Pain_Man

I wanted an Amiga but the maternal verdict was: NO! Before that, I wanted a Mac. Same verdict. Her employer was using PCs so we had to have a PC because she might have to do work at home. Funny, she never did do any work at home in those days. Without getting into a debate about the relative merits of the various platforms, she ultimately chose the right one by buying a PC. Having expert Mac, let alone Amiga, skills wouldn't be worth much. There are a few industries where Mac still rules. I believe there are some video engineers who may still use Amigas, but they would be a tiny minority. (Didn't the "Toast" program originate on the Amiga?)

<wistful, good old days mode on> I remember buying the old 5 1/4"floppies for 5 bucks each and my first CD-ROM was a single-speed Amiga A570 (which I still have around here somewhere) that cost me just under a grand. Hardware is ridiculously cheap these days by comparison. <wistful, old fart mode off> Exactly! My first PC, bought in '86, was an XT clone and cost $1200 (and came with a 20MB hdd). That $1200 is easily more $3000 in 2006 money. Hardware's not only ridiculously cheap, it's dirt cheap even buy comparison with ten years ago--when RAM cost $1US a MB. Nine years ago I bought a Pentium 200 MMX with 64MB EDO RAM, a 2MB graphics card and 20x CDROM with some bad ass speakers for $2700. In '03 I bought a VAIO that was light years beyond that Pentium 200 machine in every way. It's cost? Ironically: $1200. Then, 'bout '99, the bottom dropped out of hardware prices and they became truly commoditized.

Yes, crule must be highly praised for all his hard work testing various media. I've drawn water from that well myself. Serves as good "templates" against which to measure one's own media's performance.

Might I ask, Oh, Great Fettler of the Registry Keys, what exactly are you trying to do? Ah, I feel much better. Seamus be unclear as to minty's aim as well.

If I sound like a non-progamming computer peasant, so be it. I admit, this is so much Programmese to me. On the other hand, when I did tech support for Dell, there were people who couldn't find their C: partition. Ignorance, like most everything else, is relative. Frankly, if I boot up or type in my password and the desktop comes up, I say a silent prayer to the PC Gods and go with it. The more I learn about programming, the more I'm glad I chose to pursue graduate work in sex, drugs and rock n' roll. But exactly what are you trying to accomplish here, minty?

You see why I had to take his space fleet away from him? (!) I admit I don't really know what mon cher ami is talking about. Do you mean the appearance of XP?

Souce: TV Guide J.J. Abrams Beams Up More Star Trek The Star Trek franchise is being given new life by the Genesis experiment Lost cocreator J.J. Abrams, the man behind this summer's Mission: Impossible III, Variety reports. The as-yet-untitled feature, slated for a fall 2008 release, will focus on the early adventures of James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, including their first meeting at Starfleet Academy; Abrams will direct as well as help write and produce the pic. Is anyone else getting goose bumps, or am I just a big ol' Star Trek geek? Seriously, no one's Kirk Halloween costume could ever compare to mine.

I admit that due to my relative ignorance of the labrythne that is the Registry I don't muck about with it too much. However, I looked into the DVDInfoPro folder under HKEY_CURRENT_USER and did not find this strangeness. Maybe it was done specially for you, minty?

Your smiley has a cop's hat on. Does that mean I'm going to banished to Village People Land?

Am I the only that finds that a little redundant and lot a waste of time? Apparently.

NO ONE found this sufficiently interesting to comment upon? Or are we all just so oversatured with DRM bullshit, we're numb to it? Either that, or I'm getting boring in my old age.

It'll burn 8x Yuden000T02's at 12x. (The Plextor 716A would burn them @16x.) The only other 8x'ers I have are Sonys and it will only burn them at 8x (the Pioneer 110D burns them at 12x). According to the information on their website the "Solid State" technology is supposed to function like Plextor's AUTOSTRATEGY and figure out the best burning speed for media not already in the FW to burn at speed y. However, if this is a function of the Qsuite software, then I'm SOL because it won't work. Oh well. I'm tired of screwing with it. As long as I get my card credited with the refunds from Plextor's online vendor, I'll be happy. Messing with DVD burners wore me out. Like I said, I'm just going to wait until I buy a new machine in Q4 of this year and then buy another Plextor. But I'll probably always have a Pioneer in one of the slots. They are extremely reliable (KOW).

You wish to anger the God Emperor too? There's always room for one more against my brick wall.

Looks like one of those goofy ass "Accent" fonts. I have 1200 fonts on my machine (1000 of them courtesy of WordPerfect 10) and about ten of them are called Accent and they are all incomprehensible symbols...that look like corn's.

I did download this from the URL for my 1655 (url courtesy of Chewie). I also found it on the American BenQ website. It will not flash my drive. On the other hand, while the Qsuite software will install, it won't launch either. I just reinstalled a full C: partition image using True Image and Qsuite still won't function. My guess is that some other software I've got on my machine has a conflict with it. But what? There's nothing on the BenQ site (admittedly not very helpful with a sparse knowledge base and illiterate TS) regarding this. I doubt I am the only person with this problem. Anyone else having issues with either upgrading the firmware or the Qsuite sftw, drop me a PM. Thanx. It's a great drive. Very solid. Unfortunately, I can only burn DLs at 2.4x but that's not that much of a big deal. My Pioneer 110D burns them at 8x (avg a li'l over 6) and burns them well. For everything thing else, the DW1655 is excellent.

Women just don't understand the, ah, gravity of contemplating laser sharpened surgical steel slicing into a nut satchel. If sterilizing them involved potential breast atrophy they'd be a lot more sympathetic. Besides, what if I'm seduced by the heiress to a multi-billion dollar fortune who wants to sweep me away to a tropical paradise and produce half a dozen kids? I have to keep my options open. Billionairesses proposition me all the time. I'm just waiting for the right one to come along so I can ditch my family and live in sybaritic luxury until I die of pleasure. Hey, a guy's got to have a dream, doesn't he? Of course, that just about guarantees the proverbial night on the couch.

For my edification, to further my aspiration to join the vaunted ranks of the Beta Team (I know I'm not but I can dream, can't I? Plus lightning seemed to think I already was a BT member )... What exactly's meant by a "spike", aside from the literal meaning of course.

she was nice for a girl with name like a facial cream--Niva. But giggly. Giggly's not really a prime quality I'm looking for in an L1 TSR. (Maybe if I'm flirting...) The drive works tits. The Verbatim it burned at 2.4x works/looks great. In fact, to top it off, it was a screw up. I had intended to copy Aunt Narni's funeral and instead copied Uncle Jean Luc's 98th birthday. Ain't that a bitch? I was in a hurry and forgot that IB likes to default to the last image burnt. There's a $2 mistake. Good thing Uncle Jean Luc's almost completely deaf and can only remember French (he was a Captain in the French Marines in WWI). I also burned a Johnny Mercer album to a CDRW (approx 100MB of MP3s) and it came out perfectly, on a CDRW that's been used many, many times. It burns my 6x -RWs excellently. Since I'm going to buy a new PC in August, I'm going to keep the BenQ. Aside from the slow burning speed of DLs (and since the Pioneer more than makes up for that--and you really wouldn't want to burn two DLs simultaneously outside a RAID would you?), it's a solid drive. Plus, I'm tired of screwing with optical drives, messing with the VAIO case--a pain in the tuchus--having to ship things back, catch the UPS girl to refuse deliveries. Hell I still have to ship the defective Plex back to Plextor's online vendor. Hopefully, by August, Plextor will have worked out the bugs in the 760 and I'll be buying a 760SA. Maybe by August there'll be burners that can handle the DL RWs that DVDInfoPro has a listing for. That'd be nice.

...work around, as the article points out. Doesn't matter if it becomes "supremely difficult" to free music or other "content" from the shackles of Rights Destruction Technology (euphemistically called "DRM" or "copy protection"). excerpt from cdfreak's analysis: I cannot see any hacker trying to get around DRM by intercepting the physical patch between a decryption chip and the CPU, particularly for audio where a good sound card would be much more straight forward for capturing the analogue audio fed out from the PC or portable audio device, not to mention being straight forward enough for anyone with the ability to record audio to perform. That is, anyone with HANDS! No one's going around the mountain to piss next door trying to tap into this "integration." Somebody'll figure out a software work-around or we'll just be running out patch cables to recording devices. Sure, we'll lose a little sound quality (I have especially acute hearing so I'll probably notice more than the average person; the average person will barely notice it. It just throws us back to the day of recording from LPs to cassettes. The minor loss of quality didn't bother us then. As the article says, if its the only way to preserve our rights, we'll just live with it again, as we did in the 80s). IBM unveils integrated cpu encryption for tight security/drm Original Wired article.... Not quoted in cdfreaks article... Bruce Schneier, founder of Counterpane Internet Security, said more fully integrating encryption and processing would likely improve a machine's performance. But he said it was "just stupid" to claim that hackers would otherwise target the transmission between a computer processor and a separate encryption engine. Far more likely, he said, is for someone to try to steal data when it was unencrypted ? such as when it appeared in plain text on a computer screen. "Security is a chain and it's as strong as its weakest link," he said. "They're talking about taking a very strong link and making it a little bit stronger, at best. Maybe."

Danke. I'll check it out.

She wasn't a tech. In fact she said, "Our techs tell us..." Jesus.

No respect for the God Emperor of the Universe . THIS is why you must DIE!

The little woman's argument is that "it's major surgery for me." My argument is, if the gyno's been on a three day coke binge and screws up you don't end up eunuch'd. If the urologist has been on a three day coke binge and screws up, I'm singing soprano and playing sad fucking celibate harmonica. She still doesn't buy it. So one of these days, I guess I'll be placing the ultimate trust in someone: putting my nuts in their hands--literally. Personally, I prefer the metaphor. But metaphors don't stop babies. My old man had the snip after my little brother was born. Guess he figured four kids was enough. One of my brothers died shortly after birth. Years before I was born. Something I didn't hear about until I was about 30. 'Bout then, the old man got confessional. Suddenly announced to the family he'd been drafted by the Yankees out of high school. Went to one of their minor league teams and got cut after six weeks. (The equivalent, I suppose, for soccer--don't even get me started on "cricket," the name alone is enough to cause paroxysms of giggles--would be starting at Manchester United, getting cut and not getting a chance to improve one's game at other franchises.) His girlfriend--not my Mom--lied about being pregnant. In 1961, you didn't run off on a pregnant girlfriend. You married her. Which he did. By the time he discovered the lie, she was pregnant with my half-brother. So he never had a chance to improve with teams of a lesser caliber. To think I didn't find out my Dad could have been playing with the Mick, Marris, Cofax, Drysdale, Hank Aaron. I realize these names probably don't mean jack to you Brits. But trust me, they are the legends of "sport" (as you call it). Now we know where my brother got the ability to throw 90mph (145kph) fastballs at age 11. At the risk of straining the "Special Relationship" there just isn't anybody in soccer to compare to the Mick or Henry Aaron (751 HR with NO steroids? The awesome nature of that achievement eclipes every other record in any other sport, period). Charlie Hussle (aka Pete Rose)'s 4000+ hits comes close (I was priveleged enough to see him hit his 3000th hit in person).

Couple of years you're probably safe. But you've got to, ah, empty the vesicles what 50 times before you're "safe." My uncle didn't wait long enough. The result? My 14 year old nephew.

Hah! The Venusians were poufters. Three Anti-Matter BFBs and they're history. My starfleet reigns supreme. And you have already outlived your usefulness even before the Conquest. You'll soon see how I punish disloyalty ...no matter how far you flee or to what shithole system on the Outer Rim, you are DOOMED. HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Of course, if you surrender Salma Hayek I might let you off with just solitary with Jar Jar Binks for eternity. Decide, as you cower #39;( in fear. Otherwise, you'll be from the sky in that 20 yr old junker the Venusians sold you for five times the market price.