rridgely

Microsoft makes better mice than just about anyone. I have bought 2 desktops sets of theirs and wouldn't use anything else if I could avoid it. What kind of mouse is it? I know mine use this software to configure their settings: http://www.filehippo.com/download_intellipoint/

To be honest I'm not sure, I think its just that windows wont be able to recognize anything larger. I had read of this a long time ago but back then I didn't have any hd large enough to bump into this issue. I do know that if you just make an xp sp1 or later disc and install it fresh you shouldn't have any more problems. I would shoot for at least sp2 since its a major update and SP3 only takes a few minutes to install afterwords.(Personally I would go ahead and do SP3. )

What you need to do is create a slip streamed xp disc. There are different ways to do it.(I use the nlite one) You could do it like this if you prefer: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windo..._slipstream.asp Thats with SP2 which may be better to do anyway.

Have any one here ever seen the "Behind the Music" episode on GNR? They all had their issues, most of everyone else's was drugs, Axl was more just crazy as all hell. They are rock stars after all, each of them had an ego larger than Mt.Everest and thought they could do better without the others. Turns out none of them could.(I will say though that CD is better than either VR record, and I actually like Scott Weiland) BTW what a great time for me musically. The new Scott Weiland album is coming soon and so is another one from Paul McCartney. Plus theres rumors for new U2 and Aerosmith early in 09.

Those aren't what I was referring too(but great songs none the less). You seem to be under the impression that Izzy was the only thing that mattered in the band.. have you heard his solo stuff? His band is called the ju ju hounds, no where near as good as what Axl just released. I was talking more of the differences when he sings really low like in estranged to screechingly high in parts of knockin on heavens door. Then compare those 2 songs with say Mr.Brownstone, its obviously him but hes got a very different sound on each song. This is the reason that when VR toured Scott could sing the lower stuff like Brownstone and Its so Easy but when he tried to do the higher parts in patience it didn't go so well.

That's true, but who bothers installing pre sp1 xp anymore. I actually forgot all about that issue(I didn't have/ know anyone with hds that big back then). But I was mostly speaking to a certain other member... Edit: Yikes your actually right... (just noticed post about specs) Here is how to fix this problem: http://lifehacker.com/386526/slipstream-se...installation-cd

Guys his service pack or how he chooses to install it has nothing to do with this problem. Why must this be brought up in multiple topics all over the forum? Really there is no need to have MS send you a disc unless your on dial up. You can burn your own for like 10cents with a cdr if you must but even thats not really needed. But still this has no relevance what so ever to this topic. However this does have relevance: I forgot to include a link to dban just encase you don't know what it is: http://www.dban.org/

A lot of artists are doing this now as sort of damage control so that people can listen to the songs without downloading. (since all albums seem to leak before being released to buy)

This is wrong on so many levels. I saw Velvet Revolver in concert(basically GNR without Axl) and they were no where near as good as GNR. This is probably one of my top 5 favorite live performances: (youtube audio/vid sucks but you should be able to get the idea. ) They were just one of those bands where every member is phenomenal but they need each other. For instance Page and Plant together are unstoppable but you switch Plant for David Coverdale and you get crap. As far as his voice is concerned I would say he has about 10 different voices and can sing pretty much anything. There is stuff on the illusions albums that doesn't sound like it could be coming from the same guy. His voice on CD isn't what it used to be but its pretty damn close. Now as far as his character... that I wouldn't/couldn't argue with. The man is pretty much insane.

There is no reason to use fat32 anymore. Only really bad pc makers were even using it on xp much less vista.(I'm not even sure you can use it on vista). Dont bother.

I would probably just nuke the hd with something like dban and then reinstall windows. If that doesn't wipe any partitions that were made then I dont know what will. Just make sure you have a windows disc and not a recovery partition because that will get deleted too.

There is a reason though that the Japanese automakers are putting their plants in non-union areas. While I don't think they are the only or main cause they have had some impact on these automakers going under. I and none of the rest of my immediate friends/family are really hurting right now either, but if things get much worse then everyone will be. I cant wait for my taxes to go sky high, but at least everything will be FREE!

After those last previews I was a little worried. Those mixes were said to be close to finished and the vocals were bad. This I Love is like November Rain part 2 without the killer solo. But its an amazing song. The Blues is everything I hoped it would be, I just wish Madagascar lived up to what I had in my head. Now I just hope this thing sells well so he will make another one.

I've litterally been waiting years for this album and its FINALLY here! You can hear the whole thing on myspace: http://www.myspace.com/gunsnroses There is never going to be another album like this. Its not the best album ever made but it's breathtaking.

I wonder how long these last... also what about air conditioning since those seem to be out in the middle of the desert.

Dont bother with real alternative. VLC all the way. (no one uses real formats anymore.)

I've been using firefox for four years? Seems like it hasn't been nearly that long. I remember absolutely despising FF1 until 1.5, but I still used it because the only real alternative at the time was IE6. Of all the things FF1 introduced tabs changed the way I use the internet. Not sure if thats good or bad because now I'm like a crazy person reading 6 things at once, quickly cycling and reloading them all. Whats even crazier is that in a few months it will be 4 years since some of us joined this forum. Something that I'm sure none of us could have imagined at the time.

Openoffice can save as pdf, I dont think it can go back to powerpoint though.

I think that pretty much just comes down to population. 6.1 percent may not seem like a huge amount but our population is a lot higher than yours. We have social programs too. We have people who basically live off the government their entire lives through things like food stamps, government housing, ect. Even though we dont have socialized medicine, doctors are not allowed to turn you away. You may not get a heart transplant(even then there are ways to get the money) but your not going to be turned away. I have no problem helping people who are down on their luck or actually cant work(blind, paralyzed, ect) but we have enough moochers as it is. I dont think thats cold or wrong either, I dont think I should be taxed to take care of people who are too lazy to take care of themselves.

Your right, now that I reread that I thought you meant college was free. Thats about all we can do.(agree to disagree) Or we would both be stuck typing these large posts forever. I actually have taken history classes taught from teachers on both sides of the isle. The liberal ones hated me but they could never flunk me.(although a few have wrote some pretty nasty comments on a few papers. ) Interesting that your banks aren't being affected. I guess your economy wasn't as heavily linked to ours as I had assumed. From what I've seen on the news a lot of the banks in Europe are being heavily affected. The "bail out" plan that we passed modeled after what they did in the UK from what I understand.

Sorry but I think you may be out of luck. I've only ever seen things to go the other way around. Unless its some crazy elaborate thing, you may be better off just copying it manually into powerpoint.

I use this program all the time. Usually the updates are just to crack whatever the newest encryption is. I did like the older version better though because it didn't have that annoying donate screen.

Humpty I was going to take your quiz thing but I'm already annoyed at the 3rd question: Is competence more important than honesty in a President? Yes, No, Unsure. Why cant both be important. With the question phrased like that I would have to say yes its more important but I think they are both important. EDIT: Ok now I know I'm not gonna finish it: Economy: 13. Is outsourcing jobs to other countries good for America? I say yes and it adds to mccain, I say no and it goes to obama. Sorry but McCain wasn't running on a platform of "lets send our jobs to other countries".

Cuba and Venezuela are labeled that way for more than not agreeing with us. We had this little problem with Cuba during the cold war where they kind of threatened to nuke us(with a little help from the gold ol USSR of course). By some sick joke Castro has managed to stay alive, I believe that once hes dead (and his crazy brother) we probably will have a relationship with Cuba.(not saying that our relations with Cuba are purely their fault either... but thats a long and completely different discussion all together). Chavez is out saying how he wants to go to war with us and trying to rally his troops.(He even goes around calling us devils and stuff . ) If you want to get really into why most countries dislike us, it has more to do with our support of Israel than anything. I would say much more so than us being perceived as bullies. I actually meant UN where I put Nato... yay 1am posts. Its pretty much impossible to defend the way things are going in Iraq right now, its a mess and we all know it, but at the time things were different. We did go into Iraq without full UN support but at the time I seem to remember we had a coalition of other countries with us(small amounts of troops, but they were there). Somalia specifically is a very interesting situation. We did indeed send military aid to try and sort them out the best we could, but like you said it didn't go so well.(as also chronicled by the movie Black Hawk Down). The situation that happened their is actually very similar to whats happening in Iraq if you think about it. The US destroyed Saddam and the Iraq army in what 2 weeks from the start of the war? What we are in now isn't a war in the traditional sense. We aren't fighting a country, were fighting different tribal factions.(who are being supported by Iran none the less). In the past we installed dictators into situations like this and it didn't go so well(south america, africa, ect) I think we thought it would be different now and it turns out we were wrong. What can we do in these other countries that you mentioned besides send aid and hope things work out? They have proven that they don't want our help. I honestly believe that with Iraq we thought we could create a flourishing, independent democracy that the rest of the Middle East would have saw and tried to model their own countries after. It obviously didn't work out but I honestly dont think we went their to try and take them over, remember that the US doesn't and hasn't ever been really imperialistic(we have guam or puerto rico but they aren't exactly clamoring for us to leave). After WWI and WWII we helped rebuild Europe and especially Japan and then we just walked away. During the so called "red scare" we tried to fight communism by installing and supporting democracies but we never tried to take these countries over. Maybe its the optimist in me but I really feel like Iraq was supposed to be more than just us going after oil, we wanted to end terrorism by helping these countries establish democratic governments. The US doesn't actually have a lot of troops, we could go into Korea but we would have to really hope that either our technology would win or we would have to have another draft. The draft thing wouldn't go over very well... Plus our economic warfare there seems to be working the way we planned at the moment but I wouldn't rule out a war completely(scary to think about though). Of course recent reports seem to indicate that Kim Jong Il is either dead with a body double(kinda far fetched but its been thrown out there) or hes about to die of brain cancer or something. Maybe once hes out of power things can be done though discussions instead. (I'm pretty sure we all agree that Kim Jong Ill is pretty much crazy right? ) My point is that I dont think you can trust the people to make these kinds of laws. Our economy is so fluid and powerful because its essentially a free market(not completely but more than any other in the world). The problem is that it can go both ways, but thats part of the bargain. Our taxes pay for public schools but not universities. Everyone is entitled to a basic education(getting more "basic" every day but thats another story too) but if you want to college its up to you to either get scholarships or pay your own way. My state actually has a merit based scholarship program that will pay tuition to students who keep a b average or better thought high school and college. Its however funded by the state lottery and not the govenment(which is another example of how we try to let the free market prevail instead of government intervention.) The dems had a majority but they lost it when the elections came up under Clinton. We will eventually learn that its not smart to have one party rule the whole government. With our two party system this will continue to happen though because people just vote strait down the line for whatever party they vote for president. I will say though that this liberal party that we have now is nothing like we've ever had before. Despite what people want to believe people like Pelosi, Reed, and Frank(head democrats in senate/house) are closer to socialists than anything. We had a similar movement under Carter and we all know what happened then(yay hyper inflation) I'm not saying its going to get that bad(I hope not anyway) but its going to be an interesting time. Who here remembers what happened when the Clintions tried to pass the "Hillary Care" bill that would have effectively passed socialized medicine? It caused an uproar and didn't come even close to getting passed, now its going to pass. I'm not saying our health care system is perfect but we need to look to the private market to come up with a solution, not the government, its the AMERICAN way. More input is definitely encouraged, we wont bite.

That is one way to look at it, but I have another. I think that this job should actually be done by Nato ideally but as an organization, Nato is weak. Right now we are dealing with north Korea and we are imposing really strong economic sanctions in order to persuade them not to continue enriching uranium. This technique has proven to be most effective but it seems we are the ones being tasked with doing it. Why? We are the only ones who currently are in the position to do it. To me it seems like we would love more help in doing it but we are the ones left doing the dirty work. (do you really think your government, the UK's, or any other wants them to have nukes? I dont.) Iraq and Afghanistan are a different situation than anything we've ever done before. We went into Afghanistan because that is where the Taliban, led by Osama were at. We went to Iraq the second time because after 9/11 we decided that we were going to deal with terrorist nations in a general "war on terror" in order to prevent any attacks from happening on US soil again. It was believed at the time that Saddam had WMDs, we gave him multiple opportunities to cooperate with NATO, weapons inspectors, ect. When he failed to cooperate that is when we invaded, hind sight is 20/20 but at the time everyone thought he had them. This war with Iraq wasn't for oil but the Gulf War undoubtedly was, but once they started burning kuwait the world didn't seem to mind us intervening much when their oil supplies were burning too. As for those nations in Africa that you mentioned us not helping. We send billions of dollars there every year to try and help them. The people in those countries are tribal and we learned long ago that there was no hope of installing any one governing body to rule those nations peacefully. Sort of like what we should have known before going into Iraq.(Some did know this of course, I read a fascinating biography of General Scwartzkopf who won the first gulf war. He mentioned this issue specifically and cited it as the reason we didn't overthrow Saddam then) I didn't miss any point. It was the government's intervention in the first place that partially caused this crisis. If they would have stayed out than maybe this whole mess wouldn't have happened. As far as the government not allowing this to happen, the democrats agree with these types of things. They are all for "spreading the wealth" and all that stuff. That's why I'm not optimistic about what Obama is going to do for our economy. We don't have like a massive gain in homelessness or anything right now, so I'm not sure what you mean. Most people who cant pay their mortgages didn't put down any sort of down payment so they just walk away and find themselves something cheaper. Now if people start losing their job on massive scales we might have a problem but right now its just no so. Surprisingly all the polling that's been analyzed so far shows that Palin helped McCain more than it hurt him. Last numbers were that it gained him 4% more votes among core republicans who didn't like him before. McCain isn't the hard core conservative that they made him out to be. He was much more centered than Bush and people seem to forget his campaign against him in 2000. The two men were almost polar opposites on everything except economics and the war. McCain was much more socially liberal. That was just an example. I'm so sick of the bickering about abortion, gay marriage, and all that other crap. The two sides are never going to agree and the government shouldn't be involved with any of it. I hope he does good too but at this point I'm not optimistic. This is kinda fun... talking about world politics from someone outside the US.