What? Where in your mind did you make the connection between 64-bit and 64,000 rows in Excel? Excel 2007 supports over a million rows in a spreadsheet and it isn't even available in a 64-bit edition.

I've tried cable twice over the past four years or so, each stint lasting no more than six months. Each time, I found it more hassle DVRing, channel checking, or hunting down broadcast schedules that I canceled each time with no regrets.

Well, very few. There have been two times that I went to a friend's house to watch a live event.

As alternatives, I've watched the Olympics live streaming, downloaded whole series of tv shows (anime, out of print, and more) via BitTorrent, or explored movies on Hulu, Joost, YouTube, and other online offerings. I also have a very substantial (purchased) disc library (I still enjoy my HD-DVD player very much, thank you!). That includes box sets of great cable shows, like Rome, Deadwood, and more. Much of that has been ripped and served via my Xbox 360 to my living room.

Bottom line, I've saved at least $60 per month on cable, simplified my entertainment setup, and spent more efficient and pleasurable time in front of the tv (negligible ads!). No cable tv for me, thanks.

Not to beat a dead horse, but way back at the start of the year, Warner Brothers chose Blu-ray over HD-DVD. I thought that totally blew chunks. Thankfully, I still have the Looney Tunes Golden Collections to temper my hatred for this company.

Also, the "higher power" thing dosen't work for atheists.

That's a choice. AFAIK, a "higher power" is simply a "power greater than yourself" and all that is suggested is "a willingness to believe". People don't necessarily have to make it into a divine being or anything other than something besides themselves. A simple friendship can be enough to start. 12 step programs are a solution to "self will run riot".

The best thing about recovery is that the only person who gets to determine if it works for them is the person themselves.

I've been a long time Creative user, and they've lost me with this one. I have used Soundblaster cards since the 8-bit Soundblaster Pro. Since then I've owned the Soundblaster 16, AWE 32, and a couple cards in the Audigy series. For over 15 years, I've used Creative's cards almost exclusively (aside from a brief stint with the Pro Audio Spectrum 16).

When Vista SP1 was released last week, I didn't see it in Windows Update because the latest driver available for my Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro was not compatible with the update (see this KB article). This driver hasn't been updated since March 2007, and didn't work all that well to boot. Analog 5.1 surround was sketchy, and the sub channel didn't even work.

Daniel_K came to the rescue in my situation. I needed to uninstall my drivers to upgrade to SP1, then install his driver package get my card working again. The installation went very smoothly, and my card is working better than it ever has on Vista. There are some quirks, but all surround channels are working as they should, and sound quality seems to be improved over the previous drivers (although this could easily be attributed to the placebo effect).

The last thing that Creative should be doing is going after Daniel_K. If anything, they should hire the guy to teach their driver team a thing or two.

Sadly, this is not likely a technical issue, but a marketing one. Creative seems to have made a deliberate decision to leave Audigy users in the cold in an effort to get them to upgrade to their new X-Fi series. Problem is, it doesn't seem to be working. Peruse Creative's support forums and you'll see post after post lamenting their substandard driver support with promises to avoid their cards in the future.

Creative's strategy may work with casual customers with a sub-$50 card, but not for others who have invested over $200 for a high-end Audigy card with a breakout box. Those people are still looking for return on their investment, and will be the first to walk away from Creative when they get snubbed.

Hopefully this is a misunderstanding, and Creative will work out a deal with Daniel_K. If this doesn't happen, they stand to lose some of their most loyal customers. Given their track record so far, the outlook doesn't look good.