Zixar

How did YOU get appointed to the position of THE person to whom we must all justify our thoughts? Rocky: Thanks for illustrating my first sentence with yet another ridiculous example of that bizarre distortion filter of yours. This has nothing to do with thoughts, Rocky. If you'd even bother to re-read what you quoted from me, the word doesn't even appear, nor is their any implied hint of such. It has everything to do with actions, notably your boorish behavior towards pretty much anyone who doesn't agree with you by now, but Pawtucket in particular. As for your assertion that I'm the sole arbiter of what's justifiable, that's just laughable. You want to turn this into a personal fight between the two us so that people will dismiss it as a "....ing match". Yet, if I got hit by a bus today, I'd wager you wouldn't even have time to celebrate before someone else here took you to task. The facts are clear, and they are not on your side, Rocky. -- You were banned from the Political Forums ENTIRELY because of your own actions, not anyone else's. -- You tried to circumvent that ban by posting a political article on the Open forum, which did not succeed. -- Only then did you start THIS thread, in which you made baseless accusations against the moderators, as well as against me, and indirectly against QamiQazi, as well. -- When Pawtucket informed you exactly "who took your thread" and returned access to it to you, you lost interest in it, but apparently not the sniping it looks like you were trolling for in the first place. What makes you think that you're above accountability? If not to me, then to the others on this site that you've either directly assaulted or directly offended by those attacks?

It must be awfully convenient to treat fact and context so malleably, Rocky. Even if any of that were actually true, exactly how would any of it justify what you did, though?

laleo & krysilis: Thanks. It's good to know that not everyone around here has a moral compass that is all-too-easily deflected by expedience.

There's an article in this week's Entertainment Weekly about how Jones' new album illustrates the shift in the music business in the MP3 Age. Among the points: Make a GOOD album, and people will BUY it. (Jones sold over 1 million copies the first week, which hasn't been done in over a year.)

Early reviews say that the new 5th season finally delivers on the promise of the first two. Oh, and Season 3 of The Shield starts Tuesday night on F/X...

Trefor: No matter how you may try to justify it, what you've done is just as bigoted and prejudiced as those who think all homosexuals are automatic pedophiles. Card is no idiot, and he's certainly not a mouthpiece for the LDS church. Neither is he a Republican (surprise!)

Geez, Radar, if you don't want to read them, then don't. Scroll on by. You're reading way too much into this.

I tried DVDShrink on Disc 1 of LOTR: Two Towers Extended, and it only took about an hour to downsample, including a DVD burn at 2x. The picture was a bit softer than the original, but unless you were specifically looking for it, you'd probably never notice. Nice freeware. Thanks, Andy!

Trefor: Attacking a man because of his religious beliefs? Are all homosexuals such paragons of tolerance? --> Garth: I notice that neither you nor Trefor actually refuted anything Card said. You built a nice straw man, but you haven't offered anything of substance for the contrary view.

Radar: They do tend to get a bit lengthy, I agree. Most should probably be linked using the "URL" button in the Instant UBBCode box instead of pasted verbatim. Still, while it isn't required to post supporting evidence, it does help, at times, to know where a particular piece of someone's position came from. If you'll look back a couple of years, you'll find that this was going on long before the QQ/Rocky/Zix conflict occurred, so please don't be so quick as to lay this at our feet. Want me to document that? ;)-->

excathedra: How about this one, then? If Wierwille were alive today, do you think he would at least owe you an apology for what he did to you? More to the point, how would you respond if someone basically told you "Ok, you've made your point about VPW, but I'm sure you were partly to blame, too, so shut up about him already"? The point is that there are things that should not be dismissed solely on the basis of the participants' personalities. I don't particularly like you, excathedra, but I don't think you're exaggerating or overstating your abuse by VPW, either. It's too late for you to get any sort of recompense for his deplorable behavior out of him, since he's long since dead. Rocky's still alive, still here, and still smugly unapologetic, the latter of which owes thanks in no small part to the panty-bunched "....ing match" clique. C'est la guerre. I think Pawtucket deserves better treatment than he's gotten here, and I'm amazed that that sentiment isn't apparently shared by many of this thread's posters. You don't know if Paw deserves an apology?

While we're posting long articles, here's a good one that hits the societal issues well... :)--> Orson Scott Card's take on Homosexual Marriage [This message was edited by Zixar on March 03, 2004 at 12:53.]

Vickles: Nice ideals, but I'll ask you the same question I asked of excathedra: Do you really believe that Pawtucket doesn't deserve an apology from Rocky?

From dictionary.com: -->

John: How long has it taken? If it's only taking about 20 minutes, then you lucked out on short movies. If it's taking a couple of hours, your software is downgrading the image to fit.

Trefor: Would you recognize an analogy if you saw one? ;)-->

Rocky: No, you have not got that straight. No one's intimidating you. I know full well you won't apologize to Pawtucket, and that's why I phrased that question the way I did. From everything in evidence here, it's apparent that it is simply, sadly, not in your nature. Excathedra: Do you really believe that Pawtucket doesn't deserve an apology from him?

That's not exactly true about the PS2, P-Mosh. My Playstation2 will read DVD+R and DVD-R, but not DVD-RW or DVD+RW. My old DVD player would only read DVD-R. Most burners nowadays are dual format (both + and -) so you can experiment with whatever media your other DVD players will digest and stick to burning on that.

P-Mosh: You want FireWire throughput, an external microphone jack, and s-video throughput. 3-chip recorders are the best, but there are some nice sub-$1000 1-chip models out there. Where you don't want to skimp is the editing software. Get a hold of Vegas 4 + DVD Architect. I like it better than Adobe Premiere 6.5.

Tom: Yes, if it will make you happy. You can even have the official motto of the office embroidered on it as well: It's dead, Tom. You grab the saddle, I'll start on the horseshoes...

Tom: You know, it's really hard to support your bid for GreaseSpot Official Horse Coroner™ if you yourself keep poking the carcass... ;)--> Just a friendly reminder, no pressure. Rick: Another time, another place, definitely. Thanks. Rocky: "I think it's particularly intriguing that so many people see fit to apologize to Zixar, as if they have done something wrong, just because he declares it to be so." I asked no one for an apology. It's simple common courtesy, Rocky. If you would exercise it yourself a bit more, none of this would keep happening. No one should have to dare you to do the right thing. Skiving off and sucking up to your next enabler in another thread isn't taking responsibility, it's just blatant self-service. Tell you what, if you issue a public apology to Pawtucket on this thread, there wouldn't be an awful lot left to say here, now would there?

Welcome to democracy, Mister P-Mosh!

DVDs are in MPEG-2 resolution, which is 720x576. A standard VHS tape is only about 320x240 resolution. You can tell a difference between the two if you put them side-by-side. I'm now so used to the higher resolution, even on a standard TV, that watching old tapes is kind of annoying now, like watching a program in black and white. That's also why I love MiniDV camcorders so much. They shoot 720x480, but without nearly so much compression as MPEG-2. You can digitally edit the footage, then downsample from DV to MPEG-2 and your home movies (can) look every bit as good as professional DVDs!

In some cases, you can fit a movie onto a plain old CD, if you downsample all the way down to MPEG-1 quality. But blank DVDs are cheap nowadays, so splitting a movie across two is no big deal.

Tom: So, now you're the one who gets to decide when a thread is no longer worth discussing? I must have missed that memo... Look, all I'm asking is that if you don't particularly want to discuss a thread anymore, then just stop reading that thread. Why perpetuate them by adding unrelated noise if you aren't going to add any more signal? That's like saying, "well, I don't want to discuss this anymore, but I don't want YOU to discuss it either, so I'll just post something silly!" Can you see where I'm coming from?