Author: William
LightScribe: Next Generation Disc Labels
During my efforts to recover from my computer woes around the first of the year, I decided that I needed the ability to backup larger files than my DVD burner could copy onto a single disc. So I decided to price recorders that could support the dual layer, 8.5-gigabyte discs. After I started looking, I come across a DVD-R that has LightScribe written on the box. Curious I found their website http://www.lightscribe.com and took a look.
LightScribe is a technology that allows you to use your DVD burner to laser etch labels onto the discs that you make at home. This means no more paper labels or Sharpies are needed to know what’s on your disc. Use you label creation program that is bundled with your burner; simply create a label for your disc, and place disc into your burner upside-down and print. The labels are black writing etched into a gold foil label embedded in the DVD or CD. This technology is supported by Roxio Easy Media Creator and Nero software.
LightScribe requires special hardware, software and LightScribe enabled discs to operate. The DVD-R drive that I purchased was from the local Staples store for 79.95 plus tax. My LightScribe burner is made by I/O Magic and was bundled with Nero 6. As it turns out, the LightScribe drivers are embedded into the Nero software and cannot be installed separately. My Roxio software supports LightScribe but would not work until I had installed the Nero program that was bundled with the drive.
I have found that the LightScribe discs are made for CD’s and 8x (4.3 GB) DVDs. The best prices I have found thus far are at my local Wal-Mart.
You can us any background image that you want to create the label but remember that your end product will be in a single color so there are limits to your creativity.
After the label is created in your computer, place disc label side down into your burner. Close door and the go to print in you label program. You will then be able to select your burner as a print device. Select Best print quality and then print label. In about 25 minutes you will have a disc with a laser-etched label.
This is a system that works just like it is advertised. I recommend that you get LightScribe enabled burners for your next computer upgrade. Best of all, it works wonderfully on my 64 bit Windows XP system.
My Shot at Dick Chaney
1. While the Vice President will no longer be known as a straight shooter, the real question is was he leaning to the Right when he fired?
2. Did he have a campaign flashback and think he was in Cambodia?
3. When Dick Cheney says his beer is “Less filling”, don’t argue and say, “Tastes Great.”
4. If Dick Cheney has you in his sights, you’re in big trouble.
5. I bet young men will think twice before dating the Vice-President’s daughter now!
Bureaucrats Criminalize 21st Century Lifestyle
When can you tell that government is out of control? When government makes law abiding citizens into criminals just for going about their daily lives, the government has overstepped its rightful boundaries.
If you are a gun owner, smoker, motorcycle rider or other persecuted minority in California for doing something that is legal, you now have company. Every citizen in California has been made a criminal today. That’s right! Effective today, if you throw a dead AAA battery into the trash you are criminal. If you put a burned-out light bulb into a dumpster you are an evil doer. If you toss a disposable cell phone you are scum. So says the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (also called CalEPA).
A summary article can be found at the KCRA-TV website.
The real lessons to take from these Liberals are these:
We cannot listen to terrorists talking on disposable cell phones but we can imprison them for tossing the phones into the trash when their calling minutes are expired.
Our State legislature is more fearful of the batteries in my baby’s electronic toys than the possibility that thermonuclear weapons might be detonated in San Francisco or Los Angeles.
Gallo Teams with Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart announced that they would soon be offering customers a new discount item: Wal-Mart’s own brand of wine. The world’s largest retail chain is teaming up with E&J Gallo Winery of California, to produce the spirits at an affordable price, in the $2-5 range.
Wine connoisseurs may not be inclined to throw a bottle of Wal-Mart brand into their shopping carts, but “there is a market for cheap wine”, said Kathy Micken, professor of marketing. She continued, “But the right name is important.” Customer surveys were conducted to determine the most attractive name for the Wal-Mart brand.
The top surveyed names in popularity are:
10. Chateau Traileur Parc
9. White Trashfindel
8. Big Red Gulp
7. World Championship Riesling
6. NASCARbernet
5. Chef Boyardeaux4. Peanut Noir
3. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Vinegar!
2. Grape Expectations
And the number 1 name for Wal-Mart Wine…
1. Nasti Spumante
According to Micken, “The beauty of Wal-Mart wine is that it can be served with either white meat (Possum) or red meat (Squirrel).”
Founder in 1962, Wal-Mart is a global company with more than 1.3 million associates worldwide and nearly 5,000 stores and wholesale clubs across 15 countries. Last year, Wal-Mart generated more than $256 billion in global revenue, establishing a new record and adding more than $26 billion in sales.
Islamic Cartoons
This is one of the phoniest issues that I have ever seen. These cartoons were published in September of 2005 and are just now getting protested.
If you want to know the truth just follow the money to see who is financing the �brute squads� terrorizing embassies and burning flags. Syria has already been fingered as a major backer of these attackers. I’m sure Sandi Arabic and Iran are also kicking-in a few Rupees to stir things-up.
The cartoons can be views at HumanEventsOnline
I agree that supporters of the Global War on Terror are using the cartoons to make the natives restless; but this is the same type of tactics that these repressive governments have used for years to blame Israel for all their self-inflicted ills. To wait five months to mount a campaign against the newspapers that published these cartoons is proof that this is a staged event.
These protests also serve to silence what few moderate Muslims there are in the region.
These protests are really a preemptive step to unify the region to raise the stakes to the point that Israel and/or the United States will loose their backbone and not attack the nuclear program in Iran because such an attack could escalate into a regional war. From this perspective, the events that are unfolding now are a brilliant political move. Truly, the chessmasters are putting their pawns in play.
Of all the cartoons, the one above is my favorite.
It does bring to mind one question that I have never heard explained and that is what are the women who blow-up innocent men, women and children supposed to get from Allah in the next life?
eTrust Antivirus Release 8
Occasionally. I have to be the first kid on the block with the new techie toy. In that spirit, I purchased the new Computer Associates eTrust Antivirus program, Release 8. I wanted a program that was certified to work with my 64-bit version of Windows XP.
Prior to installing, I uninstalled the eTrust version 7 that I was using for the past three weeks.
The installation went ok. I was prompted to agree to three different licenses and had to fill out a full-page registration form before I even got to the screen to select the product that I wanted to install.
When selecting the program to install, there is a one-sentence summary of each product choice; there are five or six from which to choose. I selected eTrust Antivirus Release 8. The next screen lets you choose Client, Server or Custom installation. I made my choice and then presses finish to install.
Partway through the installation, I got an error that the license would not register so I was being given a 30-day trial version of the program. After installation finished, the system prompted for a reboot.
After rebooting my computer, I tried to find where the license could be entered again to get the product registered. I could not find any screen to enter the information. There is a license button on one of the screens but it doesn’t work like you would expect. It doesn’t ask you to enter a registration number or verify the information that you had previously typed in case you typed one instead of I or zero instead of O or something lame like that; instead, it asks you for a path to the license file. I even tried cutting and pasting the license key code from the order confirmation e-mail that they sent me but it would not work.
The license button gave you a screen that had three buttons. A fill-in box next to the Browse button seemed the logical place to find a license file. Once you click on Browse you are presented with a search window similar to Word or Excel when you select File-Open. The choices for file type are the default *.* (the dreaded search wildcard), .gif or .htm.
What and where this mysterious license file is remained a mystery for several hours. It seems like this interface is intended for a client installation to find the license file of the server installation. (See number Five below for more info.)
There is no Help option. I looked because often licensing is buried in the Help-About button on the program.
After several hours of frustration on the CA website and uninstalling and reinstalling the program four more times, this is what I discovered.
First, all of the user name, address and other neat mandatory fields that you are prompted for in the installation, are not memorized by the setup program and must be reentered each time you run setup.
Second, there is no help option available from the setup menu.
Third, there is no help available for Release 8 at the CA website.
Fourth, HP and Microsoft have much better Knowledge Bases than Computer Associates. I even went through the registration at their website, for the third time in a month to try to login to some support options. CA does not seem to have integrated login data so I had to register once to download a trial copy, which I could never get to install. Then I had to enter all the same info to buy the program on their store website, and third, I had to register to get a look at portions of the support website.
Fifth, I did find out that there is a registration file in the Shared Components directory that this is an .xml file but it only shows enough information to see that I have a thirty day trial version currently installed.
Sixth, the licensing scheme and file locations have been completely revised for Release 8 when compared to Release 7.
In light of all that had happened, I sent an e-mail to CA in hopes of getting some help to get the program licensed properly. I may have to hack the xml file but I would like to get the program working properly.
***
Six Hours After My Original Post
Amazingly, when I got home today there were two e-mails waiting for me in response to my request for help, the e-mails were due to the fact that I was not there to answer the phone call from Computer Associates. That’s service!
Anyway here is the text of the e-mail.
This is with regards to your Licensing Issue# XXXXXX91.
I understand that you have installed the product on a 64 bit machine.
Kindly note that the agent will work fine on a 64 bit machine, however, kindly install the (ITM server) Console on a different machine which does not have a 64 bit processor.
The licenses will get updated only when a console machine connects to CA site and get it refreshed. Otherwise, the license.xml file will be holding the trial info only.
Hence, you can install the Console on a different machine and have the 64 bit machine as an agent. Kindly let me know if you have any questions.
Regards,
Cheryl
CA
License Support Representative
As Paul Harvey says, “and now the rest of the story.”
I took my handy eTrust R8 disk to my wife’s 32-bit Windows XP computer and started the install process again. I agreed to three licenses and filled-out the same full page form again, selected eTrust R8 and then surprise! There were four menu choices instead of the three that were on my 64-bit computer.
As instructed, I installed the ITM Server.
This was a good first step but is not the end of the computing adventures that I experienced.
When I rebooted the computer and tried to go into the ITM Server, I was prompted for a Username and Password. I figure no sweat, I will enter what? My registration stuff asked me to create a password but not a username. What now?
Thankfully there was a help button on this screen. After mousing around I found out that the eTrust ITM Console uses the default Administrator account of the computer as the Username and Password. This was simple enough, I entered the username and there was no password on the Administrator account on my wife’s XP machine so I just hit Enter and . . . nothing. Program error, I must enter a password. But there is no password! The only choice I had was to go to Users in the Control Panel and enter a password for the Administrator account on the XP machine.
I then went back to the ITM Console and tried the Administrator account with my newly created password and like magic, I was able to login.
The console could see my computer had eTrust but there was nowhere that I could find to register the license which was the whole purpose of this exercise in the first place.
Based on my experiences the night before, I though why not just share the directory with the license in it and see what happens. I shared the SubscriptionLicense directory and then went to my 64-bit computer.
I opened the License Tab and browsed to the SubscriptionLicense directory on my wife’s computer and selected the License.xml file and my computer accepted the choice. Now I am running a fully licensed copy of ETrust Antivirus Release 8 for my 64-bit Windows XP system.
John Danforth Whines in Washington Post
A friend e-mailed me a copy of the Washington Post interview with former Senator John Danforth. This article advocates that moderate Christians should rise-up to oppose the Christian Right and their involvement in the Republican Party.
Danforth cites such issues as gay marriage, posting the Ten Commandments, Terri Schiavo, embryonic stem cell research and other social issues as needing the wisdom of moderate voices. OK what is a moderate position on such issues?
Let’s look at the issues.
Is it ok to kill unborn babies as a form of retroactive birth control?
Is it ok to conceive children to harvest their body parts in the name of science?
Is it ok to have religion in the public square?
Is it ok to honestly acknowledge the intellectual and moral foundations of our Founding Fathers?
Is marriage between a man and woman the best way to raise children?
Is forcing acceptance of homosexuality upon me and my family a good thing?
Obviously there is no such thing as a moderate position on these and other issues.
You are either for or against such issues. They are either right or wrong. The one thing most of these issues have in common is that they are being advanced by judicial legislation and not the normal Constitutional processes that are setup under our form of government.
There was a time when the Episcopal Church was called the conscience of the Republican Party. Since then the Episcopal Church-in which Senator Danforth serves as an ordained minister-has left the Orthodox Christian Faith and descended into heresy.
The Christian Right is involved in politics to defend itself from the attacks of Democrats and liberal (moderate) Republicans. Now that the tide is turning and the Senator and his allies are losing, they are wandering about the country like a roaring lion seeking whom they may devour. (see 1 Peter 5:8)
Now, their last vestige of power, the judicial branch of our government, is shifting away from judicial activism and towards a strict constructionist view. This coupled with more minorities in the middle and upper classes and the demise of the Roosevelt era Democrats by attrition has left the political Left in demographic hell for at least the balance of the good Senator’s lifetime.
Once this truth has truly taken hold within the Democratic leadership, look for many of the Dinosaur Democrats to find reasons not to run for re-election.
The Other War on Terror
Far from Afghanistan and Iraq, Saudi Arabia is funding armies of radical Mohammedans that are trying to overthrow the governments of countries such as Nigeria and Sudan. They are systematically burning villages and murdering their inhabitants. Those that survive these raids end up either as refugees or slaves.
The raiders are using guns, machetes, spears and explosives and anything else they can purchase to spread their terror. They purposely torture many before killing them.
Similar atrocities are occurring frequently in Indonesia and occasionally in the Philippines.
However, in parts of Africa this has gotten to the point where there are clearly defined territories controlled by the radical Muslims. In an effort to stem the tide of bloodshed and terror, Christians that live in these countries have begun to fight back, not with bullets but with Bibles. They have decided to evangelize the followers of Islam by literally loving those that persecute them. The famous saying of Tertullian “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church” is as true now as it was in the early Church.
Africa is emerging as the center of Christianity in the 21st Century and also its primary battlefront. This struggle must succeed. It appears to be Africa that is destined to re-evangelize Western Europe and other once Christian nations.
It is interesting that the hope and future of both Protestant and Catholic branches of the Christian Church is anchored in Africa.
Saudi Arabia has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to eradicate Christianity and establish nations that adhere to Sharia Law. We must begin to fight back by praying for our brothers in Africa and sending support to those committed to spreading Christianity in the region.
Just as a point of reference, it costs about two thousand dollars per year to support one African as a fulltime missionary.
I trust that you will join me in supporting this battlefront of the Global War on Terror.
NBC Closes Book on Daniel
After just three episodes, NBC has pulled the plug on its controversial series, The Book of Daniel. The show featured an Episcopal minister addicted to Vicodin with a drug dealing daughter and prominently featured homosexuality and adultery.
The show was so out of the mainstream that several NBC affiliates would not air the program. The ratings have tanked on the program and a lack of advertising support sealed its fate lamented NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly.
Sadly, this program may have been close to the mark of where the leadership of the Episcopal Church of the United States (ECUSA) finds itself heading.