jeffmeden

Oh you Chase people, thinking SLA batteries will last forever. I sit next to the guy who processes all your warranties. I wish he would do us a favor and just let you guys go to APC... you will know what bad batteries REALLY feel like.

Compare a SD DVD played on a 'budget' upscaler to the same DVD played on a Toshiba HD player. You will be rather disappointed, interpolators are NOT all created equally.

For anything good to happen in Cuba, the US needs to get rid of the prison at Guantanamo and replace it with a Sandals. Think about it, all that those commies see now is how oppressive the US is by sending people to prison without trying them (this issue is neither here nor there.) Instead, they could be seeing capitalism at it's finest, a resort with nothing but swimming pools and smiling faces. Once we do that, Cubans will be beating a path to capitalism's door. Then, move GITMO to a suburb in Mexico city and demonstrate to any potential border crossers how we deal with dissidents. Politicians just don't think outside the box these days!

La Tavola.

There are only two places that never fail to impress me, Figlio and Carrabba's. Bravo and Bucca are decent but overpriced for average food, IMO. And for that matter I would rather go to Fazoli's than Olive Garden, at least I don't have to wait forever at Fazoli's! Of course, I don't get out to the hole in the wall places very much, I will have to take some notes from this thread and start getting off of the chain restaurant circuit.

Blu ray and HD actually use the same wavelength laser (405nm), however there are other technical limitations on HD that most likely stop it from having any chance at playing a BD movie. Not the least of which is that the playback itself is proprietary (and protected), Bluray uses Sony's release of a java virtual machine loaded off of the disc to actually play the movie. And a note to anyone planning on using a BD player in their pc, remember that HDCP will be fully enforced in hardware, meaning a specific Mobo, windows Vista, a specific video card, and a compliant monitor must ALL be present before the movie will play in high def.

What are the odds that Sony (the owner of your playstations and your blurays) will license their tech to Microsoft for anything less than a small mint? Gates would love it if he could start slapping blu ray players in an enclosure and pushing them out the door but the reality is it's not gonna come cheap any time soon.

The HD player isn't any more useless now, there just won't be new movies for it going forward, and Netflix won't be carrying HD-DVDs. It's still the nicest DVD player you can get (cheap upscalers you find for $50 do NOT compare to even the cheap Toshiba HD player.) Personally I have an HD player, and Netflix, and I welcome this news. The HD-DVDs netflix pushes out are so badly scratched that out of the dozen or so Ive rented, only ONE played all the way through after a careful cleaning. About a month ago, I gave up on HD dvds from them, most movies just don't look that much better in HD to warrant the frustration. I am sticking to buying the titles I like, while the price is right. In the past week, BB had a buy one get one sale and Amazon had a buy two get one sale. Regrets? I look at it this way. I would have paid $300 for any Blu ray player if i got it instead of my HD player, which was only $200. That's $100 saved. By the time HD movies are scarce, Bluray players will probably be about $100, at which time I will probably buy one. Out goes the $100 I saved, but I will have both players and an extra 9 months or so of HD watching.

State farm, multi-line, and age discounts are a big win. My 05 zzr600 is $185/yr for full coverage, it was about $400/yr before I turned 25.

Theres a new hazardous materials facility for Franklin county: Environmental Enterprises Inc., 1249 Essex Ave., near the 11th Avenue exit of I-71 2 to 6 p.m. Wednesdays and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursdays No more waiting for the SWACO tour to come through town.

Here's a very interesting chronology of gas prices: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/gas1.html Cliffs: Gas prices have basically doubled in the last decade, with most countries in Europe paying more than $7/gal. Steady increase in demand means the price can only go up. The question is simple: do you move to bike/walk range to work and adjust your life, or do you invest in a hybrid/electric/whatever and keep on truckin? I can't even fathom filling up a 15MPG vehicle to drive to work right now, much less when prices are higher. oh and you guys are saying it wrong. it's POINT FIVE OAAAH.

That 'rebound' against the euro in the middle of december that lasted a whole month, was actually at a point where interest rates were stable (the fed cut on oct 1, nov 1, jan 1). Since then, not as much 'rebound', plenty of 'freefall'. Certainly we can all agree that spending on US goods and services is a good thing, spending on imported goods a bad thing. This is true during any economic climate. However, if you're going to save money, you need to do it smart.

Wow a fluff feel-good piece from the likes of CNN, who would have thought. Go ahead and look at the winners and losers today. Winners? Gold. Foreign currency. Losers? DJIA. NCI. Please explain how it is that you're right. P.s. Integrity only works if you have some.

For anyone who thinks gold is overvalued, welcome to the 'new economy'. Gold will not go down until the dollar gets stronger. Guess what *doesn't* happen when interest rates are dirt low? Anyone of you who would like to actually explain your economic theories are welcome to. I will refrain from insults, as there is such a thing as integrity where I come from.

No doubt that panic selling makes it worse, but thinking that now is the time to buy is completely daft. If you're selfish (admit it, you are) you will move all of your stock investments to gold or industrial blue chips until the market settles down. If you have a heart, keep your stocks and ride out the rough seas. If you're looking to vaporize money you can either a) move money into stocks or b) slip the cash in an envelope under my door. I promise I won't tell anyone.

LOL yes buy buy buy right before a recession. Buy High, Sell Low, that's what I always say!

While you're at the bank, sell the shit out of your stocks!!! And FWIW, the interest rate can and likely will go lower. Today is not the day to buy a mortgage.

??? Force the oil companies to give profits back as dividends, directly to whoever bought gas. Exxon has cash on hand to cover a pretty big 'stimulus package'. On another note, am I the only one immature enough to laugh whenever a politician says something like 'this is a big stimulus package designed around sustained growth'?

Has anyone else wondered if Top Gear is as lauded in the UK as it is here? I mean, what if it's a cultural sort of thing that's just cool to us?

It would also bring a screaming slow down to... you guessed it, screaming slow downs! Although my experience with RR has been getting better over the past 2 or 3 years, there is still and always will be the problem of one or two big time 'hogs' trying to take all the bandwidth, especially at peak usage times. I say F them, I don't download 100GBs of anime or porn or ISOz or wtfever it is that those freaks fill their hard drives with, so I for one welcome our new hog-punishing overlords.

It's getting better all the time but yes, it's not quite as plug and play as XP is when it comes to capture cards. It works very well with a variety of cheap NTSC cards, and a handful of decent ATSC/QAM cards. All you have to do is pay a little attention when you pick out your capture card, and it will be fine.

You haven't even found the best part yet: Netflix on demand movies. Sure, the selection is still pretty limited and it will be a while before they negotiate for new releases, but there is a LOT of good content and any DSL or cable connection can stream DVD quality video instantly. And, you get all you can watch for free with any netflix subscription. O, and MythTV blows Windows XP MCE out of the water. The ability to have commercials completely disappear with no intervention is the only way TV is worth watching anymore, and it's much smarter about scheduling. The only problem is that dual-boot is still needed since the Netflix app only runs on Windows.

It's easy. THE BITS ARE THE SAME. There is no technological difference between movies delivered on HD-DVD and BLU-Ray. The TV makes all the difference when watching HD content, what the TV gets will be the same whether it's coming from a disc or even OTA from NBC-4. My personal opinion is that this will end with Toshiba and MS licensing out HD-DVD tech for such a low cost that dual format players will become the norm.

The bottom line is that if you shoot well with the trigger on a Sigma, every other gun is a breeze. For a range gun, be a man and don't fear something with a stiff trigger! The only important thing about a good range gun, IMO, is that the ammo is cheap. This means get a 9mm, or a .40 if you are a little looser with your wallet, and only think about a .45 if you just have money to flush away. Consider a .22 if you aren't prepared to invest about $500 a year on practice ammo (even using 9mm). To become and stay proficient at the range, you will easily spend the cost of the gun a few times over.

Any field where there are positions suffixed with the word 'assistant'. I wouldn't prejudge this person, though. I know a LOT of 'not the brightest' people who have gotten BS or BA degrees (the latter of which is about equivalent to a good associate degree, but I digress). The key to picking a college applies to smart people and dumb people just the same, if you have an interest in an area, and are willing to put work into studying it, then that's what your degree should be. Leave the job finding for after you get out, a lot changes in 4-5 years.