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There are several different versions of Roxio. The more common ones don't support making DVD-Video discs. Anyway, I suspect that there are a minimum of free DVD authoring tools simply because DVD Video is encumbered with licensing costs at virtually every step of the process.

You're doing it wrong. There's lots of ways to make a quiet home theater setup but I think you're pursuing the wrong avenue. 1. You're playing back movies. Storage does not need to be local for that. Capture is a different story, but these days a crappy little 2TB array will last years if...

I haven't been posting lately because, frankly, for the last couple months I've been just about as empty and depressed as I've ever been. I haven't had anything I wanted to say or to talk about. I've been sleeping with any time I wasn't working and that is literally all I've been doing. I was...

I have a couple of the P35s on order but you'll probably get yours before I get mine. The "DS3" and its lesser "S3" brother, in both "G" and "P" varieties, are generally good for me, though not the best Gigabyte motherboards I've ever used. My main complaints are that there's no way to...

Oh yeah?

Bottled water is the one that's maddening. A lot of bottled water is literally some city's municipal tapwater. Not filtered. Not extra-pure or more free of contaminants. It's tap water that's put in bottles made from hydrocarbons and shipped all over world. The cost of the water itself is...

This is why I roll my own prepped images for the hardware I deal with.

Simplified information on how to Upgrade Vista to proper versions of Windows.

IBM 1401: a User's Manual. In this case, the video is an interpretive dance. The Mainframe is used AS the principle musical instrument. How cool.

There might be a legitimate state interest in encouraging childbirth and couple-hood, that being that there's probably a commensurate reduction in crime and public health issues for intact families. From the standpoint of resource allocation/energy footprint, I kind of wonder how worthwhile it...

Oh. I see how it is. You'll provide women for the maple-syrup-swillin' poutine and Tim Horton's lovers but it'll be a cold day in Palo Alto before you put even ONE chick in a fedex box and ship her off to Indiana! I'm telling Cougtek about all your plans for an English Only Quebec, sirs, and...

Shit. I'd send a whole PC, except that Handy would probably expect that by now. :D

The Tech Report has an interesting article on the value proposition of current Intel and AMD processors. There's even some folding-specific comparisons. I linked to the last page of the article.

In what twisted world do you live that a Treo is a "small" phone?

Eugenics was an idea that had a great deal of traction among the intelligentsia in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It wasn't all Nazis. Mainstream physicians, philanthropists and social philosophers genuinely thought it was a good idea. There was a particular interest in sterilizing poor people...

I'm still a big fan of Nero. Nero 7 is kind of bloated, but the basic apps (Nero, Express, ImageDrive, Recode, Vision, and the Wave Editor) are pretty spiffy. I pair Nero with AnyDVD to handle my DVD copying needs.

Thinkpads have joy-nipples. They also have three sets of left/right mouse buttons (lower, trackpad and upper) for different hand sizes/positions. Little touches like that are one of the reasons I so adore Thinkpads.

Well, it was a Vista DVD. It's probably doing more good as its constituent atoms than it was in DVD form anyway.

I've sincerely enjoyed everything Judd Apatow has ever done. Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, the Cable Guy, Anchorman, 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up are all wonderful films. My honest opinion (aside from the essential fiction of the movie, about fat losers getting laid), is that it is a very...

Also, Micheal Moore's Sicko was leaked on the Internet a few weeks ago. I only technically have insurance (very expensive, catastrophic-only coverage) but that movie made me want to find insurance executives and get all Cougtek on their asses.

I saw Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer recently. It was appropriately comic-book-y (which means the plot was kinda juvenile and had holes you can drive a truck through, but I'm fine with that), but I wanted to see more of the Thing and Mr. Fantastic. The Silver Surfer was all noble and...

How about just carrying around a 20" monitor in the ol' Subaru and using a laptop that isn't the same size and weight as a microATX desktop?

Sprint has an exceedingly yummy offer called Sero, which offers a 1000 minute phone/unlimited (EV-DO?) data plan for $50/month and steep discounts on phones. Drawback is that it has to be a new number. I wouldn't mind doing the phone as modem thing, but I really don't like smartphones. I...

I use Verizon. My phone stuff is outdated and crappy right now. And in the past I've had limited data packages but they are very limiting. Also the tiny amount of investigating I did suggests that Verizon takes offense to using its service for ANYTHING but basic web and e-mail. Don't stream...

Whoops. MIPS-based. Whatever. I looked at both.

I have the Geode-based mainboard, a chassis, a power supply and a pair of Atheros (work well with Linux) based miniPCI cards that I've stolen out of dead laptops. I'm not sure what I'm going to do for an antenna yet, but I have some nice Hawking omnidirectionals sitting in a box. The power...

I'm not exactly sure but there are 23 400/800GB tapes for my whole media collection.

Verizon and Sprint both offer a Cellular-based data service called EV-DO. Speeds are supposed to be pretty quick for wireless - around 700kb/sec and prices are not unreasonable ($50/month). Has anyone tried these services? Do they work all over the place or just in certain areas? Are speeds...

Germany's climate generally isn't such that AC is needed. Ditto for France. They treat temperatures over about 90 degrees as a health emergency as a consequence of that. Basically western Europe has a much milder climate than folks in the USA are used to.

I think I've mentioned this before but I moved most of my pr0n off to tape a while back. I've only got maybe 1.8TB of smut that I can directly access at the moment. :P

The case is a $25 option for it.

I don't *need* a pair of NICs. My thinking was to provide an 802.11g and an 802.11a network. Or you could have two "g" networks, one on an intranet and the other sitting in a DMZ with internet access only. Or provide a "b"-only network and a "g"-only network, so "b" clients don't kill "g"...

Just a lot of stupid crap that has reminded me how much my life sucks.

When I looked at closed-source systems a while back, a lot of the quotes I got were around $10k for systems that were built on MS Jet or SQL Server... without including the cost of the DBMS. MySQL really, really shouldn't be a big deal for anyone who has dealt with Oracle.

I'll probably try it with Linux. I'm not sure how far I'll get, but there are distributions made for these things. There's a pre-built appliance OS for them as well, for the ddruedings of the world.

I've been very depressed lately. Going home from work and immediately going to bed. But at least I've been working a lot more.

I still haven't gotten that pizza. I have not been anyplace where there is good pizza and I don't think it's worth the effort to drive to get it.

I think I'm in the same boat with Coug on this one.

I like my Creative Zen a lot better than any iPod I've ever used, but I don't listen to music on mine.

I bought one of these earlier this week. I plan to plug in a pair of mini-PCI 802.11 cards I have sitting around and to turn the whole thing into what I hope will be a vastly more powerful and reliable access point than the Linksys units that keep breaking on me. If I get any good at building...

Has anyone had any experience with ZFS? Fushigi, maybe? Or Gary H? I've been reading a bit about it, and it sounds really sexy.

I have bought and RMA'd stuff from Directron. They're a perfectly good internet retailer. I also really like Provantage. They tend to be a little cheaper on Printer supplies and some network kit than other places online. Anyway, yeah... overclocking C2Ds. Really, really easy. Been saying so...

I've never broken a SATA connector, but I've seen other people do it. My reason for wanting molex connectors is that less expensive power supplies typically do not have SATA connectors. Piyono, this was a state program funded by our Employment Office. I was teaching 20 - 25 kids at a time. Some...

I see absolutely nothing wrong with a 14" screen. Notebooks that have smaller screens have batteries that last longer. I like having a notebook I can run for five and a half hours while it's unplugged.

Recently, I had the opportunity to build 100 identical systems. Strictly speaking, 94 of them were assembled. So all these numbers are out of 94: Motherboard: GA-M61SME-S2 Failures: 2 DOA, 1 moron-can't-listen-to-instructions-related (ATX12V in backwards, system powered on and smoke came out)...

Look down a couple threads to the uATX case suggestion thread. :P

This is supposed to be a universal cooler. But, um, can I just say "I told you so." about those 17" laptops, Nits?

I would love to hear justification from ANYONE for buying a "portable" computer with an eight to ten minute battery life.

Heh. 50 miles is too far for pizza. Plus the construction on the Indiana Toll Road and on 80-94 around Torrence are enough to make grown men weep. I had a three hour drive from Orland Park (about 35 miles) on Wednesday. Idled the whole way. One of the other difficulties in this is that I hate...

AD, here's the ultimate IBM testimonial: I stepped on one. Full weight, on the not-screen side. The damned thing did not break. It wasn't even DAMAGED. I've seen coffee spilled in them. It all went out the bottom of the unit, no harm done, other than needing a keyboard cleaning. The inertial...