Define what you mean by backwards compatible? Windows 64bit will run 32 bit programmes. May not guarantee running every 32bit programme though :-)

Difficult call I would say. I do rather like GT and there's plenty to amuse yourself with if you spend some time in the play park. Having said that Afan is still good fun having done Whites last week and realising that the climb is a tad more effort than I remember. Do like the new Energy section though as that is waaaaay better than just hooning down the hill on the road.

If they were equidistant I would go GT. If you just want to have a good ride and limit the travel then go Afan.

Personally not clamouring for you to lose your job – fair play to you. I'm just saying that my experience of listening to it was underwhelming considering the cost and reputation of the kit. But that's my personal taste and what worked for me. :D

So does this mean you are wondering why someone who swam slower than you finished ahead of you in a recent tri?

As has been said above, if the swimmers all started at the same time and form the same place then there is no way with those times that swimmers 1 and 2 would have lapped swimmer 3 unless swimmer 3 only did 2 laps.

I don't really think Spongebob was advocating anything much more than we need to do some thinking about how our society is going. He posited a couple of ideas but also wound up by saying I don't know the answer. Nice and open minded of people to not bother reading what he wrote and then jump on him. We have drifted in an unhealthy direction in many areas for some decades now and we are seeing the fruit of that. And it will no doubt take some time to correct / reset that if we can be bothered.

With the Moat thing it was never going to end "happily" once he'd shot a policeman. With the ex, her new fella and the policeman he will have known that he would get nothing less than prison for the rest of his productive life so it was obvuous he was either going to get shot by the police or would take his own life. The whole saga is a sorry and senseless waste of life.

The very essence of chav is that they think they are unique and funny with it. Being able to comprehend anything beyond this will melt (what there is of) their brains.

I guess a lot of it all comes down to what you are into and what your view of value is. We bought the Sony BluRay player (S360) just after Christmas and got it for £99. Bargaintastic it is. I personally don't find the picture quality between DVDs and BluRays is that great but the sound quality that we get is significantly better. The Arcam would have to go some way to be worth 9 times the cost of the Sony to tempt me into buying it. IMHO a lot of the hi fi stuff also comes down to your personal preferences and tastes. Listened to a NAIM cd player, through a NAIM amp and £2000 Dynaudio speakers a few months ago and I was spectacularly unimpressed. Yet I'm sure there would be some hi fi buffs spaffing off over how great and magical the whole thing sounds. While I'm nowhere near approaching hi fi buff land I am particular about the quality of the sound that I get when listening to music and am keen to ensure that I get very good quality and value form the budget that I have. Baffles me that some people are quite happy to buy some plastic box from Currys or Comet that sounds absolutely dire. But I guess sound quality is not important to them.

she has developed selective-amnesia which really annoys

I thought that was just part of the female make up, born with it. It's not something that somehow develops overnight. You just might be a bit more aware of it now. :D

Probably not a quote or response to post up on MN though….

Good of you to go in so "under cover" hora – I mean, we would never have guessed it was you. :lol:

How many rides is it worth? Bargainign chip with the wife? ;-)

Based on what has been said here is does appear to be a bit one way. People are odd though and make strange choices – or what appear to be strange from our perspective. I assume you have had the conversation with your wife that says I don't really want to do this?

How about the American's use of the word momentarily – which they appear to use to mean "in a moment". "Bob will be here momentarily". Oh good, because Bob is a useless **** and I couldn't bear the thought of him being here for any longer.

"Talking to" is another US favourite that seems to highlight a distinct lack of vocabulary or understanding.

And, we want to talk about business speak, how about a splendid "Go Do". Bad enough when it was confined to the US but having seen it pop up in the First Great Western magazine a little while ago (as well as hearing it in other presentations) it looks as if it may be making a bid to become part of our culture. Ugh!

Seems to be like the diet / losing weight syndrome – there doesn't appear to be universal agreement on how to do the plank. Picture from Clareymorris is how I've been taught making sure that you do not create a "bridge" with your arms ie. arms and hands should be in line with your body and not joined together. The picture that Ti29er posted is supposed to be a harder version of it. To add to the effect you then have the option of slowly raising a foot off the ground and lowering it back down (alternate feet). Supposed to be good for core along with crunches. Sit ups work the 6/8 pack rather than the core, apparently. But then again, I am only going on info provided by our gym instructor.

I'm hitting Swinley around 6 tonight for a couple of hours or so. I generally bimble over to the corkscrew and then work my way across to Surrey Hill for Deerstalker / Babymaker / labyrinth via seagull, stickler and tank traps.

I only recently switched to wearing contacts (about 3 years now) and it totally transformed my riding experience. Like you I was finding that glasses bouncing around on the end of my nose gave me a bit of a blurred outlook and wet weather was a bit of a pain. I didn't think my eyes would take contacts at all so never looked at them (wore glasses for 30 odd years before that). I have found that my eyes can cope with contacts and they are revolutionary to my enjoyment of outdoor pursuits. Daily displosables are not the only type of lense but are the most convenient. However, they also work out the most expensive way of doing contacts.

Waderider – Hmmm, a fair amount of tosh in that response, although, as you say you have a balanced opinion. Sadly, a lot of what you wrote is just that – opinion.

It needs antivirus because it is a market leader and has security issues

Er, not quite. All OSes need an anti virus if you have any concern about security. Windows is the most high profile because it is probably the most widely used OS and therefore the most profitable to attack. The so called super secure OSX that didn't need anti virus suddenly (a couple of years ago) decided that AV was a good and necessary thing. The Windows OS has got steadily more secure with Windows 7 being pretty good out of the box compared to most others.

It has a poorly designed update system

? Eh? Compared to what?

Microsoft controls the hardware market so that machines with competitors OS's can't compete

I have no idea where you plumbed this nugget from but it clearly isn't this world. MS has no control of the hardware market. I think you are confusing MS with Apple here regarding the hardware that the OS will run on.

The closed nature of the OS means severe problems require a complete reinstallation, were most users will lose data unless backed up. So those who only know Windows are more prone to losing their data. This is partly cause by Windows method of installation surrounding disk partitioning and formating.

What do you mean by "closed nature of the OS"? It's actually pretty open in as much as there are published APIs for access and use. Sure, the source code for the OS is not available at large to the public but it is available to view for those that have a requirement to do so and under license. Giving away your open source preference here.

MS will push updates that are more about enhancing their market position than improving or securing your system.

Spectacular tosh. Are you really neutral or just an anti MS bigot?

Microsoft produce propriety software

Well of course they do, as does pretty much every other commercial software organisation, including Apple. Why is that so bad, unless of course, you are a died in the wool, open source evangelist?

Microsoft use patents in a manner only made possible by the £'s in their coffers

Not sure what your point is caller, but it makes no sense at all.

Your use of the term amoeba is a little uncalled for given that your responses are hardly intellectually or factually accurate. Perhaps it is you that is more amoebic and blinkered having concocted a number of half / un truths to support your personal prejudices and perferences. Not very big nor very clever.

At the end of the day there is a significant difference between Apple and Windows in what they have to cover. Windows is designed and sold as an OS that can run on a wide range of hardware. And is installed and run on a wide range of hardware. Apple design an OS for a very tight and closed set of hardware. Given the 2 approaches Windows does a pretty spectaular job most of the time. I would agree that Vista was an abortion of a product that did not serve MS very well at all but XP was pretty good and Windows 7 similarly is a very robust and performant OS.

The purists maybe along shortly to ask what you are partnering them with before offering suggestions. Always worth listening to as well as one persons "great" speakers will not sound the same to you. Case in point – lots of people rave about B&W speakers. Personally I don't really like them. Sound a bit poor for the money to me – too sharp / tinny and miss out mid range. Some of that will be down to my dubious hearing and also my musical sound preferences. Generally I have liked Mission and Tannoy so you can tell I have an inclination to a warmer and more detailed sound. Having said that, bookshelf speakers are always going to sound a bit limited so it may not be such an issue.

Keep going back until they fix it. Talk to the manager. If there is still no movement then ask them to pay for another LBS to have it fixed as they are clearly incapable of doing it themselves. Annoying and frustrating when this sort of thing happens. I suspect it is usually down to someone who either doesn't really want to do anything about it or is scared of the workshop and would rather come up with some pathetic excuse than deal with it properly.

The OSS community model helps drive down costs & increase innovation etc. That gets passed on to the customer. From that perspective it's a good business model.

Don't you mean community model, as I suggested? If you have a product that you give away for free , the fact that the community increases innovation maybe a valid point but how can it drive down costs when there are none to start with? Surely one of the significant drivers for a busines is to make money – at a minimum to cover your costs. If you give your stuff away for free where does your revenue come from? Ergo, it is not a very good business model.

Yes i would, if there was a job available for me.

And where would they get the money to pay you or would you do it for free? And if doing it for free where would your income come from?

Hmmm, must be something wrong with me as I'm not seeing the hotness. She's ok, but I wouldn't go as far as very hot. :?

Would like to and have offered before but apparently I was born in the wrong place a year too early. Asked for clarification by the web site a couple of years ago and never got a reply and haven't really had the opportunity since. Maybe time to go back and try again….

What you mean is the product is not a good busines model. It only works when you wrap a service around it such as the SLA / support. Which for Joe Public is not going to happen. The reason that Red Hat and the like are making mooney these days is because they have developed chargeable services around the free product. The basic premise of OSS is not a good business model. Great as a hobbyist movement but not a busines model.

I'm not sure I agree that the large proprietary software companies are trying to copy it. What they are doing is, to a degree, hedging their bets and mostly protecting their revenue streams. IBM are not entirely altruistic about their involvement in the OSS space. Neither are Oracle. These are cpmanies that generate vast sums of revenue and claerly don't want to lose them. Do any of these proprietary software companies give their proprietary software away for free? Oracle 10 free for Linux? I don't think so.

So, if Red Hat didn't have a chargeable support business would you still be working for them?

Ubuntu's support can be poor (I've had bugs open for years with loads of "me too!" posts but no proper reply from the devs, I've also got so tired of waiting for Ubuntu to look into a sound problem that I learned C and fixed the driver myself).

But isn't that the point / selling point for open source software? It's free. But you can't expect someone to rustle up a fix for your problem overnight as there isn't anyone paid to do that, so you either need to do it yourself or you wait for the community to help you out. It's a great concept for those who don't like paying for stuff but at some point it will fail, surely, as giving something away does not pay any bills or put food on the table. Hardly a great business model.

Too many issues to discuss at any length really – and lots of points already brought up that could be discussed on their own. IMHO though:

1. Manager is partly to blame. He did a great job during the qualification round and then went mental for the final prep and squad announcements. His own standards for picking players went out the window and he recalled Carragher. What was that all about? He had a poor season in a poor Liverpool and yet he took Dawons who had a great season for Spurs. And it emerged he was even trying to persuade Scholes back to the squad. Absolutely mental. His choice of teams was poor and his tactical decisions in the games was poor. Not sure what happened to him but to me he lost a huge amount of credibility with his choice of squad and tactics in the games. For that alone the powers that be have a rioght to ask him to explain himself.

2. The players were shocking. Whatever the ball is like these are professional footballers who had plenty of tie to adapt to the new ball and yet couldn't string a decent set of passes together in the Algeria game. I have seen better team play in saturday and sunday league games and yet these are supposedly the best professionals in this country. Too many of the players were being played out of the position that they do very well for in their clubs. That's certainly part of the problem for Lampard and Gerrard. In their club setup they are very good players – but you also have to see the rest of the team around them. What is definitely clear is that these players are not as good as they think they are. Some decent players which were in the squad weren't even used. As mentioned above, Heskey on against Germany instead of Crouch? Crazy thinking. I still believe Rooney is a hugely talented player but he was not involved in any of the games in a way that allowed hiom to be effective. And then when he did get the ball it was a case of trying too hard or not having any support. Players too tired? Come on. They've just had the best part of a month off the full on competitive rigours of the premiership. They need to get back in touch with the real world and take some personal responsibility for theor performances.

3. FA. Clueless and incompetent.

4. Fans / followers. Fall a little to easily to the hype and get too dispapointed when the players cock it up. Deserve an award for their optimism though. :-)

That just looks wrong. So very wrong. :lol:

yes
yes

cockweasel.

[Or is this the wrong thread? :-)]

It would be a shame to bring a sense of balance into the discussion though wouldn't it? :-) I think we can all agree that there are people in private sector jobs who are lazy, workshy, oiks and that there are people in the public sector who are workshy, lazy oiks. The privare sector ones do not always get the heave-ho but many do. It seems harder to remove public sector people from their jobs when they are incompetent or not providing any value. Sweeping generalisation suggests that we employ more public sector staff than we really need and that a combination of those people and the workplace policies makes it difficult for them to actually deliver a decent / the right service. I work for a public sector company. My job takes me into a good number of other companies – both public sector and private sector. On the whole, it is the public sector offices that I have worked in that display the higher percentage of useless and incompetent staff.

Nice of her to lay into the new budget without any reference to the reason for it and the previous governments profligacy and complete lack of fiscal credibility. Interesting to see Alistair Darling sitting there with barely an emotion or response. Clearly he knew how badly the economy was shagged and that it would take a robust budget plan to address it.

Depending on how tall you are and the likely height of your kids I would avoid the A4 estate as it is a bit tiny in the back – espeically if you are of the taller persuasion and like a relaxed driving position.

Allroad has a higher ground clearance and 4WD but don't know that it's necessarily much better off road.

Must say that some of you seem to get a bit wound up quite quickly. :-)

I quite like Alan Green as a commentator. Sure he has an opinion but that adds colour to the commentary to me and he often says what we all think regarding poor play etc. Don't mind Adrian Chiles either although he was a bit bland after yesterdays match. Colin Murray is quite amusing and, like many Irish people I know, could talk for Europe! Agree that you would have a long way to go to find anyone as good as Motty though.

I have a Polar and although I cannot vouch for its accuracy it seems to reasonable to me. I use ot more as a way of estimating my work out and that allows me to compare sesisons I have done. The event I did on saturday saw a mix of running and biking over 4 hours and it reckoned I burned up 3700 odd calories. Max heart rate didn't go above 161 apparently. Numbers are generally a lot lower on the Polar than they are on the gym equipment I use. But, as I say, I'm not really using it for an absolute calorie burning counter.

Surely the good news is that we didn't lose the opening match so are still in with a very good chance of progressing to the next round. Sure, Green's mistake was a howler, right up there with the very best of them, but these things happen. The other twonin the group that played yesterday looked pretty woeful and so we should be able to beat them quite comfortably. As was mentioned several times in the post match analysis it may well come down to who can score the most goals against them. Provided we play to our best then it should be us. Biggest concern of the night for me was Carra. Very slow. Ok, so the US guys against him were fast but against a decent team I think both him and Terry would have been found out.

Agree with above comments on Germany too. Looked very good, very calm and very efficient. You can never tell how good when playing fairly mediocre opposition and the Aussies were quite poor. On the basis of yesterdays games expect Germany to top the group which makes it more important for us to make sure we top our group.

Doing the Greenbelter at Swinley tomorrow – looking forward to it for a bit of fun. Should then have time to get home, get showered, get the curry in and settle down for "the match". :-)

Would need to check that she is happy with the feel of a WSD type bike. Talon is quite a reasonable bike. Daughter has a Trek WSD which she likes and wifey now has a new Marin Whiteline – but feels more comfortable on the man frame. Personally, when I have ridden my daughters bike (and an older bike my wife had) the balance on the WSD bikes just feels all wrong. Maybe it works for the ladies but I certainly wouldn't feel confident going up a steep climb on one.

At that sort of price there are quite a few bikes to choose from including the Boardman jobbies from Halfords, Trek, Spesh etc. Generally Marin still seem to be a bit too little bike for too much money. Other options could include a Merlin Malt 2 (although only another £100 or so on top gets the Malt 4). My son has a Malt 4 and rather like it.

No. It's 12.

Leave.

Or stay.

Up to you and how you feel. ;-)

It's the atmosphere you don't like – so would that change with a salary raise and a car? Part of me thinks it's a bit late for them to make you the offer to stay but that would probably be a bit unfair as they may not have known you were thinking of leaving until you handed in your notice. They clearly like you and think you are worth it (or are desperate to keep you as they don't think they could replace you quickly and cheaply enough).

Difficult one really. Personally I can't get too excited about father's day as it feels nothing more than a cheap commercial opportunity to try and balance mothers day. I'm quite happy with a toblerone (other chocolate products may be available and would probably do) or a chance to just do what I want to do on the day. This year it will be something I can look forward to when I return from this Good, fun romp around[/url]

So does the whole "big car" thing apply to 29ers as well? ;-)

It has to be pork pie, sausage roll or a good pasty doesn't it? Obviously not all at the same time. I know that there's a fair amount of fat content in that lot but it is offset with the banana. A little. :D

Oh, and mini chedders. Mmmmmm, snack of the gods!

Bikingcatastrophe – so much fail in that post the last government's fiscal competence I don't know where to start

There, corrected it for you Grum. :-)

As mentioned above, 13 years of Blair and Brown and people still think it's all Thatchers fault. And apparently it's Thatchers fault that people are greedy and want to keep more for themselves. Really? So how does that one work? And no, I don't believe that the previous government was open and honest about the true scale of the debt that we have nor the state of the public finances aside from Mr Darlings admission during the Chancellors TV debate that "The cupboard is bare – there is nothing there". Financial prudence eh? I wouldn't trust Gordon Brown with my kids pocket money. If he was a company finance director the government would be calling for him to be prosecuted and held accountable for the financial crimes he has committed. Criminal! Far worse than anything the despised Tories did during their time in office through the 80s. And now everyone is going to complain because we have to take tough steps to try and get ourselves out of the mire before it becomes catastrophic!