ffynnon

Although this is slightly off topic, someone mentioned Pinochet a few post's back. Here in Canada the Calgary Sun ran an article claiming that Pinochet was a great man, and that people who said he was a dictator were "historical revisionists" or something similar. You can read it here: http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/C.../11/454375.html Nice to see we have fascists working among us. As for the death penalty, I once heard a statistic that it costs MORE money to execute someone than to give them a life sentence. It had something to do with the number of appeals someone on death row typically utilizes--and all the money spent in court. Incarceration without rehabilitation is pointless. While people are being rehabilitated (those that can be), they should work breaking rocks or some other labour intensive task. Just my 2 cents.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Clone High yet. No fans? There was only 1 season, but damn was it good. Grab 'em off P2P--they're worth it if you like the humour of family guy/futurama/aqua teens etc. http://www.clone-high.com/index.asp

It's CNN. Don't you find most of their reporting a little...lacking? Par for the course.

I never really bought his "pretzel" accident. When watching sporting events--and engaging in consumption of spirits--I've been known to experience "impaired motor control". I can see falling over and wacking your head if you're pissed--but choking on a pretzel? I've choked on peanuts and whatnot, but I've never fallen face first into a coffee table while trying to recover. Hardly scientific, but I don't think he and I share the same definition of "truth". edit [i just remembered he claimed he blacked out--I guess that would explain the fall]

The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporations for those unfamiliar) ran a documentary/expose on PNAC a while back. You're right, they are *very* right wing. I guess they've been pushing their agenda for years. Someone leaked a copy of it to the press back in the days of Bush Sr. At the time it was so disturbing and so unthinkable a direction to take the country in that Bush Sr. ordered it shelved--and made haste to distance himself from it. Today the US is operating under what is essentially that same mandate--dusted off and given the thumbs up by Bush Jr. and his crew of "old boys". For crying out loud in contains passages detailing how to pre-emptively attack ANY nation that stands to challenge US military dominance. How a president can be impeached for lying to congress about a blow-job, while another president lies the nation into a WAR and remains in power is beyond me.

The big drive behind this is most likely "The Project for the New American Century"--a plan for US global domination. Scary stuff indeed. As for Scott McClellan, he seems less agile than Ari Fleischer was. Ari rarely bothered to address an issue he didn't like (read: anything critical of the administration). Scott stumbles and hums and haws. At least when he lies he's not convincing. A nice site that tracks one reporter's attempts to get Scott (and previously Ari) to answer questions is: http://www.commondreams.org/scottie.htm peace

By most accounts, Bush stole the election. Doing a bit of research on all the disallowed votes/outright illegal acitivity in Florida will shock even the most staunch Bush supporter. Well, maybe not--they simply wouldn't believe it. Only 308 more days until he's gone for good! And for reference, most Canadians don't like the guy either. Only Alberta (Canada's Texas--and my home!) was half and half on the guy.

When choosing nic's on IRC it seemed mine were always taken. I chose something as obscure as possible. ffynnon is from "ffynnon garw", the almost-mountain from "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain". I've always liked the sound of "ffynnon", and I still haven't run into anyone else who uses it as a handle.

I never thought I'd see relationship advice given on an emulation board. Interesting. And some of it quite insightful! I'd agree with the confidence angle. The bumbling Hugh Grant just doesn't work in reality (unless of course, you're Hugh Grant--but even he resorted to hookers, so what gives?!) #1 is LISTEN. If you get her talking--get her to talk about herself. Her likes, her dislikes etc. Listening is EASY. Try to remember at least a few things she says--even if they're incredibly boring or mundane. If you can follow up later in another conversation and say "so how's mittens?" or "what did you think of that _____ you went to?" you'll score big points. This shows you took the time to LISTEN, and that makes her important. If you sense you've been lumped into "friend" territory, come clean and flat out ask her out somewhere. Better to be rejected and move on (really--trust me!) than to pine over something that will never be. Sorry if some of this has already been covered--I admit I skimmed the larger posts. Good luck!

Nah, nail-gun.

Are you behind a router? I had to punch a few holes through mine to get any decent speed with bittorrent. Do a google search for "bittorrent router" and you should get some info. Also quite a few bittorrent FAQs around that talk about the ports that it needs. Hope that helps.

ForceX--thanks! I think I'm leaning towards whip... whoops--looks like viewing the poll results (null vote) counted as my vote. Oh well.

could someone create/link to a page with pics of all of them? I can't say I'm familair with a lot of the women listed (time to brush up on my gaming it seems)

I picked up a Saturn at a flea market this weekend (rare find--don't see them here too often). After doing a lot of reading on the web I think I've determined it is the older model (oval buttons). That means that most of the mod chips won't work with it--is that correct? The mod chips available from dealers are made for 21 pin Saturn's, and 20 pins either never existed, or are in such short supply they're unheard of. I found a few sites with info on 21 pin Saturns, but they were way over my head. I popped it open and counted the wires on the ribbon cable to the cdrom. 20. Is this an accurate way to tell? I had hoped to modify it to play games I snag off various DCs, but that looks less and less likely. Then I found a link to a thing called "game hunter". http://www.sintech-shop.de/shop.htm?sega_saturn_hardware.htm Would this work with my older Saturn? The description says works with backups. Anyone use one of these? Have any reputable sites to buy these things from? Thanks for any info! (and yes, we could use a saturn board--or make the genesis one a generic sega--just a suggestion)

Thanks! I got Maria and proceeded to sleepwalk my way to the end. Holy cr@p is she powerful! That "dark maria" move is devistating. Double jump--invincible with a turtle...Maria rocks! Makes the game waaaay too easy though.

I certainly died enough times to know I never saw a "player change" option. I guess I must have missed her. Looks like I'll be replaying level 2! Thanks for checking. I assumed I was overlooking something simple--I guess I was--saving Maria!

are you trying to rip it from an iso/bin/img, or the dreamcast GD-ROM? I don't know if it will work from anything but the former... try daemon tools (sp?) or nero to rip the audio from an iso. or search the net--I've seen the soundtrack floating around before--save you the hassle (but you'll have to be happy with mp3s)

It worked. Not optimal, but better than not working at all!

I'm curious as to your thoughts on whether we'll see re-releases of Dreamcast games from the groups who initially ripped them. Many games had their music and/or FMV downsampled to fit on a CD. If Icarus or another DC emulator emerge and are able to run ISOs, do you think they'd re-release games like RE: Code Veronica? Just how many games required downsampling? Anyone know? I imagine the release groups would have held on to the untouched originals. Some games were so small to begin with you needed a dummy file to fill the CD--but what about the ones that were too big? Interested in your thoughts--this just occured to me when I was playing RE and hit a FMV sequence...

Gamefaqs was a little unclear. I've beaten the game, and I swear I rescued her around level 2. Can someone walk me through the process like I'm 2 years old? When accessing the stage select I don't see an option for character. Mashing every key combination while in-game doesn't do jack. (I'm playing the PC engine version). Any ideas? Should she be viewable on the stage select screen? I've been playing a few Castlevania games simultaneously, so now I'm second guessing if I actually rescued her or not (I seem to think you have to to advance to the next stage, no?) Thanks for any help!

Juniel: you're right, my avatar is a picture of Rorschach, and he was indeed killed by Dr. Manhattan--the big blue guy you spoke of. The graphic novel is The Watchmen by Alan Moore. Certainly worth a re-read if you've forgotten the finer details! (IMO)

Alberta Canada--sort of like the Canadian Texas. =)

james: I agree. I assumed it was junk. I wasn't going to pitch a 150mb download without a trip to google though. For smaller files you might not want the added overhead, but until it gets better known it's a good idea. As for parameters, I've just discovered the "help" file. Doh!

Yah, I used to dabble in DVD-->Divx/Xvid and I would always keep my audio as AC3. It was already so well compressed, why transcode to MP3 and lose that quality? On the video side h.264 AVC looks AMAZING, but it's not optimized yet. I lurk over at http://www.doom9.org/ once in a while to keep up on video compression. Good video forums. I've tried.ogg and liked it--much better than mp3. I'd put it on par with mpc although mpc might have the upper hand. I bought an iriver mp3 player in the hopes they would upgrade it to play ogg, but of course my model is one of the few that won't do so. Something to do with the chip they used. As an ogg person, you'd probably enjoy http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?showforum=57& Those guys love their ogg! I love hearing about new compression codecs/techniques. My registry gets bunked up pretty fast with the software I install, test, and uninstall. God bless ghost.

I'm pretty comfortable using "alternative" software. My music is Moneky's Audio (ape) or Musepack (mpc) in a bind. I'm all for revolution! A quick search of a few hubs for.7z netted a few results--I was surprised. I guess I should have posted a link to 7zip's site (I think clone7z is just for 7-zipping Goodsets) http://www.7-zip.org/ Enjoy! (I do wish it had shell integration, but oh well!)