Rick

I like to see good alternatives to the brutal stuff but there are lots of those games out too. Every sport you can think of, you can learn to fly, etc. But one game that caught my attention. Grand Theft Auto 3. I had no idea that this game had what it did...I was thinking that I can deal with a car theft game but I didn't know that you can hurt and kill innocent people. In my book, that's sick. At least with many of the other violent games, the person or thing that you are shooting is the bad guy. Rick

I have to agree with you on that one Crispy...it's not all P2P and it's not all because of CD sharing. Nothing good has been coming out but since I'm getting old, I may be opinionated in saying that the good music days ended about 5-8 years ago. Hehe If you read the article where I got the news from...they use this as a factor too. Rick

Yes...thanks to MSNWAR who pointed this fact out to me. The version I have for d/l is for Streambox 2.011 which does not support RealAudio? You have to go back a version to 2.009 if you want to have realaudio support which from what you see above you can get off emule, overnet, etc. I found another prog that I have not tried that claims to be able to convert also. The link is below but you have it buy it if you really want to use it because the trial for it is terrible. Try this one. Rick

That's funny! Rick

My thoughts from the beginning have been that if the record labels would get with technology and offer their stuff...all of it...online. They should offer pay services and people would pay for it. I guarantee it. If I could listen samples of tracks and then make a choice to buy, that would be nice. Or pay a subsription fee to d/l stuff. This is nothing new...it has been suggested over and over but RIAA thinks they can win the war and stop technology. Yes they are very powerful but not enough to just shut down file sharing. PPL like Sharman who own Kazaa don't like having to depend on the stupid spyware crap. I believe they would all cooperate if all could profit. Rick

Haha! Good one Tris! He put that up in rebuttal to my cross avatar. You should have seen his first one to where he took my avatar and turned the cross upside down. Rick

Okay...just think back to the days of tapes. It was so common to copy tapes that nobody really gave it a thought. It wasn't until the cd burning days that I ever even stopped to wonder if copying was wrong. Actually, I don't forsee a stop in cd burners but what I do see are more controls on copyright laws while making the burners. I see a cooperation between the cd burner makers and RIAA and other media companys to put in a hardware block for burning copyrighted cd's. Rick

You can use a prog called Streambox Ripper. It is hard to find but I happened to locate it here:Click! Here is a page that tells you how to do it...Ignore the link to Streambox on there because it's no longer there. Hope this helps. Rick

Worked that time! Hahahaha! That's hilarious! Rick w00t

I guess this is the place to post for something like this but I think my topic will spark a little lively discussion. As reported by USA Today...record sales are taking their first loss since tracking of sales began in 1990. The RIAA obviously blames file sharing for the problem but the bottom line is that people just aren't buying the music like they used to. My question is this: In your opinion, why do you think that there has been a decline and if you think it has to do with P2P like I do, then what do you think the RIAA could have done differently or can do to help themselves out here? I will start off a little but but not ruin the whole discussion. I think it's pretty obvious that P2P has sucked record sales dry but what I see is a stingy market that was not willing to listen to their customers demans. Napster was a huge hit and I believe that labels could have used this to their advantage. Instead, they fought against momentum and now they stand in decline. Rick

MSNWAR...I don't know if you are just trying to spark conversation or if you are looking to buy and want good advice but Tomshardware does an exhaustive 3 part series on TFT. Take a look here: Tomshardware Guide Rick

I was just sitting around so I decided to do a little research into what exactly comes bundled with Kazaa. The little app that they put in is disturbing. Brilliant Digital Entertainment teamed up with Sharman Networks to put their little add "sleeper" on your computer for later use. What this thing does is wait until your computer is idle and it then uses your computer bandwidth to power a huge network. It has the ability to turn on your computer without your knowing.. And guess what...it's right there in the 2,644 TOS so you can't say they didn't tell you this! Did you take the time to read it? Well, who reads any of them anyway and this one...you would need a lawyer to go through it with you! Here are a couple of sites with good resources on this: ZD Net Article How to get rid of the spyware What about Kazaa Lite? I found This article on Wired News about the development of Kazaa Lite and it appears that it is indeed spyware free. Crispy, I have a feeling that you probably switched from Kazaa to Kazaa lite like most ppl do and some stuff was left behind from Kazaa. But I would like to see what you are talking about...I say don't believe everything that I breath! Hehe And that's about enough for now. Rick

I use ad-watch which is with the pay version of adaware and it is pretty darn good at keeping the registry keys and cookies off your system. As soon as one tries to do something, ad watch pops up an alert and launches adaware to remove the junk. However, as soon as I load Kazaa...the ad watch pops up with the bad stuff. I'm sure there's also other stuff that gets by without being written into the registry. Rick

Tris constantly refers to me as Ned Flanders because of my Christian beliefs but I have to say one thing...this belongs in the funny farm. I have never seen any of these games and how can they be selling like they are? Crazy! Rick

Darn thing doesn't play right for me...it's like seeing a movie in slow mo...but I get the gist of it..funny! Rick

Yeah...uhh...that's pretty funny? LOL JK Good joke Rick

Yes...do the scan like everybody is telling you to do and before you do that...do the restore. I know it's old but it will not take anything off of your computer that you have put on there since the last restore point. The best thing is that if you do the system restore and it does not work or you are missing stuff...you can simply go undo the system restore to go back to where you are now. Rick

What this translates to is Tris is drunk! Everybody make sure you have your firewalls on and watch out...he likes to hack when he's tipsy! Rick

Did you get this resolved Rich? What error code did you get after turning off the automatic restart and started getting the blue screen? Is there a prog that you have open when this happens? Never did get computer specs from you...I know it's a hassle but it helps us to help you. I have had an incompatibility between my vid card and some other component of my computer for over a year now and I have just learned to accept it as a screw-up from building my own computer and not checking the compatibility list good. But things like that can be ruled out by a spec rundown. Rick

If I see no helpful advice from our regulars...I can get the right answer for you but for now. Have you tried to restarting windows and hitting F8 to bring up the boot menu...then select start with last known good configuration? If that doesn't work, try to restore your Windows from the restore feature. Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->System Restore. Pick a restore point from before yesterday. If that doesn't work and you get no easy answers, you can always do what I had to do today and pop in the windows XP disk and do a repair installation. The way this works is that you just tell it to install (don't hit the first repair option which says you can use the repair console). It will find your installation and then pop up with either fresh install or repair. Hit repair and it will reinstall the system files without erasing all your stuff. You have to enter the registration key again too.

Well, I'm not an official beta tester so I was only able to fool around with it for a little while without being nagged to death with the WAP screen. But from what I saw I like the new skin throughout and I really did not notice a huge difference except in the look of Outlook. But after using Incredimail for about a week now, I see that the look has already been around and it appears that either somebody got an early glimpse and copied the new outlook before release or somebody from M$ noticed a good design and put it to use. Warning for those who do not have a beta-testers licence. There are no cracks that really work and no resets that work every time. If you get a copy of Office 11 beta and then want to uninstall, it will totally screw you up when you put XP back on. For example, I never did get my Outlook XP to work again...I instead had to find another mail client or face reinstalling windows. Office leaves deep traces behind even after a complete uninstall! Rick

Hahahaha!!!! That was sooo funny...my wife says, "I can't believe you watch that." Which made me laugh that much more. Rick

It didn't get fixed...I changed every setting back to default except for Indexing. I checked and the box for use logon screen and fast user switching are both checked. Tried unchecking and then rechecking after reboot. Argggg! Why do I always have to fool with the **** settings??? Rick

Shut up man! Don't tell everybody! Hehe. There has been a huge resurgence of the original Nintendo with a few guys in my youth group. They were buying these little boxes for like $5 and the stores at the mall were selling the original games! I was like, just call me and I'll tell you all the codes to Legend of Zelda! LOL Rick

Changed Fast User Switching back but I don't see an Interactive Logon service in my services or on the web page that lists all services: Services List Is there an equivalent that you are thinking of? Rick