Zixar

Good article, Click-N. When I built my external DVD writer, I used a FireWire enclosure and it's really zippy. Never had any problem with drivers or compatibility. Nothing against USB 2, but with my MiniDV camcorder and the DVD writer, I'm very much a FireWire fan now. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the word of God..."

It sets at 05:46 am tomorrow. :)--> The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the word of God..."

laleo: Not quite voice activated, but near enough. Zixette has no problems operating our TiVo. If you don't have DirecTV yet, I'd highly recommend buying into both technologies at the same time. The DirecTiVo satellite receivers have two separate tuners so you can record two shows simultaneously while watching a third you've previously recorded. Plus, the monthly Tivo charge on DTV is only $5 for all Tivos in the house, while the monthly charge for standalone Tivos is $12.95 each. This really will change the way you watch tv forever. As far as screenwriting, I take it in fits and starts, although the market is hard to predict. The best advice I can give you is just write the story you'd want to go to the movies to see. Once it's done, start writing a different one while you shop the first around. If one genre is cooling off, another might be heating up. Think about what you haven't seen in a while--"Chicago" got the awards partly because there hadn't been a good musical in many years. You might hit it rich by writing a silly teen comedy WITHOUT a semen joke in it. Look at Animal House, Caddyshack, etc., the movies that all the baby boomers quote--there's nothing really that outrageous in them, yet they're still funny. Real life experiences can be a knockout, too. Big Fat Greek Wedding? Just one lady telling her family stories to the tune of $200 million. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the word of God..."

I do have to agree with P-Mosh on South Park. Beneath all the crude humor lies some biting social commentary that skewers the fanatics on BOTH sides of the aisle. The South Park theatrical film was one of the best anti-censorship statements of recent memory. Since kids are drawn to bathroom humor, you might as well teach them things with it. Like the idiocy of hate crime legislation, the dangers of mob mentality, the stupidity of political correctness, etc., etc. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the word of God..."

Tivo has a very friendly user interface. You don't even have to know what time the show comes on, just pick the title off a list and tell it to record it. You can even tell it to record every episode on any channel it comes on, and it's smart enough not to record the same show twice in a 30 day period unless you specifically tell it to. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Unfortunately, I-285 is bumper-to-bumper, but only at 8mph, not 80... Traffic is HORRIBLE. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Dot: I reposted the thread from the archive... ;)--> The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

As an Atlanta resident, I wish I could say that more than 10% of this is humorous exaggeration. Well, okay, 11% of it is humorous exaggeration... All right, all right! 10.5%. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

It is possible for two people to come up with the same conclusions and not have anything to do with each other. Newton and Leibniz both independently came up with calculus, for example. And, if VPW had otherwise demonstrated integrity, he might even be allowed the benefit of the doubt on whether or not he came up with Four Crucified without ever reading Bullinger's work on it. However, the plagiarism is pretty damning to any claims of VPW's integrity. If he had been honest, footnoted everything with proper credit, and claimed that he was merely the compiler of all this stuff and not the creator of it, we could cut him some slack in the matter. But this is not the case. The evidence is substantially against his claims of ownership or scholarship. The sad thing is that his vain, arrogant, prideful abuse of others' works casts a shadow over everything he taught--even those places where he might have actually divided the Word correctly. That wasn't just a crime against all of us, it was a smear on God. Gee f*cking thanks, "Doc". The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

"Vive la difference!" as the saying goes. The difference is what makes life interesting. No one wants to marry a clone of themselves. I think it's great that men are starting to get educated about women's needs. Now perhaps women will get the idea that men aren't makeover projects for them. Men need to learn that foreplay goes a long way. Women need to learn that men don't give the tiniest of damns about the drapes. Men need to learn that women love to talk about their day. Women need to learn that men generally try to forget their day. Men need to learn that women aren't turned on by the same things we are. Women need to learn that testosterone really is a behavior-altering substance, and not just a joke excuse for male behavior. In short, we aren't you, you aren't us. It isn't wrong to be you, it isn't wrong to be us. Vive la difference! The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Cabin 7 should be available for someone to reserve now... The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

John: In Microsoft's case, history has shown that early-adopters of their software rarely have good experiences with it. That being said, I can't speak too much about W2K3, since I no longer have access to the shovelware CDs Microsoft used to send out to their developer network. The rule of thumb in such cases is, only switch if the new version has a feature that solves a current problem for you. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it.) The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

It is one of my favorite quotable statistics, but the entire space program (1958-1969) that put those men on the Moon cost about the same as American women spent in one single year on cosmetics. Either that was the bargain of the century, or else we should all be digging in our back yards, hoping to strike Oil of Olay... As far as women go, well, I'm not sure how I can put this delicately. Suffice it to say that, in my admittedly-limited experience, there isn't all that much variation in the reproductive portions of different women's anatomy. Benjamin Franklin once said "All cats are gray in the dark," and the rumor has it that he was using the word "cats" as a substitute for another feline euphemism. Heinlein refined it to say "all women are the same height in bed," which isn't literally true, but still indicative of the same general observation. So, if, from the man's perspective, the actual act of copulation isn't affected all that much by female sexual physiology, the real reason for the packaged vanity of cosmetics is salesmanship, er, saleswomanship. Let's face it, milk is milk, gasoline is gasoline, and potatoes are pretty much potatoes. There has to be something that makes a particular brand stand out from the crowd in order for someone to select that one over all the rest. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Unfortunately, we just found out we can't go. I'll be cancelling the reservation for cabin 7 this weekend, or Monday if they aren't in the office on the weekend. Maybe next year. Y'all have fun without us... The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

We can bring a couple of cases of assorted sodas. Check-out time on Sunday is at 10am CDT, so I wouldn't count on the cabins' kitchens being available for an elaborate breakfast. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Plug N Play = absolutely necessary. UPnP = big f*cking security hole. The two really don't have much to do with each other except in name only. (Sort of like "Java" and "JavaScript") PnP is how your computer gets all the different pieces to talk nice to each other and not step on each other's lawns. This is a very good thing, which, if you'd been playing around with computers ten years ago, you would have prayed for. UPnP, on the other hand, is part of Bill Gates' idealistic plan to Windows-up your stereo, and your fridge, and your dog. The idea is that all these devices should be able to automatically talk to each other and scan each other's properties without user intervention so they can work better together. Anyone who can't see why that is a REALLY BAD IDEA, please shut off your computer and throw it out the window. Then, go rent the Terminator movies and "Colossus: The Forbin Project" to see why it only takes one maliciously-programmed machine to screw up the entire planet... :)--> Don't think it's so bad? What if that Blaster virus could have infected your printer, your DVD player, your fax machine, and your goldfish because all of them were busy happily sharing their Universal Plug-n-Play channels with each other in the background? And you just KNOW some zit-faced German teenager would do it just for the bragging rights amongst his Goth-dweeb friends. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

You can safely disable UPnP--and should--even if you do have network printers. Universal Plug-N-Play is a big open door to hackers and should not have been implemented this way. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Anyone have a tentative list of events for this shindig? Who's arriving Friday vs. Saturday? The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Well, Tennessee is fairly NEAR the East Coast... :D--> The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

It will be this good until the end of September, but if you keep following it, you'll be able to see it until it gets lost in the glare of the sun. Even at greatest separation, Mars is still as bright as a 1st-magnitude star. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

...then of course you'll need surround sound, too... :D--> The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Kathy: Here's 2 at walmart.com for $148, take your pick: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp...%3A3944%3A62055 Just be aware that you can't copy DVDs to tape with these machines. DVDs are copy-protected with Macrovision which makes the picture fade in and out if taped. You can copy homemade DVDs like home movies, but not the Hollywood stuff. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

The new Two Towers DVD has an interesting preview of Return of the King. Where the Battle of Helm's Deep in TTT had 10,000 orcs/uruk-hai, the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in ROTK has TWENTY times that number. Should be incredible... The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

David Lynch's film of Dune was hard to understand if you hadn't read the first book. Frank Herbert created an intricate mythology surrounding the universe in the year 10,191, one on a scale that few sci-fi epics match. It's similar to Lord of the Rings in scope. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

I haven't gone through processing all the images (it was 125MB of raw data), but here's one that looked promising: That dark smudge in the center contains Vallis Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system. You can see the south polar ice cap and the blue glow through the northern atmosphere. Compare it to the pics Hubble got a few hours earlier...(and you'll see why we spent all the money on Hubble.) The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."