cameramonkey

Actually, the problems with viruses like nimda, code red, etc arent sent to the server via posts, etc.. The viruses spread usually on thier own from server to server out of sheer luck.(they try random internet addresses till they find another server) They are really the result of a lazy hosting provider. Those viruses can EASILY be prevented by keeping the server software properly patched against such attacks. Sure, its time consuming to do, but so much less than rebuilding an entire file/web server. I should know, its my real job ;). Many times my job includes going in and cleaning up after morons who think they know what they are doing. Good luck, and I mirror your sentiments about wreck dot. Gilligan PS. yes it is possible that it also happened via an attachment, but not as likely. best idea is to keep your system at home fully updated using the microsoft windows update (win98 and newer), and ALWAYS ALWAYS run a real time virus scanner like Norton Antivirus. (hint: virus scanners have to be updated every 2 weeks to a month to work)

Anyone notice that ALOT these arab F*cks that claim that the USA is "the great satan" are currently paying to have thier children educated at our fine colleges right NOW? (heard it on Fox News today) Does this seem wrong to anyone else but me? DEPORT THE IDIOTS!!!!!

CHRIS!!!! Glad to see ya! When did you get here? Gilligan

Defanitely a hardware tweak is needed. also check to make sure you have no resource conflicts, and the system performance is optimized within the bios settings. if all else fails, call the firewire mfr, I am sure they can help.

the only complaint I have heard so far about the PC9 is that is is gonna be difficult to side mount if you plan on using a device like the Cam eye remote control. Sony moved the ports (av jacks, LanC and mic) from the front edge of the camera, to the left side near the eye piece. that covers your ports when you side mount it. They apparently did listen to the skydiving community and made the strap removable with two screws. As for lenses, I use no lens for tandem and 4 way (you'd have to get too close for a good shot as far as safety is concerned IMHO), and would recommend a .42 for shooting within the formation. I have a .45 and it just doesnt quite cut it. Personally, I'd stick with a pc5. the price is right and its a proven piece of hardware with lots of accessories (d-boxes, etc) already around. Still lots of new cameras in the warehouses from what I have seen. just my .02 Gilligan

Well, its a bit out of the way, but Richmond, IN (home of THE boogie) is very dog freindly. one full time boxer named Joe, and several others that visit.

ooh... very bad. I just looked inside my cookie. it stores your login and password in plain text for all the world to see.. *grumble* I hate security holes like that. (it isnt HH's problem. its the design of the software)

try changing your password (from another PC) or delete the cookie that was left in the machine. do a find for "dropzone" you should see @www.dropzone.com. in the cookies directory if you delete that one cookie, that should prevent the auto login.

Sony? give us plans? even CONSIDER modifying (or producing) a camera for a minority group like ours? not a chance. Hell, Sony makes more camcorders in 60 days than we have vidiots. Yes, there are alot of us by our standards, but not by the standards of a global electronics firm. Nice thought tho'.

Yet smaller cameras... hmmm... now if we could only get them to make them in a more horizontally oriented design that would be great. Imagine a camera a little smaller than a PC5 that you can mount on TOP of your head (out of the way of your risers) with only a 2 inch addition to the top of your helmet instead of 6. I'm gettin wood thinkin about that... I dont see why they dont. A camcorder in the same rough dimensions (wider than tall) so you can hold them like binocs makes more sense to me than that vertical thing they did with the PC series. Hell, during "normal" use, holding my PC5 too long makes my wrist sore.

I cant remember if its the amish or menonites, but one of them isnt allowed to DRIVE cars, but they are allowed to ride in them. and I understand they pay VERY well for someone to drive them around. Usually in groups in a van. I heard somewhere here in indiana, last week some pranksters stole a phone booth. problem is its a privately owned booth put up by a local landowner in an amish community. he installed it after getting overwhelmed by the amish borrowing his phone in his house to make the occational phone calls that they need to make. true story. it was funny, the local TV station made it sound like a huge trajedy, the teaser was talking about "a prank that has cut off an entire community from the rest of the world". like they blew up a bridge to an Island or something. sheesh. sensationaists. And if we didnt make fun of things, people, etc, the jokes wouldnt be very funny... just take puns and knock knock jokes. VERY lame compared to the really funny ones. And besides, if you cant laugh at yourself, you are too uptight. Which reminds me... Mountainman goes to the optometrist. His doctor says "Mountainman, I am afraid you need to stop masturbating." Mountainmain says "why, doc? am I going blind?" "No", the doc says, "you are scaring the others in the waiting room." Sorry Brandon, had to pin it on somebody. LOL

ok, gotta ask... who is that in Bra8.jpg... I am in lust. *drool.....* Somebody please pass me a tissue.... LOL

So what do the Future Farmers of America have to do with the air traffic control system? I guess we get shot down buy a bunch of shotgun toting high school hicks?

no thanks... only one cheez for me... more than that and I get constipated.

you still stewing about that? You know its only because we care about ya. ;)

Glad to see you made it online Dan...

Of course... I know his writing and could tell you after the second paragraph he couldnt have written it... one dead giveaway that SCREEEEAMS it wasnt him was him suggesting we "... pray too seldom". He seems to me to be a ranting atheist with a strong distaste for people of faith. He'd never think of putting that in something he wrote... at least not without some snide comment about people who do pray. After reading his books*, you'll understand it isnt even his style. :) Gilligan *dont buy anything he wrote after Brain Droppings... the rest of the books are 95% his old routines and stuff rehashed from Brain Droppings. I think he's running out of $$ and needed to make a quick buck.

Well, after almost a month, MANY phone calls, and emails (including a nasty one to the president of Matrox) I FINALLY got some relief. Mr. UPS man just knocked on my door with a new cable. I guess that nasty email to the prez helped. Still doesnt change my mind... will never buy from them again.

I agree... I have a rebel 2000, and it works great. easy to use, and lightweight. my only complaint is for the lack of a fill flash setting. Minor detail.

Richmond "THE" Boogie is in my opinion the best. Lots of airplanes, lots of people (between 900-1500 depending), but still a smallish freindly feel. It starts the wednesday before labor day and goes on thru the holiday. Yes, maybe I am biased since Richmond (Indiana) is my home DZ, but ask anyone (except a certain USPA official who insisted on getting kicked out for bad behavior) and they will tell you it ROCKS!

Oh, and I was out at our DZ all last weekend waiting for the ban to lift. damn ATC never told us no.... just to call back after the next update and maybe... But we got bored and patriotic. Out DZO drug out a HUUUUGE demo flag, Our chief instructor, my team captain( a former Marine), our S&TA ( had to make it safe and official) and several others including myself climbed the beacon to hang the flag. It was weird actually asking permission from airport mgmt to climb it. they said yes, and this is what we ended up with.... You know its bad when you have two guys (me one of them) deathly afraid of heights willing to go up there just to show support. http://www.techondemand.net/skydive/flag/flag.html if you dont see anything, I am still coding the pages, check back later.

Wrec dot who???? There isnt another bunch of cool skydivers online. Yeah, sure there is a place where skygods, skygod wannabes and general idiots hang out to be cruel, but those arent real skydivers. In my world, that place doesnt even exist. Would be nice to get a NNTP(read "newsgroup server" for non geek types) type interface for this place. might make it a bit more speedy.

lets see... 5200 skydivers that cant jump.... This site was a little slow before, but I did notice it really got bad right after the planes got grounded. Methinks HH's server cant keep up with all the bored skydivers.

I dont understand why my DZO would get a call. They have nothing to do with this story except for the coincidence that I was there when this happened. The problems are strictly between me and a multinational computer video component manufacturer.

I am usually not one to bash products, but this is one I gotta tell everyone about. This is my account of my experience with Matrox. I purchased a Matrox RT2500 Real time, PC based digital video editor back several months ago. I started to install it into a system that I built (I am a professional PC/Network Tech). It wouldn’t quite work. I contacted tech support and was told flatly that it wasn’t their problem because I wasn’t using "approved" hardware. They immediately blamed my untested hardware and would not help (it wasn’t the hardware as you will see later). So, since I really wanted to get this $1000 non-returnable item working, I gave in and upgraded the system to be "approved". After another call that lasted quite a while, they couldn’t quite figure out why it wasn’t working. They gave me a handful of things to try. I hung up and after tweaking it a bit, found the problem (system memory set for 100mhz instead of 133mhz). A month later I got the phone bill... $100 in international long distance @.89/min since they are located in Montreal, Canada. OUCH. At least now it works. (for now) Bear in mind this is marketed as a professional grade product.... It ran GREAT for months. I set up the first day of the Richmond Boogie (WED) to start filming/editing tandems. I noticed that morning that the right audio out channel kept dropping. I thought it was a bad cable because I could tweak the connector and it would work for a few seconds then drop out again. In the process of tweaking, I found that the connector had come loose on the cable that runs to the PC. Well, actually the RCA jack came out completely from the breakout box, and due to the fact that its made by injecting plastic around the electronics, it was impossible to field repair. SO, I called Matrox. I was told that I would have to send the cables, AND remove the card from the PC, and as soon as they got all the pieces they would return a "new" one to me (reconditioned product). I explained that this is an urgent situation, the card wasn’t defective, and needed to be brought up immediately, but was told they didn’t have a way to get the part replaced immediately. I gritted my teeth, and accepted the RMA. The tech gave me a number to call to get the RMA expedited if it was at all possible. I called the number, and got the Matrox receptionist. She had no clue who to send me to, and that tech didn’t specify who to talk to. I gave up. On a side note, it took another 24 hours to actually get that RMA issued. I then immediately started calling other departments at Matrox in order to just buy a new cable (its a proprietary cable). I finally talked to a person who could sell me one BUT... first he would have to talk to some people to find out how much to charge me, and what part number to actually use (they couldn’t figure it out). An hour or so later, he quotes me a price (it was fair). I just need to jot down a purchase order and fax it to them with my CC number. After several faxes since we had to do it JUST right (they don’t normally do this, so they didn’t have a form for me to use). I told them I needed it TOMORROW. They said no problem, they could overnight it to me. Finally 3 hours later, it was supposedly on its way. All better.... so I THOUGHT. Thursday came and went and there were no packages for me. By the time I realized it wasn’t going to get there, Matrox was already closed. I was furious. Friday morning arrived, and I called them first thing. The gentleman that was so helpful was out of the office, so after another 10 minutes they were able to find my order. He then proceeded to tell me that I would be getting the order late that day. It seems they had to overnight it from the Canada office to the USA warehouse in NY so THEY could send it to me. WHAT?!?!?! Yes, you heard correctly. They couldn’t overnight it directly to me... the other warehouse had to do it. I was livid. I finally got the replacement cable that afternoon, and was back in business. And here I sit 19 days later with no warranty part. I am currently fighting the RMA dept because they are having trouble figuring out how to replace JUST the cable. They still want to take me to take my system down for several weeks so I can lose productivity and send in a perfectly good card to replace only a cable. I call them to see what is going on, and am told that "so-and-so (supervisor who needs to approve) is out of the office/busy/etc. and they will call me tomorrow." several days later I call, and they still don’t have an answer, but they will definitely call me the next day with an answer. Last count I had (last Monday) it was kinda approved, and they were trying to find one in their warehouse that they can send or get one from the other to send me. They use the excuse that they normally don’t do this, and that is why the process is running so slow. Slow is an understatement. They claim this is a product aimed at professionals, but only provide consumer level support, and poor support at that. All other companies I deal with have advanced replacement options, if not individual part replacements. A professional can’t take down a system for weeks. They rely on it. Soooo.... the bottom line is, as a product, it works great. BUT, if it ever breaks down, God help you. On a personal note, the people I talk to are usually freindly and eager to help, but have their hands tied due to bad corporate policies.