AndyMan

I know absolutely nothing about the incident you've mentioned, so I can offer little commentary. I do have one comment, though. As much as instructors try their best to teach you as much as they can, one undeniable fact always remains. Once you're jumping your own parachute, you are responsible for your own actions under canopy. Your profile says you've got 20 jumps and are still a student. After doing 20 jumps you should be more than capable of two things. a: From the ground, you should be able to look up into the sky and predict where the plane will be (roughly) when it comes time to exit. b: Once your parachute has opened, using the knowledge you picked up doing (a:), look at the ground and identify where the landing zone is. You should be able to find the dropzone and fly your canopy back, and think about setting up your pattern for landing. If a student flies off on a tangent, the only person responsible is the student who wasn't able to spot a runway from 3000 feet. Dropzones are generally very easy to spot. I certainly do have some curiosities about what exactly happened here, but its key to remember that you are the only person who's responsible for your safety. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you do not hear instructions under radio, ensure that you do not get lost. Look down, look around, find your bearings, and fly back to the dropzone. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I suspect you might be elegible for unemployment insurance. Be sure to ask. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

The questions you're asking do not show an understanding of the risks. You seem to think a side mount is safer than a top mount. Why? You seem to think a "cam eye" is something you shoot video with. It isn't. You seem to think that doing amateur video work is safer than higher quality work. It isn't. It's not about the number of jumps. It's about knowledge and experience. You say you've got the experience... and I believe you. It does sound like you could use bit more knowledge, first though. You say that you're a military guy, and military guys tend to be very cautious and safe. If that were true, you would not be asking to for instructions on how to jump a camera at 100 jumps. Call me an asshole if you want, but you've got absolutely no business going down the road you're on right now. I won't help you, either. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

You've still got letters clipped from newspaper articles and simple white glue... _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

You are wrong. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I believe that is the case, yes... _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

You are correct. Telemarketing to cellphones itself is not explicityly banned. However, you might want to find yourself a copy of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA). The TCPA does ban the use of autodialers against cellphones, or any numbers in which the user pays for incoming calls. Banning autodialers is very effective in banning the most annoying forms of telemarketing. They are almost the same thing. The nutshell of the TCPA is here: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/policy/telemarketing.html. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

Read the Snopes article. It's all addressed there. The proposed cell-phone directory is "opt-in". Nobody's number will be published unless they specifically want it out there. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

This problem only exists with older lenses. Newer ones work fine. That said, there's no guarantee that this lens won't work with a future cannon camera... I have no problem buying Sigma lenses. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/cell411.asp There is NOT a cell phone do-not-call registry. None is required since it's already illegal to telemarket to cellphones. There is a land-line do-not-call registry. General rule: If it was forwarded to you by a friend or aquaintence, it's probably false. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I thought the back logo color was limited to the reserve center flap color....? _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I don't use either. If you pay attention to your posture and stand up striaght, you don't need one. Most people lean forward, which puts too much tension on your lines and your rig pulls forward. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I know Brian. He's one of the good guys here. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

In the old days, "charging" for "liberation" had a more accurate name. "Pillage". _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

It's incredibly dificult to change your name for any reason other than marriage or divorce. If you have a son, he'll be stuck with your hyphenated name the rest of his life. If you have a daughter, she'll be stuck with it at least until she gets married. Kids can not arbitrarily decide at some point. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

Dude, you SO need to move to Canada. At least go there to get hitched... again. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I've always wondered what would happen when two people with hyphenated names get married. Hyphenating names does not end the name debate - it only puts it off until the next generation. Be easy on your kids - make the choice for them. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

To answer your question... I used to have a Tempo, and I put one jump on it. It performed its intended job, so from my limited experience they work just fine. Is $500 a fair price? Likely... Depends on how old it is, and how many times its been used. If it's a recent model - about two or three years old, and has no more than 2 or 3 jumps on it? Sounds good to me! I don't use one anymore, I gave it to my wife. Yes, I love my wife very much. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I used to have a beer or two at lunch daily. Yes, we'd go back to work after lunch. Of course I worked for Molson.... _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

The only camera mounts I've seen that are angle-adjustable are from SkyDance photography, and they bolt onto the Velocity helmet. I have one on my Velocity that I barely ever use. The biggest disadvantage is that the pivot takes space, and causes the camera to stick out an inch further than if I'd used a simple 'l' braket. That said, since I went top-mount I'm never going back... _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I don't care so much about if a horizontal scroll bar shows up, like on slashdot, but more if the website requires you to use that scrollbar. The scrollbar does pop up on slashdot only because of the banner, and the banner is effectively the only part of the screen to run off. All of the news articles, right and left menus are all intact, and don't require use of the scroll bar. On many reloads slashdot uses markup based ads instead of a banner, at which point that scrollbar dissapears. 640*480 is indeed an odd case, and is currently statistically insignificant. However many wap-enabled phones do use this resolution, and its unwise to create a website that is unusable by certain devices. Many website owners counter by saying "well, our website isn't designed for wap-phones". This poses one big question.... "why not?" Do they think people with wap-phones don't want content? Brower equiped phones (and usage) are the growing at exponential rates. If the online marketing industry would get away from using images as banners and use markup based ads, making a truely scalable device independ web would be a lot easier. They were making a lot of progress a few years ago, but that seemed to stall... I don't think its coincidence that Google AdSence uses markup based ads exclusively. There are certainly obstacles to a complete device independence. That doesn't mean web designers shouldn't try. I'm not saying it has to be perfect, but rather it's really obvious (and lame!) when designers don't make any attempts at all, like the site that started this thread. The biggest hurdle designers need to get over is the idea that a website is not print. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I'm curious by what you mean when you say "the quality is terrible". DV-25 is DV-25. The video signal comes off your camera, travels down the firewire, and is recorded onto your hard disk. There really isn't any "magic" going on here, no matter what software package you're using. Things only start to get interesting once you start fucking with the video. Microsoft movie maker is capable of compressing video using a variety of different formats. Some have high compression, good for the web, but look like crap. Others barely compress at all and look good, suitable for a CDROM. Choose settings appropriately. The "better" software packages only tend to have more toys available. They'll give you things like transitions and special effects, but they largely won't make the quality of your video any cleaner. Ultimately, its how you "compress" the footage afterwards that results in a good quality picture or not. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

That's odd, your website largely conforms to it. As far as I can tell, with only a few minor exceptions dz.com is almost entirely browser and display resolution agnostic. It's aparent that you've gone to pretty long lengths to make it so, too. I disagree. Slashdot, Google all scale from less than 640*480 up to as far as my monitor will go, without leaving excessive whitespace. They even display reasonably well in text-only browsers like Lynx or my wap-enabled phone. Now I'll grant that those are exception. As a side note, I used to hang out with "CmdrTaco" of Slashdot, and I know he'd be quite pleased if I accused his website of being a 'hack'.... But that's another issue. The reality is that there's middle ground, and that middle ground is just as you say, it's smart to target your website to the largest possible audience. The path to the larges tpossible audience is not to pigeon-hole people into one specific group, but to come up with a model that works for the most people possible without leaving 80% of your real-estate as whitespace. Large whitespace columns on the sides of webpages are anachronisms coming from people who learned page layout with print. The web isn't a fixed environment where you can control every aspect of the layout. Smart graphic designers understand this, and design to the medium. It always has, and still is stupid to design your website to work properly at only one specific resolution, or with only one browser. I'm not surprised that you're arguing the sharpness of my comment. I am surprised that you're arguing the meaning behind it, because its clear that you understand the issues well. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I repeat, a properly designed website does not assume a user uses any specific browser or display resolution. Any other answer is a hack. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

Have you ever read the ingredients on a package of McDonalds salad dressing? You can not eat a healthy meal at McDonalds. You can only eat meals which are less unhealthy than others. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.