threegee

$595 !!! Users of Nokia Maemo (Linux Based) phones and ITs are quietly chuckling, as they've been doing remote system admin for years without shelling out (unintended pun) a single extra buck. The merging of Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin into MeeGo is looking very promising. You can already boot a development image on an N900. Watch out Google, here comes open source with clout!

Is the Samsung BD-C5300 Blu Ray Starter Kit the best bargain ever? http://www.rgbdirect...SAMSUNG-BDC5300 ..and also from many other suppliers. Well it depends. Take away the six Blu-Ray disks and you've got a cracking top-quality and state-of-the-art Blu-Ray Player for maybe £80 or so. But wait, there's a lot more! This sleek little baby has an RJ45 Ethernet port, and - unlike several other home entertainment items I've bought with an Ethernet port - this one actually does something; the software is there to use the Internet connection! The software is Samsung's internet @ tv that's built into other recent Samsung products (like TV's and Home Cinema Systems) currently on store shelves. Samsung want you to buy their USB WiFi dongle for £50 or so to be able to connect to your home wireless LAN. But you can wire it directly to your ADSL box with a budget Ethernet lead and enjoy higher performance without shelling out any more cash. That's the route I went with a couple of l-o-n-g custom made leads butted together and hung from room to room, just to see if it was worth stringing a permanent Ethernet connection around the outside of the house. The answer I eventually arrived at was that it is! But, I was going to do this anyway. Now, it will probably be this week or next rather than after Christmas. Internet @ tv promises a lot more than it actual delivers just now. For instance when you select Facebook you get told that it will be ready in April (note to Samsung: Which year will that be? It's now July!). But what it delivers is already well worth it. Google maps on a 50" full HD plasma TV has to be seen to be believed, and YouTube has taken on an entirely new perspective now that I don't have to juggle it around in windows an 8.9" screen, and can view it from the comfort of the sofa. The hardware (?) graphics codecs already in the Blu-Ray player are obviously put to good use here, as the playback is a lot smoother than on any of our netbooks. On a note of caution: it wasn't easy to get the first Internet connection, and I can imagine that many people have thrown internet @ tv back at suppliers for just this reason. Once I did get a connection it was possible to upgrade the firmware from xx.8.1 to xx.13.4 in about ten minutes and this seems to have solved the connection problems. I've seen other reports of this on the net put down to poor cable drivers in the box's Ethernet connection, supposedly only good for tens of feet. This isn't so - my BD-C5300 is working just fine into a couple of very long daisy-chained Cat 5 leads right now. I think the problem may have been confusion due to the auto-sensing on my router ports. Anyway, I overcame it with a bit of fiddling with the Samsung's Network settings and inserting an old (fixed gender) Ethernet switch very close to the Samsung, then playing with the connections until the LEDs on the Ethernet switch showed what looked like a promising conversation. When the box upgraded itself over this connection the lashup proved to be no longer necessary, and the Samsung connected to my rather complicated LAN purely on automatic everything (no manual configuration required), and without any extra hardware assistance. People with little computer networking experience might want to insist on the box having the latest firmware before delivery, or ask a local hardware hacker for a bump start. The BD-C5300's performance in its advertised role as a Blu Ray player is faultless. An HDMI cable straight into our TV, and in seconds 1080p HD pictures were wowing all around. I've used the cinema 24 fps option as my (non-Samsung) TV does seem to support this and this seems to result in very smooth motion on the big screen. True home cinema at long last, and at a price that's amazingly affordable - even for a pensioner! The box also has USB ports front and rear so you can play HD material on USB Flash Memory keys and external hard drives (which must be self powered). Conclusion: If you don't already have Blu Ray then grab the package whilst it's still available! (But don't spend £19.90 on a £3 HDMI lead! )

It's OK, it's all in the imagination. There isn't a problem at all. Doesn't quite explain why the calls then fail to get through, but maybe that's psychosomatic too? BTW I hadn't up until this moment realised that multitasking Apple style involves only those selected apps that Apple gives you permission to multitask. In my naivety I'd though that it meant what the rest of the World has always considered it to be. So, there you are: back in pre-history when we ran a TSR program on an early PC we were really multitasking all along! You live and learn - unless - you are an Apple fan, when you simply queue, pay double, and worship!

I know nowt about football - and really don't want to - but it's very similar to software projects. At core they are both "people things". With "people things" when there's far too much money available (to "guarantee" a good result) it's then positively guaranteed to go totally TU! This is particularly true with team people things, where the human interactions are what runs the show, and the manager only thinks he does.

And now... the iPhone that you have to be careful to hold in the way Steve Jobs tells you to hold it: http://news.bbc.co.u...ogy/8761240.stm Maybe when they get on to the iPhone 172c they'll have learnt what proper mobile phone manufacturers learnt about designing good phones - twenty years ago!

This time Google gets stitched-up! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/scotland/north_east_orkney_and_shetland/10401345.stm

Only a very few dedicated people are posting events! The Calendar is for ALL members to post events. If you know about an event then don't wait for someone else to post it - JUST DO IT! If you want to add to the description of an event, or correct an error, then do a duplicate posting, the moderators will do the tidy-up. It doesn't even have to be a public event, it can be a private one. If you are wondering why you don't get more reputation, then here's one way you can enhance it. The moderators WILL NOTICE your efforts and rep you, even if no one else does! Maybe not the first time, but your efforts will be rewarded, and your standing in our community will be advanced. Active contributor to Our Town, or couch-potato - the choice is yours! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note that there are 5 *very active* moderators on the board just waiting to help you. PM any one of them and see how fast you get a helpful response with your posting. They are not there to answer questions that regular members may be more qualified to do; they are there to help you with the mechanics of getting your message out.

Cider Tax scrapped! Is there a single measure in Darling's pointless April budget that now still stands? 20% V.A.T. - as long predicted here - won't come in until 4th January 2011, so a tiny bit of relief there. The welfare cuts are going to take a long while to sink in. 25% cuts to many government department budgets are going to be very traumatic. But for once the North East has come out better than many other regions, especially if it can rise to the challenge and start creating many more private sector jobs over the next few years.

Well it's sure not going to be Harriet Harman! What a totally hopeless response to the budget speech - so predictable and formulaic it could have been written months ago. Not one iota of original thought, nor any attempt to seize the moment. What's her "real world" job again? Oh yes, a solicitor!

...we should just give up? When we start taking the really big things - like Eurovision - seriously again, we'll be able to kick a bit of leather in the right direction once again!

Amazing but true: Legionnaire's Disease (Legionella bacterium) can be found lurking in one in five vehicle's windscreen water containers that don't have a screen-wash added to them. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/10293519.stm Van drivers are particularly at risk.

On TV too. Have to agree with you on that one - that must be one of the most irritating and annoying adverts of all time; it really grates! "Get a lot of X-tra annoyance from the HalifaX." I'd go out of my way NOT to take out an ISA with them!

I live in Europe, and I don't like to see American marketing outfits sell overpriced tat when we've got better technology at home!

...and if the N900 is too complex for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrXHXin9Iio You don't have to send it back to the factory and pay megabucks to change the battery; the maps are free; they aren't trying to tell you that you can't view Flash websites because THEY have issues with Adobe; there is a flash memory slot; and the audio doesn't have a ball and chain attached to it. It's most likely pretty good at making phonecalls too! Sample Photo 1

No I didn't! I read it all through and tried a dummy application. That's for the current batch, but they are intending to expand the scheme. The majority of applications will fail for other reasons, so there's no certainty in anything ... except that if you don't apply there's a certainty that you will get diddly squat. I also think that there are other operators currently looking at this market, so hopefully another firm will pilot it in this area first. BUT... You might find this interesting reading. http://www.guardian....-feed-in-tariff The obvious conclusion is that these schemes are bound to be withdrawn as they become too popular - leaving those holding the price guarantees laughing.

So... have you tried booting in recovery mode? Unplug any USB devices. Disable the splash screen so you can read the boot messages.

"know just wont boot" -- could be a keyboard problem! Where does it stop in the boot sequence when you turn on boot messages? Has Windows messed with the loader? Does Windows boot? What does the boot selector give you as options? What did you do just before it stopped booting? Boot from the live CD or a USB stick and examine the logs. Best was to TRY Ubuntu is to install Wubi. No repartitioning necessary as the Linux filespace is then contained in a large Windows file which you can delete. http://wubi-installer.org/

Go here and register your home (which must be South facing): http://www.ashadegreener.co.uk/ Government pays four times the cost of normal electricity, which is why you get it for nowt by simply supplying the site!

The question I'm asking is what prevents you doing something at your own pace? I can see that that pressures in some jobs would be too much, but it would have to be pretty desperate not to be able to pace yourself doing something useful. I'm talking as someone who's had a nasty infection over the past couple of years and still brings up lots of mucus all the time, palms and feet are visibly inflamed and my temperature control is completely shot. I'm not sure that all the various antibio's used haven't contributed to the problem now that the original infection is gone. I'm improving, but nothing like as fast as I'd like to, and I'm having to work hard at improving. But although retired I still put in productive hours around the place, and even service a few paying customers a week. What's different about ME that prevents this? I think if we had an explanation of what it's really like, people (and maybe even GPs - some of whom still don't accept it's a genuine condition) would be a lot more understanding. Difficult I know, but worth a try.

:D

And.. they have left interest rates at 0.5% today! Could it be that the 2% target is now history, but no one has got around to telling Joe Public?

If you've had an accident at work that wasn't your fault, then.... you're probably a liar, as well as a careless idiot! No matter, Screwu & Suethem (Qualified ambulance-chasers) will pursue your employer through the courts to make sure that all the sensible and careful people in your company have to do entirely pointless things for decades to come to try to avoid us trying it on again! **We, of course, provide this service entirely in the public interest. Sign here and don't trouble yourself reading the small print in the contract - you're such an idiot you wouldn't understand it anyway!

I'm not unsympathetic, and I do appreciate that this is a genuine condition that wasn't recognised by medics until very recently. The only thing that puzzles me is *why* you can't work in some capacity or other? You're obviously as intelligent as the next person, and in no way physically disabled, so what makes it impossible to do something for the community instead of staying home? Even staying home AND doing something for the community if you can't manage a regular job? Not being critical at all, just trying to understand.

More ways to extract revenue (the margins on these products are so thin! ).