I caught <I>Sahara</I> on the tube the other night, and thought its blend of pure mindless fun and solid barely plausible technical background was perfect. It wasn't a great movie, but it was a great guy-flick.

Conspicuous consumption for pets&mdash;and its discontents.

Terry Jones 'fesses up that <I>The Life of Brian</I> might have been even more controversial than it was&mdash;thanks to a couple of deleted "Otto" scenes. However, says one of the two "nice" Pythons, that wasn't why he cut the material.

Mark Waldrep, the man behind the "only all-HD digital label," Aix Records, has now established an all-HD download site, www.itrax.com. While Music Giants and Linn offer HD downloads, iTrax calls itself "the only website to offer <I>real</I> HD in multiple mixing perspectives," since it offers consumers two-channel stereo, 5.1-channel "audience," and 5.1-channel "stage" perspectives in MP3, Dolby Digital, DTS, WMA pro, WMA Lossless, and PCM 96kHz/24-bit resolutions.

John Atkinson and I recently spent a few hours talking to cable manufacturer <A HREF="http://www.tributariescable.com/">Tributaries</A>&#039; president and founder, Joe Perfito. Perfito had come to NYC to meet the press and introduce his company's newest cable families, the high-end Series 7 and the higher-end Series 9. "The Series 9 cables are the best cables we know how to make," Perfito told us. "The interconnects are hand-made of 20AWF solid OFHC signal conductor and a 1.25% silver-plated 46-strand 20AWG OFHC return conductor. We use an LDPE dielectric and an OFHC copper-braided shield <I>and</I> a double-sided copper foil secondary shield for 100% freedom from interference. The conductors are double-soldered to the solid brass connectors, then pressure welded&mdash;they will <I>not</I> let go of one another."