True dat. An occasional empty suit moment is much preferable to an empty head.

Sure I would. The IH-35 corridor from D/FW to Austin & San Antonio is a real pain in the ass to drive. I've lived in the Dallas area for 20 odd years and I've never driven it w/o encountering construction delays. But hop on a 100+ mph train for a trip to my hometown (Austin) ? Sign me up!

Hell yes. The new models of the Mini, while being decent, incremental upgrades, aren't real bargains. Knock off $100 (low end model) to $200 (high end) and Apple would sell tons of them. Apple needs a line of good quality, low-end machines whose price differentiates enough from the 20" iMac - and the high end Mini ain't it. (Hint: there's a Recession going on out there, and plenty of people aren't going to spend $1000+ for a computer)

Sometimes I wonder if Apple really cares about gaining market share or not...

Indeed. And I'll admit to being a bit surprised at my home state. Pleased, but surprised. We have a LOT of anti-intellectual, "Christian" conservatives here...

Heh, heh...well, for $4K (in 2001) they damn well better sound good :) I'll certainly admit that my Stax 'phones cost an order of magnitude less than that.

But in the realm of Reality®-based budgets, the Grados still provide great "bang for the buck."

I like my Grado SR-60 cans 95% as much as my older Stax electrostatic ones. They really are that good.

What sort of braindead, "can't read the documentation" moron encodes MP3s at 128 kbps CBR ? Heck, lame makes it easy to produce very listenable and reasonably well compressed music. Just add the "--preset standard" cmd line switch and you're good to go.

Hey, here's a novel concept: Don't treat your employees like crap, and they're less likely to treat you that way. (not a common idea in American Big Business, I know...)

The discs only get scratched if you re-orient the console WHILE the disc is being USED. This is a stupid idea to do with ANY disc-based system.

Uh, no. The previous generation of Apple Macbooks had this issue with their slot-loading DVD/CD drives. And Apple did the right thing about that - they fixed it. Discs, most esp. game discs, are feckin' expensive, and there's no excuse for Microsoft's (lack of) response.