Info and forum posts by 'tychobear'

RE: Nick Berry`s

Anyone know if this was the last episode or if more are planned?

Pioneer DV-717

It`s a pain in the ass. My chipped 717 was bumped during a recent house move with the damage limited to the multi-region-enabling small daughter board that stuck out through a small ventilation vent on the side of the player. Now it`s back to being plain simple Region 2 only.

So, I try to find someone who`ll re-chip the machine for me and find that the cheapest I can get it done is 55 quid - ten pounds more than it cost to have it done originally when I bought the player in 1999.

And the only company that I can find who market the equivalent simply-slide-into-place daughter board refuse to sell it to me and insist I either by their DIY kit which requires soldering or pay 80 quid to have them put in the daughter board - THANK YOU TECHTRONICS FOR BEING BLOODY UNREASONABLE.

Now I have heard that there are handset hacks for this machine but I`m not sure if this is true. Someone told me one which is for the DV-505 instead, and another just doesn`t work.

Does anyone know of a remote handset hack for this machine which applies toi the earlier models/firmware versions?

Thanks!

Gareth

The West Wing on DVD

I noticed in today`s R2 news that the first season of The West Wing is coming to DVD in March, or at least the first half of season one. This is perhaps some of the best drama television to come out of the US in years and something I was eagerly awaiting.

Now, call me a skinflint if you want, but I find forking our thirty-five pounds for half a season of a television series - even one as good as The West Wing - a bit steep. Yes, yes, I know I`m getting over seven hours worth of programming but that`s just my opinion.

So, I head on over to Amazon.com to see if the US price in R1 works out cheaper as it usually does. Problem is, I can`t seem to find any R1 site that has this box set, or any West Wing DVD, for sale. It can`t be that R2 is seeing this series on DVD first, can it?

Does anyone have any info on when this might come out in R1 and, more importantly, what the price will be?

Cheers,

Gareth

RE: Problems with The Mummy Returns

MGS,

Mine`s an R2 copy.

Cheers,

Gareth

General questions on PC DVD ...

I currently have a region 2 DVD-ROM drive with DVDExpress playing software on my PC. I have a couple of questions which you might be able to help me with.

a) What is the best DVD player software? (I know there are a lot of different options and most people will diagree on which is the best but I though it might be possible to get a feel for what is generally well tought of, as opposed to dVDExpress which I think is crap.)

b) As I don`t really want to do anything to the firmware on my R2 DVD-ROM drive (a friend tried to redo his and ruined his drive - don`t know why), would it be possible to add a separate R1 DVD-ROM drive and load another player software package to handle R1 discs, keeping them entirely separate (i.e. R1 would have a separate player/drive set from R2)? Would the hardware or software interfere between the two region setups?

cheers,

Gareth

RE: Problems with The Mummy Returns

Thanks Sash, I`ll give it a go ....

Gareth

Problems with The Mummy Returns

Folks,

I was given a copy of the Mummy returns as a Christmas pressie which I sat down to watch on my Pioneer 717 and happily enjoyed.

I also have a SD-612 DVD-ROM drive on my Compaq Presario PC which I wanted to watch the film on as well. However, I came across the two following problems when trying to watch the film on the PC :

a) the picture would go blank after twenty to thirty minutes (didn`t seem to be linked to the same point in the film) and the PC wouldn`t respond. This happened once where the sound continued to playback while the picture disappeared but twice when both sound and vision were lost.

On the first occasion I was able to kill the DVD playing process (it`s one that comes on the disc - Advent? - and didn`t use the DVDExpress player that was supplied with the PC)while the two following times I had to reboot the machine completely.

b) the sound seemed to occasionally drop out and come back as if there was some really bad attempt at surround sound decoding going on (the PC is only stereo).

Has anyone else experienced this or a similar bug with another film? Any ideas why either of these happened and what could be done to resolve this?

Cheers,

Gareth

p.s. Happy New Euro

(With me working in Germany, I now have Euros, deutschmarks and sterling all rattling around in my pockets - with the DM disappearing at the end of Feb, I find myself hoping the pound goes soon too!)

RE: Be afraid........be very afraid.

Micoman,

Wasn`t it at the end of "Bad Boys" where Will Smith has his gun to the head of the baddie (played by Tcheky Karyo, I think), who tries to convince Smith`s character to shoot him?

Or something like that.

Ssssssufferin` ssssuccotash .....

Gareth

This item was edited on Wednesday, 31st October 2001, 12:02

RE: Am I a pillock or what?

Animal Farm?

Damn.

And with me just thrown my velcro-fronted wellies out last week too ....


:o)

fornication = 11 letters
pornography = 11 letters, too
George W Bush = 11 letters (but maybe I shouldn`t mention that as HappyExHitachiOwner might get in on the act!)

No clues there I`m afraid.

RE: Re : Am I a Pillock ....

Ah, see what happens when you don`t log in before trying to write a response, and then can`t remember the thread title? It goes and puts your submission in as a new thread instead of as a reply to Andrew Bruce`s thread.

Re : Am I a Pillock ....

Hi folks,

A couple of points.

First off, I do respect Greg for his opinions on pr0n - i.e. that he personally doesn`t like it - which is fair enough. It is important though that either partner in a relationship is flexible (no, not just THAT way!!!) and understanding towards the likes, dislikes, turn-ons, turn-offs, etc of the other. That means that simply stating, "I don`t like it and you HAVE to respect that." is an approach that can be very damaging in the long run. If both partners take that approach towards a single issue, and have opposite views, then you have a serious problem with no obvious solution.

My personal view of pr0n is that it can be a very entertaining medium for both myself and my wife. While she was not especially keen on the idea of watching pr0n together when I first suggested it, her lack of enthusiasm disappeared when she realised how much she was enjoying the film, both in terms of watching and in terms of what we were doing at the time. It now forms an occasional, but enjoyable, part of our loving relationship.

I should note though that the particular "flavour" of pr0n that we watch is the very much couples-oriented variety such as Adam&Eve`s "Search for the Snow Leopard". We don`t have any interest in the more hardcore kinds of pr0n such as anal, orgies, peeing, S&M, etc.

Getting less serious for a moment, my second point is for Andrew.

I think you`re going to be in luck mate because one of five things will happen :

a) the Postie will realise that the name on the letter corresponds to number 10, not number 32 and deliver it to you anyway. This is pretty likely.

b) the little old lady in number 32 will realise the error and drop it through your mailbox without opening it, being the friendly neighbour she is and remembering how everyone came together during the Blitz, and all. The is also pretty likely.

c) the little old lady in number 32 will open it and, upon checking the address label, realise that her neighbours are perverts but put it through your door anyway, maybe with a comment to the girlfriend about the shocking morals of some young people today ....

d) the little old lady in number 32 will open it and, upon checking the address label, realise that her neighbours are perverts and hand it back to the Postie. The Postie will then check the contents and probably invite you to the next local wife-swapping S&M party that he`s holding. There you will be able to enjoy the delights of watching all your erstwhile apparently normal neighbours walking around in leopard-skin thongs and leather bondage gear - at which point you will realise that it`s time to move house.

e) lastly she might just send it back to the sender without doing anything else.

So the most likely thing to happen is that you`ll get your DVD without any problem. The worst that will happen is you have to move house.

As for my guesses on what the film was, what about the aforementioned Snow Leopard film, or maybe the Blue Matrix?

Cheers,

Gareth

RE: Where is this going to end?

Alan,

good point about the fact that terrorists become more vulnerable once they become organised. I`m not so sure that you could claim America is harbouring terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh (him being kind of on Death Row and all).

I`ve also found that my mortgage becomes null and void if the property on which it is secured should be vaporised. Of course, I`d still have to cough up the full lot in repayment though .... :o)

I had wondered though about a rather unpleasant looking industrial unit that`s about a mile from my house. A real eyesore it is too. Maybe I could drop an email to the FBI suggesting it`s one of Bin Laden`s training camps and they could bomb it into mulch for me ....

Cheers,

Gareth

RE: Where is this going to end?

Interesting points, one and all.

My personal opinion on what will likely happen is ...

1) the US-led Coalition will put substantial ground `assets` into Afghanisatan, suffer some bad losses but in the end eradicate this particular lot of terrorists.

2) Bin Laden will be killed by a aerial bomb - basically because they CANNOT afford to catch him and put him on trial and don`t want to leave behind a body for the TV crews to show on Al-Jazeera - a martyr is less of a threat than an imprisoned `freedom fighter` as having Bin Laden in jail will result in nothing more than an endless stream of attacks aimed at getting him out.

3) The Taleban will be replaced with a `fudge` government that will be no more successful than the previous Northern Alliance government. In ten years time, Afghanistan will be just as poor as now. There`s no Marshall Plan coming for these poor starving and hopeless people. MREs are only good for right now. Give a guy a sack of grain and you`ll feed him for a week. Give him some seed and a plough and he`ll feed his family for a year.

4) the Coalition will do a few other `pin-prick` attacks on Iraq, Lebanon and maybe a few places elsewhere but there will not be any major attacks. To do so would totally destroy the current Coalition which, I agree, is likely to break nto two or three factions soon anyway.

5) another head of the Hydra - another terrorist group - will pop up and commit some act or acts of terror in the US or Britain and then be destroyed. This process will continue ad infinitum.

6) there will NOT be any use (or threat of use) of tactical nukes. To do so would destroy any Coalition immediately and mos definitely lose the support of Russia, China, Pakistan and India, not to mention the UK.

7) America will finally learn that the unconditional support afforded to Israel over the past thirty years has been a mistake that has done nothing but prolong the conflict in the Middle East. It will be necessary to force Israel and the Palestinians to accept a solution that will be ideal to neither side. Such a solution will have to be internationally monitored nd enforced by the UN until it sticks.

8) All this talk of a Holy War will, as it did in 1979 after the fall of the Shah, slowly recede. There will be more acts of terror but these will peter out to a `background noise` level after a few years.

9) The religious divide between the West and Islam will be even wider and deeper than before. Unfortunately, everything seems to have this effect.

Gareth

RE: Does anyone know if......

Sorry Dusty,

I haven`t seen it mentioned anywhere. Basically, if it isn`t listed on amazon.com, then it ain`t out on DVD.

Cheers,

Gareth

Where is this going to end?

"There are thousands of young people who look forward to death. The Americans must know that by coming to Afghanistan they have opened a new page in the battle against the unbelievers. We shall be victorious. America has opened a door that will never be closed. America must know that the storm of airplanes will not stop."

This is the statement from Al-Qaida, showing that this organisation intends to conduct further terrorist attacks in the coming days, weeks and months. We can expect to see attacks in the USA, Britain and other major players in the Coalition.

Without ending up as an exchange of views on the various ethnic or religious factions involved, I would like to ask what people think the end result of this is going to be. I find it difficult to think of a plan of action that will not either let the terrorists win, or have the conflict become increasingly viewed in the Muslim world as an attack on Islam.

What do you lot think will happen?

Gareth

RE: Attacks on Afghanistan.

I`m going to do what I should have done earlier. Ignore Happy.

So bye bye Happy. I`m not going to feed your ego by responding to any crap you write from now on.

See ya,

Gareth

RE: Attacks on Afghanistan.

DanB, Clayts, Rob, etc

Please excuse me for this posting, but ......

Happy - would you please just F&%K OFF.

"By killing fundamentalist Muslims we will be saving many peoples of all faiths and those of none."

Do you really believe that the people who commit terrorist acts are doing this for their claimed faith? Of course not. They are doing this for hate, for vengeance, for themselves. They manipulate the fears and hopes of others who, in their weakness, believe that they can be justified in committing appalling acts against innocent civilians because some idiot claiming religious authority says to go and do it.

This is not Islam. This is not the Will of Allah, despite what ever they may say or claim or issue as a Fatwa (which is a religious opinion by the way, not an order that must be obeyed). This is evil people wearing a cloak of religion and using their power and influence to make less well-informed people, less well-educated people, or more gullible people do what they want.

Fundamentalist muslims are no more the problem than fundamentalist Jews (see the venom spat out by them in Israel who believe the Arabs are dogs who should be killed), fundamentalist Christians (or didn`t you see the people screaming abuse at five year old children going to school last month? Or did you forget Omagh?) or fundamentalists of any other creed (Aum Shinrikyo in Tokyo, the massacres in Rwanda, the ethnic fighting in Indonesia).

This is nothing about religion. This is all about power.

Now I have to say that the tone of your postings on this forum over the course of the last few weeks/months has been decidedly anti-Islamic, while throwing in the odd "...I have nothing against Muslims, but ...".

Freedom of expression and freedom of opinion are fine. I`m just not sure if I want to have you expressing this sort of opinion in this forum anymore.

What about it Dan? Is it time to ban Happy?

Gareth

RE: She`s gorgeous...

Dave,

Congratulations to you and the new Mum too.

Just to warn you, the last nine months have been the easy bit. Now comes the sleepless nights, nappies, puking, burping, colic (a word I came to hate!), feeding, endless walks to get them to sleep, etc.

But it`s all worth it when you get what my wife and I call "Limpet Mode". That`s when your baby falls asleep on your shoulder and you can FEEL them getting heavier and heavier as they go deeper into sleep. Best feeling in the world, mate.

And just to prove that we never learn, with a three year old boy in nursery and a five year old girl in Primary 1, we now have number 3 on the way in March.

Actually, forget what I said earlier. This IS the good bit.

Cheers,

Gareth

RE: Where is Happy?

He`s back!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


:o)

RE: Are these DVD`s ever likely to appear ?

Regarding "Voyager" - definitely, in fact I think it might be planned for next year. Best to check out some of the Star Trek websites like Trekweb.com for more info. As for "Auf Wiedersehen Pet", that is less clear but I still expect that it will appear some time.

RE: Even more shocking than the Terrorist Attack on America ???

I haven`t heard personally of someone expressing opinions such as that attributed to the representative of the Muslim Youth organisation, however I do believe that there are a couple of aspects of this which should be mentioned.

First, the right to freedom of expression and speech. The film "The American President" summed it up quite well by saying that the right to freedom of speech means that you must defend the right to speak of someone who is expressing a view that you would spend your life trying to oppose. When you suppress someone`s views, you start down a very slippery slope to censure and suppression.

Second, incitement. The right to freedom of speech is not without bounds. Where someone is expressing a view that can be reasonably expected to result in actions of others which ARE illegal, then that is termed incitement. It is an extremely difficult charge to prove in court, but it might be applicable in this case if the result of this statement can be seen to be ending in a crime.

So if someone says that, should a Muslim be killed in the actions that will certainly come in the next few days/weeks/months, then Muslims in Britain or elsewhere should try and kill those who participated in those actions, there may be a case to answer for incitement. This would especially be true where the person is shown to be in a position to exert influence over people who might then go and do what they say. A spokesman for the British section of the Muslim Youth Organisation could be considered to be in such a position.

I have to say though, that there is a danger that certain people on both "sides" are trying to make this situation into a conflict between Muslims and the Western culture of Europe and North America. It is NOT true to say that we should hold all Muslims, or indeed those of Middle-Eastern descent, as in some way responsible for what happened in the USA. Likewise, all westerners cannot be held collectively responsible for the actions taken by various national governments over the course of the last fifty years which have undoubtedly resulted in the inhumane treatment of some peoples in the Middle East.

General assignment of such collective responsibility would achieve one of the objectives of the terrorists themselves.

Instead, we should only hold responsible those who helped support, plan, or conduct this act of terror. An important distinction made by Tom Clancy in the novel "Sum of All Fears" was made near then end of the book. These terrorists should not to be classified as Muslim terrorists, or Middle-Eastern terrorists, or Palestinian terrorists, but merely terrorists. As such they are criminals whose religion, ethnicity or homeland is irrelevant to the crime they have committed, despite anything they might think or use to justify their actions.

Islam is, in many ways, a far more tolerant and hospitable religion than Christianity (I personally am Church of Scotland) or the Jewish faith. The use of this religion as justification for acts of terror is a malignant twisting of the faith which is condemned by most Muslims.
We should always keep in mind the ultimate motives for those who preach hate in the name of a religion. How "christian" were the Inquisition who burned people at the stake and tortured others for lack of religious purity? Or the Crusades who butchered and pillaged indiscriminately? They too used religion as justification for evil acts.

We should remember that any Muslims or arabs persecuted without justification for the acts perpetrated in New York, Washignton and Pittsburgh, will be just as much victims of this horror as the workers in the WTC, or the firemen who have been lost.

I`m going to sign off now as it`s almost midday here (Germany) which is the specified time for the three minutes silence.

RE: A new anthem ... or a new monarchy?

There`s life beyond DVD?

Says who ... ?!

RE: Massive terrorist attacks in America

To those of you who might think that the victims ín this tragedy are reaping what they sow, consider this.

Over the course of the last 36 hours, we have all sat and watched on TV or on the web while this drama has unfolded. We all watched, and continue to watch, the endless reruns of the planes impacting the World Trade Center towers. It`s a hell of a show, isn`t it?

Well then, think about this. Before the planes crashed, the crews were either incapacitated or murdered with knives. There are reports that the stewardesses on one plane may have had their throats slit. Children had to watch this happen. When the planes hit, the people on board did NOT die instantly. They were burnt, crushed and dismembered. For a few brief seconds, these people will have known exactly what hell was like.

For those in the towers who survived the initial impacts, they will have known unimaginable fear when the true extent of what was happening became clear. Anyone who was on the floors around, or on any of the floors above, the points of the two impacts were doomed immediately. There was no way to get down past the floors on which the fires burned.

Those below will have tried to evacuate to ground level. To do this they will have had to run down some eighty flights of stairs in smoke, surrounded by many others all pushing and shoving, not in belligerence, but in desperation.

When the towers collapsed, and for a tragic few beforehand, they will have been alive for the time it took for the fall to the first solid object below them. We have all seen the incomparably horrible film of people falling almost a quarter of a mile to the ground. People jumped rather than burn. Can you imagine what that would be like?

Those running from the towers will ahve been met by firemen, police and paramedics running up. These brave people will have known all too well the risks of a collapse and went into the buildings anyway. I can only assume that every, EVERY, one of these brave people who went into the towers will have probably died.

Those that survived the collapse will have been in tiny claustrophobic spaces full of dust, and probably horribly injured with crushed and broken limbs.

Consider this Bear. While you sit at your keyboard typing the disgusting filth of your postings, there are people buried alive right now who are terrified. They will almost certainly not survive becuase opf the nature of the disaster. There may well be children under that rubble who will not be rescued in time.

If you believe that any of this disaster is justified, then I pity you.

RE: Massive terrorist attacks in America

Dan,

Your point is very significant. The response to this atrocity will not be purely a US one, but an international one. That means us, people. We are in for a very difficult time, I think.

On another matter, I attended some lectures by a Professor Wilkinson at Aberdeen University some fifteen years ago - he was until reently frequently rolled out by Sky, BBC, et al, as an anti-terrorism expert. He made it clear in his lectures that there were smart terrorists and there were dumb terrorists (e.g. the not-so-smart bombs who blow themselves up in markets).

Don`t make the mistake of thinking that, because these people were willing to die in conducting this attack, that it wasn`t a meticulously planned and conducted operation. It seems a reasonable point to make that, if the attack on NYC and Washington was so well coordinated and planned, it is also possible that, alrge as it may be, there is an even larger scale of planning involved.

I think it not impossible to contemplate that there may be more to come. It is psychologically effective to let a victim gain a little self-respect and security before you take it away from them again, by mounting another attack. Just like a boxer coontinually knocking an opponent down after they`ve gotten themselves back on their feet.

What could they do to attack America after such an attack as we have seen? I`m not sure, but the very situation that they have created gives them opportunities. Air travel is now going to be both very restricted and very high security. What about highways? What about ships? How hard would it be to smuggle a bomb into a skyscraper once people come back to work? Blow up the lift shaft and you bring down the building.

Then there`s the possibility of more serious attacks. A biological agent is not hard to manufacture and deliver - check out "Executive Orders" by Tom Clancy or, more reliably, "The Cobra Event" by Richard Preston.

Osama bin Laden has shown that, despite his utter ruthlessness and hatred for all things Western, he is an intelligent and resourceful individual. I would be very surprised if his next move is not already ready.

I have to confess that I`m worried what will happen next.

Gareth

RE: The Sum of All Our Fears (SPOILERS I suppose)

Yup,

And much of the story of "Executive Orders" follows how the Preseident handles this and subsequent attacks, and how he chooses to respond.

My personal opinion on this is that the US will respond, but not alone, and not in a constrained way. I think we will see a quiet period of investigation and intelligence gathering followed by a sudden bout of retribution involving attacks on terrorists and support organisations which have previously or currently threatened the United States. As a Canadian colleague of mine said, the USA will use this attack as a reason the "clean house". They will determine a whole series of targets and take them out, probably spectacularly.

And they won`t be alone. I expect that any operation will, by deliberate design, be an international one involving the US, UK, Russia, and maybe Germany and France also. The key point that is being pressed home by every government official around the world (ok, excluding Iraq and Afghanistan), is that this is not just a US problem. It is an international one, requiring an international response.

The time has come to deal decisively with terrorism on a world scale. I fully expect that a coordinated effort will now be made to achieve just such a goal.

Incidentally, the death toll from this attack is liable to reach into the many thousands - my best guess would be around 8 to 10 thousand dead or seriously hurt - a level not incompatible with a small nuclear attack.

In "Sum of All Fears" the finale involves the political ramifications of a decision made by the President that, at first glance, appears appropriate. In the end however, the choice is a poor one.

The clamour by those who feel we should bomb Kabul or attack Baghdad is ill-advised. There are much better ways to get the people who are responsible for this, and those who support them. Targets can be picked that will send the strongest possible message without needing to resort to acts that will result in that most trivialising of euphemisms, "collateral damage".

We now await the decisions to be made by the US leadership to see how George W. Bush behaves under the most extreme circumstances. Hopefully he will receive good advice, from home and abroad, on what the appropriate response should be. I personally don`t have the answer except to say that when it comes, and it will come, America`s revenge will be a terrible thing.

After the successful attack ion Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, who had masterminded and carried out the attack on the US Pacific fleet, stated that he believed, "we have done nothing more than wake a sleeping tiger".

Let us not forget that the USA is the most militarily powerful nation on Earth, bar none.

A new anthem ... or a new monarchy?

Following on from the discussion of whether there should be a specific English national anthem - and I think that there should be - the question that springs to mind is, what about the monarchy? According to the British national anthem, there`s little else in the country apart from them, or at least the Queen.

The adoption of "Flower of Scotland" by the international community as the national anthem for Scotland is a great move. One that was and is immensely popular in Scotland and among Scots, even though it isn`t an ancient Scottish song but one created in the last 20 years or so by a member of the Corries, now sadly deceased. My only criticism of it would be that it dwells too much on the ancient historical fued between England and Scotland, instead of trying more to define who we, the Scots, actually are today.

A similar move by England would be a good idea, while also getting rid of the annoying habit of some playing the British national anthem as if it was the English one. (I won`t bring up the minor detail of those who believe the Union Jack is the English flag - that`s what the St. George`s Cross is for.)

Being British, or English, or Scottish has nothing to do with the rights (or wrongs!) of a single family. "...Long to reign over us ..." Why should She?

As a Scot I`m proud of Scotland, of the achievements of Scots through history, and of the quality of life that we have in Scotland. The same can easily be claimed by the English, Welsh or Irish with their long histories too. In truth, the inhabitants of the British Isles have played a conspicuous role in the development of the world.

I, not being a fan in any way of the Royal family apart from the Queen Mum, am an Equalitarian, meaning I believe that nobody is "born" to any role in our society. Everyone should be judged and treated according to their talents and deeds, not by who their great-grandmother married. It doesn`t matter to me if they are pure-bred Brits (to use an unintentionally racist-sounding phrase), or whether they are Greco-Germanic in origin. They wouldn`t have the right to reign over me whoever the hell they are. No-one does (except my wife, evidently ...)

To me the Royal Family serves only the limited purpose of attracting tourists. That role, for what they cost us all in taxes, is on shaky grounds in terms of value for money. After all, we pay a fortune to this lot every year despite the fact that the Queen is one of the richest people in the world. I found it very annoying and offensive to have the Queen insist that the public purse be used to repair fire-damaged parts of Windsor castle which are not open to the public, only the Royals.

I`d like to point out that much of her "wealth" is in the form of land ownership across the United Kingdom which she inherited from her predecessors. They in turn inherited it or were given it or simply took it by saying it now belonged to the Crown.

I strongly feel that, in our world of computers, the internet, international air travel and other such modern wonders, the concept of a ruling family is so out of date that it should be seriously questioned. Technological change must be accompanied by sociological change.

I have no doubt, though, that Queen Betty is one of the last. The monarchy will not survive for much longer if they maintain the distance between themselves and their "subjects". They are simply out of touch.

The percentages of the population who feel that the monarchy is an irrelevance will grow as the generations that lived through the Second World War pass on. Then the monarchy, and here`s where my respect for the Queen Mum is rooted, chose to take the difficult path of staying in London and living out the Blitz, even though they would have been a plum target for the Luftwaffe. But those memories are slowly departing from us, and being replaced by the ridiculous machinations of the Palace residents regarding Princess Diana, Fergie, Prince Charles, the Duke of Edinburgh, et al.

The future is, as with every generation, for the young. In this case, the young don`t really see the need for a monarchy. It seems unlikely that this will change.

And if you feel the need for proof that this statement is true, just watch what the celebrations will be like for the Queen forthcoming Golden Jubilee. I remember the Silver Jubilee with all the street parties and parades, etc. I doubt that there will be many street parties next year, do you?

(Stands back after throwing the cat among the pigeons ...)

cheers,

Gareth

RE: Help - Reviewer crashing my netscape!

Richard,

I`m getting the same thing - pages are loading but only the top bar image. If I then stop the load, and reselect the page it usually loads ok, but not always. This is new to the last few days, maybe a week at most. Have you changed anything that might cause this?

I`m using Netcape 4.7 on Win NT 4.0.

Cheers,

Gareth

RE: I`m famous - well sort of...

Um ... way back in the dawns of prehistory (i.e. 1980) I was in two productions. The first was the Scottish Television version of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" where I got to play Street Urchin #5 and spent two days loitering around Lady Stairs Close off Edinburgh`s Royal Mile with an unlit cigarette in my mouth.

I got two hundred pounds for that little jolly - a fortune for a thirteen year old at the time.

But then I moved onto the big time - movies, or at least, movie (singular). I played the part of Snowy Cunningham (although later deleted in the last script draft - sniff!) in the movie short "The Dollar Bottom" starring Rikki Fulton for Rocking Horse Pictures and directed by none other than Roger Christian of Phantom Menace and Battlefield Earth fame.

That had me running around playing a public school boy in some place in Cramond in west Edinburgh for two weeks over the summer holidays. The film ended up as the accompanying film to the utterly boring "Ordinary People" starring Mary Tyler-Moore and Donald Sutherland and directed by Robert Redford. I actually had to sit through that piece of drivel three times just to see my 25 minutes on film.

I`ve not been able to eat bacon or sausage butties since without remembering the fact that I ate nothing else for two weeks while making that film.

Still, my name is in the credits to a film which won the 1981 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film!

I hope that doesn`t end up being my only 15 minutes of fame ... !

Gareth

RE: On to the next great conspiracy debate ....

As a certified (or at least, certifiable) astro-nut, I`m convinced that we aren`t alone in the Universe.

With our galaxy of 100 million stars, multiplied by at least the same number of galaxies in the Universe, it seems ridiculous to assume that the same conditions that arose on Earth over the past 4 billion years didn`t get repeated many times over in other places. And that only accounts for life similar to our own. There are possibilities of life based on materials other than carbon. All that is required is a system of energy production that doesn`t require oxygen.

Anatomy would be almost anything that is suitable for the circumstances in which they live. We evolved due to the environment of the world to give us height, speed, intelligence (um ...), steroscopic sound and vision (this is a DVD forum after all!), a sense of smell, taste and touch. What senses and anatomy might evolve for creatures living on very high gravity planets, or very low. Or on planets which orbit stars that emit powerful radiation, or give off light in wavelengths other than what we see in.

Over the past twenty or so years we`ve also discovered just how resilient life can be - living under the surface of salt flats, or at oceanic thermal vents at the bottom of the sea. Places where there is almost no light, and no oxygen.

The more contraversial question regards whether there have been any living creatures from elsewhere that have come to visit Earth. My imagination and curiosity want the answer to be yes, but I have to say that my reasoning says, probably not.

Assuming for a moment that the lightspeed limitation cannot be broken, any journey across the galaxy would take decades at best. A starship travelling to the nearest star would need four years at lightspeed (an unattainable speed) to get there. In all probability, we would need a fifty years to cross that distance in any practical spacecraft design. And Proxima Centauri is not likely to yield life. So any journey that would reach us from a more likely candidate star would take centuries. Not impossible, especially if time is not perceived in the same way by our theoretical aliens, but still pretty unlikely.

If we could travel faster than light (Einstein`s limitation actually states that it requires an infinite input of energy to attain a speed exactly equal to the speed of light, so travelling FASTER isn`t theoretically impossible, just very improbable. This takes us into the realm of probability mechanics and quantum physics which, to say the least, wasn`t my strongest subject at Uni) then there seems very little restraining aliens for coming to Earth to study us strange bipedal water sacks. So where are they?

The most convincing bit of "evidence" that we are alone in our *local* neighbourhood comes from radio astronomy. With the exception of the big "Wow!" yome years back, there have been no signals detected that could be considered indicative of intelligence. We`ve been chucking out high-power radio frequency transmissions into the ether for over seventy years, which means that anyone in a region of space comprising basically one and a half million cubic light years could have heard us. And in all our searches looking at nearby stars, we`ve never heard a thing. That means no-one in the neighbourhood is transmitting on a signal that we can detect.

The chances of us being the first kids on the block is remote. Don`t forget that us mammaly have only been around some 100 million years, double that for good measure and you can realise that we have only been evolving towards intelligence for 200 million of the 15 billion years the Universe has been in place, roughly 1.33% of the time. It would seem logical that if we could develop in the 4.5 billion years since the Earth formed, why couldn`t others develop earlier in the history of the Universe? So they should be there.

My opinion is, they are there, but not nearby, and not communicating on a level we can detect or understand. They may be aware of us - we`re not exactly hiding ourselves under a blanket - and are ignoring us, or studying us from our transmissions, or slowly, carefully, laying their plans (oops, sorry, had a Richard Burton moment there).

Of course, they may also be watching us like dispassionate documentary cameramen, watching the wildebeest happily watering blissfully unaware that the leopard is fifteen feet away and about to pounce ...

Who said paranoia couldn`t be fun?

On to the next great conspiracy debate ....

OK,

Setting aside the more colourful theories of Zeta Reticuli and all that, what do people think about the possibility of aliens coming over for a visit?

Have they already been here? In antiquity and/or more recent times?

Where do they come from? Why are they here, if at all?

Was Roswell a genuine event or just a military cover-up of a more Earth-bound conspiracy (oooh, there`s that word again)?

What about Holloman AFB in 1963 (which was allegedly used as the inspiration for the finale of Close Encounters of the Third Kind)?
Or Rendlesham Forest?

Let`s hear those opinions !