I remember quite a bit of my software and some hardware coming from Ireland in the late eighties an early nineties. I still have my old Apple PowerBook 170 that was made in Ireland. Good on 'em!

The same reason that between myself, my insurance and Medicare AirWay Oxygen has been paid over $26,000 over the past seven years for a machine that costs $2,000; The pain in the ass to get FDA approval (both real and imagined) for a "medical device" prevents many would-be manufacturers from entering the market, and none of the players wants to ruin their golden goose by starting a price war. We used to say the same thing about military equipment when I was an Army Mechanic... In 1982 I couldn't understand at all how the little M151A2 "jeep" cost over $75,000 a pop!! Especially since the assembly lines have been running since 1968 and a lot of the expensive magnesium pieces had been replaced by steel. The adage is the same: "Paint it green and quadruple your profit" or "Paint it white and put FDA on it and quintuple your profits"!

So that is what you understood from my statement?... That I'm upset about the format? You should make sure you understand the argument before you open your mouth, as it just makes you sound a bit silly.

I think the real question isn't what someone is allowed to do to their own art, but what happens to our collective memories? I wold love to share my childhood memories with my grand kids, and for the most part I can... But thanks to Mr. Lucas one of the biggest influences of my childhood has been lost forever. Out of respect for all of us who have made him rich beyond any of our individual dreams he should allow the theatrical releases to issued on BluRay as well. It isn't my place to tell someone how to make their own art - As an artist myself I know that an artist doesn't ever really finish a work they abandon it, but at the point that art becomes a part of our collective conscience we should be able to revisit that memory. My two cents.

-Rant Warning- Try talking to someone who has owned a late 2006 Apple product with the ATI X1600 video card how happy they are with Apple service. My iMac 5.1 has been dying a slow death for about two years now, and I've a few friends with MacBook Pro with the same freezing and screen artifact issues I've been getting on my 20" iMac. This was first all in one machine I've ever bought (not counting laptops and PowerBooks) and I'm kicking myself because the video card is soldered in place on this over heating piece of acrylic. As a point of reference I've got a PowerMac 8600 and a G4/400 AGP that run great still - And my old Zeos 486/66 DX2 with the Pentium OverDrive chip and 2MB VESA graphics still runs like new... Along with a few SGI O2's, a SparkStation 5, a PowerBook 170 and on-and-on.... Drives are expected to wear out, but I've never really had a computer screw up like this iMac at only two years old. -End Rant-

My dear friend just dropped by to return the computer I let her have while she was finishing her degree..... That was the fall of 1994 and I forgot all about it. How awesome it was to see this old machine again all original Zeos 486-66 DX/2 with a 90MHz Pentium upgrade, and a Diamond SpeedStar Pro with 2MB and a 300MB HDD that if I remember cost me an extra $300. I couldn't believe the deal I was getting! "A hundred bucks per megabyte!". She even dropped off all the 51/4" floppies of the DOS/Windows install and Lotus AmiPro. And the public beta of Win95 - Ha! But the true fun is the DOS 6 and all my old DOS games still on it and running, Blake Stone, Doom (of course), Rise of the Triad, System Shock, etc. I've yet to find an emulator on my Mac that will recognize the System Shock CDROM. There goes an entire day and night...... yay!

This makes me think of when my boys were in grade school; I tried to come up with a word that would describe the single most important factor in their success. I would tell them that the reason they did poorly on a particular test isn't because they weren't smart enough, it was because they were sorely lacking that most precious of elements: G.A.S. = Give A Shit. They just didn't give enough of a shit to succeed - They may have been motivated enough to work hard (see how hard I'm working?), or to put in the time (see how long I've been sitting here?), but they just didn't care enough to think things through or to go back to the problems they fudged on to see if they could figure them out. There are external motivations and then there are internal motivations. If you are too focused on the external factors of impressing others then you most likely will miss the most important thing; Satisfying yourself by actually doing your very best weather or not someone is looking. Cheers, TJ

You have genuinely earned your retirement good man. While the saying "thinking outside the box" has become quite cliché today, you have never been boxed in by convention. I love how you truly made an Art out of "If it looks right, it'll fly right". Enjoy your retirement, you've earned it! TJ Lambert