> And for 99% of my communications, I don't care if someone listens.
> There really isn't anything of any importance -- which is why no
> one's listening. It simply has no value to them at that capacity.

Nice attempt at rationalization. Fact is, that you DO NOT decide
what's valuable to someone else nor whether somebody will be
listening.

I have ST:TOS downloaded in SD with XviD, that was before the blu ray release, and I am not planning to redownload it. I probably will redownload TNG and DS9 because I have those in the 175MB format (lower quality than 350MB of course) when I decide to record them to tape (I am in the process of slowly copying my DVD-Rs to LTO tape).

$700 is a lot of money, especially if you are going to watch mostly cable TV which is analog and SD for now (there are some HD channels, but for those you need DVB-C receiver with HD support (very expensive) and a decoder card, while you can split the analog signal to however many TVs you want, which we have 4 not counting my VCRs, though I now use a digital receiver with my VCRs, I can see the channels I want even without the card, but in SD).

Yes, HD TV shows are in h.264, so is anime (though sometimes even the SD version of anime is in h264), but SD TV shows are still XviD/avi. The release groups probably know that they can use h264 for DVD rips, but choose not to, because XviD/avi is more common.

Just like audio codecs - ogg and aac may be better, but you can be sure that mp3 will be supported by almost all players (portable and not). So, most of the music is available in mp3 format, because all of the players play it, and all of the players play it because it is so common. When you rip the CD for your own use in a portable player, you can choose whatever codec your player supports, be it ogg, aac or even flac, but if you wanted to release that rip to the internet, you will probably have to choose mp3 because it is more widely supported and transcoding from one lossy codec to another degrades the quality, be it audio or video.

Xvid video with the same quality takes more space than h264 video, but I don't think that people would run to the stores to buy h264 compatible players just so they can download 300MB instead of 350MB. However, I think that xvid will be dropped only when h264 compatible players become as common as divx dvd players are now. Remember - SD TV shows still get released so you can fit 1-2 episodes on a CD-R (350 or 700MB, but usually not 800MB for example) and DVD rips of moves are release in 1 or 2 CD format, usually 1-2 files 700MB each, though now DVDR drives and discs cost about the same as CDR drives and discs.

They can scoop some out of the bowl when I'm done having my Morning Glory, if they're that bothered about how much I had to drink last night.

They can also just ask me. The answer is "If you haven't brought me some black coffee and dry toast in 5 minutes, I'm barfing on your shoes."

Unofficial SmartQ users board.

That would be my mistake. I used SSD as "solid state disk", which would make "SSD drive" perfectly acceptable. It would appear that SSD actually does stand for "solid state drive", though. Thanks for the correction.

French is a useful and underrated language. It's the most predominant language on the European continent in areas without good English speakers. In my experience, native Italians are ok at English, the Spanish and Portuguese are great, but the French are very poor (I'm less sure about Eastern Europe). German is practically English already.

It's also an official language of international diplomacy (it comes *before* Spanish translations on US Passports), and is spoken in a lot of North African and Caribbean nations, so you have more places available to comfortably vacation =)

Ah! Nice setup. The infamous Godwin's check, which often happens to be strategically played to have the law invoked within two more moves, such as the 1931 tournament. Sneaky, but a perfectly valid move.

I had Friday 13 for two days in a row. Fiji to Hawaii.

Saying "April 1st" feels more natural to English-speaking people

Huh? So why do people say "4th of July"?

They're both communications with a rule-making body of the government. I fail to see any difference between them.

Like I said in another post on this topic. Where homosexuality is legally protected, pastors have been hauled to court over their refusal to marry gay couples.