Oh just realised. Quite right – most vital points at hand here are a; it was a while ago and we can just forget all about it now, and b; posted in the wrong forum and therefore beneath contempt.

Not forgetting c; definitely in a category called conspiracy, and therefore also not worthy of discussion – isn’t it fabulous to live in a world where conspiracies just don’t exist? Except – er, hang on – isn’t it the official line that these terrorists did conspire to commit these crimes? So – it’s ok for conspiracies to exist, provided the narrative is set by our official good guys.

Quite a lack of information, Northwind, from you about exactly what was “blatant misinformation”. or should we automatically know that?

For a start, it makes no difference if he is correct or not – wanting rid of someone just because they have different views is idiotic. Or American, I suppose.

Secondly, he isn’t even “wrong”. The Second Amendment says; “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” If you choose a little bit of that phrase to suit your own violent ends (like the NRA do) then that is the real offence. Well regulated for the defence of the state is what it says and means – leaving out that bit changes everything.

Thirdly – what’s the big deal with PM? I find Clarkson at least as offensive.

Well, ok – one, but one which is useful a hell of a lot of the time. Also, meant more control over dof is even more important on a crop-chip/DX/whatever you call it camera, because you’ve sort of sacrificed a stop of dof effect before you even start. And it is way more important than does it shoot 1080 video (for example), imo.

I’ll concede – for out and about photography where your main activity is something other than photography (eg cycling) then I guess an all-rounder zoom is very useful. You get a picture vs not having the time to make the picture.

Save money on the body and get at least one lens that goes a heck of a lot wider than f4, or whatever the typical kit zoom offers. The ability to isolate using shallow depth of field gives you loads more creative options than any of the extra features a newer camera will give you. I recently went with a near-mint D300 and a new lovely fast lens, rather than a D7000 and kit zoom for this reason.

(Low light performance on offer with a newer camera is a big plus point – although you of course get that for free with an f1.4 or 1.8 lens anyway because you immediately win several extra stops of flexibility and get a brighter view in the viewfinder to go with it.)

(With the possible exception of one that does exactly a certain thing that you need) “features” are a total distraction. In this modern consumer crazy world we get sucked into feature counting, at the expense of thinking about the things that actually matter, such as does it fit in your hands nicely.

As for video – once you actually watch the content and not the presentation it makes no difference at all, except you get smaller files. imo

That the same women’s “logic” that caused you not check it was plugged in? Glad all is well tho!

Er. Are you really sure it is dead? Any power at all? If not don’t chuck it away without checking fuse in the plug and the internal fuse (very often a spare fuse is either taped or clipped next to the one that is in use). Just saying.

Failing that, Cambridge amps are good and cheap.

Er – for most of the season Alonso had TEN times more points than Massa – that’s some pretty good driving. The car improved steadily and was extremely reliable. So both were good enough really – they only missed it by a hair.

Brazil probably not the most fair comparison – Merc long since gave up the chase for 2012, and tbf they did win a race in 2012. But so did Williams.

Realistic goal for 2013 though would be to beat Lotus – still a massive ask and there are three massive teams another league ahead of them.

Sorry – if you think Hamilton can win anything next year you are either very optimistic or don’t know much about F1. Ditto with the idea that Alonso will remain on 2 WDC – Alonso was clearly the best driver this year and Ferrari aren’t ever going to slip out of the running.

This sort of thing is Ferrari all over (IMO) though; terrible loosers (sic)…

The FIA said no team had appealed or asked them to investigate. But don’t let that get in the way of your bias.

The article actually goes on to say that the FIA are required to investigate whether there is an appeal or not.

If he passed under yellow, he should not be WDC.

OK – so despite some uncertain feedback I ordered one anyway. Makes me wonder why I even asked! Here’s hoping that it’s all I want it to be…

That’s interesting. It’s available here Procamerashop.co.uk for £300, which is £50 less. As far as I can tell that’s a decent shop too – anyone got experience of them? They answered my email queries very promtly and comprehensively, which is a good sign at least.

Compression means two things, doesn’t it? 1. Squeeze it into a small file size, and 2. make all the levels near to as loud as each other (radio edit style). The OP is about the latter, whereas the discussion has drifted into the former (further up). You can have the highest quality in raw file size terms, but it could still be compressed for loudness.

Thanks molgrips. That’s sorta the answer I was expecting! I absolutely love the look of the lens, but this focusing business does seem to be a common complaint.
I’ve read people claim that as long as you use single point focus it holds focus well enough, but otherwise it doesn’t seem to want to make its mind up – would that make any sense?

I was born in Friday Street and now live in Abinger Common, so I think I’ve got a fairly good angle on these issues. A couple of points:

crossfire 80 – I don’t think it is reasonable to expect Peaslake to be a sleepy place with next to no commerce or visitor activity. Just because you were lucky enough to buy a silly-priced house in a beautiful place, doesn’t mean that place is an idyl for the wealthy. In the past there would have been much more going on there. Plus, if you have caused criminal damage, or have sanctioned or encouraged such, you deserve everything coming to you.

(Some) riders – inconsiderate parking is not on – go and park up the hill somewhere if the village is looking a bit full. You have a bicycle!

And – a hell of a lot of confrontation would be avoided if bikers would stop (or go down to walking pace) when they encounter walkers. Just do it – then wait until you have the space back to yourself and then get on with enjoying your ride.

Unless any names were displayed there is no material difference between using the piece of paper as a prop and simply mentioning the problem of some names being in circulation. I think a lot of the stink derives solely from Philip Schofield being expected to do strictly fluffy stuff.

What is the difference between this being an actual list of names and it being a blank piece of paper?

You, me and no-one else saw it, and DC didn’t look at it.

The problem is what, exactly?

funny, I thought they started from the pit lane cos they’d not had enough fuel in the car during quali and we’re punished accordingly.

Hmm. Now I see where you are coming from, and why maybe you don’t see things the same.

DQ from qualifying puts you on the back of the grid. Start from the pit lane is a further disadvantage that the team took upon themselves to be allowed to take the car out of Parc Fermé and change the set-up. Obviously they did that because a different set-up would give them the chance of coming through the field, but it was by no means certain that that gamble would pay-off.

I believe the only reason you feel he isn’t good at overtaking is that you made up your mind on that point some time in the past and now you just refuse to see the evidence before your eyes.

Just to add a little more perspective on Vettel – the Red Bull’s entire concept is for maximum downforce for best lap time, not the more versatile set-up that (say) Ferrari use, which has much better top speed. For that reason Red Bull started from the pit lane and turned-out a completely different set-up which SV hd not driven a single mile before the race started. Considering that teams often find great chunks of time fine-tuning the set-up his race was absolutely remarkable – a testament to the technical prowess of that team, and of SV’s quality as a driver in the all-round sense.

Doesn’t really matter does it? Compared to the ridiculous idea that he can’t come through traffic – which is plainly wrong! OK, so he ain’t perfect (nobody ever made up that many places without taking a few risks) – but that’s a pretty big difference to what you were trying to make out.

I’ve said it before and I’ll.say it again, Vettel can’t cut it in traffic.

Will you be saying it again? Pit lane to podium, including a wing change and an extra stop. Looked pretty decent to me!

No worries stevewhyte – odd that you managed to read one but not the other. I was only concerned about your twisted knickers.

stevewhyte – I already took that over-reach back. But you only read the posts that you want to read I guess.

Still – even if I phrased it in an ott fashion, I do believe he has tainted a long phase of TdF history, not only by doping, but by conspiring, bullying, threatening, arrogance and greed.

OK, I take back singlehandedly.

Well. You are trying to make light of it!

It is clearly different to other riders, and rightly gets more attention. He has singlehandedly invalidated 7 years of TdF history, and tainted the sport forever. Millions of people bought the great story and took him to be the saviour of cycling following the absolutely dire Festina days. Turns out he was the opposite.

Wrecker – sure;y you a re either having a laugh, or haven’t read the story at all.

Vilifying fellow riders. Threatening to ruin people’s lives. Invoking his own life-threatening cancer as a defence against the very idea that he would put something dodgy into his body… He’s done plenty to put him far and above (well, below) other riders.

Regs change is what Newey is crying out for – he wants more space to innovate.

I’m still quite surprised by this Vettel story – it does leave Red Bull exposed. They have Webber for next year, but maybe they now feel the need to bring in a younger guy to get ready for 2014.

Instances of FA getting beat are very very rare. Obviously we can look at 2007, but no-one really knows what went on there. My own opinion is that McLaren should have stuck with Plan A.

BBC front page has already been amended to “might” join Ferrari (although story still says will).

Hats off to Vettel for having the balls to go to Alonso’s team. Possibly by 2014 Fernando’s powers will be ever so slightly on the wane – although I doubt it. SV does have a better reputation in qualifying, which is FA’s sole weakness (ever so slight). On balance, I’d expect FA to win that battle. Interesting – wish it was happening straight away.

BTW, all those that bang on about Alonso being stroppy are just plain wrong, imo. If McLaren had shown more wisdom in 2007 things would be very different now.

Can’t even get the holding page here!

Look into the background of the Swedish prosecutor. Why did the original prosecutor leave it?

I have read the article now – it doesn’t surprise me that the media are united against him, despite being quite happy to repeat the leaks themselves to start with. The whole thing stinks – and the biggest stink of all is that no matter how serious the claims against Assange, the real crimes revealed in the leaks are massively worse.

So why didn’t they arrest him and charge him when he was in Sweden?

The fact that he hung around in Sweden for so long, the fact that tweets and texts were deleted by the women, the fact that the original prosecutor wasn’t interested but the new one (a politician) was, the fact that he remains un-charged, the fact that they could very easily interview him here – all these facts tell me you are wrong mogrim.

I can’t believe how effective the propaganda is! These are obviously trumped-up charges and the Swedes obviously have no intention of actually taking things to trial (he isn’t even charged with these “crimes”, only wanted for questioning). Blatantly the US wants to extradite or otherwise snatch him away to try and prosecute him for the heinous crime of irritating them.

I don’t care how “creepy” any of you think he is (by the way, that ain’t a crime either), he isn’t the criminal here. The real crimes were revealed in the leaks, and they were murderous and shameful.

Plus, all Wikileaks do is pass on the leaks – they aren’t the original leakers. Should our newspapers all be extradited and tried in the US for repeating the leaks?