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Just so you feel a little better, my note about how my laptop is now working was slightly wrong. Everything works except picking up email with POP, which yields the easily understood 0x8007007E error. Sigh. Reckless precelebration is the root of all failure.
Onward! The Ole filter makes a pass...
 With the recent AppleTV announcements, I have a renewed interest in using it, and have *finally* made time to try to convert the movies I have in AVI format for iTunes import (and subsequent AppleTV sync). The movies are mostly encoded with Divx (various versions) and some with Xvid (various versions), with a variety of pixel dimensions, frame rates, audio codecs and qualities, etc. Truly the acid test for a conversion utility. So I couldn't find anything that worked on Windows (Google yields a million hits, but after trying a few apps which didn't work well, I gave up). My friend Gary recommended Visual Hub for the Mac. So far works like a charm; it has converted five movies with five different formats, and automagically imported them into iTunes, which synced them to the AppleTV. Quality seems as good as the originals (which were not all great to begin with). Excellent! 
P.S. In addition to "just working", Visual Hub also features a nice sense of humor. Check out the Advanced... dialog box at the right :)
 Here we have AirMail; a Macbook Air "sleeve" that looks like a Manilla folder. Unbelievable. These people did not have advance warning of the Macworld Jobsnote, but immediately afterward they had the idea, registered the domain, and created the website. Product ships in two weeks. It's the American way.
The other day in my rant as the memory turns, I wrote: there are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don't. A friend wrote back: there are actually 32 kinds of people in the world, those who understand ASCII, and those who don't. Good point, but on further review there are 242 kinds of people in the world, those who understand EBCDIC, and those who don't. It is frightening that I remember EBCDIC digits, but then, I remember using PIC 9(4) PACKED all too well.
 How many of you have used Adaptive Cruise Control? I've test driven a few cars that had it; definitely the wave of the future. The emphasis so far has been on safety, but as FuturePundit notes Automated Tailgating Would Save Fuel. Even cooler, it would reduce traffic congestion; I've been hawking this idea for years. The great thing about adaptive cruise control is that it works all by itself, but it works better as more cars have it; a classic network effect.
I liked this one: CNN notes Boomerang returns after 25 years. "Officials in an Australian Outback town were surprised when a boomerang arrived in the post. Along with it was a note from a guilt-ridden American who said he stole it 25 years earlier from a museum in the mining town of Mount Isa, and now felt rotten about it."
 Okay, before you click this link, you must sit down and set aside all hot liquids and sharp objects. Here we have LOLinator. It makes any website look like it was written by cats. Here's this blog LOLinated. Just when you thought you'd seen everything, you realize "everything" is so much bigger than you thought :)
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