Pain_Man

Hey, crule, they still cut your nuts off for counterfeiting over there? That used to be the penalty for counterfeiting and coin clipping. If you got caught it was YOU that got clipped. Coins are as worthless as the paper money, i.e. have no instrinsic value. Our pennies are zinc now because the price of copper makes them worth more than a cent! Nickels are made of copper because nickel's waaaay to expensive. Quarters are made out of silver-coated copper because the weight of silver's worth more than face value of the coin. Oddly enough, the Mint still issues solid silver dollars! As for Minty's basement....I shudder to think about what's down there. Probably a warp core. A gun mount from the Millennium Falcon and several hobbits chained to walls as slaves.

They periodically do a run of $2 bills. Because of their relative rarity, they are prized by collectors. I've had a number of the years but money, imo, is for spending. Not for looking at. When I working as a courier at a bank, somebody brought in a thousand dollar bill (all American currency printed since 1789 is legal tender--excepting only Confederate money--FOREVER) and cashed it. One of the tellers actually bought it. Just to have the silly thing. Thousand dollar bills are cool, sure. TO SPEND. Or save. But just to look at? Please! It's loses value by the year. So, as a collector's item, it's a dumb move. Speaking of coins, back in 1999 or 2000, they tried a $1 coin. It didn't last long. I haven't seen any in several years. Americans, for whatever reason, don't like coins. When I was in France as an exchange student, at the end of my visit I had more 10 franc coins than I knew what to do with. Carrying them around is a pain in the ass. So I sold them to my exchange "mother." Believe or not, you canNOT exchange coins at money exchange houses! Just bills. I find that odd. But I tried to do it at the Swiss border and, got non for a response.

Actually, once you've been handling cash for a while, you develop a feel for what is and what isn't a real bill. Bank tellers find nearly all counterfeit bills by touch. And while its easier to counterfeit than some other nations, it's not as simple as using a laserjet printer (which has been tried by certain bubbleheads). First, the money's not printed on paper, but a mixture of cotton and linen. The ink is also of a very special kind. It's also moved in heavily guarded convoys with as much security as nuclear warheads. While a counterfeit bill might be successfully passed at a liquor store or a fast food joint, it will almost certainly be caught by a bank. And, finallly, most counterfeit money is used in illegal transactions, e.g. buying dope or guns, etc. Not too many counterfeiters are good enough to walk into a bank with $9000 of phoney twenties and succeed in getting real hundreds or fifties for them. And counterfeiters also tend to be stupid, even good ones. E.g. creating fake bills that bear the same serial numbers, putting the wrong background on the bill. Besides, counterfeiters almost always go for the big bills--which are most watched for--rather than the smaller denominations which aren't. I bought gas with a $50 bill one time and the guy wrote my license plate number on the bill (!). I'm sure it won't be that long before they figure out how to put tiny chips in bills--just like you can implanted in your dog.

In a typically stupid move of the Carter Administration, the Shah of Iran was allowed to buy the 20 ton-per sq. inch presses we use to print our money. The presses are unique and have never before or after been sold to another government. When the Murderin' Mullah's overthrew the democratic revolution that toppled the Shah they found themselves possessed of the means of creating undetectable counterfeit American currency. So these bubbleheads decide they are going to destroy our economy by printing hundred dollar bills by the ton. Which they proceeded to do. The fake bills were so good that the Treasury Dept could NOT tell the difference! They just left them in circulation (since the dollar is the world currency, it's not surprising that 2/3rds of our currency is outside the US) since they couldn't be told from the genuine article. This farcical attempt by the boneheads in Tehran finally prodded Congress into ordering the Treasury Department to do something about our ridiculously easy to counterfeit money. Which they did. Ten years after the fact. So now our bills sport some of the features that Canadian and European, among others, have long had: water marks, color as well as some high-tech stuff. The bills still aren't as counterfeit proof as they should be, but they are a lot better than the previous ones.

Minty's not bringing any gov't into it. You do (or did) have a coin called the "Looney" because there's loon stamped on the obverse. My grandmother brought me one after a trip to Vancouver. Nice coin.

, Mike Meyers is on our $50. An improvement over the psychedlic colored bills with Bess II on them.

The speeds you got on your 111D are almost identical to the speeds I get on my 110D Pioneer for DLs. Set at 8x, it averages 6.01, 6.02, with peaks about 8.1, 8.2. The scans you put up for the burn at 6x looks very much like the scans I get for disks burnt in the 110D at 8x. Basically, in the scans I've done, 16x with single layers and 8x with DLs rarely get anywhere near their supposed maximums. With the 16xers I average around 10ish and with the 8x on the DLs, as I've said, its a little above 6. For whatever reason, reaching those manufacturer rated "maximums" just doesn't happen. The speed difference between 8x and 16x single layers (both formats) is 60 to 90 seconds in favor of the latter. So, in my opinion, it really isn't worth spending extra money to buy 16x media even Taiyo 16x. As both Grain and I have observed, we get better scans when we slow the max down to 8x or 12x. And with the Pioneer and the Plex the 8x media should burn at 12x*--so you're going to achieve about the same average burn time/speed as with the 16x media (again, both formats). Plus, to reiterate, for whatever reason, the scans look better when the speed is set to the lower numbers. *That's for Taiyos. (BTW: As I'm sure you know, the Plex comes with its own extensive set of testing tools. I've run comparative scans with Nero's CD/DVD Speed tool and there's quite a bit of difference between its scans and DIP's.)

The Deluxe Naked Hooker Edition? What version number would that be... Probably have to go to E-bay for one of those and I'm sure the price has tripled or something.

I would have absolutely agreed even ten years ago. But Shatner's 75 and I think Nimoy's even older. It would be a loooong stretch for septugenarians to save the Universe for the seventh time on the big screen. Personally, I'd prefer a Voyager movie. Any excuse to put Jeri Ryan back in her "Seven" suit! But if it can be done well then I'd go see it. Personally, I think they need to bring Nick Meyer in to either write or co-write the script; at least work on the screen story. He is the man that saved the "franchise." Does anyone really think there would have been eight more movies and four more TV series if Wrath of Khan hadn't been a roaring success? (BTW: this brings up a long-standing gripe of mine. Why in the name of Mt. Seleya didn't they include "Space Seed" in the "Director's Cut" of Wrath of Khan? Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven includes a B/W episode of "Maverick" where he's a guest star! And Paramount couldn't slip "Space Seed" onto Disc 2 of the set? Instead we get hours of worthless 23 yr old interviews and newer ones with Shatner w/o makeup and very much looking his 70+ yrs?? OK, bitching over.)

Here be a fuller story... "Trek" Rediscovered by "Lost" Creator

I accept and match you one Romulan ale.

You guys have a $20 bill?

Remember that show "America's Dumbest Criminals"? How 'bout "America's Dumbest Victims"? Can you believe this shit? Phony doctor gives free breast exams MIAMI (Reuters) - A 76-year-old man claiming to be a doctor went door-to-door in a Florida neighborhood offering free breast exams, and was charged with sexually assaulting two women who accepted the offer, police said on Thursday. ADVERTISEMENT One woman became suspicious after the man asked her to remove all her clothes and began conducting a purported genital exam without donning rubber gloves, investigators said. The woman then phoned the Broward County Sheriff's Office and the suspect fled. He was arrested at another woman's apartment in the same Lauderdale Lakes neighborhood on Wednesday, a sheriff's spokesman said. The white-haired suspect, Philip Winikoff, carried a black bag and claimed to be visiting on behalf of a local hospital. "He told the woman that he was in the neighborhood offering free breast exams," sheriff's spokesman Hugh Graf said in a statement. At least two women, both in their 30s, let him into their homes and he fondled and sexually assaulted them, the investigators said. Winikoff was not a doctor, Graf said. He worked as a shuttle driver for an auto dealership.

Oh to have bought Rockstar stock when it first went public!!!! Talk about sweet P&L statements!

Aren't those things like $200? Besides, you bought it, so he don't have much of a say, does he? GTA III is the only one I have. Got it at Wal-Mart ( (!) ) for $10US. I love it. Great way to blow off steam. I love that mode where you can go Postal and just start slaughtering civilians, cops, blowing up cars. (It's most fun when you use the cheat which gives you a tank.) Speaking of outrageous pricing, I saw on a website, the X-box 360 going for $600. Granted it was one site and it was some kind of "deluxe kit" or something. But still. Something's a little goofy when you can buy a full-fledged computer for less than a dedicated gaming machine.

Which is why it rocks. No legacy crap mucking up the works. Besides, you have to pay to ask Lightning dumb questions. I've got my receipts. Where're yours?

Well at least 30+ people looked... Besides, the really important people talk to me.

I just wish someone would pop in with a post and say, "Hey Pain_Man do you have XYZ installed? I did too and that's what keeps Qsuite from launching." So far, no luck. Besides, benefitting from your wisdom and from Grain, I've decided that burning slower produces better results. The scans seem to be bearing that out. Watching the videos, on the other hand, I can't see any difference between video burned at 16 and that burned at 8. The big difference, which I just watched yersterday was between media. I burned a copy of Uncle Jean Luc's 8th birthday onto a TY 16x (it had been on a CMC 4x) and the difference in video quality was quite striking. Ahh, Uncle Jean Luc, how we miss him so.

The Registry's like women: it don't forget nothing. Looking around I find keys from "uninstalled" programs all over the place.

I'm already ahead of you! Take me to your favorite pub. I want Liffey water straight from the tap!

I will NOT be out mental'd by a guy from the wrong side of the Mississippi!

I thought Germans were into monkies, guys in leather shorts and Anglo-Saxon bashing. Got their undies all in a knot when y'all put up a statue to Air Marshall Arthur "Bomber" Harris. (Not the inventor but an enthusiastic practioner of "area" or "carpet" bombing...of German cities.) Shoulda put a statue up to Spaatz while you were at it.

I wondered why that proctologist was wearing a cop's uniform and had "Macho Man" on track repeat on his stereo.

How wude! All he tried to do was pass along some smilies, and you have to go and tell him to bugger off? This means bugger off? Forgive my Yankee ignorance. We colonials just aren't as sophisticated as those who stayed behind in the Motherland.

If your room's filling up with "acrid, choking smoke" you got hosed, homes. It should be filling up with the sweet smell of the Heavenly Herb...