I love Nero Burning ROM, it has always worked perfectly for me.  Ahead, the company that created Nero, has unfortunately decided to crap about 200MB of extras along with the basic CD burning app.  One of the extras helpfully took over my DVD playback, which caused media player to stop being able to play DVDs (I got sound, but no video).  To fix it, you can use the DVD Codec Utility from Microsoft to set the Microsoft codec to default.  The tool says it's for XP, but it worked for me on Vista.

(warning: this strays very close to discussing politics.  skip if you like.  Again, I realize that you don't care what I think about politics; remember that I don't care what you think either).

Anyway, today I saw this: "Americans are responsible for about 1/5 of the world's garbage annually.  On average, that's 3 pounds a day per person."  Statistics like this are trotted out fairly often to illustrate how bad Americans are.   Generally, people who say things like "Americans are only X% of the world population, but produce 2X% of [something bad]" want to illustrate how Americans should just stop doing bad things, and become more enlightened and less wasteful. 

That's usually a crock.

The production of just about all of the bad things that people love to excoriate Americans for creating are a function of economic activity.  So, instead of saying "Americans, with only 4.6% of the world's population, create 20% of the world's garbage", they should say "Americans, with only 4.6% of the world's population, create about 20% of the world's economic activity, and *suprise* 20% of the world's garbage".  Of course, that doesn't make Americans look so bad, so its frequently not addressed.

(I got the GDP and GWP numbers from the earth-policy.org, here and here.  I have no idea where the garbage quote people got their numbers.) 

Again, I don't really care what anyone thinks about global warming, or American wastefulness or anything like that:  I just hate to see people screw around with statistics to make their point.  Furthermore, I am not very smart, so if I can figure it out, you can bet that the people who come up with those comparisons can figure it out too, they are just massaging the data to fit their preconceptions.

My review is coming up at work soon, and you can bet I will be massaging statistics to make my point (the point being that I am a hero, and thus deserve piles of cash and new computers &etc)

I learned this the hard way, and there is no point in arguing with me about it, you will find out for yourself:

1) It is not acceptable to tell your wife, who had (or is currently pregnant with) your children, that you did not buy her a Mother's Day present because "you are not my mother".

2) Once your children are old enough to discuss mother's day, it is not acceptable to teach them that Mother's Day is "the most important made up holiday of the year".

Trust me on this.

I suppose this is 'vigorously defending their trademark' to avoid becoming another 'xerox' or 'kleenex'

From Adobe's site, via Digg:

Proper use of the Photoshop trademark

Trademarks help protect corporate and product identity, and Photoshop is one of Adobe's most valuable trademarks. By following the below guidelines, you can help Adobe protect the Photoshop brand name.

The Photoshop trademark must never be used as a common verb or as a noun. The Photoshop trademark should always be capitalized and should never be used in possessive form, or as a slang term. It should be used as an adjective to describe the product, and should never be used in abbreviated form. The following examples illustrate these rules:

Trademarks are not verbs.

CORRECT: The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software.

INCORRECT: The image was photoshopped.

Trademarks are not nouns.

CORRECT: The image pokes fun at the Senator.

INCORRECT: The photoshop pokes fun at the Senator.

Always capitalize and use trademarks in their correct form.

CORRECT: The image was enhanced with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements software.

INCORRECT: The image was photoshopped.

INCORRECT: The image was Photoshopped.

INCORRECT: The image was Adobe® Photoshopped.

Trademarks must never be used as slang terms.

CORRECT: Those who use Adobe® Photoshop® software to manipulate images as a hobby see their work as an art form.

INCORRECT: A photoshopper sees his hobby as an art form.

INCORRECT: My hobby is photoshopping.

I was a 'non-traditional' student in college, and by 'non traditional', I mean that I was totally unsuited for a college education; I was more interested in drinking and chasing girls than studying. (I rarely caught a girl, but I DID manage to drink a lot).   Luckily, the school I went to was very non-competitive, so I could neglect my studies and still manage to graduate after 5 or 6 years.

Seeing this article in today's Charlotte Observer lets me know that there are still students as dumb as I was:

CULLOWHEE, N.C. (AP)--

Two students at Western Carolina University and a third person face charges in connection with throwing a soda bottle filled with an explosive mixture from a dormitory window, authorities said.

No one was injured in the incident Tuesday, school officials said.

"I don't get the sense they were trying to injure anybody," said Chancellor John Bardo. "On the other hand, that doesn't really matter."

Antonio Izzi, 18, Michelle Hargenrader, 19, WCU students, and Jesse Edwards, 21, each face charges of possession of a weapon of mass destruction and four counts of possession of explosives on school property. They were being held at the Jackson County jail on $27,500 bond each.

A 20-ounce soda bottle containing chemicals that included toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum was thrown from a window at Leatherwood Hall, a 400-bed dorm, police said.

Chemicals, including toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum, were mixed in a 20-ounce soda bottle, police said.

Campus Police Chief Tom Johnson said the trio told police they were bored. "Not the smartest thing in light of what happened at Virginia Tech," he said.

On Monday, 32 people were gunned down at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., by a student who then killed himself.

One of my colleagues at work also attended WCU, and his comment was "you know, if I had a buck for every time my stupid actions were explained by “I was just really bored”. "

The computer that I built for Al is very noisy, and it's really annoying me.  What I have been dong is remotly shutting it down, but Al gets upset at me when I do that while he is working on it.

That's what I get for buying the cheapest case with powersupply that I could find.

I really like the PRS-500 ebook reader that I got for Christmas.  The system requirements say it needs Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business or Ultimate, but it does not specify 32 or 64 bit.  Since I cant get the software to install on 64 bit (and I could get it to work on 32 bit versions of Vista), I am pretty sure it isnt. 

I would ask Sony directly, but they only have phone support, and I hate talking on the phone.  I would imagine that it would be cheaper to provide email support, but what do I know?

Luckily, I have an SD card that I can put books on, and I have an old app that would convert gutenberg etexts to another ebook's format.  It should be fairly easy to figure out how format something to look good on the sony device.  The problem with that is that if people don't buy books from the Sony store, Sony might decide to kill the project (that's what happend with the last ebook I used)

If you have XP or Vista, and a fairly beefy video card, Yod'm 3D is really neat.  It is an application that allows you to rotate your desktop as if it were a cube. 

Sort of like Beryl, but for Windows.  (If you haven't seen Beryl in action, go and take a look.  It's eye-candy overload)

The problem with buying a PC that isnt certified to run your OS is that you get to spend a lot of time figuring out things that you shouldn't have to.  My current problems with my new PC are:

• I get lots of ACPI Event ID 6's (IRQARB: ACPI BIOS does not contain an IRQ for the device in PCI slot 19, function 0. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance.).  This is http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/930062
• When trying to install Vista x64, I get http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929777/.  The workaround is to remove 2GB of RAM, install Vista, patch the HAL, and then put the other 2GB back in.  I don't mind spelunking around in the back of the PC and moving stuff around, but I try to avoid it as much as I can (as I am all thumbs).  I fooled around with the Windows Automated Installation Kit to make a custom Vista installation today, but I didn't do it properly. 

There are several other people at work with the same machine, and we have started comparing notes.  The great thing about working at Microsoft is that I posted the stack of the bluescreen to an internal alias, and had a hotfix inside of 10 minutes.

Hopefully, I will be able to get the 64 bit version of Vista going in the next couple of days, then I will start feeling more at home in the new machine.  I am supposed to get a new machine at work too, so I will have an embarassment of riches.

Yes, the new PC is here.  Yes, it's fast.  It only has a WEI of 5.0, I am going to investigate why my "Memory Operations per Second" is only enough to get me a 5.0.  I figure I can tweak myself up to a 5.9, which is as high as I go before they release the specs for a 6 later this year.

While the machine has 4GB of RAM, the 32bit-ness of the version of Vista that I installed fixes it so I can only see 3.  (More info on this is here).

I have one piece of hardware that requires 32 bit for the drivers, but I may have to move some things around so that I can go to x64 and use all of my RAM.

I am still in the process of fooling around, I will post my further impressions once I get a chance to set the machine up properly.

According to this article in the Telegraph, Prince Harry is partying quite a bit before he is deployed to Iraq.  The article says:

This week the beet-faced Prince of Boujis was in trouble again, after newspaper reports of him downing a vat of Crack Baby cocktails and being photographed falling into the gutter outside a nightclub.

Ahhh youth.  I'm glad that there were no news photographers following me around when I was a 22 year old Lieutenant.  I am willing to bet that drinking to excess in the British Army among junior officers is about as common as it was in the US Army when I was a junior officer.

The only criticism that I can make is that his drink of choice is not something I would be proud of describing in the officer's mess.  He was apparently drinking "Crack Babys", which is "a combustive mix of vodka, passion fruit, raspberry liqueur and champagne".  I was at the Officer's Club at Fort Benning once, and someone ordered a Pina Colada, which is about 4 levels up the manliness scale than a "Crack Baby".  All conversation stopped, and I believe the offender was given the opportunity to change his order, or face an involuntary transfer to the Navy or, god help us, the Air Force. (of course, I have the highest regard for all of my brothers and sisters in the Navy and the Air Force.  It's a joke)

Other than his choice in drinks, the only suggestion I can make for young Lt. Wales is that he drink on post, where they can hopefully keep the press away.  If I were a member of the British Royal family, I would be doing my best to tarnish the family name, not willingly placing myself in harm's way.