpected income) until the prices of the players get resonable. Good news is the BR disc prices are coming down. Crusing Amazon, I saw a good number between $15-$20. I really don't plan on buying movies in either of the two HD formats at this time. At this time I prefer the HD-DVD player with the expectation of it being a nicely discounted product, but as donta pointed out there are alot of standalones that will upscale as well.

It was never a question of one format being superior to the other in terms of clarity. Maybe it one has 20-10 or 20-05 vision (or even the 20-15 I was born with but which has faded with time and decades of computer use), one could tell. But for 20-20, there's no difference. Don't know about the PS3's upscaling but there's no reason to think it would be inferior (unless Sony--surprise!--used inferior parts) to Toshiba's or one of the SD-DVD stand-alone up-rezzers. If Time-Warner had made their announcement (going all Blu-Ray) two weeks before Xmas instead of after it, I'd almost certainly have a PS3 sitting beside my HDTV, along with a stack of BR discs and some PS3/2 games. Bloody bastards. If they, TW that is, didn't own the largest film library in the world (much of it acquired when they bought out Turner, I'd never touch another TW product. But, alas, for cinefiles, that's just not an option. (TW owns 20% of Hollywood's movie library.)

I have an A-30 and the upscaling ability kicks ass. I didn't believe it until I saw it but it really does make a difference. It's definitely not the same level of resolution as a true high definition disc, but it's also clearly superior to 480i/p.

I'm not sure that isn't wildly optimistic. My brother's a programmer and many of my friends are computer literate. http://forum.imgburn.com/style_images/1/fo...itch-editor.pngSwitch between standard and rich text editor

Amen!!!!

It's basically the same as the law here in the US. Obviously there are variations amongst the states and the Federal government. Unlike the United Kingdom, the US is not a unitary state (tho' the Far Left is trying as hard as it can to make it so). My state's statute (Nevada Revised Statutes) NRS 200.200 Killing in self-defense. If a person kills another in self-defense, it must appear that: 1. The danger was so urgent and pressing that, in order to save his own life, or to prevent his receiving great bodily harm, the killing of the other was absolutely necessary; and 2. The person killed was the assailant, or that the slayer had really, and in good faith, endeavored to decline any further struggle before the mortal blow was given. NRS 200.120 “Justifiable homicide” defined. Justifiable homicide is the killing of a human being in necessary self-defense, or in defense of habitation, property or person, against one who manifestly intends, or endeavors, by violence or surprise, to commit a felony, or against any person or persons who manifestly intend and endeavor, in a violent, riotous, tumultuous or surreptitious manner, to enter the habitation of another for the purpose of assaulting or offering personal violence to any person dwelling or being therein. NRS 200.130 Bare fear insufficient to justify killing; reasonable fear required. A bare fear of any of the offenses mentioned in NRS 200.120, to prevent which the homicide is alleged to have been committed, shall not be sufficient to justify the killing. It must appear that the circumstances were sufficient to excite the fears of a reasonable person, and that the party killing really acted under the influence of those fears and not in a spirit of revenge. If anyone's interested here's the link: http://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-200.html#NRS200Sec120 Though our two systems have grown apart since even before the Revolution, two basic things remains the same in both systems: precedent (i.e. judge made law) and the jury system (as the finder of fact). I do find one thing that the Blair Ministry did highly, highly disturbing: it had the law changed so that judges can instruct juries that a defendant's failure to testify can be construed as a sign of guilt (that is his invocation of what we call the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, y'all call it the "right to silence", which dates back, I believe, to the Bill of Rights of 1689).

Guns are tools. And, just like any other tool, it's their use that's good or bad, safe or dangerous. The law explains it best: "intent follows the bullet." If we are judging tools by the harm they cause, and the evil or negligent uses to which they are put, the automobile should be banned tonight. It's far and away more dangerous than firearms. Properly trained gun owners, just like properly trained drivers, are far safer than their opposite.

Ahhhhh. I downloaded a suite of freeware tools and one of the progs was a password recovery tool and it was flagged. Since it was freeware I thought it infected and zapped it. Thanks or the list. guilt by association

Hey, man, who said anything about keygens?!?! I scan every morning at 3am, both for virii & spyware (tho' the boundary seem awful fuzzy to me). I also regularly scan with Spybot SD, Adware and have javacool's spywareblaster installed. I'm as security conscious as I think is reasonable. Perhaps some might think I'm paranoid--but (knock on wood) I've never had a malware problem of any kind. That's why I find it so curious that files which have never caused me any problems should suddenly show up with malware. And, what's even odder, is sometimes copies of an infected file aren't infected, which I don't understand. I admit the paucity of my malware knowledge ("Kill that fucker!" is pretty much it.) I always delete them. ZA has a quarantine function; the only rationale I get see for that is to be able to provide it to one's AV provider for analysis. Nope, don't think so PM. Check/scan/delete your keygen software. I have CA software in my first line of protection, but I'm not a fan of it as much as Kaspersky, which I use on a semi-monthly basis unless I've been 'slimed' by some piece if crap software. As to why it only just shows up now...maybe a time bomb went off or something else activated it...hard telling. The good thing is that it matters not that it was there, what matters is the fact that it couldn't report back to the script kiddy that wrote it...

the add file function doesn't work in the chat forum, you have to use a picture host like image shack Ooops, corny, didn't see you'd explained this for Will.

Hmm, I have two accounts active (I also have the "Guest" account disabled); the Administrator which I use and one for my wife (she likes to use color schemes which make my head hurt). If by "install for all uses box" you mean for all the listed file types, I let certain file types remain the "property" of different apps than IB. I don't normally use my laptop for burning DLs. I use my desktop rig's Plextor 760A. It burns @6x (even tho' the box promises it can burn @10x). I know that Lightning advocates burning @2.4x, but I routinely get PiPo scans of 91% to 95%. More than good enough for me. You can add an image to a post by using a third-party hosting service (I use photobucket, it's free and has a relatively generous amount of storage space) and then including it with the [/img] HTML tags.

FAT32 stands for File Allocation Table. Check this article. It was up in the air. As someone pointed out here, I forget who, but there was a lot of doubt about the accuracy of the sales figures . Still my reaction is a combination of & And remember TimeWarner--which Toshiba itself says was the "nail in the coffin"--did not make their Blu-Ray only announcement until after Christmas And everyone knows why: . (I keep saying this, it makes me feel smarter .) HD-DVD is, er, was the less restrictive format (no mandatory AACS, or Region Coding); it was also technically sounder, Blu-Ray had some major tech problems (the need for a protective shield, the whole BD+ fiasco; some first generation players can no longer play newer discs, quality problems with the PS3). So there were good reasons for going HD-DVD. Twenty-five years ago a lot of people thought that Betamax would win. We all know it didn't. But it still has it's devotees. In fact, there are small companies still making blank beta tapes. In one sense, I suppose, Sony had this coming. How many format wars have they lost? Betamax and the Mini-disc were both major disasters. Disasters of Sony's own making it's true. Much like Apple with the Mac, Sony refused to license Beta to third-party manufacturers and the Mini-Disc (for which Sony created its own lossy codec, a codec Sony stopped supporting last yr) was a solution for a problem that didn't exist, another attempt to lock consumers into a proprietary format totally controlled by one company , call it the Steve Jobs Business Model (if one's tempted to say it could be called the Microsoft Model, remember that Microsoft's model is succeeding wildly). Interestingly enough, Mini-Disc has found a niche market: radio stations commonly use them.

Danke, Loco. Apursheateit.