taks

well, PG-13 didn't exist in the early 80s, either. that's why it was added, in fact, because there were a lot of titles the MPAA felt didn't deserve to be called R, but were not exactly PG, either. almost, but not quite. there are several PG-13 movies, and a few PG from the early days, with some nudity (including doc holliday with a full-frontal, which surprised me). tv has gotten worse, IMO. do-gooder parents drive this mess, btw, not really the MPAA or whatever board (though they are complicit, and over-arching i think). however, i can't think of another way that you can find out at least a general idea of what a movie/game/other media contains without some form of rating system. taks

i didn't want to start a new topic though this is not really "what i did today"-ish. well, it's what i did a few weeks ago. when we ski copper mountain, we regularly stay in frisco, co. and here's a little article on the town that appeared today. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,490926,00.html unfortunately the article doesn't mention my favorite restaurant, the blue spruce. taks

that would make more sense, wouldn't it? taks

the people that don't like ubuntu are, apparently, linux developers that develop code for embedded systems that are used to standard linux distributions. apparently ubuntu does some things differently (like file locations) which makes it difficult to deal with. i have only used red hat (fedora) and gentoo (very limited install) so i really don't have a personal basis for an opinion. the contractor i work with has been complaining about it lately, which is why i am aware of this issue. taks

thanks for making me look. ugh. me neither. voir dire does not work properly: people lie (i know this from personal experience) and get away with it. assembling a "jury of peers" is all but impossible and i'm not sure the concept even has legitimate meaning. who are a drug dealer's peers? as for civil juries, it's even worse. there, however, both juries and judges are (often) required to rule on issues they are not remotely qualified to even understand. marilyn vos savant advocates some sort of "professional juror," sort of like referees in the NFL, i.e., they come in for trials and get paid to do it, but have other jobs in the mean-time. that's probably not a good idea, either. taks

are the levels achieved through experience points or skill usage? i hate the skill usage systems, e.g., gothic. taks

^theslug: sounds like my detection and estimation theory class, except that the first three problems were not 5 minutes each. i spent, as i recall, nearly 20 hours a week doing homework not counting study time for tests. we never had more than 4 or 5 problems per assignment, either. oof. taks

Welcome to political discussion on the internet, or anywhere else for that matter. obviously i missed something "angry" so the context is lost on me, but i think i understand the follow-up: we're retarded for doing so, right? taks

yes, at least, it's sort of complicated. DSL variants operate over existing twisted pair telephone lines and associated infrastructure. the VDSL standards actually offers higher bandwidth potential than cable but the rate deteriorates quickly as the distance increases between the subscriber and source station. at any rate, most places that have either system available, the cable system offers higher data rates. i think i get 6 Mb/s through comcast's cable service, but i would be limited to 1.5-2 Mb/s through qwest's DSL service. cable also tends to have higher up capability than DSL, though they all tend cap they up rate anyway. taks

unfortunately, my laptop came corrupted with winders visitor. taks

just the opposite sign... understand and feel your pain. that's why i married. now i have even less of the good stuf... what was i thinking? taks

apparently UPS ain't the way to send something international... USPS is muuuuuuch cheaper. like, $10 instead of $80 or so. sheesh! taks

really? is it hard to find now? taks

getting M&M6 to run on my pc wasn't as bad as i had originally thought it would be. ultimately, the only problem is a DLL file that was improperly decompressed and required "deshrinking." i'm not even sure if it is running in any sort of compatibility mode now, either (i had some files set for compatibility, but unclicked the box for most of them but i'm not sure if i got 'em all). this all came about (M&M6) because i was cleaning my off... er, man cave yesterday. i was at first shocked at how many games i have, then dismayed at how few good games i have. since i just got done with BG2 for the billionth time (give or take a couple million), i wanted a new game to play with none on the horizon. bored of all the IE games, NWN 1 and 2 plus variants (including witcher) and not a fan of the gothics nor elder scrolls series (i have the arena one on floppy, with the disks still wrapped in the plastic sleeve - never used), i ended up staring at a few action/rpg games (nox, darkstone, et. al.). i was almost desperate enough to install ToEE again, but came to my senses at the last minute and settled on M&M6. wow, is it ever campy. i actually remember playing it now and i do recall enjoying it. i have 7 and 9 lying around as well, but neither was as much fun as i remember 6 being... we shall see. taks

apparently i'm not the only perv... just the first to post about it. them's good problems, particularly if you are into "living in the moment." taks

how would they stop digital distributions without implementing china-ware anyway? the whole ratings thing seems... misplaced - to me anyway. taks

2, 3, and 4 could result in a highly beneficial solution, together... all at once... killing three birds with one stone... ahem. taks

i think that's actually his point... he has no need to upgrade now, so he might as well wait 6 months so he can get the exact same hardware later, but at much lower prices. i do the same, i wait till i'm in dire need of an upgrade and buy stuff that's been out 6 months or so, hopefully right after a major CPU or GPU release (which seem to never occur simultaneously). of course, my "dire need of an upgrade" definition is probably much higher than the average joe's (as soon as i'm bored and want to build another PC, i'm in dire need). taks

might and magic 6. yes, ancient, somewhat retarded, but i haven't played it in nearly a decade so it MUST be better than all that's left that's new... taks

maximum deductions on the w-4 (i think it's like 10 or something). i understand the feeling, and last year i had a bit of a boon with taxes ($1500) and used that for my property taxes as well. however, $4300... at 5% that's over $200*. oh yeah, total breeze. since i'm paying this year, however, i'm procrastinating as well. taks *yes, i know, you wouldn't get the rate for the whole year on all the money, but still! it pains me to pay the gov't as it is, even if it is a penny too much!

yup, but the transition went quickly. most people never got the higher speeds anyway, since you had to be pretty close to the sub-station to get the required SNR as i recall. even when i had the 56 kb/s modem i rarely attached above 28.8 kb/s and probably had a ton of re-transmits to boot. i've got cable modem now, which works significantly better than the DSL variants here in the springs. i won't switch to fiber till i know whether or not i will be moving, at which point (assuming i end up where i expect to), i'll be forced into an ADSL solution because i'll be out in the middle of nowhere. taks

kwinkidentally, this month's IEEE Communications Society magazine has an article on 4th generation broadband, which is slated to provide 100 Mb/s to 1 Gb/s rates via fiber to the home. taks

my former employer, in 2000 or so, did a marketing study on network access and user perception. they found that the initial "hit" time is more of a concern than the actual data rate with most people, i.e., how long it takes for the page to first show up is more important for standard browsing than how long it takes for the whole page to load. since we were developing wireless access systems, the original load time was obviously a bigger issue than what you would get at a desktop, and there was a point at which even a fast first load wouldn't overcome nightmarishly long transfer times. taks

actually, what was being discussed - at least, your complaint - was the article, which is talking about an open architecture, i.e., a standard, not a proprietary hardware equivalent of windows. i think my first PC had a 9.6 kb/s modem, in 1993 or so. V.34bis came out in 1994 allowing 28.8 kb/s, but those modems were expensive as i recall. i keep all my old hardware, so i probably have the original stuff around (i was actually using one of my original HDDs up till a couple years ago). taks

I was actually talking about the up-coming sequel to that, 28 Months Later if I remember correctly. But, yeah, 28 Weeks had a very different feel - although it was a good film. i put up my 2 cents on 28-weeks later in an early post expressing my displeasure with several aspects of the second one. in particular, people are simply too stupid to live (and don't) in the second, which always aggravates me - particularly when the opponents are mindless zombies. i didn't know about a third installment. hopefully it does a better job than the second (i did like the first, and enjoyed, but got aggravated by, the second). taks