I’m sure a lot of you will find this as exciting as I did when I first found out from a friend yesterday: Belle and Sebastian’s new album, Write About Love, due to be released Tuesday next week, is available to stream for free from NPR.org up until its release.  ...

I think I posted a thread a few months back about buying a laptop. Well, I stuck it out with this old Dell Inspiron 9300 but now I'm coming back to the States for Thanksgiving and would like to take a new Centrino 2 computer back to Germany with me. So here's what I'm looking for:I want to...

So I moved to Europe (specifically, Germany) a little less than two months ago. In America, I drove to work for about 45 minutes -- when there wasn't any traffic, that is -- and worked in a cubicle all day. My coworkers were great, my boss was great, the pay was great, and the taxes were WAY...

So I graduated from college last year (spring '07) and the first job I had was as a contractor, getting paid for every hour I worked. Only thing I missed out on was the crappy "fringe benefits" that permanent employees get. You know, the Christmas party, the paid holidays, etc. Now I've moved...

I'm looking to buy my dad a BBW (big, beautiful widescreen... har har) LCD monitor for Fathers' Day. He works from home four days a week and is still using an old CRT. His eyesight isn't great already, but staring at a CRT that much can't make it any better... and he loves gadgets (don't we...

My almost-3-year-old Dell Inspiron 9300 is getting a bit old and I want to buy something newer and snazzier. I'm particularly tired of how loud it is and its loud noises have me hearing "send me to a PC retirement home!" I was wondering if you guys have any suggestions? Here's what I'm...

My friend needs to buy a new laptop for law school and asked me for some advice. He was recommended the HP DV6436nr for $800 at BestBuy (15.4", Turion 1.8GHz, 160GB SATA, 2GB RAM, Vista Home Prem.) which actually looked pretty decent except for the AMD processor which also has only 1GB L2 cache...

Just read about this here. One of the greatest film directors of all time, he directed some of my favorite movies, like Fanny and Alexander, Wild Strawberries, and his masterpiece, The Seventh Seal. May he rest in peace.

I'm wondering if anybody here can help me with a problem I have with Mozilla Thunderbird. I just installed it last night (v1.5.0.9) and it appears to crash immediately after downloading any message from my college's email server. I connect through IMAP and security is SSL, if that makes a...

So here's the deal. I got into a car accident about two weeks ago. I was waiting to make a turn when a car pulls up behind me and decides to pass me by taking the path through my right bumper as opposed to the more traditional route around me. The driver pulls up next to me and we look at each...

The Jewish Association at my college is looking to buy a DVD player that can hold hundreds of DVDs. We have recently begun to acquire DVDs for the Jewish Center and in the past couple of weeks we've already bought about 75 discs. Buying a "DVD Jukebox" and locking it behind glass would let...

My beloved girlfriend lives in Bavaria and, after having spent almost six months of wonderful time together here in Massachusetts, we decided to continue the relationship across the Atlantic. It actually wasn't a hard choice for either of us. What will be hard, however, is paying for the...

I know I haven't been around much and I suppose many probably don't even remember who I am. But I've been busy with actually trying to get good grades here in college, with my new band, and a girlfriend, so both time and money are unfortunately lacking for hi-fi gear. I've decided almost 100%...

I've mentioned before that I was pursuing a commission in the Marine Corps via the Platoon Leader Course for candidates still in college. I would have spent 10 weeks next summer at Quantico doing OCS and then received my commission after graduation and been sent (hopefully directly) to The Basic...

My friends have a band in Boston and to avoid practice room costs rented a house together in Allston. They built a little stage in the basement, put up some carpets on the walls, set up their gear, and started playing there. It's a residential neighborhood with the distance between houses the...

An important note: political discussion and comments will not be tolerated here. If and when I see them I will delete and send warnings. Just saw this movie tonight with but a freshman for company. Most realistic war movie I've seen, probably ever. Though I haven't served in the Marine Corps...

Happy (Jewish) New Year, everybody. May this 5766th year be filled with happiness, success, and much rejoicing.

I don't know how many of you are into the punk scene -- be assured that all my ancient reviews of headphones and equipment are based on classical and jazz. But I love listening to and playing punk music. THE FEST is a punk/indie festival taking place over three days from November 18th through...

This man was one of my greatest heroes. Having survived five Nazi death camps and lost 89 relatives in the Holocaust, he went on to help capture and bring to justice about 1,100 Nazi war criminals including Eichmann, the head of the Gestapo's Department for Jewish Affairs from 1941-1945, in...

As some of you might have read in another thread, I'm applying for the Marines' officer course for next summer. I need to get in good-enough shape to score a 225 or higher on the physical fitness test (PFT) which means I need to be able to do more pullups than I can right now. I just started the...

Last night before I went to bed I tried to check gmail (about 3-4am IDT, so around 8-9PM EDT) and I couldn't open the page. I tried now as well -- 8 hours later -- and it still is unavailable. Are any of you other gmail users getting this problem? How long with this outage last?

My last CD player was the Meridian 508.20 and was by far the best one I've had. Before that it was the mid-fi Marantz. I only bought the Meridian about three years ago (sold it last year for financial reasons) because it was so cheap -- I was in the market for a 506 but found a 508 for just a...

I'd like to wish everyone a happy and peaceful Jewish new year and hope that everyone fasting for Yom Kippur will have an easy fast. May your new year be filled with many successes, much happiness, and good music!

I've gone from MD (Sony MZ-R900) to CD (Sony D-EJ01) and I've decided I need a HD-based MP3 player. My CDP is great and I love it with the Headroom Total Bithead and Ety ER-4S inside the Headroom AirBag, but the only problem is that I can't stand to lug around and deal with my huge 100-CD...

For some reason, all the audio and video on the computer I'm using here in Israel (my cousin's computer) is sped up. That means it's also at a higher pitch which is also annoying. I'm trying to watch the regular season opener of my boys the Sox and it's pissing me off. My cousin is running...