DamnSaxon

When I first heard of it, I thought it was a Chris Morris spoof, but no, reality has caught up with him. (or is that "caught down with him?) Yeuch.

Hey, that's right. Except as my box runs on GMT I only get a one hour difference (eg 8am not logged in, 9am logged in).

It seems pretty typical given that Pratts supplies a number of leading supermarkets. It doesn't seem to matter what sort of idea you come up with to be a bit nicer, the big supermarkets will subvert it. Label foods to encourage the public to learn how to eat healthily? Oh, no, much too complicated, say the supermarkets, we'll use this toytown traffic lights thing. (And there won't be many red lights, you can bet.) Fair trading practices to try to improve the lot of the dirt-poor people who are slaving to grow your coffee, etc? Wonderful, they say, that's a nice label, must be worth 30-40% on the price, and after six months people won't be watching our practices too closely. And now we have McDonalds campaigning to get "McJob" out of the Oxford dictionary. Leave it in! It's their karma for exemplifying the crappy jobs in the first place. Nice to see a corporation that size running scared!

Yes, Freecycling is great. A friend is a keen member of the Nottingham group, and apart from anything else practically runs his computing life on free kit - latest acquisitions a P4 server and a Sony 24" monitor. (monitor case slightly wrecked, admittedly.) I wonder if you might get more sense by contacting the organiser of one of the English groups? It seems to be basically setting up an email net, so can't be that difficult. If you like I could ask my friend's advice, if I can catch him inbetween haring off to today's mad bargains.

That's good These things are so mindblowingly complicated it always seems a miracle that they can work properly at all.

You're right of course, Fjool, but you realise that saying so means the Scientologists will now be declaring "holy" war on Shetlink? I find David Icke's reptilian shape shifters much more entertaining than Scientology.

Ask not for whose defence, it's not ours.

This is particularly true if you are going to have lighted matches around.

I'm inclined to agree - drives do fail in weird ways sometimes but there are lots of idiots who will do this sort of thing to you. Trout's right, unplug and disinfect. Quick check - boot on a "live Linux" CD if you've got one. If it's the hardware, it'll still do it.

I never knew that ... I did it in W H Smiths once when I was younger and faster than I am now. Some idiot stopped the escalator when I was almost at the top, I almost broke their glass door as I flew out of the shop. I'd have to run up a lot to cancel out all the fags I've smoked, though ...

A very nice upgrade. I go away for a few weeks and ... No cookie crunching or anything needed, everything I've tried so far has been fine. Well done.

Yes, it may be slack, it may be technically wrong, but it's probably not going to go away. There are too many other 'plural places' - the Scillies have already been mentioned, I'm writing from the Midlands, and so on. Or, play it up. "Sumburgh, twinned with Goose Green" ...

(that'll show 'em)

It was decidedly questionable leaving them alone like that - as the subsequent tragic events proved - though I suppose in mitigation they probably assumed that the holiday place was reasonably safe, as you would. At least they were checking them regularly, and the restaurant wasn't that far away, so perhaps they weren't entirely negligent. To the extent they were, they're already going through hell. And so say all of us, though the longer it goes on the more you despair.

Well, there wasn't quite the rioting in the streets there should have been when it was first announced, so it's probably fair to assume it is going ahead. Joe Public is too busy watching 'Big Brother' to realise the irony.

The Ultimate Dinner Party Guestlist: 1. God 2. Allah 3. Jehovah 4. Odin 5. Finn McCool Should be a humdinger. Bet the neighbours complain (if there are any left at the end of the evening). Now, guys, no talking about religion please ...

^^^ Oh, well, that's as well to know I'll lower the tone again with this - play with your favourite US President: http://www.dailyhaha.com/_flash/Bush_doll.swf (this really hurts!)

Please don't

That was my reaction too. Trouble is, the vacuous celebrities we are busily disapproving of do nevertheless influence a lot of "mundane" people. I'd go along with Carlos, double the punishment for setting a bad example!

It's been commented on here in Nottingham that if you don't speak a word of English, you get a translator at the Social Security office who'll let you know all your rights and what to claim, and help you do it. If you actually speak English, you're on your own ... the staff behind the desk won't volunteer any information about what you're entitled to on pain of losing their own jobs. Also a friend (English) who'd worked on the Continent for three or four years was told that he wasn't entitled to a penny of support whilst (actually) looking for work back here, because he was not "habitually resident" in the UK. Looks like the message running throughout is, "law-abiding honesty is a mug's game". It's not just the old it's hard on, it's anybody who can't fight back equally hard on their own behalf.

I always wanted to be able to turn into other animals, so I could fly and do all sorts of things small humans can't. Just as well I wasn't around 500 years or so earlier ...

I connect to the net via wireless, via a friendly and co-operative neighbour (plus a cash inducement). At first we didn't know how to set up the security, and within 24 hours the connection was being caned by some of the local students. The connection really speeded up when we booted them off. The (so far successful) secret of our link is WPA/PSK encryption with a b-i-g password plus MAC filtering in the router - it will only talk to the remote units whose MACs are on its list. The log still shows students attempting to link, but it kicks them off every time; the box also allows disabling given MACs so that an internet cafe, etc., could keep specified troublemakers out. For a good, strong password (which you'll need to copy onto a memory stick or something, as there's no way you'll remember it) try Steve Gibson's 'Ultra High Security Password Generator' at https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm.

Aw, come on, the "flames" on the net aren't as bad as the ones they used in the middle ages ...

Surely Arabia Terra answered that one above? - Go on to assume that you grow up in a "pre-modern" society, where you'll be surrounded all your life by people brought up with the same set of beliefs, and it will be a very strong (or "stupid", if the penalty for disbelief is strict enough) individual who questions the received wisdom. Believing that story is the path of least resistance. Surely religion developed as a part of our human desire to understand the world we live in. It's easier (if unhelpful in the long run) to assume some sort of super being who makes things happen the way they do, and to live in a way which your friendly local priest tells you will keep him sweet. Science answers a lot of our questions very well, though it has not yet filled in all the gaps - e.g. the way life itself arises. It stilll leaves us all the moral and ethical questions, the answers to which seem remarkably uniform across nations and religions. I remember hearing a thing on the 'Today' programme a few years ago to the effect that someone had tried to work out a "Ten Commandments" valid across the whole human race. Everyone agreed on the easy ones ... thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt show a bit of respect to thy parents and so on. This sort of basic morality is less a matter of needing evidence of anything than of allowing everyone to get on with their neighbours with a reasonable chance of not being killed off or whatever at someone else's whim. And then you come to "having no God but me" ... and the bloody history of humanity. Frankly, for me, the question is not whether my neighbour believes in one God, or many, or none at all. I'm a lot more interested in what sort of person these beliefs make him - is it safe, for instance, for my five year old daughter to accept a lift home from him on a rainy day? Can I leave my keys with him when I go on holiday? If the human race can learn to rub along with one another with a decent basic morality, maybe there's hope for us yet. If we let our gods - or, in the case of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, aspects of the same God! - lead us into wholesale slaughter of the 'heretics' who dare to think or behave differently from ourselves, we deserve what we get for being so stupid. As someone once said, "Mankind created God in his own image". And whilst we can occasionally act really nicely and kindly to others, there's a lot of times you wouldn't want to be anywhere near us.

But can anyone see the situation improving? Britain gave the world post offices, but our own now seems to be in terminal decline, and with it the very civilised idea that it shouldn't matter whether you live in the middle of nowhere or in a city, your post should travel for a fixed, reasonable fee. First all the profitable parcel business was broken up and laid open to the "private sector", who of course undercut the PO precisely because they're only offering a second rate service. Then the bulk mail - you might not want this stuff, but people used to pay the PO to deliver it and are now paying TNT etc. Then benefits were paid into bank accounts, hacking away another source of income for the PO. Latest one I've come across is that I can no longer pay for my water at the PO without a surcharge, but have to go to a (private sector) "Pay Point". Then companies go for the cheapest option - from the place I buy bits for my computer: "Delivery must be to an address in Britain. We cannot deliver to Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, Orkney, Shetland and the Scottish islands." I like the "we cannot" - at the moment it just means "we cannot be bothered" but soon it will be precisely literal, because Britain will no longer have a postal service, just a rabble of private sector money spinners vying to see who can get round London the cheapest. And interesting to note that Shetland, etc., are no longer "in Britain" as far as these cheapskates are concerned. I hate what they're doing to our damn country. Do forum rules allow calls for the overthrow of the government?