index.html Journal Index file See my Blog I have a blog on Google's free blog site. Try the link below. You can make comments about it there. Here is a scripts/feedback.htmlFeedback Form http://brucesalem.blogspot.com My Blog on Google DVD Writer on Mac A DVD writer that does Lightscribe had been a dissapointment to me because after I bought it from Staples I couldn't get it to work on a non-Windows system. Even though the packaging clearly mentioned only comat with Windows I thought that there should be useful drivers for other systems. When I started using the Mac Mini running OS 10.4 after a year and did the upgrades that came from Apple, I tried on a wim to see if now I could use the drive. I was surprized that not only could I now read DVDs, but I could write DVD+RW and later DVD+R. I was able to backup everything except the 18 gb of iTunes I have including a 1 gb of iPhoto. I was also able to copy a DVD in the combo CDRW-DVD-ROM drive on the Mini to the external DVD writer. This was a pleasant surprize since the Mini doesn't have lots of memory. Itunes Smart-playlists and backups Building playlists manually is error prone especially if you are trying to do it for backups to DVD. Nominally, you should be able to put about 4.3 GB of music on one DVD, although I haven't confirmed yet if iTunes uses more overhead and can only backup up somewhat less than that. The Smart-playlist lets you define a simple filter on fields in the track info to automatically build and maintain playlists. With it you can build a selection of all of J.S. Bach's music in your library. Unfortunately, none of these automatic playlists optimally files a DVD. The alturnative is to tell iTunes to dump the entire library on as many DVDs as it needs, that would be about 5. I don't yet trust the writer or iTunes enough to do that and I don't care for the way iTunes sequences the tracks when it dumps everything. I'd like to copy together several automatic playlists into one of optimal size for backup to DVD. The way I may have to do that is to select all the tracks in a smart-playlist and copy them to a new playlist, and then add tracks from other smart playlists until I have have enough to fill a DVD. It IS the Economy, Stupid Recalling the slogan from Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign against the elder Bush. This time there would have to be some real surprize for the GOP and Sen. John McCain and the unknown VP candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, to defeat Barack Obama and Joe Bidin, both Democrats in the U.S. Senate. The economic mess, the credit system seizing up because banks don't trust one another, will decide the election. The Republican Party, with its litany of deregulation and free-market capitalism with low taxes for the wealthy and no new taxes, has shot itself in the foot. Never mind the debacle of George W. Bush and his abuse of power (Many people in his administration should be put in prison) it is the economic disaster caused by the people who put him into office which will cause political change in the U.S. I hold the belief that it usually takes an economic disaster of the sort we are going through now to wake most people from their usual stupor about politics and economics. If the problems we have here in America get as bad as they did during the Great Depression, and the panic is now world-wide, the repurcussons could be dire and long-lasting, and we lack much of the community and cohesion we had in this country back then. One thing that could happen, if the U.S. manages to survive, would be a re-examination of the form of our Government at the level of Constitutional change addressing the proper relationship of power in business to the government. People who don't "promote the general welfare", as much as their own interests, which are sometimes anti-american, have had too much access to the politicians who are supposed to be leading the government to represent our, the citizen's, interests. Too often, and especially in Republican Administrations, the loyalities are divided. How interesting the possibility that patriotism could become a virtue of Democrats against Reepublicans who would sell us out on the international economic market. And indeed the very idea of the two-party lockup, a duopoly, of power, to which wealthy special interests have equal-access, could be changed if the electoral college was finally aboloished and Representative Democracy weakened. It would allow for third-partys and a colilition form of government which might be good for the nation, politically. I could vote right now as I can vote by mail, but I'll wait a few days to hear about some of the lessor issues. I think that I will vote "no" on every state proposition regardless of merit as a vote against that mechanism which is subject to special interest manipulation. The state sends out this 200 page pamphlet every election with the texts of these propositions which are legal landmines.