Grafitti

The US market is about the cheapest you can get. Even I try to save up till a friend is going to the states, and then i order stuff online there. If you're looking for cheap externals, here are some ideas: Seagate / 250GB / 7200 / 8MB / ATA-100 / EIDE / OEM / Hard Drive with Ultra USB 2.0/FireWire Enclosure $100 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se8&CatId=136 Fantom / Titanium / 250GB / 7200 / 2MB / USB 2.0 / External Hard Drive $90 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se9&CatId=136 Western Digital / MyBook Premium / 500GB / 7200 / 16MB / USB 2.0/Firewire / External Hard Drive $260 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se8&CatId=136 Fantom Drives / G-Force MegaDisk / 600GB / 7200 / 16MB / USB 2.0 / External Hard Drive $290 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se429&CatId=0 Calvary 160GB 3.5" 7200RPM eSATA + USB 2.0 External Mobile Solution $100 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se768&CatId=0 etc. there's 26 pages of external hard drives, so you should be able to find something you like, and at $0.50 a GB, that's hard to beat. of course, you can also order a regular 300GB HD for $60, and then find a cheap casing for $10, but IMO you're better off buying the ready-made ones.

JustJoey pretty much summed up the difference between Zonealarm and XP firewall. a router, if supporting it, can be a hardware firewall. but it's much safer to have a software one as well, and not only depend on the router. i know someone who only used hardware, and they still got trojans and backdoors installed on their computer. If you've got a single computer, just set it to high on the slider, and you won't have to cutomise most of it. it'll do it automatically. And in a worst-case scenario as you described, getting hacked into or whatever, you'll at worst have to do a reformat. not buy a new one.

Mitchell, I don't quite agree with you on the specifics, but in the larger picture i guess we're on the same side anyways. Yes. As i said in my previous post, that's what i believe. And no, no one can reasonably satisfy me, because there isn't hard evidence to the contrary. NEITHER is there hard evidence for it, but that's where the individual can make his own decision as to which he feels is a better theory. Though i do include bacteria in my definition of life. Their mutations don't count, to me, because these microorganisms, for instance tuberculosis bacterium, may evolve into other strains of TB, but they won't mutate into cholera bacteria. Therefore i believe that this does not in any way prove evolution. But someone looking at it from another angle could draw different conclusions. Since I'll be losing my cable connection for a couple weeks and will only have dialup, i won't post in this thread anymore --takes too long to load-- and i've had a chance to extensively air my views... I do like the debate, tho.

Where can I find a MacOS distro that will run on a PC?

Compaq too. My 2500 model kept overheating, finally the motherboard burned out.

But what creation and evolution differ on is in who was behind it, and in the process. Creation argues that man was created fully formed, and was brought to life from dust. Evolution argues that man evolved, and originated by himself from dust. Basically, gave himself life. Since spontaneous generation has been proven false, that adds the same "mythology" aura of magic to the evolutionary process, as "in the beginning of the big bang", life formed from dust. And why would we have removed ourselves from evolution, if it makes us get better? Why did we all of a sudden decide that we were perfectly fine, and didn't need anything else? Why aren't secretaries evolving a third hand to type with? What about the amazon indians, who live in the jungle. wouldn't a tail be an asset? why haven't they started growing one? And just because we discover new species, doesn't mean that they weren't there before. we just never found them. Because if evolving was such a lengthy process, it's inconcievable that say, 200 years ago we didn't see them because they weren't there, and that 200 years later, they've all of a sudden evolved into this new species. why aren't there any transitional forms of it? even if they were the weaker ones, and got killed off, where are their bones? My point is, if they are evolving, there should be lots of halfway-there animals. Or at least remains of them.

But logically, then now we should not have lifeforms grouped into the classifications that they are in. there would be mass confusion, and everything would be still evolving. It's too much to assume that they would all evolve at the exact same rate, so how come we don't see transitional lifeforms running around?

Yeah. I'd just like to point out that what you just cited is adaptation, not evolution. Otherwise if we say that adaptation is the evolutionary process, then anyone who goes to a gym is in an evolutionary transitional stage because their muscles are growing so that they can lift more. Evolution would be, say, a canary becoming an eagle so that it wouldn't get eaten by the eagles. Proof for evolution would be a case of species transformation. Even just one case would give it some sort of basis.

That's the point i was trying to make. It's simply another belief, and ok, stretching the imagination might consist of creationism for one person, and evolution for another. So while i back the creation theory, I'm happy to respect other people's beliefs as well. Knowing that either side won't back down, it's more of a debating sport. I hadn't meant to give the impression i was flaming anyone.

One other thing that NFS Carbon will focus on is driving style. It's basically based on the Fast and Furious:Tokyo Drift where the main focus was on high-speed drifting. sort of a cross between circuit or sprint, and drift. Now if it has all that upgraded AI and police to boot, I will absolutely love the game.

Not really. If you're going to argue that evolution is science, then you've got to admit that creationism is a science as well. You've got two alternative theories to pick from. While creation, God making the world and all that in 6 days, might sound a bit far-fetched, and incomprehensible, evolution is even more so. At least if we believe that God created the world, then you just have to believe that he created, say, the animals, like snap. Ok, it's not within our mental scope to try to unravel that, but if you consider the alternative, that this primordial ooze became alive, and morphed into everything we see today, isn't THAT also stretching the imagination? Take appendages, for example. --bird wings. You say that it took millions of years for birds to develop wings, feathers, hollow bones, muscular dynamics for flying, and a whole lot more. The only reason they would grow these wings is if they were useful right away. But no. During this whole growth process, those wings were useless. So the evolutionary process would have reversed itself. One generation of birds decides it wants wings, then a couple generations later the bird with these stubs wonders what they're for, and decides it doesn't want them anymore. And we seesaw back and forth, ad infinitum. isn't it amazing how , of all those millions of years, and billions of birds that lived over those supposed millions of years, there are no tranistional fossils? The Darwinian process, by which i refer to an apparent contradiction of the second law of thermodynamics, only works under controlled circumstances, in laboratories. Assuming that our world was formed through evolution, that definitely was not a controlled environment. As soon as that primitive life form would have evolved, it would have died. How does that define a point? I mean, isn't the definition of an atheist someone who advocates that God doesn't exist. To know whether your religion or lack of it was the right one or not, you'll pretty much have to wait until you die, and then I suppose we'll see who was right. Just to point out something, the Christians, Jews, and Muslims, in spite of all their differences, in essence believe in the same God. On the other hand we have other religions that have several to thousands of different gods. But no matter what people's religion, people inside are the same anywhere you go, and well, my personal belief is that there is a God, a higher being, by whatever name you want to call him, and to God, it doesn't matter whether you called him Jehovah or Allah or what have you. If your heart was in the right place, you sincerely believed, even if you were a little off, He counts it as belief and acceptance of Him, so you're pretty safe. Of course if you take the humanist route, of which i'm sure there are a lot of here, and you believe there is no higher power, no divine being, that there's no afterlife, that no matter how you live your life here, there no accountability in the afterlife, there we have the beginning of the breakdown of civilized society. Because while maybe some still choose to live their lives doing their best to help others, there will be those who succumb to man's innate nature, which is to do evil. And those are the ones that will ruin it for everyone else. That's not to say that religion is totally innocent. People kill each other in the name of God. The sad thing is that, while there are some who are misguided and actually believe they're doing their God a service by killing the infidels, where they're Muslims killing Americans, or Americans bombing Muslims, or Jews killings Palestinians, the other way around, etc, religion is many times simply used as a cover for greed, which is the basic reason for war. The Christian crusades against the Muslims, America destroying Iraq, etc, and religion is left to take the rap every time.

God is simply the most logical explanation for everything. Take evolution, for example. It's not that evolution is scientific. Evolution is a religion, just like Creationism. Both of them, nobody was there to see it, so we don't know for sure. But the creation/God theory makes a lot more sense scientifically than the big bang. That's not necessarily addressing the full topic of belief in God, but i think it can be applied to a lot of these arguments.

I've tried it. you don't absolutely need a core duo, but it's helpful. at this stage in Vista, anything to boost its slow speed.

Pakistan's pretty much the same. even ifyou wanted licensed software, hardly anyone sells it, other than operating systems:Copyrighted:XP ProPhotoshop CS2DivXTotal CommanderPGP 9Office 2007Nero 6Free:BitcometDAPDVDShrinkDVD DecrypterRegionfreeFilezillaGIMPJAlbumWinRarWinampVLC Media PlayerMP3GainminiMIZEYpopsUncopyrighted: (gosh, I'm the first to actually put a price tag on it)$15,000 roughly

Without getting into names of particular softwares, there are some that work fine as long as you aren't connected to the internet, but when you do, unless you have your outbound ports closely monitored, they call home, and if you have a pirated version they get disabled.

http://www.redferret.net/?p=6911 http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ http://www.nextag.com/barebones-computer-nook/compare-html Those link to barebones laptops that you can either have them put together for you, or that you can have the pieces delivered to you if you want to do it yourself.

If you really know nothing about computers, get a PC with windows. It's an operating system made for those who fit the profile you just described.{cringe}Yikes! I use windows too.

Possibly... I wouldn't want to take the time to do that though. But i think i might have just found the perfect program for me, and it's freeware to boot! http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ I'll give my review of it after install. Edit: After trying it out, not so thrilled. The features page on their site sounds great, but in practive, it's cumbersome, not very customisable, and even adding keywords requires several steps. Not bad, but not great either. I found a couple more appz that have potential, though not the all-in-one powerhouse i was looking for. Simple freeware app is Pixvue, which integrates into windows explorer, let's you view, add, edit metadata keywords, which then get indexed by windows indexing service, or easily picked up by desktop search appz. a bit TOO simplistic for me though, so I'm going to try the demo of Picajet FX, and see if that one can give me what i'm looking for.

After researching it a bit more online, i still haven't found exactly what i need, but i have more of an idea. I need a good image cataloging program that uses XMP (or something similar) for saving keywords. freeware if possible, paid if not.

You can already get the release candidates of Vista if you're willing to risk it. Otherwise, who cares when it comes out? Wait at least 6 months after that till the first service pack rolls out before getting it.

Alright, it's worth a shot. One thing i didn't see in the features list though -- does it support tags in file properties?---Edit after installing the trial version---Unfortunately this doesn't cover my needs. It's a great program and has a very intuitive interface, fast and comprehensive search, etc. But it doesn't save keywords if i modify the file in any way. Say i used Compupic Pro to add a "BMW, car, silver" tag to a picture, if i rename the picture, or move it to a different folder my keywords are lost. i need something that saves this info in the picture, so that it stays there even if i move it, and the program also needs to be able to query those tags/keywords when i search.

I'm looking for a good program that i can use for indexing and cataloging my clipart. Seriously, i have like 20 GB of pictures, and i can't figure out for the life of me where to find that particular one that i need at any given moment. I've tried Picasa (not what i want) and Picajet. Now Picajet was something that i found good, but the free version didn't quite measure up. Since these pictures are all on my external drive, i'd like some program that catalogs them and i can search by keywords, rating, etc, on any computer i plug the HD into. Or if i can just copy over the database. Picajet creates that database, but you can't copy it onto another computer without having the FX (paid) version. I'll spring for that, if i don't find anything else, but i'd like to find a different program if at all possible.

Yes. I agree that in essence Vista is a rip of MacOS. BUT... it's windows. and all my programs are written for windows. once they make a windows version for the mac, or everyone starts porting their programs and games to MacOS, then i'll consider switching. Though I still say that Vista is a world of security improvement over XP>

probably buggy system files. do a repair installation, that will probably fix it.

True. but for security purposes, i think Vista will be an improvement over XP.for speed, we'll probably have to wait for Vienna. Isn't that supposed to be built on something similar to the Linux kernel?