Pain_Man

Count Taxula as in Count Dracula. Because, despite his promises, it was clear that everyone's taxes would go up and not just the evil , greedy, dastardly, thieving bastard richies. Under William Jefferson Blythe Clinton $30K a year became "rich." algore as in Igor. And, just as Rush (and I) predicted, Slick Willy raised taxes on everyone. Don't trouble yourself with our country's politics. Our politics suck. Our politicians suck harder (on our wallets!!). You don't want to wade into that mire. The joke was intended for Americans. Sometimes I forget just how many Brits, Aussies and others are members of our li'l group here. After all, posts have no accent. And the Net tends to smooth out national differences in orthography.

You know what they do in the US Navy (don't know about others) to the guys the first time they cross the equator? Smear them with crank case oil, every kind of engine grease and other disgusting fluids imaginable. My grandfather went through it in the mid-Thirties and, from what I'm told, it still goes on today (tho' I don't know if women have to endure it. (Obviously, there were no women onboard naval vessels 70 years ago. Yeah, Gramps'll be 91 this year. Was in Dubya Dubya eye-eye and Korea too. Though he only saw action in the latter war. He reached the highest enlisted rank. Since he retired in '57 and Congress didn't introduce E-8 & E-9--Senior Chief and Master Chief of the Navy, respectively--until '59, E-7 was as far as he could go.) There was ritual at aeronautical plant in my home town. When a guy got married, the rest of his work crew would grab him, pants him, and spray paint his nuts blue. This came from an unimpeachable source. (It's a good thing to have women around.)

One would certainly hope so. 'Specially if the beer's Steinlager.

As I wrote, it's from a dictionary of Aussie Slang. To wit: And actually the, ah, "game", according to wikipedia, originated in British boy's schools. So if you want to disbelieve anyone, disbelieve wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soggy_biscuit Given some of the shit that goes on at American fraternities, and used to go on at the military academies this is not all unbelievable. There's a similar activity here in the US (only?) called a "Circle Jerk." If ya needs it explained to ya, ya probably shouldn't be on the 'Net without Mommy's permission. Just because one hasn't heard of something does not mean it does not exist. See last quote in my signature for further clarification.

I just bought a NEC AD-7170A. Despite being marketed under NEC's rubric, it's actually made by a company jointly owned/run by Sony and NEC. It's called an "Optiarc"; I knew none of this until I got it installed--talk about OEM, it not only came with just the drive, but with no box, just in an open plastic bag, wrapped in bubble wrap and cushioned by bio-peanuts. And yes it does have 12x DVD-RAM capability (what the chipset is, I couldn't say). I just bought my first batch of 2x-3x Panasonic discs. (What a purty data surface they have...) The website has NO info about any of the drives they make. NO download page for firmware or anything else. Just pictures of the drive. And I had to Google to find the English page. Everst's link was only to the Japanese site. While my Plextor 760A can't run any quality tests (either DIPs or Nero CD-DVD Speed), the 7170A can run some of Nero CD-DVD's tests. Unfortunately, the jitter test isn't one of them. I haven't had a chance to burn a DVD yet, so I don't have any IB/DIP burn graphs. (I just a few days ago replaced a malfunctioning Samsung drive with this one.) The Plextor, of course, can run jitter tests with it's own software package, Plextools. But the Optiarc, as I said, literally came with nothing. I consider myself lucky it had a jumper. So unfortunately, I can't give you jitter readings from the NEC drive.

First you have to follow American politics, which as Aussie, you probably don't. Not that I'm finding fault, I don't follow Aussie politics. Second, you need to have been a Rush listener (and I don't mean the band) during the '92 election. He did a parody political commerical about Clinton. "...Count Taxula and his [sidekick], algore!" Ever since then, Conservatives always refer to Al Gore as algore. My wife said that when the project manager told her this he actually said "algore" instead of "Al Gore." (At least this was taken as a joke. That's a good sign. )

Thanks, Crule, but 28 quid is $54.63 American--without shipping. (As of yesterday, the exchange rate is 1 GBP = 1.951 USD). You can do better than that here, my compatriots. Meritline has an EXCELLENT deal. $38.99 + FREE shipping for qty 20 (go here) to order Supermediastore often has excellent deals. They're not matching Mertiline this week, but they often do. Check them here... Also, check their Verbatim Page, here Both sites also have good deals on Taiyos (if only they made DLs!).

I've noticed that if you put an ellipsis inside quotation marks, that's when the server seems to choke... As you can see, just using an ellipsis, doesn't make the server do the 404 dance...

Ahhh!!!! Whew, saved myself. Oh no. I didn't catch 616. Some versions of the New Testament say the Mark of the Beast is 616, not 666. I'm doomed again!!!!

I'm too lazy to turn everything into ISOs for IB. So I still keep CopytoDVD and Nero around. Even tho I only use about 1/100th of its functionality. Though since I know have a DVD-RAM burner, it's the prog I have that'll burn DVD-RAMs, so it's in the "must have" category again for that reason. Fortunately, I know someone and he/she got me on the comp list. >>>As my parents always say, "Who you know is more important than what you know."<<< It's AAC encoder is a good one, though. dbPowerAMP uses it to encode aac files. I tried InCD5 once, but, really what's the point with jump drives, et al? Besides, for ripping and burning CDDAs, and converting wav files into ogg, MP3s (L.A.M.E. only!), AAC-M4As, etc; & it's support for CD-Text is outstanding; there is absolutely NO substitue for Easy CDDA Extractor (ver. 10.0.4b1 just came out, btw). It's impossible to exhaust the number of good things to say about this prog. It's worth every penny.[/b] (Unfortunately, it can't be freeware because of Frauenhofer and Advanced Audio whatsis...)

From the Babylon dictionary Australian Slang [by N.B. (author email: nathalie_w@yahoo.com)] Soggy Sao game in which a group of men simultaneously begin masturbating onto an Arnott's Sao biscuit, the last to ejaculate having to eat the biscuit To quote a certain member (no pun intended), is the last guy the winner or the loser? Man, either way... :&

Gotta run so I don't have time to properly edit and cut the length down. However, I think you should read this. They very way we live our lives is under attack by a tiny clique of determined activists who believe THEY know better than you do how YOU should live your life! And they are dead set on imposing their way of life on you. If that's not the very antithesis of democracy and freedom, what is? ______________________________________________________________ Speaking as one who's cause a big brouhahah (how d'ya spell that anyway?) lately, I think that's what's necessary is that everybody, me included, keeps their cool. Given how many highly intelligent, well-informed people that are in this club, I'd hate to lose the ability to discuss whatever. The funny thing was, I was going to put up my posts about these new smoking rules when I logged onto the Forum and saw that you'd beat me to the punch. In reality, there's no evidence that second-hand smoke causes all but a small number of people problems. My wife happens to be one of them. It cause her asthma problems as well as Upper Respiratory infections if she's in it too much. We really can't go to casinos (since we live outside of Vegas; 'bout 25 miles from the Strip) except to see shows (where smoking is almost always banned. And then we can't spend too much time inside the casino area without it causing her problems. The WHO (World Heath Organization) commissioned a study (about 10 yrs ago I think) in order to prove that second-hand smoke killed people. The scientists' conclusions were the exact opposite of what the anti-smoking nazis wanted (just to clarify: I quit smoking myself 12 years ago--barring the occasionally "fine" cigar--and I gave myself asthma in the process. I myself support restricting: keep it out of restaurants--excepting "stand up" bars, i.e. one's that serve no good, or the casinos [it's the state's lifeblood, gambling; 65% of casino profits come from 15% of gamblers and they tend, overwhelmingly, to be smokers, esp the foreign tourists]. Getting it out of the grocery stores. Yes, you actually can smoke in a grocery store in Nevada. Many of them have slot machines in them where, invariably, you'll find little old ladies, glued to a slot and chain-smoking cigs at the same time. I want to be able to go the store without having to deal with cigarette smoking. And without my wife and daughter--and myself--risking an asthma attack. In other words, I support common-sense smoking laws.] When I write "anti-smoking Nazis" I mean those people who want to basically crucify smokers on giant Marlboro cartons. People who make the wildest claims about second-hand smoke that are completely unsupported by science; the Clinton Admin's EPA actually phonnied up a study to "prove" second-hand smoke killed X amount of people. The study group came up, initially, with a very low number. Politically, that wasn't good enough, so the EPA's Administrator, a real tree-hugging hippy named Carol Browner pressued the study group to change the experiment's methodology to come up with a bigger number of people supposedly "killed" by second-hand smoke. Anyway, getting back to the WHO study. It ran so counter to what the heads the WHO wanted, that they buried the study. It would have remained buried, except that Rush Limbaugh got a copy of it and publicized it on his show. It showed that the number of deaths that could be related to second-hand smoke was 2,000 or less. Not the tens of thousands the anti-smoking Nazis wanted. Ultimately my point is two-fold. 1.) the anti-smoking groups have gotten way out of hand trying to regulate tobacco. Why not, as Rush says, just ban tobacco? If it's SOOO bad for people, if it's so deadly, why not ban it? Heroin, cocaine, PCP, in fact all the illegal drugs together kill 5000 people a year in the United States. Yet according to the dubious number we hear bruited about, smoking "kills" 500,000 people! The truth about that has been fuzzed over. In fact, the majority, the overwhelming majority of people who die from "smoking-related illnesses" are already past their life expectancy anyway; in other words, these people were past their expiration dates anyway! So their deaths are NOT premature. They would have, statistically speaking, died from something else, non "smoking-related" anyway. People my age (I'm 36) have a life expectancy of 75 years, I think. My daughter's above 80. The people dying from "smoking related-illness" are most from the World War II and Silent generation (that is, people who's life expectancy is in the late 60s). So, if someone born in 1930 dies from lung cancer is not a premature death! 2.) And, imo, more important Is the mentality of the anti-smoking nazis. The Nanny-Staters. The people who literally think THEY know how to live YOUR life better than you do! Just like Lenin or Stalin, they believe (quite falsely of course) that since they are "smarter" and "more educated" than John Q Public, they have the "right" to regulate every aspect of our lives. I smoked for about five years (17-24; I quit off and on during the period). I have asthma now as a result. THIS IS MY FAULT. I did something dumb, something deleterious to my health, so I have to pay the price, both in pain and suffering from asthma attacks as well as extremely high insurance policies. I.e.: that bureaucrats in windowless rooms in DC (or some state capital) can make better decisions for you that you can. Is that not the very essence of tyranny? Of government run wildly out of control? In a certain country (I'm not going to say which because it's irrelevant which one it is), when you're prescribed a med by your doctor, it's NOT the doctor who decides what you're going to get. It's some bureaucrat in this country's capital. He's going to decide you should have drug ABC because it's cheaper for the national health plan instead of a newer drug, XYZ, which, while more expensive, is actually cheaper over the long-hall because it's more effective, therefore requiring less of it to be taken for a shorter period of time and has fewer side-effects than ABC. So instead of your doctor, who's examined you, looked you in the eye and made a correct medical decision, you have a bureaucrat who's NOT an MD deciding matters of life and death (and who is totally immune from any responsibility, unlike your doctor, if the drug he orders you to take kills you or injures you). and that's exactly what's happening in the United States and what's been happening in other "industrialized" nations for a long time. In the US we have successfully fought a lot of this off. But the Nannystate Crowd are very determined. So they use bogus science, false media reports, and, most importantly, the courts to impose their agenda on our lives WITHOUT our having a say so (in supposedly democratic countries!). This should scare the hell out of everyone, Liberal, Conservative, whatever your political beliefs are. Who do we want making decisions about our lives? Even if we decide to do something stupid? And an essential component of freedom is the right to do something DUMB. We've even got SERIOUS proposals that smokers be denied medical treatment before other people because they've allegedly "inflicted" their illness "on themselves." Despite the fact they were using a perfectly legal product. But it won't stop there. Next will come people who are overweight. People whose cholesterol is too high. People who participate in dangerous sports. People who drink alcohol. That's why we have to stop these people. Their ultimate goal is a totalitarian state that dictates what foods we can eat (look at NYC banning "trans-fat" foods in restraurants! How long before food makers are next? How long before bureaucrats are approving menus, striking off fettucini or steak and substituting spinach noodles and tofu? I may sound hyperbolic, but do Google searches on any of these things I've mentioned and you'll find exactly what I'm talking about.

I must to disagree with esteemed colleague here. I've been using both Sony DVDRs and CDRs and have had only a few coasters (and those have been CDRs). In fact, Sony 8x DVD+Rs (with a purple label) are actually Taiyo Yudens--the absolute best on the market (and the inventers of the CDR). Sony's yellow label -R 8x'ers have also proven to be quite good in my experience. The Sony item number: 25DPR47LS3 These are Yuden000-T02-00s. Muy bitchin' And, with a 96% success rate after 355,000+ burns, here's the proof of how good they are:

When you buy Memorex-badged Ritek 8x DVD+RWs! I've got ten and they are WORTHLESS!!! Seriously, the best way, if unsure, is to read the package. The logos are unhelpful. If it's an RW, it'll say something like, "Can be rewritten 1000 times." (or 100,000 in the case of DVD-RAMs). And if anyone finds any 12x RAM discs for sale in the US, PLEASE let me know!!!

It just gets sillier and sillier. =)) That is, it would be silly if it weren't actually happening... The Nanny-staters are at it again in both Maine and Connecticut. Smoking in Car with Kid Is Murder CT lawmaker wants to ban smoking in cars How long is it before, they're busting down the doors to make sure we're not "abusing" our children or "killing" ourselves? Our ancestors, who fought, bled and died for freedom in this country would be turning over in their graves if they knew how easily their descendents are surrendering the freedoms their sacrifices paid for...

algore is going to screw up something my wife's company has been working on for nearly ten years. The Las Vegas Desert Springs Preserve--a flagship project in the Sustainability movement. He's been hired as keynote speaker for the ceremony officially completing the ceremony. When the company's project manager told my wife this, he was absolutely green from the shock. :& This is not cool. While I was planning to attend it, obviously now, I cannot. How, in good, conscience, can I be in the same room as algore? The mere thought has my lunch lurching. Oh, the horror, the horror! Well, it could have been worse. It could have been Count Taxula himself rather than algore. (And if you don't get that this is a joke...you're probably not an American. )

EAC did the oddest thing to my Benq 1650. After I installed it, the drive would no longer burn Sony-made CDRs. Every other brand, no problem. But it hashed every Sony CDR I tried...even after I uninstalled EAC. (Which singularly failed to live up to its self-hype, in my experience anyway.

Vso-software's CopytoDVD (an excellent example of non-bloatware). Vso-Software site (One warning: you have to go into settings and disable multi-session dvd writing on the Multi-Session tab; for some reason it's enabled by default...) Nero 7 (an excellent example of bloatware). But it can burn so many thing so many different ways that even if some of its apps no longer work as well as they used to, it's still very, very necessary. Intervideo's DVDCopy 5 (a little basic for this crowd, but it's an excellent coverter; I converted several WMV clips into an excellent looking DVD-Video that played on my set-top with no problems. Unfortunately, it's getting bloatier; they've added a virtual drive module amongst other things...) For those with Plextor drives, Plextools is an excellent package (tho' be careful with v. 2.35; for the first time ever, Plextools hashed my C: drive & I had to reinstall from backup). It has the killer ability to burn CDR with up to 298MB more, tho' I've never been able to burn more than 224MB, than the CDR standard. The disks work in my PC drives, as well as my set-top DVD drives and my Sony MP3 Discman. It also supports CD-Text burning and as well as a suite of scanning tools. For Music CDs, imo, there's really only ONE choice Easy CDDA Extractor web site It's been rightly called "the Swiss Army Knife of Digital Audio." The only formats it lacks are rare or weird ones like TTA or Shorten (which it did, at one point, support). There are two versions, the "free" and the payware. The price, for what you get, is quite reasonable, especially when you're as much of an audiophile as I am. It rips CDDAs (this is COMPLETELY legal in the US). It burns CDDAs flawlessly (the scans are excellent). It converts, quickly, from one format to another. And it now burns CD-ROMs so that one can create MP3 or WMA (or whatever you want) discs. In fact after three years of use I came across, a few days ago, the first disc that it couldn't properly rip but that another app could (dmcAudio Power Input, part of the dbAMP Converter package; this package supports CD-Text which, for example, Winamp does not, as well as being able to rip and burn Apple's Lossless format). And, of course, ImgBurn where would I be without that??!?! >>>Pls note that NONE of these apps violate the DMCA.<<<

We want God to come and save us. But [H]e won't. God doesn't stop levees from failing. [H]e doesn't stay the force of tsumanis. [H]e doesn't stop planes from [being flown] into buildings. Deus ex machina is overrated. --Walter Rant, 9 SEP 2005 Heaven helps the man who helps himself. He also helps those who stand and wait. Nice to know we have options.

I'm looking around the various sites here in the US of A and there don't seem to be any 12x'ers on sale here either. Another case of our Japanese brothers-in-geekdom keeping the "good stuff" to themselves?

Yah, if memory serves, the father and one of the sons has gone to the pokey and are surving substantial sentences for, basically, draining the company accounts. Like South American dictators in the 60s & 70s, they simply transfered company money to personal accounts (as if no one would notice!). Another brother, I believe, either copped a deal or was an "unindicted co-conspirator" or some shit like that. Since there were no stories, aka Bernie Ebber's wife, of the wives and children literally being turned out into the street, they must have done business legally for at least some of the time.

Looks like my bad typing strikes again! What I want to know is, what does is the increment that "x" stands for when talking about burning DVD-RAM discs? E.g.: CDR x=150KBs; CDDA x= 176KB/s; DVDR x= 1150; DVD-Video x= 1350KBs (tho' I admit I need to look up the number for DVDR's speed as opposed to video; like audio, it's also faster than "regular" data, tho' I don't know why).

You know, polo, I had forgotten about that. But it's true. He did strike a couple of people with golf balls; but that was post-presidential I believe. He later became friendly with Chase. He was one of the best collegiate football players of his generation. He helped lead lead the University of Michigan to two National Titles. He was offered contracts by the Packers and the Bears. But, in those days, football players made so little, that nearly all of them--even the star players--had a summer jobs (often inconstruction since in those days it was exclusively a summer pursuit since the concrete they had then wouldn't set in cold weather). So he chose law school, graduating at the top of his class. Good choice. Only boxers, in those days, made big bucks in sports. (Excluding, of course, the Bambino.) theres a few people still healing from being struck by golf balls he hit ,Chevy Chase used to lampoon him pretty good on SNL

Aren't the father and son founders in Federal prison for ripping the company off? Maybe they can't get to their laptops in the joint?

I just bought a Samsung SH-S183L burner that burns DVD-RAMs @12x. DVD-RAM writing wasn't my primary reason for buying it (SATA was more important). I have a couple of questions. Can the usual burning progs (Nero, CopytoDVD, etc) burn to these? In a related question, this drive, to my surprise, also supports Mt. Rainier which is, someone correct me if I'm wrong, a "packet-burning" function like InCD. Does one need special software to take advantage of this function? ________________________________________ I see that the maximum speed is 12x. What is the "x" stand for with DVD-RAMs? CD= 150KB/s (176KB/sec for CDDA); 1350KB/s for DVDs. I like the idea that they can be reburned 10,000 times. Unfortunately, I don't have a set-top that plays them, but I've read, in more than one place, that DVD-RAM was never intended for video but data (but, then again, what's video but a type of data?). BUT, I have this bad-ass new 22in 16x9 monitor that I can comfortably watch DVDs or TV on (as I write this, FoxNews is playing in the upper right hand corner). Still, I will probably mostly be using them for data. Fortunately, Panasonics are carried by Wal-Mart (even the 9.4Gigers). ___________________________________________________ One odd thing is that this drive is somewhat slow on the DVD side. Reading is rather slower than my Plextor 760A. And various progs like DIP and VSO Inspector show that it will only burn DVDs at 2.4x. (On the other hand, my IDE drive, the Plex 760A, is supposed to have a max DL burning speed of 10x and ImgBurn and every other prog, reports a 6x. So I'm wondering if it's something to do with a component for my new Gateway--still less than a month old? OTH, the Pioneer 110D was supposed to burn DLs @8x but it always averaged at 6x.) So I may return this Samsung and buy the Plextor 755SA (which also burns DVD-RAMs @12x). It's great to have a Plextor again!