Zixar

There has been speculation that Christopher Lee may get the part of Dumbledore in HP3. That would be quite a coup--major roles in the three biggest film franchises of the past 25 years, Dumbledore, Saruman in LOTR, and Count Dooku in Star Wars 2&3.

(p.s. Speaking of Lord of the Rings, the new extended edition DVD is fantastic! The extra half hour fills in some gaps in the backstory, and it's all seamless. Fortunately, the booklet shows which scenes were added or extended so you can see all the little differences. Highest recommendation!)

Hope: Oh, definitely. Quite superior to the first one. Might have used a bit more humor, though. Lucius Malfoy was played by the same actor who played Mel Gibson's nemesis in The Patriot, Jason Isaacs. And Kenneth Branagh is superb in everything he does. (Which makes Wild, Wild West even more inexplicable...)

You'll have to go see it again, though. Unless you sat through to the end of the credits, you didn't get to see Lockhart's final disposition. (It's worth it.)

Cindy, if you don't have a happy birthday, the random executions will continue until morale improves...

Go! Have a happy birthday NOW! What are you waiting for??? [boot]

Have a great one! (swat!)

Zix

quote:

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Originally posted by Steve!:

Chattsy -

Most newer computers already come with an Ethernet card, which is a NIC (network interface card).

If your puter doesn't have a NIC, then a USB port would be sufficient - I connected my sister-in-law's computer to a router, and she didn't have an ethernet card OR a USB port in it. I had a spare USB card that I installed in that machine, got a USB-to-Ethernet cable (10-base T) adapter, and voila! she was good to go.

The adapter was aabout $10 or so.

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Network interface cards themselves can be had for $5-$10 on sale at BestBuy or CompUSA.

John: Some of the cable and DSL modems are USB instead of Ethernet, so they require drivers. Motherboard manufacturers rarely ship a bug-free BIOS, so updating it at every opportunity is a good thing, and it's hardly rocket science.

Krys: Reinstalling IE 6 over the newer version shouldn't give you any problems. The intermittent reboots may be from your power supply, if it isn't rated for high enough wattage, or it's got a fault that opens when it heats up. Check with CyberPower, they can probably help you.

Krys: IG is incorrect. A BIOS update is a fairly trivial task that doesn't even require opening the computer. You absolutely have to have your motherboard's maker and model number though, that's crucial. Each BIOS is specifically tailored to a particular motherboard, and you cannot use any BIOS but one intended for your machine.

Typically, you go to the motherboard maker's website, look up the model number, and any BIOS updates will be listed there. You download the latest version, unZip it, print out the instructions, copy the files to a boot floppy, reboot with it in the A: drive, and follow the instructions. Takes 5 minutes or less.

I can personally verify that Accenture Consultant entry, being one myself. If we could generate a penny of income for every hollow buzzword inserted into a simple press release or corporate memo, Bill Gates would look like he was next in line for food stamps.

Sheesh.

Thank you so much, everyone! It was a quiet day, spent with family and friends. But then the weather radio kept going off every half hour after midnight with all the tornado warnings, so I'm completely worn out today!

Thanks again, and God bless you all!

Zix

Well, I think the swelling has subsided now! Thank you all so much for all the nice greetings!

I got a new computer chair and some books I've been wanting, plus I got to watch the fantastic Falcons-Steelers game with friends and family. A most enjoyable, if understated, birthday.

Thanks again!

God bless!

Zixar

A reporter runs across a story about a secret videotape which, if you view it, you will die in seven days. Of course, being the typical reporter, she watches it. Immediately after the final image on the tape, her phone rings, and a mysterious voice says "Seven days..."

She's still not convinced, although her research turns up that every one of the high school kids who watched it did die, precisely seven days later, to the hour. Gradually, she becomes more and more fearful as the time winds down, until she walks in too late to keep her young son from watching it. Now she becomes more and more frantic as she tries desperately to unravel the horror before her seven days expire...

This was the flat-out creepiest movie I've seen in quite a while, easily stomping "Blair Witch Project" flat. Director Gore Verbinski doesn't give in to the Hollywood cliche' of cheap scares/"fake-boo" shots, (like the mysterious noise only being a cat in the kitchen) he instead creates dread subliminally, using inappropriate camera shots to keep tensions high. An example: Normally, when you want to have an actress convey great fear, you do a tight close-up on her face, or maybe even just her eyes. However, if you have the same situation, but put the actress off to one side of a medium shot, and show this space behind her that she obviously can't see, then linger on it for a few seconds, the impression is created that something is going to come up behind her and get her. Remember the scene in Aliens when the little girl is standing in the water while Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn try to cut through the floor with a blowtorch? Then, just as they do, the camera jumps back to the same shot of the girl, but now an Alien comes up from the water and grabs her? You get the idea.

Verbinski uses shots like these all through the film, but (cleverly) doesn't pay off on all of them. You keep trying to predict when the stereotypical "boo" shot is going to happen, just like it always does in all the zillions of horror movies you've seen before, but it's not predictable. There's no "Okay, it's too early in the movie for this to be the real villain, so it's a fake...[insert cat jumping off cabinet]See? Told you it wasn't him. Yawn."

Now, there is at least one point in the movie where you'll say "Yawn, Zix was wrong, I saw that coming a mile away..." All I can say is, "you didn't see what you thought you did--keep watching..."

My wife was physically shaking through the ending, and there must have been twenty teenage girls shrieking at the true-boo scenes.

For only a PG-13 movie, it's surprisingly effective. Naturally, then, it's not an American original. It's a remake of the 1998 Japanese film Ringu. Expect to see the Americanized versions of Ringu 2 and the prequel Ringu Zero over the next couple of years. (Although one of the scenes from Ringu 2 was used in this remake of the first in order to explain a little of the backstory...)

If you enjoy a good scare, but not cheap scares, this is one you'll want to see. If you're the type who has nightmares easily, avoid this one at all costs. I think it's an absolute must-see for film students.

Before you die, you post on GreaseSpot...

John: Telescopes magnify very small sections of the sky, so they're useless for watching meteors as they shoot all the way across.

Oh, but the first time you see Saturn through one... You'll never forget it.

Here's a smaller, portable scope, the Meade ETX-90 Maksutov-Cassegrain. You can also get the $99 eyepiece deal with it and the excellent UHTC coatings.

http://www.optcorp.com/cart/ProductDetail....PR_ProductID=40

I have this one too. It's nicely portable(aircraft carry-on size), and with the Autostar controller, it's computer-controllable. Superb optics, and you can set it up on a car hood out in the boonies when the clouds finally run away.

It's a fantastic hobby that can be enjoyed on any budget, from naked-eye to spending $600 on a single eyepiece! (Mmmmm...31mm Nagler...sigh!)

Start with the two major magazines: Sky and Telescope and Astronomy. Then look up your local astronomy club and go out to a star party. They love newbies, since it gives them a chance to talk about all their cool stuff!

Once you know the stars, you'll always know where you are...

Best Buy has a router on sale this week for $29 after rebate. That's a no-brainer, y'all.

Garth: An outsider can only hack into the router if the owner has enabled remote management on the router. Otherwise, it cannot be targeted. You can use ZoneAlarm if you really want to, but it's really not necessary once you have the hardware firewall of the router. All computers behind the firewall are completely hidden from attackers on the Internet. (If you really want to know why, I'll explain it, but it gets kind of technical, and you know how long-winded I can get...)

Igotout is right, the great thing is that a router is really a set-and-forget security system. It doesn't take up any of your computer's resources like ZA or WinXP's ICF software firewalls.

John: Well, you can have a telescope just like mine, for a mere $3,000! I'd recommend something smaller if you're just starting out, though. But if you really want it, it's a 10-inch Meade LX200GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain with UHTC coatings. Meade has a special until the end of the year where you get $500 off the normal price, and and extra set of 6 Super Plossl eyepieces for another $99 (a great deal--wish they'd been offering it when I bought mine, oh well!)

Here's the link for it at the BEST scope store on the internet, Oceanside Photo & Telescope.

http://www.optcorp.com/cart/ProductDetail...._ProductID=1512

Kathy: A router might not be a bad idea in any case. A router's internal "firewall" works by splitting the network into two distinct pieces, the outside/Internet/everybody piece and the inside/network/your computers piece. It handles all outgoing and incoming requests for data, automatically acting as a secure "mailman" for the data packets, passing them between the two networks. The beauty of it is that since the router separates the two networks, no one on the outside can see any of the computers on the inside!

You could have 1 computer behind that router or a million, and no one on the outside can see (or subsequently hack into) any of them. All traffic coming from your network appears to come from the router instead of any of the computers. The router keeps track of which internal computer made which request and seamlessly routes the incoming packets accordingly. All this takes place behind the scenes, so you don't even know it's happening.

Even better, the router itself is very secure from being hacked--most default to accepting configuration commands only from the "inside" computers. (There might be a time when a person would want to remote-manage their router, so you can set it up to accept commands from "outside", but most people never need to do this.)

Considering most personal firewall software programs cost $40-$50 anyway, and they must constantly run on your computer, taking up memory and processor time, I'd spend the extra ten bucks and put in a router even for one computer. It also gives you room to expand if you ever decide for a second computer.

Don't bother with wireless unless you are sure you're going to have extra computers in your house--then you might want to look into that. My home network is 3 computers, 2 of which are tied into my router via secure wireless cards. I can take my laptop into the back yard and post on GreaseSpot while my telescope takes pictures of the stars...very neat!

What, you want to risk a meteoroid strike or a solar flare around unshielded off-the-shelf hard drives? Ooooooo-kayyy....

quote:

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Originally posted by igotout:

A solution for those with money to burn. But what if there was an earthquake and the bank vault got destroyed along with my computer?

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Then you'd have bigger problems than restoring backups...

(Is western Florida really that seismically active?)

Sure! Buy a new harddrive for each month and vault it like you would a tapeset...

But you'd better go read that last paragraph on the link you posted. Your RAID box may not support drives over 137 GB.

If it does, you can get the WD 180GB drives for $100 cheaper each at www.mwave.com.

John: Sounds like a good price, although you're limited to the max capacity of a single drive. Still, with 160GB drives under $500, it might be all you really need.

Yes, the img tag is only for this bulletin board. Most email programs will let you add pictures as attachments. You can right-click on a picture in your web browser and pick "Save picture as..." and copy the picture from the web page to your own computer. You can then attach that picture file to an outgoing email.

Hope that helps,

Zix

Um, hate to rain on your parade again there, Zshot, but do you realize Chinson already posted that joke about a week ago?

Krys: DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, a long name for a relatively simple idea. Every computer has to have a unique address so the net knows where to send and pick up data, like your street address or your phone number.

DHCP is a way for your service provider to share a pool of these addresses, rather than assign a unique one to every subscriber from day one. So, when you log on to your ISP, instead of sending out "It's 192.168.0.1 again, log me in!" it sends out "I'm logging in again, what's my address this time?" and the computer responds "Ok, in this session, I will address all traffic for you to address 192.168.0.136, so listen for that one."

All this happens behind the scenes so you rarely have to bother with it. It's good for the ISP because they are charged by the data-carrying provider by the range of addresses they use. Since few folks leave their computer on 24/7, they get to use a smaller range and recycle the addresses for those who are connected at any given time, rather than pay for a zillion addresses that only get used 5 minutes a day to read email.

Your error is probably due to some minor network configuration error and is more or less harmless if you can log on to the net. Don't lose any sleep over it!

Firebee: God will supply all your need, buddy.

In the meantime, keep your outlook wide and don't get tunnel vision on your immediate situation. You never know when an opportunity you never even thought of will come your way.

I never thought I would:

-deliver pizza

-sell car stereos

-work with textiles, chemicals, baby clothes, or the phone company

-write a movie (still waiting to see how that one's going to turn out...)

Remember, if your chin's up, your eyes are, too. All you have to do is keep them open!

God bless!

Zix

Zshot: As of July, the population of Iraq was only 24 million +/- ... Sure it wasn't "Arabs"?

Need to open Windows Explorer in a hurry? Hit the "Windows" Key and "E" at the same time.

Need to shrink all your windows to the taskbar at once to get back to the desktop? Use Windows Key+M.

Chinny: Well, you can if you want to, but antibiotics and antihistamines are not the same thing. I doubt you'd get the same effect, but if you want to do some clinical trials, go for it!

Let us know how that goes,

Zix

Mark: If you grow up in Middle Georgia with a 150 IQ, you either read a lot, or start shooting people... I stand by my choice. (Ammo is too expensive!)