Steve_Barker

...but right from being a little kid I've always wanted to live in a cave.

A bit like http://www.cheatneutral.com/

One always hopes that people will develop and come to see a more tolerant and understanding view of the world. I do not see death as a sad thing, its just part of the cycle of life, like the incoming and ebbing tide. What is sad is when people die without reaching their potential - Joerg Haider had probably reached his.

The coastline is wonderful, but last time we went we spent a full week looking at Dolmen (tombs), Menhirs (standing stones) and Alignments in the Carnac area: http://members.tripod.com/Menhirs/dolmen.html We went in November when it is virtually tourist free. When I first went to Brittany in the 70s it was very quite, alas, the world has found it.

Brittany is a most wonderful place - it is a region of France, but only on paper since 1532, the Brettons are very much their own people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany I have been to Brittany many times, and would recommend it - apart from all the France holiday villas, and the large amount of traffic on the Autoroute on a Sunday evening heading back to France. http://www.brittanytourism.com

I see the merging of countries into superstates as a move towards greater totalitarian control. We need to cooperate on global issues, but decisions should be as local as possible A diverse approach will create problems, but it can also allow for variation to find better ways of doing things. What about Brittany, I would tend to view it as a separate cultural identity, with more in common with Cornwall than France.

I will not bother. I have Fahrenheit 9/11 on DVD, but have not yet managed to stay awake to the end. With the new film, I can understand being upset that Bush was re-elected, but fail to see that a Democrat would have made much/any difference.

Who needs it? Does it do all these?: AIM Bonjour Gadu-Gadu Google Talk Groupwise ICQ IRC MSN MySpaceIM QQ SILC SIMPLE Sametime XMPP Yahoo! Zephyr No option then Pidgin it is then: http://www.pidgin.im/about/ Pidgin review: http://en.onsoftware.com/the-pidgin-soars-like-an-eagle/ Actually, I use Kopete http://kopete.kde.org/ which is not quite as good as Pidgin, but it comes with KDE, and as I have only used Yahoo messenger once in the last two years, I see no hurry to install Pidgin. My other half uses Pidgin regulary on her computer.

Another vote for myspace - although I can not remember when I last logged on!

If this is a step towards Google OS, then it may well be a good thing.

In once sense another browser to bite away at the IE strangle hold is no bad thing - obviousl I have not tried it (Linux / FreeBSD user), but I have used Konqueror and like it very much - but I do find it a bit sluggish compared to Opera. What may become a problem is, will Google stop paying Firefox / Opera for searchs, and funding schemes to encourage Firefox uptake?

I believe its a matter of judgement. Sometimes weeding is good, sometimes not really needed. We have serious problems with bindweed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bindweed_(genus) , if we don't keep on top of it it suffercates everything else. We did not weed the squashes too much this year, they ran out to the paths etc, in order to have clear space.

I believe its always good to get the longest possible use out of something. Hence, surfing on this thin client -also, because I can make it work, is a good reason!

Mind you the Core2 Duo has a standardish Ubuntu desktop too, just a photo of one of our best places. Mac theme. Why not get a Mac and use Boot Camp for all those Windows programs and games? http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html

Thanks. I must be sad, but I like percentages :excl:

Stricktly speaking I can stand, but I have to get written permission from my bosses allowing me to stand, then I have to sign to say that I will not discuss anything that is related to, or could be percieved as being related to work. All in all it becomes impracticle to stand.

As you can see, this is the bog standard PC-BSD desktop. I have not customised it, the PC is an old Compaq thin client upgraded to 340 RAM, and a small local disk (which am using as a the hard drive to run the OS). Hence, I need every bit of memory I can find!

By the way, what was the breakdown for the Operating Systems. The Firefox/Opera/Safari results show that individual sites vary greatly from the Global figures http://marketshare.hitslink.com/ Afraid it is I who works for the Government - although I'd rather not, prevents me from standing for the Green Party :mad:

The truble with damaging big cars is that the insurance pays to use yet more energy and resources to fix them - becomes planet defeating.

IE6 at work is not too bad.................................................because I never have to use it :thumbup: Outlook iritates me no end though :crazy: My brief use of IE7 did not sugest that it was any better than IE6 I work for a government department, and even though Government Departments have had the OK to use open source no government department has yet made the switch. I spoke to one of the top IT buyers who was on a site visit about a year ago, and even though it would save money, and Dell can supply Ubuntu, and Linux can do all the types of work we do, and on top of that Oracle is taking over most admin functions He and his fellow buyers will continue odering Windows until another department has sucessfully made the move........... just in case If work had Ubuntu and a Mozilla browser (i like Epiphany best) I might even surf a bit at lunch times :rolleyes:

Last night I used a friends computer (we have Explorer 6 at work) and used Explorer 7 for the first time, gosh it is cluttered, and awkward. The only other browser I find the interface very cluttered and offputting is Flock, and M/soft seem to have tried to copy it. We spent about two years trying to decide if we could manage without this that, and the other. In the end we decided to put Suse on one of our computers, we hated it, but then tried Fedora, and very quickly decided to drop M/soft products altogether. Now we made the change, we would not want to go back.

I tend to agree with both Simon and Armadillo. I've been down Victorian iron ore mines, where the employers were considered very progressive because if the husband was killed down the mine the employers allowed the family a week to move out of the miners cottage, when standard practice was eviction on the same day. Social and environmental law has progressed a lot since then, and society has genrally benifited from this. However, it is OUR companies that have realised that opting out of such legistlation saves money. The sad thing is that enough people were happy enough to buy "cheep" and unethical, that now even buying "quality" brands means poor labour and/or environmental conditions. It always amuses me about right wing politicians telling us about the importance of free trade. What they are wanting cheep is production in Asia. However, once we have no manufacturing base we will be vulnerable to the whims of the Asia production countries, because if we do not like what they demand they can bring our infrastructure to its knees by withhollding parts for our equipment.

Unfortunately, we do not have the space to grow all our vegitables, but the more that people grow in their gardens the healthier they will be and less food miles produced.

First impressions is that this is a good idea. However: 1. Building these things will require time, politicians never think of beyond the next opinion poll, never mind next week. 2. They would be built cheap, and could easily become undesirable places to live, and what work and leisure activities would there be? Makes me think of the ships on Battle Star Galactica, that you never saw, often, where people festered in poverty with nothing to do. 3. We deal badly with refugees at present. Would there be enough pads, at great expense for every climate refugee, or would there be a controled entry, "deserving" and "non-deserving" refugee (which could become very racially/cultually orientated/devisive), or will refugees have to pay to escape the floods? Its all very scary. Just makes me think of how short sighted we actually are as a society.

Noticed this story on the BBC news yesterday: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7503060.stm I wonder how many people will actually notice this story, never mind contemplate it.