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Like you said- Jesus was totally big on metaphor. So, I'm willing to bet BIG DOLLA DOLLA that his statement that you should bring a sword has nothing to do with war. Rather, Jesus is of the mind- and we should be too- that you should always show up at a party with your dick in your hand. Or someone else's. At least, I imagine that is the interpretation of the TMC+A.

"Writing [Talking] about music is like dancing about architecture."

Evidently that one is not attributed with certainty to Zappa...see here.

Still a great quote though.

Think about it: this article would just encourage high profile targets to use 30+ characters of random garbage for their keychain passwords, rendering their methods next to useless. They're not that stupid.

"How did you break that 256-bit encryption so fast?"
"With our mad deadly worldwide gangster communist frankenstein distributed computing network, bitch."

Tin foil is still the best buffer.

Of course. This is very smart of you. If you had gotten the notion to pick up the phone and, well, ask who they are, control of your brain would have automatically been siezed by the worldwide deadly Communist Gangster Frankenstein Computer God, who controls all of the brain-bank-brains on the far side of the moon that we never see.

Consider yourself lucky.

I doubt that Kipling's McAndrew's Hymn would be as impressive if redone for micro-engines or hamsters.

Here is a fairly large panoramic we took that day. You can see Johnston Ridge Observatory on the far right. The trail actually takes you across the ridges on the left and then drops you down in to the flats at the base of the mountain:

http://home.pacifier.com/~richmond/Helens.jpg

• Steadicam Physics and Construction Hints
• Do-It-Yourself Stabilizer for the XL-1
• • Plus, as a bonus:
  • 
    Create Your Own Camera Boom

If you look around, you can find a couple of good sites around that carry the torch.

If you look around, you can find a couple of good sites around that carry the torch.

If you look around, you can find a couple of good sites around that carry the torch.

If you look around, you can find a couple of good sites around that carry the torch.

Crystal Pepsi was the only good Pepsi ever. It tasted like Coke. And it was a good thing, too, since at that time, Coke was trying to pass New Coke off as the real thing.

The aforementioned "[...] genuinely intriguing claims about Janet Reno's time in Miami" turn out to be documented on the bizarre site Lesbian Studies, which seems to be one lone man's effort to expose how the government financed Lesbian Mafia controls America.

That's all well and good. One google-eyed religious crank is connected to another google-eyed religious crank. No surprises there.

But wait, look again and scroll down a bit. Thompson and Reno have the same goofy grin! It's not quite a separated-at-birth, but it's still kinda spooky!

Ah, forget it. These guys are bad enough on their own. Making fun of them just seems redundant.

I wonder if Donna Kossy know about them...

Great, another hypochondriac Jew from New York trying to change the world. This guy is a nut, and if he was broke, he'd be another toothless guy wandering around with his aluminum foil hat rambling about the Computer God's Worldwide Overall Plan and brainwash antenna loops. This guy needs psychological help, not medical.

Oh and if you're really curious, check out a guy who started the whole paranoid-schizophrenic luddite thing: Francis E. Dec, Esq. A good read even if you're not interested in Feinberg or whatever the hell his name is.

This (supposedly) only works with pre-1989 Betas. Around 1989, Hollywood finally confronted Sony and forced them to make Beta vulnerable to Macrovision, just like VHS. Of course, by then, it was a little late, as Beta was irreversibly going down.

I'm on a mailing list called the Beta Informer , and there has been quite a lot of discussion about Betamax's apparent invulnerability to Macrovision.

Here's a quote from issue #129, in a submission by Dan Petitpas:

The reason Macrovision doesn't work with Beta is because of the way the system was designed.

All VCRs have automatic gain controls (AGC) circuits that modulate the video signal, boosting weak video signals and clamping down on too strong signals.

But Sony [the inventor of Betamax] put the AGC circuit on Beta's inputs, as was done with previously with audio recorders, where the signal is modulated before it is recorded.

JVC put the AGC circuits into VHS's outputs to compensate for poorly recorded tapes. Sony, because it tightly controlled the quality of the format between only three other manufacturers, expected Beta tapes to be recorded as well as possible and used the circuit to make that possible. JVC, with alliances with over 80 other manufacturers, took the philosophy that the quality of the recorded tapes would vary so much by manufacturer that it had better modulate the signal output.

Macrovision took advantage of this. In the sync signal it puts a big, white, pulsating "block." As the "block" overmodulates periodically (every 30 seconds or so), the AGC tries to clamp the signal down, causing the rest of the sync signal to weaken. As Macrovision found, the trick is to allow the sync signal to lessen to the point where a VHS recorder couldn't lock in on the sync, but a TV had enough of a sync signal to lock in on and boost using its own built in AGC.

This was why different TVs reacted different ways to the different tapes. Each AGC would handle the signal somewhat differently. Also, some tape distributors turned down the Macro signal so that their tapes would play better. Other manufacturers were more worried about piracy and turned up the Macro signal. A couple of studios didn't sign up with Macro at first, and put out Macro-free tapes for a while.

[Some pre-1985 TVs would show a distorted picture when used to view a Macrovision-protected videotape.]

Beta decks worked the same way TVs did and basically helped fixed what it saw as a weak sync signal, which allowed you to make Beta copies of VHS Macro tapes.

For a while, most studios did not put Macro on Beta copies, but when they started using the same video tape master for both VHS and Beta copies, Beta tapes were sold with Macro on them. This caused more annoyance for Beta users than anything else. I have a copy of the darkly lighted film Aliens where the damned "flashing" of the sync signal is quite apparent because it turns black areas at the top of the screen to turn grayish when it does its "thing."

You could make VHS copies of Beta Macro movies with no problem because of where the ACG control was wired in, but I think you could make Beta copies of Beta pre-recorded movies because the sync signal was stronger to begin with and Sony may have had its AGC set not to be fooled by this.

From another contributor:

Macrovision uses a different format, I believe, and I've heard of some later Betas being affected by it as well.

From Mr. Petitpas:

I have heard this -- that Sony was sort of forced to wire in an AGC circuit to the outputs so Macro would function as it did with VHS.

Anyway, I've heard a lot of people talk about making perfect copies of DVDs and copy-protected VHS tapes on their Betamaxes. I tried that a few times with my SL-100 SuperBetamax (made in 1986), but I still got a mild lightening and darkening of the picture.

I still don't fully understand the relationship between Macrovision and Beta decks. If the AGC on Betas is wired to the inputs, wouldn't that cause the Beta deck to produce screwed-up recordings of copy-protected tapes? It would be clamping down the stronger video signal.

What I do know is that Macrovision (on videotapes) mainfests itself as a really bright white line just above the picture (in the out-of-band area) on your TV, and most VCR's AGCs take this into account when determining the picture's brightness (which is why videotape copies have that "flashing" effect). Also, if you're ever watching a commercial video and the screen appears bright or distorted at the top of the picture, that's Macrovision at work. The brightness at the top of the picture is especially noticeable at the beginning of the video, during the black screens between the trailers and the antipiracy notice.