threegee

It was his decision to make a dumb political gesture to holiday there. The police want their expenditure back so why should the taxpayer pay instead? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england...olk/7866646.stm Really illustrates the futility of all this political posturing (they're all at it!). Oh for an honest politician who tells it as it is whatever the consequences! Doubtless it will be brushed off as another "it was the right thing to do!" Spin-doctorese for I can't be arsed to explain; your tiny mind wouldn't understand anyway; I can't make a proper explanation into a useful sound-bite; and if I did you'd likely see right through the con!

This is what the government should be putting a few tens of millions into, and NOT pumping billions of our future earnings into feather-bedding the banks! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7862827.stm It would save the country huge launch fees for civilian and military satellite launches, provide high tech British jobs, and encourage school leavers into science. Any one of those would justify the small government grant. Huge mistake to cancel Britain's small space program back in the 1970's because some dumb civil servant decided there was no commercial purpose in it. We'd already spent the money and so been paying for that mistake ever since! Here's a chance to correct that mistake at a time when we really need those jobs. Put VAT back up to 17.5% to fund it in the short term (though Gordon seems to be able to conjure astronomic sums out of nowhere when he thinks he needs it). In the long term this investment will pay for itself many times over. Does the government have that much common sense? Of course they don't; they'd rather splurge a couple of billion (probably ten times the amount of seed capital needed here) on trying to buy a few thousand dumb votes at a local election to prop up their evaporating power base!

If you knew as much about computers as you know about drinking holes you'd know just how close Mac OS X is to Linux, and how many ideas they stole! So much so that if the boot had been on the other foot the writs would be flying. At least when Microsoft sell their old wine in new bottles they try to maintain some backwards compatibility and don't regularly leave their punters high and dry with the major hardware & software changes necessary to correct *their* repeated mistakes. I suspect you've never actual tried a modern Linux distribution. Easy-to-use has a huge price tag, and appeals mainly to the easy-to-part-from-their-money.

Ubuntu is just a spruced-up Debian. Uses .deb install files in the main. Can you imagine the M$ reaction to someone taking their OS, bending it to their own preferences, and then giving it away. That's the power of open source, the GNU General Public License, and copyleft!

That was my first intro to W-I-M Linux too. But the Ubuntu CD is live too. What's more you can install it properly from the live CD without even rebooting. I have a couple of USB sticks I use to install it on other machines for people - faster than using a CD. The best way to try it out though is Wubi. This creates a virtual file system under Windows, and gives you a dual boot machine. The Linux drive is just a big NTFS file in a directory off the Windows root, and it can be un-installed from the Windows uninstaller. Wubi is on the Ubuntu CD, but if you download it then it will go on the net and download the Ubuntu image itself and install that. Obviously Wubi is a Windows program.

The problem is it's a global setting and we have a couple of open forums that don't need registration. Making this one open was pre-planned - honest it was!

Would that be the four hour faff I had re-installing a damaged copy of XP on a machine that had to be returned because of a WiFi module fault. (From the in-the-box discs and hours worth of "hotfixes", bundled applications & driver updates.) Or the twelve minute faff I had installing a bang up-to-date and fully functional copy of Ubuntu on the replacement hardware (including re-partitioning the hard drive)?

There's a far simpler reason too. That's that most Linux users are far more computer and security aware and simply don't do things that will compromise their system. You can get just about everything in source code. So it's all open to peer review - some purists still insist on compiling everything themselves. I'd also guess that may virus writers are Linux users themselves and don't have any incentive to c**p in their own back yard. Nor is there an "evil empire" attached to Linux that you'd be motivated to mount a "guerilla attack" on. And, you know that if you did, you would be much more readily traced and identified. I've been impressed recently as to just how portable binaries now are between various Linux distributions. If there is a portability issue you can be pretty confident that someone somewhere has already fixed it. I'd urge everyone to give say Ubuntu a fair try. You will probably be very pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to install and how useful the bundled software selection is. At worst you will come away with a free glimpse of what's on the other side of the fence, and at best you'll never spend another penny on legitimate software (and the constant buying of the same old rope over and over again).

The odds were very much stacked against her, but she has to be greatly admired for trying. If the clock were put back I'd guess the owners, knowing what they now do, would have given her a better hand. The town would be a much richer place with a few dozen like her. So, to rubbish her efforts is a tad disingenuous. We're all influenced by public opinion and other people's experiences, whether we admit it or not. People aren't stupid and note who reaches out to them and values their custom, and who takes their business for granted.

We've flung this forum open to guest postings for an experimental period. The reason for this is that it has many casual visitors interested in computing who may not want to become a full town website member simply to post a casual observation, but who may still have something valuable to add. The downside is that the posts now have to be pre-moderated so may take a little while to appear. We will review this in a few weeks in the light of how much value is being added against how much worthless spam has to be trashed. UPDATE (The score so far - Mr D please feel free to update my tally else it's a bit pointless) Got my first one today Guest Spam: 5 Intelligent Guest Posts: 0

Well they would say that wouldn't they. The lack of brain cells is more likely in people who don't recognise the power of the Internet to make or destroy businesses'. This is treating their own customers with contempt. If so I doubt that this business has a future, at least in current hands. Their competitors will - particularly when times get tougher. And tougher they will get! We're here to help local enterprises, but some may be beyond that. Or... they are frightened of engaging with their own potential or existing customers. A 20th century business in a 21st century world - not may brain cells in that!

It's subject to VAT, so £345,000 at the present rate or £352,500 when it goes back up again. By contrast the asking price of The Terrier is £500,000 plus VAT, but they will consider all offers. I'd say The Lion is generally a much better and more valuable location, but don't know how the sites compare from an actual pub income point of view.

So say the agents: Red Lion, Front Street West, Bedlington, NE22 5TZ Price/Rent: Offers over £300,000 Status: Available For Sale Freehold (De-Licensed) Substantial detached property close to town centre Potential for a variety of uses (subject to planning) Large open plan bar, first floor 4 bedroom owners accommodation Large car park to the rear

I'd considered 30 seconds very reasonable. How long does it take for you to think about/type a post for goodness sake! OK we'll go with the majority.

Presumably because you haven't got a 64bit CPU! Or have a mixed up windows+utilities installation. You really don't need all this software bloat, there's enough of that from M$ already. Though C Cleaner is a must-have if you want to run your copy of windows for more than a year or so. BTW Linux users never have to defragment, and rarely need to reboot either!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7859422.stm

The problem is the Enterprise Centre. All efforts to find some in the town have so far failed!

Unlikely with a troll sitting on the thread! Look up "rumour" THEN look up "speculation". When you say you don't know for sure it's the lattter not the former. And, for another correspondent: all rumours aren't necessarily malicious rumours, especially when they so obviously aren't!

I'd remove this pronto. Best anti-malware is common sense. How do you know this isn't malware itself? If you feel the need for this sort of thing you probably have been running execs you shouldn't have and need to start again clean. Only download what you need to download and only from reasonably trusted sources.. If you feel a need to try stuff out do this on a throw-away version of the OS (or old machine).

Need to know what operating system you are using. Malware can't be directly responsible. So don't do it! Most likely explanation is that the disk is too full. A defragger needs working space. Do a disk cleanup first,removing temp files and finally empty the WPB, Recycle Bin or whatever it's called by your OS vendor. If there's a huge file you could temporarily move it. Rewriting it to a defragged drive will ensure it's defragged too. With Windows remove some of the older reversion files which can be a space hog. That's if the cleanup doesn't offer to do this for you. If the drive hosts the swap file temporarily kill that too. You can easily recreate it, and likely Windows will offer to do this anyway.

Then you need to answer a few simple questions: So who decides what this price should be, and how do they decide? If one company (maybe a better organised one) thinks that they can charge less and still make a useful profit then they shouldn't be allowed to? If everybody charges the same then what happens if one company does a better deal and starts making more profit than the others? Similarly, if one company's costs turn out to be higher (through circumstances beyond their control) then they should be forced to supply the utility at a loss? There's more but that would make an interesting start.

It seems to be quite easy to go to another supplier; you only need to use another 49,999,000 litres of water to qualify. http://www.ofwat.gov.uk/competition/ Other than that, and challenging the incumbent for the licence yourself, it rather looks like Ofwat has run out of ideas.

One suspects that someone is closer to the action than they are saying. Of course the Market Tavern could use the Business Booster section to post a public announcement that would be un-spammable and definitive - thus completely ending all speculation. Would probably result in a few extra customers too!

Now for the inconvenient science bit: Maximum power a USB can provide is 500mA = 2.5 watts, and that's not possible in many cases. The power is only there to power up a hub without a separate power adapter or some other very low power peripheral. Conclusion... you'd need over a thousand of these devices (and over 1000 full spec USB ports to power them) to compete with an average UK kettle. A USB toaster is only slightly more practical. You could do toast faster crumb by crumb using a magnifying glass on a sunny day!

Just expect it to cost twice what a more functional equivalent costs, scratch badly on the first outing, and have to be returned to the factory to change the battery!