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If you're unable to find the references to the weird program, you could also try punching "services.msc" into the run-box.  This'll open a panel of system services that are currently running (or set to run in various circumstances) on your system.  Don't disable anything unless you're pretty certain it doesn't belong, and only make one modification at a time unless you know what you're doing.  If you find a suspect program, open its properties and change the startup type from manual or automatic to disabled. 

Another thing you can try is searching the registry ("regedit" from run) for the suspect program's name.  Blade's got a good point concerning the system-file status.  If it's in a Windows directory, it may've been protected as a vital operating system file.  You can download various freeware utilities that'll delete it upon startup if you can't do so manually.  The name's incredibly suspicious as viruses will often reproduce with randomly-named files (I've got a KBdhizk.dll I've been trying to get rid of for awhile, virus-related, based upon the name should be a Keyboard Language dll).  Another thing you can try if you can't delete it is to rename it, sometimes you'll be able to do this despite error messages (mine's renamed to KBdhizk.dll.bkp and thus rendered harmless).

I don't think that male-bonding relationships are any deeper than that of females.  In fact, I think they're usually a lot more trivial, it's just that males showing affection for each other is so rare that the meager amount of comraderie equates to a significant bond.  I've seen a lot of life-long male friends that don't know much about the other guy except that he likes Beer, Football and video games.   I tend to avoid the shallow relationships in favor of more intimate ones (not sexually intimate as the word's connotation often is), forming equally strong life-long friendships with males and females alike. 

I don't actually *know* but my observations of female-female relationships leads me to believe there's far less difficulty in having physical intimacy (non-sexual) and talking about real emotion than with a male relationship.  I'm probably a bit biased here as I've done military service and a lot of security work.

I'm in disagreement concerning Jar-jar.  He doesn't seem like an annoying character meant to flesh out the world.  Perhaps he will play some greater role but he seems deliberately inserted in order to appeal to the kiddies.  That's part of what I disliked about the prequels - ep. IV-VI were PG but seemed to cater to a PG-13/Adult audience.  Here, they've gone PG-13 (I'm a tad too lazy to verify this, maybe PG) and it seems like a PG movie.  I could easily imagine the whole thing in Disney-style animation without much loss of any of the courser elements of the movie. 

As for Lucas' directing, he did THX-1138 as a student film, found some backing/actors to jump it up a notch in prestige (Robert Duvall is quite good, even then) and found critical (though not audience) acclaim.  You can very much see how THX-1138 influenced the first Star Wars films.  Later, he directed American Grafitti, which is as close to 'present time' as he got and it found wide audience acceptance, partially due to exploration of America's culture (and filmed a decent portion in my home town).  He came up with a good story for a pop-culture Sci-fi (could've taken place in any era, really, it's a space opera mostly), had some help and churned out wildly successful movies.  He made sci-fi palatable to the US audiences who hadn't had much indoctrination to sci-fi and were ready for something a bit different (the 70's weren't the most interesting of movie times). 

He got lucky and had good success with his franchise, even gathering a lot of youth support for Ewok Adventures (significantly darker than any of the prequels), the Ewok cartoons, and - of course - toys and t-shirts galore (I've since lost my glow-in-the-dark r2d2 pajamas).  Now, he relies upon the franchise in order to stay involved in the movie business.  He's got film re-releases out the yin-yang and jumps with both feet back into the Star Wars universe.  Hell, the man lives out at Skywalker Ranch in Lucas Valley and has company 4th of July parties out at Ewok lake (ego-stroking much?).  His company continues to be involved in gaming, and movie special effects (check the ILM website, you'd be surprised how many current films Lucas is involved in SFX-wise), while any failure or shortcoming causes the company as a whole to revert to "safe" territory - the Star Wars franchise.  Critique Lucas all you want (hell, I have) but he takes very good care of his employees (around 2,500 or so) and has kept Lucasfilm privately-held while doing so - that's damned amazing in this day and age.

I usually find voices in games a bit more immersive.  If it's done well and I turn the speech off, it's almost like watching a movie unfold.  Of course, the number of times it's done well to that extent is very low.  I thought Malcolm's voice acting in KyraIII added to the humor quite a lot, Grim Fandango's voices really fleshed out the world, and Ben from FT was damned awesome. 

As far as amateur adventures go, I usually play the non-talkie unless I'm being asked to critique the voices.  Fatman was an adventure I'd enjoy equally with or without.  And the foreign accent mention? It wasn't that offputting in Fatman, just try to avoid doing other accents like a native English speaker would do them if you can help it.  Imagine a Russian imitating a cowboy, for example.  If you did that, you'd definitely need some backstory to justify it. 

Not having speech certainly isn't a deal-breaker but I do appreciate the effort.

Regardless of what came first, at least Douglas Adams wrote the screenplay before he expired.  Here's hoping the people adapting it to current film standards don't flub it up too much.  And for those of you who haven't done the text adventure, the BBC has a couple editions online with static graphics (although the best way to play is in the old-school DOS, take it with you to work/school).  http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/gallery_game.shtml

I've got to agree with most of the shortcomings listed.  For my part, I mainly feel let down by the prequels because they haven't got any charaters I've got the slightest interest in.  This should change a bit in Episode 3, perhaps making it all worthwhile. 

Taken on their own, they're not bad films, but I'll take the Solo, Chewie, Lando trio over the Queen, Jar-jar, Obi-Wan (MacGregor-style) any day.  I've never been a huge fan but was interested when I first heard about the sequels.   I was let down, but only when comparing the soul of the first 3 to the sterility of the prequels.  There comes a point where you've just gotta shrug your shoulders and relegate yourself to the fact that it's George's invention and his property so he'll do what he likes with 'em.   

As for getting the original trilogy, I could care less about seeing the original versions - except for those damned CGI insertions that stick out like a sore thumb.  Being very into graphics (3d and otherwise) I don't generally deplore their usage but it looks like crap inserted into the hardware vs. software effects world of IV-VI. 

Most of what I've heard about the upcoming Ep. 3 sounds good.  I've seen the first 5 minutes (with some placeholder renderings) and it seemed a good intro (if a bit busy)

Spoiler

space dogfight with Anakin & Obi vs. a crapload of ships and drones, a little weak since you know the two main characters aren't in any danger but cool nonetheless

[close]

But then again, George has said there's going to be a lot more action in this one with major events and fights happening throughout the entire movie  - necessarily to fill in all gaps between II and IV but here's hoping it's not catering too much to the low-attention-span generation.

Definitely coffee.  I drink almost primarily coffee and water.  For a more "social" beverage, I like a good White Russian, Long Island Iced Tea, Rum and Coke, or Vodka Sour.

Re-reading the non-alcoholic statement, coffee.. oh.. and water.

There seems to be enough screen space for a brief blurb about each.  Most people that could find the program useful (and it very well could be) won't have any idea what A2 or Stinger are. And Avast, isn't that something a pirate says? 

Something like this with perhaps a "General Information" with the basics on spyware or viruses and some explanation of what these things are and what they do (along with an auto-launch installation button) would definitely be something I'd consider handing to someone.  Then again, I make my own autorun start x.htm type CD's for friends currently.

So, it's based in a book? A good one, apparently. I will have to add that to my list.

Missed this post the first time around. Argh.  It's based upon a book? Yes.  Now it looks like it's time for another Bitchslap-A-Spaniard day (It's been what, a week?)

And Yuff, your dialogue was genius..  pure genius.

Looking a touch more twisted than usual:

250x250, paint.net.

Not a good way to follow up BigBro.

I never threw mine into the mix.  My personal vote would be SQ3, of course it would be due to the fact that it's the second adventure game I played (after the oh-so-trite KQ4).  As far as what I consider the best..  GK1, the others were crap.

Honorable mentions: Sam and Max, DOTT, Grim Fandango, MI, (wow, lots of Lucas) and one I don't see much, Kyrandia 3 - sadistic sense of humor, interesting main character and made for a nice antithesis to the others in the series (I can still hear Malcolm's tone of voice when he says, "Squirrels, I like squirrels" in that chummy-banal-tongue-in-cheek way).

I hope I'm not out of line in saying this, but to me the most important thing here is to keep a good relationship with your parents and with God. If you want some Christian backup in this, I'd be willing to talk to them on the phone or by email: PM if you want my contact details. You could mention that I'm a married  straight evangelical christian with 2 kids... 

Your comments were very well put, however I'm wondering how this would go over:

Peter: Mum, Dad, there's someone on the phone I want you to talk to.
SSH: Hullo, I know you don't know me but I've been chatting with your son online and he seems like a pretty good bloke..  anyway..
M&D: [click]

Another bonus is if a digital camera supports it. Mine isn't high-end enough to do anything other than .jpeg and they often won't let you tweak the compression.  If you absolutely must have a file without compression artifacts or are looking to photograph textures for 3d-rendering, it would definitely be recommendable to give the .tiff file a shot.  I'm currently using a few files in that format for photo-restoration, the job is detailed enough that I don't want any compression adding more dots of varying colors to the mix.

Agreed.  I don't think it's essential to have backgrounds better than the first pic (which isn't a bad AGI-style background, very clean and retro EGA). However, if you can do backgrounds of the second's quality, it'd seem to be selling yourself short to do anything less.  It's quite good, sort of Sierra-esque but grittier.

I'd hate to see the default roger here, I think I'd rather see something almost stick-figure-like.  I hope you at least do a Roger paintover.

It sounds a bit like an operatic version of scatting.  With the way the gibberish turns towards the crescendos, I imagine they're merely using syllables that go well with the music.   I'd be surprised if it were a real language with the amount of repeated syllables.

Happy Birthday to a long-time member who's got some very interesting material under his belt.  Umm..  didn't mean that phrase to come out as a potential euphemism.

One thing's for certain.  If there was any chance I might've been exposed to the virus, I'd get tested ASAP.  The uncertainty would be kicking my ass.  If positive, at least you'd know and start figuring out what parts of your life might need a little tweaking.  If negative, I'd figure I'd gotten a second chance and would definitely maintain caution with a good amount of thankfulness for whatever deity's generosity.

Of course you wouldn't be obligated to let us know how it turns out, hell, doctors are specifically forbidden to share the information, but despite not knowing you personally, I'm still concerned and am (for lack of a better term) praying for a near miss.

Or slit his wrists in front of him, thus causing permanent mental anguish.  Damn goths.

V-day?  Brings to mind this url: http://tinyurl.com/41a4u

Agreed, the 'A' is hard to distinguish.  I was able to read the title well enough but that may be because someone else wrote it before I was able to see the pictures.  Perhaps lengthening the diagonals of the 'A's' would be sufficient? 

I like the darker re-touch for the background but maybe a compromise would work as the ship's a tad too dark.  I like how the text looks in the lower version since it seems less squished.  Very nice pic, reminds me of 90's style shareware shooters.