Jobber of the Week

Californians pay plenty in taxes as it is and our state economy is still in a mess. We don't want to send even more money to Washington when our own government is so broke it should probably put a money box in the capitol lobby for charity money. This doesn't look good, and I'm sure if that was seriously considered Arnold would ask Bush to find another way. I always keep expecting to see a Bush tax cut at the same time that Arnie buckles to pressure and raises taxes to try and tie the ends together. The state gets more money, Bush probably gets reduced complaints about his tax cut from blue California, Arnold breaks the Republican "no new taxes" code but gets away with it under the cover of the cut, and red staters getting their tax cuts can have little orgasms over the fact that their political enemies in Cali are still paying as much as they used to. Everyone wins!* * not really

Taking the photos, publishing the photos, or what was going on in the photos? NoCalMike: Usually, the guy sitting in a cell overnight because he was considered cause for suspicion does not present any kind of threat that justifies torture. Usually he'll shout something like "I want my lawyer!" and not "Down with America!"

My take: I think if one of them says "Hey, just you wait and see, I know of a huge plot that will kill and destroy and your country will never be the same!" and presenting a threat, then you really have no choice but to get it out of them however you can. Torturing someone when you have no solid proof that they have anything useful to give you is uncalled for, though.

I'd like to second this opinion. I'm honestly tired of trying to play Talking Point Whack-A-Mole with you guys over abortion, gay marriage, the death penalty, etc. At the same time, I agree with Hogan Made Wrestling (as usual) that blogs are for people who can't actually issue a counter-rebuttal to anyone in an open forum. Some of the people listed who blog in this thread are people that I don't want to listen to without someone there to shut them up with a differing opinion. Radio personalities have found how much fun it is to bash "Red State America" or "latte sipping liberals" without a person to refute their opinion, and blogs just give internet windbags like the several I've met on this board an oppertunity to do the same.

iTunes is iTunes. I would reccomend going to their site and getting the latest version if you haven't. Unless the iTunes is in some odd folder other than the default one, it'll install over the old version while still keeping your old settings and stuff. Also, when installing and setting up, you may want to go into settings and tell it not to arrange music you're importing. It arranges all your MP3s into folders for artists and stuff and while a few people like that, most people don't, especially people who keep all their MP3s in one big folder. I do that, so I turn it off. About problems: A video went around the internet of some phone call conversation with some guy calling Apple support about getting his battery replaced and being told he'd have to pay some outrageous sum. This audio was set to a movie of him running around spraypainting "The iPod battery lasts only 18 months" on a bunch of Apple billboards. Shockwaves arose over this and while the video's production is rather suspect (exactly how did they know to record this conversation? Did they call back a second time with the same problem just to get it on tape?) a lot of people still bought it all at face value and misinformation started spreading fast. So, facts: 1. If you recharged your battery every single day, it would last an average of 18 months. 2. People who own iPods from the very first batch, over two years ago, are still using their iPods today with no problem. 3. All rechargable batteries, as the years wear on, recharge less and less and eventually refuse to work. This is not exclusive to iPod or Apple. A lot of portable devices, including the latest Game Boys, use the same idea and will eventually suffer the same effect. So do many other MP3 players. 4. You can buy a new battery for about $40 if you want to install it yourself. $100 if you want Apple to do it. Buy the AppleCare warranty program ($60 for warranty coverage over the second year of your unit) and if the battery goes dead in that period somehow then it's covered. 5. Do you really trust a couple anonymous guys that video tape themselves vandalizing ads and then publish it on the internet?

WinDVD is a DVD player. It plays DVD movies like you buy at Wal-Mart or whatever. It is not a burning application, so you might be using the wrong kind of program. If you don't have a burning program, a very basic one is built into WindowsXP if all you want to make is a data disc (i.e. files you can move from computer to computer, but can't play in any DVD player box). Insert the blank disc, copy the files to the DVD drive in My Computer, and then open up that drive and choose Burn DVD. Again, if you want to watch a movie on a DVD player hooked up to your TV or something, it's going to be more work and will require getting an actual burning program.

Oh, you're talking about the XP program System Restore? That's included in every XP installation and not quite the same thing. Plus, while it does archive some files and come in handy from time to time, it's not going to be able to replace your entire OS with an entire old one. You need to nuke your system drive and start over. Edited: Check this document. I think it might help. Again, you're going to lose everything you haven't backed up elsewhere, but it's the only real way to go without opening yourself up to all kinds of errors and oddities. Consider it your punishment for installing a bootleg OS, I guess.

That's pretty much correct. Apple is banking on AAC, the iTunes Music Store's copyright protected files are AAC with an encryption lock on them. Everyone else is banking on Microsoft's WMA. WMA is used by every online store that isn't iTunes, doesn't sound as good as AAC at similar bitrate unless you crank the bitrate VERY high, but does have the backing of Microsoft and a bunch of players behind it. Beyond the music stores, this stuff doesn't really matter because both AAC and WMA support is considered secondary to MP3. Most people like to have everything in MP3 as it's infintely more tradable and replayable than AAC or WMA both are. That said, no offense, but the Creative players are not really considered that great when you put it all together (software support, onscreen interface, etc.) The only real contender for the name "iPod killer" at this point are certain iRiver models (not the cheap ones) and the Rio Karma. Neither have the kind of ad blitz or store presence or "chicks will fuck you" factor as the iPod does, but feature for feature they stack up well. Edited: Yes, you can play music off an iPod through your computer without having it on your computer. However, you have to play it through iTunes or one of it's competing programs that I've listed above. Unless, of course, you simply stored the MP3 as a data file on the hard drive partition that shows up in My Computer. Then you can play it with any player, but can't listen to the song when it's unplugged.

Nope, there's Anapod Explorer and Ephpod. iTunes does not convert your MP3s to anything different at all. You add your MP3s to the program's song database without any conversions. I don't know where you got your information that it changes them. However, if you choose to use it as a CD ripper and make a copy of a CD you own, by default it makes it in AAC format. You can go into the options and choose between AAC, MP3, FLAC (huge lossless files), and a few crappy formats like WAV and AIFF. AAC is actually superior audio versus MP3 when at the same bitrate. Audiophile magazines have tested both formats against each other and some other formats and found that AAC sounds great. In addition, tracks you rip from your CDs have no copy protection, since you already have the master CD. The only downside to AAC is that some players choke on it because it's not the world-standard that MP3 is.

When you attatch an iPod, it not only appears in iTunes but connects to your computer as an external hard drive that you can copy files to. Look in My Computer for the drive. Along with the folders already there (Calendar, Notes, playlist data, etc) You can create folders in that drive and move computer files onto that. Note, however, that if you copy MP3s onto the drive in this method you can't actually listen to them on the iPod as a standalone player. But if you want to just move files between computers, you can do this and not run into problems with duplicates, as long as all files with identical names are kept in different folders.

What kind of hardware is this? When you say "DVD recorder" the first thing that pops in my mind is a burner for PCs, but you make it sound like this is a different piece of hardware, perhaps a standalone.

What kind of machine is this? I've never heard of a "system recovery partition" before. Can you boot to that partition and run the provided XP Home installer there or what?

Well see, now you just got him aroused. Kotz, didn't you know? Mike ignores things by posting on the internet about it. That's how he doesn't give one rat's ass about gay marriage, by making 3 pages of rebuttals to anyone who suggests any compromise other than "put it on a ballot and go by populist opinion." Thank god Mike cares so little that he can vehemently defend the ideals he has no standing on. If only more people might choose to not care about issues the way Mike doesn't, then they'd all be opinionated instead of just carelessly swinging their voting pen whichever way the crow flies. When Mike chooses to ignore and pay no attention to something, then you really know he's really putting his heart and soul into it. Into ignoring it, of course.

Middle click (aka wheel-click if you have a wheel mouse, which you likely do) on a link and it'll open up in a new tab.

Out of those, iPod. iRivers are good or bad depending on the model, and Nomad/Dell both suck. Apple has the manuals for the iPods online if you want to look at them. Basically, when you hook it up it will appear with your playlists in iTunes, and then you can drag files in your library (which can also be downloaded/ripped MP3s, don't worry, you just say Import Folder/Files To Library) to the iPod and it copies over. If you highlight the iPod you can see the music that's on it, a disk space gauge, and the ability to create playlists for the iPod (seperate from the playlists for your PC.) Keep in mind you want to have USB 2.0 or FireWire (another hookup that moves at about the same speed as USB 2.0) on your computer. USB 1.0 does work, but moving files over it is a bitch of a wait.

I think such graphic gore is rather recent. I was scared by Jason from Fri the 13th as a kid, so today I actually watch them alone for a cheap thrill and provide a running commentary to the TV screen ("Naw, that ain't gonna work" "Hell, now you just gone and pissed him off") and one thing I've witnessed in those is that you often see him take the knife, then get an OMG X-TREME CLOSEUP of the same kind of frabic of that character's shirt and the knife going into it, then suddently cut back to see them slump over dead. The knife looks like it's just stabbing curtains or a couch with that absurd non-bloody closeup. In today's cinema, you pretty much see eviscerations with blood fountains and intestines being strung around. I have no clue when this change started.

Since Bad Post Pointout isn't here, I guess I'll have to take the reigns: COMMENT: Poster C-Bacon is bored enough to protest a politician that he couldn't vote for and doesn't represent him. COMMENT: Poster Highland seems appalled that liberal politicians would attack the politics of a conservative politician.

Hundreds of years, numbers of generations, and it's just figured out now? I don't think so. What I do in general is lower the age considered an adult to compensate for how much our children are doing and learning earlier in life. Unfortunately, parents and moralists probably won't agree.

I say no, and I don't know why it's an issue beyond so much as someone disagreeing with my opinion. But why after all this time is the question even asked? Children have been doing wrong things, even violently wrong things, since we arrived on the big blue globe. How is this even remotely new territory?

Their last album was a gush of touchy-feely emotional songs that found a niche with an especially sensitive post-WTC USA, but I never really cared for it. As an old-school fan (songs like Desire and Still Haven't Found are my faves) I'd like some freakin' rock, but by what I hear Vertigo is the height of the rock, and then it gets mushy again.

Lennon is actually worse than Bono, as he rarely even contributed anything of value to music. George & Paul (in that order) were making all the best tunes in the band, people.

Does that woman from "The Weakest Link" qualify?

I thought OK Computer, in particular Paranoid Android was decent. I don't care for the rest of it, though. I think the last album turned me off for good.

Andy fucked up hard and his last stand in the first boardroom (let's face it, he did nothing in the second) was pathetic. Trump: This bottle looks pathetic. Andy: Okay, I'll give you that, but we were under tight pressure and... George: You barely did anything. You were a slave driver to the design people and had them do the work for you. Andy: You got me there, but I was a good leader... Carolyn: You started giving cash handouts. *longish pause* Andy: Well, yeah. Trump: ..... The last nail in the coffin was when Trump told him he was getting served by the women, and rather than complain about the shouting, he just said "I know." I don't know if he didn't see any old episodes or has been falling asleep in Boardrooms, but other people haven't been afraid to disagree with Trump & Co. and still kept their skin as long as they didn't say something stupid. Andy just sat there and nodded his head while Trump treated him like a fool. How could he NOT be fired?

Mac help ahoy! Step 1: Open iTunes. Before adding any of her music or tunes to the Music Library, connect your iPod once. Step 2: Go into preferences and change your auto-synchronize settings to manually manage music: Step 3: Disconnect your iPod properly and connect the other iPod. If it starts transferring songs, stop it. Step 4: Make sure the preferences window above is set to the same position. The only reason for Steps 3 and 4 is that I believe that window's settings is saved only for each individual iPod, so if you plug in another iPod the settings are set to defaults. If it's the first time the iPod is plugged in, it should bring up a window asking you to name it and ask if you want auto-synch on or not. If so, say no. If nothing like that pops up or it's not the first time it's been hooked up to a computer, go through Steps 3 and 4.