Pooks

Hmmm, Julian Cope - Brae Hall - Sometime in the past, not every night the artist gets off the stage and pogo's around more than the crowd (or in the case of that night...the small gathering). Edited to include THE WURZELS! Fantastic band if there ever was one.

While I am not really that fussed about the ban I can't see why they didn't allow establishments that have two seperate areas to enforce one as non-smoking rather than an all-out blanket ban. Think about the pubs around Lerwick (and the rest of Shetland for that matter). Most of them have two bars, one lounge and one public. Make one for the smokers and one for them that opt not to. This does of course bring the question 'What about the bar staff?'. They would need to have a contractual clause that says that they do, or do not wish to work behind a smoky bar. This could of course discriminate against those that do not wish to work in such a place. I am all in favour of banning smoking in restaurants and the like. Foodstuffs and reek don't go well. How long until they ban drinking, coughing, farting and laughing? Nanny state........

OpenOffice is a very good office suite and I would recommend anybody who hasn't given it a look to try it. There could be a lot more competition for Microsoft now that the open document format is being adopted allowing for a far wider scope of interoperability between various packages. Then again they are moving on to Microsoft Live now which will no doubt put a large stick in the spokes.

The sea is generally thought of as the most popular place for these pastimes.

Been watching it now on a weekly-ish basis. Up to Series 2 Episode 14 as of tonight. I have to say that the second series seems more drawn out than the first. Nothing spectacular has really happened and there don't appear to have been any decent cliffhanger endings for a while. Still watching in the hope that something spectacular happens or that they at least give away the meaning to some of it. I seem to recall reading on another website that even the producers didn't know the meaning behind the numbers yet...whether that was a ploy to confuse folk more or not I do not know. If any of you are interested in finding out what happens in upcoming episodes then take a look at watchlost.com. It DOES contain spoilers and frame grabs from the series however so don't go there unless you want to know what happens. Cheers, Pooks.

You could have a confused elephant driving a vehicle whilst not even bothering to look at the road or hold the steering wheel.

One of the major issues of ID cards is the security. If they can make the card then somebody else can clone it and use it for illegal purposes. A few months ago I read about a campaign in Computing magazine to reduce the amount of backend databases that the Government had storing peoples data. A lot of the data differed in each database. Think about yourself, which doctor are you registered with, what address is on your driving license, are you registered on the electoral roll? How many spelling mistakes are there within your 'official' documentation? The government should really think about sorting out existing databases and cross-referencing the data held in each so that it matches securely before even considering starting another database that could be misused. I believe that there are already several million National Insurance numbers in use than there are people in the UK....how does that work? More info here http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2071203/major-database-plan-cancelled and it looks like the UK's first Biometric ID cards are to be rolled out as soon as 2008 according to this --> http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2150323/biometric-id-cards-scheduled

"Are youuuuuuu CONFUSED about what INSURANCE to gett?", "Try CONFUSED.COM"......"THAT'S CONFUSED.COM". Why is it all the insurance adverts that are getting on my tits? Time to get a push bike I think. On another note, as has been discussed in another thread recently, is it any wonder these young kids are going ballistic and whacking folk about? Growing up with this sharn being drummed into them would be enough for anybody to go of the rails. There is a campaign HERE which aims to stop loan/debt advertising on childrens television, I suggest you all go and sign it now. For any of you who have kids then you will realise that this is the prime area of advertising for these gits. They are targeting the parents who are home through the day. The ones who more than likely have money worries and are out of work. The more serious side to this however is the fact that it affects the kids as well. They are getting it drummed into them from an early age that it is OK to borrow and live a life of debt. Cheers, Pooks.

Did you hear the one about the blind circumciser? He got the sack! What is red, white, fluffy and sits in a tree? A sanitary owl! What's black and loud? Stevie Wonder answering the iron! What do you call a black man flying a plane? A pilot you racist bar steward!

Yes indeedy, the good old Commodore. The peripheral port on the rear could attach all sorts of wonderful dangly bits. If you so much as touched the keyboard when anything was attached it would reboot, but apart from that it was great. Don't you recall the 1541 floppy disk drive, or the Mps801 Dot Matrix printer, or the Alphacom 81 thermal printer? Replaced it with a C128 eventually. Twas the bees knees.

I have to say that when I got the insurance I can't really recall seeing the advert that much if at all. I think I'll try Sheila's Wheels next...

A tricky question. I know a good few 'Under 30's' who have come up to Shetland for a short period of time (Generally a week or two) and they have really enjoyed themselves. Would they want to live here though? That's another question. As for it being a healthy place to live...we have more well-equipped leisure centres than most areas do (per population head) yet we have a very strong drinking/socialising culture. It all depends what you mean by healthy. Mentally healthy it is probably better than most. Physically healthy? That would be down to the individual concerned and as most of the sporting groups I have witnessed decide to go to the pub after training I suppose the two collide. Employment healthy? For the under 30 bracket I would say that it is limited in many ways. There are not many jobs on the go where someone under 30 can progress their career, educate themselves, gain experience and move on.

I have no problem with anyone supporting their own religion providing they don't push it upon others. It should be looked upon the same as drugs, smoking and anything other addictive. People should be free to make their own choices in life. If someone believes that a religious life is for them, then they have plenty of outlets to gather information on the best path to take. At the end of the day when a war starts somewhere in the world it is undeniably tied back down to either religion or politics, usually a combination of the two. All because one or the other is trying to push something on the other party that they don't want. Leave folk to their own devices and things might not end up so bloody. Wasn't that long ago that I had to ask a couple of Mormons to shift their car off of my garden, which they promptly did, only to follow it up by going and knocking on my garage door...are they that desperate?

As one who does not like to participate in cheese eating I once entered a Pizza Hut in Gloucester and requested a pizza without said cheese. It took a while to arrive but was most delectable...considering the...ahem...chef had probably gobbed upon it.

Yup, if it says that it is ATA150 then it should really be referring to it as SATA150. If you currently have ATA/PATA (you can tell if it has a wide ribbon-cable connecting it to the mobo) then stick with that. If it has SATA (small connector about the width of your finger and normally a red cable) then go for that. SATA is a great improvement over PATA but I can't see it being long before solid-state memory replaces the current offerings.

I have to disagree. Firefox has had problems with memory leaks but a lot of these are related to the extensions/plugins that people load. Firefox renders pages considerably faster than Internet Explorer and consistantly stays within the W3C guidelines. Something that Internet Explorer has never done. You have to remember that a good chunk of Internet Explorer loads with Windows and is already running in memory when you boot the machine. There is an extension available for Firefox (forget the name) that does much the same thing. It loads in the core components at boot time so that they don't have to be loaded when you open Firefox. If you are using your browser on a regular basis then it would be worth trying it out.

Another recommendation for AVG. Installed it on dozens of machines and it works as it should. It should be noted though that as well as installing a firewall (Zonealarm is fine, Kerio Personal isn't bad on a standalone machine), you should really look at running some Antispyware/adware software on your computer. In my experience it is causing a lot more problems at the moment than any of the viruses out there. Adaware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Ewido are some of the ones I would recommend. Running Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer helps to cut down on some of the browser-based nonsense floating about as well. Avoid Norton. It all seems to work fine until it goes wrong. When it goes wrong, it is a complete pain in the ass to sort out. If you don't believe me then check out Norton's own forums. Even they don't have fixes for some of the problems it has.

Looks like most of the Rumshackers are! I have had no connection problems with PlusNet nor no abnormal disconnections... If you subscribe to the mailing list then they keep you more than well informed of any changes that are going to take place in the back end. Probably the best bit of the service is that if you do have a problem, you get to talk to a human that actually resides in the same place as PlusNet. Not some peculiar call centre that has no idea of the workings. Talk to one of these guys and they tend to know what they are talking about. A rare thing in the ISP world (coming from one who knows).

PC or Mac? Surely Multi-booting a PC with OSX/XP/Linux/BeOS/**Insert favourite OS here** would be the answer? In my opinion nowt beats the good old C64, still remember the fun of dialling into BBS's with a 2400 baud modem....

I am 100% in agreement with you. Even more so as I had a policy with this bunch of hopeless pilticks... (cheapest quote, don't ask). To cut a long story short, a Norwegian driver decided to drive on the wrong side of the road and hit my car practically head-on. The insurance claim dragged on for a few months before I phoned yet again to find out what was happening. They told me that the other driver hadn't replied to their letters and that it would be coming off MY insurance and I would lose MY no claims. As can be expected I was pissed off and told them to give me his insurance company's details and I would contact them myself. Turned out he was insured through the NFU for the UK side of things. The nice lady at the NFU phoned my insurance company and then phoned me back (something Elephant has never done although promising to do so). This got things moving ahead, albeit slowly. It has now been nearly 7 months and still no sign of it coming to an end. One 18-month old car written off and not an ounce of help from Elephant.co.f**king.UK Avoid like the plague. If any of you have a policy with them I strongly urge you to reconsider.

IIRC (and don't quote me on this) he is one of the original Zetnet customers and has attended a number of 'Zetmeets' (for those of you in the know). Whether he has other Shetland connections or not I can not say. As for the column in the Shetland Times, I have to say that I am in agreement with most of the people here. A more "local" column would be of more advantage to the majority of readers. Quite a few people who read the Shetland Times are subscribers who want to keep in touch with Shetland, not America. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the articles she has written, I just believe that the Shetland Times is not the most appropriate outlet for it to published in.

As far as my limited knowledge takes me I have always been on the understanding that 'Soothmoother' was derived from an explanatory term rather than a derogatory term. e.g. "'Wha's yun?', 'Oh he's a Soothmoother'", rather than "'Bloody Soothmoothers!'". It is a very slim dividing line that many in this ridiculously politically correct world take to the extremes. In my opinion it doesn't matter where you are from, what colour you are or what direction the person faces when you are having sexual relations with them. What matters is that you get pilticks in all walks of life.

I once toyed with the idea of a BBS/Forum for Shetland. I was gonna call it Board Shetless. Glad you guys have brought this about...so when's Careless Flow coming back? Cheers, Pooks.