GrahamS,

I think what he means is you need to spend £1300 on a decent i7 base unit and then £1000 for a Dell monitor that would top the 27" screen in terms of size,resolution & quality.

I love these arguments there is so much BS floated about it is laughable. I use both OS', windows for work and gaming and Mac OS X on my home laptop. They both work and are very highly tunable. OSX is very similar to Linux/Unix.

I agree with the pay for what you get argument. My macbookpro is over 3 years old now and still looking good and working fine. My wifes £650 Lenovo laptop purchased at the same time slowly fell to bits and we only got £100 for it on ebay. I could probably sell the mac for £500 now to some smug ****. 😆

@Debz

Yup… So far I have learned that the RAF use the same systems as Blockbuster entertainment, we know what someone will be doing when his 22 are up!

30, & another IT bod, SQL Server DBA/Team Lead looking after too many databases for too many clients…

Somehow made me think of the life of Brian when Cleese is caught writing Romans go home..

Well a brand new PC is way better than a PS3 in terms of graphics etc. I'm afraid however that even with a top end graphics card your machine would struggle to get the best out of it. I also suspect that you only have an AGP port so you'd also be limited to older or lower end cards anyway.

Buy a PS3, shove a bit more Ram in your PC and defrag the Hard disk for slightly better windows performance.

Watched some of that, lots of pictures that prove that the glaciers this guy visited are indeed melting away. One of them shows a lovely picture of retreat since 1850 and it is quite a lot.

However

I'm sure the anti AGW camp are probably prepping a similar presentation to demonstrate why it can't be AGW and that 1850 marks the end of the little ice age etc etc.

I've watched a few of these things now from both sides of the debate and as someone with only GCSE science they are all pretty convincing. I do sometimes check out the presenters and to be honest the pro-AGW lobby usually wins hands down, the deniers are often easily shown to hold poor credentials – that was until all this stuff about UEA hit the headlines… it seems that since we can't trust what they and therefore the IPCC had to say their work needs to be scrutinized again, but can't well not properly as they have dumped the orginal stats…Great… looks like we are just going to have to wait and see, on the bright side we are now due a period of change in solar activity. If we start getting proper winters again then that might help prove/disprove some of the theories doing the rounds.

One thing I will say is that people always look to make ourselves the most important things around – earth at center of the universe, god is very interested in us etc etc. I'm sure that if the majority of scientists claimed climate change had nothing to do with man made emissions then many out there would still claim it was mans fault. Either the scientists are wrong or it in places like Indonesia it is gods desire to punish us etc etc.

What I can't abide are those who don't think we should cut down on pollution or those who think because they have bought a hybrid car they are doing their bit. It is like the power stations that burn wood – great we are using renewables, bad it is being shipped 6000 miles!

It's the neighbour, probably downloading a weeks worth of porn…

Sometimes, it's a bit of a double edged sword, I can usually crack on and get certain types of work done quickly without the usual office distractions. If my wife is in she sometimes forgets I'm working and just sits and chats.

If you have a room you can make a home office & shut the door I think it would work all the time. If not and it's a laptop at the dining table then probably not.

Scripture is never wrong it is 100% right, therefore the world was created in 6 days (not 7 as some people think).

Everything must fit with that, all other gods and points of view are false. Evil spirits, demons or Satan himself are trying to fool you, remember the bible warns of false prophets to mislead and confuse and as it is never wrong what more proof do you need 😉

recommended [for a girl that is !]

Ahem, whilst I drive the mini daily it is actually the wife's car 😉

Ive a 2003 cooper s with 210bhp kit(smaller pulley on charger an remap) on fast chuckable but not cheap on fuel. BigEaredBiker dont know how you manage that I get 20-25mpg only could just be me being leadfooted tho. Once managed only 70 miles out of a full tank on my yamaha r1.

Hmmm.. actually I think I might be wrong on that MPG figure. As that's the figure the computer provides.

I actually get about 320-330 miles out of a tank when I only drive to work an back which 50 miles a day around 30 of which are Motorway. If I drive just around town or like a nutter it'll be around 280 miles.

The maths – The mini has a 50 litre tank so 50/4.54 = 11 gallons.
330 (miles) / 11 (gallons) = 30 MPG.

THE COMPUTER LIES!!!

2003 Cooper S here, get around 34-36 MPG (combined) and it really does put a smile on your face. The newer models with the turbo instead of the super charger are supposed to be more efficient.

Crap car to put a bike in, possible but a tight fit!

This one won't run as long as the 'helmet saved my life' and 'death penalty' but my bet is it'll get to 2 pages.

Mac's can and do suffer from problems from time to time, however a badly running program rarely manges to take out the whole machine, if it does a quick reboot normally fixes it no problem (and no need fr safe mode).

Every iteration of windows seems to get better at this than the last. IME Vista has been shed loads better than XP and some people would have you believe 7 is the best thing ever.

That just looks 'right' for playing around on.

That is seriously shit. I think you would do better to tell em to stick it and find something else. It isn't usually difficult to find minimum wage jobs in London.

The only way I'd do that is if it was for a temp amount of time only and was guaranteed to lead to a good job in a field I wanted to work in.

Since living in Dartford and train/tubing it to White City is out (you'd never get home from a late shift) you need to look at living next to the central line but near the M25 etc.

I recommend Woodford/Woodford Green, never been there & no idea if it is posh or a dump! As it's Zone 4 hopefully the Oyster fares wouldn't kill you either.

I use PC's at work and have a Dell XPS desktop at home purchased just over a year ago. It has Vista installed and has never given me trouble. Having said that I work as a SQL DBA so buggering about with windows is second nature.

I purchased an Intel Macbook pro in 2006, OSX has satisfied my inner geek by giving me a new command line to play around with and familiarized me with Unix/Linux type stuff. This has been dead useful when supporting the odd Linux/mySQL install that turns up hidden on client networks.

Given the choice once I get home from the office I'd sooner be using OSX over Vista however I can never get the macbook pro off my wife…Once I have enough cash the XPS will probably be replaced by an iMac with Sun Virtual Box running windows to deal with a few work things. Since my daughter was born I seem to have little time for the PC games which were the main reason for the XPS purchase.

I'm sure you would be happy with either, the bad old days of windows 98/ME and PC's shipping with woeful hardware specifications seem to be over. Windows 7 is getting a thumbs up all round so go for that if you do go PC.

ahwiles

It's wikki we all know the 'wierd lefty carrot munching lesbians' have it monitored so it always edited in their favour. I'm sure it did not say that the last time I actually read that page… 😆

Not got one but looks like a bargain to me especially on the Ride to work scheme.

Molgrips,

Your post reads like some of the hyped up media stuff I've been referring to. Can you post links to your sources of information? If it is Al Gore then I'm not going to bother, his film really was overly exaggerated to terrorize us all into action.

Think about it for a minute, every litre of petrol you put in your car ends up in the air.

There is something wrong with a car that does that. In fact I doubt it would even move, a 100% efficient engine would result in just CO2 and H2O as exhaust but since none are much of it must turn into the deposits caught in the cat and engine itself.

Neither H2O or CO2 are toxic and therefore not a pollutant as such and both can readily be absorbed by nature. The only concern is how much of the CO2 can Nature consume and does the stuff it can't really matter? This is what I'd like to get to, the supposed famous hockey stick graph proving cause and effect and used by the IPCC has now been discredited and is in dispute according to (wait for it) the internet…

Hockey Stick

Midgebait/AdamG

Thanks for your more informed replies but the problem is when most of us get our science for the mainstream media and at best National Geographic and New Scientist magazines it is more often media opinion than proper science with which we are equipped to form our own opinions. There is hardly a week goes by without some new report or another making claims or overturning previous claims often backed up with few tangible facts and statistics. It also seems that climate change gets linked to so many media reports even when there is no proven connection – lazy reporters! Don't even get me started on TV adverts for products that tell me they are environmentally friendly as a way to try and get my cash!

Given the expense that combating CO2 emissions costs not to mention the focus it pulls from other global concerns would you not say it is reasonable to expect the burden of proof should come from those who imply it will destroy the world(Gordon Brown)?

As we can't afford to do everything at once I'd sooner the poorer countries of today become self sustaining with a good standard of life tomorrow than be condemned to continue in impoverishment because our fears over AGW mean they are not allowed to modernise or industrialise. I accept your point that we should equip them to do it in a more sustainable way but at the moment it is just too expensive.

Finally I apologise for misusing the definition of a model but Newtons laws are easily demonstrated therefore proving them, the stuff connected to AGW is so heavily disputed and dare I say it political that it makes me sceptical of what anyone says about it.

AdamW.

These are all measurable things so there should be no need to rely on models. Newton did not have to come up with complex models – just made some accurate measurements and then did the maths. His laws don't quite hold up at the level you are talking about but work well enough to describe what I experience everyday.

Now is there a study that does that with regards to AGW? There might well be but I have not yet seen it and each one with models seems to come to varying conclusions as to how much the climate will change.

If anyone heads out there and takes a laptop check it for spy-ware that switches on web-cams and microphones!! It downed a network I looked after a few years back because it was sending so much data back to a Chinese registered IP address!

For that reason stories like this interest me and I don't doubt that they do it on a massive scale. If you must have a link to oil China is burning through it at a massive rate, you can fill in the rest…

Can someone post a link to a study that directly proves human produced Co2 causes global warming. Can we have one where no models & projections are used?

Personally I think the money spent on countering climate change would be better served building decent hospitals, schools in the developing countries. What use is Britain spending billions to reduce our CO2 emissions compared to turning third world countries into self sustaining countries with good schools, hospitals and access to clean water?

The second will result in better living standards for more people than the first. GM trees will take care of excess CO2 if we desperately need to get rid of it – Need is the mother of all invention and all that.

@LittlestHobo,

Strategy & tactics have a hell of a lot to do in a counter insurgency such as Afghanistan. We could win it (or surpress the insurgency at least) with WW2 kit but the right strategy and number of soldiers.(elevated casualty rates expected of course)

Both the strategy and the number of troops to ensure victory (I'm not really sure what that is here) are being hottly debated right now by McChrystal etc.

I suppose the White House/Downing Street and NATO need to clearly define what will consitiute a victory and then implement a plan accordingly – if only someone would supply and pay 500,000 profesional soldiers…

The 'shifting' victory aims are what will probably define this war. Was it just to remove Taliban from power? Install a democracy? Remove the Opium trade? Open Afghan up for western enterprise/companies? Stop AQ from ever hiding in Afghan again? Bring about western style womans rights, freedom of speech? etc etc etc.

With regards to the TA it is nuts pure and simple if all training is stopped for 6 months then I doubt many will return. I'm sure £20 million is a drop in the ocean to our Afghan operation and destroying your reserves that are supporting it makes no sense.

Stumpjumper HT for xc racing
Trek Fuel EX FS trail bike
Trek Madone Road bike for sportives/training
456 with 160mm fork for fun 🙂

If you find a mortgage that will give you a rate of 3.85% you might, I would seriously doubt that would be fixed.

So if you got the 3.85% rate on a tracker that means that if the base rate goes back to a realistic 4% from 0.5% you would then be on 7.35% which would mean £1400 a month repayments!!

I'm not surprised by this post and can confirm that when you don't have a massive flat changing the bag on a Henry does only need to be done once a year.

Great piece of British engineering…

I own a BMW Mini Cooper S and an MG ZT-T. The ZT-T is fantastic to drive and the overall build quality is just as good as the Mini. The 75/ZT range were/are excellent cars it's shame the lower end stuff was not as good.

Having said that by 2004 when Audi/BMW/Ford etc were starting to really refresh their ranges Rover MG seemed to be relying on the same late nineties designs so even if GB had given them the £100 million loan I doubt they would have made it through the current crisis.

I have just checked and the item I bought at the start of the week and sent payment as a 'gift' via paypal did not involve any fees my side. I had no funds in there but my account is verified.

i did the same, quick call to TFT suggested I carefully sand any sharp edges of and live with it as repair costs where £200 + regular servicing + P&P. Apparently it is not usually so bad on a 36 dues to the way the internals were designed as on say a talas 32.

Not been to vegas but I imagine you will enjoy whatever they have if you have not shot much before. Watch out for range safety, it can be interesting in the US to say the least!

Nicko – a bit like the bloke from the Mummy then. I saw him at a local comedy club as a surprise guest, he was crap, he forgot half his material and fell back on his old Iranian gags used on TV god knows how many times.

Agree with all the above. I have Raid 0 on my home desktop simply because Dell configured it that way, completely pointless and just a marketing gimmick I expect.

At work RAID 5 and RAID 1+0 are common. RAID 5 for the backup drives and 1+0 for database data drives on servers still with physical local drives. Nearly everything else is SAN now, which leads into another debate, why do IT managers not understand that SAN is not put in place for performance reasons?? Why do I always get the same questions about database performance issues on servers that moved over to using the cheap SAN… drives me mad!

I bought a 20" frame off Ton at the start of last year which was battered but sound. Ton is a big chap who rides in proper mountain bike country so they are certainly strong. I used it with a Fox 36 Talas in the alps last year with travel at 130mm most of time but it was fine on 160mm and fantastic on the DH runs (for a HT).

I then sold it to my brother at the start of this year but have now bought another one to build up as I missed it on all day rides when I travelled to Wales etc.

[quoteWell i think he's funny, and have tickets for his Glasgow gig

Everyone to their own i guess[/quote]

Now that amuses me, I saw him at one of the London comedy clubs in 2006 and he threw in a few jokes about scotsmen which upset a Scottish chap in the audience. McIntyre then proceeded to mock this poor bloke & Scotland until the guy completely lost it with him and had to be dragged away by the bouncers 😯

Lake Garda is also worth a look.

BigEaredBiker wrote, "Another point that won't be lost on many a US citizen is that the inception of the NHS occured just as Britain stopped being the worlds dominant power… "

This really is complete toss.

Is it really? All Americans know their country is the worlds current superpower and many believe that GB fullfilled that role before them. India became independent shortly after the NHS was established and within 10 years Britain could no longer act unilaterally on the world stage. Mark my words the same sort of nutters that said Stephen Hawking would be dead if treated by the NHS would say that a country that provides free universal healthcare can no longer afford to also be a 1st rate military power.

If they wish to use this warped logic the stats are there to help them this year the government will spend approx £110 billion on healthcare and £42 billion on defence. Add the other £50 odd billion spent on welfare and this country spends almost 4 times on 'socialist' areas than things that can be put to good use invading other countries and scaring ascending powers.

The argument raging in America isn't really about what may or may not be true but about what people percieve it to be.

How can you have a right to something when you contribute absolutely nothing?

Those who disagree – are you saying that if 25,000 people from sub saharan Africa turned up next month and then again for the following 6 months just to be treated at our (uk taxpayers) expense you would not feel a just a little bit uneasy about it?

Human rights is very much 'from the eye of the beholder type argument' I guarentee that most of you on this forum would choose for people to die in Africa rather than people in this country if you were forced out of your comfortable safe lives and it was a you or them scenario. I know I would – it's simple human instinct you look after your own first the rest is a luxury. In fact we all probably do – how many times do the chuggers in the streets tell you that £10 a month would feed a family in Africa? You wouldn't donate that if it meant taking food out of your families mouths and most of you probably don't regularly donate to any charities that work out side of the UK anyway – I don't. My money goes to UK charities first. Admit you are all as selfish as me despite all the supiority attitudes on here mocking the Americans.

Anyway;

I'm surprised no one on the STW massive has commented on one obvious point behind all this. In the UK the NHS is the single biggest expense to the government. In the US the military is. This profits mostly US companies twice over – those that supply the military and then the medical/insurance companies. If the US government put in an extact replica of the NHS both military and medical insurance companies profits would fall and both are massive in the states. Another point that won't be lost on many a US citizen is that the inception of the NHS occured just as Britain stopped being the worlds dominant power…

The Wadeys are campaigning for any potential owner to require a licence because, Mr Wadey added, many owners underestimate the snake's "wild instincts".

Pure hypocrisy, bet his cat has eaten plenty of wild animals without him giving a second thought.